Here I Am (46 page)

They unrolled the Torah on the kitchen island, and Sam chanted with a grace that had never before touched a member of the Bloch family—the grace of being fully present as oneself. Irv lacked such grace, was self-conscious about crying, and held in his tears. Julia lacked such grace, was too concerned with etiquette to respond to her most primitive instinct to go to her son and stand beside him. Jacob lacked such grace, and cared enough to wonder what others were thinking.

The Torah was closed and dressed and replaced in the cabinet that had been emptied of shelves and art supplies. The men who surrounded Sam took their seats, leaving him alone to chant his haftorah, which he did slowly, resolutely, with the care of an ophthalmologist performing surgery on his own eyes. The rituals were complete. All that remained was his speech.

Sam stood there, at the kitchen-island bimah. He imagined a cone of dusty light projecting from his forehead, creating everything in front of him: the yarmulke on Benjy's head (
Wedding of Jacob and Julia, August 23, 2000
), the tallis that wrapped around his grandfather like an unfinished ghost costume, the unoccupied folding chair on which his great-grandfather sat.

He walked around the island, then awkwardly between chairs, and put his arm on Max's shoulder. With a physical closeness that neither could have borne in any other moment, Sam took Max's face into his hands and whispered something into his ear. It wasn't a plan. It wasn't a secret. It wasn't information. Max softened like a yahrzeit candle.

Sam made his way back to the other side of the island.

“Hello, gathered. So. Right. Well. What can I say?

“You know how sometimes, when someone wins an award, they pretend that they were so sure they
weren't
going to win it, they didn't bother to prepare a speech? I don't believe that that has ever once, in human history, been true. Or at least not if it's for an Oscar, or something big like that, and the awards are televised. I guess people think that saying they didn't prepare a speech will make them sound modest, or even worse, down-to-earth, but they actually sound like totally disingenuous narcissists.

“I guess a bar mitzvah speech is like a plane in a storm: once you're in it, there's no way out but through. Great-Grandpa taught me that expression, even though he hadn't been in a plane for like thirty years. He loved expressions. I think they made him feel American.

“This isn't really a speech. To be honest, I didn't think I'd be here, so I didn't prepare anything, other than my original bar mitzvah speech, which wouldn't make any sense now, given that everything has completely changed. But I did work on it a lot, so if anyone wants it, I suppose I could e-mail it to them later. Anyway, I brought up that thing about actors who say they didn't prepare a speech, because maybe demonstrating my awareness of the untrustworthiness of saying you are unprepared might give you a reason to believe me. The real question is why I care if you believe me.

“Anyway, Grandpa Irv used to do this thing where he'd give Max and me five bucks if we made a speech that convinced him of something. Anytime, anything. So we were constantly making little speeches: why people shouldn't have dogs as pets, why escalators encourage obesity and should be illegal, why robots will defeat humans in our lifetime, why Bryce Harper should be traded, why it's OK to swat flies. There was nothing we wouldn't argue, because even though we didn't need the money, we wanted it. We liked how it accumulated. Or we wanted to win. Or to be loved. I don't know. I'm mentioning it because I guess it made us pretty good at speaking off the cuff, which is what I am now about to do. Thanks, Grandpa?

“I never wanted to have a bar mitzvah in the first place. My objection wasn't moral or intellectual, I just thought it would be a colossal waste of time. Maybe that's moral? I don't know. I assume I would have continued to object even if my parents had genuinely listened to me, or proposed
other ways of thinking about a bar mitzvah. We'll never know, because I was simply told that it's what we do, because it's what we do. In the same way that not eating cheeseburgers is what we don't do, because it's what we don't do. Even though we do sometimes eat real-crab California rolls, even though it's what we don't do. And we often don't observe Shabbat, even though it's what we do. I don't have any problem with hypocrisy when it's self-serving, but applying the logic of
what we do
to having a bar mitzvah didn't serve me.

“So I made efforts to sabotage it. I tried not to learn my haftorah, but Mom would put on the recording whenever we were in the car, and it's actually unbelievably catchy—everyone in the family can recite it, and Argus starts beating his tail with the first verse.

