Between Gods: A Memoir (9 page)

She looks around at us. “Who knows which month we’re in?”

She’s appealing to the Jews who are here to support their partners in a potential conversion. They shift in their seats: the
Israeli with the dreadlocks, the cluster of ball-cap wearing boyfriends.

“Tevet?” one of them guesses.

“No. Anyone else?”

Everyone in the class averts their eyes, nobody willing to risk an answer.

“Kislev,” the rabbi says finally. “The month of trust. Also the month of?”

I raise my hand. “Hanukkah?”

“Correct.”

Debra gives me the thumbs-up.

“Which,”
the rabbi adds quickly, “is a very
minor
holiday. A holiday for children.”

I busy myself with my notebook.

“Anything else about Kislev?” she asks.

The silences blooms and bursts.

“Kislev is the dark month,” she says. “Both outside and within. As the days get shorter, our own inner darkness makes itself known.”

Rabbi Glickman invites us to close our eyes. To enter the blackness, the cold. My lids fall shut as though weighted by coins.

She begins to speak in a singsongy voice, like a yoga teacher might use in Savasana or a kindergarten teacher during story time. “Christmas is such a big light,” she says. “It’s so overpowering. We need to fortify ourselves, to push back against it, to find our
own
way to light the darkness. Our own Jewish way.”

Lay off my holiday, I think instinctively.

I open one eye; the rabbi is looking directly at me.

I close my eye, chastened. But in my mind’s eye my dukes are still raised.

“Now picture a menorah,” she continues in her singsongy voice. “Perhaps the special menorah you had as a child.”

I exhale, refocusing. A menorah, okay. That was the one Jewish item we did have, at Granny and Gumper’s house in Quebec. It was pushed to the very back of the highest shelf of a huge walnut cabinet Granny and Gumper managed to smuggle out of Europe. Nobody mentioned the menorah; it was never lit. And instead of eight branches, it had six.

Rabbi Glickman says, “Picture the menorah. Envision the row of unlit candles.”

I do.

“Now light a match,” she says.

I imagine striking the flint, wait for the little flame to rise, but my brain refuses the image. The rabbi is instructing the other students to light the candles one by one. I try, try again. But again my mind balks. It knows the light is a lie.

We learn that Kislev, the dark month, is also the month of dreams. Almost all the dreams that appear in the Torah occur in Kislev. Back from class, I fall into a deep sleep while the first snow falls outside my window. I dream that my cell rings. When I answer, Eli whispers in my ear.
Come with me to Paris
.

I know him in my dream by his Hebrew name, Moshe.

Come with me
, he whispers again.

Is this the still, small voice within? Or is it a test, a temptation?

On Friday afternoon my phone buzzes in my pocket. “Let’s meet up,” Eli says.

He sounds different from the dream. Buoyant, and matter-of-fact.

There’s no discussion about who will be the one to cross Toronto.

An hour later I ring his doorbell; there’s the sound of footsteps from deep within the house. After several minutes he appears, wearing a beige cable-knit sweater. There’s a fire in the grate, and behind him our Scotch is on the table, already poured. I feel, for a moment, that I could actually step into this advertisement, which could be for booze, or J. Crew, or for some other life I’m meant to be living. Maybe this is my chance to leave my lead cloak behind forever.

Eli takes my coat, kisses me on the cheek. “How’ve you been?”

“Not great.”

“Still feeling down?”

“You could say that.”

“Well, you look good.”

He ushers me into the glossy magazine.

We settle beside each other on the couch. I notice that the photo of his girlfriend, the one that used to be on the coffee table, has been removed. I put my feet in their wool socks up on the ottoman.

“It’s been a long week,” I say, although of course it’s been more than a week: it’s been a month, a decade, a lifetime. Because this is the thing about depression, or
one
of the things that makes it so awful: you cannot, no matter the effort, remember life without it. You know, intellectually, that there have been periods of happiness. Of peace and ease. But knowing and believing are two different things.

“How’ve
you
been?” I ask.

“Good,” he says. “Busy polishing my dreidels.”

I smile.

“I was thinking,” he says. “My mum is having a Hanukkah party on Saturday.”

