Jephte's Daughter (23 page)

And through it all, she finally realized, to her amazement, there was an element of taste, good taste or bad taste, which had nothing at all to do with God’s will.

And so, Batsheva began to think, there must be different kinds of men among them, too, different kinds of husbands, not modeled on Isaac Meyer Harshen, who allowed their wives to dress so differently. But this remained only a theory. She could not meet any young men. For the men of Meah Shearim walked with their eyes cast downward, avoiding any contact with a woman’s gaze. And those who did look, did so surreptitiously, from behind doors, through the slats of partly closed windows. They would not sit next to women on the bus, but crowded together in the back. They would not agree to take an intercity taxi that needed at least six passengers to begin its journey, if a woman insisted on sitting with them in the back instead of segregating herself in the front seat beside the driver. When they came to Batsheva’s home to speak to Isaac, they avoided being alone in the same room with her, and if they said hello at all, it was without their eyes meeting her face. She knew it was out of modesty, to preserve their distance from her, a married woman, whose very touch was the essence of sin. But still, it made her feel unwanted, unclean.

She began, with Gita as her guide, to explore and understand the place in which she had lived from the beginning as a stranger, an outsider. The houses of Meah Shearim were built around inner courtyards, long row houses piled one on top of the other with all kinds of temporary add-ons to increase the unbearably limited space: glass enclosures, plastic and even cardboard nailed down over balconies to keep out the cold winter winds, the intolerable summer sun. Long staircases wound around the old buildings, almost hidden by rows of laundry, countless diapers hanging everywhere. And in the courtyards were always the riches of the poor, the pathetic clinging to worn-out, useless junk that is the surest sign of unbearable poverty: old rubber basins, dried-up palm fronds from a long-ago booth erected for the Feast of Tabernacles; a cabinet that once held a sewing machine. It made her realize with shame, for the first time, how much she had and how little she shared or appreciated it. She had always taken her home, her wealth, for granted. But now, face-to-face with the unrelenting poverty around her, she felt ashamed. With Gita’s help, she began to make the long climb up the steps, entering into homes so bare it made her want to weep, and yet so clean and honest and proud, it filled her with envy and humility. She gave, from the small allowance Isaac permitted her, more than she could, and found herself happy to go without things she wanted. It was a new experience that made her feel as if some change had taken place in her soul for the better.

Her own home was one of those old stone villas erected by rich men at the turn of the century, full of Old World charm. Her father had completely renovated it with every convenience of modern plumbing, air conditioning, and electrical wiring. He had had craftsmen painstakingly retouch wonderful hand-carved doors and mantels, lovely hand-painted Armenian tiles, keeping all that was original and irreplaceable. From its windows she saw the mysterious black dome of the Abyssinian Church, with its black priests, dressed in black flowing robes, its riot of birds, walled in in utter isolation. Sometimes she tried to imagine how the black priests must feel and thought perhaps she felt something of the same thing: outsiders amidst the people and streets that surrounded them—women in bathrobes and old worn black boots climbing up thirty steps to run-down, crumbling homes; old men in wispy beards and old clothes, walking slowly down narrow cobblestone courtyards that could have been in a little village in Poland.

Their babies grew. Dina, Gita’s little golden-haired girl, and Akiva, black-haired, blue-eyed little boy. Little Akiva, little boy! He loved to laugh. Whatever silly thing Batsheva did—wink at him, or hide her eyes for a moment and then reveal them—made him double up with belly laughs so infectious she found herself smiling all day long. She kissed his round, perfect knees, his pudgy thighs, drinking in his delicious sweetness like wine. Sometimes her love swelled up inside of her with a fierce, hopeless ache and she would hold him and hug him, burying her face in his soft, fat stomach. He smelled so fresh and fragrant, redolent with baby shampoo and powder. He would grab her wig with both hands and tug it off, screaming with delight, delighting them both. Once he did this to her out in the park and Gita saw.

“What have you done to your hair?” She was appalled.

“My mother-in-law does it for me whenever it gets grown in. Aren’t you supposed to? Don’t you?”

