An Observant Wife

by Naomi Ragen

  “Do you want to tell me what it is?” Leah whispered, rocking her.

  Chasya nodded solemnly, pressing her small soft lips so close to Leah’s ear that her breathing moved the tiny hairs inside. “Every day, I’m getting smaller. Smaller and smaller. Maybe one day, I’ll get so small, you won’t be able to see me. I’ll just disappear, like my mameh.”

  Leah pulled her gently away, turning her by the shoulders so that she could look deeply into her eyes. “Chasya, look at me. Every day, you are getting bigger and bigger, and smarter and smarter, and more and more beautiful. Every day, you make me and your tateh so happy. Even if you hide, we’ll always be able to find you. Do you believe me?”

  The child thought about it for a few moments, then nodded.

  “And now I have a secret to tell you.”

  Chasya looked up expectantly.

  “It’s okay to feel sad, to miss your mameh. But it’s also okay to be happy. That’s what your mameh would have wanted for you. For all of you. To have fun! And you and I and your tateh and Cheeky and Shaindele and your big brothers are going to be a very happy family. We are going to be the kind of family your mameh would have wanted us to be. We are going to have a lot of fun together, every single day!”

  Ever since that conversation, that had become her mantra, Leah thought. To have fun; to bring joy to the home she had moved into and to the motherless children under her care. She had never understood before how simple a mandate that was.

  In the past, she’d always thought joy came after huge successes or immense expenses. But now she found it was at the end of a sugar cone or a lollipop, in front of the monkey cages in the zoo. It was sometimes just as simple as putting on music and dancing around the living room as the children whooped and danced around her.

  She got into the habit of playing music for them right after their baths as they waited for their tateh to come home for dinner. First she used Yaakov’s ancient boom box, putting in outdated cassette tapes of young yeshiva boys singing liturgical songs. But one day, she simply connected her iPhone to the speakers on her computer, putting on her favorite playlist. The first song was Foo Fighters’ “Everlong”: If everything could ever feel this real forever, if anything could ever be this good again. And then the music just kept blasting out: oldies like the Beach Boys’ “Wouldn’t It Be Nice,” the Supremes’ “You Can’t Hurry Love,” Justin Timberlake’s “Can’t Stop the Feeling,” Avicii’s “Wake Me Up,” Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face,” Katy Perry’s “Hot N Cold.”

  At first, the kids seemed a little uncertain at how to react to the unfamiliar music, but they got into it quickly, she saw, wildly throwing themselves into stamping and shouting and twirling around the living room. Chasya, sweating, peeled off her pajama top, laughing. The baby soon followed suit, left with nothing but his diaper. Her own hair covering had long ago been flung to the floor, her tight, frizzy red curls spilling down her back, flying in all directions. She hardly noticed. Twirling around the room in some kind of trance, the music bringing back so many memories of the life she’d left behind, she almost didn’t hear the banging on the door until it did the impossible, becoming even louder than the music.

  Only then did Leah think of the neighbors and the curtainless windows whose shades she had not bothered to pull down.

  * * *

  Fruma Esther Sonnenbaum didn’t listen to gossip. As every person harboring an unquenchable desire for a large and respectable portion in the World to Come knew, gossip was a surefire way to erase your merits and get yourself permanently banned from heaven. After all, were there not thirty-one commandments and four curses in the Torah specifically aimed at the sin of malicious talebearing? As it is written: You shall not go up and down as a slanderer among your people. Gossip, as she and every other God-fearing Jew well knew, was the leading cause of baseless hatred, the reason our temple was destroyed, why our people were exiled from their land, and why God did not listen to our prayers. Indeed, as the sages declared, gossip, slander, and talebearing were worse than murder, immorality, and idolatry, the three mortal sins one was ordered to give up one’s life rather than commit. A gossiper, they said, denies the existence of God, and the Almighty “cannot live in the same world” with such a person. Even the “dust” of evil talk was toxic. So you couldn’t get away with saying things like: “Oh, what I could tell you about her if I wasn’t a pious person.” Sorry, no. As Solomon, the wisest of all Israel’s kings said, “One who guards his mouth and tongue, guards his soul from tribulations.”

