by Leah Lax
No one moved. Sixteen thousand eyes below, plus women and children above, all straining to absorb something infinite from this man. I was among them, with them. We had willed the Rebbe into existence out of collective hope. We felt he was us, all of us. Silent cries filled the hall: Rebbe. Help me give me show me tell me teach me save me. Give me God. Give me me. Rebbe!
The Rebbe scanned the crowd. Here, he seemed to say, let me take that for you.
There was a solid spread of hats and a good distance between the Rebbe and his seat at the table. “Watch this,” the girl said into my ear.
From above, it looked like a tear in quivering black fabric. The Rebbe began to walk forward straight at the dense crowd. At each step, the tear opened a little more and then sealed back behind him as men stepped or fell back in front of him, leaving space for the Rebbe where there had been none a moment before. The Rebbe paid no attention to the people falling away before him. He simply walked forward, nodding and smiling at people who all looked stunned at his attention.
“Krias yam suf,” the girl said. Parting of the Red Sea.
“So,” I said. “The Rebbe is Moses.”
How I wanted to be down there, breathing in the man air, the air of the presence of God. And yet I could hear my mother’s disdainful whisper. They worship him! she hissed in my ear. She had to be wrong, because Seema told me that no Jew ever worships a man or needs an intermediary to God. “Everybody has God’s ear,” Seema told me, “but a saint like the Rebbe has God’s ear a little more.” You have to think for yourself, my mother hissed. But wasn’t I making up my own mind, rather than letting her think for me? I had come on my own. I turned as if turning away from her and dove into the powerful current of reverence and trust in the Rebbe.
Two steps up to the platform, and the Rebbe settled into his red chair before the microphone to give his speeches. For hours. Once he began, I understood so little that it took a while before I realized how distorted the sound was that reached the women’s gallery, how many of those women who could understand Yiddish fluently still couldn’t hear enough to follow. There was little to do but stand there. The spiritual high started to wane. I sighed. The girl who had pulled me in whispered, “It’s hard to hear, I know. Just let your soul absorb it all.”
Seema had told me that the Rebbe filled his talks with quotes from Bible, Talmud, Kabbalah, and classic commentaries, how he teased meaning out of subtle inferences or even omissions in the text. Today’s talks would be recorded, printed, and quickly disseminated for worldwide study. Every speech concluded with the Rebbe’s urging us to obey the Law more, study holy books more, pray more, exalt separate roles for men and for women more. Spread the Word. More. Every speech ended with his promise that the Messiah would come through our efforts. Anticipation of mashiach, the Messiah, ran through the crowd like a current of energy.
The Rebbe finished his sicha speech to a resounding “Amen!” from below and above. We waited with slowing of breath. For a second, I wondered what the Rebbe would say about my wanting to postpone marriage. Then he began to sing. His old voice was hoarse and strong, the melody raw and piercing as a cry, as if we were privy to his intimate conversation with God: Tzamah lecha nafshi. My soul thirsts for You. My flesh thirsts for You, in a land dry and exhausted, devoid of water. The Hasidim sang the same lines back to him: my soul thirsts for You, my flesh thirsts for You. Kamah lecha besari. Hasidim and the Rebbe were lovers who shared a mutual thirst for God, each Hasid focusing his longing for escape from cares on one old figure on a red velvet chair. Each wanted to embrace him, then grab the Rebbe’s coattails and fly with him to God. The Hasidim repeated their song again and again in a growing roar of intensity. My soul thirsts for You, my flesh thirsts for You. Men put hands over their faces, swayed, and cried. The crowd, the current: I was both in the song and of it, filled with it, transported. I, too, closed my eyes to soak in this. It was happening. I was flying, carried far beyond petty hopes or dreams, rocketed out of my fragmented family and deep into this community, with God, with the Rebbe. The refrain was wordless, yamamamama. A roaring, begging cry.
Then, for a moment, I snapped out of it. For a moment, I could see that I was actually removed from that current below, not in the midst of it at all. I was, after all, standing up above, behind glass. How I wanted to dive down there, or, rather, float down to blend invisible among the men and sing out the way the men sang. I wanted to be one of them, one with them, and not just a spectator on the periphery of that spirit.
