First there is the snow, a thin white film of it blotting out the city, and for a moment Sofia imagines she is back in Leningrad, waking up in her old school dormitory. But in the bed next to hers, beneath that forbidding lump of pink blanket, lies not a schoolmate but her sister Irina. And in the icy dark outside her curtainless window, the yellow eyes of early morning traffic are sliding warily along Woodhaven Boulevard. Perhaps more than anything else it is the poster of the New Kids on the Block watching over Irina like ersatz guardian angels while she sleeps that roots Sofia firmly in Rego Park. She rises and stands for a moment in the narrow space between the two beds, watching flakes cling to the bars of the fire escape, fall past the branches of sycamore trees, and coat the frozen courtyard.
Then she goes to the bathroom and sees the blood, and that is when the trouble begins.
“Mama.” She creeps into her parents’ room, feels her way around the bed, and in an agitated stream of Russian tells her mother. She has gotten her period. Today. The day before she is to enter the temple formally by having a bat mitzvah. Orthodox Judaism says that while a woman is menstruating she is impure, and today, the day before she is to stand on the bema and read from the Torah, the day before she is to become a bat mitzvah, a Daughter of the Commandment, she has become impure. In the dark of the bedroom Ister Normatov listens to the news delivered in the voice of her third daughter, a voice with oddly taut and flattened vowels, and she thinks, “Then there won’t be a bat mitzvah after all.”
Iluysha and Ister Normatov had not wanted their daughter to have a bat mitzvah in the first place. A year ago, when the rabbi who gave religious training at Lexington School first broached the subject, their answer was no. Why should a deaf child have a bat mitzvah? Their two hearing daughters, after all, have done without the honor; they grew up in the Soviet Union, where Judaism was forbidden. But gradually Mr. Normatov accepted the idea, even grew to like it. As the date for the ceremony approached, he helped Sofia study Hebrew, reading aloud with her in the evenings. But Mrs. Normatov remains opposed. Not this child—she doesn’t want this child speaking aloud before a hearing congregation. Perhaps this is God’s way of saying he doesn’t want Sofia to have a bat mitzvah either.
Mrs. Normatov, awake in the dark, thinks about this daughter, about how strong-willed, even defiant, she has become in this country, and so she steals out of bed and follows Sofia into the kitchen. “What are you planning to do?” she inquires suspiciously, and sure enough, Sofia replies, “I will call the rabbi. Maybe it will be all right.” They argue then. Snow continues its clean descent past the little window at Sofia’s back while she reads the words on her mother’s lips: you are creating a sin, your bat mitzvah will mean nothing, bad things will happen to you.
Her mother’s words follow her out the door that morning, a visual echo reverberating across her mind: the lips, the teeth, the dark, knowing eyes. The school bus is already waiting at the curb and she has to run for it, her hair half combed, her stomach empty. She scrambles across the skid marks and turbid slush that already mark the snow. Irina, lagging behind breathlessly on plump legs, protests, but Sofia takes no notice. She will talk with the rabbi. They must hurry and get to school so that she can call the rabbi.
Only a week ago Wednesday Sofia had been sitting in the school library having her last Hebrew lesson before the bat mitzvah, and everything had finally seemed all right. She had arrived just a few minutes late and Rabbi Donna Berman had already been there, at a round table tucked against the back wall by the fish tank and the heaters. The rabbi stood up, tall and slender in green jeans and sneakers, smiled her warm, impish smile, and kissed Sofia hello.
The first time Sofia met her, slightly over a year ago, she was shocked and delighted to encounter a woman rabbi. Of course, by that time, shock and delight had become almost routine sensations for Sofia. School in America had proved full of surprises: deaf teachers, hearing teachers who signed, Jewish holidays on the school calendar. Every time she turned around, it seemed, another old certainty came crashing splendidly down.
Last fall, when Rabbi Berman started her religion class at Lexington, Sofia stood out instantly from the other four pupils. The group met only one hour a week and offered no academic credit, but Sofia treated it like a core course, taking the Hebrew alphabet home to study and diving eagerly into this language—her fifth, after Russian, Russian Sign Language, English, and ASL—with innate ability. She began to wear a gold chai, a letter of the Hebrew alphabet and a symbol of luck, on a chain around her neck. She cried upon seeing her first real menorah; until then she had only known the makeshift candle-gouged potato used at secret Chanukah celebrations in Russia.
