So that stopped me short a second. But then I said, “You know, you can’t just be born a certain way, you have to believe. Something’s gotta click”—I thumped my heart—“in here! See, Dovidl,” I said, “what I’m looking for is to be inspired, and reborn, and transformed, and for miracles happening nowadays, and to me, not just back then and to the children of Israel. Is there some kind of Judaism like that? Is there some kind of Tantric Judaism like that?”
And Dovidl said, “Yes! Yes, there is. Hasidus is Judaism like that!” And he went and got me a book and Fred a book all about Hasidus, which was the Hasidic flavor of Judaism. And the book was called Tashma. It had been written by the grandmaster Hasids back in Europe, and it was printed up in English and Hebrew, and it was the most amazing thing. There wasn’t a line about cooking utensils in it. It was all about spirituality and magic. It was actually a kabalistic environmental creed.
We started discussing the Tashma right then. We began with the first chapter, and Fred and I were just looking at each other in shock. This was really one of the most mind-blowing things we’d ever seen. The book was an explanation of how everything was connected, every soul and every heart, every element and every tree. In the Tashma your soul is like a spark flying up to heaven, and also a root, just one of six hundred thousand tiny roots delving down into the earth. Your mind is like water, and your heart is like fire. Your body is a plant, and when your soul is clothed in holy prayers your plant-body feeds your divine spirit. In the Tashma each person is a world, and each world is an organism. And there are worlds and worlds and worlds, layered on top of one another, and a higher and a lower of nearly everything, depending on what level your soul ascends up to, and it’s like everyone is climbing staircases trying to move up to the higher realms from the lower, but the angels get to run up and down the staircases between them. And it turned out God did have a feminine side! There was a feminine and a masculine side to God, and they wove together the whole fabric of creation, just like warp and woof; they meshed together in this one sexy cosmic loom.
I took the book home, and I began reading it every night. And you know what the most amazing thing about the Tashma was? You could close your eyes and picture the whole thing, just this whole planetary system of elements and roots and wings, and these stairways. My imagination was having a field day romping around. I really dug the Garden of Eden, both lower and upper, and I could totally get how the aspiration of one single drop of semen could be a whole universe right there. Probably some of the theological concepts were escaping me, but I was latching on to this stuff at my own level, which was the whole point of what you were supposed to do, because the Tashma was about levels. That was the point of the whole thing.
So if fire was the element for hearts, I guess at that point I was stoked. The day I moved into Wayne’s house in Aina Haina and he carried me over the threshold, I uttered a line: “A good thought joined to God is like wings.” And Wayne set me down and he said, “That’s beautiful.” And we stood there with my boxes and various plants around us in the vinyl tiled living room of his tiny and hot ranch house—where he was in the process of installing ceiling fans, but hadn’t had time to finish—and I said, “Fear of God is one wing and love of God is another.”
Wayne closed his eyes a little bit. He was so supportive of my studies he used to close his eyes while I would tell him things.
“There’s this whole concept,” I explained. “If you just have fear of God you only get half the experience, and if you just have love, you only get half. But if you put fear and love together, you get the whole bird.”
“And what is the bird?” Wayne asked.
I plunked down onto our nubby yellow couch. “It’s a metaphor,” I said. “The whole bird is a soul that can fly.”
Wayne sat next to me. He said, “This stuff is like poetry.”
“It is poetry,” I said. “That’s what kills me. Dovidl doesn’t even realize it. Half this stuff actually comes from the poetry of William Blake.”
“No kidding.” Wayne was stroking my hair.
I had the feeling he didn’t really know who William Blake was. Yet explaining would have ruined the moment. I just put my head down on Wayne’s shoulder. I just whispered to myself, “Brian was so wrong about you.”
“What about Brian?” Wayne asked.
“Nothing.”
“The guy was always jealous,” Wayne said.
“Jealous!” I was really surprised.
“Yeah, when we were together before. He had such a crush on you, I could tell.” Wayne was laughing softly.
