The Righteous Men (2006) (13 page)

Girls and women who wear immodest garments, and thereby call
attention to their physical appearance, disgrace themselves by proclaiming that
they possess no intrinsic qualities for which they should garner attention …

So that explained the dress code. But the word that leapt out at Will had
nothing to do with necklines or slits. It was ‘Rebbe’. This sounded
like the man Will had to meet.

He looked up to get his bearings, noticing for the first time the street
sign. Eastern Parkway. He had barely walked ten yards when he saw another sign:
Internet Hot Spot. He had arrived.

His stomach heaved as he walked in. This was surely the scene
of the crime. Someone had sat at one of these cheap blondwood desks, surrounded
by fake wood panelling and grey floor tiles, and typed the message announcing
the theft of his wife.

He stared hard at the room, hoping his would suddenly become a superhero’s
gaze, magically able to absorb every detail, seeing with X-ray vision the clues
that must be here.

But he only had his own eyes.

The room was a mess, not like the latte-serving internet cafes he knew from
Manhattan or even his own patch of Brooklyn. There was no espresso or mocha
here, no coffee of any kind in fact. Just bunches of exposed wires, peeling signs
on the wall, including a picture of an elderly, white bearded rabbi — a
face Will had now seen at least a dozen times. The desks were arranged
haphazardly, with flimsy partitions attempting the separation into individual
workspaces.

At the back were a stack of empty computer cartons, still leaking their
Styrofoam packaging, as if the owners had simply bought the equipment, unloaded
it and opened for business the same day.

Will got a few upward glances as he came in, but it was not nearly as bad as
he had feared. (He had visions of his occasional student forays into
out-of-the-way pubs in big English cities, places so hostile the locals seemed
to fall into an instinctive, sullen silence the moment a stranger was among
them.) Most of the customers in the Internet Hot Spot seemed too preoccupied to
be interested in Will.

He tried to assess each of them. He noticed the two women first, both wearing
berets. One was sitting side-saddle on her stool, allowing her to keep one hand
on her pram, rocking her baby to sleep as she typed with the other. Will ruled
her out immediately: a pregnant woman could surely not have kidnapped his wife.
He eliminated the other woman just as quickly: she had a toddler on her lap and
wore perhaps the most exhausted expression he had ever seen.

The rest of the terminals were either empty or used by men. To Will, they
all looked the same. They wore the same rumpled, dark suits, the same
open-necked white shirts, and the same wide-brimmed black trilby hats. Will
looked hard at each one in turn —
Did you kidnap my wife?
— hoping
that a guilty conscience might at least send one of them blushing or rushing
out of the door. Instead they kept staring at the computer screens and stroking
their beards.

Will paid his dollar and sat at a screen himself. He was tempted to log onto
his own email, so that anyone checking him out and reading over his shoulder
would immediately know who he was. He half-wanted them to know that he was
here, that he was onto them.

Instead, he took time to absorb what was in front of him. Each terminal was
programmed to show the same home page, the website of the Hassidic movement.
There was a tracker on the left of the screen, scrolling birth announcements: Zvi
Chaim born to the Friedmans, Tova Leah to the Susskinds, Chaya Ruchi to the
Slonims. At the top of the screen was a banner, showing the same face that hung
on the wall, though this time it appeared to be dissolving into a picture of
the Jerusalem skyline. Underneath ran the slogan:
Long Live the Rebbe Melech
HaMoshiach forever and ever
.

Will read the line three times, as if trying to crack a cryptic crossword
clue. He had no idea about melech but
Moshiach
was now very familiar,
even if he had not seen it in this form.

The word that mattered was Rebbe. The man in the picture that hung
everywhere — an ancient rabbi with a biblical white beard and a black
trilby pressed firmly on his head — was their leader, their Rebbe.

To Will, it felt like a breakthrough. All he had to do was find this man and
he would get some answers. A community like this, he was sure, would be
hierarchical and disciplined: nothing would happen without the nod of the top man.
He was like a tribal chief. If Beth had been taken by the men of Crown Heights,
the Rebbe would have given the order. And he would know where she was now.

