Zahava

Life is not only about getting married. It’s about staying married.

Mrs. Muller

Life is not about money. Don’t lose this opportunity.

I remember my mother’s money-voice. The words varied, but it was always the same tone. “I need to buy diapers,” she would say, or, “Can I do the grocery shopping yet?” She would look at my father, he would turn away. And we kids would run away, to another room, so we wouldn’t have to hear what came next.

I told my friends the official version — my father was “in sales.” Now I understand that he only earned commission, but then all I knew was that sometimes there was money, and sometimes there wasn’t. Usually there wasn’t.

In eighth grade I got a job helping a sheitelmacher in the evenings. By tenth grade I was the one who did my friends’ hair for simchahs. I did haircuts on the side, too, $10 each. I could earn $50 in two hours on a Sunday.

My high school principal helped me piece together grants and scholarships so I could go to seminary. Seminary is basically a place where you spend a year talking about the kind of person you want to marry. The teachers all talked about histapkus b’muat, sacrificing for Torah, and I wanted it so badly. But I knew something my friends didn’t.

I knew what it’s like to have a child crying with a fever, and to wait, and wait, and wait, and not take them to the doctor, because you don’t have cash for the co-pay or the antibiotics, and maybe it’s just an ear infection that might be viral anyway.

I knew what it’s like to have a car parked in front of your house, in decent working order, but you have to walk everywhere because you have no money to buy gas.

I knew what it’s like to stand by the window and watch the whole neighborhood play in the snow. Snow is free, but there are only two pairs of boots, and the smaller ones don’t fit you anymore, and your older brother needs the bigger ones to wear to school. Besides, who wants to wear boys’ boots?

I knew what it’s like to borrow a little money from your uncle, just for a few days — it’s the 25th and you get paid on the 30th — and then borrow a little more from your cousin, on the 15th.

I knew that marriage takes a lot of compromise and goodwill and good middos, and that all those things are in short supply when you can’t provide for your basic needs and you’re always thinking about your debts.

At the end of the year in Israel there were a few presentations from different degree programs. My roommate immediately chose a speech therapy program.

“What exactly do speech therapists do?” I asked her.

She shrugged. “Um, I don’t know, fix people’s lisps, maybe? The point is that it’s the shortest program.”

There was this enormous pressure to get a degree as fast as you can and start earning a huge salary immediately. For shidduchim, you know.

I didn’t go for a degree. I didn’t want my children to have the same childhood I had. I didn’t want to have the same marriage my parents had. Paying back student loans as a married woman working part-time on a speech therapist’s salary was not going to work.

I came home from seminary and went straight back to work. Soon I was doing my friends’ hair for dates. Then I was doing their sheitels. I quit my job with the sheitelmacher and rented a small basement apartment — two rooms, a kitchenette, a bathroom. I turned it into a salon.

“You practically live in the salon,” my mother complained.

After a few years I officially moved in — I furnished the second room and bought some kitchenware. I started selling sheitels, then I started sourcing my own. I raised my prices. My clientele grew anyway.

When I turned 30 I thought, what am I waiting for? I took a deep breath and signed the lease on a storefront. I invested a lot — chrome and glass and mirrors and lighting and the perfect decor to make my clients feel pampered. I hired two high school girls to help wash the wigs. I couldn’t believe this was me.

Mrs. Muller, the popular shadchan, bought her sheitel from me right after I opened the new showroom. We schmoozed, of course — everyone schmoozes with their sheitelmacher. (“Between the two of us,” Mrs. Muller once said, “we probably know more secrets than the FBI.”) When she asked me what kind of boy I was looking for, I thought she was just being polite.

“Tall, dark, and handsome,” I joked, snipping carefully.

She tried laughing without moving her head. “Can you be a little more specific?”

“I’m flexible at this stage.” No point in pretending. “But my dream was always a learning boy. All this,” I waved to indicate the whole salon, “was so that I could support my family.”

Eli sounded too good to be true. Normal. Good family. A masmid. He wanted to stay in Lakewood (“I’m thinking of switching to a halachah chaburah next zeman”), we clicked on the first date. Was this a fairy tale or something?

(We’d even talked about the out-of-town thing, sort of. On the first date he’d thrown his hat onto the back seat when we got into the car, saying, “Don’t mind me, I’m from way out of town.” We spent the drive debating the differences between “in town,” “out of town,” and “way out of town.” When we got out of the car he put the hat back on. “Been here so long, I’m turning native.” He’d winked. “Don’t tell my mother.”)

On our second date he’d asked about the salon. I told him how nervous I’d been to expand. “Until then I’d been saving,” I explained. “I had to invest almost everything to expand into the storefront. I calculated that the business would grow enough to make it worth it, but there’s always a risk. And I wouldn’t be able to get the money back. You not supposed to invest funds that you can’t afford to lose.”

That had puzzled him. “Of course you don’t want to lose your investment… all your savings. But it wasn’t like you couldn’t afford to. You weren’t living off that money… were you?”

