A Boundary

Before the pandemic and the necessity of so many boundaries, I traveled to New York, a precursor to Thanksgiving in Philadelphia with the rest of the family. I stayed in Harlem, close to another Airbnb we had inhabited the year before. This time on my own, a walk up to the second floor to one small room with the bed in a generous closet. I entered the space for the first time and felt immediately comfortable, The retired teacher downstairs who welcomed me, gentle and Jewish. So, no boundaries there.

 As Sunday approached, I knew I wanted to go to Church. To a Baptist church. To hear the singing and maybe some dancing. I didn't want to isolate myself from the life in this place so different from my past. I found the place…the Abyssinian Baptist Church. It was famous in Harlem and of course the tourists flocked so I was instructed, via some Yelp page, to arrive early. I trekked from my apartment to one of the "Best Coffee Shops" in the neighborhood. I had to Google that too. I suppose this internet search that I do every time I arrive somewhere - looking for morning coffee at someplace unique and local and un-Denny like -is another example of the boundary I live within. I don't mean to isolate myself, but I like good coffee.

 So, I found the tiny shop within sight of the church. I lined up with others, standing in the line for tourists while there was a second line for church members. We were told to go to the balcony. Me and a bunch of other white folks. The orchestra below was filled with hats and suits and people who I assumed lived nearby. They were black and, in this moment, the privileged, though I assumed they might not have felt so in other places. There were announcements and singing and then the blessings started. The "God" talk and the stuff that Jewish girls don't hear in modern synagogues surrounded by well dressed, if uptight, lawyers and doctors. Our reform temple was famous in Los Angeles for our pacifist rabbi who was also the father of my best friend. He marched with John Lewis and protested the Vietnam war. In Sunday school we were escorted to meetings of the John Birch society and listened to Erica Huggins of the Black Panthers. The idea was not to feel any boundaries, at least not intellectual ones, even as I returned home to the house with the pristine swimming pool.

 Here in Harlem, at the church with the balcony and the Sunday morning tourist attraction there was also a pool. This one was small and was wheeled onstage for the baptism of anyone so desiring to be blessed. But not anyone, not for the white tourists with balcony seats. There was a line of black women and children and young men. In turn each stepped into the pool. A second person who I imagined was a member of the congregation would step behind to gently lower the volunteer into the water, a head tipped back or dunked or both. It was the moment of blessing, of baptizing. A moment I had no corollary for…perhaps my own wedding or the Bris of my son? Even in the balcony, for that moment, the boundaries were removed as I found myself teary and moved. Why did I feel anything watching a black stranger submerging himself in a tiny pool that had been wheeled onstage as if a magician were about to pull some rabbit or saw some woman?

 The music was loud and two large screens magnified the stage as if we were at a rock concert. I only knew synagogues with quiet, restrained music. Yes, an organ and voices, but still bound by decorum. Certainly, without water splashing onto the stage.

 After the service and the singing and the splashing, we were ushered back downstairs as all concluded. The worn carpet and framed photographs of church members or the illustrious who had donated remind me now of the Winterland ballroom and those Grateful Dead concerts of the 70s. There were no boundaries then either. Hitchhiking to San Francisco from Santa Cruz for concerts and marches was safe, or so I thought.

 In Harlem I felt safe to go to the bodega down the street for a turkey sandwich or a bottle of water. To stand below a tall counter as the only white person, the only white woman. I didn't know of a boundary. I wish I could have stood in the pool line and been dunked onstage. I wonder what it would have felt like? Never needing to go the Mikveh as perhaps my sister-in-law did when she converted to the faith that my father could never understand someone choosing since after all, "why would someone want to be a member of a religion whose members have been persecuted throughout history?"

I am glad I found good coffee on a Sunday morning in Harlem and stood in line to sit in a balcony to feel blessed even if I was not eligible for the swimming pool.