Noach was the antithesis of his name. He was not very
noach, that is, a pleasant, easy-to-get-along-with
kind of person. Even in kindergarten, he was already labeled
a difficult child, and no one made any effort to change that
impression.
"A self-centered, unsociable child. Never willing to share,"
his gannenet passed judgment, casting his sentence for
future life. She, herself, was an old maid in her advanced
thirties who tried to insert some beams of light into her
dull life via the colorful doorway of the neighborhood
kindergarten.
"Noach doesn't get along with others. He is spoiled and
introverted, not a very pleasant person..." his
melamed echoed in subsequent years.
"A terrible character," said his teacher. "I simply have no
complimentary words to say about him. He is selfish to a
degree which I have never before encountered in all of my
teaching days."
As Noach grew, other adjectives were added to the list of
negative character traits. "Arrogant and self-important,
egocentric in advanced stages," the principal of the Talmud
Torah pigeonholed him. And the original characterization was
repeated by his dormitory mates, "Noach lo noach," an
ultimately difficult person to deal with.
In short, Noach was the epic example of one who was haughty,
smug, unliked, unaccepted in his social milieu or in any
social circle of his environment, embittered, hopelessly
rejected. In short -- truly miserable, pitifully so.
Noach persisted in despising his kindergarten teacher, Tzila,
who continued to clap her hands and tap her tambourine in the
playground, her mousy looking, thin ponytail gray, by now.
"A bad person," he would repeat to himself, untouched by her
sad family situation, a judgment he continued to reinforce
even after years of examination through the thick lenses of
the passing years.
He would never forget the box of crayons he had received for
his third birthday. The picture was sharply focused in his
memory, its colors unfaded by the gallop of passing years.
It was a huge box of crayons, shiny and very captivating.
"What America produces these days!" his mother exclaimed at
the time when she opened the rustling wrapping paper of the
package that had arrived especially in time for Noach's
birthday. "Special crayons from Zeidy Mendel," she said
ceremoniously, handing him the package. "A birthday present
specially for you."
Noach had never received anything so large before in his
life, nothing so impressive, and all for him. "A gift from
America!' he exclaimed in an incredulous voice. "A birthday
present just for me!'
Noach wanted to take the crayons along to kindergarten. "I
think you had better not," his mother said. "The children
will be jealous of you and they might even snatch away the
crayons by force." "Just for today," Noach begged. His mother
capitulated as she inserted the box into his lunch bag,
together with his small embroidered napkin and sandwich.
Noach was pleased as punch.
"Noach has brought us a box of new crayons," Tzila announced
on that fateful morning in her authoritative voice. "A whole
lot of crayons. From America..." and withdrew the brightest
one from the bunch, a brilliant red Crayola crayon.
"What do we say to Noach?" she said in her finest didactic
tone.
Noach was up in arms. These were his new crayons, and very
dear to him. He, himself, had not even decided when to begin
using them for the first time.
"They're mine!" he explained to Tzila, in a helpless but
resolute and uncompromising tone. "M-i-n-e! From Zeidy
Mendel."
Tzila did not remember what her teacher had taught her to do
in such situations. Mazal, the assistant, was unfortunately
absent that morning and even Yona, the teacher from the
adjoining class, was too busy to enrich Tzila with her
advanced experience.
Tzila herself was at a loss. This child was unwilling to
concede. He was unwilling to share with his classmates.
Selfish and spoiled to a terrible degree. In a flash of
insight, Tzila decided to educate Noach, together with all
the children.
It was the period of sefira and the class was still
under the strong impression of the passing of R' Akiva's
students. This, she felt, would be a golden opportunity to
teach the children, whose character formation was entrusted
in her hands, to give, to give in, to think of others.
Tzila announced a campaign for vatronus, for just that
morning. "Today, everyone is mevater," she explained
to the children, and beat time on her tambourine to their
shouts of enthusiasm. She burst into song, "Omar R'
Akiva... sheli sheloch..." and everyone joined in
energetically.
And the children? They yielded and they yielded, they gave
and they gave! They exchanged a banana for an apple, an
orange for a tangerine, a turn at the swing for the
seesaw.
"What sweet children you all are! Everyone is mevater
today!" she praised lavishly. "My little
tzaddikim!"
Noach was the only who remained adamantly unyielding of his
box of crayons.
"They're m-i-n-e! From Zeidy Mendel," he explained again at
the height of Tzila's campaign. The kindergarten was
appalled.
Tzila singled out each child for praise at the end of that
day. Yossi and Duddi, Meir and Menachem, Yaakov and Uri,
Natty and Oded...
