The Sabbathday River (60 page)

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Authors: Jean Hanff Korelitz

BOOK: The Sabbathday River
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“Thank you,” Judith said cautiously.
David leaned back as Judith removed his soup plate, but he never took his eyes off Naomi's face. “Interesting that you chose the pronouns ‘we' and ‘us.'”
“But that's just my point. Nothing brings out my Judaism like anti-Semitism.” Naomi was cutting some of her chicken for Polly. There was a tzimmes of sweet potatoes, too, and noodle kugel laced with currants and apricots. Also Judith's transcendent (as it turned out) gefilte fish.
“Well, let me ask you something, Naomi. If an external force like anti-Semitism is required to keep Jews Jewish, is Judaism worth preserving at all?”
Naomi put down her fork. “I don't know. It's a good question.”
“I think there are more pertinent questions,” Rachel said. “I mean it's all very interesting to talk about faith as if this were just between the Jews and God, but there have been a few other players in our history. Like, I know you can see this coming, David, but if there is a God, where was He during the Holocaust?”
“He was there.” David chewed his chicken. “He heard. It ended, didn't it?”
“It started,” said Naomi darkly.
“He was there, but He doesn't control everything that we do. He made us and He gave us the choices. Man chooses between good and evil. Often, unfortunately, he chooses evil, and when he does, God suffers with the victims.”
“Not good enough,” said Rachel. “I mean, Christians, at least, have a reasonable response to this problem, but we don't. A Christian can say she knows she can handle sorrow, because she believes God won't give her something she
can't
handle, so she can draw strength from his belief in her. But what tools do we have to confront sorrow with? If we're punished, we must deserve it in some way. He even leaves it to us to figure out what we did wrong. Plus we don't get to burden God with our private prayers. Christians can talk about their personal relationship with Christ. He's their personal savior. But we're not encouraged to be intimate with the Master of the Universe. He's got bigger stuff on His mind, so He can't pay much attention to our little lives. We have to say the ancient words when we pray, and we're not allowed to improvise. Plus there's no promise of an afterlife, where we can look forward to seeing the people we love and mourn. All we have is this, and if our history is any indication, this is nobody's idea of a picnic. Sometimes I wish I could believe in the Christian God. He's so much friendlier.”
“Oh, He is?” Joel said ironically. “I haven't noticed that the world's been a nicer place for the last two millennia. Besides, I've never understood how Christians can actually bring themselves to trust the God Jesus tells them to trust. Isn't this the same God we're talking about, after all? So if He abandoned the people of His original covenant, as they claim, what makes them think He'll honor His so-called new covenant with them?”
“Maybe they feel we blew it and they can do a better job,” Rachel said.
“I think Joel's point is that you can believe in God but recognize that He does have limitations,” David said, getting right back to what was, for him, the point. “It's not inconsistent to say that He hates suffering but can't eliminate it, at least not without taking away from us the gift of our own choices. And even if tragedy isn't God's will, overcoming it may be.”
Naomi smiled and shook her head. “Is that the same as saying that
He takes credit for the good things that happen, but the bad things are our own fault.”
“Not at all! It's saying that good can come from bad. From the Holocaust we got immeasurable suffering and sorrow. But we also got Israel. We got an opportunity for renewal.”
“Great!” Naomi said maliciously. “Let's go dig up the mass graves and spread the news.”
“I don't want renewal,” Rachel said softly. “I want what I've lost. I don't want to hear about how my sadness will contribute to some future happiness.”
“Rachel,” her sister said.
“No, really. I hate it when doctors tell me how what they're learning from my child might save somebody else's child. I feel badly for the next mother. I do. But I still want my own child. How can I embrace a God who's determined this will happen to him? And it's all very well to say genetics determined it,” she said, shaking her head, “but if there is a God, didn't He make genetics?”
“You're missing the point, Rachel.” Joel spoke softly. “If you can think of God as a little bit like a doctor, this is all I'm saying. You know, we don't always understand what He is doing on our behalf. Our challenge is to believe that He knows what's best for us, and hang on to that belief, even when we don't see the whole picture.”
Rachel was suddenly bitter. “So I'm being tested? That's great. He's obsessed with testing us, this God. And we never pass. It's rigged.”
“Abraham passed,” Joel said soothingly. “He had the hardest test of all, and he passed. That's why we can even sit here and have this discussion, thousands of years later.” Polly put up her arms to Naomi. Naomi pulled her out of the high chair and settled the little girl on her lap. “One supreme act of faith, long ago. And surely the entire meaning of our history is that we were chosen because Abraham passed his test.”
“I'm
not so sure,” Naomi said, her cheek to Polly's cool cheek. But nobody seemed to hear her.
“But this is just my point,” said Rachel. “Here you have a God who, even though He's not going to let Abraham actually kill his child, is still more than willing to put them through unspeakable trauma. I mean, how's poor Isaac supposed to live a normal life after he's watched his father tie him up and raise a knife to slaughter him?”
“Let's get him on
Oprah
and ask him.” David laughed.
“No, David. I mean it.” Rachel shook her head. The tight curls bounced for an echoing minute. “What kind of God would put His most faithful servants through that just to prove what was already obvious. Just to reassure Himself?”
Joel sipped his wine. “Have you considered that God always knew Abraham would pass, and that the purpose of the test was for Abraham himself to see the extent of his own devotion?”
“That's an even more convincing argument for not having put him through it,” Rachel said.
