Sotah (11 page)
There was silence. Brindel Brietman got up and cleared away the dishes. Faigie Reich pulled down the corners of her wig, feeling the blood pounding in her temples. Rabbi Reich ran his delicate, gentle fingers through his beard.
“Well, sometimes the boy’s parents are also willing to help,” Rebbetzin Reich said finally.
“Yes, yes,” Rabbi Reich exulted. “This is the answer. We must both help when the children come. I will get another job. I could work evenings, late, as a mashgiach.” His eyes lit up.
“Rabbi Reich, my dear friend …” Rabbi Breitman laid a heavy hand over the other man’s. “We are also not wealthy people. Abraham is our eldest. We have five other children. All girls, all in their teens. We must provide for them. We were counting on Abraham marrying a girl with means. If he doesn’t, it will make it difficult, if not impossible, for us to provide for our girls when the time comes.”
“Let me understand this, Rebbetzin—”
“Brindel, please,” the other woman corrected her.
“Yes, well. Brindel. I want to be very clear. So you are not willing to help with their
parnosa
at all?”
“It’s not that we are not willing,” she answered uncomfortably. “Everyone who knows me knows the kind of person I am. I live for my children. I think only of their welfare. And not only my own children, but all our children. All the children of Israel are precious to me,” she said piously. “But think about it. What a burden for you! And for us, of course, this other offer, it would make a difference. He could have a real
parnosa,
not just handouts from his family. He would be able to help his sisters, too …”
“I understand,” Faigie Reich said, the pounding in her head growing worse, her heart feeling a sudden sharp, debilitating stab of pain. She grew pale and poured herself a drink from the pitcher of juice.
“And your daughter is so young yet. I am sure she will have many offers. Such a lovely girl, such a wonderful family,” Brindel Breitman said expansively, wallowing in generosity now that she saw it wouldn’t cost her anything. “It will be better for you also, if the boy’s family is more able to help.”
“I don’t understand. I don’t understand why it has to be this way.” Rabbi Reich shook his head in sorrowful confusion. “But perhaps in this case, it is not meant to be after all.”
“This is what seems to be the case. G-d works in his own ways,” Brindel Breitman said almost joyfully, pouncing on the opportunity to align herself with G-d in this delicate case.
The two men shook hands sorrowfully, Rabbi Breitman avoiding Rabbi Reich’s eyes. “I wish Abraham and the whole family a long, good, healthy life. May we see peace in our land, and Jerusalem rebuilt speedily in our days,” Rabbi Reich said. His eyes watered with pain.
“May your daughter find her
beshert
soon and get married in a good hour.” Brindel Breitman smiled, the warmest smile of the evening, the polar cap melting and little laugh and pleasure lines running like swollen streams down from her twinkling eyes to her broad, happy lips.
“And may your son enjoy the sunshine on the porch.” Faigie Reich nodded pleasantly. “Boys get a little too old,” she whispered to the other woman, so that the men wouldn’t hear, “and people begin to wonder what’s wrong. I’m telling you this for your own good. My Dina is only seventeen. She is beautiful and intelligent. She will soon get over her disappointment. But at twenty-two, disappointment hits harder. A boy lives with a woman, Rebbetzin Breitman, not only with plastic bags. May he marry in a good hour!” She walked out quickly and did not turn around, although she would have given a not inconsiderable part of her share in heaven just to have glimpsed for a second the reaction on Brindel Breitman’s face.
R
eb Chaim Garfinkel hated amateurs. Meddling aunts, foolish fathers, pushy mothers, misguided
chumash
teachers, even an occasional
rosh yeshiva.
All those busybodies who dove headfirst into the swampy quagmire of matchmaking, dragging poor, sweet young girls and innocent boys down with them.
He stroked his long, scraggly reddish beard, picking out the crumbs left over from breakfast. He stirred his tea, then took tiny burning sips through a cube of sugar that rested on his tongue. Would these same people presume to write out prescriptions with no medical training? Would they dare to drill teeth without having been to dental school, or prepare tax returns or build houses, or even unclog drains! … He felt the burning liquid course down his throat like a hot stream of indigestion. Yet putting two people together, joining two families whose genes would determine the looks, the intelligence, of countless human beings still unborn, that they felt was easy.
