A Life in Black
Picture a Brooklyn street, cloaked in the orange-purple rays of sunset. The road is crowded, choked, with a living, dark mass of people. All dressed in black. All ages, all sizes. Men, women, little boys with sidecurls and yarmulkes. They are chanting, wailing, pleading. They direct their voices towards a single building, and from there, up to the heavens. The chant consists of only four words:
“We want Moschiach. Now.
We want Moschiach, now.
WE WANT MOSCHIACH NOW!”
Moschiach. The Messiah. The anointed one. The redeemer of the world. These people are crying for their dead rabbi, their spiritual leader, their rebbe. Some of them believe that he was actually the Messiah, and they are begging for him to return, and to heal the world.
They are the Chabad-Lubavitch Hasidism. Ultra-orthodox Jews who believe they are on a mission from God to spread around the world, bringing assimilated Jews back into the faith, to redeem the world through Jewish practice- to bring the Messiah, whoever he is. By a strange twist of fate, their lives and mine are permanently intertwined.
My grandfather Max belonged to Chabad. I haven’t been able to determine exactly when he joined them, but it probably happened sometime in the early 80s. Religion had dominated his life since he was diagnosed with, then treated for, colon cancer- the same disease which had killed his father. Max, according to my grandmother, had “made a deal” with God. If he survived his surgery and improved, he would become more religious. He lived. Sometimes I wonder if anyone ever pondered that things might have been better had he not.
Max became, as some called him, a “super-Jew”. Nothing was good enough, kosher enough, or religious enough. The dinner table became a regular theological battleground, with Max demanding more and more concessions of his family, particularly my grandmother and his youngest son. He wanted her to start dressing more “modestly” (covering her hair) and wanted him to grow sidecurls. My 15-year old uncle, then in high school, refused and was punished. My grandmother complied.
It was during this point that he fell in with Chabad. The men around him bought into his delusions; fed his madness. Max was an alcoholic and a manic-depressive, with occasional psychotic episodes. To the Hasidism, he was a “holy prophet”. Once my father went to see him in Brooklyn. While there, he spoke to my grandfather’s then-roommate (he was separated from my grandmother), who proudly proclaimed that his father had “holy visions”. “We just called them hallucinations”, my father said.
My grandmother still remembers the day things took a dramatic turn. She and Max were living together again, and he came into the kitchen one morning, very animated. He proclaimed that he had fantastic news. She cautiously inquired what he meant.
“God appeared to me in a dream and spoke to me,” he said, his face illuminated with excitement. She could see he was serious, and it scared her to death. He went on for several minutes, describing his dream in detail and explaining how God had “chosen” him, selected him, to be his messenger. Max was the Messiah. “But,” he said sternly to my grandmother, “You can’t tell anyone. Not a soul.”
My grandmother’s hopes were briefly raised. Maybe a part of Max was still hanging on to reality, maybe he could actually see how crazy this all sounded. “Why?” she asked. “I don’t want my friends to think I’m stuck up”, he replied.
My grandmother stayed with him, all through the madness. She went with him to prayer meetings at ramshackle synagogues, where she was shoved into back rooms with other women and young girls so as not to “distract” the men from their prayers. She had been raised Orthodox, but not like this. This was worlds away from my grandmother’s childhood religion. Her parents had been of the modern world. To her, the Hasidism, complete with their ideas about modesty and gender roles, were ancient relics from a past age.
In the end, it didn’t matter. No one was good enough for Max. He divorced my grandmother and disowned his four children- all for not being “Jewish enough”. He found a new wife, a religious wife. Her name was Regina, and she had been a camp survivor. That was the only thing I ever learned about her, as she and Max were never mentioned in my parents’ home.
I didn’t meet my grandfather until I was three years old. My father had always had a certain bond with him that distinguished him from his siblings- and so when they repeatedly fought with each other, the pain cut deeper. Supposedly, my grandfather and I were “in love” with each other. Not surprising, considering we both loved to talk- and I greatly resembled my father, who in turn was the spitting image of Max. In the years afterwards, my grandfather was an often-present afterthought in my mind. All of my friends either had relationships with their grandparents, or they were dead. No one I spoke to seemed to have a relationship like I did- nonexistence. My grandfather wasn’t there, he was just “gone”. On one occasion, I actually remember asking my mother if my grandfather had died. “Of course not,” she said. “Then why don’t we see him?” I wondered. She replied that he lived all the way in New York. I was unsatisfied with this answer, particularly since we visited New York once every few years.
I began writing to my grandfather. He wrote back enthusiastically, but cautiously- I think he was worried of my father cutting off contact. Max half-heartedly answered my repeat questions as to when we could meet- he said one day, I would understand why we couldn’t see each other. I resolved to write to him often, but an unfortunate side-effect of being seven years old was a miniscule attention span. The letters soon waned, and to this day, I have only been able to find two of them- to my great regret, I can’t remember if there were any more.
At eight, we were planning a visit to New York, and I hit on a genius idea- I wrote to Max, asking him if he would see us. He accepted. I was ecstatic. This man, who to me had been little more than a myth, was finally going to show himself to me.
