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24. Between Two Mountains
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154 We were harrowing the soil at Packard Manse, an ecumenical retreat in Stoughton, Massachusetts. Joel was sweating profusely and there were grey rings under his eyes. “Spiritual renewal,” he said, “has always come from this neck of the woods. Walden Pond is not too far from here. And Brook Farm was located in West Roxbury.” “What was Brook Farm?” I asked, grateful to take a breather. I knew that Brandeis students would trek to Walden Pond with their marked-up copies of Thoreau. “A socialist commune,” Joel explained. “Hawthorne worked there for nine months and later alluded to it in The Blithedale Romance.” “So that’s why we all ended up here,” said Kathy, straightening her kerchief . “New England is the birthplace of utopian experiments.” I looked over at Shammai, the only one among us laboring in pleated trousers and a white shirt, his prominent nose and marvelously disheveled hair adding to the anomaly. “Shammai,” I spoke up, “reminds me of the first Zionist pioneers, the h .alutzim.Closeyoureyes,andwecouldbebackonthebanksoftheKinneret.” “May it be Thy will,” pronounced Shammai with a flourish, “that the seeds we sow be blessed in equal measure.” 24 Between Two Mountains “Amen,” the three of us replied in unison. The agricultural work we did in return for room and board. Rabbi Everett Gendler, who lived at Packard Manse and had just returned from a year in Mexico, cheerily offered hands-on instruction in the ancient art of tilling. There were forty of us now, two-and-a-half times larger than the founding group. In September we would move into our own quarters, a rambling three-story wooden house on College Avenue in Somerville, around the corner from Tufts. Our first task was to forge a community, so here we were spending five days together, tilling the New England soil, breaking bread, and trying to overcome our terrible self-consciousness. George,fromGloversville,spentmostofthetimeinbed,withamigraine. Evenings, Kenneth, who had stepped out of another world, played Baroque music on the piano accompanied by the serenely beautiful Elizabeth. The few bona fide couples—Art and Kathy, Barry and Janet, Ronny and Manya, Michael and Ruthie, Charles and Kathleen—appeared to have the easiest time of it. I sought out the single men who seemed most quiet, studious, and approachable. Both Joel and Mike later joined my circle when I offered to teach Yiddish songs. The one person we had in common was Arthur Green. During my freshman year, Art had paid a visit to Brandeis, his alma mater, and we spoke to each other in Yiddish. He had been Professor Mikhl Astour’s only Yiddish student. Once, Art had come late for class and found that the professor—a true Litvak—had already begun to lecture, in front of an empty classroom. So we had a good laugh, and I invited Art to attend the next Yugntruf conference in New York, where he was studying to become a Conservative rabbi. Five years later, the brightest and the best of his graduating class—including Art himself—were now the core faculty at Havurat Shalom Community Seminary, with official accreditation from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The Havurah was Art’s soul-child, and the child had come of age. My entry into the group came with none of the usual Sturm-und-Drang. I had no interest in Eastern religions and had never spent time in a monastery. I was not seeking a 4-D deferment from the U.S. Army. I had never taken mescaline. But I had returned from Israel with an overwhelming need to be part of something, something innovative and vital. Despite the wealth of new personal contacts, the romance of Yiddish was wearing off, even as the campaign to unify the Jews through a language was wearing Between Two Mountains 155 [44.222.87.38] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 06:56 GMT) me down. The search for a new language, equally threatened but destined to last, linked as it was to a time before time, had led me to Franklin Street in Cambridge, where a small group of young Jews were doing their own thingandwherevisitorswereallowedtoattend Shabbesmorningservices— itwasduringoneofthesevisitsthatmyfatherhadjoinedinthecircledance, revealing a genetic link to Hasidic fervor that I had not known about. Nor did I take in that there was a two-track membership: those who were committed to study full-time at the Havurah, and those who were pursuing graduate studies elsewhere but whose presence in the Havurah was strongly desired. I belonged to the...