That
they presumed.
If Reb Garfinkel had been artistically or literarily inclined, he would have likened his predicament to that of the skilled, talented writer or artist. Just because everyone knew how to put words down on blank paper, or brush colors on a blank canvas, people thought nothing of trying, of calling themselves writers or artists, of producing countless unreadable pages and unbearably bad pictures. And each time someone with no experience or talent or skill sat down and wrote or painted, what he produced was an affront, a virtual slap in the face, to all those who spent years slaving to earn the right to produce just one sentence or a paragraph worth its name, one simple line drawing worth looking it.
In very much the same way, Reb Garfinkel was insulted and angered by all those who had the offensive indecency, the sheer, stupid gall, to horn in on his exclusive territory: matches among the Misnagdim,
haredi
families whose near ancestors came from Poland, Russia, or Hungary. That was his stake. His homestead. He guarded it with the same rabid jealousy, the almost insane covetousness, of an 1890s prospector in Alaska who has just struck gold.
Sometimes people came to him (mostly ignorant Americans or out-of-touch Europeans) asking his help with a match for a Hasidic family. Depending on his mood, he would either curse them and slam the door or offer them a seat by his rickety table and begin the long, involved explanation of why such a thing was out of the question.
He would sit with these ignorant fools, these outsiders, who looked at the black hats, the long
payess
, the beards, the black coats, and saw the same homogeneous world, the way some Caucasians looked at Orientals and thought they all had the same face. To explain the profound and manifold differences in the
haredi
world, he began with history, with the bitter differences between Hasidim and their fierce opponents, the Misnagdim.
Being in the Misnagid camp himself, his description was hardly objective. He tended to show the beginning of the Hasidic movement in Poland-Lithuania in the late eighteenth century as the banding together of Jews too ignorant to study themselves, who put all their faith in a charismatic leader, a rebbe, whom they would follow blindly. He left out the sincerity of these followers and the many scholars who were among them. Perhaps these things were not truly relevant, or perhaps he was just doing what any good businessman does—simply making his goods more attractive than the competition’s. He would emphasize how the great tzadik and leader of the Misnagdim, the Vilna Goan, had outlawed and excommunicated the Hasidim—the whole bunch of them—and with good reason.
The idea that “all is in G-d” promoted by Hasidim was sheer blasphemy, leading to thinking of the Torah in unclean places, erasing the distinction between clean and unclean, licit and illicit. The claims made for the rebbe, tales of supernatural powers, healing, direct mystical communion with G-d, were also sheer arrogance. And the elevation of prayer above study, or emotion over intellect, was tantamount to
bitul Torah
, the denigration and neglect of Torah study. Besides, the Hasidim did ludicrous things. The Bratslav howled at the new moon in prayerful ecstasy. And (so Reb Garfinkel claimed with a straight face) some turned somersaults in the synagogue. Besides, they drank and smoked, all part of feeling “joy,” Garfinkel related with derision, and back in Europe they encouraged their young men to leave home early and spend long years at the court of the rebbe. An anathema.
Then, if the audience seemed receptive, and the day before had seen a few matches progressing well, he might launch into a few jokes about the Hasidim. How they recited the morning prayers at noon because their rebbe did and how it turned out the rebbe had stomach problems that kept him in the bathroom until noon. Or the one that went this way:
There were two Hasidim discussing which one of their rebbes was greater. “My rebbe,” said the first one, “is the greatest. He was on the road from Minsk to Pinsk when suddenly a great downpour of rain began. Being without his boots and raincoat, a long way from home, the rebbe looked up into the sky. First he pointed to the right and said: ‘Here’s rain.’ Then he pointed to the left and said: ‘Here’s rain.’ Then he pointed to just above his head and said: ‘Here’s no rain.’ The rain immediately poured all around him, leaving him dry.”
“That’s nothing,” said the second Hasid, waving his hand deprecatingly. “My rebbe was riding a horse on Friday from Minsk to Pinsk when suddenly the sun disappeared and the Sabbath came in. Now, everyone knows that you are not allowed to ride a horse on the Sabbath. He pointed to the left and said: ‘Here’s the Sabbath.’ Then he pointed to the right and said: ‘Here’s the Sabbath.’ Then, raising his hand just above his head, he said: ‘Here’s no Sabbath.’ And lo and behold, he continued to ride his horse.”
