Uri Full of Light

by Holly Sortland

  He looked at her lip gloss, the blush on her cheeks, how pretty she looked with her hair pulled back.

  “What’s wrong, do I look super dorky?” she asked.

  He hesitated for a moment, imagining himself kissing her. The thought both shocked and aroused him.

  “No Hannah, you look really pretty today.”

  Hannah smiled. “Uri, I lied,” she said.

  “You, lie? I’m shocked!” he said sarcastically.

  She rolled her eyes. “I am a bit nervous.”

  “About what?” he asked as he closed his locker.

  “About this,” she said, handing him a small, overly folded piece of paper. “I gotta go!” she said in a rush. “Read the note!”

  She disappeared behind the row of lockers into a crowd of students.

  When Uri arrived at his English class, he was pleased to hear that Mrs. Fisher was running late. He pulled Hannah’s note from his pocket.

  In beautiful handwriting, the note was carefully written in red ink. The paper came from a small journal page. Hannah seemed like the type of girl who would keep a journal.

  The note read:

  Uri,

  Will you meet me at the library during our lunch period? Come alone if you can.

  On the bottom of the crisply unfolded page was perfect Hebrew, written right to left, as it should be.

  It read: תודה רבה לך meaning, thank you very much in English. Uri smiled. Hannah’s audacity amazed him. Looking at the clock, he counted down the hours until lunch.

  8

  Hannah sat in her first period orchestra class, unfocused and unprepared.

  Mr. Kelly, the orchestra teacher, stopped conducting and tapped his baton loudly on the stand. “Second violins!” he scolded them. “What is the problem today? You’re all over the place.”

  Hannah felt like he was especially eyeing her. Once a star violin student, she stopped practicing after she started dating Will. Her chair in the orchestra continually dropped. She stopped a lot of things after Will came along.

  She impatiently looked at the clock, counting the hours until their lunch period. Would Uri show up? Would he even be allowed to sit in the library with a girl unchaperoned?

  During her study hall hour before lunch, Hannah browsed through her copy of It’s a Mitzvah! Step by Step to Jewish Living, a book she found at the mall shortly after her first encounter with Uri at the football game. She pondered her attraction to him. His religion fascinated her, but there was something about his demeanor and inherent kindness that drew her to him.

  Her mind flashed back to the previous weekend, when her ex-boyfriend, Will, showed up unexpectedly at her house. When she returned home on Friday evening, after the uncomfortable visit to Uri's house, she was angered to see Will's truck parked in front of her house.

  She found Will visiting comfortably with her parents about hunting, his work on the ranch, and his plans for vocational school.

  After two letters from Hannah explaining why she wanted to break up, followed by a painful telephone conversation, she’d received a letter from Will indicating that he planned to visit her soon. If they met in person, he explained in his letter, he was sure they could work things out.

  Hannah was in no mood to deal with Will's neediness. Her parents, who Will won over after two years, offered him the guest room for the night, but Hannah insisted that he stay at a local hotel, even offering to pay for his lodging.

  Will asked to talk with her privately. Soon she found herself in the front seat of his truck. She had been in that truck so many times; its inner contour was etched in her brain.

  Hannah listened to Will beg and plead his case for staying with her. He had changed, he assured her. He admitted that he had treated her poorly in the past. Wherever she decided to go to college, he would follow her.

  Tired of the same exhausting conversation, Hannah desperately wanted to put an end to it.

  "I like someone else," Hannah blurted out.

  "What? Who the hell are you talking about?" he asked her angrily.

  "No one you know," she replied. "He's new in town and a year younger than me."

  She was stunned as she watched tears stream down Will's face. "Have you had sex with him?" he asked, pounding his fist on the steering wheel.

  "Jesus, Will, no!" Hannah responded. "You need to calm down."

  "Calm down? I've been waiting for you for two years. . . after everything we've been through, how can you just throw it all away for some kid you barely know?"

  He was audibly sobbing now.

  "I am really sorry, Will. I don't want to hurt you." Hannah responded with genuine sympathy.

