Matthue Roth - Yom Kippur a Go-Go

The World Bank held its annual summit that week, and Washington braced for the worst. They shut down the Capitol, the White House, and the Smithsonian museums, and any tours that hadnt been canceled were escorted by hulking security troops. Police officers were working eighteen-hour shifts. The president went on TV and said he was calling in the National Guard, but werent they in Washington already? The first World Bank riots, the previous autumn in Seattle, saw the largest domestic protest in U.S. history. Gas bombs, rubber bullets, anarchists picking fistfights with the police, nose to nose. All the rich-kid activists in Washington used their frequentflyer miles to fly there and participate firsthand. The rest of us were unspeakably jealous. We called them sellouts for months afterward. Now, the next phase of the riots was happening in Washington, D.C.

It was practically in my backyard.

I was in Washington that year, living on a very big scholarship from a very big university. The university, with its rich North Jersey political science majors and Pepsi-sponsored welcome seminars, was everything terrible we hated about America. Its president, a blubbery iceberg of a man in a walrus moustache and too-tight neckties, was the kind of guy who would cancel funding for the rape awareness group because he said it made the school look bad. He was also given to making lame jokes about the cost of tuitionyou know, like If You Have To Ask.

Our school president welcomed the World Bank conference with open arms. Like good activists, we were devastated, although in retrospect his enthusiasm fueled our fire like nothing else could. The university had paid for our housing and education, and encouraged us to leave our hometowns and move to D.C. Now we would use everything theyd given us to strike back. The conference started on Sunday. Activists planned to make human chains around crucial buildings on Saturday afternoon.

The National Guard tanks rolled in on Friday morning.

The air was tense and the city was jumpy. Regular citizens, the kind who didnt wear combat fatigues and handkerchiefs over their faces, were jumpy.

The entire city held its breath.

I was gearing up for the best weekend ever. Dubbing mixtape soundtracks, making plans with friends, picking out my best T-shirtsthe ones that started conversations, that made strangers walk up and say to me, Damn, where did you get that from? Riots, intrigue, the National Guard, hot activist girls in combat gear coming from across the country for the weekend. You knew there were going to be some good parties.

The streets would be closed off to traffic, just like the Fourth of July. Bands were scheduled to play nonstop concerts all along the paved-over quadrangles near the Washington Monument. The entire weekend was a punk-rock paradise. I was stoked as hell.

Only, the riots started on Shabbos.

I had just decided to become Orthodox. I had left Washington for a semester, come back, started hanging with the religious kids, and then, one day in late fall, I realized I was keeping kosher, scheduling my jobs so I didnt work on Saturdays, and I hadnt skipped synagogue in longer than I could remember. I was going through a geek phase, and, as geeks went, Orthodox kids were the absolute geekiest. The laws were so strict that it would be impossible not to rebel. In a religion that dictated the order of putting your shoes on, there had to be some pretty heavy partying going on to supplement all the rules.

Plus, they had six thousand years of history as backup.

They had to be doing something right.

Maybe I was feeling insecure about life, the uncertainty that followed college. Maybe I was just that rebellious, and all the usual rebellions had already been played out.

So suddenly, I was Orthodox. Learning how to be Orthodox was like learning to walk again, maybe like learning to walk on the moon. My house, which I shared with Yuri, had two sets of dishes. Our light switches had little metal covers so you wouldnt accidentally turn a light off on Shabbos. Our alarm clock went off every day at 6:45 A.M., a ten-minute shower before we had to say the morning prayers. Everybody I knew slept till 11:00, or ten minutes before class, whichever came first. The first time I got challenged for being Orthodoxby some vegan straightedge kid at a hardcore show, You cant be serious,Matt, that shit is so misogynisticI shoved the 6:45 A.M.

Two sets of dishes. One for meat, one for dairy. Actually, we had two and a half sets, because my roommate was especially anal and wanted to have neutral dishes, toononmeat and nondairy.