by Naomi Ragen
“Look, Shaindele. I love HaShem, our HaShem, the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, because He gave us the Torah, all the laws we live by. What is the Torah really asking of us? To be kind to one another. To be just. Not to harm anyone or cause them pain or loss or embarrassment. The Ten Commandments that were written by God on two tablets of stone, what do they say? Don’t steal. Don’t lie in court as a witness. Honor your parents. Don’t murder. Don’t commit adultery or even secretly covet anything in your heart that belongs to someone else. And if you don’t worship idols, and have only one God, who you love and fear, and respect, never throwing His name around, then you’ll keep the other things He’s asking of you as well.”
“Like Shabbos.”
“Yes. Like the Sabbath.”
“It sounds so goyish when you say it like that.”
“Well, the Commandments are part of all Western religions. It’s something we Jews gave the world to make it a better place, a kinder, more just place. This is our God. He belongs to us, and we to Him.”
“Okay, I understand. But what does that have to do with not meeting a boy and going to a jazz club in Greenwich Village? What does it have to do with not dancing in your own house to music?”
Now I’m in hot water, Leah thought. I shouldn’t have said anything to the girl; I should have told her to ask her local Orthodox rabbi, or her bubbee or her father!
“I’m not smart enough to answer those kinds of questions yet, Shaindele. I don’t understand the connection either.” And I don’t know if I ever will. “I’m also learning, day by day. But I really do believe that this community, in its own way, has created these rules to keep people close to God and to encourage them to keep the Torah.”
Even as she said it, Leah wondered if that was as true as it once was. Or if she even believed it at all anymore. Or were the social rules piled on top of God’s rules just a misguided attempt by very limited and small-minded people to keep control of the little society they’d created and wanted to rule with an iron fist? And did it expand hearts and minds, or simply harden and close them? She felt her face flush.
“Sometimes,” Shaindele began wistfully, oblivious to the struggle going on inside the woman across from her, “I wonder what it would have been like to have been born into another family, from another religion, maybe even another country. Is that terrible?”
“No, of course not. All of us wonder that.”
What are they teaching her in Bais Yaakov? All those religious lessons, over all those years, and still they had not instilled in her even the most fundamental loyalty and appreciation for the basic tenets of her faith! And were the rigorous and never-ending attempts to seal off members of the community from the outside world simply the recognition of the abject failure of the educational and spiritual training given to their children, leaving them so weak that they’d crumble with the first whiff of a challenge from outside the community’s high walls? But no, she thought. It’s more than that.
“Shaindele, you have lived such a sheltered life. You go out into the world and listen to some music, and it all seems so much fun, and so innocent and enjoyable. The world outside of Boro Park does have many good and interesting things, but it is also full of real horrors.”
“What do you mean?” Her eyes were wide.
“Well, some of these places are dangerous. The secular world isn’t a place that respects women. There is so much pornography everywhere.”
“What’s that?”
Oh boy. Just shut your mouth, Leah. “Ugly movies about young women who are attacked and molested. It encourages normal men not to respect women, to behave badly toward those who are vulnerable or in the wrong place at the wrong time. Your father, your teachers, they want to protect you from those risks. They don’t want you to learn about such terrible things or to be in any danger.”
“Were you ever attacked, Leah?”
“No, because I knew how to protect myself. But I hated living in such an unsafe place. I wanted to build my real home among people who respected women. Many—most—of the men I knew were like your Duvie. Sure they wanted to be with me, but only to get whatever pleasure they could without giving me any real commitment in return to be together, to build a family. I felt used. So I came here and met your tateh, who loves me and respects me. And that is what you should want for yourself, child.”
“Then why did Mameh kill herself?” she blurted out. “Did she hate being a mother and wife so much? And how do I know the same thing won’t happen to me?”
“Come here.” Leah reached out for her, taking her into her arms. The girl moved closer, laying her head on Leah’s shoulder, wiping hot tears from her eyes.
“I’m so afraid there is something wrong with me, Leah, something sick inside me like there was in Mameh. What if it comes out when I start having babies? What if I do the same thing to my children she did to us?”
So that was it, the bedrock of this young girl’s most terrible fears, the source of her rebellion and rootlessness. Leah hugged her. Her bones felt like those of some fallen bird, so young, so fragile! How had she not understood how young Shaindele really was? How had she had no inkling of what she must be going through?
The idea that she now had the responsibility of helping this truly troubled girl was horrifying. What do I know? What can I say? But there was no choice. “Shaindele, you can’t think like that! No one knows what tomorrow will bring us. There are accidents, and people die or get crippled in all kinds of strange and sudden ways we never even imagine. Does that mean we should never leave the house? There are children whose parents abused them. Does that mean that they won’t have any choice in life and will wind up abusing their own children? The most precious thing every human being has in this life is the freedom to choose how to live. But we can’t use that gift if we are cowards, afraid to get out of bed in the morning. I always say, ‘Choose wisely, then do it! Whatever is going to happen is going to happen. But at least, I’ll choose my life, and not be paralyzed with fear.’ Does that make sense?”
“I don’t know.”