Will left hurriedly, anxious to find this Rebbe as quickly as he could. As
he got back onto the street, he noticed that others were moving at similar
speed; everyone seemed to be in a rush. Maybe something was going on? Maybe
they had heard about the kidnapping?

Within a block or two he found what he was looking for: a place where people
gathered to eat or drink. For reporters, cafes, bars and restaurants were
essential locations. If you needed to talk to strangers, where else could you
start? You could hardly knock on people’s front doors; stopping people in
the street was always a last resort. But in a cafe, you could start a
conversation with almost anybody — and find out plenty.

There were no cafes here, no bars either, but Marmerstein’s Glatt
Kosher would do. It was more of a dining room than a restaurant. It looked like
a canteen, with hot food at a counter served by large, grandmotherly women.
Their customers seemed to be gaunt, pale men, wolfing down chicken schnitzel,
gravy-soaked potatoes and iced tea as if they had not eaten for twenty-four
hours. It reminded Will of the refectory at his public school: big women
feeding thin boys.

Except this scene was much more bizarre. The men might have stepped out of a
picture book of seventeenth-century eastern Europe and yet several of them were
yammering away into cell phones. One was simultaneously tapping into a BlackBerry
and reading the
New York Post
. The collision of ancient and modern was
jarring.

Will queued up to get his own plate, not that he felt like eating; he just
needed an excuse to be there. He hesitated over his choice of vegetable,
overcooked broccoli or overcooked carrots, and was soon upbraided by one of the
babushkas behind the counter.

‘Hurry, I want to get home for
shabbos
,’ she said without
a smile. So that explained the rush: it was Friday afternoon and the Sabbath
was coming. Tom had mentioned something about that as Will left, but he had not
taken it in: he literally did not know what day it was. This was bound to be
bad news. Crown Heights would surely close down in the next hour or two; no one
would be around and he would find out nothing. He had no choice; he would have
to move fast, starting right now.

He found what he needed: a man sitting alone. There was no time for English
circumlocution. He would have to deploy the instant, American approach:
Hi,
how you doing, where do you come from?

His name was Sandy and he was from the West Coast. Both of which facts
caught Will by surprise. He had, half-consciously, assumed that these men with
their beards and black hats would bear alien names and speak with thick Russian
or Polish accents.

That had been part of the culture shock of the last hour, the realization
that a corner of what could have been medieval Europe lived and breathed in the
here and now, in twenty first century New York. He felt like a novice swimmer
who discovers he can no longer touch the bottom.

‘You Jewish?’

‘No, I’m not, I’m a journalist.’ Ridiculous thing to
say. ‘I mean, the reason why I’m here is that I’m a
journalist. For New York magazine.’

‘Cool. You here to write about the Rebbe?’ He pronounced it
Rebb-ah.

‘Yes. Well, among other things. You know, just writing about the
community.’

Sandy turned out to be relatively new to Crown Heights.

He said he had been ‘a surfer dude’ on Venice Beach, ‘hanging
out, taking a lot of drugs’. His life had been a mess until six years ago,
when he had met an emissary of the Rebbe who had established an outreach centre
right on the oceanfront.

This Rabbi Gershon gave him a hot meal one Friday night and that was how it
started. Sandy popped in there for the next Sabbath and the next; he stayed
overnight with Gershon’s family. ‘You know what was best, better
even than the food and the shelter?’ said Sandy, with an intensity Will
found awkward in a man he had just met. ‘They didn’t judge me.

They just said that HaShem loves every Jewish soul, and that HaShem
understands why we sometimes take a roundabout path. How sometimes we get lost.’

‘HaShem?’

‘Sorry, that’s God. HaShem literally means “the Name”.
In Judaism, we know the name of God, we can see it written down, but we never
say it out loud.’

Will gestured for Sandy to carry on. He explained that he had put his life
in the hands of the Rebbe and his followers.

He started dressing like them, eating kosher food, praying in the morning
and evening, honouring the Sabbath by abstaining from all work or commerce
— no shopping, no using electricity, no riding the subway — from
sundown on Friday to sundown on Saturday.

