Sotah Read online

  “They were pious people, ancestors to be proud of. You know that not everyone who earned the title of rabbi in Europe had a congregation or a yeshiva! Look at the great tzadik Chafetz Chaim. He ran a grocery store! So Rabbi Eliezer was a shoemaker, but everyone in town knew that he studied day and night. His scholarship was respected,” Chaya Leah insisted.

  “I’ve heard these stories. I believed them. But there is something you don’t know. There was a woman. A great-great-great-aunt …” The eyes of the other two sisters widened. “I don’t know when she lived exactly, fifty or seventy-five years ago. It was in Poland. Her name was Sruyele. And she ran away from her fiancé.”

  Chaya Leah looked blank. “Where did she go?”

  Dvorah looked at Dina as if to say, I told you so. Too young! “She ran away with another man!”

  “Was it on Mother’s side or Father’s?”

  Dvorah exploded, “What difference does it make! She was like a sotah! She ran off with another man! She ran away and left her fiancé, her parents, behind.”

  The sisters held their breath in hearing the horrible term. The sotah, a married woman suspected of adultery, was held up to public ridicule whether or not she was guilty. Her hair was uncovered, her dress ripped by the priest at the very gates of the temple. And then, if she continued to insist on her innocence, she was made to drink a potion of water and dust. If she was guilty, her stomach swelled and burst; she died in agony. If she was innocent, well, nothing happened to her. But still, the disgrace of the ordeal … !

  “But how could she be like a sotah if she wasn’t even married yet?” Chaya Leah asked thoughtfully.

  “It was after the tena’im, the formal engagement, had been signed.”

  “What happened to her? Who did she run away with?” Dina asked, sick with apprehension. She couldn’t stand stories of people going wrong. She couldn’t bear the idea of G-d’s anger and punishment and the yawning pit of sin that lay in wait around every corner. Yet she was overwhelmed with a horrible fascination—almost ecstatic with it—so that it was strangely akin to joy.

  “He was a goy, or married? Something horrible? …” Chaya Leah asked hopefully, wanting the story to reach its full potential.

  “No, thank Hashem. As if it weren’t bad enough! Simply a poor local boy from the yeshiva. The boy she’d wanted to marry ever since she was a little girl. But her parents didn’t think he was right for her. He didn’t seem bright enough, ambitious enough.”

  “Did she marry him, the one she loved?”

  “She did, in a town where no one knew her. She even had a child. But then they all found out about the tena’im with the other and made them get a divorce.”

  “How can you make people get a divorce? Who made them? Was it the Morals Patrol?” Chaya Leah continued, referring to the haredi community’s well-known vigilante group whose effective, if brutal, tactics discouraged haredim—married and unmarried, male and female, young and old—from straying down sinful paths, which included everything from adultery and child molestation to attending movies or reading secular newspapers. It was the most extreme of several such quasi police forces operating in the haredi world, and by far the most feared. However, like most police forces, average, law-abiding citizens like the Reich girls knew about them only by reputation.

  “I don’t think they had such a thing back then. It was the rabbis, her father, his father. She was practically married to another. She had no right to marry until the tena’im were annulled. She would have been better off marrying and then getting a divorce. Tena’im are almost impossible to get out of.”

  “Well, at least she wasn’t married. If she’d been married and run off …” The three sisters looked at each other with horror. Adultery. It was a sin too unbearable to contemplate. A sin for which there was only one appropriate punishment: death. No one questioned that.

  “What happened to her?”

  “They made her marry the first man, the one she was engaged to. She died young.” Dvorah returned her sisters’ incredulous stares with defiance. “I heard Ima and Aunt Simcha talking about it in whispers on Yom Kippur. It’s all true.”

  “She had a child,” Dina whispered. “An innocent child left with no mother.” She was like her father. Every whiff of human misery, present or past, filled her lungs with despair. “A little boy?”

  “A boy,” Dvorah confirmed. “So now you understand about us!”

  The younger sisters, lost in thought, took a moment to refocus. They understood nothing. Dvorah saw it.

