Gym Shoes and Irises
SIEGEL, DANIEL M.
Gym Shoes and Irises DANIEL M. SIEGEL We know Ralph Nader and the Lubavitcher Rebbe are out there fighting for us and God and Truth and Right. We know they're doing big things,...
...What I would do while in Israel was unclear to me, though a month in Jerusalem, if correctly unplanned, could be awesome, DANIEL M. SIEGEL Part-time l-caring is astronomically effective...
...They begot a multitude of children, among them Zeev David, called Velvel, my Zeyde...
...And I threw in a quote and some trumped-up page number from the Talmud to bolster my argument...
...I assured them I would stretch every bill and coin...
...Big Man...
...It is a Purim-play of the highest order...
...Here are some flowers for your son...
...Tzaddik (righteous one...
...Your bravado, naivete, and flair for romance that lie latent can come out to your heart's desire, and you can swagger and swashbuckle your way into a Grand Old Time of It for the Sake of Heaven...
...Players with the nation's railroads (Penn-Central), diplomats trading off this for that, the any-and-every size Mafiosi stuffing Mankind down a umongous drain...
...The little guy, statusless, getting dumped on everywhere, trying to do his bit to sew, the rape ut, and carpenter the atlings and shambles of All Mankind...
...You will become more aware of the privilege of Mitzvah-doing and of allowing others to join you...
...But I assured them (taking the last $7 from their hand) that even the most grumbly giver with the most obnoxious intent is moving Heaven and Earth...
...So 50 Israeli pounds became some fancy-schmancy schnapps, though I don't know whose bris it was, and the parents certainly never heard of the family in Oklahoma...
...By the very fact of having reached bar or bat mitzvah, a Jewish child becomes obligated to fulfill the Mitzvah of Tz'dakah...
...she asked...
...These thoughts and questions are everyone's, I thought...
...Ya'akov Maimon, inventor of Hebrew shorthand, recorder for the Knesset, 72'/2, short, dressed like out of a movie, rumpled hat, thick glasses, shlepping me up and down and up and down steps visiting families (Iranian, Indian, Algerian, Moroccan) to whom he brings tutors in English for the children...
...Some Russian Jews: Crossing into Russia from Finland, the border guards took half, more than half, of our S i d d u r im and c a l e n d a r s and M'zuzot, and Magen Davids...
...enjoyable, or at the least, fun...
...To raise $1,000,000 to be put at your disposal, all you have to do is convince 200 people to throw a $5,000 wedding for their kids, instead of a $ 1 0 , 0 0 0 j o b b i e , or 400 people to throw a $2,500 bar mitzvah instead of a whopper for five grand...
...Here...
...You wonder how you ever thought of the million million wrong ways to do this thing, Living...
...Why not...
...and not every one involves a Tzaddik...
...Just as I had chosen to collect the money through straightforward, friendly means, so, also, I decided to search out the people and places of my m i s s i o n through my friends, by word-of-mouth and suggestions from enough to be touched by his grasp of what I was about...
...And they know they are converting you to Mentschlichkeit, and that you might not be able to keep up their pace...
...It's all right...
...I cannot give to your building f u n d , " I explained...
...He will no doubt do this much longer, with the same vigor and grandheartedness...
...So it was me, Dan Quixote, the 35 or so of them, and a few others against the Montefiore Windmills...
...They were entitled to them — they are Russians and we are Jews, 64 Jews with a pittance of thing-gifts for our friends in the Soviet Jewish Community...
...Mendelow...
...Mentschlichkeit should be a word in every Jewish child's vocabulary...
...Eva Michaelis...
...Boris is my only friend in Jerusalem who has a car...
...This is not a lyrical exposition or high falootin' dissertation...
...And then he says, " I t ' s the other way around...
...Her most recent project is Magen, making a home for older retarded people whose parents are too old and too ill to take care of their children...
...But what about all of them ? The Mitchell-Momzers and General Browns, the Men with the Petrodollars, the large-, medium-, and small-scale Destroyers...
...Spontaneously (I would try spontaneity again and see how far it would go) I picked Mrs...
