by J. S. Margot
By tradition, their engagement would take place behind closed doors. But before that happened, Isaac wanted to give her a very special introduction to New York, the city where the young couple would live.
His first plan had been to treat Elzira to a helicopter tour above the Big Apple. That way, his future wife could admire all the famous skyscrapers—the Flatiron, Empire State and Chrysler Buildings, the Trump and Twin Towers—from above, and she’d see with her own eyes that Central Park, where they would stroll with their children, was as big as Belgium. However, he’d gathered from the last conversation he’d had with Elzira that she wasn’t so crazy about air travel: on long flights she took a pill her mother gave her. “Mummy suffers from a very acute fear of flying. If it was up to her, she’d be given a general anaesthetic just after fastening her safety belt.”
So Isaac didn’t charter a helicopter but a luxury yacht. “A kosher private yacht, with captain, cook and waiter. We sailed through New York harbour and past the Statue of Liberty.”
Me: “So while you were afloat Isaac got down on his knees and proposed to you?”
She: “We, les juifs, don’t kneel. Not when we pray. Nor when the man asks the woman to marry him.”
Unfortunately it was raining when they set off. And as they’d left the shelter of the harbour the weather had got worse; a grey curtain of rain and mist had hung between them and the Manhattan skyline the whole time. The boat had rolled. She’d found the heat of the cabin oppressive, but it was too wet to go on deck for a breath of fresh air.
She’d tried her hardest to enjoy the cruise, had strained every sinew to keep smiling and not betray the fact she’d rather have been dropped into the subway blindfold than toss about on the Hudson in this vile weather. She knew how important this trip was to them both. She appreciated the effort Isaac had made, didn’t want to hurt her future spouse, didn’t want to mess up the engagement. Not even when she saw the soup in her plate sloshing back and forth.
She’d grown dizzy and nauseous. She’d wanted to massage her temples to relieve the pressure in her head, but she was scared to show how ill she felt: he might think her affected. So she’d placed her hands on either side of her plate. The wind whipped up, attacking the boat. Ever bigger waves thudded against the side and washed over the deck. In a panicky reflex she’d grabbed hold of Isaac’s arm, held on to it, squeezed it. “That’s against Jewish laws, c’est terrible, on n’est pas marié, zelfs niet fiancé—not married or even engaged—and I touched him.”
We talked for over two hours. By the end of the conversation I’d managed to get her to laugh. But she refused to see the harmlessness of this “slip”.
I learnt that the young couple, in consultation with their families, had already pencilled in some possible wedding dates. All they had to do was pick the best one, and bien sûr, of course the wedding would take place in Antwerp; she and Mummy still had to find out whether the hotels, preferably the ones in the Jewish neighbourhood, would have enough rooms on those dates and not charge top rates.
“We’re getting married in the Romi Goldmuntz cultural centre.”
“Oh, so not in your synagogue?” I asked, after all these years still ignorant of the most basic customs and rituals.
“You can, but you don’t have to,” she said. “The rabbi conducts the ceremony, but he can do that anywhere, so we’d prefer it to be at Romi Goldmuntz in Nerviërsstraat, which has big function rooms. Lots of weddings and parties are held there, really lots. Jewish weddings don’t take long. Don’t have to take long, I should say. Sometimes it’s almost like in Las Vegas. If you don’t watch out, you’re married before you know it. It is suffisant that, in the presence of two kosher witnesses, a man says ‘Harei at mekudeshet li b’tabaat zu k’dat Moshe v’Yisrael’ to a woman and hands her a ring, and les deux sont mariés!”
“Can I be a kosher witness?” The stupid question popped out before I knew it.
“You hear stories about jokers acting out such a ceremony as if it were a play. And girls falling for it. They joined in the play—as they thought—creating leur propre drame—their very own drama. Only an official divorce could free them again.”
