The Jewfish

That year, Chanukah fell on Thanksgiving, which gave the young rabbi a dilemma. While it meant there wouldn’t be the traditional confusion of Christmas with a relatively minor post-Biblical holiday, lighting the menorah after carving the turkey just didn’t seem, well, kosher, like mixing milk with meat, or putting mayonnaise on pastrami.

It was barely late afternoon, but the sun was preparing to set, this being central New Jersey in winter. The reflections of Christmas lights across the street bounced off his glass-covered desk, a reminder that Other People were doing Other Things, and he was holding down the fort for what his mentor, Rabbi Herzfeld, called “the loyal opposition.”

Loyal to whom, though, was a question that hurt his head to ponder, even though he knew it was his job to ponder such questions, for his congregation’s sake, as well as his own. They had their miracles, and we had ours, though a virgin birth and a resurrection compared to low tide on the Red Sea and a plethora of frogs seemed like comparing a royal flush to three-of-a-kind. Where were the miracles of today? 

So the mood was already odd that late winter Wednesday afternoon, his first since graduating from the seminary, when an old woman in a tattered coat shuffled into the temple and hesitated at his open office door. He thought he should recognize her, but as he thumbed through his mental rolodex of congregants, he couldn’t place her.

Her shoulder-length dark hair, streaked with gray, looked like Mrs. Lewisohn from the Building Committee, but her bent posture and long fingers reminded him of Mrs. Davidson from the Ritual Committee. Couldn’t be her, he thought. She wasn’t yelling at him to shorten his sermons.

“Is this a good time, Rabbi?” the old woman asked. She held a large paper bag in her hand that seemed ready to break.

“Of course, come in, have a seat,” he said. “I’m sorry to ask, but I don’t think I’ve seen you at services recently.”

“No, no, I don’t belong here,” she said. “But I imagine being a rabbi at Christmastime must be odd – everyone celebrating and you left out.”

“We have our traditions,” he said, “like being obstinate.”

“I imagine so,” she said, and lifted the paper bag onto his desk, where it clunked solidly. “I know what you mean to our community, so I brought you a gift. I know it’s too late for Chanukah, and I shouldn’t be giving a rabbi a Christmas gift, but I walk by here all the time and see you working late into the night, the only light on in the building. Such dedication!”

“Thank you,” he said. This was getting odd, he thought. It’s nice to be noticed, but this feels close to being stalked.

“Go on, open it,” she said, pushing the bag across his desk.

He peered in the bag and lifted out a glass globe with a wide opening on top. It was about ten inches at its widest and looked like a child’s idea of an astronaut’s helmet, only larger. He looked it over, turned it all around, and sat it on his desk. 

“That’s going to make a lovely terrarium,” he said.

“No silly,” she said. “Look in the bag again.”

He turned his head quizzically and opened the bag wider. He saw a thin plastic sack tied at the top and pulled it out. 

“A fish?” he said.

“Yes, a goldfish,” the old woman said. “Just gently drop him and the water into the bowl.”

The rabbi removed the metal twist tie and slowly poured the water and the goldfish into what he now realized was a large goldfish bowl, with gravel and a little plastic cave on the bottom. The fish looked stunned for a moment and then began happily swimming in circles, thankful to be out of a plastic bag and in his new relatively comfy surroundings. 

“There’s all you need in there,” she said. “Food, and a net for when you change the water.”

“This is – this is lovely,” he said. He looked directly at the goldfish, and they seemed to lock eyes. As much as a rabbi and a goldfish could lock eyes.

“I thought you needed a low-maintenance companion for those late nights,” she said, as she rose to leave.

“Wait,” the rabbi said. “I’m sorry to ask, but who are you?”

“I’m a friend of the temple’s,” she said. 

“Can I do anything for you?” he said.

She looked at him and smiled. “Just take care of him, that’s all I ask.” Then she stopped in the doorway.

“Oh, his name is Paul.”

“Paul?” said the rabbi.

“Yes. Paul. Paul the Goldfish.” And she walked out of his office, out of the temple and into the cold Yule night.

The rabbi smiled. He had a goldfish when he was a child. For some reason, he called him Tony, and he would tell Tony all about his day, from kindergarten to second grade, recounting tales of lost crayons, boys who ate paste, and his mother’s peanut butter sandwiches on mushy white bread – creamy because he was too young for chunky.

