On the other hand, Wendy recalled the words of her heroine, Jane Eyre, that she was going to be “solemnizing” the “culinary rites” in such a way that “words can convey but an inadequate notion to the uninitiated like you.” Was she solemnizing culinary rites in her Jerusalem kitchen? On the other hand, Wendy remembered Professor Van Leeuwen’s feminist analysis of the text for Contemporary Civilization: Jane gave up the possibility of being an artist to care for her blinded spouse. The novel, Bronte’s last, embodied the tension Wendy was feeling about love versus career. I’m not going to think about that part of it, since I am enjoying the scent of melted chocolate lingering in the air, and the taste of the mousse in my mouth, she said licking her fingers one more time. There was something to domestic and culinary rites, Wendy didn’t doubt it, but she wanted Uri to share jointly in their pleasures, and to be sure that they didn’t detract too much from the intellectual work that was her chief goal right now.
The fascinating thing to Wendy about making this mousse was transformation. To take a puddle of egg whites, an off-color blob, not yellowy, not white, just gelatinous, and craft them into a lovely foam which combined with chocolate, cream, coffee, and a bit of liqueur for flavor gave her a certain amount of power. Making mousse, she could transform reality. In her dissertation too, she could take a mass of stories, quotes, lives, and, along with some good flavorings, put them together in a new way, create for them a new substance and existence as they are reformulated and restructured into a coherent written document. It was a kind of sorcery, infusing the ordinary with meaning. It might not have the heft of a craft like wood carving, but when done properly, it too had solidity.
The phone rang as she was tearing the plastic wrap to make a cover for the bowl of finished mousse she was placing in the refrigerator.
“Hi. It’s Noah.”
“Oh.” Why was he calling her? She hadn’t heard from him since she bumped into him at the Hebrew University library before Passover.
“How are you? I heard you’ve been going to Atarah Hideckel’s classes, and I wanted to hear about them. I might go to hear her at the tikkun at Wisdom.”
Wendy slammed the refrigerator door shut and walked over to the sink to begin the cleanup process. “What can I say? She’s incredible. It’s . . . she can lay a finger on my soul when she speaks. I’ve been inspired by teachers, had crushes on them, been in awe of their brilliance, but . . . it’s not just intellect; there’s more with Atarah’s teaching. You should come. Definitely.”
“I’m glad you’ve found a teacher. It’s important to have a guide,” Noah said, a faint trace of wistfulness in his quiet voice.
Wendy brightened. “I haven’t changed, you know. I’m still me. One of the things I like most about her is that she doesn’t offer spoonfed pablum to make things easier to digest. She discusses difficult things. She makes me want to know as much as she does, to learn more.”
“Just to learn? What about practice?”
“Turn the tables; give me a survey,” she said as she continued rinsing out the other bowls she had used, carefully holding the phone cord above the water with her elbow. Noah laughed.
“Sure,” he assented.
“You’ll never guess this! I’m dating someone who grew up modern Orthodox. He didn’t know how clueless I was when we met.”
Noah was quiet and then said, “Where’d you meet him?”
“Atarah’s house, on Purim. He’s with her husband, a psychiatry resident.”
“Wow.”
“That’s how I feel about him too. You? Love life?”
He sighed. “Still not sure where my passions lie. I’m waiting to see who’s next.”
“Will you let yourself be guided by passion or are you still afraid of it?”
“Not so afraid.”
“Do you consider yourself gay?”
“Some questions are teiku.”
“Asian food? Do you want that with teiku sauce?”
“No,” he said with laughter. “I’m glad you still don’t take anything too seriously. It’s an acronym for tishbi kushiot ubayaiyot. It’s a way to say the issue can’t be resolved; it stays on the table till Elijah shows.”
“So basically, the question is important but we can’t answer it now.” Wendy continued, “I like the idea of not having to resolve questions. For me, I want to be part of Jewish history. I want to do things out of tradition and peoplehood, in a sort of Reconstructionist way, I think, from what Dara tells me. I’m going to be listed in the Jerusalem phone book next year.”
“Oh?”
“I got a Lady Touro fellowship. I’ll be here another year. What’s next for you?”
