Unorthodox

by Deborah Feldman

  They say a fish talked in the village of New Square, which is a small Hasidic compound in upstate New York. The still-writhing carp opened its mouth and spat out a warning to the Jews to atone for their sins or there would be hell to pay. There’s a whole panic about it. Apparently Moshe the fishmonger was busy killing and cleaning carp to meet the holiday demands, and just as he was about to bring the heavy cleaver down on the fish’s head, it opened its mouth and a voice sounded from it. There were witnesses to the event; both Jewish and gentile workers in the fish market claim they heard the fish speak. It announced itself by name and declared it had been sent to remind the Jewish people that God was still watching, that he would punish them for their misdeeds. “Seek forgiveness,” the fish announced, “or destruction will rain down on you.”

  Since this occurred just after the Twin Towers were attacked and right before Yom Kippur, the annual day of atonement, the story was especially juicy. What else could this be but a reminder to us all? True repentance was in order. There was proof of reincarnation in our very midst.

  The details of the story spread quickly and changed constantly. Every day someone was stopping by the house to bring a fresh report of the supposed true version. But the truth didn’t matter; the bottom line remained the same. If the fish talked, then it was all real. It was frightening to contemplate. One could no longer expect to go through the motions of atonement on Yom Kippur, mouthing prayers out of a sense of obligation. Everyone around me was truly galvanized now; they were taking it seriously.

  I too want to believe the fish talked, but not for that reason. I don’t want to think about my sins and the pack of punishments God has in store for me. I want to focus on the magic of it, the miraculous testimony of a fish before he gasped his last breath. They say it was served at the fishmonger’s pre-fast meal, coated in the gelatin that formed around its own skin.

  Zeidy doesn’t believe in the talking fish. He says that God doesn’t perform miracles anymore, not in this day and age. He prefers to work according to the natural order of things, so his interference won’t draw attention. I understand why one would be skeptical of such a story, but I don’t concur with Zeidy’s reasoning. Why would God suddenly stop performing miracles? Surely the same God who split the Red Sea and delivered manna in the desert didn’t suddenly lose his appetite for drama. I’d rather believe in reincarnation than hell. The idea of an afterlife is so much more tolerable when returning is an option.

  Zeidy will go to New Square for Yom Kippur just like he does every year, even with the fuss about the talking fish. He and the Skverer Rebbe go way back, and at one point he even wanted to move there, but Bubby resisted. She said she had a bad feeling about the village, back when it was just two rows of suburban homes on the northwestern edge of Rockland County. She was right. Now they have separate sidewalks for men and women up there, labeled clearly in color-coded signs. I would be mortified if I had to live in a place where I was banned from walking on certain sidewalks.

  Bubby and I stay in Williamsburg and go to shul together, on the only day of the year when the women’s section is actually used. Everyone will spend the entire fast day praying for mercy. I am not a good faster, and standing in the shul all day hardly distracts me from my gnawing hunger. Around me everyone is genuinely penitent, frightened by the prospect of their future being decided in heaven today.

  In school I was taught that if we don’t atone for our sins before the last call of the ram’s horn on Yom Kippur, Hashem will exact his own justice. There is nothing in this world that is undeserved, my teachers state emphatically; every ounce of suffering is counted and measured out by God. I begin to understand the logic behind thinking of ourselves as inherently evil; it follows that the more we suffer, the more evil we must be. But Bubby and Zeidy are two of the most devout people I know, and their lives are riddled with suffering. What could they have possibly done to deserve it?

  Suffering today is different than it used to be, Bubby explains to me. Nowadays if someone doesn’t have nice clothes or a nice car, they complain. “When I was a child, if there was a scrap of food to be found in the house, we were happy,” she remembers. “We had each other, and that was all that mattered.”

