If I Forget Thee

The rabbi’s house. Cold white stone with thousands of years of history, waiting for the imprints of the present to smooth it into the sand that blows in the windows with the five o’clock gusts. Cold stones to cool daytime skin hot from the relentless sun. Hostility is this place. It remains God’s center and yet it is godless  at its core.

Every thought creases her face and overwhelming loneliness crowds out her smile. Each day they come to her, asking for tzedaka. “You have so much and I have nothing.” And she knows they’re all charlatans, begging the foreigners who aren’t yet immune to their ruses and ultimately bringing home hundreds to families who are morally poor. She doesn’t give and they curse her, sending her imaginary ailments, harsh pregnancies, destructive children, poverty, cruelty of loss and the violent horrors of brutality. She holds her ears when she hears these words because even knowing they hold no power, they still make her shudder.

“Kein ayin hara” she whispers to herself, clutching the hand-shaped amulet she wears to ward off the evil eye. It’s become her mantra, while holding the silver hamsa—the hand of God–because surely if she says it enough times, nothing bad will happen. Nothing bad could ever happen. Not here, not in this holiest of cities, not with so many great men who dedicate their lives to piety, to purity, to holiness. Not here, in this holiest of places, where women pride themselves on being the daughters of Zion, the beautiful women whose spiritual cleanliness nourished a starving nation through the darkest of nights, the shapely women who brought water and white shrouds and buried their dead with their  strong hands, with songs of prayer upon their soft lips.

The sky pinkens, a few lost clouds purple and deepen to black as time creeps up to evening. Echoes of the muezzin calling his people for the maghrib prayers of early evening wind like curious fingers through the alleys of Jerusalem’s Old City.  She walks faster now, with a purpose, her feet slipping on stones polished from thousands of years of history.

“As-salaam aleikem.” Men hurriedly rush past each other, their voices bouncing off the ancient stonework.

“Wa-aleikem salaam.” They turn into the mosque, engage in the required ablutions, washing hands, feet, faces and go to pray for peace.

She slips past the entrance, down, down David Street through the shuk and past the Arab men selling colorful dresses, hookahs and copper and golden ornaments. She turns right and hurries through narrow and narrower places as if shooting through the birth canal to be born to the Jewish quarter, that mystical place of the ancients who sacrificed all for the present. Under arches decorated with flowers, past throngs of tourists, she breaks into a run. The air is thick with the heady smell of overcooked beans, meat, stale garbage… but she breathes deeply, wanting to inhale all of Jerusalem for herself, to savor it for those moments when it may be out of her reach.

To step in now would be to save her. Except that the moment is gone before the thought is realized and it will forever be that way. These bits of time will replay themselves for years to come and the mischievous desert winds will occasionally scatter the order or the location but each of these moments will end the same way. The moment is always the same: she’s going, she’s decided. She gets into the car. She goes into the house. She sits next to him in the cab. The permutations are endless. The outcome never varies.

This time, she enters the house on the right. He has invited her under the pretext of helping her gain spiritual clarity. She trusts him and why not? He is one of the city’s most renowned rabbis.

This time, she enters the car under the pretext that he’ll drop her off after bringing her friend home. She trusts him and why not? His head is covered in a black yarmulke. He is the son of a great dentist.

This time, she enters the cab and he follows under the pretext that it’s cheaper and safer to share a cab in these troubled times. She trusts him and why not? He wears a black hat and earlocks. He is somebody’s husband, father, son.

He is never the same person, nor is she. The instances are almost identical, save for setting and physical situation. They are as constant as the sunrise.

The wind howls. She is in the house. The rabbi’s big-eyed wife, still attractive eleven children later, leads her to the study. She says little and adjusts a gold and black  scarf covering her hair while gathering the children littering the hallway. She walks in to meet him. The door remains slightly ajar. A worn carpet lines the floor. What used to be color has been reduced to shades of gray where dirt and sand have been permanently bound to the fibers of wool.

He begins to speak the speak of the Classic Lure, pulling her to him with his words. He slowly brings his hands up, and like a magician, slowly waves them as if to draw her in to his realm. She sits, mesmerized, hearing only his soothing voice uttering words of the fiery passion of their shared ancestry.

“You are holy. A holy vessel to be filled with light. To be made pure and kept pure.”

She listens intently, eyes fixed on his hands which are slowly twisting, slowly reaching into her soul. She tries to fight it, but time is slowing and the air is heavy. He stands and gestures for her to follow. They climb three flights of dimly lit stone steps leading to the roof. She gathers her cotton skirt to her knees to keep from tripping. Somewhere in the recesses of her mind is a small voice telling her not to follow, that it’s a trap, but the rabbi keeps talking of the sacred and divine and drowns out the warning. So she follows to the top steps, through a door to the fenced-off roof.

“Look.”

She sees the Wall. It is illuminated by floodlights and appears to glow, to rise above its surroundings. The rooftops of Jerusalem stretch out around her, but still, the Wall seems to grow bigger, bigger until it completely crowds out everything else.

He is behind her now as she leans on the railing surrounding the rooftop deck.

“Truly you are of those blessed. You belong here. This is your heavenly home on earth. Stay.” To these words he barely lends voice but she can hear them as they lick the lobes of her ears and trail down to the front of her neck, under her blouse, over her young breasts and wend their way into her heart.

She shivers in the cool air of the night and he moves closer, brushing against her. Softly, softly he places his liver-spotted hands on her waist and gently presses his large body against her, his breath musty and hot on the back of her neck. Whispering, he begins to mumble, incoherently at first and then more clearly.

“Shma Yisroel, Adonai Eloheynu, Adonai echad.” He slides his fingers under her shirt and into her bra, kneading her breasts the way his wife kneads the dough for their Sabbath challah. “Hear O Israel. The Lord is God. The Lord is One.”

Time has stopped. His hands move down along her body lifting the very skirt she wears for reasons of modesty. He continues offering blessings to God and she tenses but can’t move until he turns her around and pulls her down onto a lounge chair. Her black hair tumbles into her face. Terrified, she does not brush it away. The moon is huge and red and straddling her is the rabbi, his great weight on her, forcing her submission. She is trapped between a rabbi and his God to whom he utters thanks every morning for not having made him a woman.

It is too late to step in. She is paralyzed with fear and confusion and is rendered powerless in the hands of God and his advocate, who sits above her, fumbling with his belt and then the button on his pants. It is too late to help her. Screaming is futile; she has lost her voice.

Within the space of thirty minutes and eternity, it is over.

She is broken but cannot cry out. His fingers have probed every secret place, the proof of his covenant with God has entered and destroyed her, the lips that have pronounced holy words have defiled her in the name of piety.

The winds died down hours ago and somewhere, time once again stands still in Jerusalem. She remains and becomes victimized again and again through time as the white stones wear down into billions of grains of sand.

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