FOR THE SINS WE HAVE COMMITTED BEFORE YOU THROUGH HARD-HEARTEDNESS

Overture

September. The season for requesting and granting forgiveness, for getting into a forgiving mood, if you celebrate the Jewish New Year and wish for a blessed one. The ritual is sourced in Yoma 8:9: “For the sins between man and God, the day of atonement effects atonement, but for the sins between man and his fellow, the day of atonement will effect atonement only if he has appeased his fellow.” Meaning you cannot expect God to forgive you unless you have requested and received forgiveness from those you have wronged, and forgiven those who have hurt you.

In both Christian and Jewish doctrine, confession is required for true repentance. The forms and frequency differ. Modern Jewish confession is a private matter: There is no priestly Aharonite mediator involved in the ritual. Sinners beseech God’s forgiveness individually, in silent prayer. Jewish confession is also an annual rather than weekly ritual. Though the daily silent prayer includes two notes of breast beating, the extended or long confession known as the al chet (translation: On Sins) appears only in the Yom Kippur service, but on that day, as if to make up for its rarity, it is recited ten times.

1. For the sins we have committed before You through hard-heartedness

I stopped participating in this ritual probably by the end of middle school, certainly by the time I was in high school, when the schoolgirl intrigue of who asked whom, exposing behind-the-scene misbehavior within and ­outside of schoolgirl cliques, was no longer so interesting. My New Year’s calls evolved, became more holiday greeting than request for forgiveness. By the time I was in my twenties, I avoided the ritualized conventions of the form altogether, even or especially in the pre-sundown call to my parents. The problem? My so-called off-the-straight-path life was, if you asked my parents, my worst sin—I had abandoned their teachings—but I had no intention of changing it, which is to say I was not truly repentant. Without repentance and a plan for correction, the request for forgiveness is a dishonest one, therefore not participating presented itself as the best, the only solution.

Delaying the pre-holiday call until seconds before sundown, when there was no time left for close questioning, allowed me to avoid questions about where I was attending services to hear the plaintive call of the shofar, and at whose house I was celebrating the new year with its recitations and honey-dipping rituals. I had by then lost patience with the disruptions of the weekly Shabbos and frequent holy days, and did little to mark and celebrate them. To avoid fabricating more elaborate plans, adding lies to misdeeds, though the white lies might soothe, I waited until there was just enough time for an exchange of blessings and nothing more, no discussion.

2. For the sins which we have committed before You under duress or willingly

I was delaying as usual one year when the phone rang, and though I let it ring four times, the caller remained undiscouraged. I picked up with dread, but the voice at the other end was unfamiliar, not family. Even after she introduced herself, I was slow to understand that this was a Heller girl calling, but not Kayla Saryl Heller, the girl I went to school with; the voice at the other end was her younger sister, Frume Chana, whom I hardly knew.

She was calling, she explained, as if this were the most reasonable thing on earth, to ask forgiveness. She had heard bad things said about me (this falls under the category of the ubiquitous sin of loshon horo) and had not stopped up her ears, in part because she’d agreed with what was said. It was true, she said, that I had dressed inappropriately for an orthodox Jewish wedding, in sleeves that didn’t quite cover my elbows, in a neckline that revealed my collar bones, in a dress that had not quite covered my knees. Also my hair wasn’t covered, in other words, it was my fault that these things were said, my fault that she had heard them—here I wondered how this call for forgiveness had transformed itself into a lecture and exercise in blaming—and now, since it was erev Rosh Hashono, she required forgiveness.

This comes off as bad comedy now; at the time, I was stunned, speechless. She repeated her request and I knew what came next: according to the Rambam, if the injured party has difficulty granting forgiveness, you must make three attempts, and remind him that he must forgive in order to be forgiven.

I found my tongue before she got around to asking a third time. How did you get my unlisted phone number? I asked.

Oh, she said, I asked your mother.

This enraged me. I imagined my mother’s pain on hearing about this—she had a horror of being on people’s tongues, as she put it. And did you explain what it was you were calling me for? I asked.

No, just that I had something to discuss.

Are you aware that in your attempt to purify your own soul, you’ve hurt mine?

Yes, she said, and I must ask you to forgive this too.

3. For the sins we have committed before You through speech

Did I have a choice not to forgive? I considered disconnecting, cutting off a transaction I had not initiated, had no interest in, no stake. I was twenty-three, not yet troubled about receiving forgiveness or blessings, not in those days anyway. I considered myself the injured party on all counts, suffering from my particular circumstances, my set of parents, their insular community and onerous religion with its 316 dos and don’ts that left no time for living. I also wasn’t holding my breath, wasn’t expecting apologies from those who had brought me into this restrictive world. I understood life as a struggle to make the most of myself, whatever that might mean, and along the way figure out how to have some fun, pursue pleasure of all kinds, aesthetic and otherwise.