  “This is known about our family,” she said in exasperation, defeated in her attempt at subtlety. She didn’t bother to elaborate. The girls knew what that phrase meant. It was one of those stories that had been handed down ear to ear, generation to generation, and had reached Israel. Now it was common knowledge among their very tight-knit compatriots.

  “I can’t think! Let me think!” Chaya Leah pleaded. “This thing that happened—fifty, seventy-five years ago, you say?—this Surele, Sruyele—what?—is held against us?”

  Dvorah nodded. “It’s part of it. It’s a taint, a black mark that spreads over our genes. No one ever forgets or forgives anything. Just as we wouldn’t if someone wanted to introduce us to a boy whose mother or grandmother had gone off and done …” She stopped, seeing Dina’s soft, pained face, and feeling a twinge of pity. “But that’s only one reason that it’s hard for us to find husbands … maybe not even the most important one. The worst part is the money. There is no money. No money at all for dowries. For any of us.”

  There was a terrible moment of pained recognition. They all knew this, had known it, but had never said it out loud before.

  “But money is not important. Everyone knows that! G-d doesn’t measure your worth by how much money you have!” cried Chaya Leah.

  “But the family of a future husband does,” Dvorah answered with quiet bitterness. “They want brides whose fathers own businesses. Brides who have apartments already bought and paid for; apartments with three bedrooms and a refrigerator, a stove, and a washing machine. They want cars. Why do you think I’m still not married when practically every other girl in my class at Beit Yaakov already has a child or two?” Her words hung in the air like a poisonous mushroom cloud after the dropping of an atom bomb. There was devastation in the room and complete, stunned silence. “So don’t you dare say anything about fat Yaakov Klein!” She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand and pulled the covers over her head.

  Dina put out the lights. She could hear Chaya Leah tossing defiantly in her bed, Dvorah’s soft sobbing ebb and flow and disappear into the soft breathing of sleep. But she herself could not sleep. She tried to imagine the face of her sister and Yaakov Klein’s side by side on a pillow; then she tried to envision a small child, bereft, the child of Sruyele. She tried to feel appropriately shocked and sad, yet all she could think of was Sruyele running away, her small feet tapping the icy cobblestones in the Polish village, while in the distance the pale, long face of her beloved hovered like a ghostly apparition, lighting her way down the dark, cold street. Over and over again she felt the leap from the cold pavement into the warm arms. Sruyele’s leap. It made her shiver and feel short of breath, like someone who has been crying for a long time. She took short, deep breaths which she was afraid to release. Her temples throbbed, her mind full of contradictions and a fearsome kind of pleasure. Hours into the night, she could still hear the frightened beating of the strange heart, unseen and unknown, hiding deep within her.

  Chapter two

  Faigie Reich opened the door to her daughters’ room carefully. This was odd for her. She was a big, almost overpowering-looking woman, given to large, decisive gestures: pot lids were lifted and lowered with a clang; rugs were beaten with whomping vengeance; and erring young bottoms received righteous whacks that boded no room for shilly-shallying or idle dreams of reprieve.

  Yet without her being aware of it, a new softness born of doubt had crept into Mrs Reich’s disciplined, st
aunch, and unflinching vision of life ever since Dvorah’s wedding six months before. Perhaps it was the devastating vision of every mother of the bride: the tiny creature suddenly heart-breakingly beautiful and pure under the wedding canopy encircling a strange man who would now be her whole life. You lost a daughter, whatever they said about gaining sons. Dvorah’s husband would be her life now. And you hoped—you so hoped and prayed!—that she would be happy with that life.

  So many things could go wrong.

