My life is an out-of-the-money call option about to expire. Time value is quickly diminishing to naught. What is left of my career at the options exchange is in a corrugated banker box I am carrying to the elevator. I am tired, confused, forgetful. Dreams are no longer confined to the realm of sleep. I shut my eyes. Vivid images appear and vanish when I try to capture them. Ruminations are of an episodic past, whether legendary or real. My future is fantasies of a time gone by and playing boogie woogie piano Wednesdays at Captain Jack’s on the Southside.
My great-great-grandmother Leya was the daughter of Rabbi Shmuel Jacovitsky. Rabbi Jacovitsky was a renowned scholar and author of esoteric interpretations of the Zohar in the tradition of the Holy Ari. For fourteen hours a day, except the Sabbath, he poured over the Midrash and treatises of the great scholars and meditated on the meaning of prayers and the letters of the Tetragrammaton. Upon the publication of his seminal work, The Sefirot of Evil, he was celebrated by rebbes from Vilnius to Odessa. In the Grand Synagogue of Kiev, built with the generosity of his father-in-law Aaron Brodsky, Rabbi Jacovitsky meandered through the aisles on the Sabbath, followed by his favorite students and carrying the Torah with its gold breastplate and crown and embroidered velvet mantel. He nodded approvingly at the men who approached and touched the Torah with their kissed tallit. From the bima, he flailed his arms about as he told of being transported without the passage of time by a chariot drawn by a host of angels, half-men and half-beast, to commune with the spirit of the Great One, the Ba’al Shem Tov. “As I left his holy presence, I was bathed in the pure light of Ultimate Nothingness. I became one with the spirit of Hashem the Creator and the goodness that flowed forth.” The women in the balcony sat transfixed. The men stood and davened. Gone was the short, bespectacled Shmuel with an unkempt gray beard and drooping belly, stooping as he went about a day interrupted by his bodily functions. Before them was a blessed one, a Master of the Divine Name, the Ba’al Shem of Kiev.
It was apparent from an early age that Leya was a piano prodigy. She was drawn to piano by the age of three. By four, Leya could play by ear tunes that she had heard only once. A member of her father’s congregation came by once a week to give her lessons. Leya did not need to be coaxed to practice. The piano was her only friend. She spoke to it with her fingers, and it responded...
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