Sotah (25 page)

He made no move to touch her.

“Would you like a drink, something to eat?” His voice was gentle, solicitous.

She thought about it a moment. It wasn’t possible, was it, after all that food that she could be starving? And yet she was. Absolutely ravenous.

“I myself am just about ready to faint from hunger!” he admitted.

She looked up at him gratefully and laughed.

“All that money! All that food! The stuffed chickens and the beef in mushrooms! The borekas and the slices of kugel! And here we are, both starving. What would you like to do? I don’t think there is much in the house,” he said apologetically.

“Why don’t I just go and see?” she offered, trying to sound wifely. She was relieved to have something as ordinary as getting a meal together to focus on; grateful for anything that would postpone the inevitable strangeness of their first night together.

She wasn’t afraid of him, she told herself. But the whole idea, the whole scenario, just seemed so utterly preposterous! That she, Dina Reich, who had her whole life been taught to cover her body, to lower her eyes, to stand in separate lines in the bakery, to stand hidden behind partitions in the synagogue, should now be expected to enter a room with a man and take off her clothes and climb into bed with him! The thought went beyond absurd. It was simply terrifying and irreconcilable.

Someone had stocked the large, clean, hummingly new refrigerator generously and carefully. How pretty the kitchen was! How much expense and care had been given to make it a pleasant place to be and work, she thought with covetous pleasure. “Would you like some eggs? Coffee?”

“Fine,” he said. “Don’t go to any trouble. You must be very tired, no?”

He had walked in and stood very close to her as she puttered around the sink and stove. He leaned back against the cabinets, watching everything she did with the utmost concentration. She could almost feel his eyes as a physical touch, a soft caress running up and down her body and face. Trembling, she placed two new, clean plates on the table, filled two shiny blue earthenware cups with coffee, and went to get the milk and sugar.

“I can’t believe we are both still milchig!” He shook his head. One had to wait six hours between eating milk and meat, and the milk on the table was a sign that neither of them had even so much as nibbled at the wedding food.

She sat opposite him, cradling the coffee mug comfortingly between her cool palms. Slowly she began to feel a cleansing warmth spreading out concentrically from her chest, traveling slowly up her arms and neck. Shyly she studied the strange man she had just married.

He did look well in the soft, domestic light of the kitchen. Very safe and predictable, surrounded as he was by the scrambled eggs and salad, the plates and forks and place mats. The food slid down her throat, easing the terrible protests of her rumbling stomach, so long denied sustenance.

“I thought that the rabbi’s words were very good. Did you think so, too, Judah?”

“Yes.” He looked up at her, and his passionate, longing eyes startled her, piercing through her calm like a bullet. Not predictable at all! A flash of danger tore through her stomach. She felt his hand, large, gentle, yet increasingly possessive, squeeze her arm.

She got up abruptly. “I’ll just do these dishes …” She hurried to clear off the table. But his arm was insistent on hers.

“Leave them!” It wasn’t harsh or commanding, simply compelling, and she felt helpless against it. Slowly she felt the plates slip into the hot dishwater with a soft, faraway tinkle that didn’t even seem to be in the same room.

“Then I think I will get dressed for bed,” she tried to say casually. But there was a choked, quivering acquiescence to her tone that made him sad.

“Yes. And I, too,” he agreed, beginning to feel a little doubtful—the same sad, remorseful feeling he had when he accidentally frightened the little sparrows he came to feed. But you couldn’t very well leave your bride untouched, could you? It was their wedding night. This was her right, as his bride, not something due him. If he didn’t measure up, she could get rid of him. The thought almost paralyzed him.

They stood together, not moving. The idea of changing in and out of clothes in front of each other kept both of them rooted to the floor.

“I’ll go in and use the bathroom,” Judah said solicitously.

“Thank you,” she answered politely, her heart beginning to pound.

