Once more with chutzpah, p.2
Once More with Chutzpah, page 2
I tried to help him feel better. I invited over his friends from his old middle school band and arranged family outings to bowl and play mini golf. I spent two weeks writing motivational quotes on the bathroom mirror. I bought him three different self-help books and left them neatly stacked on the corner of his bed. I baked his favorite chocolate cookies and put together a family game night with his favorite board game, a weird electronic version of Life.
Nothing worked.
The regular decision deadline for BU is two days after we get back from this trip. If he wants to apply, he’s going to need to fill out the application and write an essay and then write supplemental essays on top of that. The small blessing here is that we took the SATs together last spring. If he has any chance of getting everything else done now, he has to start while we’re on the trip.
This plan has to work; this has to make him feel better. I’m running out of time.
I glance over at Max. He isn’t even smiling while he watches The Nanny. That’s basically the loudest cry for help possible.
I put my notebook back in my purse and take out my earbuds. They’re cheaper than Max’s but far more practical; two people can listen. I wave them in my brother’s face.
Without saying a word, he unplugs his headphones, takes my pair of earbuds, and plugs them in.
We watch together until it’s time to board our flight.
DEFYING GRAVITY
Grouping a bunch of young adults on a “life-changing” trip is going to lead to some relationships. Probably friendships, maybe more. It’s like if you leave theater kids alone with a piano: at least someone is going to sing. Or hook up. Usually both.
I didn’t initially intend for this to play any part in my plan to fix Max. Said plan was mostly to surround him with people, go on Israeli adventures, and cross my fingers that all of that was enough to make him return to normal. At which point I would subtly slide in and say something like, “Oh, hey, the BU deadline is coming up. Might want to work on that.” He’d be eternally grateful that I saved his future.
When a girl around our age literally falls into Max’s lap on the airplane, I start to reconsider.
“I’m so sorry; this is absurdly embarrassing,” she says, standing up. She’s got on a trip lanyard with a name tag that reads SAMANTHA LEVINSON. “I tripped over a bag and just,” she continues. “Such a great way to start out this trip.”
“No, no. Don’t worry about it,” Max says.
“I’m actually—this is actually my seat,” she says, voice apologetic, pointing to the spot next to Max. “Are you here with the Temple Beth El Youth Group?”
“Yeah,” he says, holding out his own lanyard. I swear his voice sounds like the beginning of a rom-com, the optimistic and giddy sort. “I’m Max.”
“Tally,” I say.
“Sammy,” she responds. “I’m so excited. I just know we’re all going to have so much fun.”
“I think we will,” Max says. Then he smiles. I missed his smile.
“Which temple do you guys go to?” Sammy asks. “I don’t think I’ve seen you at Temple Beth El.”
She hasn’t. I can’t even remember the last time we went to services. Maybe the High Holidays a couple of years ago? I only found out about this trip because my mom was asked to speak to the congregation as a part of this lecture series, and I tagged along.
That’s probably a bad thing. She’s going to think we’re not Jewish enough to be here.
I hate that prove you’re enough mindset. Our dad, who is Jewish, and our mom, who is Catholic, tried raising us pretty evenly in both their traditions when we were younger. It gets even more complicated what with the whole mother who is literally a doctor of religion thing. Because, for fun, she likes practicing her lectures over the dinner table sometimes (though I’m not sure she’s actually aware that’s what she’s doing), so I can probably school undergrads on rabbinical laws and trends in early Judaic customs, but I never had a bat mitzvah. Sometimes it all messes with my own brain.
“Oh, well, we’re interfaith,” I answer. “Went to midnight mass the other night. Which is not what you asked. Went to a whole bunch of bar and bat mitzvahs, so.”
My rambling doesn’t seem to bother Sammy. “You said you’re interfaith? What’s the other religion?”
“Catholic,” I say. Though Mom’s ties to Catholicism are pretty loose at this point, seeing as the whole time we were at church with her side of the family, she spent the service muttering about historical inaccuracies.