“Don’t be a nitwit! God forbid! A woman is supposed to look attractive to her husband. Crazy to cut it off at all, beautiful hair like that.” She smoothed down Akiva’s thick black hair. “Tell your mother-in-law that Gita said it is forbidden to shave off your hair, and that you only have to cover it when you leave the house. In the house, I never cover my hair.” Batsheva blushed, embarrassed by her own ignorance. She had accepted Isaac’s word, his mother’s word, believing herself ignorant of the law. What had her father said? “Let him teach you.” Isaac had said it himself so many times. He would lead her. He would instruct her in the ways of the Lord. She had never, until now, questioned if what he said was indeed true, was indeed God’s will.

“I went to Bais Sarah, but we never really learned the source of the laws. They just told us—pious women do this, and do that. I never learned to question anything. I don’t know what is law, or what is custom, or what is just social pressure, and passing fads.”

“Well, you can read Hebrew, can’t you? And Aramaic?”

She had learned both in school and had even had private tutors. “A little.”

“So open up the Talmud, or the Code of Jewish Law. Read Maimonides. It’s your life. What good is observance if you don’t know what you’re doing, huh?” She winked. “I think you’re in for some surprises.”

“What kind?” Batsheva was puzzled and amused by Gita’s laughter. But Gita just patted Batsheva’s wig and helped her pull it back on.

Gita’s suggestion and, ironically, Isaac Harshen’s stern insistence that she read none of her own books, had led the way to her studying his books. Left with no other reading material, she had taken to struggling with the big set of Talmudical literature that now comprised the only books in the house, and she had learned, beyond a shadow of doubt, that Isaac Harshen was no scholar. The private lessons she had taken in Talmud to please her father and the Hebrew and Aramaic of her school days enabled her to decipher the difficult passages very slowly at first, and then with greater ease. To her shock, she found that Isaac Harshen was making up a lot of what he piously quoted her or seriously misconstruing it. There were laws he half fabricated, or twisted just to keep her under his thumb. For the Talmud, she learned, was full of discussions where scholars passionately disagreed with each other over the interpretation of laws. And yet, Isaac always acted as if everything was engraved in stone. Isaac, she had learned, was a man who memorized words but had little understanding of their meaning. He lacked the ability to assimilate knowledge that makes a man or woman a wiser human being, or the gift of making intuitive leaps of understanding between concepts that constitute true genius. If anything, the opposite was true. While the clear intent of the Talmud, she had learned, was to make men kind, charitable, generous, loving, forgiving, hospitable, and honest, Isaac, because he was dishonest and without understanding and even real faith, used his phenomenal recall for detail to prove through the dry letter of the law that cruelty and narrow-mindedness and petty unkindnesses and even untruths were permissible. He constructed a whole way of life that was a perversion of everything pious Jews strove for.

Once Batsheva realized this, once she understood totally that what she had taken as God’s word was only Isaac Harshen’s word, it gave her a wonderful inner freedom. But she did not confront him with this knowledge. Instead, she saved each lie, each inconsistency, hoarding them up like a prisoner who rejoices over each rusty scrap of metal, dreaming of creating an instrument capable of cutting through to freedom. Isaac Harshen was a liar and a bit of a fraud, a hypocrite certainly. He acted as if he had some special access to truth. But she had uncovered the most wonderful secret of all. He didn’t really believe in God. She saw this in the cruel lines in the corners of his mouth when he bullied her, careless of all the laws that said a man must treat his wife better than himself. He bullied her because he had no fear that God was looking over his shoulder preparing a reckoning.

She began to stay out later and later with Gita. Sometimes she would ask, embarrassed, if Gita’s own husband ever minded. Gita laughed. “Why should he mind? And if he does, so we talk about it, we discuss it.” This was incredible to Batsheva, the very thought. She began to understand how abnormal her relationship with Isaac really was. She was not his wife, but his child, his terrified child. She more and more wanted to see Gita’s husband with her own eyes, to study him and contrast him to the husband she knew, to be sure it was not a misunderstanding on her part. The opportunity came on Succoth, the Feast of Tabernacles. It was Batsheva’s favorite holiday. She loved the sukkah—a little hut built of wooden slats with large palm leaves or bamboo for a roof, where they ate their meals for eight days in the almost summery autumn air. She spent the morning helping Gita to decorate it. Akiva and Dina played happily with strings of brightly colored ribbons and paper and baskets of plastic fruits. Newly risen from crawling, Akiva tottered like a happy drunk, his stomach out, his back arched, falling as much as he stood. The women laughed at him and tickled him.