Leah sighed. “There was this story I once read called The Beast in the Jungle by Henry James. It was about this person who was always afraid something terrible was going to happen to him, that some beast would pounce on him at any moment. So he never did anything in his life. And then, when he got old, he realized that none of the things he feared had ever happened. What had ruined his life was the fear itself, which kept him from living; the fear was the beast in the jungle.”
“I am trying! That’s why I spent time with Duvie. He wasn’t even nice to me most of the time, to tell you the truth.”
“What do you mean?”
“He made fun of me. Called me a baby. All he wanted was to touch me.”
Oh no. Leah took a deep breath. “Did you let him? Did you want to?”
Shaindele looked across at her defiantly. “Sometimes.”
Oy vey. “What, exactly—”
“I don’t want to talk about it! But I never let him do anything I didn’t want. And in the end, I decided I didn’t like him, after all, and I walked away. Isn’t that enough?”
“But you do know, right, about the birds and the bees?” Even that I can’t be sure of with this kid and the kind of education she’s gotten in this place, Leah thought, furious.
“Oh, the things they teach you in bride school, right?”
Leah’s heart skipped a beat. “Right.”
“I wouldn’t do that. What for? That’s between me and my husband, if I ever have one. If I wanted to do that, I’d go to the shadchan and find someone to marry.”
Leah felt the breath come back inside her lungs. “But he, Duvie, wanted to?”
She nodded. “He was always pushing me to try things. But I didn’t do what he wanted if I didn’t think I’d like it.”
“But some things you liked, you tried?”
She nodded.
“Okay, it’s good that you kept control, because that is your righ
t as a woman. What you say goes when it comes to your body.”
“Even when I’m married?”
“Of course!”
“That’s not what I heard.”
“What did you hear?”
“That on your wedding night you have to do exactly what he wants. Otherwise, you’re a ‘rebellious wife,’ and he can divorce you.”
“Now you listen to me, Shaindele Lehman. You never, ever have to let anyone use your body in a way you don’t like. Period.”
The girl looked relieved. “Are you going to tell Tateh?”
Leah considered that. What part of this was she referring to? Her fears? Her guilt? Her sexual experimentation? Telling him everything would be honest, but foolish, she realized. If he was upset now, this additional information would just ignite all burners and take this problem zooming to another stratosphere. And she loved him too much to do that to him.
“Shaindele, I honestly don’t think that I need to tell him everything you told me, at least not right now. But I should tell him some things. He loves you, and I’m sure he’d want to help you.”
The girl looked down, exhaling long and hard. “Don’t tell him I don’t believe in God. Don’t tell him I let Duvie do things to me.”
Leah nodded. She’d been thinking along exactly the same lines. “Okay. But that doesn’t mean we can forget about all this: your fears about getting married, about what happened with Duvie, even about your faith in God. These are very important things, and I think you need to talk to someone, a professional.”
“Like Mameh did? A psychiatrist?”
“I don’t know exactly. But someone a lot smarter than I am, someone who can help you get over your fears and can give you some good advice. Would you be willing to do that?”
Shaindele nodded gratefully, feeling a weight roll off her shoulders. “But this person, it would be private what I tell them?”
“Completely private. It would just be between the two of you.”
“That would be good,” the girl nodded eagerly.
Goodwill and relief flooded them both as they held on to each other affectionately, neither dreaming about the far-reaching and unimaginable consequences of this decision.
16
IT IS NOT GOOD TO BE ALONE
“I tell you, Basha, when you get to a certain age, you want to feel some nachas; you want to feel that you’ve built something, something that will last after you’re long gone. But then you see things, in the ayniklach, your hope for the future, that make you afraid, that make you ashamed, like you didn’t do your job for the Aibishter.”
Under normal circumstances, Fruma Esther Sonnenbaum would never have shared such thoughts with any living being. But now, after what had happened with Shaindele—something she could not share with anyone, even her best friend—her heart drowning in sorrow, so heavy she felt she could no longer carry it, she had no choice but to open the floodgates before she was dragged under, breathless from the weight of it.
She was sitting on a park bench beside her friend as they tried to angle their faces toward the weak rays of an unseen sun. Despite being early spring, just a few days before the merry Purim holiday, snow was still on the ground, blackened by dog excrement, polluted city air, cigarette butts, and various pieces of trash. The sight of it further depressed her.
“This is not like you, Fruma Esther.” Basha shook her head.
“You should only know what’s like me these days, Basha. But I don’t know what to do. My sins overwhelm me,” she murmured sadly.
“Sins? What sins, Fruma Esther?” the other woman scoffed, a small ironic smile twisting her kind face into one of surprise and skepticism. “If your sins are sitting so heavy on you, what should the rest of us say? You are the most pious person I know.”
Fruma Esther—longing to abandon herself completely to the joyous comfort of complete self-recrimination and disgust, feelings that demand nothing but shame, which she could supply in abundance—was flattered. “I have always tried, Basha. My whole life. With my whole heart.”
