BAR-ILAN UNIVERSITY

The Psychedelic Jew

Rifka Dzodin

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Master's

Degree in the Department of English, Bar-Ilan University

Ramat Gan, Israel

2011

This work was carried out under the supervision of Joan Leegant
and Professor Alan Hoffman of the Department of English, BarIlan University

Table of Contents
Abstract

Introduction

The Psychedelic Jew

Conclusion

115

Bibliography

117

Abstract (Hebrew)

Abstract
This master's thesis comprises the first half of a tragicomic novel that explores issues of
identity and belonging among Jewish American teens from religious homes. At the center
of the story stands Dov Koslovsky, a high school student who has abandoned religious
observance and the small, tightly-knit religious community in which he was raised. Dov
has embarked on a search for creative paths to achieving a feeling of "connectedness," a
search which has led him to experiment with LSD. During a drug-induced hallucination,
Dov finds himself in a dialogue with God, from which he eventually concludes that he is
a prophet with the responsibility to bring his prophecy to the Jewish community. Before
delving into the story, the introduction chapter discusses the ideas and personal
experiences that inspired this story. The conclusion chapter, in turn, proposes plot lines
that will follow in the story's as of yet unwritten second half.

Introduction
The Psychedelic Jew is a tragicomic novel, the first half of which is included herein as
the thesis for the Masters of English program in creative writing at Bar-Ilan University.
The book, composed so far, explores the sometimes unusual and even illicit avenues
traveled by the young and disenfranchised in search of a "real" Jewish/spiritual
connection. In this story, Dov, a confused and misunderstood Jewish high school student
in Pittsburgh, experiments with LSD, and in his hallucinations God speaks to him.
Though he at first does not believe that his interaction with God is real, he is intrigued,
and plots to engage in further solitary drug taking to replicate the divine exchange. Dov is
thirsty for a real connection, over what he perceives as empty slogans and pre-prescribed
prayer, which is the only way of connecting offered by the religious Jewish community in
which he was raised. Throughout the story, we learn of Davids upbringing in an
ambivalently religious family and in an ambivalently religious American Jewish
community, where the rules are set in stone, but they are followed automatically and
without thought or feeling. Religious devotion seems to Dov to be governed by social
pressures for belonging and acceptance more than actual devotion.
Without making a conscious decision regarding the matter, David and his friends
have eschewed Jewish observance for the sake of adolescent thrills and curiosities.
Although as a child he enjoyed singing songs about the greatness of God and engaging in
the curious pleasure of ritual, hormones and psychotropic substances now flow through
Dov's veins, taking the place of the unquestioning religious dedication of his childhood.
The story follows Dov's transition, with a special focus on his bar mitzvah as a turning

point for his becoming a man - independent and obstinate in his personal wishes and
desires.
The character of Dov and those of his friends are rooted in experience, although
they have been flavored distinctly by imagination. For much of my life, I grew up in an
Orthodox community, although my family was always on the fringes of that community,
too compromising in our religious devotion, too liberal in our philosophies. Although I
was raised in an open and inquisitive family, I grew up among many teens who were not
as fortunate. Religion was forced upon them without being sufficiently explained or
opened to discussion. Religion was not a thing of curiosity and free intellectual
investigation and questioning. It was a fact that one was forced to accept, and as such,
became associated with general authority, which, being teenagers, many rejected.
Among my own acquaintances, there seemed to be many more youth from
religious homes who used hard drugs and found themselves in trouble with the law than
from non-religious or non-Jewish homes. Without the ability to question their families,
teachers and rabbis, they were left to answer difficult questions on their own. For youth
who were raised in suppressive households, there was no difference between healthy,
acceptable "transgression" (for example, sexual intercourse in a steady, loving
relationship) and destructive, and even illegal transgression. In a culture where
everything is forbidden, when the yoke is thrown off, everything suddenly becomes
permitted. In this story, I have created one such boy. He is a good kid who does many
not-so-good things, and he ultimately finds God in places that he hasn't been told to look.

When I grew up, I heard many times from teachers and religious youth group
leaders that there was no "standing still" in Judaism: that if one did not progress in one's
devotion and observance, one would inevitably be thrown down the slippery slope of sin.
Most of my peers from Jewish day school indeed adopted one of these two options. In the
years of my early adolescence, a wave of ultra-Orthodoxy swept the formerly modernOrthodox school and community to which my family belonged. My pant-wearing female
peers switched to long skirts and sleeves and eschewed dreams of college and careers for
dreams of early marriage and baby-making. Boys began being sent out of town, draping
themselves in a wardrobe of black and white. Others, many others, wound up like Dov
and his friends. Some of them have since come full circle and are now husbands, fathers,
upstanding members of the very community against which they had rebelled as teens.
Others have left to find themselves, to redefine themselves in other parts of the world.
Another main theme I have explored is the isolation of being between worlds. For
an "off the derech" teen, living in both religious and secular spheres means that he or she
does not fully belong in either. Dov has opted out of the competition for community
acceptance and the race for piety. This decision has made him an outsider, an
untouchable in the Jewish community. Although Dov fantasized the secular world as an
infinitely open place, he finds himself an outsider there as well, his Jewishness, his
foreignness something he cannot shake. Adolescence is for many a period of isolation,
but for teens like Dov, the isolation is compounded by living in limbo between the worlds
and belonging to neither.
As I have mentioned above, many parts of this story are rooted in experience, and
are the products of excavations in the recesses of my memory and imagination. I, myself,

left Jewish day school for public high school after ninth grade, not because I was kicked
out, but because I had simply had enough. However, I remained religious during all three
years that I was there, and know the feeling of being between worlds quite well. The
feeling of being the girl with the unpronounceable name, the girl who does not go to
parties on Friday nights (not that I was invited very often). Indeed, I know the feeling
well, as I still live at the center of that dichotomy, bearing a secular brain and a devout
heart; having married a secular man and living in a house that is a combination of
Kiddush and radio broadcasts on Shabbat.
Place plays a central role in the story. For better or worse, Pittsburgh is a special
city, and it often has a magnetic hold on its inhabitants. After high school, most of my
college-bound acquaintances pursued studies at universities out of state, but after one
year, many returned to the comfortable oddness of that industrial yet green habitat, which
was officially north east in geography, but Midwest in its soul. While friends from other
cities fled to New York and Los Angeles, many of my fellow Pittsburghers stayed,
marrying former schoolmates or even classmates in sometimes surprising and odd
combinations, managing the local Jewish businesses and teaching in their former school.
As a Jew, Pittsburgh also boasts one of the only urban Jewish communities
remaining in America today, but its urbanity is a kinder one than that of Manhattan, for
example. As opposed to friends of mine who lived in places like Cleveland and Detroit,
we as children walked everywhere, from a very young age. Pittsburgh was a place that in
many ways, felt like it was transported from the 1950s, in our feeling of independence,
our freedom. My childhood was spent largely in the street and in the park, playing hide

and go seek in disapproving neighbors' yards with Lubavitch, Asian, South American,
black and working-class white kids.
Although Pittsburgh was on the one hand a place of joy, an easy place it was not.
While the sprawling parks felt infinite, Pittsburgh, especially as a member of the Jewish
community, felt suffocating and small. It is also the second rainiest city in the United
States, and the hills certainly put one to work. The physical characteristics are an
appropriate metaphor for the darkness that sometimes lurked beneath. There was so much
poverty, pediatric illness and personal crisis that I remember. It was not a depressing
place, but a place that did not easily give way to simple living.
Among the influences for this story, I wish to cite The Brief Wondrous Life of
Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz, a humorous and tragic story about an awkward, overweight
Hispanic-American teen who is an outsider in his own community. The book also has an
ethnically specific flavor, including many Spanish sentences without translation. This
effect makes the writing more authentic and emphasizes that though the story is
universal, some things are intensely personal.
I will also use some whimsical, fantastical (even hallucinogenic) elements from
Yiddish literature, including authors Isaac Bashevis Singer and Y.L. Peretz. Specifically,
I will illustrate Jewish practice as an enigmatic mystical phenomenon, in a way modeled
after Singer's memoir In My Father's Court, in which the author revisits his childhood
home in the "old country." Singer is also an apt model for this work, due to its hesitant,
guilty, yet amorous relationship with religious transgression. Singer's characters often
harbor an ambivalent religious ethic, which is a natural characteristic of my main
character, Dov, as well.

This religious ambivalence is also characteristic of Philip Roth's earlier works,

including Portnoy's Complaint and the short story Eli the Fanatic. Roth takes the brand
of religious transgression explored previously in Singer's work, and widens the
transgression to beyond the Jewish realm, delving into the taboos of secular American
society with gusto. I plan to make use of such an approach by exploring the combination
of ambivalent Judaism together with rampant drug use and hormonal adolescent musings.
As a major influence on my descriptions of place, I would like to site The
Mysteries of Pittsburgh, by Michael Chabon, which also applies a mysterious, curious air
to the streets of the eponymous city.

The Psychedelic Jew

There are two types of boys in this world: boys who love their mothers, and boys who
love their mothers but disappoint them endlessly. Dov Koslovsky falls into the latter
category. It is a Thursday afternoon, and Dov is bolting through the gates of Theodore
Roosevelt High precisely after algebra and before American history. He never would find
out what that New Deal was about.
Once out of the visual and disciplinary sphere of the school security guards, Dov
takes a moment to reflect. He ties a loosening shoelace and moves a curly lock out of his
eye. Next comes the kipa, which he pulls from his pocket and places on his head, as he
does every day upon leaving the secular confines of school and entering the minefield of
potential run-ins with family friends that is Squirrel Hill.
Shlomo set the time for one-fifteen, but that fell smack in the middle of algebra.
Dov has no qualms about cutting class, but leaving in the middle constituted a whole new
level of transgression, a line that he was not prepared to cross. He told them to wait for
him, knowing they probably wouldnt. He is the only one of them who goes to a real
school with real rules, ever since he got kicked out of yeshiva in Skokie, and he knows
not to expect too much understanding from them in all things school-related. Menahem
still goes to Rabbi Akiva, the local yeshiva, where everyone knows that attendance at
secular afternoon studies is, unofficially, optional. Shlomo is home from his out-of-town
yeshiva for the battery of Jewish holidays that have taken most of September and part of
October captive, so he has nowhere he needs to be. And then there's Judah, who has done
as he likes, whenever he likes, ever since Dov can remember. Anyhow, the lucky bastard
is getting his GED after he was asked to leave by the head Rabbi of the Rabbi Akiva.

Another Wednesday gathering with the bad boys of Squirrel Hill; a meeting of the
minds among spicy clouds of smoke in Shlomos basement. Shlomo's father never gets
home before seven, and his mother does Jewish outreach work in Moon Township three
days a week. Even when his parents are around, they dont take notice of the hubbub of
sweaty pubescents on the floor below. The basement is like another galaxy and its
inhabitants a life form they seem not to recognize.
The basement gatherings have morphed over the years. What was once a forum
for never-ending games of "Asshole" and "Bullshit" (which they in their innocent age had
still termed "AH" and "BS") and proud communal farting, transformed into a weed den
after Judah picked up a low-level habit at public school in the 8th grade and introduced it
to the clan. At first they hesitantly and fearfully partook, taking pains to hide their
lawlessness, restricting their pot smoking to the wooded parts of Frick Park and spraying
their hands with stinging deodorizing spray in the bathrooms of Starbucks before
deigning to head home. The basement situation changed further after Shlomo and Dov
(particularly Shlomo) went off to yeshiva, which meant that major chunks of the year left
the boys without a cozy, private venue. Although Dov completed his yeshiva stint
quickly enough, Shlomo has been stubborn about seeing out his four years in the suburbs
of Toronto. During Shlomo's absences, the boys don't bother to find alternate
arrangements, having grown spoiled by the comfort of their own habitat. Indeed, they live
altogether healthier lives during these times (except for Judah, who has since been
promoted to full fledged pothead), but they are bored as hell. Anyhow, Shlomo always
seems to be back home for weekends more often than he is in yeshiva. He always has
some kind of excuse: bar mitzvah, funeral, family illness. But Dov knows that the real

reason he allows himself to be draped in so much familial joy and suffering is that he is
homesick, plain and simple.
Shlomo's return for the holidays sparked an ecstatic flurry of illegal activity, the
peak of which they would experience that afternoon. Instead of the usual cocktail of
weed, cheese puffs and Married with Children reruns, this afternoon features an
experience that, according to Judah, Will fuck you up for eternity, man. And I totally
mean in a good way.
When Dov arrives, he is greeted by a round of lazy hand waves and an extended
Jimi Hendrix guitar solo playing in the background. Say what you will about these boys,
they have a sense of history.
Dov settles into his usual place on the tiger-print bean bag. He kicks off his shoes
and grasps the joint that Shlomo hands him as a formal greeting. A tense silence envelops
the room. Days of Our Lives (set on silent with the closed captioning activated) is just
finishing. The boys have developed a few theories about the identity of the Salem Serial
Killer (Shlomo thinks it's Marlena; Judah says it was her evil twin; Menahem is loathe to
discuss soap operas in the first place), which they are eager to see played out.
Menahem uses the coffee table to lift up his heavy body and notices an unusual
addition to its usual dcor. Whats this, dude? Menahem asks, fingering a stack of
foreign looking stamps that that dont appear to be postage for anywhere rational.
Everyone else in the room knows exactly what they are, but the particulars of this
afternoons activities have been kept from Menahem. He is a little too close with his
siblings to be trusted, and there can be no interferences, not today.

10

This is like God, man, like the proverbial fucking creator of the universe, says
Judah, who until four months and eight days ago went by Yudi, which is what the mother
whom he disappoints endlessly still calls him. Fucking LSD, he clarifies for the
uneducated masses in an enthused whisper.
Acid. Menahem restates the facts in a tone so casual he must be faking it.
Pure lysergic acid diethylamide, adds Shlomo, who likes to get academic with
his drugs before getting decidedly un-academic with them.
Dov picks up the paper-thin square, contemplating the unlikely power of so
lightweight an object. Like God? Dov asks.
Like the big man upstairs himself, assures Shlomo.
God. These days Dov has few kind things to say about him.
Hes just too big, he often says. Hes just too controlling.
And what an ego problem, right? He adds this when he is feeling particularly
contrary. But it wasnt always this way. Indeed, there was a time when Dov and God
were friends. As a boy, he sang along joyously to prayers and songs, all praising the
admirable qualities of God. Hashem is here, Hashem is there, Hashem is truly
everywhere. This was his boyhood favorite. Up up, down down, right, left and all
around, he exclaimed with glee on his way home from school, in a private conversation
between Dov and himself. He had such benevolent feelings towards God that he was
even willing to perform the seemingly odd and incomprehensible for his sake. In Dovs
house, milk was eaten with milk. Meat was eaten with meat. Hours were measured and
waited between the two. Dov often thought about milk and meat, wondering why they
were so afraid of each other. All he knew was that the fear must run deep, because they

11

wouldnt even touch the same plates. He was also scared of certain things, like fireworks
and washing machines, so he understood.
Everyone in his family, and everyone they knew did the same thing. Except for
Uncle Hershel. He ate everything, and his dishes werent afraid. Dov summed up his
confusion into a single word: Why?, which he asked his mother as he stood wrapped in
the overlapping gauze of her skirt, watching her arms gyrate over him as she grated
potatoes with fervor.
Because he thinks its inconvenient, Dovy. Because being a Jew, you have to do
things that arent always fun. And Uncle Hershey doesnt have the patience to do things
that arent fun. Dovs mother paused to snatch back an edge of her skirt that he was now
rolling absentmindedly above her waist. And he never has.
Though over his phobia of washing machines, at the ripe age of 16, Dov is still
scared of certain things. Every time he walks home from Shlomo's, he fears he is wearing
his fuzzy high like an ostentatious, sweaty fur coat that covers his whole body. He pours
the remainder of his body and brain power into walking like a normal human being, a
complex choreography of lining heart beat with the blinking of eyes and feigned casual
footsteps. All while the secret boils in his blood.
Dov also fears small talk, sudden attention, and solitary standing and sitting.
Already in his first year at Roosevelt, he realized that those were the only three options
for social existence that high school offered, and that he would have to get over one of
those fears if he was going to make it through to the end of 12th grade. Dov couldn't
decide which fear was most worth getting over, so he experimented with each one. He
tried biting his lip through awkward conversations at lunch, which inevitably ended with

12

a polite, undecided silence that warmed his face and goaded his throat to swallow. He got
his eyebrow pierced, thinking that the pain, parental rebellion and frequent infections of
that endeavor would at least earn him points with someone, but the invitations for social
inclusion did not pour in, not from the punks, not from the metal heads and not even from
the happy hippies. All it got him was grounded until he agreed to remove it and walk
around with a scab of shame, evidence that he lacked a single hardcore bone in all his
body.
For his next experiment, Dov tried to make himself invisible. He started taking
his lunch in the second floor annex hallway, outside of the library, where he sat with his
sandwich in one hand and the words of Kurt Vonnegut in the other. He found that
invisible worked, but the floor was cold and dusty, and he was never able to lose himself
in his book, his attention stolen by a paranoia that someone would come down the hall
and stare at the sorry kid who ate lunch on the floor outside of the library. He realized
that high school would only be bearable if he would be able to maneuver a minor
combination of all three, mastering none, but also preventing a transformation beyond
recognition to become an empty-headed social darling, faker bad-ass or non-existent
anomaly.
Dov slumps his body down onto the floor and changes the beanbag's function to
pillow. He twirls his fingers around strands of rust orange shag carpeting, an artifact left
over from a renovation job performed back in the '70s by the previous owners, who
presumably thought themselves very hip at the time. The thick hairs are soothing in their
antiquity, a forgotten leftover of childhood, full of memories of play dates and birthday
parties. The windowless wood paneling turns the basement into a land unbound by the

13

rules of time. There is no day and no night in the basement, just artificial yellow light and
the creaking of footsteps above, which the boys do their best to drown out with loud
television watching and guitar-heavy classic rock.
Menahem switches to the shopping channel. A middle aged woman with frizzy
blond hair and pink lipstick is modeling a crystal necklace. "Your friends will never be
able to tell it's not a diamond. Yes, for just $29.99, you can add class and exclusive
luxury to your wardrobe," says a very toupeed man who looks like he is wearing makeup.
The woman tilts her hips from side to side, smiles and flutters her lashes, as if she is in a
child's beauty pageant. "Menahem. Can you change the damn channel?"
"Nope." Menahem knows that Dov won't get up to make it happen. And indeed,
Dov doesnt care enough to warrant moving. He stares at the screen. Better to watch
something than nothing at all.

Shlomo, Judah, Menahem and Dov sit in silence. He eyes the others to gauge the level of
inebriation in the room. More than inebriated, they just look bored. It is Menahem who
breaks the silence. "Man, I am so stoned."
"You are not, dumbass. I read it takes like two hours to kick in," Judah says while
watching his own calloused toes, which he is wiggling slowly. "Man, my feet are falling
asleep." Dov never understood how Judah knew so much, about everything. Polar bears,
African tribes and oral sex: he brims with information, but he never reveals his sources.
"I know," Menahem says, his eyes beseeching Dov for moral support. "I'm just
saying I think I feel a tingle."

14

Judah flings pretzels at Menahem. "Don't ever say the word tingle to me, you
homo."
"Hey, Hey. No throwing edibles in my basement."
The boys take this as an opportunity to pelt Shlomo with all the foodstuffs they
can grab in their fists. Shlomo covers his head to protect himself from the onslaught of
cookies and corn chips, on which they have spent their allowance money in order to
satisfy their stoner cravings.
You guys suck." Shlomo picks a cheese puff off his shirt and flicks it into his
mouth. "I'm telling you. My parents will shut down this cozy operation if they find
crumbs crushed into their precious carpet. My dad still goes on about the time Yoni Klein
smashed cookies into the living room floor at my first grade birthday party."
"Don't worry, we'll get Menahem to suck up the crumbs, hey Mr. Human Vacuum
Cleaner?" Judah pinches a roll of fat wrapped around Menahem's torso.
"Cut it out," Menahem says while laughing and flinging away Judah's hand. Being
ticklish beyond his control, he must take the insult in relatively good spirits.
Dov switches on the TV and finds nothing but talk shows and documentaries.
"Man, Shlomo. Why don't your folks get cable?"
"I think they're afraid I'll hack into the Playboy Channel. I heard them arguing
about 'bad values' or some shit like that."
"Oh, if they only knew. Yeshiva kid by day, weed den host by night. It's tragic,
really. Rabbi Jekyllstein and Mr. Hydeman, the true story," Judah says.

