An Observant Wife

by Naomi Ragen

  “How did it go? With Rav Grub?”

  She looked up into her kind father’s eager, anxious eyes. She’d caused him enough problems, she thought. Besides, he couldn’t help her. No one could.

  “Fine, good,” she answered like an actress learning a part. She had better learn it fast, she told herself, because it was the part she’d been given to play. No one else was auditioning. No one else wanted it. If she was going to get through this without breaking her father’s heart, she was going to need to win an Oscar.

  22

  LOVE AMONG THE RUGELACH

  Rav Alter heard the doorbell ring with surprise and—rare for the pious old man—uncharitable annoyance. Were even these few, sacrosanct hours of rest not to be vouchsafed him? Was there going to be no end to the intrusions on his life so that even his right to loneliness and mourning were not to be respected?

  But when he looked through the peephole, he was shocked to see Fruma Esther Sonnenbaum. Quickly, he opened the door.

  “I’m not bothering you, k’vod harav?” she said, thrusting out her foiled covered tray.

  Rav Alter did his best to hide his considerable discomfort and even embarrassment. What was she doing here in the evening when his daughter wasn’t there to chaperone? How could he invite her in, given the halachic problem of yichud? But on the other hand, she was no youngster, and she must no doubt be tired having walked all that way with … what was that she was holding? His mind, whirring with questions in the manner of a Talmudical exegesis, suddenly halted as he looked down. With perfect timing, Fruma Esther whipped off the cover. The indescribable smell of freshly baked rugelach still warm from the oven filled the space between them.

  Rav Alter looked down at the little cakes. Every age has its desires, he thought. And after all was said and done, scholar or no scholar, rav or no rav, he was only human.

  She saw his eyes light up with desire.

  “Come in, come in, Rebbitzen.” He opened the door widely but did not close it completely, hoping in this way to solve the yichud problem.

  But Fruma Esther wasn’t having any of it. “You should lock your door, Rav Alter. It’s not safe these days.”

  He hardly hesitated. She was right.

  More and more, strange things were happening in Boro Park. Men and even—HaShem Yishmor, young women pushing baby carriages!—had been mercilessly assaulted by gentiles for no reason, punched in the face, slammed to the ground, their head coverings and wigs torn off. And many others not physically harmed had become the recipients of hurled insults and defamations using the hateful, age-old idioms handed down from mindless anti-Semite to mindless anti-Semite; people with empty heads and empty lives to whom unfamiliar outfits and head coverings were trigger enough for mindless fury. Everyone was in shock. After so many years of telling themselves they were safe in their own country, Boro Park was now more and more a fearful ghetto in a hostile foreign land.

  “This is true, pekuach nefesh,” he agreed, locking the door. Anything that was a danger to life trumped any halachic requirement, permitting acts normally forbidden, like riding in a car on the Sabbath if you needed to go to the hospital or putting your arms around a strange woman if she was drowning in order to save her. But what to do about yichud? He suddenly went to the large living-room picture window, pulling up the shades and pulling aside the curtains, making it possible for everyone in the street to see into the well-lit room. Satisfied, he returned to his guest.

  “I’m sorry to disturb you so late, Rav, but I wanted to bring them to you straight from the oven.” She smiled. “I’ll put them in the kitchen.”

  She bustled through the apartment with a familiarity and ease that stunned him. How did she know where everything was when most of it was still a mystery even to him? Then he remembered: the shiva.

  “I’ll bring you a cup of tea, Rav?” she called to him.

  He followed her into the kitchen. “Only if you make two cups,” he answered graciously. A woman in his kitchen. The smell of freshly baked cakes. Something in his heart leaped up.

  Evenings were the worst. The big house so quiet with only his own breathing, the shuffle of his slippers from living room to study, the slight crackle of the well-worn pages of his beloved sacred texts. It had grown familiar to him like the deformed and ugly healing of a wound that you had no choice but to accept. And now, her voice, a woman’s voice, comforting, bringing succor and sweetness into the sour loneliness to which he was never, ever going to become reconciled.