  Although Bubby doesn’t like to talk about the past, sometimes she can be convinced to tell the story of her mother. Her name was Chana Rachel, and a lot of my cousins are named after her. Chana Rachel was the fifth child in a family of seven, but by the time she got married, she only had two siblings left. A diphtheria epidemic had passed through their small Hungarian town when she was younger, and Bubby’s grandmother had watched one and then another of her children die, as their throats closed up and oxygen no longer reached their lungs. When four of her children were already dead, and little Chana Rachel developed the same high fever and mottled skin, my great-great-grandmother wailed loudly in desperation and with the rage of a lunatic rammed her fist down her daughter’s throat, tearing the skinlike growth that was preventing her from breathing properly. The fever broke, and Chana Rachel recovered. She would tell that story to her children many times, but only Bubby lived on to tell it to me.

  This story moves me in a way I can’t quite articulate. I imagine this mother of seven as a tzadekes, a saint, so desperate to save her children that she would do anything. Bubby says it was her prayer to God that helped her daughter recover, not the breaking of the skin in her throat. But I don’t see it that way at all. I see a woman who took life into her own hands, who took action! The idea of her being fearless instead of passive thrills me.

  I too want to be such a woman, who works her own miracles instead of waiting for God to perform them. Although I mumble the words of the Yom Kippur prayers along with everyone else, I don’t think about what they mean, and I certainly don’t want to ask for mercy.

  If God thinks I’m so evil, then let him punish me, I think spitefully, wondering what kind of response my provocative claim might elicit in heaven. Bring it on, I think, angry now. Show me what you’ve got.

  With a world that suffers so indiscriminately, God cannot possibly be a rational being. What use is there appealing to a madman? Better to play his game, dare him to mess with me.

  A sudden feeling of peaceful resolution washes over me, that traditional Yom Kippur revelation that supposedly comes when one’s penance has been accepted. I know instinctively that I am not as helpless as some would like me to think. In the conversation between God and myself, I am not necessarily powerless. With my charm and persuasiveness, I might even get him to cooperate with me.

  In school, I hear hushed rumors about a Jewish library in Williamsburg, hosted once a week in someone’s apartment, where you can take out two kosher, censored books, all written by Jewish authors. I convince Zeidy to let me go. If I can get books from a kosher library, I won’t have to hide them under my mattress. My heart won’t pound every time I hear a noise outside my room.

  When I arrive at the designated address, the building’s shabby lobby is empty, and I take the rickety elevator up to the fifth floor. In the hallway I can see that the door to 5N is open slightly, light from the apartment bursting out into the dank corridor.

  Inside, a couple of high school girls peruse the wall of bookshelves. I recognize one of them, the girl with the straight black hair and the wide jaw, with eyebrows that arch into dark points above pale green eyes. Mindy is in the same class as Raizy’s older sister, a grade above me, and they say she’s the smartest kid in the school. A writer, she calls herself. She carries a journal with her everywhere, I’ve seen it. In the cafeteria she scribbles while biting into the sandwich she holds in her left hand.

  She probably won’t recognize me if I say hello. And she’s a year older than I am. Why would she even want to talk to me?

  She checks out two fat books and leaves with a friend. I wish there were someone like that in my class, someone who loved to read, even if it was just kosher books.

  Zeidy comes home carrying one of the pashkevilin the street is l
ittered with, angry flyers targeting the new “artists” who have recently become enamored of Williamsburg. Williamsburg was never supposed to attract this kind of crowd, drugged to a stupor, playing loud music, and wandering through the streets looking for inspiration. No one dreamed others would want to live in such an ugly, crowded place, with rancid odors rising from the gutters.

  Now they are taking our land, the rabbis cry. They issue a ruling for a real-estate embargo. No one is allowed to rent or sell to the artisten, or hipsters, as they call themselves. But suddenly there are people willing to pay triple the money to live in raw, unrenovated hovels. Who can say no to that?

  Hasids take to the streets in protest. They line up in front of the large homes of the wealthy real-estate magnates on Bedford Avenue, shaking their fists and throwing rocks at the windows. “Traitors!” they call them. “Nisht besser fun a goy!” You are no better than a gentile.

