All Who Go Do Not Return (44 page)

And for the loss of my faith, for being unable to fully embrace the mythic beauty of those words, for my detachment from all those things that I once held dear, I let the stream of tears fall over the open pages of my prayer book.

Akiva and I sit on a couple of large rocks near a shallow stream, the water cascading over tangles of branches and fallen tree trunks. Akiva has a sandwich that Gitty packed for him and a water bottle. I have a hot dog and a container of sautéed chicken liver from Mechel’s Takeout in Monsey.

Hershy was supposed to come, too, but this time he isn’t with us.

Six times a year, I come up from Brooklyn to see the boys. Earlier this morning, I took the train from Penn Station to Suffern for my single summertime visit. A friend picked me up and loaned me his car for the afternoon, and before heading to New Square, I stopped at a photo store in Monsey to print photos we’d taken on our previous outing, during the intermediate days of Passover, at Bear Mountain State Park. Outside the store, while I smoked a cigarette and waited for the photos to be printed, Shragi appeared, out of nowhere.

“Amazing to meet you here,” he said. “I’d been meaning to call you.” He’d meant to but didn’t, for unspecified reasons. “I wanted to tell you, just so you’d know, that Hershy doesn’t want to come today. I thought you might want to make other plans, but, well, you’re here already, so I guess it doesn’t matter.”

Doesn’t
matter?

“Why doesn’t he want to come?” I asked, the message like a blunt knife scraping against my skin, causing a minor bruise, annoying but bearable. It is what I’ve come to expect.

“I’m not sure,” he said, avoiding eye contact. “Does it matter?”

I felt a rising sense of fury.
Does it matter?
It was eight weeks since I’d last seen the boys. Several years since I’d seen Tziri and Freidy—and even Chaya Suri stopped coming soon after I moved to Brooklyn, after she turned thirteen. I wonder often what their lives are like, whether their interests have changed, whether they look different, but I can barely imagine it. My calls and letters continue to go unanswered. The cell phones I bought them must never have been charged, always going straight to voice mail, my messages unreturned. In the beginning, Akiva would call on occasion, but now, even he no longer does. I can sense, with each visit, the growing distance between us. Soon, I am all too aware, the boys, too, will turn thirteen.

I suggested a hike in the woods, to see the waterfalls a mile up the Pine Meadow Trail, off Seven Lakes Drive. Walking along the trail, Akiva eagerly pointed out the blazes of red circles on white rectangles that marked our way, jumping over knobby tree roots, which, because of the erosion of soil, rise inches above the ground. It is one of the most popular trails in the park.

Now, as we eat, I explain the history of the trails, the early hikers who mapped out the hundreds of miles of crisscrossing paths. I answer Akiva’s questions about who puts the blazes on the trees, builds bridges over streams, cuts away fallen tree trunks that block the trails. I make him sit still and listen to the sounds of the forest, the chirping of birds, branches swaying in the wind, the rustling
shrrrip shrrrip
of a deer taking off at the sight of us.

He doesn’t ask about my life now, and I don’t offer much, although I want to. Whenever I do mention something—my apartment in Brooklyn, my new friends, the articles that I write—he goes silent. I know that inside him must be a mountain of turmoil; yet I feel powerless to do anything about it. All I can do is show up and pay attention.

We trek back the mile or so to the parking lot, where a soda vending machine stands. “I want to buy a soda,” I say, and he regards the machine with hungry curiosity.

“Can I put the money in?” he asks.

I hand him a dollar bill, but it doesn’t take.

“It’s spitting it out.” He laughs.

I give him another bill, a crisp one. This one takes, and he pushes my hand away when I reach in to make my selection.

“Let me press it,” he pleads. A boy for whom a soda vending machine is a novelty.

As we drive home on the Palisades Parkway, he speaks eagerly about school trips and neighborhood news. He notes the speed on the speedometer, 70 mph, and then the 55 mph sign.
“Farchap yeneh car,”
he says, and points to a blue Honda Civic ahead of us. He grins as I switch lanes and press down on the gas, and I wonder if I’m setting a bad example.

