To my hand it was the hair at the place I go into her.
He wears a hat borrowed from Jake, although it turns out there are skull caps laid ready at the entrance to the place of worship they’ve been given on the invitation instructions to reach. They are led in by a young man who takes his function ceremoniously, hesitating before the rows of seats, indicating the best choice. The synagogue is large, high-ceiling but without the elaborations of a church of such proportions, no graven images, bare of chapels where special favours are asked of this saint or that, like highly qualified doctors specialising in different pardons, benedictions, solutions for various spiritual conditions. It is simple in spacious lack of distraction from the only focus, the curtains behind which there must be something holy hidden, on the far wall above a platform with a discreet pulpit-podium to one side.
Seats are comfortable as those in a luxury cinema, very different she finds them from the benches in her grandfather’s and her father’s church; Steve doesn’t remember how his young backside might have been accommodated accompanying father Andrew on one of his rare obligatory occasions to show up in church, a wedding perhaps, or a funeral. In front of them are books slotted in pockets on the backs of the next row of seats. The woman beside him—he gives a quick glance of polite acknowledgement, but she is passing the time pushing back the cuticles on her fingernails, the man on Jabu’s side is praying, just audibly, a white shawl falling round his neck. Jabu’s careful not to disturb him by jolting the chair arm and she manages with her usual natural grace to succeed in taking a couple of the books without doing so.
There is pervasive talk, even giggles from young boys apparently corralled to a block of seats across the aisle.
Is this an orthodox or a reform synagogue. The woman is satisfied with the condition of her nails and he can ask her. It’s reform. Jabu is turning pages to verify something she’s finding in one of the bilingual books, there’s movement of her lips—she’s trying to mouth Hebrew words, she who speaks at least four languages other than the natal isiZulu he’s picked up under her tutelage. If you’re black you’ve had to improvise communication with unilingual whites, she’d probably easily acquire this ancient one, too.
The rabbi welcomes the congregation in Hebrew and with colloquial English, not the tone Jabu’s accustomed to in church, whether spoken isiZulu or English, implicit chastening against inattention to the presence of the Lord. His Hebrew is poetry, there’s a choir singing in that language, you don’t have to be able to read music in order to understand the beauty of it.
Steve has been looking about to see where Jonathan is sitting, if he’s not behind the scenes, who knows what the protocol may be for the father in this male ceremony.
Andrew and Pauline—must be here, Jonathan’s and his parents, the boy’s grandparents. He has passed over the man in robes and a turban-like headgear, fringed prayer shawl, some ecclesiastical functionary among those in the gathering, although standing, not seated, where yes, the parents Andrew and Pauline have been spotted. He glances that way again as if to mark, we’re here too, Jabu and I. Family solidarity in the most unlikely circumstances after the years when I had to be removed from the way of life expected for me.
The rabbi or whatever he is: he has the face of Jonathan. He is Jonathan. That’s my brother. How could I not have seen. Known him.
Can those stage props have changed him; the sign of change, this one way: his. What was it he said that day, it isn’t enough to be black or white, finish and klaar the way it was in the bad old days, you belong to something…what was it, ‘more real’. What’s more real than what we are, now! My Jabu is a woman the same as your Brenda is a woman, same rights—must I spell them out. Your
He wears a hat borrowed from Jake, although it turns out there are skull caps laid ready at the entrance to the place of worship they’ve been given on the invitation instructions to reach. They are led in by a young man who takes his function ceremoniously, hesitating before the rows of seats, indicating the best choice. The synagogue is large, high-ceiling but without the elaborations of a church of such proportions, no graven images, bare of chapels where special favours are asked of this saint or that, like highly qualified doctors specialising in different pardons, benedictions, solutions for various spiritual conditions. It is simple in spacious lack of distraction from the only focus, the curtains behind which there must be something holy hidden, on the far wall above a platform with a discreet pulpit-podium to one side.
Seats are comfortable as those in a luxury cinema, very different she finds them from the benches in her grandfather’s and her father’s church; Steve doesn’t remember how his young backside might have been accommodated accompanying father Andrew on one of his rare obligatory occasions to show up in church, a wedding perhaps, or a funeral. In front of them are books slotted in pockets on the backs of the next row of seats. The woman beside him—he gives a quick glance of polite acknowledgement, but she is passing the time pushing back the cuticles on her fingernails, the man on Jabu’s side is praying, just audibly, a white shawl falling round his neck. Jabu’s careful not to disturb him by jolting the chair arm and she manages with her usual natural grace to succeed in taking a couple of the books without doing so.
There is pervasive talk, even giggles from young boys apparently corralled to a block of seats across the aisle.
Is this an orthodox or a reform synagogue. The woman is satisfied with the condition of her nails and he can ask her. It’s reform. Jabu is turning pages to verify something she’s finding in one of the bilingual books, there’s movement of her lips—she’s trying to mouth Hebrew words, she who speaks at least four languages other than the natal isiZulu he’s picked up under her tutelage. If you’re black you’ve had to improvise communication with unilingual whites, she’d probably easily acquire this ancient one, too.
The rabbi welcomes the congregation in Hebrew and with colloquial English, not the tone Jabu’s accustomed to in church, whether spoken isiZulu or English, implicit chastening against inattention to the presence of the Lord. His Hebrew is poetry, there’s a choir singing in that language, you don’t have to be able to read music in order to understand the beauty of it.
Steve has been looking about to see where Jonathan is sitting, if he’s not behind the scenes, who knows what the protocol may be for the father in this male ceremony.
Andrew and Pauline—must be here, Jonathan’s and his parents, the boy’s grandparents. He has passed over the man in robes and a turban-like headgear, fringed prayer shawl, some ecclesiastical functionary among those in the gathering, although standing, not seated, where yes, the parents Andrew and Pauline have been spotted. He glances that way again as if to mark, we’re here too, Jabu and I. Family solidarity in the most unlikely circumstances after the years when I had to be removed from the way of life expected for me.
The rabbi or whatever he is: he has the face of Jonathan. He is Jonathan. That’s my brother. How could I not have seen. Known him.
Can those stage props have changed him; the sign of change, this one way: his. What was it he said that day, it isn’t enough to be black or white, finish and klaar the way it was in the bad old days, you belong to something…what was it, ‘more real’. What’s more real than what we are, now! My Jabu is a woman the same as your Brenda is a woman, same rights—must I spell them out. Your
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