Questioning Return

by Beth Kissileff

  Wendy remembered first being aware of the opposite sex at Jewish summer camp. When boys and girls prayed together each morning, there was a masculine power in those boys now wearing talleisim, and the sinewy wrap of their black tefillin echoed the newly appearing musculature in the arms of those beginning puberty. The tufts of hair above their lips, beginnings of mustaches signaling masculine growth, seemed to come at the same time they began to wear those white garments that enabled them to sway and swoop in prayer, active and in constant motion as they were in sports. Wendy’s prayer time always seemed wrapped up in noticing those around her, who they were, what was appealing. She never quite understood the prayers at camp, all in Hebrew. But she liked the slowness of moments they brought, and how they enabled her to pay attention to what was around her, particularly if a guy she found interesting was nearby.

  The wordless melody, the pent-up buzz of the congregation, was now set free. The prayer leader began chanting the set of psalms that culminated in the greeting to the Sabbath Bride, the Lecha Dodi. The man now leading the prayers had the wide shoulders yet narrow body and hips that Wendy associated with swimmers, as though his arms were more important in propelling him than his legs. As the service progressed his legs remained rooted, but his hands and arms moved. His tallis was entirely white with white stripes, and with his wide shoulders, he looked as though he might bound into the air and soar at any minute, his spiritual force powering his ascent. His voice was a lovely clear tenor, high and smooth, gliding lovingly over each note and intonation, channeling its melody outward. Enjoying his voice, she wondered, Will I ever find myself so seduced by anything as to change my life completely?

  She settled back in her chair and concentrated on the singing around her, its twittering sounds, words rising and falling, joining, trilling a note, crescendoing, falling again. The music was now a slow aching tune of yearning. For what? The Sabbath Bride? God? A heavenly Jerusalem? Messianic times? Was there something else to hope for, even actually being in the Promised Land? She’d have to ask Shani later what the worshippers were yearning for.

  In the midst of the congregation, crooning, harmonizing, the prayer leader’s voice out ahead, creating the tune that others wrapped their voices around in a coiled helix of melodic shape, was one solo male voice. As the congregation harmonized, his voice kept originating his own harmony, echoing the others’ song but in his own tuneful, melodic, and utterly gorgeous way. His voice above the others made an impression, lulling and thrilling at once. Whoever the owner of this voice was, he had finessed the dilemma of how to be in a group and be a unique individual, doing both simultaneously. Wendy was in thrall, listening, and puzzled over what type of person had the confidence required to soar above the sound of the crowd, and at the same time, the musical ability to improvise. The sound of his voice penetrated her; she leaned back in her chair and closed her eyes. She wanted to concentrate on the sound, blocking out other stimuli to let this ascending voice pulsate through her, to focus totally on her pleasure.

  As she listened, a tingly, swoony, feeling overcame her. She heard harmonies from worshippers around her erupting spontaneously, sounding at once improvised and planned. She kept hearing the solo male voice, mysterious bringer of joyful melody. He was singing alone yet supportive of the communal sound, protective of the entirety of the musical montage. She speculated whether, rather than being seduced entirely, absorbed into the fibers of the entire being of another, it would be possible to have a love that was a partnership, a commingling of two voices with separate identities, which together could create a united sound?

  The worshippers rose as the service built to its crescendo at the last stanza of the song to greet the Sabbath Bride. While they were standing, she tried to scan the men’s section and find the owner of the voice, or who she would like him to be. On her feet, broken off from the lulling fantasy of lush sound she had been in, yet now in motion as part of the group bending towards the Sabbath Bride emerging at the door, Wendy gazed around and asked herself, When was the last time most of these worshippers had gotten laid? She would have liked to stay in that moment of desire and connection, but getting out of her chair had shattered her pleasurable moment. Feet on the dusty floor, Wendy reverted back to her observer self: Is the intensity here completely a consequence of repressed sexual feelings, my own included? She hadn’t thought about the role of sexuality and its repression in her baalei teshuvah, but it definitely needed to be covered, she decided, feeling under her chair with her hand for her purse with the notebook as the congregation resumed its seats. She didn’t dare write a note in it now, but just wanted to assure herself that she would bolt to get it down as soon as was feasible.