She went into their bedroom, turning on the light. It reflected harshly off the magnificently polished surface of the bedroom set. Again it struck her how very dark and old-fashioned it was, how much she disliked it. A hard knot of pique formed in her chest. She undressed quickly, not bothering to fold her clothes but hurrying to quickly cover herself. She was terrified he might come out of the bathroom before she finished. She felt her fingers fumble with the zipper on her silky skirt, then slip nervously around the smooth buttons of her blouse.

A hesitant knock on the door.

“May I come in?”

“Please!”

He was too large for the room, she thought. His pajamas, old-fashioned and dark brown, made him seem almost bearlike. He took a few hesitant steps toward her. Yet his face was very handsome, his shoulders broad. Quickly she backed away, climbing abruptly and instinctively into the twin bed nearest the door.

She pulled the covers over her high-necked, long-sleeved nightgown, then reached into her night table for her prayer book.

She took it out and found the prayer for intercourse:

… purify my body, sanctify my soul and thoughts and intelligence and feelings. Strengthen me and dress me in Your good and generous spirit, that I might build up my household in truth and righteousness … Give this new life that may be conceived completeness in charity and mercy. Have compassion on all its doings, its health and creativity. Let nothing in its body be defective or wanting all the days of its life. Let it never feel pain, or sorrow, illness or disease. Bless me and my household and my offspring with wholeness, completing our ideas and intelligence and feelings, so that everything we do will be according to Thy will. Bless us with heavenly blessings from the world above, and the worlds that lie beneath. And from Your blessings will Your servant’s house be blessed all the days of our lives.

It was a long prayer that filled her heart with a feeling of calm and decency. It was startling and uplifting to be reminded of children at such a time. But just that reminder, and the constant idea of G-d being with them in the room, she found infinitely comforting. Nothing could happen that was shameful or wrong in this room into which she had just invited G-d’s presence. She thought of Rebbetzin Felder’s words and the feeling of intense purity that had enveloped her in the mikveh. Her mind, her feelings, were ready. But was her body?

She felt Judah move in slowly beside her. His fingers were long and sensitive, surprisingly smooth as they explored her in the darkness, the way a sensitive blind man might explore a rare and beautiful sculpture, trying to understand and appreciate it fully. Slowly she took off her nightgown and inched toward him, reaching out timidly for his chest. It was big and strongly muscled, covered with downy hair. She pressed her neck into the crook of his arm. It was not so different, she thought, from the loving warmth of a parent’s caress. She snuggled closer, gaining confidence and boldness.

And then she felt him move toward her, and things began to move out of control with frightening rapidity. There were no longer any clear expectations. Everything was unbearably new and surprising, and exquisite, with a terrible, unbearable strangeness.

“Shall I stop?” he whispered to her anxiously, full of concern.

“No.” She felt the corner of her mouth catch a large and salty drop as she felt the painful tear that cut her off irrevocably from her past. She closed her eyes and thought: What do I know about life? Reward and punishment. Love as a sacred duty. Kindness and charity and obligation. If you did everything you were supposed to, it didn’t make you good. But if you didn’t, it made you bad. Even going out of your way, doing something extra—carrying the packages of a stranger—was nothing special, just the ordinary threads of life’s fabric. Not silk or velvet, just simple cotton and wool. Natural and ordinary.

It had been bred into her and into her parents before her and their parents before them. Life was always on a higher level. You always prayed. You always set aside ten percent of your earnings for the poor, invited strangers for meals, cared for aging, often ungrateful relatives. All your goodness, your sacrifices, flowed together, an ordinary stream of life. It never added up into any great achievement. There was always something missing. Always one could have prayed with a little more devotion, invited a few more guests, given a little more time and effort to visiting the sick and comforting the bereaved, fed a few more odd and distasteful strangers, learned a few more pages of Torah.

What act would be truly whole, truly great? she wondered. She could think of nothing, for even giving up one’s life was within the ordinary limits of the law, prescribed and delineated with clear certainty. Many had done so rather than deny the one true G-d, rather than rape or murder or commit adultery. It was expected.

Was there anything one could do, any gesture or act so unusual or magnificent in its piety and sacrifice that it would rise above the stream, creating its own separate flow? This idea had often troubled her.

