Home of the Sages

 

“Each day, about a dozen Orthodox Jewish men in black hats and skullcaps file into the Home of the Sages, a Manhattan nursing home in the shadow of the Williamsburg Bridge.” 

—The New York Times, April 27, 2015 

 

On the ever-growing list of What I Never Knew

comes word that the Great Ali’s grandson becomes Bar Mitzvah.

Then, watch as the Eagle Eye Home Inspection Service

pulls into the empty spot next to the pump,

spreads its stainless-steel wings like the phoenix,

and morphs into a Mitzvah Mobile, ready to do all kinds of good.

And waiting for me this morning on the front stoop, this:

The New East Side Nursing Home–

on Bialystoker off of Willett just a short walk,

from the Essex Street Station, if you got the legs,

turns out to be the Home of the Sages.

 

But that’s how it is with Sages–

you never know where they’ll turn up.

You might happen on one in a coffee shop,

head bowed and shuckling over the puzzle in the Times;

or another gets loose and goes weaving up the street,

mumbling everything he knows of the Talmud

to no one in particular.

 

It’s better to find them where they gather each day

in Loisaida, soon after daybreak, from who knows what walkup,

having already taken their tea

through a cube of sugar clenched between their gums,

and now they’re limping, some with canes and walkers,

up the ramp and into the first-floor meeting room

of that rattrap, the New East Side Nursing Home–

then counting each other to a dozen most days.

Who should care so long as they make it to ten?

Or if they have to–not for nothing, these are Sages–

one goes to the landing and hollers up the stairs: