There was a thing people said: Do the Jews keep Shabbos or does Shabbos keep the Jews? A foolish expression. It was she who kept Shabbos, kept it for all the Jews, kept it despite the bait and switch that happened once she was in charge of keeping it. The wives kept Shabbos and the wives kept the Jews. The doughy, tradable wives up to their elbows in cold, gray sink basins, the waxed and stretch-marked wives. In this way, it was said, this way of keeping the Jews, women earned a holiness men could never possess. So instead the men possessed the women themselves, kept them. Let them, like
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