  Curious about our new neighbors, these so-called artists, I venture over to the north side of Williamsburg, toward the waterfront where they all seem to gravitate.

  At the Brooklyn Navy Yard, the full Manhattan skyline comes into view, painfully bright in the clear day, shimmering like jewels against the neckline of the river. My breath catches in my throat when I see it, this magical city that lies so close to my home, yet so far away. Why would anyone want to leave that magnificent place to come here? I wonder. What does this dirty neighborhood have to offer besides the freedom to disappear into a self-imposed ghetto?

  I resolve to venture into the city on my own. I look at maps in the library—subway maps, bus maps, and regular maps—and try to memorize them. I’m afraid of getting lost; no, I’m afraid of sinking into the city as in a quicksand, afraid of getting sucked into something I can never escape.

  As the J train makes its slow, swaying start across the rickety elevated tracks leading to the Williamsburg Bridge, I look down at the dirty, sludge-colored rooftops of Williamsburg and feel finally tall enough to overcome its flat, indifferent demeanor. I didn’t expect to feel this good getting out. So good, I want to prance around the subway car, leaping from pole to pole in exhilaration.

  On the F train I don’t feel hardly as serene. Perhaps it’s because I’m underground, but most likely it’s because of the two middle-aged Hasidic women sitting opposite me. Although their round, sagging faces are devoid of any expression, I just know they are judging me, wondering what I’m doing going to the city on my own. I panic suddenly: what if they recognize me? Worse, what if they know someone who knows me? I couldn’t bear to be found out.

  I get off at the next stop and emerge on Fourteenth Street near Union Square, a thoroughfare choked with traffic and pedestrians, alive with the sound of honking cabs and braking buses, the smell of street meat wafting from the vendor carts. The noise, the sights, the smells are so overwhelming that for a moment I don’t know where to turn. Then I glimpse a Barnes & Noble sign and head toward it desperately, knowing somehow that once I am inside and among the books, I will be safe.

  In the bookstore there are attractive display tables everywhere, telling me what I want to read so that I don’t have to figure it out for myself, which is reassuring. The new books do not appeal to me. Their covers seem too colorful and tawdry. I like reading stories that took place a long time ago, with photos of slender-nosed women on the covers, dressed in silk and lace. I feel I have more in common with the characters in older novels than I do with modern-day heroines.

  I decide to purchase a cheap paperback edition of Pride and Prejudice. The first sentence is what draws me in. “It is a truth universally acknowledged, that a single man in possession of a good fortune must be in want of a wife.” It is immediately apparent to me what this book will be about, and there is nothing my curiosity is greater about than marriage and, more important, the machinations involved in arranging such a circumstance. No one I know will talk about marriage, or anything concerning it, in front of a young, unattached woman. I cannot wait until my time comes to discover all the pertinent facts; perhaps this book may help to enlighten me.

  Pride and Prejudice turns out to be a particularly delicious reading experience. For one thing, I have never come across a book with such unusually formal language and elegant tone. Still, I find it very thrilling; the deliberate and pointed phrases add tension and suspense to the narrative. This is my first introduction to pre-Victorian England; although my mother was born in the United Kingdom, this book is about a country in a vastly different era, and although at first I find much unfamiliar, I soon begin to draw strong comparisons between the world of the Bennet sisters and my own. For one thing, the incessant gossip and conniving ways of the female characters are hardly new to me. Is that not how women amuse themselves in my world as well, with persistent chatter about others, which is instantly replaced with unfailing politeness when confronted with the subject of such gossip? How thrilling to be able to identify with Elizabeth so easily, and to feel along with her the infuriating injustices meted out in her society. I laugh along with her at the hypocrisy and narrow-mindedness clearly displayed by characters that suppose themselves to be superior.

