by Naomi Ragen
“How did that work out?”
“I’d never been to Israel before. It was overwhelming. I saw people, whole communities, actually living their daily lives according to the rules I’d only read about. Many of my teachers invited me to their homes. They had these big, noisy, happy Jewish families with everyone from the tiniest toddler to the great-grandparents living totally committed Jewish lives rooted in traditions that went back centuries. That somehow made it real for me. It showed me how such a thing was possible. It didn’t feel primitive or reactionary. It felt homey and right. It felt holy.”
“So why didn’t you stay? I’m sure Ohel Sara had plenty of matchmakers looking out for you.” He smiled.
She smiled back, a bit uncertainly. “Ohel Sara was good. I enjoyed some of it.” Again, she hesitated. “But it was so big! I was one of something like seven hundred women. I got a bit lost there, I think. And also, by this time, I felt I wanted to deepen my intellectual understanding of the laws, the lifestyle, not just to be told: do this, don’t do that. Many of the classes weren’t geared for that. Many of the women had just taken out their tongue rings—” She blushed fiercely, looking up. “I’m … I…”
He waved dismissively, his blue eyes mischievous. “Believe me, we’ve seen everything here, too.”
“Well, anyway. They went straight from that into trying to imitate everything their teachers said and did, even if they didn’t understand a thing. And they were very judgmental toward one another. It was sometimes like high school and the mean girls. Still, I had some very inspiring teachers, and I went up a few more spiritual rungs there. But I was running out of money, and honestly, I wasn’t ready to leave America. So I came back and looked for work. A high-tech company in Manhattan hired me. I rented an apartment not far from where I used to live. I was terrified of falling back into my old lifestyle; I didn’t want to forget everything I’d learned. So when I got involved in the Washington Avenue synagogue, I was relieved. Here was a modern Orthodox congregation where people had a similar education to mine and were working in top-notch professions. Many were baale teshuva, and quite a few were single. They were so much less restrictive than either Chabad or Ohel Sara. They had television sets, went to movies and the theater, and read the latest New York Times bestsellers. They were exactly like I used to be, except that they were Sabbath-observant and ate kosher. With them, I didn’t get the highs I got in Jerusalem or even Chabad, the spiritual uplift from prayer, the sense of being in conversation with God. It reminded me a little too much of the Reform and Conservative style of abridging God’s demands to make them easier and more popular. But I wasn’t looking for easier. I wanted something true and tested. Something eternal. But I was also tired of searching. I was hoping it would be enough even if the fit wasn’t perfect. Part of that, I’ll admit, was the fact that there were quite a few eligible men in the congregation. I wanted so much to settle down and have children.”
She paused, self-conscious, suppressing an audible sigh. “I met someone there. He was my age. A systems analyst. He was also a baal teshuva. We went out for six months, seeing each other two, three times a week. I expected, I hoped … But then, someone else from the congregation took me aside and told me that I wasn’t the only member of the synagogue he was going out with. There were at least two other women.”
She looked up, staring across the impersonal desk in this nondescript Brooklyn office at the bearded stranger facing her, his brows creased with sudden pain. He understands, she saw gratefully.
“So, there was a little too much ‘modern’ in the Orthodox.”
She nodded wordlessly. Like Venetians who had fled an enemy right into the ocean, building houses on stilts, she had run from modern morality and modern business practices, finally reaching the edge of America, a world as alien and opposed to everything “modern” as one could possibly imagine.
“Rabbi, I am thirty-four years old. I want to stop running. I want to live here, build a Jewish home, find a good husband, have children. I know that the women who finish your program find shidduchim in this community. I am hoping…”
“Leah, what is your current level of observance?”
She knew what he meant. He wasn’t talking only about her faithfulness to the laws of the Torah but also to the stringencies imposed upon those laws by thousands of years of rabbinical decrees and custom. Truthfully, she’d never met two Jews who were on the same level as far as observance. It was endless, depending on what you had observed at home and been taught in school. She had been privy to neither, randomly picking up customs and stringencies here and there and doing her best.