  “I’m happy to have a cup, too.” She opened the cupboards, somehow knowing exactly where everything was, which was fortunate because he would not have been able to tell her. Setting two cups and saucers on the counter, she switched on the kettle.

  “The tea?”

  “I’m not sure.” He shrugged, feeling a bit foolish. But the kitchen was like a rented hotel room in a foreign country, an unexplored space.

  “Maybe here?” She nodded, laughing, holding up a large ceramic jar with the word tea written in gothic letters in bright red. “Please, Rav, go sit in the dining room. I’ll bring it to you.”

  “We could sit here in the kitchen; it’ll be easier for you,” he suggested, suddenly wanting to be a good host.

  “If you want. But I always like to eat in the dining room. It makes the food taste better,” she answered honestly, shutting off the screaming kettle and pouring out the hot liquid. She opened up a tea bag. It was the kind that made the water dark brown in seconds. “I’ll use one bag for both?” she asked. “They are so strong.”

  “Yes, that is what my wife used to do,” he murmured, remembering.

  “And how much sugar? Or do you not take? Diabetes?”

  “No, thank HaShem. Nothing like that. But the rugelach will be sweet enough.”

  They sat down across from each other at the long, elegant dining room table, the steam rising from the tea fogging their glasses. The cakes were piled up on a plate between them. But he made no move. She got up suddenly and brought two plates back to the table, placing one rugelach on each. Of course, she couldn’t expect him to reach out for one! What if she reached out at the same time! Their fingers might touch!

  She watched as he murmured the blessing over the cake and then over the tea, his lips moving silently before placing anything in his mouth. Always this restraint, always this remembrance of HaShem before enjoying any good thing; this Blessed Be You King of the Universe Who Creates—cakes, fruits, breads, and all other delicious things. How she’d missed that, sitting across the kitchen table serving a pious man, watching his lips move in prayer!

  She watched him anxiously as he bit into the delicate crust. He closed his eyes, which almost watered in pleasure. Only then did she mouth her own blessing and take a bite herself. Oh yes. Delicious, she quietly rejoiced. A real pleasure. Among all the endless prohibitions and nitpicking don’ts of their lives as God-fearing Jews, how many pure joys were there unencumbered by guilt or shame?

  “Just like my dear wife’s.”

  “You must miss Malka Ruth so much. She was a wonderful woman. So kind, so charitable.”

  He looked up, his eyes alight. “You knew her?”

  “Since we were girls in Bais Yaakov. She was always a special person. All the girls respected her, and the teachers only had good words for her.”

  “I didn’t know that part of her life at all. It was over by the time we met. Did she like school?”

  She hesitated. From what she vaguely remembered, Malka Ruth Diskin had been no scholar. But she had golden hands. “She used to knit sweaters. Beautiful mohair sweaters. All the girls were so jealous. She also liked to draw. Pictures of flowers.”

  He sat back, astonished. “I didn’t know that.”

  “You know, a girl grows up, gets married. There is no time. You raise a family, work, help your husband, invite guests for big meals…”

  He nodded, a bit sadly. “And now that things are slowing down, and now that there is a little more time…” He shook h
is head mournfully. “I knew your husband, Yitzchak Chaim. We learned together in the same bais midrash, and then in kollel. He was a great man. A true scholar. And as a teacher—so many students were blessed with his unique way of learning, his middos. He once told me he wanted to write a sefer about middos.”

  “He started it, but he never finished.”

  “But he published so many books!”

  “Yes, on the weekly Torah portion, and also one on halacha. But the one he wanted so much to write, about how a person’s character is the most important thing, more than any single observance, he was never able to complete before…” Her eyes grew blurry, and her mind wandered.

  Rav Alter got up and brought her a box of tissues.

  She took one gratefully. “Thank you.”

  “I know where these are at least. I use them. Often.”

  She looked across from him, her eyes softening. “You are still working, Rav Alter?”

  He nodded. “Too much.”

