Questioning Return

  “I hope you don’t have to spend too much time doing accounting—your talents clearly lie elsewhere.”

  “I like to sing, to elicit emotions from people. Music can really invigorate a person’s neshama, you know, inspire someone to get closer to Hashem. It is an important tool.”

  “I imagine,” Wendy said, she hoped calmly, while swooning inwardly.

  Rahel reappeared with snacks securely packed into a reusable purple nylon case with pink and white flowers. Shir-li looked ecstatic at the sight of it. “Shir-li flower snacks. Shir-li flower snacks,” she said, giggling.

  Aaron and Shir-li exited with a stroller, a bottle of a soap for blowing bubbles, and the flower snacks. Rahel took off her beret and said, “I do really need to practice. As I decide whether to do this piece for the Israel Philharmonic I need to see what kind of shape I’m in, how much work I have to do to get to where I need to be.”

  Wendy asked, “Why are you so ambivalent?”

  “Oh,” Rahel said, opening the case her harp was in and seating herself in her practice chair, “I don’t want to do a poor job. They told me as part of the contract that I am guaranteed a few performances, even as an understudy. I’m not sure I can devote as much time as I need to to the music and care for a young baby. But if I don’t take this, they may not ask me to do things again. If I take it now and don’t sound so hot, I’ll definitely kill my chances with them in the future. Either way, it’s a risk.”

  “You have Aaron and Shir-li and, being frum, it’s not like music is your whole life now,” Wendy said, surprising herself.

  “Yes,” sighed Rahel, looking more than three years older than Wendy. Wendy suddenly realized that, at twenty-nine, she could be in the same position as Rahel, mother of a toddler or pregnant and deciding about which way to pursue her career.

  Rahel continued, “I set out to be a musician. I want to be frum; I don’t want music to be the only thing in my life, but I am still ambitious.” She sighed. “Aaron and I are different in that way; he likes having a profession and a skill and a way to earn a living so that his music is completely lishmah, for its own sake. His favorite kind of singing isn’t in a concert, facing the audience and looking at them, but hazzanut, facing the aron kodesh, pouring his private emotions out before Hashem. He likes allowing others to listen in, understanding his yearnings and passions, but not seeing his face or him seeing theirs. He prefers knowing his singing is really directed to Hashem and not for his own glory. I like performing for others, watching them react, seeing what they think.” Wendy voyeuristically imagined whether this carried over to their private life, lights on or off, but didn’t ask. “I care about the audience. So I probably won’t turn it down.”

  Wendy was not sure what to say next.

  Rahel added, “And then you never know. God willing the baby will be healthy and everything will be fine, but if I turned it down because of the baby and then something happened . . . it would be so much worse, knowing I didn’t have a baby or a career. So . . . I will probably take it.”

  Wendy asked a final question: “How do you think being religious has affected your career?”

  “If I weren’t religious and was living in New York, I certainly wouldn’t be playing with any Philharmonic. Too much competition. Here, there are only a handful of harpists. There is less work, but also less competition. So I’m doing okay, surprisingly. I definitely wouldn’t have kids if I were in the New York music world. I’d have to wait till I was established, or be seen as not serious about my career. In that world, if you have anything at all besides music in your life, you are ranked a dilettante. In Israel, people see having kids as just part of life; you have them and then go on with the other things you want to do.”

  Wendy did know. “In academia it’s the same way. Unless you have tenure, you don’t have kids. By then you are so old; it’s difficult. I don’t know that I want to put everything else in my life on hold until I get tenure. But I do want an academic career.”

  Rahel said, “It’s all about choices. Had I known I would have had this great opportunity, I might not have tried to have a second child so soon. But I’d like, God willing, to have a big family, so I don’t want to wait so long for more children. Would you like to hear me play?” she said, beginning to stroke her harp, its strings emanating soothing sounds. As she warmed up, she said, almost methodically, “The harp has a long place in Jewish tradition. King David played for King Saul to soothe and calm his tumultuous emotions; the cohanim played in the beit mikdash. The harp is in the repertoire of the Jewish neshama, so I feel somehow, even before I was religious, I was beginning to connect by playing the harp. Maybe that’s too mystical . . .”

