Dreidels on the Brain (5 page)

I nodded, seeing no sign of a box that would hold a top hat. I looked at my mom, waiting for The Explanation. Something wasn't right. I could tell from the way she was talking, like everything was so wonderful.

“Aren't the candles lovely?” she said.

This much cheeriness meant something was definitely wrong. Kenny and Howard must have known it too, because they sat there silently, waiting.

“Why the long faces?” said my father. “It's Chhanukkah! You're supposed to be Chhhappy!”

I saw no box, or bag, or anything that looked like a present, and realized I had been a fool to expect one.

“We have some news,” my mother finally said. She didn't have to say another word. From the look on her face, I knew exactly what we were getting.

Chopped liver.

My childhood isn't supposed to be like this.

I say
isn't
but at this point I may as well say
wasn't
, because it's pretty much over. My bar mitzvah is next June. That is, next June I will
become
a bar mitzvah. Just to clarify, I won't
get
bar mitzvahed. Cantor Grubnitz made that painfully clear back in September, on the first day of Hebrew school.

“I want each of you to tell me the date you will become a bar mitzvah,” he said. Then, noticing there were girls in class, he added, grudgingly, “Or bat mitzvah.”

A bunch of us raised our hands and began calling out dates.

“Excuse me, Cantor Grubnitz,” said Ernie Maitloff. “What if you're not sure when you're getting bar mitzvahed?”

That was all it took to set Cantor Grubnitz off. For a moment he just stood there, staring at Ernie. Cantor
Grubnitz has a blue vein on his forehead that gets bigger when he's angry, which happens a lot. I think it might be a gorgle, like when someone says, “Calm down, or you'll bust a gorgle!” Now it was twitching.

“If you don't know, then I'll tell you. You'll never
get
bar mitzvahed. You know why? Because it's impossible. You
become
a bar mitzvah.”

Ernie had hit a nerve. Evidently, you can
get
a joke,
get
lost
,
even
get
busted. In fact, you can do all of them at the same time. But you can't do them while you're
getting
bar mitzvahed, because no one
gets
bar mitzvahed
.

Instead, you
become
a bar mitzvah. I know that sounds bizarre—like a little kid suddenly turning into a big party with balloons and music and chopped liver sculptures. But to become a bar mitzvah actually means that you are “a child of the commandments.” Just what
that
means, I have no idea, but it only happens after you've survived dozens of torture sessions with Cantor Grubnitz. Then you stand up in front of the whole congregation and sing so everyone can hear your voice cracking. Afterward everyone says mazel tov and congratulates you on becoming a man—which you're really not. You've just become a bar mitzvah.

As far as I can tell, there are two kinds of cantors. The cool kind are guitar cantors. Some even have long hair, and
play songs that everyone can sing along to, like “Blowin' in the Wind.” You might not think of that as a Jewish song, but it was written by Bob Dylan, who is Jewish, so it counts.

Cantor Grubnitz is the other kind of cantor: an opera cantor. You don't sing
with
him. And you don't sing
against
him, because you'd lose. All you can do is sit there and listen. I think the idea is that his voice is so loud that God will hear it and do what he says. My mom thinks his voice is beautiful—then again, she likes everything, or at least says she does. Maybe it's because she's able to hear him. I don't think his voice is beautiful at all. He can take a service that already goes on forever and stretch it out even longer by holding the notes.

But it's when he's alone with us kids that he lives up to his title—cantor—because he's always telling us what we
can't
do.

“You know what's wrong with you kids today?” he said after chewing out Ernie. He didn't wait for us to answer. “I'll tell you what's wrong. All you want to do is sit around with your transistor radios and your ‘rock and roll' music.”

Any one of us could have pointed out that transistor radios were from way back in the 1960s, and that what kids today actually want to do is sit around and listen to eight-track tape players, which somehow let you choose between four songs playing at the same time! They're amazing. No
one knows how they work. You can switch back and forth between the Beatles, Bob Dylan, the Beach Boys, and the Carpenters. But no one was going to say that to Cantor Grubnitz. He's scary.

