WHAT IT MEANS, “BESHERET”
In the cramped quarters of the creaking old freighter, it was not long before all of the immigrants crowding the sweltering steerage compartments and the deck knew the young couple by sight.
The pair spent their days and nights standing at the rail, looking out at a sea as endless as the prospects just over the horizon. Or perhaps at the birds.
They were quiet, well-behaved and reserved. The older passengers, particularly the religious ones, noted with approval the modest distance the couple maintained as they stood, almost (but not!) touching. Only by standing at their elbows would you know that they spoke with one another at all, so low were their voices as they talked in Yiddish.
Two days out of port, the young man turned to the girl.
“Rivkie. Are you happy?”
She nodded, knowing that it was the expected response. She quickly glanced sidewards at Sam's face and away. Happiness? If happiness was relief, if it was the giddiness of leaving violence and hatred behind, she was happy. But leaving her mother, her father, her brothers, everyone she knew? It was impossible to be happy about that. All she had to pledge against the loss was hope, hope it would be better in America. Though “what it” was, and “what better” meant, was unimaginable.
But already, just a few weeks into this strange state called “marriage,” she’d mastered the essence of marital conversation.
“It was besheret,” she demurred.
“Besheret!” Sam snorted. “What do you mean, ‘besheret’?”
She took a deep breath. Marriage was a process of discovery. She'd discovered during the first week of marriage (just a week ago, in the old country, still calling himself Shmuel), that Sam, for all of his intelligence and accomplishment, didn't understand many of the things that were perfectly clear to her.
He didn’t understand besheret, for one thing. Nor God’s hand guiding their lives. Nor, for that matter, the need to give thanks. He’d talked at length about something called “free will,” which seemed to argue that he alone was responsible for everything that happened to him.
Without rancor, she explained besheret again:
“It means fate, that what happened was what was supposed to happen. Don't you think that it must have been besheret that everything happened like it did to put us together, right here?”
Sam snorted. “It's no such thing. I married you because I wanted to marry you. And I wanted to marry you from the first time I saw you.”
“But you could only marry me because the other boy...”
She stopped, feeling her cheeks grow hot. That was another of her mother's instructions: never, ever mention Gershon Levy. What was done was done; marriage and emigration would erase that problem completely from their lives.
Rivkie swallowed her words, hoping that her husband would take the color in her cheeks as the result of the bracing sea air.
Sam wasn't willing to let it go. “Gershon Levy? He was nobody!”
She ground her teeth and glared at him. Sam was tall and handsome in a tattered sort of way. She didn't have any doubt that he'd make a good enough husband: he was as considerate as you could expect of a man raised in a shtetl, and gentle after a fashion. And he had certainly saved her. But nobody, not even her new husband with his new English name, would denigrate the memory of the man for whom her heart still ached.
“Nobody?” she whispered acidly, careful not to cause a scene. “He was important. He was handsome and cultured. He was a gentleman. He wrote beautiful letters. He was going to give me a big house in Warsaw. He traveled all over the world. He travelled in express trains, always in his own compartment. He was a mensch.”
Rivkie returned her attention to the endlessly passing water, savoring the memory of Gershon Levy. She had never even seen his picture, but she remembered what she saw in her mind's eye during all those weeks of receiving his letters. People said that he was tall and straight and handsome. Everyone agreed that his family was wealthy. People in the family who knew him—or who knew people that knew him (or perhaps knew people who knew his family)—described the riches and luxury in which they lived. And certainly he had to be wealthy to travel all over the world as he did, sending her letters from one country and another across Europe, from Paris to Moscow, one following the other almost faster than the fastest train could travel. Until that last letter, from Siberia.
At her side, Sam, too, stared out over the water, irritated by the contrast between Gershon Levy's big house and separate compartment and this overcrowded, stinking ship. This, their first abode as a married couple, was nothing but a cavernous compartment shared with dozens of passengers. He glanced at her angrily, a retort on his lips. Her slight, straight form, seen against the grey sky and slate sea, and her quiet, almost magisterial composure, stopped him. Just as had the first sight of her, she alone stood out of an indistinguishable flood of people. They were a disconsolate crowd, struggling into his village with only the belongings they could carry in their arms. The faces of all were drawn and haggard, skeletal survivors’ faces. Hers alone shone. Her dark eyes and a walk that was like a ritual, she captured Sam’s heart with a glance. If there was any besheret, it was that his eyes found her that day. The rest was his own hard work.
