“It’s like going back in time to chaos,
tohu ve vohu
, when the earth and water were all mixed up and there was no sun or moon,” Tamar said, almost close to tears.
“I wonder what all those red and green flashing lights are for?” Hadassah asked.
“I can’t believe you two! For Pete’s sake, it’s just the subway! We haven’t even gotten to the city yet and look what fun you’re having. Talk about easy to please!” Jenny laughed. “But it’s a long ride. We should sit down.”
“Oh, I don’t know, I sort of like standing and the view,” Hadassah murmured, fascinated by the rushing darkness.
“View?!” Jenny laughed.
“It is sort of like the funhouse in Playland,” Tamar agreed.
“That’s not what I meant, Tamar! Oh, never mind, you’d never understand.” Hadassah’s eyes glowed with excitement.
But soon they were all tired, weary of the monotones, the effort to keep their balance.
“So, where to first?” Hadassah asked Jenny as they settled themselves on the grimy red plastic seats, sticky soft with summer heat.
“The first stop is the Metropolitan Museum of Art.”
After two train changes, and what seemed like forever, they
got out, gulping the city air, which seemed fresh and clean after the stale subway ride. On Eighty-second Street and Fifth Avenue, the three yeshiva girls just stopped and stared for a few moments at the museum’s glorious neoclassical facade.
“It’s gorgeous,” Tamar pronounced.
But Hadassah said nothing, just staring as if she were in the middle of a very good meal and had not yet finished eating.
“Oh, the outside’s nothing. Wait ’til you see the inside!” Jenny laughed. They ran up the steps and into the cavernous entry hall.
“Where should we start, Jen?”
“I always skip the ground floor and go up one flight. I start with the American collection, then skip all those guns and things and go to the European paintings and sculptures and then the Greek and Roman art.”
“Are those the naked men?” Tamar asked anxiously.
“I don’t believe you! Lord, they’re not naked, they’re works of art!” Hadassah exclaimed with utter contempt.
“I don’t care what you call it, I’m not going to look at any naked men,” Tamar said firmly.
“The human body is a beautiful thing, Tamar. It’s G-d’s creation,” Jenny said seriously. “We’re not embarrassed about seeing other living creatures naked, why should we be embarrassed about humans?”
“I don’t know. I can’t explain it…”
“She’ll come,” Hadassah prophesied.
They wandered through the pictures of George Washington standing and sitting, of pretty landscapes, of fur traders on canoes…
“Whenever I see or learn about anything American, I think, like, what has this got to do with me?” Jenny said thoughtfully.
“What do you mean? You’re an American. We all are!” Hadassah protested.
“But, Hadassah, you know in our book on American history where it says how our forefathers did this and that—you know,
Mayflower
, Civil War, Dutch in New York, that stuff—I always think: My forefathers were in Russia or Poland. And before that, they were in Jerusalem, and before that in Canaan. They wore white robes and had flocks of sheep. What does Washington crossing the Delaware have to do with me? It’s somebody else’s history.”
“I know what you mean. That’s why I don’t think all this trouble with Negroes and Southerners has anything to do with me. I mean, we never had any slaves. But when I see those Southern sheriffs on TV, it does kind of make me sick. I keep thinking about the faces of the Germans looking at Jews. I bet they had the same faces,” Hadassah said.
“Goyim.” Tamar shrugged. “It’s just an accident which goyim we happen to be living with. It’s not really important, is it, their history, their culture? It’s just goyim!”
“Sometimes you just blow my mind!” Hadassah said, rubbing off a spot of dust from her boot. “What’s that supposed to mean, ‘just goyim’? We are all part of the planet, aren’t we? We’re part of humankind. We’re also goyim!”
“
What!
” Tamar said indignantly.
The guard turned around and looked at them severely.
“You’re going to get us thrown out before we reach the naked statues, Tamar!” Hadassah hissed at her.
“What I think Hadassah means, Tamar, is that the word
goy
means nation. So the Jews are also a nation. We have a country. Israel.”
“But we’re Jews, not Israelis. You know how funny the Israelis are, at least the ones in our class. They bring those weird sandwiches to eat two hours before lunch, and they wear those open-toed shoes even in the winter…” Tamar pointed out.
“But Israel… that’s where David lived, and King Solomon.
