The Beautiful Possible

by Amy Gottlieb

  “You don’t need to tell me,” says Rosalie. “I know everything about Tateh.”

  “You understand so little. Old enough to be a bride, far too young to be a rabbi’s wife.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “You have so much to learn.”

  “Like?”

  “Like you won’t always come first.”

  “So I’m selfish, Ma?”

  Ida folds her arms over her chest. “You’re still a child, that’s all.”

  Rosalie shrugs.

  “Your father used to describe you as a beautiful colt, ready to break out of its pen and gallop. Does this sound like a rebbetzin to you?”

  “Sol understands me,” says Rosalie.

  “Thank God,” says Ida. “A marriage needs at least one who keeps watch.”

  Rosalie returns to the books. Her father’s Chekhov, Dostoyevsky, Pushkin. How could her mother pretend that her own marriage was fixed by tradition? It was anything but. She opens her father’s prayer book and riffles through the pages. The Ashrei prayer he taught her to recite in a singsong melody. The Shema he taught her to recite slowly, because, he said, you want each syllable to feel sad when it departs from your lips. She was five when he taught her those prayers; it could have been yesterday.

  Ida stands next to Rosalie and pulls a thin volume off the shelf, tucks it under her arm.

  “Something I shouldn’t see, Ma?”

  “Every marriage has its secrets.”

  Rosalie knows the contents of her father’s library by heart but she can’t figure out which book her mother is hiding from her.

  “The Spinoza, Ma?”

  “Guess again.”

  “The Mei HaShiloach?”

  “Of course not. I already put that one in the shaimos pile.” Ida smiles. “Tateh’s students won’t understand the Ishbitzer’s teachings, and it’s not a suitable book for a young rabbi and his beautiful bride.”

  Rosalie remembers her father sharing his interpretation of the Ishbitzer Rebbe’s work. God is in all things, even in your doubts and desires. So let your heart be your master; let your life become a sacred story. He insisted she tell no one that he was teaching her a nineteenth-century Hasidic book considered so heretical that Polish Jews would keep it hidden in an outhouse. I can’t teach this to my students. They will learn the language of transgression before they understand their own boundaries.

  Ida carries the book into the kitchen.

  “You hid the Spinoza with the blue cover,” shouts Rosalie. “Right?”

  “Oh, that Spinoza. His writings nearly destroyed our marriage. These books aren’t so innocent. None of them. I carried faith in my bones, from Lublin to Brooklyn, I never wavered. But he—”

  “Tateh was a Hasid, Ma. His doubts only brought him closer to God.”

  “Whatever he was he was. We survived each other and it worked out.”

  Rosalie doesn’t know whether to cry or laugh. She spent her childhood watching her parents’ separate orbits grow distant and then even more remote until something realigned and they began to revolve around each other like the earth circles the sun. Rabbi Shmuel and Ida Wachs, spinning celestial objects. Rosalie would lie in bed at night and listen to her father talk to his students in the living room while her mother hummed in a singsong voice in the bedroom. It wasn’t until after her father died that she found a tin filled with notes he wrote to her mother.

  My head is in the books but every word reminds me of our kisses.

  Buy a chicken and remember to ask the man for some livers on the side. And then pick out a pastry for us. One bite for you, one bite for me, my sweet butterfly.

  While her mother seemed to uphold the wheel of tradition, blessing every morsel of food before she took a bite, Shmuel played with the edges of his beliefs, testing the parameters of his faith. When Rosalie was small, he experimented with keeping Shabbat on a Tuesday, just to see how it would feel. He wore his silk-lined coat, blessed wine and challah, sang zemirot, napped, and meditated. When the sun set he told Rosalie it was a failed experiment. Tuesday cannot be Shabbat. Next time I’ll try Wednesday.

  After her father read a book review that quoted Saint Augustine, he borrowed The Confessions from the Brooklyn Public Library. Then he perused the shelves. Pascal. Rousseau. He peered at the Koran, dabbled in Sufism, considered Buddhism and Zen, but always returned to his beloved Hasidic masters. He told Rosalie that these rabbis gathered sparks from all of human experience, packaged them up for their students so they could taste the essence of the entire world without needing to leave home.

