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Sunday, September 24, 2023

The procession wound its way around the sanctuary with the rabbi in the lead, followed by the assistant rabbi, the cantor, the president of the congregation and a teenage boy. The adolescent was shockingly young when compared to the others. His jet-black hair, golden eyes and high cheek bones made him strikingly handsome.

Each of them was carrying a Torah — a copy of the original five books of the Bible, painstakingly copied by hand in elaborate Hebrew lettering onto a continuous parchment scroll that, in this case, was 128 feet in length.

Each Torah scroll had an elaborate, hand-embroidered, fitted cover that alone cost thousands of dollars. The tightly-wound scrolls themselves were worth between fifty and a hundred thousand dollars apiece.

Generally, only one or two scrolls would’ve been sufficient for the worshipers, but Torahs were seen as status symbols. This was a very wealthy congregation, located on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Hence there were five Torah scrolls kept in the sanctuary plus an additional two kept in the small chapel in another section of the building. Because the small chapel was used for the twice-daily minyan services and for the weekend teen services, those two actually saw the most use.

Following the five who carried the Torah scrolls were an elegantly-dressed, portly woman and a tall, slender, refined gentleman. They were followed by identical twin girls in their early teens, and then an impeccably-dressed woman who looked like she’d walked out of a fashion magazine. Each of the ten people in the procession had an important role to play on this, the holiest of days.

Although the congregation belonged to the Reform branch of Judaism, it adhered to many traditional observances and even kept a kosher kitchen, while the prayers were mostly in English so that they could be understood by all. Men and women sat together in stark contrast to the separation of genders imposed in Orthodox synagogues.

Still, a majority of the men were wearing traditional kippot on their heads and many congregants were wearing a tallit, or prayer shawl. As the procession passed by, people near the ends of each row pressed forward, holding the fringes of their tallot in outstretched hands as they sought to touch them to one of the Torah scrolls, and then to their lips as if to kiss the very words of God.

Eventually, the procession wound its way back to the bimah, the pulpit, and one-by-one, the rabbi returned each Torah scroll to its place in the open ark, leaving only the center spot for the scroll being carried by the boy. Gingerly, the rabbi removed the cover from that one and set it aside.

She then removed an elaborate sterling silver pointer that dangled from a silver chain, looped around the handles at the top of the Torah. The end of the pointer, known as a yad, was in the shape of an elaborate pointing hand. Indeed, yad is the Hebrew word for hand. It’s also the Hebrew word for power. The pointer mitigated the oils from human hands that could degrade and ruin the delicate parchment scroll which had already served the faith for over one and a half centuries.

Setting the pointer aside on the amud, or lectern, she took the Torah from the boy and grabbed it by the bottom set of handles. She opened the Torah to show just one page and held it high above her head with her back to the congregation so that all could see the word of God. Finally, she placed the scroll down on the amud.

Tonight was Erev Yom Kippur, or Yom Kippur Eve, the start of the Jewish Day of Atonement. Yom Kippur marked the end of the Ten Days of Awe, a period of self-reflection that began with Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year. During the past ten days, Jews around the world contemplated their failings of the past year.

Yom Kippur is about seeking God’s forgiveness. Although much has been made of fasting for 24 hours — a fast which only the most devout adhered to any more — there were prayer services that kept everyone too busy praying to even notice their hunger.

It all started with the chanting of the Kol Nidre, one of the most soulful and mournful prayers in Judaism. For all of its wordiness, it came down to a simple request for God to forgive his people in advance for making promises on this Yom Kippur that would be broken by the next. It was then that the boy was joined by the portly woman. It was evident as they stood next to each other, behind the amud, that they were mother and son; the resemblance was unmistakable.

The boy reached down and withdrew a violin and a bow from within the amud. It was his own violin and although not a Stradivarius, it was an exact replica of one. Fashioned by the world-famous luthier, Luiz Amorim, it virtually duplicated the sound of the original, but at the price of a fine sports car. The original violin from which it was copied had been owned by some of the finest violinists in the world. It last sold at auction for $20 million.

The wood of the violin literally shimmered in the bright lighting of the bimah as the boy raised it to his chin and brought the bow up to it. Sixteen years old, he was a junior at New York’s famous LaGuardia High School of Music and the Arts and the Performing Arts. He was a true prodigy, having played piano and violin since he was a toddler. He’d been invited to perform with the New York Youth Symphony, with the New York Philharmonic itself and with the Pittsburgh Symphony, among others, but his parents had kept him from doing much of that. They knew from personal experience what early fame could do to one’s life.

He appeared to be the essence of calm as he brought the bow to the strings of the violin, but in truth he was a nervous wreck. Of course he’d been performing in front of others for years. He did so regularly at his school, yet this was the most important performance of his life. The congregants included bankers, doctors, lawyers, actors, musicians, news anchors and politicians, some of them with faces that would be recognized just about anywhere in the world.

The boy started to draw the bow across the strings of the instrument as he fingered the strings in a transcendent vibrato. The soulful tune of the Kol Nidre filled the sanctuary with its haunting beauty as the boy played the melody with seemingly no effort at all. His anxiety faded away as the notes that were playing in his head seemed to be reproduced magically on the strings of his instrument. It was so instinctual, he didn’t even need to think about it.

After completing one full verse of the tune all the way through, the boy repeated the melody, playing it a bit softer as his mother joined in, singing the Hebrew words that had been chanted every year for centuries. She sang it three times (as tradition dictated), the first time very softly, the second with more vigor and the third time at full volume in a soprano voice that was well-known the world over.

The congregants were supposed to chant the words aloud but softly as she sang, but most kept their lips shut. No one dared to mar the flawless performance of such a world-class opera singer. Many had tears in their eyes as the prayer came to an end. Although it was totally inappropriate, the entire congregation rose to their feet and applauded wildly. People would have paid good money for the performance they’d just heard and in a sense, they had. Dues at the synagogue weren’t cheap and tickets for the High Holy Day services cost extra.

The boy descended from quite a pedigree. Not only was his mother a soprano with the Metropolitan Opera, but his father, who was also present on the bimah, was the principal conductor of the New York Philharmonic. The boy put his violin and bow back into the amud. He and his mother sat back down with the other participants on the bimah.

Pausing for just a moment, the rabbi rose from her own seat and walked to the amud. Standing behind it and the closed Torah scroll, she began her sermon:

My friends, ten days ago, on Rosh Hashanah, I spoke to you about the significance of the Akeda – the demand by God that Abraham offer his only son, Isaac, as a sacrifice.

We spoke of the teachings of the Talmud and some of the more controversial interpretations that have been debated ever since. Even the most traditional scholars agree that the text was altered and that perhaps Abraham even went through with the sacrifice, as his son is absent in the passages that follow.

Then there’s the fact that Sarah was Abraham’s sister and married to someone else. Many do not believe that Isaac was really Abraham’s son, even though the Torah makes it a point of saying he was, three times! Too bad they didn’t have DNA testing back then.

Predictably, the congregants laughed as she continued her sermon.

We spoke of the hypothesis that Abraham actually failed God’s test — that God wanted Abraham to stand up to him, yet he did not. Perhaps that’s why the Jews were exiled to Egypt and had to endure slavery until a more worthy leader, Moses, came along.