What had once been denied was now being offered. Like a load of fresh chickens suddenly stocking yesterday’s barren shelves in a Russian grocery, the promise of Sofia’s religious heritage now appeared before her. She had known too much denial, too many restrictions, not to reach for it. It didn’t matter that this was the fifth alphabet she had to learn, or that she was struggling to learn English at the same time, or that she couldn’t hear the new language, couldn’t sound out the strange words, couldn’t ever—it was hopeless, she was sure—pronounce the Hebrew ch sound. None of that mattered. She would practice for it all day and all night, patience and desire pressed together in her heart like two gold coins in her fist.
After three months of classes, Rabbi Berman, or Rabbi Donna, as Sofia called her, pulled Sofia aside and asked whether she would like to have a bat mitzvah. Sofia had never actually attended a bat mitzvah. She didn’t know exactly what having one entailed, nor was she entirely sure that her parents, who had practiced Orthodox Judaism since coming to New York, would approve. She did know that at eighteen, she exceeded the traditional bat mitzvah age by five years. But when the rabbi assured her that this was not a problem, Sofia decided to swallow her other qualms, and without initial parental consent, she spent the next nine months preparing for the ceremony.
It wasn’t until this final lesson, sitting cozily back by the fish tank with Rabbi Donna, that Sofia finally let herself believe it would happen. Bent over the rabbi’s fat leather book, her right thumb looped through the chain from which her chai dangled, her left index finger gliding horizontally along the page, she read aloud. The fingers on her right hand dipped and curled as she unconsciously fingerspelled portions of each Hebrew word.
The rabbi pulled her chair close and read over Sofia’s shoulder. She stopped Sofia intermittently to correct her pronunciation, attempting to finger spell the proper sound. The rabbi’s fingerspelling was earnest and imperfect; frequently, Sofia had to smile gently and correct her signing as the rabbi corrected her Hebrew.
Behind them, a class of five middle-school girls had entered the library. The children wore hearing aid receivers strapped around their waists on wide elastic straps. They danced and jostled around the card catalogue in search of books on lizards. Unable to locate the proper subject heading, a few of them buzzed up to Sofia’s table instead and peered interestedly over her shoulder until their teacher shooed them away toward the reptiles.
“They wait for you to hand it to them,” commented a librarian, leaning across the shelf by the fish tank.
“Always,” agreed the teacher, switching off the microphone on her lapel. She watched her students sashay at last in the general direction of nonfiction. “On a platter.”
Sofia, oblivious, read on. Her hair curled like black flames down her rounded back. Rabbi Donna sat close, half curved around her, and Sofia could see her approving nods from the corner of her eye. She worked her thumb in and out of the loop of her necklace, following Hebrew across the page, spelling sounds on her fingers, molding them in her throat. Finally she came to the end of the passage, sighed, smiled, and raised her eyes for approval.
The rabbi laughed. “You need a sweatband.”
Sofia frowned.
“A sweatband? Sweatband.” The rabbi sketched one across her own forehead.
Sofia nodded. “Oh yah, yah. I know that.” She used only her voice with the rabbi.
For the past few months, Rabbi Donna had sensed an ambivalence on Sofia’s part; she seemed to be dragging her feet. At one point she had even wondered whether Sofia had changed her mind about the bat mitzvah, and had asked, “Am I forcing you?”
Sofia had shaken her head. “No, no . . . I just have to check with my mother.”
Now the rabbi gently brought up logistics. “Sofia, are you making an invitation?”
“Not yet. I want to.” There would be no engraved cards with sprays of roses for this bat mitzvah, no thick creamy envelopes, no neatly stamped and addressed printed reply cards. After school one day Sofia would print something out on the laser printer in the second-floor computer room—if she ever got a moment in which to do it.
“Maybe after your bat mitzvah, when you have more time?” suggested Rabbi Donna. She laughed again and laid a warm hand across Sofia’s shoulder blade.
“How many people?” asked Sofia.
“The temple has a lot of seats.”
“Not too many. Better limited,” she suggested anxiously.
“Can I come?” teased the rabbi.
Sofia smiled tiredly.
She hadn’t dreamed that a week and a half later she would be grimly riding on the bus through the snow, preparing to ask the rabbi that very question in earnest.
As soon as she arrives at Lexington, Sofia places a call, via telephone and TTY and relay service, to the rabbi’s office number. She gets an answering machine and leaves a message to please contact her through her guidance counselor, Louann Katz. She makes the call from Louann’s cubicle in the guidance office. Louann, one of the handful of Lexington staff members invited to the bat mitzvah, is all compact efficiency, warm and brisk and solid. With her strong, rapid signs, she promises to contact Sofia as soon as the rabbi calls back. Then there is nothing to do but get a pass and go to class.