15

"They've got to have a hunch. I come to dinner high all the time. Truth is, I don't
think they want to think about it. Not like you assholes who have to run around with eye
drops and breath mints all the time to cover up your potheadness."
"Speaking of potheads, who's turn is it to roll? If we're going to have to wait here
for hours, let's at least do it high, shall we gentlemen?" Judah says.
"Aw, I knew we should've gotten a hold of some ecstasy instead. It's way faster,"
Shlomo says.
"What, so we could get all emotional and rub up against each other? That sounds
great. Fucking great."
Dov always falls silent when the boys launch informational sessions about
narcotics. When it comes to drugs, Dov takes what he is given, but it isnt something
especially worth talking about. Its just something to do, and for a 16-year-old boy from
Squirrel Hill, sometimes thats enough.
He watches them: Judahs lanky arms are looking for where to exist in the
labyrinth of overgrown bones. Despite his uncertain body, his dark brown eyes are
always sharp and thinking, perched over a bulbous nose and narrowed in on a nameless
goal. Shlomo is what Dov would call good looking if he were gay. His sandy hair and
green eyes attract attention from girls, although out of awkwardness he inevitably blurts
out a weight- or face-related slur early into co-ed conversations, so that at the end of the
day, all four of the boys remain equally undesirable. Menahem wears round, oversized
glasses, seemingly the same pair he has worn since he was four, and along with Shlomo,
maintains the long sidelocks of biblical mandate, looped and hidden behind his ears. His
shirt is never untucked, his hair is always a reliable 3, and his doughy body gives the

16

illusion of innocence. His only expressions of visual self-determination are his socks,
which span the gamut of Lego colors, his hutzpa only showing when he bends his knees.
He has been watching these boys for the last 11 years, sometimes listening.
Sometimes not. They are friends of least resistance, bound together by eight option-less
years in the cocoon of small-town yeshiva. With a class of just 13 boys, one had to make
due with what was available, and these guys had definitely been a step up from Yishai,
the Talmud protg who cracked jokes exclusively in Aramaic, or from Fat Moishie, who
people were nice to out of pity. But still, Dov always had a hard time coming up with
reasons for their friendship other than convenience. Public school offered more than just
a viable educational alternative after Dov's Skokie Yeshiva ousting at the end of 9th
grade. It also presented a way out of this four-way marriage. No more having his
sentence completed for him, no more being taken for granted. Or so he thought.
Dov envisioned public school as a glorious new beginning, where he would be
free of the piety pressures and forced intimacy of a religious education and its droning
Talmud lessons. Dov always told himself that it was yeshiva that made him the bored,
bumbling kid he was. All he needed was a change of scene to release the charming
witting and confident young man cooped up in his head out into the world. At public
school, he would surely shed his well-worn image, along with his shyness, and be born
anew as someone who initiated conversations, successfully delivered punch-lines, and
who was never alone except by choice. His TV-inspired imagination conjured up
encounters with the fairer sex, girls with torn jeans and tight t-shirts who cradled
notebooks across their fully developed chests as they asked about his life aside open
lockers. He would be the "new guy," the word on everyone's lips. In reality, Dov's

17

newness, his existence, even, went largely unnoticed in the dense halogen hallways. By
the time Dov showed up at the start of 10th grade, friendships and rivalries had already
been cemented, and there was little place for new Jew-boys with funny names in the
jigsaw puzzle that was high school. And the name was another thing. How hard could it
be to pronounce his measly one syllable of a name? He got everything from Dove to
Doug, and after two days of polite, strained corrections, Dov let himself be called every
available bastardization.
There were a handful of curious kids who actually tried talking to Dov. He told
them of his abbreviated stint at a "Jewish Boarding School." They said things like "Whoa,
that must have been tough," or "Whoa, did you have to wear uniforms?" or just plain
"Whoa." After about two minutes the conversation would come to an uncomfortable
standstill, and Dov would hurriedly scan his brain for interesting things to talk about,
feeling the opportunity for newfound friendship slip between his fingers with every
encroaching second. Finally, Dov would settle for an inane question, like "So, what are
you having for lunch?" or make frequent declarations of "I'm so tired," while skimming
the hairs on his forearm with his palm.
Dov eventually found his way into a group of friends that tolerated his presence,
math genius types who are one degree above full-fledged nerds and wannabe cool kids
who never made the cut into the Land of Popular. They are so nice that they tolerate
Dov's awkwardness with not an ounce of ill will. They invite him to their (dry) parties,
and to go with them to midnight Friday cult screenings of The Rocky Horror Picture
Show, which he politely declines, citing prior family commitments.

18

And so, Shlomo, Judah and Menahem remain Dov's friends of convenience, but
they are more convenient than ever. So convenient that Dov can never wait for the school
day to be over so that he can breathe some air with them. So he can sit silent and issue
tired grunts instead of words. It is exhausting to be so aware of yourself. All Dov wants at
the school bells final ring of the day is to be able go back to being a given, a fact taken
for granted.
He pulls the sandwich bag of weed from across the table and a packet of rolling
papers out of his pocket. He spreads a tuft of fuzzy green sprouts along the length of the
delicate paper, rolling with purpose and precision, his movements quick and sharp.
"Behold," Dov says, bowing his head to the outstretched joint. "And the Lord said it was
good."
"Amen, Brother," said Judah as he snatches it out of Dov's hand.
The joint makes its way around the room, as does Dov's glance. While watching
the boys banter on about the complexity of parents, scholastic ambition (or lack there of)
and Internet porn, Dov laboriously tries to control his body, which is steadily melting into
a state of fuzzy anticipation. His body feels warm and full, like hes in love, but without
any one object of affection. He forces out grunts and nods at the appropriate intervals, but
his head and the sounds that come out of him dont feel like they belong to him.
"Ha, ha. Look at Dov. His eyes look like they're about to jump out of his head,"
says Menahem. Dov feels that his eyes are indeed jutting forward into the world, but he
cant seem to bring them back into the dull comfort of sockets. There is too much to be
seen. Seen again for the very first time.

19

"Hello, anyone in there?" Shlomo snaps his fingers in Dov's general direction, but
Dov does not utter a word. He is busy running his finger over a pretzel that smiles at him
with cunning from the carpet. "Hello," he says, bringing it close to his face. He senses
voices in the background, but they are already far, far away.

Then the last voice falls silent in wonderment. The last reveler descends into his own
rabbit hole of skeletons and curiosities. The only voice comes from the radio. There is a
forecast. Thirty degrees and a chance of marshmallows. Dov thinks he hears his name
being whispered in between the forecaster's syllables. Now.

Dov.

O.

Dov.

Ver. Dov. To.

Dov.

You. Dov. Dov. Dov. Dov.

He looks at Menahem, Judah and Shlomo and sees their hearts beating, sees the
blood traveling through veins. He even tells them so. Judah doesnt laugh. Shlomo
doesnt roll his eyes. Menahem doesnt repeat Dov's words in ridicule.
Shlomo turns to Dov. "Your hair is shiny. Your head is covered with glass. Don't
move. Don't let it shatter." He brings his fists to Dov's cheeks as a measure of protection.
There are so many sounds. Somewhere a washing machine is clunking and
swishing. Elsewhere, a dog barks, a power line hums and a car engine struggles to start.
One moment, Dov hears them as separate sounds, the next moment they are one,
separating and uniting and separating again.
Dov rises from the bean bag. He looks at the space he has vacated, and sees the
imprint of his body left behind like the image of a fetus projected in an ultrasound.
Shlomo jumps up and grabs Dov's left arm. "Where are you going? You'll break, you'll
break."

20

Menahem, who hasn't said anything in a large, indeterminable chunk of time,

stands and points to the door at the top of the basement stairs.
The three of them head jacketless up the stairs, leaving Judah amidst a
conversation with his black, distorted reflection in the screen of a turned off television.
Shlomo walks behind Dov, shielding his body with his arms. They get to the top of the
stairs and empty into the kitchen, where they are met by Shlomo's younger sister, Faygie,
who prefers to be called Fay even though its an old lady's name. Faygie holds a phone in
her hand with the coiled phone line twisted about her arm like tefillin. She looks at her
brother's contactless embrace of Dov. "My brother is so weird," she says to the phone
receiver. She stares at his eyes, which are erased of all expression, with pupils that are
three times larger than usual. She puts her hand over the receiver and in a forceful
whispered says, "Are you doing drugs again?"
"No," cries Shlomo in a voice that was more defensive than convincing, while
releasing his protective pose over Dov. He runs out the front door before Faygie has a
chance to shout "I'm gonna tell Ma."
Dov and Menahem are left to behold Faygie's malevolent countenance. "Can't you
see I'm on the phone?" she shrieks in her thirteen-year-old voice, baring a cavalcade of
teeth. The boys let out a squeal and run out the door. They run, not because they fear
Faygie's adolescent rage; neither do they run to search for Shlomo, who is nowhere to be
seen; Dov runs because he has to. After a few blocks he tries to stop, but feels his body
pulled forward by his own rebellious muscles and bones. Menahem runs because Dov
runs.

21

They run down Forward Avenue, which is overwhelmed by cars that travel so fast
they are reduced to waves of colored light. Dov comes to a curb flanked by a traffic light,
which is flashing Walk and Don't Walk at the same time. "You know I can't do both,"
Dov yells at the light while running in place. The light complies and settles on Run. Dov
follows the order, looking up all the while his feet hit the pavement (there is so much to
see), which is a problem because he bumps into two telephone poles and trips over a
dog's leash. Eventually, though, he finds a rhythm and learns to perceive the contours and
curbs of the terrain without seeing them. Upon passing the gas station at the corner of
Forward and Murray, a giant neon "Yes!" radiates in cursive lettering above the prices of
unleaded and diesel. "This way," he says to Menahem without taking his eyes off of the
dusk sky and the dancing streetlights that its creeping darkness has beckoned.
They run without stopping, not even when they pass Mrs. Kornfeld, who calls
after them. The only word Dov can make out is "why," a philosophical question they
dont have time for. They run all the way to Schenley Park, which is full of after-work
joggers who look askew at them as they run jacketless through the woods, Dov in Jeans
and Doc Martens, Menahem in his black and white school garb, soaked in sweat and
some kind of unknown hunger. The heat of Dovs overworked organs clashes with the
freezing-temperature air, and his skin stings from the contrast.
Dov's breath begins to fail him as he approaches the man-made pond, and his
body finally lets him stop. Dov is alone; Menahem has apparently disappeared
somewhere along the way. Dov collapses on a bench. He lies on his side and curls his
knees into his stomach. The ponds temperate waves glitter as pixels of light that flash as
the wind stubbornly carries the water back and forth. As the light hits, the ripples move to

22

a 1-2 beat, forming shapes and letters. He can make out a t, an h and an e. Next there is
an a-n-s-w-e-r. With the next flash of light comes the words "is b." What the hell does
that mean? Dov thinks out loud. The words, however, do not cease. Next comes a
question, two words at a time. Would you. Like to. Know some. Lottery numbers. Dov
shakes his head. He is too confused to accept the attractive offer.
Stock tips. Dov shakes his head again.
The meaning. Of life. Dov shrugs. He seriously doubts there is such a thing.
What then. Dov takes a moment to think. "Will the Penguins make it to the
playoffs?" To this the water replies You're joking. Right.
The water is still glistening with geometric shapes, but no words emerge. "Wait, I
have a question. Are you still there?"
On the water shines a Y-E-S in cursive lettering, similar to what he had seen at the
gas station.
"Does God really exist, or is everyone just yanking my chain?"
Who the. Hell do. You think. This is. Sonny. The milkman.
Dov lets out a scream and jumps up from the bench. He runs as fast as he can out
of the woods, running, running, running until he makes it all the way back to his house.
He runs up to his room and puts a pillow on his face. His mother, having heard his
thumping entrance into the house comes to check up on her son.
"What's wrong, Dovy?"
"I don't feel well," Dov tries to fake some sanity into his voice.
"Well, you don't sound well. You might not look well either. I would know if
you'd take that pillow off your face." Dov grabs the pillow even harder, denying his

23

mother a glimpse of his gargantuan pupils. But his mother has always been stronger than
him (even puberty didnt change that) and manages to yank the pillow free after no more
than a short struggle. She felt his forehead. "You're burning up. I'll bring you a wet
towel."
She returns with the compress, and swabs Dovs forehead with it as she smoothes
his sprawling curls out of his face with the other hand. She comes so close to him that he
is sure he will be found out. Luckily, the only drug Mrs. Koslovsky has ever seen in her
life is Tylenol, and even the telltale signs tell her nothing. She loosens the shoes off his
feet, turning her face from the smell of hormones and sweat newly released into the
atmosphere. "No matter. You'll shower in the morning."
She kisses his forehead, bringing to mind earlier eras in the Koslovsky household.
Schluff, mein kind," she says, just above a whisper, as she turns off the light. In the
Koslovsky household, the remnants of Yiddish that survived the passing of generations
have become a vehicle to sooth and to scold, never to be wasted on more middling states.
Dov lies in bed with his eyes open, witnessing the natural, familiar order of the
world slowly fall back into place as he feels a tremendous exhaustion come over him. He
falls asleep with his clothes on and dreams that people are holes of air in a world made
only of skin.

The next day, Dov lies his way to a sick day. He tells his mother that he must
have come down with something, which is not entirely untrue, since he does feel rough in
the fullest sense of the word. From his first aching moment, he is eager to compare notes
with his friends, and to make sure that they still possess all of their limbs after the

24

previous day's events. He waits for a moment of solitude in the house, lest someone
accidentally eavesdrop on their exchange. His father was already long gone; he was never
home past 7:30 am. His younger sister Sari had vacated in the direction of school at 8.
And Ephraim, the first born and main source of parental pride, is already past his days of
troublemaking and tattletaling, having been humbled by his own personal failures and
disappointments in recent years, after capitalizing on a scary, uncomfortable mugging in
Jerusalem to cut short his year at the high-pressured Mir Yeshiva and return to the
familiar, unexceptional comfort of Pittsburgh. He also happens never to be home. Where
he spends his free time, nobody knows. When he is home, he is generally fighting off
solicitations from the kollel rabbis across the street, who are desperate to get their hands
on so bright a light, even one that is somewhat burned out.
At about noon, his mother finally departs for Rabbi Akiva, where she is the
substitute teacher of choice, an arrangement that earned him a greater measure of
kindness from teachers and secretaries when he was a boy.
Plans are made for a recap at Shlomos. Conveniently, Menahem and Judah are
also home with a mysterious illness. Dov leaves his mother a note just in case she comes
home, which is a possibility, since school lets out earlier than usual on Fridays, a fact that
limits the number of classes that need subbing. "Hi, Mama. I went out to get some fresh
air. Be back soon. Love you." He meticulously scratches out the last bit, which on second
thought would definitely arouse her suspicion. He hasnt said the words "love" and "you"
in the same sentence to his mother unprompted since sixth grade, especially not with the
permanence, the solid proof of the written word.

25

Dov grabs his coat and heads out into the prematurely cold October afternoon as
he walks the six and a half blocks to Shlomo's. He can see the steam of his breath
swirling and warming the air around it. He can swear that it looks different than before,
sharper and closer, like he is looking at the world with 3-D glasses.
When he gets to Shlomo's, Judah and Menahem are already there. "That was fast,"
he says as he descends the basement stairs.
A bong is making its way around the room, but Dov declines it. Yesterday he was
saved from a near fateful blow of cover. He feared he had used up his good luck
allowance for the week.
Taking one more bong hit, Judah exhales words along with a gale of smoke, "Ok,
I call this recap meeting into session. Impressions, complaints, exaltations regarding the
events of September 24, anyone?"
"Aw man, it was pretty fucking awesome," Menahem volunteers. Fuck is a word
he uses only within this forum, so he likes to get in as many as he can before going back
into the world of godly manners. "I passed out at some point in the park. When I woke up
it was totally dark out, and someone had stolen my wallet. How crazy is that?" Menahem
says with an enthusiasm uncharacteristic of someone who has just been robbed in his
sleep.
"You know, I never even left the basement, at least not physically. At least I don't
think I did." Judah pauses to shuffle through his shaky memories. "No, I'm almost
positive I never left. Anyhow, that's not the point. The point is that it was like I was sent
on this whole journey, without even moving. It was like my mind was moving." Judah
says with uncharacteristic earnestness

26

"That's pretty deep," Shlomo says. "I don't know if I can handle the deepness."
"Shut up, shithead. Like you have anything more intelligent to add to the
conversation."
"Intelligent, maybe not. But awesome? Hell yeah. I landed up at the JCC,
although I think I made a stop at Giant Eagle. I have some memory of riding in a
shopping cart. Anyhow, I went swimming."
"I thought you don't know how to swim," Menahem says.
"I don't. That was the awesome part. I just took off my clothes and jumped in. At
least I wasn't tripping hard enough to take off my boxers. Otherwise, the old ladies over
there would have rung my neck with a lifesaver. Or stuffed a shower cap down my throat.
One of the two. Anyhow, it was like the second my body hit the water, it just knew what
to do. I ended getting a little water in my lungs by the end, and the lifeguard yelled at me
for keeping my shoes on, but it was worth it."
Judah points his gaze at Dov. "What about you, Mr. Koslovsky? You are awfully
silent over there. Is there anything you'd like to share with the gentlemen of the
committee?"
Dov is pulled out of a daze. He has heard only pieces of the others' stories, his
mind dwelling on his own. What would he tell them, that the godly presence was
revealed to him? That sounded dumb, and it probably wasn't even true. Just a trick of the
mind.
"So, what's your story, Dov?"
"Oh, nothing much. I just talked to God and shit."
"Yeah right."

27

No, I mean, I didn't really talk to God. It was just part of the, you know,
hallucination or something."
Shlomo exhales in Dov's direction, and the smoke tickle the tips of his nostrils.
"Everyone hallucinates God. The whole fucking world."

Dov does not dare linger at Shlomos. He faces a two-fold risk of arousing suspicion.
Aside from the chance early return of his mother, his father could phone the house as he
often does in moments of occupational despair. Dov knows that he is perpetually on call,
and he has left his post abandoned. At any moment, the phone could ring, and Dovs
afternoon would be sacrificed to the family dry cleaning business, Mr. Koslovsky's home
away from home. Even when his father is physically present in the Koslovsky home, the
cleaners is a force felt at all times, from the moment he walks through the door, bringing
the sweet detergent smell in with him. And coming home is an accomplishment for Dov's
father. Even after he locks the doors for the evening, he stays to balance the books. Even
after balancing the books, he sits in the silence of his cluttered closet-sized office to
digest the gains and losses that will determine his breadwinning success or failure. At
least once a week, Dov or his sister Sari are sent to remind him that he has a house to
come home to, to pull him out of a worrisome trance. Dov's brother Ephraim is exempt
from these errands, since, as a shift manager at the kosher pizza/falafel/bourekas/salad
place, he already bears the working man's burden and often didn't get home until well
after ten, himself. Ephraim is exempt from many things since giving up on a promising
career as a Talmud scholar in favor of moving back in with his parents, prematurely

28

gaining the lazy weight of an aging body, and enrolling in night classes at community
college.
Once in a while, his mother loses track of time. Dropping the dish she is washing,
or the bills she is organizing, she says, "Oh, sugar, or some other innocent phonetic
innuendo for profanity. It's 9:30." Without another word, she gets into the car and
drives to fetch him. When he enters the house, he collapses into his arm chair without a
word and turns on the TV. He settles on the first thing he finds, which leads Dov to
believe that he is never really watching. Whether it is a program on dinosaurs, a madefor-TV movie or Murder She Wrote, he lets the lights of the screen dance upon his face
with the same drooping eyes, lips and arms. All he ever seems to want is to drown his
mind in sound. Dov never knows how the business is doing. His father always carries a
face of impending disaster, and he believes that Mr. Koslovsky is just as perturbed by the
unpredictability of success, than of finite consequences of failure.
Dov suspects that one of the reasons that his parents let him go to public school in
the first place was that he would have more hours free to help out at the cleaners, which
is apparently not lucrative enough to allow for the hiring of additional paid employees,
and family comes cheap. Since the age of thirteen, the cleaners has been his summer
camp, his after-school-program. The call generally comes around 2:45 pm, which on a
school day leaves just enough time for Dov to get home, fix himself a snack, turn on the
TV and feel his bones relax into the folds of couch. Today, Dov is interrupted in the
middle of a bowl of cereal. He brings the bowl with him to the phone, since no phone call
is important enough to let a perfectly good bowl of Trix get soggy. Hello, he answers
with a full mouth.

29

Listen, Dov. We just got a last minute order. Theres an entire wedding partys
dry cleaning to do before closing for Shabbas, on top of everything else. Sweat stains and
wine all over the place, says Shimmy, his dads right-hand-man and messenger, who
instead of asking for help states facts, which is more than his father generally offers.
Uh, Shimmy. Im not feeling so good. I didnt go to school today.
You sound fine to me. So, when can you come in? The cleaners means almost
as much to Shimmy as it does to his Dad.
Can I talk to my dad?
Shimmy calls in the background He says hes sick. Then comes a mumbling,
which he assumes is his father. Your father says unless youre dying, we need your
help.
Dov may not have a say in whether or not he will show up, but he does have a say
in when he will show up. He savors every floating morsel of sweet, artificially flavored
and colored rings of grain and makes it through the end of a Cheers rerun. Then the
phone rings. He grabs his coat and heads out, letting the call, which is probably from
Shimmy, ring off the hook.

