“Yes. It isn’t so much the layers of self, but what does the new picture look like? How is the present different when one sees the past behind it? There is a good visual analogue in the work of this photographer Shimon Attie—have you heard of him? There was an exhibit of his work at Princeton last year. He took pictures in modern Berlin and then found archival photos of the exact location before the war when the area was a Jewish neighborhood. He superimposed the two. The montage is . . . haunting. One can’t see those places as they are now without seeing what came before. It’s as though the ghosts have come back to life. My baalei teshuvah don’t know how to look at themselves as a whole with these two aspects, past and present. They haven’t been able to fuse the images and create a composite. Nothing coheres.”
“You’re right. Baalei teshuvah don’t feel there is room for a crisis of faith; they see things in stark terms—religious or non-religious, Jew or goy. One needs leeway to doubt and question. You know, I’ve found with my patients, the ones with the most successful outcomes are the ones who come in most full of doubts about the therapeutic process.”
“What do you mean?” Wendy felt perplexed by this comment that she would not have expected.
“That they . . . well if they express their fears about the process, that enables them from the beginning to admit their struggles and make our treatment more effective.” He stopped and saw from Wendy’s face that she was still perplexed, so he added, “Have you ever heard about the Bobover rebbe? He survived the Holocaust and had a crisis of faith after the war. He shaved his beard, didn’t want to be a rebbe. He eventually returned to his role, and he was able to attract followers because of his own doubts. Everyone needs to be able to step back and question.”
“Do you?”
He laughed. “I’m a baal teshuvah myself. My parents came to New York from Germany in the 1930s. They were secular and we lived in an intensely Jewish neighborhood in Washington Heights, full of Jews and refugees. When I got to college at Chicago, I took a Jewish studies class and was invited by another student for a Shabbat meal. I felt comfortable with Shabbat and the community at Hillel. I became religious.”
“Oh.” Wendy was silent for a moment and then asked, “Did your goals change after you became religious? Would you have done something else if you hadn’t?”
“Hmm. You know, it is a general problem, how to integrate youthful ideals into the realities of life, to merge dreams from the past with one’s present where they may or may not come to fruition. I always wanted to be a doctor. As a child of immigrants I was a caretaker in many ways, mature for my age. I don’t know whether being religious heightened my interest in psychiatry . . .” He looked at his watch. “I’m sorry, Wendy, but I have another appointment.”
She stood up and slung her messenger bag over her shoulder. She reached out to shake his hand. “Thank you so much for your time, Dr. Hideckel.”
He shook firmly and said, “A pleasure to meet. Good luck with all your challenges in the next few weeks.”
She added, standing, “One final question, relating to you and to Shaul. Why do some people cope with the fact that their present life and their past dreams need to create some kind of composite, and some can’t let go of their expectations from the past?”
“I wish I knew. There’s so much we don’t know about ourselves and others,” he said as Wendy exited his office.
As Wendy left the building, she gazed at the Bauhaus buildings in the neighborhood, constructed by Jews like Dr. Hideckel’s parents, those who fled Germany in the 1930s. She thought about how their well-crafted minimalism negated the complications of the lives of those who escaped. The forced simplicity of the buildings—was it a necessity? The attempt to reduce design elements so, on the surface, all could appear controlled, no frilly ironwork or odd angles to disturb the purity of the architect’s modernist vision. Wendy wished that she could do the same, reduce the messiness of her subjects’ lives, and her relationship to them, to a particular kind of grid: these emotions here, those there, cause and effect, neatly sorted. She considered human attempts to purge their lives of messiness and what the cost was. Obviously, for Shaul it had been high. Once he allowed that untidiness to return, to see there was still much that was preventing him from being the person he aspired to be, he felt the enterprise of changing himself entirely hopeless.
Jerusalem’s buildings veered from the architectural purity of the Bauhaus style and became less elegant and simple as Wendy’s walk brought her closer to her apartment on Mishael Street in the German Colony, away from the Rehavia neighborhood of Hideckel’s office. She had been told that Mishael meant “who is asking” in Hebrew. Who was she to ask others about their lives?
