All Who Go Do Not Return (28 page)

Worst of all was the realization that I had to build myself a new value system. When everything you’ve ever known is suddenly up for question, what are the values you retain and what do you discard? What is the meaning of right and wrong when there is no guidance from a divine being? And most of all, if we are all but accidents of matter and energy, with no greater purpose beyond our immediate natural needs, what, then, was the point of it all?

In the dining room of our new home, two men, employed by the moving company, were reassembling the breakfront. One of them, tall and broad-shouldered, was concentrating on the work, a power drill in his hand and a handful of screws in his mouth, pointy sides in. The second man, short and stocky, looked around, vaguely distracted. Then his gaze fell on the two kids around me.

“Hey, there, little guy,” the man said to Akiva, who was now almost three and clasped my hand, vaguely frightened of these strangers in our strange new home.

In my other arm, I held one-year-old Hershy, who was born in November 2001. With five children, we’d long outgrown the two-bedroom apartment on Bush Lane, and were now moving to a new place one block away, on Reagan Road. Finally, we could afford to buy a home of our own, two floors, four bedrooms, two and a half baths, and our very own front lawn, with a newly planted Japanese maple and a pair of white rosebushes.

The boys and I watched the movers go about their work. A few minutes later, the girls stomped in, home from school, and dropped their schoolbags in the hallway.

“
All
these kids yours?” the short one asked, his eyes opening wide.

“Yep.” I tried to look proud.

“Some brood,” the taller one said. The screws were no longer in his mouth, and now he, too, looked up from his work. “You rich or somethin’?”

“No. But each and every child is a blessing,” I said. That was the line, when outsiders asked.

The men nodded and pursed their lips with what appeared to be tentative admiration.

It was true, each child was a blessing. Yet I couldn’t tell these men that if I’d have had my way, things would be different.

Gitty and I had talked about birth control. Or rather, I brought it up, and Gitty always had the same three words in response. “It is forbidden.” Her resolute tone declared the discussion over.

I hadn’t known about birth control until years after our marriage. Once, back when we were expecting Tziri, I heard an acquaintance say that, on average, Borough Park Hasidim had fewer children than other Hasidim. Eight instead of twelve, the man said. I was baffled, but too embarrassed to ask: how do they do it? I knew only the barest facts. Sex brought pregnancy, which brought babies, and that was that. None of it, as far as I knew, was optional. Not even the sex, which, according to Jewish law, a husband was to provide weekly—it was all in the marriage contract.

Eventually, I learned about birth control the way I learned about much of modern life: through the Internet. I also learned that its use was not permitted. Or permitted only under special circumstances. Or permitted only by certain rabbis, and our rabbi was not one of them.

After three children, I thought it would be wise to take a break, but Gitty wouldn’t consider any form of birth control without rabbinic permission. Since our rabbi wouldn’t permit it, any rabbi who would was, ipso facto, not a good enough rabbi.

After our fourth, I tried again to reason with her, but Gitty protested that she would feel naked if she wasn’t either pregnant or pushing a baby stroller. “People will look at me funny,” she said, and I sympathized. Who wants to be looked at funny?

After our fifth, I finally declared it was time.

“Which of them would you give up?” Gitty asked, and we looked at our children, the four older ones around the kitchen table, and Hershy on her hip.

Which would I give up?

We were a family of seven now, and I could not imagine it any other way. I loved my children for the ways they resembled one another, but even more for the ways in which they were distinct.

Tziri devoured books.
Just like me
, I would say to anyone who listened. Wins every spelling bee. Corrects her teacher’s grammar mistakes. Beats me at Scrabble. I was proud when, a year or so earlier, she leaned in as I read the
New York Times
at our kitchen table. I thought she was scanning the advertisements, until she looked up and asked: “Who’s Pope John Paul Eye-Eye?” I was proud, though a little concerned. The pope was in the news because of the sex-abuse scandals of Catholic priests, and I began to worry about what else Tziri might be reading over my shoulder.