Max saves me from further embarrassment. “We go to Temple Beth Israel.”
“Oh, cool, I’ve gone to some services there. It’s beautiful.”
Should I agree with her? Or perhaps go through a detailed list of every single time I’ve set foot in the building?
“I’m going to run to the bathroom before we take off,” Max says, breaking my thought spiral. He stands. “Be right back.”
As soon as he’s gone, Sammy turns to me. “He’s cute,” she says, her voice the volume of a stage whisper.
“Oh, uh—he’s twin. Max brother. No—” I pause. “Max is my brother,” I finally get out. Nailed it.
Her face almost instantly turns red. “I thought you were just temple friends. I’m doing a really great job at making good impressions with your family,” she says.
I laugh. “No, don’t worry. I’ll never tell him; it would go straight to his head.”
Straight to his head, I think. Wait. A few years ago, Max found out that Alyssa Greenburg had a crush on him, and he was insufferable, constantly showing off. He wrote her three songs and then applied to that gifted program in Madrid just so he’d seem like a world traveler.
His complete inability to deal with romance could work in my favor now. If he thinks that Sammy likes him, he’ll start acting more like himself. He’d probably be so embarrassed if she ever found out about this whole didn’t apply to schools thing.
And if not, at least he’d make a friend. I try to casually duck out of the conversation when he gets back. I’ll let them bond a little now, so it will feel even more meaningful when I let it slip that she likes him.
I take out my notebook and place it on the seat-back tray in front of me just in case inspiration decides to strike on this here flight.
I run my hand over the indents on the notebook, small musical notes patterned across the soft faux leather. It was a gift from Cat. For the last few years, she has given Max and me matching, often ridiculous gifts. Once she bought us both these big makeup sets, the kind I have to assume professional makeup artists use, and then watched gleefully as Max unwrapped his present. Another year, she bought tickets for all three of us to see Disney on Ice: Frozen.
Last year’s gifts were more practical. She bought us each custom music notebooks, the exterior designed to look like sheet paper. She claimed it was so Max could write more of his moody nonsense and so I could write a Tony Award winner.
The obvious thing to do when you can’t seem to write any of your own lyrics is to listen to preexisting hits. I start with Hamilton. Max and Sammy are still talking. Then I try Rent.
It’s extremely difficult to go to sleep on a plane. It’s harder when people are singing about going out tonight. I switch over to Disney piano music, because I should probably try to get some rest now, and even that’s a bust.
Max and Sammy have actually gone to sleep, but at this point, I’ve given up hope of getting any rest. I try out the airplane entertainment … then I try out some airplane food … then I give Wicked a shot.
I’m not sure if I fall asleep or if I was just imagining myself as Elphaba really hard, but all of a sudden, they’re announcing over the loudspeakers that everyone needs to get in their seats and fasten their seat belts. I picture us crashing, but only briefly.
I do a quick check. No physical symptoms of a panic attack. This is just my regular, underlying anxiety, which is fine. I wonder, if the plane was actually about to smash into the ground or spontaneously combust, what I would want to think about. Which might be kind of morbid, but sometimes I think about that, what my last thought should be. Even before Max almost died. Like if I’m crossing the street or in a crowded elevator that’s probably too full.
Cat. I think I’d want to picture Cat.
We’re starting the descent. I look out the window, and everything seems so small. I always bully my way into getting the window seat. I mean, I don’t travel a ton, just to visit Safta and Sabba in their new condo in Sarasota and that trip I took with Cat’s family last spring to LA, but those were all within the continental US. This looks different. Tiny greens and fields and scattered houses with red roofs and buildings painted over with washes of tan, like someone took a whole set of toys and brought them to the beach. From this height, everything looks vaguely fake and manufactured. I imagine removing that car or those houses from some ridiculously complicated set of packaging and setting them out to play.
