Acts of Faith (10 page)

“Jews don’t proselytize,” Deborah stated, herself puzzled that she should be so dogmatic at this moment.

“I’m not worried.” Tim smiled, and Deborah suddenly felt uneasy. His expression was so … angelic. “Actually, if Father Hanrahan finds a place for me, I’ll be going to seminary where knowing Hebrew letters will be a real advantage for the Old Testament classes.”

“You mean you’re going away?” she asked, almost involuntarily.

“If I’m found suitable for the priesthood.”

“What do you mean?”

“Well, like Our Saviour, I’d have to be impervious to the temptations of the world, the flesh, and the devil.”

“Oh,” she remarked, not knowing what else to say,
inwardly hoping she had not betrayed her disappointment at the prospect of not seeing him.

“Actually, I’m not worried about the devil—” he joked lightly, “but I’m still working on the other two.”

Suddenly Deborah began to panic. What was he talking about? Why had she allowed herself to begin this conversation? She mustered all her inner strength and said nervously, “I’m sorry, I’ve got to go to sleep.”

She forced herself to turn and start up the dark stairs.

His glance followed her long after she had disappeared. He was now more than curious. He was desperate to see exactly what text she had been reading.

He picked up her book, the Soncino Bible with Hebrew and English translation. His eyes fell upon the words, “Behold, thou art fair, my love … thine eyes are as doves.”

He was now convinced that some greater power had intended him to read these words.

And, he thought, maybe Mr. Wasserstein is still awake and will help me learn this in Hebrew tonight.

Deborah was at once excited, confused … and frightened. She had to speak to someone, and the only person she could trust was her younger brother.

“For gosh sake,” Danny said sleepily as she knocked softly and entered his room. “It’s nearly midnight.”

“
Please
, Danny. I’ve got to talk to you.”

Sensing her urgency, he sat up. “Okay,” he said, suppressing a yawn. “Now what’s the big deal?”

“It’s about—you know the
Shabbes goy?
”

“Yeah, Tim,” Danny responded. “Good guy, isn’t he?”

“Uh, I don’t know,” Deborah stammered.

“Hey, Deb,” Danny whined, “what the heck is this conversation about?”

“Did you know he speaks Yiddish?”

“Sure. I’ve had a few talks with him. For this you woke me up on the only night I can get some sleep?”

“Well, don’t you think that’s weird?” Deborah persisted.

“Not really. Tim’s an unusual guy.”

“In what way?” she asked, eager to learn whatever she could about the young man who now held her imagination captive.

“Once when that
shaygetz
Ed McGee was trying to murder me, Tim came by and punched him out. He’s a terrific fighter. Actually, I’ve never even thanked him. I just ran for my life.” He paused for a moment and then looked at his sister, who was nervously biting her lip. “Now what was it you wanted to tell me?”

Deborah sensed that even confiding in her brother would be too great a risk. “Nothing,” she answered. “I’m sorry I bothered you.”

As she started out, Danny whispered, “Hey, Deb—”

“Yeah?”

“Has he—you know—tried anything?”

“I don’t know what you mean.”

“You darn well do. Has he?”

“Don’t be stupid.”

“No, Deb. Don’t
you
be stupid.”

All through the week, Deborah looked forward to the Sabbath—albeit not for the usual religious reasons. Yet she had a special reason, which both excited and troubled her.

This time he appeared even earlier—in fact, scarcely ten minutes after the rest of her family had gone upstairs.

“It’s only ten-fifteen,” she complained in an anxious whisper.

“I was watching from the street,” Tim confessed. “When I saw you were alone, I thought it would be all right—”

“Well, it isn’t,” she retorted. “I mean, you can turn off the light and go. I shouldn’t be talking to you. Don’t you know that?”

“And I shouldn’t be talking to
you.
Don’t you know
that?
”

There was a pause. Finally, Deborah asked in a quiet voice, “Why?”

“They teach us in school not to consort with non-Catholics. Lately they’ve been telling us that Jewish girls are Jezebels.”

“Jezebel wasn’t Jewish,” Deborah objected. “But I guess your school thinks anybody who’s evil must be.”

“That’s unfair.”

“Well, tell me one decent thing they’ve ever taught you,” she demanded.