She had asked someone about his life, to learn hours later that her probing questions led him to give up trying to change, to obliterate himself.
Could she continue her dissertation research? Was her career as important as a life? Did she have the right to do work that could damage others—what if there were other baalei teshuvah who were, unknown to her or others, in Shaul’s fragile condition?
Thinking about herself, was she any different from them? Like Shaul, she set high standards for herself. She had felt lost and unmoored in college until she decided to be a religion major and go to graduate school; the academic system was a path as much as a baal teshuvah yeshiva was. Being a graduate student was a way to get out of her parents’ house and antagonize them a bit. But it was also a way to find answers and reach goals, to be less lonely. She wasn’t so different from any baal teshuvah in what she was seeking. Her Fulbright award and being a grad student at Princeton couldn’t change her status as a human with the same needs and problems as others.
Like anyone else, she had the boring and unenviable task of putting one foot in front of the other, trying not to think about anything but that for the next twenty minutes, until she got back to her apartment. She neared her neighborhood, the German Colony, settled in the 1870s by German Templers, a Christian group whose descendants were deported from Israel in 1945 by British Mandate authorities. Walking, she thought about the differences between German Jews in the 1930s and German Christians who entered Jerusalem in the 1870s.
The Christian Templars who built up the German Colony had attempted to reenact architecturally the pastoral look of the villages they left in southern Germany, though with the materials of the Middle East, Jerusalem stone instead of wood and brick. The German Jews attempted to create a modern style, to proclaim themselves a new group with new goals and ideals, living in this oldest of lands.
Which are baalei teshuvah doing? Wendy deliberated. Reconstructing elements of America in an Israeli tempo, or building something completely new in their lives?
The next day, Friday, Wendy met Todd Presser, from her Fulbright group, at Caffit. They hadn’t seen each other since he’d been back in the country after a midwinter vacation week in Greece where he met a friend from the States. Wendy wanted to catch up with her pal, but hoped her problems wouldn’t monopolize the entire meeting.
She began their conversation. “I went to the airport to see Shaul’s coffin off, like I did for Benj. Twice already this year.” She shuddered.
“What was it like?” Todd asked in an almost reverential whisper, the quiet tones of his voice reflecting his uncertainty at how to approach the tragedy.
“The rosh yeshiva got up and spoke, and one of Shaul’s teachers. It was such . . . pablum, bullshit, the rabbi saying that we each have a role in life and some fill the role sooner than others. This other teacher told a story about figs, and how if you are worried they will spoil, you eat them even if they aren’t ripe, and Shaul was taken at a young age so he wouldn’t spoil. You would never have known it was a suicide from what they said—it sounded like he had a heart attack. I was sobbing loudly, and a woman walked over, put her arm around me kindly, and asked how I knew Shaul. I told her I interviewed him, and then . . .” Wendy lifted her shoulders and shook herself, “All hell brok
e loose. The woman took her arm away quickly, as though I were contagious, and said coldly, ‘Oh. You’re the one.’ Then she looked at me like I was monstrous and added, ‘Can you even call yourself a Jew? You don’t have the right,’ and walked away. She quickly whispered to the other women and they moved away from me too.” She paused and breathed hard, weary. “Shit, I really screwed up. I can’t believe I did this.”
“He’s dead. Whether you pulled those tefillin straps or not, there’s nothing you can do now. Go on, enjoy your life, mon cherie.” He took a large and satisfied sip from his double cappuccino. “I love the coffee here,” he sighed, satisfied, looking around him at the large Friday morning crowd.
“You just like the waiters.” Wendy smirked at him. He stuck his tongue out at her. It was so easy with gay men—why couldn’t she get along better with heterosexual ones?
