The Sacrifice of Tamar (45 page)

She stopped crying. “There is a G-d,” she said with a little of her old strength. “And He is just. I put my faith in Him. One day, you, Aaron Finegold, will come on your knees and beg me to grant you
mechilah
for what you’ve done. You will come three times, with witnesses. You will beg me again and again. But I will never, ever forgive you.” She lay down in bed and covered her face with a pillow.

He walked out of the room, his confidence oddly shaken. The faces of the rabbis restored it.
“Nu?”
they asked him.

He shook his head. “She is intractable in her sin. You must talk to her again. Tomorrow.”

They nodded in agreement. The matter had to be settled. For the good of the religious community. The obligation lay on their shoulders to calm the hurricane tides engulfing the streets of Jerusalem and B’nai Brak. The grapevine had done its work. The story was now common knowledge in almost every
haredi
home in the country. People wanted an ending. They had to have an ending.

Chapter thirty-two

“Today it will be settled, I know it will.” Aaron rubbed his hands together excitedly.

In all her life, she had never seen him like this. All his righteousness, his single-minded devotion to the law, to goodness, to G-d, suddenly transformed into this ferocious, almost deadly drive to destroy his young wife. To her horror, she saw his pleasure in it.

He was wrapped in some evil, dark embrace, almost in love with the frenzied desire to destroy. And when she peered into his gentle, kind eyes, she saw the dark shine of a stranger she had once met briefly, amused and elated at his own power, the power to destroy another human being. She was horrified.

Yetzar Hatov… Yetzar Harah
. The drive to goodness… The drive to evil.

Locked in a wrestler’s embrace within him, within herself. Within her black rapist. Within every man and woman who lived. A saint could act like an animal; the most bestial of humans act like a saint. Each human being was capable of anything. It was a
choice, she thought, not a destiny. It was human accomplishment, not some G-d-ordained fate.

I too, she thought, badly frightened. I too am capable of anything.

He had just finished saying his morning prayers and still wore his prayer shawl. Its white gleamed distinctly against the deep black stripes. Black and white, Tamar thought. The white so pure, so immaculately, perfectly untainted. And the black so dark, with no hint of light. Simple, clear. A prayer shawl to wrap around yourself when you prayed clean, pure, good prayers to a perfectly understood G-d.

“The
rabbaim
of the Beit Din tell me in such a case I don’t need my wife’s consent for a divorce. The evidence of what she did is so strong… I’ll do it! I’ll divorce her. I’ll remarry. Start my life over,” he said with enthusiastic bitterness, almost madly.

Start his life over, Tamar thought, a shock wave going through her. Another bride. Another child with the genes of his half-black father, his black grandfather, and somewhere along the line, sooner or later, another black baby. And what then? More lies? More tales of adultery? Never any end to it, the lying, the deception? Never any end to the hatred.

G-d, she thought. G-d. G-d.

“Aaron, Aaron, why such a rush?” Josh said desperately. “Why can’t you investigate first? Perhaps there is a skin disorder, or some…”

“You, my own father, take her side? Why,
Aba?
Why?! It isn’t right. You are
my
family. I need your support! . . .” Aaron shouted.

“Stop shouting at me! Have you no respect?” Josh shouted back.

The doorbell rang. On the threshold stood Gitta Chana’s parents, the Kleinmans.

“Don’t let them come in! I don’t want to see them!” Aaron screamed.

“Rebbetzin…” Gitta Chana’s mother began to sob softly as she addressed herself imploringly to Tamar.

“Aaron, stop!” Josh warned him, mortified, leading the Kleinmans into the living room.

“You don’t believe it of my Gitta Chana, Rebbetzin Finegold? Do you?” the woman wept.

She looked at Rebbetzin Kleinman, a stranger who had never harmed her in any way. I have to tell the truth, she thought. I can’t let an innocent girl’s life be ruined. Her good parents lives be ruined. And yet, to tell the truth… What of my own innocent children? What of Aaron, Malkaleh, Saraleh? Utterly, utterly ruined. No one will want to marry them. My beautiful children… my innocent, beautiful children. And what of Josh? His place at the yeshiva? His chance to rise to its head? It would all be lost.

I was also once an innocent girl. Who says the innocent do not suffer? Who says life is fair?

