A Bronx Yom Kippur, 1970

       
By Raanan Geberer                                                                                        
Four people were walking up the steep Kingsbridge Road hill on the way to the Young Israel of Kingsbridge for Yom Kippur. They were Sid Steinberg, an accountant in his late 40s; his two sons, Rob, 17, and Joel, 15; and Sid’s uncle Lazar, an elderly widower who lived a few blocks from the Steinbergs. Lazar was a retired grocer; but he was also a Yiddish poet and short-story writer who was often published in the Forward and the Workmen’s Circle’s magazine. They weren’t taking the bus because traditionally, one doesn’t travel on this, the holiest day of the year.

The one person who wasn’t with them was Mom, who had such bad asthma that sometimes she could hardly walk across the street to the store. But even if she’d been well, Mom basically had no use for religion. The rebellious daughter of former communists, Mom was proud of the fact that she’d rejected her parents’ pro-Soviet orientation while she was still in her teens; still, their strident atheism stayed with her. When Rob tried to talk to her about his growing interests in karma, reincarnation, Eastern religions and Kabbalism, Mom shot back with, “Maybe we should have sent you to that child psychologist for a few more years! Then you wouldn’t be talking about religion so much!” She’d conceded to Dad on sending the kids to Hebrew school, but she criticized the rabbi at every opportunity.

Near the end of the hill, where Kingsbridge Road transformed into a level plane, Lazar started to talk to Rob and Joel in the heavily accented, deep bass voice that made him a favorite in Yiddish choruses. “You know, kinderlach,” he said, “the Talmud says there are four kinds of students. One is like a sponge, he absorbs all he studies. One is like a sieve, he saves what is good in the study and leaves out what is not. One is like a funnel, that lets the liquid in one end and out the other. And the fourth is like a strainer that lets the good wine out but absorbs the dregs...” Lazar had been a yeshiva student in his native Lithuania and even though he was no longer observant, he still liked to show off his Talmudic learning.

Rob wondered why Dad would go to such an Orthodox shul as Young Israel. Dad was only half-kosher, didn’t observe Shabbos, never mentioned God or faith. It could only be, Rob reasoned, that Dad was so set in his ways that this was the type of shul he remembered from his childhood in the immigrant East Bronx; and on those few occasions when he did go to shul, he wanted to go to the kind of place he felt comfortable with. If Dad had a religion, it was loyalty to the Jewish people, especially Israel. Dad had been one of a small number of American volunteers in Israel’s ’48 War of Independence and had lived in Jerusalem with Mom for two years after their marriage. While he didn’t talk much about those days, his commitment was evidenced in the many photos and paintings of Jerusalem in the apartment.

Finally, the shul. They sat down, put on their tallises and took out their prayer books. Despite the name, Young Israel of Kingsbridge was what, years later, Rob’s wife would call an “old men’s shul”; varicose veins, stooped backs, croaking voices ruled. Rob idly looked into the women’s section see whether there were any teenage girls his age, but he already knew he’d be disappointed; the two or three that were there were yeshiva types with long sleeves, long dresses, too much makeup. A relationship with one of them was out of the question.

Joel, in the next seat, started kicking Rob playfully. They kicked each other under the seat, giggling with muffled voices, until their father caught on and said, “Will you guys cut it out!” They soon arrived at the Shema, the most important prayer in the Jewish religion, and Dad grabbed Rob’s hand and made him point to each line, word by word, apparently not knowing or caring that Rob knew enough Hebrew to follow it himself. When they got to Adon Olam, Dad called Rob’s attention to the fact that each line began with a successive letter of the alphabet. “It’s an acrostic,” Dad said proudly, pleased with his own knowledge. Rob was bored: Dad said the same thing every year.

Soon, it was time for the rabbi’s sermon, which served as break time for the Steinberg family. Dad encouraged Rob and Joel to go outside; he knew they needed an outlet for their pent-up energy. They walked the few blocks to the Eames Place shul, which was bigger, more modern, and had more families as members. As always, a crowd of kids gathered in front. Joel recognized Alan Greenstein, a tall kid in his class who was a big deal on the basketball team. Joel and Alan spent the next 10 minutes talking about the Knicks; Rob, who really wasn’t that much into sports, just looked on.

When they got back to the shul, the congregation was chanting Anu Amecha, or “We Are Your People,” a seemingly endless prayer whose melody was only heard on Yom Kippur. Joel leaned over to Rob and sang, in a mock-Yiddish accent, “Anu whore-echa, ve’ato hu elohaynoo, anu pimp-echa, ve’ato hoo mosheaynoo!” Rob started cracking up, and laughed until Dad told him to be quiet. After that came Ashamnu, a prayer of penitence that were part of the solemn holiday service. The congregation chanted, in Hebrew, the sins that they might have been collectively guilty of: “We have killed, we have stolen, we have borne false witness, we have committed adultery, we have mocked, we have been disrespectfulÿ” Dad tapped Rob on the shoulder. “Sounds like you!” Dad whispered, with a laugh. Rob, hurt by Dad’s remarks, just sulked.

When the morning service ended, the Steinberg family, because of the long trip up and down the hill, traditionally went home to stay rather than return for the evening service that ended the holiday. They’d already heard the shofar on Rosh Hashanah, anyway. (There was a synagogue closer to them, on their side of the hill, but Mom and Dad both decreed that the family would never have anything to do with that place!)

