Living in Herzliya and working in the Old City of Jerusalem means I get to ride the train to work in the morning. Other than cafes, there is no better place to meet and get to know the widely diverse group of people we call “Israelis.”
Last week on my morning commute to Jerusalem, I had a special encounter. I was on my way to teach an intelligent group of rabbis who study in our Sephardic Educational Center Beit Midrash in the Old City. The opening part of my planned lecture to them involved several quotes and reflections from Nobel Prize winner S.Y. Agnon’s monumental novel A Guest for the Night. It’s no secret to my readers that I have a deep love for Agnon’s writings. For those who wonder why a Sephardic rabbi reads an Eastern European writer like Agnon, that’s like asking why an Ashkenazi rabbi would read a Spanish-born Sephardic rabbi named Maimonides who wrote in Arabic. All Jewish literature belongs to all Jews.
As I sat on the train reading Agnon’s A Guest for the Night, two stops into my commute, a gentleman boarded the train and sat opposite me. I was dressed in my signature “Rabbi Bouskila rabbinic garb” – jeans, sneakers, a black sweater and a scarf. The gentleman opposite me was dressed in what Israelis call “Haredi garb” – a long black coat and a black fur hat. I’m clean shaven, he had a beard and long sidelocks. I held an Agnon book, he held a volume of Talmud. Can we get more stereotypical?!
He looked at me with a warm smile and asked: “Are you a teacher of literature?”
“Sort of,” I responded, shocked but pleasantly surprised by his question. “Not formally as my vocation, but literature – especially Agnon – forms a very big part of my teachings.”
Here came the clincher, from the mouth of those who are often branded as anti-modern:
“That’s great. It’s good to see that there are still people teaching Agnon. He was so brilliant, his literary style was so unique, and he has so much to say to us, still today.”
For the next 45 minutes, the two of us had the most fascinating intellectual and heartfelt exchange – about Agnon, Hebrew literature, music, art, Torah and Israeli society. The commuters were listening and watching in amazement how these two strikingly different looking individuals were engaged in such deep thought and conversation.
As we got off the train, we exchanged numbers and emails. We will meet again and continue our conversation, hoping – through our common love of Agnon – to foster Jewish unity.
The train in Israel is a magical place, and Am Yisrael – jeans and black coats together – are a magical people.
Shabbat Shalom
Rabbi Daniel Bouskila is the international director of the Sephardic Educational Center.
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