So I told him a little, only a little, about my family.

“You’re a very strong person,” he’d responded.

I came home on a high.

But on the third date something was different, we couldn’t get a good conversation going. “It’s my fault,” he finally admitted. “I got bad news yesterday. Maybe I should have canceled.” We drove out to the water, sat in the car, and he told me about his father.

I sat there in the dark car, staring straight ahead into the future. So we would move to Cornersville, to be there for his family. (And support them? I wondered, and felt guilty for thinking it.) I’d get some kind of hourly paid job that would probably enable us to eke by until we had kids… then what? And Eli would take care of his father, take over the kollel, and we’d raise our own family, marry off Eli’s siblings, all on a come-and-go income, like my parents had?

I just couldn’t do it.

“Money can’t buy happiness,” Mrs. Muller says, like I’m in fifth grade. But money can buy a tutor for a struggling kid so he doesn’t end up in crisis. It can buy cleaning help for an overwhelmed mother so she can be present for her family. It can buy therapy to resolve issues before they cross the line into dysfunction.

I want to tell all this to Mrs. Muller. Not so she can fix it — she can’t — but just to protect my reputation. But then I think about my siblings. They also need to get married. I don’t want to affect their chances.

It was a good plan, sheitels; a family-friendly career, a lot of potential and flexibility. But there’s no market for my sheitels or my skills anywhere near Cornersville. My savings are sunk into the new showroom. I’ve spent all night thinking about it, but I can’t find a way out.

“Zahava, be smart… Don’t throw away something good.”

I know the whole range of stereotypes about older singles — picky, commitment-phobic, married to their careers, unrealistic.

But really we’re just so vulnerable.

If I could tell Mrs. Muller one thing it would be: Life is not only about getting married. It’s about staying married, raising a family, making choices that set you up for success. This is a setup for disaster.

Mrs Muller

I’d known Eli since he was born 33 years ago, but I only met Zahava last year, when I treated myself to a new wig at her salon and showroom. The sheitelmacher and the shadchan — it was an instant click. And I could totally see her with Eli.

I didn’t suggest her to Eli right away, though. It was years since the broken engagement, but no one had forgotten. They didn’t want to be burned again. And I didn’t want to be the one to burn them again.

Then I mentioned it to Meir, and he insisted I suggest it.

“Oh, but you know what they say about doing business with family,” I protested. “He’s my nephew, remember? Not recommended.”

“You know what they say about the shoemaker’s children,” he retorted.

While I waited to hear from them after the first date, I was sweating like it was my first shidduch.

She said yes. He said thank you.

After the second date, she noted that his hair was “kind of salt-and-peppery.” I guess sheitelmachers notice these things.

“Does it bother you?” I asked.

“No.” There was a lilt in her laugh. “I think it’s distinguished.”

Over my shoulder, Meir pumped a fist. I knew it had been a good idea.

The third date was a Sunday day-date. I was surprised when I didn’t hear from Eli that evening, but he called me first thing Monday morning.

“Sorry for not calling last night,” he apologized. “We got back late, I was afraid to call.”

Zahava called me before I could call her. “Hi,” she said. “How are you?”

Okay, she wanted me to prompt her. “So where did he take you?” The sheer white curtains over the kitchen window danced in the breeze. Everything I saw looked like a wedding gown.

“Oh, it was nice.” She gave me a rundown of their trip to a museum and then a restaurant. “Then we picked up drinks at Coffee Czar and drove down to the water.”

“To watch the sunset?”

She laughed politely. “Something like that.”

Call-waiting was beeping, but I ignored it. Something was wrong here.

“He told me this morning that he wants to go out again,” I said, feeling my way carefully.

“I know — I mean, I figured he would.”

It was over. I’ve been doing this for 20 years, I know when a shidduch is over. I couldn’t believe it.

“Really?” I was stalling. “What did you guys talk about?”

Zahava blew out a breath. “He told me about his father.”

“What about his father?”

“Uh… that his father is sick.”

My breath vanished. “What?” Miriam hadn’t said a thing!

In the pause that followed, denial kicked in. “Are you sure? He was sick years ago. Maybe you misunderstood?”

“I don’t think so. I had heard that his father had been sick, before we started dating. He told me it’s back.”

“How bad is it?” I knew it was inappropriate to ask her but I didn’t care.

She was quiet. “It’s pretty bad,” she finally said.

Call-waiting beeped again. I didn’t even look at the screen. “Okay, listen, Zahava, I know this is a huge shock and it makes everything very complicated and, um, stressful, but it doesn’t have be the end. Let me talk to Eli and his mother and find out what the story is.” I was talking quickly to cover my panic; inside me something was howling noooooo! No, Shimon can’t be sick again, no, this shidduch just couldn’t fall apart! “I’ll call you back, okay?”