“I’m not sure. If I want to continue in grad school, I should go back. But it’s probably not for me.”
“You can say teiku on that too!”
“You’re lucky, Wendy; you’re so certain.”
“No, Noah, you’re lucky, actually. You are willing to wait to receive a glimmer of something, passion or understanding.”
“Since I was with Sam, and he said to me, ‘I’ve had the kisses of God’s mouth,’ I’ve been puzzled. Is that life, some kind of summation, which may appear truthful, but actually be entirely false?”
“Why is it false? Can’t humans be agents of God?”
“It’s hard to think of myself as an instrument of the divine. Sam was deluded if he thought my kisses were those of God’s mouth. I’m glad if it brought him comfort. Maybe knowing that I forgave him for lying to me about the inscription he wrote in the book, he felt he had received some kind of divine favor.”
“Don’t use this teiku as an excuse to do nothing,” she said, beginning to dry the rinsed bowls with a towel, phone precariously perched on her ear.
“I want some kind of intense passion that tells me, ‘It must be this way,’ a kind of inevitability because I am surrendering to this incredible idea or great love. But if I go through my life without ever feeling it, then what?”
Wendy decided to try to provoke Noah to some kind of response, so asked him the purposefully provocative question, “What if Sam was the one love of your life and now you’ve lost your chance?”
“I can’t know. Is Uri the love of yours?”
“We haven’t been together long enough.” She thought, Is Noah Lazevsky really the person I want to discuss this with? Hardly. “Is passion only something that happens all at once or does it build up over time? Shavuot is a culmination of leaving Egypt and preparing to receive the Torah; it doesn’t just happen in one burst of light. That’s Atarah.”
But she still didn’t have the answer to her question about Uri. She did like him, but was still mad at how this Shavuot lunch had been handled. He invited people to her place without letting her know how many and what she needed to do. He basically wasn’t doing any of the work since he was spending the week taking extra call, covering hours for others so he could be off for Shavuot. He just assumed she’d be able to do all the shopping, cooking, food preparation, cleanup without seeing whether she’d wanted hosting duties in the first place. He presumed it would be fine with her since the people being invited were those they owed invitations to. The whole thing felt unfairly thrust upon her, and she felt like he was being an insensitive jerk, not being considerate of her time, assuming he could make any demands, whether she had time to do this or not. It was a hugely, hugely chauvinist thing. But she wouldn’t give Noah the satisfaction of obtaining details about Uri’s less than immensely perfect nature . . .
Noah ended, “Sounds like I should go hear her. Hag Sameach, see you there, then.”
“If I see you. Get there early if you want a seat. It will be crowded.”
A few hours later Wendy found herself in a gymnasium, much like the one where she spent her first Shabbat in Jerusalem. Inside it was dank and gloomy with a bit of a mildew smell; now at the end of May it was beginning to be humid. Small windows—not much outside light, though it would be dark in an hour. Her friend Dara Glasser had been
so excited by this radical innovation, a service that would be strictly Orthodox yet as egalitarian as legally possible. She told Wendy that it would be a good compromise for her and Uri. Uri had gone to the Israeli Reform movement’s Hallel Yah shul with her, but didn’t feel totally comfortable there. Wendy had gone to synagogues with mehitzas, but hated the feeling of being a second-class citizen, in the back of the bus. The many justifications she had heard over the year for separation of the sexes during prayer continued to sound hollow and contrived, and she didn’t like being in the segregated atmosphere.
Wisdom of the Heart was enabling this new prayer group by paying for the space; they hadn’t wanted to offer their own building for fear that it would be too controversial. This gym was not in the gym of a school, like Shir Tzion, but the gym of a community center, built with private money unconnected to the many state-sponsored venues for religious expression. Wendy didn’t get the point. Women lead some parts of the prayers, not others? Why not go to a Reform or Conservative shul where it was completely egalitarian? She had come tonight because Dara asked her to, not out of willingness.
