Body, Remember: A Memoir

Two: Heat and White Stone

TWO fffeal and Q)))hile C?fione I needed to find out who I was told I was before I could contradict it. -jOSPENCE g OR most of my life I have lived near water. When I wake in the middle of the night and cannot get myself back to sleep the sound of foghorns, sometimes dis, tant, sometimes near, serves as the background for my fast' moving thoughts. No matter from what distance the foghorns sound, they are persistent and in their constancy echo throughout my body louder and louder the longer I remain awake. During these sleepless nights the drone of the foghorns is transformed into sounds unlike those that originally enter through the walls, through the windows, into my room. On the hottest nights, when I wake on top of the sheets, the warning sounds of the foghorn become the arresting notes of the shofar, the ram's hom blown by the cantor, awakening us to a new year on Rosh Hashanah, the sounds that end the holy fast of Yom Kippur. Tikiyah . . . Teruah . . . Tikiyah . . . And if I listen long and carefully enough, I can once again hear the Arabic prayers broadcast from the mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem during the holy month of Ramadan, the melodic chanting so similar to the plaintive wails of prayer I heard in synagogues when I was young. These 65 Kenny Fries mysterious yet familiar tones ride from the minarets on the hot night air into my room, just as they did every night during my stay in Israel over a decade ago. EI Al tells you to get to JFK Airport two and one half hours early. It is 1984 and although there has not been a recent terrorist attack on an airplane, EI Al takes every precaution. As passengers enter the terminal they are accosted by the Lubavitcher Jews, religious Hasidim. I am reminded of the Mitzvah Mobile that roamed my neighborhood when I was young, carrying Hasidim who sought out assimilated Jewish boys whom the religious sect would try to convince to lay tefillin, the black boxes with Torah parchment inside, wear yarmulkes, would proselytize us to study the Torah, to be more observant Jews. These men with tzitzis, the fringes of the tallis, the Jewish prayer shawl, hanging out from beneath their white shirts, were comforts to our parents, who lived in fear that their secular teenage children would be converted by the Jews for Jesus who would make regular appearances in our apartmentbuilding hallways and at our door. I would avoid the men in the Mitzvah Mobile, running back indoors when I saw their white van parking on Cropsey Avenue or Bay Forty-third Street. These zealous men, wearing unkempt beards and payis, unshaven curls dangling near their ears, terrified me in ways I was much too young to understand. As passengers congregate in the security area I realize that I have not been among a group where everyone is Jewish since the last time I was in synagogue, eight years ago. When with a group of disabled people I feel we should disperse before passersby throw money at us. Together with all these Jews, I cannot help thinking we will be rounded up, put on planes instead of trains. 66 Body, Remember "Has anyone given you any package to take to Israel? Has anyone else packed your luggage? Have you accompanied your luggage the entire time since leaving your home? What lan~ guages do you speak?" This last question stops me. "I speak some Hebrew," I tell the security team. "Why do you speak Hebrew?" "I studied it in school," I tell them, shrugging my shoulders for the benefit of my parents, who have driven me to the airport and are standing at the other end of the baggage check, waiting for me to be cleared. "Who do you know in Israel?" "The person I will be staying with and a few old family friends." "Why are you going to Israel?" The truth is I never wanted to go to Israel until six months ago. When I was young my father would badger me with the myths of Israel: the importance of having a place, a homeland, where Jews could always go; the Arab hatred that besieged the young country; how the Jews miraculously transformed the desert into paradise. "They'll always hate you for being Jewish," my father told me...