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A Gentile in the Family?

Written by Terry Howard

Late winter 1635

"Sarah? Just what do you think is going to happen when your father finds out?" Rivka asked as they left the grade school. She was one of those precocious little girls who behave like they were born twenty years old and started aging from there.

"Finds out what?" Sarah replied. Snow was falling in large wet flakes all around them.

"You know what! I saw you kissing that boy. It wasn't the first time you kissed him either. If I saw you, others have too. Someone will tell and it will get talked about down at the shul. What do you think your father will do when he finds out?"

Rivka was not allowed to walk the two blocks home from school without an escort; which was usually her brother Chaim and their cousin Yudl. When Chaim sat detention, Rivka waited in the library with Yudl until they could walk her home. On those detention days her brother and Yudl needed to go to the shul after school for Hebrew lessons; Yudl could not wait without being late. So Rivka waited until Sarah came after the high school let out to walk with her.

Sarah traveled to and from school without a chaperone. At first she left for school with other children in the family on the trolley, which was contracted to move school children so the buses could handle the areas not yet serviced by a rail line.

When she landed a before school job at a bakery, an escort for form's sake was discussed, even though she had to leave the house at four in the morning. It was agreed Grantville was safe, so the escort was foregone. When there is not a Jewish quarter where the boundary is set and behavior changes, a family must decide what is and is not allowable.

Sarah's boyfriend Hans accompanied Sarah as far as the grade school and said goodbye there. Eventually Rivka saw them saying good bye.

"I'm going to marry Hans!" Sarah told her young cousin.

"No, you're not. You tried to bring it up with your father and he wouldn't even hear you out. There's no way you're ever going to get him to give his consent."

"I don't need his consent. This is Grantville. He does not own me. I do not have to have a dowry. I do not have to have his permission. When we've graduated Hans will get a job, we will get a place of our own and get married, and there is nothing my family can do to stop us."

"Until you're eighteen you can't get married without parental consent." The age of consent had been hashed out by the government. It used to be even lower in some places back up-time. Some down-timers wanted it higher still and others thought no girl or women should be allowed to marry without the consent of a guardian, for their own protection.

"We might not have to wait that long!" Sarah said in a dreamy voice.

"What do you have planned, little bird?" Rivka asked, translating a family endearment into English.

"Oh, nothing really."

"'Fess up, Faygeleh." Rivka saw nothing odd about the hash of languages.

"Hans is checking on something. He knows a boy who was fighting with his parents over how much of his paycheck they got and how much he could keep. The father wanted the whole thing. Well, they yelled at each other so loud and so often the neighbors called the police. The police told the boy if he had an income and a place to stay he could get the court to declare him an emancipated minor and he could move out. So he did.

"I've got an income from the bakery. All I need is a place to stay and then I can do what I want and I don't have to wait to get married."

Sarah!" Rivka was truly shocked. "Do you want them to sit shiva for a dummy and declare you dead to the family? I'd never be allowed to speak to you again!"

"They won't do it unless I convert."

"You're getting married by a priest. You will have to convert."

"Rebecca didn't."

The conversation ended right there for the time being. Chaim, out of ear shot, was heading straight and fast for three boys who were waiting on the corner, snowballs in hand. They would get off one shot and then they would have to run or Chaim would be all over them.

"It was a fair fight," Chaim said once, "there were four of them." When it became clear that as long as he was not the one starting the fight, all that would happen was a few hours of detention, fighting became Chaim's passion. At first his family was proud; after a bit they became annoyed. When the rabbi complained he was late to Hebrew classes because of detention for fighting, it became a serious topic of concern, almost as troublesome as Chaim wanting to cut his ear locks or Daniel taking a second shift job in the munitions plant and missing Hebrew classes because of it.

Chaim just plain liked to fight.

"Chaim Buchbinder," Sarah called out loud and clear, "don't you dare. If you are one minute later getting to the shul than you need to be you will be in serious trouble, young man."

So Chaim was plastered with three snowballs and then three more as he hurried past with a promise of "later," being his only response. He would have gotten hit a third time but Sarah's stern "Drop them!" put a stop to it.

Then Sarah and Rivka were home so the conversation was put on hold.

****

Two weeks later Sarah's trouble with her parents came to a head.

Yankel, his brother Avram and Moshe, who was married to Cousin Leah, trudged home against the icy wind to the house shared by all three families, after a long day at the shop. They entered the kitchen off the back porch. The very word "kitchen" was warm. In their minds it meant: hot soup, hot oven, good food, and happy wives. But most of all it meant: a rich man's house with a room just for cooking and eating. What awaited them ended any warm thoughts. They stopped in the middle of taking off their cold weather trappings.

Rachael, Ruth and Leah were waiting. They could have been sitting shiva for the dead from their solemn faces and quiet ways. It was a heavy, sour quiet, like an over-filled balloon on the edge of popping.

Avram voiced his worse fear. "Is Daniel . . . ?" He worried every day about his eldest son working at the munitions plant.

"Daniel is well," Ruth answered. There was more to tell, yet she was a dry pump.

Avram primed. "What has happened?"

"Sarah has moved out."

"What? She can't. She's not married. Where would she go? Why?"

"She's moving in with a girl she works with who lives at the bakery," Ruth replied.

"Why?"

Ruth closed her mouth and her eyes. The former was leaking pain, the latter tears. She rocked back and forth in her chair as if she were davening, her arms wrapped tightly around herself.

Rachael spoke. "She is going to marry a boy from school. A Gentile."

"She can't. I forbid it!" Avram shouted.

"It is against the law," Moshe added.

"No, it isn't," Yankel said.

"Yes, it is! She is under age," Avram answered.

"We tried that argument," Rachael said. "She said she is seventeen; she has an income and an address. She can get the court to declare her—what was the word—an emancipated minor. Their laws will not stop her for us."

"The marriage is against the law!" Moshe said.

"No, it is not!" Yankel said.

Moshe looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

"Rebecca?" Yankel paused. "She married Mike?"

Moshe paled. "So we will get no help from the Abrabanels in this. Sephardim!" He used the word for Spanish Jews as an obscene curse. "They approve! Why did we ever comen here?"

Leah spoke. "For a good living, to be safe."

"At what price? Is this any better than a pogrom? If she were killed at least we would have a body to bury," Yankel said.

"We do not have to treat her as one who is dead. She is not converting. She is just getting married without permission, unless you decide to give your consent," Rachael said. She looked at Avram, while Sarah's mother continued to sob quietly.

"How can she get married without converting? The priest will not allow it," Moshe said.

"The up-timers do not all have priests. Some of them have a minister. They are different. Rebecca did not convert," Rachael countered. "They can even be married by the mayor."

"I never thought this could happen to us," Avram said.

Chaim came in from after school Hebrew class with a blast of cold air. He was late getting home because he was late getting to the shul. With the number of detentions he was sitting for fighting ...