Walking down Kingsbridge Road near the V.A. Hospital, Lazar asked Dad, “So, how are the boys doing in school?”

“Oh, very good,” Dad answered. “They get that from their mother—she was a Phi Beta Kappa, you know. Not like me, with my C’s and D’s at CCNY!” He laughed, embarrassed.

“By the way, Israel canceled the municipal elections in the West Bank,” Lazar commented.

“That’s because they all voted for the PLO! We try to be nice to them by letting them have their own elections, and what happens? They vote for terrorists!”

“Dad,” Rob objected, “you know I’m not anti-Israel. But you gotta admit, the Palestinians were screwedÿ.”

“Palestinians? Listen, in my day, we were the Palestinians! They were called Jordanians! Look, I was there, remember? You’re telling me about the Arabs?” Rob retreated into himself; you couldn’t argue with Dad. If you presented a better argument than him, he’d only ignore you, as if he’d never heard what you’d said.

As the family got to the beginning of the hill, Lazar said in a low voice to Dad, “Look, zey hoven a bodega dort’n!”

“A bodega? Oh, maybe we can eat some cuchifritos!” Dad laughed at the foreign-sounding word. “That’s a bad sign! You mark my words, everybody will move out in five years, and it’ll be 100 percent Black and Hispanic! Then they’ll start burning the place down! If one of them has a fight with his brother, he burns his house down! If he has a fight with his girlfriend, he burns her house downÿ”

Now it was Joel’s turn to challenge Dad. “So,” Joel argued, “are you telling me that Earl Gardner and his sister from our building, who are probably straight-A students, would burn their house down?”

“Well, um, of course, er, some are OK,” Dad fumbled, embarrassed. “But most of them are poor people, up from the South or Puerto Rico. Half of them can’t read or write!” Rob had complained to Mom about Dad several times, but despite Mom’s self-congratulatory liberalism, when it came to race, she was almost as bad as Dad. Like most adults in this lower-middle-class neighborhood, Mom and Dad let their fears overwhelm everything else.  Even Grandpa Harry, the former communist who was still a socialist, said, “Vell, I vish it vas a class war instead of a race war, but in ah race war, you have to support your own race!”

Satisfied with needling his father, Joel turned to Rob. He sang into Rob’s ear an off-color parody of the Irish Rovers’ recent pop song, “Unicorn,” substituting the word “eunuch” for that of the mythical one-horned beast:

“Some cats and rats and elephants,

But as sure as you’re born,

You’re not gonna see no eunuch (chopping sound).”

Rob laughed uncontrollably until Dad noticed and gave both boys a dirty look. When they were all halfway down the hill, Lazar again went into his Talmudic shtick: “Sidney, remember, in the Talmudic tractate Pirkei Avos, it says that a father should do three things for his son: Teach him a trade, teach him how to swim, and get a wife for him.”

Rob was slightly interested in what Lazar was saying, but only slightly. Maybe, Rob reasoned, back in the ‘30s and ‘40s, when Lazar and Dad’s long-deceased father, who’d been a lay cantor for his tiny East Bronx shul, presided over the family holiday celebrations, the observances had more meaning. But as it was now, Dad basically treated Yom Kippur like an oil change -- as an obligation.

When they got to the bottom of the hill, they bid Lazar goodbye, then went home. Dad went to sleep; Rob and Joel started reading their school assignments, since there wasn’t much else they could do. At about 3 p.m., Rob could fight his hunger pangs no longer. Surely, he said to himself, God wouldn’t mind if he had a drink of orange juice. He went to the refrigerator. Suddenly, he heard footsteps behind him. He froze with fear—Dad! But it was only Mom, wheezing and puffing her Primatene inhaler. She smiled.

“I won’t tell Dad,” she said, coughing. “How’s your good old uncle Lazar?”

“Oh, he’s OK!”

She smiled. “I’m glad. You know, Dr. Simon told me he’s going to start me on some new medication,” she said. “If it works, maybe I can start going to my French movies again.” Mom had been a high school French teacher before her health had forced her to retire; she loved everything French.  “Wanna go with me one of these days?”

“Um, I don’t know, Mom.” Going someplace with Mom was always a problem for Rob. One minute, she’d act sweet and nice; the next, she’d be telling him that he’d been considered a disturbed child when he was younger, that he still had “many problems,” and that he shouldn’t expect much out of life. And that was the last thing he wanted to hear.

“OK. Well, let me know. I’m gonna go back to the room: I got two magazines in the mail yesterday, the New Yorker and Commentary. You can read them when I’m through.” Giving herself an extra puff, she shuffled back in the direction of the parents’ bedroom.

About fifteen minutes later, Joel, less fearful of Dad than his brother, turned on WABC Top 40 Radio. Immediately, Dad yelled from the other room: “Turn off that junk! This is Yom Kippur, you know! Is something wrong with you?”

Suddenly, Dad’s and Mom’s voices were heard, arguing. After awhile, Mom addressed Rob and Joel, projecting her voice from the parents’ bedroom as best she was able: “Boys, we decided on a compromise. You can listen to the radio, but only to talk programs—no music!” Joel immediately turned to Lee Leonard’s sports call-in show on WNBC; for the rest of the afternoon, he was in heaven.