“I was incredibly obnoxious to my tutor, but he was happy enough eating my crap if it meant cashing my parents' checks.

“As some of you might know, I was accused of writing some inappropriate words in Hebrew school. As terrible as it felt not to be believed, I was happy to get in trouble if it would get me out of this. Which it clearly didn't.

“I've never thought about it until right now, but it occurs to me that I don't know if I've ever actually tried to stop anything from happening in my life. I mean, obviously I've tried to get out of the way of inside pitches, and I make a lot of efforts not to use urinals without vertical privacy shields, but an
event
. I never tried to stop a birthday or, I don't know, Hanukkah. Maybe my inexperience made me think it would be easier. But for all of my efforts, Jewish manhood only got nearer.

“Then the earthquake happened, and that changed everything, and my great-grandfather died, and that also changed everything, and Israel got attacked by everyone, and a whole lot of other things happened that this is not the right time or place to get into, and suddenly everything was different. And as everything kept changing, my reasons for not wanting to have a bar mitzvah changed and became stronger. It wasn't just that it was a colossal waste of time—that time was already wasted, if you think about it. And it wasn't even that I knew that lots of bad things were going to happen after my bar mitzvah, so the effort to stop my bar mitzvah from happening was actually an effort to stop all kinds of bad things from happening.

“You can't stop things from happening. You can only choose not to be there, like Great-Grandpa Isaac did, or give yourself completely over, like
my dad, who made his big decision to go to Israel to fight. Or maybe it's Dad who is choosing not to be there, which is
here
, and Great-Grandpa who gave himself over completely.

“We read
Hamlet
in school this year, and everybody knows the whole ‘To be or not to be' business, and we talked about it for like three consecutive classes—the choice between life and death, action and reflection, whatever and whatever. It was kind of going nowhere until my friend Billie said something incredibly smart. She said, ‘Isn't there another option besides those two? Like, to mostly be or mostly not be, that is the question.' And that got me thinking that also maybe one doesn't have to exactly choose. ‘To be or not to be. That is the question.' To be
and
not to be. That is the answer.

“My Israeli cousin Noam—that's his dad, Tamir, over there—told me that a bar mitzvah isn't something you have, but something you become. He was right, and he was wrong. A bar mitzvah is both something you have
and
something you become. I am obviously
having
a bar mitzvah today. I chanted my Torah portion and haftorah, and no one was holding a gun to my head. But I want to take this opportunity to make clear to everyone that I am not
becoming
one. I did not ask to be a man, and I do not want to be a man, and I refuse to be a man.

“Dad once told me a story about when he was a kid and there was a dead squirrel on the lawn. He watched Grandpa take care of it. After, he said to Grandpa, ‘I couldn't have done that.' And Grandpa said, ‘Sure you could.' And Dad said, ‘I couldn't.' And Grandpa said, ‘When you're a dad, there's no one after you.' And Dad said, ‘I still couldn't do it.' And Grandpa said, ‘The more you won't want to do it, the more of a dad you'll be.' I don't want to be like that, so I won't.

“Now let me explain why I wrote all those words.”

“O Muslims, the hour is here! The war of God against the enemies of God will end in triumph! Victory in the Holy Land of Palestine is within the reach of the righteous. We will have our revenge for Lydda, we will have our revenge for Haifa and Acre and Deir Yassin, we will have our revenge for the generations of martyrs, we will have our revenge, praise Allah, for al-Quds! Oh, al-Quds, raped by the Jews, treated like a whore by the sons of pigs and apes, we will restore to you your crown and your glory!

“They burned Qubbat Al-Sakhra to the ground. But it is they who will be burned. I say to you today the words that filled the hearts of a thousand martyrs:
‘Khaybar, Khaybar, ya Yahud, Jaish Muhammad Saouf Ya'ud!'
As the Prophet Muhammad, peace be upon Him, defeated the perfidious Jews at Khaybar, so too will the armies of Muhammad inflict the final humiliation on the Jews today!

