The Seventh Telling

by Mitchell Chefitz

Genres: Jewish Fiction

Synopsis

The Seventh Telling is a journey into the Kabbalah, a spiritual discipline hidden within the folds of Jewish history. Stephanie and Sidney have been studying with Moshe Katan, a kabbalist who shared his learning only when he perceived that a kabbalistic intervention might be necessary to save the life of Rivkah, his wife. What has happened to Moshe and Rivkah we do not know, only that their house is now being used for an extraordinary storytelling, a spiritual discipline to share with those willing to risk examining the very core of their beliefs.

Release date: January 17, 2002

Publisher: St. Martin's Publishing Group

Print pages: 400

Sample

Seventh Telling, The

CHAPTER 1

They began the seventh cycle of stories at the conclusion of the Sabbath. With experience the cycle had evolved into four sessions, a marathon: Saturday night, Sunday morning, afternoon, and evening, each spanning four sets of stories. Several of the students had made arrangements to stay in the house, either in guest rooms or sleeping bags. Others were commuters or had booked hotel space nearby. Ten students, plus Stephanie and Sidney, gathered in the living room for havdalah, the ritual that separated the Sabbath from the ordinary days of the week.
Six women, four men. Each had submitted an application, necessary because the material was so numinous, not fit for the imbalanced. The application requested a reference from clergy, therapist, or physician, and the references were checked. Sidney wasn't prepared for another Emily.
Stephanie had read through the applications. She knew the makeup of the class and attempted to match the person to the clothes. The man who had lost his wife several months before was likely the one in shorts and sandals, a thin white beard, balding. The three repeats, friends, were the middle-aged women in long folksy cotton skirts. Two young men in jeans, a couple. Two young women in jeans, a couple. That was going to be a challenge for Sidney, because the imagery of the Kabbalah was decidedly heterosexual. One man in dress pants, button-down shirt, sleeves rolled up. The executive. He worked on Saturday, something to note. And a woman, also an executive, in the pantsuit, perhaps a Donna Karan. Stephanie looked for and found the jacket draped across a dining-room chair. She also worked on Saturday. They had singled each other out already, though they sat apart. Two engagements had come out of these storytellings. Perhaps this would be another.
So much for judging a class by its clothes.
The three long skirts came to Stephanie for hugs and kisses. They had wept their way through their first course but still had an appetite for more.
Stephanie had no choice but to begin by asking the gathering for the names she would soon forget. Sidney would remember. Sidney was good with names, Stephanie better with experiences. She asked for names and what each hoped to gain from the storytelling. There were no surprises in the responses. "A connectionwith God; a sense of purpose; a sense of self and my place in the world." No one said, "To surrender unconditionally to an agency beyond my self; to relinquish my beliefs; to risk a transformation of my very being."
Stephanie uttered the standard disclaimer. "There are no guarantees," she said. "We have stories to tell, for you to retell. Each time we do this, the experience is different, different for each of us. You may find what you expect here. You may not. It might be best to have no expectations, to surrender to the stories, and to allow what will happen to happen. That's up to you."
That done, she lowered the lights, lit the braided candle, and began chanting the havdalah blessings. She took care to explain each of the symbols--the wine, the spices, the candle itself--for the students who were not Jewish and for those who were. She knew from her own experience that being Jewish did not guarantee familiarity with the symbols of Judaism.
"We let Shabbat go gracefully," she said. "As we brought her into the house with wine, we let her go with wine. As she entered a house fragrant with spices, we let her go with fragrant spices. And as we greeted her with the light of candles, we let her go with the light of candles, but you see the candles have become braided into one. That's the grace of Shabbat. What was divided in the beginning has become one by the end."
Sidney chanted the blessing separating the Sabbath from the ordinary days of the week. Together they sang Eliahu Ha-navee, an incantation intended to bring Elijah the prophet back into space and time.
Stephanie raised the lights, but not to their full intensity. She sat in one of the deep chairs, looked from student to student, and then surprised herself.
She began with Sidney's words.
Four in the Morning
Four in the morning, too dark for the morning prayers, Moshe Katan descended to his study. At the top of the steps he acknowledged his exposure. With each step down, his anxiety grew. He descended into trepidation.
He needed some light, even though he could navigate the room with his toes through the shag rug. He turned the light up only enough to locate the CA125 chart and unpin it from the corkboard, then sat, not in the swivel chair behind his desk, but in a coffee-table chair, his back to the painting. He didn't want to be distracted. Perhaps that's why he would have preferred the lights not on at all.
The chart appeared ordinary. He knew it, didn't have to look at it. It could have been mistaken for something as benign as the progress of November beans, but CA125 was a cancer marker, not a commodities contract. Moshe closed his eyes and followed the flow of data with a light that emanated from within. It was there. Subtle, but there. Movement. Only a trader would see it. Rivkah's oncologist was not a trader.
Dr. Dowling had held the chart up to the light as if it were an X ray. "I don't see anything," she had reassured him. "What do you see that alarms you? We've had isolated readings this high before." Her patience barely masked her annoyance.
