Free The Unthinkable Thoughts of Jacob Green by Joshua Braff Page B

hate
The Muppet Show,
and deny having any idea how the LEGO firehouse got under my bed. He’s cool, I’m not; he’s rock, I suck; he drives, I can’t; he drinks, I can’t; he fucks, I wish. I’m a bar mitzvahed junior high student with braces, a bedtime, and a father so far up my ass you can see him performing in my pupils. I want to hate stuff like Asher and have punched holes in the walls behind my posters. I want a girlfriend with stone-washed jeans and tobacco breath and the gumption to give blow jobs. I want someone to paint the
Highway to Hell
album cover on the back of
my
jean jacket and smoke weed and go to concerts and screech tires and swig Stroh’s and flipoff cops when they’re not looking. Instead I’m in fuckin’ temple again at 6:30 A.M ., waiting to wrap tefillin on the anniversary of my grandfather’s death, listening to my father pontificate on the downfall of my brother’s faith. Who, by the way, should be standing right next to me, strapping his tefillin onto his ass too. But isn’t. “Why?” I ask. “Because Brigitte’s a goy, because Dad’s a dick, because I don’t give a fuck, and because I feel like Kunta Kin Kike, when I’m bound up in tefillin straps,” he answers. “That’s why.”
    Just inside the sanctuary I pull the thing out of its velvet bag. Tefillin are two black boxes that contain verses from Scripture that bar mitvahed males affix to their foreheads and arms with leather straps. Forever my vote for most bizarre Judaic ritual, the impetus comes from Deuteronomy in which God says, “You shall bind [the verses] for a sign on your hand, and they shall be for frontlets between your eyes.” A less popular and figurative interpretation suggests that God wanted these crucial writings to be kept at hand and in sight. But I guess some early rabbi decided to take this literally and one thing led to another and now I’m strapping a black leather box to my face while listening to my father lambaste his son.
    “
I’m
here.
You’re
here. Is
he
here? No! No, he’s not.”
    To my left bicep I’ll moor the other box, which is attached to a long strand of the inch-wide leather strap. And after a quick prayer I’ll wrap it tightly all the way down my elbow, forearm, wrist, and fingers in this extremely precise coiling process that can only be learned with practice. For weeks before my bar mitzvah I was absurdly lost in the specifics of wrapping tefillin. But it was Asher, believe it or not, who helped get me through it.
    “And now he’s punishing
me,
” my father says, lifting his “for frontlets” box on his forehead, “and his grandfather’s memory.Just . . . flat-out ignoring this crucial day in my life and why? Why Jacob? Why isn’t
this
day, the day of my father’s death, a crucial day in your brother’s life? Easy. Selfishness. Self-indulgence. Self-interest. Well, you know something? I can be selfish too. How’s he goin’ to college without money? Ask him! Who does he think’s paying for it? Who?” He centers the
shel rosh
box above his brow ridge and looks at me for a reaction.
    “I don’t know.”
    My father shakes his head and tosses his
talit
around his shoulders. “If all you do is take and take and take, then you’re a
fool
to extend your hand. What goes around, Jacob, will for
ever
come around. Trust me,” he says pointing at the ceiling. “He’s watching. Always.”
    O N THE WAY home from synagogue my father says I have to write twenty thank-you notes per night for my bar mitzvah gifts. There are hundreds of them and he feels I’m way behind. Each note will be individually checked for proper spelling, grammar, syntax, and word choice, and I’m told over and over that each syllable should be considered “a jewel, a cut and cleaned jewel.” He asks if I understand this. I tell him I do.
    He tears the first ten I write into tiny tan bits and lets the pieces rain onto my hair. He then pounds my desk so hard he has to grip his hand and hop