in it now, but just wanted to assure herself that she would bolt to get it down as soon as was feasible.
More importantly, Wendy scanned the room, trying to guess where the owner of that voice was located, even though she needed to crane to see the men’s section while seated. She couldn’t discern any likely candidates, but saw a man at the periphery of the men’s section closest to the women; he was pacing and looking over the mehitza, surveying the crowd. He was looking at the women, intently, searching. He looked like he was on military patrol with the preciseness of his gait and the specificity of where he was looking. Wendy looked away; she didn’t want to be a target of his stare. Notes on sexuality and its discontents, she repeated to herself so she wouldn’t forget later as she sat and tried to follow the Hebrew prayers, with Shani pointing to the spot every so often when she became confused.
At the service’s end, Shani smiled and greeted people. Wendy and Amalia hung behind. Shani introduced Wendy to a few women their age as a friend of her cousin, here in Israel to write a dissertation. Some of them asked politely what it was about and Wendy considered how many times she would have to repeat herself, explaining what she was doing in her research and why. She hated the tedium of constantly explaining herself to new people. Could I just be back in Princeton with my grad school buddies, she thought, feeling meager and inadequate for not wanting to retrace her life for new strangers.
The first day of classes at Princeton, after the introductory seminar required for all religious studies graduate students, they adjourned to Café Metro, all eleven of them, to detox after the stress of the first class, worries about the heft and density of the reading, and early anxieties about the final paper. Each one of her cohort had a different background and potential area of research. With this group of people who were so different, she still shared so much: basic values of intellectual inquiry and skepticism, along with respect or reverence for religious phenomena. And all of them, except Matt Lewis, a former crew rower, had been bad at gym in school, like Wendy. Had a basic disconnect from physical skills led them all to academia? With her fellow grad students, she felt so at home, comfortable, and relaxed. As they trained together in graduate school, reading common texts and learning from the same mentors, their modes of discourse and thought became more strongly formed along comparable lines. Could I find a group in Jerusalem to feel at home with this year? she asked herself, feeling alone in the crowded gymnasium, having little in common with most of the people there.
Finally, the group of four left the school where the synagogue met, the happy chatter of people meeting and greeting following them, knots of individuals in threes and fours dispersing in different directions in the Jerusalem evening. As they walked, they heard the Friday night home prayers, Shalom Aleichem and Kiddush, from the windows of different apartments, a chorus of welcoming. But for who or what? Wendy thought. Are they welcoming me here to the country for my first Sabbath? Or greeting only those who are religious at a certain level, an exclusive band of worshippers? Still, Wendy enjoyed these familiar and comforting songs emanating from apartments along their route.
The dinner at Shani and Asher’s apartment was the same mix of comforting and frustrating as Wendy had experienced at Shir Tzion and on the walk home. On the one hand, it was pleasant: delicious dishes that the newlyweds had prepared together kept popping out. First came homemade whole wheat challah with all kinds of Middle Eastern spreads, alongside a wonderful Moroccan salmon with tomato sauce. Accompanying the main course of chicken baked with forty cloves of garlic were a bulgur salad with pine nuts and onions, redolent of some superb seasoning that Wendy couldn’t name, potato kugel, and green salad. There was plenty of wine, and Wendy enjoyed the pleasant tipsiness she got after a few glasses. Her week of moving at an end, it felt good to be able to drink with others and de-stress. Wendy wasn’t a big drinker, but enjoyed booze at parties, to relax, particularly when meeting so many new people. Finally, there were desserts: a variety of cookies and cakes, including what Wendy had brought from the shuk. She hadn’t been to such an elaborate meal since Passover at Grandma Essie’s.
There was pleasant conversation on a variety of topics. The other guests seemed interesting, not what she would have expected from a religious group. They were aware of the latest TV shows, movies, music, pop culture references. She thought they’d be more bookish and serious and less interesting and hip. But there was a moment when Wendy blundered. They were discussing politics, and Asher proclaimed that, now Bibi was in power, since he’d formed the government in June, there wouldn’t be any more terror attacks like those on the number eighteen buses back in February and March. Wendy asked why that should make a difference and what had happened on those buses anyway? Another guest whose name she never caught but whose accent was Canadian, yelled at her, “Why are you coming to this country if you don’t want to really know what’s going on? There have been almost sixty people killed this year, Americans too. You didn’t know about those buses on Rehov Yaffo?”
Shani added, quietly but in a tone that could be heard, “Americans our age. Sara was my friend. You remember her, don’t you?” she said to the group as she tried not to let the others see the tears beginning to form.
Wendy just wanted to fade into the floor, but was rescued by another guest. “Guys, she just got here. When you are in hutz la’aretz, you don’t always know what’s happening in Israel. Give her a chance, would you?” He glared at her Canadian interlocutor. To Wendy, sitting across from him, he said, “Opening your mouth is risky in this country. You see what your innocent question started? But basically Asher’s position is that a tough politician like Bibi won’t let the Arabs get away with these kinds of attacks, that he will stop them. There hasn’t been one since he took office,” the rescuer, Donny, added hopefully.
Asher tried to squelch any ill feeling and changed the subject to give a dvar Torah, saying he had planned to do it later but now was the most appropriate time for it during the meal. The one thing she grasped was that there was a verse about the nature of God being hidden in the weekly portion from the book of Deuteronomy. The word for hidden somehow sounded like the name “Esther”; and the biblical Esther, even without knowing what God’s plan was, was willing to act in a decisive manner. He applied this lesson to some aspect of Israeli politics but she couldn’t follow the names of the politicians and parties. One guy kept making smart aleck remarks in the middle, interrupting Asher good-naturedly. She felt so clearly outside the group when he did this, as she didn’t get any of the jokes.
At the meal’s end, Shani and Asher asked Donny Zeligson, Wendy’s fearless defender, to walk her home so she wouldn’t get lost. He was walking in the same direction to Yeshivat Temimai Nefesh, “the yeshiva for pure souls,” in the Old City and agreed to help get her back to her apartment.
It was strange to feel she needed someone else to give her direction. She didn’t expect she would get lost, really, but there weren’t that many people out on the empty streets to ask directions of, and even if she found someone, that person would need to speak English too. The way wasn’t far, but there were a few turns on the way that had strange angles, perhaps remnants of some older system of navigation, an alternate logic for street layout. She acquiesced to her host’s desire to have her escorted home, feeling vaguely like a teenager, dependent on someone else for a ride from one place to another, incapable of her own mobility.
Wendy and Donny walked side by side on silent streets. Wendy felt obligated out of politeness to converse, though she didn’t know what to say; he had spoken little during the dinner other than assisting her. “What brought you here?” she asked.
He kept walking. She didn’t know whether to repeat herself or just accept that he wasn’t interested in talking to her when he began to speak. “Hashem. I came as part of my undergrad work in Oregon. I was a lousy student there.” He gave a sad smile and tossed his shaggy bangs out of his eyes. “I was, I still am, a pretty big disappointment to my parents. They’re dentists, in practice together. All they want is for me to join them.”
“Two
