Questioning Return. Beth Kissileff

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СКАЧАТЬ any audience could be more certain of the uncontested significance of each of its utterances than the ones at Princeton. In a moment, she saw this assemblage as able competition. Each question was not a question, but a disquisition on the work of the questioner, and the grave mistake the speaker was making in not paying more attention to its significance, imperiling his ability to draw proper conclusions. After a number of these, Emma Fletcher cut off further discourse and thanked the audience for their attendance.

      Wendy rose and gathered her belongings, and so did Orly. As they waited behind the others in their row to file out, Orly asked Wendy, “Shall we go for coffee? I know a good place near here.”

      They left Mishkenot Sha’ananim and walked up the hill, through Yemin Moshe, out to David HaMelech Street. Orly told her, “I’m taking you to Café Florence. They have amazing Italian food.”

      They walked through the pleasant air of the late summer evening and sat on the patio on the street outside the restaurant, stepping over the ropes separating the restaurant’s seating from the street. They didn’t need to enter the restaurant since they were going to sit outdoors, on the patio. The décor was minimal: an awning overhead, black iron tables and chairs with lattice work, white linen table cloths. A waitress brought them menus. The summer night, with a bit of a breeze, was perfect for sitting at an outdoor café.

      Orly spoke confidently, “The crepes here are amazing, and they make their own gelato. Want to share one?”

      “Sure.”

      “You won’t be sorry,” Orly said as she turned to the waitress who reappeared to take their order. Orly spoke to her in fluent Hebrew.

      When the waitress had departed, Wendy asked, envious, “How do you know Hebrew so well?”

      “My mother is Israeli. She spoke Hebrew at home, and I spent some summers here growing up. It’s helped my career—I only write for English language periodicals, but I interview people in Hebrew. They trust me because I speak the language.”

      “I have a question. If you get Israelis, can you explain that Hartheimer? I’m confused. He’s not religious, but I’ve never heard someone speak of the land of Israel with such . . . I don’t know . . . intensity? It seemed religious to me. Am I missing something? And, he looked, so . . . how can I say it? Did you notice something almost translucent about his skin? If he were an insect he’d be missing his carapace, whatever it is that protects him from outsiders. He just seemed . . . those bug eyes, so large and like they can’t create a barrier between him and anything that might hurt him in the outside world. He looks shorn of ordinary protection, you know?”

      Orly picked up her knife and stabbed menacingly at the air, “Yedidya Hartheimer is not protected,” she intoned.

      Wendy laughed, “I’m not explaining myself. I guess . . . I was surprised by what he said.”

      “How so?”

      “I haven’t really heard anyone articulate this notion of Israel and its potential to be miraculous and at the center. I mean . . . on the plane here I bumped into this professor from my department who’s a survivor and religious, and he told me how miraculous it was to be in Israel, but . . . I was surprised to hear an avowedly non-religious person speak of the place in such unabashedly sacred overtones.”

      Orly placed the knife down and turned serious. “Wendy, how many of the people in this country would not be on this earth, just wouldn’t exist, if this place were not a haven? I wasn’t shocked by Hartheimer, but by Berger. A guy who spent his childhood away from his family, who didn’t have a family by the time he was an adult, to say that we shouldn’t have a homeland because Jews don’t belong at the center, but on the margins? To me, and I hope I’m not offending you, that position is completely not intellectually or morally defensible. What did this guy learn from history?”

      Wendy said, “It isn’t about him, personally, it is about where the religion belongs in the world, what kind of space it occupies in the public sphere. Is Judaism a religion for the world, to be on the periphery, or for ourselves to be at the center?” Wendy mused. “I’ve taken classes on the role of religion in public debate, First Amendment issues and how they play out in America versus Europe versus Moslem countries. Each country has its own code of what works for that place. Israelis are, by and large, willing to put up with Sabbath restrictions to create some kind of common shared culture. Americans are freaked out when the Ten Commandments are posted in courtrooms. The French don’t like seeing little Muslim girls wear headscarves in a public school.”

      “What do you think?”

      “I just got here, Orly. I’m not ready to formulate an opinion—very un-Israeli of me, I know. Having said that, if I’d gone through the Holocaust I’d be more Hartheimer than Berger. And Berger . . . his appearance. No one in Israel wears sports jackets, and his whole getup—the Hermes handkerchief in his jacket pocket, the tortoiseshell glasses that he kept taking on and off as he spoke—something about him was too . . . polished? I’m not sure what I’m getting at.”

      “Wendy, the man is legendary as a womanizer, who beguiles and mesmerizes, enthralling the ladies them until they succumb to his charms. He just separated from wife . . . number four? Three? I agree, there is just something . . . unctuous about him.”

      Wendy smiled. “There was this guy at Princeton who was a grad student in literature. He kept propositioning my friend Leora. He would tell her things he wanted to do with her, like “cunnilingus” in eight languages. He confessed to another friend that he got all the words from an article by Phillipe Berger, which bragged about how he seduced women in different languages. That’s how I know his name.” Wendy guffawed, loudly and unabashedly, proud of herself for recalling the source of her knowledge of Berger’s name.

      “Glad to know tuition dollars are being put to such good use, multilingual seduction. I knew a PhD had some practical value.”

      “Yep.” Wendy looked at Orly, more thoughtful. “Can we reduce this Diaspora/Israel thing to Berger’s need to prove himself desirable to as many women in as many places as possible, and Hartheimer’s apparent monogamy?”

      Orly looked up as the waitress approached with their chocolate crepe with dollops of both cinnamon and espresso gelato on top and an extra plate. She thanked the server in Hebrew and said to Wendy, “B’tayavon.” Wendy gave her a look of incomprehension and Orly translated, “With gusto, good appetite. Ta’avah is, literally, passion, so when you say ‘eat with good appetite’ you are saying ‘eat with passion.’ To passion.”

      Wendy raised her fork to dig in. “To passion,” she said and bit into the delicious combination of hot sweet chocolate and cold bitter espresso gelato. “Ohhhh,” she moaned, “you were so right. This is . . . superb.” She dove her fork back for more, smiling at her friend.

      Orly smiled back, chocolate sauce dribbling lazily from her chin. “From the Holocaust to the sex life of Phillipe Berger. This is good. I need friends who can have meaningful conversation and also talk about sex, you know?”

      Wendy laughed. “We’re going to be good friends this year.”

      Orly responded, “I’d like that. I don’t have many friends who are serious about their careers. My boyfriend, Nir, he’s fun to be with, he’s in a band, he works in computers during the day, but he doesn’t really understand when I have a deadline and can’t go out. Or my passion for my work; he just says I work too hard, wants me to party more.”

      Wendy sighed. “I have the СКАЧАТЬ