Not all of my Broadway experiences have been in midtown theaters. Between 1988 and 1993 I did my graduate work at 721 Broadway in lower Manhattan, the sixth floor of which housed (and still houses) the NYU Department of Performance Studies. There I learned to think of performance as something broader and more diverse than what happened on so-called legitimate stages. I had friend who was into Japanese Rakugo, another into shamanic rituals involving trance states, another into queer theory, and still others who studied downtown dance in which the women lifted the men. My area was American popular performance, especially vaudeville with a concentration in magic–the entertaining deception kind, not the raising the dead kind. Today, I sometimes teach a course with a deception theme, but back then I was still learning the basics.

One day after some hours of fondling books at the glorious performing arts library at Lincoln Center, I thought I’d walk all the way down Broadway to 721. I made it through the theater district, past the magic shops, and a little past Herald Square before I met a thin, swarthy, and curly-haired man who, in a gauzy shirt and a vaguely Middle-Eastern accent, gave me a useful tutorial.

“Can you tell me where is the synagogue?” he asked in a halting voice.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “but I don’t know where there are any synagogues. Do you have an address?”

“The synagogue,” he repeated plaintively, “there they will help me. Where is, please?”

I repeated that I didn’t know where the synagogue was and I made leaving moves. He hooked my arm and explained that he was in a terrible spot. His name was Israel Aron—an extreme Jewish name—and his daughter was in the hotel room and they missed their plane to Tel Aviv and he had no money for another night in the hotel and the next plane didn’t leave until the next day.

“In the synagogue they will help me,” he said.

“I’m sorry, but I don’t know where the synagogue is.”

Then, Israel Aron looked deeply into my eyes and said, “But you are Jew, yes?”

Crap. How did he know?  Did I walk Jewish?

“Well, yes,” I admitted.

“Then you will help me! I will send you the money when I get back to Tel Aviv.”  He took out a scrap of paper and wrote down his name and address.

By now my astute readers will know that it is unlikely that this man is named Israel Aron, that he had written his actual address, or that he had a daughter in a hotel. It is obvious that I, a graduate student of sham in the Department of Performance Studies at NYU, could recognize the signs and sounds of the gonif in mid-con. In fact, I was almost certain. I put the probability that this story was a stinky cheese of deception at about 93%.

But then, there was that remaining 7%.

When I told him I didn’t have enough money for a hotel room, he told me he and his daughter would gladly stay at my place. By then, I think he knew he had me. How could I risk mistreating a fellow Jew in need? I felt that all the rabbis and Hebrew school teachers of my youth were watching me from the hereafter. With the gonif’s hook piercing my gills and the word “mark” flashing across my shoulders, I wrote my dorm room address onto a scrap of paper for Israel Aron. I handed him 40 dollars, which was all I could rationalize and which was most of what I had. His thank yous echoed and mocked me as I continued to walk downtown.

I’m still waiting to hear from Israel Aron.

I told my mother this story shortly before she passed away. The story pleased her. She said it showed compassion. My mother was proud.

“Broadway Fred” appears every Wednesday.

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