Subway Stories

My MTA card is a ticket to adventure.

Straphanger: Daniel Kaplan’s commute from Queens to his school in Manhattan includes two subway rides and a cast of interesting characters. Courtesy Daniel Kaplan

by Daniel Kaplan

For most of my friends their commute to and from school involves riding in a van or a school bus with door-to-door service. My commute involves a bus ride to the subway at Union Turnpike in Queens and then two subway trains to 77th Street and Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. From there I walk two blocks to Ramaz on 78th Street between Park and Madison avenues. Although sometimes I wish I were riding a comfortable bus to school, I enjoy the freedom of being able to come and go on the subway.
Since I am an observant Jew, I take pride in wearing my kipa wherever I go. Although I occasionally feel uneasy or get strange looks I feel privileged to live in a place

where I can freely practice my religion.
While I am never embarrassed to wear my kipa on the subway, I must say that it does attract interesting people and fosters out of the ordinary encounters. Now that I commute to high school I have a subway carload of interesting stories.
My first encounter occurred approximately two weeks after the holiday of Sukkot. As I entered the subway station I noticed that there was a strange looking man with an abnormal amount of hair on his head and face. He looked like he hadn’t had a haircut in six months hadn’t combed it in six months either. In general, he looked quite disheveled.
He struck up conversations with numerous people who were waiting for the train. As the train approached the station I continued toward the spot that would make my transfer to the next train most convenient. I wound up standing right next to this man.
While on board he turned to me and said, “Did you just have some sort of holiday?” Trying to keep my distance, I kindly nodded my head and said “yes.” But no, plain yes was not enough for him. He insisted on verifying the name of the holiday, Sukkot. He proceeded to tell me that he had been in the hospital during the week of Sukkot and his Jewish doctor took him out to “a tent.” He continued to describe the tent by saying “it wasn’t really a tent because it had four walls and some sort of roof made out of branches.”
After a while on this “long” ride I felt a bit more comfortable talking with this man. He proceeded to tell me how he felt about the way historians viewed his religion, Christianity. He told me that he enjoyed reading the Old Testament and the New Testament.
What came next almost threw me off my seat. He told me that along with the Old and New Testaments he enjoyed learning the Mishna. At first sight I knew he was out of the ordinary but I was really not expecting this. The only people I knew who studied the Mishna are Jews. The remainder of the ride proceeded rather uneventfully and I was thankful for that.
I am not the only one in family who rides the subway everyday. My brother, Yonatan, who is a senior in high school, and my sister, Atira, who is a sophomore in college, also ride the subway everyday. Both of them have stories to tell but Yonatan and I attract more interest simply because our kippot make us stand out as observant Jews.
My brother and I don phylacteries every weekday. Every Friday my brother and I take home our tefillin, which are in a special case called a tefidanit. It is a green, fabric cylindrical container in shape and sort of resembles a thermos. One Friday last year on my brother’s ride home from school, two ladies with very heavy southern accents turned to him and said, “What a nice lunch box you have there. What do you have in there?” My brother tried to respond and explain that this canister shaped container actually contained religious articles but these ladies would not let him get a word in edgewise. One lady immediately responded to her friend, “Mary, I told you he keeps his lunch in there” and with that the matter was resolved.
During final exam week at Ramaz, students come in for tefilah (prayer), take an exam and then go home. Between the hours of 10 a.m. and three p.m. there are less people riding the subway than during peak times. When I entered the station at 77th and Lexington Ave during the last week of January I noticed very few people in the station. I did, however, see a man frantically pacing back and forth at the far end of the platform. Since I needed to get to that end of the station (because that is where my transfer is) I decided to proceed, albeit a bit hesitantly.
I decided to stop 15 feet away from this person. While I continued to wait for my train, this man noticed me with my kipa on my head and decided to approach me. I began to get scared when this man stopped right in front of me. He then stuck his hand into his pocket. I contemplated whether I should run away; I figured if he had a weapon he would still be able to hurt me so it did not pay to run. I was not comforted by the scarcity of people in the station.
What could this man possibly want from me? I wondered. I was a little freshman on my way home from school. Suddenly he pulled out his wallet with a picture of the Lubavitcher Rebbe inside. He then looked up at me and said, “I like to greet the Orthodox Jews like this because they are the soldiers of God and I am a soldier of God, too.”
In shock, I just looked up at him and nodded. He then proceeded to ask me questions about where I went to school and about the area’s Jewish population. Since the trains don’t arrive very often during off-peak hours I actually had quite a long conversation with this individual. Once I got to know him he wasn’t all that strange. I still haven’t figured out what all that frenzied pacing was about.
Every year my school chooses a book that the entire school reads. This year the book is “Black Like Me” by John Howard Griffin about a white man’s experience in the south as an African American. I decided that I was going to read this book on the way to and from school because I couldn’t really do much other schoolwork while standing.
One day on my way home I was approached by a man who asked me what school I go to. Assuming that he was just a curious subway commuter I explained to him that I go to a private school called Ramaz on the Upper East Side. He told me that he found it interesting that I was reading that book because the other day he saw an African American woman reading a book about the Holocaust. This time I wasn’t so scared. It was a packed train and he was just trying to make conversation. He asked me questions about where I live and where I went to elementary school. It turns out that he sends his son to the same elementary school that I went to. You never know who you are going to meet and what connection they might have to you.
My mother always taught me not to talk to strangers. In fact, in all of the above encounters I didn’t start talking to anyone; in every case they started talking to me. Some of these people were surely peculiar others were simply eccentric—all of them were out of the ordinary. Fortunately at no time did I find myself in danger. For the most part, I hoped that what I said would help these people understand us Jews better.
I now realize the connection between my actions and wearing my kipa. I am well aware that some people will judge all of Orthodox Jewry based on my behavior. I may be the only Orthodox Jew they have ever encountered. As I continue to ride the subway every day proudly wearing my kipa, I hope that all my actions will be ones that show Orthodox Jews in a positive light.
Daniel Kaplan is a freshman at Ramaz Upper School in Manhattan.

Westchester Jewish Conference

Westchester’s Jewish Community Relations Organization