G-d bless my family. My good mother and good father. Cast your shadow over them, O L-rd, in the valley of the shadow. And bless my husband, wherever he is. And bless my sleeping son, my Aaron. And my innocent sleeping daughters. And Gitta Chana. Bless my little grandson, nameless, alone in his crib. In this time of trouble. Bless them all. All of them that are alive and struggling and wounded.
And bless me. Not most of all. But just. If you can. That I might forget the shame of my youth. That I might not have to feel ashamed anymore. Anymore.
She lay down in bed, her arms at her sides, her palms turned upward in supplication. The room seemed empty without her husband. And peaceful, too. She was still awake at dawn when Josh walked into the bedroom.
He looked familiar and dear in the room they shared. And frighteningly large.
“Where did you go?”
“I went to see the Kleinmans. To see Gitta Chana.”
She had not thought of that. The hardest, most humiliating task of all. And he had taken it on without discussion. He had spared her that, she thought gratefully.
“What… ?”
He shook his head. “She is leaving the hospital tomorrow without the baby. She wants a divorce.” He looked toward the living room, toward Aaron.
“Joshua…”
He held up his hand to stop her explanations, her words, to shield himself from them. “I want you to know something. The only thing that is important to me right now is Aaron. Nothing and no one else. He is my son! I have no other! I want him to know that, to understand that, despite everything. My son, mine…” His voice grew less angry, the timbre dissolving into a soft moan of despair. “We will both have to leave the yeshiva. Probably the country…”
She was not surprised, but the reality of the destruction, the splitting apart of her life, was stunning. “But where will we go? Back to Orchard Park?”
He shook his head. “That is impossible. You know this story will spread like wildfire. Has already spread. Aaron needs to be able to start a new life. We will find some town in California or Michigan or the West that needs teachers of Hebrew…”
She stared at him. His whole brilliant future… A teacher of the Hebrew alphabet to children in some tiny assimilated Jewish community! . . . He, who had been a candidate to head the most prestigious house of Jewish learning in the world.
“But why? Your whole future… you had such good prospects at the yeshiva… Why does it have to be this way? Surely no one will force you out. They are all pious men.”
What, after all, had Josh done? She had been raped and borne another man’s child. Her son had the genes of a black rapist. But what had Josh done? What was the unforgivable taint that would force him out of the world he loved, destroy his future prospects, his whole life?
He had simply associated with the wrong people.
His wife and son.
“Of course no one would force
me
out! But Aaron… he’s lost everything. The way he treated his wife and the Kleinmans… The accusations he made, the things he said. Now that the tables are turned, they will crucify him! Do you understand that? And on top of it all, he has to deal with losing everything he thought he was, or wanted to be… I’m afraid of what he might do… I have to be with him.”
He stood by the window. Pushing aside the curtain, he stared into the dark, empty streets, the dark inscrutable heavens. “If he were sick, I would gladly give him my kidney, my bone marrow, anything,” he said quietly. “But this, this… thing is, you see, worse. I want him to know whatever happens, he has not lost me. He has not lost his father.”
She felt breathless.
She had lain beside him for over twenty-two years, and she had never understood him. The blow that would have turned a lesser man into a beast, roaring with betrayal and lost pride, had simply etched his best qualities into fine relief. He would give up everything he had worked for, everything that was most precious to him, for Aaron. How many men would feel this way? she wondered. And how many would simply reject the son, the mother? Wash themselves clean in the mikvah and go on living their blameless lives in their comfortable niche?
He is a good man. The best. It gave her courage. “And what,” she said softly, “about us?”
He turned to her, his back against the cold window glass. “All those years we lived together… a lie.”
“What else could I do? I looked up the
halacha
in the Mishnah. It said that if a married woman was raped in the city and didn’t cry out, if there were no witnesses that the rapist had a knife and threatened to kill her, then she was considered an adulteress. That meant you’d have to divorce me, didn’t it? Even
though I knew I had been raped… But I had no witnesses.”