Friday night rolls around, and Dov puts on the white shirt and black pants that make his
parents happy. They would be happier if he'd agree to wear a suit and the black hat they
bought him for yeshiva after he speedily grew out of his bar mitzvah threads, but there is
only so much Dov will put up with for the sake of his parents' charade. It's enough that he
has to don a black velvet kipa, which is hard to keep in place atop his Brillo head of hair,

30

and waste one hour of Friday night and three hours of Saturday morning sitting in silence
beside his father, mouthing "watermelon" over and over in feigned prayer.
The difference between Dov in his everyday imitation retro t-shirts and jeans, and
the Dov of Sabbath threads gives him a Superman/Clark Kent quality. Both uniforms
drape on him like costumes. Even when Dov is in his public school clothes, and even
after he takes off his kipa upon approaching school grounds, a leveled, matted spot
remains within Dov's unruly curls, in the spot where the kipa has weighed on his hair for
more than a decade.
Dov respects the rules of the house and the Sabbath that resides within its walls
(while within their bounds), except for cigarette breaks, which he takes behind the
garage. He never can be sure how much his parents know. Not that he works hard to hide
his transgressive proclivities, but he doesn't shove it in their face, either. Dov and his
parents keep to a "don't ask, don't tell" rule of behavior, which so far has prevented messy
confrontations for him and uncomfortable thoughts for them. In the Koslovsky
household, punishments are issued for challenging the comfortable status quo, for
jeopardizing the family's standing in the community, for getting caught. But more private
sins are allowed fester unencumbered under the surface of family piety for an eternity.
Dov takes the Discman out of his backpack and presses play to fill the few
minutes that remain before the Shabbas Queen enters the atmosphere. He basks in the
incongruence of his garb against the thrashing guitars of Nirvana and the words of the
fallen prophet Kurt Cobain. The sounds of his mother's calls are submerged in the layers
of distortion that grind out of his headphones. Then come three beats of a pounding fist
on the door, which his mother retains as a gesture of respect before barging into a room.

31

"What are you doing? You're father's already left for shul, and I'm about to light
candles, so turn off that noise already."
"How do you know it's noise? How do you know I wasn't listening to the Miami
Boys Choir?"
"I know what kind of music you listen to, if you can even call it that. All guns and
immodesty." She lingered in the doorway, waiting for Dov's final word of protest, but all
she gets is a huff on his part as he rotates his body to a sitting position on the side of the
bed, and pulls a shoe out from under a worn sweatshirt. The black skater sneakers that he
wears to school, shul and which he would even wear to bed if he could are a rare form of
open rebellion. A last refuge for expression among the uniforms of his life.
By the time Dov shows up to shul, they are already halfway through the service,
and Dov smiles at this accomplishment. He takes a seat in the back row next to 95-yearold Saul Hyman who has been known to tell dirty jokes during the Rabbi's sermon so
in order to avoid the disapproving stares of his fellow congregants. Their eyes would say
things like "That Koslovsky boy has finally graced us with his presence," or "Last week, I
saw him eating traife pizza on Murray, when he could have been eating kosher pizza for
free across the street (You know, his brother works at Menni's Pizza). Next time it will be
cheeseburgers at McDonalds," and worst of all, "His poor mother." The only good part of
shul is that Shlomo, Judah and Menahem have the same sort of arrangement with their
parents, so at least Dov is never totally alone in his boredom. However, Menahem and
Dov are the only ones who actually stay inside for the entirety of prayer. Shlomo and
Judah get to hang out outside or cause trouble in the social hall, stealing cakes and the
occasional bottle of wine set aside for the next morning's Kiddush.

32

Dov listens to the mumbling mass of voices that engage in responsive prayer, and
watches the men who utter them. Their eyes drift in various directions as they sway back
and forth. At the end of the service, Dov joins in for the final song of Yigdal, and feels a
moment's warmth creep in along with a memory of childhood prayer, sitting at a
scratched metal desk with his arms folded many years ago.
Dinner this week is a modest affair. No guests are on hand to break up the family
monotony. Dov watches his father mumble Shabbas Zmiros in a tired monotone, and
remembers the days when Uncle Hershel was a regular guest as well, infusing the meal
with awkwardness and mystery. He always arrived solo. His wife, Pamela, and their
daughter, Cheyenne, possessed an unshakeable devotion to NBC's Friday night lineup.
Throughout dinner, Hershel, who was the only person to show up in jeans and gym shoes,
always looked constricted, as though he was wearing a suit that was one size too small
for him, one he had worn in a previous lifetime, fidgeting stiffly and curling his shoulders
together in the constricting unease of tightness and outdated fashions. His mouth spread
in a polite, stiff contortion. His kipa hung noncommittally off the side of his balding
head, Sometimes, when Mr. Koslovsky spoke of the weekly Torah portion, Hershel
slowly slumped into a position of bored surrender, with his hands in his lap.
Hershey tried to follow the rules of the family while he was in their house, but he
always let a hint of his sacrilege slip. Dov remembered the interval between ritual hand
washing and the blessing and eating of bread, when Dov, the rest of his family, and the
Jewish people were forbidden to speak. In the interim, they communicated through
primal sounds and gestures. "Hmmmm hmmm" mixed with a waving of one hand often

33

meant "I need something." Hershel picked up on Mr. Koslovsky's muffled plea. "What do
you need, Aron? Salt, a knife?"
With every word, Mr. Koslovsky's eyes bulged further out of his head, in a bid to
convince Hershel to conform to the momentary ban on verbal communication. He finally
stood from the table, entered the kitchen and came back with a bowl into which slices of
Challah were to be placed and passed around the table. Mrs. Koslovsky recognized her
oversight in setting the table and issued an apologetic "Hmm." After Dov's father divvied
out the bread, everyone exhaled as if they had been holding their breath.
Friday night dinner throughout the years was largely an all-male affair. Even
though the women all had places set at the table, their presence was sporadic. Mrs.
Koslovsky, Sari and whatever female guests were in attendance busied about the kitchen,
transferring dishes from heavy, aluminum pots that were crusted black with burnt fat to
daintier ceramic serving trays, obscuring the crude origins of the feast. Dov sometimes
came into the kitchen to help. Mrs. Koslovsky humored her son until he inevitably spilled
rice, or worse - meatballs, all over the counter. Then Dov's mother launched a treatise on
the separate roles of men and women in keeping a house. "You have your job, we have
ours. Now go sit with your father and hear some Torah."
Dov's mother never sat still at the table for more than a few minutes. Even after
every dish was laid out before her guests, and everyone was eating happily, Dov's mother
was always up and about, her eyes constantly darting around the table to make sure that
nothing was missing, searching the faces of her guests for hints of unfulfilled want.
In the middle of dinner, Hershel often rose from the table with a polite "excuse
me" and disappeared for minutes on end. Dov would notice his father raising his

34

eyebrows each time Hershel got up from the table.

Dov had always wondered where Hershel went during his intermittent absences.
One time, he timed a trip to the bathroom to coincide with an Uncle Hershey
Disappearance in order to find out. Dov knew to leave a minute and a half of space
between Hershels exit and his own, so as not to cause suspicion, after which he scaled
the farthest corner of the living room and opened the door with the slow, measured
movements of a burglar. He found Hershey outside, smoking a cigarette. Dov gasped
when he viewed the sight. Lighting fires for any purpose was strictly against the rules of
the Sabbath, and his uncles open digression threw a punch to his gut that left him with a
sudden sadness. When Hershel saw Dov, he put his index finger to his mouth in the
international language of silence and discretion. It costs the same to sit down, Dovy, he
said, finally, after Dov continued to stand with his hand on the doorknob. Those were the
only words uttered between the two for the next three minutes. Hershel smoked and
stared at the cars that whizzed without caution around Shady Avenue's sharp curve, their
tires humming with friction against the winding asphalt like Formula One racecars. Dov
pretended to do the same, minus the smoking part. He cupped his chin in his palm like
the grownups did and cast his glare into the confounding nothingness and everythingness
of night. Every so often he would turn to Hershel, to look to see if he had the position, the
expression right, and to see if Hershel would ever look back at him. After enough silence
had passed between them, Hershel said, Youd better run in so they dont think youve
been out here with me. I dont want to get you in trouble. They give me enough of my
own. Dov did as he was told, but from then on, he made a point of joining Hershel on
his silent cigarette breaks during Friday night dinners. They never said very much to each

35

other, but Dov was excited about having the secret. They always timed their outings so as
not to arouse suspicion. By the time Hershel tiptoed back in, bringing the stale smell of
already smoked cigarettes with him, Dov was already seated and singing to whatever
Shabbas melody had been chosen. Dov was lucky his mother was so often in the kitchen.
She would have sniffed out a pattern faster than you can say "Oy Vey's Meer."

Saturday morning, Dov awakes with the natural alarm clock of habit, which has alerted
him to wake up between eight and nine on Saturday mornings ever since he could
remember, an adaptation his body took on in absence of an alarm clock of the mechanical
kind, which were not allowed on Shabbas. He picks up last nights white shirt from the
floor and gives it a cautious sniff. Fresh enough. He runs his palms down the front of the
shirt to smooth out the wrinkles, pushes crusted sleep out of his eyes and makes sure his
unruly curls look somewhat presentable. Saturday morning services offer a perk, an
opportunity to bask in the presence of the fairer sex, decked out and made up in their
Shabbas best, so he cannot show up looking like a total slob. This consolation prize
almost makes it worth withstanding the never-ending Saturday service. Friday night,
though far shorter, offered no such benefit, the women's section containing only pious
older single types who mouthed silent prayers with closed eyes and fervent lips.
Between "watermelon"s during Saturday services, Dov's eyes wander upwards,
not to God in heaven; but to the girls in the women's balcony. There is something
delicious about this separation of the sexes. The stolen glances it affords, the room for
undisputed fantasy. From this position, it seems that each girl's gaze is directed at Dov,
like people in paintings, whose eyes follow you across a room. From this vantage point,

36

he has the visual pick of them, and he, as always, chooses Sarah Brent (Sarah, not Sorah,
a minute distinction that puts her in a category of Jews who can hide it) , who is a year
older than him and who dares to wear skirts that come entire inches above her knees
when she sits down. Sarah's family is what his parents would call "modern," using the
same tone they use to describe liberals, health food and Reform Judaism. Today Sarah is
wearing a lime green skirt suit, a sign of her family's affluence and her own desire for
womanhood. She is whispering into the ear of Miriam Laskov. Dov bets her lips are just
grazing the soft girly hairs of Miriam's ear. In his head, an image of Sarah sitting alone on
the steps of shul. Now she is standing in a white cotton bra in his room. He imagines
himself raising his hands to touch her. And then, oh the guilt! Despite his weathered
sinner status, Dov still can not bring himself to have a proper sexual fantasy in shul.
His imaginary hook-up with Sarah Brent doesn't last long, and he finds himself
unable to rekindle it. His upward gaze is distracted by the height of the synagogue dome,
which spirals up to a tiny stained glass disc segmented by a Star of David, which washes
the room with rods of yellow and blue tinted sunlight that flickers full of dust particles.
With siddur in hand, his lips move with the usual lack of intent, but in his mind, Dov
thinks about God. Not that he wants to; he even tries to banish these thoughts. But the
harder he tries, the more they take his brain hostage. Dov spits out his watermelons with
uncharacteristic gusto, forcing himself into something of a shuckle. His father, most
likely surprised and delighted by his son's enthusiasm in prayer, puts an affectionate hand
on his back.
Mr. Koslovsky isn't the only one to have noticed. Dov turns around and spies
Menahem sitting with his father and moving with the same intent. Menahem, who is

37

more elaborate in his charade with his parents so much so that, de facto, he is still
observant shoots Dov a knowing wink. "Yeah, that's the strategy," it says.
As always, Dov and Menahem rise from their hard backed wooded seats and rush
out of the sanctuary as the final lines of the final prayer, Adon Olam, rings out. They
make it out of the back doors just as the congregation sings "God is for me; and I shall
not fear" with lazy voices that imply that three hours in prayer is too much for their more
committed souls as well. This has become Dov and Menahem's tradition, partly to avoid
the crowds of congregants pushing to get a good spot in front of the dessert table at
Kiddush; and partly because the promise of freedom always weighs heavy in their chests
throughout the service, and they cannot but release it at first opportunity.
The second Dov and Menahem descend the steps to the social hall, Menahem jets
over to Judah and Shlomo. "Hey, you guys. Guess what? Dov's gone shtark. You should
have seen him. What Kavanna." Menahem punches Dov in the shoulder.
"Say it ain't so, Dov. Say it ain't so," says Judah, downing a pilfered shot of
whiskey in plain view. And before Kiddush!
"It ain't so. It ain't so. Don't get your panties in a bunch."
"How did you know I had a thing for women's underwear?
The boys' eyes and mouths contort in a combination of disbelief, awkward disgust
and curiosity. "I have a thing for women's underwear. When they're on women." Dov
Shlomo and Menahem exhale.
"Man, you are so full of shit. You have never seen a woman scratch that you
have never seen a girl in her underwear," says Shlomo. At the word shit, Mrs.
Teitelbaum, a lonely woman, one of the first to stake her territory on the social hall floor,

38

spins around with a look of shock that was usually only reserved for face-to-face
encounters with the devil.
"Except for his mom, maybe," says Dov.
"Except for your mom, Asshole."
"You're welcome to her. Hope you like thunder thighs."
The social hall is a sanctuary for chintz and neglect. The paisley satin wall paper
sags and peels in the corners, where decades of dripping pipes and overflowing toilets
have taken their toll. Brittle, gelded chandeliers hang under reams of exposed wiring,
giving the appearance of an unfortunate accident waiting to happen. Dov turns to the set
of double opposing marble staircases that spread grandly into the room. Congregants
descend the stairs in groups threes and fours, walking, talking, and slapping each other on
the back, familiar enough with the depth and height of each stair that the it is as
predictable as level ground. With each wave of newcomers, the room echoes with
burgeoning decibels. Dov turns around to take in the room. Something strange is
happening. He can hear the clamor of rising and falling voices as a single chorus, but he
can also make out individual conversations. Someone calls Reva Englander a prutzah
who is all too aware of the power of the ample female breast. Somewhere else, two men
are lamenting the death of a great rabbi who could decipher the cause of a womans
childlessness just by examining the pupil of her right eye. His ears are so assailed by
competing conversations, that he becomes totally unaware of the one he was previously a
part of. Come in Sergeant Dov. You are needed back on earth. Dov comes to and sees
his friends collapsing in a fit of laughter.

39

Flashback much, Dov? Judah says. I knew you were too spacey to begin with
to start with the hard stuff.
Dov is saved by a wave of "shh"s, which started at the front of the hall where
the rabbi is presumably waiting with a cup of sweet, thick wine in hand and made its
way from congregant to congregant, gathering volume and sprays of spit along the way,
until reaching our wayward boys at the back of the hall. The boys fall silent. Menahem
runs to try to maneuver a place at the dessert table before it is too late.
Dovs eyes scan the green and purple specked carpeting, and he is struck with a
sudden desire to touch it. Dov imagines grabbing those raised thumbtacks of green,
momentarily convinced by the illusion of three-dimensionality cleverly entrenched in the
carpets design.
"Veshamru Bnei Yisrael esssssssss Hashabasssssss, La'asosssss esssssss
Hashabbassssss Bris Olam," begins the voice of the rabbi, a small bald-headed man with
a trimmed beard whose soft voice and slight appearance clash with the words of fire and
brimstone that often emerge from his mouth. And the Children of Israel shall keep the
Sabbath. A unanimous "Amen" travels across the room, together with the sounds of brief,
thirsty slurping.
Menahem comes back with one brownie (which are always delicious in ways that
only shul brownies can be), a slice of marble cake, another of chocolate cake and a palmsized chocolate chip cookie, all cradled in a pink paper napkin. Dov sends his left hand
toward the brownie. "Aw, thanks man."
Menahem yanks his bounty out of reach. "Get your own damn cake. If you had
any idea the sacrifice I made for these. I got squashed between Zvi Greenberg and Yitz

40

Fried, and let's just say I don't think Yitz showered before Shabbas. Plus, Shoshie Berman
stabbed me in the foot with her goddamn high heels."
Ten feet over, a group of girls are giggling. Sarah Brent stands among them, but
she is not among the giggling masses. Her mouth is curled into a coy smile, too proud to
emit silly laughter. Dov watches her stand with her hand on her hip, towering half a head
above her friends, including her sidekick Bracha Lieblich, a tiny girl who snorts when she
laughs and bites her nails at the speed of a paper shredder. Sarah's shoulders are hunched
over to close the height gap, but she still hangs, like a sunflower suspended over
competing crops. They all wear dark shades of lipstick and perfume that Dov can smell
from where he is standing, both applied in amounts only paralleled by old women. The
girls point at various congregants and issue whispers in one another's ears. A subtle
choreography guides their gossip, a broken-telephone chorus line of rumors and
judgments. Dov waits for their gaze across the room to fall on his entourage, but then,
without warning, they turn around and make tracks toward the ladies' lounge, where they
will be able to properly discuss their research findings. As she walks, Dov thinks he sees
Sarah's eyes hit his, but in all likelihood, he is just the invisible foreground of a final scan
of badly planned outfits and examples of newly gained or lost weight that people the
room.
Dov looks over the thinning crowds to see if his parents are still in the room, but
they are nowhere to be seen. His mother and father seem to be long gone. His parents
learned long ago not to draw too much attention to their familial connections when he
was with his friends. At this moment, his mother is probably hard at work transferring
coleslaw from industrial-sized Tupperware to flowered ceramic bowls, and cutting off the

41

layers of burnt crust that grows on the potato kugel after several hours of reheating on the
Sabbath-friendly hot plate. The hardened crust is Dovs favorite part, and his mother
traditionally puts all edible portions on Dovs plate without his even having to ask.
Ephraim is one of the stragglers, and he is chuckling next to Elli Friedman. A
remnant of Ephraim's childhood, Elli now teaches Chumash at Rabbi Akiva, where less
than a decade ago he made a career of stealing the eyeglasses of bespectacled children
before stubbornly trying to flush them down the toilet. He spies the beginnings of a gut
on both of them. Not the soft, equitable pudge of youth, but the low-hanging, resigned
paunch of early defeat. They have grown soft - not just in their bellies, however - and it is
probably for the best. Still, he feels for them the same hopeless pity he feels when seeing
a dead animal at the side of the road, when watching a crowd of five push a stalled car up
the hill. Who knows if Ephraim is eating at home? Dov will not ask him. He may no
longer hate his brother, but the space and time set for brotherly camaraderie and intimacy
were historically filled with power grabs and aggression. Although the latter has subsided
over the years, there is nothing left to take its place. Anyway, his parents have learned to
expect his absence in order to save their energy for the thrill of surprise in the off chance
that he would arrive.
He sees his sister Sari gathering abandoned pieces of chocolate sheet cake into
napkins. She knows, better than anyone, that there is no shame in salvaging perfectly
good leftovers. She will probably eat them all on her own, too, though you wouldnt
know it by looking at her fatless thirteen-year-old frame. Sari stumbles over to Dovs
corner of the room, balancing the pile of carefully wrapped cake that rested in the
recesses of her elbows. You coming?, she says to him without looking at his friends.

