The Jerusalem Inception - By Avraham Azrieli Page 0,38
with her sleep, she argued, and she could no longer bear children, so why share a bed? Aaron begged, yelled, threatened a divorce, but Miriam was deaf to his pleas. So he took her to their rabbi, who had married them many years before, circumcised their sons, blessed their daughters, and led them through life with his wise advice and knowledge of Talmud.”
“Ah!” The men sighed in relief.
Rabbi Gerster clapped his hands. “Guess how the good rabbi from Haifa ruled. For Aaron?”
A forest of hands appeared.
“For Miriam?”
Lemmy looked around. No hand rose in support of the wife. The blood rushed to his face. Talmud didn’t command marital slavery! He knew what Howard Roark would do now!
He raised his hand.
No one saw the lonely hand in the rear of the hall, except for his father, who ignored it and announced, “Mazal Tov! You voted wisely!”
The men applauded.
“Talmud commands a wife to serve her husband’s bodily needs, notwithstanding her incapability to bear children anymore. It’s part of the marriage. After all, Sarah, the mother of our nation, gave birth to Isaac when she was a hundred years old. It can happen.” Rabbi Gerster looked down and sighed. “It’s all in God’s hands.”
The silence was charged. Everyone knew of the rabbi’s pain at his wife’s inability to bear him more children.
“You voted wisely,” he repeated, “but you guessed poorly!”
The crowd groaned.
“Their rabbi told Aaron to let her be. Now what do you say to that?”
The men shook their heads. They all had wives.
“It’s true,” the rabbi explained, “that a wife must serve her husband. Miriam sinned, but a sinner cannot be forced to repent. That’s the essence of Judaism—a free choice to sin or to repent. It’s between you and God. And that’s what I told Aaron when he came to me for a second opinion.” He caressed his beard. “But then I thought, does Talmud allow a second opinion when you don’t like your rabbi’s ruling?”
No one responded.
“Create. Acquire. Don’t you see it?” Rabbi Gerster looked around the hall. “Friendships you acquire with kindness, generosity, or intellectual interaction. We are friends with our grocer, tailor, and barber, and we are friends with our study companion. Friendships vary by the nature of reciprocal exchanges. We go through life acquiring and losing friends. But a rabbi?”
Lemmy watched the nodding heads spread like a wave of comprehension.
“Every Jew must create his rabbi by embracing faith and knowledge. It is a permanent bond of trust, spirituality, confidence, and obedience to your rabbi’s authority. Create! Your rabbi will conduct your marriage ceremony, pronounce your food kosher, settle your disputes, educate your children, and marry them to their chosen spouses. The relationship with your rabbi is like the relationship with your child. And let me ask you: When our child behaves disagreeably, do we go out to seek a new and better child? Of course not! Once we create the parental bond, it’s inseparable, for better or for worse. Similarly, the bond of obedience to our rabbi is unbreakable.” Rabbi Gerster paused, looking from one side of the crowded synagogue to the other. “And when I called to check on Aaron a few months later, he told me that Miriam had fallen sick, and he took care of her, which renewed their feelings for each other—better than ever!”
The men exhaled in relief. A story with a sweet and instructive ending was a perfect appetizer for the warm dinner that awaited each of the men at home, prepared by their loyal wives. The chandelier above the dais, while not lit up, glistened in red reflections of the setting sun, signaling the end of a day of studying.
But Lemmy could not think about dinner. How could hundreds of Talmudic scholars, critical and inquisitive minds, turn into the submissive crowd surrounding him? How could they not raise their voices in the same protest that boiled inside him?
As if in a dream, he raised his hand.
His father noticed. “Yes?”
The clatter subsided as all heads gradually turned to him.
“I think that, just like Talmud doesn’t require a wife to obey her husband blindly, Talmud also doesn’t require a husband to obey his rabbi blindly.” Lemmy swallowed hard. “A rabbi is only flesh and blood. A rabbi could be wrong. Anyone could be wrong sometime, right?” He took a deep breath. The hall was silent. “Maybe the meaning of create is that we have a personal choice to seek a rabbi whose rulings we find to be wise?” He shifted his weight, his knees