by Ragen, Naomi
There would always be poverty in the world. There would always be the suffering caused by disease and the malice of humans toward one another. The Torah commanded people to set aside ten percent of their wealth for charity, but the other ninety percent, a person was free to enjoy in any permissible way he saw fit.
Yes, all this was true. But who decided what was a fit way to enjoy God’s blessings? Was it not the society in which one lived? One’s neighbors? Should not the synagogue set the standard for moderation and being happy with what one has? For as it is written in Ethics of the Fathers: “Who is wealthy? He who rejoices in his lot in life.”
Why shouldn’t this community which had everything, including a perfectly adequate synagogue, simply rejoice in what it already had? Would Viktor Shammanov’s gift really make anyone happier? Or would it feed into the community’s ever-burgeoning demands upon itself, making each congregant mourn all those things they imagined they lacked, instead of praising God for the abundance that was already theirs?
The first rule of fund-raising is to know how to say no to a donor who wishes to donate something you don’t want: the million-dollar statue of the late Herbert Cohen, to be placed at the entrance to the town’s meeting hall; the Hospital for Stray Raccoons; the soccer stadium for ultra-Orthodox Jerusalem.
This is very difficult, because for the fund-raiser it means deliberately reducing your bottom line. But sometimes less really is more. This too, he thought, was a time to say: No, thank you very much. We have what we need. We should not be concentrating on walls and floors. We should be concentrating on how to fill the shells that are our homes and places of worship with the richness of meaning, values, and generosity toward our wives and children and neighbors and friends and employees that is expressed in the expenditure of time, and words, and caring personal acts, not the purchase of more things. Enough with the remote-controlled toilets, the three-hundred-dollar rubber beach sandals for three-year-olds, the infinity pools, the midget trees, the au pairs day and night, the ten-thousand-dollar koi fish, the army of servants you treat like slaves. Enough! Learn to find pleasure in your relationships with your family and your God. Learn to cherish what you have, not to pile on more junk you’ll need to unload: things that will clog your basements and attics and brains and arteries, like plaque choking off the flow of lifeblood to the heart; things that will block and obscure what really matters in life!
He wrote furiously, nonstop, his armpits wet, his forehead glistening, his hands shaking.
Yes, Chaim thought, his chronic stomach pains leaving him for the first time since he got the invitation to the Shammanovs’ Bar Mitzva. This is the speech he would make. Let them fire him! Let Delilah leave him! As he had once read on the door of a toilet stall in a vegetarian restaurant: It is never too late to be what you might have been. This is what he would say to them all. For once in his life, he would be a real rabbi, a mentor.
A week after the Bar Mitzva, Viktor Shammanov gathered up the men of Swallow Lake and took them on his private jet to witness the triumph of the New England Patriots in the Superbowl. While Chaim too was invited, he gently declined, claiming an inability to take off more time from his congregational work. Surprisingly, he got no special phone call from Viktor—or any of the other invitees—urging him to reconsider, a circumstance Chaim viewed with a mixture of relief and foreboding.
Delilah had come home with leis around her neck and a feeling of heaviness in her heart. The words that had passed between herself and her husband revealed to her how flimsy a structure her marriage really was. More a sukkah than a brick house set on concrete. She had never given her marriage—as a marriage—the least thought, viewing Chaim as she viewed the anchor person for the evening news: Whatever happened in the world, he would be there with his well-pressed suit and toothpaste commercial smile. The idea that her bond with Chaim could ever dissolve or disappear had not occurred to her.
Until now.
She pondered the unthinkable. What would it be like, she wondered, to dump Rabbi Chaim and run off with some rich, sexy, irreverent playboy, who knew how to dance and drink and do more than a quick close-your-eyes-and-wait-twenty-seconds-it-will-all-soon-be-over in bed? She thought about life with Joseph Rolland or even Viktor Shammanov. Joie didn’t really appreciate her luck. A man that extravagant and adventurous. A man looking for meaning in his life. She finally had to admit to herself that was what she wanted, what she had always wanted: a Yitzie Polinsky, someone dark and dangerous who lived on the edge and took the world on his own terms. Not some scared rabbit hiding in some sunless warren, always a terrified hop, skip, and jump in front of some plodding hunter. This was all frighteningly new, thrilling information for Delilah as it bubbled up from her subconscious into her daydreams.
