Tucked beneath the Brooklyn side of the Brooklyn Bridge, beyond the serviceberry trees and hedgerows of the Bridge Park Greenway, across the blacktop of Furman Street, the House of God awaits. Nearly 7 million Jehovah’s Witnesses throughout the world call the collection of buildings Bethel, transliterated from the Hebrew, Beth El, “House of God.” Its tall red sign, a city landmark for decades, looms over the skyline: watchtower. The building is also home to thousands of volunteers who live on the premises, all in the service, among other things, of printing the most widely circulated magazine on the planet: 46 million every month. I was supposed to live there, too.
When I was a small Jehovah’s Witness boy living in Queens, Bethel was Oz-like for me. I mean that with all the awe, utter hopefulness, and mythic fear with which Dorothy and her friends had approached that magical city. My earliest memory of visiting there, at six or seven, has my family walking those incredibly clean streets as if beyond them were a protected place, separate from the broken cement outside of Bethel’s borders. But mostly I remember the street names: Orange, Pineapple, Cranberry, and Water. Such nature! God lived in a concrete Eden. I remember Lemon Street most vividly of all, so bright and perfect. I can still see my father pointing at the sign. So this was where God lived.
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