Bs”d

Mishpachah

Translated from the Hebrew: Appeared October 9, ‘97

When a Professor of Mathematics Writes a Novel

Chaya Hertzberg

Professor Rachel Pomerantz is a mathematician, a latecomer to Judaism, who moved to Israel from the United States, and has written four novels for adults ■ Her first book to be translated into Hebrew, A Time to Rend, A Time to Sew, has made her known also outside the scientific community in Israel ■ In a certain sense, the heroines of my books are myself, and their lives are mine,” says Pomerantz, “The double frustration of being both a woman and an Orthodox Jew in the corridors of science has characterized my struggles throughout my years as a student and as a young researcher.” ■ The book, which deals with the life of a young American girl from her discovery of Judaism until her adjustment and that of her sister in different segments of the Jewish community, is written in a straight-forward, open American style ■ “I wrote the book in ’82 and when I first submitted it to publishers they did not want to publish an Orthodox novel for adults.” ■ An interview.

Twenty-five yers ago, a young Jewish couple, graduates of the prestigious Harvard Graduate School, made aliya to the Land of Israel. “We came to this decision after we realized that Israel is the center of gravity of the Jewish world. We saw that what happens in Jerusalem influences Jews all over the world in a way that nothing happening elsewhere does. We decided that if Israel is the center, then we should be there and make our contribution there, and we made aliya.

The Pomerantz family adjusted relatively well in Israel, from a professional point of view. They had to overcome the ordinaly obstacle that their unual situation placed in their way. They were Americans, very successful in their fields, and close to being Ultra-Orthodox. With the years, the last of the differences were wiped out, and the “close to” could be erased. They were Ultra-Orthodox in every way, living in Bnei Brak and educating their children in the standard Ultra-Orthodox educational system. “Professionals? No, none of our children are in a college preparatory program. That was already a part of our original choices, years ago, when we settled on a path in life.”

However, Professor Rachel Pomerantz is not only a mathematician, she is also an author. Her latest book, the Hebrew translation of A Time to Rend, A Time to Sew, is what has made her name known outside the scientific community in Israel. In American and France she has already published five books: Wings Above the Flames, A Time to Rend, A Time to Sew, As Mountains around Jerusalem, Wildflower, and Cactus Blossoms.

A Time to Rend, A Time to Sew, is unusual both for its content and for its approach. It describes the lives of two sisters, Beth and Lynn Snyder. Beth and Lynn, third generation Americans, were born to parents who had long since distanced themselves from tradition. They were educated in superlative American public high schools and set out to make careers for themselves. They ran into discrimination against women and discrimination against Jews – and fought it. They became interested in observance, Beth first and Lynn getting involved later in an effort to prove to Beth that the steps she had taken are irrational. They are torn between two worlds, required to invest their best effort in two places at once, to make progress in Judaism and set up families which still trying to keep their place in the professional world. Beth succeeds in the effort to be mother of a strong Jewish family and a doctor, while Lynn abandons the effort, concentrating on raising a particularly large family and dropping her career.

“Rachel Pomerantz, who is Beth really?”

“Beth is me, in many senses.”

“And who is Lynn?”

“Lynn is also, in many ways, me.”

The two possibilities, which are split between the two Snyder sisters in the book, has been the single way of life for Professor Pomerantz for the last twenty-five years: both mother of a large family and also holding down an academic position, and – as a surprise – also an author. The third question in the series, to which I did not get an answer but only an explanation, was “Who are you, Rachel Pomerantz?”

“I wrote my first book under that pen-name – Rachel Pomerantz – because I was afraid that the fact that I wrote books might cause me damage at the university. I suspected that this might be considered using work time for other purposes. By now my colleagues know that I write books, and, thank G-d, that has not caused me difficulties in this area. The second reason, which is still in force, is that I am comfortable in my anonymity. I wouldn’t want to become a celebrity.”

“To do what David Zeretsky did . . .”

