does nothing to interrupt the system. People use all sorts of excuses for their indifference. They even appeal to God as a shorthand route for supporting the status quo. They talk about law and order. But look at the system, look at the present social “order” of society. Do you see God? Do you see law and order? There is nothing but disorder, and instead of law there is only the illusion of security. It is an illusion because it is built on a long history of injustices: racism, criminality, and the enslavement and genocide of millions. Many people say it is insane to resist the system, but actually, it is insane not to.
The Search
I
LIFE HAS EVER BEEN in search of answers to basic questions—What is Life? Who is God? Why?
As a boy, this quest took me to the oddest places. When Mama dragged us to church, it seemed more for her solace, than ours. A woman who spent most of her life in the South, she must’ve felt tremendous social coldness up North. “Down home” was “down South,” for even after over a decade, the brick and concrete jungle we walked daily didn’t seem like home.
Only at church did it seem that Mama returned home. It was a refuge where women her age sought a few hours for the soul’s rest while the preacher performed. In a sense, Sunday trips to church were her weekly “homegoing.” They were islands of the South—its camaraderie, its rhythms, its spiritual community—come north.
Yet for myself, as for most of my siblings, church was a foreign affair. We had never lived (and seldom visited) in Mama’s Southern birthland, and the raucous, tambourine-slapping, sweat-drenched, organ-pounding milieu couldn’t be more alien. We weren’t Southerners.
Black preachers, especially those of Southern vintage, are extroverts in style, diction, and cadence. They may yell, shriek, hum, harrumph, or sing. Some strut the stage. Some dance. Black Baptist preachers, especially, are never dull or monotonal. Their sermons aren’t particularly cerebral. Nor should they be. They preach to congregations whose spirits have been beaten down and battered all week long. To them, Sundays are thus days when the spirit, not the mind, needs lifting. So preachers must perform, and sermons become exercises in exuberance.
I remember staring at the preacher—his furrowed face shining with perspiration, eyes closed, lips locked in a holy grimace—and wondering to myself, “What da hell did he just say?” His thick, rich, southern accent, so accessible to Mama, was Greek to me.
Part of me was embarrassed, but the other couldn’t give a damn. I couldn’t care less what the preacher was saying, and he couldn’t care less what I was thinking. I was thinking: I am bored to tears.
The only “salvation” I felt in church was the rapturous joy I felt when I looked around me. Here, I thought, are some of the most beautiful girls in the world.
I was lost in a reverie, in rapt adoration, my eyes locked on a girl a few pews back. She had fresh pressed hair; a crisp, starched dress; patent leather shoes that shone brighter than the real stuff. Her dark brown legs shimmered with the luster of Vaseline. . . .
Then a painful pluck would pull me from my rapture, and Mama’s clenched lips whispered, “Boy! Turn yo’ narrow behind around now! Straighten up!” I would simmer. Who would choose to stare at an old preacher when there was a pretty girl to look at? If I hadda choice between ’em—well, that wouldn’t be no contest. But I was only ten. Mama made the choice for me. I turned, glowering.
It was only several years later, when I was no longer forced to go to church, that I really began to explore the realm of the spirit. Sometimes I went to Dad’s church. Although Mama was a bred-in-the-bone Baptist, Dad was Episcopalian. He had taught me how to read by using the Bible, and seemed to take pleasure in listening to me read Holy Scripture.
After the raucousness of Mama’s Baptist church, Dad’s Episcopalianism seemed its quiet antithesis. Whereas Second Pilgrim’s was cramped, Episcopal was spacious. Baptists sang and danced; Episcopalians were reserved and stately. Mama’s friends shook their tambourines in North Philly. Dad’s sang hymns in the foreign outlands of Southwest Philly.
Dad’s church was vast, reflecting substance and wealth, yet it didn’t feel like home. Maybe Mama’s church was a sweatbox. Dad’s seemed a cold fortress. Soon I began to seek my own spirit-refuge, going wherever I felt the spirit lead me. Like to the synagogue.
II
THROUGH READING the Bible and other books, I knew that the Scriptures were supposed to be the Word of God. I thus reasoned that among the Jews, whose faith is rooted in the Old Testament, I would find this Word in a purer form. One day I went to seek it.
In North Philly’s bustling black and Puerto Rican neighborhoods, Jews were a distinct and rare minority—old men, and a few women, who sold chickens, clothing, or peanuts. Their house of prayer, however, was hardly distinct: a small synagogue, it stood recessed, tucked in between the storefronts that margined it like the edges of a book cover.
Inside the vestibule, six or seven old men stood, chanting in an unknown tongue. They wore yarmulkes on their heads, and prayer shawls fastened across their chests covered their stooped shoulders. The room was dark, and what little sun seeped in hardly penetrated the dimness. Dust motes swam like goldfish in thin ribbons of filtered light. To this day, I remember the dust; the dust of old stones, of old men. And the smell of old men.
The rabbi, his eyes enlarged by bifocals, shuffled over to me, his shoulders stooped, his eyes sharp. “Can I help you, young man?” His speech was guttural, thick; colored with Yiddishisms. There seemed to be—or was I only imagining it?—an aura of fear around him stirred, perhaps, by my entrance. Who was this big, beardless youth confronting him?
As tall black men learn to do, I made myself mentally smaller, and looked askance as I explained my reason for entering the synagogue.
“Yes, sir. I—umm—I’m—umm . . . l wanna learn about Judaism.”
“Vy iz dat?”
“Well, I’m interested in learning about the religion that really began Christianity.”
“Vell—Vy?”
“Umm . . . becuz I think I wanna become a Jew.”
“Dyou vat? Vat you mean? Vy dyou say dat?”
“Well—I’m interested in a pure religion. I’ve read that the Bible has been tampered with; there are different translations and stuff. I wanna study what God really said, you know . . .”
The rabbi stared at me. He was trying to formulate an answer, but the words stuck to his tongue. I looked into his eyes and saw incredulity dueling with quiet surprise. Is he serious? silly? he seemed to be asking. Then he turned and looked around, as if searching for something.
“Vait uh minute.”
“Zis vill help you, young man,” he said, handing me an envelope, and walking me to the door.
“Ven you are finished, come back, ya?”
“Thank you, sir!”
“By ze vay, dyou know, zair ah black Chews. Haf