 At 6:30, 45 minutes before the end of Yom Kippur, Dad started cooking dinner. It was the same every year: rubbery chicken with bland, frozen carrots and peas. “I’m gonna give you the bird! Ha, ha, ha!” Dad joked. No one laughed—he used that line at least once a week. After it was served, the family ate in silence, a silence punctuated only by Dad slurping his tea. Dad soon turned on the all-news station, WINS, and opened up the Post, eating all the while. He later went to the refrigerator and started serving the cake, scattering crumbs all over the table.

 After Rob and Joel finished, they went to their room, without a goodbye, to watch the latest episode of Mod Squad. Mom walked slowly to the phone and dialed her old friend from Hunter College, Alice. The two of them spoke two or three times a day, yet rarely saw each other because of Mom’s illness.

 Seeing Mom at the phone, Dad said, with a hint of mockery, “Oh, you’re calling your buddy? OK, call your buddy! I’m gonna watch the ferdlach!” The ferdlach, or horses in Yiddish, was what Dad called cowboy shows and movies. “Yeah, the ferdlach! Ha, ha, ha!” Rob and Joel, hearing Dad’s voice from the other room, both wondered how often Dad could tell the same old joke--which wasn’t funny to begin with.

 And thus, the Steinberg family ended Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year.

Who knows what the Barclays center will bring?

Originally in Brooklyn Daily Eagle July 2012      

By Raanan Geberer
Brooklyn Daily Eagle
It is now only a matter of months before the Barclays Center opens, changing the face of Downtown Brooklyn forever.
We’re used to audiences pouring out of shows by modern dance companies or a symphony at BAM, but that's nothing compared to the huge crowds that will be coming to the huge 19,000-seat venue for Nets games or to see such blockbuster acts as Rush, Neil Young or The Who. And it will be even busier if the Islanders decide to relocate there.
What will the scene be outside the arena after the events? Will “Gridlock Sam” Schwartz’s transportation plan work? Will Barclays’ security plan work?
We don’t know. But we do have a clue.
We just have to look across the river, at Madison Square Garden. Not only do the two venues share sports team and major concerts, but both are a stone’s throw from a major Long Island Rail Road station.
Looking in the area around Madison Square Garden, we see that there is a residential community to the south (Chelsea), but the few blocks south of the Garden are completely dominated by businesses catering to Garden-goers (although not exclusively). There are sports bars, convenience stores, fast-food outlets, and even one or two “real” restaurants.
We also see, in the five or so blocks between the Garden and the residential area and in one or two blocks west of the Garden, garages that offer discounts to people going to games or concerts. Gridlock Sam’s transportation plan relies heavily on the use of garages that are near, but not on top of, Barclays Center. The garages on West 31st Street, West 30th Street and so on are real-life examples of the same thing, and they seem to work.
What about the crowds, which some neighborhood residents fear will do such damage? Of course, as in any public event, you do have some rowdy, drunk kids hitting the streets near Madison Square Garden.
But before and after every event, we almost always see groups of cops standing around — and when I see groups, I don’t mean two or three, but 10 or 12, with cop cars, EMS vehicles and vans nearby. These cops’ mere presence keeps mayhem to a minimum. Yes, we do see scalpers — and we’re likely to see them at Barclays, too. But we hardly ever see gang fights or violent robberies.
Of course, there are important differences between the areas around the two arenas. Madison Square Garden is not a stone’s throw from two giant shopping malls, as Barclays is from Atlantic Center and Atlantic Terminal. The presence of the malls must be taken into account in any security plan. But bear in mind that most, if not all, of the stores in these malls will be closed by the end of games and concerts anyway.
No, we still don’t know if the traffic, transit and security plans for Barclays Arena will work. But the example of Madison Square Garden shows that something like these CAN work.
Raanan Geberer is managing editor of the Brooklyn Daily Eagle

Keep Pushing for Civic Projects

From Brooklyn Daily Eagle 

The recent reopening of Greenpoint’s renovated McCarren Park Pool, together with the photos of happy swimmers amid the backdrop of the 1930s-era bathhouse, brought something to mind

When I started working for the Eagle (then the Bulletin) in the mid-1990s, the McCarren Park Pool had already been closed for more than 10 years. The rumor was that it had never reopened after routine maintenance because some Greenpoint and Williamsburg residents didn’t want kids from Bedford-Stuyvesant coming up there.

Occasionally, we would hear from a particular local resident, an artist, who wanted it reopened and volunteered to paint a mural on the outside with mermaids, fish and other sea creatures. Eventually, the community board began to consider the idea, but they wanted a different plan, one that would combine a half-sized pool with other athletic uses, such as a basketball court and a weight room.

The artist didn’t like this idea—she still wanted an Olympic-sized pool. However, the community decided on the smaller pool and athletic facility, but to no avail. While the money was in the budget, it somehow was never appropriated. This happened for several years in a row.

Eventually, the community board talked about covering up the pool’s surface with a temporary lawn and green space that could be removed if the city ever decided to appropriate the money.

It was then that I concluded that the idea of rebuilding the McCarren Park Pool was nonsense, that these people were just tilting at windmills, and the that pool would just continue to deteriorate until there was some sort of accident, at which time it would be demolished. The fact that, about six years ago, the pool site began to be used for rock concerts, to me, just put an official stamp on its doom.

So I was pleasantly surprised last month when I got the news about the pool reopening. Apparently, someone must have been out there advocating for its renovation all this time. Here you have an important lesson – if you keep advocating for a civic project and never stop, there’s a chance that your project will succeed, even if it takes 30 years.