“So there will be no transistor radios in class,” he went on. “That's not why you're here. You're here to learn your Haftorah portions. Is that clear?”

“But Cantor Grubnitz,” said Ernie, who wasn't smart enough to keep quiet, “I have another question.” Everyone calls Ernie “Meatloaf,” on account of his last name, Maitloff. That is, everyone except me. It's not that Meatloaf is such a bad name to call someone. But I never make fun of anyone's name—especially anyone's
last
name. That's not a matter of nobility, just survival. You wouldn't make fun of anyone's name either, if you had a last name like mine. I have no problem with my first name, Joel. It's a fine name, and sounds like Joe, which is a regular guy's name, like GI Joe. But my last name is a punch line. Guaranteed to get a laugh. You don't even need good comic timing. Teachers reading it out of the roll book the first time will try not to laugh, then when they do, will pretend they're coughing. Sometimes they'll assume there must be some right way to say the name that's not so embarrassing, and rather than try, they ask
me
how to pronounce it. But there is no other way. So I end up saying it out loud, to the laughter of the class. It's even worse
when it comes up accidentally, like in Health Ed when we're talking about parts of the human body. I hate my last name, and don't want to talk about it.

Back to Ernie
Maitloff
—who said, “I think I get bar mitzvahed in February. Do I still have to memorize half the Torah?”

Cantor Grubnitz sighed. “First of all, you won't get bar mitzvahed. Second, it's not ‘half the Torah.' It's your
Haftorah
. They're writings from the prophets, which is what you will chant.”

“But I don't understand,” said Shelly Schwartz. She's really smart, and kind of pretty. “Why don't we read from the
actual
Torah?”

“We don't want you to get it dirty,” said Cantor Grubnitz, with a snort. “First, learn to chant your Haftorah and become a bat mitzvah. Then, when you've done that, you can talk to me about studying Torah.

“But I know you won't,” he added with a sigh. “Because no one ever does. You kids today with your transistor radios, you don't care about being Jewish. You just want to mix in, assimilate with everyone else, and pretend you're not Jewish. Just like the Jews in Germany, before The War . . .”

Now it was our turn to sigh. Conversations always turn to what happened to the Jews in “The War.” And when someone says “The War,” you know exactly which war they mean.
Not the Vietnam War—which technically isn't even a war, though everyone calls it one—and not the Korean War, which was
a
war, but not
the
war. They don't mean World War I either, which used to be called “The Great War”—not that there's anything great about war in my book. But when people talk about “The War,” they always mean World War II.

“What do you think happened to Jews who didn't care about being Jewish during The War?” asked Cantor Grubnitz. “I'll tell you what happened. The Nazis came and got them just the same. Took everything they had, then hauled them off to death camps. You understand? People have died for this religion of ours—and you kids can't even be bothered to learn your Haftorah portions.”

There's nothing you can say or do when a teacher brings up the Holocaust. It's like this card game called bridge where you put down a special card that's called a “trump” and the game is over. The Holocaust hangs over Jewish conversations like a storm cloud. I don't know very much about it, except that some people don't want to talk about it, so when they do, they whisper. Then, once they start, they can't stop. What I
do
know is that during The War the Nazis rounded up and killed six million Jews, in Germany, Poland, Austria, Hungary, and all over Eastern Europe. You know how many six million is? A lot. I asked Mr. DeGuerre, my
math teacher, who said if you counted one number every single second and never slept, it would take eleven and a half days just to count to
one
million. Multiply that by six, and you get sixty-nine days—over two months—counting one number every second without a break. But these six million weren't numbers, they were real people, with houses and families and stamp collections. And it's not like they were doing anything wrong—they were just being Jewish. Some of them were my relatives.

