The Sacrifice of Tamar (6 page)

They had never been so close. They had never been so far apart.

Chapter three

She got up the next morning with a feeling of heaviness, as if an iron pole was pressing from the roof of her mouth down the back of her throat to the edge of her stomach. Her sides seemed like rude strangers squeezing up against her, and her eyes pressed up against her lids sending aching pains shooting down her cheeks to the tip of her nose. Her teeth throbbed, a flashing, stabbing pain that wandered from tooth to tooth.

All day, she lay on the couch, immobile, her mind filled with frightening images of evil, images in which she found herself holding knives and guns; in which she found herself shooting, stabbing, kicking, pouring burning oil, slashing, smashing…

Would she become evil? Like a dark rain, would the constant bad thoughts, the hatred, penetrate her soul and suffuse it? The idea frightened her. The idea of going out of the house frightened her. The idea of being alone in the house frightened her. She checked all the doors, all the windows, again and again. She refused to let in the nice young delivery boy and insisted he leave the groceries on the doorstep, slipping him the money underneath
the door. It took her a long time to open the door to take in the food, but finally, worrying that the cats would get it, she did.

It was a strange and hopeful thing, her worry about the cats, her concern for the waste of good food. It was like a short visit with her normal self, proof that self still existed. But once she had put away the groceries, that self seemed to go away again.

She sat on the edge of her old blue velvet sofa, sinking into its softness. She rocked and rocked, hugging her damaged body as if trying to prevent it from shattering like glass in the wind, sending slivers drifting away into nothingness. The tears rolling down her cheeks were comforting in their real warmth, another sign of normal function.

The phone rang. It was Rivkie.

“You’ll never guess what
mazel
. Someone broke into the house right after you left! I guess I should keep the windows locked! Went through all the drawers and took a few dollars and my silver bracelet and some other cheap stuff. But of course he didn’t find my good jewelry. I’m not stupid. I hide my jewels in a place no one could find. The safest place!” she gloated. “Wasn’t that a
mazel
you left early? I’ll tell you the truth, I was not too happy to see on that note that you went. But then when I saw the house, I knew it was all
beshert
, that
Hashem
was just watching over you, you should get out early. So I’m calling to tell you I’m not mad you left early, even though you promised to stay, and you never said anything about leaving… I’m really not even a little mad anymore. But isn’t that something? Must’ve happened not a minute after you went! . . . Tamar?”

“I have a headache, Rivkie. I’m going to lie down.”

After that, she let the phone ring, the mail lay unopened until daylight began its slow retreat. As the light dimmed, she forced herself to begin dinner. But as she took out her butcher’s knife to trim the tips of the chicken wings, her fingers flexed in a gesture of horror. The knife fell. She heard it clatter behind her
as she fled to her bedroom. She slammed the door, then crawled into bed, pulling the covers over her head.

Josh came in late from the yeshiva, searching for her, softly calling her name. She reached up for him urgently, pulling him down, needing to feel his clean, wholesome body cherish her unclean, battered one, her defiled and destroyed self. In his arms, she could forget for a moment.

He was surprised and shyly pleased at her ardor and happy to return it. He was a man whose mind ruled his passions, who lived by rules. And when the rules told him it was permissible, even praiseworthy, to make love to his wife, he brought to his passion the total commitment he brought to every other aspect of his life. He was a man free of guilt and full of pure intentions. He loved his wife.

It was like a balm to her wounds, his loving warmth. Pressed along his body, made one with him, she seemed to draw from him some of his serene purity. Sex was no longer something she did for a mitzvah, something she did for him. It was not, an extra, a frill removed from the necessities of life. It had become an oxygen mask. It told her she was still alive. It told her she was still loved.

Yet later that night she only pretended sleep, waiting for him to start his gentle snoring before climbing out of bed. She left the room quietly, sitting again on the couch, rocking and rocking, hugging herself against the enemy, protecting herself against the silent annihilation taking place inside her soul.

He felt her absence and wandered into the living room, sitting down beside her. “What is it?”

