Hide-and-Seek

You win, Madness.

Speaking of The Boats of Saintes Maries de la Mer.

Mivzoim bocherim came back. I think they are hunting for me for the third or fourth week in a row. And they figured out the time I come to my mother on Fridays. The aggressive one said he is Matusof. I remember his older uncle Eli; I remember how Eli was sitting with the boy’s zeide from Morocco in the Levertov’s sukkah on Lefferts, when Eli just got engaged to Elka (I think there was a match only because the names sounded the same). There was also a “modern” sister that married and divorced some punk from Boro Park. I remember the couple well. She was tall and didn’t look like she was from the same family. I asked about her; the boy didn’t remember, or maybe didn’t know, or didn't want to remember. I vaguely remember that she came back, saintly and regal, married some BT doctor, and had a kid, one precious kid. It's blurry.

What Zalman Schneerson wrote about Matusof raced through my mind: A Letter from Zalman Mendelivich Schneerson to Meir Yankelevich Dizengoff.

“MATUSOV Solomon or Shloma, 18 years old. A Jewish student, lived on the funds of friends – in fact, on the funds delivered by Drizin. In 1933, he was in prison for the above-mentioned Kutaisi case and then released as a minor.”

His great-grandson is about 16 now. Or is it grandson? That’s a lot of shared and heavy history for being a complete unknown… They kept pressing for my name. What is my name, in fact? I don't remember what happened.

But I remember that fatal idealism that was the downfall. Let them surf the wave. When they surf up to greet the sun, covered in the salty foam of passion, why think that the wave will eventually and inevitably crest and crash?

Crest reminds me of Moscowitz from Chicago, in the basement of the Chabad house at U. Penn. Moscowitz sang and was dumbfounded that I knew “via” means “through” in English. Doesn’t he know that “via” is just a street in Italian, and I just came “via” Italy?

“A groyser uftu!” — The Matusof kid said he knows the “fancy word” uftu from some maamar. Who do they think I am? I told them… Who am I, indeed?

I remember Rabbi Goldberg; I was sitting at the Shabbos table with him on a hot and humid summer night in the Catskills, a few years back. He asked the same question: who are you? He was almost screaming.

I told the boys not to come to this house; it used to be 100% Jewish, and now it's 70% Chinese. And the rest no longer remember they are Jews. Or simply don’t remember. Sort of a contemporary American story. I point the finger at Chabad. I always point to Chabad. But looking at the boys, maybe it was inevitable? Not the money-grabbing Shaliyach fathers that trade in Christianity, but idealistic and pure boys. I remember.

I asked the boys to walk with me; I will show them a secret. I brought them to the room where the Chinese do their exercises. American meets tai chi. The room is glazed all around. In the window there is a framed picture of the embroidered scroll of Sefer Torah. We are looking at the translucent back of the picture through the window; no one inside or outside the room knows it's a Sefer Torah. To the back of this embroidered Sefer Torah, someone taped an icon portrait of the Rebbe, with the face only barely visible. How can you see it? - the bocherim asked. This is how it felt in Russia, that only I knew the secret. At that moment I regretted the Rebbe’s portrait that my mother painted, and I threw it in the trash chute.

The boys inherited real estate that suddenly crashed in price. But it’s not just real estate; it is home, sweet home. Who has the guts to tell them? At the end of the day, not I. They will be saved by cynicism and those ubiquitous jokes. Or become communist like everyone else.

What's the alternative? - the boys asked. The alternative to a boy growing like a lonely monk on shilchus is a community. But isn’t the “community” exactly what a man is trying to escape his whole life? Revolutionaries gathered around the mad messiah are not a community. It’s only survived because under the madness, there was a layer laced with Russian culture of suffering and beauty. And now even that is replaced. You win, madness…