Actually I knew better. The opposite was true. But it was just like with William Blake. You were sitting there with your live-in boyfriend who you loved in this little starter house like married people, and you didn’t want to go off explaining things.
I would have brought Wayne to those Saturday classes, if he hadn’t been on the job. A lot of times when I told Wayne about the singing and the stories, he said he wished that he could go. But since Saturdays were a workday in construction, it was just me and Fred learning together with Dovidl. And I said to Dovidl, “When I’m reading, I feel like I’m learning stuff I knew all along. I feel like when I see these metaphors I’m seeing these things for the second time!” Because, hadn’t I seen those birds flying upward into the upper worlds? Hadn’t I seen whole islands of birds? And hadn’t I seen the Infinite Light, pouring out of the depths of the sea? I said to Dovidl, “These classes are the best I’ve ever taken!” I would stay up every night reading in the Tashma, in the English. And without any help, or even the slightest medication, I could imagine myself inside those word pictures on the page. I had these unbelievable all-natural dream visions. I’d be on the runway with my wings outstretched ready to leap into the next dimension, and I’d run faster and faster, and then off I’d zoom up into the air, and I’d fly upward to the Upper Garden of Eden past the moon and the sun, and I’d camp there in Eden, and farm there and live there all alone, and none of the insects would bite me, because they would all be praying.
The next three years I was probably the happiest I’d ever been outside of Tonic or Molokai. No more frustrations with the ladies at the temple. With Wayne’s business going so well I stopped teaching. I didn’t need the money anymore. No more cooperative living. No more pressure-cooker academia. I had my job at Shirokiya; I had my home with Wayne, and hardly ever even thought of torturing myself wanting what I couldn’t have. In fact whenever Brian and I ran into each other, for example, at Longs Drug Store, he’d say, “What’s up?” and I would just reply, “Not much,” and smile, rather than tell him everything like I always used to. And I think, to tell the truth, he was a little bit hurt the way I breezed on by. Yet how long can you open up your heart to someone like that with nothing (except maybe disapproval) in return? Now I had Wayne, and I was studying this mystic Judaism. My soul was like a cat in the sun catching those mystic rays.
Everything was great. The only problem was, at times it seemed like my personal and my spiritual trajectories were heading in two different directions. By which I mean, Wayne and I were living this comfy American life, and my religious classes were preparing me for something else entirely—which I didn’t realize at first, since I was so busy drinking up mystic truths, but after a while it started to dawn on me: the whole point and moral of kabbalist religious teaching was that you were supposed to become a religious Jew! Before you could get to all the higher realms enumerated, you had to become religious here on earth according to sixty volumes of Jewish law, and follow every jot and tittle of the 613 commandments. So that was a fairly heavy asterisk attached to all these goodies. That was a fairly big hook to swallow. Yet Dovidl and the Tashma kept that hook coming; they kept dangling the laws of Moses, from kashrus, which was keeping kosher, and Shabbes, which was the Sabbath, to marrying a Jewish man. There were all the holidays, there were big and little fasts, there were a thousand rules you had to live by, not to mention praying, morning, noon, and
night. And whereas the religion was so beautiful in its visions, to practice it was like digesting the entire telephone book!
I felt like saying, Give it a rest! I felt like saying, Let me have my desserts. Leave me with the cosmos and the spheres of angels. I’m of the holistic persuasion, man, I don’t take prescriptions. But yet the classes always came back to what you gotta do to earn your place on the stairs to paradise. And what was weird was, when I was reading alone, the whole universe and the fires and sparks floated free, and the spirits and the angels just flew by, but then in class, it would turn out to be this slow progression, this slow crawl up sheer mountain walls. At home I’d see all humans were like monarch butterflies poised to migrate upward these incredible distances, ready to storm at least the nearest heaven with the beating of our countless wings. And then in class it would turn out we were all just brown ants creeping upward, and we had to carry all the fine print in our mandibles.
