Since You Left Me (24 page)

“That’s a nice thought,” I say.

“You don’t believe it.”

“I don’t.”

“That’s where faith comes in, Aaron.”

“Sanskrit. My name is Sanskrit, but you always call me Aaron.”

“Your Hebrew name is also your name.
Ah-roan
.”

He uses the Hebrew pronunciation.

“No, it’s not. My grandfather pushed a Hebrew name on me, but it’s not my name. My mother gave me my name, and it’s the name I want to be called.”

“I stand corrected,” he says.

The dean stands up, extends his hand.

“I wish you luck, Sanskrit.”

For a moment, I think about walking away without shaking his hand. My grand exit from Jewish school. But the dean is being a mensch, so I will, too.

I shake the man’s hand.

“Thanks for trying,” I say.

“That’s my job,” he says. “It was not so difficult with you, Sanskrit. Not as difficult as you would believe.”

“I don’t know about that.”

I think about Mom, how difficult it was for her to be my mother. I always assumed it was because I was difficult to begin with. But what if the dean is right?

It’s not that I’m difficult, it’s just that Mom has trouble being a mom.

“Good-bye, dean,” I say.

I head for the door.

“Even though you’re leaving us, don’t leave God,” the dean says.

When I get outside, Dorit is sitting at her desk in the main office. She follows me with her eyes.

“What?” I say.

“I rubbed your back,” she says angrily. “What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Guilty as charged.”

Her face softens.

“Honesty,” she says. “That’s a good beginning for you.”

There’s nothing else to say
.

That’s what I think as I walk through school for the last time.

Nothing to say to Herschel. Nothing to The Initials.

It’s all been said.

I walk past my cabinet for the last time.

I go out to the parking lot. I look across to the synagogue.

On one side is the school, on the other the synagogue. Cars in between. The secular and the spiritual, separated by the real world of gas prices.

I walk out to the street, and I stop.

I look back at the synagogue. For some reason, I want to see it again. One last time before I go.

Jewish jail.

That’s what it felt like when I was a kid. My parents would drag me to services on Saturday mornings. Not Mom. Not anymore. But in the past when she and Dad were still pretending to be Jewish for
der kinder
.

They’d drag me to synagogue for services on Shabbat morning. They’d drop me off in a classroom with the other kids before going into the big synagogue.

We’d have a separate and supposedly fun children’s service, designed to make us fall in love with Judaism.

The Hebrew school’s idea of fun? We sat on a cold linoleum floor, squirming and hating it, while they taught us Bible stories and made us clap and sing
Dayenu
and other Jewish songs.

When I was finally old enough to be in the synagogue, what did I discover?

A group of adults sitting on barely padded benches, squirming and hating it.

Jewish jail. It’s a life sentence.

That was the real lesson of synagogue. It never ends.

Not true. It ends now. It ends for me.

No more Jewish school. No more services. No more hard floors or benches.

It took me getting thrown out of school, but I’m free now.

Like Herschel said, I could go somewhere else. There are plenty of private Jewish schools that will take me if I can afford the tuition. It wouldn’t have to be in L.A. I could go over to Pasadena or down to South Bay. Up to Northridge. There are other schools, more liberal schools, plenty of places to spend Zadie Zuckerman’s money.

But Dad and I talked about it last night, and he
came around to my way of thinking. I’m going to be a public school kid again. I promised him I’d go to a state school and apply for financial aid when it came time for college. That probably means UCLA instead of Brandeis, but it’s a small price to pay for freedom. The dean thinks God has an infinite reach? He never met Zadie Zuckerman. Zadie was reaching all the way from the grave to make me a Jew in his own image, but he failed.

It’s a great day for me. An even greater day for the Tay-Sachs research community.

I walk through the main hall of the synagogue. Portraits of the executive committee look down on me. Then portraits of the building committee. Then portraits of high-level donors. Lots of glaring Jews with white hair.

I imagine Zadie’s portrait among them. What would he say if he could see me now?

On the opposite wall is a Chagall print of a somber Jewish man contemplating the Torah while his goat looks on. An angel dances high above them. A fiddle sits unplayed on the ground.

Man trapped between heaven and earth. In one place, thinking of the other.

Maybe that’s how it was in little Russian villages in the nineteenth century, but that’s not how it is now. At least not for me.

I arrive at the dark carved-wood doors of the
synagogue. I’ve walked through these doors several hundred times in the last two years. I’ve hated every time.

But it feels different now with nobody around. No ushers reminding me to put a
kippah
on my head. No jostling for the good seats.

I touch the door, let my fingers trace the carved wood.

I go inside.

There’s nobody here.

The pews are ready for services, the prayer books stuck in little pockets. At the front of the synagogue is the raised carpeted bima, the stage where the rabbi and cantor stand. It’s just high enough that everyone in the synagogue can see them. In the Jewish religion, we’re taught that there is no intermediary needed to reach God. The rabbi does not stand above you. He stands among you. You connect to God together.

But everyone wants to see the show, so they have the bima.

Above it is the Eternal Light. The flame of the Jewish people. The reminder of God. It never goes out because it’s connected to a gas line with its own power source.

HaShem
is a pilot light. It’s like praying to your stove.

I sit down in a pew. It’s nice in the syngagogue when it’s quiet, when nobody’s around to blow their noses, say stupid things, daven too much, slip mints to their
family during the sermon, forget to turn off their cell phones.

I think about the life of the synagogue and the culture that surrounds it. It usually seems absurd to me, a lot of noise that adds up to nothing. But now I think of it a little differently.

Everyone is trying. Herschel is trying. My teachers. The rabbi, the dean, my whole school. They’re all trying.

Outside of school, too.

Mom is trying. Dr. Prem is trying.

Judi Jacobs and Barry Goldwasser. The yoga mommies.

Even the guru.

They’re all trying to feel connected to something bigger than them.

I lean forward in the pew. It’s hard wood. Not comfortable at all.

But I like it in here. It’s quiet. Kind of nice. I never knew that before.

I never knew people were trying, and I never knew it was nice in the synagogue.

“Great Spirit—” I say.

And then I stop. Because I don’t know what a great spirit is. That’s Mom’s word.

“Infinite and Divine,” I say, because that’s how Dr. Prem says it. But it doesn’t feel right to me.

“God,” I say.

I don’t know what God is either, but I don’t hate the word.

I say it again. Out loud in the empty synagogue.

“God.”

The space feels less empty.

“Thank you,” I say. “Not because things worked out, because they didn’t. I pretty much got screwed on the Mom and Judi Jacobs front. And I won’t be graduating from B-Jew. So I really can’t thank you for that.”

My leg is falling asleep. I move on the pew, shift from one butt cheek to the other.

“And I can’t thank you for this pew, which is hard and hurts my
tuchas
.”

The eternal flame flickers. I wonder if God is pissed at me for saying
tuchas
in synagogue. Maybe he hates that I used a slang term for
ass
, or maybe he loves that I spoke Yiddish at all. But I can’t believe in a God like that, one who hates or loves according to an obscure set of rules. I have to believe in one I can say anything to. I can tell him the truth, I can be myself, and he doesn’t blink.

“I can’t thank you for making things work out, but maybe I can thank you for being with me while they didn’t.”

Was God with me?

I close my eyes and think about it for a while. I don’t get any answers.

Instead of pushing through and trying to figure it
out, I hold the question in my head like the guru taught me. I sit with it. I sit with the idea of God.

After a while I look at my phone. A half hour has passed. I think it’s the longest I’ve ever been in a synagogue voluntarily.

I should leave now, but I don’t want to.

I want to stay.

I want to sit with God a little longer.