Moshe retrieved the chart from her, smoothed it on her desk, and traced his forefinger along the path of the most recent entries. "The movement has settled into a new pattern. It wasn't doing this before." He traced the line he could see, and she could not.
"I'm sorry, Rabbi, I still don't see anything."
"I chart things all the time. That's my business. I see things that look like they're not there, but are there. What I am seeing here frightens me."
The doctor looked again, shook her head. "I wouldn't take any action because of this," she said. "There's not enough change to justify it."
"If the marker continues to go up, what would you do?"
"If the marker goes up, we'll worry about it then. We'll do some additional tests. But I don't see anything in this that's cause for alarm, Rabbi. If you will excuse me, please, I have patients to see." She left him alone at her desk, an overprotective husband who saw things that were not there.
Maybe Dr. Dowling was right. Maybe there was nothing to worry about. What could he do anyway? Even if there was something he could do, what would Rivkah allow him to do?
Those were the two questions he asked himself at first. Those were the two questions he pondered as he fell asleep that evening. If they had been the only two, if he had not heard the deeper questions in his sleep, there would be no story to tell. The deeper questions awoke him and drove him to his study.
He had asked first what he might do. Was there indeed anything in his power to do? Surely he would never have been troubled to rise from his bed if there weren't within him a notion of something to do, a vague sense of something distant in the Kabbalah.
Then, what would Rivkah allow him to do? He knew how she felt. Rivkah wanted no involvement with the charts, and she had a disdain for the Kabbalah. She had made both abundantly clear. The charts were a reminder she hadbeen ill. And as for the Kabbalah, throughout their marriage any attempt to share with her his passion for Jewish spiritual discipline had been met with an apathy just short of contempt. He had learned to keep his discipline to himself, and then not even to himself. To do away with it, no longer necessary, an impediment to him and to his marriage.
The third question was the deceptive one. Was there any reason to do anything? Might he respond with no response, by doing nothing at all? The doctor saw no cause for alarm. Who was he to disagree? If he did nothing, who would challenge him, even if it turned out something was there? Who would expect anything from him? The very notion he might be able to intervene in any effective way was in itself presumptuous. So rational, such thoughts would have lulled a lesser man into deeper sleep. But for Moshe, the suggestion of denial was an alarm and gave rise to a fourth question.
If he should do nothing, then who was he? What was there to him if he perceived even a hint of a need and failed to respond to it? That he considered no response even for a moment touched an emptiness within him. His life had become comfortable. Actions that would have sprung from urgency years before were impeded by complacence, satisfaction.
Sitting in his study in the early morning darkness, he held the chart in his left hand and opened his right, staring at it as if something were missing.
He summoned his breath back into control, settled in his chair, and allowed his eyes to survey the room, from the bookcase to the left, across the wall of charts, to his desk, the computer, the globe, the wastebasket. The crumpled letter.
The letter was an invitation for him to teach a course about the Kabbalah at the Metropolitan Institute of Expanding Light. He had not offered such a course in years. The synagogues and Jewish organizations had long since stopped asking. Out of habit he had discarded the letter. Yet he had awakened early in the morning to retrieve it.
Moshe positioned himself more comfortably in his chair. He had an exercise to do. Between any two points in the universe, between any two points in any of the worlds, flows a straight line. He would surrender conscious thought so he might be moved by the most subtle of influences, that his perspective might change. The two points, the cancer marker and the invitation to teach, were still separate. He needed to shift his perception until the line disappeared, until one could be seen within the other. At that point he would know the connection for a certainty.
Monitoring his breathing, he inscribed the Hebrew letters of the DivineName on his body. He traced the YOD, HEY, VAV, HEY along the path of breath as it entered his nostrils, inside the lids of his closed eyes, across his forehead, around the curve of his ears. Layer after layer of concentration bound him deeper and deeper to the body of God. He descended gracefully, the world above disappearing. Suspended, frictionless, beyond sense, he asked himself the only question he had ever asked at that depth, "From here, where?"
When he rose to the surface and opened his eyes, he could distinguish the outline of the eucalyptus trees against the predawn sky. The time had come for morning prayers. He ascended from his study to the living room, enveloped himself in his tallit, the ritual prayer shawl, bound the tefillin, the leather cubes containing words of Torah written in the ancient form, to his arm and head, and walked out onto the deck. He wore the uniform for prayer, but prayer did not rise easily from his heart. The flow of words slowed and ceased as images broke through.
He visualized the doctor in her office. She had remembered him as the "Rabbi." The Metropolitan Institute had asked the Rabbi to teach, but the Rabbi had been absent for years. Moshe had exorcised the Rabbi from his system, or so he had thought. The unbidden images were telling him otherwise. Something of the Rabbi needed to return. With a calm acceptance he resumed his prayer and sought comfort under the wings of the Divine Presence.


