Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(121)

“But now the two kinds of Jews have equal mortal standing. Isaac might not be with his brothers in an afterlife, but he is with his brothers in death. So what can we now say about him, and how should we mourn him? It was not because they lacked strength that his brothers died, but it was because of his strength that Isaac lived and died. Kein briere iz oich a breire. Not to have a choice is also a choice. How will we tell the story of he who never had no choice? At stake is our notion of righteousness, of a life worth saving.

“What was Moses crying about? Was he crying for himself? Out of hunger or fear? Was he crying for his people? Their bondage, their suffering? Or were they tears of gratitude? Perhaps Pharaoh’s daughter didn’t hear him crying because he wasn’t crying until she opened the wicker basket.

“How should we mourn Isaac Bloch? With tears—what kind of tears? With silence—what silence? Or with what kind of song? Our answer will not save him, but it might save us.”

With all three, of course. Jacob could see the rabbi’s moves from five thousand years away. With all three, because of the tragedy, because of our reverence, because of our gratitude. Because of everything that was necessary to bring us to this moment, because of the lies that lie ahead, because of the moments of joy so extreme they have no relation to happiness. With tears, with silence, with song, because he survived so we could sin, because our religion is as gorgeous, and opaque, and brittle, as the stained glass of Kol Nidre, because Ecclesiastes was wrong: there isn’t time for every purpose.

What do you want? Anything. Tell me. I want you to have the thing that you want.

Jacob cried.

He wailed.





THE NAMES WERE MAGNIFICENT


Jacob carried the casket with his cousins. It was so much lighter than he’d imagined it would be. How could someone with such a heavy life weigh so little? And the job was surprisingly awkward: they nearly fell over a few times, and Irv was only a half teeter from tumbling into the grave with his father.

“This is the worst cemetery ever,” Max said to no one in particular, but loud enough for everyone to hear.

Finally, they were able to position the simple pine coffin on the broad strips of fabric that eased it into the grave.

And there it was: the fact of it. Irv bore the responsibility—the privilege of the mitzvah—of shoveling the first dirt onto his father’s coffin. He took a heaping mound, turned his body to the hole, and tipped the shovel, letting it fall. It was louder than it should have been, and more violent, as if every particle of soil hit the wood at once, and as if it had been dropped from a far greater height. Jacob winced. Julia and the boys winced. Everyone winced. Some were thinking of the body in the coffin. Some were thinking of Irv.

HOW TO PLAY EARLY MEMORIES

My earliest memories are hidden around my grandfather’s final house like afikomens: dish-soap bubble baths; knee-football games in the basement with the grandchildren of survivors—they always ended in injury; the seemingly moving eyes of Golda Meir’s portrait; instant-coffee crystals; pearls of grease on the surface of every liquid; games of Uno at his kitchen table, just us two humans, just yesterday’s bagel, last week’s Jewish Week, and juice from concentrate from whenever in history was the last significant sale. I always beat him. Sometimes we’d play one hundred games a night, sometimes both nights of the weekend, sometimes three weekends a month. He always lost.

What I think of as my earliest memory couldn’t possibly be my earliest memory—it’s too far into my life. I am confusing foundational with earliest, in the same way that, as Julia used to point out, the first floor of a house is usually the second, and sometimes the third.

This is my earliest memory: I was raking the leaves in front of the house when I saw something against the side door. Ants were beginning to envelop a dead squirrel. For how long had it been there? Had it eaten poison? What poison? Had a neighborhood dog killed it and then, full of a dog’s remorse, delivered his shame? Or perhaps his pride? Or had the squirrel died trying to get in?

I ran inside and told my mother. Her glasses were steamed over; she was stirring a pot she couldn’t see. Without looking up she said, “Go tell Dad to take care of it.”

Through the open door—on the safe side of the threshold—I watched my father cover his hand with the clear plastic bag that the morning’s Post had come in, pick up the squirrel, and then pull his hand out, turning the bag inside out with the squirrel in it. While my father washed his hands in the bathroom sink, I stood at his side and asked him question after question. I was always being taught lessons, and so came to assume that everything conveyed some necessary piece of information, some moral.

Was it cold? When do you think it died? How do you think it died? Didn’t it bother you?

“Bother me?” my father asked.

“Gross you out.”

“Of course.”

“But you just went out there and did it like it was nothing.”

He nodded.

I followed his wedding ring through the soap.

“Did you think it was disgusting?”

“I did.”

“It was so gross.”

“Yes.”

“I couldn’t have done it.”

He laughed a father’s laugh and said, “One day you’ll do it.”

“What if I can’t?”