Two other examples of this come to mind, although they’re both from Manhattan. When the city decided to tear down the Third Avenue El in Manhattan in the 1950s, it had already announced plans for a Second Avenue Subway. Indeed, bonds had already been issued for the subway, and everybody assumed it would be ready by the time the el went down. But the Transit Authority (now MTA New York City Transit) decided to use the funds to repair existing stations, buy new subway cars and do track work.

Fast forward to 1972, when, after years of planning, Mayor John Lindsay and his colleagues broke ground for a new Second Avenue Subway project. During the next few years, several sections were built, including one in the East Village and another in East Harlem. But the work came to an end when the city almost went bankrupt in 1975.

But now, work on the Second Avenue Subway is yet again under way. Someone must have been advocating for it all these years.

Here’s a third project, one a friend of mine was personally involved in. In the 1960s, the city tore down a municipal gym and pool in Chelsea to make room for a post office. It promised a new pool, and indeed, one was almost finished until, in 1975, work stopped because of the very same fiscal crisis.

For the next 30 years, the new building, half-finished indoor pool and all, was used as a Parks Department storage facility. My friend, however, persevered. He wrote letters, met with public officials, submitted resolution after resolution at the political club we both belong to. Today, the Chelsea Recreation Center is a reality. (My friend is a little bitter because he assumed the city would give him a job there, but that’s another story.)

So  if you’re really serious about a civic project, you’ve got to hang in there. It may seem hopeless, but you never know when things may change. A new administration may come in, the economy of the city may improve, private funds may become available, any number of things could happen.

The Eagle has been running several articles about the Brooklyn War Memorial, which is currently closed to the public. But who’s to say that in a few years, the War Memorial will be, at long last, an active museum that pays tribute to the country’s service members? Indeed, there seems to be some movement in that direction already.

To sum up – civic activists, hang in there! Your day will come—even if it’s later rather than sooner.

Skeptical About Bike Lanes

One of the new city-installed bike lanes is on the wide avenue outside my co-op building’s front door. I’ve noticed a good number of bike riders during rush hours and on weekend days with good weather. But other times, especially at night, few bicyclists, other than delivery people, can be found.
I offer this observation to point out that putting bike lanes everywhere and anywhere may not necessarily be a good idea. I’m certainly not anti-bicycle—I’ve been riding bikes since the age of 8 or so. But for me and most of my contemporaries, bicycles were for recreation. I would rather bike through a park than brave city traffic, with its trucks, buses, speeding cars, pedestrians crossing in front of you, horns honking and, worst of all, traffic lights.
I love bicycling along the shore, and am 100 percent in favor of the Brooklyn Greenway and any other Greenway in the New York metro area. Give me a bike lane in a park or within a parkway (like the bike path I used to ride on Ocean Parkway), and I’m there. But the other thing—Well, I’m not so sure about that.
There’s nothing wrong with someone commuting to work by bike or using bicycles as their main means of transportation. But that should be someone’s personal choice – and these bike lanes should be established where bike use is already heavy.
It seems to me that Mayor Bloomberg and his transportation commissioner, Janette Sadik-Kahn, are approaching this with some sort of semi-religious zeal. And in this zeal, they’re not hearing the other side. When one bicycle advocate bragged about how the new bike-share program would bring “20,000 new bikes to the streets of New York,” the only thing I could think of was 20,000 bikes zipping in front of me when I’m trying to cross the street.
Yes, bikes are good for the environment, and for those who want to bike in city traffic, there should be more accommodations. But they’re not the only game in town. What about electric and hybrid cars? For years and years, you heard that Detroit “killed the electric car.” Now, however, you have the SmartCar, the Nissan Leaf, the Tesla, the Chevrolet Volt, the Mitsubishi i-MiEV, and several others. Yes, Mayor Bloomberg added 70 electric cars to the city’s fleet of official vehicles, but a lot more could be done to promote them.
Then, there’s the alternative that no one seems to want to talk about: Electric streetcars, or trolleys. They were common in most cities before 1950 or so, and some, like San Francisco, Philadelphia and Boston, never gave them up. In the last 20 years or so, Buffalo, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Charlotte and other cities have installed new light-rail systems, as they’re known nowadays.
Even across the Hudson River, the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail system carries 41,000 passengers a day. But here in New York, we’re having the same discussions we had 20 years ago about trolley service in Red Hook. Strange, isn’t it?
So, for those who want to bike through the busy streets of Downtown Brooklyn and Manhattan every day, good luck. But don’t forget—there are other forms of environmentally friendly, non-automotive transportation out there.

Why I am a member of J Street

From Brooklyn Daily Eagle, April 17, 2012

BROOKLYN — More and more, it seems like the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, now (in its present form) more than 40 years old, polarizes people, with little room for moderation.

On one side, you have the “cheerleaders” who think that Israel can do no wrong, who will tolerate no criticism of Israel, and who see Israel mainly as the bastion of western values against Iran, Hezbollah and Hamas. They fear that any compromise Israel makes will merely be exploited by these forces, and that moderate Arabs are, at heart, no different than Hamas. If you mention international law and Israeli violations of such law, they will either ignore you, insult you or give you a verbal song and dance. These people include the Christian right, many members of the Orthodox Jewish community, and, unfortunately, many U.S. elected officials and many leaders of American Jewish organizations.

