Sotah (21 page)

“I mean, the way your leaders teach. I was reading this book by this Misnagid
rav,
and he says specifically that just as there is no separation between G-d and the Jewish people, there should be no separation between a man and wife.”

They were both silent. “What else does he say?” Chaya Leah asked timidly. Even for her this conversation was getting a bit much. But her curiosity took over, driving out her natural modesty.

“He says that a married couple can do anything they want, except that the man shouldn’t kiss ‘that place.’ But otherwise, everything else is okay.”

She was beginning to feel very hot. “Well, how are your rules different?”

“We’re taught not to touch anything. A man should kiss his wife’s face and that’s it. Also, there is only one position that’s acceptable, and the room has to be totally black. It’s also preferable to wait until midnight, when you won’t be distracted by voices in the street which might lead a man to think of other women.”

“Do you always do everything your rebbe says? I mean, couldn’t you adopt some of our customs, too? After all, marriage is a partnership. And as it is written, a man should make his wife happy. Actually, you’ll have to do whatever pleases me.” She gave him a long, languid look. “You don’t need your rebbe’s blessing for everything, do you?”

“But of course I do!”

“What about what we’re doing now? Have you gotten his blessing for that also?” she said slyly.

He took his arm off her waist and clasped his hands together, studying them in chagrin.

Then she started to giggle.

He looked up with distress, and then his face contorted with laughter. “We’ll get married one day.” He pressed her against him.

“Without a
shadchen!
”

He traced his fingers down her back. “Without a
shadchen.
”

“With or without the rebbe’s blessing or my parents’? And we’ll do whatever we want in our own house, in our own bed?”

He hesitated. Her arms went over his shoulders, her fingertips pressed softly into the back of his neck. She brought his mouth down again over hers.

He didn’t answer. He didn’t have to.

She crumpled up the bit of paper in her pocket and threw it away.

It was late when Moishe finally wound his way through Meah Shearim, yet he felt exuberantly alive. A few times he grabbed on to lampposts and swung himself around them. He tiptoed across low stone fences, he leapt over fire hydrants.

Streets in Meah Shearim were almost always full, even this time of night. There were always boys coming from or going to late-night prayer gatherings or
shiurim.
So the footsteps behind him did not even entice a backward glance. Then, suddenly, the footsteps were no longer behind, but on either side of him in perfect time. Two arms linked violently through his, and he felt himself dragged to a small alley.

They were yeshiva boys a little older than he, he saw, yet lean and muscular. Their faces were clenched in hatred.

“Brothers, what is this?” he began mildly, but his heart was already beating with an animal’s fear. He knew who they were. They were the commandos of the Morals Patrol, young thugs in yeshiva boys’ clothing. They came from every group in the
haredi
world, Hasidim and Misnagdim, who worked together in rare harmony united by a shared fanaticism and a need to sanctify somehow the natural violence of their natures. In the name of purifying the community’s morals, they were not above putting you in the hospital. Or worse.

Haredim
didn’t believe in going to the Zionist police force, didn’t want the secularists involved in their private lives. This estrangement from the government had begun with the very creation of the State in response to certain government-inspired outrages. It was a common practice, for example, for newly arrived, deeply religious Moroccan and Yemenite immigrant families to be broken up, the children sent to secular kibbutzim where their
payess
were shaved off and their skullcaps thrown out in an attempt to integrate them culturally into the mores of the ruling secular Zionists. In outraged response,
haredim
had washed their hands of the government, building up a wall of suspicion and resistance to any incursion into their communal life. They created their own court system and several quasi-official police forces that guarded
haredi
streets, catching thieves or child molesters, investigating rumors of adultery, and disciplining wanton yeshiva boys and girls.

