Acts of Faith (21 page)

“Rabbi Luria, you aren’t Moses on Mount Nebo. This is a promised land that you
can
enter.”

It was the host himself, at his side an elegant blonde in her early forties.

“Come in, Daniel. There’re lots of people I think you’d enjoy meeting. For a start, this is my wife, Nina. You know that silkscreen in my office you admired? She’s the artist.”

Mrs. Beller smiled. “Nice to meet you at last,” she said. “Aaron’s told me so much about you.”

“Thank you,” I replied, wondering what exactly Beller could have said. That I was a mixed-up Jew in the throes of an identity crisis?

Though Mrs. Beller herself was beautiful, I could not keep my glance from wandering past her. There were lots of women here, all exquisite.

“Aaron,” she addressed her husband, “why don’t you see to the punch, while I make the rounds with Danny?”

There were also many distinguished minds in the Bellers’ salon, including a prize-winning poet who kept calling me “man”—perhaps because he’d forgotten my name—while soliciting my opinion on the relative merits of Walt Whitman and Allen Ginsberg.

To my chagrin, I had read neither
Leaves of Grass
nor
Howl.
Once, in a bookstore, my father had picked up the hippie poet’s
Kaddish
and after only a few seconds cast it back as “blasphemous.” I made a mental note to buy both books.

After half a dozen introductions, Nina left me to fend for myself, advising, “Just walk up to anyone and say hello. You’re among friends here.”

I looked around, still feeling insecure, for I had never heard such uninhibited laughter—except perhaps at Purim parties.

Suddenly I felt a tap on my shoulder and heard a breathy female voice.

“Are you some kind of holy person?”

I turned and saw this … creature. She was blond and bare-shouldered in a skin-tight black dress. She was smoking a long, thin cigarette. Her smile was dizzying.

“I don’t understand,” I stammered.

“That’s okay,” she answered. “Actually, it was just an excuse to meet you. But I mean, that cap you’re wearing makes you look just like the pope.”

“Good joke,” I rejoined, assuming she knew full well I was an Orthodox Jew.

Nevertheless, her quip made me self-conscious. As we continued talking, I removed my skullcap as inconspicuously as possible and stuffed it into my pocket.

Yes, I felt guilty … traitorous even. But I rationalized it as a gesture to preserve the good reputation of truly pious Jews. Why should my sins be ascribed to them?

“I’m a rabbinical student,” I explained.

Her eyes widened. “Really? How fascinating! That means you must believe in God.”

“Of course,” I answered.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Do you know you’re probably the only person in this entire room who does?”

Somehow I didn’t think she was being completely facetious. There was a sense of—I don’t know—pagan hedonism about this whole party. And this girl in particular.

“What do
you
do?” I inquired casually.

“Oh, I’m into lots of things,” she replied. “Officially, I’m a graduate student in Art History at NYU. But I have all sorts of projects going. By the way, my name’s Ariel.”

“Do you know your name means ‘Jerusalem’ in the Bible?”

“Really?” she retorted. “I always thought it was the ‘brave spirit’ in Shakespeare’s
Tempest.
”

“I’m sorry, I’ve never read
The Tempest.
”

“That’s okay. I’ve never read the Bible, so that makes us even. Are you really sure about my name?”

“Absolutely,” I replied, feeling comfortable for the first time. “It’s Isaiah twenty-nine, verse one—‘Ariel, the city where David dwelt.’ ”

“That’s fascinating. How much of the Good Book do you know?”

“A bit of it, I guess,” I replied.

“I bet you’re being modest—I bet you know the whole damn thing by heart. You could probably go on a quiz show. I expect you even know what they ate at the Last Supper.”

“Right,” I answered, managing a grin. “It was matzos.”

“You mean those little balls you put in soup?”

“No, the Last Supper was a Passover seder, and that’s when Jews eat only unleavened bread called matzos.”

“Hey, that’s right—Jesus
was
a Jew.”

“But did you know he was also a rabbi?”

