Jephte's Daughter by Naomi Ragen

Author:Naomi Ragen [Ragen, Naomi]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Historical, Adult
ISBN: 9781902881508
Publisher: Toby Press
Published: 1988-01-01T06:00:00+00:00

Gita’s suggestion and, ironically, Isaac Harshen’s stern insistence that she read none of her own books, had led the way to her studying his books. Left with no other reading material, she had taken to struggling with the big set of Talmudical literature that now comprised the only books in the house, and she had learned, beyond a shadow of doubt, that Isaac Harshen was no scholar. The private lessons she had taken in Talmud to please her father and the Hebrew and Aramaic of her school days enabled her to decipher the difficult passages very slowly at first, and then with greater ease. To her shock, she found that Isaac Harshen was making up a lot of what he piously quoted her or seriously misconstruing it. There were laws he half fabricated, or twisted just to keep her under his thumb. For the Talmud, she learned, was full of discussions where scholars passionately disagreed with each other over the interpretation of laws. And yet, Isaac always acted as if everything was engraved in stone. Isaac, she had learned, was a man who memorized words but had little understanding of their meaning. He lacked the ability to assimilate knowledge that makes a man or woman a wiser human being, or the gift of making intuitive leaps of understanding between concepts that constitute true genius. If anything, the opposite was true. While the clear intent of the Talmud, she had learned, was to make men kind, charitable, generous, loving, forgiving, hospitable, and honest, Isaac, because he was dishonest and without understanding and even real faith, used his phenomenal recall for detail to prove through the dry letter of the law that cruelty and narrow-mindedness and petty unkindnesses and even untruths were permissible. He constructed a whole way of life that was a perversion of everything pious Jews strove for.

Once Batsheva realized this, once she understood totally that what she had taken as God’s word was only Isaac Harshen’s word, it gave her a wonderful inner freedom. But she did not confront him with this knowledge. Instead, she saved each lie, each inconsistency, hoarding them up like a prisoner who rejoices over each rusty scrap of metal, dreaming of creating an instrument capable of cutting through to freedom. Isaac Harshen was a liar and a bit of a fraud, a hypocrite certainly. He acted as if he had some special access to truth. But she had uncovered the most wonderful secret of all. He didn’t really believe in God. She saw this in the cruel lines in the corners of his mouth when he bullied her, careless of all the laws that said a man must treat his wife better than himself. He bullied her because he had no fear that God was looking over his shoulder preparing a reckoning.

She began to stay out later and later with Gita. Sometimes she would ask, embarrassed, if Gita’s own husband ever minded. Gita laughed. “Why should he mind? And if he does, so we talk about it, we discuss it.

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