Stories of the House of Love and Prayer
Miera -- An Excerpt from "Holy Beggars"
Excerpt from Holy Beggars: A Journey from Haight Street to Jerusalem
Moshav Meor Modiin
December 2003
I visit Miera, whom I knew as Louise at the House. She's one of several people here who have agreed to let me interview them for my book. Some of the houses on the Moshav, like Moishe Yitzchak and Bernice's, are substantial and spacious two-storey structures. By contrast Miera's house is a tiny, non-descript single-story square with a flat roof sitting on bare land. Except for a small patch of garden on the side, there is no landscaping.
A woman in her 80s, frail, bent over, with a scarf tied over her hair and a hesitant, uncertain smile, Meira opens the door and invites me in. The kitchen table, with stainless steel legs and a Formica surface, is covered with bowls, potted plants and books. Meira has cleared space for me to sit and set up my tape recorder. She offers me tea, which I accept.
Later this morning Meira will be going to the monthly women's Rosh Chodesh (New Moon) gathering at the shul. This is one day a month at the Moshav that belongs exclusively to the women. On the Hebrew calendar, we count our months by the waxing and waning of the moon, which is connected in Jewish mysticism to the deepest mysteries of the Jewish people, to what it is to be a seeker of God, and to the feminine. For years the women of the Moshav, together with visiting women who come to learn and teach, have been gathering on the day of the new moon. Wendy is joining them today.
I turn on the tape recorder and we talk. I ask Meira how she first found out about Shlomo and the House.
It was from her daughter Joy, a student at Sonoma State College, who met Shlomo at a concert there and danced all night. "Joy came home and showed me her shoes," Meira says, laughing. "She had danced holes in the bottoms of her shoes!" After that Joy started coming to the house. Meira started joining her, until finally Joy, Meira and Meira's three younger kids, Joe, Harold and Ester, all moved in.
Meira became a kind of den mother to the rest of us, making sure there were meals at night and especially that there was enough food to feed the hundreds of people who came for Shabbos.
"I remember everybody at the House using the stove at the same time, wanting to get ready for Shabbos," she says. "All the people were experimenting with dietary things, the different kinds of breads, the different kinds of dishes. They had never cooked before, some of them, and you never knew what you were going to come up with! (laughs) So I always tried to have a pot, a big pot, of something edible."
On weekdays she commuted 50 miles each way to her job as a kindergarten teacher at Travis Air Force Base. Sometimes she would be so tired that she had to pull off the road to take a nap. "Most people at the House were still sleeping when I left in the morning," she says laughing, "and when I got back in the late afternoon they were just getting around!"
At first Meira can't recall many specifics about her year of living in the House, but as we talk she begins remembering things. There was Shelley, the girl who wanted to sleep with a little privacy, so she moved with her stuff into the front closet where the pay phone was. That was the only phone in the House. If you wanted to use it, you often had to step over Shelley. Then there was the donation box in the front hallway. We used the donations to pay the utility bills. Someone started stealing the money so we put on a pad lock, which worked for a while until someone sawed it off. Although Shlomo usually stayed in a hotel when he was in San Francisco, Meira remembers a couple of times when he slept in one of the bedrooms on the second floor of the House. People barged into his room to talk at all hours of the night and he couldn't get any sleep, so she posted someone to guard the door.
One of Meira's biggest challenges was trying to raise her kids in the chaotic environment of the House while she was gone most of the time. "They witnessed things they shouldn't have," she says, "stuff that was going on in the basement, like drugs and sex, and they got a little bit out of hand."
That eventually led her to decide to move out of the House. She found a little apartment in back of Anshey Sfard synagogue about a mile away. When she lost her kindergarten job at the Air Force base, she found a job running the lunch program at the Hebrew Academy for kids in San Francisco.
A few years later Meira wound up at the Moshav with her daughter Ester, who is now married and lives with her husband and children nearby. Meira's oldest son Emory also came to the Moshav, and now lives a few houses away.
After we're done I turn off the tape recorder. As I’m returning the chairs to their places at the kitchen table, she leaves the room and comes back with a little girl’s dress. She's making this for her granddaughter, she tells me.
Meira follows me through the kitchen to the front door of her tiny house, and steps outside with me. The ground around the house is bare, evoking the harsh desert landscape that she and the other holy beggars must have found when they first got here.
“Come here, I want to show you something,” she says with a shy smile. I walk behind this stooped over old woman. The slow, careful way she walks does not conceal the strength and determination that move her forward. We get to the back of the house. There, in the shadow cast by the late morning sun, is a small patch of dark, moist earth that has been tilled, watered and carefully tended. Growing in the earth are tiny green vegetables.
Moshav Meor Modiin
December 2003
I visit Miera, whom I knew as Louise at the House. She's one of several people here who have agreed to let me interview them for my book. Some of the houses on the Moshav, like Moishe Yitzchak and Bernice's, are substantial and spacious two-storey structures. By contrast Miera's house is a tiny, non-descript single-story square with a flat roof sitting on bare land. Except for a small patch of garden on the side, there is no landscaping.
