Free I Am Forbidden by Anouk Markovits Page A

few semesters of Torah study, away from house chores and sibling care, would be Hannah’s lasting gift to her girls.
    Zalman argued that the seminary, while ultra-orthodox, was not run by Hasidim. Teaching Torah to women was not the Hasidic way, nor was sending unmarried girls far from their father’s guardianship. But the thought of the two adolescent girls idle in Paris, and the recurrent appearance of secular books in Atara’s possession, troubled Zalman. He ponderedrecent rabbinic rulings that saw no harm in women studying Scripture and Ethics; he verified that there was no Talmud instruction—which was expressly forbidden to women; he authorized the seminary.
    A new urgency pervaded Atara’s forays in the city; these August days might be the last she would call Paris home. After the seminary, she would be expected to marry abroad, in a Hasidic community. Zalman was adamant: not one of his children would settle in France; it was too hard to bring up Hasidic children in France. On the crest of the Pont Saint-Michel, Atara turned her head right, to Notre Dame’s flying buttresses, to the forest of gargoyles and spires; she turned her head left, to the string of bridges arching over the Seine, the Pont Neuf, Pont des Arts.… She loved the story of time the old stones told, time before her, after her, loved feeling herself to be a mere fleck in this immensity. The bells rang the hour, then the hour filled with silence and she filled with longing; must Paris be a mere way station on her wanderings? If Paris had a home in her heart, might she not have a home in Paris?
    Atara daydreamed of preparing for the baccalauréat with her classmates at the lycée, but then her family would be erased from the register of good Hasidic families, her siblings condemned to bad marriages, to no marriage at all.… Was it a selfish heart that dreamt of living her own life?
    T HE TAXI’S horn sounded through the open windows. The girls’ suitcases sat on the landing. Hannah placed a finger on her lips and signaled the girls to follow her into the living room. She opened the dark walnut chest from Transylvania, now emptied except for two stacks of new sheets and pillowcases. “God willing, the chest will fill up, yes, your trousseaus. You are laughing, Milenka? Two, three years go by fast.…”
    Hannah kissed the girls, she blessed their journey:
“May the Lord bless you. May He guard your steps.…”
    One last time, Zalman exhorted the girls to uphold the family’s reputation and their Hasidic antecedents.
“May the Lord bless you. May He guard your steps.…”
    *
    T HE TRAIN clanked its way north on the last leg of the long journey. Mila read her Book of Psalms; Atara stared out the window.
Northampton … Leicester … Nottingham
. Neither farmland nor city but vast stretches of humble brick houses, row after row of row houses punctuated by slag heaps and tall chimneys.
Doncaster … Newton Aycliffe
. Leah Bloch had challenged Atara; the most erudite rabbis taught at the seminary, some with broad knowledge not only in Torah matters but in worldly disciplines. If Atara applied herself, she would obtainanswers to the questions she had not dared ask Zalman. It was urgent that Atara find answers that would ready her for marriage with the pious young man Zalman would find for her.
Stony Heap … Deaf Hill
. Atara made up her mind to try. She would study the holy texts as intently as she had read secular books.
No Place … Quaking Houses
. She would immerse herself in the seminary’s teachings and perhaps the holy texts would work their magic on her, too; perhaps she would stop dreaming about the baccalauréat and learn to dream of preparing meals for the Sabbath so that Zalman’s and Hannah’s hearts would not break.
    The car couplers clattered. The train crawled through hissing smoke and stopped under a dark vault.
    Two girls in long skirts greeted Mila and Atara on the platform. In the taxi, the seminary girls talked