Devil in the Details (13 page)

I took to it immediately. Mr. Stein presented a practical
Judaism, not so much of ideas, but of actions. Not: here’s what you
should believe, but: here’s what you should do. I found this
tremendously appealing. This was exactly the kind of peer pressure
I’d been looking for – come on, all the Yids are doing it.

It was just what I wanted. For some time now I’d been having
these impulses to wash and check and eat funny, and now here was a
channel, a vessel to give them shape. It gave me an identity. Now I
wasn’t just a weird kid; I was a religious fanatic. It could have
been worse. If, say, an athletic coach had taken me under wing as
Mr. Stein had, giving outlet to my determined impulses, I might
have become a maniacally driven gymnast or ice skater instead. That
would have been much worse. The hours were longer, and you had to
wear leotards.

Instead of tights, I had Torah. Twice a week, I met with Mr.
Stein, and he handed down new laws and lessons. We started with the
basics of kashrut. Because food was a subject that interested us
both, and because a little snack fit nicely into the lesson plan,
we spent months on the topic. Just learning which animals were
kosher and which ones weren’t took weeks. In a less rural area we
might have skipped or shortened the lesson, but living where we
did, Mr. Stein knew it was likely I would encounter donkey meat and
squirrel. These were out. Pigeon was fine, but not if you shot it
yourself, as our neighbors often did.

Then there was the matter of separating milk and meat. This
lesson, too, took weeks. There were so many substatutes and terms
to learn. Mr. Stein brought in packages and taught me to read their
codes, pointing out the
Us
and
Ks
that indicated
kashrut, the problematic ingredients that rendered innocent-looking
products inedible. Both meat and milk had aliases, it turned out.
Milk could hide as ‘casein’, ‘sodium stearoyl lactylate,’ or
‘whey.’ Meat could be ‘mono- and diglycerides’ or ‘natural
flavors.’ You had to watch out.

By the time we moved on to bigger things like commandments, I
was hooked. This stuff was
gold
. Twice a week wasn’t enough.
I began studying on my own, following a self-designed curriculum
based mostly on the works of Herman Wouk and the encyclopedia
entries on food additives. Mr. Stein and I hadn’t gotten to prayer
yet, but I couldn’t wait, so I just started praying freestyle. Soon
I was spending the bulk of my day in prayer. The rest of the time,
I combed the pantry for new foods to stop eating.

Yes, I’d crossed a line. My parents blamed Mr. Stein. They’d
liked him just fine until I started throwing out all their bacon.
But now he was trouble. Now he was a bad influence. My parents
didn’t understand that it wasn’t coming from him; it was coming
from a dark, determined place inside me. They didn’t understand
that this was inevitable. I was obsessive-compulsive. I had spent
the last decade tapping bookshelves and frantically rearranging my
stuffed animals. This couldn’t have come as a surprise.

It didn’t particularly surprise me. I had known for a long time
that I would become observant when I turned thirteen. Thirteen is
the age at which you’re expected to follow all the laws. Up until
then, you’re not responsible; you can mainline lobster bisque on
Yom Kippur and it’s technically permitted. I’m still not sure why I
didn’t take more advantage of this by cramming in all the pork I
could that twelfth year. Maybe it’s because I knew I would have to
stop. I always knew I was going to become religious. I just didn’t
know I was going to become crazy, too.

Mr. Stein didn’t know it, either, didn’t know he was handing me
grenades that would continue to go off all over our house for years
to come. He did not know what I was doing with his lessons, how I
magnified and misinterpreted them to my scrupulous ends.

He did not know, when he casually mentioned that you had to
watch out with yogurt, because it sometimes contained un-kosher
gelatin, that I would go home and subject the contents of the
refrigerator to a yogurt witch hunt, a dairy performance of
The
Crucible
in which all the questionable cartons were accused and
cast out. He did not know I would go on to conduct a cereal probe,
a cracker tribunal, a canned-goods inquisition.

Mr. Stein did not know, when he taught me the prohibition
against wearing a garment made of mingled linen and wool, that I
would refuse to touch anyone wearing a different fiber than I. He
did not know, when he taught me that milk and meat required
separate dishes, that I would decide they required separate toilets
as well. He did not know that my family was one mitzvah away from
sending me to boarding school.

