La vie soferet – moving house; Thursday

[hatam_soferet]

Downstairs neighbour has spent the afternoon in the garden in a deckchair.

I come in through the garden carrying a sefer Torah.

You see I left the sifrei Torah in the old apartment. First and foremost because I didn’t want to put the sifrei Torah in the moving truck, in boxes as if they were just anything, and second because this way, I could set up the aron kodesh for them so they would have a fitting place to rest as soon as they arrived. Flatmate had a car today, so we went to fetch them.

(Yes, sifrei Torah plural. One I own, and one I have because I’m repairing it.)

Anyway, there I am walking through the garden with a sefer Torah.

“A sefer Torah in my house!” says Downstairs Neighbour. “I can’t believe it!”

She opens the door for the Torah.

“What kehilla?” she asks. (Kehilla means congregation – she’s asking “to which community does this sefer belong?”)

“It belongs to me,” I say, slightly embarrassed, because owning a sefer Torah is rather like owning an original Da Vinci or something. It’s just not really something normal people do.

“I never heard of such a thing!” says she, calling the elevator.

I make the kind of smiley face that means “Well, now you have!”

“You must be very religious,” is her next comment.

This makes me want to laugh my socks off, because I’m wearing cargo pants rolled to mid-calf, ratty sneakers, and a v-necked T-shirt. I don’t feel very religious at all. So I mumble “Uh…I guess so…” or something similarly inarticulate, and thankfully bid her a good evening as we reach her floor.

Perhaps I should have dressed more thoughtfully (religiously?) to transport the sefer Torah, come to think of it. But it’s boiling hot outside so sober trousers, etc., didn’t even cross my mind, and my Becoming Clothes for Summers aren’t very good for navigating stairs with heavy objects, carrying as they do the risk of tripping on the billowy skirts and falling over. This, you understand, I did not want to do with a sefer Torah in my arms.

Anyway, the aron kodesh was made ready the previous day, and the sifrei Torah are now sitting inside it, quite as if they’d never moved. Downstairs Neighbour now lives below a sefer Torah, and my apartment is back to normal, just in New Frankfurt (a.k.a. Washington Heights) and not in Totally Manhattan (a.k.a. Riverdale)

Mirrored from hasoferet.com.

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

this sounds similar to the following encounter:

setting: january morning, 7am, freezing cold and still dark. Run into the British Jewish mother-in-law of neighbor in the entryway of the apt. I'm wearing pants.

She: Where in the world are you going this early? (as if I couldn't ask the same of her, but no matter)
Me: To daven.
She: Wow. You must be very frum. What do you do for work after minyan?
Me: I learn at yeshiva.
She: IN TROUSERS?!

(that was from emfish)

[(Anonymous)]

%)
(that's a rolling-eyes face)

Re: (that was from emfish)

[hatam_soferet]

Oh, that was you, emfish. I thought it was someone else :)

[hatam_soferet]

Hee.

If this is you, friend-with-many-LJ-accounts-and-love-of-privacy, can you perhaps work out an ungooglable way of idenifying yourself in comments? Maybe with acrostics, like in piyut? Double-encrypted, so you could call yourself Inkwell and start all your comments with "Inkwell," acrostic-ed...