“Well, it’s not a word for little girls to know,” Bubby says, and goes back to rolling the delicate potato-flour dough with her bare hands. Her pink cotton turban is askew, so that the glittering rhinestone set into the knot is over by her right ear, and a thatch of white fuzz is visible. When I’m married, I’m going to wear the fashionable turbans, made out of terry cloth and piled elegantly into a square knot on top of my head, and my neck will be shaved clean, even though Bubby says her neck itches all the time when it’s shaved closely.
Bubby loves to tell the story of how Zeidy asked her to shave her head. Two years after they were married it was; he just came home one day and said, “Fraida, I want you to shave off all your hair.”
“Husband of mine,” she retorted indignantly, “you went crazy in the head or what? It’s not enough for you that I cover my hair with a wig, even when my own mother didn’t bother back in Europe, but now you want me to shave it all too? Never in my life did I hear of such a frumkeit, of such a religion, that says a woman has to shave her head.”
“But, Fraida,” Zeidy entreated, “the rebbe said! It’s a new rule. All the men are telling their wives to do it. You want me to be the only man whose wife doesn’t shave her hair? Nu, an embarrassment like that you want to bring down on our family? You want the rebbe should know that I couldn’t get my wife to follow the rules?”
Bubby sighed dramatically. “Nu, what is this rebbe? My rebbe he never was. Your rebbe he never was either, before the war. Suddenly we have a new rebbe? And tell me who is this rebbe that he said I have to shave my hair, when he never even met me? A more modest, devout woman he has never met before, tell him, even if I have a little hair on my head.”
Still, after multiple appeals, Bubby finally capitulates and takes a razor to her head. She always tells me, “The shaving you think was such a big deal? Not a big deal at all. I got used to it so fast! And honestly, it’s so much more comfortable, especially in the summer.”
It was nothing in the end, she says. Sometimes it sounds like she is trying to convince herself and not just me.
“Why did the rebbe decide that the women have to shave their heads,” I always ask, “if nobody did that in Europe?”
Bubby hesitates for a moment before answering. “Zeidy tells me that the rebbe wants us to be more ehrlich, more devout, than any Jew ever was. He says that if we go to extreme lengths to make God proud of us, he’ll never hurt us again, like he did in the war.” And here she always falls silent, sinking into reminiscent misery.
I look at Bubby now, bent over her ever-present work, and watch as she adjusts her turban with a floury hand, leaving a white streak on her forehead. She begins cutting squares out of the flattened sheet of kreplach dough and fills them with farmer cheese, then folds the squares in half to form triangular pockets. I drop the kreplach into a pot of boiling water on the stove, watching them jostle each other for space at the top. I wish I could take back my question, or at least say a gut vurt to Bubby, something that will reassure her that I’m a good girl who doesn’t use bad words. All I ever have are questions, though. “Oy vey,” Bubby says with a sigh when I start asking questions, “why do you always need to know everything?” I don’t know why, but it’s true, I just need to know. I want to know about that book she keeps hidden in her underwear drawer, the cheap paperback with the pouty woman on the cover, but I know it’s hidden for a reason, that it’s a secret, and I have to keep it.
I have secrets too. Maybe Bubby knows about them, but she won’t say anything about mine if I don’t say anything about hers. Or perhaps I have only imagined her complicity; there is a chance this agreement is only one-sided. Would Bubby tattle on me? I hide my books under the bed, and she hides hers in her lingerie, and once a year when Zeidy inspects the house for Passover, poking through our things, we hover anxiously, terrified of being found out. Zeidy even rifles through my underwear drawer. Only when I tell him that this is my private female stuff does he desist, unwilling to violate a woman’s privacy, and move on to my grandmother’s wardrobe. She is as defensive as I am when he rummages through her lingerie. We both know that our small stash of secular books would shock my grandfather more than a pile of chametz, the forbidden leavening, ever could. Bubby might get away with a scolding, but I would not be spared the full extent of my grandfather’s wrath. When my zeide gets angry, his long white beard seems to lift up and spread around his face like a fiery flame. I wither instantly in the heat of his scorn.