Although I majored in science in America, I also took courses in history and literature. I always loved literature and my interest in writing was inherited from by father. The fact that I became a published author would have been a consolation to my father, who wrote a number of magazine articles by never published a book. The first things I published as a writer were articles on Jews communities in different parts of the world, about their way of life and what is distinctive about them. I travel professionally at least once a year and always make contact with the local Jewish community. I wrote the articles of a chareidi monthly in the States. I would have enjoyed doing more writing. About nine years after we moved to Israel, one of the most difficult periods of my entire life, if not the most difficult: I finally got tenure in my job, and could take a breathing spell. Ever since we made aliya, I had been torn between my home and the children, who wanted their due and whom I was not willing to sacrifice, and, on the other side, my work at the university, which also demanded my all, in order that my colleagues in the department would be convinced that I was indeed a serious and dedicated researcher, capable of enhancing the reputation of the institution. Only if they are convinced that one is self-motivated, and will continue to publish professional articles and pursue ones research in the future as well – only then will one be given tenure. Without tenure there is no job security, and without a job, there is no salary. . . After nine difficult years, including one change of job, I finally got tenure and could relax a bit from my exertions.

“I was sitting at home one evening, when the children were asleep, and considered what I might do to paper myself a little, now that all the pressure was behind me. My first though was – to improve my Hebrew, to enrich the rather pedestrian basic vocabulary that I had acquired when I made aliya. I wanted to be more familiar with idioms, expressions, and metaphors in the language. A friend suggested that I do this by reading David Zaretsky’s book, Beyond the Sun.

“I read it with great difficulty, and when I finished if thought – in this book the author is describing the struggles and difficulties of yeshiva boys between the World Wars. Boys in have similar struggles in the yeshivas of our generation. I know those doubts and hesitations very well, not from the Israelis but from the Americans.

“Before we moved to Israel we belonged to the Orthodox Hillel House at our university. In that community, there were ba’alei teshuva, others who were more religious than their parents, and some who were nearly chareidi, also wanted an academic career.”

“I gave myself three weeks.”

“Those students who became serious ba’alei teshuva during the course of their academic studies were torn between their desire to dedicate all their efforts to Tallmud study and their desire – which was also that of their parents – to finish their degrees. Later, here in Israel, I ran into these stuggles again in a fresher form, when American students in the midst of their college careers became religious during a visit to Israel, and were torn between a desire to remain at yeshiva or to go back and finish up their college degrees.

“The result of those internal debates varies from case to case. In general, the rabbis instructed those students of advanced degrees, who had only a short time remaining until they would finish, to go back and finish so that they would be able to use it to support their families in the future. To young students at the beginning of their studies, the rabbis often advised that they not continue, but devote themselves instead to regular yeshiva study;.

“I was with these young men in their indecision, both personally, through my husband and other relatives, and also form the sidelines, through our young Shabbos guests struggling with these issues. I realized that I had a great deal of background material here for a book. When I finished Beyond the Sun, I said to myself, “Okay, he described his period, you could write about your period.” I decided to change my intended ‘reward’ from improving my Hebrew to writing my own book. In English, of course.

“Before I was certain what I intended to do, I sat down one day and wrote a scene describing two American college students in their room in a yeshiva for ba’alei teshuva. They were engaged in packing suitcases and discussing their future paths. My husband read their draft and said, ‘No, you can’t write this. You have never been a man and you have never had any opportunity to hear how two young men speak when they are alone.’

“I therefore switched my heroes to heroines. Although I hadn’t changed my original purpose – to write a book that would discuss the issue of a life of Torah and yeshiva study against the demands of a career – I decided to present the issues from the women’s point of view.

“I gave myself three weeks, during which time I would write as much as I could. At the end of that time I would judge my creation. If I should decide that it was worth something – I would continue to write thereafter. If the results would be disappointing, I would give up this idea for something more worthwhile.”

Beth’s miserable Shabbos

From the point of view of a writer, I scanned the professorial author in front of me with great interest. Without a doubt, her scientific outlook is so much a part of her that it can be recognized in everything she does. Amazingly organized, with everything planned out in advance and assigned a precise timeslot. Even after the three weeks she had budgeted for her writing were sufficiently productive to convince her to continue writing, her efforts continued in the same precise style.

