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By Root 159 0

practice and worked. My mother went back to school and painted pictures. There were other Jewish families in Albuquerque, and in time we got to know most of them. Most of us went to the same synagogue and all the kids went to the same Hebrew school, which is where I began to understand my unique talent for driving people to the edge. In my mind, the entire Hebrew school concept had nothing to do with learning about Judaism. It was there to let me blow off the steam and rage that accumulated in my being during regular school. Why not? It just seemed that there was less on the line. So what if they kicked me out of Hebrew school? What could happen? I wouldn’t be allowed to be a Jew? So, twice a week, at four in the afternoon, I would go to Congregation B’nai Israel and redefine the phrase “the Jewish problem.”

I verbally abused the teachers, constantly cracked jokes, and cussed. I generated as much anarchy as possible via spitballs, farts, fights, and preadolescent sexual outbursts. I was very proud to have pushed two of my Hebrew school teachers to tears. One of them actually quit because of my behavior. I relentlessly made fun of this kid who sat in the back of the room picking his nose with a crochet needle. I swear, he did it every Monday and Wednesday for three years, until one day he bled and had to be sent to the hospital. I mocked all rituals and traditions at every opportunity and I laughed during services.

The first time I got loaded was at a friend’s bar mitzvah party in the social hall, after which I projectile-vomited all over the stall of the boys’ room. The first time I smoked a whole cigarette was in the back parking lot of the temple with Herb, the gentile shul janitor from Brooklyn, who wore cowboy boots and told tales of pain about his ex-wife to dizzy twelve-year-olds. His entire face seemed to wrap around each draw on his filterless Camel. He resonated a reality of a life lived and left. Herb was the first heart-hardened man I ever knew and I listened to him because he let me smoke.

The only things I remember actually learning about Judaism and Hebrew prior to my bar mitzvah were that kelev meant dog, adonai meant God, your head had to be covered in the sanctuary, mezuzahs have a rolled-up piece of paper in them, Hitler and the Germans once bulldozed piles of dead Jews into holes and the ones they didn’t they made into soap and lampshades, Golda Meir and the guy with the eyepatch were important in Israel, and Jews were different from everyone else and that’s why nobody likes us. Holidays meant presents on Hanukkah; honey-dipped apples on Rosh Hashanah; a long, draining meal on Passover, with symbolic crackers and questions during which we left the door open for a ghost to come in and get drunk; no food and no school on Yom Kippur (introducing the idea that all good things are grounded in some kind of suffering); strange desert fruits hung from the ceiling on Sukkoth; triangular prune cookies shaped like a bad guy’s hat for Purim. They were delicious.

I studied for weeks preparing for my bar mitzvah. The Torah reading was Deuteronomy 11:26–16:17 which began with these words:

See, this day I set before you blessing and curse: blessing, if you obey the commandments of the Lord your God that I enjoin upon you this day; and curse, if you do not obey the commandments of the Lord your God, but turn away from the path that I enjoin upon you this day and follow other gods, whom you have not experienced.

My haftorah was Isaiah 54:11–55:5, which began with these words:

Unhappy, storm-tossed one, uncomforted!

I will lay carbuncles as your building stones

And make your foundations of Sapphires.

I understood none of it then because it was in Hebrew and I don’t remember ever reading it in English. Now it seems to prophesy my entire spiritual life.

I wore a light-blue leisure suit on Friday night and a navy three-piece suit on Saturday morning. My speech, as I remember it, was essentially an overview of my haftorah and what it meant to me, via the cantor who made me write it. It also included a long