Sotah (8 page)

She wore a two-piece suit. It was a square, lightly quilted jacket and a flouncy skirt. The colors were brilliant—lavender-and-green paisley with soft gold highlights. It had little gold buttons and a braided trim of twisted gold and black. Even to someone like Rebbetzin Reich, who had never in her life seen a fashion magazine or been to a fashionable clothes store, it was absolutely clear that the seamstress had done a magnificent job. Dina looked like a model on a magazine cover.

“She looks gorgeous!” Chaya Leah practically shouted.

“We want to see, too!” cried Benyamin and Duvid, pushing their way into the room.

“Don’t. It’s not right,” Ezra said severely, trying to stop them.

“Fancy-shmancy. We’re going to a wedding!” said Shimon Levi, his nose in the air, his behind swinging, while Asher started doing a spirited wedding dance, pretending he was balancing a bottle on his head.

They were smothered by a chorus of horrified shushes from their mother, Dvorah, and Dina.

“He’ll be here any minute! Do you want him to hear you halfway down the block?” Dvorah said severely. Then she relented. “You do, you know, look beautiful.”

“Phtu, phtu, phtu,” Rebbetzin Reich said warningly, herding the boys out of the room. It was an amused but not wholly unserious imitation of the traditional three-spit formula for warding off the evil eye. “You should just have a beautiful
mazel
,” she added, coming back in and closing the door behind her.

This was not good wishes, her daughters knew, but a rebuke that they accepted. Looks had no way of influencing G-d’s will. An ugly girl’s piety could earn her a fine husband and a wonderful, happy life. A beautiful girl’s sins, the opposite. Looks had nothing at all to do with it in the long run. It was G-d’s compassion, his
hashgacha pratis
, private care for each individual, which led a man or woman to find their perfect mate. This was all decided long ago, even before conception, in heaven itself. However, although each man and woman had their perfect counterpart, there was no assurance they would necessarily ever find each other. It was something to be prayed for with great humility. It was a gift, a boon, a reward dependent on one’s worthiness.

“Put on a little lipstick.” Chaya Leah, ever practical, broke the mood.

“Do you think I should?
Ima
, Dvorah?”

Her mother and sister considered. “Well, maybe just a touch of pink,” Dvorah said.

“Yes …” Mrs Reich considered, her doubt fading as she got used to her daughter in the new dress, the new role.
Kallah moid
, bride girl, a girl ready, willing, and able to have a husband. “A little lipstick. And maybe some perfume!” After all, a person wasn’t supposed to rely on miracles. There was no harm in helping
hashgacha pratis
along a little.

“Will
Aba
be home in time?” Dina asked anxiously.

“Your
aba
promised, so he will be home,” Rebbetzin Reich said with a conviction she didn’t feel. Who knew? Of course he would start home on time as promised. But maybe he would find an old man lugging a heavy basket from the
shuk
and have no choice but to help him home with it. Or perhaps there might be a hungry vagrant whom he would have no choice but to take to dinner. Rebbetzin Reich knew her husband. He was the kindest, gentlest, most wonderful person in the world. Everyone protected him from the slightest distress because he felt it so deeply. If he heard that the Jews in Russia were frightened of pogroms, or the Jews in Ethiopia were hungry, he would weep for half an hour, wondering perhaps if he had done some transgression that had weighted the scales of justice in the heavenly court toward punishment for the Jewish people. He didn’t consider himself a separate human being, but a part of a great whole. The Jewish people were a body. When some part of that body ached, Rabbi Reich moaned.

And so his wife couldn’t bear to bother him with unpaid bills, with clogged drains, with broken beds and the need for warm sweaters; with mortgage payments due and water bills overdue. The girls were her allies, keeping their small woes to themselves or sharing them with her.

“Of course he will be here soon.” There was a short silence in the room. “And if he is a little late,” Rebbetzin Reich allowed, “well, we all know that what he does will earn us all extra merit. And Mr Breitman will understand.”

“
Aba
can always meet him when he brings you home,” Dvorah soothed. She had been through this more times than she wanted to remember. Sometimes her father’s absence when her dates came to pick her up made an odd impression, but most of the time it didn’t really matter. The boy just assumed he was off somewhere studying. Sometimes they were even relieved to be spared, if only temporarily, the traditional paternal grilling, which took place long before they knew if they wanted to pass.

