A None's Story by Corinna Nicolaou

Author:Corinna Nicolaou
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: REL062000, Religion/Spirituality, BIO026000, Biography and Autobiography/Personal Memoirs
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Published: 2016-04-04T16:00:00+00:00

Freedom Song

Before returning to celebrate with my old ultra-orthodox neighbors on the first night of Passover, I decided to take a self-guided tour of the Fairfax area, a section of Los Angeles known for its high numbers of orthodox Jews. Here the city is particularly gritty, the Jews particularly Jewish, and the juxtaposition particularly vivid. I was stopped at a light, thinking about how the only other place in the United States to offer this same cultural mash-up may be parts of Brooklyn, when a Hasidic man in full fuzzy-hatted regalia caught my eye and I turned to look just as he crossed paths with a scantily clad prostitute in Lucite heels, who, on closer inspection, also appeared to be a young man. So ho-hum was this encounter that neither seemed to notice the other. The area is also home to a cluster of Jewish shops, like a little main street with a deli, bakery, and a couple of small grocery stores. I parked and wandered up and down the street, thinking what it must have been like when the Venice boardwalk looked like this. One particularly expansive window front displayed a range of supplies: ram horns, menorahs, prayer shawls—all the odds and ends one might need to closely observe Judaism. I passed a bakery that I imagined had been cranking out matzo sheets for the last several days. I thought about the fact that even if you bought all your food from these establishments—kosher everything—being kosher still depends on the choices you make at every meal. Eating a kosher pastry made with butter and a slab of kosher meat together would render it non-kosher. Having all these goods available must be convenient, but you still have to consider what goes into each item and how they are grouped, combined, and presented. The rigors of this lifestyle are astounding; it requires the support of a community.

By the time I arrive at the synagogue for Passover dinner, it is dark outside. The gymnasium has been completely transformed for the feast. Fluorescent lights blaze over four long tables already populated with an odd assortment of individuals, men down one side and women down the other. Most of the guests do not appear Hasidic; they are a bit of everything, Jews from many backgrounds and countries. The rabbis and their families occupy separate tables on either side of the four main tables, whether to protect us from the world or themselves from us, I can’t be sure. As I enter the room, I freeze to take it all in. I spot the rabbi’s wife, Rachel, and wave; she smiles and waves back. I notice that the corner of the room where there had been an assortment of liquor bottles the week before is now wiped clean, the spirits nowhere to be seen.

I find a seat in one of the last available spaces, to the left of a cluster of Iranian-American Jews, one of whom sports a platinum hairdo and ample bosom like a Persian Dolly Parton.

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