...By Sunday I had called my friends and flipped through the note cards of Recommended Tzaddikim, adding here and there a few names suggested by my people in Jerusalem...
...But they also know you will make something of the encounter, and that is enough for them...
...I'm only part time, and Wolk and Kapach and Maimon and Levi and Gaster and Michaelis are too much . . . I 'm not those people...
...M y Chevrah wants more direct, more immediate results, and they want the funds to be under your personal c o n t r o l . " We gave her 250 pounds for anything she liked, like cab fare for Irena Gaster, 77, who is a little shaky on her legs...
...I thought, as the plane approached Lod, Ki tireh arom v'chisitol When you see the naked, clothe them...
...He is the author of SOULSTONED, a collection of Jewish poems, and is now at work on a sequel...
...Ho, hmmm, h u m . " It is the Repetition Syndrome which teachers, a s s e m b l y - l i n e workers, and secretaries suffer from (to say nothing of occasional neurosurgeons, Professional Fundraisers, and other assorted busy individuals...
...The American custom of stashing away aging parents in (ugh) Convalescent Homes to let them die o u t - o f - t h e - w a y, stripped of their well-deserved majesty and treated like infants—all this is foreign to Mrs...
...Flowers for everyone...
...Even in the most discriminating retrospect, it is impossible to grasp fully the ad infinitum extent of what you have done to move human hearts through a single gesture...
...And to spite my cynic-self, the next day (Friday...
...If I could just find another two or three, I would have fulfilled my mission...
...Sara Pearl, Mother of the Soldiers all over Galilee...
...So I decided to steamroll a little, making the rounds of aunts, cousins, parents, inlaws, friends, and passers-by, saying, " I ' d really like a thousand...
...Tell him you are not a foundation, institution, or home for anything, but on the contrary, think you can get a lot of Mitzvah-mileage out of $10...
...and stepping out to get me coffee and cookies...
...It is a real zetz in your soul, a kick in your spiritual life, and you are entitled to feel good about it...
...T e l l Mrs...
...I usually consider $10 a nice sum to take with me, but by the time this occurred to me for Trip # 1 0 , I was rated by Dun & Bradstreet at well over $150...
...Until you talk to the boy (that's all he is, a boy) in the eye clinic, with a bandage, and he tells you he writes and you say, I write, too...
...They are reliable, trustable individuals, and you become willing and inspired to give them anything they want, even if they won't tell you what they will do with your gift...
...Why should we spiritually orphan our children, sending them insensitive as the cattle of Nineveh into the world, only to have them discover at age 25 or 33 or 41 that they have missed out on this most unique privilege for years...
...And you may never consider despair again...
...Spiritual exhaustion is a possibility to be considered...
...By doing these acts, by conscientious and energy-charged consideration of the swirl of people around us, we can do j u s t that...
...You can play disguises: in one place you can assume such-and-such a name, and in another (wearing a different hat, sunglasses, and shirt) you can be someone else from Norman, Oklahoma, instead of Chicago...
...Gaster: founder of almost everything in Israel having to do with the retarded, denouncer of psychiatrists who are too quick to label, thereby condemning someone to retardation, a n a t h e m a - h u r l e r at agencies and institutions-gone-bad, Lover of Children Class-A with four Oak Leaf Clusters...
...I began to like one-way conversations: "Speak to me, Mrs...
...Listening to his tales, his quotes, following his hands, you understand a hint of Hillel...
...Even if you won't be in Israel for a while but want to do it in Minneapolis, L.A., or Aberdeen, S.D...
...If you get $1,000, don't panic...
...Hers, I think...
...I would have wished him "ad meah v'esrim —may you continue your work till you are 120—" but it seemed a shade insulting...
...Too few people consider that a hat, a hand gripped firmly on someone's arm, or a cheap $3 prayerbook can give a sense of startling and sublime joy to another person...
...Even if you will be in Israel only a week...
...It is a choir and tree-planting, and a Chevrah of Dignity...
...So you will say: Well, I 'm not all that good...
...The moral insight and imaginative investment will be proportional in at least a 100 to 1 ratio to the quantum of money put in the pot...