And what were the rabbis thinking, I wondered. I could mouth the words—I forgive you—but actually feeling it was another thing, difficult in the best of times, impossible for me then. The theurgic strategy of saying it in order to make it come true did not work for me; I was if anything more resentful of having to say what I definitely did not feel.

By now we all know that the beneficiary of forgiveness is the one who forgives. In Buddhism, forgiving is a way of restoring equilibrium, of finding emotional quiet, wholesomeness; Hinduism’s Mahabharata recommends forgiveness for supreme peace; in Jainism forgiveness is a characteristic of the dharma. As you would expect, studies show that people who forgive are happier and healthier than those who hold onto grudges: stress levels drop, breathing becomes easier, cardiovascular and nervous system functions improve. It shouldn’t come as a surprise that there is an International Forgiveness Institute that promotes forgiving as a life skill, and that, yes, it offers a step program, a process model of forgiveness. The number of steps? Twenty. Clearly, forgiving isn’t easy or quick.

4. For the sins which we have committed before You inadvertently

The wedding was Hindy Klein’s, the last girl in my high school class to marry. She had waited patiently as each of her older brothers took his time finding the right girl, and by the time they all had, she was in her midtwenties, working on Third Avenue in NYC, some blocks south of where I wrote ad copy. We met for lunch one day, an awkward lunch because for one thing, she ate kosher and I didn’t. I don’t recall now whether she purchased a salad or merely drank coffee, just that eating in front of her made me uncomfortable. We were meeting at one of those sad New York City fountain plazas sandwiched between buildings, those inadequate oases corporations offer in return for taking up too much space, for diminishing our right to air, sky, and light. I had picked up something, the usual tuna or egg salad sandwich probably, but having to eat it in front of Hindy, who was virtuously not eating, made my lunch seem positively hedonistic.

So it wasn’t exactly a fun lunch date, still we tried again, scheduled another noon meeting in which we said nothing about what really mattered, about what we were experiencing, and everything about nothing. We were both lonely, both overguarded in our separate ways, and for different reasons, and the lunches, no great pleasure on either side, soon stopped. Then Hindy got engaged and sent me an invitation to her wedding. Though I was no longer in and of the community, I agreed to attend.

I was happy for her, wanted to celebrate with her. Marriage and family were what she wanted and needed. She’d waited a long time, more than deserved what amounted to, in that community, as the start of significant adult life.

This was 1985, a year of weddings. Hindy’s was my third invitation of that year, and it became clear I would need a dress, or dresses.

5. And for the sins which we have committed before You with ­immorality

Bloomingdale’s launched a Breakfast at Tiffany show, with LBDs in every window, and since I had never owned one, and had weddings to dress for, Bev, who worked in Jewelry and Accessories, offered me her employee discount if I found a dress I liked. She also offered to advise in her limited half-hour lunch. In those days—I was in my twenties—what I wore and how I looked made all the difference. In a chic LBD, I hoped I could be happier, momentarily at least, and I looked forward to this shopping spree.

I tried on several. The too-expensive Rebecca Moses in black grosgrain was of course the favorite. Bev gave it a double thumbs up. After tormenting myself over the cost and not quite getting the go-ahead from X, who by then was refusing to offer opinions on clothes and risk his mother’s disapproval—she considered knees ugly—I gave the OK and Bev purchased it for me.

6. For the sins which we have committed before You with lewdness

It was gathered at the waist and tapered at the hemline just above the knee, a pegged silhouette. With its fitted bodice, square neckline and slim sleeves that stopped at my elbows, it seemed to call for little gloves. I purchased a pair in white netting and also white fishnet tights which I would wear with either my patent leather ballerina flats or heels, depending on mood.

Bev helped with my hair, hot-ironing soft waves into it. It was back to shoulder length finally—grown in from my senior-year pixie cut that X had hated—and side parted, and I clipped a sparkly barrette into it, looked in the mirror and liked what I saw.

Relying on my sense of what looked good, that was my first mistake. I was living and working in New York City, and my eyes were accustomed to the fashions and trends on city streets that season. In other words what I liked best was not filtered through Hasidic conventions and rules of modesty. I had forgotten somehow that in a community that was always at least five years behind on every trend, looking fashionably of the moment was a mistake. I wanted to impress, needed to prove that there was life post-Hasidism, that pursuing modern life had not turned me into some form of alien, but in the end, that is precisely what I did prove.

7. For the sins which we have committed before You intentionally or unintentionally

I don’t have the most forgiving temperament, and as sins go, this gossip was relatively harmless, still it seems fair to ask whether there are some sins that cannot, should not be forgiven.

