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When Edward’s grandfather dies, Trisha tears her blouse.
She does it right there at the doorstep, where some hired courier delivers the news with his cap pressed to his chest. Edward peeks around her skirt, frowning. His hand reaches toward the tear. Mom always scolds him and Al when they tear up their clothes playing. Why would she rip her pretty shirt on purpose?
“Mom?”
She sets a hand on his head, but she doesn’t answer him. She murmurs words Edward doesn’t recognize, then nods to the courier and shuts the door.
“Oh, Ed,” she says, and scoops him up in her arms. He presses his head into the crook of her neck. From here he can better reach the tear, right over her heart, and he pulls at the fabric as if he could sew it back together with his fingers. Something wet lands in his hair.
Trisha boards a train to the city. Edward and Alphonse stay with the Rockbells for a week, and Yuriy and Sarah dote on them the whole time. Edward ignores them. He didn’t ever meet his grandparents, and Al is still too little to really understand.
So he’s not sad, exactly. Not for his grandfather. Just for his mom, who, even after she gets back, still acts strange. It’s a whole month before she sews up her blouse, and even then the stitches are long and loose. Edward offers to try to fix it with alchemy. Trisha just smiles at him.
“You’re very kind, Ed, but I don’t want it repaired.” she tells him. “It’s not what we do.”
He pokes at the blouse where it lays over her lap. “We?”
“Jews,” she clarifies. “Where I grew up, there were more of us. Sometimes I wish you boys could have had that, but…” She smiles softly at her half-sewn blouse. “Well. If there’s one thing our people know, it’s how to grieve.”
She teaches him the Mourner’s Kaddish, even though she says she can’t say it without more Jews to pray with her. Ed and Al don’t count because they’re too little (Mom says they haven’t become bar mitzvahs yet).
Trisha tells him about the week she spent at her mother’s house. About low stools and silence and covered mirrors. She promises they’ll do things differently now. She whispers psalms in his ear and promises to teach him and Alphonse everything she should have already.
She dies first.
Afterward, Edward doesn’t even think to say kaddish. It’s not about the minyan, or about not being bar mitzvah. In fact, Edward hardly lets himself grieve at all. There’s simply no need, because he won’t let Trisha stay dead.
When the thing-that-isn’t-Trisha dies, no one says kaddish. Nobody covers any mirrors.
Edward never has a bar mitzvah. By his thirteenth birthday, he’s a military dog.
Liore happens. Edward, in his typical fashion, mouths off at Rose and Cornello and just about everyone else they meet. He has some choice words about their sun god and even more about their religious practices.
Afterward, on the train, Alphonse stares at him, then at his hands, then back again. Alphonse doesn’t breathe, exactly, but there’s a quiet sort of sound he makes like an intake of air. Like he’s going to say something, then changes his mind. And he just keeps doing it.
Edward, head tilted toward the window, watches him out of the corner of his eye. Finally, he takes pity on him.
“Whatcha thinkin’ about, Al?”
Alphonse’s leather fingers fiddle with his loincloth. “Oh! Um. Well, I guess I did have a question.”
“Yeah?”
“Back in Liore, you told Rose you were areligious.”
Edward gives him a look, brows furrowed. Maybe he did go a little overboard with his speech, but Alphonse knows he’s always been a cynic. He hasn’t talked to him in detail yet about the Gate or meeting Truth. He doesn't really want to change that right here and now on this train.
“Uh-huh.”
“Well—” Alphonse’s soulfire eyes look intently at him. “What about Mom?”
Edward blinks. That wasn’t where he expected this to go. “If you wanna know what I think about the afterlife…”
“Not like that,” Alphonse interrupts. “Mom was religious, right? It’s just, I don’t remember as much as I’d like to, and I know you’re not that much older than me, but I guess I was curious…” He trails off.
Edward purses his lips. During the shitshow that has been the past few years of their lives, Judaism hasn’t exactly been the first thing on his mind. It hadn’t occurred to him that Alphonse hadn’t gotten to see that side of their mom. Hell, Ed barely had.
“I don’t know about religious," he starts slowly. “It wasn’t like she talked much about God or anythin’. Not like the Letoists. But I guess maybe it counts anyway.”
Alphonse says nothing. Right. Not like he’d know any more than Edward.
“And she didn’t tell me a lot either,” Edward continues. “It only came up after Grandpa died. She said Jews were good at grief, or somethin’ like that.”
There’s a moment of quiet while the vicious irony sets in.
“I want to learn more about it,” Alphonse says quietly. “I mean, obviously the stone comes first, but… if it was important to Mom, it’s important to me. If it’s okay with you?”
Edward stares. “Why wouldn’t it be okay?”
“We promised not to go back,” Alphonse says quietly.
In his coat pocket, Edward’s fingers curl around his silver pocket watch. He hadn’t thought of it like that. Honestly, he’s not sure whether he should.
But this is something his little brother wants, something he can have. Edward isn’t about to tell him no.