...After being introduced to the people in the Military Office and obtaining a list of who was in what ward, the lady, my friend, and I, bundled in flowers, began to walk the corridors...
...Mendelow I sent y o u ," she said...
...When I bring to mind my years of knowing him, a constant flow of T z ' d a k a h acts-andintimations gushes forth...
...I wanted others, preferably three or four others, standing with me, because I am not so sure I can stretch that far — even for the Chevrah...
...Except for three people who specified where I should give their money, I was on my own, the Chevrah's Shaliach (messenger) to the Holy Land...
...My Shabbas tablecloths are from their workshops, as are my sweaters, and a few of my toys...
...So, too, are the dangers of surprise...
...I said, " H e r e ' s 100 pounds for benzine — put yourself at Bracha Kapach's disposal till the gelt runs o u t . " Rebbetzin Kapach (or as the Sefardim would say, HaRabbanit) is the Utmost Yemenite, the woman I was looking for but didn't know was true until I saw her and watched her walk around Jerusalem doing her acts of gentlelovingkindness...
...Pray...
...If you have $500,000 to distribute, you go to different places, talk to different people and give out different proportions and quantities than if you have $955...
...He is the full embodiment of the Life of Torah...
...If the child was a bed-wetter at age 10 (and therefore disturbed), she stopped the bed-wetting...
...It couldn't hurt, could it, fellas...
...They are formidable, and for the unprepared, more difficult to be with, these Tzaddikim, because they are so right...
...I would give it out somewhere as the occasion presented itself somewhere in Israel...
...I know they're soldierboys, and tough, and Israelis, and this is sort of twinkie, but the lady said, " D o n ' t worry...
...Whoever gave me a $3 gift that moved me so much...
...My wallet fattened before I could say, " I ' l l send you a report...
...The money will be re-cycled when she has finished with it...
...None of the pathetic foolishness of basketweaving is to be found in its precincts, and, indeed, the handiwork that they produce has won awards in various countries, not because a bunch of doddering old fools made them, but because they are joyforever things of beauty...
...This RabbanitRebbetzin gives clothes, Shabbas food, love, weddings, a jar of hotsauce and Yemenite bread, books, or whatever is needed all over Jerusalem and into the boondocks on the Hillsides of Judea . . . the most extensive f a r - s t r e t c h i n g private MitzvahMatchmaker I was to meet, coordinating the Givers and the Receivers with enthusiasm and uplift as I had never seen before...
...And this is all I own (hand sweeps the air around the apartment on Ramban St...
...Where, Why, and How the Revelation Belted Me Last fall friends and acquaintances began gathering for Israel...
...Part time is good enough...
...On the way back to her house she saw some children she knew who should have been in school...
...Heavy Conclusions The risk and emotional drain are immense...
...I remember that feeling of being scared: 20 Yiddish phrases and a few tchatchkes to give...
...A dime's worth of flowers...
...Whoopiedo...
...Isaiah, I hear you, we hear you...
...The "few o t h e r s " included my rabbi, my forebears, and some Russian Jews...
...The assistant director, Aharon Langermann, understood me and the Chevrah immediately, and with 350 pounds from the fund assured me that it would be used individually, directly, and personally for anything that comes to him that will not be taken care of by the Red Tape Machine...
...There is a certain woman on the staff of Life Line who for the last seven years has made the rounds of the soldiers at the hospital, bringing fruit and cigarettes and candy and other things for anyone there from the Israeli Army...
...I don't know if they needed gym shoes for gym class or whether it was teen-age fashionable to wear the casual style and, therefore, embarrassing to come to school in some other shoe...
...I had seen with my own eyes and the eyes of the Chevrah the allthetime Holy People, rubbed my hands in theirs, and felt warmth and hope and the mysterious glory of what it is to be a Creature of God...
...Next: find yourself a local millionaire and surprise him with a $10 proposal...
...And since they have revealed themselves to you entirely and unabashedly, there is, thank God, never any room for doubt...
...Faith, innocence, and the Yes come streaming out at us through these acts with the force and mystery of a laser...
...At select times in life, simplistic thinking is profound, and miracle-working...
...My tenth trip...