For instance, my Golden Guide to Birds is out of date: the warbler is now up here, several hundred miles farther north than its one-time habitat. The Baltimore oriole too. Our local bat population was decimated by a white nose fungus. And given the strange and stranger weather we are having, given the four-day power outage for Hurricane Sandy, and the extensive damage of the September snowstorm, when the leaves were still on the trees, the violent hailstorm of the August before, and the haywire politics of this country, we can no longer rely on the update and maintenance of infrastructure, on the kinds of services our taxes pay for. This fall, we are all installing generators, my neighbors and I. Not so long ago, this mindset to fend for ourselves, protect our own, would have smacked of the bunker mentality of paranoid apocalyptics prone to endgame scenarios. In 2013, after centuries of human abuse, nature is pushing back, putting the squeeze on us, and though half the population is in denial about the effects of global warming, worse is coming. Who will forgive us this?

Today, November 8th, more bad news appears on my screen: As a result of hunting, poaching, and land development, the western black rhino of Africa is officially extinct. Is this forgivable?

What about violence against defenseless children? How is the death by internal bleeding of an eight-year-old Yemeni girl sold as a bride to an older man forgivable? What about the terrible rape and murder of the young physiotherapy student in India? The acid-throwing and general misogyny in Muslim culture? And so as not to condemn traditional religious culture only: what of the misogyny in American politics, in corporate culture, in the media and publishing, in a nation that likes to think of itself as evolved?

The many sexual abuse scandals that have emerged in the last decade, in the church, in American sports, on college campuses, and too often also in private homes raise the same question: Is there a level of misconduct that must remain unforgivable?

Closer to home: What about the recent headline-making case of the Hasidic therapist hired by school authorities, who molested his patient over the course of ten years? Even closer: Consider the case of Israel Weingarten.

8. For the sins which we have committed before You with evil inclination

In 2011, after years of postponements and delays, a Hasidic father of eight, charged with sexual abuse, including transporting a minor (his eldest daughter) across international and state lines with the intention of carrying on sexually, was found guilty and incarcerated for thirty years. The federal trial was controversial and tortuous, with children and brothers testifying for and against the perpetrator. The federal judge on the case was quoted saying that this crime, its particular brand of evil, would haunt him to his grave.

Details of the case are all over the Internet, but even if I didn’t know the name of this criminal, wasn’t familiar with his peculiar personality and manipulative style, his unsophisticated bald attempts at mind control of the victim, her siblings, his wife, even his own lawyers, would identify him. He is the all too memorable eighteen-year-old who lived in our house for a year, was given full access to my younger brother, spoken of as a potential husband for my eldest sister, until, when our parents returned from a three-week stay in Buenos Aires, my sister and I informed them that this young man, this Israel Weingarten, my father’s cousin, was a creep. He had taken our brother’s temperature rectally several times a day, we reported, had tried to interfere in our lives, offering unsolicited advice on my hair and the shape of my eyebrows, my clothes, and more. In a community that keeps boys and girls apart, such interests and behavior are indeed ­shocking.

9. For the sins which we have committed before You under duress or willingly

Our mother didn’t need persuading; she had never liked having Weingarten in her home and she started refusing to serve him meals. When our father offered to share his own, she threatened to hold back all family meals. Under pressure, he finally relented and Weingarten went back to Brooklyn.

10. For the sins which we have committed before You by false denial and lying

During the trial, when the facts emerged and the community could no longer pretend that this evil hadn’t been allowed to fester—the girl’s desperate complaints to relatives, teachers, and neighbors were dismissed while the father’s defamatory statements against his own daughter, calling her a whore, were given credence—my father wondered aloud whether he shouldn’t do something for the poor wife, our mother’s niece, who through no fault of her own had landed in this particular hell. He and my mother had served as the matchmakers, had recommended a child molester and sex offender to my mother’s niece. My youngest sister, who was too young to remember Weingarten, shrugged: It’s not your fault, she said. How could you know?

But, oh, he did know, would have known if only he’d wanted to. Tradition and familial feelings got in the way of truth. Perpetuation of the patriarchy got in the way of the truth. Despite what we said, despite all signs to the contrary, because it was what he wanted to believe, my father convinced himself that what Weingarten needed was a wife, someone to satisfy his sexual urges, and he encouraged my mother to recommend his cousin to her blameless niece, the daughter of her own sister.

Whoever brings together two people in matrimony, goes the Midrash he likes to quote, creates worlds, partakes in the work of a Creator. The unfortunate wife of this pederast, my mother’s niece, and her daughter, the victim, are more likely to think of this match as a sacrifice, as death rather than creation. If they knew the facts, knew what my father had known, would they forgive him?

11. For the sins which we have committed before You in business dealings

The first match my parents made was between a distant cousin of my mother and a young man from Manchester, England, who was still at yeshiva though he was already into his twenties, which is to say he’d been passed over as first choice, didn’t make second or third cut—local fathers clearly didn’t want him as a son in law—and he was in danger of becoming a loner, unfit for family life. The girl’s handicap was poverty; an orphan with no one to fend for her, past nineteen already. Important as it is in this socioreligious culture not to remain single into your twenties, especially if you are female, especially if you have no other enhancements, such as money or beauty, her situation was considered dire and she said yes to the strange young man from Manchester.

