“Ah, there you are,” Hadassah’s mother exclaimed, opening the door with a sudden impatient push that sent it flying toward the wall. She caught the handle just before it banged against the delicate rose-patterned wallpaper. “Your father is already at the table.” She tapped her elegant patent-leather shoe against the thick carpeting, tugging at her beautifully coiffed and stiffly sprayed blond wig.
The lazy ease with which Hadassah uncoiled herself from her bed pillows surprised both girls, who had reacted to the imperious words by jumping to attention, Tamar quickly putting the doll back on the shelf and Jenny shoving the book into its correct slot in the bookcase. Even Davy had stopped chewing his candy and was watching warily. They suddenly felt like trespassers.
“Do I have to? I’m not hungry,” Hadassah whined, a tone of voice the others had not heard her use before. It seemed like a performance to them, and they watched with fearful interest and secret admiration.
“Yes,
maideleh
, but maybe your…” Her mother hesitated, noting there were three extra children to be dealt with, when she had been expecting only one. “Your
guests
are ready to eat.” Who were these children? she wondered, and why wasn’t the house full of Hadassah’s usual friends, children of prominent Kovnitz Hasidim?
“Oh, I ate already,” said Tamar, reading the rebbetzin like a neon sign. She had this unsettling ability—shared by many children—to hear what people meant rather than what they said. It was a talent that had led to more than one embarrassing incident with uncles, aunts, and older cousins. “Really, we finished our
seudah
at our house. I just came to play.”
“Well, still, you’re most welcome to join us anyway,” the rebbetzin said, her pale face going slightly pink and her nostrils flaring with chagrin. She felt ashamed. After all, it wasn’t their
fault that the house was in an uproar, and sticky fingers and candies and mushed cookies were going to be wedged inside sofa pillows and ground into the new carpeting. And all this with Passover cleaning just around the corner, when every cookie crumb became an enemy to be routed at all costs!
Why did Purim have to come just before Passover? Really, it was most unfair, most unfair, her tired mind repeated irrationally. Couldn’t Haman have picked a different date to annihilate all the Jews? Really. Another reason to shout down his name during the reciting of the Purim saga… “So your family’s eaten already.” She nodded once, as if saluting the achievement. “We’re always a little late over here.” She sighed, looking suddenly as if she would like nothing better than to join Hadassah facedown on the bed for a few hours. “Please come, children, I suppose there is room for everyone,” she said, trying to make amends. “Come, come…” She shooed them down the stairs, following behind slowly, her hand testing the mahogany banister for stickiness. She found it, in abundance.
The dining room was already packed.
There was so much noise! So much food! So many bottles of wine! And the singing, the hands tattooing the table, the feet pounding the floors, and then the utter silence preceding the Rebbe’s
vort
—his words of wisdom—said in slow Yiddish, punctuated by occasional slaps on the table.
Jenny didn’t understand a word of it. But what would stay with her always was simply the look on the faces of the Hasidim: rapt, almost painfully concentrated and at the edge of ecstasy. She had never seen anything even remotely similar, except, perhaps, in those Norman Rockwell drawings of children’s faces on Christmas morning.
Tamar, her stomach filled with her own lavish
seudah
and all those delectable Barton’s candies, sat there politely, intending to simply watch. But then the rebbetzin put a plate of warm,
sweet noodle kugel in front of her. Just the smell of the hot raisins and apples and cinnamon made her mouth water.
She loved noodle kugel. Just a taste, she told herself, and wound up eating the whole thing. And then the fish with almonds, which she would have let pass if the rebbetzin hadn’t been staring right at her. So she ate it to be polite. And then the main dish: roast beef with new potatoes and sweet potato
tsimmes
swimming in brown sugar and pineapples… She ate and ate and ate until she started to feel her eyes blur and her head swim as if in a bad dream.
She felt the nauseated groan of her stomach as it churned in angry protest at the overcrowding and abuse. She needed a bathroom but the room was so crowded, it would have meant pushing her way through all those men to get out the door. And then they’d all look at her. The idea of it, of being the center of disapproving glances, was unbearable to her. So she sat very still, like someone holding an egg sunny-side up trying to keep the yolk from running. Very still, she told herself, until the room clears out a little. She could do it. She wouldn’t throw up all over the table. She wouldn’t pee in her pants. She calmed herself. She would simply sit there and not move a muscle. She would simply sit there and suffer quietly, allowing everyone to continue having a good time.
