An Observant Wife

by Naomi Ragen

  Then he caught her eye for a moment, and a look passed between them that sent a chill up her spine. Was it an appraisal? Was it a sensual, older man looking at a young girl, imagining her body beneath her clothes? Was that even possible? She shivered, lowering her eyes quickly and staring at the floor.

  Leah reached over and squeezed her limp white hand, surprised that despite Shaindele’s outer show of complete indifference, it was trembling. Shaindele didn’t let go.

  “We all know why we are here,” Rabbi Halpern began.

  “Not really,” Yaakov countered. Why should he give an inch?

  Rabbi Halpern cleared his throat. This obviously wasn’t going as he had expected. “Your daughter’s behavior. Let me be frank, if she were anyone else but Fruma Esther’s granddaughter, she would have been thrown out of our school long ago.”

  “And why is that, Rav Halpern?” Yaakov said mildly, raising his brows.

  “Don’t pretend you don’t know what’s been going on!”

  “I think your family is more to blame for that than my innocent young daughter!”

  Rabbi Halpern leaned back. “HaShem Yishmor. My family?”

  “Yes, your son. Your Duvie. Don’t you pretend we don’t know everything.”

  Rabbi Halpern sighed heavily with a show of saintly patience, as if greatly put upon without justification. “Yes. With my son. My Duvie. But if not him, it would have been someone else.”

  Yaakov slammed a fist into his open palm. “That is mamash a farshtunkene chutzpah! You sit behind that desk, you think you’re so important you’re potur? Your son took that job in the pizza place to meet girls, girls from your school. My innocent young daughter is not the only girl he started up with. You think you’re the only one with informants?”

  Like chalk from a blackboard, the arrogant certainty was suddenly erased from Rabbi Halpern’s face, Leah saw with a mixture of satisfaction and fright. She could not believe Yaakov was behaving like this! It was thrilling.

  “You knew he was a danger to the community, yet you sheltered him instead of sending him away.”

  Rabbi Halpern visibly shrank. “A father does not give up on a son so easily. We had hopes—”

  “You should have been more concerned for the girls in your care than your son! But gornisht! Aren’t you the principal? Don’t you have responsibilities?”

  “We aren’t here to talk about Duvie!”

  “And why not?” Leah interjected firmly. “K’vod harav, that is exactly what we are here to talk about.”

  “And your child, your Shaindele? She bears no responsibility? She has been meeting with Duvie for months.”

  “Months?” Yaakov lost his certainty.

  “Ask her!” He nodded disgustedly toward Shaindele, who for the first time looked up.

  “It’s true,” she admitted, shaking.

  “So what now?” Leah said, wanting it to end for all their sakes.

  “Tell me why I shouldn’t throw your daughter out of our school before she infects the hashkofa of the rest of her classmates.”

  “If you tell me one good reason I shouldn’t go to the rabbonim and the entire community and tell them how you protected your son and endangered our girls when for months you obviously knew all about it.”

  The two pious, bearded men looked across at each other like well-matched, battered prize fighters in the tenth round.

  “Let me … I have a suggestion,” Leah interjected. “We are all pious people here who love HaShem, are we not? As it is written: Be compassionate because He is compassionate. Where is Duvie now?”

  Rabbi Halpern shrugged. “He’s gone. We think he went out west.”

  “Las Vegas,” Shaindele mumbled.

  “What?” Rabbi Halpern asked, all ears.

  “She doesn’t know,” Yaakov said firmly. “In any case, you say he isn’t around anymore?”

  “Let him go to Gehinnom. I was done with him anyway. He’s a jerk,” Shaindele continued under her breath.

  Yaakov shook his head at her fiercely, and she went silent again. “What is your idea, Leah?”

  “Rav Halpern, you know the Lehman family has undergone a terrible tragedy. I’m sure you can imagine, k’vod harav, how very hard it was for Shaindele to lose her mother at such a young age and to have so many responsibilities fall on her young shoulders! It has left her traumatized. Even before this meeting, her father and I spoke about getting her psychological help.”

