An Observant Wife

by Naomi Ragen

  “Get out!” Halpern shouted.

  She shot up.

  “No, not you. You sit.”

  The man disappeared, closing the door.

  “What about my son?”

  She thought fast. “My daughter was a minor, and your Duvie wasn’t. Sexual abuse—including statutory rape—is a felony in New York. And Grub is going down the same rabbit hole as Nechemya Weberman. And you, and your precious Bobelger Rebbe, are both his accomplices, so you are going down with him! Because you are right. Being who I am, you’re dealing with a woman who didn’t grow up on your sacred streets and doesn’t understand the unwritten codes here and won’t be intimidated. Got that? You throw my daughter out of school or hurt her in any way, and this conversation is over, and I won’t be coming back without the NYPD.”

  He sat there, stunned and speechless. The minutes passed. The secretary poked her head in, concerned at the sudden silence. He waved her away, furious.

  Finally, he composed himself. “Eppes,” he began mildly, in sharp contrast to his previous outbursts, “zeit ois az ich hob zich zu geheilt. Oh, you don’t know Yiddish? Maybe I was too hasty,” he quickly translated.

  “Maybe we both were,” she said with equal restraint.

  “Why don’t you ask your husband to come and see me, Mrs. Lehman?”

  “And until then?”

  “Maybe it would be best not to involve the girl.”

  “So she stays in her class, without harassment, and without loshon hara?”

  He raised two palms upward in surrender. “For now.”

  “Thank you so much, Rabbi Halpern. As it is written in the Ethics of the Fathers: ‘Three things sustain the world: justice, truth and peace.’”

  She got up with dignity, turned her back, and walked swiftly out of the office, then out of the school. Only when she got behind the wheel of her car did she realize that her hand was shaking too much to put the key into the ignition. She sat there, her brave front collapsing, filled with a sudden terrible fear and regret over her outburst. Halpern would soon realize the emptiness of her threat; seventeen was actually the age of consent in New York, so his precious Duvie was safe. And despite what she had said, she had lived in Boro Park long enough to know the codes and to realize she had finally broken every one of them. There will be hell to pay, she thought, tears rolling down her cheeks as she wondered what her husband was going to say when she told him.

  29

  SHOWDOWN

  “Yaakov, can you talk now?”

  He put down his sandwich, holding the phone closer. “Yes, I’m on my lunch break. What happened? Your voice is hoarse. Have you been crying?”

  “Yaakov,” she whispered, “I had a fight with Halpern. He was going to throw Shaindele out today. I said some things…”

  “Going to throw her out! What … that’s … disgusting!” He paused. “What things?”

  “I lost my temper. I’m so sorry; please forgive me.” Her voice cracked. “He wants to see you.”

  “Maybe that would be best. I’ll call the school. Did you take Fruma Esther with you?”

  “No, I forgot all about it! I was dropping off the kids and just decided to go in to see him for a few minutes, but it was a mistake. I wound up telling him I was going to turn him into the police.”

  “Turn in Halpern?”

  “And Grub, and the Bobelger Rebbe who backs him and sends girls to him.”

  There was a sharp intake of breath on the other side of the line, then silence.

  “We’ll talk about it tonight, Leah. Try not to worry.”

  “Oh, Yaakov, I’m such an idiot! I’ve ruined everything!”

  With a keen understanding of the bottomless abyss she had unwittingly opened up by threatening the Hasidic leader himself, a man basically worshipped as infallible by his fanatic, cultish, and often violent followers, Yaakov nevertheless made a superhuman effort to comfort her. With a calmness and patience that took more self-control than he had ever imagined he possessed, he said, “You are my darling wife, and I love you. You were only trying to make things better.”

  “Thank you, my love. Thank you.” She blew her nose. “Okay. Enough. I’ll see you later. Bye.”

  She hung up and sat on the couch, twisting her hands together, unable to gather her thoughts. There was a sudden knock on the door. “Who is it?”

  No one answered. She looked through the keyhole, but there was no one there. She opened the door a crack, and there on the floor was an envelope. She widened the opening, stepping through and looking down the staircase. But it, too, was empty. Picking up the envelope, she hurried back inside, locking and bolting the door behind her.

