“I . . . I don’t know. That’s hard. I mean, surface level, yeah, I keep Shabbos, and kashrus; I’m shomer negia—that is a challenge for sure—but really, the real self of mine, the self that most of the time just feels dead? That self is still around.”
What the fuck was I thinking? Wendy yelled at herself out loud. If that isn’t a cry for help I don’t know what is! I have got to be the world’s biggest asshole! She stood up to stretch and pace the room, to distance herself from the tape recorder’s disturbing emanations.
She could still hear herself telling Shaul, “Right. Okay, next question is about specific observances. What is the hardest part of observance and what the easiest?”
“Easy—not eating the limb of a live animal. Did you know that?”
She could hear her voice in the background—“I’ve heard of it”—faint, not wanting to overpower him with a loud voice so he would continue to speak.
And then his, “Yeah, it grosses me out too. So definitely that is easiest. But hard, I mean respecting your father and mother has always been hard, but I’m so far away it isn’t so relevant now. Can you come back to that?”
Wendy continued, without pause on the tape, “Absolutely. Now, can you pinpoint the particular event or point in time that made you realize you were staying the course with religion and not going back to your former life?”
On the tape Wendy could hear Shaul tapping on the desk and shuffling his feet. She realized now that this was a sign he was uncomfortable—yet another missed cue on her part. Then he said, “You know, that is a hard question. Of course, any question can be made a hard one, but that . . . I . . . no.” She listened to the white noise of the tape, pausing. “I’m sorry, I really don’t know. Maybe I will walk out of here today . . . But to what? I left college and I can’t go back. I often think it would just be so much easier . . .”—he trailed off to a whisper that Wendy could hear clearly on the tape—“if I weren’t here.” And he repeated himself in a hush, “Easier not to be here, not to have to answer these questions.”
Wendy turned the tape off and put her face in her hands. She wept and thought to herself, It’s worse than what they suspect me of. I didn’t provoke him to question himself and then commit suicide. I didn’t actually pay any attention to what he was saying. I missed him. He was there in front of me, sitting across from me, and I could not hear what he was telling me. I failed to comprehend. But this is not a test, some kind of exam that I should have studied for and couldn’t, or an essay that I didn’t understand the question to, so couldn’t answer right; this is a person communicating something, asking for help, and I was completely oblivious. My vision was just totally blocked, occluded, not working, like I had some kind of compassion stroke, a temporary unavailability of the part of my brain that should be aware of what the living breathing human being right in front of me is trying to get me to hear.” The tears flowed harder as she thought that the live person who had been sitting across from her, little more than twenty-four hours ago, was now in a coffin in the cargo section of an El Al plane, making the return journey to the States. She put her head down into her arms on the desk and wept with greater force and louder sobs, stopping only to click the cassette player open and hurl across the room the plastic tape encasing the evidence of her transgression, her inability to listen and prevent a suicide. She could easily have told someone, one of the rabbis, Keep an eye on him; he seems very sad. And they could have protected him, called his doctor, had him hospitalized. But she didn’t.
Wendy Goldberg, thinking about herself and her research and her career, missed something far more important. And now she had to figure out how to live with herself. Words from short-story writer Alice Munro came to her: “We say of some things that they can’t be forgiven, or that we will never forgive ourselves. But we do—we do it all the time.”
Will I ever get to that point? Wendy asked herself.
ELEVEN
Dr. Hideckel
Willing or no, who will but what they must / By Destinie, and can no other choose?
—JOHN MILTON, Paradise Lost
As Wendy walked from the bus stop on Aza Street towards the office of Dr. Daniel Hideckel at 10 Bartenura Street, in the next part of the neighborhood, she thought about how she would present herself to Shaul’s psychiatrist. To make the appointment, she had merely phoned and spoken to a receptionist. There was none of the American efficiency of taking down information, putting forms in the mail, or questioning whether she had health insurance coverage. The Israeli system like everything else here seemed to be casual and friendly—Okay, you want to come over, come—so inimical to the American penchant for advance planning.