“One day you’ll be old enough for chunky peanut butter,” his mother told him. He never really developed a taste for it, but his stomach began to grumble and all he could think of was chunky peanut butter on mushy white bread.

He looked at Paul the Goldfish and realized he might be hungry as well. He took the small box of goldfish food and sprinkled it in the bowl. 

“Here you go, Paul,” he said. “You must be famished.”

Paul bobbed to the top of the water and quickly ate all the grains of food. “Praise the Lord,” said Paul the Goldfish, “to whom all our praises are due!”

It wasn’t very late in the night, so the rabbi didn’t think he was dreaming. But he distinctly heard a voice, slightly lower than his, quote a portion of Jewish liturgy. 

He got up close to the bowl and looked at Paul.

“Surprised?” said Paul. “The Lord works miracles!”

Just then, the rabbi saw one of the temple’s custodians outside his office, and he considered asking him in, to make sure he wasn’t hallucinating. But what if he was? Of course he was. It wouldn’t be right for anyone to see him in this state.

He got up, closed the door, and returned to his desk.

“You’re a talking goldfish,” he said.

“Did not Balaam’s Donkey speak, in B’midbar chapter 22?” said Paul. “That’s Numbers to you Reform chazerim.”

The rabbi opened his Torah, and went to the passage Paul mentioned. 

“Verse 30, specifically,” Paul added.

The rabbi took his finger down the page to verse 30. “The she-donkey said to Balaam, ‘Am I not your she-donkey on which you have ridden since you first started until now? Have I been accustomed to do this to you?’”

Goddamn. The fish knew his Torah. Better than me, he thought.

“So you talk.”

“Yes.”

“You’re a talking goldfish.”

“Hallelujah! Praise be to God! It’s a miracle!”

“And your name is Paul?”

Paul the goldfish flipped his dorsal fin a few times, which seemed to the rabbi to be a signal to come closer.

“Yes,” he said. “I may not have had a bris or a bar mitzvah, but I’m just as Jewish as you. I’m kosher too, but I hope that doesn’t mean you’ll eat me.” 

“Fish can’t be Jewish,” the rabbi wanted to say, but he stopped himself before he could finish.

I’m arguing theology with a goldfish, he thought. I’ve been working too long. Time to go home and have dinner. Maybe take my mind off things. He loved basketball, and the Knicks were playing that night on TV. Yes. Dinner and a Knicks game. A bottle of wine, too. It would relax him, and make him forget.

On his way home, he stopped at a market and bought a nice salmon filet, already cajun spiced, ready for the skillet. He had shopped there many times, but never noticed the small aquarium across from the register.

Mauricio the owner had stepped away for a moment, and as he waited to pay for his dinner, one of the fish in the tank caught his eye. It was striped black and white, about the same size as Paul, but with bigger fins. He approached the aquarium closer.

“You wouldn’t happen to know Paul, would you?” he asked the fish.

But the fish didn’t answer. Was he ignoring him, or was he just a normal non-talking fish?

Mauricio returned and began to ring up the rabbi’s order: the salmon, a few baking potatoes, three broccoli stems, and a cheap bottle of white wine. 

“Merry Christmas,” Mauricio said.

“Thanks,” said the rabbi. “You, too.” 

He pointed to the aquarium.

“That fish, the striped one,” he said.

“Sharon?” Mauricio said.

“You name them?”

“Well, pets sort of name themselves, don’t they?” He nodded his head at the tank. “She looks like a Sharon, doesn’t she? You know, like the Rose of Sharon from the Bible.”

“What does a Sharon look like?” the rabbi said.

“I don’t know,” Mauricio said. “She just looks like a Sharon.”

The rabbi collected his groceries, and while his credit card was being charged, he began to open his mouth to ask, “She didn’t actually…tell you her name, did she?” but before the words passed his lips, he held his tongue. 

At home, he unwrapped the salmon filet. As it sizzled in his skillet, he looked down at it. 

“Hello,” he said to the filet. “Sorry to cook you.”

The filet did not answer.

***

The next day, the rabbi got to the temple early. They usually didn’t open until 8:30 in the morning for the preschool, which was a combination of early Jewish education and babysitting service, and paid for at least three-quarters of their expenses. It was the one product they offered that everyone could agree on. Of course, he was in charge of the other quarter, and receipts were lagging. 

