JETS OVERHEAD by Peter Nolan Smith

Falmouth Foresides was a quiet neighborhood in the 50s. Ships blew their horns leaving Portland Harbor and channel buoys tolled out their passing wake. At night I listened to the Celtics game on a small transistor radio from Japan.

I set the volume to almost silence.

My older brother was a light sleeper.

My mother worried about my hearing and I pulled the earphone out of my ear before falling asleep to my brother's breathing.

None of this coastal quietude preparation me for our move in the summer of 1960 to a suburb south of Boston. The neighborhood itself was peaceful, however our split-level ranch house lay directly beneath the landing pattern for Logan airport. The jets powered down their engines sixty seconds apart, as if Boston was under attack from a bombing run.

I was eight.

Our first night in the house I lay in bed crying. My brother was dead asleep. Sobs and planes didn't disturb him, only the hoarse voice of Johnny Most calling the Celtics and they weren't playing this time of year.

Downstairs adults were laughing in the kitchen. My parents were having a house-warming party for the neighbors. Cocktails were popular in the suburbs. Their drunken conversation grew louder with each overflight and then subsided with the planes passing our house.

I covered my face with a pillow.

My Uncle Jack entered the darkened bedroom and sat on my bed.

"I thought I heard crying." Uncle Jack was the youngest of my uncles. "What the problem?"

"The planes." I whispered, as a set of jet engines whined down its speed.

"The planes." He laughed with relief. "Those planes are bringing people home from trips far away. Soldiers, sailors, mothers, fathers, and children. They're a good thing."

"But they're loud." Maybe the fireworks for the 4th of July were louder.

"Yeah, I guess you're right." Jack followed the plane with his eyes. His house was up the street. He shrugged a shoulder. "Believe me you'll get used to it. My kids did."

"They did?" Uncle Jack had three sons about my age. We were to attend the same school. They were the same as me.

"Yeah, you can get used to most everything." Jack said like he was telling a lie. "Well,not everything. I ever tell you about the time I was in the Chosin Reservoir."

"No." Uncle Jack had been a Marine lieutenant during that war. Comic books glorified these battles. He had won several medals for bravery. Everyone in my family called him a hero.

"I marched through that frozen hell with my troops. We started out two-hundred strong, but day by day we lost friends. I can remember their names. Their faces. The Chinese blowing their bugles. You want to talk about noise. Those bugles were loud and then we'd kill the men blowing them before anyone with a weapon. We mowed them down with machine guns, rifles, hand grenades, and rocks. Then it was over. The commies were either dead or so exhausted that they couldn't even breathe. Quiet. Just like now. Then there was a gasp. Not one, but by all the living, wounded, and dying. Some crying too, but none of it loud like that."

Uncle Jack pointed to the approaching roar of a jet. His eyes were wet and he wiped at them with his sleeve.

"Silent like no one was sure what they were, because we were scared. The chinks and us. No one wanted to die anymore. I went to sleep right after that. The only officer left in a command of ten men. I slept like a king surrounded by the dead and wounded. They knew how to cry, but in the end it got quiet. Now you go to sleep too." His voice had authority. Men of that era were knew how to speak like their fathers. He patted my head and then said, "Not an order. Dream if you got them."

It was a strange bed story, which probably should have kept me awake for hours, instead I slept until dawn and Uncle Jack was right. I grew accustomed to the jets that I didn't hear them anymore.

Years later I ran a cross-country track meet in East Boston. My high school against Don Bosco. The course skirted the beach across a channel from Logan. Neptune Road was so loud that the noise rattled loose your fillings.

A few of the opposing track team lived on that dead end street. None of them said that they had ever grown accustomed to the noise.

Not then and not now.

And neither will Uncle Jack to sobs at night.

For him the crying belonged to the dead.

Torah Torah Torah

TORA TORA TORA was one of my mother's favorite films. The infamy of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor burned bright in her memory. Her friends from Jamaica Plain enlisted in the Marines, Army, and Navy by the scores. Many of them failed to return to Boston. Their bodies rest on islands across the Pacific.

The 1970 film flopped at the box office. Hippies didn't want to see a war movie, but I went with my mother and father. She cried at the sinking of the Arizona. My father had joined the Army Air Force that January much like many young Americans volunteered for the armed forces after the 9/11 attacks.

The producers of MAGNUM PI and NYPD BLUE manipulated the Japanese Navy's radio command TORA TORA TORA into TORAH TORAH TORAH for episodes about stolen Torahs. It has never been used by the IDF, who have been trying to draft Yeshiva students into the army without any success, for they consider the Torah trumps any secular laws.