On the other side, you have many so-called “progressives” who believe that Zionism is a racist philosophy, that a moderate Israel or moderate Zionism is an impossibility, and that the only real solution to the Mideast conflict is the replacement of Israel by a “secular, democratic state” (as if any of the Arab states are secular or democratic). Even any gesture of conciliation by Israel is regarded by them as being sinister in nature — for example, they might say that Rabin and Peres started the Oslo peace process merely to make it look like they were making peace, while in reality they were trying to strengthen their stranglehold over the territories. People who hold this view include many professors (most of whom probably rarely socialize with anyone outside of their academic ghetto), college students, and members of extreme left groups. While many of the Israeli human rights violations they cite are, unfortunately, true, these people ignore similar rights violations by the Arab states and Iran.

Happily, a third way now exists between these two extremes. That way is the organization J Street, a Jewish organization that describes itself as “pro-Israel, pro-peace.” J Street recognizes the historic ties between the Jewish people and the land of Israel, but believes in a two-state solution — a Jewish democratic Israel and an independent Palestinian state — based on the 1967 borders with equal and mutually agreed territorial exchanges and opposes the West Bank settlements. Although this is not part of its official policy, many of its members also criticize laws that discriminate against Arab citizens of Israel and the increasing number of privileges given to the ultra-Orthodox. It is supported by more than 700 rabbis and cantors, 44 locals and 38 campus chapters across the U.S. Survey after survey show that J Street’s views are basically those held by the majority of American Jews.

This writer is a member of J Street and went to its last two national conventions in Washington, D.C. During the first convention I attended, I went to a panel of five Congress people who endorsed J Street’s views. I was impressed that these officials were not intimidated by members of Jewish right-wing organizations who sometimes have reportedly threatened to blackball any official who accepts J Street’s endorsement. I saw young members of what used to be called “Labor Zionist” youth movements in their uniforms — the same type of movements that my parents belonged to in their teens. I saw members of many, many organizations giving out literature. This year, I attended a panel made up of rabbis and rabbinical students. And I heard from both Israelis and Palestinians who praised J Street’s views (although they didn’t always agree with the organization 100 percent) — a hopeful sign. Finally, I heard a speech by famed Israeli writer Amos Oz, who said, “J Street, where have you been all my life?” to thunderous applause.

I have, among my many books, a photo book my parents bought in 1947, before either I or the State of Israel was born, called Palestine: Land of Israel. The photos portray a hopeful, youthful group of people — children growing up on kibbutzim, workers irrigating the soil, a Saturday night concert on a kibbutz, the beach at Tel Aviv, children picking flowers, the printing plant for the Jerusalem Post, doctors at Hadassah Hospital. There are some negative things in the book — the Arabs are portrayed in a stereotyped fashion — but hopefully, nations as well as individuals can learn from their mistakes, and one should not throw the baby out with the bathwater.

Many times, I, in despair, have wondered whether the type of positive energy pictured in that book can ever come back to Israel. I can’t say for sure, but J Street is definitely a start in helping it to move in that direction.

 

Song of the Conquerors, first three chapters

These are the first three chapters of my new book, "Song of the Conquerors," a social-commentary sci-fi book with a dash of spirituality and a hint of humor. It's available from booklocker (www.booklocker.com) as well as Barnes and Noble online and Amazon, in both paperback and e-book versions:

PART ONE

CHAPTER ONE

SARAJEVO, 2030

Josh Kagan glanced at his watch. It was a Rolex, one of the few relics of his comfortable life in the former United States, along with his pipe, his electronic drum pad and his old biology teachers’ handbook, that he’d taken with him when he came to this remote corner of the world.

 Four o' clock. It would be three more hours to go until the fighting started. At least he and his troops wouldn't have to go far to take up their positions--the enemy was right inside former old school warehouse building, two flights down. That's more or less the way things had been since the Java Convention of 2022 confined fighting to indoor locations at night. There had been just too many civilian casualties, and after thousands of years of warfare, the United Nations got fed up and decided to do something about it.

Of course, the nations of the world were prepared to do what they always did – ignore U.N. resolutions – if not for an extraordinary event. Josh still remembered where he was at the time – he had been at a party smoking hashish, and he was sure it had been so powerful, he was having delusions. A mysterious figure who called himself the Healer  appeared in public places simultaneously in every country in the world, on every screen, speaking a thousand languages all at once, pleading for the world to adopt the Java ideas. If mankind was too immature to stop war, he thundered, at least war could be contained.

The next day, he spoke again. And on the third day, houses of worship, as if by magic, sprung up fully built on every continent, and the Healer once again appeared. These sanctuaries, he told the world, were set up for people to confess their sins, to give offerings, to vow to love their brothers and sisters, and to meditate and study sacred texts of all the world’s traditions. He bid the world goodbye, saying that he would return every 100 years – but in the meantime would impart wisdom to certain select individuals as well as watch over everybody else. The world’s religions merged into one, skeptics became believers, and the Java Convention’s resolutions were passed. People’s awe of, and fear of, the Healer was so strong that even the most aggressive nations and semi-nations, even the most vicious fighters, scrupulously followed the new rules of combat.

The Java Convention may have put a damper on war, but it didn’t stop it.  In at least half the world now, there weren’t even any nations, just the two shifting alliances--the Force of Honor, our side, and the Confederacy of Twelve, their side.   Unlike the nations of the 20^th century, which controlled their populations through ideology, religion or nationalism, neither alliance had any ideology to speak of. Instead, they recruited members through neighborhood loyalty, village loyalty, family loyalty. In a big-city neighborhood, one apartment building might be a Force stronghold; an identical building across the street might be a Confederacy stronghold. Everyone knew they both made their money from the sale of drugs and of human organs for transplants. Josh often thought they were more similar to the old-time organized crime families than anything else. And, of course, both of them claimed the Healer was on their side.