42

Hey, you, Shlomo spits at Sari. His friends, who have picked on Sari since she
was too young to even speak, wouldnt lower themselves by actually uttering her name.
Eat enough cake, and you might even grow yourself some tits.
Dov rolls his eyes, punches Shlomo in the shoulder and departs. Sari trails behind,
moving slowly to balance her bundle. Hand over the cake, Dov says to Sari as they
climb the stairs, grabbing one of the packages from out of her grasp. He knows she
doesnt even mind. For Sari, it isn't about eating the cake, it's about saving it from
eternity in a landfill, suffocated by never-biodegrading diapers and shopping bags. Even
the marble cake without frosting she has salvaged.
Those guys are losers, The edges of Sari's mouth are crusted with a dark brown
residue. Like all 13-year-old girls, Sari is an expert on loserdom.
Cuz your friends are so cool, right?
At least theyre not mean.
Dov could tell her that everyone is mean when they have the chance, when there
is someone smaller to be mean to. He could also say that these boys are all he has, that no
one understands him the way that they do. He could have, but the thoughts don't run
through his head in any sort of linear, lingual manner. All he has is a pang, a jab,
somewhere inside his intestines: a longing and a sadness, although he would never call it
that. And so, instead he shrugs and pushes his sister off the curb. Ow, she utters, but
leaves it at that.
As they walk up Shady Avenues brutal incline, they pass revelers from other
synagogues. A mumbled "Good Shabbas" passes automatically between them and every
Jewish-looking passerby encountered. Some are men outfitted in black from hat to shoe;

43

others, with awkwardly affixed kipas, wear brown trousers and leather loafers, intended
to give a casual appearance, but the only impression they give off is rich, north of Forbes
rich.
Forbes Avenue, the once grand thoroughfare whose designer boutiques have
decayed together with their aging clientele, stands as a fault-line between Squirrel Hills
lower to squarely middle classes, who live in narrow row houses once occupied by the
coal miners of local Pittsburgh legend, and the decidedly wealthy with their mock-Tudor
mansions and tennis courts.
Dovs immediate circle of friends is a strictly south of Forbes gang. Among his
school acquaintances, however, stand a couple northerners. He's been to Micah
Dunbars house three times since the beginning of tenth grade, and each time he became
giddy from the sheer space, from the number of functionless hallways and corners that
his house contained. There are so many places to be. Micah even has a living room that
no one really lives in. According to Micah, it's for guests. It has no television, only stiff,
light colored couches, a fireplace that stands under a stern, shadowy still life of flowers
and fruit, and many highly breakable artifacts that were gathered during extensive world
travels, a shrine erected to the quaintly foreign. This wooden giraffe is from somewhere
in Africa, those mini-clogs are from Holland, the stuffed, happy looking dolls are from
someplace Russian. The only foreign country Dov has ever been to is Canada, and that
doesn't really count.
Last time Dov was at Micahs, he, Jon Persky and Brian Roche (who also lived
north of Forbes, but made a concerted effort to dress and talk as though he grew up

44

among the gangs of Homewood) sat with empty tea cups and crossed legs on the peerless
couch cushions.
Sir Brian. What do you think of world peace? Jon said in a feigned high British
accent. I do say its very good for business, dont you? Brian was busy lifting a crystal
swan to the window and putting his eye to the prism of light.
Micah scrambled across the floor, rubbing the dust of his friends shoes from the
ivory carpet. Come on. You guys cant be in here with your shoes on. Olga will be
pissed. Olga, Micahs housekeeper and acting mother, put the fear in Micah in ways his
doctor parents, even when they were around, never managed to.
.

Dov feels a punch to his left bicep. He stops to rub his wounded skin. Sari stands

across from him, her hands straight at her side. Youre too quiet.
Thats what you punched me for? Dont think that just because youre littler,
doesnt mean I wont hit you back.
Sari is saved by their approach to the house. It is a general rule that all
misbehavior, in whatever form, ceases with the curving of Shady Avenue. Even if they
are still four houses away, their mother has a bionic ability to detect trouble, as if she can
smell the rising tide of hormones that accompany the excitement of physical fights and
illicit cigarette smoking. Whenever Dov came home after getting up to no good at
Shlomos, Frick Park or in the parking lot behind Mellon Bank, he would find his mother
standing on the porch, or, if it was cold, sitting on the couch, not doing anything beyond
waiting. She used to ask him where he had been, whom he had seen, and what they had
done. She soon learned that more telling than Dovs mono-syllabic replies Shlomos.

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Nothing. No. I dont know. was his face, his posture, which always betrayed him to
guilt.
Dov and Sari are welcomed home to a whiff of cholent (brewing in a Crockpot
since the previous afternoon), which somehow never smells that different going into the
body than out of it, but which is delicious still. Many things in the rhythm of the
Koslovskys shared life change on Shabbat, and so does his mothers usual guard duty.
There is no time for suspicion when there is a table for ten to be set.
"You two certainly took your time," their mother says without looking up from
the napkins she is fluting into empty glasses.
********
Yes, Dov has been disappointing his mother for a number of years now, but once
upon a time, he used to make her proud. Her pride reached its gushing climax at Dov's
bar mitzvah, when she bathed in nachas, her eyes growing teary as Dov gave the drasha
after his Torah reading. Although a mark of pride for his parents, the bar mitzvah was a
source of great confusion for Dov himself.
As a child, Dov had always fantasized about his bar mitzvah as a mark of
prestige, of respect. What Dov was being told by his teachers and parents closer to the
time in question was that it was really about responsibility, and he didn't like it one bit.
Dov didnt like it when his mother tried to put her nose in all of his comings and goings,
but God, whom he had never even seen, whom until now, he had only really fathomed
through simple childhood melodies, would now be tallying every action of every hour of
every day in parallel heavenly chronicles entitled "Dov Is Good" and "Dov Is Evil."

46

In the months leading up to his bar mitzvah, everything his parents said to him
was somehow related to that upcoming milestone. From his mother came: "Dov, stop
pulling your sister's hair. Bar mitzvah boys don't behave that way." "Ok, fine. You can
stay up till 9:30. But only because your bar mitzvah is coming up." "No, you can't pal
around outside during shul, and I don't care what other parents do or do not allow. In this
family, bar mitzvah boys belong in shul."
And from his father a mere, "Dov, you are about to become a bar mitzvah," with
no explanation or situational anchors needed. The message was clear. That was the way
Dovs father achieved his power: with sharp, sparing words, with silence.
Despite his childhood anticipation, Dov wasn't exactly looking forward to it, the
event itself. All those people staring at him, scrutinizing him, waiting for his voice to
crack, searching his suit and his haircut for imperfections. If only he could watch himself
from the side, or maybe place a robot version of himself on the bimah in his stead. He
would trick them all. He would watch his robot get showered in praise and disabling
handshakes, while he breathed it all in from a side pew, wearing a fake mustache and
hiding under a tallis.
In the months that preceded the event, Dov learned how to translate the
illuminated text of the Torah scroll into its singsong recitation, the same tune used by his
people all over the world for generations. His parents gave him the option to choose the
rabbi under whose tutelage he wished to learn this tradition, as long, of course, as he was
"from the community," meaning Orthodox. Rabbi Kreshevsky was the least angry rabbi
that Dov knew of, and this was Dov's main criteria. There was no way he was going to
spend one hour a week for six whole months with any fist thumping, barrel voiced rabbi

47

with saliva that sprayed from an emphatic mouth. Rabbi Kreshevsky was a soft man, a
patient man. Dov began meeting Rabbi Kreshevsky at the synagogue every week to
practice the scriptural intonations for the Torah portion prescribed for him.
The Shabbat before Dovs 13th birthday was the date prescribed for his bar
mitzvah, prescribed by date of birth, by fate. That weeks Torah portion was "Bo," which
Dov knew translated as Come. And, yes. Dov did need a personal invitation, especially
after nine-hour school days. Every week, when Dov entered the shul library, a small
rectangle of a room with bookshelves instead of walls, Rabbi Kreshevsky was already
sitting at the long desk, poured over a book, with his glasses in one hand. Whenever Dov
opened the door, Rabbi Kreshevsky narrowed his eyes and rushed to put his glasses on,
beholding Dov in a look of surprise, as if he hadn't expected him; as if he and Dov hadn't
been meeting every Tuesday for several weeks. And every time, Rabbi Kreshevsky
greeted him with an "Ah, Dov, come in," as though Dov was an unannounced guest in the
Rabbi's home. He wouldnt have been surprised if the rabbi had offered him a bowl of
soup.
Ten days before his bar mitzvah, the skies released twelve inches of snow on
South Western Pennsylvania. Two days later, Dov was in the shul library for a make up
lesson after the entire city shut down on their regularly scheduled Tuesday. Through the
windows of the shul library, Dov stared at the kingdom of grey slush that Pittsburgh had
become. The winters were evil that way, letting the occasional precipitation of snow, the
great white hope, fill the city's children with faith. Faith in the possibility of a snow day.
Faith in the unparalleled joy of sledding down the steep hills of Frick and Schenley Park.
(They slid down the slopes on expensive wooden sleds, basic plastic disks or flattened

48

cardboard boxes, anything they could get their hands on, the joy equally great, whatever
the medium.) Faith in the unmarred beauty of a whiteness that descended equitably on all
of the surfaces in all of the neighborhoods of the city..
But snow also offered heartbreak, since it maintained its pure form for less time
than it took to fall. By the time Dov headed home from the park with his three layers of
clothing and oversized down coat (he had become too proud for snow suits) all soaked
through to his skin, to his bones, the layer of white that had covered the city had been
packed down to a layer of treacherous ice, salted and scraped to the edges of streets, into
heaps of jagged grey clumps, which would melt and refreeze, melt and refreeze again
throughout the week to come.
While Dov was braving and cursing the harsh Pittsburgh winter, the Jews in Dov's
Torah portion were preparing their escape from the heat of slavery in Egypt. Rabbi
Kreshevsky worked very hard to get Dov excited about the parsha. He spotted his
language with slang like "radical" and "groovy," terms that were hopelessly outdated by
anywhere from a few years to entire decades. The week before the snow, he had even
asked Dov to compose a rap about the exodus from Egypt. Of all of the weeks to give
him homework, Rabbi Kreshevsky had to wait until two weeks before the bar mitzvah,
when Dov had enough prep work to do as it was. Dov didn't even like rap, which made
the assignment just that much more embarrassing. But however much Dov was
embarrassed for himself, he was even more embarrassed for Rabbi Kreshevsky and his
well intentioned but ultimately futile quest for relevance. This, the same rabbi who
bashfully glazed over juicier parts of the Torah, ones that spoke unabashedly of s-e-x, by
supplanting the word "marry" to describe conjugal relations, the true details of which

49

Dov had roughly gathered through the years, from curious, controversial conversations
that carried on in hushed tones at the backs of classrooms.
Dov would have skipped the take-home assignment, if he hadn't felt bad for Rabbi
Kreshevsky. And so, sitting in his room with the door locked, he wrote a biblical rap with
as little effort as possible:

The Jews, the Jews, they had no shoes,

Slaves to a pharaoh that didn't read the news,
Then Moses came to cure their blues,
With Hashem on their side, you know they couldn't lose.

Dov cringed as he scribbled the last line in the margins of an old sheet of math
homework, which was as good of a place to hide it as any. It was so earnest, so ugh, he
didn't even know how to describe it, but he wanted to shake it off like the flu. One verse
was more than enough, he thought. On Tuesday morning, he tore the page out of the
notebook, crumpled it into a ball and stuffed it into a pants pocket. At the beginning of
class, Rabbi Kreshevsky moved straight from his initial frazzled state to leading Dov
through a first general rehearsal of the reading. He thought he was off the hook with the
rap, the good part about absentminded rabbis being that they often forgot their own
sentences minutes after uttering them. The bad thing was from across the chaotic
synapses of a scattered brain, recollections could pop up unannounced at any interval.
And so, Rabbi Kreshevsky remembered about the rap, five minutes before releasing Dov
from the yoke of potential shame. Dov mumbled under his breath as he fished into his
pocket for the crumpled wad of paper. Rabbi Kreshevsky lowered his eyes at Dov, and a

50

half-smile formed on his lips as Dov straightened out the dense wrinkles until the paper
was legible. Rabbi Kreshevsky's look said, "Oh, Dov. What will we do with you," but it
also held a degree of commiseration. Rabbi Kreshevsky no doubt wrote his sudden
flashes of disorganized genius on old receipts, unused coupons and back issues of Torah
Tidbits.
Luckily, Rabbi Kreshevsky missed out on the ultimate purpose of rap, which was
to be recited aloud, and thus Dov was at least spared that embarrassment. And
embarrassment for almost thirteen-year-old boys sailed in the same boat as torture and
dying of hunger. Rabbi Kreshevsky made due with bringing the illegible script close to
his face. His lips moved while he read it, as if he were in the middle of silent prayer.
"Very nice, Dovy. Next time make it longer." In Dov's head an assortment of unkind
words swam with a forceful current. There's going to be a next time?
Three boys from Dovs class had already been bar mitzvahed before him. They
read from the Torah at shul on a Saturday morning, spoke about the lessons they learned,
publicly thanked relatives who came from Detroit, Cleveland and Muncie, and basked in
the admiring eyes and hearty pats on the back that nearly dislodged their internal organs.
Shlomo was one of the three, having passed into manhood three months before. In his
speech he talked about the value of respecting ones elders, reading from three sheets of
lined notebook paper in a robotic monotone. During the speech, Dov couldnt help but
think of the time last year that Shlomo sprayed shaving cream under a pile of papers on
Rabbi Pacheniks desk, knowing that at least three times during any given 45-minute
Gmara class, he would pound his desk either for emphasis or out of rage. Dov
remembered the flying foam. He had known it would come, since Shlomo let him in on

51

his secret in a note passed to him in the middle of class. It was still a shock, the flinging
of white on to the fading black lapels of the rabbi's well-worn suit. And even though Dov
laughed together with the rest of his class, he also felt sad, watching Rabbi Pachenik wipe
the shaving cream off with the side of his hands, and then exit the class without once
looking up from his suit.
Dovs sympathy quickly changed to anger when the principal entered the
classroom four minutes later, and told them that unless someone fessed up to the crime,
the entire class would stay for detention. Sergey Lipsky, the Russian boy who sometimes
ate chalk, cried out in protest, Its not fair, Rabbi Katz. I didnt do anything. Why do I
get punished?
Rabbi Katz scratched his ginger beard, which was streaked with grey. You are a
class, and as a class, you are responsible for each other. Kol Yisrael Arevim Ze Lazeh. If
the perpetrator of this crime had understood the true meaning of this phrase, you all
wouldnt be in this situation right now.
Sergey slumped in his chair in defeat. Dov looked at Shlomo, who refused to
make eye contact with him. Dov looked back at Rabbi Katz, who met his eyes in a
narrowed expression of accusatory understanding. The Rabbi departed with the words I
will be in my office, if someone would like to repent.
Shlomo did not come forward, and the class stayed an hour and a half for
detention, which was never actually as bad as Dov expected it to be. And of course, it
was Judah who got blamed. Judah always got blamed, sometimes for good reason.
Sometimes not. The next afternoon, Judah was absent from their regular after school
meeting place, from which they would usually start their walk home. Judah was often

52

enough in detention, so Dov was trained to head out alone if he didn't show up after 4:35.
Today, Dov peeked his head into the doorway to the dark, echoic lunch room where
detention was held, opening the swinging door a crack and pressing his eye into the
newly created doorway. Dov looked up at the exposed pipes and rafters, which together
with the tables of empty chairs and the lunch counter that was shut by a thick metal sheet,
did discomfort one into thought. But Judah was not among the detention crowd, made up
of bitter faced chubby boys and young ones who were sharp in the eyes.
The next day, in the middle of English, essentially a time for the telling of dirty
jokes and the throwing of writing utensils at sometimes undeserving victims, Dov poked
Judah with the eraser end of a pencil. "Hey. Where were you yesterday?" Mr.
Bartholomew was reading a passage from White Fang, another book that Dov hadn't
read, although he was already supposed to be in the middle of part three. His words were
barely perceptible over the din of pubescent rambling.
"Don't ask. Rabbi Katz had me in his office for two hours, when everyone knows
it was Shlomo who pranked Rabbi Pachenik.
"Did you rat him out?"
"No, but you'd have to be an idiot not to figure it out. Everyone was talking about
it. Teachers are so friggin' dumb." This was in the era before Judah's graduation to full
blown swearwords.
Six months later, Judah would succumb to his bad reputation, which was partly
earned and partly the fruit of other people's libels and paranoia, and be let go from the
school's clutching embrace. First, parents of classmates began calling the school and
complaining about Judah's negative influence upon their children's otherwise

53

unblemished souls. Next, teachers, one by one, began to declare that Judah was no longer
invited to come to their classes. Ultimately, there were no classes that he was allowed to
go to, and so quietly and without rage or shock, he left the school for good.

There was an upside to the whole bar mitzvah thing, though. In the month leading up to
his bar mitzvah, Dovs sister spared him her usual poking and nagging. It was as if there
was a force-field around Dov, created by the frantic energy of his mother and her harried
arrangement making and the restrained glow that silently engulfed his father. Dov was all
of a sudden, part of something important, and there was no place for Saris mini-crises
and do-or-die needs in the equation.
In fact, Sari pretty much stopped talking to him altogether. Saris working
vocabulary among the family could not form sentences lacking the words can I, can
you, please, pretty please and douchebag (a word she had unfortunately learned
from Pessie Hershkowitz, whose older brothers sneaked her into R-rated movies) and,
thus, she kept her communication with Dov over the past several months to a series of
door slams, sighs and exaggerated gum smacking. Most of the time, Dov was happiest
the less Sari opened her mouth, but Saris silent theatrics had started to irk him even more
than the worst of her verbal haranguing. Sari's silence was unexpected, unpredictable, and
was most likely hiding something sinister below its surface. And then one day he came
home from school to find her taping photos of Brad Pitt, Leonardo DiCaprio and, even
worse, those fairies from Take That which she had presumably ripped from any of the
15 teeny bopper magazines that she regularly checked out of the Squirrel Hill Library

54

against their parents wishes on top of the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Dark Side of the
Moon posters in Dovs room.
What the heck are you doing? Dov howled, grabbing a Will Smith poster out of
her hands (oh, if only their mother knew there was almost a photo of a shirtless black
man on the walls of their house) before she had the chance to defame his The
Godfather poster with it.
You know that Ima doesnt want you hanging that stuff on your wall, Sari said,
picking another magazine off the floor and leafing through its pages.
Dov confiscated it before she got to anything good, and smacked her on the head
with it. And hanging up pictures of guys with shaved chests that you stole from the
library is way better, right?
Ow, Sari said and smoothed her hair back into place. Theyre not stolen. I
bought them. And on the floor lay a pile of shredded Seventeens, Teen Beats and few
others whose titles were hidden under the refuse of magazine scraps.
You spent your allowance money on this? Thats even worse than if youd stolen
them.
It was worth it. Im making a protest. She was so tiny, so thin, his sister, but
always so determined. He looked at her, still wearing her school uniform, the midcalflength navy skirt and white stockings, standing with one hand on her hip, thrusting out
her flat, 10-year-old chest with the overcompensating confidence of a full-blown
teenager.
You're making a what, now?
Its not fair, Dov.

55

Its not fair. Its not fair. Its not fair, Dov squeaked in a nasal imitation. Do
you ever say anything else?
Sari took the chewed up wad of gum out of her mouth and stuck it in Dov's hair.
Screw you and your stupid bar mitzvah. Im going to go live at Pessies house. I bet no
one will even notice.
Dov pinned his sister to the wall. "You little witch. All this is just because of my
stupid bar mitzvah? Sari hung her head and fell silent. Then a single tear dripped off the
tip of her downturned nose. Dov released his grip Just dont act all on the rag on me,
ok?" On the rag was a phrase Dov had overheard from the eighth graders at school. He
had not yet had time to pick up on its meaning, which, when he would finally receive a
definition six month later, would make him shudder in disgust (and he would never use it
again). "Next year youre going to get your own little bat mitzvah. Have a little patience,
will you.
Its not the same. You actually get to do stuff. You get to stand in the middle of
shul and get candy thrown at you. Girls dont get to do anything. They just wear a dumb
poofy dress and cut a cake at kiddush that says happy bat mitzvah in pink frosting. It
probably wont even have my name on it.
Well, Id trade with you in a second, except for the dress part. It's not all that
great, the bar mitzvah stuff. Rabbi Kreshevsky is so boring. He sounds like a frog, and his
shoulders are covered in dandruff. Its so gross.
No you wouldnt. You'd hate it, too. Youre lucky you get the chance to hate
your bar mitzvah lessons. At least theyre something.