“O Jews, your time has come! Your fire will be met by fire! We will burn your cities and your towns, your schools and your hospitals, your every home! No Jew will be safe! I remind you, O Muslims, of what the Prophet, peace be upon Him, teaches us: that on Judgment Day even the stones and the trees will speak, with or without words, and say, ‘O servant of Allah, O Muslim, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him!' ”

“ ‘Watch me,' Gideon told his men, greatly outnumbered, facing the Midianites not far from where I now stand. ‘Follow my lead. When I get to the edge of the camp, do exactly as I do. When I and all who are with me blow our trumpets, then from all around the camp blow yours and shout, “For the Lord and for Gideon.” ' At the sight and sound of our unity, the enemy scattered and fled.

“The majority of the Jewish people have chosen not to live in Israel, and Jews do not share any one set of political or religious beliefs, and do not share a culture or language. But we are in the same river of history.

“To the Jews of the world, those who came before you—your grandparents, your great-grandparents—and those who will come after you—your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren—are calling out: ‘Come home.'

“Come home not only because your home needs you, but because you need your home.

“Come home not only to fight for Israel's survival, but to fight for your own.

“Come home because a people without a home is not a people, just as a person without a home is not a person.

“Come home not because you agree with everything Israel does, not because you think Israel is perfect, or even any better than other countries. Come home not because Israel is what you want it to be, but because it is
yours
.

“Come home, because history will remember what each of us chooses in this moment.

“Come home and we will win this war and establish a lasting peace.

“Come home and we will rebuild this state to be stronger and closer to its promise than it was before the destruction.

“Come home and be another hand around the pen that writes the story of the Jewish people.

“Come home and hold the arms of Moses aloft. And then, when the guns have cooled, and the buildings have risen where they once stood, only prouder, and the streets are filled with the sounds of children playing, you will find your name not in the book of Lamentations, but the book of Life.

“And then, wherever you choose to go next, you will always be home.”

“A couple of weeks ago, everybody was obsessing over what kind of apology I would give during my bar mitzvah speech. How would I explain my behavior? Would I even fess up to it? When I was being blamed, I didn't feel like explaining myself, much less apologizing. But now that other things have taken everyone's attention, and no one really cares anymore, I'd like to explain myself and apologize.

“My friend Billie, whom I mentioned before, told me I was repressed. She's really beautiful, and intelligent, and good. I told her, ‘Maybe I just have inner peace.' She said, ‘Peace between what parties?' I thought that was such an interesting question.

“I told her, ‘I'm really not repressed.' She said, ‘That's exactly what a repressed person would say.' So I said, ‘And I suppose you aren't repressed?' And she said, ‘Everyone is somewhat repressed.' ‘OK,' I said, ‘then I'm no more repressed than an average person.'

“ ‘Say the hardest thing,' she said.

“I was like, ‘What?'

“And she said, ‘I don't mean right this second. You couldn't even know what it is without thinking long and hard about it. But once you figure it out, I dare you to say it.'

“ ‘And if I do?'

“ ‘You won't.'

“ ‘But if.'

“She said, ‘I would invite you to choose the terms, but I know you're too repressed to tell me what you'd actually want.'

“Which was obviously true.

“ ‘So maybe
that's
actually the hardest thing to say,' I said.

“She said, ‘What? That you want to kiss me? Doesn't even make the top hundred.'

“I thought a lot about what she said. And I was thinking about it in Hebrew school that day when I wrote those words. I was just seeing how each of them felt, seeing how hard it was to write them, and say them to myself. That's why I did it. But that's not the point.

“The point is: I made a mistake. I thought that the
worst
thing to say was the
hardest
thing to say. But it's actually pretty easy to say horrible things: retard, cunt, whatever. In a way, it's even easier because we know exactly how bad the words are. There's nothing scary about them. Part of what makes something really hard to say is the not knowing.

“The reason I'm here today is because I realized that the hardest thing to say isn't a word, or a sentence, but an event. The hardest thing to say couldn't be something you say to yourself. It requires the hardest person, or people, to say it to.”