  Wendy wasn’t sure whether she should interrupt here or not. “Many baalei teshuvah have this sense that somehow they were always meant to be religious, that it wasn’t entirely volitional, but they were being guided, led along. Do you feel that way?”

  “I’m bothered by that explanation. I consciously chose to transform my life when I left Juilliard. Saying, Hashem was guiding me, it was hashgacha pratis and meant to be, removes my agency. Hashem doesn’t need little drones doing his will. I prefer to say, Here I am, a human being with all my wants, needs, desires, and there are lots of worthwhile ways to live my life. I’ve chosen to be frum; I’m willingly embracing it. The rabbis say, in the Gemara, if we walk by a restaurant where something traif is cooking and we smell it, we shouldn’t say, ‘That’s hazer; its traif; it’s disgusting.’ It’s better to say, ‘Oh, that has the most wonderful aroma; I’d love to have some, but I can’t. The Ribbono shel Olam, master of the universe, has forbidden it.’”

  Wendy said, “What’s the difference. You’re still not eating it.”

  Rahel said emphatically, “Denying the attractions of the outside world, closing yourself and your senses off from everything to make it easier to be observant—it’s tunnel vision. Most students at Julliard had it too: nothing else exists except my world view and way of being. Anything else is by definition unattractive; I can’t want it. That’s the haredi, ultra-Orthodox, mentality. The intensity of haredi life is easier—always knowing the newspapers you read and stores you go to will be approved—but it isn’t for me. I can’t have only one thing in my life. I’m much happier now that I have music, and a spouse and child, than I was when I only had music and nothing else. Hey,” Rahel said, glancing at her watch, “I would love to play something for you, but then I must have my practice time.”

  Wendy looked up from her notepad. “I didn’t mean to impose on you. Sorry.” She looked at Rahel and said, “I appreciate your honesty. This has been so helpful because of your candor. People aren’t usually so open. You know, I hope to be in your position one day: having kids, trying to figure out how ambitious I want to be. It sounds like you are balancing everything.”

  “Why don’t you listen to me play, and then judge how well it’s balanced?”

  Rahel tuned her harp. Wendy watched Rahel touch the harp tenderly and tilt it towards her. It was taller than her head, and, as Rahel tilted it, Wendy noticed that it was a bit off kilter to make room for her enlarging belly. The sounds began. Rahel brushed her hands across the strings and pressed the pedals with her feet. There was something ancient about the reverberations and their rhythm, each aspect of the way it was done somehow recalling an earlier time. Wendy saw the hands on the strings and thought of demonstrations she’d seen of weaving, the hands going through the strings to create something new, coming out the other side. Wendy thought Rahel’s hold on the harp seemed more like an embrace of something alive, something that would draw living sounds out of itself. The sounds were like the sudden rush of water at a creek: plashing, soothing, life-giving.

  As she listened she looked around the small apartment more carefully. Wendy noted a discoloration on the wall from some kind of leak, crayon marks and other scuffs from the prior generations of juvenile inhabitants on another part of the wall, linoleum tile coming up in odd spots in the kit
chen, and the age of the battered furniture. How was it possible to coax celestial sounds from such earthbound surroundings? As she listened to Rahel’s harp, she closed her eyes to focus on the sounds, departing mentally from her physical setting.

  That evening, Wendy met Orly for dessert at Don’t Pass Me By Tea and Pie. Violating their rule of not going to the same place twice, this was their third or fourth time there. The décor was lots of exposed wood, warm orange- and yellow-toned paint on the walls, rotating displays of art, and a menu that was almost all pie, both savory and sweet, with a constant rotation of varieties. It was a place that felt cozy to hang out at and gab, as they loved to do.

  After they each ordered a slice of pie, Wendy started to tell Orly about Uri, and the dinner he made when she got back from Eilat.

  “Have you slept together?” Orly asked.

  “We’ve had fun.”

  “No details?” Orly said, disappointed.

  “No divulging. This is . . . it’s more personal now. I will say he knows what he’s doing.” Wendy smiled dreamily and looked into the distance.

