Lars Israel Peretz Larson was the great chronicler of Midwestern Jewish Life, If you are not familiar with the work of this master it is because, in his efforts to make his work truly reflective of his experience as a Midwestern Jew, he always had his work translated into Hebrew which he, like his readership, could sound out but not actually comprehend. This rendered his work quite obscure until it was recently translated back into English. The following masterpiece is a quintessential Larson story entitled, "Ryan, the Yeshiva Bucher." It serves as a window into a little considered but surprisingly vibrant pocket of Jewish life -- that is the Jews of Michigan, or, as the region is sometimes known, the "Mitten of Settlement."

This story takes place in Lansing, coincidentally. Larson himself was not from Lansing, he was from a much smaller Jewish community, actually. He was from Battle Creek. But he wrote about many of the small communities throughout the region. His father, Mordechai Larson, was a distributor of beverages and Lars traveled with his father on many occasions and so had great firsthand familiarity with many of these communities. In this story he takes us into the world of a Hebrew school in Lansing, Michigan. It's very similar to the one I attended, as a matter of fact - really, the coincidence of finding this particular story was quite remarkable - and, it takes place during a typical Wednesday afternoon class... Larson takes some time in the beginning of the story to describe this world for us, to give us a window into the rhythms of Jewish life as it existed in the Midwest at the time the story was written which, I believe was about 1998? 99, maybe? He sets up the sort of insular life of this region and then he inserts the reappearance of a boy who has been away, traveling with his family and the boy brings a description of what he has seen on his travels which... well, I don't want to ruin the story. I suppose I should just let Larson speak for himself. So now, without further ado, I present to you Lars Israel Peretz Larson's story

"Ryan, the Yeshiva Bucher."

In the town of Lansing, in the province of Michigan, there lived a small community of Jews. To say there were few Jews in this corner of the world is not precisely true for, while it cannot be argued there was any comparison with the great Jewish centers of Bloomfield Hills, Royal Oak or Skokie, Lansing was home to a small but lively community. The precise number of families no one could say for sure because at first glance in dress and manner the Jews of Lansing appeared to blend in with their gentile neighbors. The men ritually covered their heads only while at prayers, the married women did not hide their hair and in fact, often had the same bad perms as the non Jewish women of that region.

The community numbered a few hundred families, if counted according to membership in the local shul. It was a typical congregation with the usual squabbles. For instance, Zalman, the town periodontist, thought that the greatest portion of the congregation's wealth should be allocated to the hiring of a permanent rabbi, while Shmuel, the town dealer in pre-owned Hondas, would slam down his fist in board meetings and raise his voice, threatening to quite if the greatest portion did not go to the building fund. Every autumn a heated disagreement would break out between Yonkel, the town psychologist and Mendel, the other town psychologist, as the time neared for the festival of Succot. Each year Yonkel insisted the community Succah should be framed with aluminum while Mendel would declare Yonkel, "an idiot not worthy of his place on the ritual committee" because Yonkel would not accede to Mendel's belief in the superiority of PVC.

The Hebrew school was the one thing about which everyone agreed. The Jews of Lansing fiercely loved their children and were of one mind as to their Jewish education. The young Jews of Lansing were given instruction in three areas: Hebrew, sometimes actually taught by people who spoke the holy tongue; Synagogue skills, in which the children would instructed in the ancient traditions - when to sway and bow, stand and sit, and mumble convincingly as if they actually knew any of the prayers. And, of course, the youngsters were tutored in the great history of their people. That course was entitled: "How Your Ancestors Suffered And What Makes You Really Think It's Going To Be Any Better For You?" for which they utilized the renowned text: "Seven Hundred Really Bad Things That Have Happened To Jews In History - An Introduction For Young People."

And thus it was in this small pocket of Jewish life and learning. Year upon year, every Wednesday afternoon and every Sunday morning a dozen or so young Jews trouped into their small classrooms and learned, as Jews in the middle west have learned for decades. But on one cold winter Wednesday, these students found themselves shaken to their very bones by an unexpected reappearance. Ryan Goldfarb had returned.

No one had taken much notice when Ryan Goldfarb disappeared from the Hebrew school. He was widely thought to be a doltish boy who had never properly learned his aleph bet. His classmates sneered at him behind his back and took secret bets about whether his studies would continue long enough for him to accomplish his bar mitzvah, speculating derisively that even if he managed it he would not actually read from the holy scroll but memorize his portion off a cassette tape. When he missed one Sunday morning no one paid much mind. When he was again absent the next Wednesday afternoon it again passed unremarked. After a few weeks there was some speculation that his father was on Sabbatical but no one knew for sure and soon Ryan Goldfarb was forgotten altogether.