  A year before he died, Shmuel shocked his students by espousing the works of Spinoza alongside his Hasidic texts. He shaved his beard and tucked his tzitzit inside his pants pockets, keeping the fringes of his tallit kattan a secret from the outside world. You are just like me, he had said to Rosalie. The boundaries of this life will not be wide enough to contain your longings.

  Ida’s voice wafts from the kitchen. “It’s your turn now. Grow yourself up.”

  “You mean grow up,” says Rosalie. “Use proper English.”

  “Whatever. As long as you do it.”

  “Why hide the Spinoza, Ma? Tateh taught me everything; I’m not such an innocent.”

  “Of course you’re not. And I didn’t hide the Spinoza.”

  Ida emerges from the kitchen. Her mother looks like a sparrow whose gummy beige shoes keep her tethered to the earth. Rosalie kisses her cheek.

  “I didn’t mean to offend—”

  “This apartment may seem small to you but your father and I lived a big life here. Faith, doubt—everything seeped into these walls.”

  “What did you ever doubt, Ma?”

  “More than anyone will ever know, little rebbetzin.”

  Rosalie laughs. “And what book are you hiding from me?”

  “That’s none of your business. Just remember that as long as you look the part you can be a secret heretic. Be as daring as you want on the inside. And on the outside, you set a nice table on Shabbat, keep the holidays, go to shul for Kol Nidre. And keep quiet. Your life will be hard enough; don’t let anyone pin you down.”

  That’s a comfort, thinks Rosalie.

  “Do you understand what I’m saying?”

  “Of course, Ma.” Rosalie picks up her father’s prayer book, closes her eyes, and recalls their last conversation.

  Don’t squander your wisdom. You may know much more than this man you found.

  Sol is learned. He will be a good rabbi.

  Rabbis come in different flavors, Rosalie. What flavor is your Sol?

  Tateh?

  Is he the God kind of rabbi or the law kind of rabbi? Which does he love more?

  Both, I think.

  And you. Are you in love?

  I am.

  There are many flavors of love too. Be free of him, be devoted to him, both at the same time. Keep your soul open; dream beyond your marriage.

  “Finish up already,” says Ida. “The shaimos man is on his way.”

  Rosalie closes the last book and places it on top of a pile. What she had with her father has ended. She had learned from him, yes. And now she will learn with her new rabbi. Sol will lead her fingers across the page and point out the words that will help her comprehend the mysteries of this life.

  Two months before he died, Rosalie’s father had insisted she attend a lecture by Abraham Joshua Heschel. He knows how to translate Hasidic wisdom into the words American Jews can understand, he had said. Go listen and you’ll see what I mean. At a packed YIVO Conference, Rosalie sat scrunched between an overweight man who reeked of sauerkraut and a handsome rabbinical student whose arm brushed against hers. At first the student edged away from her, but as Heschel spoke she leaned close enough to inhale his aftershave. Rosalie’s comprehension of Yiddish was spotty but when Heschel said, “Books are no more than seeds; we must be both the soil and the atmosphere in which they grow,” the student turned to her and smiled. “Sol K
erem,” he whispered. “Rosalie Wachs,” she whispered back. For the rest of the lecture, she thought only of the man named Sol who sat beside her and decided that he was her bashert, her soul mate.

  Rosalie places Sol’s books in a shopping bag and carries them down to the subway. Her wedding is eight months away. She still has time to find a white flapper dress, just like the one she saw in a bridal magazine, and time to convince Sol that a traditional gown would not suit her at all. She has eight more months of sleeping alone in her childhood bed, plenty of time to consider the ways she loves Sol (how he leans his ear close to her lips when she speaks, how he shuckles in prayer and raises his arms as if to touch God, how he gazes into her eyes whether they speak of China patterns or theology). Even when they disagree over wedding plans, Rosalie feels a quiver behind her knees every time he says her name.