“Der tumeneh shprach!” he thunders at me when he overhears me speaking to my cousins in English. An impure language, Zeidy says, acts like a poison to the soul. Reading an English book is even worse; it leaves my soul vulnerable, a welcome mat put out for the devil.
I’m not myself today, which explains my slip of the tongue. There’s something new under my mattress this week, and soon (when Bubby doesn’t need my help with the kreplach) I will shut the door to my room and retrieve it, the wonderful leather-bound volume with its heady new-book smell. It’s a section of the Talmud, with the forbidden English translation, and it’s thousands of pages long, so it holds the promise of weeks of titillating reading. I can’t believe I will finally be able to decode ancient Talmudic discourse designed specifically to keep out ignoramuses like me. Zeidy won’t let me read the Hebrew books he keeps locked in his closet: they are only for men, he says; girls belong in the kitchen. But I’m so curious about his learning, and what exactly is written in the books he spends so many hours bent over, quivering with scholarly ecstasy. The few bits of watered-down wisdom my teachers supply in school only make me hunger for more. I want to know the truth about Rachel, Rabbi Akiva’s wife, who tended her home in poverty for twelve years while her husband studied Torah in some foreign land. How could the spoiled daughter of a rich man possibly resign herself to such misery? My teachers say she was a saint, but it has to be more complicated than that. Why would she marry a poor, ignorant man like Akiva in the first place? It couldn’t be that he was good-looking, because then she wouldn’t agree to his twelve-year trip. There has to be a reason, and if no one will tell me, then it’s my job to find out.
I purchased the Schottenstein translation of the Talmud last week at the Judaica store in Borough Park. The small shop was empty, lit only by the weak strands of sunlight filtering in through the grimy windows. The silver dust bunnies seemed suspended in the beams of light, floating slowly upward with the force of a weak draft from a heating vent. I hid in the shadows of the staggering bookshelves as I mumbled to the bookseller that the book was for my cousin, that I had been asked to purchase it. I wondered if my nervousness was evident; surely my deception was written on my forehead, just as Zeidy always warned me it would be. “Der emes shteit oif di shteren,” Zeidy says. “No matter how convincingly you lie, your forehead gives you away.” I imagine words etched into my skin, glowing like neon in the dark, my lanky brown bangs swept upward by a sudden breeze.
There is only one man ever working in that tiny bookstore on New Utrecht Avenue, as I have gleaned from the many reconnaissance trips I have made. He is old, with shaky hands and eyes that blink unsteadily, and as he wrapped the large, ungainly book in brown paper, I couldn’t quite believe I’d gotten away with it. Maybe this man couldn’t read foreheads, or I had succeeded in looking stupid, keeping my eyes flat and lifeless. He took my sixty dollars, most of it in singles and earned from babysitting jobs, counting it slowly before nodding his head. “It’s gut,” he said: I could go. I tried to exit the shop nonchalantly, and it was only once I was all the way down the block that I started skipping in uncontained joy. The illicit thrill of what I had just done made my knees tremble on the bus ride home to Williamsburg. Surely anyone could see the mischief I had been up to. The men sat in the front section of the bus, thankfully turned safely away from me, but the women with their kerchief-wrapped heads and thick stockings seemed to stare accusingly at me and the hefty parcel in my lap.
Walking down Penn Street, I clutched the brown pa
per package to my chest, my legs jerky and electrified by a mixture of fear and triumph. I avoided the gaze of passersby, terrified of running into a suspicious neighbor. What if someone asked me what I was carrying? I skirted young boys careening by on shabby bicycles and teenagers pushing their younger siblings in squeaky-wheeled prams. Everyone was outside on this balmy spring day, and the last half block seemed to take forever.
At home I rushed to hide the book under my mattress, pushing it all the way in just in case. I smoothed the sheets and blankets and draped the bedspread so that it hung to the floor. I sat down at the edge of the bed and felt guilt wash over me so suddenly that the strength of it kept me pinned there.
I wanted to forget that this day had ever happened. All through Shabbos the book burned beneath my mattress, alternately chastising me and beckoning to me. I ignored the call; it was too dangerous, there were too many people around. What would Zeidy say if he knew? Even Bubby would be horrified, I knew.
