Sisters Weiss ~ A Novel

by Naomi Ragen

  Rose hung her head in shame that her niece had gone through all this completely alone. She couldn’t even bring herself to ask: Why didn’t you call us? The answer was too clear. It was as if she were looking at herself forty years ago. “I’m … so … very, very sorry, Rivka, and so very ashamed that I let you down. Can you ever forgive me?”

  She seemed amazed. “You’re sorry? As my friends in the home used to say, ‘Jesus, Mary, and Joseph!’ Why should you be sorry? You were very kind to me, Aunt. You are a world-famous photographer, a person who brings truth and beauty to the world. And who was I? A stranger, a mixed-up kid from a family that had rejected you and thrown you out, who suddenly landed on your doorstep, demanding you take risks and expose yourself to even more abuse. And you did. You went through tons of holy crap—oh, sorry, that’s also some of the other new words I learned there—all for my sake. No, no, I’m the one who’s sorry.”

  How generous she is, Rose thought. I am not so generous to those who were unkind to me when I needed them. I will hold a grudge against every single one of them until the day I die. And yet I behaved no better to my own flesh and blood. “You are a good person, Rivka, you know that?”

  The girl shook her head. “The jury is still out on that one.”

  “Where is he?”

  “Who?”

  “Your child.”

  “Or?”

  “Or what?”

  She laughed. “No, that’s his name. I called him Or, which is the Hebrew word for ‘light.’ He’s in daycare.”

  “Why didn’t you give him up for adoption?”

  “I thought about that before he was born, but never after. All my longing to be myself, to create a world of my own, and here it was, in this little creature, this little world that belonged only to me. I couldn’t give him away any more than I could donate my heart to someone who needed it. I needed him more than anyone did.”

  “But how did you manage, all alone, with a new baby?”

  She pinched her lips together, gnawing on them, then sighed. “You do what you have to do. When the good Christian ladies at the home finally gave up on talking me into signing him away for adoption or converting me, they put me in touch with social workers and city services and Jewish charities. I got some rent money and a few dollars for furniture and baby supplies. I found a job. And then I saw this ad on Craigslist for ‘a spacious one bedroom, prewar’—I guess they were thinking of the Civil War!—‘apartment thirty minutes from Manhattan.’”

  Rose got up, looking around, peeking into the bedroom off the corridor. It had a bed and a child’s cot stuffed inside with hardly room to squeeze by between them. But it was neat, with a matching ecru and rose bedspread and curtains and a few crowded shelves of plush animals and toys.

  “Not much privacy.”

  “No. But thankfully my son and I get along,” she laughed. “I don’t expect to live here forever. I passed my GEDs last year, and now I’m enrolled at Hunter College. I go three nights a week.”

  “It shows.”

  “Really?”

  “The last time we spoke, you would have said: ‘Three nights a week I go.’”

  They both laughed.

  “Do you still want to be a doctor?”

  She shook her head with a grin. “I’ve grown up a lot since last we met. But I’d like to be a medical technician. It pays good, I mean well, and you get to help people.”

  Rose cocked her head, incredulous. “And on top of school you work and take care of the baby?”

  “Do I have a choice?” Rivka answered, her voice at once both challenging and resigned.

  “And who watches him?”

  “He’s in a free daycare center during my working hours. And at night, I have a friend who helps babysit.”

  “A friend?”

  “Okay, a boyfriend.”

  “Gonzales?”

  Rivka looked puzzled, then broke out in a wide grin. “No, she’s in Brazil. This is a sublet. Her mail still comes here, though.”

  Rose exhaled. “Tell me about him.”

  “He’s like me. We met at the apartment of this girl who runs an organization for people like us.”

  “Like you?”

  “Runaways from Haredi families. She got some funding. She runs GED classes, drop-in centers. We’re all in the same boat: no education, no family, no place to live, no jobs, no contacts. We help each other.”

  “Does your boyfriend live with you?”

  “No. I don’t want Or to see that kind of life. I want to be very, very sure before I commit myself to a man next time.”