I didn’t tell her, but after a few years of brief romantic escapades, love had once again entered my life. I was lying naked, unmarried and unengaged, telephone in hand, in the arms of Martinus.
“You’ll really like Isaac,” Elzira was sure. “He’s smart and so funny.”
Thirteen
If I occasionally had the temerity, even briefly, to think I could penetrate the millefeuille of Jewish culture, I was soon disabused of this idea.
By now I’d chosen to live by my pen, and was writing articles for newspapers and magazines. Reporting out-of-the-ordinary stories in our seemingly ordinary world: that was my forte. I wanted to write a story on the shadchan.
I called the Schneiders. I still knew their telephone number by heart. Still know it even now. In an age of phones without memory buttons, I must have dialled it hundreds of times.
Mrs Schneider was surprised and pleased to hear from me. I told her a little about my work, and my wish to write an article about the Jewish tradition of matchmakers.
“Jakov’s essays helped you well,” she laughed. “Votre journalisme est né chez nous. Your journalism was born at our house.”
I didn’t tell her I’d started on my first novel.
She said that in her community, marriage mediation was regarded as an affaire religieuse, a sacred matter, and that I would have to treat the issue with delicacy.
“Could you give me an introduction to a shadchan?” I asked.
Mrs Schneider didn’t see any objection. She gave me the telephone numbers of two Antwerp-based matchmakers, adding that I should pass on her respectful greetings, and in the case of Mrs Rosenbaum her most cordial greetings, because Mrs Rosenbaum had matched Elzira and Isaac, and the two would marry shortly!
I rang Mrs Rosenbaum.
“You are qui?”
“A journalist and a friend of the Schneiders.”
“Aaron et Moriel Schneider?”
“Yes. Mrs Schneider asked me to pass on her most cordial greetings.”
“But you are not Jewish?”
“That’s correct, Mrs Rosenbaum. I’d like to write an article about your profession: how you tackle the matter of mediating between people, and why your knowledge and expertise are so important within your tradition.”
“We have nothing to gain by allowing others to pry into our affairs. I refuse to talk to you.”
“But Mrs Schneider—”
“I will ring Mrs Schneider.”
The conversation with the other matchmaker followed an almost identical pattern. Unglaublich, this shadchan muttered several times at the other end of the line. And: “The less people know about our way of life the better.”
“I’m sorry, I—”
She hung up without saying goodbye.
That same day Mrs Schneider was rung by two furious matchmakers. Their reactions had stunned her, and she rang, apologetically, to tell me so. The fact that her community closed ranks to keep outsiders at bay wasn’t new to her: when I appeared on their horizon she herself had been a fervent supporter of this approach. But Mrs Schneider had got used to my presence. And that was the nice thing about the whole affair: she’d forgotten that I too was an outsider. Over the years, the Schneiders had come, in some tiny way, to regard me as one of them.
I experienced something similar with Elzira.
In the run-up to getting married, she moved back in with her parents for a while. She made good use of these months to plan the wedding. And to get her driving licence.
She asked me to help her with the theoretical part of the driving test. Not that she needed my help; she could have managed perfectly well on her own. But any excuse to relive ol
d times just once more was good enough for her and me.
“So your father’s teaching you to drive,” I said.
“No. I’m taking lessons.”
“How’s that possible?”
“I don’t understand you,” Elzira said.
“How is it okay for you, as an unmarried Jewish woman, to be taught by a man? A car is an enclosed space, right? Or do you always have a chaperone?”
She grinned. “You know more about us than some liberal Jews.”
She admitted that driving lessons for women were a borderline case. Her parents didn’t have a problem with it. Nor did she. And Isaac hadn’t objected. As long as it didn’t have tinted windows, she and her circle regarded a car as a transparent space. In the daytime, at least. As soon as it got dark, there was no way she should sit in a car with a man who wasn’t a relative, not even if he was an instructor.
She was being taught by a non-Jewish driving instructor who specialized in Jewish pupils.
“He can even a little Yiddish!”