"Noach, too!" shouted Chananel (Noach would never forget him)
into the silence of the closing story session. But Tzila
would not concede. "Noach did not give in today. Perhaps he
will be bigger tomorrow and will be mevater like all
the rest of the children."
The children returned home that day from gan with a
sticker on their shirts. Tzila had quickly made them up with
bright markers: "Vatran." Noach was the only one who
did not receive a sticker.
"Perhaps tomorrow," she promised, and Noach forged a lifelong
hatred for her.
In his childish sensitivity, he felt he had been done an
injustice. He had been wronged and mislabeled. In truth, he
had been the only one expected to yield something that
belonged to him for the sake of the kindergarten. Only he had
brought that shiny new box of crayons. Only he had had to
struggle inwardly. In his place, would Tzila have done any
better? Only he was the loser that morning, a loser in the
full public eye.
How sharp memories can be. Twenty years passed but the memory
of the box of crayons from Zeidy Mendel was sharp and searing
in his heart with full vivid recall.
Noach despised his sixth grade Rebbe with equal venom. Rebbe
Yehoshua had isolated him from the rest of the class and
placed him in the last row without a seatmate for a long,
nightmarish year. Noach clearly remembered that bitter day
when he had drawn with perfect precision a demarkation line
down the length of the hated green desk, dividing it into
two, with a long, ancient ruler he had picked up somewhere.
He had carefully measured the width of the desk -- one meter
twenty -- and measured it once again, marking the exact
center point at sixty centimeters and dividing it equally.
"That half is yours and this is mine!" he said to Motty, who
had nodded in agreement at the line drawn down the middle of
the desk. "No more problems," noted Noach with satisfaction,
and from that moment on, he made sure to place his belongings
on his half.
Rebbe Yehoshua discovered the division the next morning and
all he could say was, "Disgusting!"
"Whose brilliant idea was this?" he asked in a severe,
derogatory tone. "`What's mine is mine and what's yours is
yours -- middas am ho'oretz or Sodom'?" he asked the
class at large.
Noach heard what he hinted at between the words: Welcome
to the society of Sodom, Noach. How well you fit
there.
Natty and Oded chuckled aloud. Motty cringed. And Noach?
Noach was being put on public trial without a lawyer, without
explicit charges. On the following day, the rebbe sent Noach
to the back of the room. "You can have the whole desk to
yourself," he said, and sent him out to look for an empty
desk somewhere on the premises.
Noach could not see the blackboard. Yonoson's broad back hid
the rebbe's face from him, besides. "Hey, you in the back,"
the teacher would remember his diminutive student
occasionally. And the `you in the back' would have loved to
scratch his face until it bled...
Things developed rapidly by themselves and Noach could no
longer differentiate between innate tendencies and ones
acquired from his numerous bitter life's experiences.
"You're not an only child, here, Noach. You must remember
that there are other people in the world, other wills and
other weaknesses," his Rosh Yeshiva, R' Mandelbaum, explained
to him. Complaints had reached him from the dormitory about
genuine difficulties encountered with Noach's roommates.
"But they sit on my bed, even climb up on it with their
shoes," he complained, feeling like a little boy defending
himself before his father.
"Try to ignore it. Be more of a vatron. That's how we
want Hashem to relate to us, as well, forgiving and
yielding."
The following year, the Mashgiach placed Noach in the last
room on the floor, which was really no more than an enclosed
porch with a single bed and small nighttable.
"I hope this time there will be no problems." His voice bore
no rancor, but Noach could not help imagining a bitter
tone...
A problematic kid, the "you in the back, there." The one who
refused to share, who argued, stubbornly stood his ground and
fought for his rights. Noach, the very antithesis of his
name...
*
The bus wending its way up the road to Meron included our
Noach as well. The Meron of Lag B'Omer is not the same Meron
of normal weekdays and Noach felt he just had to experience
this pilgrimage to the gravesite of the Rashbi at least once
in his lifetime.
"Hey, friend," said Natty and Oded the evening before the
trip, "pray for us, too, by Reb Shim'n." Noach could not help
hearing the sarcastic undertone in their voice. They could
have called him by his name, and they could also have said,
"by the Rashbi" or "in Meron," but they chose an over-
familiar "by Reb Shim'n" and for good reason.
When he left the dormitory, Natty threw him a package of
thick candles. "You might as well..." Noach almost regretted
undertaking the trip altogether.
The bus filled up very quickly. Men, women, young boys,
seminary girls and darling curly headed three-year-olds. A
broad spectrum of Jews going up to Meron, to Rabbi Shimon.
"Sixty buses like nothing." Noach could not help calculating
the gross income that Chatzkel was raking in, as an
additional bus, the one before them, packed to the gills, set
off.