“Tamar, Tamar…” He shook his head, holding his face in both hands, bent over in shock. “That is not the law. There is a well-known principle in
halacha
that says: ‘The same mouth that accuses her, acquits her.’ In any case where there are no witnesses, then the woman’s own testimony is believed.”
“But I didn’t see it. It wasn’t written…”
“It’s not written anywhere. But every rabbi, every Talmud scholar, knows that. If you had just asked… Why didn’t you ask? All these years, you were blameless. A married woman who is raped by force is blameless. She is not divorced, she is not punished. She is without taint. That is the
halacha
. And even the pregnancy, going through with it, that, too, was the right decision. That, too, was the
halacha
. When a married woman has a child, her husband is considered the father, no matter what. There would have been no reason to abort the child.
“I would have helped you, brought you some comfort, given you strength. But you didn’t trust me. You didn’t trust G-d. You never gave either one of us a chance…”
It was true. She had judged him by her fears. Judged the
halacha
by her fears, not trusting in either one’s justice or compassion. In fact, she had judged and condemned the whole society in which she lived by her fears, not giving them a chance to show they could rise to the occasion, that they could become the compassionate people the law was trying to make them with all its constant demands.
“If you see a mother bird sitting on hatchlings, send the mother away before you take the young.” “Do not harvest the corners of your fields. Do not denude the fruit tree of its fruit. Leave these things for the poor, the orphan, the widow.”
Compassion. The whole Torah was filled with compassion, with love for the misfit, the stranger. How could a society built on that Torah, on those laws, be unjust, unfeeling? Perhaps there
was more love there, more justice, than she had given Orchard Park and B’nai Brak credit for. Perhaps they would rise to this occasion. It was time to find out.
“What about us, Josh?” she repeated. And then, breathlessly, “Do you want a divorce?”
He looked at the floor. “I think this family has had enough disgrace without adding another, don’t you?”
She felt suddenly very cold. “You mean, to keep up appearances?”
“Tamar, it is very late. I am very tired.”
“Not yet, Josh, there is something else… I want to make Aaron’s son a bris. I want to hire a catering hall. To invite the yeshiva, the
admorim
, our relatives… And then, if Gitta Chana goes through with her plan, I want to take the baby home with us.”
He stared at her. “Are you crazy?” he exploded. “You can’t do that to Aaron! You can’t humiliate him like that, showing the whole world that child!”
“He is my grandson. He is a Jewish child! Where is your compassion?”
“My compassion is for Aaron! You can’t do this to him, I tell you! Hold up that child in front of the community! Rub their faces in it! And why, Tamar? Not for the child’s sake. He won’t know the difference. But for yourself! All these years when it suited you, got you what you wanted, you hid, and now you want to make a big party? For whom? To wipe the slate clean? To atone for yourself?”
She swallowed hard at the wounding accuracy of his words. “Perhaps. But also for us, for our family. Why should we be thrown out, ostracized? Why should my girls become damaged goods, bad matches, my lovely, innocent girls! I will make them accept us!! I will—”
“Tamar, it’s over. Nothing you do now matters! Don’t you
understand that?” His voice was gentle, almost comforting. “These ideas will only lead to more humiliation, not less! I won’t let you do this, not at Aaron’s expense! Find your peace another way!”
“He is our grandchild, part of our family! He deserves a normal bris.”
“You can’t make Aaron stand there in front of everyone as that child is passed around, everyone looking and whispering.”
“But the father must be present at the bris. Isn’t that also the
halacha?!
”
Josh suddenly sat down heavily on the bed. “Yes,” he admitted. “That is the
halacha
. The father of the child must be there. But it can be done discreetly. In the hospital. With only the immediate family—you, me, Aaron, and the
mohel
who does the circumcision. And afterward, let them put the child up for adoption. It will be easier for Aaron that way.”
