With Apologies To Jennifer Bleyer

Motzai Yom Kippur ebbs away and I’ve eaten but I haven’t bentched. Andy Statman plays Wisdom, Understanding, Knowledge, as I write. On the stack table next to this laptop sits the World Jewish Digest, open to page 58. The headline shouts; Jammin’ Genius by JON KALISH. I guess the article about Statman inspired me to put Andy in my CD player – even though I readily listen when he doesn’t make the headlines, which is - sadly - most of the time.

I was once at a Chanukah extravaganza at Nassau Coliseum, not sure why – but I was. And before the Miami Boys and other featured Las Vegas show tune styled acts came out Andy Statman did a couple of numbers. It was tragic – witnessing one of the world’s greatest living musicians being ignored. Matt Glaser is quoted in this new article as commenting that “Andy has an internal sense of doing whatever would guarantee that he would not be commercial.” That only makes me like him more.

On a seemingly unrelated note we turn now to an apology that I feel that is owed to two men who’s names elude me. I’ve been thinking about these men all through Yom Kippur. Every year of my childhood these two men appeared on Yom Kippur in the row in front of me in Shul. My father (HSLABW) always told me to say hello to Mr. So and So and Mr. So and So and to shake their hands (to this day I always move from sitting towards standing as I shake someone’s hand because my dad taught me that it was the correct thing to do). I always looked a bit askance at these men, as not from ours, as “the other.” They were once a year Jews. Who were they kidding? These thoughts filled me, not in words, but in a sensation than ran naturally through my bloodstream. What I remember most vividly is that the one who sat directly in front of me used to always finish Shmoneh Esrei quickly and then take off his Tallis and step outside for a few minutes. That made an impression, drove home to me how unserious he was.

I’m not sure why that man stepping out after every Shmoneh Esrei on every Yom Kippur of every year so resonates with me, but does it ever. I’m going to type until I figure it out. I think it’s coming to me… You see I’m no longer a little boy who thinks that energy never fades and that if we want to we can all live forever. I no longer think that if you’re hair turns white it means you’re old, or that if you need to step out of Shul because your tired or your stomach is acting up or you feel cramped or stifled or even bored that you deserve to be looked down upon. I now believe that these reactions are part of being human, for the simple reason that I‘ve experienced every one of them. And as I feel the need to step out of Shul. On Yom Kippur or on Shabbat of the week of Parshat Tzav, I think of myself pretending like I wasn’t noticing that old man every time. Sometimes I feel the need to step out for a minute or longer, and I feel myself being watched by young eyes, while they deny it even to themselves.

“Can you imagine old age? Of course you can’t… Not even a false image – no image. And no-body wants anything else… Understandably, any stage of life more advanced than one’s own is unimaginable…” So writes Phillip Roth. And it’s not just old age but different mindsets as well. Till we think or feel a certain way ourselves we can’t believe that anyone would ever be like that.

So here I am understanding that some people come to Shul only on Yom Kippur. And though I never did or never will know the names of most such people, they exist. They are as real as I am. These strangers are never as strange as they seem, once you give them some attention. Maybe that’s why we’re warned more times any other exhortation in the Torah to be kind to the stranger – usually with the reminder that we were strangers too. And we will be again. I have felt and will feel again many of the same things that that Yom Kippur Jew that I wanted to disassociate from since I was six felt as well, both in and out of Shul.

While I’m recalling Yom Kippurs past in that blue faced building on 215th Street I think of the time my brother turned to the young man of around our age one row back. It was after the break and my brother looked at the fellow’s shirt and asked him what the stain on it was from. “Tomato juice,” replied said fellow, in the most even keeled tone I’ve ever heard. Conversation over. But for about thirty years now I’ve wondered about the unstated. Did he go home during the break and guzzle tomato juice? Or was this a spot from before the fast? And why does this incident plague me? I guess because it’s another example of how little we really know or understand of the life of the guy sitting on either side of us in Shul. There are specs of hints that announce themselves to us like tomato juice on a clean white shirt. But in the end only G-d knows.

Jennifer Bleyer wrote of her first time in The Carlebach Shul: “I had grown up in congregations where the aisles were used as catwalks during the High Holidays. Here, worshippers were freaks, geniuses, outcasts, and eccentrics—more like members of the tribe to which I imagined myself belonging. One was a former yeshiva student who now favored various Hindu gurus, but still kept Shabbat. One was a Kahanist alcoholic from Transylvania. One got arrested for aiding a runaway teenager and other congregants rallied to help bail him out of jail. Reb Shlomo referred to all of them as "holy schleppers."

My nearest and dearest are all holy schleppers. Years ago I told a friend of mine how there are the guys in Yeshiva who are known as the masmidim, and the guys who are known as the illuyim, then there are the guys who sit and struggle. They learn a little, they get up, leave the beis medrash and go tho the water fountain they return and find someone took their seat, so they get another one, then they go get a tissue… She used to ask me to repeat the description to her and never tired of hearing it. One day she asked me plainly – don’t you realize that I relate to that because I feel that I‘m that person? I didn’t. And I’d never mentioned that my description was based on experience rather than theory.

As Andy's Ramble plays I'm very close to believing that even the most put together person on the catwalk, in or out of Shul, is a secret holy schlepper. As atonement congeals, I pray that we be blessed to be at one with ourselves and each other. As we prepare to schlep through another year, if G-d will grant it to us, let us commit to being gentle in our judgement of schleppers - for we were shleppers in the land of Egypt.