LITMIR.BIZ

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      “I have a question. If you get Israelis, can you explain that Hartheimer? I’m confused. He’s not religious, but I’ve never heard someone speak of the land of Israel with such . . . I don’t know . . . intensity? It seemed religious to me. Am I missing something? And, he looked, so . . . how can I say it? Did you notice something almost translucent about his skin? If he were an insect he’d be missing his carapace, whatever it is that protects him from outsiders. He just seemed . . . those bug eyes, so large and like they can’t create a barrier between him and anything that might hurt him in the outside world. He looks shorn of ordinary protection, you know?”

      Orly picked up her knife and stabbed menacingly at the air, “Yedidya Hartheimer is not protected,” she intoned.

      Wendy laughed, “I’m not explaining myself. I guess . . . I was surprised by what he said.”

      “How so?”

      “I haven’t really heard anyone articulate this notion of Israel and its potential to be miraculous and at the center. I mean . . . on the plane here I bumped into this professor from my department who’s a survivor and religious, and he told me how miraculous it was to be in Israel, but . . . I was surprised to hear an avowedly non-religious person speak of the place in such unabashedly sacred overtones.”

      Orly placed the knife down and turned serious. “Wendy, how many of the people in this country would not be on this earth, just wouldn’t exist, if this place were not a haven? I wasn’t shocked by Hartheimer, but by Berger. A guy who spent his childhood away from his family, who didn’t have a family by the time he was an adult, to say that we shouldn’t have a homeland because Jews don’t belong at the center, but on the margins? To me, and I hope I’m not offending you, that position is completely not intellectually or morally defensible. What did this guy learn from history?”

      Wendy said, “It isn’t about him, personally, it is about where the religion belongs in the world, what kind of space it occupies in the public sphere. Is Judaism a religion for the world, to be on the periphery, or for ourselves to be at the center?” Wendy mused. “I’ve taken classes on the role of religion in public debate, First Amendment issues and how they play out in America versus Europe versus Moslem countries. Each country has its own code of what works for that place. Israelis are, by and large, willing to put up with Sabbath restrictions to create some kind of common shared culture. Americans are freaked out when the Ten Commandments are posted in courtrooms. The French don’t like seeing little Muslim girls wear headscarves in a public school.”

      “What do you think?”

      “I just got here, Orly. I’m not ready to formulate an opinion—very un-Israeli of me, I know. Having said that, if I’d gone through the Holocaust I’d be more Hartheimer than Berger. And Berger . . . his appearance. No one in Israel wears sports jackets, and his whole getup—the Hermes handkerchief in his jacket pocket, the tortoiseshell glasses that he kept taking on and off as he spoke—something about him was too . . . polished? I’m not sure what I’m getting at.”

      “Wendy, the man is legendary as a womanizer, who beguiles and mesmerizes, enthralling the ladies them until they succumb to his charms. He just separated from wife . . . number four? Three? I agree, there is just something . . . unctuous about him.”

      Wendy smiled. “There was this guy at Princeton who was a grad student in literature. He kept propositioning my friend Leora. He would tell her things he wanted to do with her, like “cunnilingus” in eight languages. He confessed to another friend that he got all the words from an article by Phillipe Berger, which bragged about how he seduced women in different languages. That’s how I know his name.” Wendy guffawed, loudly and unabashedly, proud of herself for recalling the source of her knowledge of Berger’s name.

      “Glad to know tuition dollars are being put to such good use, multilingual seduction. I knew a PhD had some practical value.”

      “Yep.” Wendy looked at Orly, more thoughtful. “Can we reduce this Diaspora/Israel thing to Berger’s need to prove himself desirable to as many women in as many places as possible, and Hartheimer’s apparent monogamy?”

      Orly looked up as the waitress approached with their chocolate crepe with dollops of both cinnamon and espresso gelato on top and an extra plate. She thanked the server in Hebrew and said to Wendy, “B’tayavon.” Wendy gave her a look of incomprehension and Orly translated, “With gusto, good appetite. Ta’avah is, literally, passion, so when you say ‘eat with good appetite’ you are saying ‘eat with passion.’ To passion.”

      Wendy raised her fork to dig in. “To passion,” she said and bit into the delicious combination of hot sweet chocolate and cold bitter espresso gelato. “Ohhhh,” she moaned, “you were so right. This is . . . superb.” She dove her fork back for more, smiling at her friend.

      Orly smiled back, chocolate sauce dribbling lazily from her chin. “From the Holocaust to the sex life of Phillipe Berger. This is good. I need friends who can have meaningful conversation and also talk about sex, you know?”

      Wendy laughed. “We’re going to be good friends this year.”

      Orly responded, “I’d like that. I don’t have many friends who are serious about their careers. My boyfriend, Nir, he’s fun to be with, he’s in a band, he works in computers during the day, but he doesn’t really understand when I have a deadline and can’t go out. Or my passion for my work; he just says I work too hard, wants me to party more.”

      Wendy sighed. “I have the opposite problem. This guy in graduate school, Matt, we’re compatible intellectually, he’s good-looking, we get along. I like to talk to him, but there’s just something . . . not quite there. He doesn’t excite me. We keep saying if we’re both single at thirty we’ll get together.”

      “How unromantic,” Orly sympathized.

      “Exactly.” Wendy carefully swooped up a piece of crepe draped with chocolate and swathed with the bitter espresso ice cream, now puddling as it melted. “Maybe I need to improve my Hebrew, try seduction in different languages. My chances to land a guy will go up statistically if there are more guys to cast my potential net for.”

      “Phillipe would be proud—why don’t you write him a fan letter and tell him what you learned from his article.”

      Wendy smirked.

      “No, seriously, I had a professor in journalism school who made it the capstone of our class to write fan letters to writers we admired. People appreciate them, and mostly write back.”

      Wendy wiped her mouth with her napkin and intoned, “I’ll pass on that assignment, thanks, Professor Markovsky. Currently, I’m limited to English. That’s why my dissertation is exclusively on Americans.”

      “What’s it about? You haven’t told me.”

      “American baalei teshuvah in Jerusalem. How they tell their stories.”

      “They’re nuts. What else can you say?”

      “For starters, why? Why of all the possible nutty paths there are do they choose to do this, not radical veganism? Or Buddhist asceticism?”

      “Big deal. There are a variety of ways to be a nut! As we say in journalism school, where’s the story here?”

      Wendy put her fork down and said, “American kids, from American families, most of them in the US for a few generations. Now, they are taking on this different identity, Jewish in a way no one in their family has been in over a century. Why? What does it say about the role of religion in America? Dormant for a few generations and then, voila, coming to the fore. Does the behavior of baalei teshuvah compare to other American religious groups or is it sui generis?”

      Orly chewed thoughtfully, and said calmly, “Wendy, I’m not your professor. You don’t have to use jargon or situate your work within the field as a whole. Just tell me why you’re doing it, as a friend.”

      Wendy put down her utensils and laid her

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