12. For the sins which we have committed before You in passing judgment

A recurring Saturday night scene of my parents and this unhappy couple persists as an image in my mind, four adults stirring sugar cubes into their tea, their spoons clinking against the glass, their tearing eyes also in their glasses, avoiding looking at each other. We weren’t allowed into the dining room where they sat, but somehow we knew, the way children do, that there was trouble in this marriage, that they were taking turns airing their grievances, that my parents would advise, working to make peace, avoid divorce, the breakup of a family of three, later five, then eight, though you might well ask, wouldn’t it be better to end such unhappiness sooner rather than later, with fewer miserable lives?

13. For the sins which we have committed before You by tale bearing

And who, I worried, would advise our parents, our mother especially, whose deep unhappiness scared me, whose regular tantrums made my younger siblings sob. We fully expected her to carry through on her daily threat, to one day pack her bags, get on a plane to Jerusalem, and never look back. By the time my sister and I were in our teens, the threat had hovered long enough, we finally wanted it to happen, if only to get it over with and get on with life. We planned to serve as better mothers to our younger siblings, and we were quite certain we could manage that even with our busy school schedules and after school activities. What we didn’t plan for was a young child’s need for the familiar, even if it is a miserable familiarity. When our parents were away for three weeks and we had an opportunity to prove ourselves, we took the kids skating and bowling, planned picnics, prepared dinners (pancakes!) our mother would never have called dinner. A week or so into our style of mothering, the little ones stared into their plates and cried. The more change we brought into their lives, the more they missed their mother.

14. For the sins which we have committed before You by a confused heart

I wonder now what she was thinking, my mother rather than my father, because he never acknowledges that there were problems anywhere, especially problems between them. My mother, however, knew her own marital miseries full well, recounted them often enough, so that we, her children, couldn’t help being aware of my father’s flaws. When late in her life we attempted to recall these unhappy years for her, she shrugged as if they had never much mattered, and proclaimed her love for our father. When I persisted, she acknowledged that there were difficult years, but that she would change nothing. She pointed to her achievements, her creations: nine healthy children and more than fifty beautiful grandchildren. She was satisfied with her life’s work, even if the struggle was not always a happy one.

She wondered about my work, my novels, whether they would bring as much satisfaction, a basic question comparing our acts of creation, hers biological, mine imagined, her literal humans versus my figurative ones, which is to say actual versus fictional life.

Figurative and fictional creations don’t impress an Old Testament mind. My father reads the stories of Genesis literally, as factual history with the authority of God as author. About my work, written with my woman’s mind, he echoes the male point of view in Virginia Woolf’s To the Lighthouse, Charles Tansley’s “woman can’t write, can’t read, can’t paint.”

15. For the sins which we have committed before You by obduracy

After the trial, Weingarten’s younger brother released a statement that revealed the awful truth that his brother had molested him too when they were young, that their parents had known of it, that as a correction, his father had read them the biblical admonition against lying with one’s brother.

Reading this statement, I finally understood why this eighteen-year-old was living in our home rather than at yeshiva. Aberrant sexual behavior had gotten him expelled from several schools. Wanting him far from her own younger son, his mother had recommended him to my father, sent him to our home, where there were nine of us, young boys and girls, potential victims. Is this forgivable?

16. For the sins which we have committed before You with impudence

Fortunately for us, my sister and I were strong personalities, and plenty rebellious. We liked being in charge when our parents were away, and because Weingarten threatened our autonomy, we were as mean to him as only teenage girls can be. We shut him out. We ridiculed his comments, his claims to higher powers—he said he knew hidden things about each of us. We were not impressed. We parodied his way of leaning against the door with his legs crossed, offering unasked for observations. We performed caricature imitations of him leaning and picking his nose. Fortunately. We resisted all his attempts at flattery, allowing him nothing, no control; but we couldn’t protect our little brother who was alone in his company all day, while we were at school. It was our middle sister, Sarah, young enough to be perceived as safely unknowing, who reported the frequent rectal temperature taking, but only after this brother started acting out, killing our goldfish one day, destroying our wall hangings another. His demand for attention worked.

What is wrong with you? we shouted, when we got home from school and discovered his murderous mischief.

Brave Sarah told us.

17. For the sins which we have committed before You openly or secretly

X attended Hindy’s wedding with me. Lean and handsome in his dark wavy hair, dark suit, and conservative tie, he was completely out of place in what was a sea of black hats. He didn’t mind, considered it an opportunity to observe the natives, he said. This wedding would serve as material for the improv routines he enjoyed performing at family dinners, for the benefit of his mother, a huge fan of Johnny Carson. We looked at each other—find me when you’re ready, he said—and parted, he toward the men’s section, I toward the women’s.