  More importantly, Wendy scanned the room, trying to guess where the owner of that voice was located, even though she needed to crane to see the men’s section while seated. She couldn’t discern any likely candidates, but saw a man at the periphery of the men’s section closest to the women; he was pacing and looking over the mehitza, surveying the crowd. He was looking at the women, intently, searching. He looked like he was on military patrol with the preciseness of his gait and the specificity of where he was looking. Wendy looked away; she didn’t want to be a target of his stare. Notes on sexuality and its discontents, she repeated to herself so she wouldn’t forget later as she sat and tried to follow the Hebrew prayers, with Shani pointing to the spot every so often when she became confused.

  At the service’s end, Shani smiled and greeted people. Wendy and Amalia hung behind. Shani introduced Wendy to a few women their age as a friend of her cousin, here in Israel to write a dissertation. Some of them asked politely what it was about and Wendy considered how many times she would have to repeat herself, explaining what she was doing in her research and why. She hated the tedium of constantly explaining herself to new people. Could I just be back in Princeton with my grad school buddies, she thought, feeling meager and inadequate for not wanting to retrace her life for new strangers.

  The first day of classes at Princeton, after the introductory seminar required for all religious studies graduate students, they adjourned to Café Metro, all eleven of them, to detox after the stress of the first class, worries about the heft and density of the reading, and early anxieties about the final paper. Each one of her cohort had a different background and potential area of research. With this group of people who were so different, she still shared so much: basic values of intellectual inquiry and skepticism, along with respect or reverence for religious phenomena. And all of them, except Matt Lewis, a former crew rower, had been bad at gym in school, like Wendy. Had a basic disconnect from physical skills led them all to academia? With her fellow grad students, she felt so at home, comfortable, and relaxed. As they trained together in graduate school, reading common texts and learning from the same mentors, their modes of discourse and thought became more strongly formed along comparable lines. Could I find a group in Jerusalem to feel at home with this year? she asked herself, feeling alone in the crowded gymnasium, having little in common with most of the people there.

  Finally, the group of four left the school where the synagogue met, the happy chatter of people meeting and greeting following them, knots of individuals in threes and fours dispersing in different directions in the Jerusalem evening. As they walked, they heard the Friday night home prayers, Shalom Aleichem and Kiddush, from the windows of different apartments, a chorus of welcoming. But for who or what? Wendy thought. Are they welcoming me here to the country for my first Sabbath? Or greeting only those who are religious at a certain level, an exclusive band of worshippers? Still, Wendy enjoyed these familiar and comforting songs emanating from apartments along their route.

  The dinner at Shani and Asher’s apartment was the same mix of comforting and frustrating as Wendy had experienced at Shir Tzion and on the walk home. On the one hand, it was pleasant: delicious dishes that the newlyweds had prepared together kept popping out. First came homemade whole wheat challah with all kinds of Middle
Eastern spreads, alongside a wonderful Moroccan salmon with tomato sauce. Accompanying the main course of chicken baked with forty cloves of garlic were a bulgur salad with pine nuts and onions, redolent of some superb seasoning that Wendy couldn’t name, potato kugel, and green salad. There was plenty of wine, and Wendy enjoyed the pleasant tipsiness she got after a few glasses. Her week of moving at an end, it felt good to be able to drink with others and de-stress. Wendy wasn’t a big drinker, but enjoyed booze at parties, to relax, particularly when meeting so many new people. Finally, there were desserts: a variety of cookies and cakes, including what Wendy had brought from the shuk. She hadn’t been to such an elaborate meal since Passover at Grandma Essie’s.

