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thedupshadove · 5 years

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G-d of My Father’s

Summary: An interesting fact about Newton Pulsifer comes further to light. Newt, as usual, frets.

Author’s Note: This was sort of written to be set within @jewish-kulindadromeus “HaSofer”, but I’m over-eager, which means that only Chapter One of that fic is actually up as I write this, which means that further chapters of that fic may render this one incompatible with it, which is fine as that author is within her rights to write whatever kind of story she wants, seeing how we’re not actually working together.

“Say,” said Crowley after the sixth time Newt overheard him giving Aziraphale some Judaism 101 lesson and interjected with a helpful clarification, extra information, or his own view on things only to hastily shut himself up, “how come you know all this? I remember asking you if you were Jewish and you said no.” In fact Newt had looked at the ceiling, stammered a bit, pulled his mouth into a thin Muppety line, rubbed the back of his neck, and then said no, but Crowley hadn’t given that much thought at the time, since that was barely more awkwardness than Newt tended to display when asked to make a definitive statement on anything. “What, did an old girlfriend teach you?”

“His current girlfriend could have taught him.” said Anathema pointedly, walking into the room. “Although I suppose if that were it he’d wax fondly about boyoz instead of babka.”

“No,” Newt finally forced out after exhaling the breath he’d been holding in since Crowley had started addressing him. “No, it…it wasn’t any girlfriend. It was, er, well it’s all stuff I picked up from my father’s old synagogue.”

“Uh-huh.” said Crowley in a much-is-becoming-clear-to-me voice. “Your father’s old synagogue. Your mother, I take it, not having one.”

“Right.”

“And may I further hazard a guess that your father, family obligations aside, is not what one would call a pious man?”

“Oh, completely non-observant. And pretty well atheist too. Since well before he met my mum, mind, so don’t go blaming her.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it” Crowley deadpanned. “So, you were dragged to the synagogue sometimes, probably mostly for b’nai mitzvahs, and couldn’t help but absorb a few things. I see.” He made as if to turn back to Aziraphale.

But Newt suddenly looked distressed and a little defensive. “Well I wouldn’t say dragged.” he protested. “I mean they didn’t have to drag me. Why would they? It was something special, something wonderful. A day to be spent surrounded by relatives, plenty of whom I didn’t see very often. Getting to see some cousin have a shining moment. Good food, good music, good conversation, us kids sneaking off to go exploring or play hide-and-seek during the reception, what wasn’t to look forward to?”

“Alright, alright, I apologize.” said Crowley, seemingly a little taken aback.

But Newt seemed now to feel that not enough had been said. “And it wasn’t just b’nai mitzvahs either. I mean there were a lot of those, but there were some weddings too, and of course a few funerals. Those obviously weren’t fun, per se, but they were…good. In a way. Like, if this relative was going to die, I’d much rather that we’d all gathered and done this funeral than if we hadn’t. When I first heard that my grandfather had died I was just…numb, and it wasn’t until we were all standing around the grave and it was my turn to shovel in some dirt that I think it really hit home. And that was a good situation to have that happen in, I think. And we would go to the Seders at my aunt’s house pretty regularly.”

That made sense, Crowley reflected. If there was any one holiday that even the most secular Jew might go home for, it would be Passover, being not only very major and important but also placing such an emphasis on family and gathering and togetherness. And food and drink and storytelling and, if you do it right, laughter.

“I even…” some of Newt’s natural state of embarrassment seemed to have caught up with him again, but he soldiered on, powered by some inner spring of…something that needed to get out. “I even did the Four Questions a couple of times, until the cousins younger than me started getting old enough to take their turns doing it. But I remember my Dad teaching me how in the weeks before the holiday. Took me forever to get it right: I kept forgetting myself and using a soft ‘ch’.

“And sometimes Dad and I would just…talk about it. I mean, he didn’t keep any of the practices or rituals anymore except at family things, but I never got the impression that he, you know, really hated it now or anything. I would want to know something about what’s this holiday or why that rule or how come this is kosher but that isn’t, and he would tell me, and he never seemed to mind. Even seemed to kind of enjoy it. Not, I figure, from belief surging anew but,” Newt shrugged, “nostalgia, you know. And often that question led to other questions, and discussions, and sort of…arguments but without anger. I remember one time, after he’d got done explaining that ‘animals that walked on the ground’ had to have the right kind of hooves and the right kind of chewing habits, but any kind of bird was okay, I pointed out that perhaps our ancestors had not made a close examination of the usual behavior of the average chicken, and he,” Newt made an upward striking motion with his hand.

“He hit you?” Aziraphale gasped, shocked both at the sudden turn of the story and the fact that Newt’s tone hadn’t changed with it.

“What? No, no, no.” Newt said hastily, realizing his failure of communication. “He pantomimed dope-slapping me, but he didn’t actually make contact, and he was smiling. Smiling like he would sometimes when we had those talks. Like I was the biggest little smart-arse he’d ever met, and he loved me for it.” Newt was smiling too, now, bathed in his own nostalgic glow.

“Did he ever start one of these talks?” asked Crowley.

