One Hundred Philistine Foreskins (15 page)

The matter, however, grew far more urgent after Tema finished high school and still refused to budge from her position as, one by one, like ducks in a shooting gallery, each of her classmates either became engaged or was married and some could even be spotted already pushing a baby carriage down the street. Tema alone was taking no steps to begin real life. The time had come for her father to pay attention. A girl could not forever remain in such a holding pattern; before you knew it a new crop, younger and fresher, would be moved to the front of the shelves, and she would have to be sold off at a bargain price past the expiration
date, cut-rate goods, remainders, as is. Meanwhile, though, for his sins, under no circumstances would this prima donna daughter of his consent to fill this gap in her life in a respectable way by teaching at Beis Ziburis, for example, for which she was remarkably qualified though she herself claimed she did not know enough.

Reluctantly, therefore, Reb Berish gave Tema permission to attend night courses at Brooklyn College just so she would have something to do with her time during this limbo; she could after all make some practical use of this dead space by working toward a degree in elementary school education, for example, which, God willing, he hoped and prayed she would never have to complete, though it was a very good backup career for a woman if it came to that since it fit so compactly into the schedule of a wife and mother. During the day, Tema continued with her own private curriculum of Jewish studies behind the locked door of her room at home, and for a brief period she came into his office part-time several days a week at her father's insistence, to contribute to her “room and board,” as he put it, helping out with the phones, especially with handling complaints, until the day the other ladies, the secretaries and the bookkeepers, listened wide-eyed as the boss's daughter explained to a caller that No, that wasn't rat feces in the box of chocolates, it was the candy itself, and even if it was rat feces, the Berel Bavli
hashgakha
seal meant that it was one-hundred-and-ten-percent kosher, you can count on it,
ess gezunt aheit
, eat in good health.

Privately, Reb Berel Bavli put out the word to all the yentas on the circuit that he was now in the market for a suitable
shiddukh
for his daughter, Tema, and naturally he got in touch with every one of the recommended matchmakers operating in the territory. The professional assessment was that Tema Bavli was an exceptionally beautiful and brilliant girl. Both of those attributes were on the minus side. Also on the minus side was the fact that her mother had died young of circumstances that were not exactly clear, from a physical or a mental problem, either of which was not good news, either of which could, God forbid, be inherited by the children, may they multiply. In addition, certain rumors did not exactly improve her prospects, including reports by witnesses that she had often been seen coming and going from the public library, which suggested that she polluted her mind with English books and other garbage. Finally, the matter of her having been found one morning in an
empty grave in a cemetery reportedly after having experienced some kind of mystical vision that many suspected could more accurately have been described as a nervous breakdown of some sort was common knowledge in certain circles, and though this event had occurred several years earlier when she was considerably younger and more impressionable and understandably still overcome by the loss of her mother, unfortunately it did not help in the delicate situation of pinning down a girl's destined mate.

On the plus side, however—and this, by universal agreement of the professional matchmakers, was a tremendous plus—the prospective bride's father, the distinguished Reb Berel Bavli, was an extremely wealthy man. In comparison to this, every other plus paled and was not worth mentioning, even and including the plus of Reb Berish's well-documented record as a benefactor of many worthy causes and his numerous notable charitable acts such as his weekly custom of putting each of his little girls on the meat scale every Friday morning and then distributing their weight in top rib or chuck roast stamped with the Berel Bavli kosher seal of approval to the poor for the Sabbath stew. The consensus, then, of these experts who dealt day in and day out with delivering perfect matches from heaven was that, with regard to Tema Bavli and her special situation, they should narrow the search to a young man acclaimed to be brilliant and diligent, a beacon in holy studies, a
talmid hokhom
of the top caliber, but also dirt-poor. Once the couple was married, may it be in a good hour, the boy would sit and learn all day, while the wife would have babies, and her father, Reb Berel Bavli, would support them for as long as necessary, maybe forever.

