Introduction
The old man sat down at the Steinway piano and allowed his hands to hover above the white ivory keys. His tired, water filled eyes objected to the brightness that leapt up from the keys as stubbornness and determination gripped his fingers but in spite of all he knew they still trembled with memory and a certain fear.
It had been such a long time.
Brittle blue veins on the backs of his hands throbbed and seemed to bully his mind into action. He held back, fought even. Would his fingers still be able to answer the call? Would they still bend, move and delight with a subtlety that could inspire complete silence and sometimes uncalled for tears?
His mind travelled back to a song he had first heard as a fourteen year old boy coloratura soprano. It had been a song that even his eighty five years of living had been unable to diminish or erase. At last, his own particular courage moved into the worn out fingers and ordered them to play. Those around him stopped and listened. They felt his journey and knew that they must join him.
The old man went back in time.
He remembered.
The 21 Silver Songsters sang again through his fingertips.
PART 1
1
Issy Kaddar stood before the bima, a tall desk in front of the Ark, a secret and hallowed depository for the sacred scrolls of his ancient religion. Some of these scrolls lay on top of the desk, intent it seemed, on intimidating his ability to memorise and recite. The synagogue was quiet, faces watched and expected.
It was his bar mitzvah. He had become a man, an adult in the eyes of his Jewish faith. His father was no longer responsible. His fourteen years stood upright as he faced a congregation that stared and tortured. Issy was tall for his age but well proportioned. His muscles were developing in all the right places; he had been spared the misdirected, gangly limbs of pubescent revenge. His face, untried and untested, enjoyed a handsome bone structure, as jet black hair curled and danced without restraint, like his father’s in more youthful times.
Issy pulled his deep blue eyes away from the fearsome scrolls of antiquity and looked at his father standing at the front of the synagogue. He saw an expression of pride shine from the man’s face and yet his mother standing along side, seemed to shed a tear or two from her resigned eyes. The contradiction confused him for a few moments but his uncomplicated youth prevailed as he took one last look at the extracts from the Book of David that lay in front of him. The Rabbi’s words came back to him, ‘Learn that you might see, boy. Learn!’ Issy had learnt. His ‘Manhood’ now depended on it.
He took a deep breath and began his recitation.
The beauty in his voice soothed the struggle and tragedy in his history and calmed the fear of slavery and rejection. It sang the misery and victory of his past. All in the synagogue were forced to release their minds and bodies to a voice that seemed to sing and fly from every darkened corner of their Holy place. None could resist its comforting arms as it murmured gently and healed.
The silence and awe from those who listened and felt was complete.