In Praise of Silence
Moshe Zvi Marvit
Lillian Minsky stared out the window of a small makeshift classroom to look at the advancing clouds. Even though it was not yet noon, the clouds made the sky look darker, and the early winter darkness made Lillian agitated. It was doubly so on this day because the darkness brought the Shabbos, and she still had to find a way home, finish cooking and cleaning, and help prepare the house, all before an early sunset.
The teacher stood in the front of the small New York City classroom making trees of English words, action trunks growing from subject seeds and shooting off predicate branches.
The man is going to the store to buy a ham.
The dog is barking at the cat.
The wife holds the child.
Lillian could not keep still, shifting in her chair, surrounded by other new immigrants learning English. The class was for women under eighteen from middle and eastern Europe, and she looked the oldest in the room. No one questioned it; nothing good came from asking questions or speaking answers. This was the rule that every new immigrant knew. As long as you kept your mouth shut, you could be anything from anywhere. Some days, when leaving the house, her mother would hold one finger vertically across her lips to say good bye and to say say nothing. The moment you spoke you were a Litvak, a Vilniak, a Kulak, an other. And that information would be used against you, to exclude you, and there was no way to recontain it. Lillian liked that no one asked questions, no one talked, because she sat in fear that she’d be found out. She knew that her voice or her words or her opinion or some other detail that she could not control despite her constant state of vigilance would accidentally reveal who she was, what she was doing here.
One of the officials in one of the many offices she had to visit—Naturalization, Public Welfare, Mental Hygiene, Social Hygiene, they all became as one in their administrative demands and oversight—told her about the American reset. She forgot how he described it, and wasn’t really listening closely when he discussed it. But she held onto the concept and repeated the words in her head, where they grew in meaning and importance. She took it to mean that she could be a different person here, that since no one knew her, only the parts of Poland that she brought with her and held out for others to see would be part of her. Otherwise, she could be a new woman, in a new place, and take back the years she had lost.
Liebe left Poland at twenty-four and traveled back in time, arriving at Ellis Island as Lillian at seventeen. The years disappeared on the Atlantic when no one was watching or paying attention. The years were taken from her originally, and she felt no shame in stealing them back on the journey. Liebe didn’t tell anyone; not her mother or father or her sister or brother. She listened closely on the boat when the English speakers spoke to learn the number—seventee, sewenteen, seventeen, seventeen—and repeated it over and over to learn the pronunciation. Before she knew what a word tree was, she planted simple saplings throughout the decks and common spaces of the ship.
I have seventeen breads.
I have seventeen Zlotych.
I have seventeen years.
My name is Lillian and I have seventeen years.
When she announced to the customs official that she—Lillian—had seventeen years, no one corrected her. She looked at each of her family members to see if they had noticed. Her father was deep in thought, either considering the large folder of documents he carried or a scholarly matter, or both, balancing the sacred and profane simultaneously. Her mother stared at her and when Lillian glanced back, she turned to look at Lillian’s siblings. Her younger sister appeared nervous, waiting for her turn to speak to the customs official. Lillian’s brother—the youngest—had been transfixed by the city, unable to gaze away since it was first visible from the boat. Her parents noticed, and they said nothing.
Lillian tried to forget through silence, and though she could hide the facts from herself, she didn’t know how to keep the fears away. Especially fear of the night; specifically, the streets at night. She could no longer remember a time when she loved the dark, but she knew that it used to excite her. She knew that she used to look out at the stars, counting aloud the days when the moon grew and then counting down until it disappeared. She was the oldest child, by a few years, and she spent hours weaving intricate fantastic tales for her younger brother and sister about how the moon watched over each of them. She knew she had played in the streets at night because she could picture all those dark corners beside her father’s yeshiva, near the market, in narrow alleys where she’d hide as a game with her girlfriends. Though she could still picture the places and how her eyes would adjust to the dark, she could no longer recollect the movements, the running, the joy of the night.
