The Devil in Jerusalem (27 page)

“Rebbetzin, I'll ask you again: Where is your husband?” Morris asked, this time like the bad cop. His face had also transformed from its usual mild paternalism to something stern and almost frightening, which was not to be trifled with. Bina watched him, amazed.

“I don't know.… I can't be sure,” Ruth answered slowly, with complacent self-confidence.

Bina exploded. “We know all about what you and your husband and your friends did to those helpless children! How they were tortured, beaten, starved, burnt. Menchie is in a coma. You are going to be held as an accessory in attempted murder! Your children will lose both their parents!”

“You know all about what happened? Who told you? Menchie? The baby told you?” she mocked, turning away from Morris and looking derisively into Bina's face. She turned back to Morris. “Yes, my husband is gone. He knew they would make up lies about him, those possessed devils! You can't believe the words of those children! They are evil! Liars! I know them much better than you! I lived with them for months! But, thank God, you're too late. You'll never find my saintly husband!” Her look was triumphant.

Morris dialed furiously. “Get Border Control at Ben-Gurion. Check to see if a Menachem Shem Tov has left the country in the past few days. Don't let him through!”

A few minutes later, his phone rang. He listened briefly then hung up. “It's too late. He's gone.”

 

24

Their lives were good, so very good. They had a beautiful house in the Old City and no money worries. Shlomie spent all his time learning Torah, or so he said. She never questioned him on exactly what that meant, content that he had found something useful to do that kept him happy. She knew that he was learning with Menachem Shem Tov, first at his yeshiva near the shuk, and then when that mysteriously shut down, at Shem Tov's home in Beit Shemesh.

Shlomie was more than content. He was thrilled to have been admitted to his holy teacher's inner circle, feeling immensely flattered and uplifted when he was invited along to the group's raucous prayer sessions in dark forests at midnight, visits to saints' graves in Meron and Safed, and intimate sessions around Shem Tov's own table, where their holy teacher shared stories of his latest miraculous exploits, which his Hassidim confirmed, swearing they had witnessed these things with their own eyes. And when Shem Tov remarked that government bureaucrats had sinfully shut off his funding, Shlomie happily wrote him a monthly check to help further his holy teachings, never asking what he did with the money. It was tithe money, a tenth of their income, which all came from the interest that accumulated on his wife's inheritance less what they had paid for the house. They still had plenty left over, he told himself.

Daniella didn't mind that Shlomie tithed their income even though he wasn't working. Tithe money was considered the extra amount God gave you, so it never actually belonged to you anyway. You had to donate it to a worthy cause. But once she actually did say to Shlomie, “Shouldn't we spread our charity money around, not just give it all to one person?”

To which Shlomie replied, “We give it where it will do the most good. To support a tzadik increases peace in the world,” he assured her.

She was pregnant again. Toward the late months of her sixth pregnancy, when she was feeling especially weary and heavy, Daniella began to begrudge the amount of time Shlomie was spending away from home. “You always used to at least help me with getting them to bed and with the shopping. Now you don't do anything! Do you know what it's like to lean over a bathtub with a pregnant belly and give children a bath one after the other? The children are forgetting they have a father.”

“Reb Shem Tov says that in a truly pious household, there is a division of labor. The man learns and the woman cares for her household. A man has more important things to do than soaping down a washcloth or picking out tomatoes in the shuk,” he told her loftily in his newfound voice of religious authority.

What could she answer without sounding like a woman who had lost her moral strength and betrayed her core values? Besides, this was what everyone in their new circle of friends believed, so who was she to question it? But as much as she tried to find joy in doing God's will and solace in lofty spiritual thoughts, little by little the tiny drops of bitterness and resentment against her husband seeped through all her defenses.

The baby was born around Passover. Shlomie was overjoyed with his new son, wanting to name him Menachem. But Daniella put her foot down. It was the first child born since her grandmother had passed away, and she wanted the child named for her. She was surprised that usually mild mannered Shlomie was adamant. She was even more profoundly surprised when she found herself fighting back viciously.

