Sotah (12 page)

There were only about twenty professional matchmakers in the
haredi
world. There used to be many more, Reb Garfinkel would hasten to tell all prospective customers. But it was such a hard business, it drove people out! As it is said: Two things are harder than parting the Red Sea—finding a mate and earning a living. So being a matchmaker, which involved both, was a few hundred times more difficult. Most matchmakers had a second job that didn’t take up all of their time. They worked either as a mashgiach—a supervisor of kashruth, ensuring that meat and milk were kept separate in the kitchens of kosher restaurants—or they taught.

Like doctors, every
shadchen
had a specialty. One took widows and divorcees. Another catered to the poor. The most prestigious ones (among whom he counted himself) even operated internationally, maintaining subagents and a stock of brides and grooms in America, Australia, Europe, and Canada.

Each Hasidic group had its own designated matchmaker. A Hasid of Gur would never bother to ask for a match from the matchmaker of Belz, who considered a Gur Hasid as desirable a match as an Eskimo, a Zulu, or a kibbutz farmer. This rule, however, was suspended among royalty. It was considered perfectly politic for the daughter of the rebbe of Gur to marry the son of the rebbe of Belz, in the same way that the warring kings of France and England often mated their offspring.

Garfinkel had great respect for his fellow matchmakers in the Hasidic world. What a degree of control they had! How they divided up the territory so that no one would dare poke a tiny finger into another’s pie! But then they had the advantage of having the rebbe’s blessing for their work, whereas he, he thought glumly, had to rest on reputation, on results. But on the other hand, the rebbe himself was involved in the matches, which could not go forward without his blessing. Imagine! The secondguessing, the wrench thrown into the works at the last minute!

Fortunately he didn’t have that problem with the Misnagdim, who usually made up their minds themselves and no nonsense about it, either. Or there had better not be. They had better not start up with Reb Chaim Garfinkel or they would find (and had found) their precious merchandise piling up on the shelves going stale. Parents of rosy young girls of seventeen who had been too choosy, too greedy and unrealistic, often came crawling back to him when the girls were twenty-two and using rouge. Families with boys studying in the yeshiva who demanded not only an apartment and a car, but a duplex, three-bedroom palace, and a new Volvo could be persuaded when the boy was a nervous, frustrated, unmarried wreck at twenty-three that soon no girl would have him. Then they’d settle pretty quick for half the rent money on a one-bedroom place out in Judea or Samaria, and a motorbike.

Reb Garfinkel looked at Rabbi Reich sorrowfully as he listened with one ear of absolute glee. This is what happened! Amateurs. The girl was growing paler every month. She didn’t feel like going out anymore, not even to family celebrations, because she was heartbroken and embarrassed. Seventeen years old and she was heartbroken! Feeling on the shelf, like used, unwanted merchandise! And the boy? He’d also refused to consider another. He’d spent months defying his parents until his
rosh yeshiva
had to get involved and pressure him. His studies had suffered. He’d lost weight. In short, a real
tsimmes
, a boiling pot from which no one would eat.

Only recently had the young man begun to see reason. A plastic bag factory. Was that something to defy? The girl’s face he would soon get used to. Anyhow, he’d be in yeshiva, in
kollel
, learning all day. It would be dark when he came home.

He raised his sad eyes to Rabbi Reich’s even sadder ones.

“
Nu.
So you come to see me now? Why not before?”

Reb Reich wiped his brow. “Reb Garfinkel, it was the children—Dvorah and Yaakov—may they live and be well. They meant well.”

“Children,” Reb Garfinkel muttered knowingly, then softened his tone as he remembered that he’d been the matchmaker between Dvorah and Yaakov, as he remembered all the wonderful things he had said in the too recent past to extol Yaakov Klein to his father-in-law. “Well, a good-hearted boy, that Yaakov. Surely he only meant well,” he agreed, his joy fading as he realized his limitations in milking the subject. He gave up. “So, now we start.”

He took out a pencil and licked the tip, rummaging through his pockets and withdrawing a ragged-edged notebook full of coffee stains and mathematical calculations. He flipped it open.

“Name: Dina Reich. Age: Seventeen. School: Beit Yaakov.

“Now, what does she want in a boy?”

