The Believers

by Zoe Heller

  Twenty people were sitting around the Reinmans’ dining table, grazing on the remains of the Rosh Hashanah feast. They paused now to hear Esther’s reply.

  “Is it because they have crowns on their heads?”

  The rabbi wagged his finger at her and turned to his oldest daughter. “Rebecca, what about you? Do you know?”

  Rebecca twisted uncomfortably in her seat. “I’m not sure, Daddy…I forgot.”

  Rosa raised her hand. “I know. It’s because the pomegranate is said to have as many seeds as there are mitzvoth.”

  The rabbi blinked in humorous surprise. “I can see you have been doing your homework, Rosa! Since you have grown so knowledgeable, I am sure you will be able to tell me how many mitzvoth there are.”

  Rosa nodded. “Six hundred and thirteen.”

  “Oh, Rosa, that wasn’t kind,” Mrs. Reinman said. “Now you have deprived him of the pleasure of teaching you something.”

  Everyone around the table laughed. Rosa blushed with pleasure. It was hard to believe that this was the same house in which she had dined so unhappily four months ago. When she looked back on that torturous occasion now, it was with the sort of smug pleasure that a man lying in a warm, dry bed recalls his cold walk home.

  “Have you ever actually counted the seeds, rabbi?” she asked.

  The rabbi shook his head in benign reproof. “Now, that is a mischievous question, Rosa.”

  “Have you, Daddy?” Esther asked.

  “I have not. But you know, Esther, there are other explanations of the pomegranate’s significance on Rosh Hashanah.” He glanced at Rosa slyly. “Your grandfather used to say that the seeds in a pomegranate represent all the good deeds that exist within even the least observant Jew.”

  Mrs. Reinman and the other women began to clear the table. Rosa got up to help, but the rabbi motioned for her to follow him out onto the deck at the back of the house.

  The day was cold, and on the garden’s withered lawn, Esther’s plastic Wendy house was tipping from side to side in the wind. Mrs. Reinman ran out after them with a scarf for her husband.

  “She always thinks I’m going to get a chill,” the rabbi said with a smile when she had gone inside. “But I like some fresh air after a meal. It clears my mind.” He sat down on the edge of a lounger and beckoned Rosa to take a chair. “So. I gather you are going home this afternoon.”

  Rosa sighed regretfully. “Yes, I’m sorry. It’s terrible timing, but the girls at my program are performing in a special show, and I have to attend. I hope you understand.”

  The rabbi studied her thoughtfully.

  “I know I’m not meant to travel today,” Rosa went on, “it’s just something I couldn’t get out of.”

  He cleared his throat. “Tell me, Rosa, where do you think you are in terms of your religious progress? I know you had a little crisis in the summer that you felt you worked through. But now I get the sense that you’ve run into another roadblock. Am I right?”

  “Not at all! I mean, my family’s been going through a lot lately—”

  The rabbi nodded. Rosa had told him about her father’s affair.

  “So I guess I’ve been pretty tied up with that. But going to shul and talking to you has been an enormous help to me in getting through the whole thing. I’ve been feeling very positive about the religious part of my life.”

  He nodded. “Yes, I can see that you feel ‘positive.’ It’s comforting for you to feel some ethnic connection, to go to shul, to eat a little cholent on Friday night. I understand. But I’m talking about something more than that.”

  “Oh, I know—”

  “Judaism is not a folkway, Rosa. It is a religion. You can’t be a Jew just because you think we have some colorful holidays and some neat songs. If that’s what you want—a dance and a song and a bagel with cream cheese—you should go join the Reform. They are very good at this sort of thing.”

  Rosa sat back, startled. The rabbi had spoken often of his contempt for the intellectual sloppiness, “the religion lite,” of Reform Judaism. To steer her in this direction was an insult of the most pointed sort. “But I don’t want to join the Reform,” she said.

  He cocked his head. “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “Because you know, if you are serious, Rosa—if you are looking for a real relationship with your Creator—sooner or later you have to make some sort of commitment. You have to decide whether you really want to remain part of the secular world—a world in which men behave as your father has behaved—or whether you are willing to change.”

