Here I Am by Jonathan Safran Foer(123)
Miriam Apfel, Shaindel Potash, Beryl Dressler…
He had some vague awareness of the prohibition against taking one’s own life, and the price—beyond death—for having done so. The punishment wasn’t for the criminal, but the victims: those left behind and now forced to bury their dead in the other-earth. He remembered it like he remembered the prohibition against tattoos—something about desecrating the body—which would also land you in the other-earth. And—less spiritual, but every bit as religious—the prohibition against drinking Pepsi, because Pepsi chose to market to Arab countries and not Israel. And the prohibition against touching a shiksa in any of the ways one was dying to, because it was a shanda. And the prohibition against resisting when elders touched any part of your body they wanted, in any way they wanted, because they were dying, perpetually dying, and it was a mitzvah.
Standing in that unwalled ghetto, he thought about eruvs—a wonderfully Jewish loophole that Julia had shared, before he even knew the prohibition it was circumventing. She’d learned about them not in the context of a Jewish education, but in architecture school: an example of a “magical structure.”
Jews can’t “carry” on Shabbat: no keys, no money, no tissues or medicine, no strollers or canes, not even children who can’t yet walk. The prohibition against carrying is technically against carrying from private to public domains. But what if large areas were made to be private? What if an entire neighborhood were a private domain? A city? An eruv is a string or wire that encloses an area, making it private, and thus permitting carrying. Jerusalem is enclosed by an eruv. Virtually all of Manhattan is enclosed by an eruv. There is an eruv in nearly every Jewish community in the world.
“In D.C.?”
“Of course.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“You’ve never looked for it.”
She took him to the intersection of Reno and Davenport, where the eruv turned a corner and was most easy to see. There it was, like dental floss. They followed it down Davenport to Linnean, and Brandywine, and Broad Branch. They walked beneath the string as it ran from street sign to lamppost to power pole to telephone pole.
As he stood among the suicides, his pockets were full: a paper clip that Sam had somehow bent into an airplane, a crumpled twenty, Max’s yarmulke from the funeral (apparently acquired at the wedding of two people Jacob had never heard of), the dry-cleaning ticket for the pants he was wearing, a pebble Benjy had taken from a grave and asked Jacob to hold, more keys than there were locks in his life. The older he got, the more he carried, the stronger it should have made him.
Isaac was buried in a pocketless shroud, six hundred yards from his wife of two hundred thousand hours.
Seymour Kaiser: loving brother, loving son; head in the oven. Shoshanna Ostrov: loving wife; wrists slit in the bath. Elsa Glaser: loving mother and grandmother; hanging from the ceiling fan. Sura Needleman: loving wife, mother, and sister; walked into a river, pockets full of stones. Hymie Rattner: loving son; wrists slit over the bathroom sink. Simcha Tisch: loving father, loving brother; steak knife in the gut. Dinah Perlman: loving grandmother, mother, and sister; leaped from the top of the stairs. Ruchel Neustadt: loving wife and mother; letter opener in the neck. Izzie Reinhardt: loving father, husband, and brother; jumped from Memorial Bridge. Ruben Fischman: loving husband; drove his car into a tree at one hundred miles per hour. Hindel Schulz: loving mother; serrated bread knife across the wrist. Isaac Bloch: loving brother, husband, father, grandfather, and great-grandfather; hanging by a belt in his kitchen.
Jacob wanted to pull the thread from his black suit, tie it around the tree in the corner, and walk the perimeter of the suicide ghetto, enclosing it as he unraveled. And then, when the public had been made private, he would carry away the shame. But to where?
Every landmass is surrounded by water. Was every coast an eruv?
Was the equator an eruv around the earth?
Did Pluto’s orbit enclose the solar system?
And the wedding ring still on his finger?
REINCARNATION
> So what’s new?
> You’re the one in the middle of a crisis.
> That isn’t new.
> Everything’s the same here, except my great-grandfather is dead.
> Your family is OK?
> Yeah. I think my dad is pretty upset, but it’s hard to tell, because he always seems a bit upset.
> Right.
> And it’s not like it was his dad, anyway. Just his grandfather. Which is still sad, but less sad. Far less sad.
> Right.
> I really do like it when people repeat bits of language. Why is that?
> I don’t know.
> Your dad and brother seem to be having a good time. They’re worried about you, obviously. They talk about you constantly. But if they can’t be there, it’s good that they’re here.
> Have they found anything?
> What do you mean?
> A house.
> For what?
> To buy.
> Why would they buy a house here?
> My father hasn’t mentioned it?
> Mentioned what?
> Maybe to your dad?
> You guys are moving?
> He’s been talking about it for a few years, but when it was time for me to join the army, he started looking. Just on websites, and maybe with the help of some brokers over there. I thought it was just talk, but when I was deployed to the West Bank, he started searching more seriously. I think he found a few places that seemed promising, and that’s why he’s over there now. To see them in person.