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Temple Hopping

I decided one Friday night at a writer's conference in New Orleans to check out the Jewish scene. I had the Yellow Pages with me in my artless Dodge. I sauntered into the lane of an Orthodox synagogue, but with my luck, I had to park in between a couple of redneck bars. With only a tiny napkin on my head, I approached the synagogue. The rabbi handed me a rather neat moon-like embroidered skullcap. The sexton in charge did a brief pas-de-deux, having seen in his mind a possible new convert, instantly asked me if I would do him a good deed and put on phylacteries. I refused to, however.

"Do you think Rabbi S. is the Messiah?" he quietly whispers to me. I walk out to the foyer and see a Chasidic Jew from the Green Synagogue next door, hiding a cigarette. He speaks with a Cajun accent.

"I can offer you a light," I ventured.

"For you it's all right, but if they catch me lighting up tonight, it's a sin. Are you Jewish? Are you a good Jew?"

"Yes, but I'm in a rush."

"You could help me out; actually -- a charity over in Jerusalem. But I can't take the money unless you yourself put it in my pocket.

"Sorry."

"Hey boychick, before you go, do you want me to get you a funky redheaded little Jewish chick?"

I find my car littered with Silly String and broken bottles. I look in the phone book for the Reform temple nearby, but it wasn't open. I was told by the sexton that the young blond rabbi was at a black Jewish feminist seder on Lake Ponchartrain, and couldn't be reached except by beeper.

I go to the Yiddish Cultural Coffee Club. A Russian-speaking woman tells me to sit in the "Youth Section." I look around, but I don't see anybody a day younger than fifty, but I sit down anyway. The speaker was General Dragunsky, the last Jewish general from the USSR, who spoke for the Russian cause. As Dragunsky is speaking, a man rushes to the podium and says, "Tell the truth about the Jews in Russia!"

He is dragged out from the Club, with his head bleeding, and says to me, "Mister, I just came back from the USSR, where my own brother was sent away to the camps. They told me my brother who fought for the revolution was deported. And these crazy mishugenas tell me, a forty-year veteran of the Party, someone who fought in Spain and for the Garment Worker's Union, that I'm an anti-Communist and a traitor! Well, after going to Russia, maybe I am. Mister, half the people in that hall are FBI agents, anyway."

I offered to take him to a hospital, but he limps away.

Next I went to Temple Ohabei Shalom. A wiry man in a polyester green leisure suit resembling a crocodile with a full auburn beard, greets me with a bear hug. "Have you been looking for a spiritual leader? Well, welcome brother. Rabbi Jesus is here, you know. He is our brother. Do you know Jesus?"

"Are you... the Messiah?"

"Oh, no, brother... but you can find him here, or ask God about him. Think it over, brother. I don't want you to be in hell."

I feel I'm in hell already when the man's farm-bred wife and four muscled children start singing words of Christian sentiment to the tune of "My Yiddishe Mama" --"my yiddishe savior, he doesn't care for fancy things; his joy and his pleasure is when the little birdies sing."

Next stop, Temple Sunshine.

"I'm the rabbi here. This is TV night at our all-gay synagogue. Are you coming as a man or woman tonight? Or a couple?"

"Me? Can't you tell?!"

"You never know. I'm on hormones, myself. My momma dressed me up in English curls after seeing Shirley Temple. That's me, Rabbi Shirley Temple. Wouldn't you like a massage? It's not my business, but you look beat."

"After what I've gone through, I wouldn't mind."

"Well, you're in luck tonight. We have the Queen of the Night, Miss Gay Louisiana, Sandy Frombish here, direct from Baton Rouge, as our guest speaker. Would you like to come up to the altar?"

"I'll skip that right now. I'll just take the massage."

"That's at our after-service service."

I'm sweating. I walk outside.

OK, I'm marginal. Lenny Bruce, you get the last laugh. Yet something tugs at me. It must be my tie.

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