Sunday stretches ahead of me like an unopened krepela, a soft, doughy day encapsulating a secret filling. All I have to do is help Bubby with the cooking, then I will have the rest of the afternoon free to spend as I please. Bubby and Zeidy have been invited to a cousin’s bar mitzvah today, which means I will have at least three hours of uninterrupted privacy. There is still a slab of chocolate cake in the freezer that I’m sure Bubby, with her spotty memory, won’t miss. Could this afternoon get any better?
After Zeidy’s heavy footfalls fade down the stairs, and I watch from my second-floor bedroom window as my grandparents get into the taxi, I slide the book out from under the mattress and place it reverently on my desk. The pages are made of waxy, translucent paper, and they are each packed with text: the original words of the Talmud as well as the English translation, and the rabbinical discourse that fills up the bottom half of each page. I like the discussions best, records of the conversations the ancient rabbis held about each holy phrase in the Talmud.
On the sixty-fifth page the rabbis are arguing about King David and his ill-gotten wife Bathsheba, a mysterious biblical tale about which I’ve always been curious. From the fragments mentioned, it appears that Bathsheba was already married when David laid his eyes upon her, but he was so attracted to her that he deliberately sent her husband, Uriah, to the front lines so that he would be killed in war, leaving Bathsheba free to remarry. Afterward, when David had finally taken poor Bathsheba as his lawful wife, he looked into her eyes and saw in the mirror of her pupils the face of his own sin and was repulsed. After that, David refused to see Bathsheba again, and she lived the rest of her life in the king’s harem, ignored and forgotten.
I now see why I’m not allowed to read the Talmud. My teachers have always told me, “David had no sins. David was a saint. It is forbidden to cast aspersions on God’s beloved son and anointed leader.” Is this the same illustrious ancestor the Talmud is referring to?
Not only did David cavort with his many wives, but he had unmarried female companions as well, I discover. They are called concubines. I whisper aloud this new word, con-cu-bine, and it doesn’t sound illicit, the way it should, it only makes me think of a tall, stately tree. The concubine tree. I picture beautiful women dangling from its branches. Con-cu-bine.
Bathsheba wasn’t a concubine because David honored her by taking her as his wife, but the Talmud says she was the only woman David chose who wasn’t a virgin. I think of the beautiful woman on the olive oil bottle, the extra-virgin. The rabbis say that God only intended virgins for David and that his holiness would have been defiled had he stayed with Bathsheba, who had already been married.
King David is the yardstick, they say, against whom we are all measured in heaven. Really, how bad can my small stash of English books be, next to concubines?
I am not aware at this moment that I have lost my innocence. I will realize it many years later. One day I will look back and understand that just as there was a moment in my life when I realized where my power lay, there was also a specific moment when I stopped believing in authority just for its own sake and started coming to my own conclusions about the world I lived in.
At the time, the problem with losing my innocence was that it made it difficult to keep pretending. Inside me a conflict was brewing madly between my own thoughts and the teachings I was absorbing. Occasionally this tension would boil over my smooth facade, and others would try to remove me from the flames of curiosity before I went too far.
I don’t hear the alarm go off on Monday morning, and when I finally wake up, it’s 8:40 and I don’t have time to do anything but get dressed and fly out the door. I pull on the thick black stockings that Bubby washed yesterday and dried on the porch clothesline; the fabric is stiff and cold from the chilly autumn air and won’t conform to my legs, wrinkling unattractively around my knees and ankles. In the bathroom I peer into the cracked mirror under the light of a fluorescent bulb and poke at the blackheads on my nose. My hair is squashed and limp, my eyes storm gray beneath swollen eyelids.
I’ve forgotten to put a shirt on beneath my sweater. There’s a new rule about no knits directly on the body. Now that we are growing up, my teachers say, we have to be careful to avoid clingy fabrics. I could get in trouble, but it’s ten minutes to nine and if I leave now, I will make it just in time to be let into the cafeteria for morning prayers. I can’t afford to be late today; I already have too many demerits stacked against me. Forget the blouse.
