An Observant Wife

by Naomi Ragen

  “We also can’t understand it. But it’s the truth.”

  She shook her head. “No one will believe it, Yaakov.”

  “Then we have to make them believe it, Bubbee!” Leah said passionately. “Our Shaindele got out of it before he hurt her too deeply, but what about the other girls? Hundreds of girls over the years. When is it going to stop? Who is going to stop it, if not us?”

  “You’re putting a healthy head in a sickbed.”

  “What does it mean, then, when God says to us, Tzedek tzedek tirdof? Justice, justice pursue it.”

  Fruma Esther looked at her. “You’re a baalas teshuva. You take everything word for word. But that’s not how it works here.”

  “So explain it to me, Bubbee. How does it work here? What is it exactly I don’t understand? Didn’t God say in the Torah, ‘All Israel are responsible one for the other’? And ‘Chastise your brother’? What part of this am I confused about? And aren’t people who live in this neighborhood called haredim, meaning ‘people who shake with the fear of God’? Don’t they keep the tiniest letter of the law and make up lots of extras just to put a fence around what God is asking of us, so we don’t ever even get close to sinning? And these things are written clearly for all to read. It’s HaShem’s will.”

  Fruma Esther leaned back, breathing heavily. It was all true, all true, she thought. But no one in their community spoke that way, thought that way. It was foreign and strange, this way of thinking, of looking at things. The community had a way of doing things, laws that were outside what was written in the Torah. And overarching all was the respect for the old rabbis, the leaders, whose words were not to be questioned, whose great wealth of knowledge of the holy books granted them almost prophetic wisdom far beyond the ordinary Jew’s. You didn’t always understand their decisions, which often made no sense, which even seemed, in fact, contradictory to the laws of the Torah. For example, the way you held your tongue when a man beat his wife or cheated the government out of money with false benefit claims. You couldn’t understand it, just as a person could not understand why a just and compassionate God would create a lion who had to kill in order to eat instead of living on grass; or why an innocent child should be visited with illness that brought horrible pain and suffering. So, too, you could not always understand how the great rabbinic leaders, the Gedolai Hador, ruled.

  “I’m just a simple Jew,” she answered. “And so I cannot answer you the way a learned scholar would. But I will tell you this, Leah: if you and Yaakov come out publicly against Grub and the Bobelger Rebbe, no one will be able to help you, not your friends, other rebbes, or the police even.”

  “So what exactly are we supposed to do, Bubbee? Let them destroy us?”

  “What, you mean already they started in on you?”

  With a heavy heart, Yaakov handed her the note.

  She put on her glasses and read it, her mouth falling open. Then they told her the rest—the car, the urine …

  “This is how they behaved in the shtetlach in Europe.” She nodded sorrowfully. “My father, he should rest in peace, told me they used to put nails on the floor of the mikvah to get back at rival groups. And before the Holocaust, when the shluchim came from Eretz Hakodesh to talk to the people about moving to Palestine, they would throw stones at them until they ran away. Even when the Nazis took over, some of these rabbonim were still telling the people to stay put, while they themselves ran away! They saved themselves, but did their Hasidim—the ones lucky enough to survive the camps, or the ones in America, remember any of this? No. They flocked back to their leaders here in America, stumbling after them in blindness, throwing piles of money at them, enough to build new yeshivas and batei medrash, not to mention luxurious houses for them to live in like kings. Even after what happened in Europe, their Hasidim still hang on their every word, letting them decide who their children will marry, which surgeons will do their operations, even how they should invest their money, as if they were still the wisest of holy prophets.” She grimaced. “Yes, so wise they were,” she murmured, tilting her head, her eyes narrowing.

  “I didn’t know you felt this way,” Yaakov whispered.

  “I don’t like to talk about it. We are not Hasidim. Neither was your family. We, too, had rabbonim. We followed them when they told us what hechsher to use, but on other things, we made up our own minds. I’m only telling you this so you’ll understand: don’t get into a fight with them! You can’t win. The best thing to do is nothing. Find another counselor for Shaindele and send her back to school.”