She looked into his eyes, so filled with softness and concern. Could she tell him? Could she take the chance of seeing the softness fade, transformed into the hard, unrelenting glare of judgment? Would the
halacha
command him to be kind to her, or to divorce her? She didn’t know! But one thing was certain: whatever
it demanded, however noble or painful or tragic, that was exactly what he would do. If only I knew! she thought, trembling.

He put his arm around her shoulders. “Are you cold, my love?”

His warm arm. Why should she take such a chance? Why should she cause him the pain of knowing, the pain of horrendous choice? Better, she thought, to sacrifice myself. To know alone. To suffer alone.

“Just a stomachache. I took a Tums. Please, darling, you have to get up so early. Go to sleep, Josh. I’ll be in in a minute.”

“Are you sure? Maybe you should see a doctor in the morning, Tamar?”

“We’ll see.”

“No, it’s important. It’s written: ‘And you shall take exceeding care of yourselves.’ This is the law, Tamar.”

Another law, she thought wearily, but without resentment. His face was too full of anxious concern for resentment. “Don’t worry. If I don’t feel better, I’ll go see a doctor. Now go to bed, Josh. Go to bed, my love.”

He kissed her and turned toward the bedroom. She watched his back with hot, unreasonable disappointment, crushed at having achieved her goal.

“Are you any better this morning, my dear?” he asked her the next morning, sitting on the edge of the bed.

She had not slept all night. “It’s just a bad cold,” she murmured, and then, inexplicably, she added: “And I have my period.”

He jumped up guiltily. “How can that be? Just the other night you went… ?”

“Not really a period, just spotting. I’m sorry,” she lied. For reasons she couldn’t understand, she suddenly didn’t want him to touch her.

His face fell. Spotting, those tiny drops of blood that sometimes
inexplicably appeared between periods, wreaked havoc on married religious life. It meant another two weeks’ separation, just as you’d gotten back together again. But that was the Law.

“Well, you should see a doctor, darling.”

“Yes, maybe, a doctor,” she murmured. He was so kind, so concerned! She wanted to throw herself into his arms and weep. She wanted to tell him everything, to explain all her lies, to be loved and forgiven unconditionally.

“No! Not ‘Yes, maybe.’ A doctor. Today, Tamar.” His voice went suddenly strident and harsh. “This is
not acceptable
. You must take care of yourself. This is the Law.” He took a deep breath. “Can I bring you a cup of tea, something to eat?” His voice softened, yet his eyes, Tamar noted, were still hard.

She shook her head, close to tears.

“If not, I’ll leave for yeshiva. It’s getting late.”

Yeshiva, she thought. Where he would sit and learn the Law. All day, all day. The sacred Law, which only men were allowed to study. The Law that governed their lives and that a Jew ignored at his peril. And if the Law said: “Divorce your wife,” he would, wouldn’t he?

For what was human emotion, human longing, in light of G-d’s infallible word? “And you shall take your son, your only one, your beloved, and offer him as a sacrifice.” And Abraham had not hesitated, had not questioned. And only G-d’s word had stopped his hand from killing his own child, his one beloved…

She pulled the covers over her head.

Only later, when she was sure he had gone, did she get out of bed. She did not bother to pour the ritual waters over her fingertips to rid them of the unclean residue of sleep. She had not slept. Besides, she was totally unclean. A filthy, unclean, disgusting, worthless… she thought, beaten down by each word, beaten down and oppressed by the very thought of herself.

She walked into the living room, looking up at the bookcase
filled with the Talmud, the Pentateuch, the major and minor prophets, the Mishna, and hundreds of commentaries. Where to begin? She opened the Bible she had studied day in and day out, ever since she was a little girl, the sacred text she could recite practically by heart. She knew exactly where to look: Deuteronomy 22:22. “If a man be found lying with a married woman, then both of them shall die…”

She sucked in her breath. But this was not the case. It was rape, not seduction. She read on: “If a man lies with a betrothed maiden in the city, then you shall bring them both out to the gate of that city and stone them with stones that they die; the maiden when it is proved she did not cry out in an inhabited place and the man when it is proved that he has humbled his neighbor’s wife…”

Because she did not cry out.