“You mean, like you’re going to be?”

“Well, more or less,” I equivocated.

For some reason she was interested in pursuing this line of questioning. “Tell me—do rabbis have to take a vow of chastity?”

I think I blushed. “No,” I replied. “Only priests do.”

“That’s a relief,” she commented. “Don’t you think it’s a little unnatural for people to deny that part of human nature?”

It took only a few more exchanges with this intoxicating blond Lilith to make me realize that the subtext of our conversation was not sexual abstinence but sexual indulgence. Hers … and mine.

At this moment, Nina Beller approached with a tray of assorted tidbits, none of which looked familiar to me.

“Well, I’m glad you two have gotten together,” she smiled, offering the food to Ariel.

“Gosh, Nina,” she enthused, “I’m a sucker for your pâté.”

She took a cracker with her long, graceful fingers. Nina then offered the array to me. I thought I recognized little squares of smoked salmon and was just reaching for
one when Ariel suggested, “Try those, they’re one of my favorites.”

“Which is that?” I asked warily.

She pointed to crescents of cantaloupe wrapped in some kind of unrecognizable meat.

“Actually,” Nina said pointedly, “I think Danny would prefer the egg and olive.”

Here the hostess was considerately steering me in the right direction, yet this woman deliberately tempted me to eat something that was manifestly unkosher.

“Go on,” Ariel urged. “You’ll really like it.”

I had no illusions. This was a flagrant sin with no mitigating circumstances.

I reached for the melon. And—I’m ashamed to admit—my primary worry was not the wrath of Heaven, but the fear that I might gag on it.

At last, I closed my conscience, reached down, and opened my mouth. I swallowed the … item as quickly as I could.

By a supreme mental effort, I succeeded in numbing my taste buds so I would not recall what I had ingested.

“Well?” Ariel asked, grinning.

“You were right. It was very good,” I lied. “What did you call it?”

“Prosciutto,” she answered.

“Oh.” I tried to sound casual. “I must remember that.”

“Prosciutto’s the Italian word for ‘ham,’ ” Nina Beller said and glided off, leaving me in the hands of a woman who was clearly the quintessence of the Evil Inclination. And to whom my senses were completely prisoner.

With new, unblinded vision, I looked at Ariel and imagined I saw the sensual body scarcely hidden beneath her black silk dress.

Nothing was going to keep me from seducing this seductress.

As the party began to break up, I looked at my watch. It was nearly midnight. I had a class at nine the next morning, which meant I had to be up by seven so I could pray.

Yet I wasn’t about to stop this side of Paradise.

“Ariel, it’s been so nice talking to you. Could we continue this conversation somewhere else?”

Some secret part of me hoped she would say no.

“How about my place?” she quickly replied.

It took us about two minutes flat to zoom in Ariel’s Italian sports car to her duplex apartment on the upper floors of an expensively furnished town house just off Central Park West.

On the way, she placed her hand on a part of my anatomy that heretofore had been touched only by my mother, myself, and the
mohel.

That night I ecstatically experienced a second, more protracted ritual of manhood.

As I walked all the way home in the early dawn, I contemplated the number of transgressions I had committed within the past twelve hours.

I’d eaten unkosher food. I’d missed my morning prayers—and since I was planning to sleep, would miss class, showing disrespect to my teachers. And, worst of all, I’d surrendered to the Evil Inclination. I was riddled with sin.

And happier than I had ever been.

D
eborah sat on the steps of her
srif
, breathing the jasmine in the evening air. Inside, her roommates chattered, wrote letters to their parents and boyfriends, while Frank Sinatra was “doobie doobie dooing” on the “Voice of Peace.”

Her gaze was fixed on the main hall, some three hundred yards down the hill, which sloped gently to the edge of the Sea of Galilee.

An unfamiliar male voice shattered her reverie.

“You must be Deborah.”

She turned quickly to see a short, wiry young man standing beside her, the glint of Air Force wings on the shoulders of his khaki shirt.