  Rabbi Halpern sat back in his chair. He nodded. “This is a good idea. But on one condition—that you use the psychologist approved by our rabbonim, the only one we send our girls to.”

  “So you agree she can finish her year and graduate?” Leah pressed, not taking any chances.

  “If you arrange for Shaindele to have counseling, we will consider this whole matter closed—that is, if she keeps up with her counseling and we get good reports, and of course if she keeps up her grades,” he added almost as an afterthought.

  “And Duvie isn’t coming back to Boro Park?”

  Rabbi Halpern nodded stiffly. “He is dead to me now.”

  “Surely—” Leah began, shocked, but one look from Yaakov silenced her. This was none of their business.

  “And who exactly is this psychologist?”

  “Rav Yoel Grub.”

  “I will look into it,” Yaakov said.

  “He’s the only one we’ll accept,” Halpern repeated.

  “I said, I’ll look into it.”

  * * *

  According to everyone Yaakov spoke to, Yoel Grub was a tzaddik. “He helped my child. She was broken, and he made her whole again,” said one of the people he turned to. “He has been treating young people for twenty-five years. All the rabbonim send young people to him.” “He is a close friend of the Bobelger Rebbe.” Of his professional qualifications, the same people were a bit less certain. “A degree in psychology. From Brooklyn College,” they offered. “I heard rabbinical counseling training from Yeshiva University,” someone else said.

  But it was useless. When Yaakov called to make an appointment for Shaindele, he couldn’t even get through. “Leave a message, and God willing, I will get back to you,” the recording said. “This is normal,” his advisors assured Yaakov. “He is up to the roof in clients. He is the best. It could take months.”

  Yaakov didn’t have months. So he called Rav Alter, who agreed to intervene.

  “Yoel Grub, you say? And he is a psychiatrist?”

  “Psychologist. They say he is very close to the Bobelger Rebbe. Please, Rav Alter, it’s my Shaindele. She needs help, after all she’s been through.”

  “Yes, yes. Of course. Don’t worry.”

  Rav Alter, who had never heard this name, was troubled. He picked up the phone wishing to speak to his old friend, the Bobelger Rebbe himself, but was surprised to find himself stonewalled, only getting as far as the nephew. “Hundreds of our girls have gone to him over the years,” the nephew told him enthusiastically. “He specializes in these kinds of problems, especially the ones who start to have doubts. God be blessed. He helps them and their parents. I can recommend him without a single hesitation. Don’t worry. I’ll ask the rebbe to call him to make room for the girl immediately.”

  Through this exalted connection, the phone soon rang, and an appointment was arranged for Shaindele. And because Yoel Grub was a respected member of their own community, whose character and piety had been vouched for by numerous acquaintances as well as many rabbonim, Yaakov was spared the anxiety of this damaging the family’s reputation in any way. Such a man knew how to be discreet.

  For the first time in months, Yaakov felt he was truly leading his family down a safe and comfortable road. He was grateful and hopeful. Shaindele, too, felt the world was becoming a safer, saner place. She was actually looking forward to it.

  No one had a clue.

  20

  SOME ENCHANTED EVENING

  After much consideration and the weighing of many options, Fruma Esther decid
ed on rugelach.

  “I’ll make them pareve, so he can eat them with coffee and as a dessert after meat.” Having resolved that dilemma, she went on to the next serious hurdle: chocolate, nuts, or cinnamon? Chocolate, while the hands-down favorite in certain circles, was not so good for people with indigestion, which she assumed Rav Alter must have. After all, didn’t most elderly Jews? Cinnamon, the healthier option, was popular, too, but bland as far as she was concerned. After deep reflection, she came up with the following compromise: cinnamon with nuts, with just a trace of chocolate. It was pure genius.

  She took out her baking pans, bowls, sifter, and rolling pin. She didn’t own measuring cups and wouldn’t have known what to do with them since all her recipes had come from watching her mother and grandmother and aunts cook, and they measured by seeing how much fit into their hands. As for liquid, you just had to have a feeling for it, she’d been told, and she had certainly developed one.