I race into school just as the junior secretary is about to close the door to the prayer room. She sighs when she sees me, and I know she can’t decide whether to let me in or make me wait in the principal’s office for a late note. I squeeze past her through the half-open door with a sheepish smile. “Thanks,” I say breathlessly, ignoring her scowl.
Downstairs an eighth grader has already been chosen to lead the prayer session. I slide quickly into one of the empty spots in the back rows, next to Raizy, who is still running a comb through her knotted brown hair. I keep my eyes down, in the general direction of the prayer book on my lap, but unfocused, so that the words are blurred on the page. I move my lips to look like I’m praying when the senior secretary walks down the aisle, checking to see if we are all following along. Raizy slips the comb underneath a page in her prayer book and chants loudly along with the others.
We are praying to the God of our people, whom we call Hashem, literally, “the Name.” The true name for God is devastatingly holy and evocative; to utter it would represent a death wish, so we have safe nicknames for him instead: the Holy Name, the One, the Only, the Creator, the Destroyer, the Overseer, the King of All Kings, the One True Judge, the Merciful Father, Master of the Universe, O Great Architect, a long list of names for all his attributes. For the sake of this divinity I must surrender myself each morning, body and soul; for this God, my teachers say, I must learn silence so that only his voice can be heard through me. God lives in my soul, and I must spend my life scrubbing my soul clean of any trace of sin so that it deserves to host his presence. Repentance is a daily chore; at each morning prayer session we repent in advance for the sins we will commit that day. I look around at the others, who must sincerely believe in their inherent evil, as they are shamelessly crying and wailing to God to help them expunge the yetzer hara, or evil inclination, from their consciousness.
Although I talk to God, it is not through prayer. I talk to him in my mind, and even I will admit that I do not come to God humbly, as I should. I talk to him frankly, as I would to a friend, and I’m constantly asking him for favors. Still, I feel like God and I are on pretty good terms, relatively speaking. This morning, as everyone sways passionately around me, I stand calmly in the sea of young girls, asking God to make this day a bearable one.
I’m very easy to pick on. The teachers know I’m not important, that no one will defend me. I’m not a rabbi’s daughter, so when they get angry, I’m the perfect scapegoat. I make sure never to look up from my siddur during prayer, but Chavie Halberstam, the rabbi’s dau
ghter, can elbow her friend Elky to point out the toilet paper stuck to the teacher’s shoe and it’s as if nothing happened. If I so much as smirk, I’m singled out immediately. This is why I need God on my side; I have no one else to stick up for me.
The minute I walk into my fourth-floor classroom this morning, I’m accosted by Mrs. Meizlish, our Yiddish teacher. Her unibrow is knitted in anger. I call her Mrs. Meizel, or Mrs. Mouse, behind her back. I can’t help it; her name practically begs to be made fun of, and there’s something about the way her upper lip lifts over her two front teeth that makes her look genuinely ratlike. She doesn’t like me very much.
“You’re not wearing a shirt under your sweater,” Mrs. Mouse barks at me from behind the heavy steel desk at the front of the classroom, twisting her head toward me so that her thick black braid whips behind her like a tail. “Don’t even think about going to your desk. You’re going straight to the principal’s office.”
I back away slowly, half glad at being banished. If I’m lucky, the principal will be busy all morning, and I will get to sit in her office instead of bungling through Yiddish period. It’s a fair trade-off. Sure, I’ll get a yelling; maybe I will even get sent home to change. If Zeidy isn’t home, I could while away most of the afternoon in the name of “changing.” Perhaps finish this new book I’m reading, about an Indian girl who falls in love with an American colonist in the seventeenth century. But there’s always a chance he could be at the house. Then he will want to know why I was sent home from school, and I can’t bear the look of crushed disappointment on his face when he finds out I’m not the model student he wants me to be.
“Nu, Devoireh,” he groans pleadingly. “You can’t be a good girl for your zeide, so I can have a little nachas, a little pride, from you?” His Yiddish is heavy and European-accented and has an ever-present wrenchingly sad rhythm that makes me feel old and tired whenever I hear it.
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