“Can even?”
“Can even speak.”
“So he can speak Yiddish?”
“That’s what I said!”
“Well, I’ve never seen a Hasidic woman driving,” I joked, “neither here nor in Bnei Brak.”
“Some of them drive, you know, don’t underestimate them!”
“Where do they learn?”
“Oh, if you saw them drive, you wouldn’t ask.” She chuckled. “They look like they’ve never had a lesson in their lives. But their menfolk are worse! Hasidic men haven’t any idea how to drive in a city. Have you never encountered them? In your own car? Have they never nearly knocked you off your bike or run you down on the pavement?”
She sounded cheerful, as if she felt good about life. That made me happy.
“How do those women learn to drive?” I wanted to know the answer.
“They go to a driving school. But no one’s allowed to know. That’s the difference with me. I have the instructor pick me up at home, and from here l’école starts. Hasidic women have themselves picked up at a place where no one knows them. They take the bus to a suburb where they’re sure they can practise without being seen. Or they get their husbands to take them there. A bit like when I learnt to ride a bike,” she laughed. “It has to be done in secret.”
“A female friend could go along.”
“Sometimes that happens. Mais on ne veut pas stimuler les women to get driving licences. It’s not encouraged. Not by Hasidim. Or by our community. Mummy’s been driving since she was eighteen. She just hates parking in cities, especially when there are other cars behind her.” Another peal of laughter. Israel had given her a more relaxed, mature perspective on her religion.
When the time came for her test, she asked if I wouldn’t mind sitting in the back of the car. “Then perhaps I’ll be less nervous.”
She did the test drive perfectly. Though she was briefly flummoxed when, before we all got in the car, the examiner shook her hand. Afterwards she told me: “I’d been told by other girls that he’d do that. I shook his hand, it wasn’t a problem for me. Some girls refuse, and some examiners react by being stricter on them, even failing them, some say, but I don’t believe that.”
“It’s kind of weird that I’m only asking you this now, but why don’t you shake hands? Everyone knows that in our society, shaking hands is socially desirable. You put yourself at a disadvantage by not doing it. And the same will apply in your new home, the United States.”
“If a man touches the skin of a woman who is not his spouse, he can get envie in her, become desirous of her. It’s out of respect for his spouse and respect for the other woman that he maintains a distance. And of course he never knows if a woman is having ses règles. Losing blood. Even a single drop is unclean.”
“But the examiner who shakes your hand isn’t Jewish. And you’re not married. So what’s stopping you?”
“I told you, didn’t I, that I didn’t make an issue of it. But if I can choose, I’d rather not be touched by strange men.”
“Couldn’t I write a nice story about that, about Jewish girls, their driving instructor and their driving test? And about all the quirks and complexities when it comes to touching others?”
“Shall I ask my teacher if you can accompany him and some of his pupils during their lessons? So that you can ask them questions,” she said, “and see how it is in practice?”
Of course, it didn’t get that far. When Mr Schneider heard of our plan, he made it plain, in very few words and without an accompanying joke, that we should put that idea out of our heads right away. Elzira’s protests died away almost instantly: her mind was on Isaac.
Fourteen
Martinus and I went to Amsterdam: he to visit family and friends, me to be introduced to them.
On the train to Amsterdam the subject of “the Schneiders” came up.
As we slid out of Central Station on the raised railway track we passed the main Antwerp synagogue, belonging to Shomre Hadas, the modern Orthodox Jewish community of which the Schneiders were part.
I told Martinus what I knew about this synagogue, which was looted and destroyed during the Second World War by Nazis and Flemish pro-Nazi groups, and later renamed the Romi Goldmuntz synagogue, after the man who had invested in the restoration of this place of worship. The same Romi Goldmuntz—a diamond merchant who had survived the Holocaust—as the one in whose cultural centre Elzira was to marry Isaac—by now we had received the invitation, soberly printed in white and silver, in four languages. A wedding list had been enclosed. I loathed wedding lists and was disappointed that this invention, which put efficiency and covetousness above spontaneity and generosity, had even been adopted by Jewish people. Wedding lists should be banned, I felt. They were an insult to the giver and his heart.
