Women's Minyan

by Naomi Ragen

  GITTE LEAH: When a woman opens her mind, a lot of garbage gets thrown in….

  CHANA: You can’t really believe that, Gitte Leah. You’re just jealous that I had the courage to use the brain that the Holy One, Blessed be He, gave me.

  GITTE LEAH: Did you want my husband—the ADMOR—to find the letter? Was that it? You knew how he made my life hell with all his stringencies. Did you want to ruin my marriage completely?

  CHANA: All you had to do was ask me. Instead, you started screaming and ran off with the envelope to Madame…. [to everyone.] who immediately called a meeting of the family council of geniuses and holy men…. And they decided that there was nothing left to do but marry the sinner off—and fast. So, after I refused my sister’s hairy fat candidate, Madame dredged up a hairless skinny one, with pale clammy skin and a wispy beard, that knew all about the world from what he read in the Kosher Food Bulletin, if he read at all…

  FRUME: [entering the circle, turning alternately to CHANA and the WOMEN.] Ah, so the sought-after prize of Meah Shearim said no. The matchmakers’ dream girl refused. The whole family was wrong, the whole ultra-Orthodox world was wrong, only she was right. Just like now. Leaving her husband and children is only her latest sin….

  GITTE LEAH: Don’t overstrain yourself, Mother.

  FRUME: You don’t know what it was like to raise such a rebellious child! [to CHANA] Tell them, everything, from the beginning, the whole truth: How you were wild and full of chutzpah; how you did everything that came into your head. Tell them how you lied right and left, tell them how you stole!

  ETA and TOVAH: [shocked.] A thief? A ganeveta? (thief) May God watch over us!

  CHANA: [sadly ironic.] Yes, I admit it. I stole. [beat.] A handful of raisins from a jar that Madame kept on a shelf above my bed, specially for Gitte Leah, her favorite.

  GITTE LEAH: It wasn’t only my raisins—

  CHANA: Still the same sniveling, sanctimonious tattletale…! Yes, I admit it. I also stole money from Madame’s purse. Some pennies to buy lollipops. I was four and already corrupt…

  [Reactions: Thou shall not steal]

  —and Madame caught me and did what she knew how to do best: take out my father’s belt and deliver a few lashes on my behind, and a few on my back, and a few on my small legs that were trying to run away. She beat and beat and beat, until the “thief” fainted.

  CHANA collapses. ZEHAVA hurries to help her.

  SHAINE RUTH: Ima, Ima [BLUMA checks her.]

  FRUME: “He who spares the rod, hates his child.” My own mother threw me into an orphanage when she was widowed, but I put my whole life into this child. To change her from a weakwilled thief into a strong, honest, decent…. But in the end it was no use. Just like my own mother, she also threw away her children because she thought only of herself…. [to CHANA.] A child is not a suitcase that you leave behind and come back for when you feel like it.

  SHEINHOFF: May Hashem watch over us. Frume!

  FRUME: [furious.] Everything she was taught she had to question. “Why can’t I go to a school that prepares for matriculation exams?” Imagine, going to college, a religious girl! “Why do men thank God for not making them a woman?” Always, she had to be smarter than everybody else. So smart she was she couldn’t find her way to the bathroom at night. [to CHANA.] You swore to tell the truth, so tell them how you wet the bed until you were practically Bat Mitzvah….

  CHANA: [supported by ZEHAVA.] Was it any wonder after all those beatings? Lying in bed, afraid more would come. And they came, the beatings…even though I washed your floors, and polished your silver, and peeled your potatoes to win your love—all I ever got was the belt.

  ADINA: What cruelty!

  CHANA: No, Adina. Cruelty is when you take a child’s hand [takes FRUME’s hand] and lead her out into the street in her soaked nightgown, stopping neighbors to complain how stupid she is, and how wonderful her older sister is. [she looks down at her hand.] While the child stands there, trying to convince herself she’s a piece of wood, without ears or eyes or a heart….

  FRUME, embarrassed, confused, throws off CHANA’s hand. BLUMA, SHAINE RUTH stare at FRUME, appalled.