Just be honest, she told herself, trusting those kind, intelligent eyes that looked at her so intently. “I pray every morning, but in English. I don’t know enough Hebrew yet. I’m strictly observant of Shabbos and holidays: I don’t use electricity, and shut off my phone and computer. I don’t use money, or carry or drive. I light candles and go to the synagogue even though sometimes I’m the only woman there.” (The more Orthodox the shul, she’d found to her surprise, the fewer women attended. Why was that?) “I prepare or get invited to festive meals. I’m very careful to buy only foods that have proper rabbinical certification. But most of all, I try to be careful about what I say to and about other people. I try never to hurt anyone’s feelings or be dishonest with my words or with my actions. When I can, I try to do good deeds.”
He straightened in his chair, noting her long skirt and modest blouse. “I don’t know if you need any more lessons, Leah. You seem to have learned all the most important things already!”
She relaxed. “I still feel very ignorant.”
There was a short silence. “There are many places you can take shiurim. But, to be honest, I don’t think this program is right for you. You see,” he said very gently, “most of our students are under twenty-five.”
His words pierced her heart like pincers, plucking out what was left of her hopes. Too old! She was too old. She nodded wordlessly, gathering her things together. “Thank you for listening to me, Rabbi. I’m sorry I wasted your time.”
He didn’t respond, staring at her.
Abruptly, she stood up.
He gestured impatiently. “You’re in a rush? Sit, sit.”
She fell back into her seat, confused, her face flushed with humiliation and disappointment.
“Tell me, Leah-le, what really happened to you before you went to Chabad?”
She sank back into her seat, clearing her throat with difficulty, aware of the rabbi’s intense, discerning vision resting on her without judgment but also without pity. “The company I worked for, PureBirth, was a start-up that produced a revolutionary genetic screening test that promised to detect cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease, sickle-cell anemia, Tay-Sachs, and all kinds of other genetic diseases through a simple blood test. I worked in the marketing department, helping to sell millions of these test kits all over the world. We were making huge profits. Everyone got bonuses and stock options.
“And then one day, I went into the office and there were police everywhere. People were standing by their desks filling cardboard boxes, crying. My boss, Juliana Hager, a woman I admired and looked up to more than almost anyone I’d ever met, was taken into custody. They actually handcuffed her right there in front of everyone! Our ‘revolutionary, cutting-edge’ product was a fraud! Dozens of couples all over the world had started having children with genetic diseases we’d guaranteed they were free of. The lawsuits began, and then a criminal investigation.”
She twisted the tissue in her hands. “I know it wasn’t my fault. I was just a small cog in a huge machine. But if I hadn’t convinced the buyers in drugstore chains to stock our product, maybe those couples would have gone to doctors and had reliable tests done. Because of me, they’d had access to this fake test. They’d trusted it. And now, they and their children are going to suffer for the rest of their lives.” She dabbed her eyes, the tears that had slowly built up beginning to fall. “And th
e worst part, the very worst was this.” She held up her purse. “I got rewarded for it! But God was watching, Rabbi. He punished me. Not only did I lose my job, but a long-term relationship I was sure would lead to marriage and children suddenly ended. I’d invested five years of my life—my youth—in it. I was left with nothing.”
He nodded. “God is certainly trying to get your attention, Leah Howard. Sometimes this kind of personal crisis is His way of pushing us to look inside our hearts and then outside to Him.” He tapped the desk thoughtfully with a pencil, leaning back into his chair, sighing. “Leah-le, Leah-le,” he said, shaking his head and looking her over. “What are we going to do with you?”
2
Yaakov Lehman opened his eyes as the sun streamed into his bedroom. ““Blessed be you, living, everlasting King, for giving me back my soul in Your great mercy,” he whispered in Hebrew, the first thing he did every morning. He propped himself up on one elbow, peering in the direction of his wife Zissel’s bed. This morning, like every morning for the last year, he was shocked to find it empty.