Sofia tries not to dwell on what the rabbi will say, but the day seems mined with subtle references that propel her back to the subject. In American history, the lesson focuses on religious freedom.
“Why did dissenters leave the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1644 and establish their own colony in Rhode Island?” quizzes Janie Moran, smudging the date as she hits the board for emphasis.
Sofia responds instantly, as though she just happens to have been thinking about that very topic. “They wanted to believe in God on their own, in their own way. Because it’s personal.”
“Right. Remember, the Massachusetts Bay Colony was incredibly strict.” Janie signs strict sharply, two crooked fingers snapping over the bridge of her nose. It looks like a bridle, with the rider yanking back on the reins.
Sofia rubs the side of her face and looks over her shoulder at the clock. Not yet ten.
The morning drags on, miserably chill and damp. In English class, when Sofia asks whether she may go down to her locker and fetch her book, Liz Wolter starts to harass her a bit. “What is it doing in your locker?” she asks sternly, hands on hips. Liz is another Lexington teacher who has been invited to the bat mitzvah—she is to interpret—but Sofia neither details that morning’s events for her nor plays up to the scolding. She only responds wearily, “Yes or no?”
Liz lets her go and she runs the three flights down the dim, empty stairwell to the basement, wondering again what the rabbi will say. Sofia has to pass near the guidance office on her way back to English. Might the rabbi have called by now? She returns to class without checking.
Liz Wolter reads out loud from a paperback copy of Rosa Guy’s novel The Friends, which she props open on the table, a stapler weighing the pages down and leaving her hands free to sign. She simultaneously reads aloud and signs, using English-like signs to match the text with generous snippets of ASL tossed in for clarity. Her fine-boned face lifts and contorts with feeling; her narrow shoulders shift as she takes on different characters. Her fingerspelling has the clean precision of an elementary school teacher’s penmanship.
Sofia rests her chin on her stacked fists and prepares to soak her harried brain in fiction for an hour. But too many details in the novel remind her almost uncannily of her present situation. In today’s chapter, the protagonist, a teenage girl who has immigrated to New York, is sitting in a classroom unable to stop thinking about her mother. Then Liz gets to the part where the fictional class begins to taunt the teacher. “‘She ain’t nothing but a Jew!’” reads Liz. Her chin puckers in disgust as she takes on the part of the students, signing their cruel chant, “‘Miss Lass is a Jew-ew.’”
The scene is disturbingly familiar. Sofia knows what it is like to be called “dirty Jew.” At her old school, in Leningrad, her dark, Middle Eastern looks made her an easy target for anti-Semitism. When she first came to Lexington, two years ago, she wrote an essay about her experiences which was translated from Russian to English by a school interpreter.
I want to tell you something about how Jewish people live in Russia and America. In Russia, there is discrimination against Jewish people. In Russia, the government tells people that they can’t believe in God and the government closes some churches and synagogues. Also, in Russia, some Jewish people do not know their religion. They are not free to learn about the holidays or eat kosher food.
Sofia’s own family had practiced Judaism secretly at home in Samarkand. But she spent most of her childhood away at the school for the deaf in Leningrad, cut off from both her family and her religion.
She touches the chai on the chain around her neck. She has traveled halfway around the world to a country where Judaism can be openly practiced; she has met a rabbi willing to work with a deaf student; she has labored over Hebrew and religious studies; she has wrestled with her family’s reticence. Now it looks as though she may have surmounted all of these obstacles only to be thwarted by the time of the month, a phase of the moon.
After English there is biology, and after biology, math. When it is finally one o’clock, Sofia makes her way anxiously to the guidance office instead of the lunchroom. Louann Katz is at her desk, and yes—before Sofia has even quite sat down—yes, the rabbi has called, she says, they talked for thirty minutes and everything is fine, fine, and here is the rabbi’s home phone number for Sofia if she wants to call.
A sweet tiredness washes through Sofia’s muscles as Louann tries to convey everything the rabbi has said: that having her period is a wonderful thing, a God-given gift, that there is no more appropriate time to have her bat mitzvah than during this time of potential creativity, this time of celebration. But knowing that this perspective might clash with the Normatovs’, the rabbi has emphasized that she will respect Sofia’s wishes and support her either way. She has left the ultimate decision in Sofia’s own hands.
