Waiting for the Tenth Man

James arrived at the synagogue early. Almost fifteen years had passed since he'd last been here. It hadn't changed, a stark structure of old brick with no adornments of any kind. In the cool morning air the sounds of his leather shoes were sharp on the stone steps. The sun was bright, the day brisk. He took a deep breath, barely invigorated by the cold rush that filled his lungs, and opened the heavy wooden door.

Exhaustion wrapped his body like an old blanket. Too many sleepless nights in a row, living on alcohol and cigarettes, which was not his usual style. He hardly drank a drop and never smoked. Yet this past week, as he drifted further from his family, those vices fit. Now his mouth tasted foul, a sticky film covered his teeth. He knew he needed a shave. He'd promised his sister and his wife he would try this. And so he was here. 

The air inside was stale; the lobby dark. Religion had always been a shroud of darkness to him, probably because of this place and the people he had encountered here. He remembered a constant absence of color, of joy, except at holidays, when the release of pent-up emotion surged all around him. He was surprised that it was actually a tiny building. In his memory it was a monolith of righteousness. Off to the left was the Rabbi's study, where they said the morning Kaddish. The door was shut, but he heard murmuring on the other side. He grabbed the tarnished brass doorknob, turned it slowly, and went in.

He would rather have been anywhere else this morning, even back at the cemetery, than here. He didn't want to do this, but felt he owed his father at least this much, to say the Kaddish in a minyan. Scanning the room, he quickly counted. He was the ninth. Some of the old men looked at him, disinterested, went back to their quiet talking. Those rules hadn't changed. A quorum was still ten. Now he had to wait for someone else. He'd never understood the meaning of the numbers. Why couldn't it be nine? Wasn't nine a magic number? Ten seemed meaningless.

He barely remembered the prayer, had never known it completely. If the tenth man showed, it would be the same old scene he'd partaken in when young: all of them huddled and mumbling together the ancient prayer for the dead. Would he be able to read the Hebrew? Then again, there was no reason why he would have to say it aloud. None of these old men would. They'd all sway in their davening, practically hum the words, bending at the knees at the mention of the many names of God. He'd imitate them. He was great at faking this kind of thing. He had never paid attention when he was a student here, had learned only the beginnings of every prayer. Once things got going, and the congregation joined in, or when silent prayer was called for, James looked the part. The eight men present wore their prayer shawls, patiently waiting. If someone else didn't come soon, they'd break up, and James would have wasted the morning. 

James hadn't brought his own tallis, since his father was buried in it. He thought of the mad rush he and his sister had made for the funeral parlor, six days ago. They had to bring a suit of his father's for him to be buried in, his army discharge papers for the flag, and his father's tallis. "Where's Daddy's tallis?" he'd screamed at his grief-stricken mother. She was in shock and seemed not to hear. She sat on the edge of the bed watching her children tear the place apart. Finally he found his own, buried in a drawer. "Here's mine, c'mon, let's go." And then they'd gone shopping for their father's coffin.

The cardboard box was still by the door, full of "generic" tallises, for those like James who didn't have one. He grabbed a tattered one off the top, threw it around his shoulders. It was faded, stained, smelled vaguely of camphor. He took the yarmulke out of his pocket and stuck it on his head. 

He sat down beside an ancient grizzled man with rheumy eyes. The old man had a horrible odor and tufts of hair growing out of his ears. James was obviously the only one younger than sixty years. These men were probably all retired. He imagined them spending their days in the synagogue, arguing over the Talmud, not doing any good to anyone. Some were obviously retired businessmen, talking the stock market. A few were members of the synagogue, who came every morning to say their prayers. And one or two were like the man James sat next to, poor religious fools who spent the day in the synagogue because it was warm and safe from the cruel world outside. He was supposed to come and say Kaddish for a month. He'd give it this one day.

A few of the men had on Tefillin, the phylacteries. He'd once owned a set of the small leather boxes, had even liked the novelty of strapping them to his forehead and arm, with the long strip of leather that wound around his head down his arm, ending around his fingers to delineate a Hebrew letter.  

When he was twelve he and his friends had played with the Tefillin, swinging the boxes around their heads by the leather strips, singing "Holy boxes, holy boxes, we're not gonna eat our bagels and loxes," until his father had come upon them and screamed bloody murder. His father had thrown them out of the house. Why the hell did he care? He didn't give a damn about any religion. Why should he care that his son was misusing some holy artifact? He didn't even know what the boxes were for, couldn't even put them on. In his father's great plan to train his son in the religion he'd never known himself, he'd far surpassed his father in knowledge, but still profaned anything his father might have thought holy. But after that day he'd never played with the Tefillin again, and never strapped those boxes to his forehead, either. He had no idea where his Tefillin was now. Somewhere in his mother's attic, probably. 