Freidy, sixteen months younger and eager to stand apart from Tziri, wouldn’t touch a book unless it was absolutely necessary—only for schoolwork and prayers. Rosy-cheeked and plump, she was vivacious and quick with an eager laugh. She had more friends than Gitty and I could keep track of. “Oh, hello there, nice of you to visit again,” I’d say to whatever friend Freidy brought home on Sunday afternoons, imagining it to be the same as the little girl who came last week, and Freidy would hiss at me desperately, “This is a
different
one!”

Chaya Suri, five, was a shy little girl, with big, dark eyes and chestnut hair. She resented being grouped with the little ones, but families orient themselves in natural ways, and such was her lot: earlier bedtimes, the colorful, cartoon-covered dishes and fat little forks, always being shooed away from Tziri and Freidy’s collaborations on arts and crafts projects or impromptu dance performances. Instead, Chaya Suri turned to the little boys behind her, showing early signs of a tomboyish nature. Later, I’d think of her as a Hasidic version of Harper Lee’s Scout, skinny and agile and often up in a tree, gazing out at the world from a place in which no one would bother her.

Akiva, three, was always by my side, reaching for my hand, silent, with a smile that could melt stone. A beautiful child, with an angelic face and silky blond hair, he brought squeals of delight from his dozen aunts and his many older female cousins, and often, too, from strangers on the street.

Hershy was just a toddler, but within a few years, he would show his personality, which was one of effortless indifference to convention. He was the kind of kid who would wear one roller skate but couldn’t be bothered with the other, and he’d go half-skating, half-limping down the sidewalk.

Which would I give up?

The thought made me fidget, sending my mind into a twist for a minute, but of course, there was a difference between preventing a child that did not exist, and contemplating which of our children I would rather not have. I wanted these five, no more, no less, and not a different set of five. If we had a sixth, I was certain that I would love him or her, as I did the others; yet the sixth did not exist, and so I could imagine life without it.

I tried to explain this to Gitty, but she declared with finality: “I don’t want to talk about it,” and transferred another load of laundry from the washer to the dryer.

If we could not talk about it, only one option was left. The nuclear option. The Samson option. I felt like a bad husband, a
wrong
husband, lacking some essential masculine quality. Men were supposed to want sex, always, regardless of the consequences—that, at least, was what I had read on the Internet—and perhaps I wasn’t so different either, except that I was not prepared to have another child. I was no longer a believer, and in some far recess of my mind, I wondered if I might one day leave this lifestyle behind. I had no such plans—it didn’t seem even remotely possible—but I knew that, should that dream become a possibility, having more children was the first thing not to do.

More than anything, though, we simply didn’t have the resources. Each child brought new expenses—food and clothes and school tuition and extra bedrooms and Lego sets and colorful pencil cases and, soon enough, there would be bar mitzvahs and weddings, exorbitant expenditures that caused relentless anxiety for every Hasidic man through three decades of middle age and often far beyond. It simply made no sense to let nature take its course, so I presented Gitty with an ultimatum. Without a reliable method of birth control, we would cease our twice-weekly postmidnight amusements.

Whether it was the ultimatum itself, or the realization of how much this truly mattered to me, Gitty finally relented. If I could find a “real” rabbi—not some English-speaking, clean-shaven, university-degree-holding one, but one close enough to our kind—she would accept a dispensation, if it was granted.

I called Chezky, who gave me the name of just such a rabbi. This rabbi had quite a beard, Chezky said, with not a hair trimmed, as far as he could tell. The rabbi spoke Yiddish, too. He had studied at the finest Lithuanian yeshivas in Jerusalem, but never, to anyone’s knowledge, had set foot in a university.

“And he’s easy,” Chezky said. “He rules by law, not ideology.”

Easy was good, and so a few nights later, I drove to the Monsey address I’d written on a Post-it note, a small ranch house on Calvert Drive, just across the street from the rabbi’s shul. I watched as a trickle of men left after evening prayers, and then made my way up the driveway to the side door. Hanging from the doorknob was a white supermarket plastic bag, in which there seemed to be a pair of women’s underwear.