Or perhaps it’s all nothing more than our own mythology, to be interpreted as we see fit.

Now that you’ve had some time to cogitate on my sermon from the morning of Rosh Hashanah, let’s talk about the very tradition of reading from the Torah. The Akeda is taken out of sequence.

The story is so associated with Rosh Hashanah that we tend to forget that it is a special reading taken from Genesis and not from Deuteronomy, which is the Book of Moses that we read at the end of the sequence of readings from the Torah.

The reason, we are told, is that it tells the story of the Original Oath. When Abraham proved his loyalty and obedience to God, even to the point of being willing to sacrifice his only son, God reciprocated by making an oath to Abraham and to all of his descendants forevermore.

It’s the only time God makes such an oath to the Jews as a people. God vows to forgive us our sins in perpetuity. In a sense, the Akeda is the very story of the origin of Yom Kippur, when God forgives our sins, in advance, for the rest of the year.

Stopping for a moment to reach for a glass, hidden within the amud, that wasn’t there, she remembered that she was fasting! The reflex to quench her thirst was instinctual. She continued her sermon.

The strange thing about the Hebrew calendar, in addition to it being a lunar calendar, is that Rosh Hashanah falls in the middle of the year. We celebrate the new year, not with the first month, but with the seventh month of the year. Why in the world would we do that? As with Tevya’s musing about the tradition of covering one’s head in Fiddler on the Roof, we don’t know, but it’s a tradition.

The most likely reason is that we were an agrarian people. Our forebears were too busy with planting in the spring to devote so much time to introspection. So we waited until the fall, until the harvest was complete. Only then did we begin the ten days of repentance, with Rosh Hashanah on the first day of the seventh month.

During those ten days, we must seek out every person we have wronged during the year and ask their forgiveness. Similarly, we must forgive all those who’ve wronged us, so we can start the next year with a clean slate.

Of course, in modern life, seeking forgiveness of everyone would be an act of futility. Still, we’re supposed to try our best, though few of us ever do. When something seems to be impossible, why even bother to try? Because God tells us we must.

Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, is the final opportunity to seek forgiveness from the Almighty himself. We fast, and we pray all day. We are told that in doing so, we will be forgiven once again and inscribed in the book of good life for another year. Avinu Malkeinu, kotvenu b'sefer chayim tovim.

Afterwards, we return to tend our fields and to prepare them for winter, and then we celebrate the fall harvest with the holiday of Sukkot, a week-long celebration of the cycle of life.

At the conclusion of Sukkot, we celebrate the joyous festival of Shimini Atzeret and the sacred act of Simchat Torah, when we rewind the Torah and begin the cycle of readings again. It is an endless cycle — an affirmation of life.

My message to you on this evening of Kol Nidre is to think about the endless cycle of failure. Every year we make a vow to do better than we did during the last year.

We vow to treat our fellow humans justly and to help the stranger in need. We vow to stop despoiling the environment and to save the planet from deforestation, habitat loss and climate change. We vow not to commit sins of omission — to do nothing when we could’ve helped.

We say the Avinu Malkeinu and the Al Chet and we promise to do better.

And yet we ask God to forgive us in advance, because we know we will fail. That’s the very essence of the Kol Nidre prayer. Why do we give up on ourselves, before we have even begun to try?

During the next year, why don’t we vow to try a little harder. Let us not accept failure as inevitable. Perhaps the Hebrew year of 5784 will be the year we succeed. And let us say, Amen.

As the rabbi sat back down, the two teenage girls got up from their seats and approached the amud. The Hazan, or cantor, arose as well and joined them, standing between them. He opened the Torah to the appropriate section and nodded at one of the girls. In an obviously nervous voice, she began to chant the opening prayer for the reading of the first section of the Torah portion for the evening…

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Tuesday, September 26, 2023

Simon waited patiently for the driver to lower the ramp so he could exit the Bx10 bus. He then took particular care to make sure cars stopped when the light changed and cautiously entered the intersection. First crossing Paul Avenue and then West 205^th Street, he always crossed in that order so as to minimize his exposure to traffic. Even then he had to be careful, as people making turns often didn’t see him in his wheelchair.

Now that the autumnal equinox had passed, it would only get worse as the days got shorter and the mornings darker. At least it wouldn’t be long until daylight savings time ended.

Spotting a familiar figure ahead of him, he pushed the joystick forward and sped to catch up with her. “Hey, Robin. Did you have a nice Yom Kippur?”

Robin was a year older than Simon and a junior, but they were both on the chess team at the Bronx High School of Science. “Nice isn’t exactly how I’d put it,” she answered. “Fasting and introspection aren’t exactly my idea of fun.”

“Not that we’re Catholic, but Lent is no picnic either,” Simon went on. “My parents were raised as Southern Baptists and before we moved to New York, we were evangelicals. They pretty much make repentance a full-time occupation. As I’ve heard my dad say, religion puts the misery in Missouri.”

Robin couldn’t help but laugh and then asked, “Now that you have a Jewish boyfriend, do you think that maybe you’ll start attending High Holy Day services with him?”

Laughing, Simon replied, “Craig’s mom isn’t any more religious than my parents are. Last year, when we had him over for the Winter Holiday, we bought a menorah so he could celebrate Hanukkah while staying with us. Craig didn’t even know the prayers to sing for lighting the candles. What more can I say?”

Sighing, Robin added, “At the least, I’d have liked to have heard my boyfriend play the violin for the Kol Nidre service. He offered to get me a free ticket, but my dad wanted to observe the holiday as a family, and so we all attended services at the Young Israel synagogue.”

“You guys are Orthodox?” Simon asked in surprise.

“Hardly,” Robin answered. “We used to be observant, but then my mom died when I was four and Dad kind of gave up on religion after that. Then, when I turned thirteen, I made the mistake of asking why we never had a Passover Seder. Dad explained that Passover had been Mom’s favorite holiday.

“Anyway, Dad decided it was time we all started going to services again. Not that we keep kosher or anything, but there are several Orthodox synagogues near where we live. At least Young Israel of Manhattan is a modern Orthodox congregation, but it’s still Orthodox, which means that the women sit separately from the men, out of sight so they won’t distract the men while they pray. Apparently, God only listens to men.”

“That really sucks,” Simon agreed. “You should stand up for yourself and insist on going to a more liberal synagogue.”

“Why rock the boat?” Robin asked. “My father’s a Russian Jewish immigrant with old world ideas. It’s something of a miracle he accepts my gay brother and his boyfriend, not to mention my gay sister and her punk lifestyle. Besides, I only have another year to go, and then I’ll be off at college.”

“Speaking of boyfriends, there’s Craig now,” Simon exclaimed. Sure enough Craig was getting out of the passenger side of a Mercedes SUV, just ahead of them.

“Will wonders never cease? You got a ride from your mom today,” Simon said as his boyfriend bent down and gave him a quick peck on the lips.

Although the Bronx wasn’t known for its tolerance of alternative lifestyles, most of the people around them were classmates who also went to the Bronx High School of Science. As one of New York’s elite public high schools, admission was by exam and only the best and brightest kids went there. Acceptance of LGBTQ+ students wasn’t an issue at all for most of them.

“One of the rare times my mom didn’t have somewhere else to be,” Craig related. His mother was a cardiologist at New York Presbyterian Hospital. Because she often had early morning responsibilities in the Cath Lab, Craig usually had to take the bus.

