Interview With a Jewish Vampire (8 page)

Afterwards we had a potluck dinner with scrumptious food—witches love to cook and eat, Charlene told me later. I felt right at home in the group when I noticed that the majority were on the hefty side after the robes came off. Karen, however, was not only not fat, but looked like she worked out regularly, and wore a very fashionable jeans outfit, with a fitted sweater, bolero jacket and high heels that I would have keeled over in.

“
So you’re the infamous friend who had a fling with a vampire?” Karen asked.

“
I guess word gets around?”

“
Charlene isn’t known for her discretion, and this bit of gossip is more than juicy, it’s well, Page Six worthy. I am so in awe of you. I have never met anyone who has actually had sex with a vampire. How was it?”

I’d always admired Charlene for being so open, but not with my love life.

“
I really don’t want to share the gory details, except that there wasn’t any…gore I mean. I just want to find him. He left me flowers and a promise to see me again but not a word since. It’s been two weeks. I would never track down a guy who didn’t want to see me because despite frequent lapses, I do have some pride. But now there’s another reason I don’t want to go into.”

“
What do you know about him?”

“
He’s Jewish, works in the diamond district, lives as a Hasid in Crown Heights.”

“
That’s a great cover,” Karen observed, obviously impressed. “I’ve heard rumors about Hasidic vampires, that there may be a whole nest of them in Crown Heights.”

“
Where did you hear that rumor?”

“
I took the tour.”

“
The tour? Is there a Hasidic vampire tour?”

“
No, but there’s a tour of Lubavitcher Hasidic sites in Crown Heights. The guide told us about some very mysterious Hasids who only come out at night,” Karen said. “He showed us their lair—I vaguely remember where it is. I asked him a lot of questions but all he would say was they were just dedicated Talmudic scholars, he knew very little about them and neither did anyone else. He said that as long as they observed Jewish law and didn’t bother anyone the rabbis wouldn’t bother them. Then I asked if they were married or had kids. He looked at me very suspiciously and clammed up. It was weird.”

“
We’re going to have to take the tour, obviously,” I said. “Karen, would you come? Maybe you’ll remember the building he pointed out. And Charlene, I’m sure you wouldn’t miss it for the world.”

Charlene nodded enthusiastically. She was always up for an adventure, no matter how bizarre the destination.

We arrived for the Hasidic tour promptly at the ungodly hour of 10:30 a.m. At least it was ungodly for me. I was usually barely up by that hour, and certainly was never on the subway to Brooklyn by 9:30. Maybe I could keep waking up later and later until I adjusted to Sheldon’s schedule—once I found out what his schedule actually was. Charlene and Karen came with me for the tour. I’d never been to Crown Heights. It felt like we’d gotten out of the subway from twenty-first-century New York and exited into a time warp—eighteenth-century Europe, but with some visitors from Harlem. Hasidic men, wearing black suits and hats with long beards and
side curls, shared the streets with black youth in baggy pants and over-the-ear wool caps. The Hasidic women—in kerchiefs, black stockings and long coats-- were all pushing baby carriages and had three or more kids hanging off them. The stores had Yiddish as well as English signs.

The tour participants consisted of us and a group of very Republican-looking white couples dressed up in their Sunday best, and their excessively neat children, all of whom could have been transported straight from 1958. The three of us stood out like exotic birds in a henhouse. I asked the big blonde woman next to me where they came from. “We’re from Pastor Hagee’s Church in San Antonio, Texas, dear,” she said with a southern drawl, assuming I knew what she was talking about. She stuck her face too close to mine and said loudly, “This tour is just fascinating. We went to Israel last year. We just love Jews.”

“
What?” I was stunned. “Why would you love Jews?”

“
Well, you know the Bible says that the End of Days will come after the Jews return to the Land of Israel. Then there will be a second coming of Christ and we Christian faithful will go up to Heaven during Rapture. The rest of humanity will just go to Hell. We came on this tour to be more Rapture ready.”