18. For the sins which we have committed before You with knowledge and with deceit

I was noticed as soon as I walked in and, not knowing what else to do, went with social form and made my way to the line up, friends and relatives waiting to wish the bride the best, the sweetest mazel in this new chapter of her life. I kept my head up, eyes straight ahead, and still I saw and felt the whispering and head shaking. What had I been thinking, I wondered? Why had I come?

I knew almost everyone in that hall.

There was Tzirel Erps, née Stauber, the teacher who had made my life miserable from the day I laid eyes on her, or she laid eyes on me, when I arrived, the new girl in the class, for first period of third grade, a long hour of Chumash, a subject new to me, having come from a school that didn’t teach original texts to girls.

Sensitivity was not one of Tzirel’s attributes. I was new to the group, clearly vulnerable, overtaken by fear and trembling, and yet, as if to shame me, as if to expose whatever deficiencies of character and soul she perceived, she called on me to read and interpret the second passage of the day. I stood shakily—standing when called on was a requirement at the school I’d come from—knocking over my desk, then scrambled to catch things, pick them up, which infuriated her. The girls tittered. Miss Stauber gave me the evil eye, and keeping her sharpened point on my name in her roll book, inscribed demerit after demerit, day in, day out, of that interminable school year. I couldn’t get anything right after that first unfortunate day, and she ran out of space for demerits in the first month, had to paste long strips of paper beside my name to accommodate the demerits I would accumulate the rest of that year, all in first period of third grade, reading the stories of Genesis, of fathers that favored one son, of the jealous brother, of the many wives, and of the barely named daughters. We were a class of sixteen girls taught by a fresh-out-of-teacher’s-seminary twenty-something-year-old female, all of us insignificant daughters studying the ways of these biblical men.

And there was once chubby Leah W, the girl who sweet-talked her way into everything for nothing. Even when I was determined not to give way, I gave way. She copied my homework, got answers to exam questions, got a taste of whatever sweets I had, and in return gave only her fickle attention, a fleeting moment in which she was a friend, maybe even a best friend, but only for minutes at a time. Her open sunny face, her girlish silliness, and a sure sense of belonging and love made her beloved. That her father funded the entire school budget singlehandedly didn’t hurt. She never got in trouble, was never caught for cheating even when everyone knew she was cheating. And when the time came, she was honored as valedictorian at our graduation ceremony.

There she was, a slimmed down version of her, at Hindy Klein’s wedding. She made her way toward me, accompanied by the others. Do-gooder Charna Malke Rosenberg, looking very much the virtuous woman she had promised to become. Tall, once awkward Blimie Beyer, a facsimile of her handsome mother. Shy Sheindle Malke too. They all resembled their mothers, I thought.

Of course it was Leah W who spoke, while, to their credit, the others hung back. She had a question for me, she said, this tendentious introduction serving somehow as a way of giving herself permission to ask it. She was wondering, she said, how it was possible for someone who had grown up with her, with all of them, she said, arcing her arm to include the wide wide world the way she had in school plays and school charades and show and tells. How is it possible, she asked, that someone who attended the same school we did, studied the same books, turned out so differently?

With her hands on her waist, she waited, expecting an answer, as if the question were not merely an obtuse rhetorical one.

What had initiated so much change? The reasons were too complex, too many to enumerate while standing on one foot, as that ancient Talmudic sage Hillel would say. Or there were no reasons. Shit happens. Spontaneous combustion. Or not spontaneous. Standing there on one leg, I wanted to give her some credit for the change. Remember your clever games of hide and seek? When I finally came out of hiding you and your clique had disappeared. I walked the long mile home alone, understanding what it meant to be an unwanted outsider, coming to terms with being that outsider, finally preferring it.

I looked at her, debated a range of responses—my imagination, was one; the question is not why I have changed, but why you have not, another—none good enough, and in the end, said nothing. Why does anyone change? Family and circumstance surely had something to with it. Grade school experience, perhaps, too. And definitely reading, which showed me the larger world, allowed me to imagine myself in it. And life: I moved away from home, went to college, moved to New York City, started writing, creating worlds with words, while she had stayed home, married, started a family, the biological alternative.

I discovered, standing there, metaphorically on one foot, that I had outgrown the need to respond, that no answer qualified, only questions. I discovered, standing there, that I had done nothing wrong, didn’t need forgiving.

The accusations were true: I had left the fold, had brought my parents a measure of anguish. I had changed while they, my family, my classmates, the community, had stayed the same. However it was also true that I could do nothing differently, could not repent. I had pursued a full life, was still pursuing independent, difficult life. Even now, today, I continue to be the daughter who left and has not yet returned, while my father’s arms remain open and hopeful, ready to receive and forgive.

None of what I did came easy. Unlike the prodigal son, I didn’t receive my father’s blessing, nor my half (or ninth) of the inheritance. For now, we are still in this story, in the middle of messy life, and it remains unclear how it will end.

