The rebbe sighed frequently when he thought of the enigma of his daughter the so-called Yesodite, but in the end he felt that this too must surely be exactly as it should, and that Vavah, too, must needs be perfect in every way, and that any fault in her lay primarily in his own blindness and ignorance of the will of the Divine.<\/p>\n
In this way, Vavah became, by the time she was twelve, a child of low expectations, or perhaps a child of no expectations at all.<\/p>\n
She was a mistake, a mistaken experiment, and he could not look her in the eye for all his guilt.\u00a0 And so, the rebbe was not terribly surprised, despite his shock, that he should later discover his third daughter to be a rather mannish girl, built like a tree trunk, and far worse than that.\u00a0 She was, he had overheard Hochmah, his eldest, Sophie whisper to her twin Binah, a secret admirer of some medieval French Catholic named inauspiciously \u201cJohn Dark\u201d rather than one of the great heroes of her own people.<\/p>\n
Did you hear that chortle from way on high? And then the godly snort?<\/p>\n
Once, years ago, I spotted Vavah from afar practicing a solitary form of martial art way out in the meadow, aiming her thrusts at the Uriel Tree.\u00a0 I had been sitting in the corner of my father\u2019s library daydreaming out the side window when I was supposed to be studying chumash.\u00a0 After that strange vision, I started to follow her from time to time.\u00a0 She used what appeared to be one of Binah\u2019s missing broomsticks with the straw end of the broom cut off, and another shorter stick which looked like she had fashioned herself into a homemade wooden sword of sorts.\u00a0 She appeared to me not sullen at all but entirely Other, upright, quiet and proud. Intent. Silent and formal and deep. As if in conversation or meditation with some kind of higher force not known inside our house, and sparring with a tangible regal, yet wholly invisible foe.<\/p>\n
Hear the Almighty nod in approval. \u00a0Surely my own imagination. You can’t hear such things, can you?<\/p>\n
There appeared to be mutually understood rules of engagement.\u00a0 She would bow\u2014a sin, of course, if our sainted father had found her\u2014and with each pointed strike she looked so deadly calm, so serious, so alert, accomplished, serene and filled with joy.\u00a0 These thoughts occurred to me as I watched her from afar.\u00a0 I could be wrong of course.<\/p>\n
It was a strange vision out my father\u2019s library window, and may well have been no more than the angle of the sun\u2019s rays shifting deceptively through the fog.\u00a0 But in that moment when I raised my eyes from that dreary sacred text of wrath and retribution, I saw Vavah as a luminous faraway figure, with light streaming silkily around her.\u00a0 So how could I have seen her expression at such distance and such weather?\u00a0 More likely it was that I could feel her, feel her calm, her focused intent, feel, if not her joy, then at least her relief at being left alone upon the heath.\u00a0 Perhaps it was our kinship, our destiny, the awful tie that bound us all.\u00a0 Or maybe it was I who had had a real live vision?\u00a0 Maybe she was not there at all.\u00a0 Maybe it was just too much chumash at one sitting.<\/p>\n
Worse still for the rebbe, I think, than the unseen, unknown antics up by the Uriel Tree that evening was that Vavah could not be accounted for in the house most nights.\u00a0 Our revered father did not inquire.\u00a0 It was not his domain.<\/p>\n
At sixteen, Vavah had taken it upon herself to learn somehow to drive an automobile and had actually gotten official validation from the State of her competence in this regard.\u00a0 She had received a letter one day from said State itself, ripped open the envelope, and waving the shiny little card with the State Seal embossed over her own picture, her mouth stretching widely and her big brown eyes crinkling wildly at their outward edges.\u00a0 Sophie grabbed the license from Vavah, reaffirming the announcement and thus making it official under the rebbe\u2019s own roof.\u00a0 She ran up and gave Vavah a hug around the middle, and looked mama straight in the eye.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cBe proud!\u201d Sophie said, with Binah transmitting her silent approval by her side.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cShe got in the ninetieth percentile,\u201d Sophie said, reading from the score upon the written exam portion of the test that Vavah showed her.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cHer body is big enough,\u201d replied the tzaddik\u2019s wife, perhaps misunderstanding. \u00a0Ah, the saintly mother of them all.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat?\u201d the girls said together, rather taken aback, although they should have known what was coming.\u00a0 Vavah cringed in preparation.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cHer body is big enough\u2014I wouldn\u2019t want it should go to her head as well,\u201d the tzaddik\u2019s wife replied in explanation.<\/p>\n