The thoughts drummed hard, sometimes this thought, sometimes the other, two sounds of equal loudness, equal weight. Was she capable of it? she wondered. Capable of letting her daughter-in-law be convicted of adultery? Divorced, disgraced? Could she stand by and say nothing?

“Don’t answer her! They want to talk us into accepting their wanton, their disgusting
zonah
. . . I will never accept her back!” Aaron’s voice rose shrilly.

“There has to be another reason. My daughter is pure. She is innocent,” Rabbi Kleinman said, his voice rising.

“She is a sweet, good girl!” Rebbetzin Kleinman pleaded.

“She is a
zonah
, a
pritza!
” Aaron proclaimed pitilessly.

“How dare you say that about our daughter, about your own wife!” the Kleinmans screamed hysterically.

“Aaron, stop!” Tamar begged him, her eyes wide with horror, as if she were watching him dig his own grave.

“
No! I will not. Never. Until she is divorced and in hell!!
” He banged on the table. “
Get out of here!
” Aaron thundered at his startled, humiliated in-laws. “You raised a daughter who disgraces the whole Jewish people. You foisted her off on me, tricked me! You should be ashamed! Get out, I tell you, or I’ll throw you out!”

Tamar heard the doors of neighboring apartments open and close. She heard windows slamming shut. And from the bedroom, she heard the sobbing of her two daughters. She pressed her hands savagely over her ears, willing the noise to stop. I have to leave here, she suddenly realized. I have to go away or I’ll begin to scream. I will begin, and I will not be able to stop. I will scream and scream and scream until my lungs burst and my heart simply shrivels, like grapes set out in the sun.

She grabbed her purse and ran out of the house and down the street.

Beit El. How did one get to Beit El? It was past Jerusalem, on one of those dangerous
intifada
roads. Maybe, she thought, a rock would hit her in the head, cracking it open, letting all the thoughts, the drumming, simply spill out like coffee from a tipped-over cup, leaving her clean and quietly dead. The thought did not frighten her. On the contrary.

She took a bus to Jerusalem and got off at the Central Bus Station. The neon destination board flashed the information that a bus was leaving for Beit El in a half hour. She bought the ticket and waited by the bus stop, the sounds in her head never stopping, a cacophonous chorus of bad sounds—desperately sad, angry, unforgiving sounds. The images of the cowering Kleinmans; of Aaron, his immaculate white shirt damp with sweat circles under his armpits; of Josh, helpless in the midst of it—they made her sick.

She tried to distract herself by looking around at the people waiting with her. There were young soldiers holding incongruously clean rifles in dusty, begrimed hands, their eyes weary in their young faces. Every day another tragedy. Boys Aaron’s age getting blown up by bombs in Lebanon; their heads split by concrete blocks thrown down at them by other young boys standing on rooftops in Arab villages. Aaron at least was safe in the yeshiva. She thanked G-d for that. And then she thought about the word
safe
. Safe? What did it mean? Protected from harm, from disgrace, from discomfort? A word that described something fleeting, temporary, a momentary state of grace, reversible any moment. Who could really be called safe?

She looked at the women waiting for the bus to Beit El: Orthodox, married, dressed in modest long jeans skirts and inexpensive head scarves, their bare feet in sandals. Their modesty was amazingly different from the bewigged, designer-label
tznius
of B’nai Brak and Orchard Park, which invited envious attention. Pioneers, she thought. They lived in Beit El and traveled to Tel Aviv and Jerusalem to study or work. They traveled these dangerous roads every day. They did not look particularly brave. But inside, they must be. Not like me, she thought. I’m afraid of everything.

The bus filled and the ride began. Slowly, the soft hum of the engine, the gentle chant of pleasant conversations, began to work, lulling the noise in her head. She looked out at the tranquil landscape: olive trees, gnarled and ancient looking, planted neatly on the rolling hillsides; twining grapevines that created lovely shady arbors against the harsh Mediterranean sunlight; small flocks of grazing sheep led gently by old men and children, the lambs softly jumping after their mothers, who grazed with unhurried grace among the abundant green pastures.

Judea and Samaria. The place where the patriarchs had lived and died. Historically, the biblical land of Israel. It was so
beautiful, she thought. And there was so much open space, acre after acre of uncultivated land. Why, she wondered, need anyone fight over land when there was so much of it no one was using?

