by Ragen, Naomi
They’d been roommates for about six months. They hadn’t spoken much. This, Rivkie chalked up to the fact that Delilah was a little older than she was and perhaps from a family of lesser means, which forced her to be extra busy earning money to finance her studies. The few times they had had a conversation, Delilah had wound up borrowing clothes, which Rivkie was only too happy to lend her—overjoyed, in fact.
She felt guilty sometimes for coming from such a wealthy family, being engaged to such a wonderful young man, having her health and her whole future ahead of her. She wanted to thank God every waking minute, and any good deed she managed to do she felt gave God back some pleasure. She felt this way even when her clothes came back to her wrinkled and stained—or failed to come back at all, which she viewed as an even bigger mitzva, because Delilah obviously needed new clothes badly, enough to take someone else’s.
Rivkie sat down at her bedside, shocked. “Delilah, what’s wrong?”
Her voice, so sweet and kind, filled with true concern, demolished the floodgates. Delilah sat up and sobbed—loud wet sobs full of the breathless sucking up of phlegm.
Rivkie, horrified, put her arms around her and patted her back. “Can’t you tell me what’s the matter? Maybe I could help you?”
At this, Delilah sobbed even louder.
Rivkie hugged her. “You don’t have to tell me. But you should tell God. Talk to Him. Explain it to Him. Ask Him to help you.”
Delilah looked up with surprise. Taking the tissue from Rivkie’s hand, she considered it. Yes! Yes! This was the answer. Who was compassionate and kind and forgiving? Who, after all, caused new life to be created in the first place?
Most of all, who could perform miracles?
Yes, yes, yes!
She put her arms around Rivkie’s slim shoulders, noting through her misty eyes that she was wearing a new blouse, one that had yet to be hung up in the closet, and that it was a very nice material. Silk? And that color, sort of a summer green. She wiped her eyes carefully, not wanting to get water spots on it that might ruin it, because she had a skirt that was the perfect match. . . . “Thank you, Rivkie. You’ve saved me. That’s what I’ll do. I’ll pray.” She saw her roommate’s eyes shine through undropped heartfelt tears.
For a moment, Delilah felt her heart pierced by the knowledge that such innocence and sincerity existed in the world. She didn’t doubt for a minute that if she poured her heart out and told Rivkie everything—which, of course, she had absolutely no intention of doing; she wasn’t a complete idiot—the girl would not sit in judgment.
She suddenly remembered what her teachers had once told them about Judaism being a system in which human beings attempt to imitate God. Until this moment, she had never understood what such a thing could mean. Rivkie, like God Himself, would without question react with sympathy and compassion.
Delilah was suddenly flooded by an aching desire to be a person like that, someone who went through life cleanly, openly, helping others, at one with God and other human beings. Perhaps it was not too late? Jews believed in repentance and clean slates and having your sins wiped away.
She would pray to God. She would ask His forgiveness, ask Him to solve this problem to which she could find no solution that would not lead to even worse problems. She would hand the whole sordid mess over to Him. And if He answered her, she would finally and absolutely know there was a God, and He wasn’t just a mythical being, like the tooth fairy or Santa Claus, a concept created by the popular imagination because human beings have to have explanations, and because they want to believe that their lives have some purpose, some meaning. She would bury all her skepticism, her doubts, and be reborn.
She got up.
“Do you want me to go with you?” Rivkie asked.
She shook her head. “No. I need to do this alone.”
She took her purse and put on a pair of sunglasses to hide her eyes, since it didn’t seem appropriate to begin repairing her makeup. Then she walked slowly around the corner to the synagogue.
Of course, it was locked. For a moment, all her good feelings evaporated. Why was it, she fumed, that churches were always open, always filled with quiet darkness, candles, etc. etc., and synagogues never were? And even if she waited around in the faint hope that some beadle might come by and unlock it for men wanting to say their afternoon prayers, still, she’d be the only woman there, and all of them would stare at her.
So where now? Where could she go that was dark and secret and spiritual? Where she would feel free to express her deepest soul and ponder the mysteries of the universe, God, and faith? She looked up and saw the movie house. They were playing Star Wars, which she had been planning on seeing again anyway.