“I wrote in stolen time. In the morning I was at work and in the afternoon with the children. After they went to sleep, and I had straightened up the house a bit, I would write from eight thirty until nine thirty every evening. From the moment I would sit down, I would type nonstop, because the story was bottled up inside me. I worked it out while I was engaged in my housework and all I had to do was to write it down.” For the first six weeks, which was during summer vacation, she wrote in the morning as well. Thus was created the original, 110 page version of A Time to Rend, A Time to Sew, which began with the chapter, ‘Islands’, and the words, “Beth’s first Shabbos in Jerusalem was the most miserable she had ever spent.”

“Those pages contained the complete plot. In the hundred and ten pages from ‘Islands’ to the last sentence in the book, ‘This is an aleph,’ I put in all those parts of the plot that were important to me. However, in the course of fifteen years and many editors and criticisms, much more material was added to the book which tripled its length.”

Every day, from eight-thirty to nine-thirty, continuously, without waiting for inspiration, without getting up to drink or to check if the telephone is really turned off, to return some eggs to a neighbor, to put on a sweater, to eat an apple, to close the window. When a professor of mathematics writes a novel, that is how she writes it. When the clock shows eight thirty, she starts to write. She writes straight through without pauses or interruptions. The clock shows nine thirty. Stop. Turn off the electric typewriter. Finished.

Although the book at its inception was characterized by such mathematical regularity, its later course was less predictable.

“I wanted to describe the American professionals as they are taking up Judaism and attempting to interleave Torah with science, which is why I began the book in what is now the second part, when Beth, the religious student, arrives in Israel. I skipped over the first part, ‘Two Fistfuls of Frustration’. I gave the manuscript to friends to read and they complained: ‘Who is this Beth? Where did she come from? Who are her parents? What motivates her?’ I asked the readers to accept Beth as I presented her and follow her from there on but I encountered staunch opposition. ‘You can’t do that,’ they all said, ‘It is impossible to take such an unknown heroine and follow her from the middle of her path and onward.’

Thus I went back to the beginning and wrote the first part as well, including an acquaintanceship with Beth from childhood, with her parents and her extended family. I described her high school career (including her experiences as a finalist in the Westinghouse Science Talent Search and winning the election for the ‘President’ of the youth group in her Conservative synagogue) until the middle of her university studies as she is trying to combine Judaism and a career.

After the fact I was satisfied with the change, for the work was more complete. I gave the draft to other readers, and when the responses were satisfactory, I continued to flesh out the original skeletal plot. I followed Beth and Lynn for long years until each of them reached a certain independence. Incidently, people ask me if the story is true: it is based on incidents that actually occurred, but the main characters themselves are fictional.

The publishers were afraid of the change

After the writing was finished, the book made its way to Orthodox publishers in America. In those years, ’82-’83, there was no Orthodox reading material for adults except biographies and texts. Feldheim considered the book and decided not to publish it, other publishers also looked it over and were put off by the novelty. “The chareidim of America are divided between those who are willing to read Gentile literature and those who won’t touch it. The Orthodox publishing houses rely for their economic base on the two thousand five hundred families who buy their books and avoid foreign literature completely. For this population, my book was different and more open than what they were accustomed to, and the publishers were afraid to take a chance. When I realized what was blocking my book, I decided to write another, which would be accepted without hesitation and would turn me into someone known and accepted. I wrote ‘Wings Above the Flames’ -- a book of personal stories of survivors of the Holocaust from different parts of Europe. The book was translated into Hebrew and published by Tefutza in ’85. I was pleased that the book was published quickly in Hebrew, and later in English, because one of the women who story was related in the book was a sickly and embittered woman I knew, who had survived the Holocaust and was trapped afterwards for twenty-five years in the Soviet Union, where she dedicated her life to teaching some remnant of Yiddishkeit to the assimilated Jewish children. After twenty-five years she made aliya to Israel, and grew old with a bitter feeling that know one valued her life’s work. I wrote her story into my book, with the hope that she would survive to read her life story in print. Fortunately it was put out in Hebrew in ’85, and she survived long enough to receive copies of the book in print before she passed away . . .