Now, thoughts of unpopulated streets, of growing shadows as the sun slowly set, brought only anxiety. The sky was darkening outside the classroom, and though she knew it was only the result of moving grey clouds, knowing the reason did not calm her. It was getting darker and she was getting increasingly nervous. The class was supposed to break at twelve for lunch, but it was running over, already twelve-fifteen and Lillian was trying to control her breathing. She breathed in deeply and then exhaled it all. She realized that the controlled breathing was making a sound that others could hear, and so she tried to do it silently, but focusing on silencing her breath brought on anxiety. She didn’t want anyone to see her panic because then they might ask her a question, and nothing good came of questions. Better to wait until the break and then quietly disappear, with the Shabbos as her standing excuse.
Lillian left the classroom and counted the streets by their number names, when they were numbers, so that she felt she was advancing at her fast pace. Flatbush Avenue, 21st Street, Ocean Avenue, St. Paul’s Place, 18th Avenue, 17th Avenue, the British streets whose names she could never pronounce, and then magically, 10th Street. The walk was long—almost two hours—but each day she only had enough money for either the subway or a bialy, and she still had never ridden the subway. As she rushed home on the long avenues, she thought of her father’s long journey from Pinsk to Radin to see his old teacher, the Chofetz Chaim, on her behalf. She never asked her father to go; in fact, she didn’t want him to go. Lillian had wanted him to stay in Pinsk and do what she asked of him, what she immediately thought was the right thing.
Her father, Rev Moishe Minsky, was the head of the town’s yeshiva, a well-regarded Musar scholar, who countless constantly visited for his advice and wisdom. Some even called him, despite his deep protestations, one of the Tzadikim Nistarim—the thirty-six righteous ones who are concealed among mankind at every period to justify the continued existence of mankind. But when Liebe told him what had happened to her, he didn’t answer with what she thought was both the easy thing and the right thing. He hesitated. He didn’t act immediately, and instead locked himself in his study for days, thinking and studying. When he could not reach a conclusion, he said he would travel to Radin to ask the advice of the Chofetz Chaim, the greatest living rabbi in the entire Pale of Settlement. Liebe asked her father to stay, asked him to do something now, to speak up for her. She explained that she would see the man walking around the town, near the market, beside her father’s yeshiva, all with impunity, as if he had done nothing wrong. There was nowhere for her to hide from him, and it wasn’t right that she should have to hide. Her father explained that it was not so simple as she thought; the man was the town rabbi’s son. And the town rabbi was a great man, from a long lineage of great rabbis, with his son studying to continue the tradition. Confronting him, exposing him, bringing charges before the Beit Din courts, would tear the community apart. The town rabbi was a good man and this would stain his reputation, and even she would have to admit that he did nothing wrong. And what if the Beit Din were to convict the son? What would that do for people’s beliefs in Hashem and the teachings? Or what if they did not convict him? What would that do to their beliefs in truth and justice? Liebe cried as she repeated how she did not deserve any of it either; she was innocent when the rabbi’s son approached her on the street that night. Her father said that he understood and that he didn’t put any blame on her, but he needed guidance before he could do more. He asked that she be patient as he travelled the long road to Radin.
Lillian’s walk to Borough Park always took longer that it should have, because she avoided parks and streets that had public stairways or subway entrances that intersected at blind corners. She kept a detailed map in her head, unlike the sort found in any books, which promised safe passage to all her usual destinations. As she walked toward home now after leaving the classroom, Lillian tried to focus on the street and maintain a level of awareness, but she began thinking of that night’s dinner. She would probably be too late to help cook, but she wondered if her mother was making a cholent, mixing the meat and potatoes, barley, beef and bones, eggs and vegetables into the giant roasting pan to cook slowly and fill the house with a smell that instantly carried her back to Poland. Cholent overwhelmed every other smell and sense, and since it was kept on a low fire throughout the Shabbos in order to avoid the prohibited act of lighting a fire, its smell permeated Lillian’s life for twenty-four hours. Whenever possible, her mother made cholent for Shabbos—it became as important to the welcoming of the holy day as the lighting of the candles.
Thinking about the cholent, Lillian remembered helping her mother cook when her father returned from the Chofetz Chaim in Radin. Liebe had been worried all week, and had wanted to find a way to ask her mother sensitive questions about the lateness of her yom hachodesh and what she should do. In passing, she raised the issue, but she didn’t know if her mother had heard or understood. She let the matter go, hoping instead that news from Radin would provide a divine solution to the mess. So she followed routine and left on the usual day of the month as if to go cleanse herself at the mikvah on the day when her cycle ended, but instead went to the forest on the edge of Pinsk for several hours, where she knew she’d be alone. It was when she first realized that the shadows had started to feel different.