He unlocked the modest front doors and walked into the small foyer. The heat wasn’t on, since he was the first one there, and it was cold inside. He opened the locked thermostat, whose key it took months for him to prove he was worthy of, and turned up the heat. After a few seconds, he heard a thunk, then a steady whoosh, and the building slowly began to warm.

He took his coat off and hung it on the second-hand rack a congregant had donated when they saw he piled his coats and sweaters on his office chairs during meetings. He held a still-warm cup of takeout coffee, and a bag with a sesame bagel and light cream cheese, and put both on the desk.

“Good morning, Rabbi!” Paul said. “Did you make your morning bruchas yet?”

The rabbi was awake, at least he thought he was, so Paul was still a talking fish. 

“Sometimes I do, sometimes I don’t,” the rabbi said. “I’m not Orthodox, so I save it for special occasions.”

“Isn’t every day you wake up a special occasion? Isn’t every day a miracle?” asked Paul. 

“You sound like those guys in the mitzvah tanks.”

“Who?”

“You know, the vans on the street corners with the nutcases who try to make you more Jewish than they think you are.” 

Wait. I’m explaining the ultra-Orthodox Chabadniks to a fish? he thought. Get a grip.

“That’s totally wrong,” said Paul. “Look at me. I’m Jewish, yet I believe what the sages of old taught. Even your bagel is a miracle of science, engineering and chemistry.”

“And you’re a fish.”

“So I’m told.”

The rabbi sat down, took a sip from his coffee, and a bite from the bagel.

“No motzi blessing?” asked Paul. 

“Maybe I said it to myself,” said the rabbi.

“No!” shouted Paul. “Say it loud so the whole world can hear! It’s a beautiful day, and you have food to eat. You should be thankful for that.”

“What about ‘And when you pray, do not be like the hypocrites, for they love to pray standing in the synagogues and on the street corners to be seen by others’?”

“You’ve read Matthew?” asked Paul.

“Of course, in seminary. What kind of rabbi do you think I am?”

“Very good. My last person at the fish farm, he used to quote Scripture at us. Mostly that Mark Luke and John craziness, with some Genesis and Exodus. A shaygetz. He thought it would help us grow bigger and faster.

“At first I thought it was a bunch of mishegoss, but the more I heard it, the more I accepted it as a goodwill gesture. He fed me, so I had to keep him happy. But I like that you’re well-rounded. Makes for a thought-provoking conversation.”

His teacher, Rabbi Herzfeld, also told his students to say their prayers loud, loud enough so God could hear them above the daily hubbub of modern life. Paul was no dope, he thought.

“It’s time I was fed,” Paul said, “but fish food is so boring. Probably unkosher trayf too, but who am I to grumble? I’m a fish.” He flipped his tail at the rabbi. “Can I, uh, have a bit of that bagel?” Paul asked.

The rabbi was taken off guard. 

“What, this bagel?” he said, as he dabbed a spot of cream cheese off his chin.

“No, the bagel behind your ear,” said Paul. “Of course that bagel.”

“You like bagels?”

“What Jew doesn’t?”

The rabbi looked at Paul, and Paul looked right back. He took a small chunk of the bagel, pinched it tight, and leaned over to drop it in Paul’s bowl.

“Is there a blessing for feeding animals?” the rabbi asked him. “You seem to know so much about it.”

“You know, the Shulchan Aruch says you should feed your animals before you yourself eat.”

“You want this bagel, you smartass fish?” the rabbi said.

“I get you’re upset,” said Paul. “I’m sorry if I said anything to hurt you. One learned tzadik fighting with another, it’s not right.”

The rabbi hesitated, and said a short mumbled blessing. Then he dropped the small chunk of sesame bagel in Paul’s bowl, sat down, and began to look over a few estimates from the leadership committee to fix the temple’s air conditioner, which broke late last summer. Probably cheaper to do it now and get it ready for the spring.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Paul busily chewing the bagel. A sesame seed had also fallen into the bowl, and Paul gobbled it down in one gulp. For once, his mouth was full, and he wasn’t talking.

The rabbi had a long schedule that day, full with board meetings to attend, newsletters and web postings to approve, and a Torah study session with retired congregants who had nothing better to do. When he finally left that evening for dinner, he picked up his coat from the chair he had left it on that morning without turning on the office light.