Wendy was here in this neighborhood of buildings, with stunning lack of complication in their angles and design, to ask Shaul’s psychiatrist whether she was implicated in Shaul’s death. As she looked for Hideckel’s building at number 10, she saw an older man go into an adjacent building, his face vaguely familiar from her trips to the Hebrew University library on Mount Scopus. She didn’t know his name or field, but assumed he was a professor. Even though this man didn’t know her, she felt shame and embarrassment at her proximity to 10 Bartenura. Would anyone think she was crazy if they saw her here? She did not want to be exposed as someone visiting a psychiatrist’s office.
Spotting number 10, Wendy walked in and, on the row of mailboxes, saw the name, Hideckel, unit three, second floor. It seemed to be a completely residential building from the signs with family names on the gray metal mailboxes set into the wall, large enough for bills, periodicals, postcards, and any other items deemed fit to transport via the inefficient Israeli postal service.
Wendy climbed the steps to the second floor. Even in a prestigious neighborhood in Jerusalem, there was no elevator. On the first door at the top of the stairs there was a sign, in English and Hebrew, for Dr. Daniel Hideckel, MD, licensed psychiatrist, the only indication of the nature of his profession. She opened the unlocked door and found a small waiting room, three chairs with tan faux leather covering and metal arms and legs, looking as though they were bought used from an office furniture store in the early seventies or late sixties. There was a coffee table, same provenance, holding a selection of magazines in English: Time, Newsweek, and the Jerusalem Report. Similar selections in Hebrew and German were on the side tables. She removed her purple canvas messenger bag from her shoulder and unzipped her coat. She began to thumb through the Jerusalem Report and came across an article about Jews and their attitudes to child-rearing. According to this survey, commissioned by a Jewish group trying to gauge what distinctiveness remained to American Jews in an increasingly assimilated society, Jews value being able to ask questions and think for oneself. This set Jews apart, for only 32 percent of those of other ethnic groups valued this, as opposed to 78 percent of Jews. Other ethnic groups valued obedience (23 percent), being well liked (16 percent), working hard (18 percent), or helping others (11 percent) most highly. I’m glad someone sees questions as worthwhile. They certainly don’t seem to have helped Shaul. I hope this doctor will answer mine, Wendy thought.
As Wendy continued to read the Jerusalem Report, she heard an inner door open and the footsteps of a person walking by. She did not want to see any fellow inmates of 10/3 Bartenura, and deliberately did not look up. A few moments later, she heard another pair of footsteps. This time, they were connected to a voice, which announced pleasantly, “Wendy Goldberg?” At her nod, he said, “This way,” and turned around to march back to his office. As Wendy walked down the corridor, she saw a kitchen on the left and a closed door beyond it, which she presumed was a bathroom. They entered Dr. Hideckel’s office. It was filled by a dark crimson Oriental rug, a glass-topped coffee table, and a window with a view of a garden behind it. It was flanked by bookshelves containing books in English, Hebrew, and German; medical texts, novels, and sociological studies shared the space. Hideckel gestured to Wendy to sit in a black leather armchair, while he took a white legal pad and seated
himself on the matching sofa. She faced him and the window to her right, while to her left was a large desk, piled with papers and medical journals of indeterminate date, maybe recent, maybe from ten years ago. There was not a computer or typewriter.
She gazed at the doctor wearing a plain black crocheted kipah, no designs on the edges. His black hair was gray around the temples, with more gray sprinkled through his head. He was wearing a white button-down shirt, gray wool cardigan, navy blue slacks, and sensible leather shoes. His brown eyes, like his other features, seemed sedate and moderate, calm behind his reading glasses. She wasn’t sure what to do next, so she waited.
He began the conversation, looking at her, but with a pen in his hand. “What brought you here today? What are your symptoms? I’m here to listen.”