The Rebbe took up the minor tune again: Kain bakoidesh chazisicha—So in holiness I seek to behold You—and the men again sang their wordless refrain. And so they went, back and forth, Rebbe and Hasid filling the universe and one another, bound together in song and in their reach to God, as I watched from behind the glass above.
BACK IN AUSTIN, I made my way almost every day to the music building, where I settled in with the cello in a tiny practice room and applied rosin to the bow. Scales. Vivaldi. Austere, majestic Bach. I submerged myself in a pool of pure sound. As my bow hand floated down and up, right and left, the lonely ache clarified, intensified. Desire flowed from me into the cello through my hands. All of the words that were always around me—so many words, from professors and textbooks and dead writers and philosophers; from Seema, the Bible, and Hasidic discourses; from Rabbi Rakovsky, Tuvia, the Rebbe, Isser, Rabbi Geller, and Rabbi Frumen; from past voices still vivid in memory, still talking to me, my parents and sisters and Ana—they all fell away. Music, song, was a kind of home. Only when alone with my music did I shut away words and open my ears to feeling; in that warm pool, even my pain seemed a right and good thing. I let the old ache bloom. The notes enveloped me, nurtured me. Warmed me. Vibrating through bone.
MORE THAN A WEEK after the farbrengen with the Rebbe, I was back out on Kingston Avenue, headed over to visit Seema’s niece. By now it seemed natural to pass the Rebbe’s photograph in every shop window. The sky was the blue-gray of early winter, but it didn’t seem too cold for the women squeezing fruit at the grocery on the corner with their bundled children and double strollers, or the kids headed for the candy store, or the striding men with their conscious bearing, or the laughing teens three and four abreast in shoulder-bumping groups. But now, for the first time, I noticed black people on the street as well, as if a transparent overlay had come down on the world I’d come to explore. The guy on Eastern Parkway who’d spit on my foot had made me see: real people, in slacks or dresses, old or stylish, with jackets or without, in uniforms or three-piece suits; kids with school lunch kits, coats hanging open; teens in ’fros, hands jammed into front pockets, big pick combs in back, or baseball caps pulled low. But I saw not a glance or word between them and Hasidim. Black neighbors were invisible. In fact, both groups seemed invisible to each other, each moving on a different plane. When one woman passed, I said, “Hello!” She looked at me strangely, an angry face, and moved on. I was shaken watching people who didn’t see one another. And I hated being hated. As if it would make a difference, I decided, I love the Hasidim, but after I meet the Rebbe, I’m going home.
“LEAH! IT’S TIME FOR YOU TO GO IN.” That was the Rebbe’s personal secretary, with his mottled beard, thick black glasses, and tired face, the same man from whom I had backed away in Lubavitch headquarters the day after I’d arrived. Now I was back in that same building outside the Rebbe’s office after midnight.
“Oh!” I said, and followed him, away from a waiting family with a sleeping child, a black-hatted yeshiva boy, a group of Hasidim from France and another from Israel, and a non-Jewish couple with polite demeanor, all seeking the Rebbe’s blessings. I knew some would wait until dawn.
Thanks in part to Mrs. Renner, after two weeks in Crown Heights I had gone back to the Rebbe’s headquarters and requested, begged for, an appointment. Seema had taught me well: to stand before the Rebbe is the quintessential Hasidic experience. I should meet the Rebbe’s eyes and soak in his wisdom. Mrs. Renner told me to pray and
recite psalms to prepare myself, to try to make myself into a proper vessel to receive the Rebbe’s blessing.
