I am Joel Bloom, late for an appointment with a client, striding down Bond Street with my portfolio under my arm, threading my way among the dawdling shoppers, trying to navigate a course between the bands of foreign tourists who meander annoyingly across my path to peer into the window displays. I want to shout “out of the way, you idiots, I’m in a hurry.”
I realise that my anger is just a cover for a guilty conscience. In spite of myself, I can’t suppress the feeling of having committed a sort of betrayal, of having somehow defiled two thousand years of Jewish history. It’s nonsense of course. But then we Jews are crazy for guilt, aren’t we? Who but a Jew would attack himself with emotional blackmail?
I almost collide with a hippie couple who have stopped right in the middle of the pavement to consult a guidebook. Imbeciles. Can’t you see that you’re blocking my path? But I still say “sorry” without thinking. And they respond with an automatic apology—so help me, in German. Smiling at their lapse they repeat “excuse me” in English and move aside. They obviously take me for an Englishman. Which I am—more or less. I was born here anyway. Would they care if they knew I was Jewish? Of course not, not any more. Nobody gives a damn now. So why do I feel so bad about having denied it?
When Trans-Global Publishing offered me the contract, I told them plainly and openly that I am a Jew. That’s what I always do when dealing with Arabs. It’s a matter of principle. “And I’m proud of it,” I said, perhaps a little pompously. In actual fact I never give it much thought between one Day of Atonement and the next, when I admit to spending part of the day feeling mildly guilty about not fasting. Which doesn’t mean I don’t care about my Jewish background. It just doesn’t affect me much, one way or another.
“No problem,” the managing director assured me. He’s not an Arab, of course, just a sympathiser. “As long as you’re not a Zionist fanatic.”
“I’m not that,” I told him the truth. “I’ve never even been to Israel.”
“Then there won’t be any difficulty.”
And I believed him. Until this morning when I called in at Trans-Global’s head office to sign the form for the Saudi visa and the question leaped right out of the first page at me, filling my field of vision as if printed in 124 point type, bold, italicised and all but ringing bells: state your religion.
“What do I put here?”
The managing director was out of the office and his secretary, a Pakistani woman in a floral headscarf, was less than helpful.
“Just put your religion,” she said, making it sound like the simplest thing in the world.
“But I’m Jewish.”
“You are joking.”
“No.”
“Oh.”
“So shall I write it down?”
She thought for a moment and shook her head. “I think that would not be a very good idea.”
“Then what do you suggest I put?”
“Put Christian. It is safer.”
“Christian?”
“Yes, there is no problem with Christian.”
“I don’t think I can do that.”
“Why not?”
Why not indeed? Because it was unthinkable, that was why not. But I didn’t know how to explain it to her. She wouldn’t have understood.
She pushed the form towards me in a dismissive gesture. “Nobody will know.”
“I’m called Bloom. It’s a Jewish name.”
“I think nobody in Riyadh knows that. Perhaps you have been baptised. Many people have.”
“Suppose they want proof?”
The secretary shrugged. “No problem. We ll arrange a certificate. We have done that many times.”
What could I do? I wanted the contract, but the idea of publicly claiming to be Christian horrified me, though I’m still not quite sure why. A certificate of baptism is only a piece of paper, after all. An administrative convenience. But it felt like a step too far. “I might as well convert to Islam and be done with it,” I said, forgetting she was Pakistani.
Her expression changed. She stood up from the desk. “Muslims do not take conversion so lightly. The holy Koran says the punishment for betraying Islam is death.”
“Sorry, I didn’t mean to offend.”
“So, are you going to sign this paper or not?”
Arrogant cow. She thought nothing of proposing baptism to a Jew yet was outraged by the mere suggestion of a tactical conversion to Islam. But if I wanted the Saudi visa, there was nothing else to be done. My hand hovered over the form.
She misinterpreted the hesitation: “c… h… r… ”
“Yes, yes. I know how to spell it.”
So I wrote the word “Christian” with a trembling hand.
It seemed such an awful thing. As if breaking a final and fundamental tabu. And it still does now, here in bustling Bond Street, surrounded by people who couldn’t care less about my religion, who would probably be amazed that anybody would think twice about such a minor evasion of the truth. I tell myself that nobody will know, that it does nobody any harm, in fact that it will make no difference to anything or anybody.
But it does make a difference: to me. I know what I have done. I try to convince myself that this is just a way of getting my own back on the Saudis—by relieving them of their money. My minor dishonesty is no more than they deserve for barring their country to my people. And yet… And yet my guilt still weighs me down. I feel surrounded by the accusing shades of all those millions through the centuries who suffered just because they refused to deny their faith. I hurry on with downcast eyes, but still I see them, racked and burned and exiled, their tortured features pressing in on me with ghostly censure.