...Four of the Chevrah had asked me to find someone to whom they could send clothes, so this was a priority...
...Mickey's cousin, Rabbi Mordechai Gimpel HaKohen Wolk, scion of great rabbinic houses, devoted to children, particularly of large families, placing them in good yeshivas, throwing weddings and simchas and worrying for their welfare...
...Now that I am past the age of rebellion and crankiness towards my parents, we can sit and recall and work out insights into T z ' d a k a h , because he is my R e b b e - M a s t e r in this domain of Mentschlichkeit...
...Mickey and I went Shabbas-flowering with her, into the homes of large-families-in-two-rooms that are around, if you look for them...
...oh just some friends from America...
...Big man, you say...
...He was a kind m a n . " I remember that...
...You are in unaccustomed touch with those who suffer from circumstance, misfortune, or the Will of God in its less pleasant manifestations —and with those whose lives are hour-by-hour tied to these people...
...Stripped to the bare heart...
...Swings for them...
...A widow needed a loan...
...What Happened to the Gelt It immediately became clear to me that there are two distinct psychologies of giving out Tz'dakah money: BigGelt and SmallGelt...
...It is fit and proper to praise his generosity...
...Just last year I was over for Sukkot, Purim and the summer...
...Michaelis...
...More miracles, s.v.p., G'veret Gaster...
...The list is longer...
...Apparently some friends adjusted their palms to the cost-of-living index, as $ 5 ' s and $10's and $20's and $25's began inundating my pushka...
...overprudence...
...Teensy-klayna Yidden, unite...
...Messenger sometime...
...There was also a bris my friend Mickey said would be nice, but there would only be cookies and juice and soda and some wine, though a bottle or two of schnapps would go really well...
...Being a Shaliach is an egosafeguard...
...Big Man — Tzaddik, with a wad in his pocket, doing cheap-ticket-toP a r a d i s e Mitzvahs...
...Nevertheless, she personally went to i n t e r v i ew the 40 candidates for Magen...
...A flower...
...Hadassah Levi's day-care center for young retarded people in Ramat Gan...
...In distributing irises and gym shoes, you are never certain who will be there to meet you in the next house, or corridor, or on the park bench...
...I left with $900-plus, and counting what arrived while I was there, we reached $955, or 5730 Israeli pounds...
...And now we have this Magen (take some more tea) project...
...By being a Mentsch with all that it suggests—kindness, sympathy through weeping, feeling and giving, uprightness, and a touch of human nobility we may be momentarily united with the Almighty, fulfilling the vision of Mentschlichkeit we preserve so deep within our Selves . . . and ignore, or forget, or let slip by...
...And he tells you he wrote a story about a soldier who was badly wounded, the only survivor in his tank, and his girlfriend comes to see him in the hospital...
...When we at long last re-curriculum our Sunday schools and Hebrew schools and day schools, we must include — aside from courses on risk, joy, fear, loss, uncertainty, failure, Big Think, and death — lectures and labs on Mentschlichkeit and Tz'dakah...
...I will skip around, including and selecting and excluding, since there are too many, The singularity of split-second Mitzvah-events is enough, for it carries over into however long our futures will be, reminding us that we are never alone because we have broken through to others who also felt, at some time, that they were alone...
...One lousy rose or chrysanthemum or iris per person...
...And the mother, who is all War Mothers, standing over her son (the one with the head wound, the paralyzed one), trying to feed him...
...Take my word for it...
...I am his child and again and again return to childhood when I wonder how his vision and foresight have been acted out by me, whether I am worthy of him and his parents and grandparents, all the way back to Abraham...
...Which is exactly right, and exactly the point...
...to, or should go, or whatever...
...I remember that: his ring of love was a gift to Israel...
...The thousand one-shot Tz'dakah-slams that had whipped my BigThink brain over 30 years were waiting to explode...
...Getting Your Jollies and Shaking Your Kishkes Everyone should be a ShaliachWhen He spoke at Sinai and proclaimed Tz'dakah as a just way of life, (I believe) the lowliest desert bushes brought forth flowers, and the assembled multitudes heaved the ultimate sigh of relief—men, women, children and livestock alike...