  “But maybe … I hope it’s not chutzpah for me to say … you should take some time now, do what you always wanted, planned, before…”

  He lifted his cup and drained it. “HaShem Yishmor, who knows what will become of me now?”

  “What will become of you? What’s to become?” she scoffed. “Until a hundred and twenty! But maybe, like I used to tell my Yitzchak Chaim—and he was much younger than you—I used to say: A mentsh tracht und Gott lacht. Who can know what HaShem, May His Name Be Blessed, has in store for us, and when? My Yitzchak Chaim never got to finish that book, and it’s a book we all need so much today. There is so much piety, but so few middos. What goes on in this world…” She shook her head, scandalized. “Even in Boro Park! I don’t have to tell you.”

  He nodded in sorrowful agreement. “This is something that troubles my soul, too. People keep to the letter of the law but forget its spirit. So much loshon hara. So much unkindness. What does HaShem ask of us? To be like Him! To be just, and kind and loving. This is the hardest of all the mitzvoth! To love human beings.”

  “Gentiles, too?”

  “Why not? They are God’s children. He loves them. He created them.”

  “But, Rav, look what’s happening on our own streets!”

  “What’s happening? A few lunatics. But the police, the doctors, they care for us, protect us, and they are mostly gentiles. And who’s to say if we are not ourselves responsible? We need to be more involved in the world around us, to be kinder, and not just think about our own community’s needs, our own poor. Selfishness brings hatred.”

  The great well of emptiness that was inside her ever since losing her Yitzchak Chaim yawned open for a moment, swallowing his words. She remembered all those private conversations between husband and wife in which her husband’s wise and compassionate words of Torah sank into her soul, making her want to be a better person. Now, there was only silence, or the poor substitute of rabbis up at their lecterns on Shabbos and holidays in crowded synagogues with screaming children and their gossiping mothers and grandmothers so you could hardly hear a blessed word! And even when your hearing aid was dialed up enough so that miraculously a few sentences came through whole, somehow it was never what you longed for, but some boastful, abstract erudition that threw around the names of ancient rabbis arguing over donkeys or kegs of wine, or goring oxen. So few rabbis talked about what was really important in life. But when you lived with a pious, learned man, the wisdom fell like manna all day long. All you had to do was collect it.

  “Another rugelach?” she tempted him, seeing his plate was empty. “More tea?”

  “I’m too full for more tea. But I can’t say no to the rugelach.”

  Delighted, she placed another one before him.

  Finally, both cups were drained, both plates empty. She got up to clear the table.

  “Sit!” he commanded, taking away the plates and cups and silverware and taking them into the kitchen. “I’m not helpless.”

  “I can see that, Rav.” Slowly, she pushed back her chair. “I’ll just wrap up the cakes. Or should I put them directly into the freezer for Shabbos?”

  He hesitated. It was only Monday. “You can put a few in the freezer, but leave the rest out, please.”

  “I’ll leave it all out,” she announced. “I can bring something else for Shabbos.”

  He looked at her hopefully. “Chremslach?”

  “You eat them during the year, not just Pesach?”

  “Malka made them for me all year round. With dates and coconut.”

  She looked back at him with barely hidden joy, her lips in a tight smile. “Actually, I was thinking a chocolate babka.”

  He could almost sense its scent rising like a phantom and filling the room.

  23

  BREAKTHROUGH WITH GRUB

  Shaindele stood once again in front of the dingy door in the musty, dark hallway, feeling lost. He was there, inside, waiting for her. Grub. Just the idea of it sent a hot flash through her stomach and a cold shiver up her spine. She reached back to push in the bobby pins with which she had pinned up her braid into a mature matron’s bun. She had also taken care to wear her ugliest, regulation Bais Yaakov footwear: orthopedic old lady shoes and 60 denier black tights. Her skirt was not mid-calf but ankle length, and her blouse buttoned up practically to her chin. Instinctively, she had done everything to make herself as unattractive as possible. She hoped she had done enough. Inhaling deeply, she knocked.

