The Beautiful Possible (4 page)

Soon after they met at the Heschel lecture, Sol told Rosalie about his deaf ear and she said, “Let me guess which one.” She took in his chocolate eyes and artfully matched sideburns. His plump lips and elegant nose. A faint cleft in his chin. Her Sol was the Casanova of the study hall, the matinee idol of the
beit midrash
. When he stood before her she focused on his broad shoulders and when he turned she admired the elegance of his slender back. He was a catch, her Sol.

“You are perfect,” she said to him. “Your deaf ear is your secret to the world.”

“It’s the left one,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone.”

“My best secret,” said Rosalie.

When they announced their engagement, Sol and Rosalie invited their widowed mothers to meet them at Ratner’s Restaurant. The four of them broke an engagement plate in honor of the wedding that was scheduled to coincide with Sol’s graduation from rabbinical school. Ida Wachs and Lotte Kerem wrapped their arms around the couple and wept.

Rosalie and Sol meet in Riverside Park, just hours after the gossip about the refugee and his guru-escort dissipated into vague cackles. Rosalie pushes the bag of books into Sol’s arms, picks up a handful of snow, takes a lick, and offers it to him. Sol shakes his head and peers into the bag.

“I feel as if I’m carrying the foundation of our first home,” he says.

“Careful with that metaphor, rabbi,” says Rosalie. “
Books are no more than seeds
, remember? Your holy books will only take you so far.”

Sol turns and kisses her cheek. “You will take me the rest of the way.”

“Wherever you want to go, sweetheart.”

“I can’t wait for everything to start,” he says. “Time to shake up a few lives.”

“That’s ambitious, Sol. People don’t like to change.”

“But that’s the whole point! Inspire, teach, guide. And along the way, our lives will become so textured—like living doubly! The days will seem ordinary, but the sanctity will shine through.”

“And what if life proves you wrong? One day you’ll wake up and realize that when Moses received the tablets on Sinai a great myth was born.”

“Every word of that myth is true.”

“You have to be kidding.”

“It’s not literal truth; I’m not an idiot. But the suspension of disbelief permits me to park my faith in the Torah. It’s a choice I make, again and again.”

Rosalie rolls her eyes. At times Sol seems to be speaking a lofty, foreign language. She knows its vocabulary and idioms, but she prefers to talk about religion with the language she learned from her parents: recipes and rituals flavored with a good Hasidic story. Sol is nothing like her.
Find a man who complements you
, her mother once said,
and you will honor your differences
. When they kiss Rosalie loves to rest her fingers on the tips of Sol’s ears and lightly circle the left ear that holds the world in silence. At times Sol reads passages aloud from Maimonides’s
Guide for the Perplexed
and she closes her eyes and follows the timbre of his voice, listening to him articulate every syllable as if he is making love to the words.

Sol tells Rosalie about the men who visited that day: the pompous man who said that all of humanity was sewn from a single piece of spiritual cloth and the Jewish refugee who wore a green nightgown made of thin cotton.

“Oddballs,” says Sol.

“Or opportunities, Rabbi Kerem. You have to start behaving like a holy man. Everything in your path has something to teach you.”

Sol reaches down and scoops a palmful of snow. He shapes it into a tight ball and holds it in his ungloved hand. As the chill seeps in, he thinks about how Walter smiled at him. There were other students in that room; what was Walter trying to say? Rosalie would have an answer, of course; something vaguely mystical and very silly. He was Elijah the prophet. He was the Messiah. He was the hearing that Sol lost in one ear. And of course Rosalie would think that; his fiancée was the daughter of a Hasid.

“I wish your father had liked me,” says Sol.

Rosalie laughs. “Oh, sweetness. My father knew my heart. You have nothing to worry about.”

She pulls the snowball out of his hand, carries his fingers to her lips, and blows warm air on them.

“Soon,” she says.

“Eight more months.”

“No time at all.”

Barely enough, yet just enough, thinks Sol. Time enough for the last shaping of the clay before he drives out to a pulpit and puts his hand on a lectern and imparts meaning to a sanctuary full of congregants. Time enough to complete the final revisions of his boyhood self, to grow into a proper groom for his bride. Enough time, barely enough. It would take him a lifetime to be ready.

“Did you choose yet?” asks Sol.

