Authors: Naomi Ragen
Abigail listened to her daughter. Unwillingly, she felt something suddenly resonate in her soul, something unexpected. “I would like to join you in those classes, Kayla.”
22
The tent, large and bright, seemed like something that should contain three rings and a clown, Abigail thought as she made her way toward it. It was late afternoon. She had managed to fall back asleep after breakfast and to awake just in time for a late lunch. She looked around for Kayla, but she was nowhere to be seen.
The sun was going down over the mountains.
She took out her cell phone. Kayla had suggested that she try to catch the phone signal, as the tent was the only place on the mountain where it was sometimes strong enough to use. There was a dial tone.
“Hello?”
“Abigail?”
Adam’s voice, coming to her on this hilltop in the desert, was a shock.
“Yes.” She gripped the phone, the distance between them suddenly unbearable.
“How are you?”
“I’m here, in the desert. I’m with Kayla. She’s fine, Adam, really. You wouldn’t believe it. She looks tan and peaceful and happy. It’s not what you think…”
He exhaled. “Are you telling me the truth?”
“Yes. I’m not sure what this place is, but it’s not a simple thing like a cult. At
least, I don’t think so. I’ll know more after I meet the Rav who leads the group. Tell me about yourself.”
There was silence.
“Adam?” Her brows contracted as she stared into the darkness of the little plastic receiver.
“Abby, someone has firebombed the synagogue.”
The sky suddenly seemed to darken. “Oh God, no!”
“No one was hurt. But they burnt down the study hall. The books, hundreds of them, have been destroyed.”
Her stomach ached. “Do they know who did it? Or why?”
“No… but…” He stopped.
“Adam… please!”
“There was graffiti.”
She didn’t say anything, hardly daring to breathe. “Tell me!”
“It said: ‘Jews are the real terrorists. Hang Samuels…’”
“Adam…”
“This is exactly what the rabbi was afraid of.”
“If it wasn’t about you, it would have been about something else. Every time Israel defends itself, the nutcases scribble their filth all over the world. It happens.”
“Yes. Just not in Boston. Not on Beacon Street.” The words were strangled.
“Did the rabbi call you?”
“No. I called him.”
“What did you say?”
“What
could
I say? That I’m sorry. So very, very sorry.”
“And what did he say?”
“He told me he was very busy and couldn’t talk. Then he hung up.”
“Adam… I should be with you.”
“Abby, you are exactly where you need to be—with our daughter. Have you met the
someone
yet?”
“Who?”
“The someone of ‘I’ve met someone.’ ”
Honestly, she hadn’t given it a single thought. “No, no, not yet. But I can’t believe it’s serious. Kayla is so confused.”
“I’ve spoken to Seth. But I didn’t tell him everything. I was hoping you could convince her to come to her senses before he realizes what’s going on… He has been just wonderful to me, Abby. He has been doing the most amazing research. You wouldn’t believe the information he’s come up with! Even my lawyers are shocked. I can’t tell you… Abby? What do you think?”
She wasn’t thinking anything. She stood before the sun sinking down into the mountains. Every moment, it presented a different face, a new creation, its colors merging, deepening, then fading; shapes coming into focus, then transforming, melting, fading into the background. To miss such a sunset was to miss a hundred masterpieces that would be lost forever, she thought, breathless, drinking it in moment by moment, letting it fill her with quiet joy. She felt mesmerized, almost hypnotized.
“Abigail?”
“I’m sorry. I was just… the sunset… I’m on a mountaintop facing the sea. Adam, if you could be here with me…”
“I didn’t realize you had time for sightseeing.” His voice was cold and strained.
She crossed her arms over her chest, hugging herself, chilled. “Adam. I’m still alive. I’m not going to apologize for that. I’ll do what you want me to do, but don’t take that away from me.”
“I’m sorry,” he said, and she thought his voice sounded suddenly husky. “I’m just… it’s so hard. I miss you.”
“Adam… I love you. I’ll hurry. Take care of yourself. Don’t forget to take your pills. What are you eating… ?”
But before he could answer, the phone connection suddenly went dead. She tried to redial, but it was too late. The signal had disappeared.