“Oh?”

I wait. Two seconds. Three.

“It might be interesting for you,” he says. “Because of what you’re exploring.”

A vision of his family home, the crystal chandelier ablaze, a long table laden with the traditional latkes and jelly doughnuts, rises up in my mind. His mother, a beautiful woman with the same olive skin as Eli, stands with a match poised over the menorah. She gestures me to her side, puts an arm close around my shoulder. She invites me to light the candles. As I do, she sings the blessing. My harmony weaves through hers, as though I’ve known this song my whole life.

“I’d love to come,” I say, jumping on the invitation before I can remember to try to sound aloof. “Thanks!”

He grins.

I pull my daybook out of my purse to mark down the date. “Just let me—” I say, flipping through the pages. Then I realize. The party falls on Degan’s birthday. We’re going to be up at the cabin.

“Oh shit,” I say. I check the date again to make certain. “No. I’ve got plans.”

“Really?” Eli says. “Can you get out of them?”

I rub my temples, digging into them with my thumbs.

“No,” I say. “I can’t.”

We’re sitting close to each other, our hands just a few inches apart. I see out of the corner of my eye that Eli has stuck his index finger out, in my direction. I instinctively do the same. The tips of our fingers touch.

“That’s too bad,” he says. “I was hoping you could come.”

He turns and looks me in the eye. “I’m happy to see you,” he says.

The heat rises to my cheeks. I want to meet his acknowledgement with my own, to tell him I am happy to see him, too, but all I can manage is “Likewise.”

“Really,” he says. “I’ve been thinking of you.”

It’s hard to hold his eye. I want him to continue at the same time as wanting him to stop. The impulses push up against each other inside me, competing like sisters.

The sun is setting: for a second time I’ve found myself here at the beginning of the Sabbath. Eli leans over and touches my cheek.

My palms are sweating. I can feel my pulse at my neck, so close to where his hand is resting. I force myself to pull back.

“I should go,” I say.

He smiles and sighs. “Yeah,” he says. “You probably should.”

He lowers his hand to his lap. I immediately regret what I’ve said.

“Do you want me to go?” I ask.

He smiles again, a rueful smile. “You probably should.”

I walk down the Danforth with my hands in my pockets. The lights from the storefronts cannot touch me. I think of Lucy’s confidence:
The only way to really get it back would be to marry a Jew
. My chance is gone. My one chance lost. I can’t see another.

On Sunday I go for a massage. The masseuse, Yona, is a Jew married to a Gentile. The first thing she told him when they got together was that their future children (I picture his eyebrows rising) would be brought up as Jews.

I take off my clothes and lie face down on the massage table. Yona doesn’t ask how I am. I don’t tell her. I lie like a corpse while
she digs her fingers into my shoulders, my back, pulling and prying the secrets from my cells. Tears roll down my face and splash on the floor. It’s the opposite of a burial. It’s an unearthing.

After, I go out onto the street, my loose, pummelled muscles tensing against the cold. On impulse, I fumble in my pocket for my cell. There’s a message waiting from Dad: “Call me right away,” he says. “It’s urgent.”

I stand on the freezing sidewalk panicking, pressing the wrong buttons through my gloves. I breathe deeply, force myself to slow down. When Dad finally answers, I don’t bother with hello. “Is everything okay?” I ask.

“Sure!” he booms. “It’s fine! I just wanted to tell you something I learned about Gumper’s mother.”

I let my breath out slowly. A cloud appears in the cold air in front of my face.

“Sweetie? Are you there?”

“I’m here,” I say.

The dog barks in the background. “The thing I learned is about Gumper’s mother, Ruzenka. It’s about her last name,” Dad says.

“Bondy?”

“Yes. It’s from the Sephardic name Bondia.”

“Oh?”

“And from
Bon dia
in Catalan.”

“Which means?”

“In English, ‘Good day.’ In Hebrew,
‘Yom tov
.’ ”

A smile comes over my face. I stomp my feet to warm them.

