Fiction: Twenty Contemporary Jewish Stories

Targum Press (1993)

Synopsis: Dinah Jaffe, studying as a seminary for newcomers to Judaism in Jerusalem, was in the middle of a very promising match with Moshe Gluck when her parents arrived for a pre-scheduled visit and she decided that it would be safer not to tell him that they had come.

When Dinah got back to the dorm, after settling her parents in their hotel and having dinner with them, her roommate Natalie announced, a little frostily, “Moshe called while you were out.”

“Did he leave a message?”

“I wouldn’t know. I was just starting to tell him that you had gone to the airport, when Chayah snatched the phone out of my hand and insisted on talking to him herself. Some friend! If you ask me, you should keep your eye on her. I think she is sweet on him.”

Dinah panicked. Why hadn’t she realized the Moshe might call while she was gone? How much had Natalie said before Chayah had grabbed the receiver? She ran to their room, but her friend was out. She tried the dining hall and the library, finally locating her in the lounge.

“Whew, did you have a close call!” Chayah greeted her. “Moshe called while you were at the airport, and Natalie answered.”

“I know, she told me when I came in. I almost had a heart attack on the spot. How much did she say?”

“She had just gotten out, ‘No, Dinah isn’t here, she went to the air-’ when I grabbed the receiver. I hope I didn’t bruise her ear.”

“From the way she reacted, I think you did. You’d better apologize later. Anyway, what did you say?”

“’Hello, Moshe, this is Chayah. Dinah isn’t in now. She went to town.’

“’Didn’t that other girl say that she went to the air-something?”

“’The air-something? Oh, she must mean the aerosol store.’

“’Aerosol store? What aerosol store?’

“Oh, you know, where they sell the hair spray, the air freshener, the oven cleaner….’

“ ‘But I explained to her that all those aerosols are destroying the ozone layer and leading to global warming. She told me that she would stop using hair spray and air freshener.’

“’Oh, dear, maybe she didn’t realize that oven cleaner causes the same problems.’

“’Why does she need oven cleaner?’ he sounded very puzzled. ‘I thought she said that you didn’t have an oven in the dorm?’

“I realized that I had to think fast and maybe tell a little fib. ‘She wants to help some old ladies clean for Passover.’

“’In late December!?’

“’I think she decided to stock up on oven cleaner before the pre-Passover rush. However, if you say that aerosols are not good, I’m sure she will return it and buy some other kind of oven-cleaner.’”

If the “little old ladies” were a “little” fib, Dinah wondered what Chayah would call the entire fantasy about the aerosol store. She sank down into one of the chairs. All her work trying to convince Moshe that she would be an ecologically conscious” housewife was shot. “You got me into this, you have to get me out of it,” said Dinah.

“How?”

“You have to find me these little old ladies who want their ovens cleaned. With a non-aerosol oven cleaner.”

Synopsis: After a day on a tour bus with her parents, during which Dinah found nothing she could eat except a bag of snack-food, she meets Moshe for an evening date.

Moshe was already looking impatient when Dinah puffed into the lobby of the Central Hotel, twenty minutes late. ‘I’m terribly sorry, Moshe,” apologized Dinah. “It really was a matter of events out of my control.”

The apology helped. Moshe’s glower softened. “I was beginning to get annoyed,” he said. “I cut something else short to get here on time.”

“I’ll try to keep it from happening again,” promised Dinah.

“Shall we go out for a walk?” suggested Moshe. “It’s kind of stuffy in here, and I could use some fresh air.”

“Why don’t we go down to Geula?” suggested Dinah. They could get some malauach on Malchei Yisrael, or go to that pizza place on Strauss.

“I was thinking of going up Jaffa Road to Machanei Yehuda and through to Batei Broide.”

Maybe he spent all his cash on telephone tokens and didn’t have enough left for entertaining. “You know, Moshe, I happen to be flush with cash at the moment and I would enjoy a little snack. Maybe I could treat you to a piece of pizza for a change?”

“Oh, no, really. I had more supper than I’d like to remember. Besides, I ate meat. Let’s get that fresh air.”

Dinah gave up on trying to get something to eat. She couldn’t much her way through a falafel with French fries and fried eggplant if Moshe was feeling queasy. It would be too cruel.

They left the hotel and walked out to Jaffa Road. Glancing at Moshe beside her, Dinah wondered what her parents would have thought of him. She thought he suit and hat were spiffy, but what would they think of his plans to learn for a number of years, or of his vagueness about what he could do later to make a living?”

Dinah felt as if she were looking at Moshe through a pair of stereoscopic glasses. Through the green Jerusalem lens she saw him as a very successful product of a good ba’al teshuvah yeshivah. Through the red parental lens, she saw a suspected loafer with leanings toward religious fanaticism. You were supposed to be able to look at a card overprinted in read and green and see a three-dimensional image. All she saw, however, was a multicolored blur.

“Listen, Dinah, about these aerosols…”

“Yes, Moshe.”

“I know it is hard to imagine how a few squirts of oven cleaner can make a difference on a global scale. You have to realize, however, that it is not just you, but hundreds of millions of people all over the world. Only consumer pressure will force the manufacturer to develop a safe alternative. I was truly distressed by the idea of an entire store dedicated to aerosols. Back when I was in college, we would have picketed a place like that.”

“Don’t worry, I’m going to take care of everything. There is a kind of oven cleaner that you paint on the walls of the oven. I can use that.”

Moshe looked down at the sidewalk in front of them. “Do you think it odd that I care so much?”

“Not really,” said Dinah. “We used to run recycling campaigns in high school.”

“Getting upset about that aerosol made me think about the issue again, and I realize why it matter to me. I think that environmental concern is the core from which my frumkeit eventually developed. I feel as if it would be a form of betrayal to abandon that sense of responsibility.”

So Moshe also had a form of stereoscopic vision. Some aspects of his old value system still had a hold on him. “Not using hair spray and air-freshener seems like a small price to pay for the Torah,” said Dinah.

“And spray-on oven cleaner,” said Moshe. “Don’t forget the oven cleaner.”

“Believe me, Moshe, it will be a long time before I forget that oven cleaner.”

“Do you also feel that you have a core of values from which your frumkeit developed?”

“Yes,” said Dinah, suddenly glad that she was so hungry. She could think of it as a form of atonement. “It was honesty.”

Conclusion: After another round of misadventures, Dinah and her parents meet Moshe and his parents as they are paying their bills in a restaurant. The fathers pair off and the mothers pair off, while Dinah and Moshe are left to laugh over their trials of the last few days.