In the past few weeks I have listened to the stories of a 93-year-old man who grew up in a port town on Lake Michigan and who knew the one and only Great Lakes Pirate; I have heard the tales of a middle-aged couple who are embarking on the adventure of refurbishing and restocking (organically) an old general store at a dusty crossroads in the middle of nowhere; I have heard how a brother and sister came to be raising buffalo in the north woods; I have learned how one young man has been spending the past few months digging himself a home in a hillside; I have heard about the mystery of the Paulding Light; I have learned of the mysterious act of "turning the knot" when one tats. This is just what comes to mind, and what I can share. Being knee-deep in other people's stories, like wading in a cool lake on a hot day, suits me.Then the roving rabbis came to town, and I knew it was time to tell my story.
How it started
A small item on the religion page in the Saturday paper caught my eye. It was eight inches of type in two columns capped with the headline: Traveling rabbis visit U.P. A small inset photo with the caption Sebbag and Bergovoy showed two young men with beards and broad-rimmed black hats. Butch's repetitive line in "Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid" came to mind: Who are those guys? Stories about Jews and Judaism are rare in the local paper, even on the religion page.
The article began:
Two young Chabad-Lubavitch rabbis are visiting the Upper Peninsula as part of a summerlong community outreach training. They will be equipped with books, programming ideas and lots of optimistic Jewish cheer to reinforce Jewish pride and enhance Jewish education.
No dates for the visit were provided, but the email address was RovingRabbis@YacArt.com. I wrote: Can we meet? I'm not Jewish, but maybe I am. Can I tell you my story?
Two Jews at the harbor
The next afternoon I met Yaacov Sebbag, 24, and Yosef Bergovoy, 21, at the park down by the harbor. It was a brilliantly sunny day with a cool breeze off the water. They told me they had been spending a lot of time at this one park bench, enjoying the scenery, and that is where we sat and talked for the next two hours. A few boats came and went; gulls pranced around, flew off, flew in; some young girls walked by, gabbing and giggling, and one looked at us and said "hi."
"You're Jewish," Yaacov told me. He shrugged his shoulders and looked me straight in the eye and smiled. "Most people don't have as much documentation as you do."
The fact is, I knew I was Jewish. Yes, I had grown up attending a Presbyterian Sunday School and celebrating Christmas and Easter, but a few years back some previously unknown family history came to light, and I learned my maternal great-grandmother was Jewish. When I told this to one of my best and dearest friends, who has always known she was Jewish, she said: "So you're Jewish."
Somehow it's different when a rabbi tells you.
Jewish heritage, it seems, is passed down through its women, so even though one may never practice the religion - or even know they have the right to - a person whose maternal lineage is Jewish, is Jewish. Yaacov explained the two aspects: one, you either have the blood or you don't; and two, you either practice or you don't.
I worried briefly that these roving rabbis would be akin to evangelical Christians and now, knowing I was Jewish by blood, would try to convert me to Jewish practice. (At one point in our conversation I told them I wasn't much for rules ...) But they weren't out to convert me, they said, just there to help me learn if I wanted to. So I went on to tell them the whole story, as I know it, of how the Jewishness in my blood came to be hidden. It is not a story I will tell here. One reason for telling it to the roving rabbis was to try to gain some perspective on it, some insight, something - whatever it is - that will help me to write the story as it is supposed to be written. Eventually.
Residual effect
In time, everything I gained from our conversation will incorporate itself into my writing and my life, revealing itself in bits and pieces, eventually helping to make a whole, or maybe not. Already pieces rise up. Until yesterday, I had been thinking that although I may be Jewish, my Jewish heritage has been lost, so what does it matter? But right now I see in the previous paragraph I chose the word "hidden" to describe my Jewish blood rather than the word "lost," and I feel the shift in meaning, and I know it to be true. Nothing has been lost. Hiding, yes. And hiding, after all, seems to be a pervasive part of Jewish history. I remember well "The Diary of Anne Frank."
While hanging clothes on the clothesline today I thought: We may all be human, but how we practice our humanity, there's the difference.
I remember Yaacov saying something about this country being a great melting pot, and I had been thinking the same earlier. Thinking, as we all melt and run together, what's left to distinguish us as individuals?
We have free will, but God, or the universe, or some higher power has the plan. Exactly how does that work?
Another story untold
I was torn while talking to the rabbis Yaacov and Yosef. I wanted to take notes, ask questions, and write the story of the two Jews who came to seek out other Jews in this sparsely populated, beautiful, out-of-the-way place. Where would they eat? They brought their own food ... Where would they find Jews? You'd be surprised ... In Wal-Mart they were approached by a young man, a student at the university here, who was from my hometown near Chicago. A Jew. He told Yaacov and Yosef: I am glad there are other Jews in the U.P. "Yes," Yaacov replied, "but not for long. We leave Tuesday."
But there are more Jews, perhaps, than we know. Gathering stories, with stories to tell.
