Theology at Thirteen
Rent from DeepDyve- Theology at Thirteen
Which would be the greater sin, I agonized,as I rushed from my new, secular high schoolinto the impending Sabbath darknessof a frigid midwinter Friday:A drawn-out breaking of the prohibitionagainst labor, by walking the many miles home,lugging my boatload of textbooks,or, a shorter transgression, by brazenly hopping the bus,breaking the rule against post-twilight transportation?
Because walking would be harder, evenpainful, the punishment meted outeven as I was committing the sin(Dante couldn't have improved on this scheme),that's what I chose, that's what I deserved,recent Yeshiva boy, having provedtoo timid to ask the authorities for a changeof program allowing me to leaveschool early and observe the Sabbath.
Moreover, walking would guaranteemy arriving home too late to attendeven part of Friday night service, morecause for guilt, more punishment in storefor this Prodigal Son of Brooklyn.Wasn't Father going to be proven right,having opposed my breaking awayfrom parochial school, my insistingon going to godless Samuel J. Tilden?
When, after an eternity of speed-walking,I finally arrived home, I found my mothertaking a pre-dinner nap, Father,returned from shul, setting the silverware,in a rare domestic gesture.That quiet man, seeing me, said nothing,but, raising his fistful of forks on highbrought them sharply down, their clattering crash [End Page 108] against the table piercing my skull,a fragment that has proved inoperable.
Born in Brooklyn, Alan Holder received his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Columbia. Now retired, he taught, over a 40-year span, at Columbia, University of Vermont, University of Southern California, Williams College, and Cornell, but principally at Hunter College of the City University of New York. He is the author of four books of literary criticism. His poetry has appeared in a number of journals and on-line, and his poetry chapbook, Opened: A Mourning Sequence, was published in 2008 by Finishing Line Press.
