“Do we need to have this discussion right now?”

This discussion, the one in which Hannah pointed out that some Orthodox now embraced women studying Torah. Aharon knew this. He knew there were no mitzvah that specifically prohibited it. But to him, this was simply not his idea of women—nor of Torah study.

“You’re searching for words, aren’t you? I could help.”

“No.”

“But I’m much better at crosswords and word searches than you.”

“This isn’t an amusement; this is worship!”

They knew each other well. His tone meant that this was final and she was not to question it. She didn’t. She slipped back onto the pillow.

“How about I do a little background research for you? Try to find out more about Rabbi Kobinski?”

He closed his book, glowered at her. “Three children, one still in diapers, and you don’t have enough to do? You want some suggestions? Because this place is not exactly the Palace of Solomon.”

She had rolled away from him; now she rolled back, dark eyes flashing. “No, Rabbi Handalman, it is not the Palace of Solomon! You want to know what it is? It’s a tiny two-bedroom apartment filled with three children—half the size of the house we had in New York, when it was just you and I! I would like to see you keep it perfect all the time.” Tears threatened, but she was too angry for them. “You know, I have a brain, Aharon. Maybe even as fine a brain as you. In school they thought I would be somebody!”

“A rabbi’s wife, the mother of three beautiful children, is a nobody?”

They glared at each other. Aharon had more bitter words at the ready, like poison arrows strung in a bow. He could see on her face, too, that she had things to say on her part. But they had been married long enough—they knew better.

Then, unexpectedly, he thought of his mother. His anger evaporated, replaced by a stab of worry. But Hannah was not his mother. She was not depressed, only a little restless, surely. He sighed and put his binder on the floor.

“Hannaleh.” He put his hand over hers on her stomach. They looked at each other for some time, as wrestlers might gauge an opponent. Then he kissed her. He had been too inattentive of late. He was always caught up in his work, staying late at the office to avoid the worst noise of the children in the evenings and tired or distracted after they were in bed. This, this was all she was asking for, a little attention. Hannah clung to him as if she could claim his spirit by sheer force of will. And for a few minutes, she did.

It was a shame, but Hannah was not alone in her advice. Aharon called on one of the synagogues that catered to Eastern European Jews, but the rabbi had never heard of Kobinski. “If he died in Auschwitz, why don’t you try Yad Vashem? They have a better contact list of Eastern European survivors than I do.”

“It’s a memorial,” Aharon said dismissively.

“They’ve been collecting a lot of data. So try it. You’ll see.”

He had looked for Kobinski’s book, The Book of Mercy, but no one had ever heard of it, not even the rare bookseller in the Jewish Quarter. Aharon’s contact at the Hebrew University lectured on Jewish history and occasionally on kabbalah. He’d never heard of Kobinski, either, but he had a brainstorm: “Why don’t you go visit Yad Vashem? You might get a lot out of it.” It was all Aharon could do not to conk the man on the head with the briefcase he held in his hand.

Now, alone in his office, Aharon stared at the open binder on his desk. The word Auschwitz, so consistent in most of the Kobinski arrays, lay hidden among the words like bits of barbed wire.

Get a lot out of it! As if the Holocaust weren’t already so deep in his blood that his very corpuscles cringed at the word? Did he need to see those things? Those pictures? Those heaps of shoes and eyeglasses? Did he need to have it pounded into him any more?

He had once left in the middle of a Beit Midrash at his synagogue—a visiting rabbi from the States, of course; they always knew how to say exactly what nobody wanted to hear. He’d walked out because the rabbi was talking about the Question of the Holocaust. “The Question of the Holocaust”! A poor excuse for a lack of faith! Did a man stand in front of the Originator of all the universe and say, “Excuse me, but I don’t think I can approve of what you did”? Did God need our permission to arrange history the way He thought best?

Aharon was getting upset. His stomach was spreading burning fingers up into his esophagus, a clear warning sign. He chewed chalky antacid tablets and, when they didn’t help, put on his coat. He would go out for a walk, anything to avoid thinking about her.

The old city was crowded with rush hour in Jerusalem, 6:00 P.M. and everyone in the streets. Synagogues, mosques, and churches held early-evening services and the wall was thick with men saying prayers. He would pray also, but not while he was in this mood. The walk did him little good. As his shoes clicked on the ancient stones his mind wandered to her anyway.

Rosa had been her name, and sometimes he could still hear her morbid liturgy—my brothers, my sisters, my papa, Mama, Uncle Sol and Aunt Rivka, the blond baby next door… and on and on and on, as if she had to say the names out of some macabre duty, as if handing crumbs of bread to ghosts.

His father saying, “It’s over! Let it go, for the love of Heaven!”

And Rosa, his mother, for the millionth time, “We should have brought somebody out.”

His father, who hadn’t trusted so much as the auto mechanic down the street up until the day he died, had certainly never trusted the Germans. Way back in Berlin in 1929 he’d said, “That’s it; I’m leaving.” He had given his young bride a choice: “Come with me or stay here and be a widow—I’m never coming back.” She had gone with him.

They had not, as Aharon’s mother so often reminded his father, taken anyone with them—not her four younger siblings, not her aging grandmother, no one. “Well,” said Father, “on a hunch you upset everyone’s life? Did I know for certain what was going to happen? Was I a rich man, I could afford to take your entire family to America? Did I not scrimp and save a month for your passage?”

Mother: “I wish you hadn’t! I wish I had taken my place with the rest of them!”

During the war years, Aharon’s father made a living as a kosher butcher in New York. Rosa had to be hospitalized several times during those years as reports of the worst trickled in. They’d sent money to her family; it disappeared into a black hole. When the war ended and they saw the newsreels…

In 1952, Father moved them to upstate New York. He told Aharon often enough, “I thought a change of pace would be good for your mother.” The way he said it, with that let-down tone, showed he had been mistaken. But it must have worked, for a time. In 1965, Aharon, only son, only child, was born, fruit of a soured womb.

In 1978, Rosa succeeded in killing herself.

His parents had never even seen the Holocaust, yet it ruined their lives. This was what happened when you couldn’t forget. And here was Kobinski, threatening to drag that all up again.

Why couldn’t the man have died somewhere else, anywhere but Auschwitz?