  "Jesus, Hannah, we almost had a kid. We should have kept it. If I could go back, I would have made you keep it!"

  Will’s comments triggered Hannah.

  "Are you kidding me?" she raised her voice at him. "You practically had the appointment set up before I took the pregnancy test!”

  Tears of resentment streamed down her own face. "I was barely sixteen, Will! I can't do this anymore. You need to go to a motel. I’ll give you cash if you need it.”

  He sat silently, sniffing, and wiping his face on his shirt cuff.

  "Fine,” said Hannah. "Sleep in your truck if you want."

  She reached for the door handle when he grabbed her arm.

  "Hannah, wait," he said, sounding calmer. "Can I kiss you one last time?"

  Staring at his familiar face, she felt a slight tenderness towards him. She had never seen him so miserable.

  "I don't think that's a good idea," she said.

  "Please, I need to feel you one last time," he sniffed and wiped his face again.

  Thinking about how far he drove to see her, she felt a tinge of guilt.

  "Okay, but just one. On the cheek," she reluctantly agreed.

  She leaned in to offer him her cheek, but he turned and attempted to force an opened mouthed kiss on the lips. She tried to pull back, but at six feet four inches and 210 pounds, he outweighed her. Soon his hands were up her shirt; he unbuttoned her jeans.

  Hannah had done this with Will so many times; she almost went along with it. As Will’s hands furiously groped her, Hannah thought of Uri and the courage it took for him to punch Greg Moorehouse in the nose. As Will tried to push up her bra, Hannah thought about Uri’s religious upbringing, and how admirable it was to think that he hadn't even kissed a girl. Adrenaline and indignation rushed through her body.

  "Stop it, Will!" she yelled. Hypnotized by lust and anger, he kept kissing her and pulling up her shirt.

  "I said stop!"

  With scathing urgency, she scratched his face as hard as she could, drawing blood with her fingernails.

  "What the hell?" Will stared at her, crazy-eyed. For the first time in her life, she thought he might hit her.

  She frantically pulled the door handle and jumped out of the truck. She dashed towards the house and heard Will start his engine. Before she could get to the porch, Will rolled down the window of the passenger seat and yelled, "I feel sorry for the new guy. He's going to learn that you're a selfish whore!"

  Sobbing, Hannah collapsed onto her front steps, zipped up her pants, and adjusted her shirt and bra. Smudged eyeliner stung her eyes. As she wiped them with the sleeve of her favorite blue sweater, she thought about the years she’d spent with Will—how careless and wasteful they were.

  She wondered if she ever really loved him, or if she was drawn to him because she was lonely. She wiped her runny nose, took a deep breath, and opened the front door. Her dog Tully greeted her as usual, his tail wagging. She envied the small terrier for being unaware of the evils in the world. Hannah scooped up the dog and retreated to her room, desperately wishing she could talk to Uri.

  9

  The lunch bell interrupted Hannah’s flashback of her miserable weekend. She rushed to the bathroom, checked her makeup, freshened up her lip gloss, and popped a mint in her mouth.

  She made her way to the library,
quickly greeted by Justin, her debate partner, and other students on their team.

  "Bananas!" Justin was the only person she let get away with calling her that nickname. "We have to come up with some more negative evidence cards for tonight," he said.

  Hannah kept her eyes focused on the front library entrance, praying that Uri would make his way through the doors.

  "We have tons of evidence cards,'' argued Hannah. "Besides, I have to meet my chem lab partner to finish an assignment."

  She looked at the clock. Seven minutes passed since the lunch bell rang. Uri should have been there by now.

  As her hope began to sink, Uri appeared at the entrance, his backpack slung over his shoulder, holding a binder in his other hand. He spotted Hannah right away and smiled.

  He walked up to her, looking cheerful and confident. "You did a great job on your Hebrew," he said.

  "Did I get it right?" she asked.

  "Yeah," he said. "It was perfect, actually."

  Justin interrupted the conversation by introducing himself.

  "Hey, I'm Justin. I'm Hannah's much superior debate partner," he said to get a rise out of Hannah.