With this plan in mind, they plunged into the search. One suitable candidate after another was put forward, all of whom, without exception, Tema refused to even consider. She stuck her fingers into her ears and made clacking noises with her tongue to drown out a recitation of their glowing qualities. She ran to her room, slammed the door, and locked it from within.

In desperation, Reb Berel Bavli made a decision to bring his daughter to his spiritual guide, the Oscwiecim Rebbe, to talk some sense into her. There was no question of refusing to go to this consultation. Reb Berish made it crystal clear that should that be the course Tema chose, he would wash his hands of her for good; she could go sleep in the streets for all he cared and eat from the garbage pails and squat down to pish and cock behind a bush.

The Oscwiecim Rebbe was already in place in his designated chair at the head of his dining room table in which only he was permitted to sit and which stood empty as if occupied by his ghost when he was not there to fill it. Behind him in the shadows stood his son, Kaddish, his chief
shammes
and right-hand man. Reb Berish, his major donor, took a seat to the rebbe's right, with Tema standing before them to their left like a defendant in the dock, and the rebbetzin, with her everyday oxbloodshoepolish-colored wig slightly askew on her head and in her flowered housecoat with the sleeves pushed up to her elbows, listening in through the open kitchen door as she continued rolling and shaping more than two hundred matzah balls for the forthcoming Sabbath's chicken soup.

Stroking philosophically his long white beard yellowed around the mouth by tobacco and tea, the rebbe mumbled a few perfunctory questions in Yiddish to Tema since he was already familiar with the main points of the case through her father and chose to avoid being troubled by her side of the story. After a brief consultation with his wife, who now stood beside him mopping the sweat from her forehead with a dishrag, the rebbe announced his diagnosis that Tema was possessed by a dybbuk, the naked soul of a dead sinner condemned to wander the earth in restless torment, possibly even the girl's own mother, who had invaded the vessel of Tema's body to take refuge there. It was this dybbuk that was speaking through Tema's mouth insisting she would never get married, the rebbe explained, these were not the words and certainly not the thoughts or desires of a respectable and sensible girl like Tema Bavli herself from such an outstanding and reputable family.

It would be necessary to expel this dybbuk from the vessel of Tema's body, and since they already had her there in the room, it made perfect sense to proceed with the exorcism at once. Tema briefly considered turning and running out of the house of the Oscwiecim Rebbe to make her escape, but where could she go? She was trapped as if in a dream in which she was both actor—or acted upon—and observer. It was a Thursday evening in early winter, darkness was descending. Ten men were rounded up, trudging in from the street in their galoshes with their shopping bags, to make up a minyan. The rebbetzin turned on a lamp, and for atmosphere she lit the candles in all of her Sabbath sterling silver candlesticks, which approximated, since one is forbidden to count, the number of her children and grandchildren, close to one hundred.

She directed Tema to remove her shoes and stockings, and pointed to
the chair in which Tema must sit. Pinning Tema in place for the procedure with one arm encircling her neck in a kind of headlock and the two fingers of her other hand pressing down firmly on Tema's pulse where the demon resided, the rebbetzin whispered urgently into Tema's ear, “Push! Push! Push that dybbuk out, daughter!”

At the same time, the rebbe, her husband, was stationed at Tema's bare feet, which were resting on a stool. At his wife's behest, he was holding out a bowl to catch the exiting demon while intoning Psalm ninety-one over and over again, forward and backward, for what seemed like an eternity—You who sit in the high mystery, You who rest in the shade of Shaddai—his eyes glued to Tema's big toe as it was sinful for his gaze to stray any higher up for the sign of the blood that must trickle down to mark the exit of the dybbuk.

“Shmiel,” the rebbe's wife called to him from her end, “do you see anything yet?”—but the rebbe only shook his head despondently. The rebbetzin brought her mouth close to Tema's ear and hissed, “So nu, what about getting married already? We don't have all day. I have fifteen kugels to make for Shabbes!”—but Tema raised her hand, the one that was not being pressed down by the rebbetzin at the pulse, and motioned with her index finger from side to side—
No
.