  Orly said, “He’s read medical books. They learn the bodily functions.”

  Wendy felt annoyed that Orly was so willing to reduce something so transcendent and ethereal as sexual desire and the satisfaction of it to cold facts, a student’s ability to absorb and regurgitate the locations of bodily sources of pleasure and stimulation. Wendy said, with a closed-mouth smile and her eyebrows raised in an attempt to look mysterious, “Uri is a skilled clinician.”

  “What are his faults?” asked Orly, looking for a realistically unhappy angle, the other side of the story she knew must exist.

  Wendy sighed. “Religious differences. I can’t believe how much I can mess up even when I try.”

  Orly smiled, her journalist’s training letting her know she’d found her lede. “Oh?”

  “I bought some beer for him, actually ale,” she said, exaggerating the British pronunciation, “and put it in the fridge before the seder, hoping he might come back to my apartment. Friday night, we drank the wine you told me to buy, and I asked, when we’d finished the bottle, whether he wanted a beer. He looked at me and said, ‘I can’t break Pesach. How could you have hametz in your house? When I saw it in your fridge, I poured it down the sink.” I looked at him, confused, and he said, ‘Beer is hametz. You didn’t know?’ Did you know, Orly?”

  She nodded in assent. Wendy continued, “Well I certainly didn’t learn that in Hebrew school. How would I know?”

  “What happened?” Orly asked, sipping her cappuccino.

  “He looked at me queerly; he couldn’t believe I didn’t know. It was . . . embarrassing. I wasn’t trying to offer him something not kosher. I even went out of my way not to use one light switch all night,” Wendy continued.

  “He was there all night, I see?” Orly raised her eyebrows.

  “Plead the Fifth,” Wendy rejoined.

  “This thing about the ale—was he angry?”

  “He was . . . surprised I was so ignorant. He said, ‘I just don’t know if I can be with someone who has hametz in her house on Pesach.’ And I don’t know if I can be with someone who gets so freaked out about the contents of my fridge.’ I don’t even like ale—I bought it for him.”

  Orly looked at her. “So what’s next? Does love conquer all? Or is he an arrogant Orthodox jerk?”

  “It isn’t so simple. I can adapt, and he can accept me. He was upset to find the ale, but was willing to give me the benefit of the doubt. And he told me a story of a friend of his from London who was at Wisdom of the Heart yeshiva and had grown up fairly traditional. The friend went to Wisdom to learn more, and for the co-ed aspect, he didn’t want a traditional male yeshiva. He started dating a woman who was also studying at Wisdom and trying on different observances. They’d been dating a while, and he usually davened at a shul near his home. One morning, Rosh Hodesh, they had a minyan for the whole school and he came and saw her and some other women putting on tefillin. He broke up with her that day, just telling her, even though things had been great between them, that he couldn’t date a woman who put on tefillin. It was like a primal scene for him, crossing some kind of line to see a woman in black leather straps.”

  “Putting on tefillin doesn’t seem like a deal-breaking offense.”

  “The rest of the story is that she married another friend of theirs, and the guy who broke up with her is still single.”

  “The guy shouldn’t have acted so rashly?”

  “Well, Uri was upset about the ale, and hoped this wasn’t a ‘dealbreaker’ in terms of our relationship. He thought his friend was totally foolish to say his girlfriend’s doing this one thing meant he couldn’t date her. Uri thinks we can live with compromises. We may not be entirely satisfied with every aspect of them, but hopefully we can work it out. I don’t want to be forced to be religious in a certain way because he is. Whatever I do, I want it to be my decision. He respects that and doesn’t want me to feel like anything is being forced on me. I’ll respect things that he finds important, even if I don’t care about them that much myself.”

  “You’re in a relationship,” said Orly, softly chewing more of her lemon meringue pie. “I wouldn’t mind ceding autonomy for companionship,” she continued.

  Was the tartness of the lemon meringue pie was still pleasant in Orly’s mouth? Wendy couldn’t ask.