***

The next morning was a Friday, and the rabbi usually worked from home on Fridays, putting the final touches on his sermon for that evening’s service, and getting in the proper frame of mind for the peace of Shabbat.

Peace for everyone except him, of course. For the rabbi, the Friday night Shabbat service was the most stressful of the week. He would be on display, performing for his congregation. When he entered the temple at 6 o’clock, an hour before the service, he hung his coat in the hall closet, and made sure his office door was closed and the lights were out. 

The service was unremarkable. The Torah portion was Miketz, toward the end of Genesis, where Joseph is freed from prison by interpreting Pharaoh’s dreams of seven fat cows. He was going to ask his congregation “What if those cows could talk?” but thought better of it.

While he read from his printed sermon, his mind wandered. He had practiced it thoroughly, almost committed it to memory. He hadn’t talked to Paul for a while. He wondered how he was, and whether he enjoyed that piece of bagel.

Oh no, he thought. I haven’t fed Paul in over a day. I hope he’s all right. He decided to check on him after the service.

The last congregant had left at 10 o’clock, after all the dessert treats from the after-service oneg had been eaten and the trash taken out. The rabbi could finally breathe. No more well-meaning congregants asking about when he was getting married – he was young enough that the question was posed as when and not if – or why dues were going up again.

It was quiet, and he could finally retreat to his own sanctuary, his office. He opened his office door, flicked on the lights – he was Reform, and didn’t have a problem with so-called “work” on the sabbath – and turned to his desk.

“Hiya, Paul,” he said. “Shabbat shalom to you, my tzadik piscine pal.”

But Paul did not answer, because Paul was floating on his side at the top of the bowl. 

The rabbi bent down and looked closely at him. He stuck his finger in the bowl and gently poked him a few times, performing rudimentary CPR on his friend. 

And then he saw the sesame seed from the bagel lodged firmly in Paul’s mouth.  

Oh no, he thought. Maybe he was just sleeping. Do fish sleep? Not with a sesame seed stuck in their mouth they don’t.

He poked him again, but nothing happened. Paul, the Jewish fish who could talk, a learned friend he could spar with intellectually, was most assuredly dead. 

I can’t just flush him down the toilet like my mother did to Tony when it was his time, he thought. Not Paul, not my friend.

His vision fogged up with his tears, and he used a tissue to wipe them away. He deserves better. Maybe not a full funeral, but a resting place, maybe on a verdant plot of grass, facing east towards Jerusalem of course, maybe the dunes near the shore, yes, that would be appropriate. Ashes to ashes, sea to sea, even though goldfish are freshwater fish. He wouldn’t know the difference anyway. 

But I can’t do it on the Sabbath, that’s not respectful. The rabbi realized he had a weekend conference with other New Jersey rabbis in Passaic, and was planning to stay overnight. The soonest he could return and give Paul a proper send-off was Monday, in three days. He’ll last three days, he thought. 

As the rabbi left the temple that night, he locked his office door, so no one would disturb Paul’s remains until he returned.

***

The conference had been uneventful, which is how rabbinic conferences usually were. And that’s the way they should be, the rabbi thought, as he drove back along the turnpike on a late Monday morning, after a bagel and coffee with some colleagues who didn’t know who he was and now just had a little more information about him, that new young rabbi with the absent-minded air. 

But his thoughts were not of his colleagues, or the workshops he attended – “Kabbalah for Dummies,” “Making Your Temple Board Do Want You Want,” “Be the Sermon You Want to Deliver”  –  but of returning and paying proper respects to Paul, his be-gilled friend who he had inadvertently dispatched by way of a rogue sesame seed.

He pulled in for gas, and as the attendant pumped it for him, New Jersey being the only East Coast state to prohibit self-service gas stations, he stewed in his car, playing with the radio and hearing nothing but news, talk, and whole genres of music he was previously unaware of. 

Wait a minute, he thought. There’s miraculous, and then there’s idiocy. Paul was a fish. He had no larynx, no vocal cords, no lungs, just a rudimentary cortex and a ten-second memory, if that.

Of course he couldn’t talk, much less quote from Maimonedes and debate him on whether lab-grown bacon was kosher. (The rabbi said it was, but Paul said no, it was the principle of the thing that mattered.) Stress, that’s what it was, stress. Year-end stress, or lack of it, with no holidays of his own to observe against the Yuletide juggernaut bearing down on him.

