Brothers Emanuel: A Memoir of an American Family Page 21

  When we were both seated in the car he turned the key to the off position and silenced the motor. He then started the car again and put it in gear and hastily pulled out of the treasured parking spot.

  “Where are we going?” I inquired in a puzzled way, since we had not entered the cathedral.

  “Lake Como,” he said, making it clear we weren’t going to see the inside of the Milan cathedral no matter how majestic it was.

  About that name—Jonny. It wasn’t until I saw the invitations my parents prepared for my bar mitzvah that I discovered my full name. As my mother explained, the name Ezekiel had belonged to my father’s father, who died two years before I was born. She also told me that she did not like the sound of Ezekiel as a baby’s name and that she had called me Jonny to spare me unnecessary teasing in America.

  This explanation made sense on some levels, but was incoherent on others. For one thing, she wasn’t at all concerned about teasing when she sent us to ballet lessons. Moreover, she had named her subsequent kids Rahm and Ariel—hardly sparing them teasing because of their unusual names. Rahm especially encountered problems as people would pronounce it Ram or Ron and, after being corrected, derisively ask, “What kind of name is that?” What became obvious to me was that the paramount consideration had always been her personal preference. She always loved the name Jonathan, and Ezekiel represented the tense relationship with her mother-in-law. But now I had the power to decide for myself.

  The Ezekiel of the Bible was a prophet to the Israelites in exile in Babylon. He had railed against sin, called his people to faith, and predicted the rise of a new Jerusalem. This was inspiring, but my decision was also guided by the rebelliousness of adolescence. It would be Ezekiel. Understanding that everyone in Wilmette knew me as Jon or Jonny, I wasn’t going to ask everyone to immediately call me something else. Instead I registered for high school classes using the name Ezekiel, and I began writing Ezekiel Jonathan Emanuel on my papers at school. And when high school teachers tried to pronounce Ezekiel, I quickly corrected them and said they could call me Jon or Jonathan. I finally completed the change when I entered college and no one, except one senior, knew me from high school. Eventually, Ezekiel was shortened to Zeke.

  The preparation for my bar mitzvah gave me the time and opportunity to consider my identity. Roughly translated, bar mitzvah means “son of commandment” and marks the moment when a Jewish boy becomes responsible for his own adherence to the Torah. Bar mitzvah rites are often mocked and people love to tell stories about the excessive celebrations and the nervous children with squeaky voices reciting portions of the Torah in mangled Hebrew with little or no understanding of what they’re saying. But something in me longed for a deeper experience. In part I think this was because my Torah portion comes at the very end of the Bible—it is one of the three “endings”—and is one of the few in the Bible that is written in two columns of poetry and contains a warning and promise to the nation of Israel about how to live.

  Our temple offered basic bar mitzvah preparation from a tutor who was knowledgeable and sincere, but focused only on teaching each student how to recite the prayers and his portion of scripture. These study sessions did not provide—nor were they intended to provide—any intellectual insights into the texts or explorations of any existential questions about Judaism. I was vocal and angry about my dissatisfaction with this rote learning of my Torah and Haftorah portions. Deep down I was probably expressing frustration at the fact that I had a horrible voice and—thanks to my mom—could not carry a tune. But I was also frustrated by learning meaningless words in a foreign language without the opportunity to use my brain to figure out what they really meant. I demanded that I stop these vacuous lessons and that we find a bar mitzvah tutor who would do Bible study with me. We were too close to the bar mitzvah, and I had too much to learn to change courses. But my parents agreed to help me find some Bible instruction—after the bar mitzvah was done. In the meantime I buckled down to memorize my portion, and made do with some special encouragement from the Big Bangah.

  Grandfather Herman supported me with a symbolic tribute that irritated him but thrilled me. My wish was for him to stop shaving. I liked the way he looked in a beard. It softened his face and made him seem sage-like and more approachable. He didn’t like the way it felt on his face or looked in the mirror. Grudgingly, however, he grew the bushy white beard for me.