“No,” she said with quiet decision. “No, Josh, it won’t. I tried it that way. It isn’t easier. It might be easier for B’nai Brak or Orchard Park, you mean. For the yeshiva. For the Kleinmans and their daughter. But it won’t be easier for Aaron, or for me or you or the girls in the long run. There’s been enough lying, enough hiding. Not me. Not me anymore. I have nothing to be ashamed of. I won’t be part of it! If people are truly G-d-fearing, if they love the
halacha
, they will come, they will accept this child, the blameless, legitimate child of two pious, married people… They will accept me and you and Aaron, Malka and Sara…”
“You are dreaming.” He shook his head in quiet defeat. “And what makes you think Aaron will come? Have you thought of that? What if he continues to insist the child is not his?”
“Then you must convince him, Josh.”
“And what am I to him, that I will be able to convince him?” he said with sudden bitterness. “You have seen to that.”
She winced, the tears stinging her eyes. “No. G-d has seen to that.”
For a long time, no one spoke.
“I will talk to Aaron,” he said. And in the darkness, his expression was inscrutable.
Chapter thirty-five
“A public ceremony? A public execution,” was Aaron’s immediate reaction.
“It is your son. You must!” Tamar demanded.
“No! He is not my son!” he said, walking out and slamming the door.
“I warned you, Tamar,” Josh said quietly.
She ignored him. Aaron would change his mind, she thought doggedly.
She hired the catering hall. She began making phone calls, inviting people. Everyone who had come to the wedding. All the people who had invited them over, all the neighbors, all the relatives. Everyone took her calls but were brief to the point of rudeness. The people she stopped in the street were polite but suddenly very late to be somewhere. And then, some simply crossed the street when they saw her coming.
I don’t see you, she told herself. I don’t see you crossing the street.
She put up notices in the halls of the Beit Medrash in
Lonovitch, inviting all the boys, all the rebbes, all the married teachers and their wives and children. She even went to the doctors and nurses in the hospital, to merchants with whom she had struck up a casual acquaintance, telling them the time and date. She tried calling Gitta Chana, but Rebbetzin Kleinman politely but firmly told her Gitta Chana wasn’t going to any bris, and neither were they. It turned out to be the last time she ever spoke to Rebbetzin Kleinman.
She did not really blame her.
And how many people should we prepare for? the caterers wanted to know.
She thought about it, trying to estimate how many boys there were in the yeshiva of Lonovitch. How many sons each of the rebbes had. Trying to estimate how many people who had been invited would actually come. But it was impossible. It could be a thousand, it could be half that. And if Josh was right, it could be barely the quorum of ten men needed to say the prayers.
“Four hundred,” she said, writing out a check. Her hand shook. She was in the middle of a dream, coasting on sheer will. There was no way to estimate, no way to predict.
And then, a day before the bris, the
mohel
, the most respected
mohel
in B’nai Brak, a dark-bearded Hasid of excellent reputation both for his surgical skill and his piety, called to ask them to find someone else to perform the bris.
“You can’t do this to me,” she said.
“You didn’t tell me the details,” he defended himself. “I do every bris in Lonovitch. Rabbi Kleinman is like my brother. He wants the bris done privately, at the hospital. He won’t agree to come to the hall. I’m sorry. Try to understand my position…”
She had a hall for four hundred people. And no
mohel
.
She called Jenny. “I’m lost.”
“No, you’re not. We have a
mohel
who does all the babies
in our
yishuv
. I’m sure he’ll do it. I’ll take care of everything.”
G-d bless Jenny, she thought.
On the day of the bris, she woke up at dawn.
It was a lovely day, she saw. Cloudless, with a bright, clean feeling to it. She dressed quietly, not wanting to wake Josh, who was still deep in enviously heavy slumber. Men, she thought. Nothing stops men from sleeping. She shook her head with a little smile of wonderment. She said her prayers, the words falling thick and sweet from her lips, heavy with meaning. She felt happy, almost blissful. The girls got up, and the house was suddenly alive with movement and a natural kind of cheer. Almost normal again, she thought.
Then the caterer called. He wanted a final count.
“Four hundred,” she told him, her throat constricting a little with sudden panic as she began to understand the enormity of the risk she was taking. Full, the hall would be a celebration of life. Empty, it would provide the perfect backdrop for their ultimate humiliation.