Rabbi Reich looked blank.

“Well, then what do
you
want in a boy? Better yet, what happened with Abraham Breitman? What wasn’t good?”

“Everything was good,” Rabbi Reich mourned. “She was so happy. But his parents wanted more keys than I have on my ring.”

Reb Garfinkel shook his head. They’d gone out before this was discussed! Imagine! Before the parents had met and thrashed it all out, they’d let the young people meet and form an attachment! Amateurs!
Amateurs!

He cleared his throat and closed his eyes, rocking back on his chair. He remembered the Reich girl from the wedding. A little one, skinny. With big green eyes and childish hands. Like a little doll. Some men liked that, he thought, shrugging. His own wife was five feet eleven and weighed two hundred pounds. She had borne him eleven children.

And the finances. He remembered that, too. The little store, Rabbi Reich’s job. The mortgages they were paying. His memory was faultless. Being a Talmud scholar sharpened the mind. He had put his to good use. To marry off his daughter, Reb Reich would have to add still another job to his list. He would work around the clock if he had to, with complete selflessness. Most
haredi
fathers were like that. They never complained. Their joy was to see their children married to worthy partners. To see new, precious families begin to blossom. New grandchildren. What else was there?

Skinny and little, he remembered. She (and her parents) needed someone with a job, an apartment. Someone very pious and learned, of course, but a worker, not a full time learner. Perhaps someone a little older who had set himself up with an apartment, a business. Not a widower, G-d forbid, or a divorced man. That was for a different
shadchen.
But still, someone who’d provide a gentler, easier life for her.

Of course the parents wouldn’t like the idea. At first. They all wanted men who would learn full-time for their daughters, even the ones who couldn’t afford it. It took a little more talking. And the Reichs were ready to talk. He had sensed that. They just wanted it settled. They wanted the girl in a white dress under the canopy, beaming and young again, with color in her cheeks. They wanted a wedding, and fast.

He began to feel that old pump of adrenaline that meant all his experience, his unique powers, were beginning to take up the challenge. A good match was in the air. Just the thing!

He nodded. “Rabbi Reich, I think, G-d willing, I have just the one. Let me call you.”

Rabbi Reich clapped the other man on the shoulder. “It’s a mitzvah, Reb Yid,” he said affectionately.

“They’re all mitzvahs,” Garfinkel said slowly. “Every last one.

Alone in his living room that afternoon, Garfinkel made the necessary calculations. This one’s parents were anxious for a marriage. The boy was twenty-six already, his business was booming. He had no time. But they were suspicious people, from his experience. The type that hired private detectives to check on family trees ten generations back. The kind that wanted medical reports and would ask for the maximum financially. There was something in the Reich family tree, he’d heard rumored. Fifty years ago, something, a woman … And also, why get the Reichs involved with another set of hard bargainers? He crossed the boy off his list. The next one was better. Also older, twenty-four. An accountant. But not very good-looking. Actually, not at all. Short, fat. So soon after Abraham Breitman, it would never work. She’d never go for it. Sure, if a year or two had gone by. If she was desperate. She’d had a hard time, through no fault of her own (amateurs!). With a flourish of compassion that he tried to keep to a minimum, he crossed that one off the list, too.

Then behind his tired, wrinkled lids a vision began to form. A store with wood shavings all over the floor. A broad young man with a black skullcap, beardless, strong hands, and discolored nails, wearing work clothes. He flipped open his book, looking through the others who were available under his private coding system. But somehow … He couldn’t even say why. Yes, that one, he thought, reaching for the telephone.

Chapter nine

T
he store was crowded with housewives pressing up to the counter in the Thursday afternoon madness that always prevailed in Minskoff’s Fish and Poultry store in Geulah. This was the last possible time to buy the obligatory carp and have it ground in order to prepare gefilte fish in honor of the Sabbath. The carps, swimming joyously, oblivious of their fate, were netted, whacked, cleaned, ground, and handed to the customer in wet plastic bags rolled in newspaper. It was the freshest fish imaginable.

The little signs calling for modesty, indicating which side of the counter was for men and which for women, were roundly ignored as skinny, newly married yeshiva boys, under orders from their harried new wives, jockeyed with experienced 200-pound matrons for a closer place by the counter.