The singing and rejoicing went on and on and on.
Jenny sat watching, mesmerized and wholly delighted. She had never experienced such joy before. Oh, there were happy memories of birthdays and Sundays in the park. But this shouting-out exuberant gladness; this wholehearted adult merriment devoid of any frightening underpinnings, like the mean, drunken laughter of men in bars—this was entirely new. She drank it in like the most delicious of new drinks.
In the swaying joy of the moment, the irrational pure pleasure of voices raised in song, the natural distance between adult and child, man and woman melted away. It was so sweet, so sweet,
she thought, to be part of something bigger than yourself, to be joined together with a whole that accepted you and let you mingle your voice with theirs, your clapping hands with theirs. All her pent-up sorrow and isolation welled up inside her small chest and flew out of her heart in the songs; like a great shout of joyous pain, it flew from her, rising and hovering and disappearing like polluting smoke dashed against the sky by the clean wind.
She closed her eyes and clapped and clapped and clapped, her voice humming the melodies that rang like a chime in her deepest consciousness of being, enlivening her, scrubbing away her mourning, her loneliness. And when she opened her eyes, she felt herself staring into the dark, compassionate eyes of G-d himself, who seemed to view her with pleasure.
“
Baruchim Habayim, maideleh
,” G-d told her, and without anyone translating she knew it meant “Welcome, child. May you be blessed for coming.”
She stared, speechlessly, until Hadassah nudged her and giggled. “You can close your mouth, Jen. My father doesn’t bite.”
The face of the Rebbe of Kovnitz shone down on her with a strange power.
Was it simply the power of fatherliness over one aching for a father? Or was it gratitude for simple acceptance, from one who felt she belonged nowhere? Or maybe it was just the rare experience of unadulterated kindness she was feeling, kindness without motive?
Hadassah’s father. She blushed and looked down at her plate.
“You are one of my Hadassaleh’s new friends?”
She nodded, too overwhelmed by the attention to speak. But the voice was so kind, not the thundering voice of G-d, but simply a kind man’s.
“You were very kind to give Hadassah your Purim costume. I understand she didn’t like hers very much.”
“No,
Tateh
,” Hadassah protested, chagrined. “I gave her mine because she didn’t have one!”
Jenny watched Hadassah staring at her father, who returned the look with a piercing honesty that seared away all pretension, leaving behind a nugget of pure truth. Hadassah’s voice faltered, and her eyes dropped. Jenny could see her lips tremble.
“Hadassah!” Tamar suddenly cried out, tugging at her sleeve.
Hadassah pulled free, annoyed at the interruption. “What?”
“I’ve got to go to the…” Tamar gulped hard, clapping her hand over her mouth.
Reluctantly Hadassah turned her attention from her father to Tamar, who was turning a delicate shade of green. “Come on, I’ll take you down to the bathroom!” She laughed, dragging her through the milling crowd to the ceramic-tiled heaven on earth nearby.
The singing went on and on.
The light slowly faded from the windows, replaced by the brilliant illumination of street lamps.
“
Maariv!
” one of the men said suddenly, slapping a book down on a table. As if a whistle had been blown, the men turned and hurried out of the house to the synagogue downstairs to join in evening prayers.
“It’s dark. I have to go home I guess,” Jenny said reluctantly.
“Me too. I had a very nice time,” Tamar added politely, her stomach still churning, but much relieved.
“Do you have to?” Hadassah said, disappointed. “Well, I’ll tell my
mameh
and
tateh
. They’ll get the car for you.”
She disappeared and then returned with a strange look on her face. “My
tateh
says you should come in.”
Jenny held Davy’s hand tightly with an odd feeling of excitement as she followed Tamar and Hadassah into the small room off the study.
“Come in
tirelehs
, come, come in,” he said gently.
“Rebbe, the minyan is ready,” a black-bearded Hasid said diffidently, his eyes lowered.
The Rebbe of Kovnitz waved his hand impatiently. “Tell them to say a few
tehillim
, their Rebbe is involved in something too important to be disturbed.”
