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 dentists for parents? Did you never get candy? Get your teeth cleaned constantly?”
Donny laughed. “Yes and yes. But they . . . they do love me, even if they were hard to take as a kid . . . or now. The worst horror I brought on them was suggesting I might leave school because I loved working as a line cook in a restaurant, something they considered working class.”
“Celebrity chefs can be a pretty big deal these days.”
“Not good enough for the Doctors Zeligson. So they sent me here for a summer to a program on historic preservation of buildings and objects, because they thought contact with physical objects was what I should do, something that involved learning but also the world of the physical. One weekend the program set up an optional visit to a yeshiva, to let us experience different aspects of the country. I went and just felt . . . at home; it was my place, so I went back there, and then I wanted to stay at the end of the summer. Last summer, so I’ve been here a year now. Hashem’s doing.”
She wanted to ask him how he was so sure, but didn’t want to pick a fight. So she stayed silent, hoping he wouldn’t ask her whether she too believed Hashem was looking out for her.
“How did you get here?”
She decided to just keep it simple. “Shani’s cousin is my friend and classmate in graduate school. My friend told me her family had an apartment for rent. I took it, so Shani and Asher invited me over for my first Shabbat. It was nice but . . .” Wendy paused and decided to just be candid, “I don’t know, I felt kind of like an outsider there, awkward.”
“Me too!” Wendy’s formerly laconic companion seemed more excited by this than by anything else all night. “I mean, if you want to have guests, you need to ask them about themselves, welcome them. I was never asked one question!”
Wendy concurred. “That’s what was bothering me. It was just kind of nice polite general conversation but no one talked to me! I couldn’t figure out why I felt out of place.”
“Hey, they fed us; we shouldn’t be criticizing our hosts,” he said evenly.
“Maybe not, but it is fun.” She grinned at him, wondering if she had said something to offend his sense of what was gossipy speech, lashon hara, and what was not.
“True,” he said, and smiled back.
She was surprised he would knowingly go against doing what he thought he was supposed to. Maybe, as Lamdan had said, it wasn’t so simple: those who believed still did have their human moments of frailty and betrayal. She continued, “No offense, but I really hated that turban Shani was wearing. I felt bad for her because she kept trying to keep it on her head; her fiddling with it made me feel off kilter, you know? White women and turbans just do not work—you know, like white women and dreadlocks?” Wendy didn’t know why she had to be so catty about the turban, except that it did seem way too big for Shani’s head, and ready to topple off at any provocation. The other married woman there that evening was wearing a crocheted maroon hat with silver embroidered flowers and buttons to give it panache.
To Wendy’s surprise, her companion laughed. “I’ll have to remember that: white women—no turbans. Important fashion memo.” They walked in silence for a few more moments. Then he asked her, “So what are you doing this year?”
“Like you, my parents don’t approve of my path either.” She looked over at him and he smiled at her to encourage her to continue. “I’m working on a PhD in American religion.”
“That sounds hard. But wait, if it’s American, why are you in Israel?”
“I’m looking at Americans who come here and become more religious.”
“Oh, like me.”
Wendy had no response.
He added, “It’s okay. It’s good that you’re interested. You should definitely talk to the guys at my yeshiva. There are lots like me, people who just didn’t quite fit in with our families and their expectations.”
“Yeah?” She changed the subject, “You didn’t tell me how you knew Shani and Asher.”
“I don’t. There is some connection through relatives, Asher’s great uncle and aunt, maybe, who live in Portland and are patients of my parents. When they were coming to Israel for the wedding, my parents said they had a son here. Asher got my number from them and invited me. I don’t even know his relatives, and he doesn’t really either since he grew up mostly here.”
“So why did you come tonight?”