  Rosa gave a little panting laugh of incredulity. “I don’t understand. Is this all because I’m going back to the city this evening?”

  “No, no. It’s not only about this evening—it’s about your general approach as I have observed it over these last months.”

  Rosa was furious. The rabbi was being horribly unjust. For months, he had been wooing her with patience and sympathy, letting her believe that her earnest interest was virtue enough. And now, without warning, he had turned bad cop. No more Mr. Nice Guy. It was time to shit or get off the pot. “Rabbi, forgive me, but I don’t think you’re being fair. I’ve been doing this for such a short time—”

  “I understand. I am not necessarily trying to speed up your process. I simply want to make sure that you are on the right track. God wants certain things from you, and right now, you are choosing not to give them to Him. I think, intellectually, you see that Yiddishkeit works, that it is coherent. But emotionally, you are still resisting. You know that if you really commit, you will be obliged to totally change your life. And no one wants to change. It’s hard.”

  “No,” Rosa said. “No, it’s the other way around. Emotionally, I do get what the frum life is about. It’s intellectually that I have problems with it. You said that I should just hang in there and try to live with my discomfort. And that’s what I’ve been doing. I have really tried. I’ve read the books you’ve recommended and I’ve had all these very interesting theological discussions with you and I’ve enjoyed them tremendously, but I’m still not sure that I am capable of living life as you do. I’m still not sure I can believe like you do.”

  The rabbi shrugged. “Faith is hard, Rosa. Nonbelievers often speak of faith as if it were something easy, a cop-out from the really tough business of confronting a meaningless universe, but it’s not. It’s doubt that’s easy. The invisibility of Hashem, the fear we sometimes have that he is indifferent to earthly suffering, the explanations that science seems to offer for almost all the phenomena we once considered mysterious—these things make believing an enormous challenge. Especially for a person like you who has no inheritance to draw upon. You know, it says in the Talmud, ‘In the place where ba’alei teshuvah stand, even those who were always righteous are not able to stand.’ That is a recognition of how especially difficult and trying the journey is that you have undertaken. But you will not advance simply by standing on the sidelines.”

  “What am I meant to do? I can’t join in before I’m completely sure.”

  “You may never be sure unless you join in.”

  Rosa was shocked. “Surely you don’t want me to go through the motions without really—”

  The rabbi smiled. “Do you remember what the Israelites said at Sinai? ‘We shall do and we shall hear.’ Their choice of syntax was meaningful, Rosa. They were expressing their willingness to do God’s will before they really understood it. That is the crucial lesson of the Sinaitic revelation—God doesn’t need our perfect understanding or even our perfect faith. What he wants is our commitment, our actions.”

  It was raining by the time Rosa set off back to New York. The Monsey bus line wasn’t working because of the holiday, so she had to take a taxi to Naunset three miles away and then catch a Greyhound. When she got into the city she did not have enough money for another cab from the Port Authority, so she walked ten blocks in the rain to the GirlPower show, which was being held on Thirty-second St
reet. Members from the downtown and uptown divisions of the program were performing tonight, and in order to accommodate all the families and friends who were expected to attend, the program’s director had hired out a shabby auditorium on the fifth floor of a commercial building. When Rosa arrived, the proceedings were already under way, and a girl was up on stage reading a poem.

  You want to tell me how I should be

  You always fussing and nagging at me

  But I am a human bean and I need to be free.

  To my heart, only I hold the key.

  So go away fool, you aint the boss of me.

  Rosa’s heart sank as she surveyed the room. Of the seventy folding chairs that had been set out, no more than twenty-five were occupied—at least seven of them by program workers. Raphael was in the front row, grinning madly at the girl onstage. When she finished, Rosa spotted him trying valiantly to fill out the thin applause by whooping and stamping his foot.

  The next act was a group of girls giggling their way through a song about being true to themselves and following their dreams.

  I am special, special, special, in my own way

  I have so much to give and so much to say

  If I try my best I know that I will win the day…

  The bleak setting could not, it seemed to Rosa, have been better calculated to cast doubt on the song’s cheerful sentiments. Here in this drafty, ugly hall, the poor odds of any of these resolutely unspecial girls winning the day were cruelly manifest.

