My Way or the Yahweh

“Um, no, that’s cool,” Dan insisted, seeming a little embarrassed. Lev wasn’t about to take no for an answer. He was already reaching inside his satchel and pulling something out.

Tefillin. I’d heard the word before and I knew that it was some kind of Jewish religious article but that was about it. Is it the thing you hang on your door, I thought? No, that’s a mezuzah. A dreidel? No, that’s a spinning top used at Hanukkah.

From the corner of my eye I saw Lev take a small, dark object from his bag and insistently hand it to Dan, trying to convince him to take it. This was now getting Jewish enough that they were leaving me in the dust. I thought I was finally free of temptation to join the conversation when I heard Dan say, “Tell you what. If you can convince this guy sitting next to me to do it, I’ll do it.”

Peripherally I could see Lev lean out past Dan to get a look at me and think it over. “Excuse me?” He tentatively began.

“Don’t ask him if he’s Jewish. He’s not,” Dan intervened, trying to do me a favor.

I feel Lev studying my face, trying to decide how to proceed.

“How can you tell?”

“Because if he was Jewish he would already be talking to us.”

Lev continued full steam ahead. “Do you know what Tefillin is?” he asked me. I knew his mission wasn’t to save me. It was to save Dan. But this was too good to pass up. I lifted my head.

“Not really,” I said. “I’ve heard of it.”

“Do you know what the Torah—?”

Dan, embarrassed for Lev, impatiently cut him off. “Of course he knows what the Torah is, he’s not stupid.” He then turned to me. “Look, he wants me to do the Tefillin and I’ll only do it if you to do it.” Dan was using me, a total stranger, as his surefire excuse to not do it. He also had something else going for him: Lev was getting off in Secaucus which was about 30 seconds away. The train began to slow as we approached the station. Time was up.

“Oh, too bad,” said Dan. “But thanks for asking.”

Lev reluctantly stood up and lingered in the aisle, looking back at me. “Will you do it?”

I slapped my netbook shut. “Hit me.” I reached across Dan’s lap and shook Lev’s hand. “My name’s Jeff, I’m wide open, lay it on me.” Both of their eyes widened, neither of them sure whether to take me seriously. “Go ahead and do him,” I said, nodding at Dan. “You can do me next.”

Lev was elated. He plopped back into his seat like a schoolboy and missed his stop on purpose. That still only gave him a few minutes to work this miracle before the next stop. Out from his bag flew both Tefillin boxes attached to leather straps. I asked to see one and he tossed it past Dan into my lap. It was a black leather cube about 2 inches square with Hebrew characters emblazoned on the sides in gold paint. One side of the box was open and covered with a white film. “That’s parchment,” Lev explained with pride. “And inside are lots of pieces of paper with verses from the Torah written on them.”

“Oh,” I said. “Sort of like a Buddhist prayer wheel with scraps of paper inside with ‘Om mani padme hum’ written on them. And then you spin it and–”

Dan smiled. Lev looked stymied. Unsure whether he was offended or confused I handed the box back to him. Dan rolled up his sleeve and held out his left arm while Lev commenced the elaborate wrapping procedure around his fingers so many times and then up and around his arm in just a certain way. To me, it looked like Dan was about to shoot up heroin. Once the wrapping was completed, Dan held his bicep against his chest so the box touched his heart. Lev then strapped another box just above Dan’s forehead to be near his mind.

I’m telling you right now there’s no way anyone can sit on a commuter train at rush hour and do Tefillin and not have everyone and his sister noticing, because notice they did. The entire car was listening in on our conversation by this point. I had never seen so many people sneaking peeks at me in my life. Lev coached Dan through reciting a prayer in Hebrew, most of which Dan remembered on his own from his yeshiva days. Then it was my turn. I waited while they worked together frantically to beat the clock as the train rolled on, untying the works from Dan and strapping me in for a beautiful trip that would leave me craving more. Finally everything was in place. “I don’t know Hebrew! What do I say!” I blurted as the train decelerated.

They hesitated, looked at each other. We were pulling into Newark station. Dan finally spoke. “Just say you believe in the oneness of the universe and why,” he said urgently. Lev eagerly nodded.

The train doors opened. I thought for a moment and said slowly and thoughtfully, taking all the time in the world, “I believe in the oneness of the universe because of this thing with two total strangers that is happening to me right now.”

“Great.” Dan tore the Tefillin off me and thrust the boxes back at Lev who shoved them into his satchel, shook both our hands and bolted off before the doors slammed shut to wait in the cold and backtrack home.

Dan and I sat back and chuckled. “That was really cool of you,” he said.

“You’re not going to believe me,” I told him, “but I’m a Hindu.”

“I know you are,” he said, beaming.

“Okay now how on Earth can you possibly know that?”

“Because you knew about Buddhist prayer wheels and you believe in the oneness of the universe. And because I saw you staring at my book.”

He had me there. I smiled out the window thinking how I couldn’t wait to get home to tell Pia all about my ride. Talk about a crazy commute. Dan and I spent the next 90 minutes discussing the nature of the universe. Turns out he’s a biologist like my wife so we had much to talk about as we delved into a deep blend of science, philosophy and mysticism en route to post-industrial Trenton where I would make a final transfer to the City of Brotherly Love. At one point around Princeton Dan fell back into his seat looking suddenly drunk. “Whoa. I feel high, like we just took some powerful drug.” I knew what he meant.

Surprisingly for such a short time we had come to some pretty definite conclusions about G-d, or Brahma, and the meaning of life, but I’ll keep all these things and ponder them in my heart. You wouldn’t believe me anyway. You must experience it yourself, not read about it. I’ll let you in on this much though: a week later I stumbled upon this verse from the Rig Veda that summed up our conclusions:

Man, shining light in the City,

Has a thousand heads, eyes, and feet,

He covers the earth on all sides,

Rules supreme over inner space.

We both got off in Trenton and went our separate ways. I considered asking for his email address and I suspect he had the same fleeting thought but we both skipped it. Some people you’re only meant to meet once and glimpse briefly, like trains speeding past each other in the darkness.

Shabat shalom.

Jeffrey Stanley is a playwriting and screenwriting faculty member at NYU Tisch School of the Arts, as well as at Drexel University in Philadelphia.

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