  FRUME: Shame makes us fear sin. I did to you what my mother did to me, and her mother did to her. My husband refused to punish his pretty daughter, so I was forced to teach her some self-discipline. Your father just spoiled you. He was weak.

  CHANA: You were always jealous of the love he gave me. Behind your back, he sent me signals…encouragement. I only survived because of him.

  The circle moves in the opposite direction. BLUMA suddenly enters the circle facing CHANA.

  BLUMA: What does any of this have to do with us? With what you did to us?

  SHAINE RUTH: Bluma, don’t!

  BLUMA: [hugging her sister, but undeterred.] You tell us that Granny Frume was a terrible mother? She didn’t give you things? She hit you? Well, you were much worse. You ran away! Who do you think had to take care of your children while you went looking for happiness? We did, the “older” girls…Older…

  SHAINE RUTH tries once again to make her stop, and is repulsed.

  BLUMA: I was seventeen years old. I still needed a mother. Instead, I had to become one for ten children. You always taught us we had to make choices in life. But you didn’t give us any. You were a grown, educated woman…. You had a choice, yet you chose to abandon us, to blacken our name. You chose to ruin my chances to marry the man I wanted, a scholar, Joseph Graetz. And now you’ve come back to ruin Shaine Ruth’s chances. [to SHAINE RUTH.] Tell her! Say something! [to CHANA.] This was your choice, Ima. So, now I get to choose. And I choose not to know you. You are nothing to me anymore. A stranger.

  CHANA: [in pain.] It wasn’t a choice, Blumaleh. It was a matter of life or death. But how could you have known…? I did everything to hide what was happening between me and your father….

  BLUMA: Don’t you dare blame Father! You ran and he stayed. For Father, the Torah is his whole life, yet he took care of us instead of you. Father is a model of righteousness! [returns to the outer circle.]

  Outside, MEN’S VOICES are heard praying. Their presence seeps inside the room full of women, a constant, dominating force that surrounds them.

  Scene two

  The circle turns and stops. Memory comes and retreats. CHANA is alone.

  CHANA: The model of righteousness. Yes…When I met him, he was [beat.]…Yankele Sheinhoff, the brilliant Talmud scholar. The first time we went out alone, he said he wanted to touch me. I knew it was forbidden to say such things. But I thought: How wonderful. He’s studied so much. He knows the truth outside the rules. He’ll teach me. We’ll spend our lives together, learning and growing. Together we’ll discover the secrets of life. We married—in happiness. I was happy, even though I didn’t know what to expect. I’d never once touched a man. On our wedding night, I sat in our hotel room waiting. Finally, Yankele came over and asked me: What are you waiting for? And I answered: I read in a holy book that it is better for the bride to feel desire before she does the mitzva. And so I’m sitting here, waiting to feel some….

  Reactions of sympathy, laughter.

  CHANA: He also laughed.

  SHEINHOFF: You were such a beautiful couple.

  ETA: It was a match made in heaven.

  TOVAH: You looked so happy together.

  CHANA: Yes. We kept up appearances…. And maybe, in the beginning, I was content. From a humiliated child I became the honored Rabbi’s wife: Rebbitzen Chana Sheinhoff. All the rabbis sent me women to advise. Yankele learned Torah, and I built the family. I took care of supporting us by working at odd jobs, and tried to keep up my studies in the evenings. But most of all, I gave birth…. [looks with pride at her daughters].

  TOVAH: [enters the circle. To CHANA.] I remember how you came to the ritual bath for the first time. Like all the young brides, just a little older than children they are, their skin so pink and creamy, their bodies supple and beautiful. And then, God be blessed, they get
pregnant. Years go by, you wouldn’t recognize them. Their eyes are dull, their bodies bloated and neglected and tired. All those beautiful young brides….

  SHEINHOFF: This is God’s will, the purpose of woman’s creation….