19. For the sins which we have committed before You with frivolity

My father and I haven’t spoken in three years. Though he has left messages, requesting a call back, I do not call back. In September, I harvested the annual five ripe quince, inscribed a card with New Year wishes, boxed and mailed them priority, in time for the harvest festival compote. A week later, my sister texted to say the quince made our father happy. Two weeks later, my box, the same box but with signs of wear, returned via priority mail, though there was no particular holiday on the calendar, no urgency. Inside was my card, the one I’d sent, but with my father’s writing appended beneath mine, wrapped around mine, wishing me my fortune.

20. For the sins which we have committed before You by foolish talk

In his first years alone as widower, whenever my father called, I picked up the phone, cradled the receiver while attempting to continue what I was doing, turning peppers on the grill, folding laundry. His timing was never great, but it’s also true that there is hardly ever a good time for long telephone conversations. This is the era of texting, but my father does not text. He is also not much interested in an exchange of pleasantries, about the weather for example. His conversation is targeted, about purpose, and meaning, specifically about the significance of my life and work.

He likes starting with the rhetorical “Nu, what will be,” to which I would say, if I were being candid, death. We all die no matter what we’ve eaten, how we’ve lived, how much we’ve sinned. He would agree: death comes soon enough, but in the meantime we must work to redeem the world, gather the broken shards and overcome the condition of our exile. We must transcend our mere mortal present lives into timelessness, which is eternal.

I could make the argument that my work too gathers shards, makes meaning of narrative fragments, as the Kabbalists did. Repetition and adumbration create echo effects, and “narrative echo effect,” writes Charles Baxter, “is an almost subvocal denial of historical progression.” Avoiding chronology, I too attempt an escape into timelessness, into transcendence.

I don’t make this argument. My understanding of the Kabbalah is too secular for a religious mind. I try other diversions. I get him on the subject of world events and politics, and find myself listening to a rant about the murderous Arab character, that innate Arab fault. I cite Jewish history as evidence of Jewish murderousness, which my father doesn’t accept, faulting my knowledge of the history. In another conversation he insists that the first Bush, as he calls W’s father, left the job undone, though all signs indicate that the second Iraq war was a fatal error. No argument could persuade him otherwise.

When he called and I was on my way out, had no time to talk, he wondered what I was doing with my life. Teaching non-Jewish children, he said, what’s the point of that? And my books, he went on, are no good, can’t be because no woman could understand, never mind write about, mysticism. My life, he believes, is without meaning and purpose, and he suggests I leave it behind, leave my partner of twenty years, my writing life, my academic position, and move in with him.

After enough of these conversations, I started avoiding them. When his 845 exchange comes up on my caller ID, I let the machine take it. One day, expecting a call, I picked up without looking, heard my father’s slow European hallooo, and quickly disconnected. I went on with my day, my life, and realized it was easier, better even not to talk, not let him say these things to me.

21. For the sins which we have committed before You by scoffing

When our mother died, my siblings determined to keep our father well by keeping him busy. My brothers arranged for daily study sessions, my sisters planned for rotating weekend guests, so that there would always be children and grandchildren at the Shabbos table. During the week, my youngest sister, who lives in the same building, keeps the refrigerator stocked and provides daily hot meals. To help with his physical well being, my brothers called on me: would I visit and get him on something of an exercise plan. His doctor said daily walking was essential.

I scheduled my visit for a Friday afternoon, when he takes time out from study in order to prepare for the Sabbath. The weather was good and an afternoon walk in Viola Park seemed just the thing. In nature, I hoped to remind him of the early founders of Hasidism, men of the Romantic era, for whom nature had served as inspiration. We could walk and talk. The fresh air and company would make it a pleasant experience, one I hoped he’d want to repeat, make part of his daily routine. I planned to persuade my older brother, who also could use the exercise, to walk with him. They would all benefit from a daily walk, if only I got them started, got them in the habit.

On arrival that Friday, I visited my sister first, a great pleasure. She called downstairs to tell our father to prepare himself for a walk in the park.

I have too much to do, he said. The candles, the table. It is erev Shabbos, he said, sounding like our harried mother in her good days. Tell her to come down and we’ll do them together. We’ll talk.

It’s true, Yenty said, he takes those jobs very seriously, more than when Mameh was after him to do them. He’s become better at them. He remembers to talk to each grandchild, buys snacks for them every Friday, which Mameh used to do.

Downstairs, he was spreading the starched white cloth on the dining room table. I helped smooth the folds and stretch the familiar protective plastic over it, a practical necessity with children at the table. With a soft cloth, he polished the silver tray, then brought the handsome heavy eight-stick candelabra out of the china closet, and the protective cups for the candles from the drawer. Using a metal pick, he pulled the remaining wax out of each cup, before fitting a fresh white candle snug in it. His hands moved with knowledge, they knew this weekly task, and with urgency: the Sabbath was coming, there were things to do before sundown.

