“Spencer, you’re black?”
“Yes, sir.”
“Well, you know what they say: ‘If you’re not part of the solution, you’re part of the problem.’ ”
“Mom?”
“That’s wonderful news, Hadar. And don’t worry about Nana, she’ll come around. Christ, our kick-return coverage is pitiful this year! Someone tackle that boy!”
Grandma did come around, on the condition that Spencer convert to Judaism. During that last semester before graduation, Spencer began his conversion by meeting with the Hillel House’s clergyman, Rabbi Eisenstadt, on alternate Thursdays. Together they studied the tenets of the Jewish faith, reciting passages and prayers applicable to the conversion. One Thursday, Rabbi Eisenstadt asked Spencer how he, as a Jew, would spend Christmas Day. Spencer said he’d go to the movies like everyone else, and Rabbi Eisenstadt pronounced him fit to be an American Jew. Mikveh, the ceremonial cleansing, was held in a stagnant pond on the college’s south campus. Spencer exited the waters, sopping wet, dripping with algae, silt, and soggy underbrush, physically dirtier than when he went in, but spiritually purified. “Congratulations, Spencer,” Rabbi Eisenstadt said proudly. “I’ve forgotten to ask you one thing, Spencer, but it shouldn’t be a problem. You’re circumcised, aren’t you?” Spencer blanched, slowly shook his head no, and was handed the business card of a Mr. Epstein, emergency mohel.
The bris had all the backroom horrors of a 1950 Mexican-border-town abortion: the mailed instructions, code words to be exchanged at the rendezvous point in front of a corner pharmacy. Spencer and Hadar climbed into a minivan already seating two other blindfolded goy/Jew couples. During the long, meandering ride to the clandestine medical offices, Spencer tried to memorize auditory landmarks, just in case.
“The mohel will see you now,” the nurse said, guiding Spencer down a dim corridor lit with buzzing and blinking fluorescent tubes.
“Relax, my friend. I’m Mr. Epstein.” Mr. Epstein’s breath smelled of gin and lime, and to Spencer’s disappointment, he was clean-shaven. Spencer had pictured a man with an Eastern European accent and a full beard. With a callous, ungloved hand Mohel Epstein tugged on Spencer’s penis as if he were ringing a church bell. “Oww!”
“You’re penile sensitive — we’ll use the anesthesia.” Mohel Epstein peeled back Spencer’s foreskin and took a sip of his drink. “A bit of smegma buildup — Nurse Lacey, the novocaine.” Mohel Epstein plunged the needle into the tip of Spencer’s penis, and the last thing Spencer felt was Epstein stenciling a very crooked line around what he called the “turtleneck” of his penis.
As a blindfolded Spencer groped his way into the van for the return trip, he felt Epstein place a hand on top of his head. “Hold up a second, son, you need a name. Henceforth, you shall be known by the Hebrew name of Yitzhak.” Spencer was disappointed, having hoped for a short, sporty three- or four-letter name: Ari, Zev, Seth. He’d never known a Seth who wasn’t cool.
For the next two weeks, Hadar treated Spencer like a wounded war veteran come home. She cooked, sang, and teased him into painful erections. One night she drew a pair of dark sunglasses on the white gauze bandage that covered his dick head, playfully addressing Spencer as “Yitzhak, the invisible penis.” On unveiling day, Hadar unwrapped the bandages. Instead of saying “ta-dah” and welcoming Spencer’s new penis into the world with a little fellatio, Hadar covered her mouth to stifle a scream and ran out of the bedroom sobbing. Spencer examined his new member. His dick looked as if it had been mutilated by a broken grade-school sharpener. He vainly tried to blow and brush away the corkscrew bits of scar tissue from his penis as if they were wood shavings. “Not to worry, honey — it’s just a little bruised, is all.”
Despite the newfound carnal pleasures she received from Spencer’s penile mangling, Hadar left him at the end of the summer. “You’re too Jewish,” she explained, leaving him to a pile of law-school rejection letters.
As a result of his conversion efforts, Spencer’s grades had dropped so dramatically that despite his skin color and his ability to pay for three years of graduate education without financial assistance, he couldn’t get admitted to even the chintziest law schools. Spencer thought of appealing the decisions but knew no admissions board in the country would be willing to acknowledge the mind-numbing rigors of a black male in an interracial relationship. “But you don’t understand, dating a white girl is an extracurricular activity!”
Not wanting to waste his conversion, Spencer moved to New York and enrolled in Hebrew Union’s rabbinical program. Four years later he graduated, second-to-last in his class, and with one job prospect—“kosherizing” the steers in a slaughterhouse in Ames, Iowa. Turning down the offer, Rabbi Throckmorton supplemented his modest trust fund by guest-lecturing at the more liberal synagogues. His most popular address was entitled “The Ignored Indispensability of Jewish Support for African-American Politics and Art Forms: Without the Observers of Shabbat There’d Be No Martin Luther King Mountaintop, Bebop, Hip-hop, or Bad Shakespeare Productions.” Soon word of the existence of a hip young rabbi “who just happens to be black” spread. Spencer obtained notoriety as a freelance rabbi, speaker, and journalist, and New York City’s leading Jewish and secular publications, mistaking his innocuousness for intelligence, competed for his services. Spencer was the only black friend of many of the city’s political organizations. And since there was only one degree of separation between him and the Manhattan activists, but an immeasurable distance between them and the rest of mysterious black America, officers of various organizations would ask Spencer to recommend like-minded and like-tempered black folks for those high-paying display-window positions for which qualified black candidates were invariably hard to find. “Rabbi Throckmorton, do you know any black people qualified to head up our financial department in Milwaukee? Remember, they must be smart as a whip.” No one ever called Spencer looking for qualified white candidates who were smart as a whip, or even fellow Jews who were dumb as a doorknob; but he didn’t mind so long as they called.
Spencer’s junket to East Harlem was no altruistic act. The trust fund was petering out, and Spencer was on assignment, as one of the few black writers who, as his African-American editor at a local paper put it, “possess a command of the language that most of us don’t have. Can describe the perverse ghetto mentality in a vernacular familiar to our readers. Doesn’t write in music-magazine expletive.” Spencer had been shocked by his editor’s elitist banter, but the banknote on the condominium was due, and with a gracious smile he played along. “I’m just keeping it real, homeboy.”
Having schmoozed up the editor, he pitched an idea for a Sunday feature, using the tried-and-true derisive-article-about-minorities-written-by-a-minority approach. “Let’s capitalize on the city’s decreasing crime rate,” he said, straightening his tie to convey his seriousness and urbanity. “My sense is that your readership wants reassurance that this drop is more than just a lull. They’re seeking a guarantee that the criminal element — and let’s be frank, I mean the feral African-American and Hispanic youth, and one or two Italian boys — isn’t in hibernation like locusts awaiting nature’s signal. Who’s to say that one day without warning the hatchlings won’t swarm and devour the city?”
The editor tilted back in his chair, thumbs linked under his suspenders. “A CAT scan of the sleeping giant. It’s a bit alarmist — where’s the human interest angle?”