‘And did you do anything like that before?’

‘Me? You gotta be kidding. Man, I didn’t know what
shabbos
was! I ate everything that moved: lobster, crabs, cheeseburgers. My mom didn’t
even know what was kosher and what was
treif
.’

‘And what does she think about, you know, this?’ Will gestured
at Sandy’s clothes and beard.

‘You know, it’s kind of a process?’ Upspeak, even here.

‘She found the kosher thing hard; me not being able to eat with her
when I visit with her in her home. And now that I have kids, that gets kind of
tricky. But the toughest thing for her, without a doubt? When I became Shimon
Shmuel, rather than Sandy. She couldn’t get her head round that.’

‘You changed your name?’

I wouldn’t really call it changing my name. Every Jew has a Hebrew
name already, even if he doesn’t know what it is.

It’s the name of our soul. So I like to say that I discovered my real
name. But I use both. When I visit my mom, or when I meet, you know, someone
like you, I’m Sandy. In Crown Heights, I’m Shimon Shmuel.’

‘So what can you tell me about this Rebbe, then?’

‘Well, he is our leader and he is a great teacher and we all love him
and he loves us.’

‘Do people do whatever he tells them to do?’

‘It’s not really like that, Tom.’ (Will had had to think
quickly.

In all his preparation he had forgotten to make up a pseudonym.

So he had borrowed Tom’s first name and his mother’s maiden
name: Sandy thought he was talking to a freelance reporter called Tom
Mitchell.) ‘The Rebbe just knows what’s right for all of us. He’s
like the shepherd and we’re his flock.

He knows what we need, where we should live, who we should marry. So, yes,
we listen to his advice.’ Will’s hunch was being confirmed. This
guy pulled every lever.

‘And where does he live?’

‘He is right here in this community, every day.’

‘And can I meet him?’

‘You should come to
shul
tonight.’

‘Shul?’

‘Synagogue. But it’s more than that. It’s our headquarters,
our meeting house, our library. You’ll find out all you need to know
about the Rebbe there.’

Will decided to stick with Sandy. He needed a guide and Sandy would be
ideal. Not much older than Will, he was not a rabbi or scholar, not some
authority figure who would require ingratiation, but a burned-out hippy who,
Will guessed, had simply cried out to be rescued. If the Moonies had got there
first, Sandy would have gone with them; he was a man who needed someone to
catch him when he fell.

They talked as they walked the few blocks to Sandy’s first stop.

‘Tell me something, Sandy. What’s the deal with this clothing?
How come you all dress alike?’

‘I admit, I was pretty freaked by that at first. But you know what the
Rebbe says? We are more individual because we dress this way.’

‘How does he work that out?’

‘Well, what makes us different from each other is not the designer
shirt we wear or an expensive suit, something on the outside. What makes us
different from each other is what’s inside: our true selves, our
neshama
,
our souls. That’s what shines out. If the outside becomes irrelevant, if
we all look the same, then people can truly start to see the inside.’

By now, they had arrived at a building Sandy referred to as the
mikve
and which he translated to Will as ‘ritual bath’.

They joined the line paying a dollar to the attendant at the door, Will
handing over an extra fifty cents to get a towel, and headed downstairs into
what seemed to be a large changing room.

As soon as Sandy opened the door, they were hit by a cloud of steam. The air
itself seemed to be dripping; Will had to blink three or four times to adjust
his eyes. When he finally regained his vision, he stepped back as if he had
been punched.

The room was packed with men and boys who were either naked or about to be.
There were bony teenagers, large bellied men in their fifties, their beards
frizzing in the humidity, and wrinkled geriatrics — all of them removing
every last piece of clothing. Will had been to the gym enough times, but there the
age range was narrower, there were fewer people and nothing like this volume of
noise. Everyone in here was talking; if they were kids, they were screaming.

‘We have to be entirely unadorned when we enter the
mikve
,’
Sandy was saying, ‘if we are to become pure for
shabbos
. Our skin
must make total contact with the rainwater that’s collected in the
mikve
.
If we wear a wedding ring, we have to take it off. We must be as we were the
day we were born.’