Everything below is getting bigger, and it seems more real, fit for actual people and not just dolls. I think that maybe Israel is not that different from back home. I still see buildings and roads. We’re getting closer and closer to a city, those buildings now crammed next to one another.
I stare out the window for the rest of the trip, watching everything grow. Then I see the landing strip. If we were going to crash, it would probably be now, I think, so I imagine Cat, sprawled at the end of my bed as we binge-watch TV, looking back to make sure I’m laughing when she does.
Welcome to Israel.
START OF SOMETHING NEW
“Temple Beth El Youth Group? High school exchange trip?” This too-tall boy is standing just outside the gate as we all get off the plane. His whole body looks lost, voice questioning, thick eyebrows furrowed over his muddy brown eyes.
“Do you need help?” I ask, because sleep-deprived me is apparently a martyr.
He nods, an enthusiastic nod that shakes the dark curls on top of his head.
I enact the Three Easy Rules for Gathering a Large Group of People. 1. Whistle like a soccer coach trying to round up a group of five-year-olds after their very first practice. 2. Delegate tasks. 3. Count heads. I feel like I’m back in the middle of play practice.
Which is how we find out that we’re missing two people.
Max, who I gave the task of gathering up stragglers, walks ahead to investigate, leaving me with a bunch of strangers.
Tall Boy leans over and whispers, “Thanks. It’s my first time as a Madrich. There’s supposed to be another group leader here, and she’s been a Madricha three times already. She’s meeting us outside security.”
“No worries,” I say. I have no idea what a Madrich or a Madricha is, but it sounds official.
“I’m David.” He smiles and looks down. For a second, I think he’s checking out my chest before I remember I have on a name tag. “Nice to meet you, Talia Gelmont.”
“Tally,” I correct.
“Nice to meet you, Tally.” He says my name like it’s something special. It’s the same way I say latkes or cookie dough.
“So …,” I say. “You’re, like, our leader. Captain of the Jew Team.”
“I think you’re more of the leader right now,” he says with a laugh. “I’m just sort of a helper. Keep us together, make sure no one gets lost. Our tour guide is the one in charge.”
I look at him. Sure, he’s tall, a few inches over six feet, I’d guess, but there’s something about his face that seems distinctly young. Less like a grown-up and more like a potential chem partner. “How old are you?” I ask.
“Nineteen. I’m a freshman. I was supposed to be on break, but my mom thought this would be a better use of my time. Said it was a good way to reconnect to the temple. She correctly assumed I wasn’t going at school,” he explains. “You?”
“Eighteen.” I wonder if I should add that I’m a senior? He talked about school. I mean, he has to already know I’m in high school, since I’m on this trip.
“First time in Israel?” he asks.
“First time abroad. You?”
“Oh, I’m a traveler.” He actually puffs up his chest with that. “Went on Birthright last summer. There’s a big Yemenite Jewish population here, so my grandparents were basically over the moon about it. Went on a family trip to Scotland. Moved on to bigger and better things.” He waves his clipboard for emphasis.
“I can see.”
A thought flashes through my mind faster than Daveed Diggs’s Lafayette rap in “Guns and Ships.” Is this flirting? The easy back-and-forth, the tone of voice. You literally just met him; cool the bleep down, I tell myself. Because I do this all the time: get fleeting crushes on people without anything ever happening. Cat has made fun of me so many times for it that I’ve lost count. Like, two years ago when we were in a local summer production of Legally Blonde The Musical and I had a crush on the boy who played Emmett for basically the entire run but didn’t say a thing. Cat got so frustrated, she literally pushed me in his direction during the cast party, thus forcing us into conversation. Except that when we started to talk, he was just … kind of boring? A boring personality can immediately eliminate a crush. Then there was this time I liked the Starbucks boy at the shop in town and told Cat that I thought he might be my soul mate only to totally lose interest the next week. She made fun of me for that one for months.
But this trip is not about me, so even if I am flirting with the person I met two seconds ago, I need to stop getting off track and focus on my goal. Which is to get Max nice and distracted and happy while we travel around Israel. Priorities and all that.