  “And Halpern?”

  “You leave him to me. As for the Hasidim, tell them if they don’t bother you, you won’t bother them. That you’ll keep your mouth shut about Grub.”

  “I’m sorry, Bubbee. I know you are right, but I just can’t do that,” Leah said softly, looking at Yaakov, who looked back at her helplessly.

  Fruma Esther studied the two of them. Two lovely young people, she thought, so good and upright and pious. They were exactly the kind of people this community always pretended they were trying to raise with all their Torah institutions and all their shiurim and all their charities. But if Yaakov and Leah tried to change the world, make it a better place, they and their family would be utterly crushed, maybe even physically harmed. She was so afraid for them.

  “I see I cannot talk any sense into either of you,” she said sadly, getting up.

  “I’m so sorry we involved you in our problems, Bubbee. Thank you so much for coming, for giving us your advice, which I’m sure is good. Please, don’t worry about us. We will take care of it,” Yaakov said, smiling bravely, helping her up and bringing her coat.

  “Put this one in the freezer; it’s for Shabbos. Chicken legs. And this one is a babka. Chocolate. The kind the kinderlach liked from last time,” she said, pointing to the plastic containers on the table.

  “I’ll drive you back,” Leah offered, but Fruma Esther just shook her head. “My doctor tells me enough with the sitting around all day! The more I walk, the better it is for me. But thank you.” She touched Leah’s smooth cheek, looking into her worried eyes. And I once thought this girl wasn’t frum enough to marry into our family, to live in our community! She and Yaakov were truly the bravest and most pious people she knew, God should only bless them. What was going to happen now? Perhaps Yaakov would be able to defend himself. But Leah? The gossipmongers and back-talkers would rip her to shreds if she dared to take them on. What had happened so far was nothing.

  30

  THE CHORBYN

  The next day, Yaakov called Halpern from the office. “I can’t take off time from work, Rav Halpern. I want to thank you for your patience. My wife, Leah, she’s very protective of my children. Maybe she got a little verklempt. No, of course we aren’t going to the police! And we have only the deepest respect for the Bobelger Rebbe.” He paused, listening helplessly to the furious diatribe of the man on the other side of the line. “So what happened, happened,” he mollified. “I understand Rav Grub isn’t going to take her back even if she wants to go … What? What do you mean if we beg him? We are not beggars, and besides, he isn’t the right psychologist for her. And we all want what’s best for her, right? I’m glad you agree. You don’t? Listen, Rav Halpern, I don’t think threats are good, not from me and not from you. So let’s settle this like frum Yidden, with rachmones, all right? The child has only a few months left until she graduates.”

  He was silent, his lips stretched thin, his fists turning his knuckles white as he heard the reply. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Rav Halpern. But in that case, let me remind you of what happened to the Eshet Chayil school in Brooklyn, and the principal, Rav Yankel Hochman, and his assistant, Mrs. Surah Schneider. They threw out a girl and the parents sued ‘for negligence, defamation, intentional infliction of emotional distress, engaging in behavior with malice and intent to harm and breach of contract,’” he read from the internet article he had printed out. “And the parents could have won if they hadn’t de
cided to settle with the school. How many thousands of dollars in damages? You can just guess.” He waited. “No, I’m not saying we want to be moissar you to the secular courts, but you know the rabbonim permit this under certain circumstances. So if you don’t act toward my daughter and my family like a frum Yid, what choice do you leave me?” He listened, his lips loosening, his fists uncurling. “I appreciate that. I’m sure in a few days, this will all be taken care of. Yes, thank you. So we’re agreed to do nothing in the meantime? Okay, thank you. Shalom.”

  His relief was brief, because even as he put down the phone, his boss was standing at the door looking at him with an expression that no employee ever wants to see.

  “Can you come into my office for a minute, Jacob?” his boss said curtly.

  Trembling, Yaakov followed him.

