by Leah Lax
Seeing him gave me a shock. I was instantly, utterly embarrassed. I felt he was a complete anomaly there, and it seemed as if I had just discovered a family member who was horrendously out of step, with no sense of fashion, the butt of jokes, just when I was working hard to launch myself into a world where I was determined to fit in (just a little worried that I wouldn’t). I was still shaken when the rabbi’s secretary called me in. I caught a blurred image of the old man through the green glass, his stooped figure leaving through an outside door.
Unlike the old man, Rabbi Goldenberg was clean-shaven, his head uncovered. He swiveled his chair, then rested his chin on his hand as if contemplating me, one knobby finger up the side of his face, which was long and acne-scarred and kind. After a long gaze, he said, “How can I help you?”
Shyly, I launched into hesitant then melodramatic assertions about my newfound faith, hoping I’d get his empathy and support. I said, “I think I want to become a rabbi.”
“And why is that?” he asked, chin still on hand, doting smile.
But I didn’t really know why, any more than I knew what becoming a rabbi might require. I also couldn’t understand then how the adulation Preisand was receiving, and my mother’s pride in her, had fleeting power over me. “Let’s see,” he said. “Rabbinic training starts in graduate school—a long way off for you. But you have to start somewhere.”
That was how I wound up attending Rabbi Goldenberg’s conversion classes—a place, he said, where I could begin by getting a good overview of Reform Judaism’s liberal philosophy. In the classes, he explained how the Reform movement refused to mandate specifics of belief and rejected notions that God had dictated the Bible. He explored their assumption that the Bible is a pastiche of different texts from different hands. The Reform movement also rejected the authority of the old Code of Jewish Law, which he said tries to legislate life down to the level of minutiae and robs one of free choice. He challenged us, saying, “Chart a unique spiritual path of your own.”
The ache remained, not even muted. I found all this lofty and vague and frustratingly nonspecific when I had hoped to get club rules and a list of what I was supposed to believe and do. I also had hoped for assurance that, at the end of the path, God would be shining down His approval. That’s what I thought religion was supposed to be. Restless, I moved on, leaving behind my flirtation with becoming a rabbi. Not long after, I attended what I thought was a free day of learning at Shearith Israel Synagogue, where I happened to see a poster for a Sabbath weekend with Hasidim.
AT DINNER, men and women were seated on opposite sides of the room at tables covered in white and laden with enormous trays of kugels and salads, baba ghanoush, marinated carrots, eggs, pickles, and thick challah slices. A head table across the front connected the two sides, where Rabbi Geller and his group were assembling into a line of black coats, long beards, and hats. Maybe it was the repetition, each of them the same, the message coming at me again and again, but the appearance of those rabbis was starting to make sense. The Vietnam War was grinding on. Every night there were men in uniform on television looking purposeful and serious. “Look at those guys at the front,” I said to Ana.
She rolled her eyes. “Fashion statement,” she said.
But now their garb spelled out a statement of mission. God’s elite corps. “It’s not about fashion,” I said. “And it’s not a costume.”
“No?” she said.
“It’s a uniform,” I said. “They are soldiers for God.”
Her eyes laughed.
I was beginning to sense the self-assuredness that might come from their rules, the nobility of purpose in them, the sense of mission. Besides the uniforms’ clear message, Hasidic rules were clear and defined, even written down, and seemed to promise an almost maternal Godly love—so unlike rules I had encountered until now. Sitting at their table, I didn’t think this as much as feel it: unlike with my mother, and unlike in school, where I didn’t know how to be a “woman,” here, maybe I could get the rules right.
Rabbi Geller stood, held up a silver goblet of wine, and sang out the kiddush Sabbath wine prayer. I sort of recognized the tune from my tone-deaf father. When I was small and he was well, there was something about quiet bedtime moments in low light that would start him talking about his immigrant parents in Brooklyn and the old Jewish ways they had brought from Russia. He told me how his mother polished the wine goblet and candlesticks on Friday and set out the challah under a white cloth, preserving a steadiness and order while she was alive that was lost in our family before it got to us. Then he would stretch out beside me and sing old show tunes. You say potato, I say potahto. Let’s fall in love.