Max comes back with the last two people, who apparently had the audacity to go ahead and use the bathroom.
David has a list of all our names, which he double-checks. “Right, I guess I need to …” He gestures toward the group.
“You got this,” I say.
He nods at me and then turns to face the group. “Hi, I’m—” he starts too quietly. He raises his voice. “Hey! Everyone! Okay, hi. I’m David Damari, the Madrich. We’re going to get our bags, go through security, and meet up with the rest of the group. Onward!”
For a second, I wonder why there is so much security.
Except I guess it makes sense. We’re in Israel.
I grew up thinking about this place in terms of my family. When I signed us up for this trip, my first priority was helping Max. But there was this other layer too. I was excited. This is where our grandma grew up. Maybe we’d feel closer to her, to that side of our family, if we actually visited where they were from.
My great-grandparents escaped the Holocaust by moving here. Most of their family members who stayed in Poland did not survive. Without this land, my family probably wouldn’t be alive.
Israel is the only place in the world with a Jewish majority. Some believe this is important to give a voice in the global and political sphere to a whole group of people who have historically been persecuted. For some, it comes down to safety.
But the truth is, many people don’t have such kind feelings toward Israel. And I get it.
Last year, I took a current events class for my history requirement. We had a whole unit on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. I tried to imagine Safta and her family, where they were, what their lives looked like, as I read about the historical fights. When we got to modern day, though, it seemed so divorced from anything I heard my family talking about. I mean, as an American, it’s not like I’m unfamiliar with a government making policies that are completely opposed to everything I believe in. Palestinians struggle to find basic necessities, health care, and job opportunities. I find many of the recent Israeli government policies toward them horrifying, and I imagine many Israelis feel the same way.
So while many Jews see this land as a safe harbor, many Palestinians feel about Israel like Native Americans feel about the US. Some of the problems are rooted in the British Mandate after WWI, when the UK government basically promised the same land to Jews, Arabs, and themselves. At the time, many Jews bought land in what then became Israel. So the land was legally sold, but it was also stolen. Since the foundation of Israel, millions of Palestinians have been displaced from their homes; many remain stuck in refugee camps with no rights and nowhere to go.
I remember talking to Safta when the Israeli government was in the news about the talks around annexing the West Bank. “Our family, we do not agree on this,” Safta said over the phone. “No one supports it. We want peace; we all want peace. It is, the problem is, in Israel and in Palestine, we all do not agree on the terms.”
So there’s a hoard of political and geographic disputes, and at times of tension those disputes can turn into violence. The heightened security, I remind myself, is because of this. I wonder, though, if that security contributes to the atmosphere.
Will I have a better context for this conflict now that I’m actually here? Is this something we’ll talk about? I know this is a temple trip, so we might not even get into politics. Maybe our focus will just be on tourist sites and religious study. I honestly don’t know.
The other group leader (what did David call her? A Madricha?) is waiting for us outside security with a homemade sign, written in a neat script and bordered by adorable hand-drawn flowers. She’s got on a loose sundress and strappy gladiator sandals. There’s a scarf wrapped around her head like a headband. I think she’s probably in her early twenties. She has some serious artsy grandma who smokes nonmedical marijuana vibes coming from her. I want her to teach me how to meditate.
She gathers us all with far more ease than either David or I was able to manage. “Hi, I’m Jess Goldstein. I’m the Madricha. I’m sure you all met David.” She nods over in his direction. “He’s the Madrich. Basically, that just means he’s the boy staff member here and I’m the girl staff member. Our tour leader is going to meet us outside. There’ll be a quick info sesh, some introductions, and then you’ll have time to change if you want to. Hats and water bottles out!”
We mill into an open area outside, and it hits me. I’m Someplace Else. The first indicator is the sign, right above the exit, which is written in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. I have to assume that the English is there because English speakers as a whole don’t take the time to invest in language education … or because of colonialism. One of those for sure.