  "Whatever! Who got higher speaking points at our last tournament?"

  "That's just because you wore that really short suit dress," Justin teased.

  "You are such a sexist!" Hannah exclaimed, taking Justin's bait. Uri wasn’t sure what to think of Hannah and Justin's banter. They were obviously closer friends than he thought.

  "This is Uri," Hannah introduced him to Justin. "He's my chem lab partner."

  The two boys nodded at each other before Hannah ushered Uri away.

  "Follow me," she said. " I know the best places to hang out in the library. And don't worry, technically there are other adults in the room." She smiled at him mischievously.

  The two sat in a quiet corner for the next 45 minutes. They talked about mundane and silly things. How many siblings they had, their favorite music and books. Hannah talked about her family's dog, which intrigued Uri, as the Geller family never owned pets.

  Hannah pulled some beef jerky from her backpack, ignoring the "No Food" signs plastered on various walls of the library.

  "Want some?" she offered a piece to Uri.

  "Actually, I have my own snack," he said, pulling a zip lock bag from his backpack. "You can have some," he offered Hannah. "It's all kosher."

  "Kosher, you mean like the pickles?" Hannah asked.

  "Oh, it is a lot more complicated than that," Uri explained.

  Before he opened his bag of snacks, he quietly uttered a prayer in Hebrew.

  Hannah watched him in awe.

  “What did you just say?” she asked him.

  “In English it means, blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the Universe, by Whose word all things came to be.”

  “Do you say that prayer every time you eat?”

  “Not always, it varies on what I’m eating,” he smiled.

  He told her how Jewish blessings were designated for foods depending on how they grew. Food that grew on a vine received a different blessing than food that grew from the earth.

  He explained how his mother, Devorah, spent hours each week to ensure a kosher kitchen, making sure that meat products were not placed in the same pans as dairy products. He told her about the prohibition on eating ham and shellfish, and how all food must be certified kosher.

  "Wait a second, does that mean you can't eat cheeseburgers?" Hannah asked, incredulously.

  "Nope," answered Uri.

  "How can you deprive yourself of cheeseburgers?" she asked.

  "I've never had one before, so I don't know what I'm missing."

  "What about parmesan on your spaghetti?" she pressed him.

  "Nope!" said Uri.

  "Bacon?"

  "Definitely not," he said with a look of disgust. "Someday I will explain to you where these rules come from in our Torah. It will make more sense."

  "Someday?" echoed Hannah, feeling hope that Uri would stay a presence in her life.

  "Someday soon," he smiled.

  They talked more about his family; Uri had an older brother, Gavriel, who was doing his surgical residency at a hospital in Jerusalem after serving his compulsory time in the Israeli Defense Forces. Uri explained that in Israel, all young men, and women over 18 were required to serve.

  "I'll be serving there myself in a couple of years," he said.

  "But aren't you from Philadelphia?" Hannah asked, confused.

  "Yes, but I'm also an Israeli citizen," he explained.

  "Were you born there?" she asked, fascinated by all that she was learning.

  "No, but my parents are citizens under the Law of Return, and so am I. My mother lived there most of her life.”

  Hannah looked confused, so Uri continued. "Basically, any Jew can apply for citizenship in Israel. There are some things that make people ineligible, but even converts can apply for citizenship."

  "Seriously?" Hannah was intrigued. "I could convert to Judaism and become a citizen?"

  "Well, technically," Uri explained, "but it's not that simple. Conversion is hard work, especially an Orthodox conversion. Rabbis can make it exceedingly difficult. Some people convert Orthodox for marriage purposes, and the rabbis don't always approve of it."

  Hannah was silent for a moment. Uri could see wheels turning in her head.

  "So, if I wanted to move to Israel, I could convert to Judaism, and marry you?" She smiled.

  Uri's face turned a bright red. "Um, I guess so. Theoretically."

  "Yes, theoretically," Hannah repeated his response. Afraid she was making him uncomfortable, she backtracked her earlier statement.