The light after the exit ramp is red, and I take the Fotomat envelope lying near the gearshift. “I want to look at these again,” I say, and he leans over, stretching his seatbelt to look at them with me. We laugh at the silly poses he and Hershy had struck for the camera, until the light turns green, and I shove the photos into my lap.

“Are you going to look at the rest at the next light?” he asks. The next light is the last before we turn into New Square.

“If it’s red,” I say.

He points to an empty parking lot at the side of Route 45. “Or maybe you can turn in there.” He says it as though he’s trying to be helpful, but his concern is obvious. He doesn’t want me lingering in front of the house. I tell him I’ll pull over near the bus garage, right after the turn, and I sense his relief as he nods.

“Where should I drop you off? At the Brauns’ or at home?” The Brauns are cousins who live a block away. Sometimes he asks to be dropped off there, for reasons he won’t elaborate on.

“Doesn’t matter. Wherever’s easiest.” After a moment, he says, “Near home, you know, at the corner is fine.” As if he doesn’t want to trouble me to go all the way.

I sense his unease as we approach, his eyes shifty and alert. A group of women stand at the corner, mothers in turbans and housedresses with baby carriages and young children at their sides, and I see his glance fall on them, anxiety all over his face.

“Better at the house,” he says, and I hear a nervous tremor in his voice.

At the house, I lean in to hug him, kiss him on his yarmulke, but he’s already grabbed his lunch bag and is fumbling for the car-door latch.

“Here, take the photos,” I say, and he grabs the envelope quickly.

“Bye,” he says without turning, his eyes scanning warily for passersby. He closes the car door and steps onto the curb, then turns back briefly, unsmiling. I wave to him, then watch him run up the pathway. The door to the apartment slams shut behind him.

I pull away, stepping lightly on the gas. Just then, I notice a familiar blur passing behind a parked car. It is Hershy on his bike, zooming down Reagan Road with all the energy of an eight-year-old, oblivious to my presence. I think to honk, but before I have the chance, he’s already zoomed past. I can see him in the rearview mirror, still going full-speed down the road.

I drive ahead a short distance and make a U-turn. Then, coming back down Reagan Road, I look for the familiar round shape of his head, his
payess
trailing behind, his arms in that outward swagger I’d seen so many times before. He is not outside the house, nor do I see his bike at the door. At the corner, a group of boys of various ages rest on their bikes and huddle in conversation. I scan their faces for Hershy, but he isn’t among them. He was here a moment ago, and now he is gone.

Each of us has a story to tell. Rarely, however, are our stories ours alone; typically, we share them with family, friends, colleagues, and so on. And yet, our subjective experiences remain unique. This is true of everyday events, but even truer of contentious moments. When we feel aggrieved, we stew in the passions of our own righteousness, our very experiences often leading us to see only what we want to see. In shaping our narratives, we select facts to our advantage, even if only unconsciously.

Throughout the writing of this book, these thoughts were never far from my mind, hovering like a gray cloud in the middle distance, reminding me that my truth was not the only truth. I am all too aware that some people in this book, either individuals or groups, might offer details and perspectives that I have surely missed. I think particularly of my ex-wife, with whom I shared nearly fifteen years of marriage and who doubtless has a compelling story of her own to tell, perhaps even an altogether different story of our marriage.

Additionally, there are people described in this book who behaved in ways that are, to my mind, less than admirable. And yet, laying blame and casting stones is an ugly business, especially when dealing with people who were once dear to you. However, this story could not be told without a measure of castigation, overt or implied. I have taken pains to describe characters in this book fairly even when I didn’t feel entirely inclined to do so. I offer this not to absolve myself of the responsibility to offer an accurate telling of events, or to excuse any errors of fact that have slipped in, but to acknowledge the very real challenges in trying to present a fair and honest portrayal of deeply painful events.

Memoir, of course, is not history, nor is it, strictly speaking autobiography. More than simply a collection of facts, it is a rendering of personal history along with an attempt to find meaning within that history, to weave together narrative threads that might, both to the writer and reader, illuminate aspects of the narrator’s life, and by so doing, impart something of value to the reader. That was my sole objective.