  That was why she and other haredi mothers raised their daughters with such discipline—harshly, many would say. There was school eight to ten hours a day, then homework, and household chores that lasted several more hours. They had to be steel once they reached that canopy, tempered steel beams that could uphold the whole Jewish people. Let’s face it. The men did all the learning, all the praying. They could tell you if a chicken’s lungs were kosher or the exact moment to light candles on Friday night or how to search for crumbs before Passover. But who made it all happen? Who turned an ordinary day into a holy day, where the house shone from cleanliness and the boys and men wore spotless white shirts and prayer shawls? Where the Sabbath and holiday table groaned from the heavy platters of steaming meats and succulent chickens and kugels and a hundred delicacies fit for a king? And who made it possible to buy the food and clothes, when the husband and father spent all day learning, as was his rightful role? As much respect as Rebbetzin Reich felt for her husband, and all scholars like him, she admitted to herself that the men were all theory. Their learning, their piety, could only exist because of the protective cocoon their women wove around them, allowing them some distance from the harsh realities of buying, earning, saving, cooking, cleaning, and giving birth. As high as the men floated near the heavens, so must the women plant their feet firmly on the earth. And in her heart of hearts she faced the truth that as weak as the men were, so must the women be strong.

  In this matter she had taken her cue directly from G-d. After all, how many concessions did the Torah make to man’s weak nature? In war, for example, if an Israelite man captured a beautiful woman, it was expected that he wouldn’t be able to resist her. Even the best men (those who left the desert and came into the land of Israel with Joshua were considered extremely pious, tzadikim, men who had passed the terrible trials of wanderings, the loss of faith that had their parents building golden calves: a perfect generation) weren’t expected to have an ounce of willpower, hence all the laws concerning the captive woman. Oh, you could take her home, the Torah conceded (you probably will, won’t you, even though she’s a pagan and will bring her idols with her and probably drag you down). But once there, she had to take off her finery and put on mourning; she had to cut her long nails and be allowed to weep for her dead family a month. Only then could the man “go in unto her” and take her for a wife. The Torah in its wisdom was so wonderful, so wise, Rebbetzin Reich thought. For after she took off the finery, cut off the long, painted nails, and cried for a month, let’s face it, how good was she going to look? And thus the Torah goes on to say that if the man changes his mind, he can’t keep her but must send her off free, because “you have humbled her.” That was man’s nature.

  Faigie Reich had raised her daughters as she had been raised: to accept this world as it was and to enter it on its own terms. And she had been rewarded. Dvorah had married well. Indeed, thrillingly well. Thank G-d! She had prayed so hard and so long ever since the girl was seventeen that G-d find a good chassen for her. It had taken a long time, but G-d had his ways. Yaakov Klein! Such a fine boy from such a wonderful family! Now, only two more girls to go.

  She padded softly into the room, which seemed almost empty now. How fast they grew up and left. She sat a moment on Dvorah’s empty bed and watched her two daughters.

  Chaya Leah was sleeping deeply. She couldn’t help smiling in triumph at the child’s bigness. The only one who took after her. A pleasure to have such a daughter and a joy to have such a wife. Big strong hands, wide hips, firm, strong thighs and calves. Some man would be blessed. She would make his life a paradise. His home would be scrubbed, filled with healthy children. There would always be an income. She expected to bring Chaya Leah into the business full-time in a year or two. The little store selling balls of yarn and crocheting thread that had put food on the table and paid the mortgage and helped marry off one daughter would just have to provide enough for two. She could already imagine the girl behind the counter, carrying in the big boxes of yarn from the delivery trucks, arranging the storeroom into neat piles, balancing the books.

  Then her gaze shifted to Dina and her smile turned sad. She could never envision Dina in the knitting goods store. She was such a flower, she would fade in the shadows of the boxes, the sunless cold storerooms. Her hands were so small, childishly tender. She was a lovely piece of china, the kind you received as a wedding gift and never used except once, for once-in-a-lifetime events: engagement dinners, fiftieth wedding anniversaries.

  She was bright. She could always finish the seminary and teach. Rebbetzin Reich twisted her simple gold wedding band around her large, gnarled finger as an uncomfortable, almost sacrilegious thought came to her, a thought she would never even be able to share with anyone, least of all her husband: Dina must marry well. Someone who could support her. Someone who could take care of her. She was not cut out to be a kollel wife, supporting her husband through years of study. There was sadness as Rebbetzin Reich admitted this to herself, frustration, and a sense of failure, too. After all, being married to a boy who would rise in the yeshiva rung by rung was what every haredi mother hoped for her daughter. As the Talmud teaches: Marry your daughter to a scholar. It meant fulfilling the highest vision of womanhood. But who knew better than the rebbetzin that it also meant endless years of sacrifice. It meant there would never be any money. It meant scrimping on food, on clothes. It meant walking instead of taking a bus; buying tomatoes going soft and watermelons ready to rot. It meant one chicken for the Sabbath and perhaps another during the week. And it meant no help, ever, with the children, the housework. Chaya Leah was built for that. But Dina, beautiful little Dina. Faigie Reich’s heart ached.