Still, I couldn’t give up learning—even though I wasn’t prepared to go through with some kind of total switch to Jewish observance, and accept the Hasidic way of life, if you’ll excuse the expression, whole hog. I guess I’d been around enough to be a little bit careful with my own enthusiasms, and also to realize that Dovidl and Ruchel weren’t just a cute young couple or great Old Country chefs, but missionaries out to cleanse my mind and save my soul. Dovidl and Ruchel had a whole agenda all planned out for me. First, they’d have me give up manapua with pork inside. Next thing I knew they’d try to break up me and Wayne. I had moments when I left CHAI house and I thought, Run! Run for your life! Run as fast as you can! They’re coming after you! They’re coming with the prayers and candlesticks! Even while part of me thought, Wait. Wait, let me just finish this chapter.
I felt like I couldn’t discuss all this with Dovidl, this feeling that I was a fish and being angled for, being lured by these gorgeous hand-tied feather lures. But in the end I did come clean to Ruchel. I picked a day right after Passover, when Betsy Sugarman and the doctor were out of town, and I stayed after lunch. She’d just had her second baby, Hershele, so I did all the dishes. She held the newborn, and I scrubbed up at the sink, and I said, “Ruchel, I have to tell you something.”
She looked over at me from the dish rack.
I said, “There’s a lot of things about Judaism that I love, but a lot that really turn me off. I mean, I love the poetry and the songs and stories and all of that. And a lot of the traditions are really beautiful to me, like Shabbes lunch. But a lot of it I find just rigid and disturbing, like the hierarchies of the religion, with the priesthood and all that, and the separation of the people of Israel from other nations, like we’re better, and the separation of the men from the women, like they’re better. And, I mean, I don’t want to offend you, but I feel like I shouldn’t be leading you on to think I can embrace all that in my life—I’m offending you, aren’t I?”
“No!” Ruchel said. “Are you kidding? No, not at all!”
“I just felt like I had to be honest with you.”
“That’s right. Absolutely!” she said. “What you’re doing is getting to a new stage in your learning.”
“But, I mean, what I’m trying to say is, I like the stage where I’m at now, and I don’t think I’m going to be progressing any …”
“You need to be around other women,” Ruchel said. “Learning with women. These are women’s issues you’re talking about—”
“Well, not just women’s issues—more like existential issues—”
“I think,” Ruchel said, “I think I know a program you would love.”
“Well, I don’t want to do a new program, I mean …”
“The Bais Sarah program in Bellevue,” she said.
“In Bellevue? What? Are you talking about a hospital?”
“Bellevue, Washington.”
“Look,” I said, “the thing is, I feel I have to set myself some limits here, because limit setting has been one of my weaknesses in the past. Because I have a very eager spirit….”
“You have a goldene neshama,” Ruchel said.
“But, see … Golden? Is that what you said?” And I stopped, because those words so touched me. Just the idea that she and Dovidl might look at me like that: a golden soul. My spirit could be golden and not just silver; it could be golden and impossible to rust or tarnish. I was just so moved by that idea.
“This program,” Ruchel told me, “it’s all for women and girls who want to learn together—and they live in one big house and the most intensive learning goes on every day. An unbelievable rabbi runs the classes, Rabbi Shimon Simkovich, along with his wife and daughters, and only the best young women teachers come to live with the women and counsel them.”
“No, no, Ruchel,” I said. “See, first of all, I’m in a serious relationship. Wayne and I have been together again four years! We have a home. I doubt—”
“Every student there has doubts,” Ruchel told me. “Having doubts is exactly what they’re looking for. Their specialty is doubts!”
“Okay,” I said. “Great, but I’m thirty-eight years old. I’m practically engaged. I’m not going to leave my home and go to boarding school in Bellevue, Washington. Even if I had the money—”
“For some cases, for the most qualified, it’s all free!” Ruchel said. “It’s all on scholarship, even the plane tickets.”
I said, “Ruchel, I am not going to turn into a religious Jewish lady.”