My grandparents were gone. In a way, so was my father. I lifted my chin and sang the kiddush with Rabbi Geller. Then we were served an enormous meal.
I was long past full, sleepy, lulled, when Rabbi Geller began a moving, meditative, wordless song in a melodic minor key, in his rich baritone voice that made me think of a cello. He sang on with his eyes closed. Na nana na. Gradually, others leaned back into their chairs and joined him. People hung their heads back as they sang, or closed their eyes. Ana did the same. The tune wandered around us, lingered, sad and searching. Laced with Ana’s soprano, the voices rose and filled the room, ebbed and swelled over us in waves. Tension I normally carried rolled out my fingertips. I closed my eyes and sang, on and on, letting my body sway. Group song wrapped around us like a human prayer shawl.
Then, suddenly, the rabbi came to a halt. I opened my eyes to find he had put up his palm like a stop sign. Everyone grew quiet. “A woman’s voice is a precious jewel,” the rabbi announced in a slow, careful voice. “Of course, a jewel shouldn’t be flashed around. A jewel should be kept in a safe and treasured place. That is why women are not to sing in public.”
I woke up then, to find myself just a woman, and deeply embarrassed for singing out loud. Ana shook her head. But, I tried to tell myself, we were being honored with this enforced silence. It was supposed to be an honor. Still, I looked down at my hands.
Rabbi Geller began again, and this time only men joined him. Women glanced at one another, lowered their eyes. The men’s singing grew until the rabbi raised his arms, urging them to get out of their uptight secular selves, and the men all rose, full of righteous spiritual energy, willing and eager now to let themselves go. For God. They rushed to the open floor and began to dance. How they danced! They danced as one, and soon they were a single entity, the room full of singing men, stomping feet, and righteous rhythm. As they jumped and sang, hands on shoulders and backs, we stood at the side of their exuberant closed circle. Faster and faster they went. Shirttails came out. Ties were pulled off. They danced! One at a time, Hasidic men took off their long black coats, tossed them aside, and rejoined the fray, strings flying at their hips. Mouths open, singing, singing, voices hoarse, faces red and beaded with jumping joyous sweat. The whole room reverberated in deafening song.
I forgot about being silenced. Ana’s face was lit, her eyes shining. I tapped her arm and gestured at the dancing men, nodding my chin at them and smiling, smiling at the scene and the fervor, carried away by irresistible Hasidic confidence in their own rightness and goodness, this demonstration of Godly joy. In my mind, I was in the middle of those dancing men, my hand on a sweating back, my feet swept up in their beat, singing out loud among them, all of us bound together by a single pulsing rhythm of faith in exclusive holy intimacy. This was where I belonged. Yes! I was one of them, among them, not a woman on the sidelines. I had escaped everything. It’s true, I thought, exultant. You can lose yourself in God.
Late that night, in spite of rules that forbade musical instruments on the Sabbath, Ana spread her bedroll on the floor and sat on it cross-legged, playing guitar and singing quietly to herself. Behind our closed door, I reasoned, we weren’t exactly singing in public, so I sang with her. Soon we became a little bolder, raised our voices, harmonized. Then, a knock on the door. Ana’s hand fell flat on t
he strings. We eyed each other. But there was no Sabbath police. It was just a girl around my age who introduced herself as Janice—small-boned; fine, straight brunette hair. She had come from Fort Worth with her mother for this event, knocked because she had heard us singing. I invited her in, and once I closed the door, we had our voices again. Janice’s was clear and strong. We sang in three-part harmony, all of us cross-legged on an open bedroll. Ana led on guitar as I leaned in toward her, our eyes locking in the tune.
I WOKE EARLY BUT SKIPPED morning services. Ana was still sleeping. Near the coffee urn I met Seema, the Hasidic woman with the blond wig I’d seen at prayers the night before. “What’s your name?” she asked in an official voice, as if she were a spokesperson.
“Lisa,” I said.
“And your Hebrew name?”