“Ah, my dear Gitaleh, hard at work!” Rabbi Gershon walked in briskly, sweeping Dina off the ground and throwing the delighted child up in the air. She grabbed his thick brown beard and pulled. “Ay, as it is written: The raising of children is painful.” His brown eyes were full of warmth and laughter.

“Gershon, meet Batsheva Harshen.”

“Ay, Isaac’s wife. A great privilege.” He did not avoid her face, but looked at her pleasantly, full of friendly curiosity. “I understand your parents are considering moving to Jerusalem permanently?”

“Yes, my parents love it here. But my father has so many business interests in the States, I don’t know when he’ll be able to come.”

“It must be hard for you here alone, without your family and friends. You must take good care of her, Gita,” he called over to his wife, who stood up on a chair tying apples and grapes to the roof. She looked down at him and nodded, her eyes meeting his with a click of understanding.

Batsheva’s eyes wandered from the man’s to the woman’s. She drank in how their lips parted in happiness, how their faces lit up with pleasure when they looked at each other. She felt with the surety of sudden instinct that no sheet, or anything else, had ever come between them. The man’s long fingers held the child’s back firmly, but so kindly and carefully. It was so easy to hurt or frighten a small child. A careless pressing in of the thumb and forefinger, a sudden loosening of support beneath the tiny arms. But she could see that this man would never do that. His hands were strong and reliable and intelligent. He set the child down carefully, with just the right whoosh of swiftness to delight her without jostling her into fear or rejection.

“I understand that Zubin Mehta will be conducting the Philharmonic in an all-Mozart program tonight. You must go, of course, Gita. Do you enjoy Mozart?” He turned to Batsheva.

“He is my favorite, next to Beethoven,” she answered shyly. She was not used to speaking to men as an equal.

“Gita adores Mozart. She says he makes order out of chaos. He is predictable, yet wildly unpredictable. Just like my dear wife,” he teased fondly.

“But how can I go? I haven’t even prepared dinner yet. I don’t have a babysitter…” Gita remonstrated.

“Now, now. I will make myself a few eggs. I’m not completely helpless, you know. And Dina will be perfectly safe with me, unless of course, you don’t trust her to me?”

Gita laughed. “And what about the yeshivah? And what about all the students who will be waiting there for you, full of questions and problems…?”

“I’ll tell them there is no greater
mitzvah
than
shalom bais
, domestic harmony, and that they should go home to their own wives. Disgraceful how these newlyweds roam around the yeshivah until all hours! I have made up my mind to kick them out at seven o’clock at night. I will tell them I don’t want to see them after that. That they should go home and spend the time with their new brides.”

Batsheva looked at him, trying to hide her surprise. Isaac was never home.

“Oh, you want to create a revolution then?” Gita looked at him with excited pleasure. “You know what the others will say, that you are taking them away from learning, corrupting them…”

“If they were home with their wives they wouldn’t have time for all this dirty business. It’s a
chillul hashem
—a blasphemy, a desecration of God’s name.” His tone rose angrily.

Batsheva had heard rumors that certain yeshivah students had been involved in “disciplining” other boys found talking to girls, watching TV, or reading newspapers. They had picked one up on the ruse that they were driving him to his parents’ and instead had taken him to a deserted stretch of beach and beaten him up, making him eat sand, burning his hand with cigarettes, and exacting a promise from him that he would never repeat his “crimes” again or tell anyone. The same shadowy group had also gone on a rampage of burning down bus shelters because they disliked the advertisements that featured pictures of young models in bathing suits. While people in Meah Shearim condemned the activities, many were afraid their houses and cars would be next if they openly voiced disapproval. No one was sure who was leading the attacks. The police, nonreligious and antagonistic, held the whole community guilty of the violence and were not effectively able to search for the ringleaders.