  There was pleasant conversation on a variety of topics. The other guests seemed interesting, not what she would have expected from a religious group. They were aware of the latest TV shows, movies, music, pop culture references. She thought they’d be more bookish and serious and less interesting and hip. But there was a moment when Wendy blundered. They were discussing politics, and Asher proclaimed that, now Bibi was in power, since he’d formed the government in June, there wouldn’t be any more terror attacks like those on the number eighteen buses back in February and March. Wendy asked why that should make a difference and what had happened on those buses anyway? Another guest whose name she never caught but whose accent was Canadian, yelled at her, “Why are you coming to this country if you don’t want to really know what’s going on? There have been almost sixty people killed this year, Americans too. You didn’t know about those buses on Rehov Yaffo?”

  Shani added, quietly but in a tone that could be heard, “Americans our age. Sara was my friend. You remember her, don’t you?” she said to the group as she tried not to let the others see the tears beginning to form.

  Wendy just wanted to fade into the floor, but was rescued by another guest. “Guys, she just got here. When you are in hutz la’aretz, you don’t always know what’s happening in Israel. Give her a chance, would you?” He glared at her Canadian interlocutor. To Wendy, sitting across from him, he said, “Opening your mouth is risky in this country. You see what your innocent question started? But basically Asher’s position is that a tough politician like Bibi won’t let the Arabs get away with these kinds of attacks, that he will stop them. There hasn’t been one since he took office,” the rescuer, Donny, added hopefully.

  Asher tried to squelch any ill feeling and changed the subject to give a dvar Torah, saying he had planned to do it later but now was the most appropriate time for it during the meal. The one thing she grasped was that there was a verse about the nature of God being hidden in the weekly portion from the book of Deuteronomy. The word for hidden somehow sounded like the name “Esther”; and the biblical Esther, even without knowing what God’s plan was, was willing to act in a decisive manner. He applied this lesson to some aspect of Israeli politics but she couldn’t follow the names of the politicians and parties. One guy kept making smart aleck remarks in the middle, interrupting Asher good-naturedly. She felt so clearly outside the group when he did this, as she didn’t get any of the jokes.

  At the meal’s end, Shani and Asher asked Donny Zeligson, Wendy’s fearless defender, to walk her home so she wouldn’t get lost. He was walking in the same direction to Yeshivat Temimai Nefesh, “the yeshiva for pure souls,” in the Old City and agreed to help get her back to her apartment.

  It was strange to feel she needed someone else to give her direction. She didn’t expect she would get lost, really, but there weren’t that many people out on the empty streets to ask directions of, and even if she found someone, that person would need to speak English too. The way wasn’t far, but there were a few turns on the way that had strange angles, perhaps remnants of some older system of navigation, an alternate logic for street layout. She acquiesced to her host’s desire to have her escorted home, feeling vaguely like a teenager, dependent on someone else for a ride from one place to another, incapable of her own mobility.

  Wendy and Donny walked side by side on silent streets. Wendy felt obligated out of politeness to converse, though she didn’t know what to say; he had spoken little during the dinner other than assisting her. “What brought you here?” she asked.

  He kept walking. She didn’t know whether to repeat herself or just accept that he wasn’t interested in talking to her when he began to speak. “Hashem. I came as part of my undergrad work in Oregon. I was a lousy student there.” He gave a sad smile and tossed his shaggy bangs out of his eyes. “I was, I still am, a pretty big disappointment to my parents. They’re dentists, in practice together. All they want is for me to join them.”

  “Two dentists for parents? Did you never get candy? Get your teeth cleaned constantly?”

  Donny laughed. “Yes and yes. But they . . . they do love me, even if they were hard to take as a kid . . . or now. The worst horror I brought on them was suggesting I might leave school because I loved working as a line cook in a restaurant, something they considered working class.”

  “Celebrity chefs can be a pretty big deal these days.”

  “Not good enough for the Doctors Zeligson. So they sent me here for a summer to a program on historic preservation of buildings and objects, because they thought contact with physical objects was what I should do, something that involved learning but also the world of the physical. One weekend the program set up an optional visit to a yeshiva, to let us experience different aspects of the country. I went and just felt . . . at home; it was my place, so I went back there, and then I wanted to stay at the end of the summer. Last summer, so I’ve been here a year now. Hashem’s doing.”