Sofia thinks of her mother, who she knows is still embarrassed by the idea of her deaf daughter’s speaking in public. She thinks of her father, who only a month ago began to show his support by helping her practice the Hebrew readings. She thinks of Rabbi Donna and the Lexington staff members who have helped her prepare, who are rooting for her, who are planning on attending the ceremony tomorrow. She thinks of herself. And she tells Louann her decision.
“My family believed in God and they always celebrated holidays,” Sofia had written in that school essay two years ago, “but I couldn’t celebrate with my family because I was in a residential school. I was in a dorm school for the deaf.” For too many years she has been apart. Too much has been left out, too many connections have been missed. It is time to start recovering the pieces, filling in the holes.
“Sofia, I watched the sun rise this morning.”
They are standing on the bema, facing each other. Behind them colored light glows dully from two panels of stained glass. The room is long and low-ceilinged. A fake candle atop the ark flicks pointy orange light at odd intervals.
“I watched the sun rise because I had a great deal of trouble writing this piece. I had tried several times during the week to jot down some thoughts. Last night I stayed up late ripping up page after page, dissatisfied with anything I had written.”
Sofia glances at Rabbi Donna, tall and gentle in her dark robe and many-colored tallis. Then she looks back at Liz Wolter, who stands beside the rabbi, interpreting her words.
“And so I got up early, watched the sun rise, and realized why I was having trouble writing about you—because how do you do justice to something or someone so beautiful?”
It is December seventh, the sixth day of Chanukah. Sofia has chosen this day to have her bat mitzvah because Chanukah is her favorite holiday; it celebrates religious freedom. She chose the date almost a year ago, and now that it has arrived it is perfect: blue and gold and spare.
Driving out to Long Island with her family this morning, Sofia watched the trees that lined the roads. They looked kind and elderly, like great-aunts. Snow lay in patches deep in the woods. It seemed to come up between piles of leaves like milk through cereal. In Port Washington, they drove down streets where large plywood snowmen decorated the lampposts.
They reached the Port Jewish Center, a modern square cement building with a rutted parking lot. Sofia’s mother and grown sisters, Ada and Nelly, picked gingerly across muddy potholes in their high-heeled shoes. Sofia asked only a handful of guests outside her nuclear family: an uncle, a few teachers, a Lexington student named Ruben. She has closer friends at school, but these she did not invite. Ruben is another deaf Russian Jewish immigrant; his mother has become friends with her mother.
Inside, more and more strangers kept arriving. The rabbi sent a letter to the congregation shortly before Thanksgiving, inviting them to participate, both by attending the service and by preparing food for the reception afterward. “Sofia’s family is struggling here in the United States,” she explained in the letter, “and yet I feel strongly that there should be some kind of special oneg after the service.” All morning, in answer to the call for a celebration, the tables in the back corner were quietly stocked with Tupperware bowls, pans wrapped in aluminum foil, paper shopping bags, plastic bottles of seltzer.
By ten-thirty, more than fifty people had taken their seats in the congregation. A man in a blue velvet yarmulke set up a video camera in the back. A woman with white hair and glasses on a chain around her neck sat at the organ. The Normatovs assembled themselves on the right half of the front row, the Lexington teachers and Ruben on the left. Irina, who had been racing about all morning, looking importantly flustered in a birthday-cake dress of pink ruffles and striking up conversations with anyone who spoke English or Russian or ASL, now aligned herself with the Lexington contingent.
Upstairs, Rabbi Donna broke one of her own rules; she gave the bat mitzvah girl a gift, a tallis of her own, embroidered with glossy white threads. She helped Sofia arrange the prayer shawl over the shoulders of her suit, which is really Ada’s suit, a grown-up suit of ivory lace with rhinestone buttons on the jacket.
“How do you feel?” the rabbi asked, giving her a squeeze.
“I feel Jewish.”
Then they started together down the stairs.
Now Sofia, standing at the bema after the cantor’s first song, looks out at all the familiar and strange faces and says in as clear a voice as she can, “Please rise.”
The congregation hesitates, unsure of what she has said, until a man toward the back repeats her request and they hastily get to their feet. Sofia reads the prayer with her eyes cast down, dark hair spilling over her tallis, its fringe dripping like candle wax. Her right hand, perched on the podium under a small gold lamp, unconsciously fingerspells the words she speaks in her Russian-deaf accent. Mrs. Normatov rises, carrying Ada’s one-year-old son, David, on her hip. She walks the baby, who is not crying, out of the room.