Her bright brown eyes peeked out from under her bouffant wig. “Im yirtzeh Hashem, God willing, we can only wait and see what happens!” She said she and Dovidl were going to write to the director of the program about me and my learning and my need. They were going to do a whole recommendation for me.
I kept saying, “Please, that’s not what I’m interested in doing with the next part of my life.”
But she kept saying they could just send the letter and see what happened. Why not wait for a reply from the program before deciding what to do? If I didn’t want to go, then fine, that would be the end of it, but you shouldn’t say no before you even had an invitation.
All that talk made me slightly nervous—even though rationally I knew Dovidl and Ruchel had no power over me. They couldn’t exactly kidnap me or steal Wayne away. Yet deep down, something frightened me when I heard Ruchel speak about Bellevue. I was afraid of the idea of going off and learning Jewish mysticism. It was too tantalizing. I knew myself well enough by now—to me a new creed was like liquor, and I was a person just a few years into recovery! I knew the life I wanted was the one I had, with Wayne in Aina Haina. I knew the place I lived was this middle-class, middle-of-the-road neighborhood, no enchanted island anymore. Yet still, deep down, I was parched for the holy spirit. I thirsted for the smoothness on my tongue, and the sweetness and the burn.
The ironic thing was that Wayne, being now supportive of me, was egging me on to bring some Jewish practices to our home. He was the one who wanted to learn about lighting candles on Friday nights. I said I wasn’t ready, but Wayne was so encouraging to me and loving about the whole thing that right before Memorial Day weekend I ended up taking home a box of stocky white candles from Ruchel, and I picked up a pair of brass candleholders that looked like flowers from the India Imports store. And that Friday night in the kitchen Wayne and I turned off the light and set up the candles on a tray on top of our avocado laminate counter. It wasn’t all that dark, because the sun was just starting to set. Yet when I struck the match, the tiny little flame flashed at us. And Wayne bowed his head, and I lit each of the candlewicks, and I opened up my prayer book and sounded out the blessing with an eastern European accent, which was how I’d heard Ruchel do it: “Baruch atoh adonoi eloheynu melech haolam, asher kidishonu, bimiszvosov vitzivonu, lihadlik ner, shel Shabbos.” And then I read the translation aloud: “Blessed art thou, Lord our God, king of the universe, who hast sanctified us with thy commandments, and commanded us to kindle the Sabbath lights.”
Wayne and I stood together and lo
oked at the two candles shining in this huge pool of twilight.
“What do you see?” Wayne asked me.
“I don’t see anything,” I said.
“You were looking at those flames like you saw something in there,” he said.
“No, I was just thinking they’re so small.”
“Oh,” he said.
“And I was thinking, maybe lighting candles is like sending up a flare. Maybe there really are a lot of other worlds out there. Maybe we’re just part of an archipelago stringing out into space, and maybe all our acts are truly connected with the infinite.”
“I feel that way too,” he said. “I feel like there’s something out there too.”
And we stood there hushed, and we watched those white candles melting down.
The next morning, after services at Ruchel and Dovidl’s house I told Ruchel, “I have good news!”
She was sitting with the baby in her lap and holding a bottle, and also trying to close up her little prayer book, but she looked up at me right away and she practically shrieked, “You lit?”
“I lit candles,” I said, and I grinned.
“Yaashar koach!” she burst out. Congratulations! And then she said, “I have good news also!”
My heart fainted, as it says in the Psalms. I wished I hadn’t told her. I mean, I was a grown woman here, yet there was something about all this, Ruchel’s reaction, it was like she was my troop leader and I was collecting Girl Scout badges, like one with a little pair of candles on it, and one with challahs, and one with a prayer book, and on and on, and when you got the whole set, then—then what? Then you would make full Yiddish Scout?
She said, “You’ve been accepted to Bellevue. To the program, with full scholarship!”
I said, “Ruchel, I already told you, that’s impossible for me. It’s impossible for me to go there.”
“They said you were at the top of their list,” she told me.