They were dealing with an exceptionally stubborn dybbuk who was not cooperating at all, the rebbetzin indicated to her husband. A more extreme measure was now called for to finish this business. Dutifully, the rebbe gave the nod to Kaddish, who joined forces with his mother at Tema's head with a shofar clutched in his fist, which he raised to his mouth and blasted directly into Tema's ear, into the very same ear that she had plugged with a finger when the names and attributes of eligible young geniuses scouting for a rich bride were presented for her consideration. The rebbe's son Kaddish now filled that ear with a ringing so intense that Tema thought she was hearing voices, and all of the voices were chanting in chorus,
No, No, No.

Over the course of that winter, Reb Berel Bavli dragged his daughter Tema from rebbe to rebbe to straighten her out even as he recognized that his search for a cure would inevitably leak out into the community and lower the value of the goods in the marketplace.

The Chernobyler Rebbe listened to the whole story as transmitted by Reb Berish, then brought his face as close to Tema's as was decent within
the constraints of modesty and, expelling sour whiffs of constipation, he enunciated very deliberately as if to a person who is deaf or mentally deficient or an alien, “Listen to me, young lady—act normal! Even if you are not normal, you must act normal. Remember my words—Act Normal!”

The Kalashnikover Rebbe's face puffed up in a fury, turning blazing scarlet and blaring, “What this little
nudnik
needs is a few good
potches
in
tukhes
to knock some sense into her head!” as he came charging toward Tema wielding his cane, only to be deflected in time by the massive slaughterer's forearm of Reb Berish who said, very deferentially but firmly, “Excuse me, rebbe, but
I
am the father.”

The Brooklyner Rebbe recommended a psychiatrist on Central Park West who, though secular himself, had been thoroughly vetted by the religious leaders so that there was absolutely no danger whatsoever that he would inject heretical or forbidden ideas into the vulnerable heads of his ultra-Orthodox patients such as lascivious thoughts about their own mothers or murderous feelings toward their fathers, or attempt in any immoral way to brainwash them by opening sinful valves of temptation for relief. In fact, with his exclusively
haredi
practice, talking was kept to an absolute minimum in his treatment room; his specialty was dispensing and renewing prescriptions for drugs and medications at a good clip. Tema sat in his crowded waiting room filled mostly with men and a few depressed older women clumped together, all of whom, from the tiniest variations in their Hasidic uniforms, could be zoomed-in on the map to their exact neighborhood and even in certain cases their block in the five boroughs of New York City and the counties beyond, but she left before her appointment when a young Hasid rushed in with his earlocks and fringes flying, feverishly agitated and shaken, and went around the waiting room, from person to person, demanding that each one in turn tell him if it was really true that he looked so crazy since as soon as he had walked into this fancy building just a few minutes ago, the doorman had pointed him to this office—the office for the nutcases.

Through the long brooding nights of that winter, after Tema returned home from Brooklyn College where she took courses in Western philosophy and Eastern religion, and ravenously devoured in the library anything she could lay her hands on—every footnote was precious—about
the punished life of the charismatic and uncompromising Puritan dissident Bible teacher Anne Hutchinson, confident that all this extracurricular study was only a minor deviation from her contract with her father that he had neither the time nor the interest to scrutinize, after reading into the early morning hours Tema would switch off the light and lie on her back in the dark in her girlhood bed with her eyes open wide listening to the night noises of the house. Terrors were lurking everywhere, she could sense them closing in upon her as they had when she was a child. The steam hissed in the radiators, monster shapes were pitched onto the ceiling of her room from the headlight beams of passing cars, toilets flushed, appliances cycled on and off, she could hear Frumie's heavy, eternally pregnant tread making its way through the hallway down the stairs to the kitchen, the sucking sound of the refrigerator door opening, the scraping of the chair being pushed back as Frumie sat down at the table with a deep sigh to eat in peace whatever food in whatever combinations and quantities her heart desired. She could hear the little girls whimpering in their beds, or crying out from some Black Forest nightmare, she could hear her father lumbering down the hall into and out of their rooms to attend to them.