And now suddenly, amazingly, shatteringly, a gigantic voice booms into my consciousness with the very last question I would ever have expected: “Have you laid tefillin today?”
What? I stop dead in my tracks. Did I really hear it? Or is my disturbed imagination playing tricks on me? I am aware of the blood rushing through my ears, my heart thumping. I must have been mistaken. But the voice comes again, even louder and more insistent, threatening to tear my mind loose from its moorings: “Have you laid tefillin today?”
I am frozen into place, unable to move a muscle, vaguely aware of a group of Japanese tourists walking towards me led by a guide carrying a wand striped like a barber’s pole. They divide and flow round me like the parting of the Red Sea.
Have I laid tefillin today? No of course not. In fact I haven’t laid tefillin since I was thirteen years old, fresh from my barmitzvah, when I insisted on performing the daily ritual mainly to spite my father who scorned what he thought of as ancient superstition. I can’t even remember now exactly how it’s done: one little leather box tied to the forehead, the other to the left arm, the one nearest the heart, I seem to remember the Rabbi saying, with the straps making up some kind of Hebrew sign. And what of the prayers that go with the ritual? Long forgotten. I always thought it all nonsense anyhow; a long outdated irrelevance. Maybe it made sense to the way people thought two thousand years ago, but not today. Who could ever believe that any God would demand such a pointless daily performance?
The Voice asks the question yet a third time, vibrating the pavement under my feet. I sink to my knees. I don’t understand what is happening. Oh God who sees everything, have You found me out? You know full well that the man who just wrote the word Christian on a visa form for Saudi Arabia did not lay tefillin today. Why is it so important to You? What does it mean? What is it You want of me?
The Voice comes again, even more terrifying now: “Now is the time. Why not doven a little?”
“Doven a little… doven a little… ” The words echo backwards and forwards between the buildings which tower towards the heavens above me. God wishes me to doven, to pray. Of course. But what prayer? He knows that I am not one of those with a whole fat Hebrew prayer book committed to memory. I try to remember the Shema, the Jewish declaration of faith. “Hear oh Israel… Shema Yisroel… ”
As I struggle to recall the words, the Voice booms out again. It is too much for me. I put my hands over my ears and my forehead on the ground. Yes God, wait, I am trying, I am trying. But hang on a moment, Joel. Why are you trying to find the Hebrew words when God speaks to you in English? And now I come to notice something utterly unexpected and totally extraordinary: God speaks with an American accent.
How can that be? Is God American? Americans would have you think so. Not in so many words, of course, but by implication. By what other right do they call America God’s own country? I never imagined it might be true yet now I have heard living proof with my own ears. This is why Americans think they own the world. They do. They speak the language of God.
Something touches my shoulder. I look up. A middle aged woman is asking me “Are you all right dear?”
I am perplexed. Didn’t she hear the Voice? I can’t be the only one. It can‘t have been just in my own head. I clearly heard the sound echo between the buildings. “I’m OK thanks.”
I look around at the shoppers, the tourists and the other pedestrians in the street. All are going about their business as if nothing had happened. Except… Except that most of them are looking at me.
I get to my feet. No they are not looking at me, but behind me. I turn. Just as I do so, the great American voice comes booming yet again: “Did you lay tefillin today?” Drawn up at the side of the road just behind me is a big white van with ‘Lubavitch Mitzvah Tank’ lettered in blue on its side. On top a loudspeaker is blasting out the words not six feet from my ears. My mouth drops open. This is the missionary project of the Lubavitch Chassidic sect. A smiling young Chassid in a dark suit with no tie and a black trilby hat is getting out of the van and coming up to me. “Bist a Yid?” he asks me in Yiddish. And then in English with an American accent: “Are you a Jew?”
I feel confused, upset, furious, humiliated. I have been fooled, taken for a ride, made to look ridiculous. My knees feel weak. I am shaking.
“Why not come in and lay tefillin with us?” the young man asks pleasantly and puts his hand on my arm.
I shake it off. How dare he. No I will not lay tefillin with him after being so blatantly taken advantage of. I am angry with him and even angrier with myself for being so gullible, for letting my rational defences slip so completely.
“You haven’t dovened in a long time, have you,” he tells me, with no question in his tone of voice.
No I haven’t. And I am not going to start now. I hate myself for succumbing so readily to religious blackmail. I am bitterly ashamed to think of myself kneeling on the ground desperate for the words of the Shema.
Something in my manner momentarily shakes the young Chassid’s self-confidence. “You are a Jew, aren’t you?” he asks.
There is only one way to escape. “No, sorry, I’m not,” I tell him, moving off in the direction from which I have just come. And the funny thing is that I don’t feel the least bit guilty about saying it. A crowd of shoppers outside a fashion showroom is threatening to block my path. Out of the way, all you idiots. I’ve got to get back to Trans-Global and tear up that damned Saudi visa form.