  The envelope was not addressed. She tore it open. It was a short note, primitively handwritten in all block letters as if by a first grader practicing the alphabet.

  Shaindele Lehman is a Prutza. and her Stepmother is an American Whore. do Anyting to Harm the Santly Rav Grub, or Insult the Holy Bobelger Rebbe, and Police Can’t Help you. You have been Warned!

  Her hand trembled. But before she had time to fully absorb what was happening, the phone rang. She listened, terrified to pick it up. But what if it was Yaakov? Or Shaindele? Or one of her clients? She couldn’t allow herself to be paralyzed by fear. She wasn’t going to give them that!

  “Shalom?”

  “Shalom to you!” To Leah’s enormous relief, it was a woman’s voice, and she sounded positively cheerful.

  “Leah? Is that you? Leah Howard? Sorry.” She laughed. “I mean Leah Lehman! Sometimes I forget.”

  “I’m so sorry, who is this?”

  “Oh, it’s Gittel. Rav Weintraub’s secretary. You have a minute? The rav would like to speak with you. Can I put him through?”

  Rav Weintraub, her mentor, the person who had allowed her to enter this community, who had vouched for her, invited her to attend shiurim, employed her, found her a place to live, got her customers for her new internet advertising business. The kindest, most devout man in the world. Oh no!

  “Yes, of course,” she murmured barely audibly, her throat closing.

  “My dear Leah, it’s been a long time!”

  “Yes,” she answered, barely breathing. Please, God, not Rav Weintraub, too!

  “So you’re probably wondering why I’m calling,” he said.

  “Does it have anything to do with Rabbi Grub, or Rabbi Halpern, or the Bobelger? Because I want to explain.”

  “Grub? Halpern? The Bobelger?” He seemed surprised. “Sounds very interesting, but no. Listen, I have a girl here, a baalas teshuva, who is also a computer whiz. I told her how successful you’ve been. I think she’s also from California. Maybe you could invite her for Shabbos, talk to her about your own journey?”

  Leah felt the lump form in her throat as relief flooded through her wildly. She coughed, making it possible to speak. “Of course, I’d be happy to, Rav. Just send me her name and telephone number.”

  “I’ll ask my secretary. Thank you, Leah-le! How are you, the new bride?”

  “Not so new anymore, Rav.” She smiled, already feeling a little better, as if she were still anchored to those safe shores to which Rav Weintraub had rowed her.

  “And how is it to be a mother?”

  She breathed deeply. “Rav Weintraub, I never thought I could love so much, so deeply. I never thought I could be this happy.”

  “Not every mother is so enthusiastic all the time,” he joked. “I’m sure it isn’t easy.”

  “That’s true, but it’s worth everything to take care of your children no matter what. Isn’t that true, Rav?”

  His voice was bright, rejoicing. “Baruch HaShem! No sacrifice is too great for our children. Whatever we do for them comes back to us in blessings a thousandfold. May HaShem soon bless you with your own child.”

  “Thank you so much, Rav Weintraub. You have no idea how much your phone call means to me right now!”

  There was a beat. “Something is going on I don’t know about?”

&n
bsp; “I can’t talk about it right now. But if you hear any loshon hara about me, know it isn’t true.”

  “We don’t listen to loshon hara. So not to worry, Leah-le,” he joked. Then his tone turned serious. “If you need my help, you know you can always come by.”

  “Thank you so much, Rav.”

  “My secretary is sending you the girl’s number. Thank you, Leah-le.”

  She put down the phone, the letter still clutched in her shaking fist.

  She called Fruma Esther and asked her to come by in the evening, if it wasn’t too much trouble.

  “Something happened?”

  “Yes, I’m afraid. We need your advice.”

  Later that afternoon, when she picked up the little ones from school and took them back to the car, she found the windshield had been smeared with broken eggs. Harlot appeared on the glass in red Magic Marker.

  Chasya looked at it, startled. “Why did somebody paint on our nice car, Mommy?”