  Around this time, the Big Bangah and our grandmother Sophie moved into my father’s study, but not quite by choice. Herman had yearned to live in Israel for some time. He talked about it often, though we were still surprised when he abruptly sold his business, canceled the lease on the apartment he shared with our grandmother, and disposed of most of their belongings.

  “It’s time,” he announced. “We’re going to Israel.”

  There was only one small problem: As a young boy Herman had come to America with no official papers. Once he arrived he never tried to go abroad. So, while he worked, paid his taxes, had a driver’s license, and a Social Security number, he never obtained a passport. But without documentary proof of his citizenship he was, technically, an illegal immigrant and could not get a passport. Without a passport, he and Sophie could not emigrate. When he found out about these obstacles, Herman, having made himself homeless by giving up his apartment and selling its contents, decided his only option was to move in with us on Locust Road.

  The resolution of Herman’s immigration status would require two years of waiting and, ultimately, the intervention of Congressman Sid Yates, who was both Jewish and a Democrat. But even with Yates on the case, the bureaucracy moved slowly. In the meantime, my grandfather’s fuzzy face brought tears to my eyes when I spoke at my bar mitzvah. And the moment the service and party were over, Herman’s beard disappeared down the drain, never to return.

  A year or so after my bar mitzvah, a young Bible student came to Wilmette at the invitation of Rabbi Frankel to serve as a kind of scholar in residence at an old farmhouse with peeling paint that was owned by our congregation, Am Yisrael. For nearly a year Danny Siegel had a twice-weekly 6 A.M. appointment with me. We would study Pirkei Avot, a famous commentary on Jewish ethics. After these lessons I would cross the road to New Trier West for pre-class swim team practice.

  My mother, who thoroughly enjoyed her sleep, qualified for some kind of medal of honor by driving me to these early morning appointments. My study session required that she rise at 5:30 A.M. When she got home after dropping me off there was no chance that she could recover lost sleep—my father and brothers would be dressing, eating breakfast, and getting ready for the day in their “quiet” way. To her credit, my mother did this for a whole academic year with very little complaint.

  Danny and I immersed ourselves in Jewish theology and philosophy. Up to that point I didn’t know what it meant to really work with a text, striving to unearth all its meanings and context. But with Danny I explored the historical meaning of the words, the literary choices made by the writers, the precedents for the arguments made in a passage, and the implications the words had for the way people of any age, from antiquity to modern times, struggled to live good and moral lives.

  I recall one particular morning when we pored over Pirkei Avot and A Book of Jewish Concepts, by Philip Birnbaum. “Start reading where we left off last week,” Danny said as he walked around the kitchen bundled up in his red plaid dressing gown and sipping his tea. We were somewhere in chapter 3. I took a sip of tea, cleared my throat, and found the right spot in the text.

  “Rabbi Akiva used to say: ‘Everything is foreseen, yet the freedom of choice is given. The world is judged with goodness, and everything depends on the abundance of mitzvoth.’ ”

  “So what does that mean? How can it be that everything is foreseen and yet you have freedom?” Danny was just asking the obvious question, but the answer was hardly obvious to me, barely fourteen years of age.

  “I guess if God is God then He must be able to see everything. Nothing is out of h
is control, power, or knowledge. But because we are not God, all we see are possibilities and we have to choose among them.” I stumbled around like this for a few more back-and-forths with Danny. He then moved on.

  “What are mitzvoth? And why does everything depend upon them?”

  “Good deeds.”

  “Look it up.”

  Here Danny was teaching me to closely and critically examine how words were used, and always have multiple books open when I studied philosophy. I opened the Book of Jewish Concepts to the section on mitzvoth and started reading: “In the plural, the term mitzvoth signifies specific commands contained in the Torah. In Talmudic terminology, mitzvoth is the general term for the divine commandments, computed to be 613.” I read on: “Mitzvoth is another word for charity. It refers to any particular opportunity to fulfill the comprehensive duty of men toward their fellow men.”