When the students realized Stephanie's introduction was complete, they began to ask questions. Sidney held up his hand to stop them. "The stories speak for themselves. Rather than ask us questions, ask each other. The stories will be as complete as they need to be. If there are spaces, they are left for you to fill."
Elements of Stephanie's story had taken her by surprise. Moshe's four questions she had never heard before. She realized they had sprung from Moshe's own framework, the Four Worlds.
First a question about what he might do, what action he might take, a question in the World of Action.
Then a question about feelings. Moshe had been angry with Rivkah all those years, angry he had to sacrifice his discipline to preserve his marriage. Was that correct, Stephanie asked herself, or was she projecting her own anger with Sidney onto him? A question in the World of Formation.
And then a question from the world of reason, the World of Creation. Why not just let events take their course? If Rivkah died, she died, and the marriage with it. It wasn't a terrible marriage, but was it so good he should go to any great risk tosave it? Again, was that Rivkah and Moshe or herself and Sidney? The question registered. Stephanie didn't pause to ascertain an answer.
And a last question, from the World of Emanation, concerning the very essence of being. If he did nothing, then what was he? And as for her, Stephanie thought, if she did nothing, then what was she?
She wasn't doing nothing. She was telling the stories, and even the first one had nearly overwhelmed her. She needed time to consider before she could continue.
Sidney provided it by changing the venue, doing just what she didn't want him to do. He drew the students outside onto the deck under the vault of the heavens. She had wanted the first session cozy, confined in the textures of the pillows.
She remained curled deep in her chair, still aware of Sidney saying, "This is where much of the work took place." He gestured to indicate the living room the students were leaving as well as the California redwood planks ahead of them. A bench ran about the perimeter, enclosing four primitive chairs and a glass coffee table. Eucalyptus trees grew out of the hill below and towered above the deck. Several of the students reached out to caress the trees, the parchment bark holy in their hands.
Stephanie succumbed to Sidney's lead and sat in the chair the students had left open for her. She saw him close his eyes, as if searching for a new place for his own beginning. He leaned forward and said, "To Moshe Katan, angels often appeared in the form of winged lions. I suspect these lions had their origin early in his childhood. This was long before his name became Moshe Katan. Then he was known as Michael Kayten."
Lions
Young Michael always accompanied his father to shul on the Holy Days of Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. They walked, not because they were religious, but because they lived nearby. Michael carried his father's purple velour tallis bag, the rampant lions, embroidered in gold, presented proudly to the world.
Michael and his father sat in the front pew, to the right of the bimah, close enough to lean forward and play with the turned dark maple of the railing. When he leaned back against the soft rose cushion, Michael wrapped himself in his father's tallis and toyed with the fringes. When he became bored, he neededno permission to leave the service to sit with his friends outside on the steps, but he always returned to his father's side for the auction.
"How much am I bid for this aliyah?" In Yiddish the men called out, "Ten dollars, twenty dollars." Aliyahs were honors, the privileges of attending to the Torah. Because writing was forbidden on the Holy Days, records of pledges were kept by folding tabs on cards prepared in advance.
Every year, for twenty-five dollars, an amount befitting a dentist, his father bought hagba, the honor of raising the Torah scroll when the reading was done. After the Torah was dressed, Michael's father would beckon him to the bimah, sit him in a tall chair, and set the Torah scroll in his hands while the haftarah was read. The velour of the Torah mantle felt like the velour of his father's tallis bag, but the embroidered lions were made of a coarser thread and scratched back when he touched them.
The lions sometimes appeared to young Michael in his dreams. He didn't know them yet as angels. They were not yet threatening. No, they were watching and waiting, at a distance.