She pressed her fist into her mouth, biting hard on her knuckles to keep from screaming. No, she reasoned with herself, shaking her head. The words proved nothing. They were not the Law, she’d learned. The written Torah, the five books of Moses, were like a shorthand. The true explanations and clarifications of the Bible had been whispered to Moses by G-d on Mount Sinai, and Moses had told Aharon and the elders, and they had told the people.

For example, although it was written “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth,” the Oral tradition explained that this did not mean take out your neighbor’s eye if he took out yours; it meant that you must pay him damages for the loss of the eye. The unbroken Oral tradition had lasted hundreds of years, until people began to forget and the rabbis had decided to write it down. And thus the oral tradition had become the voluminous Talmud. Only there were all the cryptic utterances of the Bible expounded and applied. Only there was the
halacha
to be found.

She took a heavy volume off the shelf. Its sheer weight
amazed her. She opened it. The page, divided into text surrounded by columns and columns of printed commentaries, made her head swim. Her whole life, everything she did and thought and felt and aspired to was shaped and governed by these words. Yet although she could read Hebrew fluently, their meaning was totally inaccessible to her. It might as well have been written in cuneiform or Chinese.

“He who teaches his daughter the Torah, teaches her impurity,” expounded Rabbi Eliezer ben Horkanos in the Talmud, the famous opinion that encouraged Jewish leaders, communities and families to keep Jewish women unschooled and in ignorance for centuries. The Bais Yaakov movement to provide girls with some kind of religious and secular education had only begun in 1917, her mother’s generation! And even there education was severely restricted. Girls were permitted to learn the five books of Moses, the prophets, even Mishnah—a codification of Talmudic laws—her teachers at Ohel Sara had explained. Just not the Talmud. Women’s minds were too flighty, their intelligence wasn’t made for Talmud study as was a man’s, they were told. And when, rarely, a particularly rebellious or intelligent girl protested, she was placated with “But a woman’s role in life is different from a man’s. She cannot offer a lifelong devotion to Talmud study, the only adequate commitment necessary to reach some understanding. After all, someone must care for the home, the children… After all, someone has to!”

Talmud study had been absolutely off limits to her. Her teachers, her rabbis, her parents, the community, Jewish history, had made sure of that. And she had never questioned it. Besides, she had seen her father learning Talmud. It seemed so dry, so analytical, so difficult. She and all the other girls she knew had always been thrilled they didn’t have to learn Talmud. But now, realizing she did not have the tools she needed to delve into its intricacies, to find the answers on which her life depended, she
wondered if her former joy had not been simply that of the slave relieved of the burden of his own life by the slave master.

She put away the Talmud and took down Maimonides’ Mishoa Torah. She knew how to learn Mishna. It was so beautifully simple after the Talmud. Often, she had seen Josh pore over the Mishna to discover the final
halacha
.

She took down the
Tractate of Women
, guessing what she needed to know would be in there. She flipped through the pages until something caught her eye: “Who is seduced and who is raped? One who is taken with her consent, and one who is forced. Unless witnesses testify otherwise, one who is taken in the wilderness is considered raped, because even if she cried out, there was no one to hear her. And one who is taken in the city is considered seduced, because if she had cried out, someone would have heard her. If a woman does not cry out and has no witnesses to testify that the man had a sword and said ‘Cry out, and I will kill you!’ she is considered to have lain with him willingly.”

And a married woman who is seduced, who lies with another man willingly, is an adulteress, forever forbidden to her husband. This she did not have to look up. This she knew. And an adulteress deserves death. At the very least, the husband must divorce her.

It was so unfair! She had not been seduced. She had been raped. There had been a knife. G-d knew this!

But she had no witnesses.

She slammed the book shut and pressed it against her chest, the last tenuous threads holding her heart together finally dissolving.

Perhaps she had misunderstood, she thought wildly. Perhaps she should call a
rav
, ask him the
halacha
. . . But she knew the moment she asked a rabbi a
shaileh
, a
halachic
question, she would have to do exactly as he told her, no matter how painful. Misunderstanding the law was much less serious a sin than knowingly doing the wrong thing.