“Who’s next?” the owner said with good humor, wiping his fish-bloodied hands on his apron. Frantic hands went up, indignant shouts of “Excuse me, but I was here first! …” All of which Mr Minskoff ignored unless blows seemed imminent. Usually he searched the crowd for regular customers and took their orders, no matter their place in line, a strategy that ensured the maximum amount of churning turmoil and indignation.

Chaya Leah stood in the back patiently, making no move forward, letting the front door admit new customers who surged heedlessly ahead of her. She let them push her back in line without a murmur of protest. She was in no rush.

He was in the back room, but he’d be out soon, she knew. She wasn’t disappointed. He was tall and solidly built, with dark brown hair and a smooth, creamy complexion. His
payess
, like those of his peers, other Belz Hasidim, were long and extravagantly curled, bouncing on his shoulders. His eyes were a deep, rich blue and his lips generous and amused. Chaya Leah watched him as he worked, his white hands quick and somehow gay as he tossed the fish onto the counter and expertly split and descaled them. When voices in the store began to rise dangerously, he’d begin to hum a Hasidic tune, swaying, his eyes closing mischievously in mock ecstasy. He had a good voice, Chaya Leah thought. Better than most of those yeshiva boys who made the tapes of Hasidic songs that were hawked all over the streets of Meah Shearim; the ones who sold tickets and appeared at
haredi
concerts in real concert halls—the men downstairs, the women upstairs.

His name was Moishe. He was the owner’s seventeen-year-old son. She’d heard about him through a classmate, Fruma Rabinowitz, who lived near here. And while this store took Chaya Leah two buses and quite a bit of walking to reach, she had begun making the trek weekly a few months before, telling her mother the neighborhood carp were pale imitations in comparison. While Rebbetzin Reich had had her suspicions, the truth was that the gefilte fish had never tasted so good. So she decided to let it go. Anyhow, her mind was busy with other things.

Chaya Leah inched toward the counter. Already outside the store she’d switched earrings, slipping on the Yemenite ones and pocketing the little gold hoops. Mrs Morganbesser had finally given back the dangling Yemenites, but only after humiliating her and causing her endless problems and near total disgrace in a parent-teacher conference, which both her mother and father had been forced to attend, taking precious time off work.

If Dina hadn’t been sick, and Dvorah pregnant, she’d probably still be confined to the house like a prisoner,
mussar
lectures pounding in her ears from all sides. She tossed her head and inched closer to the counter. He was as handsome as a movie star, she thought, comparing him to the pictures she’d seen on bus stop posters and outside movie marquees. She’d never actually been to a movie and had only seen TV shows in store windows selling TVs or at the new shopping mall near the central bus station, which had TVs mounted on the walls. At home there were no magazines, but sometimes she’d go to the center of the city and sneak into used-book stores, where she’d flip through old copies of
Teen Movie Magic or Redbook
. Her grades in English had improved considerably since discovering
Teen Movie Magic.

She tried to compare Moishe to the slick images from the magazines. He looked like … Matt Dillon, she thought. Or a dark Jimmy Dean. He looked better than any of the singing yeshiva boys. Definitely. Or any of the local boys whose faces she’d studied from behind the high, curtained partition in the women’s section in the synagogue. Even better than Abraham Breitman.

She felt little shivers of anger down her back as she remembered Breitman. May he rot in hell! Him and his parents both! He’d hurt her sister so! They said it was his parents doing, but then he’d started going out again, hadn’t he? No one could force you to do that. You could just pine away, grow pale, refuse to eat, refuse to get out of bed. Then your parents wouldn’t have any choice, would they? If he’d been any kind of
mensh,
instead of a wet
lukshen
, he’d have made it all right somehow.

Look at Jacob, the patriarch. Seven years he worked for Rachel his beloved, only to have her father, that rat, that
menuval
, switch brides on him and give him Leah, the homely older sister, instead at the last minute. Had Jacob given up? Did he say, “Okay, I guess you know best”? Not in a hundred years! He’d waited a week and then got Laban to give him Rachel also. So he had to work another seven years. So he had one more wife than he really wanted. But he hadn’t given up!