Josh stopped daydreaming, rubbed his eyes and looked around the room. The windows, and indeed the walls, of the building were covered with sheets of the new alloy Ziridium. Today’s powerful infrared cameras, if aimed from a window across the street, could see every detail of every figure and every movement inside this former school library building. All it took was for one Confederacy sympathizer to set up a camera across the street, take his images and transmit them to the Confederate troops inside. Ziridium was the only thing that could block the cameras.

Josh’s own troops had no uniforms, although at least half of them wore the wool knit “Goggie hats” that had become the unofficial emblem of the unit. Several of his guys and girls had worn the same dirty, wrinkled clothes for two, three weeks. Some slept, some played cards, some listened to music, some played with miniature gameboards. Mahmoud and Hira slept on mats on the floor. Bucharest Joe, stooped over with an intense look in his eyes, was reading a copy of the Tibetan book of the Dead. I guess that's an appropriate choice for a man who might die at any second, Josh reflected.

The one thing none of the troops were doing was eating. The last rations of edible food ran out yesterday—the United Nations truck was a week late now. The same truck was supposed to take out the garbage, so the room was permeated with the sickening smell of half-eaten, rotting food. Thank the Healer that at least the toilets were working! And under U.N. rules, the only day fighters were officially allowed to leave their positions, go outside and interact with the local population was on Sunday. Then they eagerly ate at local restaurants, even though the only things those restaurants usually had available were sausages, bread and cheese, with a few cucumbers, olives, onions and tomatoes thrown in.

 Oh shit, he murmured. Caribou is pacing the floor again! "God damn it!" said Caribou, a short, stocky man who had served with Josh as an observer in Iceland a year or so ago. "Those bums! Who do they think we are! I'll kill them all! God damn it!"

Well, Josh thought, sighing, they're my troops, and it's my responsibility to entertain them.

Josh clapped his hands. Everyone looked up at him. "Hey, everybody, I have an idea," he said. "Let's play a game. This is a poetry game." Josh grabbed some pieces of paper from his notebook and started writing some words on them. "These are emotions--love, hate, disgust, despair, hatred, laughter. I'm going to put them on the floor," he said, placing each one on a different area of the floor. "Now all of you take turns. You have to close your eyes until you feel yourself landing on a piece of paper. Then you have to open your eyes and make up a short poem about that emotion. Okay?" The guys and girls eagerly nodded--anything to break up the waiting. "Okay! Who wants to go first?"

“Come on!” Bucharest Joe said. “We might get killed in a few hours. You want to waste time on games?”

“Look, at least it beats just sitting here, wasting time, getting depressed,” Big Szusza answered. There had been a Little Szusza in the unit—she’d been killed in battle last week.

“I’ll play,” Caribou said, stepping forward. After he volunteered, the ice was broken and the troops began to lighten up. Josh congratulated himself on this idea--he had once seen some neo-hippie types playing this game in Golden Gate Park. He was so involved in the game that he didn’t see Bucharest Joe slip out. But even if he did, there was no need to worry – Joe was the unit’s scout. Maybe he couldn’t leave the building, but he patrolled its hallways, stairways and elevators like a hawk. He looked like a real zhloobie – prematurely bald, coke-bottle glasses, pot-belly – but he knew what was going on.

And so it happened that after about 10 minutes, the good mood Josh had worked so hard to establish was shattered by a knock on the door. The troops froze.

"Who is it?" yelled Big Szusza.

"It's Bucharest Joe! I’m back!" said a voice from the other end. Everybody relaxed immediately. Josh opened the door to see Joe breathing heavily. "What's going on?" he asked with concern.

 "There's a wounded man on the stairs between the second and third floors. He's one of them--the Confederacy of Twelve--was cleaning his gun when it happened," Bucharest Joe said hastily. He had only the hint of a Romanian accent – his family had come to North Carolina when he was 11. "Wanna carry him back to his own lines?"

·         * *

CHAPTER TWO

JOSH

 Josh Kagan grew up in San Francisco. His father’s family was originally Jewish, from Israel, his mother’s, Lebanese Christian. He often wondered if members of his family had tried to kill each other during the old days. Not that it really mattered. Since the Healer had made himself known, all of the old religion-related conflicts, from the Arab-Israeli conflict to the Protestant-Catholic conflict in Northern Ireland to the Muslim-Hindu conflict in Kashmir, became much less volatile, although they didn’t completely disappear. That’s why they called that region “Israel-Palestine” nowadays.

Josh’s father was a machinist who became wealthy by making weapons illegally for the Force of Honor when it first started. So Josh always had a better car than any of his classmates. Josh was short, but he made up for his height in sheer energy. In high school, he was a soccer star and played drums in several Bolo bands. No one could play the popular new Bolo style like he could, not even El Bolo himself – although when no one was around, he’d go to his room and secretly listen to old-time artists like Prince and Springsteen. 

 He was also very popular with women. One time, when he and his friend were hitchhiking in Oregon for adventure, two women picked them up and they were screwing within an hour, before they even knew their names. He’d always have two or three girls hanging around. On top of that, he could drink any of his friends under the table. And still, he was able to maintain a 3.8 average. He couldn’t miss. Everybody thought he was headed for medical school. But at the last minute, he switched gears and decided to become a biology teacher instead.

