An Orphan's Tale (4 page)

I wanted to ask him to tell me everything he remembered about Charlie, but I didn't. He might get suspicious.

There were old Tephillin bags piled in boxes and he gave me one, and also a white and black Talis that still has some silver threads in it. He gave me a copy of PIR-KAY AVOS which has the Hebrew and the English and I told him it was my favorite book, but he didn't react. Even though I'm the only real student he has left I don't believe he really cares about me.

We walked back to the classroom and I told him about the Home being closed and that they're going to use our buildings as a halfway house for Jewish mental patients. I gave him the reason I saw in the letter, about the supply of Jewish orphans drying up and he only laughed. He got angry and said that the real reason was always the same: the lack of religious observance. The Home was failing because it was failing God. Our kitchens were no longer Kosher, our Shul was unused, our boys received no real Jewish upbringing.

He said that the Home was like the state of Israel because its real purpose was to lead the Jewish people away from religion and God!

I never saw him speak with so much passion before and I wondered if Charlie ever heard him speak like this. He stood in front of the blackboard and waved his good hand in circles above his head. He said the Zionists were willing to sell all of Jewish history for a nationalist “mess of pottage.”

He said that Zionism represented the greatest heresy of all time. He looked at me with great anger and told me to remember his words because nobody else would ever tell me the truth. I didn't say anything but I concentrated as hard as I could.

This was what he said: “ZIONISM IS AN ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH A JEWISH KINGDOM ON EARTH WHICH WAS AND ALWAYS WILL BE THE PRIVILEGE OF THE MESSIAH ALONE.”

He got so excited that he began to choke and his face turned from red to gray but I still didn't say anything or move from my desk. Marty and a 10 year old boy named Norman were peeking through the window with their eyes bulging. Dr. Fogel punched his own chest with his fist and his color began to come back. He gave me a piece of paper and told me to write out a receipt for the Talis and Tephillin and book.

Larry Silverberg was very friendly to me today but he forgot to ask me for my answer.

What I want to know: more about Israel and its history, so I can refute Dr. Fogel!

SATURDAY

Today was visiting day so I went into the Shul with my new book and stayed there all day, memorizing and sleeping.

This is what I told myself: The Sabbath is a day of rest and a day of study and I am doing both!

I stood in front of the Ark and chanted my Haftorah. I opened the Ark but I was afraid that if I tried to lift a Torah out by myself I would drop it.

There were only 6 boys at supper, and the Puerto Rican cooks and dishwashers ate with us and talked in Spanish about baseball players. After supper I took out my Tephillin and sat on my bed and unwound the leather straps. I wondered if the boy who once used the Tephillin was still alive somewhere and if he had a son who was putting on Tephillin.

When the lights were out and time had gone by the guys got into each other's beds and whispered about things they would do to girls and movie stars when they had the chance.

To remember to do before leaving:

A question: Is there an orphanage anywhere for Jewish girls?

*

The narrow line of colored glass that ran along the top of each section of the wall shimmered in the sun. Danny sat on a chair by the window, his
tephillin
bag in his lap, and watched the courtyard below. When the police car had appeared fifteen minutes before, Danny had been surprised to see Mr. Gitelman step out of it, but he had not, he realized, been afraid.

The boys stood huddled in a group, at a safe distance, watching Larry Silverberg being handcuffed. Danny felt nothing, except relief: he would not have to give him an answer.

A group of Puerto Rican boys stood on the other side of the street, outside the gate, watching. Larry Silverberg stepped toward the car, then raised his handcuffed hands above his head and looked up toward Danny. Danny moved away from the window, put his book and
tephillin
in his locker, and took out some of his money.

When he came to the window again, the police car was gone and only three boys were left in the courtyard. They played catch with a football. Danny left the dormitory, walked downstairs and along the main corridor. Mr. Gitelman's office door was open.

Danny went in and, nobody there, he telephoned Charlie's home in New Jersey. A woman answered and said that he would be back later in the day. Danny left his name and said he was from the Maimonides Home for Jewish Boys.

Then he walked from the building, showed his pass to the guard at the gate, and stepped onto the sidewalk. He stared back through the iron bars at the boys left inside the courtyard, and he wondered what—not being friends with any of the boys he himself had been growing up with—he would have to share with Charlie when they were together. What stories of the Home could he bring to him?

He looked at the bronze plaque on the wall next to the gate and wondered if Charlie would remember it.

He took the IRT subway to Grand Army Plaza and went into the public library, to look things up. Afterward he walked in Prospect Park and thought about what he'd read. He wondered what Charlie and his friends had done evenings in the Home years before, and decided that having had more boys then made the difference. In the year Charlie had left the Home there had been 326 boys enrolled.