56

By the time their mother came home, Dov and Sari were friends again. Or at least
they were back to being big brother and little sister, complete with slaps and snarky
comments. Dovs posters were spotted with white where he had ripped off the tape from
Saris vandalism, and his wavy hair hid a uneven spot where he had cut out the gum, but
otherwise, the house and the family that lived in it were unchanged.
Now that Dov had things ironed out with Sari, he just had his older brother to
worry about: Ephraim would get the weekend off from yeshiva to come to his bar
mitzvah, which was not a good thing. Whenever Ephraim came home, which happened
about once every two months, it was an event. Everything became Ephraim, Ephraim,
Ephraim. His mother cooked Ephraims favorite foods for Shabbat, starting with the
cooking on Wednesday so that she would be able to make enough (too much). As always,
his fathers enthusiasm was limited to an extra heft in his handshake, a slight smile that
softened his face from time to time. For Dov, these visits were slightly less fortuitous.
When his brother came home for the weekend, Dov was automatically relegated to the
position of middle child with all of the anonymity that accompanied it. He feared it would
be no different at his bar mitzvah. Dov would be on the bimah, reading from the Torah,
the culmination of half a year full of painful learning, and his parents would beam only
partly out of pride for him. They were not impenetrable to the inherent pride that
accompanied sending a son to a prestigious yeshiva out of town. Sure, Dov wasn't really
looking forward to being the center of all that attention, but if it was a matter of him
getting the attention or Ephraim, he would gladly accept the burden.
When Dovs parents judged him, they did so with Ephraim in mind. This only
increased during Ephraims visit, when they had the opportunity to use him as a living

57

example. Look how nicely your brother sits still during the Rabbis speech. Look how
fast your brother says yes when I ask him to go pick up some bread. Look how your
brother sits and learns instead of running off to play with his friends. And on top of that,
Dovs mother almost never uttered Ephraims name in the outside world without
prefacing it with an affectionate my, which when Dov was on hand to bear witness,
made him want to gag.
And why would Dov want to be like that two-faced, stuck up bully anyway? He
was so smart, Dovs brother. He knew how to play the game far better than Dov would
ever learn. He knew the exact strings to pull that would send his parents into a wet-dream
of nachas. This knowledge allowed him a huge amount of leeway when he was out of
their sight. They would never suspect him of smoking cigarettes (which he did). They
wouldnt, in a million years, think he talked to girls, especially not girls who wore tight
shirts and skirts that only in the most technical of senses covered their knees. (And Dov
suspected that Ephraim wasn't just talking with these girls. He was pretty sure there was
hand holding and even kissing involved, too.) This was Ephraims power, his talent for
disguise.
He also managed to abuse Dov and Sari in the slyest of ways. With a magicians
sleight of hand, Ephraim pulled ears, stole rubber balls, whistles and other small toys
from pockets, and administered brutal wedgies, wet willies and fast, sharp punches that
left bruises as a reminder of his lasting power. Dov and Sari learned long ago not to
blame Ephraim for any of these abuses. Any accusation that involved Ephraim was
always followed by a reaction of disbelief from Dovs parents. Well, what did you do to

58

provoke him? Dovs reply of Nothing fell on ears that were deafened by the unlimited
lauding of a perfect son.
Dov's bar mitzvah signaled the end of an era in more ways that one. Dov knew
that soon after his bar mitzvah he would be sent "out of town" just like Ephraim. Anyone
who was anyone in the community sent their teenaged sons away to yeshiva for high
school, and this was a class his parents wanted to belong to. The further the distance, the
greater number of social credit points there were to be earned.
Dov's parents already launched the yeshiva discussion months before his bar
mitzvah. "But I'm not even in 8th grade yet," Dov pleaded.
"You will be sooner than you know it. So, unless you want to go to NoName
Yeshiva in Boondocks, Ohio, we had better get started." His mother loved doing that
making up fast, loaded, one-breathed names for things and people. NoName Yeshiva
joined the "ILoveSalmonella Butcher Shop," "BumperToBumper Intersection," "Mr.
IThinkImTooGoodToPutMyDishInTheDishwasher." That last was reserved for Dov,
along

with

"Mr.

SmartAlecWhoThinksHeCanTalkBackToTeachers"

and

"Mr.

ImEmbarrasedToWalkDownTheStreetWithMyOwnMother." Sometimes they were whole

sentences so long that by the time his mother got to the end, Dov had lost the thread of
thought. Dov thought about how she never made up names for things she was satisfied
with, as if real, unadulterated names were an honor to be earned.
One night Dov caught his parents sitting at the dining room table after dinner, his
mother poured over a sheet of lined paper, his father sitting back in his chair with his
arms crossed against his chest, his chin lowered and his lips pursed. Dov stood over them
with a cup of ice cream in his hands. On the page was a list of cities: Rochester, St.

59

Louis, Skokie, Toronto and Dallas. Dov didn't even have to think for one second to know
that those cities corresponded with potential yeshivas. Dov's mother rattled off a list of
pros and cons that she had written for each city. Pros included "Rosh Yeshiva supposed
to be a mensch," "TV at home allowed," "Hershkopf's oldest boy learns there." Cons
included "Too far away," "Has troubled boys" and "Too frum boys dont go to college."
As she went down the list, Dov's father would now and then murmur an additional piece
of information for the list, and his mother would rush to jot it down and saying Oh, that
one's important. Dov stood over them for a good three minutes, but they were so
engulfed in planning his future that they did not notice his presence.
There were plans for Shlomo and Judah to go out of town as well. Judah would
ultimately be spared that fate, after his ousting from rabbi Akiva later that year would
make his chances for getting in to decent yeshiva an impossibility. Menahem would also
be saved, since he was lucky enough to have parents who were too poor to pay for the
tuition and boarding costs. He was even at Rabbi Akiva on scholarship. (Not that the
yeshiva tuition was easy to come by for Dov's family, either. But his father would have
probably sold a kidney if that's what it would have taken to avoid the shame of
publicizing the family's financial woes by keeping Dov local.) "Yeah, but who am I
gonna hang out with? Pittsburgh is going to suck even worse," Menahem lamented after
the boys all had expressed wishes to replace him in life.
Earlier that year, Dov and the rest of his class had gotten the chance to see the
workings of an out-of-town yeshiva from up close. As a preparatory step for what was to
come, the school took them on a weekend trip to New Jerseys own Lakewood Yeshiva,
one of the most esteemed houses of Torah in the country. Dov and his class slept in the

60

dorms, learned in the bais medrish and ate in the dining hall of the yeshiva. The boys
there were so pale, their skin was almost translucent, like those small fish with the blue
insides and thin silver rib cages that were visible to outside eyes. And they were so
serious, so earnest and trusting. Shlomo and Judah sensed an opportunity, and whipped
out all of the old tricks that had long worn off on any of the people they knew. Did you
hear that the word gullible was taken out of the dictionary? Shlomo told an unsuspecting
group of bochurs.
No, I didnt, but I dont use English dictionaries, said one of the boys, and
Shlomo turned around to send Dov a secret grin.
Do you believe these guys? Shlomo said later that night to Dov and Menahem,
who were sharing a dorm room. I asked this one kid who the president was, and he was
like, who, the president of the yeshiva and I was like no, you dumbass, the president of
the United States, and he said he didnt know. Can you believe that?
The next day, Shlomo started introducing himself to other boys as Michael
Jackson, confident that the name wouldnt add up to anything more than just another
goyish name to these boys, and he was right.
********
The Monday morning alarm clock issues its dreaded sound, and Dov wakes from a dream
starring a fridge full of moldy layer cakes. The muscles of his eyelids move to action in
atrophied slowness. As always, Dov rises in stages. He scans the white of his ceiling
while trying to muster the strength to move, as the alarm beeps in a pulsating frenzy. Dov
sits up, smashes the alarm into silence and stares at the pile of marginally clean clothes

61

that are heaped onto his dresser. Welcome to the week, Dov thinks to himself as soon as
he is capable of thought.
At school, people seem different. They look different. The borders that separate
them from the rest of space is clear, defined, as if they have been cut and pasted from
another setting. When they speak, Dov can see their muscles moving within their cheeks.
From home room, Dov moves down the congested halls to Spanish, moving with the flow
of mass exodus through to the first floor annex. As always, the lights are more yellow
than illuminating, lending the present a cloudy shade of television flashbacks.
Then Dov realizes it. Everything is hopelessly the same. The rusted lockers; the
worn-away marble stairs that droop at their center, as if bearing the cumulative footprint
of a hundred years' worth of students; the stiff narrow desks, half of which boast carved
declarations of devotion and/or profanity. Everything is the same, but him. Dov catches a
vague reflection of himself in the glass of the door to room 107. He is wearing his
favorite t-shirt, the one with the Heineken label in Hebrew that his cousin Jonathan
bought him in Israel, the one he wears at least once a week. Yep, he looks like himself.
And yet, he is different. Luckily, Dov has always been a master of disguise, and so his
transformation, whatever it is, remains his secret. If the situation calls for a smile, he
smiles. If it calls for him to laugh at someone's joke, he laughs, even if he wasn't even
listening. Throughout his high school career, Dov has existed in two places: in the world
and in his brain, and never the twain should meet.
At lunch, he plunks down the two soft pretzels and frozen milkshake he bought at
the canteen (his daily fare since coming to public school and finding out that his mother
was no longer fixing him sandwiches) next to the nicest person he could find with a quick

62

scan of the room, which at this moment is Alex Friedman who is sitting next to Mara
Watts, a kooky, X-Files obsessed blond girl who plays oboe in the marching band. Alex
is eating mashed potatoes and an unidentifiable diced pink meat (which probably
involves pig) that he picked up at the lunch counter. Alex catches Dov staring at his
afternoon fare. "It's not as bad as it looks. Want some?"
"I think I'll pass." During Dov's first year at Theodore Roosevelt, he felt
melancholic pangs of communal guilt when he watched fellow Jews partake in the 100%
treif school lunches. He watched with disbelief as globs of reconstituted cheese food and
frozen meat patty crumbled into their mouths without thought, mid-conversation even,
leaving the masticated object of their sins obvious in their half open mouths.
By now, Dov can not only watch others consume non-kosher delights, he can
even consume them with an unbridled conscience. Everything but pig, which he
somehow cannot bring himself to touch. On many occasions during his younger years,
Mrs. Koslovsky tried to convince her son that eating pig was bad for the arteries as well
as the soul. She would shoot him minute reminders, as they passed Smoky's, the dubious
so-called sports bar with wood paneling instead of windows, and the inevitable smell of
fried bacon wafting from its vents. "I don't know how people eat that garbage. One day, a
pig is rolling around in mud, the next day you're putting it in your mouth." Eating pig had
somehow earned itself a marquee slot among the smorgasbord of transgressions, weighed
down by a hefty, age-old collective unconscious.
When the time comes for U.S. History, Dov speeds into room 206 and past Dr.
Schreiber, the jolly, absentminded former hippy who decided to start the history of the
American people with the middle of the 19th century ("What do you kids need with all

63

those dead old white guys, anyways) and who gives them Howard Zinn as required
reading. Just from the looks of him (droopy eyes, scraggly shoulder-length gray hair,
yellowed fingertips), Dov is also pretty sure that Dr. Schreiber sparks up on the
weekends, if not in the faculty parking lot at lunchtime. Dov chooses a seat near the
inconspicuous back in order to escape any requests to answer questions, since he was
absent two classes in a row. Dr. Schreiber sits on the edge of his desk with a stack of
papers in his hand. When the bell rings, Dr. Schreiber begins to pass them out. "I hope
you're all prepared for today's pop quiz."
Dov's eyelids spread themselves to the outer walls of his sockets. He turns to
James Yi, the half-Asian, half-Irish kid who has absolutely no hair on his body, even
though he isn't even on the swim team. "Shit."
"He told us about it on Friday," James says with the satisfaction of someone who
studied.
"He told us about a pop quiz?" Dov claims his own page of doom and passes the
remaining stack to James. Dov's grades are nearing an uncomfortable D, and unexpected
quizzes are not an option. "But isn't that against the point?"
"He said he wanted to give us a chance to get ready for the big surprise. He made
this movie villain face when he said it. It was pretty creepy."
Dov looks back at the quiz page. At least it's multiple-choice. He is not in the
mood for bullshitting. There are ten questions. Dov knows five, which already surprises
him. All he needs is one more to protect him from abject failure. Probability is in his
favor, but Dov cannot rely on the graces of random chance. He stares at elusive question
3:

64

Which New Deal program was chiefly designed to correct abuses in the stock market?

A. Federal Emergency Relief Act

B. Securities and Exchange Commission
C. Civilian Conservation Corps
D. Works Progress Administration

Dov doesn't even know what any of those things are, let alone which one is the right
answer. He excavates deep into his brain, searching for pieces of information that might
have had the good grace to make imprints on his subconscious while he slept during
previous classes, while he was spacing out in order to engage in imaginary conversations
with Rita Canelli, the girl from Greenfield with perpetually exposed cleavage who was so
Italian that she was almost Jewish. But all he finds are memories of Indians, dust bowls
and mnemonic devices associated with Presidents getting stuck in bathtubs (Taft = Fat).
Bathtubs. Water. Wave. Flow. Water. Water Water. And then Dov remembers the water
in Schenley park. He isn't certain if it really happened or if he imagined it but he can
picture it clearly. There was a reflection, and in that reflection there were words. The
Answer is What was it? He looks round the classroom, searching the faces of better
prepared classmates for inspiration.
James Yi is long finished, sitting in the satisfying slump of confident, effortless
success. Dovs eyes plead with him for something, anything. If not an answer, then at
least a face full of sympathy. But all James has to offer is a set of raised eyebrows and
shrugged shoulders. Leshawn Williams draws manga faces all over his answer sheet.
Man that is going to jam the computer. Dov moves on to Marie Majewski, otherwise

65

known as My Jewski, even though she isnt even Jewish, as a term of endearment. Dov
can't think of another occasion when Jew has been used as a term of endearment. Thats
what happens when you join the Jew Crew, those north-of-Forbes, Gap/Banana
Republic/J Crew-outfitted, lacrosse and field-hockey-playing boys and girls with perfect
skin, 80 percent of whom are Jewish. Maries mascaraed eyelashes quiver in doubt. She
would clearly be of no help to him.
Rita Canelli, who is sitting two desks over from him, examines the ends of her
coiled hair instead of the dotted answer form before her. She looks up at him and blows a
pink scented bubble in his direction until it pops; she sucks it back in and compounds the
gum in its usual spot between her molars, her bottom jaw rising and falling with every
elaborate chew. Only in movies do girls smack gum like Rita Canelli. Dov feels blessed
to have her glorious gum chewing in his real life. And then, Rita Canelli's face becomes
Sarah Brent's. Her lips press together and release like the opening jaws of a Venus
Flytrap preparing to receive its prey. She does it again and it looks like she is mouthing
the letter b. Dov's forehead spasms in disbelief. The answer is b. What do Sarah Brent
and Rita Canelli have to do with this? There's no way they even know each other. Sarah
Brent becomes Rita Canelli once more, and her face returns to her perfect, aimless gum
chewing. Maybe wishful thinking made him imagine Sarah Brent's face; after all they
both have curly hair. And maybe Rita was just trying unsuccessfully to form a bubble,
although she's such an expert that he couldn't imagine her with less than a 100% success
rate. Dov looks back at the question, or rather at what might be the answer.

B. Securities and Exchange Commission

66

It's as good a guess as any, and weird, hallucinated tips are better than none, and so he
takes his No. 2 pencil and fills in the circle next to B, making sure that not a micrometer
of white remains, so as not to tempt fate, or God or whoever it is that is fucking with him.
As Dr. Schreiber walks from desk to desk to collect the quiz pages, Dov feels calm. He
doesn't have his usual last minute urge to change half of his answers. Just one thought
hits Dov in the head: Shit, why didnt I ask for lottery numbers?
After school, Dov heads to his traditional meeting at Shlomos. As he enters the
house he catches a whiff of perfume, and not the sort of youthful body spray the girls at
school are always dousing themselves in. It is a strange, invasive presence in the all-male
afternoon habitat. Ok, Dovs here. Lets go, Shlomo says as Dov descended the stairs.
Dov stops in the middle of the stairs as the others sifted through the pile of
jackets. Where are we going?
Shlomos Mom is here, Judah says.
"Well that explains the old-lady perfume," Dov's comment is sidelined by the air
of urgency in the room.
And shes always going to be here, Shlomo adds.
No more trips to Moon. Which means no more you-know-what in the basement,
whispers Menahem in a voice usually used by old women to describe tragic illnesses.
First, Shlomo goes off to yeshiva and effectively relegates the basement meetings to the
odd weekend and holiday, and now they are becoming extinct altogether. Great, just
great.
In other words, were going Bowling, Dov. Bowling. Dov understands the
codeword. By Bowling, Judah means Forward Lanes, and by Forward Lanes, he really

67

means the outer wall of the bowling alley and the adjoining parking lot, which gives
sufficient shelter from the inquisitive eyes that move down the street.
They walk down the steps from Shlomos house. There are so many steps that,
once at the bottom, it doesn't matter if you forgot your keys, your wallet or if you are hit
with a last-minute urge to pee, there is no way you are going back up those stairs.
Everyone in the city lives either on top of a hill or below one. There is no such thing as
happy, easy flatlands in these parts of Western Pennsylvania, and the locals have the calf
muscles to prove it.
But these are not quaint proverbial houses on the hill with picket fences. Just rows
and rows of houses so close to each other that you know exactly what your neighbor ate
on Tuesday nights (lasagna), what color bras she prefers (beige), and how much they
fight about money (a lot). Your house gives you the illusion of living among the middle
class, but you are constantly reminded that you lack the privacy of affluence. Your house
is close to other houses, but desperately far from the rest of the world, not towering
above, as much as hovering over in limbo. There is no room with a view at the top, only
heavy groceries to lug up never-ending stairs.
As they walk down the street, none of them say a word. Their friendship relies on
familiar places of refuge. They walk past the kosher Chinese/deli place, the Christian
Lebanese hair dresser who almost exclusively serves Jews, the kosher bakery and the
kosher grocery store. Over the years, Dov has developed a reflex of shifting his gaze
upon passing Jewish institutions, lest he meet some familiar eyes. Lest he become
engaged in conversation. He prefers the "If I don't see you, then you can't see me" rule of
social physics.

68

Menahem stops them on the corner of Murray and Douglas, outside one of the
only two places in the whole neighborhood where you can buy alcohol. "Hold up, I want
to grab some beers." Judah and Dov lower their eyes at each other. How is this possible?
They themselves have only ever bought alcohol by bribing homeless, or at least visibly
poor men.
"He just got it," Shlomo offers. Out of all of them, it is mama's-boy Menahem
who has blazed the trail and expanded the sources of inebriation by purchasing a fake ID.
The boys are dumbfounded.
"But where?" Dov technically has access to fake IDs, one of the benefits of a
public high school education, but he never actually considered getting one. Plus they cost
like a hundred bucks.
"Yeshiva. Pinky Englander is selling them, really quality work, and for cheap too.
He's even got your school buddies buying from him."
Menahem emerges smiling. Under his arm is a rectangle wrapped tightly within a
plastic bag. He pulls open the zipper on Dov's backpack. Dov shoots him a look. "Hey,
watch out or you're going to crush my Discman."
"Don't worry, I'll be gentle," Menahem zips up the backpack with exaggerated
care.
When they reach the Forward Lanes parking lot, they search for a good car to sit
behind. Station wagon? No way. Boat-sized Buick? Better not. Forward Lanes shares the
parking lot with a dry cleaners patronized with loyalty by frum clientele, and as such was
Dovs fathers main competition. Only sufficiently gentile cars would provide true cover.
Pick-up trucks are best, but hatchbacks do the trick as well. They finally settle between

69

the wall and a sedan with oversized wheels and an orange flame airbrushed on either side.
Yep, definitely gentile. And definitely spending the afternoon bowling.
Judah pulls a pipe out of his back pocket and a dime bag of bud from the tiny
jeans pocket that nobody ever uses. He struggles to light the bowl while enveloped by
gales of wind. The boys huddle together to form a protective wall, stopping short of a
group hug. Their discomfort in the face of man-to-man touching ends up costing them the
soft flakes of bud, when a gust of wind slips in through a crack between Shlomo and
Menahem, blowing a dusting of weed over their faces. Judah looks like he is about to cry.
"Man, that was hydroponic."
Menahem picks a morsel out of his sidelock. "Do you think it would do anything
if I snorted it?" He doesn't wait for an answer. The rest of them settle for wiping
suspicious particles from their faces, shirts and hair.
"Thank God for beer." Dov distributes cans around the circle.
They sit beer in hand, and slowly realize that they have no bottle opener. "Shit,"
Judah says, and proceeds to slam off the bottle cap in between the mildewed red bricks of
Forward Lanes.
********
Dov finished his last bar mitzvah lesson on the Tuesday before becoming a man. He
reached the end without having to compose any more raps, but he had been cajoled into
parsha role play the week before, which was only marginally less embarrassing. In the
last class, Rabbi Kreshevsky had Dov do a final dress rehearsal of the entire parsha and
haftara, this time on the bimah, tiny silver hand-shaped pointer and all. Rabbi Kreshevsky
helped Dov unwrap and unroll the heavy Torah scroll, removing it of its velvet robes.