She entered the space and walked to the left, the women’s section, picked up a prayer book from a pile on the table in the back, and found a seat. As Wendy joined the congregation in singing, she was struck by the beauty of the woman’s voice leading it. The leader’s voice was an expressive contralto, thrilling. Not in a sexual way as she felt hearing the voice of Aaron, the husband of the woman she’d interviewed in the Old City, or the man leading services her first Friday night in Jerusalem at Shir Tzion. Hearing this woman’s voice, she felt glad this woman could sing for an audience, let out the private emotions, yet not in an exhibitionistic way because her face was unseen, towards the ark. The congregation was giving the woman recognition as a prayer leader, someone they wanted to represent their community before the Kaddosh Baruch Hu, the Holy Blessed One.
The woman leading the service, wearing a long all-white tallis and a white cotton beret, sang out, her voice soaring above the rest of the congregation, joyously, triumphantly. Listening, Wendy realized that, like at the Spicehandler seder, she felt like a full person here, the different parts of her equally nourished. At this service, women were treated as equals, and all the participants were praying seriously and intently, unlike at Hallel Yah, which, Wendy reluctantly conceded, did fit Noah’s critique. He pegged it as a “davening club,” people coming together, liking to sing, but with no real seriousness about their individual prayers. Even if Wendy herself wasn’t as serious as those around her tonight, she felt a groundedness and commitment in the atmosphere that she liked.
After the woman concluded, there was a dvar Torah by Jonas Brill. He was the son of Elias Brill, the man whose chair at Princeton was the one Wendy’s advisor, Cliff Conrad, occupied. The younger Brill had come to Israel after the Six-Day War and was a psychologist at Bar Ilan University, well known for his studies of the role of memory in prior events.
Professor Brill’s dvar Torah was in English, fortunately for Wendy. He spoke of Freud’s idea of Nachträglichkeit, memory traces being subjected from time to time to a re-arrangement in accordance with fresh circumstances—a retranscription. He discussed how British psychoanalyst Adam Phillips used the idea, and connected it to Shavuot. He spoke of Phillips’s formulation that “memory is a way of inventing the past” to describe the process of earning Torah, earning the right to stand at Sinai and receive it. He quoted Geertz and Levi-Strauss, Rashi and Ramban, Durkheim and Levinas. He spoke of the need for complexity, to understand and incorporate a variety of points of view as the most important index of future happiness, and then applied this to the rabbinic notion of the seventy faces of the Torah. All of Wendy’s knowledge base, from her academic studies to her classes with Atarah, prepared her for this talk. She had heard Brill’s name all year and couldn’t believe that now she was finally getting to hear him speak. She liked the idea of the necessity of constant rearrangement, and how continually studying and understanding Torah can help with this.
Wendy wasn’t sitting with anyone she knew, though she could see Dara a few rows ahead and felt certain that must be Judy Spicehandler and her daughter Emanuella, with elaborate feathered hats, to her left. And there, a few rows up on the right, was the wife of Avner Zakh, her Fulbright adviser. Odd, how people from different parts of her life could be here in this one room. Suddenly, Wendy felt an overflow of emotions, a joy she hadn’t expected. I am happy, she realized. Tears began to flow out of her eyes unbidden, as she sat and wept quietly, allowing the sounds of the women’s singing to cascade around her.
After the service, she walked over to the men’s side to find Uri as they’d planned, and was surprised to see Jacob Lamdan. Lamdan didn’t notice her, but she went over to greet him.
She stood in front of him and said, “Professor Lamdan? Hi, Wendy Goldberg You were on my plane on the way over.”
His usually sharp blue eyes seemed cloudy as though he couldn’t place her, but then he said, “Cliff’s student, Wendy? Hag sameach. How has your year been? I’m back for the summer already.”
“My year has been . . . complicated. I’ve really mulled over all the things you said to me on the plane.”
He smiled cryptically. “Yes?”
“The power of text study, the pulsing of the light. I felt that in Dr. Brill’s dvar Torah tonight. I’ve been going to Atarah Hideckel’s classes.”
“You’re fortunate to study with her. Do you remember the Gemara we learnt on the plane?”
“There were two rabbis, one who helped the other become religious, by telling him, ‘Use your strength for Torah.’”
“Have you?”
“Have I what?”
“Used your strength for Torah?”
“I don’t know. I feel strengthened by this service. There was no need to park my academic self at the door for spiritual nourishment. Everything seems to be coming together. The different parts of my life, different people I’ve met this year . . .” Then she said, confessionally, “I started weeping.”
