Acts of Faith

  “Is it only Deborah?” Beller interposed.

  “No, you’re right. It’s what he’s doing to me. Why should I have to be a rabbi? Why should I just allow him to slam my life down on an anvil and forge it into whatever shape he wants? Suppose I’d never been born?”

  “It’s too late for that,” said Beller with a glint of humor. “Retreating to the womb won’t help you now.”

  I tried to reciprocate with a smile but couldn’t quite manage.

  “When are you going to tell him?” he asked.

  “As soon as I can buy a bulletproof vest,” I jested weakly, then confessed, “Aaron, I don’t know how to do it.”

  “Simply tell him the truth. That’s the honorable thing.”

  “I know. But I just can’t say it straight out. It’ll kill him.”

  Beller shook his head. “Danny, he’s already suffered worse catastrophes in his lifetime—the Holocaust, Chava’s death, and the loss of his first son. I guarantee you. This may hurt your father, but it won’t kill him.”

  “You don’t know him,” I protested softly. “You don’t know the man.”

  He did not respond.

  All during my subway ride to Brooklyn, I agonized over how I would do “the honorable thing.” I had thought of a million subterfuges, lame excuses, delaying tactics—“I’d like to take an extra year in Jerusalem.…” But Beller had convinced me that these would be unnecessarily cruel to both of us.

  By the time the train reached Wall Street, I had formulated my text so I could have the rest of the journey to rehearse it.

  The late spring evening had been muggy, and even in the relative coolness of the night I was pouring sweat.

  It was nearly midnight as I walked slowly down our street, past the silent, darkened synagogue, and up the steps to our house. My mother would have long since gone to bed. A craven part of me hoped that perhaps my father would have taken an early night as well.

  I was deluding myself. While the whole world slumbered, he was always working at his desk. I can even recall moments in my childhood when he came to breakfast having spent the entire night completing his opinion on a difficult doctrinal question.

  My hand trembled as I put my key into the lock. The door creaked. Would this wake my mother? Perhaps unconsciously I wanted her to be present, to help Father absorb some of the shock, maybe even act as mediator or comforter. For both of us.

  A stream of light from the half-open door to Father’s study spilled across my path. I heard him call affectionately, “Daniel, is that you?”

  I answered, “Yes, Papa,” but my voice was so imprisoned in my throat that he left his desk and came to peek out the office door.

  He was beaming.

  “Well, almost-Rebbe Luria, what a nice surprise. Did you finish your exams early?”

  I did not reply. I stood in darkness, hesitant to enter even the slenderest rays of light.

  Unable to see my expression, he continued cheerfully, “Come in, come in. I’d like you to hear what I’ve written on proper conversion for marriage. At this hour I could use a fresh Talmudic mind.”

  I walked forward slowly, my head bowed. He put his arm around my shoulders and led me inside. I shivered, not merely from the tension, but because his office was the only air-conditioned room in the house—cooled not for his personal comfort, but rather to protect the great tomes of Law. These treasured leather-bound volumes, some—like the Vilna Talmud—more than a hundred years old, had been rescued from Hitler’s clutches at great risk and were now the only “living” testament from the dust and ashes of the town of Silcz.

  “Sit down, sit down,” he gestured affably. “Do you want a cold drink? Iced tea? A glass of seltzer maybe?”

  “No, thank you, Papa. I’m not thirsty.”

  In truth, my throat and mouth were parched. My lips were almost cracking.

  He leaned across his desk, peered over his reading glasses, and stared at me.

  “Daniel,” he remarked. “You’re looking pale. It must be the examinations, eh?”

  I merely shrugged.

  “You’ve probably had very little sleep these past few weeks.”

  I nodded, guilty and shamed to be so tired in his presence. Among the many qualities of his I lacked was that enormous energy which enabled him to thrive with a bare minimum of sleep.

  He leaned back in his chair. “So, nu.” He smiled. “How did they go?”

  “What?”