  Nevertheless, as the rebbitzen was also well aware, in Boro Park, among the pious, not listening to gossip was almost impossible. In fact, it was one of the tools of the community to keep itself pure, guarding against the insidious dangers coming from those troublemakers and misfits in their midst who threatened to unravel the fabric of their lives, the well-being of their children. For how could you function as an enclave of holiness if you did not guard against interlopers filled with evil intentions, who must be expelled by collective ostracism? And how would you know who to expel and ostracize if no one told you?

  So when her phone began to ring off the hook with stories about her former son-in-law’s new wife, she was faced with a dilemma of no small proportions. Was it permissible, she pondered, to hear what her friends and neighbors wanted to tell her? The nosy strangers, the mere acquaintances who had the temerity to call her or stop her in the street were not the problem; she dispatched them with a withering look and an on-high quotation about the evils of gossip. What, there was a shortage of quotes? But the others—people she had known all her life, people she respected, who like herself had on their bookshelves well-worn copies of Rabbi Yisrael Meir Kagan’s seminal book on loshon hara called Chafetz Chaim, meaning “desire life,” after the verse: Who is the man who desires life? He who guards his tongue from evil and his lips from falsehood; people who had Talmud scholars for husbands and sat next to her in the synagogue on Yom Kippur quaking with fear that their prayers for a good year might not be accepted—if people like this were willing to risk their eternal souls by selflessly bringing a matter they considered of vital importance to her attention, how could she refuse to listen?

  What made it more difficult was the suddenness and volume of these tales after months of quiet in which she had congratulated herself on removing her opposition to the strange match as well as single-handedly facilitating the wedding through the shameless use of her considerable prestige as the widow of the great rav, cowing all opposition. Moreover, she had personally taken it upon herself to convince the loudest and most vociferous opponent to the match, her granddaughter Shaindele (who had even gone so far as to run away from home) that her father deserved to go ahead with his life, even if it meant accepting his less-than-stellar choice in a new wife. Selflessly, she had made it happen, which wasn’t to say that she didn’t occasionally indulge in secret fantasies about how different things might have been had Yaakov settled on one of the Flatbush widows or Monsey divorcées for whom the matchmakers had so vigorously campaigned.

  Most of the time, though, she grudgingly admitted to herself that he had chosen well, for himself at least. Gone was the listless, defeated widower with rounded shoulders who had allowed tragedy and loss to drain the sparkle from his eyes and the hope in his heart. He was—she thought a bit resentfully—as happy as she had ever seen him, including during his marriage to her Zissele. In fact, he seemed like a different person altogether. Realism had replaced idealism, and instead of floating through the air on Talmudical exegeses, he wore sturdy walking shoes that were planted firmly on the ground. He’d finished his accounting course, passed the CPA exam, and had just accepted a job offer. Soon his years in kollel would be behind him, along with all the dreams of his youth of becoming a great and revered rav.

  It was tragic. But who was she to criticize? Earning enough to provide for his family was a necessity, although a heartbreaking one. Such promise! He had been a shining star in the yeshiva world, or so she had
always told herself. Otherwise, she would never have considered the match for Zissele. It was what her daughter had wanted also. This she believed with all her heart.

  But tragedy tested a man, and challenged him. There was always a tension in their world between the spiritual and the material, a conflict between sacrificing all for the sake of learning the Torah and working to provide a better life materially for one’s family. While their world theoretically lauded scholars and looked down on wage earners, the wealthy among religious Jews were viewed with respect bordering on craven approbation, and young Talmud scholars vied with each other in seeking out the well-to-do daughters of wealthy businessmen, ignoring the poor offspring of fellow Talmud scholars. Still, a scholar who left the study house to work full-time was a rarity, and not a welcome one. It was a situation that invited hostility and criticism among religious Jews (which she would have preferred to believe came out of conviction rather than envy), which would fall not only on Yaakov but on herself and her grandchildren as well.