His heart ached.
He reached over to grab his undershirt, bringing it under the blanket as he took off his pajama top, quickly covering himself. Next, he reached out for the mug filled with water he’d prepared the night before, stored inside a small basin. Taking the mug deliberately into his right hand, he transferred it to his left, pouring water over his right hand into a small basin, then passing it back and pouring water over his left, repeating three times. He dried his hands, then reached for his large black velvet skullcap, covering his head.
He stood up, picking up his tzitzis and carefully fingering each set of strings to ensure they had eight long threads, then he pulled it over his head as he recited the proper blessing for this mitzvah. In his closet, he found a single clean, white shirt—his last—and black cloth pants.
He thought back to the official thirty days of mourning immediately following the funeral, the shloshim, when his neighbors, friends, mother-in-law, brother, and sister-in-law had all crowded around them, ready to take up the slack. Long since, everyone had gone back to their own lives, which was as it should be, he told himself, as a frisson of fear and doubt passed through him, making him shudder.
He had not known exactly what to expect, imagining vaguely that eventually things must fall back into place, into some kind of normalcy. He had no idea how that would happen but thought it would be taken care of by someone, the way things in a yeshiva boy’s life were always taken care of. It was not that he objected to taking over household duties himself; he just did not have the slightest clue how to begin. A yeshiva boy never had to operate a washing machine or use an iron. His clothing had always magically appeared on hangers and in drawers, crisp and immaculate. Shabbos and daily meals were prepared for him and served to him. The refrigerator was stocked. From childhood, it had been taken care of by his mother and sisters, and then his young wife, whom he had married when she turned eighteen and he barely twenty. After his children were born, they too had always been well dressed and well fed. He had never even given a thought to how that happened.
Now his sock drawer was completely empty, he saw as he searched futilely for a clean pair. Sinking into a chair, he pulled on the pair from the day before that were still lying on the floor where he had left them. Don’t think about it, he told himself, continuing the rituals of dressing with pious care, the mindless routine imposing order on the chaos of his existence. Place your right foot in your right shoe, but don’t tie it. Place your left foot in your left shoe and tie it, and only then tie the other.
Picking up his washbasin, he carefully emptied it into the toilet so that the water, defiled by the unclean spirits of night on his hands, should not contaminate anything else. Sitting on the toilet, he uncovered himself to the minimal degree possible, careful not to touch his private parts and to wipe himself with only his left hand. Once again, he washed his hands, then poured water over his clean hands in the same order he had done before.
Only when he brushed his teeth and combed his hair and thick, gold beard in front of the mirror did he allow himself to focus and think. Who is that? he wondered, shocked. An older man, much older than himself, who had only just turned forty. A man with silver strands in his gold hair and beard, little snowy tufts like weeds. Instead of gentle laugh lines around the mouth, there were the inverted creases of a deepening frown.
Who was this person who frowned, this miserable man? He himself never frowned! He was a happy, fortunate man, blessed by God in all ways! And the eyes, those clear blue eyes as calm as a summer sea, what unfamiliar depths they had now! He peered into them deeply seeing shock, shock, and more shock. The suffering there was so dense, the sorrows so deeply intertwined that they could never be untangled, smoothed over, and left to heal in the simple light of day. It was almost like looking at something not quite human, he thought, an angel or a devil, some otherworldly creature that was never meant to be confronted by any mortal on this earth.
Frightened, he turned away, combing out the long strands of his side curls with his long fingers, then twisting them into neat bundles, which he tucked neatly behind his ears.
Unlike his fellow Talmud scholars in the kollel, who, after following the same morning rituals, would now be hurrying directly to the synagogue, velvet bags holding their phylacteries and prayer shawls tucked beneath their arms, Yaakov instead went to wake his children.
