Jephte's Daughter Read Online Free Page B

lifted in her father’s strong arms, was able to reach out and actually, thrillingly, touch the scrolls themselves as they passed around the men’s section, cradled securely in the arms of the synagogue’s most respected men.
    Some of her earliest and happiest memories involved Sabbath afternoons. Sitting in her father’s lap, the back of her head pressed into his shoulder, she never tired of listening to his patient retelling of the stories of the Torah, which were as beloved and familiar to her, as firmly entrenched in the life of her imagination, as Cinderella, Snow White, and the Three Pigs were for other children. Rachel and Leah, Sarah and Abraham, were as close and real to her as her parents, her friends.
    Her favorite story was Akedat Yitzchak , the near-sacrifice of Isaac. The shivers would run down her spine imagining kind old Abraham, who had waited so long for a child, holding his cherished son’s hand and leading him away to be sacrificed because God had asked him to. She imagined the old man’s terrible sadness and fear and yet his brave steps forward. She imagined the boy’s trusting eyes fixed upon his father, his faith never wavering even as he laid himself flat upon the rock and waited. And because she knew it would all end well because God was good and hated cruelty of any kind, and that father and child would get all the credit without actually sacrificing anything, the story always made her happy.
    She loved those instances in the Bible where people took flying leaps of faith headlong into the fearsome unknown and God was always there, like a good father, His arms outstretched to catch them: the children of Israel plunging headfirst into the swollen waters of the Red Sea; Daniel in the lion’s den; Moses defying Pharaoh. Not only did they all come through unscathed, but they were also showered with rewards. All you had to do was believe.
    And as she listened to her father, trusting implicitly in every word he said with every ounce of her mind and heart, she sometimes forgot that these were God’s words and not her father’s, imagining that he and God were one, teaching her how to be wise and good, directing her steps and keeping her from all harm.
    Most of all, she loved the Sabbath day because as long as she could remember, it had been her day with her father. No matter what he did all week or how much work was left still to be done, by Friday at sundown he put it all behind him, crossing some invisible border from one world into another. In the Sabbath world, there was no such thing as bank overdrafts, unsatisfied customers, lazy workmen, unscrupulous subcontractors. The phone would ring unheeded. He never, under any circumstances, spoke a harsh or saddening word on the Sabbath. For a man who hardly had time to talk to his family during the week, he suddenly had all the time in the world, and he gave it generously to her and her mother.
    The Sabbath was a rare day of freedom for her mother, too. In those days of her early childhood, before the wealth had come, bringing with it a house full of servants, she had seen only her mother’s back most of the time: leaning over the stove or sink, bent low to make the beds and wash the floors. But on the Sabbath her mother was even forced to leave the dishes unwashed until after sundown.
    Her mother took on a special beauty as she sat wearing her girlish print dresses and little hats in the synagogue. She loved the special timbre of her mother’s voice as she joined her father in singing Shabbat zemirot , and the way her skin glowed in the light of the Sabbath candles. She loved to watch the way her mother’s eyes lit up when her father said the kiddush over wine and how her lips trembled as she sipped the sweet liquid from the silver cup he held for her. It was only then she saw clearly the beautiful, hidden current that flowed so strongly between her parents. It was like static electricity erupting into visible golden sparks on a cold winter’s