  She had hoped that with Leah’s computer business doing so well, that the girl might suggest—of her own accord of course—that Yaakov surrender the burden of parnosa to her completely. But this, she saw, was not to be. Yaakov had made it clear that he felt he owed it to his new wife to do his share. It was, he insisted, a matter of self-respect as much as necessity.

  But since when did a Talmud scholar believe earning a living instead of allowing his wife to support him took away from his self-respect? This was a secular idea, from the immoral secular world whose notions of what made an admirable husband and wife bore absolutely no resemblance to those of their own world, where admiration could only be earned in the study halls of the yeshivot and kollelim and where a woman of valor was the woman who works and runs a business (in addition to housework, childbirth, and child-rearing), freeing her husband to learn without such petty distractions.

  But his new wife, she sighed, was not from their world, and Yaakov, she supposed, was desperate to please her. This was the way of the world, she told herself, secretly mourning the distinguished young Talmud scholar who had sat in her living room as he courted her daughter, his face beaming with joyous possibilities as he talked of his love of learning, his plans to become a great scholar and found his own yeshiva.

  The children, too, had undergone a transformation since the wedding, but in their case, a blessed one, she thought, her features suddenly brightening. Shaindele had stopped stuffing herself with Swiss chocolates and rugelach to feed some hunger she hadn’t been able to assuage, her once chubby body slimming down. She was a pretty seventeen-year-old who had blossomed. She had even grown taller by an inch or two. The stodgy Bais Yaakov uniform—the blue, long-sleeved blouse buttoned to the neck and calf-length, pleated navy skirt—looked almost chic on her newly taut body. But most of all, her face had changed. Gone were the ugly grimaces of resentment and sullen rebellion. If she was not exactly the bubbly teenager she had been before her mother’s death, she was at least once again the diligent, promising student. Otherwise, Fruma Esther would have heard about it; she checked in with the girl’s principal and teachers weekly.

  As for the little ones—it was like night and day! Instead of soiled, wrinkled clothes, they were dressed like little dolls, their faces scrubbed pink, their little bodies filling out with good, regular home-cooked meals. Most of all, they seemed happy. Gone were Chasya’s constant stomachaches that had had them rushing to the emergency room. And little Mordechai Shalom had a full-time mother again he could depend upon, instead of herself, an aging Bubbee who had doctors’ appointments she couldn’t skip, bad feet that hurt her when she took him for walks, and arms too frail to even lift him up for a good hug.

  Fruma Esther, be happy! she admonished herself. Who more than you knows how close the family had come to the brink of despair, disgrace, and financial ruin! Maybe Leah couldn’t support Yaakov as a full-time learner, but the money from her thriving internet business was at least helping to pay off the endless loans from the interest-free loan funds, taken out in desperation to make up for the loss of Zissele’s teacher’s salary after she died. The loans, financed by the tithe money from generous members of the community, were not like getting money from a faceless bank. It was from someone’s pocket, usually someone who knew you, and whom you knew well. Defaulting on such a loan was not a private, personal matter but a widely known disgrace with immediate consequences to a family’s communal standing.

  Yet, despite it all, she admitted to herself that even her happiness over these good things was tinged with a strange resentment as she watched the consequences of her daughter’s tragic death slowly fade from the consciousness of her family and the community. They were going on with their lives in happiness. It was so unfair! While her love for her grandchildren and her sincere desire for their well-being sweetened the bitterness in her soul, the current rumors gave her a perverse satisfaction. No one could take her Zissele’s place.

  Still, she did not look forward to the possibility of hearing something scandalous about her grandchildren’s new stepmother. Having prominently championed the match, the opprobrium would fall heavily on her as well. With a great intake of breath that made her enormous breasts heave and tremble, she buttoned her coat. True or false, the stories making the rounds must be quashed immediately and decisively, especially if they were accurate. Her own and her grandchildren’s well-being depended upon it.