  “Maybe they didn’t have paper,” she answered, tight-lipped and furious. She strapped the children inside, took out some rags from the trunk, and sprayed the windshield with glass cleaner, rubbing away the writing as quickly as she could, aware of strangers slowing down as they passed to take in the scene, their faces surprised and a bit excited. How many had managed to decipher the writing before she got it all? She worried, scrubbing away only until the word disappeared and she had just enough clarity to safely drive home. She didn’t want to linger an extra second with the children in the car in case the vandals were still nearby.

  When Shaindele came home from school, she went straight to her room, closing the door. Leah followed her, concerned. “Are you okay?” she asked, poking her head through the barest opening, not wanting to infringe on her privacy.

  Shaindele nodded, coming to the door and opening it, then returning to sit on her bed. She pulled several stuffed animals—relics of her childhood—into her lap, wrapping her arms around her favorite, a brown teddy bear bedraggled of fur. Her face was streaked with dried tears and reddish splotches, Leah noticed. She looked like a frightened child.

  Leah sat down next to her, putting an arm around her. “Tell me.”

  “On the way home, a Hasid crossed the street and yelled at me. The names he called me, Leah! In the middle of the street! And then he opened a bottle and threw some liquid at me.” She lifted her feet. “My shoes and socks are soaked.”

  “Take them off immediately! And take off the rest of your clothes. I’ll wash everything! Do it now! Then take a bath and scrub yourself.”

  Leah lifted the wet shoes and stockings gingerly. They had a strong, acrid stench.

  * * *

  “It was urine. But it could have been acid,” she told Yaakov later, hiding in his arms, exhausted. The children had been put to bed early. Shaindele was still in her room, and Fruma Esther had not yet arrived.

  They sat side by side on the fraying brown couch in the living room whose walls badly needed a fresh coat of paint; a place that had sheltered them since their wedding day and had been home to Yaakov and his first wife and five children. It was a home like many in their community, modest in size and poor of furnishings but rich in love and devotion and piety. Always in the past, they had convinced themselves that the physical discomforts of such a place were more than compensated for by the joy of living securely among their own kind, sharing in the bounty of their rich, spiritual life. But now doubt chipped away at that certainty as they clung to each other, Leah describing her visit to Halpern, the incident with the car, and what had happened to Shaindele. When she finally handed him the letter, she did so wordlessly.

  Yaakov sat up, opening it, then shooting to his feet as he read. He paced the room. He was furious, appalled, frightened, and completely helpless. “May the God of Abraham protect us!” he cried out as the range and depth of the attacks on his family merged in his mind into one unbearable assault.

  In Yaakov Lehman’s sheltered life among God-fearing Torah scholars and their families, he had never come into contact with people who used this kind of language, let alone who were responsible for these kinds of deeds. He didn’t know what to do. Even if he had wanted to, he had no idea how to resort to brute force, threats, lies, or ugliness. He knew nothing about underhanded stratagems. In his straightforward, simple life, his whole experience had been in perfecting his character so as to live ever more honestly and kindly, treating those he came into contact with as he himself would have wanted to be treated. He had no weapons of self-defense. None. But these people, he thought, they were also part of his community. They were his brothers. But they were also his enemies, evil people incapable of repentance who wished him and his family harm. They were Esau to his Jacob.

  He crushed the letter in his fist.

  Leah caught his hand. “No, don’t. We might need it.”

  “For what?”

  “Evidence.”

  He nodded, feeling distraught at the very thought of breaking the community’s strong taboo against bringing in outside, secular authorities. Yet simultaneously, something inside him shouted wildly, They all belong in jail! Those who would harm his wife, his young daughter, should be strung up, beaten to a pulp! But even if they went to the police, until they did anything … Police were reluctant to get involved in Boro Park disputes, trying to stay out of the neighborhood. For the first time in his life, Yaakov Lehman wished he had the unrestrained physical power of a simple, primitive man with no conscience.

  “We need to find out ourselves who’s behind this.”

  “Who do you think?” She was bitter.