  “I’m hoping for a relationship of equals,” Wendy continued. “Really what I want is a creative partnership, someone who loves me and wants me to go as far as I can in my career, encourages me out of love, you know? I interviewed this woman today. She’s a harpist and her husband watches their kid every day so she can practice. It is a little thing, but it shows that as a couple they are both committed to her musical growth. That seems so rare. I don’t mind some give and take—you see the movie I want, I’ll go to your lecture, but when I look at my sister and brother and their marriages . . . Ugh. My sister was on the board of the Law Review at Penn, and now she takes orders from my brother-in-law. Her life is, ‘Take my shirts to the cleaners; call the plumber; get your car washed it looks like shit; I hope you get to the gym.’ I feel so embarrassed for Lisa when Craig speaks to her like that.”

  “I think you like Uri but don’t feel secure enough in your identity as an academic to feel that you can pursue the relationship? You’re afraid his religion and his career would take over?”

  Wendy dug into her purse, “How much do I owe you for this therapy session, Dr. Markovsky?”

  Orly laughed, and Wendy said, “You’re right. I like him but I’m not ready to be with someone if I might have to surrender part of my identity, or my career.”

  “Has he said, I don’t like women who have careers; I must be with someone who will stay home?”

  “No, but he’s said his mother stayed home and was devoted to him and his siblings. I have a sense that he would assume that a spouse would play a traditional role, or at least have that as an ideal.”

  “Isn’t he supportive of your work? You’ve told me he asks penetrating questions.”

  “True. I like a sense of intellectual companionship that I have with him. I like the way Uri thinks and asks questions because he’s been trained so differently than I have . . .”

  “Being with him is a career move?”

  “Not that, just . . . Uri is . . . very different from my idea of a person I could fall in love with.”

  “Why?”

  “He grew up religious; he’s not American. I’ve never thought about living somewhere besides America. I’ve never dated a medical student; I assumed they were all boring grade grubbers, people capable of lots of rote memorization, without much thought beyond that.”

  “Well,” said Orly sanguinely, “you’ll just have to see what happens.”

  “Let’s talk about you—how are Sven and Niels?”

  “Still filming. I have seen some kooky things, Wendy.”

  “Kinky?”

  “Sven
and Niels think they are, but I don’t know. The sexiest thing to me is an intimate touch. A guy who knows how and when to give a hug or stroke my hair. That’s what I want.”

  Wendy got out of her seat and went to the other side of the table to give Orly, who stayed seated, a hug. Wordlessly she went back to her seat on the other side of the table.

  Facing Orly, she told her, “You’ll find it one day, God willing,” she surprised herself by saying, and they both chortled.

  “You’re going to have to come with me to see Sven and Niels—you’re spending too much time with your returnees.”

  They giggled again and ate their pie.

  When Wendy returned home that night there was a message on her machine from Connie Budow, the religion department secretary, asking her to get in touch as soon as she could about some administrative details she needed Wendy to take care of. Wendy looked at her watch: 10:00 p.m. Israel time, 3:00 p.m. in New Jersey. The message had been left a few hours ago but Connie should still be in. Her anticipatory worries began—is the whole issue of Shaul and the lawsuit that never came about being opened up again? Did she want to ask about the courses Wendy would teach next year—she hadn’t started that at all, a syllabus and reading list for the two first-year seminars that she would need to teach each semester as part of her fellowship? She hadn’t done anything with that yet—though she had her ideas and knew she could easily throw a reading list together—because she was hoping now, improbably, to be able to stay. Zakh had told her she should hear before Shavuot, certainly, and he hoped sooner. That must be it: they got some kind of correspondence from the Lady Touro Foundation and wanted to find out what was up with her plans to stay in Israel another year, to be sure she wouldn’t try to transfer and get her degree from Hebrew U., not from them? Part of her just wanted to put the call off, avoid it till tomorrow, not wanting to hear bad news if that is what it was. But, she knew, ever the good and obedient girl, if called, she would call back. She decided not to put on her pajamas but to wash up and brush her teeth, evening preparations, and then make the call. She couldn’t just do it right away; it was something she had to ease herself into, not a procrastinating but a slow readying for a task, she reassured herself as she walked to the bathroom.