Acts of Faith (11 page)

He sighed again and then concluded, “Better go help Mama now.”

“We’ve finished all the dishes.”

“No, I mean help pack your things.”

“When am I going?” she asked, feeling weightless as a leaf in a gust of wind.

“Tomorrow night, God willing.”

O
nce when I was very small, my father imparted to me a special kind of practical wisdom. Having escaped the Holocaust by scarcely a few dozen paces of the jackboot, he offered the following definitions: A sensible Jew is someone who always has a passport for himself and every member of his family. A
really
intelligent Jew is someone who carries his passport with him at all times.

Thus it was that, before any of us reached our first birthdays, we all possessed valid travel documents. It was a rite second in importance only to my circumcision, the first being a covenant with God, the second with Customs and Immigration. But never in my wildest dreams did I imagine this precaution would serve to accelerate my own sister’s exile.

Deborah’s last evening in Brooklyn marked the end of both our childhoods. We spent every moment together, not just to console, but to assuage our pain at the prospect of not seeing each other for months, perhaps years.

I felt helpless, wanting desperately to
do
something. And I was glad when Deborah finally whispered to me in such mournful tones, “Hey, Danny, can you do me a really big favor? I mean, it might even be dangerous.”

I was scared, but determined to help her. “Sure. What is it?”

“I’d like to write Tim a letter, but I don’t know how to get it to him.”

“Write it, Deb,” I answered. “I’ll mail it on the way to school.”

“But there’s more chance his family will see it—”

“Okay, okay,” I interrupted. “I’ll try and sneak it over there tonight.”

She threw her arms around me and held me for a long time. “Oh, Danny, I love you,” she murmured.

This gave me the courage to ask, “Do you love him too?”

She hesitated for a moment and then said, “I don’t know.”

It was a little after two
A.M.
I had waited till I was absolutely sure that everyone, even Deborah, was asleep, laced up my sneakers, and dashed into the empty darkness.

It was an eerie feeling, running along those foggy, deserted streets, lit only by lampposts casting a kind of vapory light.

I was right in the heart of Catholic territory, and even the windows of the houses seemed to stare angrily down at me. I wanted to get out of there fast.

I reached the Delaneys’ house as quickly as I could, hurried onto the porch, and slipped the letter under their front door. Deborah had assured me Tim would be the first one up, since he had something to do with early morning Mass.

Then I sprinted with all my might till I reached our house. After I caught my breath, I quietly opened the front door and tiptoed in.

I was surprised—and frightened—to hear a noise coming from Father’s study. It sounded like a wail, a cry of pain.

As I moved closer, I realized that he was reciting from the Bible. It was from Lamentations: “And gone is from the daughter of Zion all her splendor.”

Even from another room I could
feel
his anguish.

The door was slightly ajar. I knocked quietly, but he did not seem to hear, so I pushed it open a little further.

He was at his desk, cradling his forehead with both hands, reading the wounded words of Jeremiah.

For a moment, I was afraid to talk, certain my father would not want me to witness him in this condition.

He sensed my presence and looked up.

“Danny,” he muttered. “Come sit and talk to me.”

I sat. But talk did not come easy. I feared that whatever I might say would somehow hurt him even more.

At last he cupped my cheeks in his hands, his entire face a mask of sorrow, and said, “Danny, promise me—don’t ever do a thing like this to your father.”

I was struck dumb.

And yet I could not bring myself to say the words that would relieve his suffering.

PART II

T
o the faithful of all religions, Jerusalem has existed since the beginning of time. Through the centuries, its venerable streets have been trod by pharaohs and emperors, caliphs and crusaders, Christians, Moslems, and Jews.

It was here, atop Mount Moriah, that Abraham, as a supreme act of faith, brought his son Isaac to offer him up as a sacrifice.

King David made Jerusalem his capital, bringing there the Holy Ark, for which his son Solomon built the first great Temple in 955
B.C.

Ten centuries later, David’s descendant Jesus entered the city in triumph five days before His Crucifixion. Here, the many churches—including Ethiopian and Coptic—sanctify His death and resurrection.

For the ultraorthodox Jews the most important area after the Wailing Wall is the quarter called Mea Shearim. It is a self-made ghetto for the devout—with the significant exception that its barriers are not to keep Jews
in
, but to keep the heathen
out.

Yiddish is the
lingua franca
, Hebrew used exclusively for prayers. Women in their
sheitels
dress in modest clothes, long sleeves and dresses with high necks. Even on the hottest days of summer, men continue to wear
heavy black garb and fur hats—and, of course, a
gartl
circling the stomach to bisect the sacred and profane parts of the body.

Some of the many Orthodox sects did recognize the State of Israel when it was born in 1948. Some even sent their sons (though not their daughters, as did secular Israelis) into the Army, where they were accommodated in special religious units, so they could study Torah when they were not fighting.

There are also a goodly number of fanatical extremists like the
Neturei Karta
—“Guardians of the City”—who do not acknowledge the nation’s existence. Though they live in the heart of the Holy City, they still regard themselves as “exiles.” To them the present Jewish State is a
sin
which has delayed the coming of the Messiah.

But all the factions of Mea Shearim agree on one thing: the sanctity of the Sabbath. Woe to the motorist who passes through one of their streets on Saturday—if indeed, the entrance is not already chained. He will be greeted by a violent hail of rocks. For some inexplicable reason, their spiritual leaders do not regard this action as a violation of the Sabbath peace.