...He who would wish to learn what Mentschlichkeit is would do well to visit her and the young Old People of Life Line...
...See, Shimon, say thank you...
...No one I asked felt that he was being " h i t . " Each considered it a privilege to take part in the Mitzvah with me...
...So me and my friend, see, we marches in with a flower for each one to take home for Shabbas...
...I used to watch the sun throw different shadows and light-cartoons on the buildings and street corners and trees...
...Wherever you go and however you choose to distribute your funds, you are constandy aware of the fact that you are just the representative of those who sent you...
...In the course of less than one Jerusalem-week I had discovered three of the 36 Righteous People...
...And Miss (Henrietta) Szold said I would never get anywhere — that was when I first arrived...
...S e e, Shimon, she says, they brought you flowers (who...
...By giving your own money, you treat yourself to the feeling that you are not as tight-fisted as you thought you were, Recession or no Recession...
...Oh, here's another one, and another, and another (with absolute humility and a tinge of modest pride...
...And of course, by re-telling the signs and wonders of the people we meet along the way...
...Just check your Matchmaking files and start asking more friends about more people...
...No, Eichmann...
...Life Line (Yad LaKashish) was discovered by my mother about five years ago...
...His son, my Abba, has carried on where Velvel left off...
...My forebears: Sometime in the last century, Usher Zelig Siegel took to wife a certain Sarah Golda, whose family name is forgotten...
...For nine trips I loved wandering the streets and alleys of Jerusalem...
...Either way, the 25 newlyarrived dollars were searing the seams of my pockets, and I understand that within a day, as if by magic, they were transformed into sneakers for the girls...
...And she never makes peace with it all...
...No receipts, no questions of incometax deductions, no hesitations like "Well, I already hit my 10-20 per cent for the y e a r ." A family of eight in Oklahoma spent the better part of a late evening working out how much they could send me...
...I also Tz'dakah-alchemized 100 pounds into gasoline...
...By being a ShaliachMessenger or Mitzvah-doer or just plain old part-time giver...
...As a result, I determined to watch carefully each grush, and to proceed with a sharpened sense of spontaneity vs...
...I was doing well...
...Back to the stories...
...Ten lousy bucks and he thinks h e ' s turned the world on its ear...
...We know they're doing big things, battling City Hall and beyond, up to the Highest of High Courts...
...crisis, again, as usual, was hanging in the air...
...It is food for invalid-old people who are unable to get out...
...His dry goods store is now a gun and ammunition shop, but the cop who grew up with my father said, " H e would take a nickel on a pair of gloves, and let them pay the rest whenever they could...
...With the remaining money, you take them, their wives, their sons and daughters, and all their dear ones to Israel for a Tz'dakah-junket, a spree of Tzaddiktouching...
...The check is for whatever she wants...
...At those times, Big Think Metaphysics should be crated and stored in the garage, and bullheaded, one-sided Mitzvah-doing fully activated to achieve wonders that will make the splitting of the Red Sea look like pulling a rabbit out of a hat...
...It seemed apparent that millions of new pages would be written in papers and analyses about whatever chunk of History was going to come crashing down on the Holy Land, any day...
...O there might have been one or two who play-grumbled...
...Life Line is workshops for the elderly...
...Gym Shoes and Irises DANIEL M. SIEGEL We know Ralph Nader and the Lubavitcher Rebbe are out there fighting for us and God and Truth and Right...
...My girlfriend died in a car crash, and I don't know what to d o . " Big Man...
...Over There, you give someone a $3 prayerbook, and your thanks are in tears...
...That question has stuck in my kishkes...
...During one of my previous visits, she, the MitzvahSearcher-Outer par excellence, put her Jewish Motherly foot down and declared that I must g o— in the tone of voice of " N o questions, no wise remarks, kiddo...
...Reviewing my preparations, I see that the friends and relatives and strangers created a Mitzvah-Chevrah that would go wherever I would go, speak with me, and give me some insight into the work at hand...
...I would go, I decided, stam — just because I wanted to go (or had Danny Siegel is a freelance writer who lives in the Boston area...