  Already Chaim Garfinkel had been to see her. He had been to Dvorah’s wedding, of course. The shadchen was always invited to the wedding and at the end was given his fee. It was considered very bad luck for the young couple to underpay or (G-d forbid!) withhold payment from a shadchen. As Reb Garfinkel had taken the money-filled envelope, he had stroked his long, thin beard and returned Rabbi Reich’s enthusiastic handshake. “I have someone in mind for Dina,” he’d whispered. “A fine boy. A scholar.”

  Rebbetzin Reich had found herself lying awake nights hearing those words. She’d resisted her husband’s suggestions that they begin the long, involved process of finding Dina a husband, and Rabbi Reich had put off talking about the subject for a month or two after Dvorah’s wedding, indulging what he believed was his wife’s reluctance to contemplate the loss of yet another daughter’s willing hands around the house so soon. Yet as time went by, the pressure was mounting. The shadchen was calling more often, hinting that there were opportunities that shouldn’t be casually lost; hinting that “we wouldn’t want Dina to wait as long as her sister did, would we? It would be a bad precedent. Bad for the family name. It would only make things more difficult for Dina. For Chaya Leah.”

  The rebbetzin sighed. She was going to have to deal with it. Time was racing. Dina was almost seventeen. Her friends were getting engaged. She leaned over Dina and hesitated. It actually hurt her to shake Dina awake. She—mother of eight, who mercilessly routed five reluctant boys out of bed with cuffs and harsh words, who pitilessly berated her daughters for everything from not saying the morning prayers on time to wearing stockings without seams—actually hesitated to touch Dina, to shake her from her sweet sleep. But it was Dina’s turn to do the morning shopping, to bring back the three loaves of bread, four milk, and two margarine needed for breakfast. She thought of the heavy
plastic baskets that would cut into the tender flesh of those childish palms and hesitated, tempted to ask Chaya Leah instead. But she stopped herself. In her life Dina would carry many heavy baskets. To spare her now would mean to leave the flesh tender when she as her mother should be helping to provide those calluses that would eventually protect her from more pain.

  It was getting late. If she didn’t hurry, the boys would miss their bus to the yeshiva or go without breakfast. She thought of her five little sons with something like awe. After three girls, after almost giving up hope, and then five circumcision ceremonies!

  Ezra, the oldest, was going to be Bar Mitzvah in two months and had already memorized an hour-long Talmudical discussion as well as the entire Torah reading. He was a quiet boy, refined, an excellent student. Asher, eleven, was the opposite. Loud, rambunctious, with no zitzfleisch to sit in one place and memorize. Still, she shook her head indulgently, he had a good head, quick and sharp. She had faith that the yeshiva would whip him into shape eventually.

  Though infinitely more difficult, this same faith held for eight-year-old Shimon Levi, his sisters’ scourge, his teacher’s bane. She couldn’t help smiling. What a healthy rascal he was, G-d bless him! Always full of high jinks, always full of scrapes and cuts and bruises … But underneath the bravado, she knew, there was this sweet little boy who secretly allowed his mother to kiss him good night, hugging her around the neck.

  Six-year-old Benyamin was next. She had a soft little spot for Benyamin, the only one of her children who had been born with a physical disability, a small heart murmur that had been corrected by an operation at age two. He was a pale, delicate child whom the other children instinctively protected. He had a soft heart like his father and couldn’t stand to see any of his brothers punished. He had gotten into the habit of taking responsibility for all their wrongdoings, knowing that the blows that would fall on him would be easy ones.