Whereas Simon lived in Riverdale and had a fairly short bus ride, Craig lived in Washington Heights, in Manhattan. He and his mom lived in a spacious co-op apartment in Castle Village, right on the Hudson, with spectacular views of the George Washington Bridge and the New Jersey Palisades.

When his mom wasn’t able to give him a ride to school, Craig’s morning commute involved a six block walk to catch a Bx7 bus. After crossing over into the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx, he transferred to a Bx10 bus, which brought him right to school.

At the start of the year, Simon and Craig attempted to coordinate their schedules, so that they could both ride the same Bx10 bus. Unfortunately, there was just too much variability in timing for it to work out very often. Robin’s commute was the longest of the three, even though most of it was on a #4 express train.

As the three students made their way into the main entrance of Bronx Science with Simon in a wheelchair, no one would have ever suspected that Craig was an amputee. He walked so naturally that, except for when he dressed out for gym class, no one would know he had a prosthetic leg.

He’d been diagnosed with Ewing Sarcoma in his right knee when he was just nine years old. At that age and in that location, limb salvage wasn’t practical so he underwent amputation with placement of a prosthetic knee joint. By including an artificial knee, Craig could be fit with a below-knee prosthesis that was nearly as functional as his natural leg.

“You guys up for the tournament this Saturday at Brooklyn Tech?” Craig asked. Brooklyn Tech was one of the other elite specialty public high schools. Located in Fort Greene, right near the Barclay Center and Downtown Brooklyn, it was the largest of the specialty high schools with an enrollment of nearly six thousand.

Although the chess teams at Bronx Science and Brooklyn Tech were rivals, chess tournaments usually involved competitions among dozens of schools. Hence Brooklyn Tech was merely the hosting institution.

“I’m particularly looking forward to getting together afterwards with Tanner and Zach,” Robin exclaimed. Tanner was a kid she knew from when her family lived in Manhattan Beach on Coney Island. Tanner was the son of Russian Jewish immigrants as was she, but they’d lost touch when her family moved to the Lower East Side of Manhattan.

Now, he was a senior at Brooklyn Tech. Indeed, they were reunited when they were paired to play against each other in a chess meet the previous year. Tanner’s boyfriend, Zach, lived in a semi-detached house in the Greenpoint neighborhood of Brooklyn. Zach was on the debate team — not the chess team, but he often attended the chess tournaments to see his boyfriend compete.

The sound of the bell ringing let the three teenagers know it was time to head to class.

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As with all of the New York City public schools, LaGuardia High School had been closed for the Yom Kippur holiday. Hence all students were catching up after a long weekend.

“Hey, Larry,” the teacher called out, “Do you have a minute?”

“If you’ll give me a late pass,” Larry replied.

“This won’t take long. By the way, I have it on good faith that you gave an outstanding performance Sunday night at your synagogue.”

“Yeah, well it was my mother who got the standing ovation,” Larry countered.

“I heard it was for both of you. What I want to talk about is a real opportunity. I have a colleague who’s looking for a talented musician to travel with her to Israel next week, in conjunction with the Jewish holidays of Shimini Atzeret and Simchat Torah. I know this is a last-minute request, but she only received the request herself late last week. When she asked me if I had a student in mind, naturally I thought of you.

“I take it you have a valid passport?”

Larry had traveled all over the world with his parents, and so he nodded his head in the affirmative.

“Would you be interested?”

“Of course I’ll have to ask my parents but, yeah, very. When do you need to know?”

Laughing, the teacher replied, “Yesterday, but the sooner you can let me know, the better. Otherwise I’ll need to ask someone else.”

“I’ll let you know tomorrow.”

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The tapping of the smart watch on his wrist woke Francis San Angelo from his fitful slumber. Affectionately known as ‘Freck’ to his closest friends, the copious freckles on his face that had given him his nickname had long-since faded. The Acela Express he and his boyfriend were riding was nearing Boston’s Back Bay Station.

Although only sixteen, Freck was in his fourth year out of five in the combined architecture and civil engineering program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The program was generally regarded as the best of its kind in the world. Seated next to him, his boyfriend, Kyle Goldstein, also began to stir. Kyle was only fourteen but in his senior year at MIT, in the astrophysics program.

Although the New York City schools had all been closed for the Jewish holiday of Yom Kippur, MIT was not, and so the boys would have some catching up to do. They’d gotten up early so as to take the 5:05 AM train out of Moynihan Hall. They’d hoped to arrive in time for their morning classes but thanks to signaling delays, the train was nearly two hours late getting into Boston. By the time they got to their dorm room in Maseeh Hall, the morning was a loss.

Although Freck was an agnostic and Kyle was an atheist, they took pride in their Jewish heritage, even to the extent of going through a joint bar mitzvah over the summer. That was particularly remarkable for Freck, who’d been raised as a Roman Catholic.

Learning that his mother was half-Jewish, he’d made a deep dive into learning about the Jewish faith and traditions. His twin thirteen-year-old sisters also took an interest in their Jewish origin and had undergone a joint double bat mitzvah over the summer as well.

Just two evenings before, Freck’s mom and sisters had been honored with aliyot at their synagogue on the Upper West Side. Meaning an exultation, an alyah referred to chanting the prayers before and after the reading of a Torah portion. In the broader sense, it meant living in the Holy Land, either figuratively or literally. There was no greater honor than an alyiah during Yom Kippur. Of course Freck and Kyle had been in attendance. The highlight of the evening was hearing their friend, Larry Sanders, play the Kol Nidre on his violin while his mother, a famous soprano, sang the prayer.

The school week was a busy one for both Kyle and Freck. In addition to catching up with a day and a half of missed classes, there were assignments due and exams to take.

In addition, the boys were active in the MIT Hillel and took part in the preparations for the Jewish holiday of Sukkot, which celebrated the fall harvest. They even took part in building the sukkah, an outdoor structure festooned with symbols of fall, where prayer services would be held on Friday evening.

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Friday, September 29, 2023

Seth Whitmore was a standout in any crowd. Although not the tallest in the pre-law program at Columbia University, his unruly mop of golden curls and vivid green eyes couldn’t help but draw attention. Add to that his confidence, sharp whit and innate enthusiasm, and his peers couldn’t help but be attracted to him. As the son of a U.S. Congressman, he was always in the spotlight.

Seth’s husband, Asher, was equally well-known. He’d become a star chef at the tender age of fifteen, when his mother was struck by a kid on an e-bike. With severe orthopedic trauma, she underwent multiple surgeries and months of rehabilitation. The kid on the e-bike, who’d been rushing to make a delivery, veered into the path of an MTA bus and was killed. It was a heavy price to pay at the age of fourteen.

Asher’s mother was Asian American and his father was a Black Creole. Together, they ran an Asian takeout restaurant on New York’s Lower East Side. They were about to open a second restaurant nearby, a Cajun buffet, when the accident occurred. With school letting out for the summer, Asher took it upon himself to open the Ragin’ Cajun with help from his friends. Just a few years later, in its new location at Essex Crossing, the restaurant earned Michelin’s coveted two-star rating as one of the top restaurants in the world.

