An Observant Wife

by Naomi Ragen

  And even though this was exactly the kind of disaster she’d been dreading ever since her father walked down the aisle, now that it had actually happened, she found herself strangely indifferent. So much had happened to her over the last two years!

  She’d experienced unfathomable grief, searing hatred, jealousy, bitterness, and finally a painful push into adulthood and maturity. There were things she understood now that even a few months before she had not. For example, the fact that human beings were imperfect and not all tragedies could be prevented or even correctly assigned to an individual perpetrator for absolute blame. She understood, too, that many of her schoolmates and others around her, untempered by the kind of tragedy that had shaped her young life, were simply silly children whose opinions on most subjects didn’t matter. Their simplistic view of life—to which she had always subscribed—dividing people into saints and sinners, “good” families deserving of the best shidduchim and “unworthy” families whose background, finances, and history relegated them to Grade B or even Grade C shidduch prospects, was simply ridiculous.

  Wasn’t her own family the perfect example that disproved that rule? As far as yichus was concerned, no one could deny their distinguished pedigree as descendants of European Ashkenazi Torah scholars who had settled in Brooklyn and become the much-lauded and much-loved members of Boro Park’s elite. But on the other hand, there was the difficult and undeniable matter of Zissele Lehman, her mother, who had died by her own hand, an unforgivable sin that the family had managed somehow to shroud in secrecy, even arranging for burial on sacred ground forbidden to suicides. Her father’s defection from the study house, and his choice of an unacceptable partner, had also somehow been smoothed over.

  But there was a tipping point, she thought. If this latest rumor gained momentum, it was going to be bad, even very bad. Even Bubbee, the resident family expert in quashing such scandals, was going to be hard-pressed to do anything about it. This was true because people so loved to have their suspicions confirmed, to feel that common wisdom and gossip were ultimately vindicated and that the snobbery against outsiders from those born into well-connected religious families, far from being an ugly display of the bad character and causeless hatred strictly forbidden by the Torah, was nothing of the kind. Oh no! If the community had been against the match between Yaakov Lehman and Leah Howard, it had only been for the purest of motives, they told themselves, because the community was wise and learned in the ways of putting up walls to protect the precious society they had created out of the ashes of their European ancestors, the burned-down yeshivas of Poland and Lithuania.

  We came to America bereft of everything and rebuilt and prospered, they told themselves. And this rebuilding and this prosperity must be protected at all costs from the invasion of destructive hordes, which included murderously hostile, ignorant, and hateful gentiles of all colors and races, as well as Jewish outsiders who came banging on the door wanting to abandon their meaningless secular lives and partake of the light and joy of the community that had been rebuilt with such ceaseless toil after the Holocaust.

  But one couldn’t open the door too widely. No, indeed. One moldy potato tossed into a pile of perfect produce was enough to spread the rot, to spoil years of painstaking educational efforts to nurture the next generation of Torah scholars and faithful, God-fearing Jews. Vigilance was necessary. Which is why Yaakov Lehman should never have married Leah Howard, the community decided. The music and the naked dancing were to be expected. It was inevitable, whether or not it had actually happened.

  Shaindele understood all this intuitively, revealing to her just how far she had traveled in her beliefs from her childhood and from the community in which she had grown up. Only a few months ago, such a rumor would have started her down a spiral of humiliation and devastation ending in a bitter confrontation with her father and Leah. But now, she had no intention of mentioning it at all. Why should she give the perpetrators the satisfaction of causing heartache and tension between her parents?

  Honestly, she felt sorry for Leah. A rumor like this once started never really went away. It was as sticky as superglue, adhering forever to those it shamed. Whatever the truth, Leah honestly didn’t deserve what was coming her way. But she was mature enough to understand that she, Shaindele, was helpless to do anything about it. It was not for nothing the sages compared repairing the damage caused by loshon hara to gathering feathers from a pillow shaken out in the wind. Go talk to everyone who had heard or was spreading this rumor! Go find them! And even if they could be tracked down somehow, what could you say to convince them that what they had heard, what they so wanted to believe, was monstrously wrong?