  “Come in,” he said, his authoritative, demanding voice reestablishing and confirming all the memories she had tried so hard to convince herself she had misunderstood. She trembled a little as she opened the door.

  This time, he hardly looked up from his desk. She stood there, taking advantage of his momentary disinterest to look around the room. To her surprise, the beach scene was gone. Taking up its space was a truly toe-curlingly ugly oil painting of the Bobelger Rebbe, every gray hair and wrinkle garishly glorified and slapped into place by some color-blind hack who had no doubt learned his “art” through paint-by-numbers kits, she thought. But it was better than the women in bathing suits promoting an air of casual lust.

  Finally, she noticed him stir. He put down his pen, smiling at her avuncularly. “How do you like the new artwork, Miss Lehman?”

  She lowered her head, making no reply. And Miss Lehman? What was that all about? It sounded almost goyish.

  “Please, make yourself comfortable,” he said with studied correctness, waving her to a chair, which, to her surprise, was already waiting on the other side of his desk as if it were the most normal thing in the world; as if the last meeting with all its ugly innuendoes had never happened.

  Confused and wary, but grateful for small mercies, she seated herself, crossing her legs demurely at the ankles and folding her hands together tightly in her lap.

  He looked her over, then leaned back in his chair, tapping a pencil in front of him, first the point and then the eraser, over and over. She stared at it, hypnotized. “I think we might have gotten off to a bad start, Miss Lehman. So if I upset you, I apologize. Let’s start all over again. Clean slate. Would that be all right?”

  She exhaled, nodding. All of a sudden, he spoke perfect English, with not a trace of Yeshivish. That, too, was odd.

  “So why don’t you tell me what you would like me to help you with?”

  Shaindele, who had spent the week preparing her defenses against the renewal of his merciless onslaught on her privacy and modesty, allowed herself to breathe. “I’d like to talk about my mameh.”

  “You lost her just recently, no?”

  She nodded.

  “That is very hard, especially for a young girl.” He was silent for a few moments. “Were you close?”

  Shaindele considered her next step. Was it better to cooperate or not? Well, if I’m stuck here, might as well make some use out of it. Besides, he was acting differently. Maybe he really was a psychologist, after all.

  “She was everything to me.”
/>   “Please, explain,” he said patiently.

  “She was not just my mameh. She was my teacher. How to be a good Jewish woman, a wife and mother, from her I learned it.”

  “What kind of a person was she?”

  She leaned forward eagerly. “She was so smart. She knew how to do everything. Such a good teacher she was! Her students, they love … loved her. She knew how to cook—such delicious food!—and take care of a house and children. Everything always smelled so clean and looked so shiny! I still don’t know how she did it. And … and she would sew—the most beautiful Purim costumes, and not just princesses and brides. Once, she made me a costume to be a bag of flour! And Chasya she made to be a Hershey’s bar.” She smiled to herself, remembering. “And even though she had all that work for Shabbos, she was never too tired to play with us on Shabbos afternoon when she got up from her nap. All kinds of games and big jigsaw puzzles with thousands of pieces. All the pieces always looked the same to me, but she…” Her throat caught. “She could always figure it out. I don’t know how she did it.”

  “You admired her.”

  “So much. She was perfect.”

  He steepled his fingers and rested his chin on it. “Well, not exactly. Can you allow yourself to remember your not-so-perfect mameh?”

  She gripped the sides of her chair. “I don’t know what you mean.”

  “I think you do,” he said bluntly, sitting back and waiting.

  She sat in silence for what seemed a long time. He made no attempt to fill it, seemingly content to simply wait for as long as it took.

  “She … it always happened when she was pregnant or right after the baby was born,” she said softly. “It was like she … went away somewhere and someone else came, a stranger, to take her place, someone who would yell at us and hit us and then weep and hide in her room. Everything fell apart. Clothes didn’t get washed. Shopping didn’t get done. Her job … the school had to hire substitutes…”

  “And when this stranger came, who took care of you?”