He remembered the good days he had always taken for granted, when the little apartment had hummed with activity: the clink of plates and mugs and spoons being laid on the kitchen table; the smell of toast and scrambled eggs perfuming the air; the two older boys on their way to yeshiva; his daughters’ giggles coming from the bathroom. And Zissele—his lovely, pretty Zissele!—at the center of it all, cooking and talking and laughing, a gentle smile on her lips as she nursed the youngest. Now there was only an eerie silence except for the rain slamming wildly against the windows, their thin panes the only barrier between himself and the unpredictable world.
He knocked on the door of the bedroom his two daughters shared. “Shaindele, are you up?”
“Yes, Tateh,” the voice came back.
She opened the door. She was small for her age, still a little girl at fifteen, but smart and competent beyond her years, he thought, like all girls in large, devout Jewish families, accustomed to taking care of her siblings. She was already dressed in her school uniform—a calf-length plaid skirt and a sky-blue blouse that buttoned up to her neck with wrist-length sleeves. With surprise, he noticed that her thick, dark hair hung unfettered down her back and across her shoulders.
“Your hair?”
She patted it down. “It’s gotten so long it’s hard for me to braid by myself. Ima always used to help me. But I’ll do it, Tateh. After I dress Chasya.”
Who, he mourned, would help braid his Shaindele’s hair? He turned aside, fighting the tears that sprang into his eyes. Why am I so useless? he thought. Why is it that I do not know how to do anything?
“Tateh, I will take care of Chasya and make her and the baby breakfast and pack their lunches. You’ll be late for davening.”
How can I leave? he thought. The house, my children, everything is in such disarray? But how can I come late to kollel? Despite everyone’s sympathy for his plight, by now, he was sure, he must be losing the respect of the rebbe along with his chances of gaining a permanent position as a maggid shiur, something he had spent his entire life working toward. This was not only his heart’s desire but the only path toward financial stability. Now, more than ever, with Zissele’s salary as a teacher gone, it was vital.
Before this, he’d always believed he had a chance; the rebbe liked him, and while others could occasionally outshine him with brilliant insights into the Talmud, no one surpassed him in piety and diligence. But now, as he regularly took days off to deal with household emergencies, often showing up long after everyone else was already deeply immersed in learning, he imagined
he was losing his edge. The idea terrified him.
“May HaShem bless you, Shaindele. Can you manage?”
“Don’t worry, Tateh. Chasya is already up and getting dressed.” She hesitated. “But Tateh, what about the baby? Who will drop him off at day care?”
He was confused. So many friends, neighbors, and even strangers regularly came by to help them in their bereavement he couldn’t keep track of who did what. “Who usually takes him?”
“Mrs. Glick. But her baby is sick; she can’t come. She called yesterday. I left you a note.”
That piece of paper on his night table, the one he’d meant to read. He looked at his daughter and just beyond to where five-year-old Chasya was making her way sleepily into the kitchen. Her legs, he saw, were bare. “Chasya has no tights.”
“I’ll take care of it,” Shaindele promised, her voice going shrill.
His children. His firstborn, Elchanon Yehoshua, and a year later Dovid Yitzchak, now bright, handsome yeshiva boys in their late teens, both boarding at a top yeshiva in Baltimore, where his brother, Chaim, could keep an eye on them. He missed them so much but was proud they’d gotten accepted and agreed it was better for them not to see what was going on at home and to concentrate on their studies. And then there were the girls, first Shaindele and then—after ten hard years filled with mourning over miscarriages and disappointed prayers—Chasya. Their last, Mordechai Shalom, had been orphaned so young he would never even remember what a lovely mother he’d had. During the barren years, it had often felt as if God were punishing him. But now he knew better. God in His infinite wisdom had simply shown mercy. The very thought of having more young children to care for made him shiver.
“Can’t you drop the baby off, Shaindele?”
“They only open at eight, and it’s a different way from Chasya’s. I’ll be late.”