The pious few who were wearing them today were already lost in their morning prayers. Outside he heard children on their way to school. Their happy patter sounded as clean as the outside air, and he wanted to be with them. Their sounds caused him to think back to when he'd been a child, in the summer, playing as the night came on, feeling the cool air replace the warmth of the day. If he was sunburned he would feel a chill. He could almost hear his father's voice calling him, pulling him away from the fun.

“Dov? Is it Dov?”

The old man sitting next to him, the one with the stink and the hair in his ears, was talking to him. Dov? He hadn't heard that word since he'd been a student at this place so long ago.

“That's my Hebrew name. Do I know you?”

“Meyers. Rabbi Meyers. It's Dov Steffens, yes?”

It was Rabbi Meyers, the mean one. The one who'd on more than one occasion thrown him out of the building for his insolence and disrespect. Who called him no good and told him that he would never amount to anything. Who picked his nose in a tranced state and often fell asleep while the class read prayers out loud. 

“Yes. Hello, Rabbi. I'm surprised you remember me.”

“Ah, Dov. You I don't forget, even with the beard. You gave me some trouble.”

“Yes, I suppose I did.”

“So tell me, Dov. You don't have a tallis? You wear an old one.”

The rabbi touched the tallis, fingering the torn cloth. James wanted to pull away, tell him to get his filthy hands off him. Nobody had touched him since the funeral. He wouldn't let his wife near him. Mable had kept her distance, thinking that was what he needed. He didn't want to talk to this old rabbi. He didn't want to be touched by him. He wanted to be back home, mourning with his family. He wanted a drink.

“I had one, Rabbi,” he said, tugging the tallis out of the old man's hands. “My father is buried in it.”

“Ah,” Rabbi Meyers said, a sad smile on his face, “my condolences. But Tefillin,” he pointed with his head to the men who wore them, “you know Tefillin?”

Where was the tenth man, so they could start this charade? How long could he endure this pathetic remnant of his past?

“You had Tefillin. I taught you, no?”

“Yes. I don't know where it is.”

A tenth man walked in. A minyan. Thank God. Now it could start. The tenth man found his place. The others who had not done so opened their prayer books and began. Rabbi Meyers motioned to the tenth man, and they walked to the corner of the study, whispering, looking at James. They were obviously friends. He tried to ignore them. He opened his prayer book, found the place, but Rabbi Meyers came over, pointing with an arthritic finger. The tenth man had gone out but was back. A few of the other ancients looked over approvingly while they prayed. 

The tenth man gave Meyers a worn felt bag. James recognized it. He watched as the rabbi unzipped it and took out a very old set of Tefillin. The leather was cracked with age, the little boxes warped. Rabbi Meyers unfurled the long leather straps and reached out to James, who glanced into the small mirror next to the bookshelves, caught his reflection in it, and stared at his face. His eyes were puffed from too much whiskey and crying. He flinched, pulled back, almost dropped his prayer book. A scene flashed into his mind from his childhood. Meyers had humiliated him. The class had been studying the holy seder service. He had made some crack in his usual style, and the Rabbi had exploded. Meyers had grabbed him by the neck and thrown him out of the room. James still clutched the Passover Haggadah. James opened the door, came back into the classroom, and screaming curses at the Rabbi, took the Haggadah and threw it against the wall. It fell to the ground. The class came to a hushed silence. Rabbi Meyers ran to the wall and picked it up, kissed its covers. It was the first time the child had ever seen tears in a grown man's eyes. The Rabbi tried to speak, looked to the class, opened his mouth. No sound came out. He turned back to James, who stood paralyzed, unable to move. Then James ran out of the room. He ended up in his secret place behind the synagogue, where he went sometimes to be alone. He cried for hours, and didn't know why.

He'd never wanted to attend Hebrew school. His father wanted James to go, not so he would learn something of importance that was being passed from one generation to another, not so he would enter the spiritual world his father loved so much and wanted to share. No, he realized now his father wanted only one thing: that upon his death his son would be able to say Kaddish for him, to assure his everlasting peace. 

He'd resisted with everything he had. There were arguments, tantrums, he'd tried every tactic he'd ever learned in the subtle family manipulations that had in the past gotten him what he wanted, but what kind of power does an eight year old have against his father? So he went, hating every minute he was forced to go, and his father was satisfied. 