“Seriously, what am I going to do now? How can I write this thing, feeling like someone died for me to write? Do I have blood on my hands?” Wendy asked, her hands shaking as she picked up her café hel, coffee with cardamom, an Israeli flavor combination she had come to love particularly.
He reached out a hand exaggeratedly and picked up one of hers. “Let’s see, my pretty. I’m looking.” He held her hand in one of his and turned it over with his other. “I see a need for a manicure, no blood. Get them done in red. My treat.”
Wendy made a face at him, curling her lip in dissatisfaction. “I don’t get my nails done. I could never type with a manicure; I’d spend all my time gazing at my nails. Don’t you have any sense of morality?”
“I’m writing on Isaac Babel because I love glorification of violence by Jews. It’s the best part of being in Israel: watching Jewish soldiers act like Cossacks, nightly on the news. Next time there is some big incident, I’m going to write about the analogy, what Babel would be doing if he were alive today. Maybe I can get it in some trendy publication.”
“You scare me.”
“You provoked a man to a violent death, darling. I just write about it. Face it, academics and writers are cannibals. You’ve devoured your first victim. To finish, you must digest him and excrete him in writing. It’s a blood obligation now to finish your dissertation.”
Wendy wanted to sip her coffee but found her throat too dry suddenly. She was nauseated. “Excuse me.”
She raced to the ladies room and kneeled down over the toilet. She heaved a few times, and finally threw up the cheese toast she had just eaten. Usually after throwing up, Wendy felt purged, thoroughly cleansed. Now, she still felt bloated, disgusting, as though she had ingested something entirely sickening, something she couldn’t get rid of, that would stay in her system. She washed her blotchy face and dabbed on some foundation to try to cover it. She went back to Todd.
“Pregnant?” he looked at her suspiciously.
“Sadly, no chance. I’d prefer it, life over death and all that.”
“Just . . . stress?”
Wendy signaled the waiter to come over, and noticed Todd elaborately smiling at him and trying to get his eye. She ordered her lukewarm coffee taken away and a fresh hot cup in its place.
“Todd, I . . . it’s different now. Shaul is dead. No jokes for a minute.” He gave her his best poker face in response.
“Something in me has shifted; I can’t be the same anymore. I saw . . . Shaul was . . . upset, and I . . . I . . . I don’t know. I kept pushing, asking, demanding. I was relentless, like I was pummeling him, ferocious. I just let this side of myself, all my anger at Noah and his betrayal of me, and my anger about the matzav here, it just all got knocked at Shaul. I don’t know why. Even worse, I wasn’t listening. He was asking for help and I heard nothing. But I have to live with myself.” She reached into her purple messenger bag and removed the cassette tape. She handed it to him. “Before I forget, this is the tape with the interview. I’m giving it to you for safekeeping.”
Todd took it from her and asked quizzically, “Om, sure, but pourquoi?”
Wendy sighed a bit of relief as she saw the tape vanish into Todd’s maroon backpack with its white Harvard logo. “It’s so weird. You know, Zakh isn’t the most . . . communicative guy, or warm or cuddly. But he was nice to me the other day, concerned. So this is the deal—he got a call from my advisor, Cliff Conrad, saying that there could be a lawsuit for wrongful death, against me and the yeshiva. Zakh told me I’d be better off, if this came about, if the cassette tape wasn’t available. Don’t destroy it; just hold on to it.”
“Tampering with evidence?” he raised his eyebrows and, with mock annoyance, continued, “There aren’t many people I’d commit a crime for, but for you, Wendy . . .”
She laughed. “I appreciate it. There is no crime yet, only a possibility, so your conscience is, so far, safe on my account. Mine is another story . . .” She looked down at her hands, despair in her voice.
“You will live with yourself, Wendy.” He stretched out his hand and put it over one of hers. “Maybe you shouldn’t have pushed him; maybe you should have listened better, but you saw the newspaper article. The kid had a history. He’d been hospitalized; he was ill. The timing would have been different, but it might have happened anyway.”
“I wouldn’t have had a role.”
