To view something awesomely strange...
It was my pre-emptive view of Hell as a pre-teenager to be subjected to the diligent religious delusions of my parents "for your grandmothers' sake." What could have been a circumspect perversion of arcane ritual, alien language, and blood sacrifice (Religion 101: Foreskin Amputation by Non-Medical Personnel) was bloated by a cabal of the self-righteous and professionally insane, namely the Glenwood Jewish Center. Orthodox Judaism never had it so good.
A scion of insular Eastern European religious propinquity was transplanted to Brooklyn, NY and grew vigorously in New World soil. We bar mitzvah boys were lashed to its gnarled trunk pending ransom payment with our minds. We were never buggered or otherwise made victims to Christian child abuse. Our molestation required years of diligent effort. We were to think the right thoughts of our own free will. Our minds were to be shaped like the Japanese bonsai - rooted in the sparest of soils, clipped to the quick, deformed about guiding principles, and allowed total freedom to thereafter pursue our destinies under the watchful eyes of our masters.
For all the years in which this outrage - mostly conducted in Hebrew, a language I do not speak - progressed, one single day pursues me. Our instructor was an ancient Jewish grandmother, Mrs. Sofer, quietly labeled by one and all "Pruneface." The incident occurred in the year 1963. Pruneface was about to shuffle off her mortal coil with a hideous head cold. Lesser evils would have stayed home to recuperate. She was forfeiting her health for us, and probably hoping to disseminate the ordeal.
She was in such rough shape that we were cowered into a semblance of good behavior. She was also loaded with vast quantities of a wide selection of what passed for cold medicine back then. She was well and truly ripped as she kicked back, lesson of the day put aside, and related her experiences in Palestine as a young woman running guns and killing British. I distinctly remember the look of her eyes as she progressively disclosed the latter. They shone like black opals; and it wasn't the cold medicine.
An 11 year old immersed in Portnoy's Complaint is wholly unequipped emotionally and intellectually to memorize what was unfolding. Had I possessed the foresight to take notes, my later years would have been rewarded for my suffering. I can only imperfectly remember back. It yet sends chills down my spine.
She helped smuggle guns and other practical items of nascent national liberation into Palestine. She enlisted with the Irgun, "having parties with the British," whereupon her confederate would intrude upon a little one-on-one and kill the amorous chap in a paramilitary and proficient manner, probably reciting a prayer afterward (not of contrition, but a respectful purchase order for God to send more British his way). I distinctly recall her alluding to some personal wet work. It was all a lesson for us unformed men, shaping part of our cognition and defining another minuscule morsel of our elders' sacrifices whose debt was ours to repay unto the seventh generation.
I was to learn later that there were two Jewish factions in British Palestine in the 1940s. The Haganah was not above deleting members of the British military, but they espoused diplomatic negotiation as the route to nationhood. They and the British did a lot of talking. The talks were powerfully abetted by the other faction, the Irgun, who sought the death of every non-Jewish soul treading the Promised Land. They were very good at it, and painstakingly psychotic by every measure. The British Empire did not wistfully peer over its collective shoulder when it departed. It fled the abyss at flank speed after it belatedly got its parliamentary and monarchal acts together.
That was one of my Hebrew School teachers, Mrs. Sofer, Pruneface. She was a blooded killer immeasurably beyond the caste ecstasies of Inner City gangs. Heat rose in her cheeks and her eyes glimmered as she related her small part in reclaiming Israel. The moment passed. It was back to rote memorization of long Hebrew passages about the Oaks of Momray and other drivel.
I am formally vested in the religion of my forebears and potentially wield some influence, being a Levite - one of two of twelve Tribes of Israel putatively not lost within the sands of time and Diaspora. Four years of that crap gained no purchase of my soul. One day of offhand reminiscence by an old lady tanked on antihistamines will haunt me to my grave.
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