“And what about poor Sarah?” Naomi broke in. “Don't you think it was pretty presumptuous of Abraham to take Isaac off without even warning Sarah? Giving her a chance to prepare herself for the loss of her son? Or say goodbye?”
“Yes,” Judith said. “I certainly do.”
“But Judith”—Joel looked at her—“I think what you fail to see is that the story of Abraham is really a story of consolation. I think God means us to take comfort from this.”
“
Comfort
.” Judith shook her head.
“Yes. Comfort. This is the story that enables us to confront the worst things. The loss of a child, for example. When Jews were attacked in pogroms during the Middle Ages, they took their children's lives themselves to prevent their suffering at the hands of the attackers, and they invoked Abraham as they did so. They felt that if they could submit to God's will with Abraham's faith, then their tragedy was redeemed.”
Judith looked at him, and neither spoke. Then, abruptly, she stood. She took her plate and his and went into the kitchen.
“Well, you know,” Naomi said, with forced cheer, “maybe there's a certain twisted logic to that, but the fact remains that I don't particularly want to be involved with a God who would ask it of me. Frankly, I think we're in trouble when we have a God who's asking us to kill, for whatever reason.”
Joel smiled at her. “Naomi, the notion of a father willing to sacrifice a son for the good of mankind is at the center of more than one religion, you know.”
“Then what a terrible thing to base a religion on,” Naomi said passionately. “Honestly, sometimes I'm embarrassed by the whole thing.” She looked quickly at David. “I'm sorry. I shouldn't have said that.”
Again that benevolent smile. “But it's all right. Talmud says that when the debate is in the service of heaven, both sides are sustained.”
“But I don't even accept
that
,” Naomi said. “I mean, how can this even be worthy of
debate
? The murder of a child can
never
be justified. Some positions are just indefensible.”
Judith, returning to gather more plates, looked at her and shook her head. “But how can you say that, Naomi? Aren't you the one who said conditions always matter? You said that under oath, as I recall.”
Rachel, too, turned to Naomi. “That's right. Aren't you defending a woman who's accused of murdering her child?”
“Yes,” Naomi said. “But Heather is innocent. She's innocent of killing her own child, because that child was born dead. And she's utterly innocent of killing the baby in the river, because she has no connection to that baby at all.”
“So then,” Judith said, “you wouldn't defend the person who actually did kill that child in the river?”
“No. I don't think so.” Naomi shifted Polly on her lap.
“No matter what the circumstances were?”
“What circumstances
could
there have been?” Naomi said caustically. “This was a newborn baby. I mean, Catholics might believe babies are born with some kind of sin already attached to them, but even they don't murder their infants for it.”
Judith came back to the table and sat down.
“What?” Naomi looked at her.
Judith quickly shook her head. “I was just thinking. We don't know about that baby. And what we don't know might change our minds.”
“No. However you look at it, it was wrong to stab that child. It can't be made all right.”
“It was morphine,” Judith said vaguely.
“No difference. And no difference between that and Abraham stabbing his kid with a knife. It's still murder, or attempted murder.”
“But, Naomi”—Joe! leaned forward—“Abraham
did
do the right thing. We know that, because we were chosen by God as a result of his choice.”
Naomi thought for a moment. Even before she spoke, she knew she was wrong to do this, but she couldn't stop herself.
“Chosen for what?” She looked squarely at Joel, even as his look darkened in return. “See, I've always wondered about this. Maybe Abraham didn't pass at all. Maybe he failed. Maybe God wanted to see that Abraham's humanity was greater than his faith. And God was enraged, because here He'd made man in His own image, so it was a comment
on God, too. And was this barbarism really going to come out on top of the love between father and son? Maybe Abraham was supposed to get down on his knees and say, ‘God, I love you, but I can't do this. I'd rather kill myself if you'll only spare my child.' But when that didn't happen, when Abraham just went ahead without even hesitating and bound up his son and raised his knife, maybe God said, ‘Fine. If that's Abraham's choice, then I'm going to single out his descendants for an eternity of torments.' And so He did.”
She looked at them in turn. No one seemed inclined to interrupt her, and she could not seem to interrupt herself.
“And so He started to punish us. He enslaved us for a couple of centuries in Egypt. He gave us the Babylonian exile, and the Diaspora. He gave us the Crusades and the Inquisition, and the rap for Blood Libel, and pogroms. And then, just in case there was any doubt left in our minds, He gave us the Holocaust. You see, He wanted to make sure we understood Him. He wanted us to look at each other when they turned on the gas and think,
I guess we made a mistake. I guess we aren't God's chosen people, after all
. But we're so stubborn. We insist on not seeing the obvious. We're like little puppies who keep cuddling up to the guy that's kicking us away. We just don't get it, even when we look around now and the tormentors are still out there, drinking rum on the verandah in Paraguay, totally guilt-free. God doesn't care to punish them for what they did to His so-called chosen people, because this is what He chose us for. And all because Abraham was so willing to kill.”
In the silence, she could hear nothing now. Only, far down the hill, the river's rumble. It began to be disturbing, this silence. “Well?” Naomi finally said.
“That,” said David quietly, “is about the most cynical thing I've ever heard.”
Joel stood. His face, Naomi suddenly saw, was rigid white. Very deliberately he folded his napkin, placed it on the table, and left the room. She heard the kitchen door slam shut. She looked at Judith, but her eyes were fixed on some obscure point of the tablecloth. Belatedly, Naomi understood that she had done something unforgivable.
“Judith,” Naomi said.
Judith shot to her feet. “No. I'll get the dessert.” She walked into the kitchen.

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