Would I lie to you? Would a face like this lie to you, do I look like some sort of criminal? You come in on a hospital gurney after, after what exactly? I’m sorry you’ll have to speak louder, my hearing… Gunshot wound, oye! Anyway, you come in after barely surviving a bullet to the chest and you think I’d lie to you? At a time like this? Whaddaya take me for? Look I’ve got the perfect heart for you over here. Tell the guys to bring you over, come! Come! I’m telling you this heart is a steal! If you didn’t want it I’d take it myself… 100%! Look, I’ve got kids your age and if any of them needed a new one, I’d yank this off the lot so fast your head would spin. I see you’re looking at the left ventricle; let me tell you, I’ve never seen ventricles like on this model...
Have compassion, H’ for wretched am I, heal me Gd for terrified are my very bones.
What? Oh, that!?! Just a scratch! The woman who traded it in was a peach, a peach of a woman! She told me she got that nick when some no good… And excuse my French, “son of a bitch” left her. Just one day “Boom” out of the blue! But don’t worry, I had my guys in the back check it out, they looked around and it’s just surface damage, didn’t even touch the frame! I’m telling yah, you’ll never find a heart like this one; runs like new, well cared for. Let me show you some of the features, the right ventri…
I have worn myself out from my groaning, I soak every night my bed with my tears.
Oh, over there? What are you looking at? Oh, that? Don’t worry about it; it’s just normal wear and tear… I’m telling you my guys are good, they stripped it down and re-coated it. You don’t have to worry about the myocardium, it’s just Mesothelial pericardium damage, superficial… Nothin’ to worry about, All the hearts on this lot come with a 10 year/100,000 beat warranty; you have a problem you come back here and I’ll fix you right up. You just come in, we’ll work out the financing and we can have it put in today. You want to keep looking for a bit, talk it over? Fine, I’ll be right here if you have any questions.
Turn away from my, doers of iniquity, Gd has heard my supplication, Gd has heard my plea.
…You know you’re probably right, I’m sure the dumb shmuck had something to do with it, could you imagine having to rebuild you life after something like that? You start trusting, bonding, wearing your heart on your sleeve and BOOM, without warning, without giving her a chance he just left! But you know what, that’s how you know that this is a quality heart, some hearts couldn’t take it, but this heart is built tough. The endothelium is, if you’ll excuse the pun, bulletproof. You’re sitting there with a heart with a hole in it; I’ve seen hearts like yours, hearts gone bad, worn down by fast-food, depression, and anxiety… They can fix ‘em, but they’ll never be the same. But this heart!?! That woman bounced back on this heart, it repaired itself! They were meant to be, bashert! The shock of it! But she just picked herself off the floor with this heart. This is the heart for you. How can I get you into this heart today?
Gd takes my prayers, they will all be embarrassed and confused, they will all be embarrassed and turn away instantly.
I’m sure that schlemiel wishes he didn’t pass up on that lady; and don’t you pass up this once-in-a-lifetime heart like him. I’m telling you, with this heart you’ll go places… Great, tell your friends to push you inside and we’ll work out all the details. Have you up and running in a jiffy.
Labels: divorce, hearts
I don't remember where I first read this but I think credit goes to What Would Phoebe Do?.
I am not a fan of the rightward swing of the Orthodox world in general. I have no problem with piety; but since community standards have moved more into line with written law (read about it), we have shrunken our "big tent". But this week’s NY Magazine story about Satmar and a woman named Gitty isn't only an affront to right wing orthodoxy (if we can call Satmar that), it's a crudely shaped attack on the freedom to not live as a drug addicted hipster. The author of the article seems to take umbrage with the fact that poor Gitty isn't allowed to have custody over her daughter, despite the fact that her life was recently: "hanging out, some on acid, playing Hasidic songs, wrapping each other in prayer shawls, shouting praises of the Baal Shem Tov, and screaming they were the new hippies." The bias is evident in the reporter’s depiction of the court proceedings:
Obviously, this was Yoely’s plan from the start, Gitty said. He knew about the rebels, that Gitty had hung out with them. Gitty’s lawyer, Daniel Schwartz, offered his client only cold comfort. “You fail that test, and you can kiss custody good-bye,” he told her. “You’re sunk.”
If checking to find out if the mother of his child is still a daily drug user is a "plan" then I hope that all fathers "plan" carefully when they are negotiating for custody. This is a simple tale of a marriage gone wrong and a banal custody fight, not the cultish disaster depicted here. She herself doesn't even claim that she was prevented from leaving, held hostage, and all that seems to be preventing her from getting more custody over her daughter is a general lack of stability. It would be impossible for the author to understand the twists and turns of the moderate Orthodox community, much less the trip down the rabbit hole that is Satmar. And is it me or did the author mostly choose pictures of Gitty showing a little leg or cleavage?
But as much as I'm critical of the reportage I have an equal amount of bewilderment at the inner workings of Satmar. When it is clear that a woman is going off of the derech, why aren’t there people who have connections to “middle of the road” orthodox communities; so when someone who chafes against the hard embrace that is Satmar, they can find a place for her there. Surely it’s better for a woman to be shomer mitzvos (but not like the Satmar) than to live in NYC like a shiktza. The other subtext to this sad situation is the ongoing issue of baal teshuvah integration into established communities. Was Gitty’s mother prepared to raise a little girl in her chosen shtetle? Raising frum girls is hard enough when you yourself grew up that way, from what I hear it’s even more difficult when your childhood bears no resemblance to the experiences of your child. Also, at what age was Gitty brought into the Satmar world? What damage did her mother’s remarriage do to Gitty? What support systems are there for those who are in combined families, Gitty didn’t seem to have a positive experience:
“Soon, very possibly, Esther Miriam would become nothing more than an afterthought, the bad memory of her ex-husband’s first, terribly failed marriage. She’d be the older stepsister charged with the care of her younger, favored siblings, a drudge cleaning between the floorboards for weeks before each Passover, someone who saw beautiful rainbows and felt only dread.”