With Tiger Woods good looks, Asher was well-known in culinary circles. However, he was Black, Asian and gay, which made him a target for white supremacists. That was borne out just a couple of months earlier, when he was brutally stabbed outside the Ragin’ Cajun. Asher required extensive surgery. In spite of major blood loss, he recovered surprisingly quickly from his physical wounds. His mental recovery, however, was proceeding much more slowly. He would undoubtedly require months or even years of counseling.

Wisely, Asher decided to take the fall semester off from his studies as a junior in New York University’s renowned Stern Business School. Ordinarily, he’d have immersed himself in his family’s restaurant as a way of keeping his mind occupied. However, he’d required an extensive bowel resection after the attack. The result was something called short bowel syndrome. It was difficult for him to tolerate eating his own cooking. That sort of thing could be fatal to the career of a chef at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Asher was just starting to come to terms with that.

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As a junior in Columbia University’s pre-law program, Seth couldn’t afford to take time off, and so, on the first full Friday in autumn, he was immersed in class, attending an unusually boring morning lecture. Seated next to Seth on his left was Clarke, a young man who’d been a friend of Asher and Seth since the three boys attended Stuyvesant High School. Although Seth wasn’t rich by any means, particularly by New York standards, he had more than adequate resources to cover his tuition and basic needs.

Clarke, on the other hand, decidedly was on a budget. His parents made their money the old fashioned way, by stealing it. Both had been high-level city employees who supplemented their income through bribery and kickbacks. Convicted of racketeering and child abuse, they were now serving long sentences in federal penitentiaries.

Unfortunately, when it came to child abuse, Clarke had gotten the worst of it. The resulting physical scars would never heal, nor would the deep emotional scars that at one time had made him intensely homophobic.

His emotional healing began when he met his boyfriend, Carl, who was a fellow student at Stuyvesant High School. Carl was now a star center on the Seton Hall University basketball team. In the meantime, Clarke’s oldest brother, Joseph, moved back home to help raise his sibs when their parents went to prison.

Joseph, who’d gone to Notre Dame University on a football scholarship, had been accepted to law school at Columbia for the following year. With help from the law firm where he worked as a paralegal, he negotiated a deal with the Feds that let the children keep the house and their parents’ legitimately-earned retirement funds. There was barely enough to cover the cost of sending nine kids to state universities, let alone Ivy League schools.

Thanks to Clarke’s extensive volunteer work and his having won an essay contest, he was able to secure a scholarship from the Stonewall Foundation. Otherwise, he’d have never been able to afford to attend Columbia. Once a bully, he was determined to make amends by providing legal defense of gay rights.

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Seated on Seth’s right was Ahmad, a Palestinian-American young man. Ahmad was by far the wealthiest of the three, with an uncle who’d made millions investing in Silicon Valley startups and an aunt who’d multiplied their earnings by investing in Bay Area real estate. Unable to have children of their own, they’d been very generous with their wealth, setting up trust funds to ensure that all of their nieces and nephews could study in the United States.

They’d come to America along with Ahmad’s parents on student visas to study at Stanford University. Ahmad was born in California, at a time when his father was working on a post-doctoral fellowship at Cal Tech.

His parents and their four children moved back to the occupied West Bank when Ahmad was twelve. They’d been offered positions at An-Najah National University, in Nablus, which was the top-ranked university in Palestine. Both parents thought they could do far more good in teaching the next generation of Palestinian youth than they ever could in America.

Unfortunately, for Ahmad, who’d never known life outside of California, the move came as an immense culture shock. Having grown up in an environment where everyone was free to go, be and associate with whomever they wanted to, the West Bank was literally a foreign country to him. In California, many of his classmates and friends, including his best friend, had been Jewish. In Nablus, it was downright dangerous to associate with Jews.

Not helping matters was the growing realization that he was gay. It was a secret he’d kept to himself throughout his high school years. When it came time to apply for college, it had never been in doubt that he would attend an Ivy League university.

Not only was Ahmad an American citizen, but thanks to his trust fund, he had the resources to afford the tuition and living expenses at any university. Ahmad’s older brother, Hassan, was graduating from Stanford University at the same time that Ahmad was graduating from high school. Because Hassan planned to enroll in medical school, both boys concentrated on universities that were exceptionally well-known for both medicine and law.

When Ahmad was accepted into the pre-law program at Columbia University and Hassan was accepted for the freshman class of the prestigious Grossman School of Medicine at New York University, the choice to live in New York was an obvious one.

Although they could have both qualified for student housing, sharing an apartment together offered many advantages. There was a substantial Palestinian-American community in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Bay Ridge, but the commute from there would have taken them over an hour each way. That would have been a particular problem for Hassan, whose irregular hours would’ve meant taking the subway at all hours of the night.

Instead, they found a fourth-floor walkup in Greenwich Village, on the west side of Lower Manhattan. It was adjacent to the NYU main campus, so Hassan could take advantage of the free NYU shuttle service to and from the medical school campus. Ahmad was able take the subway, practically door-to-door.

It was exciting to be able to live in Manhattan, but Ahmad wasn’t prepared for the impact of living in New York’s best-known gay-friendly neighborhood. He couldn’t help but take note of all of the gay-oriented businesses, nor could he help but stare at the sight of openly gay couples walking hand in hand.

Caught in the act of staring, Hassan told his younger brother something that changed his life. He told him that not only did Hassan know Ahmad was gay, but his sisters did as well. They’d always known. Only their parents were in the dark, and they were back in Palestine. Free to be himself, Ahmad took an interest in LGBTQ+ activities, which was how he met Seth and Clarke. In the time since, he’d had a few sexual encounters but was still single.

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Finally, the lecture finished. Seth and his friends were commuters and not on the Columbia meal plan. Therefore, after spending the morning in a series of boring lectures, choosing a place for lunch was the top priority. They were starved.

“Let’s see what it’s like outside,” Seth suggested to his two friends as they exited the lecture hall and left the building. The forecast was for rain and although it wasn’t raining yet, it sure felt like rain. The skies were overcast and the humidity was 80%.

With a temperature of 64 and a gusty wind out of the north, the chill in the air signaled that summer weather was behind them. Ordinarily, they’d have grabbed food from one of the many food carts or from a neighborhood deli or bodega.

“Definitely not good weather for eating outdoors,” Clarke lamented. “How about Fogon,” he suggested. Fogon was a Mexican and Peruvian food place that was popular with students and faculty alike. It was on campus and, with most entrées costing ten dollars or less, it was relatively affordable.

Unfortunately, that also made it noisy and crowded during the lunch hour and on a Friday, one could expect a long wait for a table. “After that lecture, I think I might fall asleep while waiting in line,” Ahmad complained. The three boys couldn’t help but laugh. “I don’t much feel like putting up with all the noise either.

“How about going to Massawa, my treat?” Massawa was one of the oldest Eritrean and Ethiopian restaurants in the U.S. It had a well-deserved reputation for excellent food and impeccable service. Although located adjacent to the Columbia University campus, it was seldom crowded at lunchtime. The fifteen-dollar per-customer minimum probably had a lot to do with that.

The three boys entered Massawa to find it slightly more crowded than usual, but they didn’t have to wait to be seated at one of the low tables. Ahmad immediately placed an order for ful for the table. Ful medames was a traditional fava bean dip served as an appetizer with toasted pita bread.

