The Tribes

I wouldn’t be in this cult if it weren’t for Bob Dylan. It was forbidden to call The Tribes a cult, but occasionally, hovering over tired feet and yanking at the seat of her pantaloons, my mother would mutter the words under her breath while folding laundry or stirring a large pot of cabbage soup. Lee, my mother, or Yakova, which was the new name given to her, was a Tribes lifer. She had been part of the community for fifteen years, but had never been promoted to Elder because she was unstable. Well, she would never become an Elder because she was a woman, but mostly because she was unstable. Yakova was different from the other members of the commune, with her chronic eye twitch and a propensity for long conversations with herself. She wasn’t a good worker either, which was an important aspect of The Tribes, but none of the other members had the nerve to write her up because of Avraham. Avraham was the prophet, a man greatly admired and feared within the community. It was Avraham who sought out my mother in the early days of the The Tribes at a Dylan concert in Bennington, Vermont. She was there alone and still frail from institutionalization. She was also twenty years old at the time, a single mother and a failed artist.

“Yakova is our Truth Messenger,” Avraham would say to the Fish — students, runaways, loners, or hikers who would be led up to the farm, observing curiously the rows of long-haired men working in the fields looking like pilgrims or hippies, they couldn’t tell. At first the Fish would be skeptical of the free meal and clean bed we offered, but they usually accepted. The Fish were fed better food than we had at the commune with brisket, potato kugel, and apple crumble. After dinner we would gather in the prayer room and play instruments (nothing electric) and the men would take turns dancing in a unity circle while the women served tea. And all together we would smile, patiently answering the Fish’s questions about our philosophy.

The name given to me was Asher, which in Hebrew meant “blessed.” Avraham named himself Avraham, after the first patriarch of the Jewish people. Avraham had dedicated his life to teaching the world about one true God —Yahshua. “He was the master of kindness,” Avraham preached during the morning sermon. “Avraham was the father of all nations.”

“Genesis 7:15,” we replied in unison.

But Avraham wasn’t the name that I wrote down on the patient forms at Sloan-Kettering hospital. Printing David Jones Marshall in my best penmanship, the prophet would sit next to me flipping through old Atlantic magazines scattered around the waiting room, frowning while reading the articles. “Sheep,” he would sigh, tossing the magazine back on the table. He usually didn’t go into his sermons while we were on our secret trips. He was pensive and withdrawn when away from the commune, but not uncomfortable roaming through the industrialized grid of Manhattan. After the last appointment, when he emerged from the office looking pale and grim, he yelled “Stop here!” as we drove down East Houston Street. It had taken five trips of driving through the city before my knuckles could return to their normal color. I didn’t have a license, but Avraham said it didn’t matter. I pulled over and followed him inside a small store.

“Yes, yes,” Avraham said, smiling to himself. He went to the counter and ordered something called “two bagels with cream cheese and lox.” I turned to him confused —Tribe followers were not permitted to eat food prepared by nonmembers, but Avraham didn’t acknowledge me, as usual, so I just itched my long beard and looked away. New Yorkers had a way of not staring the way other people did while we traveled through Ohio or Tennessee on our way to a Phish concert or a Billy Graham Crusade Festival to pick up new Fish. I liked New York. I liked that it was our secret, Avraham and I.

After...