  Now it came time for Rosa’s group to perform their dance number. She watched approvingly as her girls filed onto the stage in T-shirts and sweatpants. (After a long struggle, she had finally succeeded in vetoing the low-neck tank tops and miniskirts for which Chianti had lobbied.) When the music started, and the girls began to gyrate their pelvises, an expression of puzzlement appeared on Rosa’s face. This was not the sugary pop anthem that had been agreed upon: it was a rap song. An obscene rap song. And every one of the more provocative moves that she had personally excised from the routine during rehearsals had been reinserted. She looked over at Raphael, who was standing up, clapping in time to the music. She felt a flash of anger, succeeded by a slow wave of tired resignation. It didn’t matter. None of it really mattered. She closed her eyes as the girls bent over and wagged their buttocks at the audience.

  Gimme your booty, cutie.

  Shortly before the song ended, she slipped from the room. She was halfway down the stairs when she heard Raphael shouting after her.

  “Where are you going, Rosa?”

  “Home!” she shouted back.

  “Wait!” He caught up with her on the ground floor. “You can’t go yet. You haven’t even congratulated the girls! They’ll be really bummed if you just disappear.”

  Rosa smiled as she pushed the front door open. “I’m sure they’ll understand if I don’t congratulate them on that performance.”

  “Oh, come on,” Raphael said, following her out onto the rainy street. “They just changed back a few things. Don’t sulk about it.”

  “I’m not sulking. I just—I’m not in the mood to pat them on the back.”

  “It’s not all about your mood. They’ve achieved something that means a lot to them, and they need to know that you’re proud.”

  “But I’m not. I’m not proud. They danced a nasty little pornographic dance not very well. What’s to be proud of?”

  Raphael uttered a low growl of exasperation. “Would you get off your high horse for a second? It doesn’t actually matter whether you liked their performance or not. The idea is to give these girls some self-esteem.”

  “I understand. But don’t they have to do something estimable first?”

  People hurried past, glancing at them as they stood in the downpour. They must think we’re lovers, Rosa thought. Only lovers would be passionate enough to argue in the rain. She felt a sudden urge to call an end to hostilities, to have Raphael hug her and laugh fondly at her seriousness, but there seemed no way to change tack now.

  “I don’t get you,” Raphael said. “I really don’t. You say you want to help these girls, but the truth is you don’t seem to actually like any of them. You go on about how crappy their lives are going to be—about their ‘class destiny’—but you never give them an inch. If they’re not going to get scholarships to Bronx Science, you consider them lost. Doesn’t it wear you out, being so fucking judgmental all the time?”

  She gave an odd, rueful laugh. “Yes, it does a bit.”

  “I’m glad you think this is funny.”

  She shook her head, “I don’t, I’m sorry. It was just…” She looked down the rain-veiled street.

  “Look, I wish I could be like you, Raphael. I wish I could feel confident that I was doing something useful with this work. But I don’t. It frustrates me. It depresses me.” She sighed with the relief of saying it at last.

  “Well, then fuck off, why don’t you?” Raphael shouted suddenly. “These girls deserve better. There are plenty of people who’d be thrilled to have your job and who wouldn’t spend the whole time bringing everyone down with their shitty attitude. You’re always dissing the way everyone else lives their life, but hello? What’s so great about yours?”

  She nodded. “You’re right. I need to help myself before I can try to help others.”

  He turned away, contemptuously. “I mean it, Ro. Just fuck off. You don’t belong here.”

  She watched him walk back into the building with a strange smile hovering about her lips. Accept the truth from whoever gives it. The wind had picked up now and was driving the rain along the sidewalk in strange, scalloped formations. Her toes squelched inside her soaked sneakers. After a moment, she tucked the rat’s tails of her wet hair behind her ears and set off up the shiny black street.

  CHAPTER

  22

  One blue-skied morning in October, Susan Sarandon stood on a stage in Central Park’s East Meadow, addressing a rally of twenty thousand antiwar protesters.

  “We need to let the President of the United States know that we do not accept his phony rationale for this war. We are an intelligent citizenry! We question! We demand answers! We are not prepared to sacrifice our sons and daughters in a war for oil!”