They’d had it. There was discussion of ending my lessons. But we
were almost through, and besides, I’d started getting better. I
just had. There was that business with the behavior modification
contract, and then things improved. By the time Mr. Stein and I
were concluding our course of study with a brief tutorial on
gleaning statutes, I was close to sane. I was still a little funny,
all right, but I could get through a meal without inspecting the
flatware first. I could get through a full day of school. I was
stable, more or less.

This was good, because the next step in the conversion process
was the most unsettling. I would have to go to the mikvah, the
ritual bath. I was not looking forward to it. Despite my washing
compulsions, I didn’t particularly enjoy bathing, and I certainly
didn’t relish the thought of doing it in front of an audience. A
witness would have to be present to verify that I did it
properly.

The awkwardness of the situation, I hoped, would be mitigated by
the luxury of it. The nearest mikvah was in San Francisco, a big
city, and this conjured images of glamour for me. I figured the
mikvah would be like a spa treatment, only slightly more spiritual.
I would have a wrap and a massage, and then, when the spirit moved
me, I’d take a dip in my gold Gottex one-piece.

In reality it went more like this: there was a vigorous
pre-immersion hosing-down followed by a naked inspection from the
mikvah attendant that was so thorough it resembled a girl-on-girl
reenactment of
Midnight Express
. Then, still naked, I
flopped around in a lukewarm Jacuzzi in front of people politely
averting their eyes.

It was a very complicated process. Nothing can come between the
body and the mikvah water – not nail polish, lint, dirt, stray
hairs, or dental plaque – and the mikvah attendant was there to
ensure I was perfectly clean and bare. This was my own personal
nightmare. The last thing a thirteen-year-old girl wants is to have
her naked body examined by a matter-of-fact Russian babushka. It’s
just such an awkward time. I was so modest that I couldn’t even try
on belts in the Loehmann’s shared dressing room. An inch-by-inch
going-over was torture. It seemed to last forever. She investigated
between my toes and under my nails, under my arms and in my navel.
I had to lift up my hair and present my neck. I had to open my
mouth and stick out my tongue. I was just about to bend over for
the cavity search I figured was next when she pronounced me clean
enough and pointed me toward the water.

Now all I had to do was immerse myself three times while a
witness ensured that I did it properly. This was handled with as
much discretion and sensitivity as possible, but still, no amount
of discretion can undo the fact that you’re being evaluated while
bobbing around naked, like a clumsy Olympic synchronized swimmer
who’s lost both her suit and the rest of her team. I wanted to
die.

Well, at least I wasn’t a boy. The conversion for boys requires
a scalpel. Even if you’re already circumcised, you still have to
whip it out in front of the rabbi for a ritual bloodletting. And
you have to go through the mikvah ordeal, too.

So I got off relatively easy. And now it was almost done. I was
almost Jewish. All that was left were a few formalities, like
choosing a Jewish name. Though I’d spent the past year obsessing
over the most minute details, I gave almost no thought to this one,
opting for the name I’d randomly been assigned in Hebrew class six
years earlier: Zeva. I liked it because it sounded exotic and chic
and reminded me of Zena jeans, which were popular at the time. I
later learned it was an unfortunate choice, the Israeli equivalent
of Gertrude. It’s also an exact homonym of the Hebrew term for
genital discharge. An unfortunate choice.

Whatever. All I had to do now was appear before a
bet
din
, a Jewish religious court, whose members would quiz me on
my commitment to and knowledge of Judaism. They could ask me
anything. I was prepared to answer questions about everything from
the finer points of temple incense regulations to the minutiae of
tithing, but I still worried about flunking. What if they asked
about the sex laws? I thought that inappropriate study matter for a
girl of my age and had neglected them almost entirely. Or what if
they’d been talking to my parents? What if they went off-field and
asked me how I could reconcile my behavior of late with the
commandment to honor my mother and father?

In the end they asked me to name the matriarchs and sent me on
my way. It had taken a year to become a Jew, and now, in three
minutes, it was done.

It felt strangely anti-climactic, such a brief end to a long,
tough year. It wasn’t like getting a nose job or a tattoo. It
didn’t make me see myself differently. I’d always known I was
Jewish. Now it was just official.