He went right home and told his father he wanted to marry Rivkie. The old man had nodded patiently and said that though they were sharing their village with their unfortunate new neighbors, they weren't going to marry them. Rivkie's family, his father explained sadly, followed the mystical and somewhat obscure teachings of their own rebbe, not the rational and verifiably true teachings laid down by their own rabbi. Marriage was impossible. Rationality and mysticism could never coexist. At least, not in this world. And anyway, the girl was still a baby.
Sam knew it was no use to argue. When the village matchmakers began proposing girls for him—the next day, it seemed—he never argued. He just steadfastly rejected all of the girls who were proposed. This one was too ugly to spend his life with, that one too stupid to be the mother of his parents' grandchildren; the next was not religious enough, and others were too religious. He shivered with dread at the thought that he could lose this treasure to some bent, hairy, obscurantist yeshiva bachur. If he was to have her, he would have to take things into his own hands.
Looking back on those days, feeling her presence now right next to him, he smiled. He should be easy on Rivkie. He knew facts of life she didn't. Eventually he would tell her, years from now, when she knew him well enough to forgive what had to be done. But he couldn't resist needling her about how handsome and rich his rival was claimed to be.
“Did you ever see the other boy?” A laugh underlay the question. “Did you ever see a picture of him? Of his family’s houses and factories? Did you ever see anything other than letters?”
“I didn't meet him. It wouldn't have been proper,” she said haughtily. Then, forgetting her mother's injunctions about being gentle with her husband, she added, “But my parents knew him, and people from my village knew him.” Everyone knew about him. Everyone claimed to know of Gershon Levy's family: big, important merchants from this place or maybe that, or from both here and there.
Unconsciously she rested her hands against her abdomen. When they told her that a fine gentleman had made her an offer of marriage, butterflies began frolicking there. Her parents even let her read the first letter, the one saying that this young, rich merchant's son had fallen in love with her while passing through the village and now proposed to marry her. Week after week the letters came, imploring her parents to betroth her to him. Gershon Levy told her parents of his plans for the largest celebration ever in their little village and the house he would build for her somewhere.
It would have to be a marriage by proxy, unfortunately. Gershon Levy had pressing business all over the world and could not interrupt his business to return to their little village. But marriage by proxy was kosher, and he cited chapter and verse and the appropriate commentaries and discussions in the Gemarra that authorized the practice.
Rivkie's parents struggled with the request. It was approved by the Rabbis, of course. Still, in modern times it was an unusual request. These were unusual times, though, freighted by threat and uncertainty. Travel was unusually dangerous. An unusual condition, certainly, but Gershon Levy was an unusual man. No one could deny that the groom was unusually well suited as a husband. And committed to her: for months after the first letter, the letters came, proclaiming his commitment and his plans for their life together, until Rivkie felt as light and carefree as one of her butterflies.
Then suddenly the letters stopped. The butterflies in Rivkie’s stomach turned quiet when a few weeks went by without a letter. After a few months, the butterflies turned to snakes that constantly bit at her insides. But then came the last letter. Even the snakes abandoned her.
The writer was the rebbe of the Kamchatkaish Chassidim. The rebbe understood that an engagement by proxy had been discussed and perhaps misunderstood by Rivkie's family as an offer made and accepted. But such an offer was not kosher under the law, and certainly not under the law as practiced by the very strict Kamchatkaish Chassidim.
Everyone in the village knew about the letters and everyone knew about Rivkie's upcoming marriage to Gershon Levy of the famous Levys of Warsaw, or of Vilna, or of Lviv, or somewhere like that. Somehow, they all knew about that last letter almost before Rivkie's parents received it. Her parents tried to hide it from her, but they could not hide the arguments on every street corner or in every corner of the synagogue. Some said that if the engagement wasn't legal, then she returned to being just an unmarried woman, and that was that. Others insisted that whether the engagement was legal or not, now she was an agunah, an abandoned woman, and thus unmarriageable. Still others claimed that with an offer having been made and accepted, she was a wife, so now there must be a divorce. The rabbis and community leaders of Gershon Levy's community might have been able to determine her status for sure and come up with a solution, but with today's troubles—murders, pogroms, expulsions—they could not be found.
