“I’m sorry for this morning, Rina,” he said softly. “I acted like a madman.”

“I never knew the picture bothered you, Peter.” She pulled out a tissue and wiped her eyes. “Of course, I don’t know too much about you, do I?”

The anger was back.

“What do you want to know?” he asked calmly.

“Come back next week. I’ll have a questionnaire made up.”

“I don’t blame you for sniping at me, Rina, but it really isn’t getting us anywhere.”

“Why did you come here tonight?”

“To apologize.”

“Well, you’ve done that.”

“You say you want me to talk to you. Now I’m trying, but it doesn’t appear to do any good.”

“Maybe I’m too angry.” She lowered her head. “Maybe I’m too hurt.”

“I should have told you about my adoption. But believe me, Rina, it wasn’t stubbornness that held me back. I didn’t want to misrepresent myself to you. Call myself Jewish when I really didn’t know what it meant.”

“I’m not stupid, Peter. I know how hard it is to live this kind of life. I mean it’s not hard for me—I love it. But for someone not brought up like this, there are restrictions—”

“A lot of restrictions.”

“You don’t believe in any of it, do you?”

“I don’t know,” he confessed. “I think some of the laws are nonsense.”

“Such as?”

“The separation of sexes. Women are considered chattels—”

“That’s not true.”

“Honey, your ketubah is nothing more than a sales receipt. Your husband bought you.”

“It’s not that simple.”

He waited for clarification.

“I don’t want to get into a religious discourse right now, Peter. Why don’t you talk to Rav Schulman about it? He could explain it better than I could.”

“Yes, the good rav does seem to have an answer for everything. And when there’s no answer, he tells me to take it on blind faith. That’s not the answer I’m looking for.”

“What are you looking for? A neat little solution? You won’t find it.”

“Then why bother concocting religion, Rina? Why not say things are just random? Sometimes they work out well, sometimes they don’t.”

“Because that’s a very bleak outlook on life. I don’t believe we are just some random Darwinian mutation…that in a million years we’ll be giant brains resting on vestigial bodies. I don’t believe that at all. Judaism is more than just a series of blind beliefs, Peter—or a concoction. It’s history. The chumash isn’t cute little fables; it’s a family chronicle of my ancestors—your ancestors. When I immerse myself in the mikvah, I think: this is what Sarah, Rivkah, Rachel, and Leah did thousands of years ago. Torah is timeless.