“Christ said, ‘Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’ ”

“Our sage Hillel said the exact same thing.”

“Who came first?”

“Well,” Deborah said, “Hillel lived in the early part of the first century.”

“So did Jesus.”

They sat and glared at one another.

“Why are we having this argument, anyway?” Deborah asked after a moment.

“Because it’s the only way you’ll let yourself talk to me.”

“Who said I wanted to talk to you, anyway?”

“Well,
I’d
like to speak to you,” he said gently.

“Why?” she asked, instantly unable to understand why she had asked that question.

“Because I like you,” Tim replied. “Are you offended by that?”

However innocuous they might have seemed in the outside world, these were the most intimate words that a man had ever said to her. Yet she could not stop the momentum of her emotions.

“I’m not offended. I just wonder what I’ve ever done to make you … feel that way.”

Tim smiled. “Nothing, really. But I guess you can’t help being pretty.”

Part of Deborah was shocked. Even the vainglorious Asher Kaplan would not have been so familiar. But this first compliment ever paid to her as a woman was intoxicating.
However much she did not believe his words, she wanted to hear more of them.

“Could we change the subject,” she asserted.

“Sure. Fine.”

There was an awkward silence, finally broken by Tim’s seemingly irrelevant question. “Have you ever been to a movie?”

“No. We’re not allowed to. It’s too complicated to explain. What makes you ask?”

“Well, I just wondered if I were a Jewish boy, whether I could have invited you to one. Some of your people go, don’t they?”

“Not the Orthodox,” she replied. “I mean—”

Just then the clock began to chime, awakening both of them to the reality that what was separating them was not just a coffee table, but a bridgeless chasm between two faiths.

“I’ve got a surprise for you,” Tim whispered.

“What is it?” she asked uneasily.

He cleared his throat softly and said apologetically, “I hope my accent isn’t too terrible.” And then he quoted: “ ‘Then the people of the Lord went down to the gates. Awake, awake, Deborah; Awake, awake, utter a song.…’ ” Eyes gleaming with pride, he looked at her and said, “Judges 5:12.”

She was touched. “ ‘The Song of Deborah.’ Oh, my goodness.” She smiled. “I don’t know whether to be flattered or embarrassed.”

“Please be flattered,” Tim answered earnestly.

And then he was sitting next to her. It had happened so swiftly that she had no time to grow frightened.

“I want to kiss you,” he murmured.

She turned her head and looked into the ocean of his eyes.

“But you mustn’t.”

Yet her tone was not protesting.

Tim’s words began to cascade as if racing the end of time. “Deborah. I’ve got to say this now because I know
I’ll never have the courage to again. I … I… With all my heart, I really … like you.”

She closed her eyes but still did not move away. She felt a strange sensation at the nape of her neck. It was his hand barely touching her, and then the warmth of his lips brushed hers.

For Tim it was like nothing he had ever felt before.

Deborah was too frightened to respond but she wanted this electric moment to endure forever.

At that very moment Rav Moses Luria entered the room.

Tim instantly leapt to his feet.

There was only a single lamp still burning—the one that Timothy was hired to extinguish.

For an agonizing moment the Rav looked at them, then spoke with a preternatural calm.

“
Nu
, so what is this, children?”

“It was my fault, Papa,” Deborah quickly insisted.

“No, Rav Luria,” Tim contradicted, “it’s
mine
—completely mine. It was my idea to read Hebrew to her.”

Eyebrows raised, the rabbi asked, still softly, “Hebrew?”

“Tim’s been taking lessons from Mr. Wasserstein.”

Rav Luria pondered for a moment and then, still miraculously restraining his temper, spoke. “It’s admirable that a Christian wants to read the Bible in the original. But for what exact purpose, I ask myself. And why did he choose Deborah as an audience? I would gladly have arranged for someone on my yeshiva staff to tutor him. And so finally I ask myself, ‘What is really going on?’ ”

Timothy’s self-castigating conscience made him speak again. “Rav Luria,” he said bravely. “I started everything. I’m totally to blame. Please don’t pour out your wrath on Deborah.”

“
Wrath?
Young man, this situation calls for more than wrath.” He paused, and then added, “So if you’ll just leave your keys, we can say good night. And good-bye.”