Ahead, she saw an Arab village. And even though it seemed bucolic and pleasantly sleepy from a distance, still her heart contracted as they drew closer. At first the villagers didn’t seem to pay attention to the bus. But then she saw it: little boys staring, almost palpable hatred in their small, wary eyes; older women who looked up from their work with dull, malicious stares. And as the bus made a turn, a hail of rocks battered its side. Passengers crouched, moving away from the windows. The bus driver speeded up. And then the village was behind them.

“Not too bad,” one of the women said. “This time, they didn’t break the glass.”

Tamar wiped the sweat from her forehead. That’s where it all begins, she thought. In a small child’s eyes.

Hate everyone who is not from your country. Hate everyone who is not from your part of the country. Hate them if they come into your neighborhood from a different neighborhood. Hate them if they pray too much, or too little, or to the wrong G-d. Hate them if their hair is a different texture, if they eat meat from a different butcher. Hate them if their skin is too dark or too light, too yellow or not yellow enough. Hate them if they don’t belong to your family. And hate your own family if they aren’t exactly like you.

She thought of her grandson lying alone in his cradle while his pious parents tore each other to bits. While his pious grandparents dithered and traded accusations. While the pious community frothed and rose like boiling milk, getting ready to scald and punish, destroy and shun.

While she herself watched and said nothing.

Hate, she thought. Hate, hate, and then hate some more.

The bus rolled through the barbed-wire fences, stopping at
a checkpoint guarded by a bearded, scholarly looking soldier with tzitzis hanging out and a big black skullcap. He waved them through.

The last stop.

She got off and looked around, breathing in the fresh air of the mountainsides, the blossoming almond trees. She didn’t know where to go. She had no address.

“You look lost,” said a pretty young married woman in a jeans skirt and a warm, unfashionable army-style winter jacket. Her tone was friendly, her English halting.

“I am lost,” Tamar admitted, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.

There was a pause as the young woman looked at her, puzzled and sympathetic. “Maybe I can help you?”

“I’m looking for Jenny…” She couldn’t think of her married name. “Or maybe you know her as Yehudit. She’s an American, about my age…”

“Oh, Yehudit! Sure. I’m walking that way anyhow. Follow me.”

They’d spoken on the phone several times, but had not seen each other again. They were both busy and the roads were dangerous and Jenny didn’t get into Tel Aviv that often Tamar had often excused herself. But the truth was, by moving to Beit El, Jenny had left the
haredi
world, the world of black-suited men and bewigged matrons. The world of Orchard Park. Oh, there was a yeshiva in Beit El, too, but its bearded
rabbaim
wore knitted skullcaps, not black cloth ones. And on their feet they wore sandals, not heavy, black laced-up shoes. No one in Beit El wore black suits or hats. And no self-respecting,
haredi
B’nai Torah would be caught dead learning in a yeshiva in Beit El. She’d felt uncomfortable about inviting them to visit her in B’nai Brak, concerned about Aaron and the girls’ reaction. What would they think? What would the neighbors think?

Her heart ached for her snobbery.

The
yishuv
was very attractive. Large private homes with lots of flowers and grass and trees. A feeling of safety and suburbs and rioting, happy, undisciplined kids enjoying childhood to the hilt.

“Over there—” The woman pointed. Tamar thanked her and walked in that direction.

It was a pretty house, maybe the prettiest one of all, she thought, built of rosy Jerusalem stone with a red-tiled roof and dark wooden shutters that reminded her of pictures of chalets in Switzerland. The garden was laid out in dreamy exuberance that even in March more than hinted at the glory it would be in June. She saw a red ball whiz its way in a happy arc and heard the shouting of playing children. She smiled, walking up the steps and opening the garden door.

The lawn was full of children. As she stepped inside, she saw one of them was in a wheelchair. He was about thirteen, a skinny child with a big, toothy smile and oversize glasses. There was a girl about twelve, a pretty dark-complexioned beauty, and a little stocky redheaded boy about seven.

“
Eeeeemmmmmahhh!
” the girl screamed. “It’s your turn!” Jenny laughed, picking up the ball and throwing it to the boy in the wheelchair, who reached up and caught it with one hand.