Her father had rushed to make it home before sunset, not wanted to spend Shabbos in a foreign town. He made it home just before sunset. Her mother lit the candles, and the family sat for dinner and discussed the week’s Torah portion, all while Liebe waited for her father to talk about the trip. Her sister and brother debated the differences in the two tellings of the 12 spies sent to Land of Canaan, her sister arguing that the Book of Numbers makes it clear the people sent the spies, her brother arguing that the Book of Deuteronomy made it clear that God sent the spies. They looked to their father to settle the dispute. He responded with a summary of Rashi’s interpretation as compared to the Rambam’s interpretation. Then, his eyes became bright as he talked about the joy in seeing Rev Kagan in Radin, using the rabbi’s name rather than title, after so many years since serving as his student and scribe. He told stories about the work that Rev Kagan was doing as a teacher and a scholar, and posited that he was truly one of the Tzadikim Nistarim—a designation he adamantly rejected for himself.
Liebe sat then and choked on her cholent, as her throat felt unable to open. She had been patient for the weeks her father had been gone, despite accidentally seeing the rabbi’s son on several occasions. The rabbi’s son even had the nerve to wish her a good Shabbos from across the street one day, showing that with the passage of time he was returning to normal. He had gone from avoiding her eyes to a greeting in such a short time. Soon he would be speaking to her again, in public and in private, and all of it felt too much.
Her father was a thoughtful and sensitive man; people would visit with problems and questions and he would gather bits of wisdom from his encyclopedic knowledge of the Talmud to bring ancient teaching to an individual’s modern and unique issues. He would listen for long periods, then retreat to his books and his mind silently, before delivering concise and elegantly composed answers. Visitors left their visits with clear direction delivered by a great rabbi, who had weighed all considerations, balancing the equities, and delivering pronouncements with certitude. They would tell her that she was lucky to have such a tzadik as a father, a man of great learning and wisdom. She could not understand why in her case he exhibited no apparent urgency.
It made her sick to her stomach. Liebe had been feeling sick for weeks, the entire time her father was gone. She hoped that it was due to the anxiousness over the wait, the disgust that her story had been carried across the Litvak region, but she secretly feared that it may be something more. She had a hard enough time trying to explain to her father what had been done to her, without engaging in any details or betraying any emotions. She remembered having to go into his study to tell him, her sitting at the foot stool and he at his desk. It brought bile to her throat to think of her father sitting in the Chofetz Chaim’s study, holy books between them, surrounded by the great rabbis of the region who clung to Rev Kagan’s ankles. All those thirsty men who drank his waters and cleaved to the dust of his feet. And he, her father, describing what one great rabbi’s child had done to another great rabbi’s child. All of them nodding and stroking their beards as if they were being presented with some halachic riddle to be debated, considering this and considering that, revisiting the words of the Rambam, delivered with a thumb for emphasis, while weighing them against the teachings of Rev Hillel and Rabbi Akiva all to come to a reasoned conclusion that they could all agree upon. It made her sick. She had come to her father, Rev Minsky, as a father, and he had responded as Rev Minsky.
In their town, Liebe knew a woman whom she had heard lost a child not by accident. While her father was gone, she wondered how the woman had done it. Was it something the woman ate or drank, a scalding liquid or bitter root from the forest? Did she put something inside herself or suffer a fall? The woman was a friend of her mother’s. Liebe resolved to go visit her. She imagined different paths the conversation could take. Would she be offered tea and cake, and talk as if what was to be done was talked about? Would gossip be exchanged before doing it? Would the woman refuse to give Liebe help?
After her father returned from his trip, Liebe picked a day that she’d have to go to the market so she could have an excuse to be gone for the day and to drop by the woman’s house with small sweets and cakes. She plotted her route, the shops she would go to before the visit and those she would stop by after the visit, the woman’s house a stop along the way.