The urgency was new to him. Yenty was right: He had embraced our mother’s need for timeliness, performed efficiently because someone had to. All her life, his slowness in all things had driven her into a frenzy; I found myself imagining what she would say if she could see him so diligently at work, and not at the last minute, as in the old days, but early, with hours till sundown. Yetst hut ehr zikh Dervekt.

He had always liked speculating in real estate, and with the Mayerowitz house next door new on the market, his interest was reengaged. He suggested I apply for a mortgage and go in with him on the purchase, though I had no interest in owning a home in the area, never mind a home next door to my father. It’s a good investment, he urged, as if either of us had money for such investments. But a lack of funds had never slowed his dreams. The idea of a family compound appealed to him, and here was a house that would add to what he’d already built.

I brought up my visit’s purpose, the walk in Viola Park.

I’m waiting for a call back from the bank, he said, to find out how much of a loan they can offer.

When did they say they would call? I asked.

In a few days.

In the meantime, I said, you could get your exercise.

It’s nicer, he said, to sit here at the table and talk. To visit.

We can talk as we walk, I said.

The self-discipline that daily study and ascetic life required did not help for physical exercise. He had excuses, the same ones used the world over. Walking was hard for him. It was too warm outside. His legs were heavy. He wanted the talk without the walk. I stood to go.

Stay for Shabbos, he said. Perhaps we can take a walk Shabbos afternoon. You can wear one of your mother’s dresses.

22. For the sins we have committed before You by disrespect for parents or teachers

I cut into the box with my mat knife and with my usual distaste for my father’s gifts, the years of boxes filled with unwanted books. But this gift, it turned out, was different, was news. The contents of this box:

• ten wrinkled little apples; their wrinkling and the short white strings still attached informed me that they had been hanging as ornaments, suspended from the sukkah ceiling these past weeks;
• a small container of the sugary marmalade made from quince, apple, and citron;
• and inexplicably, as if an afterthought, a child’s pamphlet of holiday prayers and songs.

The card that accompanied these items was my card, recycled, as was the box itself and the packing material, with the odd addition of a small brown empty rectangular carton that must have been at hand, cluttering the table.

Cost of shipping: $10. A lot for a man known for frugality, for his general resistance to opening his wallet.

23. For the sins we have committed before You by deceiving a fellow man

Consider the exchange: The fresh harvest of quince, a rarified if not exotic fruit, to help celebrate the harvest festival, offered to a man who celebrates the holiday with spiritual urgency and joy. The quince requires some mild overnight frosts to ripen, therefore the timing of the harvest makes a difference in this gift’s viability, which is to say the planning and care is built into the giving. I select the best of the fruit on the tree, the plumpest and most free of blemishes, some with a leaf or two still attached, wrap them in pretty tissue paper, so that they are as attractive as a gift of seasonal fruit from Harry and David.

In contrast, my father’s indistinct, wrinkled little apples with their odor of sanctification, their service in the Sukkah, came out of a discount bag from the supermarket. If they were edible on purchase, they were beyond that by the time they arrived, but cut up and cooked into a compote or baked into a pie they might impart—if you are a believer, that is—a touch of the ineffable, the sacred. But, I am not a believer. I am also not much of a baker.

The marmalade, a homemade concoction of sugary fruits, is used as a relish, served with stewed meats. On the recycled card, my father noted that it was made by my sister Sarah. Homely in its ziplock container and wrapped tight in plastic wrap, it wasn’t exactly appetizing.

The pamphlet was another homemade job: printed on cheap paper, for use at holiday meals, with their potential for spills and crumbs.

And the card, my card recycled, with my father’s hasty handwriting wrapping around mine, running into and over the embossed decorative script of my name without hesitation.

24. For the sins we have committed before You by using coercion

The apples, the marmalade, the pamphlet of songs, the card, the box and packing material, the shards I must piece together to find meaning. In its outer form, as a box on the kitchen table, where it lands with the mail newly arrived from the post office, the box as gift echoes the many boxes that came before it (see “Deep Throat: A cultural initiation”); unlike its predecessors, the contents of this box are perishable. This makes a difference. This makes it an echo of the quince rather than of the unwanted books. But it is an echo that does not quite rhyme; it’s a partial rhyme that seems to call for closer reading.

It happens that our local post office serves also as a book trading community center. When I picked up my mail one day late September, I noticed an old copy of Tin House magazine, leafed through it briefly, saw an essay titled “The Fall of Quince,” and on a whim, took the 2005 issue home to read.

Driving the two Edenic country miles home past the shaggy white Icelandic ponies at the English Farm, and the muddy black Morgans of A Horse-Drawn Affair, toward my own cultivated garden, the words floated in my subconscious: Fall of quince, fall of man, Eve’s apple, the Tree of Knowledge. At home, I left the magazine on a side table and didn’t get back to it for a few days.