I had recently asked my mother that question because it was a blank on the registration form for this weekend. She had rolled her eyes. “We’re Americans,” she’d said, with all the vehemence as if she herself was the immigrant. Hebrew names from the old country didn’t fit her view. But I managed to get the story out of her: how after my birth she had wanted my name announced at the temple, how she’d been told that to do that, I had to have a Hebrew name. “So the rabbi just gave you one,” she said. “We were never going to use it anyway.”
“And?”
“It’s Leah.” She said, with obvious distaste.
“Lay-ah?” I said.
“That’s how the rabbi said it.”
“Leah,” I told Seema, proud that I knew. “Why?”
“That,” Seema said, “is the name of your Jewish soul.” Then she took a blueberry Danish from a platter by the coffee urn, put it on a paper plate, and offered it to me. With the other hand, she touched my shoulder, as if she’d known me for years. “Have something to eat?” she said.
I accepted as if the plate were an invitation into an elite club. How could I not? I had a momentary thought about how my non-Jewish friends would be excluded without a Hebrew name and Jewish pedigree, but still I nibbled the sweet dough. Before Seema and I had parted, I’d accepted her offer to teach me more. She would call me to spend a Sabbath in her home. It was like this: Seema, mother of six, fed me, smiled at me, touched my shoulder. She said I belonged.
That night, after the sky was dark and stars were out, we gathered in the main hall with Rabbi Geller. Someone lowered the lights. One of the bearded men struck a match and lit a tall, braided candle of many colors. The flame spit and rose. He held the torch high, fire dancing in the dark. Rabbi Geller declared the candle a symbol of the holy Sabbath moored among darkly secular days. He raised his silver cup and sang out, “Hinei el yeshuasi evtach v’lo efchad.” “We trust the Sabbath will return,” he said. “God will keep us safe. We will not fear.” Then many hands were passing tiny net sacks of cloves for each of us to smell—to revive the soul as we reentered the dark non-Sabbath. The rabbi drank from the wine and poured the rest into a plate over the tilted candle until a single ember was left floating on the dark red pool. A breath of a moment enveloped the crowd, darkness, quiet breathing, that single ember, whiff of wine and cloves, a sense in the room of camaraderie and regret—before someone switched on the lights. I blinked as if just waking. “Elijah,” the men sang, another my father used to sing to me in the dark. Eliyahu hanavee. “Elijah the prophet, the Tishbite, Elijah the Gileadite.” Harbinger of the Messiah, when every day of the week will be Sabbath.
THAT NIGHT AFTER THE Sabbath ended, the rabbis stepped back and local staff took over directing things as Channel 8 News arrived to film the anachronistic visitors to Texas. Attendance swelled from the larger community surrounding a circle of floor where two Hasidim danced the kazatske to a clapping crowd. Janice, Ana, and I were in that crowd, Ana holding her guitar case. I caught Ana’s eye, pointed to the case, and raised my eyebrows. She cupped a hand around her mouth, lips close to my ear, and said, “Someone heard us singing.” But the magic Sabbath was over and we’d returned—she was free to play her guitar. We were free to sing, free from Hasidic land and back in the world of women’s voices. We had just watched a show of visitors who were not us, and even though I wanted to know more about their rules, I also wanted this freedom.
The woman who ran the synagogue office directed two men setting up a makeshift stage in front of the huge television camera. The crowd pushed in, burning lights, and she pointed to us: Janice, Ana, and me. I looked to Ana and then to Janice, a little dazed, and climbed onto the stage after them. A guitar chord, a smile to one another, and what did it matter if we were singing to the walls of a Sunday-school room or to these blinding lights? I put my head back, lifted my voice in three-part harmony, and felt embraced by my friends and by the music. I didn’t know Ana would disappear from my life, or that Janice would reappear years later. We sang on, innocent us. I didn’t know that this moment in friendship and honesty and full voice would be one of my last for a very long time.
Five
In January after the Sabbath Experience, the Supreme Court legalized abortion. A sense of triumph for woman invaded the news, school, our home. But it felt like my mother’s triumph. I couldn’t imagine myself pregnant. I tried, and the thought repulsed me.
