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Demons, Golems, and Dybbuks: Monsters of the Jewish Imagination
Hello and welcome to the blog for the Watsonville Public Library's Jewish Literature discussions
This site will provide a venue for questions, comments, and continued engagement with the issues raised in our lively book discussion programs.
4 comments:
One of the passages that struck me at the beginning of the second part was the description of the scene in the ritual bathhouse before the wedding.
These are the highlights:
(pages 122-123 in the Farrar Straus & Giroux edition)
The passage begins with Rechele's state of mind and behavior-
"...Rechele had shown no further signs of rebellion. She listened submissively to the older women's instructions, She was already versed in the laws dealing with a wife's cleanliness and had read through all the women's books concerning purity and modesty. On her pale cheeks two red spots had settled and would not vanish."
The passage continues with the description of her visit to the bathhouse, her first time in this mysterious woman's space that marks her passage from virginity to wifehood. The scene is marked by a kind of anxiety, I think, about this in-between space that is obsessively concerned about the borderland between the sacred and profane, the possibility of contamination, a kind of repulsion around these vulnerable feelings that comes through in the very vivid, visceral descriptions.
"A number of women accompanied Rechele, forming a circle around her that she might not be contaminated by encountering a dog or a pig on the way. Vulgar street boys shouted lewd words and obscenities after her. In the bathhouse Yite the Attendant... scrutinized all the unseen places of Rechele's body.... [The women] sauntered comfortably about, perfectly at home; stark naked, with breasts hanging like lumps of dough, with mighty hips, and loose bellies from continually carrying and giving birth... they gave her advice on how to arouse her husband's desire.... The floor was as bloody as a slaughter house. An elderly woman spoke grossly to Rechele and confided things to the girl's ears that sent the blood rushing to her head, and she almost sank to the earth with humiliation."
I think it's interesting to emphasize the point here that the women are "perfectly at home" here. What does it mean to make your home in this space? What does it mean to be an adult woman in the world of Goray? What does this mysterious, bloody homeland mean as a site of purification? What does it mean to be a woman at home here in the context of the messianic message of return to the Jewish home?
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