  “The examinations. Did you find them difficult?”

  I began a sentence, but still lacked courage to complete it. “I didn’t …”

  “That’s good,” my father beamed.

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “You were going to say you didn’t find them difficult. That means you studied well.”

  “No, no,” I said quickly—and my voice quivered slightly.

  “Daniel,” he said in a worried tone. “You’re not coming to tell me that you … didn’t pass, are you?”

  “No, Papa.”

  “That’s a relief. It doesn’t matter what grade you got. The important thing is that you passed.”

  God in Heaven, after all these years of wanting me to be the best, he suddenly was willing to accept me as an average—maybe even mediocre—scholar. The irony fueled my growing frenzy.

  Now I had to get out what I had to say before my heart would beat so quickly that I couldn’t talk at all.

  “Father …,” I began, and was further unsettled by the tremor in my voice.

  He took his glasses off, and in a tone still solicitous he murmured, “Danny, something’s wrong. I can see it on your face. Out with it. Don’t be afraid. Remember, I’m your father.”

  Yes, I am all too painfully aware who you are.

  “I didn’t take any of my exams,” I said feebly, and then waited for the thunderbolt to strike. It did not. Once again, Father surprised me.

  “Daniel,” he said gently. “You’re not the first to have an inner crisis at a time like this. I think what you need now is rest. Examinations can be taken any time.”

  With a mere nod of his head, he signaled his permission to depart. I couldn’t. I knew that I could never face the sunlight till I told him everything.

  “Father?”

  “Yes, Daniel?”

  “I don’t want to be a rabbi.”

  For a moment he did not speak. Perhaps no words existed to respond to such a statement.

  “You don’t want to? You don’t want to follow in the footsteps of your father and of his father before him?” He paused and asked almost pleadingly, “Why, Danny, just tell me why?”

  I had come this far—I had to say it all.

  “Because … I’ve lost my faith.”

  There was an apocalyptic silence.

  “This is impossible,” he muttered, shaken and disoriented. “What the Romans couldn’t do, the Greeks, Hitler …”

  He did not have to complete his sentence. We both knew that he was accusing me of murder, of killing off the line of Silczer Rebbes.

  At last he whispered hoarsely, “Daniel, I think that you should see a doctor. First thing tomorrow we’ll call—”

  “No,” I cut him off. “I may be sick, but it’s incurable. My brain is full of demons, Father. No doctor—” And then I added pointedly, “And no Rebbe Gershon … could exorcise my pain.”

  It was so quiet I could almost hear the clouds moving across the blackened sky.

  Curiously, my father now seemed in total control.

  “Daniel,” he began slowly, “I think you should move out of the house. As soon as possible.”

  I nodded in submission.

  “Take everything you want and leave your key. Because when you leave this room, I never want to see you again.”

  I had anticipated all this on the train to Brooklyn. I’d even made a mental list of what I’d pack in my room. But I was not prepared for what came next.

  “As far as I am concerned,” my father said, “I have no son. I??
?ll say Kaddish for thirty days, and then you’ll vanish from my thoughts forever.”

  He rose and walked out of the room.

  A moment later, I heard the door close softly. I knew where he was going. To shul to say the prayer of mourning.

  For his only son was dead.

  35

  Daniel

  I spent the next forty-five minutes frantically packing. Along with all sorts of memorabilia, I grabbed some clothes and half a dozen books. Fortunately, my real library was back at school.

  Mama, who had been awakened by the sound of our voices, stood there in her robe, looking strange without her sheitel, talking to me—babbling really—as if her words could somehow blot out the sorrow of what she was watching. The scene was reminiscent of another played out five years earlier. A drama called The Banishment of Deborah. Only this time Mama was utterly desolate.

  “I can’t bear it,” she wept. “He’s sent away both my children. Where will you go, Danny? When will I see you again?”

  All I could do was shrug. I was afraid to talk, fearing I would burst into tears and throw myself into her arms for the comfort I so badly needed.