Stephanie observed Sidney scanning the room. She knew what he was doing. He was sensing how the students responded to the first mention of angels. He had it down to a science. If they flinched, if their faces were puzzled with lack of comprehension, then the task would be easier. Even one such student provided a foil from which to reflect and intensify the learning.
In past tellings Sidney complained that most of the students came from some spiritual discipline outside of Judaism or from the peculiar Western path known as New Age spirituality. They came to confirm their own agenda, to reaffirm some established belief rather than to open themselves to new perspectives and growth. "There is no greater hindrance to growth than belief," Sidney was fond of saying.
So Stephanie followed Sidney's lead and looked into the faces, hoping for blank slates. There were some. Dress slacks and the Donna Karan seemed lost. All four in jeans seemed apprehensive. On the other hand the long skirts were nodding their knowledge, too full of what they knew already to admit any more. Still this was a good grouping, better than average. Each had paid $180, a donation to the Havurah. Some, Stephanie observed, were likely to get their money's worth.
Sidney paused, leaving room for Stephanie to add or comment. When she had nothing to say, he continued the stories of young Michael.
Recognition
In Michael's shul the women sat in the balcony and the men sat below. Michael noted further divisions. Those men who knew enough Hebrew to be on the correct page he separated from those who did not. Of those who knew the correct page, there were those one could interrupt and ask, "What page are we on?" Michael was proud that his father was in this category. Then there were the very few who were never to be interrupted. They were really praying. He watched them, trying in vain to understand what they experienced.
One man in particular stood apart. Mr. Lieberman came early and secluded himself under his tallis in front of the bimah. He was the only one who wore sneakers on Yom Kippur so as not to have the hide of an animal under his feet. He stood when others sat, swayed when others were still, scowled when the service was interrupted for any reason or when his concentration was broken by the noise of children scurrying between the pews.
Once Michael found Mr. Lieberman's gaze on him. There was neither censure nor approval in his expression, but an acceptance that both pleased and confused Michael.


Again Sidney paused, leaving room for Stephanie, if she had something to say. He had not done so in any of the previous sessions. She realized he, too, sensed something different about this telling.
What might she say? When she was a little girl her mother had taken her to the shul below Fifth Street. They had sat upstairs while the men did whatever it was they did below. The women talked and paid little attention to the prayers. Prayer was a guy thing, she thought, though that's not the way it would have been expressed.
"Men had the obligation to pray," she reminded herself in an internal rabbinic voice she had heard somewhere, not from Moshe. From someone else, years before. "Women were excused from all the obligations fixed in time, except three." The rabbinic voice couldn't recall all three. One was lighting Shabbos candles, she remembered. Her mother didn't light candles.
Twice her mother brought her to the shul. Only twice, when she was a little girl. She had no interest in it, and neither did her mother, so they never went back.
Rabbis
Sensing that Stephanie had nothing to insert, Sidney continued.


