The Sacrifice of Tamar Read online

  Praise for the Novels of Naomi Ragen

  Sotah

  “The pleasures of Ragen’s book arise . . . from thought-provoking comparisons of Israeli Orthodox and American Jewish life.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Richness of faith and family lovingly evoked, with the other side—religious and cultural intolerance—equally given its due.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Sotah is a passionately honest novel. Gripping from start to finish.”

  —Maisie Mosco, author of Almonds and Raisins

  Jephte’s Daughter

  “An emotionally potent book.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Eloquent writing and vivid characters.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Ragen weaves the religious issues throughout the plot so that they become part of the suspense, giving this skillfully rendered page-turner . . . real substance.”

  —Jewish Week

  “First rate.”

  —Susan Isaacs, author of Long Time No See and Past Perfect

  “Terrific!”

  —Jacqueline Briskin, author of The Naked Heart

  The Ghost of Hannah Mendes

  “If you love history and romance, this is a book for you. Using the Spanish Expulsion of the Jews in 1492 as her prism, Naomi Ragen has envisioned a modern variation on Renaissance themes—an ingenious idea that works!”

  —Jacqueline Park, author of The Secret Book of Grazia dei Rossi

  “Naomi Ragen delivers a mesmerizing tale about the journey of a discontented and disconnected family as they are lead by ghosts—both real and imagined—to discover their past and their present. Ragen skillfully blends together contemporary voices with voices from the little-known era of the Spanish Inquisition to weave a stunning tapestry that brings fresh meaning not only to the lives of her characters but also to our own.”

  —Gay Courter, author of The Midwife and Code Ezra

  “Ragen examines questions of faith, responsibility, and the urgent desire to ensure the continuation of a family line. . . . Ragen’s forte is her ability to forge a connection between past and present, while the book adroitly addresses issues of faith and family.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “A sixteenth-century ghost helps her present-day descendant preserve the past, in a story by American-Israeli Ragen (The Sacrifice of Tamar, 1994, etc.) that’s as much a heartfelt plea for continuity as a family saga. A glossy celebration of culture and family.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “Ragen’s engrossing novel depicts one family’s search for their Sephardic Jewish roots. . . . As Ragen presents her fictionalized version of Mendes’s extraordinary life, she captures the terror of the Spanish Inquisition. By weaving together the past and the present, the true and the fanciful, she also shows how much a family’s history affects its future.”

  —Booklist

  “Ragen beautifully articulates what Jews must do to survive in every generation. Highly recommended, especially for Jewish readers.”

  —Library Journal

  “[An] absorbing story . . . Ragen’s fourth novel is very worthwile.”

  —The Jerusalem Post

  “As with Ragen’s other novels, the bestselling Sotah, Jephte’s Daughter, and The Sacrifice of Tamar, this book engages the reader with its combination of history, passion, and spirituality. The Ghost of Hannah Mendes is not to be missed.”

  —Hadassah Magazine

  “If you liked Sotah, Jephte’s Daughter, and The Sacrifice of Tamar, you’ll enjoy this one, too.”

  —Cleveland Jewish News

  “The blending of past and present in the story’s denouement creates a beautiful ending to a story that educates as well as entertains. The Ghost of Hannah Mendes has a little bit of everything: history, romance, adventure, mystery.”

  —The Jewish Star

  “Jews and non-Jews alike can delight in these stories of unusual pioneers who preserve a unique cultural heritage.”

  —San Francisco Bay Guardian

  The Covenant

  “Gripping, emotionally charged.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “The Covenant has so much depth, with characters so rich . . . and a story so frightening it will leave your spine tingling for days, if not weeks.”

  —Bookreporter.com

  “A thrilling page-turner from start to finish, The Covenant is not only a mesmerizing tale with finely drawn characters, it is a story of truth and integrity, a multigenerational novel of love, friendship, and duty. This is a MUST-READ book.”

  —Faye Kellerman, author of Blindman’s Bluff

  “Naomi Ragen’s books are always compulsively readable, and The Covenant is no exception. An emotionally charged and engrossing book, The Covenant is a tribute to the power of friendship and the strength of love in the face of evil.”

  —India Edghill, author of Wisdom’s Daughter:

  A Novel of Solomon and Sheba and Delilah

  “The Covenant is as suspenseful as a Mary Higgins Clark novel as you worry about the fate of characters hour by hour, minute by minute. It brings the headlines heartbreakingly home and redefines the unlimited boundaries of lifelong friendship.”

  —Gay Courter, author of The Midwife and Code Ezra

  “Ragen captures the truth about Israel and the Intifada in a highly readable account with a gripping story line. This work of fiction contains insights that are closer to the truth than many supposedly factual media reports on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

  —Tom Gross, former Jerusalem correspondent for the London Sunday Telegraph and the New York Daily News

  The Saturday Wife

  “The pleasure of this novel is in its mercilessness, with Ragen raising the stakes until the very end.”

  —Publishers Weekly

  “Ragen tells this story with insight and humor, vividly illustrating the consequences of lashon hara (gossip). This is chick lit with a Jewish message.”