The beaming smile had disappeared from Vavah\u2019s face even before their mother\u2019s words had finished flying out of her Old World mouth.\u00a0 She should never have allowed Sophie to voice a call for pride!\u00a0 Pride was not for the likes of her, nor for that matter, for any of the rebbe\u2019s daughters.\u00a0 Nor in fact, she thought with satisfaction, for the rebbe\u2019s son, wherever he may be.<\/p>\n
Vavah grabbed her driver\u2019s license from Sophie and clambered up the narrow steps, taking them two at a time, up to the sororal loft.<\/p>\n
\u00a0\u201cBe proud?\u201d she said to herself, \u201cI\u2019ve learned that one too well!\u201d\u00a0 And she fell herself into the comforter covers, still fully dressed\u2014in trousers, I might add\u2014and one of her father\u2019s old vests worn over one of his big old white button-down shirts. \u00a0Such shame! She buried her head and her body shook but refused to shed a tear.\u00a0 No, she fell instead into a deep exhausted sleep, her ordeal over, or this one anyway.\u00a0 She could drive!\u00a0 And then she had had to pay the price for it.\u00a0 But she could drive!\u00a0 Another miracle.<\/p>\n
She became quickly enough the sole driver of the old clunker vehicle that one of the rebbe\u2019s admirers had donated for his convenience.\u00a0 But the tzaddik long had claimed his preference for walking on foot in the fresh air, no matter what the weather.\u00a0 The truth was, no one had ever seen him actually drive this or any other car at all.\u00a0 But now, the rebbe\u2019s vehicle was getting plenty of exercise, both day and night.\u00a0 And funny, it tended to be Sarah, gracious mother of them all, who now sent Vavah off on missions to somewhere-in-the-city in which surely must be found some ingredient from the Old Country, spice or implement that might remind her of her long lost North African mountain home.<\/p>\n
There was that one time, however, when Vavah was still sixteen that she went to papa for some money for her trip into town.\u00a0 They were standing in front of the giant fireplace in the front room, behind the dining table, so it must have been just after dinner, I\u2019m not quite sure.\u00a0 And he took a dollar out his pocket and held it over his head, his eyes gleaming, just gleaming!<\/p>\n
Vavah reached.<\/p>\n
The tzaddik lifted the dollar higher, as high as he could.\u00a0 We turned to watch the spectacle.\u00a0 Something we had never seen before.\u00a0 Our dear papa seemed somehow\u2014impossibly\u2014menacing, larger than life, and in this moment certainly he outsized Vavah. \u00a0He was a giant looming. And she in desperation reaching. \u00a0Her sainted mother had just sent her on an imperative chore in town.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook at her!\u201d the rebbe cried, soliciting witnesses to her greed.\u00a0 \u201cLook at her!\u201d<\/p>\n
And his gleaming hazel eyes said it all.<\/p>\n
\u201cLook how much she wants it!\u201d\u00a0 And he put the dollar back in his pocket.<\/p>\n
And we all stood there, stood there unmoving. \u00a0The only sound the sound of the front door slamming.<\/p>\n
And that was the last time Vavah ever asked anyone for anything.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The rebbe sighed frequently when he thought of the enigma of his daughter the so-called Yesodite, but in the end he felt that this too must surely be exactly as it should, and that Vavah, too, must needs be perfect in every way, and that any fault in her lay primarily in his own blindness…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[216,812],"tags":[226,806,714,880],"class_list":["post-4054","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-kaddish-in-two-part-harmony","category-altteach","tag-dads","tag-the-rebbes-queer-daughters","tag-tzaddik","tag-vavah"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4054","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4054"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4054\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4110,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4054\/revisions\/4110"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}