Running With Strangers
Mordechai Gorelle2011Off the Derech
credit: Shuggy
It started with a woman. (Doesn’t it always?) I noticed her reading Intern Nation on the downtown F train. Doing my best to hide my Brooklyn Jewish accent, I asked her if she was enjoying her book. She glanced up, her blue eyes wide.
“Sorry, what did you say?”
“Are you enjoying your book?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. It’s very interesting.” She described the book. She told me she worked for a documentary filmmaking company. I told her I had applied for a summer internship at Moxie Firecracker, a local documentary film company, but the interview was rescheduled over and over again, so that summer ended before they saw me. We both had a good laugh. Her stop came, and she left.
I wasn’t raped or fondled. She hadn’t thrown me into a burlap bag, sunk a rusty ax into my back or strangled me until I choked on my own blood and died.
Huh.
As a child, I had been warned:
“They’re going to kidnap you.”
“They’ll rape and murder you.”
Strangers were dangerous.
Unless they were yiddishe strangers. A fellow Yid would always help you and look out for you.
Only years later, when I started going to The Moth, New York’s live storytelling series, did I begin to challenge the idea that anyone who looked or dressed differently than my parents was a bogeyman. One after another, people got up on stage and told stories about themselves. Some stories made me laugh, some made me cry. Some did both. I saw past the jeans and polo shirts, the pink hair and mini-dresses. I realized that these scary goyim were people too.
I used to keep my head low on my F train commute, sticking my face in a book or sefer, but now I grew curious about the people around me. The hipsters getting on at Fort Hamilton, the pregnant mothers with their strollers at 7th Avenue in Park Slope, the yuppies holding Trader Joe’s bags at Carroll Street, the suited lawyers and their clients at Jay Street, old Chinese women with their carts at East Broadway, the homeless who shuffled through the train cars.
I started talking to the bogeymen.
After the documentary film maker, I tried a tattooed man in khaki shorts, who wore a shoulder bag with minesweepers on it. He was plugged into his iPod.
I cleared my throat and raised my voice.
“Cool bag, man.”
He pulled an earbud out.
“Sorry?”
“Nice bag.”
“Oh, thanks.”
“Where can I get one of those?”
“I made it myself. I have this industrial sewing machine at home.”
“Have you heard of Etsy?”
“Yeah, my girlfriend and I discussed making a business out of it, but then I found a job.”
“Guess that’s a good thing.”
“Yup.”
“Have a nice day!” I wished him before I got off.
I checked my limbs on the platform, patted my pocket for my wallet.
All intact. Everything in its place.
A few days later I was sandwiched between two passengers on the F, trying to read my newspaper. There was little room to turn the pages without elbowing the woman on my left or the bald man in the rumpled suit on my right.
“This is why Kindles are awesome, I guess,” I said to the bald man after I almost sliced his cheek open with the Business section.
“Oh, yes,” he chuckled.
A woman standing in front of me was struggling to write on her notepad. I offered her my seat, and once standing could open my paper without assaulting anyone.
“Much better,” I said to my former seat mate.
“I’m sure,” the bald man replied.
There was the Russian programmer on the B.
The African grandmother on the 6.
The MSNBC television host on the M.
There was me, talking to all of them, the goyish bogeymen, their frightening masks removed to reveal people. Human beings. Just like me. Me, struggling to remove my own mask, a convoluted mixture of Yiddish, English, and Hebrew, struggling to show them, I, too, am just like you.
15 Responses
nice piece but extremely unrealistic. PULLeSE- who chats up starngers on the train? And while your point is that gentiles arent scary- you are trying way too hard to chat them up. Theyre reading, and listening to music and you are…trying to shmooze with them? Why ? Its the typical Jew tryin to prove himself.
Like i said . nice piece- but very not beleivable.
Lissa, if I may.
There’s a great deal of body language studying done before approaching strangers. I don’t just go over and say something. Rather, I make sure that the person is bored or isn’t doing anything.
As far as “proving myself”, a stranger’s validation isn’t worth much. Flattery only goes so far
While I welcome everyone’s opinions, I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t make judgement calls like that from one essay.
“Its the typical Jew tryin to prove himself.”
Anyone else disturbed by the undertone in this comment?
Who decided that charedim call all goyim bad?
Aree — My first grade rebbe. And my second-grade rebbe. And third grade. And fourth.
Come to think of it, I believe it actually started with my nursery school teacher.
Chezee, it didn’t start with your nursery morah. It goes way back; vechesed le’umim chatas.
Wow, nice piece Eli! I didn’t know you had it in you?!
I knew you for your great sense of humor but not the writing part 
Truly yours
Your buddy from the Daily Show
Brings home once again the truly disgusting all-pervasive 200 proof racism of the frumma. The world was created for us and us alone. Everyone else just lives there. They’re all rapists and murderers. They stay up at night coming up with new ways to oppress us. You can never trust one of them. Someday when everything is sweetness and light they will be our slaves.
Even talking to them is an accomplishment, a really transgressive break from everything you’d been taught. If we changed some of the words I’d be congratulating Buford for getting up the courage to talk to a nigger.
But in the end it’s significant progress. Rejecting the evil parts of your upbringing is a real accomplishment.
Chesed leumim -am heoratzus deorayso
My girsa says butzelem elokim osoh haodom
I still think that the need to prove oneself on a train is just riduculous. If you were truly comfortable in your own skin – you sit on the train and listen to music…read a book..or the paper- not look to strike up conversation with strangers on the train.
I said its a good piece…but not realistic.
Halacha batorah eisav soneh yackov .
Zeh germanye shell edom
truthfully, I went through the entire system, from prenursery thru 2nd year basi medresh, and have never encountered any of the anti-jewish ideas described in the story or the comments… I’ve definitely meet and talked with a lot of non-jews, and some of them are quite interesting, but in the end I just get bored (they almost always come off as incredibly shallow…). If you guys (and girls) don’t really think that you’re even a little bit different, you’re trying too hard. lol enjoy life because you want to, not because god said you can’t (jk, he never said that).
well, Id love to inform you guys that i was once the same way. same attitude about goyim. until… no not until i went off the derech cuz i thankfully never did, but until i married a nice satmar guy. I might add that he’s European, and extremely friendly. He literally talks to to everyone. people on the train(including women), janitors, policemen, salespeople, and pretty much everyone he meets. at first i was shocked at his behavior, but after a while i saw the beauty in it. Its amazing that that he treats everyone like human beings. he realizes that they have a personal life and feelings too. i was also amazed at the way people responded and opened up to him. it changed my attitude towards strangers.