  That alone was the worst thing they could have done to his family, he realized: taken the light from his happy, loving, kind, devout wife, filling her soul with darkness. Never would he forgive them for this, not if they asked for mechilah a thousand times! They needed to be found! To be punished! Surely, the good people whom he had known all his life would help him: Meir, Rav Alter, the men he had studied with for over twenty years, the rav of his shul, the friends of his father, of his father-in-law … surely? But then he thought of those men, those good, kind men, and how they, too, disliked to get involved in anything unpleasant, anything that smacked of scandal. How they actively avoided openly taking sides in public quarrels. They were men of peace, of dignity. Men who watched their tongues out of piety but also men who lived in these narrow, congested streets who could ill afford to make enemies of the Hasidim who ran the businesses, owned the apartment houses, and established free loan funds.

  Slowly, the confidence inside him collapsed. He felt shattered. “Maybe we should take her out of the school, before the girls start a campaign against her,” he suggested. “I could send her to my brother in Baltimore.”

  “But it’s only a few months until the end of the school year. She’ll be graduating!”

  He paced, more and more agitated. “Yes. She deserves to graduate, after all she’s been through. It will hurt her so much to leave now. It’s not right!” he fumed, changing his mind again and again.

  “And also, she’s in the middle of therapy. She has to continue. We can’t just stop.”

  He hadn’t thought of that. “Yes, we need to find her someone new, someone she—and we—can trust.”

  “I’ll call my friend Dr. Glaser. She’ll know. But you’re right. Maybe we should keep her home, at least for a few days?”

  “We shouldn’t have to give in to this kind of rishus. We shouldn’t bow to it, obey it. It’s like bowing to idols. There is a God, and He will protect us.”

  “But, Yaakov, be practical.”

  “All right. What if we pick her up from school and keep her from going out on her own for a little while until we figure this out?”

  “Yes, all right. I can do that, pick her up with the car.” Unless they slash my tires, she thought, wondering with a cold chill what would be next.

  The doorbell rang, and the sound sent a frisson of fear through them both. They were under siege, she realized
, and the benevolent place she had so lovingly embraced and wanted to call home had become a jungle of dark forces, wild, uncontrolled, and unpredictable.

  Fruma Esther bustled in, her hands full of heavy plastic boxes holding various delicacies. “I made so much for Shabbos, I thought you could use—” She stopped, caught by their stricken faces. She put the food down on the dining room table instead of immediately unpacking it in the kitchen. “So tell me, I’m listening,” she said, hanging up her coat and settling into a chair.

  Yaakov and Leah exchanged glances. Neither one of them wanted to hurt the old woman by telling her any of this, which reflected so badly on the world of which she was so proud to be such a prominent member. And truthfully, neither did they relish the idea of being subject to a long list of recriminations. After all, they were hardly blameless in all of this. Perhaps involving her wasn’t such a good idea, after all?

  “Nu? I’m waiting!”

  Yaakov moved a chair opposite hers. “We have a problem.”

  “With Shaindele and this Grub. I know all about it. So what else is new?”

  “They want to throw her out of school.”

  “Who? That Halpern? But his own son started it! A yeshiva bum from the pizza parlor, nuch!”

  “That’s what we told him, so he said if she gets therapy, the school won’t bother her. They forced us to send her to Grub, who’s a Bobelger Hasid.”

  “Shaindele told me all about him.”

  “The Bobelger send all their girls to him. I even asked Rav Alter before I sent her, and he said the Bobelger Rebbe himself vouched for him.”

  “The Bobelger Rebbe himself, you say?” She shook her head in dismay. “He’s an old man. Maybe he doesn’t know what’s going on. But Shaindele is sure about what happened?”

  “She’s sure. But even if I didn’t believe her, should I not believe my own eyes?”

  “Vus is dus?”

  He described his experience with the young girl.

  “Rosha,” she said softly, shaking her head. “And the Bobelger close their eyes! A shandah! And their daughters the most sheltered of all the girls, except for Satmar. They’re so careful about every little thing, buttoning the last button on the shirt collar, wearing closed shoes not to show the cleavage between their toes, dark stockings, no makeup. They marry them off at seventeen after one date, that’s it.”