  “Please, sit down.”

  Yaakov sat.

  “You’ve been with us how long now, Jacob?”

  “Eight months,” he said, wiping his suddenly parched lips with a nervous tongue.

  “And would you say you are happy here?”

  “Yes, very happy. And I hope you have found no reason not to be satisfied with my work.”

  “Well, we have actually had no complaints until now.”

  A sudden ache went through his stomach, and his heart began to pound. “I’m sorry to hear that. Can you tell me which client complained?”

  “The Weiss Shoe Company.”

  Yaakov exhaled. “But I don’t work on their business. They aren’t with me.”

  “No, but they have been with this company for many years and are a treasured client that brings in a great deal of business for us. And they’re not alone. Glick’s Diamond Factory. Shaindlin Fabrics…”

  “None of them are my clients. I have never been assigned any work for any of them,” he protested.

  His boss seemed confused, shuffling some papers on his desk. “Really?”

  Yaakov nodded, and then it dawned on him. “Can you tell me, please, if these companies happen to be run by Hasidim?”

  “Actually, I think they are.”

  “Bobelger Hasidim?”

  “Well, I’m not the one to ask. They all look the same to me … Sorry, didn’t mean to offend.”

  Yaakov waved his hand. “I’m not offended. But let me explain the background.” He explained, watching his boss’s face change colors and his body grow more and more uncomfortable as he shifted in his seat.

  “Well, I understand, and that is, of course, most unfortunate. But I’m sure you can appreciate that as a business, we have to keep our clients happy.”

  There it was, the chorbyn. After all the sacrifices he’d made! All the hard work he’d invested! And now they were going to fire him, take away his livelihood, plunge his family back into an unbearable poverty. She’s going to leave me, he thought. And who could blame her? Who would want to be married to such an umglick?

  “What if…,” Yaakov began in desperation, clutching at straws. “What if I tell you that in a few days all these complaints will disappear and the problem will be solved?” He made a herculean effort to sound confident, even as he recognized he had no idea how to make that happen.

  “So you’re telling me, on your word, that I can call these clients back and assure them that the problem will be solved right away?”

  Yaakov nodded, terrified of the commitment he was making. But what could happen that would be worse than getting fired? It was a risk worth taking. After all, miracles happen, he told himself.

  “Well, I’m glad we had this little talk, then, Jacob. It’s been most fruitful. I’d hate to lose you. In fact, your own clients have had nothing but good things to say.”

  “I’m happy to hear that. And I’ll take care of this. I appreciate your confidence in me and your patience.”

  The man nodded with a stiff, dismissive smile.

  Yaakov returned to his desk in a daze, the office and all its people, furniture, papers, lighting merging into a confused sound-and-light show that played out in front of him the way he imagined narcotic-fueled dreams displayed themselves in the minds of the drugged. But he had ingested nothing but a large dose of misery, enough to weigh him down and drown him in sorrow forever.

  * * *

  “What can I tell you, Basha? Everything is falling apart. The world is falling apart,” Fruma Esther said almost breathlessly as she leaned back on the easy chair, the most comfortable chair in the living room of her dear friend, the chair Basha’s husband, Rav Aryeh, used when he wasn’t out learning or teaching or being part of some neighborhood committee that decided the most difficult halachic issues. So most of the time, it was empty.

  “Oy, I hate to see you like this, Fruma Esther! It’s not good for your heart!”

  “Or my head, or my liver, or my varicose veins,” she muttered. “But what am I going to do? My Shaindele says he touched her. That the man touched her, took the pins out of her hair and talked to her in a way that is not tzniusdik! Think of it, Basha. A fifty-year-old, with grandchildren!”

  Basha tilted her head, giving her friend a long, sideways look.

  “All right. I know my granddaughter doesn’t always tell the exact truth, but my Yaakov looked into it. The man counsels young girls in an office with no windows, locked at both ends! With his own eyes, Yaakov saw another young girl coming out of there crying. Besides, why should Shaindele make it up?”

