\u201cPeasants!\u201d the rebbe would mutter under his breath, when his wife Sarah’s customs went too far for his Ashkenazi sensibilities.<\/p>\n
But of course, her people were not peasants. They were proud of a long and sanctified lineage.\u00a0 Proud of the language they had retained since the 15th<\/sup> century.\u00a0 Proud of those they claimed as their own\u2014from Maimonedes to Reb Chaim Pinto, the magic worker of Mogadir, and of course proud of Solika the sainted martyr of Fes, whose shrine, like Reb Pinto\u2019s granted the petitions of sufferers.<\/p>\n Always to the honorable forefathers Sarah’s pride would reach, tzaddikim all.\u00a0 But truth be told, she herself could neither read nor write. She blamed it on that infernal move from the heart of Sephardi culture to the backwaters of Maghrebi mountains. It wasn’t her fault. It infuriated her, her upbringing.<\/p>\n Such a lineage she possessed, but not a stitch of learning. Where she’d been raised, it was her beauty that had been cultivated. \u00a0She was a prize. A prize for the prize student. And that was Avram.<\/p>\n Chaval m’od.<\/em><\/p>\n She could not win a single argument, unless it was through silence, or the refusal of her favors.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cA degenerated people,\u201d Reb Avram would mutter cheerfully at such times, \u201cwho have fallen away from reason.\u201d\u00a0 And he would give a chuckle at their folly.<\/p>\n \u201cMiracle workers, indeed!\u201d<\/p>\n For surely it could not be Reb Pinto himself who (as was believed by those Sephardi mountain folk) roused the Prince of the Sea in the depths of his kiddish cup to return a treasure lost at sea!\u00a0 This was the work of the Almighty alone.\u00a0 And the Almighty requires no such pomp and silliness. His brow furrowed. If it was a miracle, it belonged to the Divine. Give credit where credit is due.<\/p>\n If it had been the Ba’al Shem Tov, he would have understood. This. This was just folklore, wasn’t it?<\/p>\n But Sarah was a firm believer in the miracles of her Reb Pinto, and she kept a copy of a painting of him in the dresser drawer next to her side of the bed that she shared with the tzaddik she had married.<\/p>\n Sarah knew for certain that Reb Pinto had retrieved the treasure lost while sitting at his Sabbath table, for when she looked in his eyes, she saw her own father staring back at her, with kindness and justice and quiet honor.\u00a0 The little picture made her terribly homesick, even after all these decades, for Reb Pinto was always and forever standing in the same place, in the center of a medina square that looked so much like home.<\/p>\n Sarah long had felt that if her husband, the modern tzaddik who was thought to know so very much, if he, \u00a0ba\u2019al ha-bayit, her current master, had allowed her to return to her home country many decades ago, she could have prayed at the tomb of the renowned saint Reb Pinto. And she could have left her offerings to him upon her pilgrimage. And, surely, she would have born her children in her prime and not her dotage.\u00a0 For this failing, she never forgave her husband.<\/p>\n Oh. And the saint could have made her learned and wise, while he was at it. She would have wanted maybe to read back then. But now, too late, for sure.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cShe,\u201d her husband would whisper to their daughters in conspiratorial rebuttal, \u201cshe must be forgiven the enchantments of her people,\u201d with one apologetic eyebrow rising, a wink in his sweet paternal eye, and the cock to the right of his benevolent head.<\/p>\n \u00a0\u201cEh?\u201d he would say, expecting confirmation from his growing girls. \u201cEh?<\/em>\u201d he would say louder.<\/p>\n His eyes would grow wide, and twinkle just the way a father\u2019s eyes must do.\u00a0 He was patient, kind, and tolerant of his wife\u2019s quaint rantings, which by now he did best to ignore.\u00a0 But he would not himself bend his will to hers.\u00a0 Nor did he wish his daughters unduly exposed to Sephardi nonsense.\u00a0 Cooking, fine\u2014let Sarah teach them good Sephardi cooking\u2014but not the superstitions of her people.<\/p>\n Nevertheless, Sarah’s habits never could he break, and so at last (without even noticing), he tuned them out, or tried.<\/p>\n \u201cSuffer<\/em>,\u201d his generosity told us.\u00a0 \u201cSuffer her her ignorance.\u201d It did not occur to him \u00a0to seek her knowledge to increase, nor did he aid her in the acquisition of the language of this new and western land to which he had brought her.<\/p>\n Instead, he protected her from exposure. Here, in this cottage on the hill. Overlooking the western sea.<\/p>\n \u201cIf we could only isolate her from ridicule. \u00a0Dayenu<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cIndulge her her anachronisms. Dayenu<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cLive by the rules of her imaginary reckoning. \u00a0Dayenu<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n So sage was the rebbe that that one raised eyebrow could communicate all this to his girls and more.\u00a0 With such an eyebrow, no need had one for many words in this or any other regard.<\/p>\n Sarah\u2019s tolerated habits included an impressive display of distinctive manners of spitting for selected, well-calculated occasions.<\/p>\n Her protections were ceaseless, intended as they were to promote the auspicious, and ward off the inauspicious.\u00a0 So adept was she that a single act of expectoration was equivalent to a declarative paragraph of censure so profound that none could withstand it.\u00a0 Her position on a given matter was in this way made abundantly clear without benefit of the language of her adopted country. On these occasions, not even the tzaddik himself would dare rebut or intervene.\u00a0 She had that much charisma and command.<\/p>\n The rebbe\u2019s personal favorite of her quaint expectorant rites, (at least from a distance), was the one specified for the occasion of the unwanted suitor\u2014particularly important to a wary mother in a household full of daughters.<\/p>\n But she had other tricks learned at her own mother\u2019s knee and from the elder women of the Atlas who had gathered in her mother\u2019s courtyard.\u00a0 She had an array of warding hand motions and incantations, herbs and spices\u2014both curative and the reverse\u2014in a multitude of combinations, not to mention recipes for dire and specialized circumstance.<\/p>\n Magical ‘cooking lessons’ indeed she taught all of her daughters, and Malkah she initiated into the tending of the Uriel Tree and goats. But it was the comida and the kitchen, and the gateau used as a weapon, and borekas for good fortune that Reb Avram relished more.<\/p>\n What a tasteless tasty culture, what a rich mine of folklore!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" \u201cPeasants!\u201d the rebbe would mutter under his breath, when his wife Sarah’s customs went too far for his Ashkenazi sensibilities. But of course, her people were not peasants. They were proud of a long and sanctified lineage.\u00a0 Proud of the language they had retained since the 15th century.\u00a0 Proud of those they claimed as their…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[250,216,812],"tags":[807,556,917,916,806],"class_list":["post-4178","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-essays","category-kaddish-in-two-part-harmony","category-altteach","tag-alternate-teachings","tag-mira-z-amiras","tag-miracles","tag-reb-pinto","tag-the-rebbes-queer-daughters"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178","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=4178"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4181,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4178\/revisions\/4181"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4178"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4178"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/beitmalkhut.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4178"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}