  Really, I am not far off from a character in Pride and Prejudice. My entire future will also depend upon the advantageousness of my marriage. Status and reputation are just as important in my community, and based on equally trivial terms; while financial standing seems to be the primary concern of the exquisitely civilized Brits, my world emphasizes a more spiritual form of currency. What is most obvious to me about Elizabeth’s thoughts and expressions is her innate frustration; perhaps she too is furious at being put in the humiliating position that women are always falling into, that inevitable role of the object to be chosen by the male, in whom all power rests. For a woman of such intelligence and wit, surely it is beneath her dignity to parade herself in front of the most distinguished of men, in hopes of a few morsels of attention. It is clear that Elizabeth hardly desires to lure a wealthy man into her clutches; unlike the other female characters in the book, she exhibits an independence of spirit that makes me love her. I am so anxious to discover what happens to her because, strangely, her fate feels strongly intertwined with my own.

  I return to the pages of Pride and Prejudice as often as time will allow, sneaking in chapters whenever I can. In school I pretend to be scribbling notes diligently, but my thoughts wander far. The country town of Netherfield comes to vibrant life in my imagination, and the faces of its inhabitants appear rosily in my mind’s eye.

  What story could be more relevant to me than a young girl of marriageable age rejecting the choices others make for her and exerting her own independence? To think that once upon a time the whole world was like this, and I wouldn’t have been the only one dissatisfied with my circumstances. If only Elizabeth were here to give me advice, to explain to me how the rebellion that comes off so gracefully in the book could be pulled off in real life.

  This is my third and last year of high school. We graduate early because there’s no point wasting another year in pursuit of an education we don’t need. We won’t get New York State diplomas, only a pompous-looking piece of parchment signed by the principal and the rabbi. Truthfully, I’ll have no use for a diploma anyway, for I will never be allowed to find work beyond the few positions available for women in our society. The message is loud and clear: any effort invested in my education after this point would be a complete waste.

  Still, for our last year we get to take an English class with Mrs. Berger, the most educated teacher in the school, who comes in from Queens every day, her hair crammed into a giant floppy hat. Mrs. Berger has two master’s degrees and an air of superiority that no one can stand. Mostly, she is notorious among the students for being a grouch. I’ve watched her push and shove her way through the crowded school hallways before, knocking her heavy heels on the tile floors. Her face reflects disgust and annoyance. If she thinks this job is so beneath her, I wonder, why does she keep coming back every year?

  When Mrs
. Berger walks into our classroom at the beginning of the school year, she gazes at us with a look of bored disdain.

  “Well, then,” she says, “none of you are going to write the next Great American Novel, that’s for sure.” Her voice is thick with contempt, but underneath it I can hear exhaustion and disillusionment too.

  Immediately, I want to challenge her statement. Who is she to say none of us will ever write anything of substance? Are we not great Americans, because we don’t write books? Is reading any less than writing? Are Hebrew books worth less than English ones? Who is she to judge us? I’m surprised at my own hot indignation, when normally I am the one to criticize the lack of academic ambition around me. If only she could look at me and see that I was the exception, instead of lumping me in with the group as every outsider does.

  She passes out a booklet, copies made from the grammar books we can’t have, censored for forbidden words.

  “My first rule,” she says, turning to the blackboard with a fresh piece of chalk. “No colloquialisms, no idioms, no euphemisms.” And she underscores each word with a thick white line.

  I’ve never heard of these words before, but suddenly I love this hard, scowling woman who looks at us with such bitter dismissal in her eyes. I love her for continuing to come here year after year, offering students a curriculum they are ill-prepared to learn and disinclined to use, because I have been waiting my entire academic life for someone to tell me something I don’t know.

  I worship this woman, who enters our classroom each day hurling fresh insults at our indifferent group, for giving me the gift of motivation, because I have set out to prove to her that I am worthy of her efforts. Of the three hundred students she teaches a year, of the thousands she’s taught in the past decade, if there’s just one student who takes her seriously, maybe she will realize that she is more important here, more appreciated than she can ever know.