Yom Kippur as Manifest in an Approaching Dorsal Fin (8 page)

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Uneasiness all around by the few

other friends and family members

who showed up.

I think there were six of them.

Erika was not in the kitchen the entire time.

Part of the time she spent with Lee. Upset,

she needed someone to talk with, to vent to.

She knows Lee. Lee is not part of the family.

Not by blood. Erika knows how she feels and

Lee is safe.

Erika is angry. She ranted on and on about

how the brother and sister treat my father

like a dog. Dog is the word she used. Over

and over. As we wait near the bar, Lee goes

on, more and more. She needs this off her, out

of her.

Erika was there when grandmother died.

She was there for her last words.

Grandpa came near. To him she says, “I

always knew you’d steal my money.”

And then, “Get away from me, you

bastard.”

And she died.

There is a break at the bar. They have Guin-

ness on tap. It is four dollars and a quarter a

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Funeral, Expurgated

pint. Four and a quarter and far too many

calories. I don’t actually need this. I order one.

The cliff is always closer than it appears.

83

Passover and

the Industrial

Revolution

Every Passover I bake matzah.

I wait until there is

Nothing left to do,

I wait for the lull

In the torrent of business and busyness

And preparation for the unexpected

guest,

The soup is bubbling slowly

Covered, tzimmes done,

Choroseth setting

And Passover plate

Covered, in the fridge

Next to the gefilte fish.

When there is nothing left to do

And everything is finished

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I bake

I work as quickly as I can

Rushing, like of old

When there was everything to do

And nothing to be done but hurry.

I work to make bread

Matzah shemurah,

“Watched matzah”

As of old,

Before the machines were invented,

Before 1857 and the mixers and

kneaders,

Rollers and perforators of the

Industrial Revolution.

In fewer than eighteen minutes

From flour to done,

Nothing can rise

But the realization of the mitzvah,

Purpose for preparation,

Intention

And prayers.

At a temperature I can comfortably

reach my hand into

They bake

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Passover and the Industrial Revolution

Quickly

Like bare feet on desert sand.

When they are done

They have opened in the

Center, crisp and brown,

Heavy and thick,

Empty. Receptive . . .

This is not like the matzah

From a box.

My matzah is not a gigantic saltine

Stacked like x-ray plates

Or cards

Or slates.

Although . . .

When I was seven

I went on a field trip

Through the Jersey countryside

To the clogged vessels of

Dense New York streets,

Sitting in the Yeshiva bus,

Staring down

At the faces in the unmoving cars

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Adam Byrn Tritt

We slid, heated, halting,

Metal to metal cells, fuming forward.

Finally, stilled, we gratefully

Disembarked, stood and walked along

Delancey Street

The lower east side

Of Manhattan,

With my school class,

We visited a temple during minyan

Sat separated

Girls from boys

On an austere balcony of

Dark woods and dark ages

Staring above the vaulted steps

At the dais of black-coated men

Listening to the song to their beloved

Carried with the audible overtone of

the holy

And an undertone of confidence

The song was surely heard.

We were there for days or minutes

And fidgeted, fussed, squirmed

In the presence of the Universal King.

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Passover and the Industrial Revolution

After, released of our confinement

Reconfined to sturdy lines to walk

On to the great mystery of the

Matzah factory.

Past the pickle barrels

On the sidewalks

Where for ten cents

We all got to dip our hands

And pull a half-sour

From the briny cask,

Close by,

And brick-built

Red and high-windowed

Was the matzah factory.

We entered though the loading dock

And never wondered if there was

A door, an office, a warehouse but

There were ovens

Vast and hot.

We stood on a balcony

Over the open factory floor,

Vats and vaults

Mixers and all over the smell of flour.

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Adam Byrn Tritt

Rolling from the vat,

Poured onto a sheet, rolled into the

ovens

Pressed by combs

For perforation

For ease of use

For profit

For Horowitz-Margareten,

Streits, Manischewitz

The Matzah Monopoly

For tables during Passover

For people to gingerly, slowly shop for

In Pathmark, Shop-Rite, Foodtown

Kids in cart, mamma picking her box

Of matzah, plums, salami

And, if she was in a hurry

It had nothing to do with

Evacuation, or the Pharaoh

Or Moses except that

We’d read it in the Haggadah

And break the matzah,

Ask the questions, dip the

Parsley, spread the horseradish

And bite.

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Passover and the Industrial Revolution

The factory was hot with baking

And we left, sweating, drenched

Flour-powdered without and

Within, samples of matzah,

In a single-file exodus from the ovens.

Which, every Passover

I recreate in my kitchen.

The bread of affliction

Is my joy, my revolt,

My exodus and cry unto the

wilderness

To my own kind—

“Let my people go.”

91

The Harmony

of Broken Glass

A million years ago, I used to own a

bookstore. The community had

asked for it and even put up much

of the money. In return, they’d receive a

return on their investments when the store

turned a profit and would have a local store

that carried the things they wanted. All Lee

and I did was to quit our jobs, invest our time

and money, and pour our hearts and souls

into it. They gave us a list of the sorts of things they wanted, we stocked them, and they

pointed their browsers at Amazon to buy the

books and drove to Wal-Mart to buy the can-

dles and soon we were out of business and

they could not quite figure out why.