  —Booklist

  “Ragen does an apt job illustrating the numerous demands upon a rabbi and his wife.”

  —Kirkus Reviews

  “[A] must-read.”

  —Baltimore Jewish Times

  “Sharper than a Torah pointer, a high comedy, social satire with a bleeding heart.”

  —Anne Roiphe, author of Water from the Well

  “With The Saturday Wife, Naomi Ragen proves herself an adept satirist as well as a brilliant storyteller. . . . The heiress to such eternally discontented heroines as Emma Bovary and Undine Spragg, Delilah Goldgrab Levi’s story is funny, poignant, and unforgettable.”

  —India Edghill, author of Wisdom’s Daughter:

  A Novel of Solomon and Sheba and Delilah

  THE SACRIFICE

  OF TAMAR

  Also by Naomi Ragen

  The Tenth Song

  The Saturday Wife

  The Covenant

  Chains Around the Grass

  The Ghost of Hannah Mendes

  Jephte’s Daughter

  Sotah

  THE SACRIFICE

  OF TAMAR

  Naomi Ragen

  St. Martin’s Griffin New York

  Table of Contents

  Title

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Foreword

  Acknowledgements

  Part One

  Chapter one

  Chapter two

  Chapter three

  Chapter four

  Chapter five

  Chapter six

  Chapter seven

  Chapter eight

  Chapter nine

  Chapter ten

  Chapter eleven

  Chapter twelve

  Chapter thirteen

  Chapter fourteen

  Chapter fifteen

  Chapter sixteen

  Chapter seventeen

  Chapter eighteen

  Chapter nineteen

  Chapter twenty

  Chapter twenty-one

  Chapter twenty-two

  Part Two

  Chapter twenty-three

  Chapter twenty-four

  Chapter twenty-five

  Chapter twenty-six

  Chapter twenty-seven

  Chapter twenty-eight

  Chapter twenty-nine

  Chapter thirty

  Chapter thirty-one

  Chapter thirty-two

  Chapter thirty-three

  Chapter thirty-four

  Chapter thirty-five

  Chapter thirty-six

  Chapter thirty-seven

  This is a work of fiction. All of the characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  THE SACRIFICE OF TAMAR. Copyright © 1995 by Naomi Ragen.

  All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. For information, address St. Martin’s Press, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, N.Y. 10010.

  www.stmartins.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ragen, Naomi.

  The sacrifice of Tamar / Naomi Ragen.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-312-57022-4

  1. Jewish women—Fiction. 2. Rape victims—Fiction. 3. Jews—New York (State)—New York—Fiction. 4. Blacks—Relations with Jews—Fiction. 5. Families—Israel—Fiction. 6. Brooklyn (New York, N.Y.)—Fiction. 7. Israel—Fiction. 8. Domestic fiction. 9. Jewish fiction. I. Title.

  PS3568.A411
8S23 2010

  813'.54—dc22

  2010014924

  First published in Great Britain by The Toby Press LLC

  First St. Martin’s Griffin Edition: August 2010

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  This book is dedicated to

  Manny and Shirley Ragen,

  And to Shanie,

  Whose courage inspired me

  And whose brave retelling

  Brought me closer

  Than I ever dreamed possible

  To understanding.

  Foreword

  The Sacrifice of Tamar is the third—and last—book of what I have begun to call my “haredi trilogy,” which includes Jepthe’s Daughter and Sotah. I didn’t know when I wrote Jephte’s Daughter more than a decade ago, that I would be returning again and again to mine the rich lode of material provided by the lives of religious Jewish women. Yet, with the completion of each book, I felt questions arise that I needed another book to answer.

  Jephte’s Daughter was the story of the atypical: A Chassidic princess married to a great scholar, who turns out to be both less and more than he appears. Sotah tried to focus on the ordinary lives of haredi Jews living in Jerusalem, and to give some of the real texture of everyday life. With The Sacrifice of Tamar, I wanted a story based in the haunts of my own childhood, the neighborhoods of New York I knew so well, comparing the lives of haredi women in the Diaspora to those in Israel. The Sacrifice of Tamar was also my most critical book, the one in which I gave myself the most freedom to express my opinions about the shortcomings of the social strictures that often impeded—even strangled—the true progress of religious life based on Jewish law. Perhaps too, it answers with the greatest force those of my critics in the religious world who have suggested that social problems in the religious Jewish world are better dealt with in silence under the cover of darkness. Those people are convinced that the perpetuation of social evils is preferable to the embarrassment that comes with their exposure.

  I remain convinced that the opposite is true.

  Naomi Ragen

  Jerusalem, Israel 2001

  Acknowledgements

  I would like to express my appreciation to the following people: To Betty Prashker and Erica Marcus, my gifted editors, for the insightful reading and invaluable guidance. To my agent, Jean Naggar, for encouraging me to pursue this project and for continuing to be a writer’s fairy godmother. To the many former Bais Yaakov and other yeshiva girls who grew up in Brooklyn in the fifties, for agreeing to be interviewed and for providing such valuable insights. And last, but not least, to my husband, Alex, for his continued generosity and dependable wisdom.

