Maggie's Farm

And just a warning to Aaron that if he doesn't do things just so, just right, punklicht, he'll get zapped too.  I think I learned that when the chief Cohen went to pray for the sins of the Jewish people once a year into the sanctum sanctorum of the Temple, he had to do the prep, the fasting, the special clothes. And for the just in case, a rope was tied around his ankle: should he be struck dead inside (for not being completely pure, purely contrite), he could be pulled out, as no one could enter.  What a life insurance policy.

Things get more intense. There is this recitation of a prayer, asking God to be merciful with us, and citing the several deeply religious rabbis who were flayed to death, or burned al kiddush hashem. Not just burned: to be sure this would be a horrific death, they put on the chest of one rabbi moist branches (smoked Jew), and the coup de grace, put a Torah scroll in his arms as the fire finally envelopes him.
This God is supposed to be merciful to us?  In Las Vegas, the odds would be long.
        And the topper is Job at the end of mussaf (when I was too worn to remain to hear it read).  Here are the less-than-Cliff's Notes.  Job is a haftorah in which no Jews appear, except the title character. Who is told by  God, go to Nineveh (some goyish big town north of here) and tell the guys and gals there that they are fornicating and such in bad ways and if these are not mended, such a balagan God was going to
make on them.  Nu, Job, taking more after myself than after Abraham, doesn't say "Hineni" , "Here I am."  Rather, he goes on the lam. Skips out on the Big One; goes AWOL; takes the "A" train, you know, "Hit the road, Jack (And don't you come back, no mo', no mo'.)."
        Or rather, a ship.  All goyim on the ship.  A good start, one figures. Each goy has his own idol on board. Makes God a big storm, shaking up the goyim, and Job goes into the hold and takes a nap. The captain, a sharpie, says they should pull out their idols, throw lots, figure out which of the 70 or so gods is making such an arroyo.
Notices that someone's missing and heads into the hold, somewhere near the "head," and asks Job, "What gives?"  (Captains, like cowboys are laconic.)  Job spills the beans about his anti-mission and his tough god. Captain asks what to do and Job offers,  "Pitch me overboard." Said; done.  Storm passes. (Seems he made believers of these sailors.)
        In the Leviathan belly three days, begs succor and Job gets vomited onto the beach near Nineveh (whose symbol, I believe was the fish.) Does his job in the streets, prophesying.  Imagine, a fish-gut smelling Jew prophesying in goyland.  And they believe him, repair their ways, even the whores.  Job seeks rest beneath a tree/bush god has grown, which protects him in the sun.  Falls asleep and wakens to
find that God has put a worm in the tree to kill it and sun bake him. Job gets petulant about this. God one-ups him: you fuss about a sunburn, but when I ask you to save thousands of my creations, you go on the lam. A zetz, we would say in yiddish (kind of like a poke in the ribs with a pole; or a slap upside the head).
        What a message these ten days. I don't figure on much mercy with this God. He does seem to know how to build character though.
        But I am not a theologian, just an Oleh Hadash and a psychoanalyst, so I turn to what I understand better: a seven year old, who it turns out understands well how to touch a heart.
        I am invited to Michelle and Ira's house for break--fast after twenty-five hours fast; Michelle is my guardian angel here, under the guise of working for the Mayor's office.  I have written about her eldest, Daniel, 20, in Nachshon, that unit that lives on the West Bank incognito, gathering information and named after the fellow among the Israelites, who, when the Jews escaping Egypt see the parted waters and hesitate, jumps in first.  He is on duty this Yom Kippur (although on the bus back from TA, I meet one of his buddies from Nachshon, rumpled,Ro'i, which means "my shepherd" or "my guardian" (in my mind at least, he is a guardian).  But his brother Ben, about 16, sister Avital (about 14) and Mayan (about 7) are here.
        Break-fast is not a rapid, hither-come-quickly matter. First havdalah, then a shot of single malt. (Who knew that there was such a liquid connection with Scotland and Jews?)  Then, feed the new yellow Lab puppy outside, prepare the table for two more guests, then food out. Everything is simple, yet elegant: when Ben and I put out a table cloth too gangly for the table, like adolescent arms on a teen's body, Ira suggests a change.
        But I want to tell you about Mayan (Brook, or Stream) and the moment with her. She has large blue eyes made larger by her black pupils. She has blond hair in various transformations of braiding; once with a colorful thread stranded through; tonight pigtails put back Heidi style. She sits on the kitchen counter eating her favorite: chocolate and peanut butter sandwich, made by her father, but in the tradition of her mother's Belgian/Hollandish tradition. (I hope I am getting my
ethnography right.)  It is in  a special bread that looks whole-wheatish with smearings of something like golden raisins baked in.  We talk, she dangles her legs, asks if I have read Junie B. (Good? I think).  Have heard of it, but never read. She high-tails upstairs as I do a very professional job arranging the satiny lox. I am imagining myself serving at Zabar's.  Down she comes with a Junie B. book and a picture book on... how to become or to love lawyers. Really.  (We agree that our favorite photo is of the British barrister with the white wig. She can't belive that the judges have bigger rags on their scalps.)  We sit on the couch and start the Junie B. getting through most of the first chapter about how she "cheats" of her desk mate, May's, paper, but May is a bit of a pill. Still, Mayan thinks it wasn't right to cheat. But Mayan seems to take to my mugging of May and Junie and of the snarky boy who sits in front of them.  I get a
reprieve to join the table.
        Shortly after, she appears at my elbow, quietly. Shows me a kind of bracelet made of wooden objects, kitchen utensils, she got fromSlovenia, a trip with her mom she has mentioned several times.  I ask for several words in Hebrew and can only remember the one for rolling pin ("arucha" perhaps).  Think to myself how my mother used many of these objects.  She also leaves at my plate, without my noticing it
until later, two wooden hearts locked into each other.  But, then a moment that reminds me of the human, the dearness that can be in children and that we must work to sustain through life.
        She asks, "Were you divorced."  A simple yes, is all I can muster. (And am aware of stirrings of difficult feelings, including a protective layer of Gardol.)  Then she asks, "Why did that happen?" Here too, I am brief, although I feel wheels of thinking getting into gear, trying to get into motion, grinding away inside. I come out with something like, "The woman I was married to didn't want to be with me anymore."  That's all. Great psychoanalyst can do no better in that moment with a thoughtful child.         Then this child says, "It makes me sad."  She leans briefly against me. I agree with her.  She is off, later inviting me to finish the Junie B. chapter and still later to
play a marble game.
        This is what made my Yom Kippur.

Copyright N. Szajnberg, MD, 2005