I have gone over this memory many times in my mind, trying to absorb as many details as possible- and to figure out what I could have done differently. In a way, the meeting had been doomed from the beginning. Max’s apartment was being painted, so they were going to pick us up from our apartment and take us to dinner. They pulled up outside in a dingy and sputtering Volvo. I ran up to the car and peered inside, seeing a strange man curled up behind the wheel. He had a newsie cap on, along with white hair, large glasses, and a gray mustache. Next to him sat a heavily made-up woman- Regina, my grandmother’s “replacement”. I shied away from her.
We piled into the backseat. Max and Regina smoked constantly, and my brother and I spent most of the ride quietly hacking and holding our noses. We stopped in front of a kosher hamburger joint, and the first event of the ill-fated evening began: Regina, in her haste to ingest as much carcinogenic smoke into her lungs as possible, was apparently unaware of the long ash hanging off of her cigarette. My brother and I watched in silence as it fell to her frumpy housedress and started smoldering. My father tried to get her attention, but Max beat him to it. Always quick-thinking- and fast-acting- Max simply turned towards her, thrust his hands out, and shoved her out of the car.
Regina did not take this well. She began shrieking at the top of her lungs, and proceeded to beat my grandfather over the head with her handbag. We all watched from the car as he tried, unsuccessfully, to calm her. It took several minutes. Meanwhile, my father groaned and buried his head in his hands. It was the first time he had seen Max in about six years.
Once inside the restaurant, we all settled down to eat. While looking at the strange writing on the walls (a fast-food menu printed in neon Hebrew lettering), I listened, awestruck, to my grandfather’s stories. He contained amazing repository of family lore; my favorite was about how when he was young and helping his father sell ice, one time he accidentally got his tongue stuck on a block of ice. A bunch of men wound up having to pull him away from it- leaving part of his tongue behind.
At one point, Max excused himself to go to the restroom. I sat back, happy and content. It was then that I made one of the worst mistakes of my life. I calmly turned to Regina and remarked, nonchalantly, “I think it’s sad both of my grandparents can’t be in the same room for my birthday.” It was a statement I had often made to my parents- all I wanted was my father’s two parents- my only living grandparents- to come to my birthday, just once.
Regina looked at me, her face taut. Then she exploded. She jumped out of her chair, and began screaming at me in English and Yiddish. She seemed determined to top her performance earlier on the street. She hurled abuse at me, cursing me for all she was worth. She cried out, “He’d be dead if it weren’t for me! I saved him! He would have died!” Then she just descended into more Yiddish curses. I was horrified. My brother and I, aged five and eight, backed away, shocked and scared. We had never seen anybody go ape-shit before.
Max came running out of the bathroom, and tried to calm Regina down. But, just like before, she was implacable. Instead, she turned her sights on him- and my grandmother. “Go back to her! You always loved her more! All you ever talk about is her, her, her!” Later on, I remember having gotten some satisfaction out of that particular revelation.
After finally calming his wife down, my grandfather drove us back to the apartment building in silence. They dropped us off and sped away. The next time I saw him would be three years later- on his death bed.
I often think about that night. I’ve cursed myself a thousand times for my youthful stupidity. Not only did I pass up the chance of a lifetime to have a written relationship with my grandfather, but then I alienated him in person, too. It’s something I can’t get away from- particularly once I found out how my first visit, as a toddler, had ended.
Max had offered a chance for forgiveness. He wanted to be a family again, he said. But it had to be on his terms. My parents needed to move to New York and put me in a yeshiva. My father the hippie, the avowed agnostic, the free-spirit, categorically refused. And that was that.
But it wasn’t. I keep finding myself thinking back to that fateful ultimatum. I know that my father never would have accepted- but what if he had? What if my father had been less stubborn than he is? I could have been one of them. A Hasid. Every facet of my life would have been different. I wouldn’t be in college; I wouldn’t be writing. I would have spent my childhood learning religious texts and avoiding the outside world. By now, I would probably be working and married, maybe trying to get more Jews to become religious, like me. To bring the Messiah. As much as the idea of this person repels me, it also transfixes me, in a way. I’ve spent years learning about the Hasidism; I’ve watched documentaries and read more books than I can count. In some ways I hate them for taking Max from me, but I can’t seem to get away from them. I’m fascinated by them; forever connected to this other life I might have led- this other me I might have been. This idea, that in some other life, I could have been close with Max, haunts me. What if?
There’s a scene in Annie Hall where Woody Allen sees himself transformed into a Hasidic Jew. Occasionally, in my mind, this happens to me, too. I suddenly sprout sidecurls and a full beard, black shoots up all around me and encircles my body, trapping me in the “uniform” of Ultra-Orthodoxy like a cocoon. Suddenly, I’m the Hasid my grandfather wanted me to be. And it scares the hell out of me, because in some ways, I want to be that person. I want to be the little yeshiva boy he always wanted me to be but which my father never would have consented to. I want him to be the Messiah he knew he could be- that he was- but which no one else could see.
Back to the Lubavitchers; who are still waiting. They want their rebbe back; they’re still waiting for their Messiah to come, and to redeem the world. A world where children and grandchildren don’t have to be Hasidism to be accepted by their parents and grandparents. Where no one has to give up who they are to be loved.
“We want Moschiach now!”
…Me too.
Hmm, maybe I should try more of the composed narrative thing and slightly less of the fisking every sincere-but-misguided-jackass I can find thing. Of course, given the fact that I'm often running low on time, this may prove difficult.
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...And don't click here.
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