Mrs. Fish's dishes

You never know about neighbors, until you inspect their storage rooms.

     "It's almost Pessah, and my husband left me," Mrs. Fish, from the third floor, explained.

    Why this news brought her to my front door I did not figure out so fast. I could have asked, but I was afraid she might have an answer. "Well, I hope he has a hag sameach," I said quickly, and inched the door closed.

    She didn't try to stop me, because she was already inside. She was holding her apron in a most threatening manner. "Hand over my dishes or I call the police," she hissed.

    If I was going to be arrested, I wanted to know why. Her version was that the dirty rat (Mr. Fish) hid their Pessah dishes in my storage room before running away with the Bienstocks' Filipino, who had connived the plot while she was cleaning by me, stealing my machsan key to facilitate the temporary transfer until the black-marketeers could steal the dishes away. I'd love to hear her husband's version.

    It was all so carefully thought out that I didn't want to disappoint her by telling her my cleaning lady is Russian. I proposed that Mrs. Fish inspect my machsan herself.

    We went to the basement, and you know how it is, just before Pessah: all the neighbors were down there, lugging boxes of dishes in, and shlepping boxes of dishes out. (Except for the Lewitzkys, who could be counted on to outsmart the system. "I'll be the only man in the building without a hernia," he said smugly. "The kitchen stays put, and we can eat down here for eight days." Like a Pessah succa. It was brilliant.)

    "STOP!" Mrs. Fish hollered at everyone but the Lewitzkys. "Drop everything!" Only Baruch Blech, the second-floor idiot, took her literally. Widening her search, she announced a snap inspection of Pessahware, and God help anyone in possession of an off-gray dandelion pattern on off-white bone china, "made with real Chinese bones, and worth a fortune."

    I had better things to do, but I wasn't going to miss this.

    Blech was on the floor, piecing together his dairy set. It had -- or had had -- a kind of mauve squashed-fly pattern, so he was given safe passage to face his irate wife.

    "Tsk, tsk," Mrs. Fish clucked at Gluck. "Plastic? For Pessah?!" Gluck blushed. Ben-Lulu's carton was opened to reveal a service for 18, and skittish old Feigendorf blanched, because he lives right below them. Deep suspicion fell upon Litvak, who wasn't hauling dishes at all but a large bag of dog food: what, the whole country is kitchen-switching for Pessah but them? It was an unsettling thought that somewhere in our building there was going to be dreaded hametz. Mrs. Fish practically accused him of stockpiling pitot in his freezer for the holiday, but stopped short of demanding a look-see.

    Her dishes were not found, but her suspicions were not unfounded. The search would have to continue machsan-to-machsan.

 

THERE'S A lot of ritual baggage if you're a Jew, and it's all crammed into either a storage room or that wonder of Israeli compactness, the boidem, or crawl-space.

    Gentiles need a storage room for things like power tools, and a wine rack, and truck parts (in England, for corpse parts).

    We're loaded down with religious items, like Purim costumes, hanukkiot the kids made, and hundreds of complimentary Grace After Meals prayerlets we get from insurance companies, supermarkets and weddings and can't bear to dispose of.

    It was a problem for the legendary Wandering Jew, because we couldn't wrap up our worldly possessions in a bedsheet and sling it over our backs, like some poor Third World refugee. We're weighted down by the minutiae of our faith. It's right there in the Exodus narration (if you saw the movie), wherein we had to acquire oxcarts to haul the Pessah dishes for forty years and forty nights, correct me if I'm wrong.

    Where those Israelites ended up, it so happens, the apartments are small and cramped. All those oversized haggadot we get as gifts in a lifetime you can't fit on a regulation-sized Israeli living-room bookcase, what with all the other religious tomes fighting for space among the art books, cookbooks and videocassettes. The machsan doubles as a sort of geniza for overflow mahzors and benchers and haggadot and ersatz scrolls the kiddies use on Purim or Simchat Torah.

    And Christmas decorations. Look, this is Israel, we do things differently here. What's an authentic Israeli succa without cherubic Santa Claus ornaments, faux mistletoe and holy holly? Well, maybe not in a secular succa (because they understand what this stuff really is), but definitely in a haredi succa in Mea Shearim (where they don't).

    The only item you'll find in both a gentile toolshed and an Israeli machsan is lumber. They use it to make such things as a boathouse or a houseboat. We need wood only for a succa, and we reuse the same boards (and the same nails, in the same holes) for generations. Don't blame us if the rainforests are vanishing.

    Actually, we also need wood for a Lag Ba'omer bonfire, but we're very thrifty about it: every winter we lovingly plant new trees at Tu Bishvat, and three months later we chop 'em down for Lag Ba'omer firewood. Whatever's left standing is hacked down at Succot. But never mind; there's always Tu Bishvat to start the cycle again.

    Purim graggers, and special canvas shoes for atoning purposes; Hanukka games and dreidls, and maybe a shriveled etrog and lulav you couldn't bear to throw in the garbage: our seasonal ritual oddments fill a room. Flags and plastic boppers and barbecue accoutrements for Independence Day (you can always tell a settler's storage room: no flags. They're in use all year 'round). And of course, for Pessah, a complete double fully-equipped kitchen (meat and dairy) including everything but the kitchen sink, though in some homes, you never know.

    Anyway, that's what Mrs. Fish came upon in every machsan during her search.

 

BLECH HAD an idea. "Why don't we reorganize all our machsans? Instead of one for every family, we could have one for every holiday, so all our Pessah dishes would be --"

    "-- stolen by my ex-husband," Mrs. Fish snarled. (We would have considered the idea had Lewitzky suggested it, because he always had great ideas, unlike Blech.)

    Bienstock's machsan was a thing of beauty: orderly and clean, which storage rooms never are. Poor Bienstock. Mrs. Fish had only lost a husband; he lost a Filipino. I generously offered my Russian, which was only fair because I had been borrowing his woman for a few days of blitz cleaning. Everyone did, and no one knew. No wonder she ran away.

    The search wasn't turning up any off-gray dandelion-pattern dishes, as expected, but we did discover an original Rembrandt in Gluck's, and a bizarre collection of bird's nests in Spiegler's. You never know about neighbors, until you inspect their storage rooms. Birnbaum was revealed to be a spy (his luggage bore tagging from Baghdad airport), and by Aharoni we found a stash of archeological artifacts. One quick look at Ziff's files showed he cheats on income tax. Litvak's huge stock of dog food was peculiar, because he didn't have a dog. Blaumilch's pneumatic drill had us wondering. And Cohen, we discovered, isn't even Jewish.

    In my machsan we found mice. And Mrs. Fish's dishes.

    It turns out her ridiculous story was true.

    Apparently the black marketeers took my dishes by mistake. I was really upset, because of their sentimental value: they were a gift of the government when I was a new immigrant in the absorption center.

    It would have been nice if Mrs. Fish had invited me to eat by her. She didn't. Ben-Lulu said he'd love to have me over but they already had 18 to feed. Feigendorf, downstairs from Ben-Lulu, asked if he can stay by me for Pessah, and he'd bring his dishes. Lewitzky said we were both welcome to spend the holiday in his machsan. Blech, his dairy dishes shattered, asked Mrs. Fish if she could lend him a few of hers. (Well, why not? She wouldn't be feeding her husband's family anymore.)

    There were numerous wives upstairs impatiently waiting for the Pessah dishes, wondering what was taking us so long. We locked our storage rooms and went upstairs, wishing each other a "happy holiday, all things considered." In eight days we'd meet here again, to once more exchange Pessah dishes and neighborhood gossip.