  Danny kept pressing me about the importance of charity, following commandments, duties to other people, and freedom. “See, in the Jewish tradition, there is no tension between freedom and duty or following commandments. For Jews, freedom is not just doing what you want. Akiva wants you to think differently about freedom.”

  It was approaching 7 A.M. and Danny told me to gather up my books. He knew I had early morning swim practice at school, which was across the street.

  “While you are swimming, think about why Akiva says that everything depends upon mitzvoth. Why doesn’t it depend upon faith in God? We are now getting to the heart of what you wanted to know about Jewish tradition. See you Thursday morning.”

  I put on my puffy orange down coat and walked across the street to my high school, thinking about Danny’s questions. The answers wouldn’t come immediately, but over time I came to understand that for Jews faith was secondary to practice. It turned out that not believing was no excuse for not doing; even Orthodox Jews could be expected to have a loss of faith, but that did not relieve them of the duty to follow the mitzvoth. This is the part of the Jewish tradition that seemed to have animated my grandfather as well as my mother and father. None of them were believers as far as I could tell; none had a spiritual bone in their bodies; but all seemed impelled to do mitzvoth, which they demonstrated in their public and personal activism. Protest against injustice is a mitzva and so is sounding an alarm about lead paint. These acts aren’t about faith in God, or satisfying the ego, they are about caring for others—in a Jewish kind of way. Later in life Rahm, Ari, and I would all fight for public policies and ideas that we believed would benefit all. When we fought to be leaders in academics, politics, and business some would see ego and little else. But anyone who knew how we were raised, in our family and our religious faith, would know there was more to it. We didn’t fight so hard—and take so many criticisms—just for ego satisfaction. Somehow, we all feel obligated to do good. Indeed, when interviewed for a story about my work, a reporter asked why I do what I do, especially when I have been subjected to so much criticism as Dr. Death and head of the death panels. I looked at her in a puzzled way, thinking that trying to make the world better doesn’t arise from an explicit decision, it is just what I—we—have to do. It is, in the old language, a calling. I wouldn’t be me, Rahm wouldn’t be Rahm, and Ari wouldn’t be Ari if we weren’t trying to make things better for our children’s and grandchildren’s generations.

  As Danny taught me, agreement was a rare commodity in the Jewish tradition—and not particularly valued. For every sage’s opinion there was another interpretation offered by an equally respected rabbi. The constant argument over scripture within the same tradition seemed, to me, to explain—at least in part—the frequent debate that took place in my family. Danny also sparked in me a great appreciation for what scriptures teach and he helped me imagine an academically oriented life.

  Like me, Rahm and Ari were given big bar mitzvah parties with dancing, food, and drink. It was the seventies so the music at these events ran from British Invasion to Motown, and the snapshots of us wearing matching paisley bell-bottoms are proof that no one with any fashion sense made any effort to dissuade us from our efforts to be as cool as we could be. The arrangements for these celebrations varied depending on economic condition. Mine included a lunch for family and adult friends at a restaurant and a party with pizza and records at the school gym for my classmates. By the time of Rahm’s big day, my father was making more money and so Rahm got a Saturday night hotel dinner banquet that combined family and friends, and a band that played well into the night.

  Rahm’s bar mitzvah was also the occasion for one of the more unsettling incidents of our time in Wilmette. During the synagogue service, which was held in the auditorium of a local grade school (our synagogue still lacked its own building), a young man opened the door and screamed some anti-Semitic curses at the crowd. As the guy fled, some of the men in attendance chased him. They caught him outside and held him until an older man who walked with a cane ordered them to leave.

  “He said he wanted to talk to him,” recalled Rahm, years later. “But everyone knew that the old man abused his own kids and would abuse anyone else who crossed him.”