In any case, the real climax would be the bat mitzvah, now just
a month away. Traditionally the bat mitzvah is held on the Saturday
closest to the thirteenth birthday, but my birthday was in July,
which is just too hot for an outdoor catered affair. We pushed it
to September, when the only open Saturday was the Shabbat of
Sukkot.

This was good and bad. The upside was that there would be a
sukkah in the synagogue backyard. I knew it would probably just be
a lean-to decorated with overripe fruit and an entourage of
insects, but my delusions of grandeur allowed me to imagine it as a
charming hut in which I might play milkmaid, like Marie Antoinette
in her Petit Trianon.

The downside was that in choosing this Shabbat I had earned
myself a real challenge of a haftorah, the portion of the Prophets
traditionally read by the bar or bat mitzvah child. One of the
longest and darkest portions, about the apocalyptic war between the
mysterious Gog and Magog, it is baffling and opaque. The only thing
that comes through clearly is a doomsday sentiment. It features
waste places and pestilence, creeping things and earthquakes, fire
and brimstone. It’s the liturgical equivalent of
I Spit on Your
Grave
. The melody is just as difficult as the content, marked
by the rarest and most challenging of tropes. Besides having to
repeat the tongue twister ‘Gog and Magog’ over and over, I would be
required to perform vocal gymnastics that are normally the province
of castrati.

Well, at least I didn’t have to worry about my voice cracking;
at least I wasn’t a boy. Still, I wasn’t the man for the job. I
cannot sing at all. My voice comes from my mother’s side, a long
line of tin-eared tone-deaf caterwaulers. A few years ago, at my
cousin’s wedding reception, my kin decided to see whose voice was
the worst of all. The ensuing karaoke competition proved so
excruciating that four squad cars were dispatched to shut it down.
Four
. With sirens.

I had reason to worry, but I hoped the backup singers might make
up for my musical shortcomings. If not, surely the sound
technicians could smooth out my rough edges. My mother snorted when
I asked where the madrigal chorus would sit.

“Ha,” she said. “If you want I’ll hand out kazoos, but that’s
all the musical accompaniment you’re going to get. Well, unless we
have beans for breakfast.”

All that work becoming a Jew, only to be rewarded with so little
fanfare. Over the next few weeks my parents dashed hope after hope.
The omelet station was out. There would be no Tiffany mezuzahs as
favors for the guests. I could forget about the
amuse-bouches
. “This is going to be a
country
bat
mitzvah,” my mother warned me, “and if you push me I guarantee I’ll
back a pig on a spit right up to the synagogue. So be happy with
what you get.”

What I would get was a hot and cold buffet, an oversized
challah, and mini bagels. There would be no champagne fountain, no
sorbet course, and I would have to make the desserts myself.
Instead of tails, the servers would be wearing clever T-shirts that
made it look as though they were wearing tuxedos. Well, that was
kind of cool. I could be happy with that.

The only thing left to do was write my speech. This was the part
I’d been dreading and the part everyone else was looking forward
to, for its potential comic value. Laugh with me or laugh at me –
it was sure to be good. My parents wanted me to deliver twenty
minutes of stand-up. “You can do it in a televangelist voice. You
can punctuate everything with ‘A-yesss!’ and ‘Can I get a witness?’
It’ll be a riot.” My parents are lovely people but they had no idea
what would cause a middle-schooler a lifetime of ostracization.
They had also tried to get me to do this when I’d run for student
council.

I wanted to skip the speech entirely. Although I enjoyed
pontificating, I preferred small crowds. Public speaking had never
been my strong suit, and for the talent portion of my parochial
pageant, I wanted to do something else. Couldn’t I do a little
dance number instead? Couldn’t I just twirl a baton?

I put off writing the speech until the last possible moment. At
the rehearsal, four days before the ceremony, I still hadn’t
written a word. A synagogue member took pity on me and dictated a
speech on the spot. I wrote it down, giving little thought to what
it actually meant. It was five minutes long, and it mentioned Torah
several times. It also struck me as perhaps a little political, but
I didn’t really understand it, and in any case I thought it would
make me sound smart. It would do.