It was to this fortress of holiness that Deborah Luria was exiled.

There had been a tearful parting at the airport in New York, though unlike her mother and brother, her father wept only within. As she walked among the jostling crowd through the El Al airplane hatch, Deborah recited the appropriate prayer for those traveling by plane:

At first she let her thoughts be diverted by the flight attendants’ efforts to cajole the colorful, chaotic passengers—especially
when some of them had declared that very moment as a time for prayers.

But these distractions were short-lived, and all her thoughts returned to bereavement: loss of mother, father, family.

And Timothy.

She could not understand the strange feelings he had aroused in her. Had theirs not been an innocent relationship? Indeed, one could scarcely have called it a “relationship.”

She wondered what God’s purpose might have been in bringing them together—or at least into such proximity—only to tear them brutally apart. Was it perhaps some way of testing her?

When the lights dimmed to let the passengers sleep, she could still hear the cries of babies, the murmuring of prayers, and the humming of the aircraft engines. Darkness cloaked her tears—the other noises drowned her sobs.

At last she drifted off. She did not even waken when the plane stopped in London to squeeze on still more passengers.

The next thing she heard was the cheerful voice of the stewardess.

“Ladies and gentlemen, you can now see the shores of Israel. We will be landing in ten minutes.”

As the loudspeaker system filled with song, “We bring peace unto you,” Deborah felt a sudden thrill.

This
was the Holy Land. The birthplace of her religion. In a spiritual sense, she was coming home after countless centuries of exile.

As she filed slowly through the door, down the steps to the tarmac simmering from the summer heat, she noticed soldiers everywhere. This was a country under siege.

What struck her next was that, though she knew everyone
was
Jewish, not many of the multitude of faces looked like her coreligionists back home.

Some of the soldiers were darker than the Puerto Ricans
she had seen in Brooklyn. Inside the terminal, the passport cubicles were manned by women, some black-eyed and olive-skinned, others red-haired and freckled. Some were even blond as Scandinavians. It was only when she was ungallantly jostled out into the stifling night that she saw faces she could recognize.

At the end of the fenced-off corridor of people shouting greetings in a carnival of languages stood a middle-aged woman. She wore a dark, long-sleeved dress and kerchief and held up a sign that read
Luna.
As Deborah neared, the woman called out in Yiddish,
“Bist du der Rebbes Tochter?”

“Yes,” she answered, sweating and out of breath, “I’m Deborah.…”

“I’m Leah,” said the woman curtly, “Rebbe Schiffman’s wife. The car is over there.”

She turned and walked off quickly, with Deborah one weary step behind, carrying her own luggage.

It had been a shock to see Leah Schiffman up close. What had seemed from afar like a middle-aged woman was in fact a tired-looking girl in her twenties with lifeless eyes and a pallid face.

After a hundred or so paces, they reached the car. Deborah had expected it to be a run-down antique. Instead, to her surprise she saw a stretch Mercedes diesel crowned by a plastic tiara that read “Taxi.”

While the driver put Deborah’s luggage on the roof rack, Leah introduced the other passengers—her sister, Bracha, a woman attired like herself holding an infant, and Bracha’s husband, Mendel, a bearded, studious-looking young man.

“Shalom,”
the couple said together, the first words of welcome she had heard.

She could not help but notice that the husband conspicuously turned his glance away from her. He would not risk the Evil Inclination bewitching him unawares.

How much did they know? she wondered. Had they been told about her sin?

In any case, to survive in this environment she would
have to win them over. Or else she would only see their backs, as she now saw that of Mendel, who was engaged in an animated conversation with the driver.

Halfway to Jerusalem, Bracha’s infant cried out, and the mother began to sing him a lullaby that Deborah recalled from her own childhood. In its way it only intensified her estrangement. But she tried to be polite.

“That’s a lovely baby,” she offered. “Boy or girl?”

“A boy, thank God,” the woman answered. “I have already three girls.”

The taxi windows were open and the scent of pine filled the air. Less than an hour later the shadows of the Judean hills were broken by an oasis of light shining high before them. Though Deborah wondered how the other passengers could remain stonily silent as the holy city of Jerusalem came into sight, no one said a word.

They reached the narrow streets of Mea Shearim in the dead of night. Here and there a solitary lamp in a window revealed a scholar still rapt in the study of some holy text.

The taxi pulled up near the corner of Shmuel Salant Street and they got out.

Mrs. Schiffman fumbled with some keys, the door creaked open, and they entered, Deborah bringing up the rear.

A corpulent man with a gray-flecked beard was seated at a table. Its oilcloth cover suggested that it was the dining room by day.

He rose and looked at Deborah. “Ah, so you’re the daughter of Rav Moses. You seem a healthy girl. God shield you from the evil eye.”

Physically tired, jet-lagged, and emotionally exhausted, Deborah did not know what she should say. The best she could offer was, “Thank you, Rebbe Schiffman—I mean, thanks for having me.”

“It’s late,” her host replied, turning to his wife. “Show her where she sleeps.”

Leah eyed Deborah, nodded, and then started to the
back of the house where several doors led off a narrow corridor.

She opened one of them and said, “In here. I gave you the bed by the window.”

It was only then that Deborah heard the sounds. There were other people in this little room, sleeping soundly and breathing audibly. In the dim light from the hallway she could barely discern three narrow beds crowded into the room. Two of them were occupied by small forms huddled under grayish-looking blankets.