two-inch square of inspection cloth, or occasionally an undergarment, which I would place inside my coat pocket and hope to find the dayan in his office on the first try.
“Let’s take a look at this, shall we?” the dayan would say, always too loudly, clearly audible to passersby behind me. At the window, he would hold up the item for examination by sunlight, while I looked away, anxious to be done with it all before the next man came knocking. Would his ruling be “kosher,” or “not kosher”? For those extended seconds, I felt like a patient dreading a physician’s diagnosis. If “not kosher,” I would have to tell Gitty to begin counting her seven days all over again, which she would accept in silence, although her expression of dismay would be hard not to notice.
A woman’s hair is nakedness , says the Talmud, and so, once married, she must never expose any of it. According to the Zohar, the primary text of the kabbalists, this applies even in her own home. During the last of her seven clean days, Gitty would take the set of electric clippers from above our bathroom sink and shear her entire head, leaving only several millimeters of growth, though even I, her husband, would rarely see those; a head-covering was required at all times. Indoors, or for casual visits and quick errands, a turban, green or blue or purple on weekdays and pristine white on the Sabbath. Outdoors, a short wig of synthetic hair covered with a hat—a pillbox during those early years of our marriage, though this would change with the fashions of the times.
After the seven clean days, Gitty would head to the ritual bath at the edge of the village, and return with her face glowing and her manner unusally serene. It was in those hours, between her return and the stroke of midnight, when we would retire for the special mitzvah of that night, that I would feel the first charges of eroticism, and an occasional spark of passion, so very distinct from the primal lust of previous years, though not yet fully recognizable. Over the next weeks, Gitty would be considered clean, and slowly we would get to know each other, though these early progressions felt infinitesimal.
Sometimes, Gitty would withdraw into herself for reasons I could not discern. “Are you upset about something?” I would ask, stiffly, and she would look away and say nothing.
“It is improper to call your wife by her name,” Avremel had warned during one of his sessions, and I was careful to follow his guidance. To get Gitty’s attention, I would clear my throat and say, “Um,” or “You hear?” Among friends, we referred to our wives using only coy and oblique euphemisms. “The household informed me of a wedding next week,” my study partner said, when notifying me of a pending absence. Yitzchok Schwartz was fond of speaking of his yiddene , his “Jewess,” causing heads to turn at such bold language.
“Is there any news yet?” Avremel asked when I ran into him one day outside the study hall. When I told Avremel that there was no news, he fixed me a look with his dark, scolding eyes. “There should be news by now,” he said. “Why is there no news?”
I didn’t know why there was no news, although Avremel came up with a reason soon enough.
“You must be doing it wrong,” he said.
He asked for details, and I gave him the rundown of our routine, parroting the directions I’d been given: We performed the mitzvah every Tuesday and Friday night after midnight, exactly as I’d been taught, always with “holiness and purity” at the forefront of our minds. We said the necessary prayers. We covered the windows with a quilt. We told stories of righteous men. We kissed twice. And then we did it quickly. As if forced by a demon —the vividness of those words proved extraordinarily effective in keeping the act sacred and devoid of pleasure.
Avremel looked confused, and then angry. “If that’s the way you do it, then a slice of noodle kugel is more
“Let’s take a look at this, shall we?” the dayan would say, always too loudly, clearly audible to passersby behind me. At the window, he would hold up the item for examination by sunlight, while I looked away, anxious to be done with it all before the next man came knocking. Would his ruling be “kosher,” or “not kosher”? For those extended seconds, I felt like a patient dreading a physician’s diagnosis. If “not kosher,” I would have to tell Gitty to begin counting her seven days all over again, which she would accept in silence, although her expression of dismay would be hard not to notice.
A woman’s hair is nakedness , says the Talmud, and so, once married, she must never expose any of it. According to the Zohar, the primary text of the kabbalists, this applies even in her own home. During the last of her seven clean days, Gitty would take the set of electric clippers from above our bathroom sink and shear her entire head, leaving only several millimeters of growth, though even I, her husband, would rarely see those; a head-covering was required at all times. Indoors, or for casual visits and quick errands, a turban, green or blue or purple on weekdays and pristine white on the Sabbath. Outdoors, a short wig of synthetic hair covered with a hat—a pillbox during those early years of our marriage, though this would change with the fashions of the times.
After the seven clean days, Gitty would head to the ritual bath at the edge of the village, and return with her face glowing and her manner unusally serene. It was in those hours, between her return and the stroke of midnight, when we would retire for the special mitzvah of that night, that I would feel the first charges of eroticism, and an occasional spark of passion, so very distinct from the primal lust of previous years, though not yet fully recognizable. Over the next weeks, Gitty would be considered clean, and slowly we would get to know each other, though these early progressions felt infinitesimal.
Sometimes, Gitty would withdraw into herself for reasons I could not discern. “Are you upset about something?” I would ask, stiffly, and she would look away and say nothing.
“It is improper to call your wife by her name,” Avremel had warned during one of his sessions, and I was careful to follow his guidance. To get Gitty’s attention, I would clear my throat and say, “Um,” or “You hear?” Among friends, we referred to our wives using only coy and oblique euphemisms. “The household informed me of a wedding next week,” my study partner said, when notifying me of a pending absence. Yitzchok Schwartz was fond of speaking of his yiddene , his “Jewess,” causing heads to turn at such bold language.
“Is there any news yet?” Avremel asked when I ran into him one day outside the study hall. When I told Avremel that there was no news, he fixed me a look with his dark, scolding eyes. “There should be news by now,” he said. “Why is there no news?”
I didn’t know why there was no news, although Avremel came up with a reason soon enough.
“You must be doing it wrong,” he said.
He asked for details, and I gave him the rundown of our routine, parroting the directions I’d been given: We performed the mitzvah every Tuesday and Friday night after midnight, exactly as I’d been taught, always with “holiness and purity” at the forefront of our minds. We said the necessary prayers. We covered the windows with a quilt. We told stories of righteous men. We kissed twice. And then we did it quickly. As if forced by a demon —the vividness of those words proved extraordinarily effective in keeping the act sacred and devoid of pleasure.
Avremel looked confused, and then angry. “If that’s the way you do it, then a slice of noodle kugel is more
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