70

Dov stood at the podium in the main sanctuary in his navy blue uniform pants, and held
the ponter in his hands, following the words as he sang the story of Exodus from Egypt.
Dov made two mistakes, which Rabbi Kreshevsky said was well below average. He
patted Dov on the back and said "You're a good boy Dovi. A good boy." As he carried
the Torah scroll back into the ark, Dov felt a feeling hunger and sadness in his belly. It
was like a zoo animal relegated back to dark cages after being ogled by the crowds.
By Tuesday, Dov's house was already full of relatives who had come in from
Detroit and New York. In their honor, Dov and Sari's rooms were turned into guest
rooms. Dov was shifted from the privacy of his own room to a corner of the living room
that was set up with a sleeping bag and two pillows. Sari got the couch since her legs still
fit in it. It was also a consolation prize that would hopefully keep her quiet about the
unfair state of bar and bat mitzvahs. There was not a moment of quiet in the house that
week. At every second, someone, somewhere in the house was talking, yelling or singing.
Dov sat on the couch and perked up his ears, curious if he could behold a second of
silence. He waited, staring into space for ten whole minutes, but silence did not come.
Finally Sari snapped her fingers in front of his eyes and said "Hello. Anybody in there?"
Mrs. Koslovsky was frantic trying to keep the out-of-towners busy. There were
trips in the mini-van to Point State Park, to the multinational classrooms at the Cathedral
of Learning, and an incline ride up to Mt. Washington to behold the illusory view of
Pittsburgh as a real metropolis. And on those afternoons after school, Dov joined the
Koslovsky tour bus for mandatory urban travels. There were only a handful of tourist
attractions in Pittsburgh, and Dov had been to each one at least 15 times. As a child it had
been a treat to go to the Point or the Cathedral of Learning, but on every visit, the vast

71

greens and towering fountain of the Point, just like the city's so-called skyscrapers,
seemed smaller and shabbier; and the classrooms at the cathedral seemed to get tackier
and smellier. But, he wasn't given a choice in the matter. "What, you think they came
here to see me?" his mother said.
On the Thursday evening, as the family was getting their coats on to go get Italian
ices at Rita's, Dov's father said to his mother in front of the guests, "I want Dov to stay
here with me." The public decree made it final; there is no room for argument when
Dov's father speaks, not to his mother, but above her. Dov removed the one arm that he
had already managed to insert into a coat sleeve. Man, he has to do this the one time
we're going to get ices. He couldn't have done this when we went to the zoo?
After the crown of revelers had departed, Mr. Koslovsky bent down to burrow
through a cabinet of plastic souvenirs from Israel and yellowing report cards. "I have
something for you," his voice echoed from inside the cabinet. That position of
prostration, the vulnerability of knee-sitting offered an unfamiliar view of his father,
thought Dov while leaning on a bookshelf. Mr. Koslovsky released an involuntary hum
and removed an embroidered velour tallis bag with one hand, while he dusted his knees
off with the other. He opened the bag and pulled out with slow hands the folded and
fringed ivory cloth with black stripes. He held it up by two corners and let the rest of it
fall open until it almost reached the floor, obscuring nearly all of him from sight. Only his
hands and his black leather shoes could be seen. "This is the tallis you will wear on the
bimah," he said. Dov knew that tallis. He knew it had belonged to his great-grandfather.
He knew it was from Poland and was more than 80 years old. He knew it survived
pogroms and sickly sea travel. Yellowed but strong. His brother had worn it on his bar

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mitzvah as well. Dov was surprised by the weight of it as his father draped it over his
shoulders. He had seen his father put on a tallis a million times, and probably could have
folded it over his shoulders like a pro on his first try, but he did not protest as his father
took each side of the lengthy cloth and folded over Dov's shoulder. "You have to grab the
fabric from the edge and pull the corners forward. If you yank it up from the middle, it
will fall off," Mr. Koslovsky said as he folded the second end over Dov's shoulder. Dov
felt the quick, intermittent touch of his father's hands as he arranged the tallis on his
body. Each hint of contact warmed his back.
"Now you try."
Dov grasped at the corners of the cloth, which extended farther than his arm span.
Mr. Koslovsky administered slight adjustments to his son's attempt, shifting the tallis to
harmonize with laws of gravity. Dov caught himself in the mirror by the front door. The
tallis swallowed up all of his five feet three inches. Dov thought that he did not look like
a man at all under the tallis, that he reminded himself of a kid running around the house
in his father's shoes.
Mr. Koslovsky pulled the tallis off of Dov's shoulders and folded it himself. He
lodged it back in its soft sack and into the cupboard of forgotten fancies. He put a hand
on Dov's head, where it rested with discomfort for two seconds. He then settled down
into his corduroy arm chair, grabbed a book about the history of the Roman Empire off
the coffee table, opened it to a bookmarked page and began to read. Dov understood that
this session of father-son bonding had come to an end.
Dov went out to sit on the porch. Across the street, the Kollel, which rented the
bottom half of the duplex across the street, sputtered with activity. Through their large

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bay window, Dov saw Rabbi Weingarten leaning against a bookshelf over a tall brown
book with his glasses dangling from his mouth. Underneath, Dov could catch the
unidentifiable shoulders and back of heads of other scholars, a kingdom of men. It didn't
seem like they ever left, ever went home to their wives and children. Dov knew that after
his bar mitzvah, they would come calling, like they did after his father, in search of the
final man to complete a minyan for prayer on less populous evenings.
The tallis was the last of a long line of trying things on. First came the suit, Dov's
first suit, which involved awkward inner leg measurements and ten whole minutes of
standing still. Then were the shoes, smooth black leather, expensive, from Littles, where
the stockroom girl flashed him a long vertical line of cleavage when she bent down to
unload her armful of boxes.
Next came the hat, which they bought from Rochel Mirsky, who sold the latest
designs from New York out of her living room. An assembly line was created on Rochel
Mirsky's couch. Rochel handed a potential hat to Dov's mother, and she in turn put it on
his head. She held up a large square mirror to Dov's head for every hat. "What a fit," "We
have ourselves a little bochur here," or "If you don't take this one, I might just have to
give it to you. It would be a sin for you not to have this hat." He had a hard time telling
them apart. Throughout Rochel's descriptions of silk bands and Italian fur felt (whatever
that was) rested and chafed against the top of his ears.
********
Dov corners Shlomo in the social hall at shul on the first day of Rosh Hashanah,
as he is coming back with a pile of cholent on a Styrofoam plate, the spoils of Esther
Baumwald and Yitz Hyman's engagement Kiddush, which has cancelled out the tradition

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of letting people go home as soon as possible after long holiday services. "I need you to
get me some more acid." Dov struggled over how to ask Shlomo for more drugs
throughout the service, and in the end, the request emerges as a desperate demand.
"What? Now, with cholent in my hands, you want to talk about drugs?"
"I don't want the other guys to know."
"I don't like the sound of this, Dov. Acid's tricky. Kind of like getting lost in the
woods. You don't want to do it alone."
"Can you, or can't you get it for me?"
"I can get it, but it don't come cheap."
Thoughts of forgone lottery winnings come to Dov's mind. "I'll have plenty of
money. Trust me. Just give me a couple of weeks to get a hold of it."
"Go fuck yourself. I'm not laying out that kind of cash."
"I'm telling you. The money is a sure thing."
Shlomo's desire to eat cholent wins out over his desire to argue. "If you're just
shitting me, don't forget, I know where you live, and so will my dealer," he says with a
full mouth.

Dov waits for the feeling in Frick Park while sitting on the bombed out wall of what once
was a home, now a grid of weeds sandwiched between cracked ceramic tiles. The cement
path that leads to the house is strewn with the pebbles and rubble of abandon. He hears
conversations of birds, their chirps in echo, their flight leaving patterns of their own
shadows across the sky. The feeling comes to him. Dov is alone in space. His heart
pumps blood. He cannot control his breath; his breath controls him, issuing a haphazard

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combination of short, shallow gulps and slow steady inhales. He puts his hand on his
chest. Fast fast, slow, slow. Fast, slow.
Dov opens his eyes. Oh shit, I haven't been paying attention. Maybe I missed the
signal. Dov narrows his eyes, peering at minute details in the terrain, searching for
changes in the natural order.
Then God appears in the laces of Dov's sneakers, which untie and loop around in
shapes and letters, two or three at a time.
"Oh-Da-vid-you-ma-ke-thi-ngs-too-ha-rd-for-yo-urs-elf-Why-are-you-lo-ok-ingso-far-aw-ay-for-me-?"
Dov looks at his feet. They are huge. They cannot be his, he thinks. God has
attached them to his legs (wait, maybe the legs are not his either!) so that he would be
able to see him more easily. Obviously.
"Uh, hey." Dov's voiced is fractured and slow. His eyes are moist and hot.
"What's up?"
"Im-fi-ne-th-ank-you."
Dov stares at the laces as they whip around and lengthen on the ground below
forming first a tree, then a bicycle, then a camel, a Rubik's cube. Dov's eyes turn away,
maybe he's not allowed to see this. Maybe he will turn into a pillar of salt if he continues
to stare. The laces wrap themselves around his ears and pull his face towards the ground.
Naturally, God's unlimited powers also include uncanny talents in initiating
conversations. "What would you like to talk about today, Dov?" Dov's abilities, on the
other hand, do not include this. Dov's mind can only fill itself with fifty dollar bills,
stacks of them. Then he thinks about the fact that God can probably read his thoughts.

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Then why is he asking me? The laces shape themselves into an impatient trio of question
marks, followed by the words "I-do-nt-ha-ve-all-day-you-kn-ow."
"Um, actually, do you remember when you offered me lottery numbers last time?
"Yes."
"Can I collect on the offer?"
"Cer-ta-in-ly-get-the-pow-er-ba-ll---num-ber-7-23-17-51-18-po-wer-ba-ll-nu-mber-2."
Dov realizes he had nothing to write it down with. "Um, you don't have a pen by
any chance, do you?"
"Lo-ok-in-yo-ur-le-ft-poc-ket-you-sto-le-it-fr-om-the-sch-ool-lib-ra-ry-yes-te-rday."
Dov pulls out a pen with a transparent chamber containing a miniature incline that
rises and falls through blue colored liquid. He rubs the ball point on his palm to release
the dormant ink and writes the winning numbers on his forearm.
When Dov looks back at his feet, they have shrunken back to normal size and his
laces lay flat and untied. Couldn't God at least have put his laces back in order?

The door of the newsstand creaks behind Dov. This is a cramped, windowless paradise of
snacks, soda, outdated yet beloved arcade games and effigies to the printed word.
Magazines, comic books and newspapers line the narrow corridor of a store. Patrons who
venture far enough back are rewarded by an assortment of barely hidden nudie
magazines. He has been coming here on at least a weekly basis since he started getting an

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allowance at age 11. Before that he made due with the 25 cents his mother gave him to
spend on candy at Tanzer's, while she picked out kosher wine for Shabbas.
This is the first time he is buying something that isn't candy bars, comic books or
cigarettes. He passes grade-school yeshiva kids who are hammering with rapture at an
antiquated Donkey Kong arcade game, and heads straight to the counter. Alan, the
perennial cashier, has been in a state of undeterminable aging since Dov can remember.
His hairline, gut and lined forehead have always dwelled somewhere in the purgatory
between the beauty of youth and the decay of middle age. They have never addressed
each other by name, but they have exchanged hundreds of muttered hellos through half
smiling mouths over the years.
Dov asks for a Powerball ticket. Alan raises his eyebrows. "What? You trying to
get rich too?" Dov shrugs. "What have you got to do with all of that money anyways?
You're still going to be living with your parents." Wise words. Dov hasn't even thought
about what he would do with all that money? "Dunno. Go to Disneyworld? Isn't that what
you're supposed to say?"
Alan smiles, but just barely. You got numbers, or you want to put your trust in
the random pick?
I got numbers. Dov turns over his forearm and pulls a crumpled snippet of
paper out of his pocket. That morning, Dov woke up with a lump of sadness in his chest
and a battalion of smudged numbers on his arm. Before even taking his morning piss, he
picked an old receipt off of his bedroom floor, wrote down the numbers and shoved the
paper into the pockets of a pair of jeans.

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In the kitchen, Mrs. Koslovsky was hard at work positioning the familys daily
bread around cheese, omelets and lettuce. Dov poured himself a bowl of cereal, raising
his marked hand to tilt the box. Mrs. Koslovsky and her bionic peripheral vision grabbed
Dovs wrist and twisted it upwards so she could get a closer look at her sons selfvandalism. What is this?
Nothing, Dov said and yanked his wrist free of her grip.
I dont need to tell you want it looks like, do I?
It took a minute for the associations of his peoples collective memory to trickle
down. Oh, come on. Not everything has to do with the Holocaust.
Unfortunately, for some people it does. Now go wash it off. Or Ill wash it off
for you.
Jesus Christ.
Dont you mention the name of that false prophet in my house.
Dov left his bowl of cereal on the counter and grumbled out of the kitchen and up
the stairs. He brushed the nail scrubber against his skin and thought that he would get a
more permanent variety of ink in a very visible place the second he turned 18. Let his
mother try to scrub that off.
Just dont forget us little people when youre hanging out in your penthouse in
the Disney Castle, Alan says as the lottery printer buzzes and chatters each line of
numbers. The pots 64 million. Drawings on Wednesday. Alan hands him his winning
ticket.
Wednesday evening, Dov takes his ticket to Shlomos house. The rest of the boys
have stayed away ever since the shift of power in the basement made its original function

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an impossibility. Shlomo is watching reruns of Golden Girls when Dov comes down
the stairs. Shlomo makes a quick attempt to change to ESPN, but Dov gets a clear enough
view of Blanche Deverau to incriminate him in acts of effeminate, geriatric viewing.
Good game?
Shlomo looks at the screen, presumably to divine what game he has actually
switched to. You know, just zapping. Dov snatches the remote, slumps into his
beanbag and flips to Channel 4.
Hey, I was watching that.
You were not, Blanche. Dov could have watched the lottery drawing at home,
yes. But he wanted to keep his becoming an overnight millionaire a secret from his
family, a surprise weapon that could best be used gradually and stealthily in asserting his
independence. If he had watched the drawing at home, they would tease him, they would
ask questions, and he could not be sure that he could keep his face straight, especially at
the moment of victory.
Dov looks at the wall clock. 6:58. The end of a commercial for fabric softener
cuts to an indoor playground of floating colored balls and smiling faces. A man in a black
suit stands next to a woman with bleached feathered bangs and a frumpy purple dress.
Youve got to be kidding? The lottery? Shlomo gets up and tries to steal back
the remote.
Shut up, Dov says and pushes Shlomo out of his field of vision. He sandwiches
the remote between his legs for safe keeping and pulls the ticket from his back pocket.
I dont get why youre taking this so seriously. The chances are like a million to
one.

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Not my chances.
The drug store version of Vanna White stands above a small lottery machine.
And the daily number is, says an invisible voice. 3-7-2. Vanna displays the winning
numbers with utmost professionalism between her press-on nailed fingers. And now for
the Powerball. Total winnings are 52 million dollars, continues the invisible voice.
Dovs eyes move like windshield washers from the screen to the ticket and back
again. Since the morning, he has been trying to commit the numbers to memory, in case
he would lose the ticket.
And the numbers are Dovs head and fingers tingle, and he feels the insides
of his chest rise in anticipation. Even though he is pretty sure that winning is a sure thing,
a lump of doubt competes for space in his excitable physiology.
7 Check.
23 Check.
17 Right again.
51 Uh huh.
18 One more to go.
And the powerball number is Dov sits up in the beanbag. The number two
pulsates in Dovs brain while Dov projects his nerves on the lottery ticket, which he rolls
back and forth between his fingers until it becomes a stiff, unified mass.
3.
Dov stops breathing. He unrolls the lottery ticket and holds the wrinkled numbers
up to his face. The powerball number is two, mother fucker, Dov squeals, his voice
cracking like a thirteen-year-old boy. He scrambles to get up, falls back in the beanbag

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and pushes himself back up with his wrists. He grabs the bean bag in the air and slams it
back on the floor.
What the fuck, man. Youre going to break something.
Dov takes an empty glass bottle from off the floor and smashes it against the
coffee table. There. Now Ive broken something.
Oh, come on. You know how hard it is to get glass out of shag carpeting. Im
going to be down here all year. Shlomo yells after Dov as he stomps up the stairs and
slams the front door behind him.

Dov takes $20 out of the stash he was saving for a trip to go see Phish in Cleveland that
summer. He may not have made off with millions in lottery winnings, but he still has to
pay back Shlomos secret dealer. Dov considers ending his conversation with God. What
does he need with a God that orchestrates wars, creates disease and offers misleading
lottery numbers? On the other hand, God needs to get some serious bitching out. Its not
every day you get to do that, Dov thinks. He pulls an extra $20 from the stash.
The next day, Dov comes unannounced to Shlomo's house straight after school,
hoping to beat whichever of his friends might wander there later that afternoon, despite
the newfound risk.
Get me more, Dov hands Shlomo a double payment. Heres for the last batch
and the next.
Shlomo extends the roll of bills back in Dovs direction. Your moneys no good
here.

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Come on. I dont mind going to your dealer myself if you dont want to get
caught up in the middle.
Its not just that.
Oh, so youre still pissed?
Yeah, I am still pissed. I sat on my knees for a full hour sucking up your mess
with a vacuum cleaner. And even then, I cut my foot on piece of glass I missed. Shlomo
turns to Dov. I also think you should cool your heels a little with the acid. I think youre
enjoying it a little too much.
Whats too much, Shlomo? You got better ways to spend your time?
Fine Ill get it for you, but just this last time. And then youre going to dry out
for a little while.
Yes, mother.

Dov sits once again in the abandoned house. He has learned to time the precise
procession of inebriation, so that today he was able to pop the tab onto his tongue and
then get some homework done before heading out to the privacy of natural expanses.
The meadows grass bows to the winds power, flattening under the gusts. The
wind changes course and blows selectively across the field and parts the blades of grass.
Lines of negative space run across the blades in all directions. Dovs eyes follow the lines
and he quickly becomes dizzy. He closes his eyes. Suddenly, a voice.
Dovi, it echoes. Dov opens his eyes. Nothing has changed. This time you
missed me. Dovi swivels his head and sees nothing. Where? he shouts.

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Oh, I cant make it that easy for you. Anyhow, the mystery is gone. We may as
well continue in human voices. The wind stands still, and the grass unbends. Ah, the
grass, Dov thinks.
So, how are things? The voice comes from nowhere and everywhere at once.
Despite the voice's magnitude, the chemical twisting of reality has made Dov
bold. Pretty shitty, actually. Yeah, for some reason, I went out and spent my allowance
money on a losing lottery ticket. How did that happen, huh?
Dovi, Dovi Dovi. You didnt think I was really going to help you win the lottery
dishonestly, did you?
Youre the one who was dishonest here.
Dovi, randomness is the true equalizer. If I had given you such an obvious
advantage, we would have upset the rhythm of the world.
You lied to me.
Someone isnt very up to date with his Chumash. God doesnt lie. God tests.
So thats what this was, a test?
I suppose you could call it that.
And I failed.
There is no passing or failing, just ordinary or extraordinary. You, I'm sorry to
say, are still ordinary in my book.
Dov's ears burned. No other word could have been more insulting. Or, if Dov
thought about it honestly, so true. "Fine. But how will I know if youre telling the truth?

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I was telling the truth even then. I never said that the lottery numbers were the
winning numbers, did I? You wanted lottery numbers, and you assumed that I had an
interest in letting you win.
So, what now?
Now is pretty much the same as five minutes ago, which is pretty much the same
as last week. Is there something you want to be different?
Dovs head fills with a resounding yes, but he can't name what.
********
It was a strange combination: This dress-up, this role play. Today you are a man.
Tomorrow you go back to middle school. By the end of the service, Dovs jaws hurt from
so much polite smiling, his right wrist felt like is was one shake away from dislocation.
Its not as though it was so horrible. It was just, well, awkward. Dov had to meet so many
eyes, but he didnt know what to do with his own. What do they want from me, Dov
thought to himself. Do they want me to be funny? Do they want me to be smart? Do they
want me to just stand here and let them stare at me and shake my hand? Dov concluded
that it was probably the latter. And then there were the kisses. So much lipstick, and so
pink it was. They weren't even supposed to be touching, let alone kissing him, these
women, especially in shul. But the laws of negiah seemed not to apply to the aged and
brazen well wishers. Mrs. Dushkin, who had to be over 70, even said in a voice so
flirtatious, it made his ears get hot in shame, Since youre a man now, I probably
shouldnt be giving you kisses any more, but I just couldnt help myself.
He saw his friends standing on the side and showing off the pocketfuls of jelly
candy they had collected during the service, when as was customary, Dov was pelted

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with soft candies after his Torah reading was successfully complete. They met his eyes
while he was being talked to by Steve Berko, the unmarried 35-year-old Baal Teshuva,
who was so earnest in his newfound religiosity, throwing around frum terminology he
could not yet fully pronounce. They looked at him and made silly faces, pointing at him
and laughing at his predicament.
In the social hall, Dov kept eying the blue and white frosted sheet cake and deep
brown mass of cholent that dripped with delicious, slow cooked fats in disposable tin
containers that almost made it look even more delicious. There were also cut up
vegetables, white fish salad and fruit, but he only had eyes for cake and cholent. They
were so near, yet so out of reach. Every time he tried making his way to the table, he was
intercepted by another smiling, well-meaning congregant. Thank you, Dov sad to all of
them as his eyes wandered to the quickly disappearing provisions. Dov inched closer to
the table, and along the way engaged in pleasantries with Rabbi Englander, the
synagogue youth director, who was as innocent as an child, himself; Mrs. Barush
machine-gunned him with blessings: May you give much nachas to your parents. May
you find a Bas Torah to start a Bayis Neeman Beyisroel with. May you be a light to Am
Yisroel. May you continue to learn the ways of Hashem. At the fifth blessing, Dov
managed to tilt himself and thus the close-talking Mrs. Barush so that his back was
almost touching the table of food. He reached a hand behind him and felt around for
something soft, wet and delicious. His hand came back with an oversized chocolate chip
cookie. It wasnt what he had been fantasizing about for the past 20 minutes, but it would
do the trick. Unfortunately, Mrs. Barush kept talking about mitzvahs and the silent
holocaust that was intermarriage, and if he would take a bite of the cookie, mid rant, she

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would probably start on a speech about the state of Jewish youth today and how they can
not control their faculties enough to keep from cramming a cookie in their mouths as they
are holding conversations with their elders. Dov dropped the cookie in his pocket, and
slipped stealthily out of the emergency exit doors of the social hall, away to the
anonymity of the dusty back lots.
Surprise, surprise. Uncle Hershey was sitting on a cement brick in the forgotten
patio outside of the kitchen, which was only important for unloading bushels of tomatoes,
carrots, canned beans and industrial-sized vats of mayonnaise. Uncle Hershey jolted
awake from his solitude, as though his body was shaking free from a foreign intruding
body that would bring with it infection or allergy. It registered for Dov that he had not
seen him the entire morning.
Uncle Hershey looked old. Either his forehead was growing or his hairline had
passed the point of no return.
Hi, Dov said, for lack of a better beginning.
Hi, said Hershey, for lack of a better continuation.
Come here often? The classic ice breaker worked across generations, across
genders.
Thankfully, no, said Hershey, and smiled.
That bad, huh?
You tell me. Youre the one whos in the thick of it in the worst way possible.
Its not that bad. Dov had since regained feeling in his cheeks. And there are the
presents.