The Hasid looked at the children with questioning intensity, then walked slowly out the door.
“Come here children,” the Rebbe said, motioning them forward. “Did you have fun? On Purim you’re supposed to have so much fun you don’t know the difference between Haman and Mordechai.”
The girls looked at each other and giggled. Haman was the villain and Mordechai the great hero and savior of the Purim saga.
“Ah, I made you laugh. This is good!” He turned to Tamar. “And what is your name?”
“Tamar Gottlieb,” she said, hoping she wouldn’t have to dash out to the bathroom again until this was all over.
“And why didn’t you wear your costume,
maideleh?
”
“Because my mother said Purim or no Purim, no child of hers was going to go to the house of the great Rebbe of Kovnitz in flimsy veils and tinsel,” she answered honestly.
The Rebbe swallowed hard, his serious eyes bright with amusement. “I see.” He turned to Jenny. “And you are new in the class at Ohel Sara, my daughter tells me. What is your name, child?”
“Jenny,” she said, then bit her lip, remembering she had a different name, a name he would probably like better. “I mean, Yehudit.”
“Did you know that a person’s name means something? G-d chooses a name for every person, even before he or she is born. A person is fortunate when the name his parents’ choose is the same as G-d has chosen and the same as a person chooses for
himself. Herself,” he added, his dark eyes lively. “One day you will decide, Jenny or Yehudit. Where do your fathers
daven
, at which synagogue?”
“My father goes to the Sephardic minyan,” Tamar said.
Jenny looked on uncomfortably, her stomach tightening. She hated telling anyone her father was dead. It was sad, but mostly it was embarrassing to her, like admitting some defect of character or material well-being. She felt somehow to blame. And she hated being pitied.
“My father’s gone away. Passed away,” she corrected herself in an agony of embarrassment.
The Rebbe looked at her reassuringly, pressing her small hand into his large warm one. “A child is never without a father,” he said softly. “You have a father in heaven, the Father of us all. You may talk to Him, and He will watch over you. No one in the world is more important to our Father in heaven than an orphan. They are His special children. Will you try to remember that, child? Whatever you need, you ask Him and He will make sure you get it.”
“But a father in heaven doesn’t talk back, and he has no arms,” she blurted out, her face going all red, her hand tightening around her brother’s.
He was thoughtful. “Children need words, don’t they? You can always come here when you need words. That I can give you. As for arms, these too are yours, anytime you want,” he said, drawing her close to him with a fatherly hug.
Hadassah watched her father, jealous and proud and aching with a need she could not name.
Chapter ten
As usual, it was Jenny who made the discovery that changed their lives the year they were nine years old. For it was Jenny who took out Anne Frank’s diary from the public library and brought it to school for the others to read.
“Read it. It’ll make you cry,” Jenny assured them, the highest praise.
Hadassah read it next with breathless concentration behind her parents’ back. There was way too much boy-girl business in the diary for her mother, Hadassah realized right away. It wasn’t acceptable reading for her little girl.
The book was a revelation to her. Anne was such a rebel, such a lively, imaginative clever girl. Even in that jail cell of a house, cut off from the world, she created her own secret life, full of intrigues and jokes and interesting stories. How was it Anne’s life in the attic had been so interesting, when her own life was always such a crashing bore? The end was so sad. She couldn’t believe it. She had never read any book with a sad ending before, except for the book of Deuteronomy, where Moses died and wasn’t
allowed to enter the Promised Land. And Anne had been so brave, so good.
Why hadn’t G-d saved her? Why? she wondered. It wasn’t fair! He was supposed to be all-merciful! He was supposed to be so kind and good, such a tzadik! Why hadn’t He just arranged for an earthquake to swallow up all the bad Germans, the way the earth swallowed up Korech and his men in the desert when they rebelled against Him?
The ideas triggered an avalanche of questions that disturbed and fascinated her, filling her with the secret pleasure of rebellion. She would have loved to ask her father, to challenge him. But since she wasn’t supposed to be reading the book, she had to content herself with the far less satisfactory imaginary debate that went on in her head. A debate, it must be said, she always won to her satisfaction, no matter the blasphemous nature of her arguments.