He took the bus to the neighborhood in which he'd seen Charlie, and he walked along the streets. Most of the stores were closed, but in a used-clothing store he bought a green cloth sack for $3.49, and in a drugstore he bought batteries and candy bars. He returned to the Home in time for supper and he listened to the boys at his table compare things Larry had done to them. Steve was proudest because he still had large purple marks on his arms and legs. They talked about running away and hiding out in movie theaters and getting jobs as delivery boys. One of them said he knew where a summer cottage his aunt and uncle owned was, and the boys became excited about going there. Danny didn't ask them if the cottage was heated for the winter.

Mr. Gitelman came into the dining room while they were eating and announced that Larry was going to have to go to court because the mothers of two young boys had brought charges against him. He had been forcing the boys to steal things for him by doing things to them that Mr. Gitelman would not mention. He warned all the boys to be careful and to report to him personally if they wanted to tell him anything. They would never get in trouble for telling him things, he said. “You don't know how good you have it here until you get sent to the kinds of places he's been in,” he added. “Believe me.”

Danny left the room while the boys were eating dessert, went upstairs, and wrote.

*

SUNDAY

This morning the police came and took Larry Silverberg away. Now they'll have nobody to rally them when the time comes. I think I was glad that he was gone because it makes it easier for me to get ready to leave.

I went to the library this afternoon and read about Zionism.

The word Zionism was first used in 1892. In Europe at that time there was still a head tax on “Jews and cattle” that moved from town to town.

There have
always
been Jews living in Jerusalem! Jews tried to create a state there in the 16th century and at other times too!

A saying I found for Dr. Fogel: “It is better to dwell in the deserts of Palestine than in palaces abroad.”

A question I thought of for him: If we had a place to call our own in 1941 would 6 million of us have died?

I looked at pictures of Jewish children frozen to death in the snow in the Warsaw Ghetto and I was surprised because instead of making me cry the pictures made my body go stiff. A girl sitting near me saw the way my fists were clenched with anger and she moved to another table.

A question for Danny Ginsberg: Why do I care so much about a Jewish Homeland? Is it because I never had a real Jewish home of my own, or is it because it's really something worth caring about?

Here are the last words of my Haftorah: “Thus saith the Lord God, Because ye are all become dross therefore behold I will gather you into the midst of Jerusalem.”

I read a story about a great Zionist named Michael Halpern who was being mocked by a group of Arabs at a circus, so he entered the lion's cage unarmed and sang the “Hatikvah.”

What that proves, according to Danny Ginsberg: True strength comes from imagination.

*

Danny handed Dr. Fogel his
tephillin
and Dr. Fogel told Steve to come to the front desk and show Danny how to put it on. Steve did as he was told. He made the blessing for the box and strap which go on the arm and he slipped the leather loop over his elbow and onto his biceps, so that the small black box containing the
Shema
faced in toward his heart.

He wrapped the strap that came from the box around his forearm seven times, for the seven blessings. He rolled the end of the strap around his palm and held it there while he picked up the second
tephillin
box. He kissed the top, said a prayer, and placed the leather loop that came from the bottom of the box around the crown of his head and under his
yamulka
. Danny thought that the box looked like a miniature square hat with a narrow black rim. Two leather straps hung down from the nape of Steve's neck to either side of his shoulders, and Marty and Heshy giggled, watching.

Dr. Fogel glared at them and pulled open the drawer to his desk. Inside, Danny knew, there were nipples for baby bottles, and even though it was silly, it scared the boys to think of Dr. Fogel handing them one to suck on.

Steve unwound the strap from his left palm and drew it through the spaces between his fingers, three times, so that on the back of his hand the straps looked like the letter “shin,” representing the name of God.

Dr. Fogel told him to take the
tephillin
off and he did, winding the straps carefully around the black rims of the boxes and kissing the tops of the boxes lightly before putting them back into the bag.

Danny realized that, except for playing ball, putting on
tephillin
was the only thing Steve knew how to do.

Dr. Fogel asked Danny to come to the front of the room, and he asked him what the meaning of Bar Mitzvah was.

“Son of Commandment,” Danny said.

Dr. Fogel asked him how he would be different after his thirteenth birthday and Danny said that in the eyes of the Jewish people he would be a man.

“In what ways?” Dr. Fogel asked, smiling.

“I can be counted among the ten men necessary for a
minyan
without which a service cannot be held and mourner's
Kaddish
cannot be said,” Danny recited. “I will be considered responsible as an adult for all my actions. I will put on
tephillin
every morning. I will—”

“Yes, yes,” Dr. Fogel interrupted. “But in what way will you be a
man?”

Behind him, the boys had their heads on their desks, hands over mouths, to keep from laughing out loud. Dr. Fogel kept his eyes on Danny. Danny said what came into his head: “I'll be a man by taking care of Jewish orphans.”

Dr. Fogel smiled. “Very good,” he said. “That is a very good answer.”

Danny saw Dr. Fogel's smile, and it seemed unnaturally large, so that he could not see the man's eyes above the smile. He felt confident suddenly. “What I want to do is be a doctor on a kibbutz in Israel,” he went on. “So I can take care of Jewish children whose parents have died for God.”