Tomorrow night, we'll be hosting the Biala Rebbe of Jerusalem, Rabbi Avraham Yerachmiel Rabinowicz, in our house. Some of our friends, and a bunch of random people we don't know, will come over and ask the Rebbe a bunch of questions about basically anything.
It's pretty random. Or, if you see it that way, it isn't random at all -- in that mystical hippie-like way, or that Rebbe-like way, that everything on Earth that happens is connected.
I first met the Rebbe when I was in yeshiva in Israel. One of our rabbis started taking up the habit of hanging out at the Rebbe's synagogue each week during his visiting hours, every Wednesday and Thursday nights from 10 or 11 P.M. until 3:00 or 4:00 in the morning. I don't know what he said in order to get us to come, but one night, we tagged along. There was a bunch of us. One, Dan, was actually his first cousin -- separated by marriage and cultures and languages, since the Rebbe only speaks Hebrew and Yiddish.
Our appointment was scheduled for 10:30. Of course, this was Israel, where time runs differently than it does in the rest of the world. Also, just sitting in the synagogue was kind of like sitting in a hospital lobby in reverse -- that is, instead of seeing all sorts of people in various modes of depression and despair, you're seeing all sorts of people in various modes of despair and joy. People asking for blessings to have children, to meet their One True Love, to succeed in business, to find out what the hell they're doing with their lives.
Mostly, if you couldn't guess, I was in that last category, although at times, over my year in Israel, I fit into almost all of the other categories. (Almost. That having-kids thing was still way over my head, at that point.) I wasn't sure about anything. Whether I'd gotten married (which I had a few months ago) for valid reasons, or just because we were Orthodox and we both figured we had to. Whether I should be in yeshiva or trying to get more writer gigs. Whether writing my memoir about struggling with dating girls and being Orthodox, which I'd sold to a publisher just before I left for Israel, was a bad idea, or whether it was going to help other people with the same issues.
I never felt like I shouldn't be saying any of this, talking to the Rebbe about hooking up with girls and wanting to be friends with girls or missing my best friend, who'd just died. Weird, yes. Awkward, no. I just sat down, let my bad Hebrew fly, and with it all of the stuff I'd been holding in when I spoke to other people. Even my best friend. We were too much a part of each other's lives. This strange, quirky man with the massive beard and the wise smile on the other side of the table, I felt like I could say anything. We didn't have any of the same friends. We never ran into each other on the street. We didn't even speak the same default language -- and for me, when I said something in Hebrew, it didn't feel like I was saying actual words. Instead, it felt like a dream, a foggy half-reality where you have memories but you aren't totally sure what you're saying until it's already been said.
So tomorrow night we're hosting him in our house. We wanted to cook him dinner, but he doesn't eat these days -- he just drinks raw juices. Good thing we have a juicer. Itta ran to the store today and stocked up on some extra carrots and apples. That part, at least, we know what to expect. What goes into the Rebbe's mouth, we'll be prepared for. What comes out of it when we ask our questions -- that'll be a whole different story.
Monday, June 7, 2010
Meeting the Rebbe
Friday, June 4, 2010
Almost a Restaurant Review
There's a new kosher restaurant right near our office. It's called Tiberias. The food looks yummy and the decor looks great and, rarest of all for a kosher restaurant (or, as I'm given to understand through reading way too many Anthony Bourdain books, rare for the restaurant business in general), the owners are actually perched by the door, welcoming people, and happy for you to be there. Oh, and hey -- they're giving out free coffee.
And yet, I'm not there.
Let me start from the beginning: Last night, I made the Best Sandwich Ever. (I know because I Twittered about it and everyone else on Twitter agreed.) 
So here I am, at work, starving, and the day is close to half over. I weigh my choices with all the usual overanalysis -- can it be vegan, or do I need protein? how cheap is cheap enough? when's the last time i ate pizza? -- and decide to hit the local kosher Dunkin' Donuts for a bagel.
And, on the way, I stumble into Tiberias.
At first I don't even know what's going on. All I see is two grinning guys out front, kissing hands and shaking babies and looking like they just won the lottery. One of them stops me -- the owner, it turns out. Today's the first day of business. He's super excited to be there. There is, he mentions several times, free iced coffee.
But the reason I stopped drinking iced coffee is the same reason my brain is working overtime: because I have an anxiety disorder, and I think too much, and caffeine only exacerbates it.
I'm peeking in the counters, and there are actually vegetables (another kosher restaurant rarity) and they look beautiful -- the eggplant sliced thick and juicy; corn as yellow as a field of radioactive flowers; perfectly grilled zucchini and red peppers. The menu in my hand lists the prices, and there's nothing less than $6.95. Except for soup, but I'm talking real stomach-filling food. The real meal meals are closer to $15.
I do the lunchtime math in my head. Packing my own sandwich costs $2 or so. Buying pizza, which is filling but not healthy, is $5 or $6. For another dollar or two, I could eat here, except that that's 20% of a meal, which is to say, I could eat out 5 times at a junky restaurant for every 4 times that I eat at this place. Or I could just pack lunch, save all that money, and spend it on my kids instead. Or save it for our trip to Australia. Or that subscription to McSweeneys that I really want.
But, really, is all this worth arguing about (or doing math over)? Kosher food, as Tamar says, is expensive. Kosher food in Midtown is expensive squared. We pay for convenience, and that convenience is multiplied when you're Jewish -- you're not merely paying for the food to be made for you, you're paying for someone else to pick out your vegetables and look for the kosher markings on the hummus carton and the bagels you would otherwise be checking out yourself. Elie Kaunfer wrote a couple months ago that most Jews don't know how to make their own matzah, and that's true, but that's just the tip of the iceberg -- there is no Jewish working class. There are upper-class people who can pay $20 for lunch, and there's this scraping-the-barrel class that packs our own lunch...or forgets to.
I do the Walk of Shame. I shuffle my feet the three storefronts down, to the donut store. I order a bagel.
The woman beside me turns around and checks out my yarmulke so deliberately that she's either making sure I'm Jewish or sizing me up for her niece. "You know," she remarks casually, "there's a new kosher restaurant that just opened up down the street. They're serving free iced coffee and it looks really good."
My face goes from zero to blushing. "I know," I manage to stammer. "I'm going to check it out when...when I'm eating lunch for real."
"I'm sorry," she gasps, seeing that she's offended me, but not knowing why. Meanwhile, I gaze at the intrepid worker who's currently toasting my bagel, enabling me to make it to 5:00 today...and wondering whether I shouldn't be toasting my own bagels instead.