Yet despite the newfound clarity that her husband held few attractions for her, that he—in fact—bored her silly, she, like many women, was terrified of the idea of losing the roof over her head and the social acceptance and respectability that was the ground beneath her feet. Did she really want to go from “rebbitzin” to “divorcee” and “single mom” with a weekly Parents without Partners meeting in downtown Hartford after a day of scraping goo off the teeth of strangers?
To leap from Chaim into the sheltering arms of another man was one thing, to take a flying leap into the unknown, quite something else again. Chaim, as a rabbi, had adequate reason to send her on her way. No rabbinical court in the world would back her up once he revealed what he knew about Yitzie Polinsky, his suspicions about her relationship with Benjamin, and what he had witnessed between herself and Joseph Rolland. It wouldn’t even matter if in the end he had not a single shred of evidence to back him up. Rabbinical court judges were notorious for their one-sided rulings in favor of husbands; they were all hanging judges when it came to even the merest appearance of impropriety on the part of the wife. This was based firmly on Torah law, which even had a special-Divine category called “the jealous husband.” A man didn’t need proof. All he needed were his suspicions in order to put a wife through humiliating and life-threatening trials. If she was innocent, of course, the bitter waters she was forced to drink made her fertile. But if she was guilty, they caused her “belly to swell and her thighs to waste away.”
There was nothing remotely similar for the philandering husband unless he was involved with another man’s wife, in which case both he and his paramour earned themselves a mandatory death by stoning. These days, of course, such a verdict was unenforceable. The result was that the man went scot free while the woman got divorced and ostracized.
If, one day, time and chance provided her with an opportunity she just couldn’t turn down, in the form of a desirable suitor willing to provide for her the kind of life she had seen all around her since coming to Swallow Lake, she might willingly open the door and walk out. Until then, she had no intention of letting Chaim open it for her, kicking her out into a world of uncertainty, homelessness, poverty, and calumny. She wanted the decision—and the timing—to be hers. That being so, she felt she had no choice but to mend her ways and earn her way back into her husband’s good graces.
The first thing she did was to talk to her former boss at the Riverdale dental clinic. He had been most understanding. That taken care of, she decided to start dealing seriously with her chesed project. She began to go through her handbags and pack them up for shipping. She contacted a number of well-known charitable agencies dealing with terror victims. But, for some reason that she couldn’t figure out, none of them had any interest in becoming involved. In fact, unless she was imagining it, she heard muffled laughter in the background during her phone conversations with them, which she found shocking, considering that the subject was no laughing matter. She chalked it up to pressure. Anyone involved with such tragedies had to crack sometime.
She now possessed two hundred and seventy-four used—but more or less still very nice—designer handbags and nothing to do with them. She put in a call to the Israeli embassy. A very nic
e girl, whose English left much to be desired, explained that if she shipped them to Israel she’d have to pay tax on them, even if they were a charitable donation. Something about putting the local used handbag stores out of business.
“But Israel doesn’t have any used handbag stores!”
“That’s not entirely true,” the girl said, getting a bit snooty. “Anyway, we don’t think a designer handbag is the most important thing a terror victim lacks. Especially the ones that are still in the hospital, or orphaned, or widowed.”
Well, she couldn’t solve all their problems.
A bit desperate, she decided, very reluctantly, to call Rivkie, with whom she had had no contact at all since the doula businesss. But times were desperate; besides, Delilah wasn’t the type to hold a grudge, especially if the person involved could still be useful.
“Hi, Rivkie, you’ll never guess!”
She could tell Rivkie wasn’t exactly thrilled to hear from her, but being Rivkie she was polite and kind. She had relatives in Israel who could give them out, she agreed, but Delilah would have to raise the money for taxes and shipping.
“How much do you think that will be?” she asked.
