Karma Chassid

Settling back into life in New York City is always difficult when you've been in other American cities for too long. Fortunately for me, the last two weeks of partisan rancor were such that being bumped on subway platforms and nearly run over by three consecutive bike messengers felt like a warm embrace. Unfortunately for me, my landlord saw fit to use my absence as occasion to change the locks.

The loss of residence allowed me to return to Crown Heights and possibly reunite with Menachem Stein and his nefarious underworld. But that would have to wait, as first I needed a place to stay.

Great Aunt Rachel owns and maintains a four story, rent-stabilized apartment building with two units per floor. It's in a relatively tree lined street not far from the Eastern Parkway. A clean building smelling of Murphy's Floor Soap and Lysol, it has no front stoop and no backyard and all the windows on the front of the building have tastefully decorated bars. She only rents to Chassids.

Rachel maintains the bottom floor as her own and has combined the two units into one sprawling space. She lives alone and keeps no pets. At eighty-three she still maintains the plumming and minor repairs of all the building's units. She sees no reason to pay someone else to do a job she, herself, has always been capable of doing.

At the end of World War Two, she was a young girl in Chicago. For that reason, she has always been an avid Chicago Cubs fan and was actually present during the last appearance in the World Series by said team. She is also a lifelong FDR/Truman type Democrat. So, last week was particularly tough on her.

Over a breakfast of the kind of colon stripping porridge more familiar to Russian peasants than Brooklyn Chassids (yet food she swears is the sole reason for her vigor at her advanced age) she explained much to me:

"Politics and baseball. Oy, William! To be a Democrat and a Cubs fan now, this, William, this is to suffer. Just weeks ago my beloved Cubs and that lovely young black from the South Side were doing so well. And now, in one week of indignity, those shmuck Republicans jump ahead in the polls and the Cubs can only manage one win against opponents inferior. I'm practically put out of my head." To make her point all the more emphatic she kneads her brow with her left hand and spoons gruel with her right.

"It's not enough to have not won a World Series in one hundred years..." Her voice often trails off when she speaks of this fact. It used to drive her husband wild. We all suspected that there was another man in those two wild years in Chicago right after the war. Her late husband, Benjamin, would always rant: "Why the Cubs, eh? We live in New York! Fifty years we're New Yorkers! Two years, two festunkena years in some town in the Midwest and I have to hear about it day in and day out! Enough!" It never was.

"But, William, to have lived these last eight with that goyische disaster Bush? These last eight years have felt longer than any hundred I could have ever imagined!" She stands slowly to pour herself more coffee. "But, William, this is what we must bare. It is our historical role, Democrats and Cubs fans alike. We will not rest until the final vote is counted, the final out officially recognized by the official scorer. And we'll worry ourselves bald up until that day. But this William, this is what it is to have a stake in history, to feel it in your bones. Because the Republicans, they don't care! They've got money and influence and that... that... attack machine, the one that chewed on Hillary for eight years like month old Matza... it will be just fine if they don't elect the shiksa and altacocker. They'll spend the next four years making sure the guy with the Muslim name is able to accomplish little and suffer greatly. The Republicans know what it is to know historical dominance. Life becomes mere sport." She coughs for emphasis.

"But, I see a great link in the events of the last week. I see the work of God testing us, the pathetically devout. This will be the year, but it will not be easy. The temptation now is to lament and blame the baseball Gods or the convention calendars. Circumstances, pheh! The economy is a disaster. This is on our side, eh? Zambrano is getting extra rest along with Harden, this is good, no? The last week has been hard on the Democrats, the schedule not in their favor, right? The next three weeks put the Cubs mostly on the road against playoff caliber teams. Unfair? Neither. I see opportunity William. I see fortification and tough earned experience. Invaluable experience. Because I believe, for once, I'm on the right side of history, this time. As long as we stopping bitching and whining and worrying ourselves bald, this may be a Fall to remember."

Still standing, she turns towards the back window that looks directly onto another back window and lifts her chin slightly upward.