One night, I went out with my twin friends, Tim and Terry, and with Pat—a girl. The twins spoke in high Texas country. Both loved to buy vintage women’s clothes and dress up Pat, with her waist-length red hair, as if she were their Barbie doll. Terry sat in the back with Pat as Tim drove their halting Volkswagen. Tim was wearing his favorite platform shoes, and he had put makeup on his zits. There were no seat belts, and a bolt that was supposed to anchor the front passenger seat, where I was sitting, was missing. When Tim hit the brakes he tended to stomp, tipping my seat and throwing me into the floor well; it had happened plenty of times, so I was trying to hold on.
The delightfully dangerous possibility that Tim and Terry were homos was definitely part of their appeal, but that word was only whispered about others, never out loud or about oneself, so neither was going to confirm. Besides, they didn’t quite seem to know. But that night, normally ebullient Tim was looking pensive as he drove. “Something on your mind?” I said.
“Tim!” Terry said from the back. A warning.
Tim abruptly pulled over to the curb and stopped. “What’s up?” I asked.
He turned around to the two in the back but also to me. “I want to make a pact,” he said.
“What now?” Terry said.
“A pact,” he said in a dramatic voice, “that we will remain open to every opportunity for love.” He put out his palm, daring his brother. His hand shook. Slowly, Terry put his hand on top of his brother’s. Pat added hers.
I couldn’t believe they would even say this. I couldn’t believe they wouldn’t hide from inevitable gawking and sneering at school. Well, I thought, the gawking won’t be at me. Heart racing, I kept my hand at my side.
Another night, I was up late, looking at a catalog for Oberlin College. I had sent away for a dozen or so from different schools to look at and dream about, all strewn on the bed. Under the bed were quivering mounds of dust, a teetering pile of jeans and tees and overalls over the desk chair. A poster-size photo of Carole King, natural woman, was tacked up on the wall. Ringlets framed her face, her mouth open, forever singing. At the foot of the bed was a cello I had managed to buy by babysitting all over the neighborhood.
I had been paging through the book Our Bodies, Ourselves, a gift from my mother, who had appeared at my bedroom door and handed it to me almost shyly. I had just found the chapter entitled “In America, They Call Us Dykes.” Under the heading, three girls posed arm in arm in men’s hats, one cupping her hand around the breast of the other and chortling. I slammed the book shut as if I’d touched fire.
I decided to apply for every scholarship I could find, go for a degree in art, and move far away and study cello. I would aim for museum work and get paid to handle beautiful things. I would experiment with kosher fo
od and fill my new life with the kind of community I had found at the Sabbath Experience.
I reached for the brochure for Rabbi Geller’s Lubavitch Women’s Institute in Minneapolis that he had given me, full of color photos of ever-smiling, modest women cooking, studying, praying. Surely I could get Ana to come with me for a brief escape before I went off to university.
Debbie had already left for college and freedom, but in the next room, Amy, fourteen, was playing my Tapestry album over and over. She had been frequenting a neighbor’s home, where shady characters came and went. There was a boyfriend she said she was going to marry, and she fought to spend nights with him. Sometimes she didn’t come home. Then the music stopped. There was a slammed door, and voices.
I found them in the living room, disheveled Mom, blouse half-buttoned, Amy, and Daddy. Daddy’s face hung forward, his shoulders rounded, his eyes dull. “I goddamn will go out!” Amy said. She was putting on her fringed jacket, grabbed her fringed purse.
“What?” Mom said. “No, you won’t.”
Then they were shouting at one another, but the room became mute. They were gesticulating puppets among the stacks of yellowing newspapers, unopened mail, and forgotten books covering the coffee table and the floor. Huge, dusty canvases of dancing colors were stacked six deep against the walls. All of it—mute people, neglected decor—bearing silent witness to the mockery of furniture arranged for guests who never came. Behind them, yellowed blinds were open to the black night.
Daddy the ghost, full of psych medicines, staggered but stood. “Listen to your mother,” he growled at Amy. His voice was strained. He tried to grip her arm. She shoved him away. He stumbled back.
“Mother,” I said in the careful, lilting voice one might reserve for a thickheaded servant after the guests have already arrived. “I think I’m going to Seema’s tonight.”