Wendy reached into her backpack for her own notepad. “This isn’t about me. I . . . interviewed your patient. Shaul Engel. Before his death . . .” She paused to take in a long breath of air. “I . . . need to know. Am I responsible?” Daniel Hideckel took off his glasses and gazed at her, a long look, something changing from his previous air of calm. “I don’t know how to . . . Okay . . .” He gave a long sigh. “Shaul’s medical history . . . there’s no way to point a finger at a specific cause.” He stopped and looked through her, adding, “Shaul’s parents are thinking of suing the yeshiva. For negligence in not noticing signs of Shaul’s increasingly severe depression and for letting you speak to him. I’ve received a call from the lawyer his parents hired. I told him there wasn’t much of a case. One can’t know what effect anything has on a person already sunk in clinical depression.”
Wendy looked at him and lifted her body into a more upright and proud position, and said, “You don’t think I’m to blame?” with a new lilt in her voice.
Hideckel placed his pad and pen on the sofa and looked at Wendy. “You asked about changes he made in his life. When he responded, he started to feel that he hadn’t changed and he wasn’t the righteous person he wanted to be. He mailed me a copy of his suicide note, apologizing that he just couldn’t keep trying.” Hideckel paused to wipe the tears from his eyes and replace his glasses. “He wrote that it would be easier to be dead than to keep struggling. He just wanted to say ‘good night’ to everything, to let it end.”
“If I hadn’t asked those questions, would he still be here?”
“Impossible to answer.” He looked at her. “Legally, you should be fully exonerated. You didn’t intend harm to him; your questions haven’t had a negative impact on other subjects. I don’t think he would have made it this far had he not become religious. There is a phenomenon, research shows, among baalei teshuvah; the turn to religion can stave off symptoms of mental illness for three to five years. After that, religiosity has a negligible affect, and the illness returns with the same potency. Another thing about suicide is that, often, the time when the patient seems to be improving is a time greatest danger. The patient has an awareness things are better, but once improved, he begins to grasp how far there is yet to go. That awareness of the distance to optimal health seems to propel some patients to suicide.”
“You don’t think I’m guilty?” Wendy said, surprising herself when the words left her mouth.
“There is a saying in Judaism: ‘Innocent in the eyes of man; guilty in the sight of heaven.’” In a human court, you’ve committed no crime. And, fortunately for you, Shaul’s parents are divorced and can hardly agree on anything, much less a lawsuit.”
Wendy breathed comfortably. “I hope you’re right.” She added, “What do you mean ‘guilty in the eyes of heaven?’”
“There are higher standards than human ones. If you feel you’ve done wrong, atone.”
“Dr. Hideckel, I am feeling vulnerable now and I don’t want to get drawn to . . . some . . . religious thing. I . . . I . . . didn’t expect that from a medical doctor, person of science.”
“All I am suggesting is that if you feel responsible, it could help you to atone. You will also pay if you do nothing. Guilt has a cost.”
Wendy looked at him, steadily. “Point taken.”
“I know you’re under stress now, and I’m just making suggestions, not forcing anything on you,” Hideckel said in sympathy. “These are ways Jews repent: giving tzedaka, doing deeds of loving-kindness, praying, studying sacred texts . . . Doing any one of these might help you feel you are atoning.”
“Maybe. I’m not a super-religious person. I go to synagogue here sometimes on Friday night; it’s social. I don’t have much money to give to charity. What else?”
“Study of sacred texts and deeds of loving-kindness. Study might be a good place to start; you’re a student. My wife, Atarah, teaches a class on the Torah portion. She has a PhD from Chicago in Social Thought. That’s where we met. As a religion grad student, you’d like her; she’s read all the religious phenomenologists—Eliade, Levi-Strauss, Geertz . . .”
Wendy looked at him with a surprised expression. “Really. Most of the religious people I’ve come across here are either hostile to academic thought or positively anti-intellectual. This is new,” Wendy smiled, intrigued.
Hideckel continued, “Atarah knows traditional text study and modern literary theory. She meshes them. Her book is coming out this fall, Oxford University Press.”
Wendy sat up. “Impressive. Maybe I will try her classes. It will help me understand my subjects better.” Then she added, half jokingly, “Can I come back for a prescription for sleeping pills?”
“Absolutely. Anything else?” he added kindly.
“I don’t know.” She stopped and paused before asking what had been on her mind: “Why is it so hard for these returnees?”