  There were two camps about pareve rugelach: the ones that added yeast and the ones that insisted on cookie dough. She thought yeast made them doughy and little more attractive than soggy bread. A crisp, sweet cookie dough, on the other hand, was irresistible. As for rugelach dough made with cream cheese, she would have been shocked and scandalized. “What is the point of a rugelach that you cannot eat on Shabbos after a heavy meat meal?” she would have scoffed, resisting the very notion.

  Still, her mother’s recipe had undergone some variations over the years, the most shocking of which was the addition of a secret ingredient that she guarded zealously even from her friends and relatives. She did not feel guilty or give into pressure as—rugelach in hand—they approached her at a kiddush, Shabbos meals, or festive holiday occasions, swooning over her rugelach and begging, demanding, and finally pleading to know how she got them so … so … indescribably scrumptious. Light, crispy, they melted in your mouth like butter, even though they were nondairy! She smiled to herself. Why should I tell them? Let them remember what I was worth. Let them know I knew some things they didn’t. Let them miss me when I’m gone.

  She sifted the flour carefully, checking for bugs. Only when she was satisfied the flour was perfectly clean did she add it to her food processor. She had tried her mother’s way with two knives—such a pain in the neck! This way was perfection. Next she added the cold margarine cut into cubes. The machine took two minutes to turn it into a perfect mixture of pastry dough beginnings. Now was the time for the secret ingredient. Taking it out of her refrigerator carefully, she was cautious not to shake it and have it overflow once she opened it. It was only a small bottle, and losing a large amount would leave her short. Knowing this, she nevertheless never went for a larger size. She was aware some people actually drank and enjoyed it, and it was always prominently displayed on buffet tables along with Coca-Cola and 7 Up. But after trying it once, she had almost gagged and would have as soon drunk it willingly as dishwashing liquid. Anything left over from the bottle when she finished making the rugelach dough would be poured directly down the sink. Adding some sugar, she buzzed the whole thing a few more minutes, then wrapped the light, fluffy dough in parchment paper and placed it in the refrigerator. When she was done, she threw away whatever remained of the secret ingredient—a little bottle of Sprite.

  Now all she had to do was wait. It would take a few hours before she could roll out the dough and sprinkle it with the cinnamon and nuts and cocoa, rolling it up into the delicious crescents that would surely be something Rav Alter would soon realize he couldn’t live without.

  Like a general back at headquarters, she calmly and expertly considered every aspect of her upcoming campaign. Long ago, she had dismissed the idea of going to a shadchan. At her age, why involve some middle-aged yenta in her private life? So she could have a good laugh and tell all her neighbors and friends? Ridiculous. Besides, why give Rav Alter the idea he had a choice?

  Instead, she worked on what she considered a far more problematic issue: yichud. So far, Rav Alter’s daughter had always been there and hadn’t thought it odd that she’d been coming by a few times a week to drop off food. Why would she? Many women were doing the same, of all ages and marital statuses. But having the daughter in the way had become an impediment, she realized. Like the pillar of fire in the desert that protected the fleeing Hebrew slaves from their pursuing Egyptian slave masters, the young woman hovered protectively between the do-gooders and her father, never letting anyone get near enough for a private word. But the daughter had her own family to care for. Someone had dropped the golden nugget of information into Fruma Esther’s lap that today, the daughter would be home nursing a sick husband. Nebbech.

  How this information got to her was as circuitous as it was reliable and unique. She had spies everywhere: the woman who prepared food for the kollel students where the son-in-law learned. The grocery lady where he picked up supplies for the family on his way home. Even the dry cleaners who saw to it his black suits were immaculate and his white prayer shawl as white as snow. Reports had come in from all over. So today was her opportunity.

  Her usual time to come was the morning, just as Rav Alter was coming home from his morning prayers. But everyone was in such a rush that time of day, especially Rav Alter, who hurried through breakfast to get back to yeshiva where a horde of yentas and needy yeshiva schlimazels awaited him, lined up outside his office door to bother him over the trivial details of their lives because they couldn’t fend for themselves for two seconds! So coming in the morning was a waste of time. What she needed was to find a time when he was alone and in no rush. How else to get his attention and show him she wasn’t like the others?