His problems began when he got married. First, his wife, who was manic-depressive, often refused to take her medication. When she didn’t, she screamed and threw things. Second, his daughter turned out to have serious emphysema. By the time she was one year old, she already had to be taken to the emergency room twice. Respiratory-based diseases like emphysema and asthma were among the very few that had resisted a genetic-based cure, Laughing Louie Levinsky’s endless fundraising telethons for these maladies notwithstanding. Just recently, geneticists had discovered an experimental cure for emphysema, but it was very expensive – the California health system wouldn’t pay for it.

 That meant that Josh would have to raise the money somehow. And he couldn’t do it on a teacher’s salary. His father suggested that he go to one of the Force’s recruiting stations and sign up. With his experience as a biology teacher, he reasoned, they’d make Josh a medic, which would be less dangerous than being a fighter.

 So Josh was taken into a car, blindfolded and driven to a secret recruiting station in the back room of an import-export company. And indeed, the interviewer promised Josh that they’d make him a medic.

 The guy lied. Three months into his service, they told him that there was an emergency, that they had enough medics, and that they needed everyone they could get on the front lines. So Josh fought in some of the hottest spots: Johannesburg, Marseilles, Iceland and now Sarajevo. But at least he had become the commander of a unit, and a unit made up mainly of artists and intellectuals, at that. It was something.

* * **

CHAPTER THREE

SARAJEVO, 2030

 When Bucharest Joe told him about the wounded enemy soldier on the steps, Josh thought for awhile. He looked at his watch. Still two hours to go. According to U.N. rules, they couldn't start shooting until then. Five years of being in the forces told him that you couldn't trust anybody. But he knew that Manuel personally was an honorable man, as Shakespeare would have said, and that Manuel's troops would do what he told them to do.

 He turned to Josh. "Let's go for it," he said. "But if they start shooting, we leave him there and run for it. Our lives are more important than his."

 Josh was halfway to the door when Bucharest Joe tried to block him. "Josh," he pleaded, "let me go. As the leader, you're too valuable. I'm a scout, remember? I know my way around."

 Josh shook his head. "As the leader, I'm responsible for everything that goes on here, and it's my duty to go," he said.

 "Well ... OK," Bucharest Joe said hesitatingly. "But I'll go with you."

 They both exited the door and started descending the cinder-block stairway of this former school building, Joe leading and Josh following. They knew every step might be their last. Well, Joe thought, it’s all karma. The smell of urine was everywhere. As they walked, they gazed at the generations of graffiti on the wall and the broken, long-obsolete fluorescent lights on the ceiling.

Half a flight down, they saw the guy, clutching at his stomach, bleeding and groaning. Josh took the guy's arms, Bucharest Joe his legs. They carried him down the stairs, blood dripping onto the floor and onto their clothes. They reached the Confederacy's headquarters and knocked on the door.

 "Who's there?" a voice from the other side of the door cried out.

 "Josh and Joe from upstairs," Josh cried out. "One of your men wounded himself cleaning his gun on the stairway. We've got him right here. Let us in, OK?"

 There was a long silence. Then the door opened. Josh and Joe brought the guy in. Almost as soon as they entered, two of the Confederacy guys took the wounded man away from them and whisked him into an Ultrasonic Healing Booth at the other end of the room. In a few minutes, the machine began to emit a pink light and a soft hum. It's nice that these guys can get a hold of this new medical technology, Josh thought, bitterly remembering the painful stomach infection he had to suffer in Iceland.

Josh and Bucharest Joe looked around. The Confederate fighters, both male and female, were lounging around, listening to music, playing board games, reading, waiting for the hour of combat. In other words, the scene was more or less the same as in the Force of Honor headquarters, except for the fact that the Confederates all wore spotless, olive-green uniforms.

A door opened from an inner office, and Manuel, a short, dark man, came out smiling, reaching to shake Josh's and Joe’s hands. Manuel was a former Bolivian soccer star who had fallen into disgrace because of his involvement with a drug cartel. In the aftermath, he threw in his luck with the Confederacy of Twelve. He motioned toward the Ultrasonic Healing Booth. "He'll be all right in a day or so," he said, with only a hint of a Latin American accent, "although it may be a week before he can fight again. Won't you two come into my office?"

 Without a word, Josh and Mike followed Manuel. They couldn't believe what they saw. Manuel had decorated his command office with wood paneling, a glass-topped mahogany desk and plush red chairs. On the wall were portraits of the Confederacy's founders: the Texas oilman Bobby Lee Prescott, the Russian Admiral Vladimir Roschenko and the Saudi Imam Abdullah al-Husseini. But what interested Mike and Josh most was a working solar-powered coffee machine, together with a big tray of bread, rolls and cookies accompanied by butter and jam, on the desk.

 "What's going on?" Josh asked with a trace of anger. "We haven't gotten any deliveries in a few days. The only things we could buy the last time we were outside were a can of soup, some powdered eggs and a few pieces of fruit!"

"Well, you must understand," Manuel said, smiling, "We have our connections. But why don't you sit down?" He poured two cups of coffee, adding milk from a small refrigerator behind the desk. "Why don't you sit down and eat?" Josh took little sips of coffee, and carefully removed the crusts from the rolls before he bit into them. Bucharest Joe gulped down the coffee and stuffed himself with bread like there was no tomorrow.  Josh asked if he could take some cookies for his other troops, and Manuel nodded his head in the affirmative.