The movie was just starting, but the theater was practically empty. She took a seat in an empty row at the far end of the aisle near the front, where anything she said aloud would be swallowed by the Dolby sound blasters. There was some kind of loud galactic fight going on.
“Please, God, I know I haven’t been behaving myself the way You’d want,” she whispered, then stopped. It sounded like she was talking to a school principal. She took a deep breath. “Dearest Father in Heaven,” she began. But it sounded so phony, so Holy Scroll Press, that religious publishing house that translated Hebrew prayers into unbearable English and published books professing to be compilations of standard Jewish laws but were actually modern reinventions so stringent and reactionary they made Maimonides look like a flaming liberal. She sat back quietly, exhausted, and watched.
Obi-Wan Kenobi and Qui-Gon Jinn, who had only good intentions, who were actually sent to make peace and stop the trade blockade of a perfectly innocent little planet, were about to be killed for no good reason. She felt angry tears drop at the terrible injustice of the world, where innocent people with good intentions—had she ever had any other kind? Had she not been, at the very moment disaster struck, planning to be a good Jewish wife and mother, taking care of a family in a large and comfortable house?—were pursued mercilessly by evil.
She put her hand over her stomach. Well, a baby couldn’t be called evil. It was a consequence but not an evil consequence. Just very inconvenient and embarrassing.
Her prayer was not going well at all, she realized, taking her eyes off the screen just as they landed on Tatooine and met Anakin Skywalker. . . .
She closed her eyes, gripping the seat in front of her with both hands.
“I’m not good at prayer,” she whispered. “It’s hard for me to concentrate; my mind is always wandering. But I’m scared, God. Really scared. I know I deserve to be punished for all the bad things I’ve done”—clothes strewn over the floor, body parts touching intimately—”but I really, really want children some day. But in the right way. With a visit to the ritual baths, and a marriage canopy, and a marriage contract handwritten by a scribe on vellum, signed by witnesses. Please forgive me for even considering aborting a child, if I am . . . if I am . . .” She hesitated, then stammered the word out loud. “Pregnant!” She looked around, frightened she’d been overheard. But people’s eyes were on the screen. She sighed, her heart racing. She put her palm over it. “You are smarter than I am. Please find some way to help me out on this. I don’t want to hurt an innocent child, or my future husband, or my parents.” She took a deep breath. “But if I have a baby now, I will be thrown out of the Jewish community. I will never be able to marry a decent man, to be a good Jewish wife and mother. And I know that’s what You want for me, isn’t it?”
So far, she didn’t see how God could be impressed, since she was even boring herself. And so God, who must hear this kind of stuff 24/7, must be snoring. She felt a sense of desperation, as if she were watching a delicate operation and the patient was flatlining and the doctors were using those electrodes, or whatever, to zap the heart one last time before calling it a day.
She leaned forward, a new sense of desperation making her body stiff and electric with passion. “Please, God, get me out of this! If You do, I swear on
everything holy that I’ll change!” She rapidly went down a checklist. “I’ll pray every morning. I’ll starve myself on all the minor fast days. I’ll wear skirts that cover my knees and blouses that cover my”—briefly, she considered saying wrists, but there was no way—”that cover two fists above my elbow. I’ll marry a good Jewish man and I’ll be the best wife, the best religious Jewish wife and mother. You won’t be sorry. Please help me!”
She felt a sudden warm flow between her legs. The skirt, she realized, was ruined. But her life was saved. It was a good trade, especially considering it was Rivkie’s skirt.
Her life, she knew, was about to undergo a transformation.
That morning, she carefully culled her closet of anything above the knee, anything red, anything too form-fitting. She culled and culled and culled. Finally, she put on the only white long-sleeved blouse she owned along with a skirt that reached mid-calf, which was possibly Rivkie’s. It certainly could not be hers; she couldn’t even remember ever trying on such a skirt, let alone actually buying it. Combing and twisting her long hair into a bun, she took out her prayer book and sat on the edge of her bed, praying. When she was done, she kissed the prayer book and put it down.