“We’re about to start,” someone whispered in her ear.
She looked up. It was an older woman with the lean body of a teenager wearing all blue with a red-cotton scarf and long, dangling earrings. She smiled, beckoning. “Come.”
Oil lamps and candles lit the interior, which was filled with pillows and a few scattered plastic chairs. Floor space, she saw, was already filling up.
“Would you like a chair?” the woman asked. Abigail nodded gratefully. She sat down, waiting.
Suddenly she saw everyone jump up. She automatically joined them, unsure what had happened. Then she saw him.
He looked like a kid, she thought, his body strong and beautifully proportioned, like a trekker’s. The long sidecurls spilling down to his shoulders from beneath a white knitted skullcap reminded her of an Old World Chassid’s, except for their silky blondness. His eyes, wide set, were of indeterminate color in the dim light, but she imagined they must be blue. A honey-colored beard outlined his slender face and high cheekbones, surprisingly delicate for such a large man. His wide forehead glistened with light and also (she admitted to herself almost reluctantly) with intelligence and youthfulness. He wore a plain white button-down shirt whose long sleeves were neatly folded just below his elbows, and simple dark pants. He wore no black hat—that easily noted symbol of religious affiliation with the ultra-Orthodox. And yet, she noted that the fringes of his
tzitzis
hung out over the waistband of his pants, clearly marking him as one who was not modern Orthodox either. The skullcap was the white cap of the Breslavers, those lovers of Jewish mysticism and song, followers of the dead
rebbe
buried in Ukraine who had left behind only his cryptic books, but no Chassidic dynasty.
Where, exactly, this person fit into the gradations of religious observance she could not decide. In fact, he reminded her of guitarists sitting on the pavement in Haight-Ashbury in the sixties although that was years before he was born.
She leaned over to the woman in blue. “Who is that?”
“Our teacher. Rav Natan.” Her face shone.
Abigail shifted uncomfortably. She’d expected someone older, greyer, fatter, swathed in the usual black uniform. Looking around the room, she realized nothing was as she’d imagined. In front of her, a woman in harem pants and a Himalayan Arveda Yoga sweatshirt sat next to a black woman in a red turban. An Asian girl in boots and a red beret and pink tights, her legs stretched out before her, gently massaged the forehead of a young blond girl whose head rested on her knees. A man with a grey beard, wearing a huge purple-and-orange skullcap, sat in a lotus position. Next to him sat a grandmother in green-and-black pajama pants topped by a black-flowered skirt and a purple blouse. Silver chains dangled around her neck. A heavy woman in boots and a jeans
skirt was leaning against her, hugging her. And in the back, among the men, Abigail was amazed to see the Arab chef, his kaffiyeh wrapped around his neck, standing and waiting for the lecture to begin.
“No matter how dark our lives may be,” Rav Natan began, “one need never despair. Real despair comes from feeling abandoned. The source of all sadness is in this loneliness. You feel there is no God, and this belief is the source of anger, depression, destructiveness. But in that fog, in the lowest depths, that is where He is, waiting for you. And what your heart desires most is to find Him, as a baby seeks its mother, a child its father.”
Abigail listened, watching as he drew his long fingers gently, contemplatively through his beard. His smile was lopsided and charming.
She looked around her at the rapt faces. They were all in love with him; that was plain. Their eyes were dark and wide; they rested their cheeks on folded fingers, like young women in Monet paintings. They looked at him as she had recently gazed at the sunset.
“But in order to connect with God, you first have to find yourself. Self-discovery is the purpose of creation, and ordeals are the way God stretches us, showing us, who we really are.”
Abigail suddenly sat up.
“The Hebrew word for ordeal,
nesayon,
contains the word for miracle,
nes
. A person looks at a wall and says: ‘I could never climb over it.’ But if that wall imprisoned you in a concentration camp, and you were being chased by Nazis and their guard dogs, you would scramble up that wall and jump to the other side. You would find that you did have it in you all along. You just didn’t know it. But as wonderful as that would be, it wouldn’t be miraculous.
“Where, then, is the miracle in our ordeals? It is when God asks you to do the impossible.”
Abigail felt her heart beat faster, the sweat break out on her forehead.
