Smoke & Mirrors

Ten is one of those mystical numbers in Judaism. Its special significance is introduced in biblical literature, and the rabbis of the 1^st century codify ten as the number which represents critical mass in a Jewish community.  A Jew can pray alone, anywhere, but he or she is required to find nine others with whom to recite the prayers designated as most important.  Ten is called a minyan, quorum, and sometimes nine Jews gathered for prayers will pause in the service to wait until the 10^th arrives.

Sometimes it feels like there are only ten Jews in the entire world, and the rest of us are a magician’s stunt, an illusion produced using smoke and mirrors.  I feel this most keenly when I play the game that Jews initiate upon meeting each other for the first time: Jewish Geography.  It is similar to Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon, only a much older and more beloved version, and it goes something like this:

Jew #1: You’re from [name of town in New Jersey]? Do you know [name of random Jew from that town, with a common Jewish name, such as Cohen or Levine]?

Jew #2: Of course! He is a few years older than I am, but I grew up with [name of Cohen’s younger sister or cousin].

In Jewish Geography, it’s usually fewer than six degrees of separation, too.  We are a small clan, and just a few generations ago it was not uncommon for distant cousins to marry each other for the sake of endogamy.

So I should not have been at all surprised when I met a fellow Jew for the first time a few weeks ago and he asked me: “Did you go to JTS?”  For a fleeting moment, I wondered if he was curious about my rabbinic training or checking my credentials, as I will be reviewing his book for a journal next month.  Then I realized, from his follow-up question, that he was playing the game:

Tom: Do you know [name of rabbi who also attended JTS]?

Me: Of course! He was a year behind me in school, but I think he is a few years older than I am.  We work together at camp and our sons are going to be bunkmates this summer. I’m going to be visiting him in [name of town in Florida] in January.  How do you know him?

Tom: He was my roommate in college.

Ten Jews.  Smoke.  Mirrors.

I had the feeling that if we’d played Jewish Geography a few minutes more, we would have discovered a common ancestor.

As the evening progressed, we discussed mutual interests and affiliations, and chatted about his book, the publishing industry, politics-- the usual agenda of people getting acquainted.

Leaving Starbucks and saying goodbye to my new friend, I understood that we are actually old friends, possibly mishpochah (family), in the sense that we are part of the quorum of ten Jews who, wherever we gather, comprise a community.