Rivkie looked her over approvingly. “So, you feel better?”
Delilah nodded. “God has answered my prayers. I don’t know why. I didn’t deserve any special favors.”
“You know, when God tells us to imitate Him, that’s what He means. He does favors for us not because we’ve earned or deserve them but out of infinite compassion and mercy. That’s why chesed is such an important part of being a Jew. Do good deeds because it’s the right thing to do and you have the opportunity to imitate God. That’s the only way we can ever pay Him back for everything He does for us. He gives us the sun, and He only asks that we light a little candle.”
Rivkie’s words, although full of every cliché religious teachings had to offer, somehow touched Delilah’s wounded soul.
“Rivkie, I have to change my life. I want to be just like you. I want to have your goodness. I want to go out with only good, religious boys. Men with good hearts. I want to reach out to people and help them. I want to get married. Can you help me, Rivkie? Can you?”
THREE
When Chaim Levi was five years old, his grandfather, a Holocaust survivor and the venerated rebbe of a small shteibel in Ocean Parkway, enrolled him in a yeshiva in Williamsburg where the rabbis’ beards were long and gray and they conversed as if the village in Poland they’d grown up in had been relocated, not wiped off the map.
Chaim’s father, an electrical appliance salesman in Canarsie, beardless and dapper, was a man who respected tradition but knew which world he was living in. Still, out of respect and pity and guilt, he bent his will to his father’s, hoping the old man might find in his grandson what had been lacking in his son.
Chaim was a handsome little boy, with big dark eyes and a shy, sweet smile. Not particularly bright, but good-natured and pleasant, as only the favored, longed-for man-child of a family starting from scratch could be (kaddishel, they called him, someone able to say the prayer for the dead for them), little Chaim went to yeshiva with an expectant smile, never doubting approval.
At first, he didn’t really understand the meaning of the long, heavy ruler in the hands of the bearded little rebbe, who slapped it against his palm as he walked up and down between the rows of seated boys. But soon, Chaim caught on. Smack! For not getting your mouth around the Hebrew vowels of the biblical verse fast enough. Smack! For not reciting the daily prayers with enough devotion. Slam! Smack! Crack! For not paying attention, for fidgeting in your seat, for forgetting to kiss the prayer book. . . .
Around the room the little rebbe went, gesturing impatiently for each to give him their hand. Once in his possession, he would grip the small palm between his thumb and forefinger, slamming the ruler down on the nails as often as it took to bring a howl. That accomplished, the hand would be released. Then, astonishingly, the rebbe would jut his head forward and point to his cheek, indicating where the victim was expected to plant a grateful kiss to thank him for his instruction.
At recess, when the boys finally escaped into the yard to play baseball, calling the plays in Yiddish, there never failed to appear another little rebbeleh, a gnomelike figure in a tallis and tefillin, who would rush into the yard and insist on reciting his morning prayers at the top of his lungs, demanding that the boys stop playing and respond Omeyn in all the right places. By the time the praying was over, so was the recess.
Chaim complained to his parents, who secretly raised eyebrows and exchanged worried glances but nevertheless publicly backed the teachers. He began to wet the bed. He broke out in hives. He bit his nails to the quick, then let the ragged edges bleed.
He tried to learn, practicing the Hebrew words. He tried to sit still. To pay attention. But when the rebbe [wham!) wished—for Chaim’s own good, of course—to (WHAM!) help free him of the unaesthetic and distasteful habit of nail-biting (wham! Wham! WHAM!), he felt a little volcano suddenly erupt in his brain. He ran to the window of the classroom and jumped down to the adjoining fire escape. Looking over his shoulder, he quickly ran down two flights to the street. Once there, he carefully spread-eagled himself on the pavement.
Carefully, he opened one eye, just in time to see the rebbe swoon, his ruler clattering to the ground. The boys, hanging out the window, cheered.