The shul had a new Rabbi every year. Michael could not remember the names of any of them except for Rabbi Margolis, who had taken him along with three other children to visit the Israeli destroyer when it came into the harbor.
"Look at this. Look at this!" the Rabbi said over and over with each new wonder. Cannon, anchors, the quarterdeck, the galley, even the sleeping spaces for the crew. "Look at this! Who would have thought we would live to see such a thing! Our own navy!"
When it came time for Michael to prepare for his bar mitzvah, his family joined the Conservative synagogue. There had been no Hebrew school for Michael at the small Orthodox shul. His father found a tutor to prepare him to read his portion. The morning of his bar mitzvah, Michael met the Rabbi for the first time. Michael sang his blessings, chanted his haftarah, read his speech, and became sick at the party afterward. His uncle Bernie had given him a rye and ginger ale to drink because, after all, Michael was now a man.
Within a year Michael had forgotten his Torah portion, the blessings, the chant of the haftarah, and the Rabbi's name.
When Michael was in the ninth grade, his parents were eager for him to be in the company of other Jewish teenagers, so they joined the Reform temple. He attended confirmation class on Monday nights. The boys, except for Michael, did not pay attention. They waited for the class to be over, to light up cigarettes in the bathroom, to joke in the hall and check out the girls.
Michael alone argued with the Rabbi. The Rabbi answered each of Michael's questions with care and patience. The class became a dialogue. The others paid no attention.
"I understand!" Michael proclaimed one evening. "The universe is like a clock, and it was God who wound it up!"
"Aha!" exclaimed the Rabbi. "Yes, but an electric clock, and God is the electricity!"
Michael understood the Rabbi's correction. A wind-up clock once wound no longer had need of the winder. An electric clock was in constant need of electricity.
Several nights later Michael awoke with a question. "But why would electricity need a clock?"




With a start, Stephanie realized she had a story. Before Sidney could continue with Moshe's college career, she raised a finger, just enough for Sidney to notice.
Stephanie had spoken her introduction while seated. She had been much too comfortable seated and had become lost in her own words. This time she rose from her chair. She would not become lost while standing and pacing, not if she kept her eyes open and moving, reading the light reflected back from the eyes of the students. "Moshe was Michael as a child," she explained. "Rivkah was Rebecca. Becky Shapiro."
The Robe
Becky Shapiro was sick in Sunday school, sick to her stomach and upset she was going to have to leave class just when they were about to make Purim masks. Every year they made masks for Purim, the Jewish Mardi Gras. It was just about the only thing in Sunday school she liked. That was the morning she was tired and sick enough so her teacher noticed and sent her down to the Rabbi's office. The office doubled as the infirmary on Sundays.
"Oh dear!" the volunteer said. "What do we have here?"
"I'm sick," Becky confessed. "But don't call my mother. I'll be better soon."
Becky lay down on the sofa in the reception area. She recognized several of the paintings on the walls. They had similar paintings at home. Her father sold paintings. That was his business. Maybe he had sold these to the synagogue. The paintings were orange, red, and purple. She closed her eyes.
When she opened them, the Rabbi was standing above her. "How do you feel?" he asked. He was in a black suit and so tall his head went up to the ceiling, almost to the light fixture in the center of the room. She squinted, trying to make out his face in the brightness. "You're shivering. Are you cold?"
She was either cold or afraid. All the kids were afraid of the Rabbi.
When she did not answer, he retreated, then returned within a few seconds. "This will keep you warm," he said. He spread his robe over her.
She knew that robe. In the synagogue, when the Rabbi raised his arms, the robe hung massive from his shoulders. Three stripes of black velvet were seared into each sleeve. When those arms were raised, the congregation followed suit, rising collectively to its feet. It was impossible to remain seated when those arms were raised. They commanded. They didn't embrace.
Becky knew a story of Moses. When the children of Israel were fighting in the valley below, Moses stood on a hill above with his arms raised. As long as he held his arms aloft, the children of Israel succeeded. When his arms tired and sagged, the Israelites did not fare well.
The Rabbi tucked the robe about her. The cotton was smooth and thin, not much warmth to it. Under the robe she trembled even more. Still she had the courage to search out the arms for the stripes of black velvet. As long as she touched them, she thought, she would be all right.
She slept until her mother came to take her home.