“Well it’s high time another Romi came along,” Martinus replied, “the paint’s peeling right off it.” He tried to read his paper.
“The synagogue was designed by a Russian and by a fellow countryman of yours,” I said.
“Ach ja, we Dutch are just like Jews: all over the place,” he joked.
“The architect’s a Dutch Jew, actually. Called De Langhe, if I remember rightly.”
“What a fate: to be born Dutch and Jewish,” he twinkled. He looked up again from his newspaper.
“De Langhe designed lots of buildings in Antwerp, it turns out. Like the coffee-roasting factory by Zuiderdokken, you know, near our place. And his Russian associate, Isgour, was also a Jew—he’d fled to Brussels with his family when he was a child, because anti-Semitism was on the rise in Russia.”
“Okay, we’ll talk till Roosendaal. Then I get to read till Utrecht. Then you can talk again.”
“Do you know where this Isgour guy designed a lot of buildings just after the Second World War?”
“Is this a quiz?”
“In the Limburg mining region. Zwartberg, Meulenberg. Where I went to school. He designed the Houthalen casino, where I often went as a kid. By then it had been turned into a cultural centre. I watched loads of plays there, and when our school put on a play—about a bear called Brammetje Brom—I appeared on stage there lots of times. I was in the choir. Brammetje was played by a Moroccan boy. He was only ten, but he was really good. Those performances were the only ones where the audience was mixed. Mixed in the sense of immigrants and locals. But I’m losing the thread. Isgour had a lot to do with the design of the cité, a kind of model village for the mining community. He built the engineers’ houses on Koolmijnlaan—we used to pass them on our way to school. And he designed the school I went to, with all those immigrant children. The ones that also had Koran teachers.”
I looked at Martinus expectantly.
“Tell me about Brammetje Brom. And about your schooldays.”
&nbs
p; “Not now. Some other time. Don’t you think it’s strange that a school where children were taught the Koran turns out to be built by a Jewish architect?”
“Now it’s strange. Right after the war it probably wasn’t that strange. I don’t know.”
“I think it’s really strange. Just as I find it pretty amazing that the same Jewish architect who helped design Antwerp’s chief synagogue also shaped the landscape of my youth! That the man who built the place where the Schneiders worship also designed my nursery and primary school classrooms. I only found this out recently. This Isgour guy even designed the Sint-Lambertuskerk where I took communion,” I said. “Was forced to take it.”
“Tell me about when you were little.”
“I only know six Jewish people, you know. Orthodox Jews, I mean. And they’re all from the same family. And a grandmother, I mustn’t forget her. So seven religious Jews. If I hadn’t done any tutoring, I’d never have met them. Their world is so closed. We don’t know anything about them. We don’t even know about their contributions to our society,” I said. “Why don’t I know about the history of Jewish architects in the Limburg mining region?”
“Gosh. Doesn’t the same apply to non-Jewish contributions? Don’t we rarely know what people do exactly? I wouldn’t split people up so much, actually. Since when have you been so into architecture?” He tucked his paper away.
“Nima’s parents were architects. We sent them photos and newspaper articles about interesting buildings. They asked us to. They wanted to see Europe.”
“And it’s through them you heard about this Sigour?”
“Isgour. No, I found that out by chance. Heard something, then went and looked him up.”
“I think that Dutch Jews are less closed than Flemish Jews. That’s the impression I get, but I could be wrong. In Flanders, each community seems to be more like a separate, mini-society. Lots of little islands alongside each other. In the Netherlands, a lot of Jews work in television. They’re politicians, lawyers, businesspeople, writers. They’re more anchored in our daily life. Because they’re more liberal. I think. But I could be wrong.”
