Sotah (22 page)

“The Jewish people have been blessed by their stubbornness. We have survived because of the strength of our beautiful family lives, the traditions handed down over the centuries. Great sacrifices have been made to do this.” The rebbetzin relished the words. Repetition was not a bad thing if the message was important. “It is in your hands to keep this wonderful tradition alive.” Her voice was inspiring, demanding, severe. Then her face softened. After all, she was talking to Beit Yaakov girls, most of whom had no need to be convinced. They were all good girls who would be happy to do as they were taught. Who sought the very life she was advocating. There was no need to be severe. These lovely, sweet young girls. She looked them over with pleasure. Pure and good, the daughters of mothers who were pure and good. They just needed to be told what to do, to be taught. Not frightened, not reprimanded.

Her face softened with love. “My dear daughters. Your whole lovely, sacred lives are before you. You please your Creator by getting married. You will please Him by keeping your marriages full of kindness, modesty, and respect. He will watch over you and bless you.”

Then she went into detail. How you must anticipate your period and separate the moment you saw blood. How you checked yourself to see if the flow had stopped and for seven days afterward by inserting a clean, white cloth into the vagina and checking it in natural sunlight for signs of red or black. A yellow stain was borderline and needed to be brought to the rabbi for a decision. White was acceptable. If in the middle you suddenly spotted, you had to start counting from scratch again. Another seven days.

The details made the girls feel queasy, just as the general information inspired them. They were all hoping for a little more detail that would be helpful concerning the wedding night. But no one had the courage to ask.

Finally a tall, dark, heavy girl in the back raised her hand. “Rebbetzin …” She blushed, hesitating.

“Yes?” The rebbetzin nodded encouragingly.

“I’m not sure … what. I don’t know what to do.”

She sat down, blushing heavily. The others leaned forward slightly, their eyes directed on the older woman.

“My daughters, I know this is a new experience for you all, to go from being innocent girls to being wives and mothers. But G-d will help you. Always your husband will help you. He will, if he is a
ben Torah
, a good man, as I know all your bridegrooms will be, treat you with kindness and patience. After all, he is commanded to please you, to make you happy. But it is also your responsibility to make him happy. A woman who separates from her husband for no reason is called ‘rebellious.’ She can be punished for her ways by the Beit Din. Just as a man who is unkind can be punished. So try to be patient and cooperative.”

“But what if you’re … tired?” a little blond girl who looked barely fourteen piped up, emboldened. Dina knew her. She was just seventeen and had been engaged a month to someone she had met only once. Her pale lashes fluttered, and her pink little face seemed to blanch.

“My child,” the rebbetzin said gently. “You must not be selfish. Your husband must not be selfish. But a man’s nature is more sensual than a woman’s. A good wife will be understanding. And patient,” she repeated.

Dina listened carefully, wonderingly. A man’s nature was more sensual than a woman’s. She smiled to herself with strange relief. Sometimes her feelings absolutely appalled and frightened her. She was almost petrified by the idea of going to bed with Judah Gutman. And yet a part of her longed for it. Was that wrong? she wondered. Did she have a more sensual nature than most women? And what would it mean? She was too ashamed to ask the rebbetzin. And she couldn’t very well ask her mother. Even Dvorah … well, would Dvorah know?

She raised her hand: “Rebbetzin, are there some books you could recommend for us to read further? I have so many questions!”

“Why, of course, my dear. And you should get answers to them all.”

Not to them all, Dina thought. Like everything else, the personal experience would no doubt be totally different from all she read and heard. Still, she wanted to know as much as she could. Everything else in life one prepared for by reading the proper passages in the Bible, in the Talmud. By learning. She knew no other way to prepare for this great experience than by using the same methods she had used all her life for everything else.

Yet deep down in her heart she recognized that she was being foolish. One could not prepare for the deepest, most physical of experiences by reading or thinking. This was what frightened her more than anything else, the idea that the old methods no longer had any power or validity. She was entering totally foreign territory, with no real guidelines. After all, all the stuff the rebbetzin was telling them had to do with menstruation, abstinence. But the act itself, the supreme moment of connection with another human being in the most physical of acts, could not be prayed away. It was her body, not her soul, that would be involved. All the rest was just beating around the bush.