As the server brought the boys their appetizer, Ahmad asked his classmates, “Last time we all had the Vegan sampler. Do you guys wanna do vegan again or maybe give in to your carnivorous instincts?” Ahmad grinned as he asked. None of the boys was a vegan per se, but they weren’t the ‘meat and potatoes’ type either. Although Ahmad wasn’t religious, he took comfort in the fact that the restaurant was halal, which meant that the meat they served had been butchered in accordance with the Quran, in an ethical manner.

“I could definitely go for something with meat,” Clarke replied.

“I’m good with that,” Seth agreed.

“How about we order beef, lamb and either poultry or seafood entrées to share?” Ahmad suggested. “Maybe a vegan entree that’s not part of the sampler, too.”

“I dunno,” Clarke responded. “Four dishes for the three of us would be about right, but this appetizer’s filling!”

“I’d hafta agree with Clarke,” Seth chimed in. “Stick with beef, lamb and chicken. We’re already eating a vegan dish right now.”

The server returned and Ahmad ordered zegini, alitcha beghe and tebsi derho to share.

“This is the first time we ordered ful, isn’t it?” Seth asked. “It’s even better than the ful Asher made for Passover this year.”

“You guys celebrate Passover?” Ahmad asked in confusion. “But you aren’t even Jewish!”

“My husband likes the challenge of cooking food outside of his expertise in Cajun-Asian fusion. We have a lot of Jewish friends and since the pandemic, they’ve been getting together every year for a teen-run Passover seder.

“Asher cooks an authentic meal for the occasion that’s similar to what the Jews in ancient Egypt might’ve eaten on the night before the Exodus. He’s done extensive research on foods that were native to the region.

“For example, slaves had access to lamb but not beef. Chickens weren’t native to Egypt, nor had they been domesticated yet. Fava beans have been found in archeologic digs in Egypt and many think ful may have originated with the ancient Egyptians.

“For some things, he has to improvise. For example, apples were available, but they were the size of today’s crabapples. He therefore makes do with modern apples that match the tartness of those that were native to ancient Egypt. Although quail eggs can be obtained today, it’s still more practical to use chicken eggs.

“Asher loves the challenge of cooking unusual things. He once did a full Italian meal for my grandpa and his boyfriend…”

“Wait — your grandfather’s gay?” Ahmad asked.

“He met his boyfriend at a summer program at the University of Iowa when he was only sixteen. His boyfriend was only thirteen at the time. They fell hard for each other, but it was the early seventies, in the Midwest, and coming out wasn’t an option. They went their separate ways, both of them marrying and having kids, my dad among them.

“In the meantime, my grandma died of multiple sclerosis and Jeff, his boyfriend, lost his wife to breast cancer. My grandpa went on to become the director of astrophysics at the American Museum of Natural History. Jeff won a Nobel prize in physics and was a professor at UCLA.

“He often toured the country, giving lectures, one of which was at Stuyvesant High School. Apparently, I look just like my grandpa did at my age and when I got up to ask a question, Jeff practically had heart failure. Anyway, after the lecture, he asked me if I was related to Paul Moore. The rest, as they say, is history.”

“That’s an amazing story,” Ahmad responded. “Apparently, the gay gene runs in your family.”

“Perhaps,” Seth agreed, “but it could also be the result of normal statistical variations.”

“How true,” Clarke chimed in.

The server arrived with a very large serving tray, balanced on one forearm. Using the other hand, he moved what was left of the ful to the unoccupied seat at their table. He then placed a large platter in the center. On it was a round piece of injera, the flat spongy bread for which East Africa is known.

Next, he unloaded the beef, lamb and chicken dishes onto the injera, each forming its own mound. After loading the plates the boys had used for their appetizer back onto the serving tray, he placed a fresh dinner plate in front of each of them.

Next to each plate, he placed a covered dish that contained a rolled-up supply of additional injera. Finally, he handed each a hot moistened towel with which they washed their hands. They placed the used towels back on the serving tray and the server departed.

Although eating with one’s hands can seem strange to Americans, the three boys had eaten at Massawa before and were well-acquainted with East African etiquette. They each unrolled a small round injera onto their dinner plate and tore off a small piece of it. They then scooped up a small portion one of the entrées into the piece of injera using a pinching motion, and popped the bread with its contents into their mouths.

Although they ate with their hands, they never actually touched any of the food, except for their own injera. It was actually more sanitary than was sharing serving utensils and passing serving dishes around a table. As the boys ate, they talked about their classes and upcoming projects and exams. Eventually, their talk turned to their plans for Thanksgiving.

“Growing up, my parents were always invited to a big bash at City Hall for Thanksgiving, so we kids were left to fend for ourselves,” Clarke began. “With nine of us, there was no shortage of labor, but we didn’t have parents to teach us and so it was very much a matter of figuring things out as we went.

“My older sisters did most of the work, trying out recipes from cookbooks and whatever they could find on the internet. Some of the food came out okay — some not so much. I can tell you first hand that neither raw turkey nor burnt turkey are particularly appetizing.

“When my parents went to prison and Joseph moved back home, everything changed. His decision to offer Carl’s mom work as our housekeeper and surrogate mom was brilliant and not just because it meant Carl moving in with us — moving in with me.

“Mami brought balance to the family that was sorely needed. She showed us what a mother’s supposed to do for her family. She made us whole again.

“So… unless something changes like an unexpected marriage or an as-yet unannounced pregnancy in the family, we’ll all gather together for Thanksgiving in our Staten Island home. With a little help from all of us, Mami will put together a Puerto Rican-American Thanksgiving feast.

“There will be roast turkey, turkey with molé sauce, turkey enchiladas, fried plantains with candied yams, cornbread stuffing, homemade cranberry sauce, collard greens, green beans, refried beans and frijoles negro con arroz.”

“Black beans with rice,” Seth echoed with the translation. “With a husband who’s a chef and in-laws in the food service business, Asher and I haven’t been able to celebrate Thanksgiving for ourselves since 2018. That was right after we met and before we opened the Ragin’ Cajun.

“Of course, Asher’s parents have always had to work on Thanksgiving — even when all they served was Asian takeout. You might not think there’d be much call for Asian food on Thanksgiving, but it’s a safe bet when disaster strikes and the holiday meal is ruined.

“So in 2018, Asher and I thought we’d make our own Thanksgiving dinner for just the two of us. That was not long after we met. When we heard that others were gonna be alone for the holiday, invitations were made and pretty soon we ended up having a Thanksgiving dinner for eight. Our friend from class, Roger Goldstein, asked if he could bring his brother, Kyle, which is how we came to meet one of our very best friends.

“Kyle was only nine at the time, yet intellectually he was our equal. He had the same potty mouth he has today. He made no bones about being gay and it was not long after that that we introduced him to another gay classmate of ours, Freck, who was an eleven-year-old sophomore. They’ve been a couple ever since.”

“Those are your friends who go to MIT?” Ahmad asked.

“You got it,” Seth replied. “Freck’s in the combined architecture and civil engineering program and Kyle’s in his senior year in astrophysics.”

“And they had a double-bar mitzvah over the summer,” Clarke added. “It was up in Riverdale and they had a reception that was a pool party. We all had a blast.”