  “It’s their sin,” her friend Shulamis comforted, her kind blue eyes narrowed, and her pretty, soft mouth pinched. She was a new friend, recently transferred from the women’s seminary in Gateshead, England, as her father took up a prominent rabbinical post in a prestigious Torah institution known for its emphasis on perfecting one’s character traits, or middos. Unlike the other girls, she was meticulously careful never to speak or listen to a word of loshon hara. The other girls, however, had kept their distance, unsure of how this would affect their own reputations.

  Walking back into her classroom after recess, Shaindele stared straight ahead. To her surprise, instead of mortification and helplessness, she felt a sudden surge of strength. Let them talk then, the useless cows! God heard all, saw all. He would decide who deserved to be punished. As it is written in the Yom Kippur prayers: He alone “brings down low and raises on high.”

  She had embarked on a new path in life, she told herself, one that would shock everyone she knew—especially her family. But she didn’t care. Why should she? Had concern for the family reputation prevented anyone in her family from doing precisely what they wanted, and the consequences for everyone—herself most particularly—be damned? So who cared that this rumor about Leah would shorten yet another leg on the already shaky stool that was her shidduch chances, putting them in danger of complete collapse? Who wanted to get married anyway? What she wanted, she realized, was something else.

  Living in a house with newlyweds had brought other ideas to the forefront of her mind. Day after day, she was witness to the interaction between her father and her stepmother: the way they stood beside each other doing the dishes, their shoulders almost touching, exchanging warm, secret smiles. The little, unexpected bursts of laughter. The way her father sang Eishes Chayil to Leah on a Friday night, his blue eyes deepening in color, his forehead glistening with a newfound youth. The way Leah touched him, so casually and delicately, her hand seeking a shoulder, a finger, his back. How they were together had awakened something within her, something new: a curiosity, a longing, to know more of that great mystery that existed between men and women.

  Until now, she had found no outlet for her desires, except to buy a ticket and take a seat on the staid, socially acceptable shidduch merry-go-round. But that wasn’t what she wanted. First, she felt much too young. And second, it wasn’t a husband she was looking for. What did she need a husband for? All she wanted was to simply explore how it would feel to be with a young man who would look at her the way her father looked at Leah. What was wrong with that?

  Up until now, it had been hopeless. But all by herself, she had finally found a solution, which albeit completely socially unacceptable, was one that felt right to her. And even though at the moment it was more like a fantasy than reality, still its promise lay close to her heart. She realized, of course, that if it were ever exposed, there would be hell to pay. But that only made it more thrilling, increasing her excitement and her desire.

  “You should ask your parents about what’s being said,” Shulamis suggested, interrupting her thoughts. “Maybe even talk to the rav? He’d put an end to it.”

  But Shaindele had stopped listening, her mind a few blocks away. She blushed. Let her father and stepmother and Bubbee deal with this. It had nothing to do with her. She had a life of her own, she thought
with sudden joy.

  8

  THE BOY FROM THE PIZZA PARLOR

  It was one of the few places where young men and young women mingled in Boro Park: Moishy’s Kosher Pizza and Dairy on Fourteenth Avenue. Children and teenagers stopped by on their way home from school or ran over an hour after Shabbos ended, magically already starving despite having stuffed themselves all day. But you didn’t have to be hungry to order a slice from Moishy’s. Even when you had no appetite at all and had no intention of going in, the smell wafting out into the street of baking dough, melting cheese, and tomato sauce fragrant with basil and oregano drew you in like sea sirens.

  In September, right after school started but before the High Holidays, Shaindele noticed a new boy behind the counter. She realized he was a little older than the last one as she studied his handsome dark eyes and the attractive hollows emphasizing his high cheekbones. She watched, almost mesmerized, as he insouciantly flicked his thick, dark bangs coolly out of his eyes at regular intervals while opening and closing the heavy oven doors to check on the dough’s progress.