And besides, he’s a scholar at heart. He won’t deny being a little curious.
“I bet there’ll be something at the library,” he says instead. “Wanna check it out when we get back to East City?”
Alphonse nods. Edward goes back to staring out the window and thinks about Trisha’s torn blouse.
The next time they visit Resembool, they lay stones on Trisha’s grave. Edward teaches Alphonse the Mourner’s Kaddish— cobbled together from his memory and notes painstakingly transliterated from Hebrew— even though they still don’t have a minyan.
Alphonse remembers the Gate. They stay far away from anything like a belief system and focus on the practices instead.
Shabbat seems like the obvious one, but they don’t actually observe it much. They’re always on the road, and the sort of danger they’re always finding themselves in doesn’t much care what day of the week it is. And Alphonse can’t eat anyway, and like hell is Edward going to bake himself a challah to eat without him. Instead they add it to their list of recipes, along with latkes and hamentaschen and a dozen other foods the books mention.
One year, they’re able to half-ass Sukkot by sleeping in a campsite outside the village they’re investigating. Then a bear takes interest in Edward’s leftovers and puts a swift end to that. Oh, and they don’t have any Judaica, because anything their mom might have had tucked away melted or burned in their childhood house. Edward doesn’t regret it, exactly— they set fire to that place for a reason— but he does kick himself now and again for not at least looking.
So. No food, and no ritual items. And no community, because again, they’re never in one place for long. Besides, they never had one out in Resembool. Edward wouldn’t even know where to start.
All of which eliminates, from what Edward can tell, at least 90% of Jewish practice.
So Edward thinks, fine. God is a hard line for him and Al. Always will be. But maybe the more philosophical side of things is worth a look. Just to see.
Turns out they’ve been missing out on a lot. Edward pulls an all-nighter at the library reading up on something called Kabbalah that feels, somehow, like looking at alchemy upside-down. It’s Truth, but more than that, it’s how the world plays it back like a harmony. Truth, and the space it leaves behind. Truth, and its reflection. Equivalent exchange.
Edward’s breath hitches as he flips through the pages He recognizes these symbols. He’s seen them on the Gate.
“Al,” he says, voice low but shaking with excitement. “I've got a lead.”
Maes, though slightly bemused, is able to point them to the largest synagogue in Central. They call ahead, and Edward and Alphonse find themselves sitting across from a rabbi who seems more than a little uncomfortable with the military taking interest in his congregation.
“It ain’t like that,” Edward says, waving his hand. “We’re alchemists, yeah, but this is a personal thing. The, uh, Judaism too.”
The rabbi looks interested. “Oh— you’re Jewish?”
Edward shrugs, then nods his head. “Yeah. Yeah, we’re Jewish.” He can’t remember every saying that out loud before.
The rabbi laughs when he asks him to teach him Kabbalah. “It would take years and a more qualified teacher,” he tells them. “But I’ll tell you what I can on one foot.” Edward doesn’t ask what that’s supposed to mean.
They’re sent away with several hand-drawn diagrams, a reading list, and an invitation to come back any time.
It doesn’t end up leading to the stone. But going forward, Edward can’t imagine ever understanding alchemy the same.
After the Promised Day, news of Hoenheim’s death arrives. Edward says the same words his mom did that day on the doorstep. He tears his shirt over the heart, then Alphonse’s when his hands— his own, beautiful human hands— are too weak and shaky to do the same.
Then Edward holds his brother in his arms as he cries all the tears his fragile body will allow.
They can’t really sit shiva. Alphonse can’t even leave the hospital yet. Besides, without a body and considering, well, everything, Edward can’t even wrap his head around a funeral service. His thoughts drift to just how many people are dead, how many funerals Amestris will see in the coming days. About how many mouths will say kaddish.
Trisha’s words echo in his head. If there’s one thing our people know, it’s how to grieve.
“Al?” he says quietly, one hand gently rubbing his brother’s back. “After you get out of here, I think we should visit that synagogue again. Whoever’s left is going to need a lot of minyanim.”
Alphonse doesn’t answer, but Edward feels his head nod against his shoulder.
“Shavuot starts tonight,” he says. There’s a mischievous glint in Alphonse’s eyes as he tilts his head to look up at him. “You know what that means.”
Edward scoffs. “And I don’t care. No milk."
“It doesn’t have to be milk. There’s cheese, cheesecake, blintzes—”
“I’m not touching that shit. If you want a cheesecake, I’ll get you a cheesecake.”
“Good luck with that,” Alphonse says drily, glancing out the window at the state of Central City. “You’ll stay up with me, though?”
“Sure. Bet I can make Colonel Bastard find something for us to read. He still feels bad about the stone thing.” Edward thinks. “Y’know, that gives me an idea.”
“I don’t know if I like the sound of that.”
“Well, I really doubt they want us to have candles in here.” Edward’s face splits into a wicked grin. “But if the bastard’s gonna be here anyway with his stupid little gloves, maybe we can guilt him into—”
“Brother, no—”