At every religious occasion, James had mocked the rituals, teased his father for his charade of belief, and resented the fact that his father was so proud of James' own accomplishments. But there were rare times when James was able to step outside of this anger and be genuinely awed by the mysteries of religion, the hugeness of this God that was unnamable, with a face that would blind anyone who tried to look upon it. He struggled against this attraction, and instead caused havoc in the Hebrew school, causing Rabbi Meyers more trouble than he was worth. James thought, years later, that he'd needed some guidance in religion, from someone who saw in the depths of the mysteries what he himself thought might be there. But Meyers was void of any deeper knowledge, he understood even as a child. The old rabbi only went through the motions because those were the rules. When he was finally bar-mitzvah, and officially graduated from the place, he swore he'd never return, never say a Kaddish for his father. It was an unspoken rift between them that never healed, and James felt as if it was the one triumph he had over the old man. 

Yet here he was, hung over and confused. Why had he come? Was it too late to undo the damage of his father's superstition? What was he trying to prove? He'd always believed that his father had kept him away from whatever joy and comfort he might have found in his religion, in effect sending him into exile. But in mourning, he wondered if that was a lie. He'd kept himself away from his heritage. The only one he could save was himself. But could he? Who was he trying to make peace with: himself? His father? God? 

Now James felt like he was being manhandled by a giant insect. The rabbi's long cold fingers wrapped the leather around his arm. James remembered when he had been shown this in preparation for his bar-mitzvah. He'd hated the old man handling him, teaching him the ritual. Rabbi Meyers had held him still with a steel grip and said through clenched teeth, “All my boys who are bar-mitzvah will know Tefillin. Even you, Dov Steffens.” Now the Rabbi smiled his crooked sad smile, and patted James' stubbled face as if he were a child again. A few of the men glanced over, pulled out of their prayers, and nodded. 

“Now,” the rabbi whispered, “say Kaddish for your father. He is with God now.”

He tried to say the words, but he got lost as he knew would happen, and quietly changed to a monosyllabic nonsense, bowing when others bowed. He closed his eyes, and then opened them again, coming back to his reflection, to see what he looked like, to see what he looked like praying. Old phylacteries and a borrowed tallis. He barely recognized himself. He still felt the rabbi's fingers on his arms, on his face. He wanted to run out of there and tear the leather off, throw it into the sky. He was strangling, the leather felt like a noose, a straitjacket. The little box stuck to his forehead weighed him down, burned into his skin. He didn't know how long it would last, but he would stand until the last one stood. He davened like the best of them, mumbling sounds and occasionally raising his voice with a broken cry of "Adonai" or "Elohim," and he lost himself to the green walls, to the cries of the children outside, and to the memories of summers past.

He felt the walls closing in around him and stared at the drunken eyes in the reflection. He saw in his bloodshot eyes these past days when he had paced the hospital floor, waiting, out of breath from running from the airport. He and his family were led into the ICU, and he had watched his father, bloated with drugs, hooked up to machines, falter, fade and finally die. He saw himself that night informing his relatives, one drunken phone call following another, his sister gently taking the phone from him, whispering, "Jimmy, I'll do that, you go and lie down." And he saw in the reflection the days of mourning after he had buried his father, who'd died too soon and too suddenly. He saw the drinking which dulled the pain and the anger he felt because he wasn't ready for all of this. He saw the sleepless nights and wasted, stinking days. 

And he felt the mysteries all around him, even if these old forgotten men had no idea what they were immersed in. This ancient incantation, this prayer for the dead. There was a power in this prayer, and even though he was far away from the actual meaning of the words, he knew. Maybe his father had known too, maybe not, but he understood now that his father always had the fear. The old man's biggest fear was that he'd die with no one to say these holy words for him, that he'd die and face God with nothing to show but an empty life, to be ultimately forgotten back on earth. James struggled to find his place in the prayer book, to offer his father something the old man had needed so badly that he'd sacrificed his only son on the altar of this knowledge. James saw himself in the reflection and the Tefillin now looked to him like a huge bandage covering his arm, his neck, his whole head, and he saw the wounds exposed to the air underneath, he could almost see the blood, and he swayed, lowering at the knees and upright again, always coming back to his reflection, and filling up inside until, finally, here, standing among strange old men, covered in worn silk and cracked leather, singing a prayer for the dead in an alien language, he thought he would burst.

Burt Rashbaum’s publications are From Where We Came (Story Sanctum, 2025), Of the Carousel (The Poet’s Press, 2019), and Blue Pedals (Editura Pim, 2015, Bucharest). His fiction has appeared in Caesura, Collateral, American Writers Review: The End or the Beginning (San Fedele Press, 2022), The Jewish Literary Journal, Spank the Carp, Epic Echoes Magazine, The Main Street Rag, Love Poems (Bronze Bird Books, 2024), 42 Stories Anthology (MacKenzie Publishing, 2024), and Jewish Fiction Journal.