  A decent-size roar rose up from the front of the crowd. Farther back, by the entrance to the meadow, where Audrey was sitting under a tree with Hannah and Jean, the response petered out to polite, golf tournament applause.

  Audrey looked up from burrowing in Jean’s cooler. “What’s this, Jean?” she said, waving a plastic tub.

  “Seafood salad,” Jean said. “Try it, it’s delicious.”

  Audrey wrinkled her nose. “Didn’t you bring any sandwiches?”

  A terrible squawk of feedback issued from the giant speakers, and all three women scowled in pain as they pressed their hands to their ears.

  “No, dear,” Jean said, after a moment, “but there’s a baguette and some pâté. You could make yourself a sandwich.”

  Audrey shook her head. “Doesn’t matter. I’m not that hungry anyway.”

  She glanced over at her mother-in-law, dozing in her wheelchair in a pair of horn-rimmed dark glasses. Hannah looked rather glamorous this morning, she thought: like a convalescent Joan Crawford. “You all right, Nana?” Audrey inquired loudly.

  Hannah sat up and pointed at the stage.

  “Who is this woman speaking?”

  “Susan Sarandon,” Jean said. “She’s an actress. Quite a good one.”

  Hannah nodded approvingly. “Attractive woman, isn’t she?”

  “Well, anyone can look good at that distance,” Audrey muttered. “She’s probably very wizened when you get up close.”

  “Oh, look,” Jean exclaimed, pointing across the crowd to a man stalking about on stilts in an Uncle Sam costume. “Isn’t he splendid?”

  Audrey glanced at her irritably. Jean was dressed in what she cheerfully referred to as her “agitprop gear” an outsize painter’s smock, black leggings, and
a preposterous woolen cap that someone had recently brought back for her from Jamaica. It was really too much. Audrey was going to have a stern word with her one of these days.

  “I’ve never understood how people do that,” Hannah remarked, gazing at the man on stilts. “It must be murder on your legs.”

  “It looks fun, though, doesn’t it?” Jean said. “I’d love to give it a go some time.”

  “Oh, Jean, you’re so young at heart, aren’t you?” Audrey remarked, scathingly.

  Jean smiled at her absently and turned to Hannah. “I must say, it’s a pretty good turnout today, isn’t it?”

  The old woman nodded. “Yes, marvelous!”

  “Get out!” Audrey said “This is pathetic. You’ve got to have at least a hundred thousand at these things to have any chance of being on the news. This little get-together won’t merit two lines in tomorrow’s paper.”

  Jean smiled fixedly. “And we’ve been terribly lucky with the weather.”

  “It probably won’t even be in the paper,” Audrey added, bleakly.

  There was a pause.

  “Right!” Jean stood up. “I think I’m just going to wander around for a bit and take some pictures, if that’s okay with you two.”

  “Be my guest!” Audrey said, managing, rather brilliantly, to give and take offense at the same time.

  A few hundred yards from where the women were picnicking, Rosa and seven of her GirlPower charges were sitting on the grass, watching a group of female protesters, costumed in diapers and papier-mâché skull masks, perform a “die-in.”

  “What they doing, man?”

  “They’re crazy.”

  “Why they wearing them ugly-ass masks?”

  “Yo, they’re protesting, stupid.”

  “They got diapers on. What’s that?”

  “Maybe they shit themselves.”

  “Oh my God! They shit themselves! They shit themselves!”

  “Stop that!” Rosa said angrily. “Stop that at once! You’re being extremely rude.”

  Today was the last time that Rosa would ever chaperone the girls on such an outing. Her two weeks’ notice period at GirlPower did not end until the following Tuesday, but this event was her de facto farewell party and it was proving—fittingly enough, she thought—a rather stressful occasion. Raphael, who was still barely speaking to her, had begged off from attending at the last minute with some shoddy excuse about a sore throat—and the girls, none of whom had ever attended a political rally before, were in a difficult, rambunctious mood. Already, she had been obliged to reprimand them three times for starting up their own, improvised antiwar chants while someone on the stage was speaking.