We were in Gainesville, Florida, at the end

of Sixth Street, where it met 441 at an acute

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Adam Byrn Tritt

angle just past the north side of town. Our

building was an old gas station built in 1906.

It had the original brick foundation holding

up the original cedar beams holding up the

original pine tongue and groove floors hold-

ing up the original pine tongue and groove

walls in which were held the original win-

dows. Nearly one hundred years old the entire

building was, and it creaked and groaned and

loved every step made inside.

The building had two main rooms. The

front, the salesroom, was twenty by twenty

and windows all around except for the front

door on the south wall perpendicular to the

street, and the door leading to the second

room, right in the middle of the west wall

with a large pane of glass, door to wall, on

either side. The second room, twenty by forty,

was solid wall on the north and east. Sepa-

rated by glass from the front room and, on

the south side, made of century old wood,

plaster and glass. Mostly glass.

The windows were high and wide with

broad sills. In the second room, three of them

stretched from the front to the back. As one

looked to the lower edges of any of the win-

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The Harmony of Broken Glass

dows, as one looked to the grass below through

the bottom of the pane, the world stretched,

became bulbous, swirly. If you put your hand

on the glass, you could feel it thicken as one

got closer to the sill. Thin at top and thick at the bottom. Old poured glass windows—a

super-viscous liquid that slowly, over nearly

one hundred years, poured towards its own

bottom. Kids would love to sit there and stare

though the bottom and watch the world wig-

gle, fatten, and wave. So did I.

This was the room we used for classes and

workshops. Around its perimeter, it held rugs

and t-shirts, dresses and scarves as well as

other textiles, folded on tables, hung from

frames, and tacked to the walls. So large, it

was, we never had to move anything much

for a workshop or fair.

We had bands too, and we’d serve coffee.

We’d be open until eleven and many of the

coffee drinkers would not purchase anything,

so we figured the coffee would pay for the

electric that evening, at the least. The coffee

was in the small kitchen area off the large

room and it was self-serve, as we were neither

set up nor licensed for food service.

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Adam Byrn Tritt

At first it was by donation. When we found

the donation can with little money but filling

fast with empty sugar packets and gum wrap-

pers, we decided the honor system wasn’t

working and charged a dollar for the cup. Not

the coffee. Just the cup. All our mugs went

behind the front counter. Folks could ask for

one, pay their buck, and drink all night if they wanted. On an average night we should have

made thirty to fifty bucks from the folks who

otherwise would not have spent a cent. Folks

who came in and bought books and such, we’d

happily hand a cup to. Everyone gets to do

their share.

It wasn’t long before I started seeing people

walking around with coffee in vessels I had

never seen before. Little ones. Big ones, Even

stainless steel thermoses and double-size

travel cups. I’d ask for the buck for the night’s coffee and they’d show me their one quart

mason jar, telling me they had brought it from

home so no need to hand any cash over to

me. I suggested, along with the cup, next time

they should bring their own coffee, too. Late

nights at the bookstore ended soon after that.

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The Harmony of Broken Glass

But the workshops continued. Authors,

therapists, artists. Book talks, dances, song-

fests. I taught a few myself, on occasion.

I had, over the few years prior, been doing

a workshop on chants from the Kabbalah. I

had been doing them at the local Unitarian

Universalist Fellowship, at churches as far

away as Greensboro, North Carolina, in the

forests of Ohio, and even in a hot tub. So why

not do one at my own store?

The night was set and we had a very nice

turnout of over thirty people. Someone vol-

unteered to watch the register and I set to

work. Three rules only. These rules, along

with the chants themselves, were taught to

me by Rabbi Shelly Isenberg, who was the

Chair of the University of Florida Depart-

ment of Religion. They seemed to work for

him, and they work for me.

Three rules:

ƒ Everyone stands who is able to stand.

“I’m tired” is not a reason for not stand-

ing. We always lose a few at this one.

People walk out in a huff because they

aren’t going to be able to sit and chant.

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Adam Byrn Tritt

No full breaths from a full body while

sitting curled in a chair.

ƒ Everyone singing. No gawkers. We

always lose a few more at that. When I

tell them we’ll be chanting for an hour

or so, still more leave. I tell them it won’t

feel like an hour. That they will wonder

where the time went but people want

fast, instant results and they want them

easy. They want to slouch in a chair and

attain enlightenment from watching

other people sing for five minutes. Good

luck.

ƒ The last rule is everyone comes to the

center. I set up four chairs in the middle

of what will be our circle and, at some

point, each person comes to the center

to sit and have the rest of us sing around

them, letting them feel the sound, the

vibration, the harmony. I often have a

person help me make sure everyone gets

their chance. I joke that I call her my

shill. I tell them, at some point, I’ll be

going to the center as well and, please,

please, they should not stop chanting

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The Harmony of Broken Glass

just because I have. Always people laugh

at this. The twenty or so people who

remained did exactly that—laughed.

The group had been culled and we were

ready to start.

The chants are short and simple. We learned