the desk. He stood in front of the class, looked at the floor, and paced back and forth, as though using up restless energy. He began, “The Ethics of the Fathers teaches ‘aseih lecha rav,’ make for yourself a rabbi. One must always ask a rabbi a shaila, a question. Even if you think you know the answer, there may be intricacies of the law you can’t grasp. Nothing is too obvious or simple for your rav. He wants you to ask. The whole system of halacha, Jewish law, is based on mesorah, the transmission of the chain of tradition. You, women”—he put the emphasis on this word and finally looked up directly at his female charges rather than the floor—“can’t know what a rav does, so always, always”—here he paused in his pacing—“ask your rav a shaila. If you think for yourself, you won’t be connecting to our heritage, only your own thoughts. Never make that mistake. Ask, ask, ask.”
Wendy, stifled by this train of thought, daydreamed back to her favorite college class, Contemporary Civilization, known as CC, her first year at Columbia. She had started college with plans to be a history major, Columbia’s most popular undergraduate field of study, because there were so many outstanding professors, particularly in her domain, American history. History was supposed to be good preparation for law school, which she assumed she’d do because her father, brother, and sister had. Her interests shifted when she took CC with Caroline Van Leeuwen, the religion department’s first female tenured professor. In class, Van Leeuwen often closed her eyes while speaking, as though she were possessed. When the teacher spoke with her eyes closed, she appeared as though in a trance, reciting knowledge gleaned from an otherworldly source. On leaving the classroom, if someone asked Wendy what had been discussed, she might not be able to define it with certainty; yet she knew something revelatory had occurred. What made Van Leeuwen’s classes special wasn’t just seeing the teachers’ eyes closed in a state of apprehension outside the immediate realm of the students’ grasp, but also what she was able to elicit from the students themselves.
Often, at the beginning of class, Professor Van Leeuwen would come in and tell the class that she had been up all night reading the assigned text and listening to jazz. She would stroll to the classroom’s large picture window and gaze out at the statue of Rodin’s The Thinker resting on one of the few small swaths of green on the city campus, waiting for students to respond. These moments of classroom silence were scary. The students were never sure what would come next. As the silence grew more oppressive in the classroom, someone always gave an answer. One day, Wendy spoke first. As she answered a question about the role of art and passion in Plato’s Republic, she felt enchanted, as though there were a magic spell over her, making her more articulate than she had ever thought herself capable of being.
After that class, Wendy was captivated by the power of the question. That’s what she would spend her life doing, she decided in the semester with Van Leeuwen: asking questions. She loved the ways in which questions of religion were concerned with issues of meaning and significance in the world. Her teacher’s passion for her subject was palpable—Van Leeuwen, in late middle age, stayed up all night reading. Yet, with the rumors of the teacher’s instability and frequent breakdowns leading to the nickname Van Loonen, her path seemed risky. Wendy doubted she could live as her teacher did, swayed by passion for books and music, putting the minutiae of daily life aside to be fully absorbed with ideas. Yet, Wendy loved to watch someone living in this exalted state of rapt absorption with her own ideas and those of her students. Over the next two years, Wendy declared herself an American religion major, instead of an American history major. She wanted to sprinkle magical thoughts into the minds of her future students, she decided as she filled out the graduate school applications. She wanted to both live in this world and connect to things beyond it, larger than it; the study of religion seemed like a good choice.
Wendy had to elbow herself to suppress a laugh, squeezed as she was in the tight chairs made for smaller people, as she thought of how different the classroom at Bayit Ne’eman was from the one in Philosophy Hall. These students too were drawn by ideas. They wanted to have an idea of their path in life, to be less lost, to connect with others, to find love, and to be a more ideal version of the self they had been. But the ways in which the questions were asked and the types of answers given in the two places were so divergent: one encouraging active thought and the other active obedience. But still, she knew, feeling small in the junior high-sized writing desks, that she was as needy and lost as the students around her. Though she had chosen a more intellectual approach to solving life’s problems, she was still facing the same ones the others in the class, she understood, as she continued to half listen to Rabbi Pavlov.
A few weeks later, she went back to Bayit Ne’eman. She had an appointment with the dean of the school, Rabbi Dr. Lifter, who specialized in getting even the most difficult of returnees to rise.
Wendy dressed in a below-the-elbow-length T-shirt this time, with the same modestly long wrap-around skirt she’d worn before, and found Rabbi Lifter’s office on the second floor. She had made an appointment with a secretary and was on time, but there was no one there. She wasn’t sure whether to wait in the office or the hallway, but since the door was open and there were no chairs in the hallway, she entered the office.
She sat on a metal chair with an attached cushion, marking it as a grade above the absolute cheapest metal chair. She looked at the desk in front of her, overflowing with papers and with more stacks of paper behind it. To her side were bookcases whose contents were mostly English, a bit of Hebrew in a title sprinkled in. One case had a sign: “Rabbi Lifter’s lending library. Sign out and return.” A diploma, she thought from a rabbinical institution—though it was all in Hebrew or Yiddish so she wasn’t sure—and a degree from Brooklyn College were hung on the walls along with an inspirational poster of the kind found in office supply stores. It was a garishly colored picture of a caterpillar and a butterfly, all neon pink lettering and green background, cheerily accompanied by the caption “Keep rising!”
Wendy waited, and after a minute took out some of her work from ulpan to review so she wouldn’t be wasting time. Twenty-five minutes after their scheduled appointment, a man came in, saw her, and said, “Can I help you?”
She rose to be polite and began to hold out her hand to shake his before stopping herself midair and lowering her arm. “I’m Wendy Goldberg, I had a two o’clock appointment with you. I wanted to talk about some research I’m doing.”
“Research? None of our classes require research. We want you out doing works of hesed, kindness, in your spare time. Not research.”
“I’m not a student here,” she said.
He strode in, seated himself behind his desk, and asked, “Who are you then?”
“I’m a graduate student at Princeton. I’m writing a dissertation about American baalei teshuvah and I’d like to speak with some of the students here. I sent you a letter about my project.”
He waved his hand in dismissal. “Absolutely not. We are here to mold souls. No interference.”
“I won’t interfere. Perhaps I can help. I want to understand how baalei teshuvah tell their stories, how they put their journeys into words. You might be able to use my work in your promotional material. Or your fundraising?”
“Hmm.”
“Did you get the letter from my advisor at Hebrew University, Avner Zakh? He asks your permission to let me do this work?”
“Avner Zakh? How do I know that name?”
“He told me you are related through marriage. A nephew of his, I believe, is married to a niece of yours. The last name is different, but I think his nephew is Shmuel?”
The rabbi stretched out his arms in front of him. “Yes, of course. The hassana was before Pesach;
