Spring Street to Kingston Avenue

Please look at me. Make eye contact. Acknowledge that I exist here with you on this train. We are meant to be on this train together, all of us. It is not coincidence. Look at me.

Your face, so smooth, brown; now a lighter-toned person next to you. Next, the person across from you, another face, light like mine. Colors all blend after a while, don't you think? What are you thinking about while I stare at you, thinking about what I am thinking about? Are you thinking about me? Look at me. Am I so different from you? Where are you from? Where have you been? Don't you think that what I am thinking is what everyone thinks? Why don't you just look at me?

Now my eyes scan the car. Another stop; some people mysteriously appear. Now I can't see you. Your face, however, after the long ride, has not changed in my mind's eye. I can see you perfectly, your cheeks, how your shoulders slightly move when you breathe. All that I can see without looking. Captured as if on film. In my mind. Easy to recall.

Next stop, on my downtown path, my path, my path, listening to the train shuttle. What is that sound? What is the correct way to describe the movement of this train? They are all different. That is strange. Some blow whistles as they pass through the tunnel under the water, some go over bridges, and all move, sway, rock, screech and move, move, move. Like my train-car companions, who differ only in skin tone, weight, sex and height, the things train cars and people have in common outweigh the differences.

Another stop. My mind pauses, as if I had a pen in my hand and were writing this as it happened and not weeks later. There, I am giving away a great deal. But as I sat there and thought all this, I already had it written, as if I were writing as it happened, only in the past tense. And that is the mystery of writing. I can write it as if I am on the train now, and have to pause my hand to adjust to the movement of the car. And the cool thing is that with this simple software program I can make the letters appear as if I were using a pen and my hand got jostled as I wrote, my handwriting uneven and bumpy as the car dictates. An outside force dictating the appearance of my handwriting, reproduced later with a simple software tool. Cool. God, I love technology.

Next stop. Goddamn, howmanymoredoIhavetositthrough, IhatewhereIlive.

It's interesting, my living situation. I hate it, yet I don't seem able to do anything to leave. I mean, my rent is $150 and I still can't save enough money to get out. And it isn't the people or the physical makeup of my neighborhood that make me so depressed. It's me. I really don't love my fellow Jew any more than this person I want to make eye contact with. It's that simple. I don't feel un-Jewish, though. I just don't feel that special connection all these religious types tell me I am supposed to have. And the worst part is that I feel inadequate because I don't feel it.

I shouldn't say I never feel close to Jews. There are times, quite powerful and shocking to me, when I do feel what those rabbinical types are talking about, and I don't feel close to non-Jews. Is that horrible or what? You see, I was raised to feel, and deep within me I do feel, that all of us are the same on the soul level. Judaism disagrees. Judaism says that Jews have a different soul (NOT BETTER, mind you, just different) than non-Jews. Heck, it says that Kohanim have a different soul than other Jews, so non-Jews shouldn't feel it's discrimination. The point is that I feel awful that I don't connect to this idea, but I just can't believe it! And for that I am called a Jew hater, or a self-hating Jew.

Ironically, of course, non-Jews, and even some other Jews, find this idea of Jewish specialness offensive, so I am not completely alone. Except that my reasons are totally different from theirs. One of my arguments against the idea of a Jewish soul is conversion. People convert to Judaism. Do they then acquire a Jewish soul? Or, as some have told me, did they have a Jewish soul all along? Both of these concepts can be found in Jewish literature. Both are completely unprovable. I mean, really, who the heck has the market on what makes a soul Jewish? Seriously, nothing makes your soul or my soul anything. Our souls come straight from The Pure Source, and therefore cannot be different from one another. Alas, I have no Talmud, Mishnah, Bible or other Jewish source that agrees with me. Oh well, I guess I am going to burn in Jewish hell, which must be a lot like Miami.

Next stop. I feel that my mind won't stop until I get to Kingston Avenue. I promise that as soon as I get off this train I will stop writing. But remember, I am not writing this down! Ha! I am thinking it down, so to speak, trying to memorize and sort through all the thoughts I have on this particular train ride downtown, down, down, down.

Wait! He made eye contact with me. Finally. After what seems like forever, I exist in someone else's mind's eye. What does he see? What does my soul look like to you? Is it Jewish? Tell me!

Oh wait, that's not fair. You are wearing a hat that places you in the group known as Chassidim. If you, the person who made eye contact with me, had access to the thoughts I just recorded, I have a strange feeling I know exactly what you, who are supposed to be a part of me, would say. Do I know what you would say because you are a part of me? Or because I've heard the Jewish answers so many times? I think what you would say is:

"Have you read To Live Each Day? Is your mother Jewish? Where are you from? Have you read the Tanya? Did you put on tefillin today? How long have you lived in New York? Have you been to Israel? I know a rabbi you can talk to. Have you read this (insert ArtScroll book here) book? Have you read Berel Wein?"

Or maybe, after I tried to explain myself without opening the entire can of worms, you would say that I am confused, lost, haven't had the proper taste of Torah. And then you would reassure me that all I need is to be religious, and everything would be OK, even OU, if I would just give in and put on the hat. "Just give in to your soul; your soul is screaming for Torah. Can't you hear it calling? Your bubbie and zeidy (Yiddish for grandmother and grandfather) were religious. You are just a product of assimilation. Do you want to go to the dustbin of history?"

People have actually said those things. Something along those lines is what I have heard each and every day for the last six years. This incredible worldview: that Jews are special, that I am special, and that all I need is Torah, because after all, Torah is God's mind. This is quite radical and unsettling. Don't I want to connect to three thousand years of unbroken tradition? And if I don't, what the hell is wrong with me? I am confused, self-hating and responsible for the demise of Judaism, and worse, my kids won't be Jewish.

HELLO! HELLO! Earth to Orthodoxy: not everyone cares about this stuff. In case you haven't looked, we don't live in ghettos, unless they are the ones we make in our minds, which are stronger than any human walls ever were. And by the way, life in the real ghettos sucked, even for the religion. We were forced into them. No one wanted to be stripped of the ability to join the greater society, to be made to wear different hats or clothes, to be barred from owning property and forced into selling shoes for two thousand years. No one wanted the ghetto, so why do you romanticize it?

And my grandparents were not religious, you ass. You don't know the first thing about my family or my soul. Why don't you examine your own soul on your own time? How do I know that you put on tefillin today? And maybe I am in mourning, or sitting shiva, or I don't own a pair, or perhaps I don't feel ready to. Why can't you just accept that? Why do you feel this need for me to "be religious"? And whose definitions are we using anyway? I am the one who has to live with these decisions. Not you.

The doors open. I step out. Several darker-toned people get out with me, along with this Jew. We are probably the only Jews on this train. This is the late-night train to Kingston Avenue. Everyone else tonight is of darker skin and probably not Jewish. Tonight I leave the train having made eye contact with two people out of several dozen. I saw four eyes.

Time to go to bed. I walk down the block. I cross the street. I turn the corner. I put my key in the outside door. I walk up the flight of stairs. I unlock the door to my apartment, take off my clothes and close my eyes. My mind, however, never stops. Never.