There were other stories she suddenly wanted to tell, needed to tell, but this wasn't the place. They were stories about herself, not Rivkah, not Moshe. Stories about Stephanie had no place in this telling, she knew. Sidney's only purpose in these stories was to lay the groundwork for the Kabbalah to follow.
Well, screw Sidney's purpose! There was another story to tell, and she could damn well make it work!
To the students she said, "Rivkah grew up in Baltimore. Me, I grew up in Miami. Rivkah and I met once when we were children. We didn't know that for a long time, but later, when we were talking about our childhoods, we realized we had the same grandmother."
Stephanie almost laughed aloud at the confusion in Sidney's face.
Becky on the Beach
I was born in New York, just before my parents moved to Miami. My parents had come to this country from Poland, left weeks before the war. I was supposed to be a boy so I could be named for my father's brother who died in the Holocaust. Everybody on my father's side died. Everybody.
My father's family had been jewelers. Generations of jewelers. My mother loved to tell me about the house in Poland. It wasn't the biggest house, but it was beautiful, in a nice neighborhood. They had a maid. And china, Rosenthal china. I can't tell you how many times I heard about the Rosenthal china.
It took everything my parents owned to get out of Poland. Everything. They came to New York with nothing, and to Miami with even less. A cousin on my mother's side brought us to Miami. My father started a store on Miami Beach, on Washington Avenue, a small store. He sold Jewish stuff, silver plate kiddush cups, shabbos candlesticks, esrog holders, spice boxes for havdalah. Sometimesa sterling piece. Mostly plate. Not old. Nothing really precious. Jewish stuff. His customers were tourists, from the hotels on Collins and Ocean Drive.
My mother crocheted yarmulkes, which my father sold. He wore one in the store. It was good for business. As soon as he got home, he took it off. My father was bald. He preferred bald to the yarmulke.
We lived two blocks away, in an apartment. I had my own room, but I didn't spend much time in it.
I was raised on Washington Avenue. I knew all the shopkeepers. The butcher, the grocer, Al in the corner store who sold newspapers, magazines, and comic books. This was my family. These were my uncles and aunts.
I had lots of grandparents, too, in the hotels. Some came down only for the winter, but some stayed all year. My favorite grandmother was Ida. Ida stayed all year round. Ida had a favorite chair on the porch of the Regency, and I had a favorite place in her lap.
One day I came to visit with her, and there was another girl in her lap. "This is Becky," she said, "my granddaughter." When she saw the look on my face, she added, "My other granddaughter. Becky is my other granddaughter, from Baltimore."
This was Rivkah. We were about the same age. She was down for winter vacation. She and her parents stayed at the Algiers, one of the new hotels, around 34th Street.
We went to the beach together. That was just one block away. I think her parents must have been with us, because we wouldn't have gone to the beach alone. I was allowed to walk all over Washington Avenue, Collins, and Ocean Drive, but I wasn't supposed to go on the beach. We built a sand castle down by the water. I remember it. A breaker came and took it away.
One night, here in this house, right here on this porch, this deck, Rivkah and I were talking about when we were kids. She told me about her one trip to Miami Beach. When she mentioned the name Ida, I knew she was Becky, and we had the same grandmother.
Ida died that year, and Becky never came back to Miami.


Stephanie didn't look toward Sidney. Rivkah had never visited Miami Beach. Sidney knew that. She and Stephanie had never met as children. But they might have, Stephanie thought. She would have liked that. So why not tell the story? She couldn't wait to let Rivie know they had the same grandmother.
The rest of it was true. Ida was true. Mildred and Sophie and Rose, but Ida was the best of all, because she was there year-round, and she madetayglach in her efficiency kitchen, hard balls of dough covered with honey and ginger.
And Al was true. Of all the aunts and uncles, he was the best. Al had the corner news store where she sat and read everything. Everything. First the comics, then the magazines, then the books he would leave for her.
Al also was from Poland. He had known her father there. Al hadn't gotten out in time. Al had blue numbers tattooed on his arm, but he never talked about it. Her father didn't like Al, didn't like that Stephanie spent time in his store. Stephanie went there anyway.
Why didn't she follow her father's wishes? What was it about Al and his store that she liked being there? That her father disapproved of it made it so much more desirable. Why was that? The questions flooded in upon her. How come she had never asked such questions before?
At home Stephanie spoke Yiddish with her parents. In Al's store, they spoke English. He didn't want to talk Yiddish. This was America, they would speak English. He didn't want to be reminded of Poland. Al wanted to be American.