Secular versus Religious Beliefs and Lifestyles
The story presents the tensions between two different ways of life within the Jewish communities in New York state. Rebecca, although she is Jewish, has been raised in a secular environment, without religious observance. She is not used to observing Jewish customs and rituals. The relatives with whom she stays are the opposite. They are part of a Hasidic Jewish community which rigorously observes all aspects of its faith and is suspicious of outsiders. This wariness of the world beyond the borders of their community is apparent when Dovid Frankel tells Rebecca that some of the people in the area are scared of her, believing that since she comes from worldly Manhattan, she may show her young cousins a fashion magazine—the orthodox community has a strict dress code that involves long-sleeved blouses and long skirts for women even in hot weather—or give them the wrong foods or tell them something they should not hear. It was the same, Dovid says, when the Adelsteins first moved there. Since they were newcomers, their orthodox neighbors did not trust them. The picture that emerges is of a rather closed community that distrusts outsiders and is protective of its own religious traditions and way of life. But this works the other way, too. Rebecca's father, a secular Jew, reacts negatively when he thinks that Aunt Malka has been trying to talk Rebecca into adopting orthodox practices. It appears there is a gap between Orthodox and secular Jewish worlds that is hard to bridge.
Rebecca in a sense is that bridge. The longer she stays at the Adelsteins, the more she is influenced by her religious environment. Esty nags her about the virtues of observing of Orthodox Jewish customs, and she joins with her cousin in studying the Torah and praying. At first Rebecca just goes through the motions, pretending to be pious as she knows doing so is expected of her. When she listens to Uncle Shimon explain his belief that there is a connection between a house fire and a smudged mezuzah, she expresses her thoughts about it in an open-minded way, beginning, "If there is a God who can see inside mezuzahs." The key word is "if." Her tone suggests she neither believes the idea nor disbelieves it, and she is also sufficiently free of the constraints of religious faith to admit to Dovid that sometimes she hopes that God does not exist.
However, Uncle Shimon's words do set her wondering, late at night, about weighty concepts such as the judgment of God. In this way, gradually, Rebecca begins to develop genuine religious feelings, although she does not believe that she fully understands them or their implications: "I know I've felt a kind of holy swelling in my chest, a connection to something larger than myself. I wonder if this is proof of something, if this is God marking me somehow."
Rebecca's developing religious awareness is a personal one, based more on her own thoughts, feelings, and experiences than on the teachings of an external authority. Her most powerful experience of God comes when she is alone in nature, and she senses that it is God who is the controlling force behind all natural phenomena—the scent of clover, the bees that fly past her ears, the sun that burns her skin. It is then that she decides for herself that she wants to know more about the will of God, and she wants to follow that will in her own life. She wants to do what God wants her to do.
There is irony in this theme of emerging spirituality. Rebecca, who...
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was feared because she might bring a secular influence into the Orthodox world, is the one who quietly becomes religious, whereas Esty, who likes to give the impression of being very pious, is in fact the one who breaks religious rules. Esty is glib. She regards it as quite all right to sin, if one repents the next day. She is the one who suggests taking the forbidden book home, not Rebecca. Rebecca has a conscience about it. When Esty says no one will know the book is there, Rebecca replies, "Butwe'll know," as if that should be enough to deter them. Esty assures Rebecca that they will not look at the book, but she is the first one who does. It is also Esty who follows her desires and arranges a nocturnal encounter with Dovid that would horrify and alarm her parents if they were to find out. It is ironic that the girl who most insists on following a religious code of conduct is the one who breaks it most flagrantly.
Emerging Sexuality
The theme of the girls' emerging awareness of sexuality is linked to moral and religious considerations. It is clear from the start that the girls are at an age where they are curious about boys and about sex, although their knowledge of both is slight. They are both drawn to the tall, tanned Dovid Frankel and are fascinated by the book Essence of Persimmon, even though their lack of physical maturity ensures that they do not understand much of what it describes. A book about sex is bound up in Esty's mind with sin. She says the book is "tiuv, abomination," although this does not stop her from reading it. Rebecca is as intrigued as Esty by the book, but not as shocked by it. It appears that she has not been taught to regard such matters as sinful. Earlier that year, before she went to stay with her relatives, she kissed a boy behind the bleachers and appeared not to experience feelings of guilt. However, her summer at the Adelsteins has changed her in some way. Her feelings after Dovid touches her arm are more complex. As she reflects on it later, she feels a "strange rolling feeling in [her] stomach." This feeling arises in part because she is becoming aware for the first time of what it feels like to have a boy touch her bare arm, but also because she knows that Dovid is doing something against the rules of his religion. Sexual morality and religion are becoming linked in her mind.
In the end, while Esty, without showing any signs of a moral struggle, reads the book and kisses Dovid, Rebecca shows a practical moral wisdom of her own. In letting the forbidden book sink to the bottom of the lake, she is acting according to her developing moral sense and also perhaps according to a feeling that the book has the potential at this stage of her life to cause more trouble than it is worth. Her action in letting the book go is not the result of a decision she has pondered with much thought, however; it seems to happen spontaneously as she plunges into the water.