  But she had asked a valid question. Where was I going to go? I’d probably get a night or two in the dorm before they kicked me out for being a traitor—and then what?

  “What will you do, Danny?” Mama sobbed.

  “I don’t know,” I muttered. “Maybe I’ll go to graduate school next fall.”

  “And study what?”

  “I don’t know. I’m much too confused right now.”

  I didn’t say I was tending toward Psychology, not wanting to incriminate Beller.

  The reins with which I had held back my anger now slipped, and I vented all my rage on my poor mother.

  “Do you think this is easy for me?” I shouted. “Do you actually think I wanted to hurt you—or even Papa? I’m upset. I’m very …”

  She put her arms around me and wept so copiously that her tears stained my shirt.

  “Danny, we’re your parents,” she implored. “Don’t just leave like this.”

  I could not stand any more.

  “He’s thrown me out,” I shouted. “To him I’m not a person—I’m just a link in his goddamn ‘golden chain.’ ”

  “He loves you,” my mother pleaded. “He’ll get over it.”

  I challenged her. “Do you honestly believe that?”

  Mama did not move. She was torn into shreds of conflicting emotions and felt more lost than I.

  I looked at her with sadness and compassion. After all, she had to remain in this house of perpetual mourning.

  I kissed her on the forehead, took my suitcase, and ran down the stairs into the street.

  I reached the corner, turned around, and took one final glance at the neighborhood where I was born and grew to manhood, the familiar homes of the people who had formed my childhood, the synagogue where I had prayed since I was old enough to read. The eternal flame would burn above the ark, but I knew it would never light my face again.

  My punishment had begun.

  I got back to the dorm and walked into my room, which—like my emotions—was in total disarray. Open books were spread out on the bed and the radiator, all remnants of my previous chaotic existence.

  With unconscious irreverence I pushed several books to the floor and sat on my bed. Late as it was I felt a desperate need to talk to someone—on the telephone at least. But I couldn’t muster the guts to wake up Beller. And I knew Ariel couldn’t provide the spiritual consolation I needed.

  There was no one. So I just sat there motionless as my entire universe ossified into sadness.

  I can’t recall how long it was except that during the time I was grieving the first dawn of my banishment had turned into day.

  When I heard a knock at my door I thought for a moment it was one of the deans—or maybe two—come to kick me out … or put me in front of a firing squad.

  It turned out, however, to be one of my former classmates from down the hall.

  “Hey, Luria,” he said in a tone of annoyance, his excursion to my room having taken him away from his studies, “there’s a call for you.”

  I shuffled to the pay phone and picked up the dangling receiver.

  It was my mother.

  “Danny,” she said, voice like a zombie, “your father’s had a stroke.”

  36

  Deborah

  After her Modern Hebrew Poetry class, Deborah’s instructor, Zev Morgenstern—a tall, sinewy Canadian immigrant in his midthirties—stood at the doorway waiting to invite her discreetly for a cup of coffee.

  She was flattered. Moments later they were sitting in an outdoor café—Zev trying to enjoy what looked like plastic cheesecake, and Deborah eating the sandwiches that would have been her dinner, since on Tuesdays and Thursdays she would arrive back at the kibbutz after the dining room had closed.

  Zev had just concluded the seminar with a brilliant explication of Yehuda Amichai’s poem, “Half the people in the world,” evoking comparisons with the Roman poet Catullus, as well as Shakespeare and Baudelaire.

  Half the people love,

  Half the people hate.

  And where is my place between these halves

  that are so well matched?

  “It’s exhilarating,” Deborah enthused. “Back in Brooklyn they never even told us there was any Hebrew literature outside the Bible. I think you’re right to rank him among the greats.”

  “I’m glad you think so,” Zev responded. “By the way, he lives about three blocks from me. I could take you to meet him some time, if you’d like. I think he’s as good as Yeats, don’t you?”