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I wouldnt use that word too generously. Just you wait. Three of them will give
you the same book. Two of them will get you kiddush cups. Four of them will get you
siddurim. Maybe two of them will give you cash, which is what youre really after, isnt
it? Its all I cared about back then. Anyone who gave me a mezuzah or a challah board,
went straight onto my black list.
There was a silence and the two of them stared straight ahead of them. This time,
there were no cars to fixate on, just the hum of heating vents.
Where are Pam and Cheyenne?
Cheyenne decided not to come, Hershel said with his voice lowered, and his
gaze turned away, indicating that the issue was a source of struggle. And Pam and I are
on a break.
What? For how long? Does my mom know? Dov was surprised by his shock.
Divorce wasnt totally unheard of, but it was strongly discouraged in the community.
Where Dov came from, only the most extreme personalities were driven to such a fate.
There was Mr. Rosenbluth, who was divorced three times, and who, it was rumored,
could be very unkind when provoked. And then there were the Weisses, who divorced
after Mr. Weiss came to the realization that he preferred men, a mind-boggling fact that
Dov was not supposed to know. Of course that wasnt the accepted narrative but it was
the subtext that lived under the polite accusations of Mr. Weiss needs some time to find
himself. Hes confused. Divorce, even in kinder cases, was a word not uttered at full
volume. It was whispered or else it wasnt spoken at all.
Dov never liked Pamela, and Hershels daughter was the worst kind of Jewish
princess, with her frosted hair and Gap sweatshirts. But now Uncle Hershey was alone,

88

which was not a good thing for someone like him. Solitude had always been the vacation
home that Hershey escaped to when human company wore on him. But where would he
escape to when solitude began to wear on him?
Yeah, your mom knows. Truth is, I didnt want to tell her. I knew she wouldnt
leave me alone about it. But Im just so worn out by the whole thing. I didnt have the
energy to start making stories. Hershel popped a cigarette out of his pant pocket and
flipped it into his mouth. Dov looked around him for potential spies. Aw shit, Dovi. I
could get you into trouble, couldnt I? Hershel slipped the lone cigarette into his front
pocket. Its one thing on your porch Friday nights. But if theres one day people will
come looking for you and pay attention to the smell of your clothes, its on your bar
mitzvah." Without a cigarette to orally fixate on, Hershey became reliant on the sort of
questions adults asked children when they didn't know what to say to these small, alien
creatures. Do you know what you want to be when you grow up?
I dont know. An astronaut, president?
You dont have energy for that sort of thing, do you?
Nah, I was just kidding. Anyhow, arent I supposed to be grown up already?
Everyone keeps telling me Youre a man now. Youre a man.
Don't worry. You've got a ways to go." Dov's first reaction was to shoot a
wounded glance at Hershel. Then he looked at Hershel's ill-fitting suit and the cigarette
behind his ear and understood that the man was speaking from experience. "Trust me.
Every date or deadline you set for yourself will prove itself to be premature. Youll say to
yourself yeah, 18. Thats it, Ill leave home, Ill be in control of my own life. Thats
when Ill be an adult. But then you get to 18, realize you know nothing about yourself

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and what you want from life, and then youll set another date for yourself. 23 youll say
to yourself. 23 is when Ill be grown up. You might even have a job by then. You
might have a goddamn college degree. You may even have a wife. But you will still feel
like the same lost little boy you are today. You will question your professional choices.
You will long for a year off from your life and you will tell yourself, 35, by 35 Ill have
it figured out. And then 35 comes around you will look sideways at your home and your
family and think is this it? And you will tell dirty jokes that you hadnt thought were
funny since you were 15, and your children will be embarrassed to be seen with you."
Hershel ran his hand across his scalp of invisible hair and exhaled. Hershel's voice was
quiet, not angry, which led Dov to think he might cry. "The next date I've set for myself
is 65. I have twenty more years. Maybe Ill be grown up by then. But then Ill have five
years tops to be a grown up, before I regress into the decay of old age, when I'll go back
to wearing diapers and being dependent on the kindness of others to care for me and my
incontinent body.
Uh, I was just kidding, Dov said
I know, said Hershel. Me too. He did not smile. You should probably be
getting back. Everyones probably looking for the bar mitzvah boy.
Yeah, said Dov. He was all out of words, and so he stared at Hershel with an
uncertain half smile straining across his face. Dov turned towards the door, which it
turned out was locked from the outside. Dov yanked the lever a few times in disbelief. He
banged on the door, but it did not open. Dov stood on his toes and looked through the
circular window. He knocked again. The sound was swallowed up by involved
conversation. He saw his mother talking to the Greens. She was wearing a brand new

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wig, which, with its flipped out ends, looked too youthful for her 40 years. She was also
giggling like a school girl, glowing with a unrestrained joy she rarely exuded, all thanks
to her dear bar mitzvah boy, who was now locked outside without anyone noticing.
When he turned around, Hershel was gone. He hadnt said goodbye. Had he seen
him struggle to be let back inside? He must have. Dov muttered under his breath and
climbed over the driveway chain and between the torn, soggy skeletons of cardboard
boxes, an accomplishment in his suit. As he turned the corner towards the yard of the
shul, he bet down to rub and pat the dust out of his clothes. He looked up to suspicious
glances from the Applebaums, who were passing on the sidewalk on their way home.
Mazal tov, they said to him quickly, and turned back to the road.
A sea of families passed him on the stairs in long black wool coats. They called
out Mazal tov, Dovi. He thought, thats it, the cholent must have run out.
Even though no one could have been hungry after Kiddush, except for Dov, who
had subsisted off of one measly piece of sheet cake and one pocketed cookie since the
morning, about 100 people had been invited to stay in the social hall for lunch. Like the
Kiddush, the meal was catered by the shul sisterhood. Everything they made tasted
roughly the same, a mixture of salt, black pepper and chicken fat, and bore the same deep
brown color, whether it was the kugel, roast chicken or potatoes. A few cut up carrots and
celery, arranged haphazardly on a paper plate, marred the general color scheme.
Dov sat in between his parents and siblings at a table elevated on a raised
platform, looking down on their guests from a four-inch advantage. They were the royal
family of Shaarei Emunah for the day. After his guests were full of belly and fatigue,
Dovs father stood up in his seat and spoke. He did not need to bang a spoon on a glass,

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did not have to clear his throat, did not have to say hear ye, hear ye. He had a voice that
demanded instant attention. He spoke about pride, about responsibility, about the duties
that come with the privilege of being a part of the chosen people. Dov rarely saw his
father in conversation, in dialogue. He generally spoke in half sentences, in extractions of
thought. But in front of an audience, could he ever speak, full sentences and all. He was
suave, he was gracious of his guests, he was commanding. Dov thought about what
Hershel had said in the back alley. He couldnt imagine his father ever thinking those
thoughts. He couldnt imagine him being anything but solidly adult. A man.
His sister was resting her face on the inside of her wrist. The skin of her cheeks
was pushed back to reveal a corner of toothy boredom. She was swimming in the frilly
purple dress from Newmans that she had successfully guilted his mother into buying for
her, despite its $60 price tag. His brother was sitting with a straight back. His
unwavering gaze was on The Father. Dov scanned the room. Uncle Hershey had not
returned. Uncle Hershey. The Amazing Disappearing Man.

Even though by Jewish standards Dov was now man, but the standards of the outside
world, he couldn't have been more of a boy if he had tried. Dov had not seen a
completely naked female torso since nursing, and even of that experience he had no
recollection. He had seen clues, hints of nudity, in stolen investigations of grown up
womens fashion magazines in the back magazine stacks of the Squirrel Hill library,
which he obscured with a second layer of car magazine. These women found all sorts of
ways to make sure they were only 99.99% naked. There were see-through fabrics,
strategically placed shrubbery or extremities, and clever, teasing camera angles. This was

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something. At least he had some sort of idea how the whole package looked, but the
covered tips and valleys of the body reminded Dov that he was not supposed to be
looking. These women with come hither eyes were sending him mixed messages. On the
one hand they were telling him, come and see, and on the other, their faces, their poses
held a warning, telling him your mother would whip you so hard if she saw you right
now.
But he didnt need such reminders. He only took the quick, measured glances of
the guilty, every one of which accelerated his heartbeat, while he kept his down coat
sandwiched in his armpit to allow for quick escape. The feeling was a mix of hormonal
flow and fear of capture, but probably more so the latter, which Dov construed as a sort
of excitement, a pleasure even. Dov lacked a proper context in which to place the photos
and their suggestions. He had puzzle pieces of information, and sometimes,
misinformation, about where babies come from, mostly from dirty jokes told by Judah, as
heard from his off-the-derech older brother, and from nature shows on public television,
which he sometimes caught on the unusual event that he was left home alone. But the
truth was that he hadn't really thought much about it. His stealthy rendezvous with the
glossy paper were more scientific study than effervescing lust. An educational gap that
wanted to be filled.
Dov knew that the car magazines were a poor cover. He limited his intake. But it
turned out that the problem with libraries was that everything was always so quiet. Even
the carpeting didnt disclose the approach of footsteps. And so, during one covert foray
into a six-month-old Vogue, Mrs. Kleinerman walked in on him while he was
scrutinizing a full spread of a model wearing nothing but sheer black pantyhose (not even

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underwear!), and crossing her hands over her invisible chest. Mrs. Kleinerman dropped
her stack of Good Housekeepings. Dovi! she said. Mrs Kleinerman was not the sort
of friend who would invite the Koslovskys over for a Shabbas meal, but she was
definitely the sort of friend who would gladly share this tidbit of information with his
mother, before phoning the scoop over to other mothers in the community.
The instinctual staring contest that ensued took place in units of seconds that felt
like whole minutes. Dov filed through his brain looking for viable plans of action. But all
he could focus on were the narrowing, deeply-set eyes of Mrs. Kleinerman and the
vacuum of thought created by pure trouble. For lack of a better escape plan, Dov dropped
the magazines, his and Mrs. Kleinerman's eyes shooting to the incriminating photo as it
splayed open on the floor, and bolted for the back door. He ran into the cold without
stopping to put his coat on. The fear, the embarrassment warmed him. He rushed toward
the corner of Forbes and Murray, the ten feet that constituted the closest thing to
metropolis that existed in Squirrel Hill. He passed the corner gas station and ran into the
high ceilings and chlorinated air of the JCC. Dovs eyes were shocked by how clean and
full of sunlight it was in there.
Here he would be safe. This was the bastion of another sort of Jew. One who ran
eight-minute miles and was at least a brown belt in Karate. One who drank wine, for
dinner, not for Kiddush, and went to lecturers on Jewish Humanism in the Diaspora. Dov
rested his moist forehead against the internal bay window that looked fifty feet down onto
the pool. Everyone always looked so perfect from on high, even the drooping older ladies
who populated the pool in the afternoons. Their backs arched and flattened amidst

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measured breaststrokes in a tranquil rhythm that helped Dov's breath return to calm
automation, while his temples and joints pulsated in release.
Dov lugged his body over to a low-seated couch in the central gallery, the apex of
the entire building, which connected entrance to exit. Dov stared at artsy black and white
photographs of the Western Wall, an exotic curiosity for these people. Mrs. Kleinerman
would almost certainly tell his mother, and her story was concrete, an eyewitness
account. What did he have to offer in the way of defense? His mind turned to storytelling:
Some woman told me to hold it, but I didn't know what it was. No, that was no good. His
mother would ask him why he was answering foreign women's requests in the
affirmative. Mothers with puffed up half ponytails, jeans and heels hurried their staring
children past Dov. He looked down at himself in his white button down shirt and navy
blue wool pants. His chunky black leather sneakers. He brought his fingers to his ears and
felt the fringes of hair that fell past his ears and branded his face. He felt the smooth,
white tassels that hung from the tsitsis under his shirt. The mark of Cain; or the mark of
Avraham, Yitzhak and Yaakov.
Dov stared so hard that the room turned into three, and then he heard his name.
"Dovi," called a male voice.
Dov turned around to see Uncle Hershey wearing what looked like white pajamas.
Must be karate. "What are you doing here?" he said. Curly black fuzz poured out of the vneckline.
"Uh, I-uh, come here sometimes."
"Do you?" Hershels voice contained suspicion, sarcastic knowing, genuine
surprise or a combination of the three.

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You do Karate? Dov asked.

Judo, Dovi, Judo. Its completely different. Hershel didnt elaborate, and Dov
was left to politely nod the topic to an end. They were an odd looking duo in their
respective uniforms, and in the silence Dov turns to see three or four light-haired boys his
age in baggy jeans and Run DMC t-shirts whispering to each other. They catch Hershel's
eye. He ruffles Dov's hair. You know Dov. It doesnt matter who you are or where you
go in your life. People will always find a reason to stare.
Dov blushed. I dont care.
"Good, you shouldn't. Do you need a ride home?
Need? No. Want? No. But Dov said yes anyways. They descended the stairs to
the basement and, to the squeaking sneaker sounds and hollow thumps of nearby
racquetball courts, exited to the parking lot. Dov slid into the front seat of Hershels
Toyota, which was so clean, so compact, in comparison to the minivans and rusty boats
on wheels that everyone he knew drove, all of them with three-month-old cracker and
potato chip crumbs nestled in their negative spaces. They departed the parking lot and
moved straight into the swelling pink of summer sunsets. During his frenzied escape from
the library, he hadnt noticed the changing of day to evening. Uh oh. Now he would be
in trouble for inappropriate use of the library and for being late for dinner.
Hershel pushed buttons on his car phone. Hi, Hon. Just leaving the J now. Where
are you?
Dont ask. The Robinson case took a turn for the worse. Im still here doing
damage control, said the voice of a woman who was not Pamela. In the months since
their separation, Hershel had started growing out his hair, despite his male pattern

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baldness, and Dov had noticed at a Friday night dinner some weeks before that there was
a new hole in his left earlobe where presumably an earring lived when Hershel was not in
the Koslovsky house. Dov now saw it shine with pride.
What, so youre not coming for dinner? I was going to make eggplant
parmesan.
Looks that way. Ill be over later, though. What did a woman who was not his
wife have to do at Hersheys house after dinner, Dov thought. The scandalous realization
came to Dov, and he labored to banish it from his mind.
Ok, Hershel said.
See you soon.
I hope. Even the low blip sound that the phone made to signify the end of
conversation sounded disappointed.
Dov and Hershel drove down Forbes without talking. Dov thought of viable
rebuttals against his mothers inevitable speech about how she was disappointed in him,
how she was embarrassed for the family. Although problematic, It wasnt mine. Someone
gave it to me was the best defense he could invent. After turning onto Shady, Hershel said
Hows school going this year?
Its ok. Dov said. Why did grownups always have to talk about school? It was
enough to spend eight hours every day in a stiff desk chair listening to stiff teachers. Who
wanted to talk about it, too?
You, know itll be over before you know it, for better or worse. You hate it now,
but one day youll miss it, at least parts of it.

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People are always saying that. That they miss being a kid. But either being an
adult is really awful or they just forget what its really like."
No, I remember. Very well, actually. I remember getting called Mr.
Marshmallow, Tubby and every other fat kid name in the book. At recess I would get
pulled into a really cruel game of monkey in the middle, where I was the only monkey,
against five or six kids every time. They would toss the ball from one to the other just to
see me and my blubber run and bounce and sweat.
Why did you play along?
Come on, Dovi. You know that when youre a kid, you never realize you have a
choice about these things.
But you still miss it?
Some things, I do. I miss laughing. Several times a day, laughing so much that
you cant breathe and your ribs hurt and your jaws ache. Grown ups dont laugh as much.
And they laugh differently. Dov thought: did my mom laugh like that when she was a
kid? Did my dad?
Dovs throat thickened as they turned the bend to his house. The lights were on in
all the rooms he could see from the street. Everyone was already home (everyone with
the exception of his father, he presumed). This could be a good thing, or a bad thing.
Hershel was talking, but Dov was too busy imagining his own doom to listen. Well, I
guess that conversation will have to wait, Hershel said as they pulled up to the curb.
His mother was sitting on the couch reading a Torah Tidbits circular. Oh, youre
here, she said to him. Sari, your brother is here. Lets eat, she called up the stairway.
Saris voice resonated from above, Iiiiimmm cooooomiiiiing. The table was already set

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for three. There was a smell of melted cheese. Dov took his place at the table. His mother
brought in a tray of formerly frozen mini-pizzas in one hand and a plate of cut up
vegetables in the other. She did not ask him where he had been, why he was late, nor did
she nudge him in any way. She went about the house without taking to him at all. She
knows. She definitely knows.
Sari. Dinner. Now, she shouted up the stairs. At the urgency of the invitation,
Sari swung down the stairs, skipping three stairs and a time. She hoisted herself up with
her hands grabbing the railing on both sides and catapulted herself to the bottom landing
with a thud.
Enough with the acrobatics, Sari. Into the kitchen. Wash your hands for
Hamotzi. Sari curtsied and did as she was told, and Dov and Mrs. Koslovsky followed.
Back at the table they said private, individual blessings on the quasi-bread that pizza
presented. She kneeled in her chair, reached over for a pizza and ripped off a corner
between her teeth with hunger. Dov stared at his plate as he ate with the downturned eyes
of the guilty. His mother said nothing. That couldnt be good. She was saving her energy
up for later. Short spurts of aggression were preferred over long, stark confrontations.
Sari crunched carrot sticks. Why is everyone so quiet?
Were eating, Sari. Not everyone always has to talk while theyre eating.
Yeah, but we usually do.
Whats with the nitpicking, huh?
Sahh-reeeee Saris non-apology ended the first and last conversation of dinner.
After dinner, Dov escaped to his room. He lay in bed and cut his toenails with his
teeth, which was satisfying despite the fermented smell.

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He heard his fathers car park in front of the house and his heavy steps drag each
foot up the walk. The screen door banged shut and after it the wooden door. He opened
his door and perched at the top of the stairs. He heard a grumbling of voices, heated
voices that tried in vain to affect silence. He thought he heard his name a number of
times, and at least once, though he couldn't be sure, the word yeshiva. At some point the
talking stopped and someone turned on the TV. Dov turned around to begin his retreat
and bumped into Sari, who had been standing behind him for who knows how long.
What are you doing here? he asked her in a whisper.
What are YOU doing here? she said loudly.
He pulled her away from the stairs. None of your business.
Are you in trouble?
No.
What did you do?
Nothing
Yeah right. Did you get detention?
No.
Did you get a bad grade?
No.
So it must be something really bad then.
No, Sari, its not anything really bad.
Oh so you did do something?
Go to your room.
Youre not my mom, thank G-dash-D.

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Yeah, like the real one is so much better.

