Sacred and Profane

The grounds of Yeshivas Ohavei Torah were located on twenty acres of brush and woodland in the pocket community of Deep Canyon. It was twenty freeway minutes from the police station and fifteen minutes from Decker’s ranch. The locals of Deep Canyon were working-class whites, and they and the Jews had little to do with each other, but over the past few years there had grown an uneasy, mutual tolerance.

The locals weren’t the only ones who felt uncomfortable with the Jewish community. The Foothill cops were equally baffled by the enclave, imagining it a slice of old Eastern Europe that had been frozen in a time warp. Actually, the yeshiva embodied aspects of both past and present, but the cops never delved that deeply. They had nicknamed the place Jewtown, which is what Decker had called it before his own personal involvement. Now, at least when Decker was around, they referred to it by its rightful name.

The lot for the yeshiva had been cut out of the mountainside. Huge boulders had been hauled away and the ground had been leveled, leaving a mesa of flat land surrounded by thick foliage, evergreens, and hillside. Set in the middle of a broad carpet of lawn was the main building-a two-story cement cube that contained most of the classrooms. On one side were smaller buildings-additional classrooms, the library, the synagogue, and the ritual bathhouse. The other side was open space for a thousand feet, then housing-a dormitory and a cluster of prefab bungalows.

Most of the yeshiva residents were college-age boys engaged in religious studies, but the place also had a high school, with secular and Jewish curricula, and an elementary school for children of the kollel students-married men studying Talmud full time. Private homes were provided for the kollel families, the two dozen rabbis who served as full-time teachers, and the headmaster-the Rosh Yeshiva. He was a meticulously dressed, distinguished man in his seventies named Rav Aaron Schulman. Rina’s husband had been his protégé and most brilliant student. Because of that, she and her sons had been allowed to stay on after he died.

Rina had once admitted to Decker that she was an outsider at the yeshiva. The women who lived on the grounds simply came along with their husbands or fathers. The school catered exclusively to men, and as a widow, she had no role there whatsoever. Though the residents treated her kindly-it was demanded of them by the Torah-she still felt like an interloper living in free housing, even though she taught math at the high school and operated the ritual bath. She knew she’d have to leave one day, but in the meantime she was grateful for the interlude that let her try to figure out what to do with the rest of her life.

Decker parked in front of the main gate, told Ginger to stay, and walked with the boys across the lawn. The place was almost empty at this time of the year; most of the boys had gone home to their families. Still, a seminar was being held on the grass. A full-bearded rabbi wearing a black suit and hat sat with five pupils-bochrim-under an elm. The students and their teacher were engaged in animated dialogue. Decker and the kids walked down the main pathway, turned onto a dirt sidewalk that cut through the residential portion, and stopped in front of a white bungalow.

“I’d appreciate it if you boys didn’t mention the bones until after I’ve spoken with your mother.”

They nodded.

Rina opened the door at Decker’s knock, her eyes widening with surprise, lips opening in a full smile.

“I didn’t expect you guys back until tomorrow!”

Sammy fell into his mother’s arms and embraced her tightly. He leaned his head against her breast and hid his gaze from hers. Rina cupped his face in her palms and looked at him, noticing moisture in his eyes and the tremble of his lower lip. She kissed him on his forehead and he broke away. Jake gave her a playful hug and smothered her face with kisses.

“I think they missed you,” Decker said.

“Happy to be home?” she asked them as they went inside.

The boys nodded.

“I’ve got surprises for you both. They’re on your beds.”

“Oh boy!” Jake exclaimed, heading for the bedroom. Sammy lagged behind.

“Shmuel,” she said, holding his arm, “is everything okay?”

He nodded.

“Something’s bothering you.”

“I’m fine, Eema. I’m just tired.”

“Okay,” said Rina, disconcerted at his evasion.

He gave his mother another hug, then trudged off to the bedroom.

“What happened?” she asked Peter as soon as they were alone.

“Could I have a cup of coffee, Rina?”

“Uh…sure. Of course,” she said. “Sit down, Peter. You look exhausted.”

He took a seat on the left side of her brown sofa, letting his head flop back against the cushion, then ran his hands over his face.

“Why are the boys upset?” she asked.

“It’s complicated. But everyone’s fine.”

“Okay,” she said. “Relax. I’ll make coffee and then you can tell me what’s going on.”

Her house was tiny-800 square feet crammed with mementos-tchatchkas, she called them. Display cases full of Jewish figurines, propped photos, and sketches of Israel. The white walls were dotted with landscapes of the Judean dessert, charcoals of the Old City of Jerusalem and the Wailing Wall, and photos of the Lower East Side of New York. Hanging above the sofa was a magnificently colored and elaborately scrolled Hebrew document-her wedding contract, her ketubah.

That’s what a Jewish marriage is, she had said. A contract. You’re supposed to know what you’re getting yourself into.

But do you ever really know, he had wondered out loud.

Emotionally, of course not. But a ketubah spells out the specific obligations for a husband as well as a wife. You’ve got to remember that back then, most societies considered women things-objects. The idea that a man was accountable to his wife was revolutionary.

Her entire east wall was the family gallery-snapshots of her parents, and her brothers and their families, pictures of her sons as infants and toddlers clumsy in bulky diapers, and antique sepia portraits of her grandparents and great-grandparents in gilt frames. And the wedding pictures-Rina and Yitzchak under a canopy holding a shared wine glass. The groom was looking directly at the rabbi, his eyes intense and serious. He’d been a handsome young man, Decker thought, lean, with even, strong features. But Rina was the focus of the photograph-a stu

His eyes drifted from the photo to the overflowing bookcases. She owned some secular books, but most were religious-Hebrew and Aramaic books of prayer, law, and ethics that were double and triple stacked on the shelves. She had skimmed through some of them, she had told him, but Yitzchak had known them all by heart.

Rina came back with black coffee for him and a milk-laced cup for herself. She sat down, tucked her legs under her denim skirt, and brushed midnight silk out of her eyes.

“Now,” she said. “What happened?”

“Everything’s okay,” he started out. “Sammy went exploring in the woods and came across a couple of human skeletons-”

“What?”

“It scared him, of course. It scared Jake, also, but they’re okay,” he said.

“What’d they do?”

“They asked a lot of good questions and I answered them. Kids do well with the honest approach.”

“Was it disgusting?”

“It was graphic.”

“What’d they ask you, Peter?”

“They acted pretty characteristically. Jake seemed more interested in the bones per se. How did they get there? Did the bad man who dumped them still live in the city? Is he going to kill us-”

“Dear God, I’d better talk to him-”

Decker held up the palm of his hand and continued.