She felt the great weight of the strange man above her bear down on her in the holy act that would bring the joy of new life into being. She felt wholly consumed, utterly sacrificed. Perhaps, she thought, perhaps this. She moved upward towards him and toward the future, giving herself wholly to the moment, and felt a great wash of understanding and comfort and joy sweep through her. She heard his sharp intake of breath in surprise and happiness as she gave herself to him, clutching him close to her.

He seemed no longer a great, strange weight above her, weighing her down, but simply part of her, like her arms or legs. No one had ever touched her so deeply, so thoroughly. It was almost inhuman, unthinkable. Yet the prayer, the darkness, kept out all shame, all humiliation.

And then, beyond imagining, she felt the surge of pleasure that had been wholly left out of everything she had been taught. Her whole body arched toward it, laughing in wondrous eagerness. More and more and more. It was … She could not think anymore. This, too, then, they had kept from her. Not sacrifice at all! Not painful or burdensome. This surge of pure, incredibly intense beauty. It had been there all the time, but she had not known it.

She felt herself reach out to him once more, beyond all shyness, all restraint. Gratefully.

Chapter twenty-two

“
I
plan to go into the army.”

Chaya Leah’s mouth gaped. “Moishe, what are you talking about? Your parents would kill you!”

He shrugged. “I’m not learning in yeshiva full-time, so I don’t have an automatic deferment.”

“Lots of boys who work part-time still get out of the army. They get notes from rebbes or psychiatrists. They pretend that they’re learning or crazy—”

“It’s disgusting!” His tone was contemptuous.

She let go of his arm, aware of their passing from the darkened park toward the illuminated center of Jerusalem’s cafés, restaurants, and movie theaters. “Why is it disgusting?” She was amazed at his heretical attitude. Everyone in the
haredi
world felt it was a G-d-given duty to get out of doing any army service. Military food wasn’t kosher enough. There was guard duty on the Sabbath and holidays. The army was full of secular, rabidly antireligious elements. Most of all, army service would cut them off from their main task in life: learning Torah full-time.
Haredim
viewed with the greatest alarm and suspicion any move by the government to change or limit draft exemptions for yeshiva students.

“But if it wasn’t for the yeshiva students who learn Torah and pray, we would never have won any of the wars. Our learning and praying is equal in value to all the bombs and planes and foot soldiers in the army!” she exclaimed, repeating the oft-expressed rationale that even the smallest child in the
haredi
world knew.

“All very well and convenient. But where is it written that studying or praying exempts one from military service? When Joshua led the children of Israel into Canaan, did Hashem say, ‘Draft everyone from age twenty and above who isn’t learning or praying’?” he scoffed. “Every Jew has to learn and pray.”

“That’s not the same thing! Joshua was leading the Jews to a religious war, a war to take over the land and build the holy Temple. But the Zionists aren’t building a Jewish country. They eat pig and desecrate the Sabbath. So all their wars to protect their secular state are not holy wars like Joshua’s …”

“But what about saving Jewish lives? Isn’t that important? Isn’t that holy?”

“G-d will help us if we keep His commandments, if we learn Torah and pray …”

“You’re just spewing out all that junk they’ve been feeding you since you were little! I’m surprised at you, Chaya Leah! I thought you had a mind of your own. You’re not supposed to depend on miracles. Remember Jacob? When he came back home after twenty years of fleeing his brother Esau, he didn’t just sit back and wait for G-d to provide a miracle. He sent ambassadors with presents to soften Esau up. And then when that didn’t seem to work, he divided his wives and children into three camps so that if one was attacked, the others could flee and be saved.”

“I don’t understand you! Why would you want to risk your life if you don’t have to? If you can get out of it?”

“It’s called being a coward.”

She turned bright red with anger. “So, are you calling my father, and Yaakov, and my brothers—”

“I’m not calling anybody anything,” he continued stubbornly despite her obvious anger. “I’m just saying that I personally am not going to be studying full-time. I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t learn how to shoot in case we’re attacked.”