(You mean I never told you about Joel? He was one of the most colorful characters of my youth! He’s the source of the scalplock. The scalplock … Oh! I guess I’ve done such a good job keeping you out of my study that you haven’t examined its ornaments. The scalplock is this thin collection of suede, thread, feathers, and beads; it’s been dangling from this shutter knob for years).

Joel was a short, cute, feisty rabbinical student I met and briefly loved, in Israel in 1971. I was traveling with my friends Mary and Laura after college, and Mary knew several students at the rabbinate, so we sojourned at their dormitory in Jerusalem between our arrival and our assignment to a kibbutz.

It was a reform rabbinate, which is a little strange in a country that only recognizes orthodoxy. But if you wanted to be a reform rabbi in the US, then your three-year graduate program began with an academic term in Jerusalem. If nothing else, you’d learn Hebrew.

It felt like a graduate program. To the extent the students discussed their course work with us, it seemed like home. We’d just gotten our bachelor’s degrees and were all considering grad school, so the guys we encountered there were around our age.

Joel was one of the first I met. In fact we collided within hours. We were in someone’s room on the second floor, we three and at least a dozen young men, and restless Joel was the one with whom I most disagreed. I remember noting that he was rather cute and completely wrong. He wasn’t tall – maybe 5’10” – and he was wiry like a gymnast, with brown wavy hair to his shoulders, round brown eyes, broad nose, sensuous lips. He was strong-jawed and vehemently incorrect in just about everything he said. But he had energy, and we were some of the last awake, and we found a way to agree enough to take a walk which, as I was to learn would be typical with Joel, led to peril and excitement.

It was a balmy night in September, and we’d wandered in a large circle for some time, managing to forge a (no doubt political) compromise. We’d just sat ourselves on a lawn and were leaning in for what would be our first kiss, when we were interrupted by an unmistakably militant challenge. It wasn’t in English. It didn’t sound like Hebrew. It was coming from some soldier in dark clothes, and he was pointing a serious-looking weapon at us.

Immediately Joel had his hands up and instructed me to raise mine, which did nothing to calm me. Worse, he began to make reassuring sounds toward the guard, in what I later learned was his attempt at Arabic, while he muttered unreassuring remarks to me about how this type of gun had a tendency to accidental discharge. I later learned we were on the prime minister’s grounds; that’s why the guard. Apparently the fellow was so flustered about our presence that he reverted to his native tongue and forgot his Hebrew, which is what made our interview so awkward.

We got away, both awash with adrenaline. We supported each other back to the dormitory and then there seemed nothing better to do than to crawl together into Joel’s narrow bed. Our comforting became quite heated. He was very limber and vigorous and inventive. By the next morning we were still arguing but we were a couple.

He was more into it than I was. It’s difficult to believe that his conversation could overcome the great sex, but that’s what happened. Partly it was that he got us into trouble too often; it always turned out to be harmless but it was tiresome after awhile, and it invited me to figure that either Joel had obnoxious karma or he was on some level just plain stupid. Neither quality was attractive. But mostly it was that Joel told lies.

I used to say “pathological liar” to describe him, but I’m not sure it rose all the way to pathology. Maybe just habitual. Incorrigible. Automatic. Unconscious.

(continued tomorrow)