“I’m still deciding.”

“A bride needs a dress.”

“I’m holding out for a flapper.”

“I can’t make you do anything,” says Sol.

“Then we understand each other perfectly.”

Sol’s hand wraps around Rosalie’s and she laces her fingers between his.
“She’elah
and
teshuvah
,” says Sol. “Question and answer. Want to play?”

“I’m always up for a round of Ask the rabbi,” she says.

Rosalie remembers how one of her father’s students would show up at the apartment, sit beside her father, and lean close. The student would whisper a
she’elah
—a personal question about faith or practice. After a few moments, her father would respond with a
teshuvah
—a ruling, an explanation, or a sideways answer that left the student hungry to ask something more.

“Remember: the answer lies between the lines,” says Sol.

“Of course. My father taught me. So, rabbi, what’s your she’elah?”

“How does a man know if he is intended to be a rabbi?”

“Teshuvah,” says Rosalie. “If the man yearns to live in the place where the words of the texts brush up against real life, maybe it’s meant to be.”

“Good one!” says Sol.

“And how would you answer the question, rabbi?”

“Teshuvah,” says Sol.
“
Do not ask if the man knows his way around a text. Better to ask if he burns with passion for his intended wife. As it is written,
the only calling is the calling of love
.”

Rosalie laughs. “You sound like some kind of romantic. Did those strange visitors sprinkle you with fairy dust?”

Sol takes her face in his hands and kisses her nose.

“I’m in love,” he says. “With you.”

In the Radish’s intermediate Talmud class, the students are required to stumble through an entire Aramaic passage aloud, correct each mistake, read through the text again, then offer a translation. Sol sits in the front row. He is the only student who does not refer to Rabbi Radnitsky as the vegetable he most resembles, especially when a passage in the text—usually concerning bodily emissions—makes him blush.

Walter sits in the last row, leans back in his chair, and stares out the window.

“Read, Westhaus!” yells the Radish. “Take a turn with your brethren.”

Walter slowly articulates the first three words, the easy ones that bear no message but announce the opening of a gate:

“Rabban Gamliel omer
. Rabbi Gamliel says.”

Walter looks up at the Radish. “That’s all I know.” He stands, closes his book, and exits the classroom.

Sol casts his eyes around the room, waiting for someone to follow Walter, but no one moves. The Radish continues with the class, and Sol stares at the page of Talmud, wondering where oddball Walter had vanished. He hears Rosalie’s voice whispering in his good ear,
Opportunities, Rabbi Kerem. You have to start behaving like a holy man.

After class, Sol finds Walter in the hallway. “Has anyone claimed you yet?”

“What are you talking about?”

“Everyone needs a study partner. A
chavrusa.
You’d be good for me.”

“I’m only visiting here.”

“I want to learn with you,” says Sol. “The others are ambitious and smart but you have the gall of someone who doesn’t care.” He thinks of what Rosalie said in the park. “Maybe you can teach me something.”

“Your school is a temporary shelter for me,” says Walter. “I am not one of you.”

“That’s exactly why I’m asking,” says Sol.

Rosalie spreads a blanket over a snow-laced boulder in Central Park. She has brought plates from her mother’s house and places a pastrami sandwich on each one.

“Leave it to you to propose a winter picnic,” says Sol.

“It’s not officially winter and a sandwich is not quite a picnic. Did you bring the wine?”

“It’s not the Sabbath,” says Sol. “I prefer to save my blessings.”

“You are the master of saving everything for another time. Picnics for spring, wine for the Sabbath, sex for marriage.” Rosalie sighs. “Does it ever stop?”

Sol wraps his arms around her. “Be patient with me.”

She rests her head on his shoulder and spies a man and woman kissing on a nearby bench. The man’s hand reaches inside the woman’s skirt.

“I just wish,” says Rosalie.

“Wish what?”

“Oh, don’t pretend to be naïve. The other students don’t follow these rules. It’s the Seminary, Sol. The Conservative movement, not some crazy Orthodox yeshiva where men and women are forbidden to touch before marriage—”

“I’m not like other men.”

“Clearly.”

“What’s that supposed to mean? Do you think this is easy for me? I touch myself at night and think of you.”

“Really?”

“I’m counting the days.”