  Consider the work of God:

  for who can make straight, which

  He has made crooked? In thy

  days of good fortune be joyful, and

  in thy days of adversity consider;

  God has made the one as well as the other,

  and man cannot know what lies

  in store for him.

  ECCLESIASTES 7:13–14

  Part One

  Chapter one

  Orchard Park, Brooklyn, 1970

  A few hours before it happened, Tamar Finegold stood smiling at herself in her bedroom mirror. With the shades drawn and her husband gone, she stomped around the room doing the “mashed potato,” like a sixties teenager or an Indian, right there, a dance of happiness and excitement.

  She was humming an old Neil Sedaka song to herself as she brushed her pretty, curly blond hair toward her high cheekbones, giving herself what she believed to be a seductive look, at least as seductive as a very devout rabbi’s wife from Brooklyn imagined she could look. And as she studied herself, her lovely gray eyes began to sparkle and her cheeks grew warm.

  It was mikvah night, the night the halacha, religious law, permitted her to go to the ritual bath and bathe away the spiritual uncleanness of menstrual blood, sending her back into her husband’s arms after two maddening weeks of total physical estrangement. It was more than not sleeping with him, she often thought while suffering through the long days of separation. It was being forbidden to touch him, to feel the casual brush of his hand against hers as he handed her a cup or sat companionably beside her on the couch, reading.

  And even though she knew Josh was simply following strict rabbinical decrees meant to prevent casual contact from turning into uncontrollable passion, still, irrationally, his distance made her feel unloved. But there was nothing to be done. She might as well have tried to convince him to commit murder as seduce him to hold her hand.

  They had never touched at all before their wedding night. Under the wedding canopy he’d looked so severe in his dark black suit and hat, his austerely trimmed beard and mustache reminding her of old pictures of Prussian generals. It had terrified her a little. But soon enough she had experienced the startling revelation that men, deprived of their outer trappings, in the secret sexual cosmos of their relationship to their women, were as vulnerable as the frailest baby. In that cosmos, the wrong word, the smallest hesitancy on her part, could utterly crush him. And once she had learned this, she understood the mysterious smiles of women secreted behind the synagogue partition as they watched the men bluster and propose and direct the service to G-d like kings.

  This was not to say that nothing of the Prussian general remained in Josh. As several minor but frightening incidents in their short marriage had taught her, when it came to adherence to halacha, he could be as harsh and uncompromising as any sergeant lambasting a raw recruit. Quite aside from her own sincere religious convictions, there was nothing Tamar Finegold had come to dread more than being found out in some infraction of religious duty by her husband.

  This quality in him didn’t overly disturb her. Women were not taught the halacha the way men were, and it was the men’s responsibility to steer them straight, to ensure no hint of sin blemished the family’s good name. Had not her father and grandfather been the same?

  But tonight, sanctioned by halacha, she would unwrap herself to him once again like a bride. Fresh, desirable, and immaculately clean, she would reach out to him, and he would lay aside his Talmud and devote himself entirely to pleasing her.

  She was twenty-one years old and very eager for the night to begin. She loved him.

  She loved his hands, eager and considerate; his temperate voice; his unending compassion for friends and neighbors. She loved his intelligence and uncompromising righteousness that had earned them both success and status in the yeshiva world. She loved him and had never ceased to be amazed at her incredible luck in meriting such a husband. After all, he could have done so much better.

  A little thrill went through her, remembering the unbearably dainty scrounging for husbands that had gone on among her classmates at the Ohel Sara Seminary for Young Women. A scholar of Josh’s caliber, with the potential to one day head his own Talmudical academy, was the Lincoln Continental of matches, a genuine commodity. He was the kind of son-in-law for whom Orthodox parents were eager to burden themselves with serious debt so that his learning might continue unimpeded by material cares.

  Josh could have had any one of her classmates—and a free apartment in a two- or three-family house in Orchard Park, a new Pontiac, and four years of uninterrupted, fully financed yeshiva studies.

  Instead, he’d chosen her. “I don’t want the spoiled daughter of the rich. I want a woman who is willing to sacrifice to reach the highest levels of holiness. A woman who will share my life and not complain of the hardships,” he’d told her frankly. “A woman who’ll let me learn in peace.”

  Yes, any one of her classmates would have been thrilled to accept such a proposal, to share the life of such a man! A life that ensured the most elevated status imaginable in the ultra-Orthodox world of Orchard Park and a golden reward in the World-to-Come. Any one of them, she breathed deeply, proudly, with a secret little smile.

  Well, almost any one of them.

  She rubbed the bridge between her eyes reflectively, her pleasure tarnished, as it always was when she thought of Hadassah. But then, no one had been good enough for Hadassah. She thought of her friend/enemy with love/hate and, finally, pity. So many years later, her story was still sending shock waves through the community. Her father—the Kovnitzer rebbe, heir to the century-old Hasidic dynasty founded in Kovnitz, Czechoslovakia—had nearly died of a heart attack, and her mother—always such a youthful, pretty rebbetzin—had grown haggard and old overnight.