He had the good fortune to sit up front, diagonally opposite
Victor, the driver. To watch the road being eaten under
the wheels was a pleasure carried over from his early
childhood. At first, he laid his hat and jacket on the seat
next to him. You never knew who might be your seatmate for
the next three hours.
A group of excited bochurim barred the doorway, their
juicy Yiddish filling the bus. Noach began to lose his
patience. An elderly Jew approached his seat but Noach stared
fixedly out the window, concentrated on the bonfires in the
distance.
"Someone sitting here?" he asked. Noach was forced to remove
his hat in an obvious motion of dissatisfaction. The man who
took the seat was heavy set. He took out a `R' Shimon'
pamphlet and began reading aloud, punctuating, "Ay, R'
Shim'n." Every few moments, he would sigh again, "Ay...
die heiliger R' Shim'n..."
The passengers were still exchanging seats before they
settled down for the long trip ahead. "When are you leaving?"
he asked impatiently. Victor sat, smoking leisurely,
oblivious of his surroundings.
"Patience, young man. R' Shimon isn't running away," he
rejoined pleasantly, but this irked Noach nonetheless.
The Jew by his side began humming the traditional Lag B'Omer
tunes with great fervor.
*
They reached Meron late at night. Victor stopped along the
way several times, per passengers' requests.
"People don't know how to prepare themselves for a trip,"
grumbled Noach. "A mere three hours and they become
itchy."
"It'll be O.K.," said Victor patiently. "I told you already,
young man; R' Shimon isn't going anywhere. He's waiting for
ev-ry-bo-dy!"
Noach couldn't help smiling. There was something authentic,
down to earth, about Victor. Your typical driver, mustached,
wearing a gold wedding band and a Magen David around his
neck. Countless times, he lowered the volume of the tape
whose notes filled the half-sleeping bus. And countless
times, he raised it, per request of the passengers in the
back.
Numerous times he turned off the air conditioning, only to
turn it on again at the behest of others. He was an
experienced driver, the kind who can proceed full speed ahead
while still paying attention to the periodic requests fired
at him by his youthful passengers.
"Are you still awake?" one arrogant boy shouted at him from
the middle of the bus when he slowed down before a traffic
light.
"Drive carefully!" ordered another baalebatishe
sounding man from the front section.
"How long is it supposed to take? Is this your first round?"
a third asked.
Noach kept tabs on the journey. A decent driver, he
could not help conceding to himself, and suddenly a sadness
came over him.
When they arrived, Victor parked the bus "as close as
possible" and Noach hastened to debark. "You're O.K.,
Victor," he said, getting the words out of his mouth as
quickly as posssible. Something about this genial, fifty-year-
old driver had done something to him deep inside. Noach felt
he owed him gratitude. The parking area was well-lit, but the
hullabaloo and the noise succeeded in concealing the emotion
in his voice. He couldn't remember himself ever having
honestly complimented someone.
"One has no choice," Victor smiled at him. "People are a
whole world -- each and every one."
*
Noach, together with thousands of others, was propelled up
the mountain, wafted as it were upon waves of love
yearning/burning for R' Shimon and his famous cave. Countless
feet stepped upon Noach's shoes and dirtied the cuffs of his
trousers. Countless hands pushed and shoved him
unintentionally, and endless fists pounded his back and head.
But Noach made his way, together with the masses, up the
mountainside. Time after time, his shoelaces got caught in
the piles of disposable cups that grew higher, the closer he
got to his destination. And endless streams of people
surrounded every possible corner and Noach was at a loss.
At first, he still wiped off the thick layer of dust on his
shoes occasionally, with his handkerchief, and tried to ward
off the sweaty hands that pummeled every part of his body
until things got deplorably out of hand and he melted into
the throng, pressed together into a solid undulating
block.
R' Shimon was waiting, was there for ev-ry-bo-dy. Moroccans
and Yemenites, Jerusalemites and businessmen, chassidim and
yeshiva students, Reb Aharlachs and hick-towners. Noach had
never seen such a medley of humanity in such close
proximity.
Every once in a while, waxy white candles would fly over his
head, one such landing smack on his hat and staining it.
Religious practices of the masses, he murmured to
himself. He was surprised, himself, to feel his lips curve in
a smile at the sight of the crowds which, under normal
circumstances, would have driven him mad.
The Meron band played typical Meron music. Those who could
not participate in the dancing, watched it from rooftops.
Jews of all kinds, of all ages, of all social strata.
Speaking a thousand tongues, strange and foreign, plus one
single united language.