  She wanted to ask him how he was so sure, but didn’t want to pick a fight. So she stayed silent, hoping he wouldn’t ask her whether she too believed Hashem was looking out for her.

  “How did you get here?”

  She decided to just keep it simple. “Shani’s cousin is my friend and classmate in graduate school. My friend told me her family had an apartment for rent. I took it, so Shani and Asher invited me over for my first Shabbat. It was nice but . . .” Wendy paused and decided to just be candid, “I don’t know, I felt kind of like an outsider there, awkward.”

  “Me too!” Wendy’s formerly laconic companion seemed more excited by this than by anything else all night. “I mean, if you want to have guests, you need to ask them about themselves, welcome them. I was never asked one question!”

  Wendy concurred. “That’s what was bothering me. It was just kind of nice polite general conversation but no one talked to me! I couldn’t figure out why I felt out of place.”

  “Hey, they fed us; we shouldn’t be criticizing our hosts,” he said evenly.

  “Maybe not, but it is fun.” She grinned at him, wondering if she had said something to offend his sense of what was gossipy speech, lashon hara, and what was not.

  “True,” he said, and smiled back.

  She was surprised he would knowingly go against doing what he thought he was supposed to. Maybe, as Lamdan had said, it wasn’t so simple: those who believed still did have their human moments of frailty and betrayal. She continued, “No offense, but I really hated that turban Shani was wearing. I felt bad for her because she kept trying to keep it on her head; her fiddling with it made me feel off kilter, you know? White women and turbans just do not work—you know, like white women and dreadlocks?” Wendy didn’t know why she had to be so catty about the turban, except that it did seem way too big for Shani’s head, and ready to topple off at any provocation. The other married woman there that evening was wearing a crocheted maroon hat with silver embroidered flowers and buttons to give it panache.

  To Wendy’s surprise, her companion laughed. “I’ll have to remember that: white women—no turbans. Important fashion memo.” They walked in silence for a few more moments. Then he asked her, “So what are you doing this year?”

  “Like you, my parents don’t approve of my path either.” She looked over at him and he smiled at he
r to encourage her to continue. “I’m working on a PhD in American religion.”

  “That sounds hard. But wait, if it’s American, why are you in Israel?”

  “I’m looking at Americans who come here and become more religious.”

  “Oh, like me.”

  Wendy had no response.

  He added, “It’s okay. It’s good that you’re interested. You should definitely talk to the guys at my yeshiva. There are lots like me, people who just didn’t quite fit in with our families and their expectations.”

  “Yeah?” She changed the subject, “You didn’t tell me how you knew Shani and Asher.”

  “I don’t. There is some connection through relatives, Asher’s great uncle and aunt, maybe, who live in Portland and are patients of my parents. When they were coming to Israel for the wedding, my parents said they had a son here. Asher got my number from them and invited me. I don’t even know his relatives, and he doesn’t really either since he grew up mostly here.”

  “So why did you come tonight?”

  “Change of pace, something different from the yeshiva.”

  The two had arrived at Mishael 5. Donny asked to come up to use her bathroom, since he still had a long walk before he got back to his yeshiva in the Old City.

  Wendy assented. Donny insisted on leaving the door to her apartment open. Amalia was staying over at Shani and Asher’s, and there weren’t other occupants who might come in, so the open door at the top of a staircase where there were no other occupants made no difference either way.

  Wendy plopped down on the couch in her living room in a daze. The boxes of books were gone, their volumes unpacked and settled on shelves. The apartment was beginning to look like someone lived there. She needed posters and pillows, throw blankets and knickknacks, the little things that made a place special to its inhabitant. Should she offer Donny a drink or something when he came out? All she had was water and milk, though there was some of that avatiach she’d bought earlier. She should at least offer.