...Let me call her The Most Loving Person in the World...
...Thursday at Life Line . . . closed Friday) I did the same for my Chevrah at Hadassah...
...Paranoics of the World, we are outnumbered...
...Say anything...
...But he dies...
...The next step is to d o BigGelt projects...
...Let them begin with their 10-20 per cent from the earliest age, and let us teach them the ins-and-outs of finding the Righteous Ones and the creativity of giving...
...For over 20 years he has been doing this, bringing truckloads from the University and other parts of town, dropping them off, picking them up, remembering each name and making sure each one is working well, becoming a part of the family...
...As the Talmud informs us: He who encourages others is even greater than he who does it himself...
...You are constantly aware of the fact that $50 too much here means next week there may not be anything left to give, just when you are discovering that the next week's encounter is the one that needs the $50 the most...
...Through another lead I entered the bowels of Israeli bureaucracy (just once, to see what it was like): The Department of Welfare...
...It was a name my mother had given me, because she knew she was eclel — refined, devoted, kindly, a decades-long crusader for the retarded...
...I believe I saw an entirely different city on this visit, shimmering with an extraordinary glow of Holiness I had missed without the Chevrah's help...
...Their wisdom and understanding of what is happening in the hearts of men is sufficient...
...My rabbi: When he was in love and had found the woman with whom he chose to live his life, my rabbi gave $1000 to Israel in place of buying his fiancee an engagement ring...
...I pilgrimaged to Keansburgh, N . J . , to supplement the old pictures and conversations with my father and aunts and cousins...
...As was my custom, I visited my well-wishers, telling them to "Give me a buck for Tz'dakah...
...According to the Torah, each Jew is required to write his own Torah...
...I was, fifteen years ago, his favorite, his hope, his most intimate prayer to God...
...No gym shoes, the two girls said...
...If you want more, you'll ask, or you'll go...
...I would sanctify their money by giving exclusively to those who were reliable, hated bureaucracy, and could use it as directly as possible to bring some assistance, joy, and the sense of Mah Rabbu Ma'asecha, How great are Your Creations, O Lord, to the recipients...
...I couldn't get to Safed, but I called and told her husband the Chevrah believes in her...
...When a child would be sent to her who could not learn to feed himself, more likely than not she taught the child to feed himself...
...And she would take up her evangelical theme, displaying verbally her struggles with the government and Welfare Department to get the proper funds, then passing to some miracles, saving children from the Nazis at the outbreak of the War, meeting Eichmann (you mean Eichmann's henchmen...
...When speaking to the recipients, you simply say, " I t 's my friends...
...To me this was Kosher Jewish thinking . . . the more reasons given for the trip, the less chance of gathering the aromas and sounds and stirrings of Holiness waiting to be ingested in the Holy Land...
...There were two kinds: the quiet, softspoken, unannounced Tzaddik, and the other — overpowering, energetic-toexhaustion, piling adrenalin on adrenalin, fighting and shouting where necessary to actualize their vision, not shying away from the Obstreperous of the Earth, convinced and justified in their Rightness, because it was for the sake of others...
...Some never let me finish my description of " T h e Plan...
...I decided then not to do any more of these Mitzvahs alone...
...And cracks...
...I think it was in the late ' 4 0 ' s . He told me that story, I think...
...And I never took a penny from anyone...
...Chip chip, gnaw, crunch, the newspaper-thoughts chew away hope, affirmation, the will-to-try...
...I didn't see, but I heard about a person she found who goes with an elderly blind lady to the hairdresser on Fridays, to fulfill the Old Woman's wish of being presentable to the Sabbath Queen...
...I started with flowers at Life Line for the Old...
...For myself, the Urge began to chomp away at me, the Psalm-craving to go back to Aretz, though I had just finished a year in Jerusalem that previous August...
...Is there anything we can do...
...Tears...
...You know how you feel when people tell you, " O h , I've been there 18 times...
...I planted trees, eight of them, for births and deaths and friends and my 82-year-old Zeyde Shmuel who last planted one for his 80th birthday, when I prayed I would do the same on my 80th...
Vol. 1 • June 1975 • No. 2
