Questioning Return. Beth Kissileff

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СКАЧАТЬ filed through the back of the men’s section to the left, partitioned off by white muslin curtains on metal frames, hung by what appeared to be round metal shower hooks. There was no art or decor on the walls. Nothing in this space suggested an arena in which to access the sacred. Basketball hoops mounted on either side of the room appeared like heads of a netted animal overseeing the proceedings. The metal folding chairs were of the most clattering and uncomfortable variety.

      Wendy couldn’t see the men on the other side of the divider from her seat next to Shani in the middle of the women’s section. She felt disgruntled and disempowered, unseen and unnecessary: They are leading the service; we are here to answer amen and look pretty. But she thought next, It isn’t my life, these Orthodox synagogues. I’ll go to a liberal congregation, or none, next week. I need to just remember that being here is fieldwork. Violet will be proud. And strictly speaking, most of this group isn’t my population since they are religious from birth like Shani. I can just see what is happening, experience it, without thinking about my dissertation. Wendy looked around as the afternoon service wended its way through the litany of words. The prayer leader standing in front was the only man she could see clearly. Women were continuing to enter, a gentle flow of bodies filling up the space, most of them around the age of herself and Shani, though there were older women with older children and young mothers with babies in slings attached to their hips, cradling their offspring as they walked. There was also a sprinkling of women in Amalia’s generation, white and gray hairs still piously covered.

      The elegant and colorful dress of the women—long skirts and matching headscarves in vibrant summer prints—contrasted with the overall dinginess of the gym and the thin crust of dust on the floor. Wendy mentally compared the site to the suburban synagogue she grew up attending, Beth Tikvah, with its immaculately kept premises, never a burnt-out lightbulb anywhere. The building was in pristine physical condition, an underutilized empty shell most of the year, except during the High Holidays. Wendy liked those fall holidays, with the hullabaloo of jumbled people, the bathroom where she and her friends tried to spend as much time as possible, to not be in the sanctuary. The restroom overflowed with various excesses and smells from the massive hordes that contrasted with its top-of-the-line fixtures and carefully planned color scheme. Wendy found something about the swarming crowds irresistible; the sheer numbers of worshippers emitted an energy that the synagogue lacked during the rest of the year. The assemblage on an ordinary summer Friday evening, here in this school gym, seemed more akin to a High Holiday crowd in the States, especially in its variety.

      Wendy turned to Shani and asked, “Is there a bar mitzvah or wedding? There are so many people.”

      Keeping her rhythmic back and forth rocking motion in prayer going, Shani replied mechanically, still poring over her prayer book, “It’s always this way.”

      Shani handed Wendy the prayer book she herself had been using, opened at the proper page, and took the one Wendy had been clutching, closed, in hopes that the tighter her grip, the easier it would be to follow.

      As Shani handed the book to Wendy, Wendy observed that a new guy had gone to the lectern at the front of the gym to switch places with the one who had been leading the weekday afternoon service. Wendy was surprised to see that both men were wearing informal clothing, the equivalent of casual Friday dress in the States: white button-down shirt, black pants, and sandals.

      As the buzz of humming from the wordless tune started by the prayer leader grew from a softer and soothing to a more joyous and raucous level, Wendy found herself relaxing, feeling calm, closing her eyes. She realized, suddenly, the tune was familiar from Friday nights at her Jewish summer camp, Kodimoh.

      Wendy remembered first being aware of the opposite sex at Jewish summer camp. When boys and girls prayed together each morning, there was a masculine power in those boys now wearing talleisim, and the sinewy wrap of their black tefillin echoed the newly appearing musculature in the arms of those beginning puberty. The tufts of hair above their lips, beginnings of mustaches signaling masculine growth, seemed to come at the same time they began to wear those white garments that enabled them to sway and swoop in prayer, active and in constant motion as they were in sports. Wendy’s prayer time always seemed wrapped up in noticing those around her, who they were, what was appealing. She never quite understood the prayers at camp, all in Hebrew. But she liked the slowness of moments they brought, and how they enabled her to pay attention to what was around her, particularly if a guy she found interesting was nearby.

      The wordless melody, the pent-up buzz of the congregation, was now set free. The prayer leader began chanting the set of psalms that culminated in the greeting to the Sabbath Bride, the Lecha Dodi. The man now leading the prayers had the wide shoulders yet narrow body and hips that Wendy associated with swimmers, as though his arms were more important in propelling him than his legs. As the service progressed his legs remained rooted, but his hands and arms moved. His tallis was entirely white with white stripes, and with his wide shoulders, he looked as though he might bound into the air and soar at any minute, his spiritual force powering his ascent. His voice was a lovely clear tenor, high and smooth, gliding lovingly over each note and intonation, channeling its melody outward. Enjoying his voice, she wondered, Will I ever find myself so seduced by anything as to change my life completely?

      She settled back in her chair and concentrated on the singing around her, its twittering sounds, words rising and falling, joining, trilling a note, crescendoing, falling again. The music was now a slow aching tune of yearning. For what? The Sabbath Bride? God? A heavenly Jerusalem? Messianic times? Was there something else to hope for, even actually being in the Promised Land? She’d have to ask Shani later what the worshippers were yearning for.

      In the midst of the congregation, crooning, harmonizing, the prayer leader’s voice out ahead, creating the tune that others wrapped their voices around in a coiled helix of melodic shape, was one solo male voice. As the congregation harmonized, his voice kept originating his own harmony, echoing the others’ song but in his own tuneful, melodic, and utterly gorgeous way. His voice above the others made an impression, lulling and thrilling at once. Whoever the owner of this voice was, he had finessed the dilemma of how to be in a group and be a unique individual, doing both simultaneously. Wendy was in thrall, listening, and puzzled over what type of person had the confidence required to soar above the sound of the crowd, and at the same time, the musical ability to improvise. The sound of his voice penetrated her; she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She wanted to concentrate on the sound, blocking out other stimuli to let this ascending voice pulsate through her, to focus totally on her pleasure.

      As she listened, a tingly, swoony, feeling overcame her. She heard harmonies from worshippers around her erupting spontaneously, sounding at once improvised and planned. She kept hearing the solo male voice, mysterious bringer of joyful melody. He was singing alone yet supportive of the communal sound, protective of the entirety of the musical montage. She speculated whether, rather than being seduced entirely, absorbed into the fibers of the entire being of another, it would be possible to have a love that was a partnership, a commingling of two voices with separate identities, which together could create a united sound?

      The worshippers rose as the service built to its crescendo at the last stanza of the song to greet the Sabbath Bride. While they were standing, she tried to scan the men’s section and find the owner of the voice, or who she would like him to be. On her feet, broken off from the lulling fantasy of lush sound she had been in, yet now in motion as part of the group bending towards the Sabbath Bride emerging at the door, Wendy gazed around and asked herself, When was the last time most of these worshippers had gotten laid? She would have liked to stay in that moment of desire and connection, but getting out of her chair had shattered her pleasurable moment. Feet on the dusty floor, Wendy reverted back to her observer self: Is the intensity here completely a consequence of repressed sexual feelings, my own included? She hadn’t thought about the role of sexuality and its repression in her baalei teshuvah, but it definitely needed to be covered, she decided, feeling under her chair СКАЧАТЬ