Yesterday I was on West 47th Street and ran into Rondell at my old diamond exchange, where I was asking Richie Boy when I can start working. The answer had been October. It was more than a month away. Manny his father shrugged that the situation was out of his hands. We were all good friends.

"So nu?"The heavy-set Hassidic diamond broker was happy that I had returned safely from Thailand. We boasted about the health of our families and after a few minutes I asked his opinion about the power of the Torah over the laws of man.

"The Torah was dictated to Moses over the forty years in the desert. The words come from a divine source." The Torah was the law for Rondell.

"What about the last eight lines? Some scholars considered that these were composed after the Death of Moses."

"They are all sacred." The youngish father of six was a true believer from a schul on Eastern Parkway and said proudly, "You know that the Torah is one of the most important school books in Korea. Its truth is taught to many of the young."

"The Torah?" I understood how the five books of Moses formed the backbone of Hassidic tradition and the Christian accepting the Pentateuch into their Old Testament as well as the Muslims regarding the ancient text to be the words of Allah, but Korea was on the other side of the world and while 22% of its people claimed to be Buddhists and almost a third profess to be Christian, almost half the country adhere to no religion. "What's the Torah have to do with Korea?"

"The Korean ambassador told Israeli TV that Talmud study is a mandatory part of the country’s school curriculum and almost every home in South Korea boasts a Korean version of the Talmud, and mothers commonly teach it to their children, who call it the "Light of Knowledge."

"I know many Koreans are Christian. I had several baptized in my youth."

My old boss shook his head. Manny had heard this schtick before.

"You were a missionary?" Rondell knew of my devotion to atheism.

"No, but as a child in Boston the nuns offered us a chance to support Korean infant orphans. $15 took care of them for the first month of their life and you got to name them." Somewhere in Korea were four men in their late-40s with my name. "Koreans are also prone to Evangelism."

"Evangelism?" Rondell was unfamiliar with Christian subsects.

"Born-Again Christians." Manny was listening to my every word.

At the mention of these words my Brazilian co-worker turned her head. Ava believed in the God of the Only Faith and she prayed for my abandoned soul, so I won't burn in Hell. I looked at her, as I said, "Yes, Born-Agains back Israel 100%, for without Israel there can be no Apocalypse and the Apocalypse bring back the Messiah to battle the forces of Satan. Ava, do you have a Torah in your house?"

"Yes, it's called the Book of Light." Ava's was guided by the Bible. To her every word was true, especially the Apocalypse. She noticed her boss glaring at her. He hated my bullshitting.

"Thanks." I respected her faith. This country the Constitution guaranteed freedom of religion and from religion. "The Talmud gets around and so does the Koran."

"Not according to the Korean Ambassador. He says no Koreans read it, because it's a book of Islam." Rondell hated the Arabs; Christians as well as Muslims.

"That's not true. I have traveled through Korea's main airport on my many trips to Thailand and seen a few Muslim Korean in Inchon Airport, but no Hassidim. They prefer to fly through Tokyo or Beijing on the way back from the Hong Kong diamond shows Jews either, but then you don't have to like pastrami to be Jewish."

"What does pastrami have to do with the Torah?"

"Nothing other than it isn't tref."

"Goyim." Rondell was ecstatic to have stumped me on this issue and said, "Call me if you get a deal we can steal."

"Will do." We had made money in the past and I hoped that we made money in the future. We hugged as men equal in love of the world and I walked him outside the exchange. I wasn't making any money on the Street today and shouted, "TORAH TORAH TORAH."

"Say the word." Rondell pumped his fist in the air. He was a good family man and loved the Torah as should any rebbi.

Back home in Fort Greene I searched for 'Korea, torah' and found the following;

Nearly ten years ago, the Korea Times reported: “Interestingly, there are at least two different books currently sitting on Korean best-seller shelves that purport to explain the Jewish Talmud. The popularity of these books initially came as a surprise. But Koreans aren’t converting to Judaism. They read those books because Jews have gained a reputation for hard work and success, two things Koreans relate to well.”

Reports of Korean schoolchildren reading the Talmud – or at least stories thereof – have also been known for several years. One American teacher in South Korea related that in 2005, his elementary school students told him that as children, they had all read the Talmud, which they called the "Light of Knowledge." When asked if they had also read the Koran, they burst into laughter, saying, "Of course not, that’s the Muslim book.”

TORAH TORAH TORAH, but I prefer a good pastrami sandwich from Katz' Deli. Throw in a cream soda and I'm in heaven on earth.