I’d heard something about the Rapture but never met anyone who believed in it. “How about the Jews?” I asked, not really wanting to know the answer.

“
Oh, we wouldn’t harm a hair on your dear little heads. All you have to do is convert and you can come up to Heaven with us.”

“
How did you know I was Jewish?”

“
The nose, darlin’.”

For a moment I wondered why I’d never gotten one of those ski jump noses like all the girls I grew up with. Because I liked my nose, that’s why. I thought it was aristocratic.

“
We’re stuck on the tour with a bunch of born-again nutcases,” I whispered to Charlene.

“
I heard that broad. You know George Bush and Sarah Palin believe in the Rapture.”

“
Let’s hope it works. When the Rapture comes they get transported to heaven and we get to stay here with all the liberals, atheists and other apostates.”

I turned towards our tour guide who was lecturing about the history of the Chabad movement. “Most people assume Hasidim are sort of like the Amish—but Jewish,” he said. “Nothing could be further from the truth. We may have black hats, speak Yiddish and have as many children as God grants, some of us have ten or more, but we also have one of the most popular sites on the Internet.”

“
Why am I not surprised?” I nudged Charlene again. “There’s no way Jews could resist modern technology no matter what kind of clothes they wear.”

Our guide was a little, skinny, very young guy with the requisite beard, except his was short and scraggly. His Yiddish accent was incongruous on such a youngster. In my world only people over eighty had a Yiddish accent. He introduced himself as Rabbi Yisroel, the former rabbi of Woodstock, New York. Like Mormons, the Lubavitchers are missionaries. They set up shop in cities and towns all over the country and try to convert Jews who have strayed from the fold back to their religion.

“
Why did you leave Woodstock?” I asked, wondering why anyone would come back to this dreary neighborhood when he could live in the beautiful Catskills.

“
Family problems, don’t ask! Plus there was a war for the local Jews. A rival Chabad rabbi in Kingston a few miles away had more money and support. Between him and the Woodstock Jewish Congregation folk singing rabbi, no one came to my services. I’m a musician too, but I play rap music.”

“
What???” The day was getting stranger.

“
You didn’t know there were Hasidic rappers, did you?” he laughed. “I play back-up for Matishayu, the famous Jewish reggae rapper. He was on Letterman a while ago.”

“
No, I didn’t know.” Hey, if there were Hasidic vampires, why not Hasidic rappers.

The first stop was the balcony of the Lubavitch synagogue where we were segregated by Plexiglas from the two hundred or so long-bearded Jewish men swaying wildly and
davvening
off-key. It turns out the Plexiglas was the
mehitza
, the barrier that separated the women from the men below. When it came to sexism even Muslim fundamentalists don’t have much on Hasidic Jews. At least Orthodox Jewish women don’t have to wear veils, but they do have to cover their heads. In olden times they wore kerchiefs but today most of them wear wigs, which makes no sense at all in an era where wigs are sexier than real hair.

The next stop was fun--a matzoh bakery where they were making
shmura
matzoh that was kosher for Passover. In the obsessive-compulsive tradition of Kosher food the matzoh has to be made in less than eighteen minutes so the dough won’t rise, not even one millimeter.

“
Try not to get in the way,” Yisroel instructed us as the group stepped from the freezing sidewalk into a loud, hot, dizzying flurry of activity. Twenty-five women in kerchiefs stood side by side at a paper-covered table furiously rolling dough into flat round blobs that were then tossed to another table where a four-man team punctured them with tiny holes, lined them up on wooden poles and handed them to a baker who slid them into a coal- burning oven for precisely twenty seconds. The workers greeted each batch with shouts in Yiddish and bursts of applause. We got to taste the matzoh which, though slightly burnt, was a lot better than Manischevitz.

The next stop was a tiny living room where a wizened old man was painstakingly penning a Torah scroll with a quill on parchment. I was fascinated by his artistry. Our guide explained it took a year to make these scrolls and synagogues all over the world ordered them.

