Talmudic conundrums.
Waiting in the synagogue courtyard, Lemmy unbuttoned his black coat and raised his face to the sun, enjoying its warmth. Benjamin nudged him, and he saw his father and Cantor Toiterlich emerge through the double-doors.
“Good Sabbath,” he said and shook their hands. Cantor Toiterlich lived with his wife and nine children in a two-room apartment three doors down from the rabbi. The eldest, a daughter named Sorkeh, stood behind her father.
Rabbi Gerster said, “Why don’t you and Sorkeh talk a bit while we walk home?”
“Yes, Father.” Lemmy’s face flushed. The separation between the genders in Neturay Karta allowed for no youthful socializing. But Talmud prescribed: At eighteen to the chuppah. So when a boy of eighteen was told to chat with a girl after prayers, it meant that the matchmaker had already proposed to both sets of parents, the fathers had negotiated terms for providing the basic needs for the couple, and the mothers had found each other agreeable to share in helping the young mother with soon-to-arrive babies, while the groom continued to study Talmud. Marriage in Neturay Karta was a serious business, handled by the parents, who knew their sons and daughters better than the youths knew themselves.
Rabbi Gerster walked with Cantor Toiterlich and Benjamin down the alley. “We’re facing a crisis,” he said, “with the abortion law proposal in the Zionist Knesset.”
“A desecration of God,” the Cantor agreed, and they launched into a discussion.
Lemmy and Sorkeh followed a short distance behind.
“Nice weather today,” he said.
“Warm! I like it!” She was a head shorter than he. Her flowery dress reached down to her shoes, fitting loosely on her plump, feminine figure. She must have just turned sixteen, the age at which Neturay Karta girls were added to the matchmaker’s list. Unlike married women, the girls didn’t cover their heads. Sorkeh’s hair was her prettiest asset-a dark, reddish mass of curls that framed her round face.
“How are your studies going?” She smiled and touched her hair.
“Very well. Thank you.” Lemmy thought how, moments after she would become a married woman, her head would be shaved smooth and covered with a kerchief-one of several fine, cotton headdresses she would receive as wedding gifts. The image of Sorkeh with a bald head made him grin.
She looked at him with an uncertain smile.
“I’m sorry,” Lemmy said, “I just remembered something funny.”
She nodded eagerly. “It happens to me too.”
He felt the need to explain, but thought better of it.
“Sometimes,” Sorkeh said, “I think of a funny occurrence, like when my mother was making the keegel for Sabbath, and the noodles overcooked and stuck together and she couldn’t mix in the sugar!”
Lemmy chuckled politely.
Encouraged, she continued, “So we tried to mix the noodles with oil to separate them, and I was holding the pot-”
Tuning her out, Lemmy thought of yesterday’s dramatic events. He recalled the Jordanian shooting, his father’s arm on his shoulders, and the petite woman who touched his father’s beard, her arm exposed, her skin smooth. He shuddered as the sun disappeared behind a gray cloud. The narrow alley had been neatly swept before the Sabbath, and the air was sweetened by the aroma of cooking pots that had been simmering since Friday. His mouth watered. Talmud forbade eating until after morning prayers, and he was famished.
“-and it took us an hour to clean up the mess!” Sorkeh burst out laughing.
Realizing she had reached the punch line, Lemmy smiled. “That’s funny. Do you like to cook?”
“Oh, yes!” She launched into a long monologue about food preparations for Sabbath and various holidays.
With occasional head nodding, Lemmy paced along the connected row of apartment buildings, which had originally been designed as a wall of defense against Arab nomads, but now kept out the immoral, secular Israeli society.
He was relieved when they reached home. After further greetings, Cantor Toiterlich and his daughter left.
Rabbi Gerster entered the apartment first, touching the mezuzah on the doorframe and then his lips. They hung their coats in the foyer and entered the dining room, where the table had been set with silver utensils and white cloth.
Temimah and Benjamin’s mother, Rachel, shuttled dishes from the kitchen. The mother and son had come to lunch every Sabbath since Benjamin’s father had left the sect many years ago, never to be heard from again.
Benjamin’s dark eyes glistened, and he whispered, “How was it?”
Lemmy crinkled his face.
Rabbi Gerster began to sing: “ Tranquility and joy, beacon for Israel, day of Sabbath, of rest, day of delight. ”
Benjamin and Lemmy joined him, singing the familiar tunes until the women were ready to serve the meal.
The rabbi recited the blessing on the wine goblet and the braided challah bread, which he sliced with a long, toothed knife. They ate gefilteh fish in jellied broth and wiped the plates with chunks of challah. The three of them sang again while Temimah and Rachel cleared the table.
Next came a large pot of tcholent — a concoction of meat, beans, vegetables, and spices that had been cooking overnight. Temimah’s ladle broke through the crust, and she served her husband. He pointed at the steaming, generous portion. “My dear wife wants me to get fat!”
Temimah emptied a full ladle in Benjamin’s plate, then in Lemmy’s. Her face, framed by a headdress tied behind, was bright with sweat. “So?” she asked. “How is Sorkeh?”
Everyone looked at Lemmy.
“Sorkeh?” He creased his forehead. “Who’s Sorkeh?”
They laughed, and the rabbi started chanting, “ Sabbath today, Sabbath the sacred day, ” saving Lemmy from further inquiries.
After the meal, while the women were busy in the kitchen, Rabbi Gerster leaned back in his armchair, sipped tea, and quoted from memory: “ The heaven and the earth were completed in all their glory, and on the seventh day God finished the work and blessed the Sabbath. ”
Lemmy listened carefully. Every Sabbath lunch, his father followed the same routine: A quote from the Torah and a trick question.
“Torah and Talmud,” the rabbi intoned, “what’s the difference?”
“Torah is God’s word,” Lemmy answered. “Cast in stone. Talmud, on the other hand, is a compilation of transcribed arguments between Talmudic scholars.”
“I disagree,” Benjamin said. “The sages’ arguments originated from God’s words, which had been passed down the generations by memorizing until the Babylonian exile, when every word was transcribed.” As always, he ran out of breath before he ran out of words.
Rabbi Gerster turned to Lemmy. “ Nooo? ”
“How can Talmud be cast in stone? It’s a collection of oral debates about law, rituals, business, science, ethics, animal sacrifices, and everything else.”
“Since when,” Benjamin asked, “does the style determine the substance?”
“Ah!” Rabbi Gerster lifted a finger. “A disagreement between two promising scholars!”
Lemmy noticed his father glance at his watch. Was he also thinking of the woman from yesterday? Would she come to visit?
“Talmud,” the rabbi said, “just like Torah, is divine, and therefore solid and unchangeable. The sages were inspired when they expressed their arguments, channeling, so to speak, God’s own words.”
“But how can we apply fixed rules to a changing world?” Lemmy swayed in the manner of Talmudic scholars. “Torah says not to start a fire during the Sabbath. It made sense when starting a fire was hard work. But today we can flip a light switch with a finger.”
“Good question!” Rabbi Abraham Gerster clapped his hands. “Why keep the rules? And why continue to wear long black coats and black hats even when the summer comes?”