“So what are your plans for Thanksgiving this year.” Ahmad asked. “Will Asher’s injuries affect his helping out at the Ragin’ Cajun?”

“That’s a very good question,” Seth replied. “He’s still plagued by memories of the attack, which was right in front of the restaurant. On top of that, much of his small intestine had to be resected, so he has short bowel syndrome. He can only eat small, bland meals. Otherwise, he has dumping.

“Whenever he eats a large meal or anything spicy, he has diarrhea within minutes of eating. He can still cook, but even the smell of his cooking makes him a bit sick. He’s in counseling and all, but he has yet to return to working in his family’s restaurant.”

“And Thanksgiving’s a really busy time at the Ragin’ Cajun, isn’t it?” Clarke asked.

“Second only to Mother’s Day,” Seth acknowledged. “Don’t get me wrong — Asher’s parents will have more than enough help for the day. The tips are phenomenal and everyone who works in the kitchen will earn double their normal pay.

“It’s just that Asher used to love working on Thanksgiving. He was always at his creative best, and now he’s not even sure he wants to have anything to do with the holiday. Even eating a large Thanksgiving dinner is out of the question.”

“That’s a fuckin’ shame,” Ahmad agreed.

“What about you Ahmad?” Seth asked. “Does your family even celebrate Thanksgiving?”

Laughing, Ahmad answered, “I was born in California and spent the first twelve years of my life there. Of course we celebrated Thanksgiving. My family would get together with my uncle’s family and we’d have a royal feast. You haven’t lived until you’ve had turkey shawarma with chickpeas and lentils, falafels and couscous stuffing.”

“Are you gonna go back to California for Thanksgiving this year?” Seth asked.

Shaking his head, Ahmad answered, “Thanksgiving’s a terrible time to fly across the country. My brother’s gonna do it, but it’s not for me.”

“Tell me about it,” Clarke chimed in. “I’ll never forget the Thanksgiving when several of us had family flying from San Francisco to New York, and then the whole fuckin’ air traffic control system went down.”

“I heard about that! Even though I was halfway around the world,” Ahmad responded.

“What’s crazy is that my parents, Clarke’s sister’s family and Kyle’s aunt’s family were all on the same flight from San Francisco,” Seth added.

“Wow, what were the odds of that happening?” Ahmad asked.

“Actually, as I recall saying at the time, pretty high. Their flight was probably at a convenient time and had the most seats available at the best price,” Seth replied.

“So getting back to this Thanksgiving, if you’re not gonna go to California, do you have plans, or would you like an invite?”

“That’s really kind of you to offer, Seth, but I have plans. Two very good friends of mine from Nablus are also attending school in the States. We’re getting together for Thanksgiving in Vermont.

“My friend Ahsan has relatives in Norwich — a cousin and her husband, who are both doctors at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, just across the river in New Hampshire. He used to spend his summers with them and their kids. They’ve invited the three of us to spend the holiday with them.”

“That sounds like fun,” Seth commented.

“I’m really looking forward to it.”

<> <> <>

Saturday, September 30, 2023

“I didn’t realize Brooklyn Tech’s so near the original Junior’s Restaurant,” Robin exclaimed as the five friends were handed their menus. Located just a short distance down Dekalb Avenue, just on the other side of Flatbush Avenue, it was a natural spot for a group of teens to grab a bite after a grueling day of one chess match after another. “I’m surprised we were able to get a table so quickly, especially the way Smashburger was so crowded.”

“Yeah, well Smashburger’s always been a popular hangout for kids who go to Brooklyn Tech,” Tanner explained. “It’s closer, and it’s a burger joint. You’ll spend more on a slice of cheesecake here than on an entire meal at Smashburger.”

“You got that right,” Zach chimed in. “A Classic Smash Burger costs $8.95. A cheeseburger here costs $14.25, and that’s before adding any sides. I’m gonna order a Reuben. That’s $19.95. Add in an order of red skin potato salad, a cream soda and a slice of carrot cheesecake, and we’re talking $37.95, plus tax and tip, which brings the total to just shy of fifty dollars…”

“You did that in your head?” Simon asked.

“It’s one of the many things that makes my boyfriend a freak,” Tanner explained.

Flipping his boyfriend off, Zach continued, “Anyway, I could feed both Tanner and me, as well as my brother on that at Smashburger. But then it’s worth spending more on an afternoon with friends.”

“Speak for yourself, Zach,” Tanner countered. “Most of us don’t have anything near your allowance, you know.”

“Which is why I said I’m buying, but why is it that everyone assumes that doctors are rich?” Zach asked. “We’re strictly middle-class.”

“Yeah, but both of your parents are physicians, they drive luxury cars and you live in a house worth millions,” Tanner pointed out. “My dad’s a teacher, and my mom stayed home to raise me and my four sisters.”

“It was their choice to have five kids,” Zach countered, “and they’d have had a lot more money every month if they’d saved their money to buy a place rather than paying rent. And that house worth millions was dilapidated and in an industrial wasteland when my parents bought it. They fixed it up themselves. And they’re still paying off their student loans!”

Rolling his eyes, Tanner replied, “I’m not complaining. At least I see my parents every day.”

“That was hitting below the belt,” Zach complained. “It’s just a good thing that I love you.”

“Sometimes I think it’s my cooking you love.” Then looking at the others at the table, Tanner went on to explain, “When I first met Zach, he and his brother were living on meal kits. Meal kits, if you can believe it. I’ve been going home with Zach and doing the cooking ever since.”

“And I appreciate it,” Zach acknowledged. “It’s what we do after dinner that I love the most,” he added with a blush, earning catcalls from their friends.

Both of Zach’s parents were Emergency physicians at Wyckoff Heights Medical Center, working staggered thirteen-hour shifts. Other than the one day each week when both parents were home at the same time, they hardly ever saw their kids, much less spent time with them.

“Speaking of your brother, where is he?” Craig asked.

“Right behind you,” Jake called out as he approached the table and grabbed the open seat. Turning to face his brother, he added, “Thanks for the invite.”

“Hey, it’s not like we otherwise get to see each other that much,” Zach responded.

“You’re just jealous ’cause I got into Stuyvesant and you didn’t,” Jake countered, earning a middle-finger response from his brother. Between the longer commute and the hours he spent on the editorial staff of the student newspaper, Jake was hardly ever home.

The truth was that Zach was a bit jealous of his younger brother. Nevertheless, in spite their two-year, four-month age difference and their three-year grade difference, the brothers were as close as brothers could be. It was Jake who’d helped his older brother accept that he was gay, and it was Zach who’d kept his younger brother engaged in his education during the pandemic. They were truly best friends as well as brothers.

Their server soon appeared to take their orders, and the six teens quickly made their choices. Craig helped get a contraption out of a pack on the back of Simon’s wheelchair, and Simon wasted no time in donning the apparatus on his left forearm.

Simon had hereditary spastic paraparesis, which not only kept him from walking but also made it difficult to use his hands. A surgically-implanted baclofen pump provided a continuous stream of medication into his spine that kept the spasms under control. Before he had the pump, his spasms were often severe enough to throw him out of his wheelchair.