“So our name is a celebration. A happy day.”

fourteen

O
UR CLASS MEETS AGAIN
, two weeks early, because people will be going away over the “winter holiday”—which is code, I realize, for Christmas. I arrange to meet Rabbi Glickman before the class, to level with her. To tell her how hard it is that the other women in our class will be “allowed” to convert, but I won’t, despite being half Jewish already. Not “allowed” because I plan to marry a Gentile.

“That’s too bad,” she says blandly when I explain.

We find a table at the small café in the foyer of the community centre. She sits and motions for me to do the same.

“The other women,” I say. “I don’t think they are really interested in Judaism. They’re only interested in getting married.”

“And isn’t that a noble cause?”

I’m silent.

“Isn’t it?” she asks. Her piercing gaze reminds me that Degan and I still haven’t set a date for our wedding.

The waitress arrives and the rabbi and I both order lattes.

“So,” the rabbi says evenly. “You’re faced with a difficult decision.”

“Whether to convert?”

“Whether to get married.”

I pinch my earlobe between my thumb and forefinger.

She eyes me. “Intermarriage is frowned upon,” she says. “You do know that, right?”

I blink. Blink again. They want me to ditch my fiancé? I forced myself to walk away from Eli, from that beautiful scene in the glossy magazine—in other words, I’ve done the right thing—and this is the result?

“Can I have some sugar here?” the rabbi asks the waitress. She turns back toward me reluctantly. “Do you know about
gilgul nefashot
?”

I shake my head: no. My eyes are wide.

“
Gilgul nefashot
translates to ‘rolling souls.’ It’s a concept that applies to bringing Jewish souls back to Judaism. There are lost Jewish souls. They attach to someone who will eventually find a Jew to marry.”

“So it’s all predetermined?”

But the rabbi won’t bite. She repeats, “When you convert, you are bringing a soul back to Judaism.”

I wonder if she’s been listening to anything I’ve said. “I’m not
allowed
to convert,” I remind her. “Unless Degan does, too.”

A look of mild annoyance crosses her face, as though I have interrupted some well-polished speech. “In your case, you’d be bringing
two
souls back.”

“But Degan doesn’t want to convert.”

She shrugs. That part isn’t her problem.

We walk in silence back up to the room where our class takes place. Rabbi Glickman greets the rest of the students and then asks if anyone knows what month comes after Kislev. People have been studying up: several hands wave in the air, Debra’s included, but the rabbi chooses to answer her own question. “Tevet,” she says. “The month of goodness and bodily heat.” She pauses. “Judaism has a notable lack of emphasis on sin. With regard to sexuality especially.” She pauses again. “Unlike certain
other
religions.”

I lower my head to my notebook, brow furrowed.

Debra, the minister’s daughter, refuses to be shamed. She raises her hand again. “For example?”

“Well,” says the rabbi, “for one, making love is considered a good thing. A sanctified part of Shabbat. In Judaism, the pleasures of the body are celebrated.”

I feel again the heat of Eli’s hand on my cheek, the pulse of my skin under his touch.

“Between married partners,” she adds.

I flush.

“In Tevet,” the rabbi says, “we ask ourselves how we can bring the
goodness
of the sexual impulse into our homes.”

I wait for the answer, but she doesn’t supply one. She peers at us over her glasses. She is a woman with almost no extra body fat. Her close-cropped hair gives her the look of a bird.

“In the Torah,” she says, “we are told about a human being’s two inclinations: toward good and toward bad. These are not states but
tendencies
.”

“The
yetzer harah
?” one of the baseball caps asks.

“The
yetzer harah
is the impuse toward bad. And who knows the good impulse? The
yetzer
—?”

I remember my conversation with Dad. Bondy.

Bonas dia
.

Good day.

Yom TOV
.

“
Yetzer tov
?” I ask.

The rabbi nods, acknowledging me. We hold eyes for an extra moment, as though she is seeing me for the first time, reevaluating her earlier opinion.

I think: My name shares something with the good impulse. With goodness itself.

“Yes.
Tov
means ‘good.’ ”

Someone clears their throat.

Rabbi Glickman says to the whole class, “Please put down your pens. What I’m going to tell you now is important.”

We do as told.

“In Judaism we are held responsible for the inner wrestling match between the two impulses. At any moment we can turn back toward good.”