  “Do your parents know about Or?”

  “No.”

  Rose thought of Pearl and Zevulun, pitying them for their terrible loss. “Rivka, can’t you forgive them, the way you’ve forgiven me?”

  “I told you, Aunt, with you there is nothing to forgive. But with them … it’s complicated.” She wandered around the apartment, studying the photos of her son, touching them, smiling here and there. For a long time, she said nothing. Then, she turned around and faced her aunt.

  “It’s not anger, Aunt Rose. I just can’t risk them knowing about us. Remember Yossele Schumacher?”

  It happened in 1960, but the Jewish world was still reeling from the story. Yossele Schumacher was a six-year-old boy kidnapped from his secular Jewish parents in Israel by his ultra-Orthodox grandparents and uncle. Taken abroad dressed as a girl by a woman convert to Judaism, he was kept hidden in France and Switzerland for two years, until the woman brought him to the States, handing him over to an ultra-Orthodox family in Williamsburg, who kept him, thinking they were saving his soul. Only when the crack operatives of Israeli intelligence got involved was he finally tracked down and returned to his parents.

  “If they or someone else in the community kidnaps my son because they don’t think I’m pious enough to raise him, I won’t have the whole Mossad to help me. I just can’t take the chance.”

  “But Rivka, that happened once, long ago … it’s not something normal. And I’m sure your parents would never—”

  “I’m sorry, Aunt Rose.” Rivka cut her off. “I just can’t take that chance.”

  Rose closed her eyes in sorrow. Frame by frame, images floated through her imagination: Her sister Pearl’s eyes bright with tears embracing her daughter. Zevulun lifting his beautiful little grandson into his big arms, his long beard tickling the child and making him laugh. The family sitting together around the table, glasses of kosher wine raised in a toast. Rivka and Hannah and their two boyfriends sitting side by side, their voices happy and friendly. She and Pearl setting down steaming platters of food on a large table, while the whole extended family sat around eating, speaking, laughing, all stiffness, silences, harsh judgments suspended in time, like a video set on pause. She blinked back tears, the images disappearing into the harsh, cold light of day.

  “So, you’ve given up on them.” Just like I did, Rose thought with sorrow. “It’s a terrible, terrible thing to lose your family. It was the biggest tragedy of my life.”

  “I can’t stand to think about it that way. I think of it more like ‘not just yet.’ I have this dream that one day I’ll have this great job, and a nice home with nice furniture in a leafy place with a big backyard, and a handsome Jewish husband. Maybe then I could see inviting them over to meet my family.”

  It was a modest dream, a very American dream. How far away was she from all that? Rose wondered. “Do you envision marrying this boy?”

  She smiled, shaking her head. “Oh, he’s not up to that. No way. He’s like me. He’s got no education. He’s working as a dishwasher. But he also has dreams. He’d like to open up a store selling music discs. He loves music. He wants to be a famous Jewish rapper, like Matisyahu.”

  At this, they both laughed.

  “Is he kind to you?”

  Rivka seemed genuinely moved by the question. “Yes,” she answered eagerly. “He is very kind. And he loves Or. And he wants me to be anything I wa
nt to be. And he is a big help. He … he gets it? You know? Gets everything you can’t explain in a million years because he’s lived through the same thing.”

  Rose nodded. “I’m glad for you, Rivka, that you have someone like that in your life. It’s a blessing.”

  “Now I have two blessings. And a few years ago, I felt I didn’t have any. That’s good, isn’t it?”

  “Yes, very good. You know, Hannah is very concerned. She’d love to see you.”

  “How is Hannah?”

  “Flourishing. She’s working on her master’s degree, and she’s found a new boyfriend. He’s modern Orthodox.”