Sam's attention returned to the woman standing at the rusting rail of the ship. Misreading the look on her face, Sam scoffed at her invocation of Gershon Levy’s written protestations of love.
“Letters. Let me tell you about the letters. There was the letter from I forget where that said he was going to build you a big house with an iron gate, and fireplaces in every room, and polished wood floors. Then there was the one where he said he was going to take you to Moscow, to the big synagogue, maybe for the High Holy Days, perhaps even to Paris. And don't forget the one where he said that he wanted to have lots of children, because he wanted reminders of your beautiful face to surround him—”
Rivkie's mouth dropped open. Her upbringing and her manners and her mother's admonitions abandoned her.
“You know what his letters said?”
Suddenly she realized that she had surrendered her every private space to this man. Even her trunk would never be her inviolate private place alone. She screeched:
“Who said you could read my letters?”
Sam realized that he’d made a terrible mistake. His mouth became so dry that his tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth. He could think of no reasonable explanation for how he knew the content of her letters, and no reasonable excuse for how he came by the knowledge.
Sam watched his new wife's knuckles grow white as they clasped the rail with crushing force. Luckily there was no way off the boat. She could not leave him. Though as his attention fixed on Rivkie’s hands, knuckles turning white with her grasp of the rusted metal rail, it occurred to him that there was one exit. He glanced at her face to see if she was angry enough to take it.
“You—” Rivkie said, not believing.
“I didn't read your private letters,” Sam said in his own defense. “I would never read your private letters.” And yet, he saw himself through her eyes. If he knew what was in the letters, it could only be because he had broken her trust. Anything was better than letting her think that he’d trampled on her trust.
Sam took refuge in the truth.
“I know what they said because I wrote them.”
The young woman scoffed. “You? You pretended to be a rich merchant? You can write like a poet?” She laughed. It was impossible. It was ridiculous. His lie was worse than his truth.
The laugh stung him. Sam lashed back.
“That's right. I am Gershon Levy.” He thumped his chest with a fist. “I did it. I wanted to marry you, so I made up the letters.” He thumped again, harder. “I and no other! And I got the postman to deliver them to you. I did that. When Gershon Levy rejected you, I knew your parents were going to be desperate and afraid that nobody else would ever be willing to marry a disgraced woman.” He pounded his chest, looking like a scrawny gorilla displaying his false dominance. “That's your besheret!”
Rivkie's face convulsed into a tight knot. She began screaming. The words—the words were sounds that neither Sam nor the onlookers nor Rivkie herself understood. All of the months of butterflies and snakes, all of the nights of crying over her abandonment, all of the indignities that marriage had subjected her to, not to mention the ones to come—
The girl stepped boldly up to her husband and beat her hands against his chest. In mute rage she beat and beat and beat, screaming as she hit him, knowing as she did so that every soul on the ship was watching her make a scene and not caring.
Sam stood and took it. And he took the interest and the shock and the hatred of all of his fellow passengers without comment, too. He understood how they would never understand why he would drive this beautiful young woman to violence. He deserved the punishment of her blows and their judgment.
Not punishment for doing what he did to make her his wife. No, any man who saw her raven hair and deep black eyes would have done the same to make her his own. No, he deserved punishment for not being disciplined enough to keep it to himself.
At last, her screaming and flailing subsided into an exhausted silence. He put his arm carefully around her stiff, quivering shoulders. Then he led her, unresisting, to their bunks in the dank steerage compartment of the ship.
Two days later, the freighter steamed into New York City’s harbor. Sam stood at the rail, alone, watching the sights, while Rivkie sat on her bunk in the darkness. It was not the beginning he’d hoped.
Eventually, the silence that descended between them like an iron wall would lift. The stresses of living together in a single room, of having children without her mother to help her, of finding enough money to feed themselves and a child, of years of shared struggle—at last the life that they shared uncomfortably worked its magic and sanded off the rough edges that had driven them apart.
They would never revisit the philosophical question of where free will began and besheret ended. And they never recounted the story of how they met, not even to their great-grandchildren. Except, obviously, one.