They were jokes his audience seldom laughed at, although Reb Garfinkel did, every time. Time after time.
Although the bitter wars between the Hasidim and the Misnagdim had ended over two hundred years ago, and each group had grudgingly accepted the other as faithful soldiers in G-d’s increasingly beleaguered army against such real enemies as Conservative and especially the unconscionable and objectionable Reform Jews, no love was lost between them.
To tourists, secular Israelis, and even the uninformed among the moderately religious who walked through the streets of Bnai Brak or Meah Shearim, the two groups looked indistinguishable. Both wore the black hats, the black coats, the long beards. Both studied Talmud in large, imposing yeshiva halls that rang with the voices of hundreds of fervent students. Both kept the laws of the Torah, the
halacha
, with the fearsome, trembling dedication of those to whom G-d is a constant companion.
Among those who lived in the
haredi
world, however, there was never any doubt to just which camp someone belonged. It was written all over them. All you had to do was learn to read.
For example, you could tell a Belz Hasid from a Vishnitz Hasid by which side the bow on their hatband rested: A Belzer wore it on the left, while a Vishnitzer wore it on the right. Every Polish Hasid wore a
spodik
—a high, narrow fur hat—on the Sabbath, and a Hasid of Gur wore the biggest one of all. When a boy married, he traded in his
felush
(a flat, low hat with a wide brim known among the boys as a “flying saucer”) for a
shtreimel
, a hat consisting of a skullcap surrounded by a thick animal pelt—fox, mink, or even sable—that could cost up to $1,500 and was considered an appropriate gift from a bride to a groom.
The gold-striped kaftan and fur
shtreimel
on holidays meant you were a Belzer Hasid. The mink-trimmed spodiks on your head and tailored black silk kapote as an overcoat showed you were a follower of the rebbe of Gur. And if you were one of those Bratslav Hasidim, mostly born-again Jews, you took pride in mixing everything up and wore the special shoes of Vishnitz, the overcoat of Gur, and the hat of Belz. They were the “hippies” of the
haredi
world.
Misnagdim, of course, didn’t have special clothes or hats. But if you were a respectable
ben Torah
, a sincere follower of the law, you tended to look exactly the same as every other Misnagid
ben Torah
. Your hat was large and black, but stylish, the kind a conservative American businessman might wear to church. Your clothes were, of course, mostly black, although dark navy was sometimes acceptable. Sometimes you might even have a dark gray or blue pinstripe suit. Years ago this was more likely to have been true if you were a Misnagid from America and your parents had taken you to Barney’s to outfit you for your year’s study in a Jerusalem yeshiva. But nowadays everyone was into pinstripes, even on overcoats. But to Reb Garfinkel’s taste and opinion, a Misnagid worth his salt wore a conservative black suit and a hat or a black velvet skullcap. He deplored some of the more stylish yeshiva boys who wore colorful ties, knotted with a rakishly loose knot, fancy white-on-white print shirts and fedora hats tilted back forty-five degrees (he didn’t understand how they stayed on their heads at all).
Among
haredi
women, the differences were much less noticeable, with one exception. The Hasidic girls of Toledot Aharon wore black stockings and long braids until they married, when they shaved their heads and wore a black scarf. It was getting harder and harder for Toledot Aharon boys to find girls willing to do this outside their own circles. Almost to a woman,
haredi
women were insistent on wearing expensive, stylish wigs and fashionable although extremely modest clothes.
Being lumped together in the eyes of the ignorant, however, had not brought the
haredim
and Misnagdim any closer. While marriages occasionally did take place between Hasidim and Misnagdim, they were considered intermarriages and usually mourned by both groups. They were accidents, the result of a girl and boy somehow, against the odds, meeting and falling in love without their parents’ knowledge. Or they were, very rarely, the result of a family of Misnagdim losing its mind and consciously deciding to join some Hasidic sect or other. Rarely, however, did it happen that a Hasid became a Misnagid. In Reb Garfinkel’s experience, once a Hasid lost faith in his rebbe, he usually lost faith in G-d too and went over to the secularists altogether.
