Disobedience

by Naomi Alderman

Those who believe that marriage is an end in itself, that it is a guarantee of contentment, are fools. Marriage is difficult. It is painful. And it was meant to be so. For in trying to approach more closely to a human being who is so different to us, we begin to understand the task before us in approaching the Almighty. This is our work upon the earth, and the work of marriage prepares us for it. And although marriage may, in slow and unexpected ways, bring us much joy and satisfaction, nothing of the sort has been promised.

We may, if we desire, stand atop a low mound of earth and declare ourselves lords of creation. But we should not then be surprised if we cease to burn with desire for the Source of the world, and if we cease to feel the warmth of His yearning for us.

It is a terrible, wretched thing to love someone whom you know cannot love you. There are things that are more dreadful. There are many human pains more grievous. And yet it remains both terrible and wretched. Like so many things, it is insoluble.

our words will swallow us. We have spat them out, but in the end they will drown us.

Silence is not power. It’s not strength. Silence is the means by which the weak remain weak and the strong remain strong. Silence is a method of oppression.

We sleep, we eat, we relax our limbs and our minds in order that we may be nourished and fit for further work. And if all that we are is work, what are we? We work in order to gain food to swallow or a pillow to press our head into. And we eat and sleep in order to work. We are machines, doing nothing more than reproducing ourselves endlessly. But Shabbat shows us that this is not so. Shabbat is not a day of recreation, of pastimes, it is a day of abstention from creativity. It is a day of treading lightly upon the world.

As far as possible, the world is not altered by our sojourn in it over Shabbat. Instead, we eat food we have already prepared, we talk, we sleep, we pray, we walk—simple, human things. And by these actions we resist our impulse to be constantly meddling with the world, altering it, making it conform more closely to our desires, as though our desires were all that mattered. Shabbat is simply to take our hands from the wheel and let it spin.

For if we cannot be distracted by our actions, our creation, we must, at last, come to ourselves. Man-and-woman were created at the moment before sunset on the sixth day. We should recall that each Friday, at sunset, is the anniversary of our birth. Shabbat draws us back to ourselves. Shabbat presents us with all we have achieved, but nothing more. Shabbat asks, quietly but insistently, who we are. And Shabbat will not relieve us if we should have no answer.

the subconscious knows no past or future. For the subconscious, everything is happening right now. Trauma that happened when you were four still feels exactly as threatening now as it did then.

In the Torah, Moses asks God to tell him His name. And God gives him a word: YHVH. No vowels, so it can’t be pronounced, even if you wanted to. It’s an impossible conjugation, three separate tenses of the verb “to be” smashed together in one word. It means having been, going on being, and going to be in the future, all together. From this, we learn the timeless nature of God. The past, the present, and the future are all the same to Him.

So we three used to sit, talking, in his room, most afternoons. If I’m honest, I did most of the talking. I used to think that if I hadn’t been there, they probably would have just sat together in silence. So at least I rescued them from that.

The wound healed unevenly, leaving a piece of tree bark lodged in my elbow.

voice in my head said she is not for you, this one. And I said I thought I told you to shut up. I thought I killed you with chocolate cake and prawn sandwiches. And the voice said no. And I said fine, talk all you like. I’m not listening. You are doing wrong, said nothing and no one.

Happiness is not the same as comfort; it is not necessarily to be found in ease, in luxury and plenty. Ease, luxury, and plenty are not shameful, but they are not happiness. Too much comfort can, in fact, cause weakening of the body, depression of the spirit, and despair of the soul. We human beings, like the Lord Almighty Who created us, yearn to build. Our happiness, in this world at least, is to be found in creation.

Happiness is not a sensation of ease and comfort. Happiness is the deeper satisfaction we find when we create: when we construct a physical object, or compose a work of art, or raise a child. We experience happiness when we have touched the world and left it different, according to our will. We experience the greatest happiness when we have touched the world and left it better,

And though the work itself may be on occasion enjoyable, certain works can only be accomplished through struggle. Thus it is that happiness often resides where we find pain. And the greatest agony often presages the greatest triumph.

He could not hope to discover, let alone understand, what thoughts moved her as she sat holding his hand to her cheek. He was alone, in the smallness of the room, in the space within him. And yet they were both together, alone.