“I’m sorry if I startled you,” he said in heavily accented English. “But I know the kibbutz is voting on your membership tonight. My father said you’d be nervous, so I came to hold your hand. By the way, I’m Avi, Boaz and Zipporah’s son.”

“Election’s not automatic, you know,” Deborah declared to justify her anxiety.

“Of course I know,” Avi conceded. “I’ll only be a candidate when I finish my tour of duty.”

He added with a smile, “Do you mind if I ask you a personal question?”

“That depends on how ‘personal.’ ”

“Is Ulla still living here?”

Deborah sighed, thinking to herself, Typical Israeli Casanova, then she answered, “You’re in luck. Ulla’s inside. She doesn’t leave till next week.”

“Thanks,” said Avi, as he mounted the steps. “And stop worrying.”

Half an hour later, Deborah could hear chatter and the scrape of chairs from down the hill—noises of a large meeting breaking up.

Moments later Boaz was hauling his heavy frame up the hill, shining his flashlight in the direction of Deborah’s hut. Though badly out of breath, he still managed to blurt out, “Deborah, it’s official! You’re a
chavera.
”

As he hugged her tightly, lifting her off the ground, she thought: At last I really belong somewhere!

To celebrate her new equality, the next day Deborah was assigned to wash pots in the kitchen.

And what pots! They seemed more like aluminum barrels. By the time she and her co-workers had finished the first half-dozen, her right arm felt ready for a sling.

About an hour later, Avi appeared.

“See, I told you there’d be no problem,” he said blithely. “Anyway, I missed breakfast. Can I steal a roll and coffee?”

“ ‘Steal’ if it makes you feel good,” Deborah answered. “It’s all common property, anyway.”

By this time, he had already opened the door of a huge refrigerator and pulled out a chunk of cheese. After pouring himself a cup of coffee, he sauntered back to Deborah.

“You don’t have to work so hard anymore,” he joked. “You’re already in.”

Deborah merely scowled and continued scrubbing.

He leaned against a counter, and as he munched on the cheese, said, “I still don’t understand what made a Jewish-American princess want to become a kibbutznik.”

“Did it ever occur to you that there might be a Jewish-American girl who wasn’t a ‘princess’?”

“Well, I’ve never met one. Aren’t you filthy rich and spoiled? What big business is your papa in?”

“He’s a rabbi—the Silczer Rav if you must know.”

“Really?” said Avi with surprise. “And how does he feel about his daughter working in an unkosher kitchen?”

“Why do you keep asking so many questions about me?” she demanded.

“Because you won’t ask any about me.”

“Okay,” said Deborah, playing along. “Tell me about yourself.”

“Well,” Avi began. “I was born on the kibbutz, I went to school on the kibbutz, and when I finish flying around, I’ll go to university, write a thesis, and then come back to the kibbutz.”

“A thesis on what?” Deborah asked, genuinely intrigued.

“Not on the Talmud—it’s more down to earth. In fact, it’s
under
the earth. I’ll be studying new forms of irrigation.”

“And you’ll really come back to live here?” Deborah asked.

“Unless you lead a movement to reject my application.”

“That’s wonderful,” Deborah said sincerely. “They say lots of the kibbutzniks who go into the Army don’t come back after they’ve seen the glitter of the outside world.”

“Well,” Avi answered, “not all kibbutzim are as nice as Kfar Ha-Sharon.”

“You mean they haven’t got such pretty Swedish volunteers.”

She detected a glint of embarrassment in Avi’s eyes.

“You won’t believe me, Deborah,” he replied. “But they’re a very important aspect of our lives. Men almost never marry women from their own kibbutz. We’re all brought up like brothers and sisters. It seems somehow incestuous.”

“So you exploit the female volunteers as sexual objects.”

He laughed. “It’s funny to hear that feminist bullshit in a place like this. For your information, six volunteers—two of them men—have married kibbutzniks and are living here as
chaverim.
Maybe this summer when the new volunteers come in, you’ll find a handsome Dutchman.”