when a community hires you to be a rabbi, or as soon as people start coming up to you asking, Rabbi, is this pot still kosher? That could happen to me at any time.”
“And rabbis don’t have to be celibate, like priests?”
“With all due respect, the priests have it all wrong. Celibacy goes against God’s wishes.”
“How can you say that?"
“Because the very first commandment in the Torah is to be fruitful and multiply. God tells Adam and Eve to enjoy each other’s bodies without shame. There’s none of that sex-is-inherently-evil nonsense.”
“It’s supposed to be about purity.”
“Who told you that sex is impure? Love between a married couple is not impure, it’s holy. Even the most pious scholar who studies the Torah every day of the week commits a sin if he doesn’t give his wife joy on the Sabbath.”
Her belly tingled as she thought of the delights of being a married woman.
“And a man does not sin if he loves his wife too much?”
He chuckled at the thought. “Only if it keeps him from fulfilling the other commandments.”
She wondered what it would be like to forget everything else and touch him—no, strike that—to hug him with all her might.
The aroma of stuffed fish drifted in from the kitchen, which meant that Dolora must have already put them in the steamer. Time was running short.
“Why do all the old laws forbid close relations between Jews and the other races?”
“You know why,” he said.
“No, I mean since the days of Solomon, as told in the Book of…uh…”
“It is written in the Book of Kings,” he said. “Because in those days it was a sin to have such relations with idol-worshipers. But in our time, Rabbi Menakhem Ha-Meiri, a likhtigen gan-eydn zol er hobn, says that the old prohibition doesn’t apply to modern Christians, because they worship the same God that we do.”
Well, thank God for Rabbi Menakhem Ha-Meiri.
“Even if the person hasn’t been baptized?”
“What difference does that make?” he said.
“Then how do you remove original sin?”
“We don’t believe in original sin.”
“You don’t?”
“We believe that man’s true sin is his inability to bring peace and justice to the world, a failure that occurs in every generation. Yes, Adam sinned, but why should the whole world be condemned to death for one man’s sins? In any case, the stigma of Adam’s sin was erased when we received and accepted the Torah.”
“And what about Eve’s sin?”
“The same.”
“But the priests say—”
“The priests say that it was Eve who led Adam to sin, and that she is inferior because she was made after him, blah blah blah—”
“Wasn’t she?”
“Some say they were made side-by-side.”
“Oh. Well, which is it?”
“You’re full of questions today.”
“I don’t mean to be such a kvic?, but—”
“What’s a kvitch?”
“A whiner.”
“Oh, a kvetch.” It was practically the same word.
“They always say that God made Adam from the soil, but didn’t He make Adam from a mixture of soil and water that He molded into a man?”
“A mist, really,” said Yankev.
“So God needed both elements. Why is that?”
“Actually, He needed three elements.”
She stared at him a moment, drawing a blank. Why didn’t he tell her? Did he expect her to know this? She looked aside, searching for an answer among the fat-bellied sacks of dried lentils and peas lining the wall beneath the shelves.
“The breath of God,” he explained.
“Oh.”
The smell of gefilte fish and matzoh ball soup was making her mouth water.
Yankev said, “The mist rose from the earth to unite with heaven, just as a woman opens herself to a man, and together they bring completion to the One above.”
“Wait a minute. You’re saying God needs us to be complete?”
“Yes.”
“And that it’s up to the woman to make the first move?”
“Well, this is an allegorical interpretation—”
She drew close and gave him a quick, soft kiss on the cheek. Now it was his turn to stare blankly at her.
“Well? What do you think of that?” she said.
No sound came from him.
Her arm floated around him like a nocturnal creature slinking along the forest floor searching for a companion, ready to draw back at the slightest hint of trouble. But he didn’t pull away. He didn’t move at all. His cloak was still damp from the rain. Her fingers dug in as if they were working the primordial soil, releasing that earthy mist and letting it rise toward heaven.
“You can’t go now,” she said.
It seemed like a long time before he spoke: “I shouldn’t have spent so much time with you, Anya.”