At the woman’s house, there was little conversation. She said she would help Liebe. When it was finished, the woman told Liebe that she would know if what was done had worked within a day or two by what came out of her. She explained that Liebe would feel pain and cramps, and might feel peculiar around others. She cautioned her not to tell anyone, because what was done wasn’t done, and if others knew Liebe would always be known for this deed. She had warned Liebe beforehand there was a chance that this might make it difficult or impossible to have children, and pointed to her own empty house as an example.
Liebe carried herself differently for days after and she wondered if anyone in her family noticed she felt weak. She thought about how her father would counsel women who suffered stillbirths and miscarriages according to the words of the Talmud. He explained that if they had discharged something that looked like hair or a shell, which dissolved in water, it was to be considered the same as blood, and they had to go immediately to the mikvah to purify; if it looked like a fish or grasshopper, then they would remain impure for seven days. If it looked like an animal or bird, and the sex could be determined, then they were impure for fourteen days and pure for sixty-six days. But in no case, her father explained, may the unborn child be mourned if it did not live for thirty-one days. Liebe thought about these numbers, wondering how many weeks or months she had to further sacrifice until she could return to normal. When she arrived home that evening after being at the woman’s house, she unfolded the skirt she had worn the night of the encounter with the rabbi’s son. It had a small tear along the seam and was stained from the ground. She held the skirt and at the tear, rended it completely along the seam until it was a piece of flat fabric.
On her long walk home to Borough Park, she got lost in that dinner and what had happened later at the woman’s house. She remembered waiting during Shabbos dinner for some sign that everything was going to be alright, that the greatest rabbis in the region had reached the right answer. The dinner went late into the evening, with songs and prayers, exhibiting all the festivities of the meal that ushered in the Shabbos. At each transition in the evening, when song turned to another course, or prayers turned to lessons, or one story that had been repeated a hundred times became another story that had been repeated a hundred times, she waited for her mention. The routine, which she knew by heart and which used to bring comfort in its repetition, now induced a newborn anxiety. There were no surprises to the Shabbos meal, but still she waited for something different. After dinner, Liebe stood in the kitchen cleaning and putting away food, while her father retired to his study. She remembered looking over her shoulder every few moments for an invitation to his study—for perhaps that is where this conversation must take place, among the books and holy words. She would sense a shadow of a man in the kitchen, and think it was her father come to talk to her, but it was nothing. A tree branch in the wind, a moving curtain. At points she would count down in her head—drey, tsvey, eyner—and then turn around suddenly, imagining the fortuitousness of her turning just as her father was standing there, about to say “Liebe”. But he said nothing.
Now Lillian walked into the apartment in Borough Park, and immediately the Shabbos entered her and stopped her at the doorway. She could hear the quiet sounds of preparation, each person doing what was required before they all congregated at the table. Tonight there would be singing and laughter, and her father raising questions about the week’s Torah portion. This week’s was Vayeshev—meaning “and he lived”—that began with the story of Jacob and his family settling in Hebron, and Jacob avoiding death twice. She always wondered why the he in the title meant Jacob, when Joseph was the survivor. And she knew if she raised the question, her father would deliver his thoughts and the thoughts of the rabbis who had come before him. But if she talked to her father about anything that really mattered, that was personal, he would again say nothing.
The family gathered around the table. By the dim glow of the small lamp left lit throughout the Shabbos, Lillian stood before the candles, ready to light them and invite the Shabbos in. She and her mother alternated the candle lighting. Tonight it was Lillian’s turn to light them and lead the prayer. It was a hushed meditation performed in a whispered prayer, with two inward facing palms that covered the candles’ flames. Her hands moved from over her eyes to the candles, obscuring the light, fluttering sideways as murmured prayers were recited by all. This was a private prayer that women controlled. It was customary to use the moment to pray for children, health, and happiness.
Instead, Lillian thought about the words from her English class: The man is going to the store to buy a ham. The dog is barking at the cat. The wife holds the child. Back and forth her palms moved, casting and controlling the shadows across her family’s faces. And each time, she brought her hands too close and the flame skipped sideways and bit her, diminishing itself and releasing a plume of smoke. The singe of pain snapped Lillian into the moment, if only for an instant.