Wasn’t her own family the perfect example that disproved that rule? As far as yichus was concerned, no one could deny their distinguished pedigree as descendants of European Ashkenazi Torah scholars who had settled in Brooklyn and become the much-lauded and much-loved members of Boro Park’s elite. But on the other hand, there was the difficult and undeniable matter of Zissele Lehman, her mother, who had died by her own hand, an unforgivable sin that the family had managed somehow to shroud in secrecy, even arranging for burial on sacred ground forbidden to suicides. Her father’s defection from the study house, and his choice of an unacceptable partner, had also somehow been smoothed over.

But there was a tipping point, she thought. If this latest rumor gained momentum, it was going to be bad, even very bad. Even Bubbee, the resident family expert in quashing such scandals, was going to be hard-pressed to do anything about it. This was true because people so loved to have their suspicions confirmed, to feel that common wisdom and gossip were ultimately vindicated and that the snobbery against outsiders from those born into well-connected religious families, far from being an ugly display of the bad character and causeless hatred strictly forbidden by the Torah, was nothing of the kind. Oh no! If the community had been against the match between Yaakov Lehman and Leah Howard, it had only been for the purest of motives, they told themselves, because the community was wise and learned in the ways of putting up walls to protect the precious society they had created out of the ashes of their European ancestors, the burned-down yeshivas of Poland and Lithuania.

We came to America bereft of everything and rebuilt and prospered, they told themselves. And this rebuilding and this prosperity must be protected at all costs from the invasion of destructive hordes, which included murderously hostile, ignorant, and hateful gentiles of all colors and races, as well as Jewish outsiders who came banging on the door wanting to abandon their meaningless secular lives and partake of the light and joy of the community that had been rebuilt with such ceaseless toil after the Holocaust.

But one couldn’t open the door too widely. No, indeed. One moldy potato tossed into a pile of perfect produce was enough to spread the rot, to spoil years of painstaking educational efforts to nurture the next generation of Torah scholars and faithful, God-fearing Jews. Vigilance was necessary. Which is why Yaakov Lehman should never have married Leah Howard, the community decided. The music and the naked dancing were to be expected. It was inevitable, whether or not it had actually happened.