The Saturday Wife (50 page)
Amber and Stuart, who were hit worst of all, having invested every penny they owned with Viktor, declared bankruptcy, losing control of their teddy bear empire. But they managed to bounce back, designing a new doll that shakes its behind when you press a button, and reportedly have made countless millions with it.
Only Joseph and Mariette stayed behind in Swallow Lake. She stopped wearing her hats, and they no longer call themselves Orthodox. Her house, they say, is as beautiful as ever, and so is she. Still, she is alone much of the time.
As for Chaim and Delilah, they’ve become somewhat of a legend, the subject of rabbinical sermons from Johannesburg to Jerusalem and all points in between. Someone even made a movie about a hapless rabbi and his scheming wife, which everyone knew was based on all the newspaper articles about them. It poked a lot of fun at Orthodox Jews and was roundly condemned by embarrassed congregations everywhere, who accused the screenwriter and the producers of being “Jewish anti-Semites.” It got Reese Witherspoon another Oscar nomination.
As for what really happened to Chaim and Delilah, stories—like Elvis sightings—continue to surface every few years, claiming to be the true, the only, authoritative version. What everyone agrees on is this: Immediately after the Sabbath when they were turned away from the ornate gates of Uspekhov, a furious crowd of shul members showed up at the home of their rabbi and rebbitzin, who, fairly or unfairly, were held entirely responsible for the disaster. Holding buckets of concrete, glass, and wooden rubble, they poured the contents on Rabbi Chaim’s front lawn, all the while waving flashlights and screaming insults. Someone marked their front door with an X, and others ran after their speeding car with a bucket of tar and feathers.
After that, it all depends on whom you want to rely. One widely circulated report, published in the
Jewish Daily Press
(known by all as the
Jewish Mess)
had them driving directly to Tijuana, where they got a quickie civil divorce and an even quicker religious divorce, or
get.
Never did anyone get a
get
as fast as Delilah Levi, the story claimed. And Chaim, instead of gently tossing the scroll into her hands, as is the custom, pitched it so hard she wound up having to duck. Subsequent reports in that same paper had Chaim remarried a year later to a short, dark-haired Torah teacher with whom he went on to have other children in addition to little Abraham, over whom Delilah was only too happy to relinquish custody. Years later, another story about a Rabbi Chaim Levi appeared, describing the life of the Orthodox rabbi of a large, prosperous synagogue in Bogota, Colombia. It described how he had learned Spanish and how he and his wife—a second marriage for both—lived in luxury with their eight children, surrounded by an adoring, respectful congregation and full-time personal bodyguards, who protected them from drug-crazed kidnappers.
Soon after that, someone who looked exactly like Delilah surfaced on the cover of a California business journal. She wore a very chic and modest black suit as she smilingly accepted an award for running the most successful new eBay venture, a Web site selling “gently pre-owned designer handbags.” In the article, the woman accepting the award—who called herself Marlene Gold—talked about how she had begun her business after surviving a devastating divorce and losing custody of her only child to her vindictive ex.
She described how she’d started at the bottom and worked her way up. She talked about her mansion in Beverly Hills with its pool, her shopping trips to Paris and Milan for the shows, her fabulous vacations in sunny spots all over the globe. Despite the fact that she wore a magnificent wedding ring, she refused to give any details about her personal life, saying only that “she had a very handsome young husband, and two beautiful blond daughters.” She had everything she wanted in life, she said, and moreover, she had earned it herself. Someone scanned the magazine cover and article, and for a while it circulated through the Internet to millions. Everyone who saw it and who had known Delilah agreed that, if it really was her, she looked fabulous and thin, and sexier than ever.
But the most recent article, which you must have read—everybody did—was the one in
New York
magazine. The reporter, a crack investigative
journalist and a Gentile, tracked down a former classmate of Chaim’s who had sent out the following shocking revelation to everyone on the Bernstein alumni e-mail list.
Dear Friends:
In light of the terrible sin of gossip and scandalmongering of which we have all been guilty over the years concerning our friend and colleague Rabbi Chaim Levi, who defied the ban on the Swallow Lake congregation, I would like to set the record straight once and for all. Chaim and Delilah Levi are still married, baruch Hashem, and the parents of five children. They are the rabbi and rebbitzin of a tiny shteibel somewhere in North Dakota, consisting of thirteen families, who all meet in the rabbi’s basement for Sabbath and holiday prayers. Because the town is snowed in most of the year, the entire congregation regularly has not only kiddush but lunch and holiday meals at the rabbi’s house, which the rebbitzin prepares, although congregants often bring homemade contributions. I know because I spent the Sabbath with them.
In the magazine interview, the classmate tried hard to convey the great joy and serenity the Levis had found in living in such a tiny Jewish community, as well as the great love of the congregation for their rabbi and rebbitzin. He described Rebbitzin Levi as
the picture of the matriarch of an older generation, dressed in the modest clothing one would expect of a pious wife and mother, her dress loose and midcalf, her hair completely covered by a snood where only her blond bangs were visible, like those pious women of Boro Park and Meah Shearim. Numerous small children tugged at her dress as she ate with a healthy appetite from the heaps of cholent, kugel, and potato salad arrayed in plastic serving plates on a plastic tablecloth. There was much sincere laughter and the singing of many Sabbath hymns, as the children played board games and the adults conversed.
She looked, the classmate claimed,
perfectly content.
The reporter, however, was not convinced. He wrote:
The classmate, a very pious Jew who lowers his eyes when he meets other men’s wives, is a man who seems to be defending the Orthodox world. It is not impossible that he views the creation and publication of this fairytale
ending to a scandalous tale that has rocked the religious world for years as a good deed, a mitzva.
Furthermore, the classmate could not, or would not, provide an address and phone number for them, claiming he wished to protect their privacy, as they had “suffered so much from public scrutiny.”
The reporter’s cynicism produced a furor. Hundreds of letters to the editor arrived at the magazine. Those who defended the classmate’s tale said they found it perfectly feasible that the Levis, having undergone such terrible trials, had stayed together and learned to love each other. Delilah’s repentance and reformation further confirmed to them the beauty of the Jewish religion, which allows people to change and grow and learn from their mistakes.
But most people, including a good number who had actually known the Levis, were inclined to share the reporter’s skepticism. They said they found the classmate’s story
hard to believe,
either because they couldn’t bear to think of Chaim still saddled with Delilah or vice versa. They also took issue with the idea that anyone, particularly a weekend house guest, could possibly know if someone was
perfectly content.
But the best letter of all, people agreed, was from a woman claiming to be Delilah’s former roommate and the rebbitzin of a large congregation. Her sentiments spoke to many when she wrote:
It is not easy to be a rebbitzin. There are so many demands on your time, such a constant intrusion into your private life, and sometimes not much appreciation. Some people are just not suited to it. Wherever she is, we hope that Delilah has come to terms with the limitations of our lives and the impossibility of having all our dreams come true. If she has been forced, or has chosen, to live a simple pious life, we hope that the serenity to be happy with such a choice has come her way as well. And if she really has found the overabundance she craved, we hope that it doesn’t give her high cholesterol or make her mean-spirited and that she is nice to her household help and takes care of her own children, at least some of the time. And that she remembers to say her prayers as sincerely and as often as she can.
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