He suddenly stopped, looking up and into the faces of everyone in the room.
“If God told you to jump off a cliff and promised to catch you, would you jump?”
There was an exchange of anxious, amused glances, as people tried to decide the right answer, the answer he wanted.
“If you knew, absolutely, that it was God talking to you, and you weren’t
hallucinating, of course you would! God can ask you to do the impossible, because it is impossible for
you,
not for
Him
. When we are faced with such an ordeal, we should not ask if it’s
possible
for us to overcome it; we must ask if it’s
necessary
. If the answer is yes, and you are willing to make that leap, then He will catch you. But you have to make the first move. You have to lift up your feet. You cannot see who you are meant to become from where you are standing now. You can only see it once you arrive, when you allow God to stretch you beyond your real limitations.”
Abigail felt light-headed, as if she’d been given a great revelation.
“
Lech-Lecha.
Leave who you are now and go to who you were meant to be.”
She felt the tears suddenly, unexpectedly flow down her cheeks. Like the Mona Lisa who gave all onlookers the sensation that she was staring directly at them, and only them, Rav Natan looked to Abigail as if he was talking to her, saying those words only to her. She searched vainly in her purse for a tissue.
“Here.” Someone handed one to her.
“Thank you.” She blew her nose, and wiped her eyes.
“Do you need another?”
She looked up. It was a young man with tangled dark curls, tragic green eyes, and a three-day stubble.
“I’m Kayla’s mother,” she whispered with some strange instinct that he already knew.
She got up, wanting desperately to go somewhere private. Her feet wobbled as if they’d been frostbitten. Her back ached. Her heart felt as if it had grown in her chest. She placed her hand over it, counting the beats.
“Are you all right?”
It was him again.
“I don’t know,” she answered. He took her arm and led her outside. He brought a chair out for her, and she sat down.
“I’m Daniel,” he said. “Your daughter’s friend.”
“Yes,” she murmured. “I thought so.”
“Really?”
He spoke in English, which surprised her. He looked so Israeli. “Is Kayla here?”
“Yes. She’s inside. You were measuring your heartbeats. Do you have heart problems?”
“No… that is… I have a mitral valve prolapse. But so do millions of others. It’s not dangerous.”
“Maybe you should lie down. Is your heart racing? Do you take beta blockers? I’m a doctor,” he said simply. “Let me help you. Was there something in the lecture that upset you?”
“I don’t know.” She shook her head. “It’s just that… I’m too old to jump, too old to grow. The trials God has given me are really too hard for me. Impossible.” She felt the tears welling over. “I’m not a bad person. And God is about to strip me of everything I have, including my self-respect, and my good name.”
“Rav Natan once taught us that when God removes our familiar boundaries, when He changes the landscape of our lives, it’s the scariest thing in the world.” He nodded. “But also the most blessed. A second chance to be born—not like a baby, but with all our knowledge. A chance to start over.”
“I was happy with who I was!” But even as the words left her lips, she felt the sting of regret, wanting to take them back. That isn’t true, she admitted to herself.
“You will be happy again.”
“How do you know?”
“You are already in the air. You’ve already leapt.”
She stared at him, and past him at the little holes poked in the sky letting in the abundance of celestial light that had traveled from billions of light-years away. She felt a strange sensation as this light poured through her, entering through a tiny crack in her desperation that she hadn’t known existed. It would not stop. Undeserved, unearned, it refused to listen to reason, gathering strength, flooding all her senses with unearned hope.
23
“Mom?”
The sound of Kayla’s voice brought her back to earth.
“Kayla. I’m here.”
She saw her daughter exchange intimate glances with the young man, the unspoken expression of married people and lovers. Her heart sank. He was glue. Superglue. And she had been assigned to pry her daughter loose.
“So you’ve met my friend Daniel.”
“Yes. He’s been very kind, but I really think I need to lie down. Will you come with me?”
“Of course.” Kayla reached down and took her arm, helping her up.
“Here, let me…” Daniel offered.
“NO! I mean, thank you, it won’t be necessary. I think I need a little alone time with my daughter, if that’s all right. I don’t mean to be rude.”