December 2008
Just the other day a backpacker with a faint Dutch accent knocked on my door and asked me if this was the correct address for an elderly French kabbalist who dispenses astonishments.
“Same address but she’s long gone,” I said. “The generations come and go.”
“. . . but the earth remains forever. Ecclesiastes.”
“You’re a good student.”
“Too bad I missed out on all that kabbalistic magic.”
“There are still plenty of astonishments to go around,” I said.
Jerusalem is the only place in the world where this can happen. I can pluck fresh dates from a tree that grows in my garden and meet a kid who knows his sources, searching for his place in the order of the universe. Everything here is layered with history and imbued with a challenge. I live in a crazy city where old dreams are translated into new ones—twisted, rerouted, corrupted, and quite often saturated with beauty. I believe Jerusalem has something to teach me, and I’m learning all the time.
I make a living leading meditation retreats that weave together Hasidic texts, world poetry, and my own conjurings. I’m the lead singer of Besamim, an Israeli-Arabic–South Asian fusion band. My boyfriend Gil plays sitar and oud, and Jase—who now lives on a yishuv with his wife and four kids—joins us on banjo when he’s not leading American kids on hikes through the Sinai Desert. It’s taken us awhile to gel as a band but we have quite a following now and we’re about to record our first CD. I’ll send you a copy.
Every Rosh Hodesh I join the Women of the Wall and we read Torah at the Western Wall—the Kotel—at the same spot where you first saw my mother slip her note between the stones. We are often harassed for leading our own Torah service and I find it helps to wear a tallit that doesn’t remotely resemble the traditional one my father wore. My tallit is sewn out of a cotton batik tablecloth that I bought during a rabbinic service trip to Ghana. The batik is patterned with scrolling vines, textured with a border of blanket stitches I embroidered myself. It’s rather immense and I love how it encompasses all of me. When I drape it on my shoulders I feel as if I’m the queen of a vast wadi.
When I was small my mother and I would stay home from shul on Kol Nidre night, just the two of us. She would sit on the chaise lounge on the back porch and hold me on her lap. Together we would listen to the first notes of the prayer wafting from the shul and I would rest my head on her shoulder and close my eyes. What better Kol Nidre could there ever be? If a child is given a complete world, why ask how it was created? And if that world was created on a bedrock of secrecy, who was I to crack it open? I could nibble on hints for the rest of my life and tango with what I knew and what I did not know. And Madeline—that would have been enough for me.
Honest to God, it would have been enough.
But we can’t undo the past. I had buried both my parents and made my peace with the closed door of my mother’s life. And then you blew it all up when you spoke his name. I hungered for every word you gave me and I sought out every seed of truth I could find. And at the same time I cursed you for leading me down that path. But no worries, Madeline. I’m a rabbi; I try to see life from all sides. You had no right to betray my mother, but you were brave enough to teach me what you believed I needed to learn. I never would have chosen you as a chavrusa, but sometimes our chavrusas choose us.
Once you gave me the bones of the story I had to find my way through it, interpret its code, make it my own. At first I thought I would create a source sheet of their favorite texts and simply meditate on the white space surrounding the words, letting the unspoken patterns speak for themselves. But without a narrative linking the texts, the tesserae would not form a mosaic, the words would be frozen in antiquity, and the story of their lives would be lost forever. My retreat students would show up for a dose of inspiration, but without a good story they wouldn’t stick around to find out what happened. The she’elah-teshuvah lines were easy for me to write, just like the contents of the purple binder were an easy assignment for Rosalie and Walter. Wisdom is easy, Madeline. It’s actual history that proves to be an unknowable, fugitive dream.
The writing of this half-imagined, half-true book about my three parents has been a comfort of sorts. Like all books, this is an inquiry, a game of blindfold in the dark, a whiff of spice, a forgotten prayer remembered. If I trespassed on their lives, I beg their forgiveness. My inheritance has many layers and unraveling is a messy, dangerous act.
I hope you will consider publishing The Beautiful Possible with your little press. My retreat students are always hungry for another book—a new seed—and our story may interest them in some way. As for my brothers, I haven’t decided if I will share this with them just yet, though I suspect they won’t be surprised that the milkman’s daughter is really the milkman’s daughter. I’m sure you know the Yiddish proverb the heart is half a prophet.
But I’m finished now, Madeline. This book is yours. It’s time to free myself to remember my mother and my father as I knew them. My father’s fingers pointing out the words in the Talmud, my tiny hand resting on top of his knuckles. My father standing on the bima, staring down at my mother and me, unable to hide his smile because we were alive in the world and we belonged to him.
I gave away all my mother’s clothes except for her white cotton Shabbat dress patterned with red bricks. I brought it with me to Jerusalem, along with my father’s books. At times I reach into the back of my closet and touch the satiny fabric, caress the huge flower-shaped buttons that I played with when I sat beside her in shul. The woman who wore that dress was my real mother. How I know and love her cannot be translated into the pages of any book. I am her daughter and she was my mother and I will miss her always.
On the last day of my retreats I invite my students to meditate on this: Inside every story lies the hidden kernel of an infinite one. We chant it together to a niggun I composed; you can hear a version of it on our CD. I came up with that line after I finished writing this book. I’m not sure I understand the essence of my own words, but I believe you will, Madeline. At least I hope so.
I often think about the day you met my mother at the Kotel, looking on as she tucked her note between the ancient stones. You told her that her words would not find their way to a geniza or to God but now I believe that you contradicted yourself. Her words were being watched over; the story was in your hands. And you carried it for all those years so that one day you could give it to me.
Yours,
Maya