“Giving up on this dissertation isn’t going to help him or anyone else. If you finish it, maybe you can identify particular characteristics, things you can point out to teachers in the yeshivot, or parents, as symptomatic of the difference between healthy and unhealthy changes. That would be important.” Todd looked at her carefully and patted her hand with his. “Making yourself ill over this is not the answer.”
She put her other hand on top of the one he had placed on hers. “You’re right. But now what?”
“You are going to drink your coffee, go into town, and do your errands. Buy your mother a birthday gift, and get on with your life. Sunday morning, you will get up and take the bus to the library on Har Hatzofim, sit in a carrel with an amazing view of the city, and work your little tootsie off. I’ll find you at noon and take you to the meat cafeteria with the panoramic view of the whole city.”
She removed her hands from his to sip her coffee. “I can’t just pretend nothing happened. I feel like I need to . . . atone.”
“You do know, le’kapper, to atone, in Hebrew is connected to the word koffer, ransom. To atone, you have to pay. When people drive drunk they go to re-education classes, and sit and listen to why they shouldn’t drive drunk again. We’ll trundle you off to some kind of spiritual drunk driving course where you can sit around and ask the others what they are in for.” He paused. “That was good, actually,” he added half to himself, pleased. “I did listen to all my abba’s High Holiday sermons,” he added about his father the rabbi.
Wendy smiled at him. “I’m proud of you. Maybe you can tell the waiter and he’ll be impressed too.” He stuck his tongue out at her, and she continued, “I want to pay; I want to do something, but I’m not sure what.”
“Extra good deeds? Random acts of kindness? Sleep with another sinner, someone who you wouldn’t ordinarily, help out a suffering Jew.”
“First you see me as a cannibal and now a whore? I don’t know, Todd,” Wendy said, shaking her head. “You go first on that one. Maybe Noah is still lonely.”
Two weeks later, also on a Friday morning, Wendy walked down the main drag of Emek Refaim towards the bus stop going into the center of town, where she had some errands—birthday cards for relatives and shopping. Perhaps she’d buy something to perk herself up.
As she was walking, she gazed down at her hands and held them in front of her, spreading out her fingers. They don’t look like they have blood on them, she thought. They look as they always do, ragged, the nails bitten, never manicured as my mother would like, but certainly not bloody.
As she continued to gaze down at her hands, in her peripheral vision she saw that she was coming closer to another pedestrian. Wendy looked up to see a man with black hair with a bit of gray in
it, kind brown eyes behind glasses, and a white button-down shirt, navy wool toggle button coat, khaki slacks. Something about him was familiar but she didn’t know quite why. She figured she should smile anyway.
“Wendy, hello,” the man said.
Quick, she commanded her brain, place this person. How do I know him. University? Rabbi at one the yeshivas I’ve interviewed at? Friend of parents? Parent of a friend?
“Hi. How are you?”
“Tell me how you are. Sleeping better?” The psychiatrist, Shaul’s psychiatrist, was standing in front of her.
“The lawsuit isn’t going to happen, as you predicted. I’m just so immensely relieved. But, I still feel . . . not culpable, but accountable in some way,” she said, hoping her voice didn’t sound too awkward.
“Hmm.” Hideckel gazed at her in a way that made her uncomfortable. It was a more penetrating look than the prurient looks she got from men on the street here. She wanted to squirm away from him, but remained where she was.
Wendy was about to say, “Nice to see you again; thanks for your advice about the lawsuit, bye, Shabbat Shalom,” but he started speaking.
“Let me speak as a Jew, not a psychiatrist. I don’t assume you caused Shaul’s death. I do think you should do something to express regret for what happened, attempt to repair it in some way. Write his parents a letter, make a donation to charity, study a Jewish text in his memory.” He added ominously, “I know, from having lived through it with my wife, how difficult it is to write a dissertation. You don’t need the additional burden of this guilt hanging over your head. You’ll be able to function better if you do something.”
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