“Ha. You never really escape,” Theresa shot back. “You’re naïve if you think you can.” And she spoke from long experience growing up in Honolulu where her strong-willed father had not allowed her to get a driver’s license. She spoke remembering her mother’s thousand prayers, offered up on every occasion, even for the family dog, a toy terrier who sat up front in the car and panted in the tropical heat. But Jess had never seen the little dog with its pink tongue, and she had never met Theresa’s parents.
“I’m not naïve,” Jess said.
“Didn’t I see you give money to Crazy Al on Telegraph? Didn’t you say you got your cards read, quote unquote, for fun?”
“Not for fun. As a thought experiment, and by the way, the guy knows his ‘Prufrock.’”
“You have something about you that attracts fanatics,” said Theresa. “You have this way of letting them in. It’s dangerous. It’s like you’re blowing some kind of high-pitched dog whistle: Take me, take me….”
4
The Bialystok rabbi of Berkeley, known affectionately as the Berkinstoker, had come west from Brooklyn fifteen years before with his wife and baby. The family had grown, as had Rabbi Helfgott. He’d gained a few pounds with each of his wife’s pregnancies, and after the birth of their tenth child, he was a substantial man indeed. He wore the traditional garb of the Bialystoker sect: black frock coat and black gabardine trousers, a white dress shirt, and, when he went out, a broad-brimmed black hat. Burly, bearded, and gregarious, he was a familiar sight near campus, and Jess remembered him well from Sproul Plaza where she leafleted for Save the Trees. She had often seen the rabbi marching through the crowds with leaflets of his own for anyone who looked Jewish. He’d even approached Jess once and suggested, “Why don’t we trade? I’ll take yours, and you take mine.” She had offered him a leaflet titled “Arcata Arboricide” and he’d handed her a glossy brochure titled “Do a Mitzvah Today.” Then the rabbi had gestured broadly toward the bare white London plane trees lining the plaza. “You light Shabbes candles, and I will save a tree….” Jess remembered all this as she walked with Mrs. Gibbs to Dana Street, and she wondered if the rabbi would remember too.
The morning was sunny but cool. Mrs. Gibbs wore a white cardigan over her white clothes. Jess pulled up her jacket hood and gazed at a message chalked on the pavement in front of I. B.’s Hoagies & Cheesesteaks:
HASTE MAKES WASTE
IT IS ILLEGAL
TO LOITER, REST, OR BE
POOR AND HOMELESS
IN BERKELEY
THANK YOU CITY COUNCIL
Jess wondered about the author of this message, with its internal rhyme and sorrowful enjambment. She imagined a poet of the streets, chalking up his anger and despair with untaught eloquence, tracing lines of exclusion, sorrowing at telephone poles with a thousand silver staples where police had ripped off and discarded notices and poetry under the rubric “Post no bills.” Why not post? Jess thought indignantly. Why was freedom of speech limited to sanctioned bulletin boards? She imagined chalk covering the pavement from Durant to Telegraph.
Mrs. Gibbs stopped at the door of a brown Victorian garlanded with rambling roses, ramshackle porches, and metal fire escapes. As soon as Mrs. Gibbs rang the bell, Jess felt a prickle of unease.
The door opened wide, revealing Rabbi Nachum Helfgott. He didn’t just smile. He beamed. His eyes crinkled up so that they looked like the tiny black seeds of his round bearded face. “I remember you!” he exclaimed in exactly the tone of a Jehovah’s Witness who’d spotted Jess years before in San Francisco Airport and cried out to her,
“I remember you too,” Jess replied.
“Really?” Rabbi Helfgott looked genuinely surprised and modest, as though there were many rotund rabbis in black suits and hats walking through Berkeley. “Did you by any chance light candles?”
Jess shook her head. “Did you save a tree?”
“I planted one! My wife and I planted one. Do you see this tree here?” He pointed to a bushy silver-barked tree near the corner of the house. “This is an apricot tree! This is what they tell us.”
“Oh, now I feel bad about the candles!” Jess exclaimed.
“It’s okay. It’s all right. Every Shabbes is a new opportunity. Every week the world begins again. Come in, come in.” Rabbi Helfgott seemed to enjoy doubling phrases. He was such an expansive man he spoke in twins. “Tell me your name once again.”
“Rabbi, this is Jessamine Bach,” said Mrs. Gibbs.
“Ah, Bach like the musician,” said the rabbi. “Very nice. Where are you from?”
“I grew up in Newton,” said Jess, “but now my father lives in Canaan, Mass.”
“Canaan! My brother-in-law lives there! My wife’s sister and her family. Who is your father?”
Jess pictured a Bialystoker rabbi in full regalia descending on her father and his Korean wife. “He’s not Jewish,” she answered instead of answering.
The front and back parlors of the house had been converted into a synagogue with EXIT signs over the doors to satisfy the fire code. A warren of hallways and little rooms and creaky carpeted stairs surrounded these parlors. Through one door, Jess saw a restaurant-style kitchen with banks of cabinets, freezers, and refrigerators. “The house was once an ashram before we came here,” Rabbi Helfgott explained when he saw Jess staring.
The rabbi ushered Jess into an office piled high with papers and computer equipment. Jess looked back, expecting Mrs. Gibbs to join them, but her neighbor had taken the little book she always carried in her purse and stood by the window praying silently.
“My mother was the Jewish one,” Jess volunteered.
The rabbi nodded. He was a true evangelist, although he only sought out Jewish souls. His goal was to return Jews to themselves. “Where is she from?”
“She’s dead,” said Jess.
The rabbi bowed his head, and recast the question gently. “Where was she from?”
“London,” Jess said.
“Really! My wife is from London! What was her name?”
“Gillian Bach,” said Jess.
“Sit, sit,” the rabbi said, even as he mused. “Gillian Bach. I don’t know the family.”
Jess sat on an old swivel chair, and the rabbi heaved himself into a larger version behind his desk. There were at least two other swivel chairs of different sizes in the office, and Jess wondered for a moment whether the rabbi kept outgrowing them.
“Mrs. Gibbs tells us you’re a student. What do you study?”
“Philosophy,” said Jess.
“Philosophy! Very interesting. I myself have a personal interest in philosophy, particularly Jewish philosophy. You have perhaps heard of our
She shook her head.
“This is a very great work, covering everything.”
“Everything!”
“God. Evil, but especially Humanity, the Soul. The Messiah. In other words, the big philosophical questions, the biggest questions, including the biggest one of all.”
“And what’s that?” Jess asked.
The Messianic rabbi didn’t hesitate. “Ah, the biggest question in Jewish philosophy is very simple:
Jess couldn’t help smiling at this summation, and seizing the opportunity, the rabbi swiveled in his chair and reached behind him for a thick black book with page edges marbled in striking pink and purple. “This