  “I’ve never seen him here before,” she whispered to Shulamis, who took a quick look and then piously averted her eyes.

  “Don’t you know who that is?” interjected a girl who was one year behind in school but a very well-informed and talented yenta and professional buttinsky. “It’s Duvid Halpern, the principal’s son. They say he got in trouble in yeshiva, and his rebbe kicked him out.”

  “That’s not what I heard,” another girl jumped right in. She was two years younger than Shaindele and loved attention. Everyone turned to her.

  “Really, I don’t think we ought to be—” Shulamis began but was immediately hushed by the others.

  “What did you hear?” Shaindele encouraged the girl, dying to know.

  “I heard he dropped out of Yeshiva Gedolah in Lakewood. That he wants to go to Yeshiva University, to be a doctor or a dentist.”

  “College!” Shulamis whispered, scandalized.

  All the girls were staring now, but he ignored them. He was shockingly clean-shaven, and his bare arms were tan beneath the rolled-up sleeves of his white, button-down yeshiva boy shirt. The skin of his neck—barely visible beneath the carelessly undone collar button—was the color of a delicious latte.

  One of the handsome Halpern boys, Shaindele thought, wondering where one got a tan in September in Boro Park. It must be left over from the summer, which meant he’d been lying around on the forbidden beaches in Coney Island or out in the Rockaways, violating a long, long list of well-known and clearly stated rabbinical prohibitions that included indulging in mixed swimming (males and females sharing the same ocean) or ogling almost-naked women. Was she shocked, appalled? Or pleased? She honestly didn’t know.

  Without even realizing it, her mind slowly began to undress him. Off went the black jacket and tie he wasn’t even wearing—uniform of every other yeshiva boy she had ever seen—and then the white shirt, the tzitzis, and the undershirt. Before she could even consider stopping herself, there he was, practically naked except for a bathing suit, sitting for all the world like some shegetz on forbidden sands.

  She blushed deeply.

  To their disappointment, someone else came to take their order, a short, heavy Israeli in his late forties, Moishy himself.

  Secretly, she followed the young man’s every move as he put on an apron and moved inside the alcove behind the pizza ovens in the narrow space that fronted the floury counters with their bins of yellow and white cheese and big, red vats of sauce until she could barely make him out. A sense of irrational loss welled up in her heart. Subtly changing places behind the counter, she got a much better view.

  Her heart beating furiously, she watched as his graceful hands turned white with flour, conscious of their strength and competence as he kneaded the dough, then pommeled and flattened it mercilessly with a lethal-looking rolling pin. But there was delicacy, too, in the long fingers as they stretched the dough thin without tearing it. And just as she thought he had finished, he lifted the whole disc on his palms, tossing it thrillingly in the air, then catching it deftly just as it seemed it might fall.

  “Maybe stop showing off already?” Moishy shouted at him.

  A sudden, irrational hatred welled up inside her, filling her eyes with tears as they narrowed in hostility toward Moishy. How dare he speak that way! She looked anxiously at the young man to see if he’d been wounded, but his face was turned away from her. It was then she noticed it: his feet. Even though he was standing in the same place, his feet were moving endlessly with a sure, jazzy rhythm—right foot forward, left foot back and behind, then right foot over and back, responding to music only he could hear.

  She lifted her eyebrows. Where does a yeshiva boy learn how to dance? Where can I learn how to dance? Her whole body tingled, thrilled.

  From then on, she could not pass Moishy’s without slowing down, her heart pounding faster even blocks away at the very thought that he might be there, that she might catch a glimpse of the long, dark bangs, the tiny triangle of tanned flesh beneath the open collar. Of course, she did not even dream of speaking to him, the very idea making her quiver with helplessness. What would she say to him, the principal’s son, the brother of her nemesis, the insufferable Freidel?

