Me or my mom being Jewish or not wasn't something I ever thought about much, until then. I'd always considered myself mixed but more in touch with my Jewish roots. I'd been raised in a neighborhood with several other Jews, went to Hebrew school, gotten crap a couple times for being Jewish, and now here I was getting crap for not being Jewish, being asked not to touch wine bottles on a table...
And how did Aaron even know? I'm circumcised so it couldn't be that he peeked in on me in the bathroom... Nope, my cousin must have told him, I realized. Obviously it mattered to her, too, and suddenly I felt betrayed.
I was angry. And the more it sunk in, the angrier I got. I wanted to leave, but the buses had just shut down for the holiday and I didn't have a car. There was nowhere I could go. I was going to have to stick it out.
So I decided to try to make the most of it. I tried to put the whole thing out of my mind, went back into the living room, and spent my time before the Seder hanging out with Miriam's eight year old daughter, playing board games with her, which was actually a lot of fun. She was an adorable and intelligent little girl and her infectious smile and zest for life lifted me up and at least temporarily made me forget about what had happened.
Before the Seder I went to synagogue with Miriam's son and was shocked at how different an Orthodox synagogue is from a Reform one. The men and women were separated, with the women sitting behind a sheer curtain in the back, and there was all sorts of singing and chanting and standing up and sitting down and strange ways of praying that I'd never seen. It was heavily involved.
Then came time for the Seder. And I went over to Aaron's trailer (which was immediately adjacent to the village's lone bomb shelter) with Miriam and her kids, quite reluctantly.
The Seder was a tiresome affair. Growing up, our Seders were pretty quick, we'd read some stuff from the Haggadah, eat the horseradish, hide the matzo, etc., then have our dinner.
However, Aaron, being an Orthodox Jew, drew the thing out for hours. Hours. There was an onslaught of prayers and numerous things we had to do. It was even more involved than the synagogue. It was painful. Even some of his family seemed tired of it.
To finish it off, he spoke of the family in the settlement of Itamar, who were murdered, whose ten month old baby was stabbed to death. It wasn't the most cheery topic to end on. By this point my blood sugar was so low I thought I might pass out, but fortunately, after yet another set of prayers, the food got served.
The food was definitely the highlight of the evening. Both Miriam and Aaron's wife were excellent cooks. Being so hungry, though, and traumatized by the incessant prayers, I might have eaten and enjoyed anything by then...
I must say that the whole Seder made me wonder about God. If Orthodox Jews are keeping true to "His" exact word, why did God have to be so tedious and demanding? All the prayers and so on... And I mean, really, if you read the Old Testament, God is always punishing and putting Jews through such grief. He's like an abusive parent... And after everything Jews have been through, how could they even believe in God or want to be associated with Him? And why do all this stuff? I can understand keeping the holidays, even I wouldn't want to give those up, but the prayers, the fasting, the 613 rules? Come on...
Other than the (possibly) good food, nice too was speaking with Aaron's relatives, who, unlike him and his children, were secular and charming and interesting to talk with.
Speaking with them made me curious about Aaron, why he became religious, since his family obviously wasn't and some of whom seemed even more perturbed than me by the prolonged prayers which had proceeded dinner...
While eating I had passing thoughts of grabbing one of the wine bottles from off the table, taking a swig from it or even playfully poking my fingers in its direction, like only a couple inches away, just to see what Miriam and/or Aaron would do. But I respectfully resisted such urges...
After dinner, Aaron's and Miriam's kids played some board game and the adults drank spirits and talked, but I left as soon as possible, went back to Miriam's place, read for a bit and went to sleep. The end of the night for me couldn't come soon enough...
I awoke the next morning to Miriam's teenage son, who I'd been bunking with, praying loudly in the corner of the room. I couldn't believe he prayed first thing in the morning, but he did. And not only was he praying, but he wore a tefilin.
And as he prayed, he appeared to be in an intense state of trance and his eyes were shut and his body rocked back and forth as he clutched at the Torah in his hands and muttered stuff in Hebrew.
I didn't know if he might speak in tongues or something next, and I didn't want to find out, especially first thing in the morning, so I dressed as fast as possible and got the hell out of there and stepped into the kitchen.
Unfortunately for me, Miriam's family kept kosher to the nth degree and didn't use electricity on Shabbat or holidays so I couldn't put anything on the stove or into the microwave. Dejectedly, I scarfed down an apple and a piece of matzo and decided to go for a long walk.
As I was about halfway out the creaky front door, Miriam emerged from her bedroom, in a bathrobe and hair curlers. She was in tears. Although mad at her, I couldn't resist the urge to ask what was wrong.
She pulled me outside, in front of her trailer, to the same spot where Aaron told me not to touch the wine bottles. If prior experience in this location were any indication, I knew what she was about to tell me wasn't going to be good. And it wasn't.
She started to talk about her husband, who'd been curiously absent last night and the whole time I'd been there. Turns out she'd caught him a couple weeks ago on the computer looking at nude pictures of underage boys. The next day she threw him out of the house and told him her intention to divorce.
Then she went on to say how he'd never had much sexual interest in her and how she suspected him of molesting neighborhood boys, how all he did was smoke pot, how she felt like she and her kids were a mere cover for his homosexuality, how he'd run their business in the States into the ground, how they'd had to file for bankruptcy, how the last twenty years of her life were basically a lie, and on and on.
I felt less pissed off at her after hearing all this. I guess it's hard to stay too mad at someone who discovers her husband is a pedophile. We took a walk down her street in the crisp dewy morning and she continued to divulge more than I wanted to hear. But I dutifully listened and tried my best to console her.
I stayed until that evening, until after sundown, when the buses started running again, and then made an exodus of my own, back to my Kibbutz, sneaking away without saying goodbye.
For as at home and one with "my people" as I'd initially felt, by the time I left that village I never wanted to go back there again.
Newamba Flamingo lives in the Far East. He likes dragon fruit, John Cheever, and alien abductions. He and his co-conspirator Frankie Metro run an online magazine called "The Meth Lab."
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