It’s where Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Jacob, and Joseph are buried… It means something,” Jenny said slowly. “I suppose any place else Jews wind up can never be as meaningful. Any place else is sort of just an accident in a way…”
“I don’t believe this! Any place else is not just an accident!” Hadassah exclaimed passionately. “Any place else is where you got locked up and gassed and tortured! They don’t do things like that in America. America took in my father and mother. America is the best country in the world, and I love it! Besides, it’s so dangerous in Israel. I mean, you can’t even pray at the Western Wall. Jordan’s got it.”
“But it won’t be like that forever. We’ll get it back. This is just the beginning of the redemption. I wish I could go there,” Jenny said wistfully.
“My friend was telling me that Israeli toilet paper is just like cardboard.” Hadassah wrinkled her nose in distaste. “I couldn’t live like that! . . . Oh, look at this one.”
They stopped before the painting of a woman in a black evening gown.
“
Madame X
by John Singer Sargent,” Tamar read.
“Look at how white her shoulders are!”
“What a snooty face!” Tamar giggled.
“ ‘Born Judith Avegno in New Orleans, she married a French banker and became one of Paris’s notorious beauties during the 1880s,’ ” Tamar read from the card. “I wonder what that means, ‘a notorious beauty’?”
“It probably means she had many lovers,” Jenny enlightened her.
“But she was married!” Tamar’s face got red. “You lose your whole World-to-Come if you’re married and you sleep with another man. It’s like the worst possible sin. Like murder. How could anybody…”
“Well, Tamar, I guess she missed out on an Ohel Sara
education, so she didn’t know all that,” Hadassah said under her breath, staring at the portrait, mesmerized by the tilt of the head, the lift of the chin, the supercilious heavy-lidded eyes. Instinctively she lifted her head and narrowed her eyes.
Hell with you
, the picture screamed.
Take me or leave me, but leave me alone! I really don’t give a flying hoot either way!
She loved it.
“Come on, Hadassah!” the girls called back to her.
She looked up, startled. They were already halfway down the hall. She gave the portrait a smile and then hurried to catch up.
“Oh, this is awful,” Tamar said, her head aching from the medieval depiction of Jesus, Mary, the saints, and the martyrs.
Hadassah shrugged. “All religions are silly, when you think about it. I mean, all those cows and sheep being sacrificed in the Temple in Jerusalem. Could you just imagine what that must have smelled like? Like Mr Weinblatt’s kosher meat and poultry! Not very inspiring!”
“How can you say that, Hadassah! Don’t you remember that we learned G-d made a miracle so that there was never any bad smell or flies in the temple!”
“I guess I wasn’t paying attention that day, Tamar,” Hadassah said dryly. “But I think if we are going to talk about miracles, we shouldn’t talk about flies and dead cows. I just think miracles should be saved for worthier occasions.”
“Sometimes you’re so… so…”
“So
apikoros-y
?” Hadassah helped her.
“You say it so lightly.” Tamar was shocked. If anyone had accused her of being a heretic, she would have turned white.
“You know, it’s like living over the store, that shul we have downstairs. I guess it takes away some of the awe.”
“If I see one more picture of a naked man with nails through his hands…” Jenny shook her head. “Why do they focus on
that? I mean, wasn’t it his life, his teachings, that they think were holy? Why focus on death and suffering?” She shrugged.
“But I guess they have to. That’s what made him important. He died for their sins. So now all they have to do is believe in him and tell the priest all their sins, and they get forgiven,” Hadassah informed her.
“That’s not fair! What a deal!” Tamar said. “You mean they don’t have to do
teshuvah?
They don’t have to correct what they’ve done, or be punished for it?”
“Wouldn’t that be great?” Hadassah smiled. “We could all go to Schrafft’s and eat ham sandwiches and ice-cream sodas and then go around the corner to the nearest shul and confess to the rabbi, and it would be fine! Or I could go to the movies on Shabbas and then just admit it, and it would be fine,” Hadassah went on, lost in the interesting possibilities.
They hurried farther on, not bothering to stop at most of the Flemish and Dutch paintings. But Jenny insisted they spend some time looking at the Rembrandts.
“I don’t like the colors. They’re so dull,” Hadassah complained.
“Just study the light,” Jenny urged her.
“The Toilet of Bathsheba,” Tamar giggled. “The Toilet?”
“Grow up,” Hadassah moaned.
“And she’s so ugly! Look at that fat stomach! And is that supposed to be David watching her?”