With his parents’ and the yeshiva’s full agreement, another school was found for Chaim, an Orthodox Hebrew day school, where smooth-cheeked American rabbis cracked jokes, and public school teachers in high heels and red lipstick came in the afternoons to teach them about the Statue of Liberty and the Mayflower. A place with a gym and a basketball court and vending machines.
His grandfather was heartbroken.
But when the boy was actually able to recite Talmudic passages in Aramaic and knew the difference between a Rashi and a tosefot, he relented. Little Chaim had taken a detour but was nevertheless on an upward path toward taking over his grandfather’s congregation. An illuy, a Talmudic genius, he wasn’t. But when he put his mind to it—or was coerced or bullied into putting his mind to it—he managed to keep up with the class, although he never rose to more than a middling student.
He had little imagination, but he was good at memorizing. He memorized whole passages from the Talmud, which sometimes convinced a certain kind of dreamy and unduly optimistic teacher that he had a special aptitude for it. Truthfully, most of the time, he had no idea what the passage was about that he rattled off with such ease. He couldn’t decipher it and wasn’t interested in it. The give and take of Talmudic discussions he viewed with trepidation, fearing they would reveal his intellectual deficiencies. Still, he always managed to get As in Talmud, which thrilled his grandfather.
When Chaim entered high school, his grandfather offered to pay his entire college tuition if he would consider getting smicha, rabbinical ordination. It was the old man’s fervent hope that, when his time came, his grandson would step into his shoes, shepherding and nurturing the beloved congregation he would leave behind.
It was a generous offer, but Chaim wasn’t so sure. To put it mildly, his grandfather’s modest synagogue did not reek of enticing possibilities. His mental image of the place conjured up dusty, mostly empty pews and creaky tables laden with anemic sponge cake and plastic cups of cloyingly sweet wine, all set out to fete a congregation transferring with alarming rapidity from rent-controlled Bronx apartments to paid-up plots in Forest Lawn. The demographics of the neighborhood had changed. The building had future Baptist Temple written all over it.
All his friends were interested in careers in computers or accounting, neither of which thrilled him either. Basically, all he wanted was something respectable, where he wouldn’t have to work too hard and which would provide him with a reasonable and steady income, enough to afford a two-family house in a better section of New Jersey, a Chevy station wagon, a JC-Penney charge card, and tui
tion at Hebrew day schools for his children.
What else did he need, really?
When it came to religion, he was not a cynic, like so many of his classmates, who were only in the lifestyle until they could escape their parents’ clutches. He was simple in his faith, a sincere, Torah-observant Jew, a person who prayed and practiced, studied and struggled. A person who sometimes succeeded, sometimes failed, repented and tried again. And all through his growing years he eventually developed a trust that his faith would see him through every joy and sorrow. It didn’t always make sense to him, the myriad laws, the intricate web of custom and lore that ruled every minute of his life, but it felt comfortable, like an old house that has its creaks and leaks but nevertheless embraces one with its sheltering arms. As for God, He was a comfortable, familiar presence, someone who sat next to him on the couch when he watched television, and who jogged alongside him in the park.
He never understood Maimonides’ God, that cold, far-off, unknowable Being, more an intellectual exercise than a Father, who had nothing to do with the heart. He believed in a God Who listened to phone calls, heard prayers and whispers, and was not above lending a helping hand when the occasion required it.
Chaim was comfortable in his own skin, happy with his place in the world, the little niche he’d been born into. A poor imagination is sometimes a blessing. In Chaim’s case, it helped him to ward off frightening visions of a future full of fierce ambitions to accomplish outlandish scenarios in which he would be the main character.
The idea of taking over from his venerated grandfather, someone he truly loved and respected and in whom he felt great pride, seemed preposterous. A rabbi? Someone who stood at the front and had all eyes glued to him? Someone others looked to for guidance and wisdom? He didn’t see himself as a do-gooder or a leader or even a politician, all of which he understood were invaluable qualities in a pulpit rabbi. He much preferred—and planned for—the simple life of the follower and had no doubt he would eventually discover a leader whose devoutness, charisma, and brilliance would shine out like a lighthouse, leading him in the right direction.