  But Duvie-leh (as she thought of him—in her heart of hearts, they were on the most familiar of terms) was nothing like his snobbish family, she told herself, determined not to allow the scantness of the information on which such a conclusion was necessarily based to interfere in any way with her daydreams. No, Duvie-leh was a sensitive soul, too sensitive for the brutal yeshiva world that demanded total dedication, total commitment.

  Had he been, perhaps, less attractive—say, five foot three, with a mousy-colored short beard and glasses—perhaps Shaindele Lehman would have reached the same conclusion that most right-thinking citizens of Boro Park had already arrived at about Duvie: that he was a yeshiva bum who had neither respect for his parents nor fear of God. There was no other explanation for a boy who should be diligently poring over the Talmud in Lakewood choosing instead to pour tomato sauce over pizza dough while imitating Michael Jackson dance moves in Moishy’s on Fourteenth Avenue.

  While at the time she did not consciously realize this, her defiance of this common Boro Park wisdom signaled a wide-ranging and dramatic turning point for Shaindele Lehman, a silent rejection of everything that had been drummed into her since childhood. While this had yet to find any tangible expression, it was an upheaval in the making that would soon upend her life in ways she could not have imagined.

  * * *

  “Vus machstu, Yankele?”

  Through the earsplitting screech of the dirty old F train to Brooklyn, Yaakov heard the diminutive of his name that no one who knew him ever used. He was Reb or Rav Yaakov to those who were his friends and acquaintances. Standing in the unbearably crowded train, he lifted his heavy, exhausted head to search for the speaker. What he saw was a vaguely familiar face he couldn’t quite place. Someone he knew from shul? A neighbor, perhaps?

  “Feivel, from the chair gmach.” The man chuckled, noticing his confusion.

  The man from across the street who had loaned them chairs for the shiva. Yaakov’s face reddened. So now they were the best of friends? Yankele? He felt his temper rise, forcing him to summon all that remained of his self-control after a soul-shriveling first week at a job he had never wanted.

  “Shalom, Reb Feivel,” he answered wearily.

  Someone in front of them vacated a seat, exiting the train. Yaakov eyed it longingly, but before he could make a move, Feivel swiftly settled himself into it, smiling up without apology.

  Yaakov shifted from foot to foot, giving him a weak smile in return.

  “My wife tells me your family are lovers of music,” he began with a snicker.

  Yaakov looked at his smirking face, only half hearing him. “What?”

  “That you love music!” the man shouted above the din
of the train.

  Yaakov stared at him, bewildered.

  His eyebrows shot up. “Nu, you don’t know? You haven’t heard?”

  “Heard what?”

  He shook his head. “The whole neighborhood is talking, Yankele.”

  Now there could be no mistake. The use of the unfamiliar nickname was meant as an insult. Yaakov stiffened.

  “May God bless you, my friend, but I’m not sure what you are trying to say.”

  “Your wife, your children, dancing practically naked to goyish music. The whole street heard them and saw them. You need to find out what happens at home when you are not there, my friend.”

  Yaakov felt his head spin. For a sickening moment, he actually thought he might faint. But the thought of giving this disgusting person an opportunity to offer him a helping hand suddenly gave him strength.

  “In our home, we listen to music, not loshon hara. And you’d do better to learn a few dance steps instead of using your feet to run around bearing tales. As it is written: Thou shall not go up and down as a talebearer among thy people.”

  The man’s mouth dropped open, but before he could think of a worthy response, Yaakov wound his way shakily through the crowded train, opening the door between cars and walking through until he had distanced himself as far as he was able.

  To his relief, there was an empty seat. He collapsed into it gratefully, pressing his hands to his forehead to stop the spinning and wipe away the newly formed beads of sweat as he struggled to decipher what had just happened. Had his transformation from Torah scholar to accountant stripped him instantaneously of any dignity so that a virtual stranger felt comfortable accosting him in public with this vile story? And what could it possibly mean? If there had been some troubles with busybody neighbors, surely Leah would have mentioned it, no?