*sigh*
UPDATE: her blog
Labels: Chassidim, divorce, judaism, Satmar
He doesn't hate Israel, he doesn’t. He’s been accused of late of not fulfilling the mitzvah of loving this bowl of sand, Sabras and Arabs… But he doesn’t. What he hated, he realized was what Israel was supposed to be. Finding an apartment, buying furniture, making shabbos and becoming a responsible citizen of Am Israel were all that he’d hoped for, dreamed for, in the years when he hammered and twisted himself into this new self. The patterns that they’d built together, rising with the sun to divide into their separate selves until sundown when they’d reunite as a fractious shared identity, had begun to be the template through which he viewed his life. But the rhythms of that life were far-away music for him, like the sound of a waterfall relentlessly drumming away in the distance, the deep bass vibrating the air in a way that fools you into thinking the rushing water is just around the next bend, near but tantalizingly intangible.
It was hard to believe that there was no way out. That there was no way he could have prevented this from happening; a bit of advice before they’d gone on that last date, some early counseling, or the right combination of words to smooth over a fight seemed like it could have completely changed the course of things for him… But as he sat there in the antiseptic office he was told that since IT had already happened it must have been Gd’s will.
Before IT had even happened everyone knew, the whispered secret passed from woman to woman like wine in a paper bag; intoxicating and delicious at first but nauseating the moment that one compared situations. So when IT was done he remembered thinking, “I suppose there’s no use trying to hide.” But when he emerged from the basement he didn’t want to be seen trying to move on with life, trying to enjoy himself; it seemed fitting to live life like an elegy for what should have been. Each second of time passing was another footstep away from the dream; to not move, secluding himself behind closed doors seemed like a way to stay immobile, to slow the gradual slide… The few things he’d done to keep himself going while he was in the basement had only gotten him dirty looks and cold shoulders. What person wouldn’t glare at this “destroyer of worlds”; his actions, scary in their implications for her own union. He hadn’t heard what they were saying about him, but the silence that enveloped him when he tried to interact with any of the other “friends” he’d had was palpable. And any attempt to bridge the gap just provided fodder for the rumor mill; so he stopped trying, and went back into the basement…
“When good things happened, like when you raced did your coach deserve the credit? Did you?”
He knew that it was a trick question, the old man certainly didn’t believe that he was the first to tell him the punch-line so he surely wasn’t surprised when he answered, “No, Gd.”
“So isn’t it chutzpah to think that you are in control now?”
Eventually the sympathetic eyes began to stand out from the hard stares of the crowd. Besides the feeling of relief, was disappointment that he’d made such a superficial impression in the land of milk and honey… The wheels of his plane seemed to have only touched land long enough to be singed by the hot soil. A few times someone came up to him and said, “I didn’t take sides.” At the time he thought these entreaties to be insincere, it couldn’t be easy to speak to the person that had hurt HER so; but in retrospect maybe it wasn’t Gd given blind obligation that had propelled the words out of their mouths… But he didn’t want to burden them with the responsibility of keeping the mask on their face, or test their loyalty; so when he swung open the door this time he didn’t try to connect to them. And it was easier. He remembered taking a breath, swinging open the door and plunging back into life; his pallor helped, it reminded the multitude that he too had a piece carved out of him. “Eventually,“ he thought as he met a glower eye to eye, “I’ll dance beyond this.” But during his first visit out he needed constant reassurance, “I’m still ok?” He asked, as if he couldn’t check his own body for cuts and scrapes. In one of the dark times when he was alone he realized that the nagging pain wasn’t loss, but the lingering ghost of his dream; disappointment haunting his every moment, every decision…
“If you are alive, then you are loved. If you begin to stumble, begin to falter then you must remember that we are all of us, and the Ribono Shel Olam… Just as you will go ask your corporeal friend for help, how much more so that you should ask “He-That-Created-You” for help.”
“But for some reason he doesn’t want me to be happy, I wish he’d just leave me alone”
“The fact that you are sitting before me is proof that he is sustaining you… But you’ve forgotten the ultimate purpose of good in this world that I taught you.”
“No. It’s a tool for more good; along with all that is bad in the world.”
One day it all changed, he couldn’t remember when or how; just that one day he woke up and it was over. Because one impossible dream had died it gave birth to two new ones; two shiny and bright practical dreams. They may not have been as enticingly vivid as the dead illusion, but they were real, and whole. This realization that ultimately the whole experience was not a world being turned upside down, but rather right side up changed the palette. That’s all this was, a return to normalcy. There are 10,000 people just like them in Israel each year, but this was their catastrophe their own “death in the family”, they were two people that happened to each other. The professionals told him that if IT hadn’t happened they might still be chasing around the same circles, might still be singing two different discordant songs; only this time destroying the ears of another generation. He knew that he didn’t want to leave another generation living with the ghost of what should have been, to spend a moment at 5, 10, 16 or 32 in a shadow…
“Should I start work, or continue in America?”
“Learn learn, isn’t it a schus to give money so other people may learn Torah!?! Go, learn…” He swayed for a moment with his eyes closed then nodded, “Go learn in Yiddish.”
“Do you have a shidduch?” He asked.
“Uhm, no… IT happened.”
More swaying, then he pinched his cheek and nodded his head while he intoned, “A good shidduch.”
Labels: divorce