“Well, it depends on how much they estimate the bags are worth.”
“Look, between you and me, some of them are fakes that are worth thirty bucks, and some are worth two thousand.”
“Well, the tax on a two-thousand-dollar bag is going to be a lot of money, believe me. But if you get it together, let me know.”
“Thanks, Rivkie.” She hesitated. “Sorry I haven’t been in touch. It was just so awkward and all. I mean, after the doula business. How is she?”
There was silence. “Her hand has healed.”
“Oh. I’m glad to hear it. And how are things going with the two of you?
“Fine, fine. Josh has just accepted a position as rabbi of the Lincoln Center Synagogue on the Upper West Side.”
“Wow, Manhattan!”
“It’s a nice congregation. Look, Delilah, I’ve got to run. Take care of yourself, and let me know if I can help you. ‘Bye.”
“ ‘Bye, Rivkie. And thanks. For everything. Oh, by the way, you don’t happen to have any friends or relatives that live in Swallow Lake, do you? Someone you might have spoken to about me?”
There was dead silence on the other end. Then a tiny voice. “Why do you ask?”
“Because someone wrote Chaim an anonymous letter about Yitzie Polinsky.”
“Delilah, I—I’m . . . well, I have to ask mechilah.”
The traditional request for forgiveness that went around before the high holidays and Yom Kippur was rarely used at other times of the year, unless the penitent truly feared for their eternal soul.
“Mechilah?” Delilah asked suspiciously. “For what?”
“Delilah, I swear I didn’t know it would get back to Chaim. Mariette Rolland is friends with my mother. And I might have mentioned it to my mother years ago.”
“Rivkie, I have something to tell you.”
“Yes?”
“Your clothes? They never actually fit me. They were too big, especially around the butt! And you can forget about mechilah. You can kiss my little ass, and that goes for your husband too!” She slammed down the phone.
Mariette Rolland. How appropriate, Delilah thought. She looked at the boxes and boxes of handbags. What to do with them? She picked up a Chanel and turned it over. Not bad. Someone would pay good money for it on eBay. A little light clicked on in her head. She piled them into cartons and put them down in the basement. Every day, she’d auction off one of them, until she had enough money to pay the taxes and shipping costs for the rest.
She got busy. She started cleaning the house, taking the baby out for walks. She skipped her aerobics classes and, instead, baked fattening cakes for myriad Sabbath guests.
“Chaim?” She poked her head into his study.
He looked up from his open books, eyeing her silently.
“I thought you might be hungry. I made a little snack.” She placed a mug of hot freshly brewed coffee on his desk with a blueberry muffin, warm from the oven. “And Chaim?”
His eyes shifted from the food to her face, which was settled in pleasant docile lines. “I have made up lists of people we should invite over soon. Can you check them over and see if I’ve left anyone out?”
He looked down at the neatly typed pages, holding dozens and dozens of names.
“This looks fine, Delilah.” He nodded correctly. “Now, if you’ll just excuse me, I have some work. . . .”
“Oh, sure, of course. Sorry.” She smiled, looking chastened and pathetic, he thought, as she closed the door behind her.
He looked down at the food. He couldn’t bring himself to touch it.
THIRTY-ONE
The Sabbath following the Superbowl, Chaim sat nervously in his chair, waiting impatiently for the moment he could rise and approach the podium. All the while, he anxiously patted his jacket pocket, like a best man fingering the rings, to make sure the pages of his speech hadn’t somehow disappeared. Finally, the Torah reading was completed, along with all the post-reading blessings. This was his cue. He rose, taking the papers out of his pocket, and strode purposefully down the aisle and up toward the podium.
Just as he was about to mount the first step, Arthur Malin reached out and touched his arm. “Rabbi? I want to ask your kind permission to address the congregation this Shabbes. The board has something very special to tell them. Would you mind?”
Chaim looked down at the speech clutched in his hand. He had opened his mouth to object when he realized all the members of the board had now risen and were standing in front of him like an opposing football team, ready to tackle him to the ground.
“You don’t mind, Rabbi, just this once?” Stuart smiled affably.