“Not a question even.” Her friend shook her head, scandalized. “We have all looked up to you, Fruma Esther. Believe me. You gave strength to so many. Just to see how you handled your nesyonos gave everyone chizuk. How you behaved when you lost your beloved Yitzhak Chaim, may his soul rest in peace! Like a queen, your head up, taking care of your family, comforting all the mourners, feeding all the yeshiva boys who came to recite the kaddish by you … What? How many were there? Twenty? Thirty?”
“Seventy, one Shabbos alone! Oy, did I cook!” She sighed. “My dear husband … Cherish your Aryeh, Basha. Every moment you are together. To be a widow is to be half-alive. The loneliness…”
“I don’t know why you never thought to remarry. You were young when you lost him.”
“Young?” she scoffed. “I was sixty-three, already a grandmother many times over.”
“Until a hundred and twenty!” Basha blessed her friend. “If you had only listened to the matchmakers then. There was Rav Eichenstein, who lost his Peninnah just a few months later.”
“I was still in mourning! It was out of the question.”
“And then there was that Admor of Chemnitz, whose wife was in that car accident, nebbech.”
“A hit-and-run, God should wreak a terrible revenge on the rosha who left her there! But what would I have done among the Hasidim?” She chuckled, finding the very image of walking side by side with some man in a big fur shtreimel and a long, black bekesha so fantastic as to be irresistibly amusing even in her present mood.
“It’s not unheard of. Remember when Rebbitzen Erlich went off to B’nai Brak to marry the head of the Mezhbizh?”
“Her children were shocked.”
Basha nodded. “It was a surprise. To everyone. But so what? I heard from my cousin Malka who saw her at a tisch just last month that she’s very happy. Wears a big turban instead of a wig. The Mezhbizh don’t wear wigs.”
The two women looked at each other and couldn’t help laughing. “Imagine! A turban! Well, if it was too late for me then, it’s certainly too late for me now.” Fruma Esther shrugged.
“No, you are wrong, my friend. As it is written: It is not good for a man to be alone. Or a woman. I happen to know for a fact that there is a very pious widower who is also lost without his dear wife.”
“Who are you talking about, Basha?”
“I have to tell you? You don’t know? A certain person who loves your p’tcha!”
Fruma Esther Sonnenbaum felt her face grow hot. “It was a kindness. I knew his wife’s recipes. And during shiva, it’s a mitzvah to bring food to the house of the mourners. It wasn’t personal.”
“Didn’t you say his daughter has been calling you to thank you? That you promised her you’d bring more?” Basha probed.
Fruma Esther squared her shoulders a little defensively. “It’s a chesed. The young girls, they don’t know how to cook. Not like we cooked for our husbands. Everything is takeout.” She paused. “I have been there a few times since the shiva.”
“I knew it! You talked?”
“Of course. What, I’ll run into the kitchen like I’m delivering from China Glatt? Of course I sat. We talked. His daughter was also there. And the grandchildren.”
“So he said something?”
Fruma Esther leaned back against the hard bench. How wonderful it had been to share her loneliness with someone her own age who understood the heartbreak of losing a partner of so many years! “We talked about our wedding days, and how it seemed like only yesterday…” Tears came to her eyes. Basha quickly offered her a tissue.
“The Torah doesn’t say what’s not true. It’s not good to be alone, Fruma Esther.”
“I’m not alone! I have also my daughters, my sons.”
“Busy with their own lives, or thousands of miles away in Israel!”
“So they don’t call? Every day, almost. You can even see them on the little phone.”
“Really?”
She nodded. “My ayniklach showed me how. They are my life now.”
“They have their own lives, Fruma Esther. And their own parents to take care of them.”
“They need as many pairs of hands as they can get to bring them up right, Basha. Believe me.”
“I’m not saying not.”
“So what are you saying to me?”
“I’m saying that you’re lonely, and he’s lonely.”
“It’s not even three months! She’s still warm in the grave!”
“Loneliness is suffering, Fruma Esther. And three months of suffering can be like a hundred years.”
There was nothing to say. It was true.
“Let’s not even talk about such a thing.” Fruma Esther sighed.
“Think about it.”
* * *
How strange, Fruma Esther thought later that evening as she lay down in her solitary bed in her empty room, that something that was never even in your head for a second can suddenly take over your whole mind. It was like a bad virus, she thought, the idea of a shidduch with Rav Alter, spreading and infecting her every waking moment.
As she tossed and turned, she tried to shift her thoughts to Shaindele. Now that was something to keep you up all night! Maybe if I had had a husband, a pious scholar at my side all those years, I could have done better, been wiser. Maybe Zissele would still be here, and Shaindele would still be that frum, dutiful little girl. For sure there would have been no redheaded baalas teshuva dancing around the apartment to the music of shkotzim, scandalizing the whole neighborhood. Why had it never once crossed her mind to find another man after her dear Yitzchak Chaim left this world for his reward? Despite all the exhortations in the holy books that we are meant to have partners, the thought had never even crossed her mind. It seemed ridiculous to even imagine another chance at love, at companionship.
But as it is written, when a person sees troubles brewing, let him examine his own acts. Could it be that all this was God’s way of showing her that her self-imposed loneliness was not His will? And if so, was this now His plan for her?