“No! Um, I mean, wait. Please.” The flapping curtains irritated me now. I turned my back. “Listen, Mrs. Muller, I’m sorry, I know that was a pretty bad way to find out that your brother-in-law is… um, not well.” Hang up already, I need to call Miriam. “But here’s the thing, I would never stop dating someone just because of that.”

“No?”

“No, of course not. I’m 32, I know the world isn’t perfect.”

“Great, so—”

“So the thing is that after El— um, after he told me about his father, he told me he’s going back.”

“Going back?”

“Yeah — going back to Cornersville. To be with his family. And to take over the kollel center.”

The kollel center. Shimon and Miriam had devoted their whole lives to it.

I walked across the room and pulled the window shut. The curtains stopped flailing abruptly. “That makes sense.” I was trying to speak calmly. “Eli’s parents basically built that community from scratch. It was all built around the kollel center. It makes sense that Eli would”—I didn’t say take his father’s place—“go back.”

“Right, of course it makes sense for him.” Her voice was stronger now. “But it doesn’t make sense for me.”

Another click. This time I looked at the screen — Miriam. “One minute, Zahava.” I pressed answer. “Hello?”

“Dina!” My sister laughed. “I just spoke to Eli!”

“Oh,” I stuttered. “Really?”

“Listen, I was thinking, do you think we can meet her? We can come to New York — we might be coming in anyway for, um, something else… I’ll tell you about it later. Can we meet her? Is it too early? Just an informal kind of thing.” She sounded so happy. “What do you think?”

“Uh, wow, well…” I fumbled for something to say. “I’m on the other line, can I call you back?”

Zahava seemed to have composed her thoughts while she waited. “I realize that no one could have predicted this, and of course I don’t hold it against you. But I would never have agreed to date Eli if I knew it meant moving to Cornersville to be the rebbetzin of a kiruv kollel for the rest of my life. So as things stand, I don’t think it’s going to work.”

If she could be calm, I could be, too. “Can you explain why not? Weren’t you looking for a serious ben Torah?”

“I am.” I winced at her use of the present tense. “And he definitely is one, that wasn’t the problem—”

“So I’m sure you realize that a 33-year-old guy, a real mensch, who’s still”—I drew out the word—“sitting and learning full-time is hard to come by. Right?” I didn’t wait, I knew I was right. “And you also realize that most guys, no matter how serious they are, by the time they’re 33, they’ve been learning for so many years, many of them have a drive to move on a little, to produce. Even if this… thing with his father hadn’t come up, I’m sure Eli would have looked for some kind of position in klei kodesh pretty soon.”

“Right, I have no problem with that.” Here her voice shook a little. Maybe there was hope. “The part I can’t do, is I can’t move to Cornersville to run a kiruv center in its tiny sort-of-frum community and live without any normal income for the rest of my life.”

“Hold on, who said anything about no income?” Not another case of have-it-all-ness? I’d thought Zahava was better than that. I’d promised Miriam that she was better than that! “Aren’t you planning to work? Let’s say Eli would stay in Lakewood — you would work, no?”

“Of course I would work. I’ve built the sheitel salon up over so many years, and it’s been doing really well lately. Well enough to support a family, for sure. And I could hire more people if I needed to cut my hours, it’s really a very family-friendly kind of business for a woman to own.”

“So open a sheitel salon in Cornersville.”

“There’s no market in Cornersville for sheitels. How many women there cover their hair?”

It was quiet. I searched for the right words. Not to convince Zahava to do something she didn’t want to do, but to help her recognize that this was what she had waited for all along.

“Whenever you choose one thing, you’re by default choosing to give up the other thing.” Too therapisty. “All these years, you wanted a ben Torah. That was your highest value. It’s obvious that a life dedicated to pursuing Torah, building Torah, is going to come with some sacrifices.” Now I sounded like a high school mechaneches. “I think—”

She cut me off. “It’s not that I’m not willing to live simply. I can work hard, I can live simply, I want to do that. The problem is that if we, um, if I moved to Cornersville, I wouldn’t just be ‘living simply.’ I know what kiruv life is all about. There’s no one paying your salary. You’re always juggling, borrowing, skimping, jumping from debt to debt.” When she paused, it was quiet — so quiet, always, in the small apartment where she lived all alone. “I could get some kind of local job, I could do a few sheitels on the side, I could run myself ragged, we’d never have enough money, we’d always be stressed, we’d… It’s not going to work.”

My mind spun, looking for the way out. “Money can’t buy happiness.” A sunbeam glowed across the kitchen. I closed my eyes. “Zahava, be smart. Think about this. Don’t throw away something good.”

“I thought about it. A lot.” How could she be so calm? How could she be so sure? “This is not right for me. I’m sorry.”

I know the whole range of stereotypes about shadchanim — from meddlesome to pushy, all the way down to manipulative.

But really we’re totally helpless.

If I could tell Zahava one thing it would be: Life is not about money. The wheel turns, money comes and goes. But who you choose to marry sets the entire course of your life. Don’t lose this opportunity for a good life.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 706)