“Really, Rabbi, do us this favor?” Joseph nodded.
“You’ll understand why in a minute.” Ari rubbed his hands together.
Chaim looked at them and at the congregation. It was, after all, their synagogue. He was just the hired help. He bowed, turning around and walking back to his seat. He sat down heavily, crumpling the pages in his fist as he rammed them back inside his pocket.
“I thank the rabbi for giving up his pulpit for me. Thank you, Rabbi Chaim! I have wonderful news!” Standing in the front of the synagogue surrounded by the other male members of the board, a huge smile on his face, Arthur Malin announced: “The board held an extraordinary meeting after the Superbowl and agreed to accept the fantastically generous gift of the Shammanovs to build us a new synagogue and a new rabbi’s house. We signed the papers yesterday. The new synagogue will have sixty-five-thousand square feet! A catering hall that is fifteen thousand square feet! It will have twenty-eight classrooms, a two-thousand-square-foot library, recreation rooms, screening rooms, a swimming pool, and a cafeteria—so you can eat after every minyan! In addition, there will be a fifty-six-foot-high waterfall in the lobby with a reflection pool that will symbolize our new theme: Mayim Chayim, living waters—and I must say, since this whole thing started off the coast of Maui, it’s particularly apt.” He chuckled.
The privileged ones who had been to Maui chuckled with him, while the others stared in shocked, morose silence.
“Construction begins next week and we should be enjoying—well, I don’t know if that’s the right word exactly, heh-heh—our Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur prayers in our new space. For his unbelievable gift, we would like to present Viktor Shammanov with a token of our community’s thanks. Viktor, would you come up here, please?”
Viktor, seated in the front pew, bounded up to the podium, a huge smile on his face. “I luff this man! You are so kind to me and my family! Who vould have thought little Viktor from Turdistan would be in America, an American, in a synagogue? That khe would build synagogue in khonor of khis grandfather, such a kholy man!”
Arthur wiped his eyes, reaching out to hug the man. Viktor hugged him back. When Arthur was able to brea
the again, he said, “On behalf of Ohel Aaron, we wish to present you with this silver pointer that is used by the Torah reader. We think it is appropriate, Viktor, because in all you do you help point the way for our congregation, showing us what we all want to be.”
Shouts of “Mazel tov!” “Bless you!” “Yashar koachl” “Wonderful!” rang out from every corner, or so it seemed to Chaim, who turned around, staring at the congregation. The truth was, he realized, that the well-wishers were strategically seated all over the synagogue to give the appearance of overwhelming adulation. In fact, the synagogue was deeply divided, an equal number of congregants sitting stone-faced, their hands clenched in their laps. For a moment, a swell of hope rose in his chest. Just then, he heard his name called: “Vere is khe? My rabbi?” Viktor shouted. “Khere khe is! Come khere, come khere.” He waved. Reluctantly, Chaim got up and walked toward him. “This is reason I came to your synagogue. This man. Khe is responsible for everything!”
Select members of the synagogue broke out into a fury of foot stamping and applause. And even those unwilling to applaud the new synagogue, found it in themselves to unclench their fists and slap their palms together, joining in the adulation for their rabbi, with whom they felt they enjoyed a special bond, especially since he had been willing to forgo his Superbowl ticket to be with them. Still others sat facing forward without moving a muscle or changing their expression as they lifted their eyes to Chaim Levi, the man who had brought Viktor Shammanov to Ohel Aaron.
Chaim stood firmly sandwiched between Arthur and Viktor, facing the congregation, his physical presence blessing the enterprise, the speech in his pocket crumpling and growing moist from the sweat that now drained from every one of his pores.
In the women’s section, Delilah sat shaking hands and air-kissing furiously, like a queen. She had done it. Pulled it off! Her husband was safe in his job. She was safe in hers. There would be no wandering now, no fear of unemployment. There would be a brand-new, huge, custom-designed house with every luxury, to rival those of even the richest members of the congregation. Chaim would forgive and forget. Their lives would be blessed, floating on calm waters forevermore. She glanced up eagerly at her husband.