Although it was still warm, the sky was iron-gray, that gray that English skies take on for days at a time, constantly threatening to rain but never quite working up the enthusiasm.

We do not hear simply the pure voice of the Almighty as the angels do. We are not ruled by blind instinct like the beasts. Uniquely, we can listen to the commands of God, can understand them, yet can choose disobedience. It is this, and only this, which gives our obedience its value. This is the glory of mankind, and this is its tragedy.

a part of His light, but not the whole of it. We hang suspended between two certainties: the clarity of the angels and the desires of the beasts. Thus, we remain forever uncertain. Our lives present us with choices, further choices and more choices, each multiplying, our ability to find our way forever in doubt. Unhappy creatures! Luckiest of all beings! Our triumph is our downfall, our opportunity for condemnation is also our chance for greatness. And all we have, in the end, are the choices we make.

We who live in Hendon now like to imagine ourselves elsewhere. We carry our homeland on our backs, unpacking it where we find ourselves, never too thoroughly nor too well, for we will have to pack it up again one day. Hendon does not exist; it is only where we are, which is the least of all ways to describe us.

She thought to herself, we could remain here forever, like this. Nothing need ever be said. Perhaps this is what is meant by love. She gathered her courage. She thought, this is not about love. Love is not the answer to anything. But speech, at least, can defeat silence.

The clouds moved silently through the sky, carrying shapes with them that would become other shapes and further shapes. Nothing remaining the same, not even for an instant. That was the truth of it.

She would live in some other, contrary fashion. She would be free to do as she pleased. She might become another sort of person entirely: make friends with a one-legged ex-fireman, set up her own pie-making business, cut off her hair and take up her skirts, draw and paint and learn the bassoon, take a lover to whom she might feed ripe strawberries and climb to the top of a tree in midwinter to gaze at the moon. She saw her life, in that moment, as a sort of fabric laid out before her, to be cut and shaped to her desire. She might choose something else. She might write her own story, for this, too, is a life that exists.

people noticed them walking. Esti thought, let them notice. That is for them to decide, not me. The thought made her smile. It was a new thought. Not Dovid’s, not Ronit’s. It did not belong to the silence that is appropriate to women. She held it tenderly in her mind. She felt there would be many more such thoughts to follow. A new way of thinking, not dominated by silence.

Ronit thought she was running away from God, but in fact she was fleeing from silence. She would need to be shown that it did not need to be feared. That ceasing to flee from it did not mean that it had to be embraced.

With her, I began to question something. And questioning something, I questioned everything.

They, like the desserts made without dairy, were indistinguishable from the genuine and the sincere.

All we demand is that women keep to their allotted areas; a woman is private, while a man is public. The correct mode for a man is speech, while the correct mode for a woman is silence. I’ve spent a long time proving that this isn’t so. I’ve spent a long time insisting that no one else can tell me when to speak and when to remain silent. So much so that it’s hard for me to tell when I want to be quiet.

We should not be afraid of words, or of speaking the truth openly. That is why I am speaking today. I am not afraid to speak the truth. “I have desired that which is forbidden to me. I continue to desire it. And yet, I am here. I obey the commandments. It is possible”—Esti smiled—“as long as I do not have to do so in silence.”

There’s something both admirable and hateful about this. The stolid refusal to become dramatic is also the inability to respond to serious things seriously, with depth.

She looks up at the pale blue morning sky, streaked with white and gray, and thinks of how only the day before, she had been there, on a plane. She had been in the morning.

All things, when measured in spans of years, seem simple. But human lives do not occur in years but slowly, day by day. A year may be easy, but its days are hard indeed.

She thinks about that: looking up, looking down, about how the sky is always there, wherever you go. You can choose to look at it, or not, but whichever you do it’ll still be there, a thing of beauty and light.

Because while you don’t have a choice about what you are, you have a choice about what you show. You always have a choice about whether you “out” yourself. Every time you meet someone new, it’s a decision. You always have a choice about whether you practice. Practice, of course, means a lot of different things. Probably something different to everyone. You can practice every day, or just once in a while. But if you don’t ever practice, you’ll never know what it could have meant to you. You’ll never know who you might have been. If you don’t practice, you’ll probably even feel awkward claiming that identity: if it has no function in your life, what’s the point of saying it? It’s still there, of course. It’ll never go away. But if you don’t practice, it can never change your life.