  Then the thought struck her with such simplicity that she couldn’t imagine that she’d missed it. Early evening, right after he came back from evening prayers, but before he started his evening shiur. Even if his daughter stole a few minutes to look in on him, she’d be long gone by then, at home taking care of her own troubles.

  As she took out the chilled dough from the refrigerator, dividing it into four round pieces, each one of which she divided into numerous triangles that she then rolled into crescents, the idea went dreamily through her head. Yes, he would be grateful for a little company from a woman his own age, a woman who had experienced loss, a pious woman who knew what it was to live by the side of a revered scholar and posek whose doorbell never stopped ringing. A woman who knew how to fill a man’s home with good cooking smells and cleanliness and order; who knew how to talk to such a man without making him feel burdened, weighed down with responsibilities to come up with solutions to problems that only God Himself could solve; a woman who knew when to put in a comforting word and when to keep her lips sealed.

  She had a vision, right there in her kitchen. It was a modest one, nothing like the prophets who saw dry bones rising and being covered with sinews and flesh and becoming a great army; nothing like chariots with four-headed horses. It was a vision of lamplight and an old armchair in which an elderly, bearded man sat with his holy books while in the corner, on a flowered sofa, she herself sat with her long plastic knitting needles twining fine wool around her arthritic fingers, content to be once more a wife, part of a couple, useful, the long loneliness banished, and the blackness of the street—which held within it hints of the terrifying descent into the permanent darkness to come—was held at bay by the reflections of light from within the room, creating a bastion, a shining fortress, that would comfort her frightened and aching heart.

  She rolled out the dough—which was perfect—then pinched generous amounts of the sweet, cinnamon-chocolate filling with its chopped walnuts, sprinkling it evenly over the smooth surface. Finally, she rolled each piece into a little crescent, which she dabbed with egg yolk, then sprinkled with more nuts. Placing her little treasures carefully in the oven, she set her timer, waiting for the glorious moment when her entire apartment would be filled with the heavenly scent like incense on the altar in the Holy of Holies. As she opened the oven door, she breathed it in. To fi
ll Rav Alter’s sad home with such a smell! She straightened her back. Now all she had to do was wait for them to be cool enough to handle.

  21

  FIRST MEETING

  The office of Yoel Grub was in a run-down office building housing a dental clinic, a chiropractor, the headquarters of some schnoring organization, and what seemed to be a factory producing orthopedic shoe inserts. Leah could hear the machines whirring from the moment she opened the front door to the building.

  “Rabbi Yoel Grub, rabbinical counselor, fourth floor, number fifteen,” Leah read out loud from the building directory on the distempered wall.

  Rabbinical counselor? Leah raised her brows. The word psychologist was nowhere to be found. But given the stigma of such things in Boro Park, she thought she understood.

  “Okay, let’s go.”

  But Shaindele didn’t immediately follow her to the elevator.

  “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe this is not a good idea.”

  Leah was stumped. “But, honey, I thought we agreed that this way you can finish school, go to seminary, start teaching. Isn’t that what you want?”

  “Avadeh. But this place…” She rolled her eyes.

  Leah couldn’t disagree. In fact, she was getting the same feeling. It just didn’t look very professional. “But it’s not the place that’s important, honey, it’s the person. Maybe this is all he can afford. Fancy offices come with fancy prices, and most of the girls he treats are from our kind of families.” Not that this was going to be free, mind you. She shuddered to think how the family was going to manage the hundreds of dollars this was going to cost. But as Yaakov said, nothing was more important than the welfare of the children. Besides, the alternative was going to destroy any chance this young girl had of moving forward in life. It was unthinkable.

  Shaindele nodded, unconvinced. She pressed the button on the elevator in the dingy lobby. But Leah hesitated. “They said to use the service elevator,” Leah told her, reading the signs that indicated it was in the back of the building.