 "Ah," Manuel said, lighting up a cigar, "it is truly unfortunate that I would have to meet two such distinguished gentlemen as yourselves in such circumstances. After the war, I invite you both to the new, expanded Confederacy of Twelve as my guests!" He puffed away. Too bad they don’t have any pipe tobacco, Josh reflected, on guard all the while for any sudden moves.

 Josh and Bucharest Joe both finished. Joe wiped his mouth with his sleeve while Josh looked at his watch. "Time to go," he said to Manuel.

"Aha! Very well. I'll escort you to the door," said the Bolivian, getting up. "Ah, war! Even the great writers like Hemingway, Stephen Crane, Tolstoy, Remarque and today’s best-seller, McCallister, haven't been able to fathom it," he exclaimed as Josh and Joe exited and walked the stairs back up to their own base.

·         * *

The King of Handball

By Raanan Geberer

Originally published in Mr. Beller's Neighborhood 

By any standards, Mark Margolies, who is now in his late sixties, lived an uneventful life. He was modest and soft-spoken. Even after he graduated from Brooklyn College, he lived with his parents until he was 30, mainly staying in his room, working only sporadically, and reading philosophy books. Then, on a weekend hiking trip, he met Gabrielle, the teacher who was to become his wife. She helped him get a job as a lab assistant, which he kept for the rest of his life. The two of them then proceeded to raise two children.

Margolies, however, had one overriding passion. That was handball. He loved any kind of handball – one-wall, four-wall, black ball, pink ball – and its derivatives like paddleball and racquetball. Even when he was a kid, once the exercises were over in gym class, he’d head to the handball court.

Once I asked Mark, whom I met when I worked near his co-op in Brooklyn Heights, whether he played any other games, like basketball or softball. “Well, I learned to swim because I had to. Once I tried touch football,” he said. “It was horrible!”

When I asked him how he got into handball, he said his father, a working-class Jew from Brownsville, worked for the Post Office, but his passion was boxing. “He was a boxer,” Margolies said, “and he trained for boxing by playing handball. He would go to the Betsy Head handball courts in Brownsville, and I’d go with him and watch.” At the same time, because Mark was very shy and had no friends, he never got into sports like the other kids.

“You know the last time I went to a baseball game? The last year the Dodgers were in Brooklyn—1957,” he said. “My brother took me. I sort of enjoyed it, but I never had any real desire to go again.”

Soon afterward, his family moved to the Sheepshead Bay section of Brooklyn. From there, it was an easy walk to the Brighton Beach handball courts, the mecca of New York City handball. Everyone, he said, played there—kids like him, guys in their seventies, A-level tournament players, beginners. Sometimes he’d half to wait a half an hour to get on a court, but he didn’t care. He was hooked.

“When I was playing handball,” he said, “it was like I was taken to another dimension. There was such high energy, I was in such a state of ecstasy, that it was like I was removed from the world. Many of the courts had night lights, so sometimes it would be midnight and I didn’t even know it. My parents had to come down and get me. I’d play singles, doubles, sometimes two against one – it didn’t matter, as long as it was handball.”

As time went on, playing on the neighborhood courts got a little boring for him. So he’d get on the trains and go to different neighborhoods all over the city. Even after he got married and moved away from Sheepshead Bay, he continued to go to the courts in Brighton Beach, where the best, most competitive handball players held forth. He went to neighborhoods that most of his peers considered dangerous, like Bushwick or Central Harlem. “Are you kidding?” he’d answer, after someone feared for his safety. “The guys there are some of the best players. They put their all, every part of their body, into it!”

He stopped playing for a few years after he had kids, but when the children got a little older, he went on his handball trips every Saturday and Sunday, while Gabrielle stayed home and pursued his own interests. Once, I asked whether he went to all five boroughs.

“Well, I went all over Brooklyn and all over Manhattan, up to about 168^th Street. I never went to the Bronx – it was too far. I didn’t like Queens, didn’t play there except when I worked in a school there. I’d play on my lunch hour, in the schoolyard. The other teachers loved to play me, the custodians loved to play me, even the kids played me. They thought I was over the hill, but when I started to play, they couldn’t believe it!”

Hearing this story, I asked whether he was an “A-level” player. “Definitely not—I was a B-level player. But who cares!” he answered. “Besides, A-level players in handball don’t get that much recognition anyway—it’s just that they get into the record books.”

 When Mark was about 45, his wrists were beginning to go, so he switched to racquetball – “not paddleball,” he’d say, “the wooden paddle was too heavy for me.” He joined a local gym, and had almost as much fun on their indoor racquetball courts – well, almost as much – as he had when he played handball. When his legs and his back started to go, he switched to ping-pong, but soon, he wasn’t even able to do that.

I saw Mark recently, just sitting at a counter at a local diner near his home and staring straight ahead. His hair was white, his beard was gray and matted, and he had a cane at his side. If you didn’t know him, you could easily mistake him for a street person.

“Been playing any ball lately?” I asked politely, thinking that the answer was no.

“No. My doctor forbids it—you know, my back,” he mumbled.

“Do you go to the handball courts at Brighton Beach to watch?” I asked, trying to salvage something good for him.

“Yeah,” he said, sighing. “But that’s all I can do.”

“Well, that’s too bad,” I sympathized.

“I’m not sad,” he said. “Handball gave me more than 50 years of fun. I’m can’t complain!”