The oldest and most venerable of these forces, the one officially sanctioned by most of the communities’ rabbis, was a group called the
mishmeret hatzinius
, or “Modesty Protectors.” They were always solid family men over forty. They never went after anyone unless the rabbinical court had accumulated tremendous evidence and no other course was possible. And even then they usually spoke to the people involved, trying to get them to cooperate voluntarily before resorting to any physical threats. Often this reasonable, responsible behavior had inflamed the impatience of younger, more zealous members of the community, who saw in it a despicable lack of zealousness and decisiveness in cleansing the community’s streets from criminals. The result had been the creation of several vigilante groups, each vying to outdo the other in their activities to “sanctify” the neighborhood. The more outrageously severe and punishing their actions, the more people they found to punish, the more attention they received and the more important they felt.

The current winner was the Morals Patrol.

The group was headed by Reb Kurzman, a complex, almost contradictory personality. A Hasid, brought up by strict, pious parents, sent to the most prestigious yeshivot, he was a dazzling scholar, zealous in word and deed to keep all the laws he studied. Yet he had been known to blow up newsstands that dared to sell secular magazines and newspapers, set fire to advertising posters and billboards with pictures he deemed immodest, and put young men whose activities he found questionable into wheelchairs for a considerable length of time.

In some ways it might be said that he was a perfect product of the society that had nurtured him, a society where every feeling reached total expression without compromise, where everything was conducted at a fever pitch of intensity: praying meant involving all your senses, all your concentration, your whole heart, your whole soul. Studying Talmud meant learning all day, every day, your entire life. Being modest meant covering everything head to toe, never looking at a woman, never sitting next to one on a public bus or taxi. Admiring a leader meant total, unthinking devotion. Hating someone meant total rejection, total war, where the end justified all means.

As a young yeshiva student, Kurzman had soon tired of the careful, thoughtful work of the
mishmeret hatzinius.
He could see the evil all around him, on every street corner, and nothing, nothing was being done! His model was the biblical figure of Pinchas, who had stilled G-d’s rage by publicly slaughtering an Israelite man during an act of whoredom with a Midianite woman.

And so in his early twenties Kurzman’s growing reputation had attracted an ever-increasing and -changing group of yeshiva boys and men from every group in the city. They were hottempered, zealous activists who, like himself, were fed up with the gentlemanly pace of temperate men whom they fiercely believed were allowing immorality to flourish and contaminate the community. Kurzman’s group used modern methods. They had their own spies. Walkie-talkies. Photographers. They achieved results.

Now they held Moishe firmly on either side. He struggled and then stopped. They weren’t increasing the pressure or lessening it. If they were going to beat him up, they would have done it already, he reasoned. Before he could figure it out, they dropped his arms. He rubbed them, then looked up. Standing before him was a stocky man, with a short dark beard, wearing white gloves. Rabbi Kurzman.

Moishe felt the sweat break out on his forehead and under his arms.

“You know that the Torah teaches men to live in modesty, to curb their animal instincts. You are a good boy, from a religious home. This you know, yes?”

Moishe nodded, too afraid to open his mouth.

“Well, you know that the daughters of Israel must all be treated like the daughters of priests. Anyone who treats them lightly is trespassing an important commandment of the Torah that Hashem, may his name be blessed, has commanded us. Do you understand that?”

Moishe nodded.

The tone changed mildly. Moishe felt a fatherly hand on his shoulder. “The temptation is always there, my son. You must suppress it. Soon you will marry and so will the girl. You do not want any taint to come to your honorable, righteous parents because of some foolishness on your part?”

“No,” Moishe said, his wits suddenly returning. “But I think what I do is my own business. The law does not prohibit an unmarried man from speaking to an unmarried woman.”

“But we know that it does not end with words. ‘Do not go after your own heart and your own eyes.’ Numbers fifteen, thirty-nine. ‘The thought of the foolish is sin.’ Proverbs twenty-four, nine. We know everything, my son.” The tone dropped suddenly to a menacing threat. “‘Neither shalt thy eye pity him, neither shalt thou spare, neither shalt thou conceal him.’” The fatherly hand on the shoulder squeezed him. The pain was excruciating. “Our sages of blessed memory have said, ‘All who become merciful to the cruel, in the end become cruel to the merciful,’ as it is written in
Yalkut, Shmuel
fifteen, one twenty-one. We hope that we will not have to talk to you about this again, my son. I would be very sorry if I needed to speak to you more than once about this. Very sorry indeed, my fine
bucherel.
” The grip slackened. The three walked rapidly down the street until they disappeared.