“Not often, no. The only times I can think of when he did were when they tried to teach us something about Judaism in school, and I’d come home and tell him about it, and it turned out school had got it wrong, or not given the whole picture.”

“So you grew up with Jewish family, going to Jewish events, celebrating (some) Jewish holidays, and getting a Jewish education at home pretty much for the asking.” Crowley clarified.

“That’s about the size of it, yeah.”

“But you’re not Jewish.”

“Well I’m not, am I?” Newt shrugged in agitation. “There’s a set of criteria, and I fall outside it.”

“Love,” said Anathema gently, “There’s been a lot of talk lately about reconsidering how strictly the matriliniality rule needs to be adhered to…”

“Yes, yes, I know about that. And it would be one thing if my immediate family really practiced Judaism regularly, or if I’d been bar mitzvahed myself, or anything like that, but we didn’t, and I wasn’t, so I’m not.”

“Well, that must be a relief then.” said Crowley, in a tone that could have pickled meat.

Newt stared at him. “What?”

“To have that escape clause.” he went on nastily. “I can understand why you would want it. Historically speaking, being Jewish has rarely been easy. Why be part of a weird minority if you don’t have to? So yes, you just go ahead and lean on that mother of yours. No one would blame you for pushing the…oddities of your heritage and past under the rug. No, don’t worry; you don’t have to be Jewish if you don’t want to be.”

Newt stood slack-jawed for a moment, then exploded. “Don’t say that, how dare you say that?” he demanded, with far more heat than it probably should have been safe to direct at a being like Crowley. “Haven’t you been listening? The times I spent…” he fumbled for words “…in Judaism have consistently been some of the happiest of my life. Laughter and connection and this…this feeling that I never got anywhere else. A feeling of warmth, of rightness. It was almost like believing in something. Not in G-d, maybe, but sometimes, even if it got more fleeting and less strong as I grew older and started to really understand the kind of half-breed hanger-on I was, sometimes, I believed that I belonged.

“And as to your veiled references to the fluctuating but ever-present antisemitism or just simple ignorance of mainstream society, trust me, I know. When I was younger it was listening to a classmate confidently explain to her friends that Jews weren’t allowed to eat leavened bread at all, ever, and not having the courage to interrupt the conversation and correct her, and more recently, it’s been these three co-workers at United Holdings who I can only assume think they’re funny. Or possibly they think that they can get away with it if they pretend to think they’re funny, which, to be fair, so far they have. But I get to listen to them gathered around the water cooler across from my cubicle making Lynch-The-Black jokes and Gas-The-Jew jokes, and they both make me angry, but the second category undeniably hits a deeper, more personal well of anger than the first.”

Here he paused. “I’m not…proud of that, by the way. It would almost certainly be better if every cruel or bigoted joke I heard hit me just as hard as the ones that make me picture my father and my aunt and my closest cousin and my new little second cousin being dispassionately yet hatefully murdered. But that’s not how my mind works. I would even hazard to say that it’s not how most people’s minds work.”

Crowley, who had withstood the storm with equanimity, leaned in closer and raised his voice a hair. “So are you Jewish or aren’t you?”

“I-DON’T-KNOW!”

“Because it seems to me that your position right now is that people who tell you that you’re Jewish are wrong, and people who tell you that you’re not Jewish…are wrong.”

“Well…maybe! Maybe they are both wrong!”

Crowley’s voice gentled a little. “Then what’s right?”

Newt sighed and deflated. “What’s right is…that I can’t say I’m Jewish. But I’m definitely not not Jewish. And sometimes I feel closer to it than other times. And sometimes I can manage to be sort of okay with this ebb-and-flow relationship, and then sometimes I want to be really Jewish so badly my teeth hurt.”

For a moment, Crowley looked distinctly like he’d just gotten exactly what he was looking for. “Then why don’t you do something about that?”

Newt blushed again. “Because…because I never know where to start. Because even if I knew enough to just jump in and start doing more, it would feel wrong of me to decide that I was allowed to do so. But trying official conversion, and having to explain my particular position to a Rabbi, always seemed to promise its own stew of awkwardness. So I’ve just…sat with this uncertainty. For years.”

Aziraphale glanced at Crowley, and an awful lot seemed to pass between them in quite a short time. “I think,” the Angel then said, “that I should quite like to have a classmate. Someone to collaborate with on homework. Someone to gang up on the teacher with, if need be.”– Crowley put his hand to his forehead in mock horror– “An extra brain to keep things interesting. If you think you can stand to bring yourself down to my level–”

“Oh, there’s loads I don’t know.” Newt interjected. “My ‘Jewish education’, such as it was, was incredibly piecemeal and haphazard, really just getting answers to questions I happened to think to ask. I’m sure that plenty of the basics will be new to me. Heck, you’re an immortal angel; you probably know a lot of things that I don’t.”

“Then we’ll make perfect complementary students, won’t we? Will you join us?”

And so, shaking almost imperceptibly, Newt sat down.

#good omens #good omens 2019 #good omens is jewish and so am i #newton pulsifer #Anthony Crowley #anathema device #Aziraphale

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