“I am sure you have heard from your subjects of the difficulty of finding acceptance in the religious community. It wasn’t always like that. The rabbis of the Talmud said, ‘In the place where a penitent’—the actual words they used were ‘baal teshuvah’—‘stands, a completely righteous person cannot stand.’ What I remember learning—and this speaks to the question of Shaul and his attempts to overcome his illness—is that the reason for the relative greatness of the baal teshuvah is his ability to withstand temptation.”
“I’ve never heard anything like this from my interviewees.” Wendy continued, “Why aren’t baalei teshuvah taught about the value of what they’re doing instead of constantly being made to feel ignorant?”
“The yeshiva isn’t at fault for Shaul’s suicide. I was his doctor. I was the one who could have saved him,” he sighed sadly. “‘Al ta’amod al dam rayekha,’ don’t stand by your brother’s blood. I should have admitted him to the hospital, to a safe place. I didn’t.”
Wendy asked, “Have many patients under your care committed suicide?” Wendy was afraid to pry into the psyche of this psychiatrist, yet also curious.
“Even one is one too many. Psychiatry is such a tough specialty, because each individual and each illness has its own contours. One never knows with certainty whether the patient would respond better to hospitalization, or a course of ECT treatments, or a different combination of medications . . .” He sighed and stared into the distance for a few moments.
Wendy fidgeted for a moment before responding. “I have an uncle who is a hand surgeon, and he says that surgery is inexact too. Only another surgeon, going in to the incision and looking at what was done, can evaluate the accuracy of a surgeon’s work. Most of us can’t evaluate whether the operation was successful because, even though we can see the surface, we can’t know what went on underneath the skin.”
Hideckel responded, “Right. Even the most exact of medical specialties can’t be evaluated externally.”
They were both silent for a few moments until Wendy continued, “Is it common for certain events to trigger a suicide? With all the interviews there seems to be a certain degree of difficulty for the interviewee in realizing how much he or she has changed, but also how the past lurks in the background, threatening to overtake the progress made towards becoming a new p
erson.”
“This physical metaphor—an old person waiting to lurch out like a panther or a ghost. Your imagery or your subjects’?”
“My subjects’. And that is why I feel so”—she paused and then said—“culpable . . . in Shaul’s suicide. He had a hard time with my questions about how he had changed since he had become religious. He started saying he’d never get to where he wanted to be, that he was a failure . . . He became very emotional. I could tell it was painful for him. His eyes became almost watery. I could see that he was on the verge of tears. I didn’t know how to react. I . . . didn’t express . . . compassion and . . . I regret that.”
Dr. Hideckel sighed. “That was Shaul. Setting unreasonably high standards for himself and then feeling a failure for not reaching them. We worked on that, but unfortunately when people become religious it often magnifies particular aspects of their personalities, rather than really transforming them, as they may hope. They focus on those aspects of Judaism that are most compatible with their personalities. Shaul had a real sense of inferiority and he used religion to reinforce it. Others, who have a need for order, will focus on the most punctilious—though not strictly necessary—observances of halacha. I wish I could convey to the rabbis at baal teshuvah yeshivot that individualism is not a threat to religion but a basis for it.” He put his hand on his chin and added, “One of the names for God in the Torah is ‘elohei ruhot,’ ‘God of the source breath of all flesh.’” Rashi commented that, in appointing a leader to succeed Moses, God must appoint someone who can deal with each individual in accordance with his own “ruah,” temperament. Israeli society values the hevreman, the group-centered person, rather than the individual.”
Wendy responded, “I agree. Conformity is unhealthy.”
“For baalei teshuvah, so much is new. The returnee isn’t sure how to integrate new things with who she or he was before the teshuvah process. Have you ever seen a plate in an anatomy book, all the different layers of a human—the circulation system, the muscles, the vital organs, the skeleton? If you see the whole, it is coherent. If you look at one layer, it won’t give you a realistic picture. Baalei teshuvah focus so much on the religious layer of the self that they often miss the others. It is difficult to reach a point of personal authenticity. That is the focus of your research, yes?”
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