  Today, my reaction to the incident Rahm recalled is complex. The response of the men there, who wanted to catch the offender, may have been reassuring to those who felt violated and vulnerable. But what can be learned from their decision to turn a blind eye and leave him with a man who was known for brutalizing his own kids? The men at the temple may have felt justified, but in the long run their behavior cannot be construed as anything but dark.

  As we brothers reached our bar mitzvahs we remained, for the most part, the same kids we had always been. Soon enough, however, the self-consciousness that comes with adolescence would make us each rebel at least a little. We began withholding parts of ourselves, retreating from the free-flowing conversation that once held every day together in our home and seeking, instead, privacy and the counsel of friends and adults outside the family. This kind of withdrawal is normal and marks a young adult’s effort to become a distinct individual. However, it was something our mother resisted. She did not want us to stop telling her about our feelings, our relationships, our daily successes and failures.

  “Why can’t we talk about what’s going on with you?” she would say. “I feel like I don’t know you anymore.”

  Her feeling of loss and bewilderment was made worse by the fact that our friends and cousins, especially the boys who had been like fourth brothers, continued to trust her with their deepest and most tender truths. If they could open up to her, she fretted, why couldn’t her own sons? With both sadness and anger in her voice she would ask, “What has happened?”

  Nothing specific had happened, but everything was changing because we had started to become young men and we needed to begin separating from her and the family and establish our own identities. We did not confide in her as teens for the same reason that we trusted her as little boys: She was our mother. As I learned with my own daughters, this is the painful paradox all devoted parents, and especially mothers, must confront one day. The job of being a good parent is inevitably terminal. If you do it well and make your kids confident and ambitious, they eventually grow—must grow—away from you. In those teenage years, when they are trying to become their own people, it’s especially difficult. Your kids simultaneously push you away—needing space to explore on their own—and yet still need you in so many ways. It’s even harder if you’re like my mother and your entire being is wrapped up in being a parent. In the empty silence you are challenged to find a new purpose.

  Thirteen

  ADOLESCENT REBELLION

  “Zeke, you really left the family when you were about fourteen,” says Ari. “That’s when you started to leave, at least.”

  “And if there was any sibling rivalry it wasn’t after college. It was when we were all living at home,” says Rahm.

  It’s Fourth of July at a waterfront house in Rhode Island and we brothers—all middle-aged men—are gathered around a table on the
back porch reminiscing, disagreeing about the details of events, and arguing about our childhood and adolescence. Amid the teasing “Fuck yous” and the ripples of laughter we compare our competing versions of the Emanuel family story.

  Rahm, ever the politician, insists that “all the events” we recall are “true” but insists that if we are open-minded we “could give another take on it” when it comes time for making judgments.

  Many people might be surprised to hear that of all the brothers it is Ari, who was so manic as a kid, who is most thoughtful and deeply psychological in his approach to life. Indeed, it is because of his struggles as a kid that he has deeply felt empathy for every player in the family drama, including our father, whom he drove crazy, and our mother, whom, he says, “I always love but sometimes don’t like.” In his eyes, she had been tortured by the way our grandfather Herman withheld his affirmation. “He never really respected her,” he explains. “She was always trying to achieve in his eyes and he never gave her his approval.”

  Exactly.

  The Big Bangah, who had been rejected by the machashaifeh when he came to America, had been hard on his own children. Like just about every immigrant father who intends to give his offspring something better than his own childhood, Herman Smulevitz was only able to make so much progress. Having been abandoned by his own father, he had no reference point for what it takes to be a good one. But he did know that life could be a cruel affair and one had better be prepared. To this end, he tried to make his children tough. He did this by withholding his approval, pointing out the deficiencies they needed to address, and demanding that they develop skins so thick that even the most cutting remarks would not draw blood. Under some circumstances, Sophie, my grandmother, might offer her children comfort, but she would not take a firm stand against the callousness and sarcasm Herman directed at his children. She feared him, too.