This book describes a crisis of faith that unfolded over a number of years, a largely internal process of inquiry and examination. I relate here mostly the external, more demonstrably dramatic aspects of that process, and the observable effects upon me and those close to me. My intellectual and philosophical journeys, however, while internally dramatic, do not lend themselves to narrative form in the same way. By necessity, therefore, they have been offered only in collapsed form within the book’s main narrative. Furthermore, this book is not intended as an argument against Orthodox Jewish belief and practice broadly, and should in no way be seen as such.

I am aware, however, that some readers might want to further explore some of the faith-related topics presented in this book. I offer the list below as a modest attempt at sharing some of the works that have contributed meaningfully to my own intellectual journey, in the hope that others might find them useful.

This list includes a variety of works, both in favor of and against aspects of religious faith, from popular works to recent classics. Most of them are accessible and illuminating even to non-scholars. They are presented here in the approximate order in which I encountered them, and correspond loosely to the trajectory of my own journey.

The Nineteen Letters of Ben Uziel: Being a Special Presentation of the Principles of Judaism
, Rabbi Samson Raphael Hirsch

Permission to Believe: Four Rational Approaches to God’s Existence
, Lawrence Kelemen

Permission to Receive: Four Rational Approaches to the Torah’s Divine Origin
, Lawrence Kelemen

Genesis and the Big Bang: The Discovery of Harmony between Modern Science and the Bible
, Gerald Schroeder

The View from Nebo: How Archaeology Is Rewriting the Bible and Reshaping the Middle East
, Amy Dockser Marcus

God against the Gods: The History of the War between Monotheism and Polytheism
, Jonathan Kirsch

The Religion of Israel: From Its Beginnings to the Babylonian Exile
, Yehezkel Kaufmann

How to Read the Bible: A Guide to Scripture, Then and Now
, James Kugel

Who Wrote the Bible?
, Richard Elliott Friedman

The Bible Unearthed: Archaeology’s New Vision of Ancient Israel and the Origin of Its Sacred Texts
, Israel Finkelstein and Neil Asher Silverman

What Did the Biblical Writers Know and When Did They Know It? What Archaeology Can Tell Us about the Reality of Ancient Israel
, William G. Dever

The Blind Watchmaker: Why the Evidence of Evolution Reveals a Universe without Design
, Richard Dawkins

Phin Reiss has been a better pal than any man deserves to have—or, at any rate, has paid for more glasses of Johnnie Walker Black than any man deserves to drink. I remain forever grateful for his friendship, his wisdom, and his generosity.

From Netanya to Cape Town to Williamsburg, Jill Schulman has heard it all many times, and still continues to listen. Her insight, humor, and compassion have been invaluable to me. Much love.

I am indebted to Ricki Breuer, Zalmen Labin, Y. M. Schwartz, and Itchie Lichtenstein, without whom this book would not have been possible. Also, those who can be known only by their
noms de guerre
: “Shtreimel,” fellow blogger, friend, inspiration. “Mendy Chossid,”
baal chesed
extraordinaire. “Hoezentragerin,” for giving me the strength when I felt depleted. Thank you, Avi Burstein, Emily Cercone, Meghan Bechtel Lin, Frieda Vizel, Judy Brown, Samuel “Ushy” Katz, and Eve Singer for your many forms of assistance.

I am fortunate to have been a part of Footsteps, a small organization with enormous impact. Thank you, Malkie Schwartz, Lani Santo, Michael Jenkins, Rachel Berger, Betsy Fabricant, Chani Getter, and all other current and former staff and board members. Special thanks to Adina Kadden and Leah Vincent, fellow participants and board members, for their dedication to our community’s needs. Many thanks also to Ella Kohn, Anouk Markovits, Alan Lerner, and Monette de Botton for their generosity and support to OTD families.

To my friends in the OTD community: You have given me hope, strength, and love. Together, we have formed the vanguard of a movement. May we continue to grow, to inspire others, and to tell our stories with clarity and strength.

I am enormously thankful to my agent, Rob McQuilkin, for his faith in this project; I could not have hoped for a more tireless and fearsome champion. Thank you, Hella Winston, for the introductions. My deepest gratitude to my editor, Katie Dublinski, for her remarkable patience, insight, and guidance throughout. Thanks also to Fiona McCrae, Erin Kottke, and everyone else at Graywolf; I feel humbled to have been accepted into the “den.”