LITMIR.BIZ

      On Sunday, after her first ulpan class at the university on Mount Scopus, Wendy took the number nine bus through the center of town. She was glad to have the intricacies of Hebrew verb conjugations and new vocabulary to focus on to get the sensation of Donny’s kiss and her surging desire, kissing him back, out of her head. It would come back at random moments for the next few weeks she guessed. It wasn’t the biggest misstep ever, or the worst, just yet another thing she shouldn’t have done. Hopefully she wouldn’t see him again and wouldn’t have to feel like a sleaze; she’d been involved with guys in ways she regretted in high school, but not recently, and thought that was in her past.

      After the bus left the center of town, it crawled down Aza Street. She asked another passenger about the stop and got off before the corner of Rav Berlin Street. The café From Gaza to Berlin was there at the intersection, as Avner Zakh, the Fulbright advisor, had told her. She was proud of herself for getting around in this new place; that only lasted until Wendy entered the air conditioned café and realized that she had no clue what Zakh looked like.

      As she gazed around the room, she saw in her peripheral vision a tall man with mostly dark hair, bits of gray jutting out here and there. He was wearing a navy kipah seruga, knit headcovering of the modern Orthodox, and jaunted over to her athletically, bouncing as though he were on a basketball court.

      “Wundy?”

      Israelis couldn’t pronounce her name. Her ulpan teacher this morning had insisted on calling her “Varda,” her Hebrew name, which she’d always hated for the clumsiness of the sound. An awkward name, like Helga or Ursula, its syllables slogged together in an unlovely clump like an overweight older woman with a headscarf and heavy calves in orthopedic shoes.

      “Professor Zakh?” she held out her hand in greeting.

      He nodded at her without taking her hand. “Nice to meet. Shall we get some coffee?”

      They went to the small counter in the back of the store and gave their orders: lemonade for Wendy, espresso for Zakh. They found a table by the window and sat across from each other. “I apologize in advance. I don’t have much time today. I’m attending the parsha class at the Van Leer. I’d invite you to come, but I understand you don’t have enough Hebrew to follow a lecture.”

      “Not yet. Today was my first day of ulpan.”

      “We have an excellent ulpan here. It went well?”

      “Yes.”

      “Good. I want you to tell you, I find your dissertation project very interesting. We’ve never had faculty in American religion, but we are now cultivating a donor in American studies. They want a . . . how do you say . . . department? Not that, a . . .”

      “Program?”

      “Right. Americanists in all departments—history, literature, political science—to make a program for students who are interested. We’ll see; these things always take time. Anyway, here’s my home number.” He took a small notepad out of his pocket, wrote his name in Hebrew and English with his number and address below it, and said, “Call with any questions. The bus lines, where to get good felafel, whatever. I’ve been Fulbright advisor for a few years. Can I guess what you need? E-mail, library privileges, pizza?”

      She nodded.

      “E-mail and library, go to the overseas student office, the Rothberg building. Ask for Donna. Tell her you’re with me and she’ll take care of you. Pizza. Where are you living?”

      “Rehov Mishael, near Rahel Emainu.”

      “Pizza Sababa; they deliver. Burger Bar, right on Emek Refaim, has the best hamburgers, students say. Tov?” he asked.

      “Are other students here?”

      “Not yet. No one else is taking ulpan. Our first formal meeting is not till September, when they all arrive. I’ll have my secretary send a letter. We’ll be in touch.” He looked at his watch. “I don’t want to be late.”

      Wendy saved the most important question for the end. “The thing I need most help with is how to interview people. Where should I start? How should I find places to find interview subjects?”

      He looked at her, puzzled. “Go to the Kotel. The recruiters pick you up; you’ll see where they send people. Yerushalayim is a small town. You’ll meet plenty of your hozrei b’teshuvah.”

      “My what?”

      “Hozrei b’teshuvah, returnees.”

      “What’s the difference between that and baalei teshuvah?”

      He laughed. “Hozer is return, and teshuvah is answer, so they are returning to the answer. If someone is dati and stops being dati, we say they are hozer b’sh’ailah, returning to the question. You, Wundy, are questioning the returners.” He got up to go. Standing, he said, “I’ll look forward to working with you this year. Naim meod. You’ll do fine.”

      She watched him walk out of the café with that spry lift in his step, and wasn’t sure whether he’d helped her or not. Was he a jerk for cutting the meeting short or a good guy for making time for her? Funny, male academics, with their vanity about their time and how busy they were, did not change over oceans, she thought. The level of self-importance was a constant. Zakh did give her some advice; she’d just been hoping for more. She needed more direction: which schools would be good places to try, how to approach the administrators. What if she couldn’t get into any of these places to talk to students? What if after getting this fellowship and settling in a new place she couldn’t do her project? She’d have to try to get help, from him or someone else. No matter what, she just had to keep going. It was what everyone said about a dissertation: persistence was the most important factor. Not talent or ideas, just stubborn refusal to give up. As she finished her lemonade she opened up her notebook to study the Hebrew verb lebanot, to build, that she had started learning in ulpan that morning.

      Wendy followed Zakh’s advice to go to the Kotel, the Western Wall, on her third Friday night in Israel. The prior week, she lay down for a nap Friday afternoon and woke up long after dark, exhausted from six intensive hours of studying Hebrew verb forms each day.

      If Mahane Yehuda was a collision with all manner of foodstuff and produce, the Kotel on Friday evening was a confrontation with every species of humanity. Wendy was overwhelmed by the mass spectacle as she stood where the cab dropped her off by the Zion Gate, so many others thronging towards the spot. Once she arrived at the stairwell that overlooked the Kotel Plaza, she went through the security check and leaned over the railing to gaze out at the crowd. She wished she had more anthropological training. How to categorize each group? There were Japanese or Korean tourists, snapping photo after photo, all in matching white polo shirts with carnelian red trim and red skorts for women, red shorts for men, and matching white baseball hats for their tour group, so the leader could find strays easily. On the men’s side, she could see from her aerial position, there were various groups massed together, some dancing in a circle. By contrast the women’s side consisted of discrete individuals, each with

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