“After that book, I wrote Wildflower, another novel about the teshuva of an American girl. It was during this period that C.I.S. and others began publishing Orthodox novels for adults, and I was no longer considered so revolutionary. C.I.S. put out Wildflower in ’90 and Wings Above the Flames in ’91. Eventually I felt sufficiently self-confident to resubmit A Time to Rend, A Time to Sew to Feldheim again. This time they accepted it. Then, when my first book finally appeared in print, what did some people say to me? ‘Oh, another book about a ba’alas teshuva.’ I was deeply hurt. A Time to Rend is not just ‘another book’, it is the first one I wrote and the closest to my heart.”

“I lost my intellectual respectability”

“When I finished writing the full manuscript of A Time to Rend around ’92, it brought to the surface much pain and frustration with had accompanied me personally as I made my way as a ba’alas teshuva in the midst of the scientific community. It is hard to explain to anyone who has not had similar experiences. An academic with a degree, working in his chosen field, becomes accustomed to a certain degree of intellectual respect from his colleagues. After all, if I am here, and reached this position through a standard set of accomplishment, this is normally considered adequate evidence that I am not actually dumb. I was accustomed to respectful and serious treatment in various areas of life. Although there might be disagreements on certain subjects, there was also sufficient respect that my positions and opinions were listened to.

The was true with regard to every possible fields, from politics and literature to research conjectures, with one exception: Judaism.

After I became religious and drew nearer to Judaism, I encountered a very frustrating phenomenon. People limited their respect for me. My intelligence was doubted, and the intellectual credit which had been extended to me before shrank and vanished. It began in my parents’ house. The respect that they had held for me before -- as a girl with logical and considered opinions against which one could argue strongly but not entirely dismiss – vanished completely. In all that was connected to Judaism I was regarded as I had gone crazy, and would not accept that if I found it worth studying, there must be at least some minimal logic and sense to it. My opinions were dismissed without a hearing. It gave me a strong feeling of frustration, insult and despair, and it took me long years to shake free of it.

One of my goals in the book was to describe an intellectual, academically oriented girl who finds herself drawn to Judaism for logical reasons that she cannot resist. What generally happens in novels of this kind is that since one cannot spread out the full range of philosophical arguments for the Torah in a work of fiction, one skips over them and goes straight for the personal angle, the emotional plane, which is easier to describe. This gives a twisted picture, as if teshuva were always based on emotional considerations. That was also the reason that in the original version I tried to jump straight to the character of Beth when she had already become religious and was continuing onward. I did not know how to manage the description of the teshuva process without distorting it.”

Rollerskates and grapefruit juice

“Did you read the Hebrew translation of the book?”

“I haven’t finished reading the entire book yet, but I did get to the part where the translator wrote that Beth made havdalah over grapefruit juice.” Rachel Pomerantz laughs heartily, then asks in wonder, “A chareidi translator, a chareidi editor, a chareidi publisher – and a mistake like that got through all the checking? It is impossible to bring out a long book without errors, particularly when working under pressure.”

Later, as I leafed through the book again, I reached the point where Mrs. Snyder, Beth’s mother, asks her husband, “Tell me, do you suppose that they curl their peyos with rollerskates?” It is clear that she meant “rollers” and not “rollerskates”, but that is the fate of a translated book: several silly mistakes have to slip in. For all that, the fact that the book is translated gives it a certain air of authenticity; for after all, most of the plot takes place in New York, wherefrom the author herself comes.

“One mitzvah leads to another,” says Devora to Lynn in their room in the seminary of American girls. “Right now, choose a mitzvah that comes more easily. Before you know it, things that were once hard will seem easy. One mitzvah leads to another.”

“Like salted peanuts,” suggests Lynn.

“Like salted peanuts,” Devora agrees with a smile.

When a professor of mathematics writes an interview . . .

Several hours before the hour of our meeting, I got a fax at work. It was the beginning of an interview of Ms. Pomerantz with herself, in my name. “There were several points that I wanted to make clear,” explained the lady, “and I thought that the easiest way would be to write down what occurred to me.” Unfortunately, composition in Hebrew is still not as easy for Ms. Pomerantz as writing in her native tongue, so most of the work remained for me to do, but I thought I would add in the first page of the unfinished interview.