“What is the problem?” the rabbi asked, after he invited me into his basement study and showed me to a metal folding chair opposite his desk. Large photos of Lithuanian sages graced the walls, as if to remind both rabbi and supplicant who the real authority was in the room.

The problem, I told the rabbi, was that I didn’t think it sensible to keep having children without a responsible plan on how to provide for them. I had spent years struggling to find a job, and while I was now doing well financially, the stresses of providing for five children was burden enough. I didn’t think I had it in me for six, twelve, or seventeen.

The rabbi tapped his fingers impatiently on his desk.
“Parnosse kumt fun himmel,”
he said. God has the financial plan. This was not the concern of mortals.

This was unexpected. Chezky had said this rabbi was easy. This was clearly not easy. I tried to restate the problem, using different words, gesticulating for emphasis, but the rabbi was unmoved. He shrugged and shook his head lightly. “Eh,” he said.

There was something in his manner, however, that suggested he could be talked into this. He seemed like an affable fellow, with a broad smile, and I had a vague notion that his curt responses were deliberate, as if to elicit from me the right words. I could not leave without the necessary dispensation, but what were the right words? I racked my brain for the kinds of circumstances for which Jewish law allowed special accommodations. Then it dawned on me: make it a health problem. Health problems could always be counted on for loopholes in the law.

And so I offered a lie.

“The truth is,” I told the rabbi, “my wife just can’t take any more of it. She feels like she’s going out of her mind. It’s just too much.” I told the rabbi that my wife was suffering from depression and a variety of other ailments, and was emotionally and physically spent. “She just …” I paused, and sighed deeply, hoping to look sad and convincing. “She … needs a break.”

Now it was easy.

“That’s a different matter,” the rabbi said, and he shook his head with a gravely sympathetic expression. “If your wife is stressed, that isn’t good for the marriage and it isn’t good for the children. And it isn’t good for you, either,” he added with a wink and a twinkle in his eye.

He promptly proceeded to explain the options. “Condoms are never permitted. But she can use spermicide gel, contraceptive pills, or an IUD.” He gave me the rundown on how they all worked, as if he were a doctor, describing the benefits and drawbacks of each.

“If you use gel,” he said, “it must be inserted shortly before the act.” The rabbi shook his head from side to side a couple of times, as if considering some thorny legal matter. “The problem with gel is that it can spoil the mood. You understand what I’m saying?” The Great Sage of Jerusalem looked out at me gravely from above the rabbi’s head.

I felt gleeful, triumphant—I’d tricked the law onto my side. Just as I was about to leave, though, the rabbi held up his hand.

“This isn’t for using indefinitely.” He wanted to make sure I understood. “She can use it for a year or two. Then come back, and we’ll discuss it further.”

A year or two was a start, I thought, although I did wonder about the parameters. “How long must one continue to have children?” I asked as the rabbi escorted me to the door. “What’s the upper limit?”

“There is no upper limit,” he said. He quoted a passage in the Bible:
In the morning thou shalt sow thy seed, and in the night thou shalt not rest thy hand.
“As long as nature allows. Each child is a blessing.”

As I drove home, my good feelings subsided. Yes, I had the rabbi’s permission, but I had lied for it, and if I was going to lie, I could’ve lied years ago. I could’ve just told Gitty that I had received permission from our own rabbi. Gitty would never have known. In her entire life, she hadn’t spoken to a rabbi, not even once—this was a husband’s job, exclusively.

I told myself that my lie was not the same as not going to a rabbi at all. This was a smaller lie. Softer and whiter, and I could keep a straight face more easily when I delivered the ruling to Gitty. Although I’d elicited permission under false pretenses, the pretense was that it was for Gitty’s sake. Didn’t that give it a redemptive quality, maybe?

Yet it was no small comfort to me when I realized that to continue to live in this community and within this marriage, as I negotiated my own needs in accordance with my secret nonbelief, lies would be a necessity. Soon enough, my lies would become routine, the destiny of anyone in my circumstances: I was a heretic among believers.