  As for the Torah’s many prohibitions about listening to gossip, well, permissible or forbidden, she could not very well turn a deaf ear to what was being said about her family. It was, she reasoned, like taking an ambulance on the Sabbath: a desecration of one of God’s commandments in order to preserve a life that in the future would faithfully observe many other commandments. Still, for a woman as devout as Fruma Esther, who believed herself to possess an absolute, iron-clad grip on right and wrong, it was no trifling matter. Her present moral confusion was rare, even a bit frightening. And thus, she felt she had no choice but to risk the dust of slander by talking the matter over with her dearest friend, Basha Blaustein.

  Wife of the deeply respected posek Rav Aryeh, Basha had been in school with Fruma Esther from kindergarten through graduation from Bais Yaakov Seminary. Both coming from established and respected Boro Park families with long lists of distinguished rabbinical forebears, they were top merchandise in all the matchmakers’ bride pools that summer and months before. Both had been offered and had accepted Grade A candidates—long-bearded young scholars with reputations for brilliance in Talmud study who, the matchmakers assured their parents, were worth every penny of the colossal financial settlement they needed to provide for years of continued study. Within two weeks of each other, and several weeks shy of their eighteenth birthdays, both had gotten engaged.

  Their friendship had become even stronger through the years as they helped each other survive the difficulties of financially supporting their husbands through kollel and giving birth to many children. There was no one Fruma Esther admired and respected more.

  She took out the cell phone her family had insisted on buying and teaching her to use following her scandalous, solo journey to a New York hospital for an eye operation that had left her stranded and in need of a secular hospital volunteer to get home. Now the phone helped everyone to keep track of her comings and goings. Even her daughters in Israel had taken to calling her a few times a week on it just to check there were no new surprises. Despite the rabbis’ harsh condemnation of cell phones, almost everyone in Boro Park had one now, connected—of course!—to the kosher internet that pre-blocked all unacceptable websites.

  “Basha, I need to speak to you. You have maybe a minute?”

  “Such a question! Talk.”

  “No, I’ll come over. You’re home this morning?”

  “I’m baking for Shabbos.”

  Although the Sabbath was four days away, this did not surprise Fruma Esther. After all, Basha had ten children—all married except for one—nume
rous grandchildren and great-grandchildren as well as a husband active in the effort to encourage secular Jews to become more religious. As a result, Basha’s table regularly seated thirty or more family and guests for the traditional Friday night dinner and Saturday afternoon lunch. To do it properly, you needed almost a week with all the food buying and preparation.

  They sat companionably on the worn sofa in the sparsely furnished living room, dwarfed by massive wooden bookcases filled with holy volumes.

  “The phone doesn’t stop ringing, Basha.”

  The other woman sighed. “It’s about Leah and the music, right?”

  “Music?”

  Basha studied her friend’s genuinely puzzled face. “So you didn’t hear even what it’s all about?”

  “I don’t listen to loshon hara.”

  Basha shook her head. “You have no choice.”

  “Why?”

  “Because if you don’t know what’s going on, how can you help her?”

  “She needs help?” Her voice quivered.

  Basha nodded.

  “But loshon hara … it’s forbidden, Basha.”

  “It’s permitted when your kavanah is not to disgrace or belittle someone but to warn others about their faults. In that case, it’s not a sin. It’s a mitzvah.”

  “Before you tell me what’s going on, tell me this, Basha: Is it true?”

  Basha pulled down her headscarf, tucking in a few gray hairs, as if to shore up her piety against accusations from a bad conscience. “It might have some seeds of truth. After all, I heard it from so many people, and not just the usual yentas.”

  Fruma Esther braced herself. “What are they saying?”

  “That she is bringing secular music into the house, and they are … dancing wildly.”

  Fruma Esther swallowed hard. “What exactly does that mean?”

  “What part?”

  “Every part! Vus is dus ‘secular’ and ‘they’ and ‘wildly’?”