So, right from the first day of Hebrew school, when Cantor Grubnitz started talking about the Holocaust, I knew it was going to be a long year. In that class he also assigned us times to meet with him privately, in his office, which is filled with pictures of famous cantors and rabbis, and stinks of cigarette smoke. My day is Monday—today—which is a horrible way to start the week. At our first meeting he gave me a little yellow booklet with my Haftorah portion and a cassette tape he had recorded of himself singing it, which I was supposed to memorize.

“And don't lose it!” he said.

Since then, every Monday afternoon has been pretty much the same. I go into his office and start to sing what I've learned of my Haftorah portion. I get about three lines in when he stops me, then gives me a lecture about how I'm not singing it right and I shouldn't listen to transistor radios
because people have died for our religion. Then he points at the pictures of famous cantors and rabbis and says how much more learned they are than I will ever be. Believe me, an hour of that is a very long time.

Last night, though, long after the candles had burned down and I lay huddled under the covers in my bed, I had another talk with God and came up with a plan that was supposed to change today's lesson.

“All right, God,” I said, “I'm sorry I bothered you with the whole dreidel thing.” It's funny, but the more you talk to God, the less weird it feels. That's especially true if you figure there may not be anyone listening, so who cares? “And I know you're really busy. So, for the record, I don't care if I get only Shins from now on, okay? And you know what? I don't need it to snow. I mean, it would be nice, but if you're only going to do one miracle for me this Kchannuukkah, make my dad's operation a success. Okay?”

That's what we found out last night, after we lit the candles and my mom said they had “news.”

My brothers and I stared at one another. We don't like news. We looked back at my mother, who was smiling and nodding the way she always does when something's wrong. The bigger the smile, the worse it is, and this one was big.

“Wait a minute,” my dad said. “Why the long faces? This
is great news! It's what we've been waiting for. I'm going back to the hospital!”

Now we stared at him, baffled. How going back to the hospital could be good news was beyond us.

“No, no,” he said, almost laughing. “You don't understand. I've been seeing a new doctor, a surgeon named Dr. Kaplowski, at Kaiser in Los Angeles.” That explained the “errands” they'd been running downtown. “And he has a whole new procedure for arthritis.”

“What is it?” asked Kenny.

“Gold!” said my dad.

“Gold?” I asked. “What do you mean?”

“Yep! Dr. Kaplowski is the most skilled surgeon in all Los Angeles! He'll go into my hips, remove the arthritis, then coat the bones with gold! Real, twenty-four-karat gold—the smoothest thing there is. It never rusts, never tarnishes!”

“Why didn't you tell us?” asked Howard.

“Because he's very busy, and we weren't sure we could schedule it,” said my dad. “And we didn't want to get you all excited.”

“Excited?” asked Kenny.

“Yeah, this will be terrific!” he went on. “I go in on Wednesday morning. Then I'll be able to walk with no problem. Not just walk, but run! And jump! And dance!”

I could not remember ever seeing my dad run. I tried to imagine him dancing, but couldn't. The closest I could
come was a memory from when I was about three, of riding on the back of this green bicycle my dad used to have, as he pedaled along, whistling. My dad on a bicycle—can you imagine? Then, when we stopped, he lifted me up and put me on his shoulders!

I've held on to that memory as tightly as I can, but every time he comes home from the hospital, more bent and broken, it grows fainter. Hospitals are where things go wrong, and the more times you go, the more wrong they get.

But that's not how my dad felt. “You know what it will be?” he said. “A miracle!”

“So,” I said to God, before I went to sleep, “you heard my dad. Snow would still be nice, but the real miracle I want is for my dad. So he can walk. And dance”—then I added—“just not around me.” That's when I came up with a plan I thought would seal the deal. “And in case my prayers aren't enough, I'm going to ask Cantor Grubnitz to pray too.”

It seemed worth a shot. Who knows, maybe God actually
likes
opera?