Misplaced Righteous Indignation

I’m fuming.

FUMING.

F-U-M-I-N-G!

I’ve just removed my key from the front door and crossed over the threshold.

The setting is my first floor apartment at 7 Keren Hayesod in Jerusalem. 

I lived there for a year — two buildings down and across the street from the Super Sol where King George starts.

About a 1¼-mile walk from the Western Wall.

1993

Even before I take the two steps to my bedroom and flip on the light, I know something is off.

I just know.

Then, lights on, I see it.

Instant fury.

I curse the air.

I mutter-scream bits of sentences—auditioning what I’ll say to a sympathetic ear, when I find one.

• “Can you believe their lack of common courtesy!”
• “How could they have violated my trust?”
• “If I—ever—if I ever speak to either again….”

✧✧✧

Until I had to leave for the movie, our three person chevrutah—Rachel, Mark, and I had been at my dining room table studying exceptions in Biblical Hebrew verb conjugation. 

There’s a word in Hebrew, chevrutah—stress on the second syllable—like, “Have-RUTH uh”—with a little phlegm for the ch at the start.

It means study partners.

But it’s more like “educational platoon-mates dedicated to pulling each other through that which needs to be learned.”

So, I left my two buddies with instructions on locking up when they left. 

✧✧✧

But, they violated my trust.

I trusted them in my house without me.

And they did this prank?

How could they?

They had tiled my very small bedroom in playing cards.

100s.

100s of cards.

Cards from three sets of Uno, three regular packs, along with a copious number from our favorite game, Taboo (we call it TA-boo—accent, Israeli style, on the first syllable). 

And one set of Pinochle cards, which I had because I expected that people in rabbinical school would play Pinochle between classes.

(N.B.—We played Euchre in the hallways.)

If there had been a camera at my ceiling’s center, you’d see that they had laid cards on every horizontal surface of my absurdly small (just bed) room.

✧✧✧

They thought this was funny!

And, actually, 33 years later, I do, too.

The problem was the movie I had gone to see—Schindler’s List.

Rachel and Mark, I’m sorry.

My righteous indignation was misplaced.

I love you, Chevurah-buddies.