A Walker in the City by Alfred Kazin Read Free Book Online Page A

think that if only I bent over it long enough I might see my own face reflected in the wood. I never did. Secretly, I thought the synagogue a mean place, and went only because I was expected to. Whenever I crossed the splintered and creaking porch into that stale air of snuff, of old men and old books, and saw the dusty gilt brocade on the prayer shawls, I felt I was being pulled into some mysterious and ancient clan that claimed me as its own simply because I had been born a block away. Whether I agreed with its beliefs or not, I belonged; whether I assented to its rights over me or not, I belonged; whatever I thought of them, no matter how far I might drift from that place, I belonged. This was understood in the very nature of things; I was a Jew. It did not matter how little I knew or understood of the faith, or that I was always reading alien books; I belonged, I had been expected, I was now to take my place in the great tradition.
    For several months before my confirmation at thirteen, I appeared every Wednesday afternoon before a choleric old
melamed,
a Hebrew teacher, who would sit across the table eating peas, and with an incredulous scowl on his face listen to me go over and over the necessary prayers and invocations, slapping me sharply on the hands whenever I stammered on a syllable. I had to learn many passages by heart, but never understood most of them, nor was I particularly expected to understand them; it was as if some contract in secret cipher had been drawn up between the Lord of Hosts and Gita Fayge's son Alfred which that
Amerikaner idiót,
as the
melamed
called me, could sign with an x. In the "old country" the
melamed
might possibly have encouraged me to understand the text, might even have discussed it with me. Here it was understood that I would go through the lessons simply for form's sake, because my mother wished to see me confirmed; the
melamed
expected nothing more of me. In his presence I stammered more wildly than ever, and on each line. "
Idiót!
"he would scream. "They have produced an
idiót
in you,
idiót!
"Sitting back in his chair, he would hear me out with a look of contemptuous resignation as I groaned and panted my way to the end of each passage, heave sighs of disgust at the ceiling, and mechanically take up some peas to throw them into his mouth one by one, always ready to lean across the table with his bitter smile and slap my hands.
    Still, I had to go through with it; I was a Jew. Yet it puzzled me that no one around me seemed to take God very seriously. We neither believed nor disbelieved. He was our oldest habit. For me, He was horribly the invisible head above the Board of Superintendents, the Almighty Judge Who watched you in every thought and deed, and to Whom I prayed for help in passing midterms and finals, His prophetess Deborah leading me safely through so long as I remembered to say under my breath as I walked in the street, "
Desolate were the open towns in Israel, they were desolate, until that I arose, Deborah.
"He filled my world with unceasing dread; He had such power over me, watched me so unrelentingly, that it puzzled me to think He had to watch all the others with the same care; one night I dreamed of Him as a great engineer in some glass-walled control tower high in the sky glaring fixedly at a brake on which my name alone was written. In some ways He was simply a mad tyrant, someone I needed constantly to propitiate. Deborah alone would know how to intercede for me. Then He became a good-luck piece I carried around to get me the things I needed. I resented this God of Israel and of the Board of Superintendents; He would never let me rest.
    I could not even speak of Him to others—not to the aged and bearded men in the synagogue always smelling of snuff, who spoke of the Talmud with a complacent little smile on their faces; not to the young Zionist pioneers in their clubhouses off Pitkin Avenue, who were busily learning to be farmers in the Land of