In a state of shock, Timothy withdrew a key ring from his pocket and placed it on the table. The metallic jangle
seemed to desecrate the Sabbath silence. He glanced at Deborah.

“I’m sorry, Deborah. But I’m sure your father will believe that you were …”

“Good night,” the Rav said emphatically.

Now father and daughter were alone. She stood barely illumined by the glow of the single lamp. He remained in a darkness so deep that he was almost as invisible as God.

She was terrified, sensing the fire that raged in him. She was certain he would lash out—if not physically, at least verbally.

He surprised her.

“Deborah,” he said gently, “I was wrong to be angry at you. I should blame myself. I know that you’re a good girl, and there was temptation. That is how the Evil Inclination entices us to sin.”

“I didn’t sin,” she whispered.

The Rav looked heavenward with a gesture of his palms. Then, he peered at his daughter and said quietly, “Go to bed, Deborah. We’ll discuss this when the Sabbath’s over.”

She nodded mutely and walked up the stairs. They always creaked, but tonight the groaning floorboards seemed like tiny voices all accusing her.

She went to her room, and slumped fully clothed onto her bed. She had no illusions about her father’s seeming lack of anger. She knew when three stars shone tomorrow night, he would excoriate her. After all, she deserved it.

She had desecrated her parents’ home, profaned the Sabbath, and disgraced her family.

But there was more. Counterbalancing all the sin was a kind of physical reverberation of the excitement she had felt when Timothy had touched her.

As he drank his morning coffee, Rav Luria revealed no trace of anger at the previous night’s events. He and Danny left early for
shul
, leaving the women to follow in half an hour. Deborah dreaded the thought of what her mother might say when they were alone. From Rachel’s
expression and the timbre of her voice, Deborah could tell that Father had reported everything. But Rachel did not say a word.

At last the day was finally extinguished. From where she had taken refuge in her bedroom, Deborah heard the door slam downstairs. She did not have to wait much longer. She got up, splashed cold water on her face, and descended.

The Rav performed
havdalah
, the rite that marks the end of Sabbath. The sacred and the profane were severed. The angels of the Sabbath had departed. And the world, with all its imperfections, reappeared.

From force of habit, Deborah immediately followed her mother into the kitchen to start all the mundane washing up—the last remnant of the Sabbath presence. She was certain that her father would come in and ask to speak with her alone. But he did not. Instead, he vanished into his study.

It was nearly an hour later when he emerged and called quietly, “Deborah, will you come in please.”

She was not unprepared. She had spent the last twenty-four hours desperately searching for a way to expiate her sin and assuage her father’s anger. Yet she well knew that it would have to be a sacrificial gesture.

The instant she entered the study, she blurted out, “Papa, I’ll marry Asher Kaplan—”

Her father calmly waved her to sit down. “No, my darling. Under the circumstances, I would not ask Rav Kaplan to consider such a match.”

Deborah sat mute, growing increasingly colder and light-headed.

“My child,” the Rav continued slowly and deliberately, “this is all my fault. Foolishly, I always thought you’d be upstairs when he came by.”

He paused and then murmured, “I think it best that you should go away.”

Deborah was stricken. “Where … where do you want me to go?”

“My darling,” he said, looking at her sadly, “I’m not
talking of Siberia. I mean the Holy Land. ‘Jerusalem the Golden.’ After all, but a few months ago, did not the Almighty choose to reunite the City of David—and in only six days, no doubt so the Israeli soldiers could rest on the seventh? I think you should look forward with happiness to your new life there.”

New life? Deborah thought to herself. Is he exiling me
forever?
She sat still for a moment, then asked hesitantly, “What would I be doing?”

“Rav Lazar Schiffman, who runs our yeshiva in Jerusalem, has agreed to find a family for you to live with. You’ll finish school.”

Her father leaned forward on his desk and looked at her.

“Listen to me, Deborah. I love you with all my heart. Do you think I want you half a world away from me? It pains me, but I’m doing this for your own good.”

There was another silence.

Finally she asked, “What do you want me to say, Papa?”

“You can tell me you’ll forget this Christian. That you’ll breathe the holiness of the Jerusalem air and purify your soul from this unfortunate event.”