  She smiled. “As my friend Malca would say, gevalt! Life is strange, isn’t it?” She was quiet, thinking, her head down, playing with the fringes of the couch cover, tangling and untangling them from their knots. “About Hannah, I don’t know what to say. I know she meant well, she really did, but she never really understood me. I was a ‘cause’ for her, not a person. And I … I wasn’t straight with her either, didn’t really trust her. I’m still very ashamed of myself for what happened when I was living with her. I know she was trying her best. But back then I was so … farshimmelt. The idea of facing her is not so … comfortable for me. But that’s more my fault than hers.” She lifted her head and looked at Rose with sudden hope. “Does she really want to see me?”

  “I know she does! We’ve discussed it. Look, I have an idea. Why don’t I invite you over to my house for dinner this Friday night? Come with your boyfriend and the baby, and Hannah will come with her David.”

  Rivka hesitated. “Aunt Rose, could we do it maybe on a Saturday night instead? And could I bring my own food, or maybe you could make vegetarian?”

  “You are still observant, aren’t you? Wow!” She had expected many things, but not that. “I thought you were running away from all that?”

  “Life isn’t so black-and-white, Aunt. Religious-secular, believer-nonbeliever. When you run, you can’t take heavy suitcases with you. So, some people just throw everything away. But I never did. I kept it all in this locker and always held on to the key. When Or was born, I made sure he had a bris. The Christian ladies weren’t much help, but a synagogue arranged it for me. There wasn’t a single person there I knew. But you know what? It still made me feel happy. I felt connected to the things that I still love and that I want to give to Or. When I moved into this place and started to think about what kind of home it was going to be for my son, I started remembering all the things I loved from my own childhood: oneg Shabbat games, and chulent, and songs on Friday night, and apples with honey…”

  It was then Rose noticed for the first time the ceramic candlestick holders, the wine cup, and the menorah sitting on the bookshelf.

  “I couldn’t find anything out there to take their place, and believe me I looked.”

  “Yes,” Rose admitted to herself, opening up that locked room inside her and sitting there for the first time in a long, long time. “We’ll make it a Saturday-night dinner, then. And please bring your boyfriend…?”

  “His name is Jerme, from Jeremiah. It’ll be so much trouble for you…”

  “Hannah’s boyfriend will also need kosher food.” And so will his father, she thought, the idea of inviting Joseph filling her with a sudden warmth.

  “And dishes and pots and silverware…”

  “I know, I know. Believe me, I remember it all … I suppose I better get used to it. Those two seem serious!”

  When Rose got up to go, Rivka took a photo off the wall.

  “Here, for you.”

  It was Or, about two months old with a huge grin (probably gas) on his sweet little face. Such a beautiful baby! Rose felt tears sting her eyes. “Thank you, Rivka. I can’t wait to hold the real thing. I’ll call you?”

  “I’d like that, Aunt.”

  Rose gently put her arms around Rivka. She wasn’t a girl anymore, Rose realized, but a fine, strong woman, tempered and hardened by her trials. She released the young woman’s slim waist. She was, in her own way, truly heroic, Rose thought. It was easy to cut yourself off from the past, to reject everything. But Rivka had taken the harder way, digging deep inside herself and finding her real nature and desires, bravely keeping connected to all those things that were really important to her, instead of slamming doors like a spiteful, angry child. I could never admit the things I missed. It was too threatening, and I was too vulnerable.

  I will find some way to help her make her dreams come true sooner rather than later, Rose promised herself. And then, maybe, in time, she will feel able to include Pearl and Zevulun and her siblings in her life. But only she could decide that, Rose thought sadly, wanting with all her heart to make that phone call to her sister and brother-in-law, to share this photo with them. Being denied that felt like a gut-wrenching physical pain.

  But as she walked slowly down the old stairs to the street, she found that in her heart there was still hope, hope that Rivka and her family might someday find a way to crack open the concrete barriers set up between them now like the Berlin wall of old, allowing those imprisoned on either side to break free and cross over to meet again, without recriminations and without fear. A hope that she too could sneak through the opening and salvage what was left of her connections with all the good and valuable things she missed in the world she’d left behind.

  She took out her phone and called Hannah, ready to tell her everything.