When he reached Exit 13, he turned west, and a few minutes later was back at his quiet temple office, which was closed for The Other Holidays in a concession to his Gentile staff, but always opened for him. A long day awaited him, he thought, writing sermons, going over budgets, and applying for security grants that were, unfortunately, more necessary than ever.

He walked into his office carrying a briefcase and a small bag, half of an uneaten bagel he thought he would munch on as he wrestled with his sermon in which he attempted to tie the Exodus to when the Dodgers left Brooklyn for Los Angeles.

As he sat and fumbled with his notes, Paul’s bowl caught his eye. It was empty, except for water, the purple gravel on the bottom, and the small plastic cave where he sometimes hid. 

But he was no longer floating on top of the water.

The rabbi drew closer to the bowl, and crouched down to look closer. Maybe he had sunk and floated into the cave. He took a bite of the half bagel, and looked around. At which point Paul leapt out of the cave and swam confidently to the top of the bowl.

“I have risen, and boy my back hurts like you wouldn’t believe,” he cried. “You took me for dead, but look! Here I am! Is that not a miracle?”

A long silence came over the rabbi, as he began to question everything he knew, everything he was taught, and everything he believed.

“Yea, does not the Lord work miracles?” Paul said. “Are you not impressed by the work of the Lord?” 

Another silence.

After a while, the rabbi pulled a chair over and looked at him. 

“You’re a talking fish,” he said. “Isn’t that miraculous enough for you? You have to play at being Lazarus?”

“What do you mean,” Paul said. “I have risen!”

“No you haven’t. Maybe you were in a coma.”

“Fish don’t go into comas.”

The rabbi sputtered. “You…you were tricking me, pretending to be dead and then springing this on me when no one’s here. You’re making me question my beliefs. You’re testing me, and it’s not right. And…and you’re a fish, for God’s sake! Nothing but a fish!”

“You make me sad,” said Paul. “I thought we were friends.”

“Friends don’t do that to friends.”

“But what if it’s true? What if I did come back to life, and do talk.”

“Why?” the rabbi said. “Why me?”

Paul swam over to him, at the edge of the bowl, and looked him right in the eye.

“No one’s ever heard me talk except you,” he said. “The old lady didn’t know from Torah, from Talmud. A total schlemiel. A goyische kop like you wouldn’t believe. Not her fault, of course. But you, I could talk to. Debate with. Help you with your sermons even. Then I ate the sesame seed, I died – or maybe went into a coma, sure, I’ll meet you halfway – and look at me now! It happened. So nu.”

And then Paul seemed to wink at the rabbi.

“But obviously, you can’t tell anyone about me,” he said. “You ever heard the old joke about the rabbi who sneaks out between the Yom Kippur morning and evening services for a round of golf? On the fourth hole, he hits a hole-in-one. He’s elated. He’s never hit one before. Only problem is, who can he tell?”

The rabbi returned to his chair and rummaged through his desk drawers for the thermometer the temple used to screen people as they entered during Covid. He pointed it at his forehead and took his own temperature. Ninety-nine-five. A little elevated. Sure, that’s it. It must be. 

“But you couldn’t have woken from a coma, and certainly not come back from the dead.”

“Maybe you’re right. Maybe that’s your take on this. Who are you going to believe – me or your own eyes?”

“That’s Chico Marx.”

“A great tzaddik,” said Paul. “But look at it this way. A wise haddock once told me ‘Don’t believe everything you believe.’ Two days later he was on a plate next to a lemon wedge. Go figure.”

The rabbi stopped for a second to consider this. That’s not bad, he thought. I can use that in a sermon.

“It will be our little secret,” Paul said. “Here’s the deal. I’ll sit on the edge of your desk, swimming around here and there. And I won’t say another word. You change my water once a week, feed me regular old fish food, but every 10 days or so, drop a little bit of a bagel in my bowl.”

“Sure,” said the rabbi. 

“But I’ll sit here as a constant reminder that miracles happen all the time, even in New Jersey. Now, is that a plain bagel you’re eating?”

“Yes,” the rabbi said. “Yes it is.”

“Well then, could you be a mensch and drop me a little bit of it in the tank? Resurrection makes a fish hungry.”

---

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