Very soon after, though, three glistening well-fed Baghdadi males appeared and took their places with showy entitlement at their personal pews affixed with their names engraved onto polished brass plates. The service proceeded with Rabbi Mendy at the helm, his prayer shawl drawn over his head, tucked behind each ear to keep it in place, reciting the liturgy expertly and with dispatch, but in a voice so creatively out of tune, it was a revelation, offering new insight into the text. A klatch of Baghdadi wives came chattering up to the balcony, steeping it with the scent of their toiletries and perfumes. Just before Shmuly rose to chant the week’s Torah portion, the rebbetzin Mindy processed in with her entourage headed by Malkie, the bride-to-be, and her pride of younger daughters all in their Sabbath finery, accompanied also by the skeletal dowager beside whom I had been seated the evening before at the Sabbath table. They took their reserved places on the balcony bench almost directly across from us, nodding to us in greeting over the chasm of the male sanctuary below that we Jewish princesses could penetrate only by diving down headfirst and breaking our crowns.

Shmuly’s voice, in contrast to his father’s, was high pitched and extraterrestrially sweet, as if the hormonal shakedown had not quite taken. You leaned forward with your elbows planted on the balcony railing, your palms joined together as in a namaste, your brow resting against the steeple of your fingers pointed heavenward as he melodically cantillated the tropes he had so perceptively deconstructed the night before—I’m quoting from your wildly enthusiastic recap of his little talk that you articulated with such polish, thanks to your high-priced college-prep education, during our walk home in the night. Death and drought, rebellion and retribution, archetypal motifs. From the front row bench on the balcony where we were sitting you looked down over the railing upon the top of his head in his black velvet yarmulke bent over the open scroll, you did not take your eyes off of him for one minute. Your mouth hung open so soft, your temple vein pulsed blue, your breathing was visible.

Listen to me, you dreamer, I wanted to cry out, Do you think you can squeeze even one drop out of this stone? Do not believe it, my daughter. It will not happen. Neither by rod nor by word.

Once again now you were stopping off at the Chabad center every afternoon on your way home from school. I should have put the kibosh on it. It was on every level a danger zone, however fortified and security-padded a cell it might appear to be to the undiscerning eye. I of all people should have known it could only lead to disaster.