I had waited over three hours, surrounded by the whispering of psalms like wind in old leaves. There had been other sounds: shuffling feet, murmurs, the love song between Hasidim and rebbe at the farbrengen that still lingered in the air, hum of collective awe, and voices from the sack of mail I had seen brought in by a postman: Rebbe! Show me what you can see and I cannot, you with your vision; the world is blinding me, I’m afraid of tomorrow. Afraid of myself. Every Hasid poured out his or her most private wishes and fears onto the page, requesting healing and blessings and guidance. To Our Master Our Teacher Our Rav May You Live Good and Long Years. But Mrs. Renner had warned me. I had to be ready to carry out whatever he would say. “The Rebbe’s blessing is a command.” I would forfeit free choice, which was anyway a frightening thing to own. But you will no longer be anxious or uncertain when the Rebbe makes your decision for you. That is the gift for trusting him.
And yet in my letter I had admitted my fear about doing what I was told to do. Was I hoping that he would take away those fears and help me conform to my “destiny”? Was I hoping for a special concession? Did I understand I was abdicating control over my life by asking? I didn’t know, would never know. “I know a Hasidic girl must marry,” I wrote, “but I don’t feel ready.” And then, “I want to travel. I want to study.”
The Rebbe’s secretary was holding the door open for me. I had expected this fear. My only clear thought was that I had to force myself into proper awed demeanor. From the doorway, a freeze-frame moment, the Rebbe looked up at his desk with something like fatherly patience. Perhaps I softened a bit then. He was holding my letter as if he’d just read it, looking over white plastic glasses set low on his nose beneath blue eyes. At me. In these moments, you are the Rebbe’s sole interest. The Rebbe’s concentration is superhuman, his gaze so total that it makes people whole. The office was large and plain. Books lined shelves along a wall, his scarred desk dotted with stacks of papers. An old wooden chair sat beside the desk amiably backward, facing him. I walked in, paused, gathered myself, then stood before him straight and tall. “Zitz. Zitz!” the Rebbe said, and pointed to the chair. Sit. Sit! But Mrs. Renner had warned me that the Rebbe would tell me to sit. She said that I must ignore this, that a Hasid must stand before his rebbe.
So I stood like a soldier. Standing there, I couldn’t see one old man simply, kindly waiting and looking at me. I saw a symbol. I saw the entire Lubavitch movement and its history back to Shnuer Zalman, eighteenth-century founder. I saw all the rebbes since, and all the Hasidim. The whole world of Hasidim was looking at me and through me, out of the Rebbe’s eyes, demanding I meet their challenge, that I measure up to them and give myself to the Rebbe, yet they were still offering to enfold me, uphold me. Seven generations of rebbes were offering love plus their vision into the unseen in place of my blindness—they would show me God’s purpose for me. They would show me the shape of tomorrow, clarify the consequence of my next step before I took it—light my way. I would never falter. Rebbe, Father, here are my fears. My basest desires. Take them away and help me not to be me. Make the Hasidim my home.
Then he spoke. “You will build a binyan aday ad,” the Rebbe said. “An everlasting edifice of a Jewish home and family.”
Binyan aday ad was the Rebbe’s blessing for marriage. My mouth fell open. The blessing that is a command. Travel. Study. I’m not ready. Can’t feel or want. My brain was spinning. The Rebbe commanded me to marry. I’d been emulating the Hasidim for two years and still, in quiet moments, had real doubts, but in that moment in front of the Rebbe, I melted and was finally swept away. The Rebbe was more than a man. He was a tidal wave.
My path to marriage as a Hasidic girl was set and sealed. There would be a matchmaker. We would build our home, my husband and I, as proud evidence of the Rebbe’s command. An eternal edifice. But it worked both ways—the command was a blessing. We would be successful because the Rebbe had blessed us. I could forever excise the yearning Hasidic rebel and her strange desires.
The Rebbe coughed into his handkerchief. It seemed the noise was a signal for the secretary to open the door. “Leah!” the secretary said. “You have to come out now!”
I looked to the Rebbe for permission; there was a moment between us, and he nodded. I backed out as a Hasid backs out, without turning his back on his Rebbe, ever-ready soldier who has abdicated his desires, who doesn’t even begin to formulate his own will. That is how I backed out, my conflict with this community and their non-relations with neighbors forgotten, deaf now as well to my mother’s hiss in my ear. I backed out carrying my mission, my stunned purpose, my imminent future, with me under that gaze.
