Swimming Across the Hudson by Joshua Henkin Page A

well.”
    He looked kindly at me. His eyes were gray, the color of quartz; they sparkled briefly in the synagogue light. “I have my beliefs. But I only preach to those who want to be preached to. Besides, that’s not what you’ve come to talk about.”
    He opened a volume of the Talmud and read to me. “ Kol ha’migadel yatom b’toch bayto, ma’aleh alav ha’katuv ki’eelu yilado. Kol ha’milamed ben chavayro Torah, ma’aleh alav ha’katuv ki’eelu yilado .” He translated: “Whosoever rears an orphan in his own house is considered by Scripture as if he fathered the child. Whosoever teaches Torah to the son of his companion, Scripture considers him as if he begat him.” King Saul’s daughter Michal reared the children of her sister Merav and therefore was considered their mother. Even Batia, the daughter of Pharaoh, was deemed Moses’ mother for having saved and reared him.
    For most purposes, Rabbi Stone said, my adoptive parents were my parents from the perspective of Jewish law. When they died, I should say kaddish for them. I was obligated to obey them, as the Torah commanded.
    Still, he said, adopted children were like orphans. They should be treated sensitively.
    â€œI’m not an orphan,” I said.
    â€œNot literally.”
    â€œNot figuratively either.” Behind him, on a bookshelf, the volumes of the Talmud were lined up. Next to them were the Five Books of Moses. Squeezed on other shelves were scores of commentaries in Hebrew and Aramaic. Some I’d heard of, some I hadn’t; some were almost a thousand years old. It was depressing how much there was and how little I knew. I, who in many ways was an educated Jew, had turned my back on this tradition without fully learning it.
    â€œI have two parents who love me,” I said.
    â€œOf course you do.”
    â€œBut you consider me an orphan.”
    â€œNot exactly.” He opened his desk drawer and removed a sheet of paper. It was a bibliography he’d prepared for me. I felt bad for having been rude to him. He didn’t even know me. It wasn’t clear what I’d done to deserve his kindness.
    â€œI didn’t mean to be impatient.”
    â€œJews are an impatient people.”
    â€œBut I wasn’t born Jewish.” I felt as though I were sitting before a great arbiter of law, before God himself. I hoped that Rabbi Stone would release me, that he’d recast my life with his long rabbinic fingers and tell me I wasn’t Jewish.
    â€œYou’re a Jew,” he said. “If your conversion was valid, as I gather it was, if you were raised a Jew, as you say you were, if you continued to practice even after your bar mitzvah, then you’re a Jew according to the law.”
    I felt great disappointment and great relief.
    He spoke to me in Hebrew: “ Yehoodee hoo yehoodee af al pee she’yechetah . Do you know what that means?”
    I did, I told him. I’d heard those words from Rabbi Appelfeld. A Jew is a Jew even if he sins . It was impossible, Rabbi Appelfeld had said, to convert from Judaism.
    My father’s words came back to me. A Jew is a Jew is a Jew. I was a Jew, but I wasn’t. I didn’t care what Rabbi Stone said. I didn’t, and I did.
    I got up from my chair and shook his hand. I thanked him for meeting with me.
    As I reached the synagogue doors, he called out. “Come back anytime.”
    â€œTo synagogue?”
    He was standing in the shadows at the front. The light from the ark shone on his head, casting him in swaths of orange. “Why not?”
    â€œI don’t believe in God. It would be hypocritical for me to go to services.”
    â€œYou came once.”
    â€œThat’s true.”
    â€œAnd you’ve been before. The door’s always open.”
    â€œThank you. I don’t expect to come back, but I appreciate your offer.”

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    T hree weeks to the day after