  Basha considered this for a few moments, then shook her head. “You’re right, Fruma Esther. She’s a bit tsumisht, but she is a good girl. I’m proud on her that she told her parents and didn’t go back.”

  “But it’s a serious problem, Basha. This counselor, this Grub—”

  “Such a name!”

  “Right? Who has a name like that and doesn’t change it? Anyway, Grub is very good friends with the Bobelger Rebbe.”

  “Oy vey! You can’t start with him. His Hasidim are animals. They’re dangerous.”

  “Not all,” Fruma Esther remonstrated mildly, with a distinct absence of the passion she reserved for good causes that she actually believed in. Both women, longtime residents of Boro Park, had watched with growing alarm and resentment as over the years Hasidim of various sects had displaced the longtime Litvish misnagdim from their homes and institutions, buying up everything in sight, causing a stampede of the older residents from Boro Park to places like Lakewood and Monsey.

  “But Halpern, her principal, isn’t a Hasid and Bais Yaakov isn’t a Hasidishe school. Why would he send girls to a Bobelger Hasid for counseling? And why would he side with him?”

  “I think that there are very few frum psychologists for girls in Boro Park, and he’s sent so many girls to Grub that if it comes out something is wrong, it will be a shandah for him personally. So he’s threatening to throw Shaindele out if she doesn’t go back.”

  “Remind me what you told me about why she was sent there in the first place? I’m so forgetful.”

  “I never told you.”

  “So tell me now.”

  She hesitated.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Shaindele was going out with Duvie, Halpern’s son.”

  “The one that’s OTD? The one from the pizza parlor? I didn’t know she already started with a shadchan.”

  Fruma Esther sighed. “She isn’t. She did it on her own. Behind her parents’ backs.”

  The other woman gasped. “I can’t believe it! Our little, sweet Shaindele who was always so frum?” She shook her head sorrowfully. “If her mameh were still alive, it never would have happened.” She sighed. “But you know, Fruma Esther, if it wasn’t your Shaindele, you’d be the first one to say it’s not fair to the other girls to have such a girl in their class, that she might be a bad influence on them.”

  “Emes. Believe me, I know. But what can I do, Basha? She’s my little Shaindele. I lost my dear daughter Zissele. What, am I going to lose her now, too? She’ll have to leave the community. She’ll be pushed out to who knows where? To what
Gehinnom? Maybe even off the derech!”

  “HaShem Yishmor!”

  Fruma Esther nodded. “Blood is thicker than water. Anyway, like you said, she’s tsumisht, not evil. Basha, the child has only four months until she graduates. Then she’ll go to the matchmakers, do everything respectably. But if she gets expelled…”

  “No matchmaker will go near her, and the boys, her brothers, will also be in trouble.”

  “Even worse, she’ll never be able to become a teacher like her mother! No religious school would accept her. And she would make a wonderful teacher.”

  “So what you’re telling me is this has to be hushed up, and fast.”

  Both women nodded. “I told Yaakov and Leah this. But there’s a problem.”

  “Vus?”

  “Leah. She doesn’t know from such things. She’s mad on the world! She goes to Halpern and threatens him she’ll go to the police.”

  “She didn’t!”

  “I’m telling you, when I heard this, it’s getting black in my eyes! She’ll turn him in, she tells him, and Grub, and also—listen to this—the Bobelger Rebbe himself for recommending Grub!”

  “I’m plotzing, Fruma Esther, plotzing!”

  “What are we going to do? Such a broch. To threaten their rebbe. His hoodlums are already worked up.” Fruma Esther shared the long list of attacks the family had already suffered.

  “I can’t believe it! To Shaindele, in the middle of the street, in front of everyone! Such chutzpah. Behemeis. So the word is already out.”

  “Was it Halpern or Grub, you think?”

  “Probably Grub called Halpern, to complain on Shaindele and get her expelled. But before he could do it, Leah started in with him about the police. Halpern for sure called Grub to tell him what she said.”