“Besides, Yaakov is coming with Abraham. It’ll be fine.”

Dina nodded, then suddenly sat down on the bed, the skin of her legs bitten by nervous cramps. The excitement was almost unbearable. She wanted to cry. She wanted to be alone. She never wanted to be alone. With him.

The doorbell rang. Mrs Reich jumped up to answer it. Chaya Leah charged into the boys’ bedroom, her job to keep them from stampeding over the young man and scaring him away. Dvorah took her sister’s warm, nervous hand and the two girls sat on the bed, shoulders and heads touching lightly as they listened for sounds in the next room. They heard Yaakov’s voice, pleasant and friendly, and then a deeper tone, very masculine but not overbearing. Dina squeezed her sister’s hand. Dvorah patted her helplessly. “It’s time now,” Dvorah said.

“Just a few minutes more! What if I have to go to the bathroom! I’ll just die.”

“No, you will not. He will probably take you to the lobby of the Plaza Hotel. That’s where they all go, all the
shiddach
dates. You will simply excuse yourself. There is a bathroom downstairs on your right,” she said with calm authority, hoping it wouldn’t happen. It wouldn’t be right to leave him sitting in the lobby by himself. “Now, let’s go.”

She saw his back, straight and slim, and the deep, dark velvet of the skullcap that sat on thick auburn hair. Her mother’s face seemed to lift in pride as she pressed her lips together in a little encouraging smile. Yaakov jumped up and made the introductions. Dina saw Chaya Leah standing behind the slightly opened door to the boys’ room, staring. She flushed, reminding herself to murder Chaya Leah.

But maybe not. The blush just made her that much prettier, she saw as she looked at Abraham Breitman’s shy, appreciative eyes. He stood up when he saw her. He was taller than her brother-in-law, she noticed, and slim. He had a young beard in the first stages of thick, full growth. Most of it was beneath his chin toward his neck. There was an elegance about it that was distinguishing. The mustache too was neatly defined, with no stray hairs cascading over his mouth—a look she hated (how did such men ever eat, ever kiss?). Behind the familiar black framed glasses, she could see his eyes were dark and receptive. His smile was genuine—a little shy and awkward, perhaps, but she perceived a gleam of hidden mischief in the corners, a vitality. He was a very good-looking young man, she thought growing shier and happier by the minute.

They sat down again around the table, making small talk. Rebbetzin Reich had set the table with elegant Sabbath china. Little silver platters overflowed with nuts, dried fruits, and home-baked delicacies. Abraham drank the tea that was offered him, took a polite sampling of the cakes, then stood up and looked at Dina expectantly. She got to her feet, feeling more comfortable now, and wished her family good night. And then they were out in the fragrant Jerusalem night, alone at last.

“I thought we could go to one of the hotels,” he said. “Is there any place you’d like to go?”

“Well, the Plaza, perhaps?” She kicked herself. Now he’ll think I am spoiled! He’ll think I wanted him to spend a lot of money on me! Why, why did I say it? “I mean, we don’t have to go anywhere special. Why don’t we just take a walk.”

“Perhaps. Perhaps afterward. When we’ve been to the Plaza. I’ve always wanted to go myself.” He grinned. “Let’s face it. We two won’t get much opportunity for such things the rest of our lives. We might as well go, no? To everything, there is a season,” he said kindly.

She smiled back gratefully.

She had never been to a hotel before in her life. She fought the temptation to take the revolving door full circle and escape straight back out into the night. She gaped at the marble columns that rose to twenty feet, framing dark silver mirrors. Abraham looked with her and nodded with slow pleasure, like a child entering an amusement park with a pocket full of change and a spring afternoon stretching delightfully ahead. They wandered to the back and found an empty alcove in the lobby. There was a couch, a love seat, and a chair surrounding a low table. She waited for him to sit down. He chose the love seat, she then decided on the chair, separating herself by the entire length of the coffee table. No point in becoming too familiar. He took off his hat and laid it carefully on the seat beside him. She took her arms out of her coat sleeves and clasped her hands in her lap, the knuckles going white. He leaned a little toward her. His hands were very mobile and expressive. His voice was gentle and clear.