After the opening prayers, the cantor sings again. Sofia seeks out Louann Katz, seated down in front, and smiles. Irina sidles up to stand just in front of the bema, squirming a little to get her sister’s attention. In one hand she clutches a bag of Chanukah chocolates, coin shapes wrapped up in gold foil. With her free hand she signs, “This is boring. All this standing up and sitting down and standing up and sit—”
Sofia replies with tiny, discreet movements: a thumbnail touched to her lips, fingertips lightly slapping the back of one wrist. “Just be patient — I’m warning you.” An indulgent smile twitches at her mouth and she looks away. Some of the congregants are smiling back at her in amusement.
The service continues smoothly after that, except for one slight gaffe, when Sofia announces in the middle of the cantor’s song, “We continue silently,” which elicits suppressed giggles from the congregation and a sideways glance from the cantor. Ada and Nelly take turns ducking into the aisle in their stocking feet to take photographs. Irina almost sits still. Mrs. Normatov, still holding little David like a shield, remains hovering around the doorway, but once she catches Sofia’s eye and waves the baby’s hand at her.
When the rabbi summons them, the entire Normatov family steps up to the bema. They participate in opening the ark and bringing out the Torah; they read from it—a privilege that they would have to pay for in their own synagogue—and all together they march around the temple with the Torah carried before them. Even Sofia’s mother walks with them now, hiding her smile in the baby’s neck while he waves a soggy piece of pumpernickel bagel in the air.
Then Sofia takes the pulpit. She thanks everyone who has helped her, apologizing first to her parents for choosing to sign her speech and have it interpreted. Then Ada makes a speech and presents Sofia with a gold bracelet from the family. “We have a very strange feeling, my family. It’s hard to explain, but we are related to everyone here and would like to thank you.” She pauses, breathing through a sob. The skin under her eyes shines wetly. “That strange feeling? It’s a happy feeling,” she explains. Then someone hands a bunch of red and white carnations to Sofia. Around the congregation purses snap open and shut, releasing tissues. The man working the video camera blows his nose spiritedly.
Now the rabbi takes her place at the microphone. Sofia looks into Donna Berman’s eyes, and at Liz, and back again.
“How do you do justice to someone so beautiful?” the rabbi says, and Sofia feels something rise and quake in her chest. “Where do you find the words to describe her adequately? Sofia, a flood of adjectives comes to my mind when I think of you. You are strong, even stubborn.” Here Sofia grins. “You are determined, highly intelligent. There is a nobility about you, a grace, a dignity that is unique. Say ‘Sofia’ to anyone at the Lexington School for the Deaf and they will smile. People are warmed by you.
“Sofia, to look into your eyes is to see worlds. There isn’t anything you can’t do—God has blessed you with so many gifts. It is up to you to decide which world or worlds you will explore. Your mind and your heart have wings; let them carry you to a place of fulfillment and peace.”
Behind Sofia, her family watches and listens. They are all squarely built, with jet hair and firm mouths, strong and ordinarily stolid. But now they sit in damp-cheeked wonder. What are these worlds that Sofia can decide to explore? As a deaf woman in Russia, she could have worked either in a factory or as a seamstress. The entire fall term before the family emigrated, she was kept out of school in order to take sewing lessons with a dressmaker in Samarkand.
“Sofia, you have been our teacher today. You have taught us about courage, about diligence, about the value of freedom and the preciousness of our faith. You wanted your bat mitzvah to take place during Chanukah because Chanukah celebrates religious freedom. Having come to this country in search of freedom, this was a most appropriate choice. But there is another reason why Chanukah is such a perfect time for your bat mitzvah, and that’s because you, Sofia, have a special light within you, and like the shammes on the menorah, you go through your life inspiring others to let their own light shine forth. It is a special gift you bring to the world.”
Sofia brings a hand to her face and artlessly sweeps it under each eye. The rabbi waits until she is again looking at the interpreter.
“And so as I watched the sun rise this morning, it made me think of you. Like a sunrise, you are brilliant—brilliant in terms of your intelligence and ability, brilliant in terms of the sacred light which shines through you.”
Sofia has had only coffee this morning. Wings seem to beat in her stomach. Her eyes swim.
“Welcome home,” says the rabbi.
When they hug, Sofia’s hearing aid gets jogged and it whistles, a high pipping sound. It sounds like a signal, like a message in code. Something has been recovered.