“Who has done more for you—and for your Reb Menachem, for that matter—than my granny? You are both leeching off her money. Off
my
money. I'm giving my son a name, and if I were you, I wouldn't fight me on this one, Shlomie! You're not as indispensable as you like to think.”

He was shocked, chagrined, insulted. But he shut up about the name.

In the end, they called the baby Eliahu—the closest they could find to Elizabeth. Everyone marveled at how much the baby looked like his father. “Just like Yitzchak looked exactly like Abraham, so no one could doubt he was his son, even after Sarah had been forced to live with Abimelech,” people would say, shaking their heads at the amazing likeness.

Shem Tov, on whom they bestowed the honor of acting as the baby's
sandak
, was also struck by the striking resemblance between the baby and Shlomie. And in his heart, an irrational hatred for the child was planted.

“Now he's offended,” Shlomie hissed to Daniella, shrinking under Shem Tov's cold stare as they announced the baby's name.

She shrugged. “I'm sure he'll get over it in time for you to give him his next big check, Shlomie,” she said dryly.

For all the lovely catering, it was a rather sad event, she thought. Joel and Esther had just had a baby, so they couldn't come. Her father had called at the last minute with regrets to say he had the flu and couldn't make it either. Daniella suspected it wasn't so much his health that was doing poorly as it was his finances. He, and especially his grasping new wife, didn't want to spend the money on airfare and a hotel room. As for Shlomie's parents, they once again begged off. The only time they'd visited their grandchildren in Israel was when Shoshana was born. She couldn't really blame them. Shlomie never called them, didn't remember birthdays or anniversaries. They bored him. As for her mother, they were still not on speaking terms.

She felt sad that she couldn't invite Essie and Yochanon and all their other good friends. All communication with people from Yahalom had ceased after their stealthy departure. As she looked around, she realized that the only people they associated with now were somehow connected to Shem Tov and his yeshiva. She didn't have a single friend of her own.

Not that she had much time for friends. Having six children did not change Shlomie's habits. Despite numerous promises, he was still never home. Daniella's bitterness turned toxic. They often had shouting matches so loud it frightened the children. But she didn't care anymore; she just couldn't cope. The venomous things that were said in these fights over ordinary, everyday disagreements turned so shockingly ugly that even Shlomie began to worry enough to seek marital advice.

Shem Tov listened carefully, his eyes narrowing as he looked over Shlomie Goodman, a man with a beautiful wife, a beautiful home, and no money worries. Impulsively and without calculation, he simply said the first thing that came into his head: “What's wrong with you? Why don't you just stay home in the evenings and help your wife with the children?”

Shlomie was taken aback. He hadn't expected such an answer. He'd expected Shem Tov to side with him, to encourage him to continue dedicating himself to study and prayer. Could such a simple solution really be the answer? he wondered. But like everything else Rav Menachem told him, he felt bound to follow it to the letter, as if it had come from God Himself.

Daniella was at first skeptical, then pleasantly surprised as Shlomie steadfastly stayed home night after night to help her with the children and the house. He bathed them, helped them with their homework, even folded laundry!

And so began a new period of calm in their marriage. The hard feelings she harbored for Shem Tov turned to gratitude when she realized it was his mentoring that had turned her husband around and saved their marriage, allowing her to recall the other wonderful things that he had done for her and her family. “We were right to make him our rebbe,” she told Shlomie one night, to his delight. The reconciliation soon led to another pregnancy. Both of them reveled in their newfound happiness, considering it a reward from God at their efforts at achieving domestic harmony.

Finally, they had achieved all their goals, Daniella and Shlomie thought, rejoicing. They had found their way to the pinnacle of holiness in the holiest city on earth, the dream of every true believer in the God of Abraham. Not only that, they had also been blessed to have found a mentor who would lead them through whatever difficulties and hard decisions they would face for the rest of their days! He would make sure they never strayed off the righteous path, that they never took a wrong turn or faltered, earning punishments. They, unlike most people, would have someone holding their hands who had direct access to the glorious ways of the Divine. He would ensure that their children had the best education possible so that they, too, could live the holiest and most blessed life possible on earth.

