At first, the kids seemed a little uncertain at how to react to the unfamiliar music, but they got into it quickly, she saw, wildly throwing themselves into stamping and shouting and twirling around the living room. Chasya, sweating, peeled off her pajama top, laughing. The baby soon followed suit, left with nothing but his diaper. Her own hair covering had long ago been flung to the floor, her tight, frizzy red curls spilling down her back, flying in all directions. She hardly noticed. Twirling around the room in some kind of trance, the music bringing back so many memories of the life she’d left behind, she almost didn’t hear the banging on the door until it did the impossible, becoming even louder than the music.

Only then did Leah think of the neighbors and the curtainless windows whose shades she had not bothered to pull down.

Fruma Esther Sonnenbaum didn’t listen to gossip. As every person harboring an unquenchable desire for a large and respectable portion in the World to Come knew, gossip was a surefire way to erase your merits and get yourself permanently banned from heaven. After all, were there not thirty-one commandments and four curses in the Torah specifically aimed at the sin of malicious talebearing? As it is written: You shall not go up and down as a slanderer among your people. Gossip, as she and every other God-fearing Jew well knew, was the leading cause of baseless hatred, the reason our temple was destroyed, why our people were exiled from their land, and why God did not listen to our prayers. Indeed, as the sages declared, gossip, slander, and talebearing were worse than murder, immorality, and idolatry, the three mortal sins one was ordered to give up one’s life rather than commit. A gossiper, they said, denies the existence of God, and the Almighty “cannot live in the same world” with such a person. Even the “dust” of evil talk was toxic. So you couldn’t get away with saying things like: “Oh, what I could tell you about her if I wasn’t a pious person.” Sorry, no. As Solomon, the wisest of all Israel’s kings said, “One who guards his mouth and tongue, guards his soul from tribulations.”

Nevertheless, as the rebbitzen was also well aware, in Boro Park, among the pious, not listening to gossip was almost impossible. In fact, it was one of the tools of the community to keep itself pure, guarding against the insidious dangers coming from those troublemakers and misfits in their midst who threatened to unravel the fabric of their lives, the well-being of their children. For how could you function as an enclave of holiness if you did not guard against interlopers filled with evil intentions, who must be expelled by collective ostracism? And how would you know who to expel and ostracize if no one told you?