  CHANA: [to daughters.] I never regretted a single one of you. You filled my life with joy. Willingly, I gave you my soul. I was prepared to work endlessly. Twelve children!! Soon enough I understood that I had no choice; that I was in this all alone. Yankele made a separate life for himself. He spent his time in the yeshiva, or else alone in his study. He would disappear suddenly, I had no idea where…. I started to feel as if I was rolling a great rock up a mountain alone and with every step it threatened to roll back and crush me….

  FRUME: All of us work hard for our homes and our children. It’s God’s will.

  ZEHAVA: No, Mrs. Kashman, it’s the men’s will. In our marriage contracts it’s written that the husband has to support his wife. That’s Jewish law.

  Shocked reactions. It is the societal norm for women to support their husbands so that they may study.

  GITTE LEAH: [haughty and indignant.] The letter of the law. By us, it’s a woman’s duty and honor to be the helpmate of a Torah scholar, if you don’t mind.

  TOVAH: [superior. To ZEHAVA.] Like Joseph’s brothers in the Bible. Zebulun worked so Yissacher could study. “Happy is Zebulun in going out and Yissacher in his tent.”

  ETA: She has to be the breadwinner so that he can learn.

  GITTE LEAH: And she has to be obedient to the man in everything. You understand?

  ADINA: Excuse me, Gitte Leah…. A woman has to be obedient to God and His holy Torah, not to men.

  TOVAH: A God-fearing woman accepts the Rabbis interpretation of the Torah, and keeps the commandments as the men explain them. She’s like the earth, a receptacle for the holy seed.

  ZEHAVA: And like the earth, the men step all over her…

  ADINA: Maimonides says that it’s man’s obligation to love his wife as himself, and to honor her more than himself.

  ZEHAVA: True. There has to be love, honor, partnership.

  GITTE LEAH: Maimonides doesn’t mean what you mean. This whole business of “love” is foolishness for silly girls. A woman with complete faith doesn’t look for such things. She’s on a higher level.

  CHANA: I saw how your ADMOR treats you, there, on that “higher level”…

  GITTE LEAH: [defensively.] This is our life on this earth! A decent woman doesn’t marry for love, but for a family! You serve your husband, give birth to his children, and in exchange you get honor in this world and your portion in the World to Come. Everything else is wantonness for the faithless.

  CHANA: If a woman is only a womb, then why did God torture her with intelligence, understanding, creativity, wisdom? Why didn’t He make her ant-like, without the consciousness to raise her head and examine her role as a beast of burden?

  ZEHAVA: Where is it written that a woman has to give birth every year?

  FRUME: “Be fruitful and multiply and replenish the earth.” It’s the first commandment in the Torah.

  ADINA: [drily.] I don’t think the Torah meant single-handedly. Anyhow, if you’ll excuse me Mrs. Kashman, the Torah gives the mitzvah of procreation to Adam, not Eve. And it’s enough to have two children to fulfill the commandment.

  GITTE LEAH: Even that you don’t do, so what are you making yourself so wise? “A person with no children is considered dead.”

  FRUME: Gitte Leah! [to SHEINHOFF.] I’m sorry, Goldie. She’s in pain so she gets nervous….

  GITTE LEAH mumbles an apology.

  SHEINHOFF: [in sorrow and admonition.] With God’s help, her turn will come. It’s all God’s will. Everything is in God’s hands.

  MALE VOICES read the Psalms, threateningly.

  Scene three

  CHANA, detached, doesn’t take part in the debate. She wavers before jumping into the fray, hesitant to reveal the secrets of her marriage.

  SHAINE RUTH: Ima, are you going to continue?

  CHANA: [with effort.] Yes, yes…I was like Zevulun. I thought: it’s my duty to be the model Rabbi’s wife. I opened my doors to needy yeshiva boys, arranged lectures for women, guided my friends with pious advice, and never complained, even though I thought I would melt from exhaustion. I obeyed my husband in everything, even when his demands…even when he behaved in a way…a way…I couldn’t understand. His will was done. The important thing was not to fail in my marriage. Except that it wasn’t only dependent on me…. I want to stop now.