Now, thanks to the pump, his spasticity was mostly limited to jerky motions in his hands that made eating very difficult. It was actually the ingenuity of his boyfriend in adapting a Steadicam meant for use in motion photography, that allowed Simon to feed himself. With a rocker knife held via a cuff on his right wrist and a ‘spork’ attached to the Steadicam, he could cut up his food for himself and get it into his mouth.

“So how did your matches go?” Jake asked.

“Simon got the top prize,” Craig stated with evident pride in his boyfriend.

“I’ve been wondering how you play chess with your spasticity,” Jake asked. “Do you use the Steadicam?”

“I probably could, with the right attachments,” Simon answered. “The problem is that it’d be hard to move my chess pieces without knocking over those of my opponent. In any case, it wouldn’t be fast enough for tournament play.

“My parents bought me a regulation magnetic chessboard with a custom voice interface that meets the official rules for reasonable accommodation. I have it with me if you’d like to see it. Each piece has a designation, such as ‘king’, ‘queen’, ‘K2’ for second knight, ‘P4’ for fourth pawn and so on. Likewise, each space is numbered, so I need only say which piece I want to move to which space and the chessboard does the rest.”

“That sounds utterly cool,” Jake responded.

“Thanks to Simon, I’ve decided I want to go into assistive technology for my career,” Craig added. “There’s a tremendous need for engineers who specialize in finding workarounds for particular disabilities.”

Just then, the food arrived, and the teens got down to the serious job of eating.

<> <> <>

The five members of the Arens family stood together on the narrow ledge of the Moore family’s terrace. The previous night, Robin and her father had attended services at the nearby Young Israel Synagogue, celebrating the start of the week-long Jewish festival of Sukkot. It was the holiday for giving thanks for the fall harvest.

After competing in a regional chess tournament at Brooklyn Tech and then going out with friends for an early dinner, Robin was enjoying the second night of Sukkot with her dad, her two sisters, her brother and her boyfriend.

The oldest of Robin’s siblings, Sarah, was in her senior year at Vassar College. Located upstate in the picturesque Hudson Valley, it was in the city of Poughkeepsie, which was the northern terminus of the Metro North Hudson commuter rail line.

Although run by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, it was hard for Sarah to imagine anyone commuting into The City from so far north, yet obviously, some people did every day. In any case, it made it easy for her to visit her family in Manhattan. She made it a point to visit on holidays and for special occasions.

After finishing her last class on Friday evening, Sarah grabbed a quick bite in her dorm. Catching the campus shuttle to the rail station, she took the train to Grand Central Terminal. From there, she took the subway to City Hall and nearby Pace University, where she boarded an M22 bus that brought her right to her family’s apartment building.

She walked in the door at just after 9:30 PM. Traveling so late in the evening meant riding on Shabbat and breaking with Orthodox traditions. But then none of the Arens children were particularly observant.

The next-oldest, Stacey, was a junior at the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design. Stacey was a gifted artist whose first graphic novel was published when she was just sixteen. She had five graphics novels now, all of them best sellers. She also had an online blog with millions of subscribers around the world.

With her vividly dyed hair, multiple piercings, studded punk collar and bracelets, and black leather clothing, Stacey stood out in a crowd. However in high school at LaGuardia and now in college at RISD, she was one of many on the artistic fringe.

Not wishing to miss out on a Friday night spent with her girlfriend, she took an early Saturday morning train. Providence was right on the route of the Amtrak Acela Express as well as the cheaper Northeast Regional, which ran from Boston to Washington, D.C. 

Stacey took the Acela Express to New York’s Penn Station, where she hailed an Uber. She could have easily taken the subway and bus, as did her siblings, but with substantial earnings from her blog and from sales of her graphic novels, she could afford not to.

Lastly, Josh was a freshman at Stony Brook University, which was one of the top-ranked schools in the State Universities of New York system. Thanks to his father’s tuition benefit as an associate professor at the City University of New York, Josh was able to attend nearly tuition-free.

He roomed with his boyfriend of nearly four years, who also intended to pursue a career in academic medicine. Dave was not only Josh’s boyfriend, but also Robin's best friend, having gone to the same middle school she had. Indeed, the two boys lived only a few blocks apart and met at Robin’s thirteenth birthday party.

Stony Brook University and the town of Stony Brook were located on Long Island’s north shore. The two young men took a late afternoon commuter train on the Long Island Railroad to Jamaica, Queens. There, they boarded a J-Train to the Essex Street subway station, arriving home at just after 7:00 PM. It was early enough to enjoy a family dinner with Dave’s mom, Sandy, but too late for Sukkot services.

Now, it was Saturday evening and all of the members of the Arens’ family could gather together to celebrate the conclusion of Shabbat as well as the second evening of Sukkot. They were joined by Robin’s boyfriend, Larry, and Josh’s boyfriend and his mother.

By tradition, Jews around the world constructed a temporary structure called a sukkah as a sign of thanks to God for a successful fall harvest. Consisting of a simple wood frame and adorned with pumpkins, gourds and other symbols of the harvest, of necessity it needed to be outdoors. Unfortunately for most New Yorkers, outside space was a rare commodity that few could afford.

Most of the apartments in the East River Cooperative had balconies or terraces, but the Arens family had chosen to forgo such luxury in favor of a large three-bedroom apartment. After renovations, it offered larger bathrooms, walk-in closets and a large, modern open kitchen with a breakfast nook. The living room included a formal dining room, a conversation corner and a state-of-the-art home theater. It had large picture windows but lacked outdoor access.

That said, each pair of buildings in the co-ops was organized around a large courtyard. Such copious green space was virtually unheard of in Manhattan, even in the most luxurious buildings on the Upper East Side. If one could ignore the fact that Co-op Village was bordered on three sides by housing projects, it was truly one of the best kept secrets in Manhattan.

Some of the Jewish residents in the cooperative had taken it upon themselves to erect a community sukkah in one of the courtyards; however, the Arens family was happy to take the Moore family up on their offer to use their large terrace to build a sukkah of their own. Although narrow, it offered more than 130 square feet of space. The terrace railing made it easy to decorate the structure for the holiday without major modifications.

Because it was Saturday, it was necessary to hold a Havdalah service before the Sukkot service could begin. Havdalah was the traditional service held at the end of the Jewish Sabbath — a thanks to God for a day of rest. The participants lit a Havdalah candle, consisting of twisted cords of blue and white wax, each with its own wick.

They drank the ceremonial wine and sniffed the ceremonial spices, all while saying traditional prayers in Hebrew. Finally, they extinguished the flame of the Havdalah candle by dipping it in the ceremonial wine, officially bringing the celebration of Shabbat to a close.

The Sukkot service involved a series of traditions and Avrahm Arens dutifully performed them, chanting the prayers as he shook the Lulav, which was a bound combination of palm, willow and myrtle branches, and the Etrog, which was a yellow citron fruit.

After finishing the service, Avrahm, his four children and their guests escaped the chilly evening air into the Moore family’s spacious great room. There, Asher Whitmore had prepared a spread of food that amounted to a feast. He and Seth had actually gone to court and combined their last names, White and Moore, not long after they married.

What was surprising to all was that the spread consisted of traditional Eastern European dishes commonly associated with Ashkenazi Jews, but they appeared to be home made.

“You made all of these yourself?” Josh asked Asher as he started to load up his plate.