Then, in mid-February, when the leaves were long gone from the trees and the gray Midwestern days were so short that darkness had already descended by the time the students sat down under the fluorescent lights, Ryan Goldfarb reappeared. A great shout went up, with the students crowding around Ryan, clapping him on the back and jostling each other to get a better look at his fashionable backpack, the likes of which had never been seen in the Mid-Michigan area. Where have you been, Ryan? they clamored. They poked at him and teased, "We thought perhaps you were being home schooled, like the crazy Baptists of the region."

No, said Ryan. His voice held an uncharacteristic sobriety that hinted at the weight of what he was about to impart. "I have been to a far off place from whence I bring you a tale such as you will never believe." "Tell us, tell us!" the students begged. "I will tell you," said Ryan. "But you must pay close attention, as this story is unlike any other you have ever heard." Though the students usually spent their time before classes roughly wrestling about or wandering the halls and classrooms thinking of ways to torment the Unitarians with whom they shared part of the building, this day they gathered around Ryan and listened, rapt, as he imparted to them the tale of his journey. These are the words he spoke:

"I have been with my parents and my sister, Courtney Shoshana, to a place called New York City. There I have seen such wonders as you will never believe. We made the journey by car. Many roads were traveled and many tolls were paid. For two arduous days we traveled but we have a new Honda Odyssey and my sister and I watched many videos which eased our agitation. Finally we arrived. In the land of which I speak, New York City, there is a region called the Upper West Side. What I saw there made me doubt my very senses. Thousands of souls reside there. And everyone is a Jew.

At this his classmates broke from their circle of rapt attention. They scoffed and knocked him about on the head for his doltishness was well known. "Everyone?" they sneered. "Ha! Impossible!"

"No. Listen to me," implored Ryan Goldfarb. "I have seen it with my own eyes. It is a land of so many Jews that in every store Kosher food is sold."

"Kosher food in every store! No wonder even the most ignorant gentile refers to you as an oafish dolt. Everyone knows you must drive two hours to suburbs of Detroit for the purchase of Kosher food."

Ryan Goldfarb persisted. A fire burned in his eyes. "I swear it. If every word I utter is not the truth may I be struck by a computer virus that will eradicate my entire hard drive."

A small voice piped up from the back of the crowd. "Perhaps he means hot dogs." It was Steven Weinshank, a sickly, pale boy with a gentle soul who always sought an end to squabbling. "Even here you can buy packages of Kosher franks at the Shopright next to the Barnes and Noble, where the scholars gather."

"No, no. Not just hot dogs," said Ryan. "Empire chickens, both whole and in parts."

At this Elana Axelrod rent her Britney Spears t-shirt and began to weep. Josh Steinborn removed his walkman and eyed his returning classmate with skepticism.

"All Jews, you say. I don't believe it. How many in the Hebrew Schools? In our grade? On a Wednesday afternoon such as this? How many would there be?" "In the Hebrew schools!" Ryan Goldfarb exclaimed, "Not just the Hebrew schools! The public schools are full of Jews. Why, I have heard it told that the schools are closed for Rosh HaShana and Yom Kippur."

The children began rocking back and forth, wailing, "Lies! He is possessed!" they cried. "What sort of demon has overtaken him?!"

"That's not all," the boy persisted, "Alternate Side Parking is suspended."

The weeping grew louder. "What is this Alternate Side Parking?" they cried.

"I do not know. But I have seen it written that it is suspended Ð even on Succot!"

At this Cheryl Rabinowitz swooned and fell to the floor a dead faint.

So incomprehensible was his story that the children fell about in a frenzy. They wept and pinched themselves. They wailed that surely Ryan Goldfarb had been possessed by a dybbuk for what sane person could imagine such things? Only a demon could put such visions get into the head of a young boy? But Ryan swore to them - "If all I'm telling you is not true, may my grandparents never give me that Nintendo Game Cube."

At this, Josh Steinborn pushed back his stackable molded plastic chair and approached Ryan Goldfarb. So extreme was his anger that the wispy hairs which had recently sprouted on his upper lip trembled with rage.

He stood before Ryan and demanded, "What is your friggin' problem, dude?" He continued to advance menacingly. "A town where everyone is a Jew? I seriously doubt it."

Ryan's voice was an urgent whisper, "I have proof."

Josh's fury reduced his voice to a low growl. "Show us this proof."

With shaking hands, Ryan undid the velcro on his backpack. From underneath his discman and gameboy, he wrenched out a wrinkled flier. He thrust it at Josh.

Josh studied the crumpled sheet. All color drained from his face. "What is meant by this?" he demanded of Ryan. "I don't understand. How could such a place as this exist? This is the raving of a lunatic. Why would you torment us with this madness? Tell me. Explain. What is this place?"

Ryan slowly raised himself from his crouched position. He spoke in a measured tone. "It is a great center. A gathering place for the thousands of Jews who populate the place of which I spoke - The Upper West Side."

"By what name is this place called?" asked the trembling voice of Stephen Weinshank.