  Reactions. “What is she hinting at?” ZEHAVA prevents her from withdrawing. They argue.

  ZEHAVA: [encouragingly.] Tell about the money. That should be enough.

  CHANA: [nodding assent, she chooses her words carefully.] When it came time for Bluma to marry, I tried every way I knew to increase our income. Zehava and I decided to open a dress store. My husband, the “model of righteousness”, agreed, but on condition that he keep the books and handle the money. The store brought in a good income. Until one day, just like that, our checks began to bounce. The bank stopped payment to our suppliers. Someone had withdrawn all our funds. Sixty thousand shekel. Mine and Zehava’s money.

  ZEHAVA: I was desperate. I didn’t know how I’d feed my children.

  SHEINHOFF: What happened? Who could have taken the money?

  CHANA: Who had access to the account? [pause.] I was shocked.

  Mutterings: “Father?” “Yankele?” SHEINHOFF grows faint.. The WOMEN attempt to shield her. But doubt hangs like a sword over their heads. Surprisingly, SHEINHOFF rises and enters the circle, confronting CHANA.

  SHEINHOFF: Enough already! [to CHANA.] I didn’t want to believe what they all said about you, but now I know: Your mother was right. Only she knows the real Chana Kashman. A child who lies and steals, it’s in her character, it’s forever! And that’s what you’re doing now, making up disgusting lies about your husband to cover up your own sins. And to think, I always defended you, even here, today! Do you really expect me to believe such a thing about my son?! Never! What a mistake we made in agreeing to listen to you at all.

  CHANA: It’s the truth, Mameh Goldie. Didn’t I take a sacred oath?

  FRUME: [supporting SHEINHOFF.] A decent woman would have gotten advice from a Rav, but she—!

  CHANA: [fighting for SHEINHOFF’s support.] That’s exactly what I did, Mameh Goldie! Instead of going to the police, I went to a Rav! To the head of my husband’s distinguished family—and told him about the theft.

  SHEINHOFF: Don’t you dare use that word!

  CHANA: All right, all right, just listen to me, please! Didn’t you all swear you’d hear me out honestly? Unlike you, Rav Aaron believed me. He was very angry at what I told him—and not just about the stealing…“Go home, my daughter,” the Rav said. “And don’t worry. I’ll speak to Yankele and force him to return all he took. And I’ll make him treat you according to the laws of our holy Torah. And if he refuses, you have my word, I’ll help you get a divorce.”

  FRUME: [shocked.] You spoke of divorce?! On account of some money?

  CHANA: That was just the last straw.

  FRUME: [to CHANA.] Naturally, you didn’t give the Rav a chance….

  CHANA: I followed his instructions to the letter! I waited in the dress store while the Rav spoke to Yankele. It was late when I finally went home. Shaineleh was setting the table for the holiday. Bluma was ironing the boys’ white shirts. I went to Yankele in his study. Looking down at my shoes, humbly, I begged him to at least return a little money to Zehava so she could feed her children. There was silence. I looked at him: there was murder in his eyes. I had ripped away his mask, shown his real face to Rav Aaron!! How dare I!! Before I could answer, he locked the door behind me, threw me on the floor, dragged me to the bed, hit me with his fists, choked me. I thought: this is the end. Now I will die. I don’t know how, I managed to get free, to unlock the door….

  Shock, confusion. Can they believe? They await the reaction
of SHEINHOFF and FRUME. BLUMA and SHAINE RUTH lower their gaze—they have seen the evidence with their own eyes.

  SHEINHOFF: [with great emotion.] What? What is she saying about my sensitive, gentle son who never raised his hand to hurt a fly…

  CHANA: There are many things you don’t know about him, Mameh.

  SHEINHOFF: But stealing, wife-beating? For years you had a beautiful life together. Overnight he turned into a monster?

  CHANA: [quietly.] It didn’t happen overnight. For years I…. [stops herself. To BLUME, SHAINE RUTH.] The children were there. The girls saw how I came out of that room. [to them.] I had to escape. My life was in danger. You can tell the truth now!