Ms. Pomerantz, a year ago I suggested that you allow yourself to be interviewed and you refused forcefully.

That’s true. My policy and that of my husband for the last twenty-five years has been to refuse to give interviews to anyone. When we first arrived in Israel on aliya, my husband’s boss bragged about us to a newspaperman in his synagogue. It sounded very sweet: a young couple of ba’alei teshuva from America, new immigrants, fresh doctorates from Harvard, respectable academic employment. The boss pressed us and we agreed, with some hesitation, to grant him the interview. The reporter neither taped the interview not took notes. He wrote a long article in which he intended only to praise us, but is was false from beginning to end.

What do you consider a falsification?

Both my husband and I came from homes in which there were strong ethical feelings and many values whose source is actually in the Torah, although our parents were not conscious of that. They were homes similar to that I describe in the opening chapters of A Time to Rend, A Time to Sew. My father-in-law had a very strong Jewish identity; he would press Jewish books on his more apathetic friends. In the newspaper article, he described the homes in which we had grown up as a “parched desert” from a spiritual point of view. He described my husband’s family as one in which there “were no Jewish books, not even a Chumash.” The reporter also wrote that my husband participated in a daily Talmud class. Indeed, five years after the article came out my husband indeed began to do so, and for fifteen years already he has been teaching his own daf yomi calss, but when were first arrived as new immigrants even attending such a class would have been far above his level. The worst of all be far was the story about his grandfather’s Talmud.

What happened?

My father-in-law’s father arrived in New York from Hungary, and managed to become a successful businessman without violating Shabbos. He bought himself a Vilna Shas, and learned from it twice a week. When he passed away, his sons gave it to a cousin who was a Rav. When my husband had advanced far enough in his Talmud studies that he was thinking of buying himself a set of the Talmud, it occurred to him that perhaps this cousin would agree to take a new Talmud in place of the ancient one which had belonged to my husband’s grandfather. He proposed this idea to Rav Gershon. It turned out that he had made a mistake. He should have first bought the new Shas, and then offered to trade. Rav Gershon gave him on the spot all twenty-two volumes of the set and refused categorically to take a penny in exchange, either from my husband or from my father-in-law. The Rav claimed that just knowing how proud and happy his grandfather would have been that his grandson was learning from his Shas was full compensation. Now I ask you, is there anything wrong with that story the way I told it?

No, it is a very touching story.

Well, in the article that appeared in the paper, the Shas had been lying like a stone in the home of “Uncle Reuven”, who was an unlettered ingnoramus. Uncle Reuven was thinking of giving it away to some synagogue but my husband rescued it. “Uncle Reuven” gave it to him with tears in his eyes. That is what I call a total falsification. Worse yet, Cousin Gershon, the Rav, reads Hebrew and saw this article. Thank Heavens, he believed our sincere apologies. Ever since that traumatic incident, we decided never to grant interviews to newspapers.

So what has changed that you agreed to let me interview you?

(Sigh) I have a very good friend at work who, although she herself is observant, lives in a secular part of Tel Aviv. When I wrote the first draft of A Time to Rend, A Time to Sew, she was the one who urged me to publish it. After it came out in English, she bought several copies for secular friends, in order to explain her double life to them. When it came out in Hebrew three months ago, I told her about it. After a week she called to complain that she had asked for the book in several stores in Tel-Aviv and none of them carried it. I explained to her that Orthodox publishers distribute only to religious bookstores, and that there is almost no intersection between the books in a secular bookstore and in a chareidi bookstore.

My friend grumbled about the situation. She claimed that we were being torn apart into two nations who cannot speak to each other. She thought that particularly a book like mine, which explains the other side, should have had a wider distribution. I viewed this idea as a heavy burden. I have been very satisfied with my life as it has been up until now, and felt no need for publicity. To the contrary, we had always avoided it. After three weeks of research on the secular literary market and consultations with various rabbis, we wrote up the question in a condensed form and got the agreement of our advisors on the form and content of the question. Then we went to ask one of the Gedolei Torah. He told us to try to distribute the book outside the chareidi strongholds. On that advice, I decided to agree to publish some of my life story in the press, and go on from there . . .