She was shocked at herself—she, who had been so respectful of her teachers and her rabbis. She, who had always looked at them with real humility, trying to follow in their footsteps. Yet in this new country, all the trails they pointed to seemed faded and inconsequential, dusty, winding cow paths made faint by erosion and fierce winds. She was alone in an uncharted wilderness. All the words, the pious niceties of the rebbetzin about sacrifice and the glory of the Jewish people, what, in the final analysis, did it all have to do with how his flesh would feel on hers? Perhaps they could not tell her. Perhaps, she thought with a little horror, they did not know.

The days passed so quickly that she could not keep count; so slowly that it seemed they would never end. The date of the wedding had been fixed according to her menstrual cycle to ensure that she would have time to count seven clean days and immerse in the mikveh before the ceremony. A bride who accidentally got her period too near the wedding to do so was placed in a horrible position. She would spend her wedding night in separate bedrooms, chaperoned. That was Dina’s, and every
haredi
bride’s, biggest nightmare: entering the marriage canopy in a state of impurity. Miscalculating, or having one’s body simply go off schedule. If Dina worried about anything, she worried about that most. Many girls even went on birth control pills months before the wedding to ensure that it wouldn’t happen.

But then the day neared, and like a well-wound clock her body entered its monthly cycle. For the first time she looked at the blood as a potential nourisher of new life and not simply as a messy nuisance. The time was coming when it would not have to be shed, she told herself. Counting the seven clean days was a bit disgusting at first, a bit shameful. After all, one was not used to being on such intimate terms with those parts of one’s body. But then she began to feel uplifted by it, as the cloth emerged clean, pure white, day after day after day.

On the seventh day she prepared to go to the mikveh. Her mother and Dvorah accompanied her. The woman who supervised the bath, a dead ringer for Rebbetzin Felder, welcomed them with a broad smile of joy. “A
kallah!
” She beamed. “Welcome and G-d bless you!”

The mikveh was a large one, just off the main street. One entrance was used in the mornings for the men, who immersed before their morning prayers; the second was strictly for women. It was hidden from the street by a high wall, which allowed women to go and come without being observed. Inside was a waiting room with chairs and a table piled high with books outlining the laws of family purity. On crowded summer days, when women could enter the mikveh only after dusk, dozens of women waited patiently to be called to the rooms upstairs.

But a
kallah
was special. None of the women waiting objected to her being whisked ahead. Her mother kissed her, and Dvorah held her hand encouragingly. Then she went upstairs.

She was led into a large bathroom with a bathtub, mirror, and sink.

“Do you need anything? Towels, cotton, nail polish remover?”

“Nothing,” Dina said. “I’ve brought it all with me.”

The laws pertaining to cleansing the body before immersion were strict and numerous. The whole body had to be scrubbed clean with vigor. Areas like the belly button, ears, and teeth needed special care. A loose scab needed to be removed. Head and body hair combed. Nails pared. All makeup, all jewelry, removed. Nothing at all was to separate the purifying flow of water from touching every part of the body.

Dina lay in the tub of deep hot water luxuriously. At home, sharing a hot water supply and bathroom with five little brothers, a sister, and her parents, there was never time for more than a quick shower. She relished the unique luxury of all the time in the world, all the hot water in the world. She shampooed her hair and combed it. She scrubbed her toenails with a nail brush and carefully scrubbed her heels with a pumice stone until all the dead skin was removed. Then, with a little embarrassment, she combed her pubic hair.

The combing, the twice daily examinations, all seemed designed to direct her attention toward that once very taboo, very hidden and forgotten part of her anatomy. Now, suddenly, she found herself paying inordinate amounts of attention to it, but in a good way. There was something matter-of-fact and calming about the checking, the ablutions. It was now a useful, respectable part of life to be given its rightful share of her attention. There was no real shamefulness in any of it, she felt. Just a twinge of embarrassed modesty, which was not the same thing at all. Shamefulness was dark, dirty, ugly, sinister. She felt all of those things far from her. Her whole physical being was a precious holy vessel being polished until it gleamed for its holy task.