  She glances at the ring on her finger: a large diamond he could barely afford. When he asked her to marry him, she said, You will be the Humphrey Bogart of the rabbis. He laughed and said, And you will be the Lauren Bacall of the rebbetzins. Together we’ll build a pulpit fit for the silver screen. She carries the bag of books tightly, ready to hand it off, father-in-law to son-in-law, rabbi to rabbi. She will find a way to live as a secret heretic, inventing new ways to spool out everything she was taught as a girl: the cycle of the six-day week that links one Shabbat to the next, the holidays with their distinct flavors and outfits—cheese-filled blintzes in the springtime, pungent etrogim for Sukkot, white clothes for Yom Kippur, and stained shirts on Tisha b’Av. Ritual is the clock with which Rosalie measures time; her bones ring with the reliable thrum of the holidays coursing through the seasons.

  Paul Richardson and Walter Westhaus arrive at the Seminary during a late November snowfall. Walter wears his green kurta pajamas from Shantiniketan, with Paul’s tweed jacket draped over his shoulders for warmth. His cloth shoes are caked with snow. As they enter the seminar room, a rabbi hands each man a black satin yarmulke. The rabbinical students slouch around a table, their arms crossed over their narrow ties. Paul talks about his research in India and how one spiritual tradition is porous to another. We are all connected in the unending chain of belief and doubt. Together we can answer each other’s questions.

  Sol wrinkles his nose and turns to his friend Morris. “Welcome to the Seminary Clown Show.”

  “Or a new class in practical rabbinics.”

  “Who’s the sidekick?” asks Sol.

  “A German Jew by way of India,” says Morris. “Testing our tolerance for guilt. Your final exam, gentlemen. In this corner we place a guru and in this corner a Jewish survivor. How will your teachings hold up now?”

  Sol stares at Walter. This man with high cheekbones has come dressed for a Purim party. He hopes someone will bury the yarmulke that covers his long brown stringy hair; surely he picked up microbes on the streets of Bombay. To Sol, Walter does not seem like a Jewish refugee at all, but like a character who stepped out of a storybook he read as a boy. Sol shuts his eyes and wonders if this man is a figment of his imagination, but when he opens them Walter smiles at him.

  Morris turns to Sol. “The refugee likes you,” he whispers.

  Sol gazes down at the table as Paul explains the myth of the eternal return. “Everything cycles back to its cosmic origins,” he says. “Even the Bible considers this, yet much is imperceptible to us. We misread so many cues. How about a line of poetry, Walter?”

  “We cross infinity with every step; we meet eternity in every second.” Walter looks up and smiles. “Rabindranath Tagore.”

  Morris turns to Sol. “What the hell is that supposed to mean? And who is Rabbi Tagore?”

  “I’m guessing Hasidic,” says Sol.

  The Seminary rabbis stand in the back of the room and cast awkward glances at one another. After he finishes his remarks Paul announces that Walter will be joining the rabbinical students for the remainder of the academic year. “Teach my student Hebrew and Bible. Show him how to wander through a text and uncover meaning. One day you will be proud to have known him.”

  Sol Kerem’s father was a Warsaw-born yeshiva student who rose to American prominence as the owner of Kerem’s Brooklyn Kosher Emporium. After he died of a sudden heart attack, his wife Lotte would say, What Chaim could not provide in progeny, he made up for with flanken and braised beef. On Shabbat the Kerem house swelled with visitors who could not afford to buy their own meat. Chaim would sit at the head of the table and pontificate about some minute aspect of Jewish law to the guests who had only come for the food. As a boy Sol stayed at the table for a short time, preferring to sit alone in the kitchen, immersed in an adventure book. On a Shabbat afternoon when he was seven, Sol warmed himself beside the stove while the guests crowded around the dining table, relishing the assortment of cold cuts, stuffed cabbage, and tongue. He was alone in the kitchen when the gas oven exploded and lifted him from his stove-side chair and threw him on the floor, momentarily unconscious, then awake and stunned, leaving him deaf in one ear for the rest of his life.

  Soon after they met at the Heschel lecture, Sol told Rosalie about his deaf ear and she said, “Let me guess which one.” She took in his chocolate eyes and artfully matched sideburns. His plump lips and elegant nose. A faint cleft in his chin. Her Sol was the Casanova of the study hall, the matinee idol of the beit midrash. When he stood before her she focused on his broad shoulders and when he turned she admired the elegance of his slender back. He was a catch, her Sol.