When he was sure they had gone, Moishe wiped the sweat from his brow. And then he spit in their direction.

Chapter eighteen

I
t was the second week in “bride class.” The wedding was three weeks away. Dina greeted the other young girls with pleasure. Some she had known before, and some she had met at the class. It was held at Rebbetzin Felder’s home three times a week.

The rebbetzin, wife of a distinguished rabbi who headed a rabbinical academy, had chosen this work as her special mitzvah. She took no money from the girls or their parents. “Does it make sense for me to lessen the richness of my reward in the World to Come by accepting a few paltry shekel in this world?” she would ask with real surprise whenever the subject came up.

She was a tall, imposing woman with a chest like a ship’s prow. Her face was scrubbed and shiny clean, her eyes were blue and shone with a clear, untroubled light. Her clothes were extra modest, even according to Mrs Morganbesser’s standards, and well cut. And always freshly washed and ironed. The whole house felt as if it had just been totally immersed in a tub of detergent and scrubbed to a high shine.

It was a perfect setting to talk about sex, making even that dark, mysterious, hitherto taboo subject emerge somehow into the light, all scrubbed and shiny clean. It was now acceptable to think about it, plan for it, ask questions about it. It was, after all, for the sake of heaven. It was now part of building a pure home, bringing pure, innocent new lives into being. It was now the Creator’s will that they think about it, plan for it.

Rebbetzin Felder smiled at the pretty young faces that crowded around her living room, looking at her with such shy interest. “A man marries a woman. She says to him: I have seen what looks like a red rose; and he separates from her. What kind of wall is there between them? What sort of serpent has stung him? What is it that restrains him—the words of the Torah!” The rebbetzin looked at the girls. “The blood that is built up in your bodies is meant to nourish new life. When that doesn’t happen, when it leaves your body, it is an impurity. This impurity, if not carefully guarded against, can contaminate your whole marriage. So you must separate from your husbands at that time and for seven days afterward, coming to him only after you have immersed in the mikveh, the ritual bath. It’s not a question of being unclean, but simply impure in a spiritual sense. The immersion is a spiritual cleansing. Your husband and you are united in purity and holiness. From this purity will come pure healthy children, not cursed with the ugly stain of having been conceived in impurity.”

The girls shuddered at the very thought. The rebbetzin smiled at them. She beamed. “And there is another reason, too. An added benefit to adhering strictly to all these laws of family purity. Each time you return to your husband after having separated from him completely for almost two weeks every month, a separation which means you must sleep in separate beds and not touch each other in any way; each time you return to him, you will be as beautiful and precious to him as you were on your wedding night. He will long for you and wait for you with the impatience of a new bridegroom no matter how many years you have been married. He will never tire of you, nor you of him.”

Dina shifted on her chair. Two weeks every month! It was a long time … Yet it depended how you felt about … it. If it was terrible, so you had two weeks off. If it was wonderful, then it would be pure torture. Yet there was no choice. The idea of being with a man when you were impure was abhorrent to her. Besides, it would mean that you would have to develop another kind of relationship, one that had nothing to do with sex. If that connection was strong enough, then perhaps it really wouldn’t matter so much that you couldn’t actually touch.

“And what is the reward for our conquering our basest natures, for allowing Hashem to be part of our marriages, our most intimate moments? The reward is great. It is a marriage that is full of mutual respect and long-lasting love and desire. It is clean, pure, healthy children,” the rebbetzin repeated, drumming the message home. “Why, in Europe, in places where there was no mikveh, women would travel many miles to reach one. Some even put their lives in danger by immersing in a frozen lake or the ocean. And those who were prevented from going to the mikveh kept apart indefinitely, for years, making a tremendous sacrifice.” The girls looked at each other, startled. Years?