  Deborah’s smile narrowed. “I’m embarrassed to say my acquaintance with English Lit sort of stopped at Julius Caesar.”

  Zev smiled. “Well, if you’ll allow me to lead you across the Rubicon, I’d gladly give you a one-man tutorial in Modern English Poetry. Can you stay for dinner after next week’s class?”

  She was torn. Inexplicably trying to deny herself the pleasure of this man’s company, she replied, “I’ve got a thirteen-month-old baby, and I should really be back at the kibbutz before he goes to bed. But I could come an hour earlier, if that’s okay with you.”

  Zev could not suppress a monosyllabic expression of surprise. “Oh.”

  “What?”

  “I didn’t know you were married. I mean, you aren’t wearing a ring.”

  Deborah shifted uncomfortably in her chair. “Well, actually I’m not. I mean …”

  She had never actually told the elaborate lie to which her fellow kibbutzniks were accomplices, believing that it shamelessly exploited the tragedy of Avi’s death, but now she allowed herself to continue.

  “He was a pilot,” she began slowly. She did not have to say any more.

  “I’m sorry,” Zev said sympathetically. “When was it?”

  “Over a year ago,” she answered. “Lebanon.”

  “And so he never saw his son.”

  Deborah shook her head. “No,” she answered softly. “His father never saw him.”

  “Well,” he commented at last, “you have the kibbutz. I’m sure they give you lots of moral support.”

  She nodded, then glanced nervously at her watch. “I think I’d better be going. I hate driving on those narrow roads at night.”

  She stood up. Zev rose as well.

  “Don’t forget next week. I’ll bring the books.”

  Deborah smiled. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  In the year since Eli had been born, she had given no thought to seeking a relationship with any man. After all, she told herself with bitter irony, she was a woman who had never married but had been widowed twice.

  She wondered why Zev had singled her out. There were far prettier girls in the seminar, and yet he had always given her a special smile when she entered the classroom. And whenever he read poetry out loud, it seemed as if he was reciting it just for her.

  She had to ad
mit to herself that she had found him attractive. Before they even said good-bye, she was looking forward to seeing him again. The thought both pleased and confused her.

  The sun was setting, and atop Mount Carmel Deborah could feel a cooling breeze from the sea.

  Ninety minutes later, when she pushed open the door to her srif, she was astonished to find a cloud of cigarette smoke. Sitting behind it was Boaz Ben-Ami.

  Deborah took one look at his expression and let her books slide to the floor.

  “All right,” she demanded, her heart pounding. “Tell me.”

  37

  Daniel

  They had taken Papa to Brooklyn Jewish Hospital and rushed him into Intensive Care.

  When I arrived, my half sisters were clustered protectively around Mama, both of them ashen-faced as if already sitting shiva—mourning my father’s memory.

  They glared at me as if I were a murderer.

  “How is he?” I asked.

  They refused to answer.

  The drab waiting room was silent, except for the quiet echoes of my mother’s sobs. I knelt down beside her as her head lay buried in her hands.

  “Mama, is he … alive?”

  Her nod was barely perceptible. Then I heard the muffled words, “He’s still unconscious.”

  I looked up at my sisters and demanded, “What do the doctors say?”

  Rena took pity on my desperation and whispered, “He’ll live. But tests they did say he’ll have some paralysis.” She paused, and added, “It’s pretty likely that his speech will be … slurred.”

  Malka, the eldest, hissed at me, “You did this to him. Let this be on your conscience.”

  I didn’t need her castigation. “C’mon, where is it written that obedience demands you automatically enter your father’s profession?”

  I turned my attention back to Mama. “Has anyone called Deborah?”

  She nodded.

  Rena explained, “I phoned the kibbutz. She’s coming—”

  “Wonderful,” Malka muttered. “She can finish the job her brother started.”

  Suddenly my mother stood and shouted, “Shtil, kinder! Stop this bickering. You are all his children—all of you. Now, Danny, you go Sunday and meet your sister at the airport.…”