“What are you studying in school?” he asked her.

“The book of Joshua, and Exodus.”

“Does it interest you?”

“Very much.”

“What part interests you?”

She felt a little awkward, as if she were being examined by an indulgent teacher. She thought a moment. Exodus—the whole beginning of the exile of the Jews from home, their enslavement in Egypt, their suffering and redemption. “Well, I understand why the Jews had to be enslaved. Why they had to suffer. It was a punishment, but one meant to refine and correct, not destroy.” She looked up at him for approval. This was what she had been taught. He seemed troubled. “That’s right, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes. Of course. Just. I myself have always had so many mixed feelings about what exactly the Jewish people were being punished for. I remember reading the commentary
Emek Davar
, the work of the Netziv, the great rabbi of the Volozhin Yeshiva. He discusses the verse that refers to the Jews in Egypt which states: ‘The land filled with them.’ He says this means that not only the land of Goshen which was especially assigned to the Jews by Pharaoh was filled with Jews, but the whole land of Egypt as well. Wherever it was possible to purchase a dwelling, there the Israelites went. The fact that the Angel of Death passed over the doorposts of the Israelites when all the firstborn of Egypt died shows they lived side by side. The Israelites were punished, the Netziv says, because they violated Jacob’s wish that they all remain together in Goshen, one family, living apart from the Egyptians.”

“Because they wanted to assimilate, to be like the Egyptians?”

“They didn’t want to be different. And this is the reason why we suffer persecution in every age, because we don’t want to keep apart, to be different.”

She shook her head, so interested in the conversation, she forgot all about her shyness in expressing her disagreement. “But we learned that the Exile was ordained even before they got to Egypt, so how could anything they did there have made a difference?”

He looked up, startled, with a new respect. “That’s true. It makes the whole thing rather complicated, doesn’t it?”

“But that’s what’s so beautiful about learning Torah. It is so rich, so varied. There are a million questions on every verse, a million answers. You can learn and learn and learn the same phrases all your life and never be bored. For example, this suffering as slaves in Egypt, we learned it was to teach us never to be unkind to or despise a stranger. To make us feel firsthand the sufferings of being a stranger in a strange land.”

“It’s the image of the furnace, melting down all the impurities in the precious metal, refining it until only pure gold remains: ‘Behold, I have refined thee … I have chosen thee out of the furnace of affliction.’”

“Do you think it’s true?”

“What?”

She took a deep breath, shocked at her forwardness at questioning so obvious a truth, something they both had learned was beyond question. “Does suffering really refine? Or does it just destroy?”

“Ah, it does both. Only G-d knows how much suffering a person can bear without being destroyed, and the measure is different for every man. We believe that G-d in his infinite mercy never gives one more suffering than one can bear. His purpose is to correct, to chastise, not to kill.”

“I believe that. But people do die, don’t they? Their hearts break?”

He gave her a long, slow glance, a kind, slightly ironic smile. She looked so delicate and fragile. “You needn’t worry. Women are naturally pious and good. G-d has so little need to punish them.”

“But, sometimes, in my thoughts …” She stopped, appalled at the sudden, intimate turn the conversation was taking. Would he think less of her? Would he be shocked and take her home immediately in disgrace?

“One is not punished for thoughts. Only those that result in acts. Wait … that isn’t strictly true. There is one case where the thoughts themselves are a punishable sin. It’s when a man specifically thinks of another’s wife with impure thoughts.”

She caught her breath, shocked, blushing furiously. But, looking at him, she saw he was very comfortable. To him it was words of Torah, she realized, which elevated any topic to holiness. She let out her breath and her hands untwined, resting more easily in her lap, the good, pink color returning to her fingers.

“I was learning something so interesting this week,” he began, not having noticed either her distress or her recovery. He was in his element and found her interest, her questions, charming. “I learned that when G-d created Man, the whole universe participated, each part of the Creation making some contribution. There is even a story that Adam was created so tall, he reached from heaven to earth and that G-d put his hand on him and squashed him to a certain size. I like that idea. A man being multistoried, one above the other. At the highest level, man is just like G-d. On the lowest, just a physical being, close to the earth.”