Soon, Menachem Shem Tov and his Hassidim were spending two or three evenings a week in the Goodman home, welcome guests of their grateful and generous hosts. Shem Tov had never been in such a luxurious home. While some of his followers, like Kuni Batlan, also came from well-to-do families, no one he knew had this kind of money. Often, he would pick up crystal bowls, turning them over to see how they refracted the light, or run his fingers over engraved silver goblets and delicate silver place settings. But before long he turned his attention to the mistress of this wondrous abode, the source of all its wealth and ease.

Although she was in her thirties, three years older than him, Shem Tov found Daniella Goodman slim, pretty, and young-looking. She wore expensive, handmade blond wigs, artful makeup, and modest but expensive and fashionable dresses in jewel colors, which made her seem positively glamorous. He couldn't help comparing her to his own frumpy, overweight, prematurely matronly wife.

Once Ruth Shem Tov, too, had been a lively, pretty girl, a child of parents with considerable means. But early on in their marriage, he had forbidden her to wear makeup or to cover her hair with anything other than a simple scarf. He also saw to it that her dresses were from the proper stores in Meah Shearim and that she didn't spend too much on them.

Truthfully, they didn't have much to spend. Before he was thrown out of the building near the shuk, Menachem Shem Tov's main income had consisted solely of the amounts he got fraudulently from the Ministry of Religious Affairs for padding the enrollment lists at his more or less fictional kollel. Now, he was reduced to managing on the amounts he collected from followers like Shlomie and various other believers as payment for advice or handwritten amulets and blessings. This was sometimes supplemented by money his wife's mother secretly sent them behind her husband's back, which Menachem pretended not to know about, continuing to forbid his wife any contact with her family.

Sometimes, when Shem Tov looked at Ruth, he felt the bile rise up his throat. He felt resentful that he had married a girl from a rich family and yet had been deprived of his due, unlike other, lesser scholars who had all their needs met by their wealthy fathers-in-law. Had this not been promised him? But her father had betrayed his word. For this, it was only right that she suffer. Still, the fact that she looked like the wife of some poor pious drudge, not that of an exalted rebbe and wonder worker, embarrassed him. There were even times he admitted to himself that he had married beneath him, never considering that he might have had something to do with the fact that his pretty, stylish bride no longer dressed attractively and had ballooned from secretly eating sweets, her only respite from her husband's total control.

Fat, slovenly, and browbeaten into submission, Ruth no longer interested him. He needed a woman on his own level, a beautiful, pure, intelligent woman he could mold anew.

Thus, sometimes in the middle of a lecture on purity, holiness, and godliness, Shem Tov secretly raised his eyes, seeking out Daniella Goodman. She sat in the kitchen, her eyes lowered modestly, a rosy touch to her creamy, perfect skin. Why would a woman like that want an idiot like Shlomie for a husband? he often thought, reflecting on the unfairness of life as he looked at Shlomie, his devoted disciple, the man who stood between him and all that was out there, almost within his grasp.

The baby was born in the spring, twelve months after Eliahu, an easy birth and a healthy little boy. This time, there was no argument. They both gratefully agreed to name him Menachem.

Daniella wanted so much for Joel to be at the brit. “Please come, Joel. I want you to be sandak! I miss you so much! I want you to see my home, my children. It's been so long!”

This time, to her happiness, he agreed to come and bring his family.

The brit was held in their home. Menachem was such a dear baby, with beautiful pink skin and lovely blond curls. Everyone commented on his beauty.

“He already looks like a mensch,” the
mohel
agreed.

Shlomie and Daniella smiled at each other. “Our little Menchie,” Shlomie said.

“I'd like Joel to be sandak. I promised him.”

Shlomie turned red. “It would be a terrible insult to Reb Shem Tov!”