As for the Temple dimmed in the distance, its star a sixth risen above the smoke, it’s been foreclosed upon by the State in a reckless invocation of, pay attention, eminent domain: it’s theological, you wouldn’t understand, better let the rabbis handle that, your former friends and neighbors; then its site haphazardly converted, seemingly overnight, all extant of its one hundred and eight floors, and with its ritzy penthouse, too, the highest gallery of the holy once intended as the Manhattan residence of the High Priest, which is Him’s what they’d been thinking when He’s old enough, if ever — to laudably lowincome, Section Shmoneh (8) governmentsubsidized housing (who’d use it as a shul, as it’d been suggested early in the planning process, who would pray on grounds so presumptive, so irremediably, irredeemably tainted, was the dissenting thought), essentially tenementspace set aside under new legislation specifically for the use of young, recently hitched couples (parking included, one cart per family, plus unlimited use of a post for the hitching of horses), husbands studying days at whichever yeshiva they might’ve qualified for, and that statesponsored, also, most of the more respected institutions situated Uptown at Park’s edge toward Harlem with a host of others scattered north throughout the Heights; their womenfolk taking in what laundry and sewing they can, cooking for their husbands home argumentweary, come sundown to this, the penultimate floor, hosting apartments #s 102–108, at present home to the Marys reinvented Malkas: three Malkas, or perhaps they prefer Malcha, who knows how they pronounce it, Kotsk, recently married off to triplets named Ivan, greencarded in from Russia, blackhatted out in Brooklyn before, exhaustedly, being relocated here, and two Malkas Plotsk, too, incredibly unrelated to one another though the younger’s a distant enough relation, it’s been said (by them), to the elder Kotsk if you know him, then a Malcha Upstairchik and her neighbor Malcha Downstairchik, though the both of them with their husbands they lived on the same floor and right nextdoor, lighting the Hanukah candles tonight in their windows with views to the Park not quite to die for but appreciable enough, they’ll live; they’re in their kitchens deepfrying latkes, flipping, then flipping again as if the very flatness of their lives, one side to the other, a conversion if slightly burning in the head, and stirring how they’re always stirring away at these thick, gooseskinned burbles of soups and cholents that they have to remind themselves every now and again not to add butter to because schmaltz, gribnes, flanken it’s fleischig, don’t forget — these new words stirring their mouths to a spit from the turn of the secular year, the false turn to which they’ve already turned their backs and with a poo poo over the shoulder poo to the past how they’re stirring dreidel round and round from nothing’s Nun to Gimel takes all in (their stomachs as wide as their households’ deepest pot, a donation), even through the Eve itself never once stilling themselves from their preparations in order to reflect, even for a moment, a moment with its own pregnancy, too, in the glow of the gathered lights, altogether eightdue.
Hanukah’s octal nights the generosity of seven days that end this year on Shabbos, and only then may the week commence with corruption: though there’d been no party last night, no popping of corks with the tongue in the cheek, no shikkers out in the streets wild and naked and hooting inhuman as in years way past immemorial, none, no observance; it’s just business as usual, and in another unusual season, in this winter perpetual, perpetuating, quarter be damned, with a reported 99 % probability of precipitation by midnight at the earliest and yet everyone wakes and rises the next morning to that slimmest of chances that everything’s going turn out just fine, God abides: the sun rises from out of the candlemelt of newly heirloomed menorahs, to be scraped out then sent back to their cherrywood cabinets, exiled for yet another year without polish. And would you believe, that even with that new cabinetry and great custom builtins, updated deluxe, the refridge slash freezer state of the art, the selfcleaning, Shabbosmode oven below the rangetop’s upgrade platinized stainless, the retiled kitchen with its counters and cooking surfaces retopped, too, new windows and doors and the furniture reupholstered, gevalt — they’ve still had trouble renting this unit?