Ten
Austin. Levi wakes up in the morning, gathers his clothes, goes into the bathroom in his pajamas, and locks the door behind him. I remember that vehement girl in Minnesota wrapped in her towel and her shout of “My modesty is before God!” and I don’t protest. I wait outside the locked door. But I think, standing there. In spite of religion, we’ve grown freer. But behind me, beyond this closed door, there is still the hidden squeak of the shower handle, the sound of rushing water. Why so strict about modesty? I wish we could brush teeth and get dressed together. Why can’t we have easy intimacy side by side? Why doesn’t he seem to need casual touch? I want him to hug me, warm and quick.
I tell myself that being with Levi feels like home, but I need to make sure it stays that way. But how can I when I can’t touch the line of his spine through his clothes whenever I want and with that touch instantly be able to picture the exact way he torques his back under the shower, how he closes his eyes and turns up his face in the spray, how muscles in his wet calves form angled ridges under the stream? After we part each morning, I walk across campus and there are brief moments when my gaze falls on a curved form, the flip of a girl’s hair in the sun. I don’t blush when I do that anymore. I just walk on, with vague longing. I want to feel at least that for Levi. But how can I, when even the sight of him dressing in the morning isn’t familiar? He’s becoming another ever-receding figure. He is a feeling I can’t capture. Even if I could open this locked door, there would be another door, and another.
One night, I cross the divide and scoot in beside him on the narrow bed. I snuggle in and draw his sleeping arm around me. Then I lie there unable to sleep. I want gentler warmth spoon-fit to mine. His body is inflexible, too large and hard. Why won’t this emptiness go away? I entwine my fingers in his sleeping hand, but his is large and indelicate, and his arm is too broad and heavy, pressing on my chest. Why am I here? This bed is another planet. I try to breathe. I can feel nothing but the deep, deep need to feel. I begin to blame him for this.
September 18, 1975. Five weeks after our wedding. Levi comes home from the university and drops a copy of the Austin American Statesman on the table. Today’s headline: Patty Hearst has been arrested. She was kidnapped nineteen months ago, just after I left home. Then she joined her captors’ cause, joined their crimes. I think of Hearst all day, and over the following months the lingering image of her in handcuffs doesn’t fade. At the oddest moments, I think, Poor, deluded thing, now she’s all locked up.
IT’S THE FOLLOWING SUMMER, JUNE 1976, our country’s bicentennial. At the grocery store and in gas stations along the route to Dallas we find minutemen figurines and American flags lined up at the registers. We stay with Levi’s parents; Levi often consults his father by phone about school and career plans. His mother has purchased new dishes and a cooking pot for us and keeps them in a sealed box so we can cook our kosher food there and have meals together. Their home shines, ordered and clean. But out of a mysterious draw that rises as soon as we get to Dallas, out of obedience to the Law, out of guilt, as soon as we arrive I leave Levi with his parents and head out to see my mother. She lives by herself now. Amy has moved out, and Debbie is long gone. My mother recently moved my father into a nearby apartment.
I park behind her old blue Malibu, the same one in which I learned to drive, next to the cottonwood I used to climb to get up on the roof where I would read and dream. The tree has grown tall and lush, with abundant heart-shaped leaves, its smooth trunk now thickened. But the house has shrunk. The foundation is cracked and shifted, and the porch is slanted, broken. At the far end of the porch sits my old, dirty rocking horse on a rusted spring. The front door is unlocked. I step in.
In peripheral vision, the ghost of my four-year-old self is climbing onto the rocking horse. The little girl is in home-sewn elastic-waist shorts and a sleeveless top. She’s barefoot, and her long, sand-colored hair looks as if it hasn’t met a brush in a while. Her legs are brown from the sun and covered in chigger bites. She’s too small to reach the wooden foot pegs, so she balances on the pegs on tiptoe and leans forward to grip the red-painted handles. She finds the musical creaks and squeaks from the spring delightful, and swings herself into a blur of swaying color. I remember now, how sure I was then, on that rocking horse, that I was in a dizzying gallop away from my parents and sisters and this house.