The essay is by food author Jeff Koehler. He quotes Robert Graves of The White Goddess: “A true apple was not known in Palestine in Biblical times,” therefore the Hebrew tapuakh of the Song of Songs is the Sidonian apple or quince. The golden apple from the garden of Hesperides, Aphrodite’s gift from Paris, was probably also the quince. “A relative to the apple and pear, especially resembling the latter in a lumpy, oversized way ... they ripen late autumn, turning from green to lemony gold, covered with a fine pubescent down.” Though it is known as the golden apple, “Golden Delicious and similar-colored cultivars were not available then.” It turns out that the Tree of Knowledge is never identified in Genesis as either a quince or apple or other fruit tree. The apple gets its reputation as the fruit that tempts Adam from a 1470 painting by Hugo van der Goes titled The Fall of Man. (Jeff Koehler, “The Fall of Quince”)

I had sent my father the truer first apple, unknowingly. Also without knowledge, he reciprocated with the over-cultivated, blemish-resistant, tasteless twenty-first century cultivar, the Red Delicious, a shade of or variation on the original. “What peaches and what penumbras,” I hear Allen Ginsburg say.

25. For the sins we have committed before You by eating and drinking

Neither the apple nor the quince are members of the seven species of fruit and grain brought back from the land of Canaan as evidence that the destination was indeed the promised land of milk and honey. The closest thing to an apple in this list of seven is the rimon (from the ancient Egyptian rmn) or pomegranate, also known as the Persian apple. The word is from the Latin, Pomum for apple, Granatum for seeds. The multitudinous seeds of the pomegranate qualified it a symbol of fertility and prosperity. In the Kabbalah, access to the pardes rimonim or garden of pomegranates, is a reference to the transcendence or knowledge that comes with the full mystical experience, which of course brings us back full circle to the Tree of Knowledge of the Garden of Eden. Indeed, the pomegranate is credited by some rabbis as the Edenic apple.

The rabbis taught: Four men entered Pardes: Ben Azai, Ben Zoma, Acher (Elisha Ben Abuyah), and Akiba. Ben Azai looked and died, Ben Zoma looked and went mad, Acher destroyed the plants. Only Akiba entered in peace and departed in peace.

This legend, set in the Mishnaic first century CE, is the source of the warnings against Kabbalah scholarship, of its dangers to the layman. Louis Ginzberg writes that mystical writings and ideas are best understood intuitively; although there is nothing particularly male about intuitive capacities, women were excluded from early Kabbalah scholarship. This is to say that my father’s idea that as a woman I don’t have the capacity for the complexity of mysticism does not originate with him.

Acher’s entry into mysticism is the most fascinating of the four journeys, perhaps because the details of his story are shrouded in metaphor. The plants are a reference to foundational Jewish teachings. According to the Aggadah, Acher went for a ride on his horse on the day of rest, rode beyond the proscribed city limits, breaking two bylaws of the Sabbath. In the woods, passing a tree, he snapped off a branch, a more major transgression. Acher, my teachers said, became a heretic, but scholarly sources indicate that his so-called heresy was based in differences between the Sadducees and Pharisees, sects of Jews with varying beliefs. The Sadducees practiced only the written law; the Pharisees accepted both the written and oral traditions. For the secular mind, these splintered groups serve as evidence of a rich tradition, of plurality, but the rabbis were and are still threatened by heterogeneous ideas. They branded him Acher, meaning “the other,” an outsider, and it’s this otherness, his break from tradition, that’s of interest to me.

26. For the sins we have committed before You by a haughty demeanor

My mother branded me “your father’s daughter,” and to an extent she is right: I look like him, but she certainly provided a good portion of who I am. I would credit her with whatever intuitive powers I possess, as well as a general nimbleness of both mind and body that my father has never exhibited. Village wisdom tells us the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree, but it is a fact that apple seeds when planted do not produce fruit true to the original. To replicate an exact cultivar, grafting is necessary. Hence the many shades and variations on the apple, the umbras and penumbras.

Finale

Quince, pomegranate, apple. They are all more or less circular, some with more bumps and lumps than others. Round as they are, they have no ­beginning, middle, or end, but are rather nonending, ongoing, eternal.

Round and complete as they each are, they present a kind of contained self-knowing, the highest knowledge. Their form, like the well-wrought urn, is an unbroken vessel, a whole, rather than the Kabbalistic shards we are advised to gather as long as we are on earth, in exile from the garden.

From this far end of the essay, the shift my father and I enacted, from books to quince and apples, begins to appear as a move from book knowledge (the shards) to something higher and more complete, something more powerful and transcendental (the unbroken vessel). As an offering of the higher kind of knowing he has formerly denied me, a woman, the gift of apples then might serve as his call for forgiveness. Finally. After three such boxes, after the third if not the first attempt, according to the sources, he has to be forgiven.

Which is to say, with this essay, I may have written myself toward forgiving.