We wound up at the visitors center at the Rebbe’s headquarters. Rebbe Menachem Schneerson had been the spiritual leader of the Chabad movement until he had the temerity to die in 1994 without naming a successor, which occasioned a huge battle between two factions of Lubuvitchers. I had no idea who won. A lot of Lubuvitchers thought he was the messiah, even after he died. I wondered how that would jibe with the second coming of Christ according to the fundamentalist Christians. I could imagine the spirits of Schneerson and Jerry Falwell battling it out during the Rapture. Who would get into heaven and who would have to convert? I’d put my money on the Rebbe.

On the way to the deli for lunch, which was included with the tour, Karen shouted out, “That’s it. That’s the place where the scholars only studied after dark. I’m sure of it.”

We were on St. Marks Avenue. She pointed out a nondescript brownstone with blackout curtains on the upstairs windows.

“
Who lives there?” she asked our guide.

“
That building is cursed,” our guide said in a low voice.

“
Who cursed it?” I asked him, hoping to get some useful information.

“
There are rumors of some strange goings-on there,” he stroked his beard thoughtfully, raised his eyebrows and nodded in a scholarly way. “Local Kabbalists tell stories about
estries
who fly and subsist on blood, especially the blood of children. Maybe vampires. It’s probably just superstition, but you never know.” He gave a ghoulish laugh to see how the kids on the tour were reacting. They had been pretty bored so far but they perked up at the word vampire. Even fundamentalist Christian kids weren’t immune to the gospel according to Stephenie Meyer.

“
Unholy creatures,” one of the suits said vehemently. “They should be burned at the stake.”

“
You just need the stake, not the bonfire, I believe,” I said to him sarcastically. “Don’t be ridiculous. There’s no such thing as vampires.”

“
That’s the place he pointed out during the last tour. He seems to have conveniently forgotten,” Karen whispered to us. “We’ll go back there tonight. But let’s finish the tour. I’d hate to miss the deli lunch.”

By the time we got to the deli I fell into the chair, exhausted. That was a hell of a long tour. Unfortunately today’s Hasidim may speak Yiddish but they know nothing about real Jewish food. I was hoping to get some good kosher food, but the pastrami was dried out and the corned beef was worse. The bagels were the big puffy kind, not the little chewy old-fashioned ones. You have to go to Katz’s on the Lower East Side for real pastrami.

That night we took the subway back to Brooklyn and braved the streets in Crown Heights, which looked much less Jewish as the sun was setting. Crown Heights was still the ghetto. When we got to St. Marks Avenue I relaxed since it was across from the 77th Precinct. We could always yell and maybe a cop would come running. Or maybe not. Why, I wondered, were streets named after saints, especially in this neighborhood. Why not Rabbi Akiva Avenue or Golda Meir Boulevard? Harlem had Martin Luther King Boulevard or W. E. B. DuBois Avenue. The building in question looked even more ominous at dusk, with those black curtains and a stoop that looked like no one ever sat on it.

“
Can we go home now?” Charlene’s voice quavered.

“
C’mon, you big sissy.” I wasn’t easily scared especially when this close to possibly finding Sheldon. “You’re six feet tall and know karate and kickboxing.” Charlene was always taking the latest aerobic fad. “What’re you so afraid of?”

“
Things that go bump in the night, more than getting mugged. Though that’s crossed my mind as well. That building might have some nasty vampires along with your de-fanged boyfriend.”

“
Get a grip,” Karen chided Charlene. “We’re big bad witches remember. We can always cast a spell.”

“
Spell?” Charlene squeaked. “I don’t know any spells against vampires. Do you?”

“
How about the divine light invocation?”

“
What’s that?” I asked. Charlene also looked bewildered.

“
OK here’s what we do just in case,” Karen instructed.

“
Raise your arms, hold your breath and affirm to yourself with all the concentration possible:

I am sustained by Divine Light

I am protected by Divine Light