“Me too,” Lamdan almost whispered to her.
“I’m glad it wasn’t just me.”
“In Jerusalem, it is impossible to remain detached. New York . . . it’s all about intellectual distance. I’ve never wept in shul in New York, not even . . .” He paused, stopped in mid sentence. He composed himself and continued, “Being in Jerusalem, hearing a woman’s voice, singing . . . I think of my sister, Hashem yinakem dama, may Hashem avenge her death. I wish Hitler hadn’t taken her, that she had been given a chance to see this.”
Uri walked up and gave Wendy a Shabbat Shalom kiss on the cheek. “Professor Lamdan, this is my boyfriend, Uri Shalem. I met him in the course of my research.” They looked at each other and smiled. “He is finishing his psychiatry residency with Daniel Hideckel, Atarah’s husband.” She turned to Uri and said, “This is Jacob Lamdan, the Talmud person in the religion department at Princeton. We were on the same plane on the way over here.”
Uri put out his hand. “Hag sameach, naim meod, nice to meet you” in his clipped British accent. “You are working with my friend Jay Epstein, then?” he said.
“My favorite student. How do you know Jay?”
“We were together at Yeshivat Shalvei Olam here, before university.”
“Very nice. Rav Amittai, the rosh yeshiva, is a good friend of mine. I’ll be with him next Shabbat.”
Uri smiled. “A special man, Rav Amittai.”
“The name he chose for himself, Amittai, truthful, does him justice.”
Uri added, “He gave a sicha to us, on Yom Hashoah, about his name. He said that the Gemara teaches that worship of God is built on truth. Hakarat hatov, acknowledgment of God’s goodness, isn’t possible for someone who has just lost an entire world as the survivors did. But even in times of hester panim, of God’s face being hidden, we need to continue the relationship with God, still speaking truth. I’d never seen him look so exerted; articulating those
words seemed to physically strain him.”
Lamdan looked saddened also. “Rosh devarkha emet, at the head of your words is truth, Amittai’s motto. He wanted me to take the name Amittai also, that there should be many of us teaching truth. We both changed our names in the DP camp after the war. I knew Lamdan, learner, was a name I could live up to. I wasn’t sure about Amittai.”
Lamdan’s son, a teacher at Wisdom of the Heart, walked over and greeted the group. “Abba, you’ve already got a crowd of students. They always find you!”
“Akiva, this young woman is from my department at Princeton. She’s been here for the year writing her dissertation on American baalei teshuvah. Her friend knows my student, Jay Epstein. You remember him?”
“Yes, yes, nice to meet you. We need to get going, Abba. There is a group meal over at Wisdom.” He directed his comments to Wendy and Uri. “If you care to join us, there is plenty of food.”
Wendy spoke up, “We’re going too, so we can walk together.”
After the dinner, Atarah Hideckel’s Shavuot shiur was in the same building where Wisdom of the Heart held most of its classes. It was an old stone building, on a lot by itself, in Katamon, a neighborhood adjacent to Wendy’s German Colony apartment. It was evident from the moment Wendy and Uri entered the room where Atarah would be speaking that it wasn’t large enough for the crowd. There were chairs set up in rows facing a table where Atarah would sit at the front of the space. Wendy and Uri snagged some of the last chairs in back, and the people filing in now were sitting on the floor in the front between the first row of chairs and the teacher’s table. The windows were open to let air in and Wendy could smell a late May flower. Lilacs would be in bloom in New York now; the Middle Eastern equivalent of lilacs, a flower with a lovely perfume, was wafting through the room with each breeze from the window. Now people were sitting in the aisles, the only open space. Wendy looked over to the window on her left and noticed faces. People were standing outside the room, looking in the windows, so they would be able to hear Atarah speak. She looked around at the crowd, mostly people her age and Uri’s age, about half the women wearing berets or scarves on their heads and half not. Almost all of the men were wearing kipot. No, there was a bare-headed one, she saw, and there another. She saw a woman in pants to her left. She looked at Uri, seated next to her, and took his hand and squeezed it gently. He smiled at her, and Atarah entered the room.
Questioning Return Page 41