And Ryan Goldfarb replied: "It is called by the letters: J. C. C."

There was a hush of disbelief. Josh Steinborn stared at the flyer with a gaze of such intensity it seemed as if it might burn a hole through the very paper. Then, all at once, he yelled in anguish, "I do not understand! Aerobics? Video conferencing? What have these things to do with being a Jew? I beg you to explain this! Ceramics? Okay, maybe ceramics I could understand but I beseech you to tell me in the name of the Almighty, what sort of Jews do METALWORKING!?"

"I cannot explain it," Ryan whispered with downcast eyes. "I can only tell you what I have seen."

"Surely you must know more than you are telling us!" cried the students.

From the back of the room Steve Weinshank's thin voice once again was heard. "We must go to see the rabbi."

"Yes, yes," the children cried. "That's it. We will go see the rabbi."

A heated discussion ensued in which the children debated whether this was the rabbi's one week per month in the Lansing area or whether he was in Saginaw. Finally it was established that he was in town and they went to him.

When the students entered his chamber the rabbi was in the midst of responding to a congregant who had inquired on a point of law. Is it permitted, the man wanted to know, to scroll through a Palm Pilot on the Sabbath. The rabbi, whose training was as a Reconstructionist, quickly typed out his response, "Sure. Whatever." and turned toward the sea of troubled young faces before him.

Rabbi Menachem "Phil" Wasserman was a sallow faced man with drooping eyelids and a twitch that ran up the left side of his face when he was nervous. His clothes were ill-fitting and often soiled will the remains of fast food items he had eaten while driving. He had come to the Lansing area two months before on a three month trial period. Though, in his youth he had dreamed of leading a larger congregation in a city on the Eastern Seaboard, his personality was lackluster and his chanting of the Sabbath melodies was nasal and hard to follow and his leading of responsive readings in English was little more than a mechanical drone.

He addressed the children: "What are these troubled faces I see before me?" he asked.

The students thrust the now tattered page at him and poured out their confusion in a cacophonous rush. What was this place, they asked. How did it come to be? How was it that thousands upon thousands of Jews living in one place could agree on anything, much less the building of an entire center? Tell us. Explain to us. We beg you!

A dry chuckle emerged from the rabbi, which startled the children, as it carried a hint of bitterness which sometimes came upon him and caused a sour taste to rise in his mouth when he thought of Chana Berkowitz, his fellow student at rabbinical school. How often he had wrestled with his resentment of Chana for securing a top position at a gay synagogue on the North Fork of Long Island! The question that had so often tormented him rose up unbidden in his soul, "Why, Lord, could you not have made me a lesbian?" Then, seeing again the young faces before him he wrestled his personal torments aside and addressed, as best he could, their tortured questions. There is a theory, children, held in some quarters, of a thing called critical mass. Here we are overwhelmed by our gentile neighbors. We must labor day and night to differentiate ourselves if we wish not to be subsumed into the doughy morass of Midwestern identity. And though we labor, still, we never succeed. For which our Christian neighbors indeed know that we are Jews, still they assume we are also Christians. Our Judaism is mysteriously viewed by them as a kind of accessory which we wear on top of our Christianity. But in New York, ah, in New York, Jews are so plentiful in number that their presence is inarguable and they can concentrate on such things as ceramics. The metalworking, yes, that is hard to explain. But some questions only the Holy One Himself can answer.

When he had finished a quiet settled over the room. Or perhaps quiet is not the right word for, while no one spoke, the substance of all they had heard races about in the minds of each of the children, looking for niches in which to settle and form some sort of sense; and the air around them was thick with the weight of their thoughts.

After a time, the spell was broken by Rabbi Phil who regretfully shook the children out of their reveries with the gentle announcement he had to get over to Home Depot before nine.

The young students thanked the rabbi, bundled themselves against the harsh Midwestern winter evening, and wandered out of the shul and into the cold. The flyer, which had caused the trouble, now crumpled and barely legible, fell quietly and without notice from the pocket of Ryan's parka when he went to retrieve a glove and went scuttling across the frozen lawn of the shul, first melding in with the detritus of late winter, the fallen wads of wet Kleenex, the patches of gray snow... It blew about the neighborhood for a time and disappeared altogether. The story Ryan Goldfarb had told them of the great Jewish center on the Upper West Side was repeated many times but eventually Ryan Goldfarb, Josh Steinborn, little Steven Weinshank and the others reached the age of Bar Mitzvah and were replaced by succeeding generations. Rabbi Phil was not retained by the Lansing congregation and went on to serve a long and unhappy tenure at a Hillel in Ohio. And soon there was no one left to remember the day Ryan Goldfarb returned. Though his tale lingered on, it lost its potency and, in time, became nothing more than a fable told to children. But how could it be otherwise? After all, an eleven story center for Jewish Life and Culture on the Upper West Side?! What sane person would believe such a thing?...