“Well, I obtained the lox and the smoked whitefish from Russ and Daughters,” Asher explained. “Not that I couldn’t prepare them from scratch, but I’d need a smoker for that and the Co-op rules don’t permit anything like that on our terrace. Otherwise, everything’s homemade.”

“Even the bagels?”

“Even the bagels.”

“You know that Russ and Daughters is on the New York Times’ list of best bagels in New York, don’t you?” Josh chided his friend. “And Yonah Schimmel bakes some of the best knishes in the world.”

“So I’ve heard,” Asher responded. “Try mine. Not to brag, but I think mine are better.”

“They are,” Larry said as he joined the two, “and I’ve eaten home-made knishes in Lithuania, Poland and Ukraine.”

Joining the group, Robin asked, “Are you still having trouble eating, Ashe?”

Nodding his head, Asher answered, “I can eat some of it if I eat slowly. I can handle a plain bagel or even a plain potato knish, but anything spicy or fatty sets off a case of the runs. Forget about eating lox. I can handle a small portion of baked salmon, as long as I eat it with a portion of starch. The key is to eat small meals, five or six times a day.”

“That must make it hard to cook food like this,” Robin observed.

“It does,” Asher acknowledged. “I know what combinations of food work well together and how things will taste, but even the smell can make me nauseous. I haven’t even tried to cook anything Cajun or Asian. The pungent odors are hard on me, and I don’t even dare to sample my cooking.”

“Do you think you could maybe open a restaurant with foods you can eat?” Josh asked.

“Yeah, Michelin will surely award me a star for a high-end restaurant serving only bland food.”

“You never know,” Robin chimed in.

“My passion is creating new tastes that have never existed before,” Asher related. “That’s what I love about Cajun-Asian fusion. I can combine flavors from two very different kinds of cooking to create something new and wonderful — but now I can’t enjoy eating any of it.”

“Perhaps you should be inspired by Beethoven,” Larry suggested.

“Somehow, I doubt that listening to a Beethoven symphony will make it any easier to cook,” Asher countered.

“No, Ashe, I meant by analogy,” Larry continued. “You might remember that Beethoven went deaf, starting in his twenties. By the time he was in his mid-forties, he was completely deaf. Long before that, he lost the ability to play the piano. He composed some of his finest works after a time when he could no longer hear them.

“What I’m suggesting is that you might have to focus your efforts on coming up with recipes for new culinary masterpieces, but perhaps you’ll have to rely on others to bring your ideas to the table.”

“I’ve been telling Ashe much the same thing,” Seth said as he came up behind his husband and looped his arm around his waist.

Then facing him, he continued, “Even before the attack, you relied on your sous chefs to do most of the food prep. I like the comparison to Beethoven. There’s no reason you can’t still create, even if you can’t enjoy it yourself. You certainly did that tonight.”

Nodding his head, Asher acknowledged, “That’s true, and they tell me there’s still hope I’ll develop more of a tolerance for eating rich foods. Even if not, I can still write my own ‘symphonies’ of food for others to enjoy.”

“Exactly.”

Wandering away from the others, Larry and Robin found an out-of-the way place to sit down and enjoy their food. Although Robin was still full from eating cheesecake at Junior’s, she wasn’t about to pass up Asher’s wonderful cooking. Taking a bite, Robin said, “Oh, this is sooo good.”

With his own fork hovering above his plate, Larry hesitated a bit before saying, “Actually, I have something to tell you. I have some exciting news.”

“Oh?” His girlfriend asked.

“You won’t be the only one heading to Israel next week.”

“What do you mean, Larry?”

“One of the teachers at LaGuardia needs a student to go with her to assist with a music program at a kibbutz. I guess she grew up there and is putting on a special holiday program or something. Anyway, she needs someone who plays multiple music instruments, and since I play piano, violin and guitar, I fit the bill.”

“Do you know where the kibbutz is located?” Robin asked.

“I’m not exactly sure yet, and there’s some kind of music festival we’ll be participating in, too. I’ll let you know the details as soon as I find out. You’ll have your phone with you, won’t you?”

“Of course, but we purchased international eSIMs that cost a lot less than international roaming charges on our plan.”

“That means you’ll have an international phone number. Be sure to send me a text after you activate the eSIM, so I can know how to reach you.”

“Oh, I didn’t realize there’d be a different phone number,” Robin responded. “I’ll be sure to let you and everyone else know what it is before we go.

“Speaking of which, when do you leave?” Robin asked.

“Wednesday afternoon,” Larry answered. “I don’t know the details yet, except that we’re flying El Al out of Newark to Ben Gurion, non-stop.”

“That’s expensive!” Robin exclaimed. “We’re flying Austrian Airlines, with a stop in Vienna. It costs about half as much and only takes a few hours longer.”

“You know, I have no idea how much our tickets cost,” Larry responded. “The kibbutz is paying, so it’s no skin off my nose, either way. I’ve been there a few times before, with my parents, and we always flew first or business class, non-stop out of Newark or JFK.” Then with a laugh, he added, “Something tells me we aren’t flying first class this time. Probably coach or whatever they call it.”

“We’re flying economy lite,” Robin said. “I don’t know what the different classes are. All I know is that we have to pay extra for each checked bag, and that we won’t know what seats we’re in until we get to the airport. Is that how it’s usually done?”

“Haven’t you flown before?” Larry asked.

Shaking her head, Robin answered, “It’ll be my first time. I’ve seen all the horror stories on TV about long lines and cancelled flights. I’ve always wanted to go, though — to see Jerusalem and the Western Wall and all the famous sights. The bar mitzvah is the excuse we needed to finally do it.”

“I’m surprised they’re holding a bar mitzvah on Shimini Atzeret, although I guess there’s no reason not to. Is it a cousin who’s getting bar mitzvahed?”

“My dad’s cousin, which makes him my second cousin,” Robin answered. “It’s in a city I never heard of before, called Ofakim. It’s supposed to be near Be’er Sheva. I’ve heard of Be’er Sheva, but I have no idea where in Israel it is.”

“Be’er Sheva’s in the south, in the Negev desert,” Larry explained. “It’s pretty much in the middle of nowhere, but then I gather the same could be said of the kibbutz where I’ll be staying.”

“We’re flying out tomorrow afternoon and spending the week seeing Jerusalem and all the usual tourist sights,” Robin went on.

“It’s cool that you’re all going…”

“Actually, it’s gonna be just my dad, my sisters and me,” Robin interrupted. “Josh will be staying behind.”

“Doesn’t he want to go?” Larry asked.

“Oh, he wanted to alright, but then he asked if he could bring his boyfriend. You don’t wanna hear what our cousin’s family had to say about that. They’re ultra-Orthodox. They’re fine with Josh being there as long as it’s not with Dave.

“We were all gonna cancel, but Josh insisted the rest of us go anyway. After all, they are our relatives. It’s just that for all intents, Dave is his fiancé. He just didn’t feel comfortable being with people who couldn’t accept him unless he hid his sexuality.

“Needless to say, I wasn’t about to ask if I could bring my boyfriend under the circumstances. Otherwise, I’d have asked you.”

“And now I’ll be going to Israel anyway,” Larry exclaimed. “As soon as I know more, we’ll hafta text you the info. I’m sure there’ll be a way for us to spend a little time together.”

“Definitely,” Robin agreed.