  “You are perfect,” she said to him. “Your deaf ear is your secret to the world.”

  “It’s the left one,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone.”

  “My best secret,” said Rosalie.

  When they announced their engagement, Sol and Rosalie invited their widowed mothers to meet them at Ratner’s Restaurant. The four of them broke an engagement plate in honor of the wedding that was scheduled to coincide with Sol’s graduation from rabbinical school. Ida Wachs and Lotte Kerem wrapped their arms around the couple and wept.

  Rosalie and Sol meet in Riverside Park, just hours after the gossip about the refugee and his guru-escort dissipated into vague cackles. Rosalie pushes the bag of books into Sol’s arms, picks up a handful of snow, takes a lick, and offers it to him. Sol shakes his head and peers into the bag.

  “I feel as if I’m carrying the foundation of our first home,” he says.

  “Careful with that metaphor, rabbi,” says Rosalie. “Books are no more than seeds, remember? Your holy books will only take you so far.”

  Sol turns and kisses her cheek. “You will take me the rest of the way.”

  “Wherever you want to go, sweetheart.”

  “I can’t wait for everything to start,” he says. “Time to shake up a few lives.”

  “That’s ambitious, Sol. People don’t like to change.”

  “But that’s the whole point! Inspire, teach, guide. And along the way, our lives will become so textured—like living doubly! The days will seem ordinary, but the sanctity will shine through.”

  “And what if life proves you wrong? One day you’ll wake up and realize that when Moses received the tablets on Sinai a great myth was born.”

  “Every word of that myth is true.”

  “You have to be kidding.”

  “It’s not literal truth; I’m not an idiot. But the suspension of disbelief permits me to park my faith in the Torah. It’s a choice I make, again and again.”

  Rosalie rolls her eyes. At times Sol seems to be speaking a lofty, foreign language. She knows its vocabulary and idioms, but she prefers to talk about religion with the language she learned from her parents: recipes and rituals flavored with a good Hasidic story. Sol is nothing like her. Find a man who complements you, her mother once said, and you will honor your differences. When they kiss Rosalie loves to rest her fingers on the tips of Sol’s ears and lightly circle the left ear that holds the world in silence. At times Sol reads passages aloud from Maimonides’s Guide for the Perplexed and she
closes her eyes and follows the timbre of his voice, listening to him articulate every syllable as if he is making love to the words.

  Sol tells Rosalie about the men who visited that day: the pompous man who said that all of humanity was sewn from a single piece of spiritual cloth and the Jewish refugee who wore a green nightgown made of thin cotton.

  “Oddballs,” says Sol.

  “Or opportunities, Rabbi Kerem. You have to start behaving like a holy man. Everything in your path has something to teach you.”

  Sol reaches down and scoops a palmful of snow. He shapes it into a tight ball and holds it in his ungloved hand. As the chill seeps in, he thinks about how Walter smiled at him. There were other students in that room; what was Walter trying to say? Rosalie would have an answer, of course; something vaguely mystical and very silly. He was Elijah the prophet. He was the Messiah. He was the hearing that Sol lost in one ear. And of course Rosalie would think that; his fiancée was the daughter of a Hasid.

  “I wish your father had liked me,” says Sol.

  Rosalie laughs. “Oh, sweetness. My father knew my heart. You have nothing to worry about.”

  She pulls the snowball out of his hand, carries his fingers to her lips, and blows warm air on them.

  “Soon,” she says.

  “Eight more months.”

  “No time at all.”

  Barely enough, yet just enough, thinks Sol. Time enough for the last shaping of the clay before he drives out to a pulpit and puts his hand on a lectern and imparts meaning to a sanctuary full of congregants. Time enough to complete the final revisions of his boyhood self, to grow into a proper groom for his bride. Enough time, barely enough. It would take him a lifetime to be ready.

  “Did you choose yet?” asks Sol.

  “I’m still deciding.”

  “A bride needs a dress.”

  “I’m holding out for a flapper.”

  “I can’t make you do anything,” says Sol.

  “Then we understand each other perfectly.”

  Sol’s hand wraps around Rosalie’s and she laces her fingers between his. “She’elah and teshuvah,” says Sol. “Question and answer. Want to play?”