Yerachmiel’s forehead creases as he thinks. “Is there a mitzvah in the Torah to be a baal korei? To write a sefer Torah, yes. But to learn how to lein? I don’t recall”

Bereishis: In the Beginning

Shlomo cradles an imaginary megaphone in both hands, then brings it up to his lips. “Gather round, gather round, today is a momentous occasion as, just three months shy of his thirteenth birthday, Yerachmiel has his very… drumroll… first… trumpet fanfare… bar mitzvah lesson.”

Shlomo looks around and nods, gratified, to the overwhelming applause of little Chani and Sara.

“And in honor of this occasion, Mommy and I… Mommy! Where are you? Ah, here you are… would like to present you with your very own Tikkun.”

With a bow and a flourish, Shlomo stretches out his hand to give the brand-new Tikkun to Yerachmiel. He gives his son a one-armed hug. “Ready?”

Yerachmiel nods.

“Then let us begin the solemn occasion of passing on the family heritage.”

They sit down together and Yerachmiel turns his little face up to him, small as a nine-year-old, thin, with a tuft of brown hair that goes the wrong way.

“This is your heritage. Your inheritance. Your yerushah.”

Yerachmiel raises his green eyes. “An inheritance connotes a monetary transaction.”

“Ding! Right you are. Just the other week I heard of a family in Bnei Brak — couldn’t afford a day trip to an amusement park, imagine that — who inherited a million dollars. But this is more than money, this is more than bills and coins.” He brings his face close to his son and whispers theatrically. “It’s a spiritual inheritance.”

Yerachmiel’s forehead creases as he thinks. “Is there a mitzvah in the Torah to be a baal korei? To write a sefer Torah, yes. But to learn how to lein? I don’t recall.”

Chaya always tells him that the more it hurts, the more desperate his jokes get. The lines fly through his head, but he swallows them down.

“Let’s put that to the side. What I mean to say, Yerachmiel” — he opens the cover of the Tikkun, closes it, flips it back and forth — “I mean to say that this means a lot to me, to lein every week. Here.” He points to his heart, “Ba-boom, ba-boom, ba-boom. And I got that from Zeidy and he got it from his father and on and on through cities and shtetls and who knows where. They probably practiced as they rode to the market on a horse and cart, for all I know.”

Yerachmiel’s eyebrows zoom down in the middle and his mouth is pinched. Lost him.

“Okay. Let’s back up. What I’m trying to say is that it means a lot to me — in here — that you’re beginning to learn how to lein.”

Yerachmiel opens his mouth. Here it comes, another objection. But then he closes his mouth. Relief. For now.

A week later, the lessons are not going well.

“Explain to me, Chaya,” Shlomo says, exasperated. “Explain how he can stand in shul each week and follow the leining like a hawk, correcting me, or the bar mitzvah boy, G-d help the poor soul, before anyone else. On the word, the trop, dagesh or no, he knows the right tune, can produce it perfectly. But when he tries it himself, he’s a mess.”

Chaya just shrugs her shoulders. “Maybe he’s just picking up something from you. Some anxiety?”

He brushes away her words, he’s not finished. “It’s like, he’s got the words. He’s got the trop. But when he puts the two together, all of a sudden it’s an… unholy mess. He’s halfway down the line with the tune, but on the previous column with the words of the pesukim. It’s like this split.” He shakes his head.

Chaya takes a long sip of coffee, which annoys him more, because she drinks too much coffee, it can’t be good for her, and she drinks it at eleven o’clock at night, claiming it does nothing to her. And she does fall asleep, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t, can’t at the best of times.

“Maybe it’s the pressure.”

Yerachmiel is allergic to pressure. Chaya had told him to start the whole leining thing a year ago, on his twelfth birthday, the way his own father had done with him. By the time he was up to his bar mitzvah, he had learned the entire Sefer Shemos, not just his parshah of Mishpatim.

But Shlomo had waved off her concern. This was Yerachmiel that they were talking about. Yerachmiel, who, from when he had come to shul at the age of five, had insisted on standing right up there, at the bimah, a Chumash in his hand. At first they had thought it was cute — the kid could barely read. But then Shlomo had tripped up, said a beis with a dagesh instead of without, and Yerachmiel had corrected him, right there, in shul, in front of everyone, at the age of what, six.

Amazing how precocious becomes uncomfortable and uncomfortable becomes embarrassing. When he was ten and loudly corrected bar mitzvah boys, it wasn’t so much fun. Shlomo had asked Yerachmiel to stop, but his son, for once, was indignant. “But it’s wrong. And the Torah has to be read right.”

He had stumbled for words to explain, but only ended up making a mess of things. Which was even worse than not saying anything at all, because now each correction wasn’t just about the word or the trop, it was about showing his father that he believed in living up to his principles. At least, that was how Shlomo took it. Chaya said he read too much into it.

“He knows this stuff, Chaya. He knows it with his eyes closed. He’s grown up with it on my knee.”

“Pressure for the bar mitzvah, then.”

He pushes back his chair, stands up, and yawns.

“Well, there’s not too much we can do about that. A bar mitzvah is a bar mitzvah.”

“How’s Naftoli?” she asks suddenly.

“Not so great. He spends too much time in the wheelchair, it’s not good for his lungs. But the PT can’t manage more than twice a week.”

She clucks. “I’ll call your mother tomorrow.”