A woman in her 80s, frail, bent over, with a scarf tied over her hair and a hesitant, uncertain smile, Meira opens the door and invites me in. The kitchen table, with stainless steel legs and a Formica surface, is covered with bowls, potted plants and books. Meira has cleared space for me to sit and set up my tape recorder. She offers me tea, which I accept.
Later this morning Meira will be going to the monthly women's Rosh Chodesh (New Moon) gathering at the shul. This is one day a month at the Moshav that belongs exclusively to the women. On the Hebrew calendar, we count our months by the waxing and waning of the moon, which is connected in Jewish mysticism to the deepest mysteries of the Jewish people, to what it is to be a seeker of God, and to the feminine. For years the women of the Moshav, together with visiting women who come to learn and teach, have been gathering on the day of the new moon. Wendy is joining them today.
I turn on the tape recorder and we talk. I ask Meira how she first found out about Shlomo and the House.
It was from her daughter Joy, a student at Sonoma State College, who met Shlomo at a concert there and danced all night. "Joy came home and showed me her shoes," Meira says, laughing. "She had danced holes in the bottoms of her shoes!" After that Joy started coming to the house. Meira started joining her, until finally Joy, Meira and Meira's three younger kids, Joe, Harold and Ester, all moved in.
Meira became a kind of den mother to the rest of us, making sure there were meals at night and especially that there was enough food to feed the hundreds of people who came for Shabbos.
"I remember everybody at the House using the stove at the same time, wanting to get ready for Shabbos," she says. "All the people were experimenting with dietary things, the different kinds of breads, the different kinds of dishes. They had never cooked before, some of them, and you never knew what you were going to come up with! (laughs) So I always tried to have a pot, a big pot, of something edible."
On weekdays she commuted 50 miles each way to her job as a kindergarten teacher at Travis Air Force Base. Sometimes she would be so tired that she had to pull off the road to take a nap. "Most people at the House were still sleeping when I left in the morning," she says laughing, "and when I got back in the late afternoon they were just getting around!"
At first Meira can't recall many specifics about her year of living in the House, but as we talk she begins remembering things. There was Shelley, the girl who wanted to sleep with a little privacy, so she moved with her stuff into the front closet where the pay phone was. That was the only phone in the House. If you wanted to use it, you often had to step over Shelley. Then there was the donation box in the front hallway. We used the donations to pay the utility bills. Someone started stealing the money so we put on a pad lock, which worked for a while until someone sawed it off. Although Shlomo usually stayed in a hotel when he was in San Francisco, Meira remembers a couple of times when he slept in one of the bedrooms on the second floor of the House. People barged into his room to talk at all hours of the night and he couldn't get any sleep, so she posted someone to guard the door.
One of Meira's biggest challenges was trying to raise her kids in the chaotic environment of the House while she was gone most of the time. "They witnessed things they shouldn't have," she says, "stuff that was going on in the basement, like drugs and sex, and they got a little bit out of hand."
That eventually led her to decide to move out of the House. She found a little apartment in back of Anshey Sfard synagogue about a mile away. When she lost her kindergarten job at the Air Force base, she found a job running the lunch program at the Hebrew Academy for kids in San Francisco.
A few years later Meira wound up at the Moshav with her daughter Ester, who is now married and lives with her husband and children nearby. Meira's oldest son Emory also came to the Moshav, and now lives a few houses away.
After we're done I turn off the tape recorder. As I’m returning the chairs to their places at the kitchen table, she leaves the room and comes back with a little girl’s dress. She's making this for her granddaughter, she tells me.
Meira follows me through the kitchen to the front door of her tiny house, and steps outside with me. The ground around the house is bare, evoking the harsh desert landscape that she and the other holy beggars must have found when they first got here.
“Come here, I want to show you something,” she says with a shy smile. I walk behind this stooped over old woman. The slow, careful way she walks does not conceal the strength and determination that move her forward. We get to the back of the house. There, in the shadow cast by the late morning sun, is a small patch of dark, moist earth that has been tilled, watered and carefully tended. Growing in the earth are tiny green vegetables.
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2 Comments
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Comment by Shmuel Burkey on April 29, 2009 at 9:41pm - I just wanted to thank you for your sweet words about my holy Grandmother. When I lived at the Moshav I felt she was often overlooked. I remember how she took care of all the stray cats around her house. How she took care of me. How she took care of everyone. She was so nurturing and giving, I remember how I would try to rush out of the house with just a cup of coffee on my way to work, she would insist I eat something before I left. She found out I liked cocoa puffs and allways made sure ther was a box in the house. She would allways pack me alunch. I don't know if when you visited she still had her grape vines, but when I was there we made the best wine from them. Thank you again for your kind words about my holy Grandma.
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Comment by reuven sabel aka golden gater rebbe aka proshevitzer rebbe aka proszowicer rebbe on August 24, 2008 at 11:43am - if more of us would get on this website aryae would be able to find a publisher for his book
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