  Epilogue

  Excerpt from the master’s thesis of Mrs. Hannah Gordon-Adler, entitled Heaven Above, Heaven Below: Nineteenth-century Jewish Women and the Enlightenment, June 2012.

  While the struggle of most nineteenth-century women for a place in the sun was doomed to failure and heartbreak, theirs was a heroic failure that tested itself against great odds before succumbing. Each individual woman, though she stumbled and fell, nevertheless added a stepping stone for other women in the decades that followed. Like the steady work of ants climbing out of their dark holes, women followed the path-blazers up and out, into the light.

  On a personal note, I’d like to say this so-called progress is far from complete, and entirely reversible. In countries outside the West, the punishment for seeking heaven on earth is often fatal for women who dare to do so. We in the West should never forget that. Even today, the path-blazers pay a huge personal price for their stubborn resistance against oppression, and for their willful determination to assert their human rights to express themselves fully and creatively.

  And the question remains, especially for religious women, why does it have to be a choice? Why should you have to give up heaven above when you seek out heaven below on earth? Why do religions force you to choose between them?

  With a little patience, understanding, and love, children could be taught that the two were not mutually exclusive, and they in turn could teach this to their children. And the world will become a more heavenly place for everyone.

  Acknowledgments

  The Sisters Weiss, while purely the product of my imagination, is about women who can be found abundantly in the real world I grew up in, in both New York and Jerusalem. I continue to live among them. The stereotypes of women, in both the religious and secular worlds, do not do women justice, as the choices all women make are complex and often driven by forces beyond their control. I am grateful for a lifetime of friendship with such women, religious and secular, Jew, Christian, and Muslim, who have, despite societal pressures, carved out a unique space for themselves in advancing all that is good in the world. To all my women friends who have provided me with the example of their tireless inspiration, my thanks.

  I thank Dr. Shmuel Feiner for our many invaluable discussions on the Jewish enlightenment and the lives of women intellectuals. I would like to offer him, and Dr. Tova Cohen, my congratulations and heartfelt thanks for their pioneering scholarship in this area, which has brought the work and the lives of these remarkable women the attention they have long merited but have not until now received. Similarly, I thank
Professor Carole B. Balin for her inspiring books and wonderful scholarship in this area, and for her cooperation and friendship.

  I thank Morris Rosenthal for his help and for translating Sarah Foner’s work into English and for allowing me access,

  A big thanks to my editor, Jennifer Weis, for her ever-sharp eye and ear and good advice, and to my agent, Mel Berger, for his encouragement and good counsel. As always, my dear husband of over forty years continues to be my sounding board, most influential critic, and dearest friend. Thanks again, Alex.

  Glossary of Hebrew and Yiddish Words and Expressions

  al pi taharas hakodesh according to the strict, holy way assur forbidden

  Baruch Hashem “God be blessed”

  bas zekunim the youngest daughter born when a parent is already advanced in age bitul Torah time wasted that could be spent on studying Torah and self-improvement bli neder a formula used to prevent a person from swearing in vain bochur young man

  broocha on your keppeleh “a blessing on your head”

  chesed a deed of compassion and charity choson groom

  chulent a dish of meat, beans, and potatoes left to cook overnight Friday night to be eaten hot on the Sabbath, when all reheating and cooking is forbidden Chumash the five books of Moses

  chutzpadika impudent, impertinent, brazen, someone showing chutzpah chutzpah brazenness, gutsiness, audacity Daas Torah a Torah scholar’s personal opinion on all matters, which is considered by some to be more accurate than the opinion of others, even though the scholar might know nothing about the subject dafka something done out of spite or something that is said to “actually” or “in fact” occur: “She dafka used the sports section, which I read religiously, to clean the windows.” Or: “She’s a liar, but this time she was dafka telling the truth.”

  daven to pray

  Eibeisha God

  eidle refined, trustworthy, respectable eshes chayil a woman of valor, a virtuous wife and mother, also the name of a song traditionally sung Friday nights by husbands to their wives beginning with those words farmisht confused, befuddled, dysfunctional farshimmelt similar to farmisht Farshteist? Do you understand?