How had Victor put it? People are a whole world. Each and
every person. He spotted Chananel, the crippled boy from
his early schooldays. Chananel, who couldn't hurt a fly, who
had struggled to the utmost of his ability to master reading.
Chananel, who had not yet found a place of learning that
would accept him. Chananel, who epitomized human suffering
and helplessness. A wave of pity he had never felt before
suddenly swept over Noach. Chananel's world, sealed and shut,
was laid there, by the tomb of Rashbi, touching and yet not
touching the hem of his jacket.
Further up, near the blazing bonfire, stood Zerach the
grocer. Zerach in Meron? It didn't sit right with Noach.
Zerach, the Polish grumbler who despised his customers and
delighted in money. What was he doing in Meron? His familiar
face looked incongruent and strange in this context. Yet he
stood there, compressed between the rest, praying brokenly.
Noach would never have conceived anything to pain him. But
how had Victor put it? People are a whole world. Each and
every person, an entire world.
Suddenly, Noach felt his heart expand with an internal
illumination, a light reserved especially for Rashbi's tomb.
A sudden enlightenment, a sharp, bright, elevating
revelation. A sense of universal joy.
He approached the grave, as close as possible, pushed and
wafted in waves of humanity. Stone, it might be, yet it
exuded searing vapor of human lava that swept to and fro,
back and forth.
Cellphones jangled ceaselessly. "I'm by R' Shimon." "A
sach mentschen..." "Incredible! Greater than life!" "No.
Not yet. Soon we'll go to see the Reb Aharalach..."
Jews exchanged live impressions; they updated and were
updated, conveying and receiving. Throbbing, yearning,
kinetic with emotion.
And Noach was amidst them.
Someone tapped him on the shoulder. At first he ignored it.
Everyone was jostling to reach the gravesite, to touch it,
wet it with their tears, each according to his tears. But
when the tapping increased and he thought he heard his name
being called, Noach turned around.
Rebbe Yehoshua. Much older-looking than how he had last seen
him, standing by his side, weary, looking desolate,
disconsolate. "How are you, Noach?" asked this sixth grade
teacher whom he so despised. Noach discerned a pleading note
in his voice. I hope you are doing all right, he
seemed to say wordlessly. The "You, there, in the back" had
turned into a man, and only he and his heart knew what he
felt. Tell me you're all right, that you are happy and
satisfied, the eyes begged silently. And for the first
time in his life, Noach let the tears stream unstemmed down
his cheeks.
A lot of water has flowed downstream since then, he
thought. A lump formed in his throat, threatening to burst
forth in a gush of water. The divided schooldesk, middas
Sodom or am ho'oretz? Suddenly, everything became
entangled in his mind. Tzila with her graying ponytail, Motty
and Oded, the Mashgiach -- all rose before him, each with
their contribution to the formation of his personality. How
sharp and stark memories can be!
Rebbe Yehoshua looked at him glassily. "I come here every
year," he murmured to Noach, "every year... In the merit of
the saintly Tana..." He did not elaborate and Noach
did not ask. Each person and his private world.
Only R' Shimon could know what had transpired in Rebbe
Yehoshua's past decade. This place, probably more than any
other, held the riddle of all its visitors: Chananel and
Zerach, Rebbe Yehoshua and Tzila, R' Meirowitz, the beloved
neighborhood Rov who stood a few steps away, his whole body
immersed in prayer. And he, Noach, as well.
He clasped the hand of his sixth grade teacher for several
long moments. It's all right, Rebbe, his eyes said, no
words crossing his lips.
Thank you, the Rebbe's eyes answered back, not glazed
like before.
*
Noach prayed a great deal for Gannenet Tzila that night.
Through the lenses of time, she seemed so much smaller and
more vulnerable, embittered and enigmatic, holding the
eternal tambourine in her hand, trying futilely to sing the
song of her life...
Someone attached a sticker to his lapel noting the free
kitchen down the mountainside. R' Shimon was worthy of all
the kindness and honor that surrounded his tomb and its
environs.
"All my tzaddikim, my vatronim," he heard
Tzila's voice echoing in his mind. "And Noach, too. Perhaps
tomorrow he will be older and will yield just like a big
boy."
*
The dawning broke at the top of Mount Meron, gloriously
proclaiming the change of the guard, from night to day.
Everyday Jews, enveloped in taleisim and crowned in
tefillin, filled the huge courtyard which was suddenly
endowed with majesty, a congregation prepared, ready and
eager, to receive the gift of the new day.
The mountain was ready, as well, ready to absorb the secrets
entrusted to it. And Noach -- he had finally found favor --
and he hummed to himself as he made his way back to the
bus.