  "I probably could never be Jewish," she said. "I'm a horrible cook. I burn mac & cheese. . .who burns mac & cheese? Besides, I could never give up cheeseburgers."

  "Right," responded Uri. "And I would never ask you to."

  "Of course not," she said awkwardly.

  "What other rules are there? Can a woman be a rabbi?" Hannah asked, hoping to break the tension.

  "No, only men can be rabbis."

  "That doesn't seem fair," Hannah responded.

  Uri explained, "In the more liberal denominations of Judaism a woman can be a rabbi, say, if you're a Reform Jew like Daniel. But in Israel the state won't even recognize a marriage between an Orthodox Jew and a Reform Jew. Only Orthodox marriages are recognized."

  "So," he continued, clearing his throat. "If you and I were to get married, you'd have to have an Orthodox conversion."

  Ignoring the slight awkwardness between then, Hannah kept asking questions. She was fascinated by what she was learning.

  "Would I have to change how I dress?"

  Uri flushed as he looked at her clothing again. Her blazer and jeans hugged her body, accentuating her curves.

  "Um, well, yes," he said. "I mean you look really nice. I like your style. Orthodox Jewish women are required to wear more modest clothing."

  "What do you mean by modest?" she asked.

  "Well, you need to make sure your body is well covered." Uri began to sweat.

  Hannah stared at him for a moment. "You mean like your mother dresses? Because I think she dresses beautifully."

  "Yeah," he said, feeling a little less tense.

  "Jews don’t believe in Jesus, right?" Hannah asked questions as they popped up in her mind. Uri began to understand why people described her as unpredictable.

  "Well, it's not that we don't believe that he lived,” Uri explained. “That really doesn't matter. We believe that the Mashiach hasn't come yet. When he comes, the whole world will know, and it is said that gentiles will turn to the Jews for knowledge. We’re called to be a light to other nations."

  “What’s the Mashiach?” Hannah asked.

  “The Messiah,” Uri answered.

  “Jews don’t believe Jesus was the Messiah?”

  “Of course not, human sacrifice is an abomination. Why do you think God stopped Abraham from killing
Isaac?” he asked, wondering how much, if any, of the Torah she knew.

  “I don’t think I’m familiar with that story,” she answered, ashamed of her lack of Biblical knowledge.

  “I’ll tell you what, I have a copy of an English Hebrew Bible at home. I’ll bring it to you tomorrow and you can read it. Only if you want to learn Torah, of course.”

  “Of course, I want to!” Hannah exclaimed, regretting sounding too eager. She valued her strong intellect, and her ignorance on religious matters embarrassed her.

  “Ok, I’ll bring it tomorrow.” Uri smiled.

  “Great, thank you,” Hannah responded, sounding more composed.

  They were silent for a moment.

  “Uri?”

  “Yes, Hannah?”

  “What exactly is the Torah?”

  Uri flashed his gap-toothed grin, got up from his chair, and walked to the librarian’s desk. A few moments later, he returned with a copy of the King James Bible.

  “There are no copies of the Hebrew scriptures here, so this will do for now,” he said. “Get ready for your first theological lesson.” He smiled at her before walking her through the first five books of the Bible, explaining how they made up the Torah.

  “But don’t be fooled by this translation,” he told her. “The Torah is in the Hebrew, so the true meaning of the words is much different than what is written in here.”

  Uri gazed at Hannah as she thumbed through the verses, seemingly lost in her thoughts.

  "What do you believe, Hannah? Do you believe in God?"

  She paused for a moment, unprepared for the question. "Yeah, I believe in God. I mean how could I not. Look at the Earth and how life couldn't survive if the sun were just a few light years closer, or if the moon were positioned just a tiny bit differently. Life couldn't exist. It really is like God made the heavens for us." She paused again.

  "And then there's the stars," she said.

  "The stars?"

  "Yeah, my dad and I once had this great discussion about the universe.” She took her eyes off the Bible and looked intensely at Uri.

  “We are seeing the light from stars that have been dead for millions of years. Isn’t that amazing?”