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Chapter 5 Early initiations Father was my only source of mental nourishment for at least the first seven years of my life. Homebound and with pretty little to do, he used to spend hours explaining things that used to perplex me and answering my nagging questions. I don’t remember having asked any of the questions usually put to parents by clever and highly imaginative boys—such as the one as to whether a crocodile would overpower a tiger or the other way round. My questions —judging at least from the answers I still remember—were of a much ‘‘higher’’ character: What was in the skyand ‘‘further up’’; the mystery that was the moon; the source of the sun’s heat and why it had the habitofrisingandthensetting;theconceptandprecisenatureofGod,His possible shape and His ways of making decisions; the angels that dwelt in Heaven; the nature of Heaven and Hell and the good deeds and the bad that earned or denied one admittance thereto. To all these queries and bewilderments Father’s answers were readyand verydefinite, at least at first; but under further pressure and nagging he would relent a little, adding however that at his age he would not want to entertain doubts of the kind I was insinuating. Yearslater,inmylateadolescence,Ireadsomewhereaboutsomerather novel concepts, variously called ‘‘the religion of nature’’ or the theory of evolution; when I confronted Father with the thesis that the universe and our world with it came into being without anybody’s orders or whims, he would merely reiterate his old argument. All his life long, he would explain , he was guided and lived by the beliefs and doctrines he was taught to observe. He believed in God and in the account of the Creation given in the Torah, in the Ten Commandments, Moses’ mission, resurrection of the dead, Heaven and Hell—and he was not now going to entertain so drastic a revision of these beliefs as was suggested by my outlandish reflections and ‘‘inventions.’’ For my part, apart from a very brief period in my adolescence years in whichIbecamedeeplyreligious,Iwasalwaysanagnosticandremainone. early initiations 39 As far as religious observance was concerned, the general attitude in our home was one of tolerance, of live-and-let-live, although throughout the first sixteen years of my life no one dared openly to flout the requirements of Sabbath observance or the main precepts and prescriptions connected with other feasts and holy days. Yom Kippur was, of course, the holiest of all these holy days, and fasting was universal, except for children of up to age thirteen who were on ‘‘the step-by-step fast,’’ som el-daghaj, and allowed to eat at midday. It was in my eleventh or twelfth year, however, thatIvoluntarilydecidedtohavemyfirstregularfast;thismusthavebeen during my religious phase. However, although I managed somehow to last the day I found the ordeal too great to bear. That was my last as well as my first full fast. I don’t think that my failure early in the proceedings to observe the Sabbath and to fast on Yom Kippur had anything to do with the fact that I never had a proper bar mitzvah ceremony. Indeed, what is now known throughouttheJewishworldasbarmitzvahwasinBaghdadcalledsimply libs el-tefillin, ‘‘putting on the phylacteries.’’ It was a simple ceremony performed in the synagogue, where the boy is called to the reading of a portion of the Law—usually the last portion (maftir), which gives him the opportunity of reading the prophetic lesson (haftarah). Except for themiddleclassesandthewelltodo,therewereusuallynoaccompanying celebrations or the kind of gaudy displays now associated with the event. For reasons I do not recall very clearly, but which must have had to do with the expense involved, I skipped the synagogue ceremony—and the first time I recall I ever put on phylacteries was when I was obliged to do so when attending morning prayers during the shiv‘a for my mother in the mid-1960s. I believe that Father, had he had the kind of authority which fathers usedtoexerciseeveninthoseearlydaysofapproachingmodernity,would have insisted on my having a proper synagogue ceremony when I came of age. But by that time Father was fast losing control of things in the household and among us children. He simply was not in a position to influence events in the family any more in a meaningful way. dina and her daughters Sometime in the late 1920s, when brother Eliahu’s business was relatively thriving and shortly before his engagement to Hella, we were living— again...

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