“Look at those two. We could be enjoying ourselves right now. No leap of time, no waiting. We decide the course of our lives, free of prescriptives.”

“But—”

“The law doesn’t have to be a fence,” says Rosalie. “It wasn’t for my father.”

“I’m not like your father.”

Be free of him; be devoted to him.
Rosalie closes her eyes. Give yourself over to your rabbi, see where it goes, she thinks. Rosalie Wachs soon to be Rosalie Kerem. Kerem means vineyard. Rosalie Vineyard. Where grapes are saturated with light and grow into their fullness in time. Rosalie rests her hand in Sol’s palm.

“We have this,” he says. “What is suggested is more arousing than its fulfillment.”

“Sometimes I feel it’s all too challenging and lofty and—”

“And?”

Rosalie closes her eyes. The woman on the bench knows the man she kisses; she studies him through his touch. Necessary information. But Rosalie knows so little about Sol; he is filled with words that Rosalie cannot translate. And yet he is her bashert; she knows this
.
Intended, perfect, inevitable as rain.

She’elah: What can the body teach the mind?

Teshuvah
:
The body delivers its truth without words.

Sol and Walter sit side by side at a table in the beit midrash, a tower of books stacked before them. Walter reaches into his pocket, pulls out a bag of yellow spice and inhales.

“Want some?”

“Don’t get your powder on the books! If they get ruined, we’ll have to bury them.”

Walter laughs. “These books were written under the influence of all kinds of spices, Sol. Just imagine your beloved ancient rabbis picking at the roots of plants and sniffing with abandon. They craved all kinds of knowledge, just like you do.”

Sol opens tractate Berakhot and scans the pages. He begins to sway.

“Oh, look,” he says, his voice falling into the cadence of Talmudic singsong. “Rabbi Meir says that to love God with all of your soul means that you should love God with your good inclinations and your evil ones too. And Ben Azzai says,
with all of your soul
means you should give your soul to the commandments.”

“That’s ridiculous,” says Walter.

“But there’s more to the story,” says Sol. “Ben Azzai was engaged to Rabbi Akiva’s daughter. He broke it off because he wanted to devote his life to studying Torah.”

“Idiot,” says Walter. “What a waste.”

“Not necessarily,” says Sol. “Yearning can be that deep.”

“For a woman. Not for the words of a book.”

“And God?”

“What does God have to do with this? I’m not a believer, Sol. You’re wasting your time with me.” Walter stands and gathers his books.

Sol pulls at Walter’s sleeve. “Please stay,” he says.

“Ben Azzai was scared,” says Walter. “Just like you.”

Sol stares at the page of Talmud and bites his lip. “Let’s move on,” he says. “Your turn to crack the Jastrow.”

Walter perches on the table and flips through the pages of the Talmudic dictionary. “I hate looking up words,” he says. “I’m a miserable foil for a promising rabbinical student. You cursed yourself by choosing me.”

Sol pulls the dictionary from Walter’s hands. “I’ll look up the words. Then we’ll be free to learn.”

By the end of the week, Sol and Walter no longer study the text in any prescribed order. They open volumes of Talmud at random, choose sentences out of context, and conjure their meanings.

“Look at this one,” says Sol.
“A slave belongs to its master forever.”

“How long is forever? How long does it last?”

“The rabbis suggest that forever lasts until the Jubilee. That’s fifty years.”

“But does forever refer to a unit of time or a condition of the heart?” asks Walter.

They spend hours like this, throwing snippets of text between them like the finest baseball players, pitching and catching with playful perfection. Sol offers Walter a translation—any string of words will do—and Walter sets off on a tangent. When they learn the laws pertaining to lost objects in Bava Metzia,
Walter talks about lost thoughts and how an isolated human idea can survive for generations. When they peruse the dictionary, Sol remarks how the Hebrew word
zeman
means time and invite and opportunity, their connotations perfectly linked like a string of pearls. They riff on how people’s lives are written into the Hebrew language, and how the ancient words are never static.

One afternoon Sol writes out the words of the Shema and asks Walter to ponder their meaning.

“It’s a haiku,” says Walter. “Three lines. Five syllables, then seven, then five.
She-ma yis-ra-el.
Five.
A-do-noi El-o-hei-nu
. Seven.
A-do-noi Ech-ad.
Five. It works out perfectly.”