Im going to tell Mom you said that.
Go ahead, Dov said and slammed himself inside the doors of his room.
********
Dov has talked to God three times and what has he accomplished? Spiritual psychobabble
some awkward small talk, and a bundle of confusion and hubris. Oh, and disappointment.
There's that too. Is this a privilege or a curse? Dov chooses the more interesting of the
two possibilities. I have been chosen, he tells himself.
Dov doesnt want Menahem getting the wrong idea about his new habit. He
doesnt want any surprise interventions staged, any whispering that could get back to his
family, or any guilt or nagging about it from Menahem or anyone else. Who else could he
ask, though, to hook him up? There is no lack of resources at school, but it isnt the sort
of thing one runs around asking strangers. You need a measure of street cred to get in
with the dealers. They have to know you're a serious buyer and that you aren't going to
rat them out.
Personal connections certainly help. His friends at school smoke the occasional
bowl while listening enraptured to Dave Matthews, but they are too pristine and well bred
to dirty themselves with the hard stuff, or at least thats what he assumes. His only hope
is Jerome Greenstein, a short skinny kid with long oily hair who always smells like he
just came from a rave. Jerome took a liking to Dov in mechanics class last year. The only
thing Jerome ever talks about is drugs. All kinds of drugs. What they do to you. Things
that happened to him while taking them. Jerome prides himself on telling his stories with
the help of as many SAT words as he can. Dov always nods throughout, half impressed,

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half exhausted. From his shifty, hyper gaze of glassy eyes, Dov is pretty sure that Jerome
does not exaggerate.
He could definitely ask Jerome to hook him up. The problem is that Jerome has
showed up for school with steadily decreasing frequency since the beginning of 10th
grade, and now, a couple of months into 11th, only showed up once every couple weeks.
Dov searches for Jeromes matted mop of hair among the heads that float backpack to
backpack in the lazy, congested traffic that fills the hallways between classes, but a week
goes by and no Jerome. He thinks about asking someone from Jeromes gang where he
could be found, but most of them arent at school, either. On Wednesday he spots Sven
Holgersson, the Swedish exchange student who was pulled into a lifestyle of misbehavior
by Jeromes crowd, who also happen to be some of the friendliest, most welcoming guys
in school, a natural fit for the foreign. Jerome? Who knows where he goes? I do not.
Maybe his parents know, but I do not even think so.
In the days and ultimately weeks that Dov searches vainly for Jerome, he is forced
to communicate with God in the old-fashioned channels. In shul on Yom Kippur, Dov
pounds his chest with his usual minimalism, while reciting the pre-prescribed confession
from the Mahzor. As he read the words, he examines them in their English translation:

"We have transgressed, we have acted perfidiously, we have robbed,

we have slandered. We have acted perversely and wickedly, we have
willfully sinned, we have done violence, we have imputed falsely. We
have given evil counsel, we have lied, we have scoffed, we have
rebelled, we have provoked, we have been disobedient, we have
committed iniquity, we have wantonly transgressed, we have

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oppressed, we have been obstinate. We have committed evil, we have

acted perniciously, we have acted abominably, we have gone astray, we
have led others astray. We have strayed from Your good precepts and
ordinances, and it has not profited us. Indeed, You are just in all that
has come upon us, for You have acted truthfully, and it is we who have
acted wickedly."

Each word sours in his mouth. Fuck this shit, Im not like them, he thinks as he
takes in the mumbling absentminded hum of prayer. He is warmed by pride, and then
with a single thought, emptied out. He can't fill his mouth with the flattery and everyday
requests prescribed by the siddur, and he can't watermelon with satisfaction. Pretending
just isn't good enough anymore. He needs connection, the real thing. Next time he is
going to ask God real questions. Things that matter, like how to make world peace and
the meaning of life. It is a problem that he only meets God when he is out of his right
mind, when it is a challenge just to form a complete sentence. He will try really hard,
though. Like that time when Judah got a hold of some hydroponic shit from Amsterdam
the night before he had a five-page essay due in English. Dov squeezed the muscles that
cradled his eyeballs to make them focus on single words, and somehow he was able to
crank out sentences. It turned out to be the best thing did that year, but it was an upward
battle. So would this, Dov thinks. So would this.
And then, on one fortuitous morning, Dov sees Jerome in the first floor annex,
cutting it up with Cheryl, the gray-haired security guard with a heart of gold. Jerome,
he cries out in an overeager falsetto and hurries down the corridor. Dov bangs fists with

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Jerome and gives a wave to Cheryl. Hey Mister K., whats your hurry? she says. She
does not wait for an answer. What are we going to do with our boy, Jerome? He is
always getting into trouble. I told him that where I come from, trouble follows you in life
like a stray dog if you dont say git and beat it away with a stick. But he dont believe
me. He think he can just go on not thinking about living, but it dont work like that, do it,
Mr. K.?
No I guess it doesnt. Jerome, you hear what the smart lady is saying?
Yeah, yeah. I get it. Man, Im not telling you anything anymore, Cheryl.
Nonsense. I need to be giving you a hard time. But you go on telling me your
stories. Everybody needs a grownup they can tell the truth to. Anyhow, you two have a
class to go to, I reckon. Both boys nod to the affirmative, and leave Cheryl with a
deferential salute.
Hey, Jerome, do you think you can get me some acid? Dov says as soon as they
are out of Cheryls earshot.
Hello and how are you too.
Cmon. I need it.
Need it? What for? You have a sance with your dead grandmother scheduled or
something? Dov rolls his eyes in impatience. Fine, fine. Yeah I can get it. But your
desperation worries me, my friend.
Worries you? Youre taking psychedelics like every friggin day.
Yes, but I know what Im doing. You dont impress me with your petty ganja
smoking. This is an entirely different animal. And she can be a fierce one.
Thank you for the metaphors. Is the poetry included in your asking price?

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Dont be an asshole. Im just watching out for you, bro. The thought that
Jerome Greenstein is looking out for him worries him for a second. He pushes forward
anyways. Eyes on the prize, he thinks to himself. Eyes on the prize.
Ill get you one tab, but just one for now. You got to get weaned off of your
everyday reality like mothers milk. Bring cash next Tuesday. I gotta come in for a math
test that could be the final nail in the coffin of my academic future, and I gotta make sure
those doors stay open for now. Jerome is always in the middle of planning something
big for the future, something that doesn't involve higher education and an office job. He
speaks about these plans in codes. For all Dov knows, Jerome could be training as a
secret agent.
Dov meets the boys at their new semi-permanent meeting place, in a pagoda at the
Nature Center. The hard-backed wooden benches are a sore replacement for velvety
worn-in couches and beanbags, and it leaves them vulnerable to the elements, with rain a
certainty in Pittsburgh and freezing temperatures a given from October to March. But at
least it offers privacy on weekdays, except for the occasional dusk tour, with the Sassy
Singles nature tour groups eying them suspiciously as they pass them on their way to
point out the natural red clay that holds up the wooded hills. They never say anything,
though, those aging hippies, out of respect, out of fear or out of jealousy. The boys are
already sitting there, with the familiar sweaty smell of weed floating in the atmosphere.
Look who decided to join us, Judah says. It was his first time at the meeting
place all week.
If I needed guilt trips, I would have stayed home.

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Oh, so thats where youve been? Judah is the voice of the group. Shlomo and
Menahem are already too stoned to get whiny. Judah is the only one never to mellow into
silence. Dov searches for Shlomos eyes. Has he been talking about his solitary tripping?
But Shlomos gaze does not move from the vanishing point on the horizon.
This is the part of being part of a committed buddy-ship that does not suit him.
The wounded Jewish grandmother act. The feeling that he is stuck for life, that he
couldnt get out of it even if he wanted to. For better or worse, their union is like Hotel
California; a biosphere of its own, with all of the parts functioning and bouncing off each
other in natural synergy. Their foursome brought new people in and had new people
come back out, but the four of them always remain in the equation, a solid nucleus that
resisted division ever since second grade. They are so used to talking in half sentences, in
codes that ordinary conversation with outsiders always feels like a huge bother.
Judah softens and hands Dov a clear glass pipe. Here, have some of my peace
pipe.
The first drag of smoke that Dov pulls into his throat only makes it half way to his
stomach when it starts to rain. Shit. It aint easy being chosen, he thinks. The pagoda
protects them from the downpour, but water still leaks lazily through the cracks in the
wooden roof, falling in fat collective drops in unpredictable locations. They wait for a lull
and then bolt it to the Manor. They know that The Devils Advocate is playing and that
it stars Al Pacino, and Al Pacino kicks ass. What Dov would remember of the movie,
though, is skin, and lots of it. He has no idea what happens in it. All he knows is that in
between numerous plot twists, lots of sex was being had. At the first of many sex scenes,
their throwing of popcorn and running commentary stopped. Dov felt a sudden need to

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inhale deep into his stomach, to swallow a pool of saliva gathering under his tongue, but
his suppressed his biological functions for fear that he would give away that he was
stirred by the rubbing and touching on screen. Next to him, Menahem repositioned his
body in his seat. From the corner of his eye, Dov saw Judah and Shlomo on the other side
of him. They did not move. Their eyes did not even blink. It didnt look as though they
were even breathing.
In all of Dov, Shlomo, Judah and Menahem's gatherings, girls are almost never a
topic discussed. Dov felt his body change already at thirteen, with the emergence of a
vague series of wet dreams that involved neither man nor woman. Just Dov in various
supernatural positions, anything from flying to dematerializing and rematerializing to
turning invisible. And then he woke up wet, warm and uncomfortable. He had since
started thinking of girls, or rather Girl, an archetype that uncomfortably resembled the
women in his family, and finally graduated to fantasies involving real, existing girls who
look nothing like the women in his family (well, most of the time). The other boys were
changing too. That became obvious over the years. Menahem started shaving at thirteen,
a year after he started to be ridiculed for his fuzzy upper lip. And since then, the others
had followed suit. Dov was sure the others thought about girls, but they never discussed it
together. It was as though their bodies were maturing but were leaving their brains behind
in childhood. When anyone brought up anything girl related, it was always forced,
misplaced in conversation and petered out as awkwardly as it had entered, a foreign body
in this harmonious immune system.
That was awesome, says Shlomo.

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Freedom, baby... is never having to say you're sorry. Menahem mimics Pacino,
and the rest of them chuckle, and that is the end of it. They bury their shame and
titillation in a mass grave of silence. As they pass corner after corner, the group breaks
into pieces. First Menahem turns home at Beacon. Then Shlomo at Hobart. Dov and
Judah walk up Phillips together and separate at Shady. See ya, says Judah. See ya,
says Dov.
********
On the Shabbasses following his bar mitzvah, Dov wore the black hat with which
he had been bestowed for his bar mitzvah with pride. At first it was just hot and tight, and
he itched to have it off him like a dog scratching desperately at a surgical cone around its
neck. But he soon got used to the hats foreignness, and it made him feel taller,
challenged him to walk straighter. It also gave him something on the younger kids in his
class who were still pre-bar mitzvah. That being said, he still wasn't looking forward to
the inevitable move to an out-of-town yeshiva, another fate that followed his entering
manhood. His parents had already picked a yeshiva for him, Skokie, which was near
enough to Chicago to be able to say it was near Chicago, but far enough that it was a
schlep to get there. He hadn't even seen the application form, nor had he written or even
seen the essay. From the entrance to his parents bedroom, he watched his mother type up
the letter, which she had already handwritten, agonizing with two index fingers to find
each desired key, but without losing an ounce of determination or even pleasure. His
father was responsible for editing, red markering his comments all over the page, which
she then retyped with gusto.

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Then there was the interview, which took place on the phone, since the yeshiva
reps North East tour of duty included New York, Boston, Baltimore, about thirty towns
in New Jersey, but not Pittsburgh. A Rabbi Feinstein called and asked to speak to his
father. A time was set. On Wednesday, February 18, Mrs. Koslovsky opened Dovs door.
What are you doing? Youre interview is in fifteen minutes.
I know, Mom. Its not like I have to go anywhere.
But look at what youre wearing. And you should be getting ready; not wasting
your time with those blood and guts so-called books.
Dov looked at his sweat pants, Hebrew-lettered Pittsburgh t-shirt and chubby bare
feet. The raised and shiny R.L. Stein cover. What? Its not like the guys going to see
me.
First of all Rabbi Feinstein is not 'some guy'. Don't be disrespectful. Second of
all, its not just about how other people see you, its about how you see yourself, Dovy.
You are how you dress.
Dov grabbed a white uniform shirt from off the floor, sniffed it and buttoned it
over his t-shirt. He also put on socks.
Dov sat across from his mother at the kitchen table. She sat with her fingers
intertwined in front of her. He rested his head in a nest of arms. Neither of them spoke.
At 7:59 pm the phone rang on the other side of the kitchen. Dov's head shot up. His
mother released her hands. "Well?" his mother said to him. Ring number two.
"Shouldn't you talk to him first?"
"He's not calling for me." Ring number three. "Hurry, you're going to miss it. And
then we're done for." She ran out of her chair while Dov struggled to push himself out of

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the space provided for him between the table and the wall, the friction of his fleshy belly
against the table's wood slows him down. In the middle of the fourth ring, his mother
picked up the receiver and yanked the tangled cord to her son's reach. Dov looked at the
phone and brought it to his ear. "H-hello."
The conversation must have gone well, because three weeks later, Dov received a
letter blessing him on his near future as a Talmud Chacham at Skokie Yeshiva. He
couldn't tell at the time. The rabbi had mostly asked him questions that no one had ever
asked him before. "What does a regular day look like for Dov Koslovsky? Start from the
beginning, right when you wake up."
"Uh, I uh, get out of bed, eat breakfast-"
"Wait a second. You go straight from bed to breakfast? Are you sure there isn't
anything else you might have missed?" What does he want? He didn't seriously want Dov
to describe the way he puts on his slippers and pees before heading down the stairs, did
he? After a second the proverbial light bulb appeared above Dov's head. Of course, he
thought. "I say Modeh Ani?"
"Very good, Dov. You shouldn't leave things like that out. Those are the things
we care about. That you're a boy who makes Torah part of his life, both in and out of
school."
Dov was less than pleased at the possibility of being sent away. Going out of town
was only one degree less awful than moving. It still involved the same starting over, the
same making new friends, the same learning of new terrain. And if he had a bad day,
what home would he escape to? There would be no more room of his own, a space that
over years of lazy decorating and cluttering, had grown his personal mark upon its walls,

110

bedspreads and furniture. He remembered the time he went months without clearing off
his bed, cozying up at night next to yesterday's clothes and dog-eared books, melting
quickly and sweetly into sleep with the his own aging scents in his nostrils. Now he
would share a room, one of a hundred rooms containing a Spartan uniform arrangement
of thin mattresses and desks. Each room bare and ready for the constant changing of the
guards, the departing and arrival of the faceless and temporary. And Dov would have a
roommate. Maybe even two. Maybe even three. All Dov could think about was the trip he
took with his class last year, the one meant to turn them on to yeshiva living. The one
with the anemic boys with no concept of pop culture. What would he talk about with
them? Do they even talk? Maybe they just quote from the Talmud. The Torah, both in
written and oral traditions, was a near-infinite text. Surely there was a quote to be found
for every occasion.
The summer before his departure was filled with shopping trips. At the clearance
rack at Marshall's, his mother hand-picked button-down shirts in ascending sizes. Dov
held up an 18 his mother had plucked for him. "This one's too big for me."
"It won't be in six months," she answered. "And who will take you shopping over
there, huh?" In her hands she also carried a stack of cotton skirts with elastic waists,
which she carried to the cashier without trying them on first. As she laid them down at
the counter, she said. "You know what I say, Dovy? If it has elastic, buy it." She smiled
with satisfaction at her practical bargain shopping.
That summer felt like the end of a movie. He sat in the passenger seat of his
mother's dented Chevy Cavalier, watching the cityscapes like it was the last time he
would get to, separating himself from the view, separating the view from the parts of his

111

life that had occurred there, watching it as an independent living thing, and then
committing it to memory. A thing of the past. He could not say that he was not excited, at
least toward the end. There was something thrilling about the unknown, with excitement
and fear affecting the same internal organs, a feeling separated by nothing but
interpretation. Abraham had felt it when he left for the land of C'naan. Yona had felt it
when slipping into the thirsty jaws of the whale.
That summer many things happened, as they do in the no man's land between
eras. Pittsburgh broke a 70-year record in temperatures. Dov found a turquoise robin's
egg at the base of a tree in a neighboring yard. His brother caught him singing TLC's
"Waterfalls" in earnest to the cavernous acoustics of the bathroom. He witnessed Judah
smoke his first cigarette, which he politely declined a drag of, in a far corner of Davis
park. That summer, it felt like things were changing, like time was moving faster than
Dov was ready to.
And then, on August 27, he made the trip in his father's Honda Accord, the more
reputable of the two family cars, with his father, brother and three duffle bags that
contained the objects that would furnish his life for the foreseeable future. Despite her
pleadings, it was decided that Sari would not come, since they didn't want to make a bad
impression by bringing a girl approaching bat mitzvah age to that all-male environment.
Until the last minute, Dov had not known who would be taking him. There had been an
argument, the muffled shouts of which could be heard beyond the door of his parents'
bedroom, the place they went to reproduce and fight, thinking that the other inhabitants of
the house would be unable to hear either. At least in the latter case, they were wrong. Dov
heard the booming of their voices from his room. "You know that I can't leave the

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cleaners on a work day, Chaya." It was always strange to hear either his father's or his
mother's names uttered in such personal frankness.
"I know this comes as a surprise to you, but the cleaners will not fall apart without
you for one day. Shimmy has been doing that job for five years."
"You have no idea what you're talking about. That machinery is very complicated.
Something goes wrong, and it's all of our livelihoods on the line." Dov did not often get
to hear his father raise his voice. He generally adopted the "speak softly and carry a big
stick" approach to human relations. His father's yelling comforted Dov in a strange way.
His father's silences bore a great many secrets and opportunities for ambush. His open
rage was at least comprehensible.
"This is important, Aron. You are not just a breadwinner. You are a father." A
door opened and slammed shut. Feet stomped down the stairs. No more sounds came out
of the room after that.
Mr. Koslovsky declared, not in so many words, that if he would have to go, so
would Ephraim. At least he would have someone to show off at orientation. Ephraim,
who had his own yeshiva to go back to, would then make the trip by Greyhound to
Toronto. Ephraim and Mr. Koslovsky packed their hat boxes into the back seat and took
their spots in the front seats. The black hats usually only made it to their heads on
Shabbas, but there was an impression to be made here, and making an impression was
more important when you were from Pittsburgh. The New Yorkers didn't have to change
a thing about their appearance, body language or speech, with yeshivas around the
country emulating their natural habitat.

113

On the porch, in plain view, his mother nearly suffocated him in her embrace. The
last time she had hugged him so tightly, he had been at least a head shorter, his head
jamming against his mother's protruding bosom. Now he stood just an inch below her.
"The next time I see you, you're going to be taller than me, Dovy."
"Ma, it's not like I'm going to see you ever. Sukkos break is in like a month." He
downplayed it, but the longest Dov had ever been away from his parents was two days,
and even that only once.
"To me, it will feel like an eternity," she sighed and kissed his forehead. "Here,"
she said, handing him a cooler full of provisions to keep their bellies full on the road. He
nearly dropped it from the surprise of its weight. He was always astounded by the hidden
strength in his mother's fleshy arms. She opened the screen door and called up the stairs
"Saaaa-riiiii. Come say goodbye to your brother." The engine started up, a signal of
impatience, but nothing was heard from inside the house. His mother huffed into the
house and climbed the stairs, probably skipping a step at a time, a habit she had retained
since her youth. Sari opened the door and let the screen close on her mother, who was
quick enough to catch it with her palm. "Bye," she said and stared at the ground. Dov
rolls his eyes. "I'll miss you too."
As Dov lugged the cooler down the walk, he thought, my life until now is turning
into a memory. He slips into the cocoon carved out between pieces of luggage in the back
seat. On the porch his mother stands and waves from the porch. Sari's eyes are no longer
on the pavement; they are staring right at Dov, but they are not smiling. The car jiggles
into first gear and pulls into the street. Dov watches his mother's form become smaller
and smaller, until her waving hand becomes a speck of sand.

114

Conclusion
The portion of the novel provided in the thesis represent approximately one-half of the
total story, which is expected to comprise about 250 pages at completion. The back story
and the present story will continue to run side by side until the back story arrives at the
moment that at which the present story began. At that point, the present story will be at a
breaking point, the identity of which I have not yet devised. What I have already plotted
for the continuation is Dov's plan of action and the subsequent community reaction. In
the present story, Dov has just come to the conclusion that he is chosen, and that perhaps
it is his duty to bring God's message to the people. He will secure more doses of LSD
from Jerome Greenstein and he will begin to graffiti the messages he receives in his
hallucinations on the synagogue walls and on his childhood school. His scribbles are
critical of the community and their approach, and are interpreted by some community
leaders as an anti-Semitic attack performed by local neo-Nazis. It creates a stir, but leads
to no introspection regarding the message and its implications for the community.
Although Dov's desire for a spiritual connection is real, it stems from a larger
desire to be special, to feel something other than the numb teenage angst that usually
holds the controlling stake in his emotional spectrum. In the coming episodes of the
present story, Dov finds transcendence of a different kind in the form of a girl from the
community, one with more experience in male-female relationships than he. Dov feels
like he has finally found someone who understands him, and not in the automatic,
unappreciative manner of his friends. After a period of keeping his "prophetic" powers
from her, for fear that she will not believe him or worse, will ridicule him, decides to
share with her his communion with God. They take LSD together and wait for God at the

115

usual meeting place, but God does not come (God, as they say, is a jealous deity). Dov
takes LSD again the following week, but God does not return. I have yet to divine Dov's
reaction to his loss of prophecy, but this point will likely be near the end.

116

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