I got an email from the mom of my about-to-be bar mitzvahed cousin, telling me that I was coming up to do an aliyah. An aliyah, not to be confused with deceased R&B songstress Aaliyah (RIP) is when you're called to the Torah to read from it. In other words, you're called to publicly worship. For a long time now, I've opted not to worship publicly or privately, which I feel like my family is pretty aware of, so I was unthrilled that my cousins just put me on the Torah-reading roster without asking if that sounded like a good time. I mean, they'd be weirded out if called up to take a Body-of-Christ wafer, I told my mom.
She said, Andrea, making an issue out this is more trouble than it's worth.
I've been trying to be a more flexible person in the twilight of my twenties, so I said, okay, I'll go up, but I'm not moving my lips.
My cousin's mom sent out an email the week of the bar mitzvah, telling all my family members doing aliyahs that if they had any questions, they could consult me, since I'd been bat mitzvahed fifteen years ago. It ended, "Andrea-- we're counting on you to get everyone through this!"
I wrote, "i don't remember a thing from my own ceremony, so it's not like i'd be any more knowledgeable about this than, say, jesus." My cousin didn't write me back.
My family was part of a reform temple growing up, meaning that no one would have balked at a "Hanukah" pine tree in the lobby at holiday time. The bar mitzvah, however, was at a conservative temple, so everyone, including women, was supposed to wear a yarmulke (not to be confused with popular motorcycle and electronic keyboard brand, Yamaha) up on the stage, or bimah. When it was almost time for me, my mom, and my cousin Lisa to do our joint aliyah, a little troll of a woman jogged over in a panic, shoving the temple's emergency yarmulkes into our hands. She was the volunteer usher and aliyah coordinator, and right away I saw that she was drunk with the power. "You have to wear these!" she hissed, her wide frog mouth, so adorable on my French Bulldog, obnoxious on her.
"Great," I said, now not only being dragged into worshiping but also into dressing up in worship gear. "Now I really don't want to do this."
The usher troll went saucer-eyed, her hands twitching as if she wanted to slap my face. "You have to wear it! You can't go up there without one! You need to cover your head."
"I didn't say I wasn't going to put it on." I was whispering because the kid's bar mitzvah was currently in progress. "I just said I didn't want to do this."
She gave me the same look I received from the mother who caught me trying to bend the chain link fence back at Grad Night, so I could sneak out of the festivities without having to wake my parents to come pick me up. "You have to put it on," she warned through gritted teeth. I sighed. "I will when we're on deck. I will." She shot me another filthy look and went to consult with a man by the bimah steps.
Meanwhile, my mom and my cousin Lisa were also balking at putting on the little round hats, not because they were so upset about participating in a religious exercise, but because they didn't want to mess up their hair. My mom, who usually would have been rolling her eyes and telling me not to make trouble, was making a face as if someone had just walked in and took a dump in the temple. "I don't want to put this on," she said, dangling the yarmulke from her fingertips like it was a gigantic booger. "Yeah, I don't want to either," I said, and in that moment we were bonded more tightly than we'd been in my childhood.
The man, filled in by the ogre woman, now came over to our bench, holding his own set of emergency yarmulkes. In a very patronizing voice, he began to explain to us, yet again, that we could not go up to the Torah without putting a division between our heads and god. The troll had already explained this to us at least three times. We had assured her that we understood and were going to comply as many. The man was being such a dickhead that even my cousin Lisa started to lose her shit. "We willlllllllll. We're not UP THERE," she snapped at him. He glared at the three of us as if we were the lapsed-Jew equivalents of the Anti-Christ. The troll usher continued to stare by her post at the flower arrangement, vibrating with agitation, her glasses practically fogging with dragon steam. I'd put my bat mitzvah mutual funds down on the fact that she was fuming not over our defiance of god but our temporary defiance of her.
The aliyah group before us went up to do their reading, and Lisa, my mom, and I went to the base of the stage to wait for our cue.
I was smoothing out the yarmulke so it would stay atop my head, nowhere near setting foot on even the first bimah step, when the troll was at my side, taking hold of my arm, hissing at me that I could not go up! I could not go up! And believe me, I didn't not want to go up, but I was going up in support of my cousin, and I was going to put on the fucking yarmulke. But let's say I wasn't. Because in that case, what was really going to happen? Let's say I was planning on pulling a renegade aliyah move, running up to the Torah with nothing between me and god but molecules of hair dye, and what would that do other than make me look like the asshole? Let's say my naked hair pissed god off so much that he took back the thing about Jews not having a hell and created one specifically for me? What would that have to do with the troll, who obeyed all his laws and commandments so much more diligently and happily than I ever could? Jews aren't evangelists. They're not at all responsible for each other's souls in protection of their own.
I turned to her and said, "You. Need. To. Calm. The. Fuck. Down."
She gaped at me.
I put on my yarmulke.
While up in front of the Torah, not moving my lips and receiving withering glances from the rabbi, my big problem with public worship, which I'd never really bothered to articulate before, began to cohere. It wasn't the pageantry or the chanting in unison or the religious accessorizing-- although I'd never loved those things. It was that it got you worrying about someone other than yourself, and not in that charitable bringing canned corn to the food drive way.
I saw Milk the other night, and watching old newsreel clips of Anita Bryant noxiously worrying, if worrying is even the right word there, about someone other than herself, I got the same feeling as when the yarmulke was being forcibly, angrily pressed down into my hand. The easiest way of life is to live and let live. It's peaceful. It's lazy. It leaves you the energy to put into hobbies, being creative, and patience for your loved ones. I lack the psychological stamina to worry about getting someone into a god-hat or to worry about who's fucking who (I mean, besides Britney Spears, Lindsay Lohan, etc.), and this is probably the lone area where I'm thrilled my mind isn't more expansive.
