distance, you perceived her through binoculars, some quick tweed movement in a field. She looked like someone who could hold liquor. Because she seemed so efficient, she was probably the least credible of the women in the group when she opened her mouth to sing.
Joan Cohen shopped and Elaine Iglauer moved. She was one of those Jersey rovers—it’s a phenomenon I’ve only observed here—who regularly changed houses, trading up or down or even. Changing towns, following the school systems, following the country clubs, on the spoor of the fashionable synagogues. Once, it’s claimed, she actually bought a house because the town it was in was reputed to have a good newspaper. In the years we’d lived in Lud, Elaine Iglauer had lived in seven houses in six different towns and, word had it, was now on the trail of another.
But all these women— good old Shelley!—were on one trail or other, hot pursuit a way of life. Joan Cohen’s shopping sprees, Elaine Iglauer’s house hunting, Naomi Shore’s and Rose Pickler’s romantic involvements, even, I suppose, Fanny’s and Miriam’s divorces and subsequent marriages, and their flattering, collective forays into my (as the rabbi of opportunity) customs—oh, oh, how they stormed my fort!—and secrets—the question of sugar, the mystery of milk. The dietary proprieties and pieties. For openers, for conversational spur-of-the-moment ploys—a fishing expedition.
What, fishing myself, I might have told them!
That Lord-of-Kit-and-Kaboodle set Eve up, that He was never any equal opportunity Creator, that He disdains women—He doesn’t like the way they smell, as a matter of fact, and that’s why He makes such a big deal out of the mikvah, the ritual bath they’re supposed to cleanse themselves in after their menses—and why He never took a Goddess; that He isn’t even very interested if you want to know the truth, and never came on to one as a shower of gold or swan or any white bull either, and that the only books in the Bible named for women, Ruth’s and Esther’s, are—what?—ten lousy pages. That He’s this man’s-man God; that that’s why He gave them periods in the first place and relented only after He invented hot flashes and then gave them those instead; that as far as He was concerned they could stay in the tent barefoot and pregnant forever at the back of the bus, and that that’s why he made them beautiful, snappy (looking at Joan Cohen) dressers, good (glancing at Miriam Perloff) at real estate, interested (tucking my thumbs into my suspenders and taking all of them in at once) in the big questions. That this was why I had seen my Connie cry but never heard her whistle.
But this is what I thought, not what I would ever tell them. I’m only the Rabbi of Lud. You go along to get along.
Telling them nothing and settling instead for the cheap—my God, how difficult it is to have power, to be, I mean, however adjunct, however peripherally, in the glamorous way—some idol of the amateur, a rabbi, any insider—thrill-a-minutes of any on-site, backstage reality. Giving them instead, Shelley’s susceptible ladies, eyewitness, hands-on experience.
“Oh, Con nie,” raising the window in the rec room where they’d been rehearsing, I called out sweetly, “ Con nie darling.” She was out front, risking the funeral corteges, which were the street’s only traffic, rather than play in our backyard that looked out on Lud’s biggest cemetery, gravestones floating on the level, becalmed surface of its unleavened earth like buoys. She was biting her nails, mauling her fingers with her mouth, drifting from station wagon to station wagon, aimless as a kid with a collection can at a red light.
“Connie,” I called, “shouldn’t we be doing Stan Bloom now? Come inside, sweetheart, and we’ll get to him while we’re both still fresh.” As I’d promised Al Harry, I’d been praying for Stan Bloom’s blood count, getting up Stan’s prayers with my
Joan Cohen shopped and Elaine Iglauer moved. She was one of those Jersey rovers—it’s a phenomenon I’ve only observed here—who regularly changed houses, trading up or down or even. Changing towns, following the school systems, following the country clubs, on the spoor of the fashionable synagogues. Once, it’s claimed, she actually bought a house because the town it was in was reputed to have a good newspaper. In the years we’d lived in Lud, Elaine Iglauer had lived in seven houses in six different towns and, word had it, was now on the trail of another.
But all these women— good old Shelley!—were on one trail or other, hot pursuit a way of life. Joan Cohen’s shopping sprees, Elaine Iglauer’s house hunting, Naomi Shore’s and Rose Pickler’s romantic involvements, even, I suppose, Fanny’s and Miriam’s divorces and subsequent marriages, and their flattering, collective forays into my (as the rabbi of opportunity) customs—oh, oh, how they stormed my fort!—and secrets—the question of sugar, the mystery of milk. The dietary proprieties and pieties. For openers, for conversational spur-of-the-moment ploys—a fishing expedition.
What, fishing myself, I might have told them!
That Lord-of-Kit-and-Kaboodle set Eve up, that He was never any equal opportunity Creator, that He disdains women—He doesn’t like the way they smell, as a matter of fact, and that’s why He makes such a big deal out of the mikvah, the ritual bath they’re supposed to cleanse themselves in after their menses—and why He never took a Goddess; that He isn’t even very interested if you want to know the truth, and never came on to one as a shower of gold or swan or any white bull either, and that the only books in the Bible named for women, Ruth’s and Esther’s, are—what?—ten lousy pages. That He’s this man’s-man God; that that’s why He gave them periods in the first place and relented only after He invented hot flashes and then gave them those instead; that as far as He was concerned they could stay in the tent barefoot and pregnant forever at the back of the bus, and that that’s why he made them beautiful, snappy (looking at Joan Cohen) dressers, good (glancing at Miriam Perloff) at real estate, interested (tucking my thumbs into my suspenders and taking all of them in at once) in the big questions. That this was why I had seen my Connie cry but never heard her whistle.
But this is what I thought, not what I would ever tell them. I’m only the Rabbi of Lud. You go along to get along.
Telling them nothing and settling instead for the cheap—my God, how difficult it is to have power, to be, I mean, however adjunct, however peripherally, in the glamorous way—some idol of the amateur, a rabbi, any insider—thrill-a-minutes of any on-site, backstage reality. Giving them instead, Shelley’s susceptible ladies, eyewitness, hands-on experience.
“Oh, Con nie,” raising the window in the rec room where they’d been rehearsing, I called out sweetly, “ Con nie darling.” She was out front, risking the funeral corteges, which were the street’s only traffic, rather than play in our backyard that looked out on Lud’s biggest cemetery, gravestones floating on the level, becalmed surface of its unleavened earth like buoys. She was biting her nails, mauling her fingers with her mouth, drifting from station wagon to station wagon, aimless as a kid with a collection can at a red light.
“Connie,” I called, “shouldn’t we be doing Stan Bloom now? Come inside, sweetheart, and we’ll get to him while we’re both still fresh.” As I’d promised Al Harry, I’d been praying for Stan Bloom’s blood count, getting up Stan’s prayers with my
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