“Look at the way she’s caught all that light. She lights up the whole painting. She glows. It’s beautiful,” Jenny said.
“Well, I think I understand,” Tamar tried. But the truth was, it was not at all how she’d imagined Bathsheba. She looked awfully fat for any man to risk his World-to-Come for, as David had risked his by having Bathsheba’s soldier husband sent to the front and killed so that he could marry her himself.
“My feet are starting to hurt,” Tamar pointed out.
“I hate to admit it, but mine are too. These boots aren’t the most comfortable things I’ve ever worn,” Hadassah joined in.
“Come to the French paintings. You’ll like those better,” Jenny suggested.
They turned to leave, when something caught Tamar’s eye: it was Rembrandt’s
Portrait of Gérard de Lairesse
. Tamar moved closer and closer to it, blinking, not believing her eyes. He was hideous, the ugliest human being she had ever seen! His nose looked as if someone had mashed it in with a boot heel; his lips were swollen; and there was something apelike about the eyes, which looked out brashly with a kind of brazen contempt.
It held her with a horrible fascination.
“Eweeee! Why would anyone want to paint such a
chazir
? And why would such a
chazir
want to have his portrait painted? I mean, if it was me and I looked like that, I’d just hide forever and do all my shopping by phone and Sears catalog,” Tamar said, shuddering, feeling the goose bumps rise along her arms.
“What’s not nice we don’t show, right, Tamar?” Hadassah mocked in perfect imitation of an Orchard Park yenta.
Tamar blushed. It was exactly the way her mother would have said it.
“But Rembrandt didn’t feel that way,” Jenny pointed out. “Look how carefully he’s worked the details: all the light in the curly blond hair, the satiny gleam of the white lace collar and cuffs, the beautiful sheen of that black coat. Look at how he’s done the fingers—he’s made them so long, so sensitive, and intelligent.”
“So why couldn’t he have just made his face nicer, too!”
“I read in the catalog that Lairesse’s mother had syphilis. He was born that way. His looks weren’t his fault. And Rembrandt isn’t ignoring them, he’s looking beyond them, to what the man’s made of himself. He’s looking at him with compassion.”
“I’d hate to be a misfit and have people do things for me
because they felt sorry. I’d rather just hide away and be by myself than be a
rachmones
,” Tamar said.
“Tamar, you’re not getting it! It’s not pity. Rembrandt really saw things he respected and liked in Lairesse. Rembrandt looked him straight in the face and didn’t blink.”
Tamar looked at the portrait again, lost in thought.
“My feet!” Hadassah implored. “Let’s look at some pretty things, please!”
“Come on. When you get to the Impressionists, you’ll forget about your feet,” Jenny promised.
They did.
When Hadassah saw Gauguin’s
Ia Orana Maria
, something inside her leapt up like a small child given a gift box with a red bow. Drinking in the bright, tropical colors, the bare-breasted dark woman, the foliage painted with lush, dreamlike abandon, she felt transfixed.
“I read someplace Gauguin was this wealthy banker who just left his wife and kids and took off for this tropical island, just painting his heart out,” Jenny said, moving in beside her.
“Take me with you, Paul!” Hadassah said suddenly, out loud.
“I knew you’d like these!” Jenny laughed.
“I love them!” Hadassah embraced herself, closing her eyes.
“I do, too! But you know what? I still think Rembrandt’s Gérard de Lairesse is worth all of the Monets and Manets and Gauguins put together,” Jenny said.
“What?! That horrible… !” Tamar gasped.
“A very wise rebbe once told me that it’s easy to accept the good things, the beauty of the Creation. But it takes a very special kind of wisdom to accept G-d-given ugliness, to accept Gérard de Lairesse. I mean, the crippled, the blind, the retarded, the deformed… they’re also His will.”
“They’re not His will! They’re punishments for being bad.”
Tamar shook her head. “Wasn’t that disease his mother had something you catch from being… bad? You know! If you keep all His commandments, nothing bad like that will ever happen to you or your kids.”
“That’s silly. Of course it will,” Hadassah said. “Besides, Lairesse’s mother probably caught it from Lairesse’s father! It wasn’t her fault! Look at Job! He didn’t do anything wrong, Tamar, and he lost all his money, his children died, he had a terrible disease… and on top of it, he had friends who kept telling him he was probably being punished for his sins and a shrew of a wife who kept nagging him to curse G-d and drop dead…”