When she had finally, carefully cleansed every possible part of her, her whole body tingled with a sense of utter cleanliness and well-being. She had never in her life felt so perfectly, immaculately clean and pure. It was a feeling that radiated down like small, electric currents from her forehead and eyes to the tips of her fingers and ends of her toes. She tingled and glowed with a rare joy.

After climbing out of the tub, she pressed a small buzzer. A discreet knock was soon heard at the door. She hastily wrapped her dripping body in a towel and opened it.

“Ready?” the rebbetzin asked her.

She nodded.

“Have you remembered to cleanse your ears? Your navel? To comb all of your hair?” The woman’s questions were all said with a broad smile of encouragement. Dina smiled back through her embarrassment.

“A kosher
maidel
.” She beamed. “Now let me check you.” She waited. Dina looked at her, confused.

“The towel,
maideleh,
” she said gently.

With deep humiliation, Dina removed the towel and stood naked in front of the older woman, who looked her over matter-of-factly, picking off stray hairs, looking over her toes and fingernails, clipping away at any stray cuticle she’d missed. The woman’s palm brushed over the soles of Dina’s heels, checking for rough skin. Dina felt herself blushing deeply.

But before she had a chance to sink into an agony of discomfort, it was over. The rebbetzin nodded in approval and motioned her toward an inner door. On the other side was a deep, small pool of water. Totally private. She stepped down into the water, hurrying, acutely aware of the stranger’s eyes on her naked flesh. Yet soon the water covered her nakedness. It wasn’t very deep, just enough to cover her breasts. It was deliciously hot and held her like a caress.

“Dip once, just to wet yourself,” the woman said, beaming.

She closed her eyes lightly and bent her knees, plunging deep into the clear water until she felt it cover her head.

“Kosher,” the woman said approvingly. “Now, say the blessing: ‘Blessed art Thou, O G-d, King of the Universe, Who has made us holy and sanctified us with His commandments and commanded us the ritual immersion.’ Cross your hands over your breasts, and cover your head with this towel.” She lowered the towel just above Dina’s head and waited.

Dina did as she was told. Closing her eyes, she felt her arms touch her hot, clean breasts. Her whole body tingled, immaculately clean and pierced with a new sense of holiness. Her mind was full of pure, good thoughts. The love for G-d mingled with a new love for the physical life of her good, clean, pure body. All her sense of shame vanished. She felt a bleached newness, spotless and untainted by anything dark or corrupt. This must be the way angels feel, she thought. Utterly white and unblemished, their very existence a song of holiness, a psalm of praise.

She said the blessing, plunging once again into the hot, clean water.

She stepped out, dripping, and the joyous rebbetzin handed her the towel. She wrapped it around herself, feeling an odd lessening of the urgency to cover her body that had been with her just a little while before.

Alone in the bathroom again, she unwrapped herself, touching her body with slow pleasure. It had been cleansed and sanctified. Nothing shameful could touch it now. Everything that would happen between her and her new husband would be done openly, before the eyes of G-d, with His full approval and benediction. She felt a sharp stab of unknown pride.

She would give herself in all her purity to this kind stranger. She would make him happy, she knew. Whether or not she would be happy, she did not for the moment consider. She was still dazzled, still a little numb with joy from the searing experience of her ablutions, her plunge into new, hot, strange waters that had grabbed and uplifted her like the strong, unrestrainable currents of a vast sea. For the moment, her body and mind and spirit were all in that remarkable state of absolute communion.

She had not dreamed it possible that the small doubts, the confusions, the second thoughts, that stuck to her like unhealed scabs would suddenly, miraculously fall off, leaving behind smooth, glowing health, a wholesomeness that was indescribable. She was one with her desires and her beliefs and the thud of her racing heart. All one, all blessed. It had never happened to her before.