He dreamt he was in Israel. But he was in the Dominican Republic. Rosh Hashanah had made the trip possible for Jerry and his mom and his sister, a school teacher in Queens, where the schools closed for the High Holidays. So he began to settle himself into the jungles and beaches of the island, sending lizard and gecko videos to Judith, his lady friend. She was at home in Boro Park. The timing of the holiday had made staying at home something of a necessity; she wanted to exercise control over her own kitchen and home and investigate the communal feeling of observing a holiday within her neighborhood and the broader landscape of the land of the Jews. It felt good to be in Brooklyn at the start of the year, though it also brought some guilt for her. She was a woman driven by a singular desire to become more religious, and had not been raised in any religion. She was not Jewish, but wished to integrate herself into a Jewish life, and this had begun for her after she had moved to the city. But she knew how to buy many carrots and new fruit, and beautiful flowers each Shabbos eve. This week there were all sorts of special fruit in her preferred grocery store, Certo market: cacao, tamarillo, passionfruit, kumquat, guava, mangosteen, kiwano melons, barhi dates, persimmons, mini pineapples, soursop. Judith collected some fruit she hadn’t eaten since last season, or ever in her life, like the tomato-like one, the tamarillo. She bought salmon heads from KRM Kollel and Certo market and cooked some carrots. The sunlight was indispensably beautiful, and the greenmarkets were full of amaranth and dahlia. While walking home from Prospect Park she admired the industrial outskirts of Boro Park, the Jewish gas station, the Hatzolah headquarters, and a group of Hasidic men chanting together on the way to shul, after seeing the resplendent gardens of Windsor Terrace and the bustling Bengali section of Church Ave, which reminded her that one day she might venture out to buy other sorts of culinary ingredients there: spiky teasel gourds, bitter melons, black cumin, urad dal, garam masala, basmati rice.

The Shabbos before she wrote in her room in Brooklyn about how much Jerry resembled a gecko, about how he resembled the movements of a gecko’s tail as it curls and trembles during its nocturnal hunts. The manner of his intelligence, and maybe even the way the muscles in his back rippled and twitched as he turned over to fuck her in a different position, it was all encapsulated in a mourning gecko’s soft torso and muscular, well-articulated tail. Then she felt him fade, fade off into his own ecstasy amidst the non-human life of the island. She thought of how the trip was possible for him and his family because his sister was a school teacher, and the school district closed for Rosh Hashanah. She couldn’t have gone with him on account of the holiday, though there was another important reason for not going, namely that she felt she was in exile from her future husband. Even if that person ended up being Jerry, Judith had to remain in exile, from whomever it would be, so she sat alone, vaguely satisfied in knowing how separate she felt from the world, and how her mind worked when it contemplated concepts such as monotheism and avodah zarah while she read alone.

Her lover Jerry had been so good to her, and she adored him. But at the same time she kept on thinking of him as a gecko: as eminently admirable but as having a separate life from hers, and so she felt unimportant in the grand scheme of things, perhaps she is important to them insofar as she feeds and houses them, but then she would be a husband, not a woman in relation to him. In her gecko-shaped distance from Jerry, Judith had begun to use Hinge more often, with the Jewish filter on. She had also marked herself as Jewish, but hidden the field from her public profile so as not to misrepresent herself explicitly. Quickly she found that no one wanted her; she received almost no inbound likes. That she was unambiguously Asian must have been offputting to those who were searching for Jewish wives, but a few men were interested, men who were secular and academic and in open relationships. She wasn’t really interested in them, however. On occasion there was a man who was Orthodox and who wanted something casual and fun, but then he was too casual and fun. For the most part the profiles were serious and explicit in the following fashion: SS/SK, looking for a NJG to build a family with, looking to host more Shabbat dinners. Eventually she found herself talking to a guy who was only 26 and fresh out of school. He was unusually attractive, with narrow eyes and a straightforward masculine look, and he also turned out to be someone who asked and answered questions very seriously: What does it mean to rescue your father from the belly of the whale? she asks, and he answers: To rescue your father from the belly of the whale means to develop so deeply and broadly that you can take your Culture (symbolized as father) in hand so that you can lead it rather than it leading you. They chatted for a week before he asked her out, suggesting that they go to YIVO, the Institute for Jewish Research. Judith in turn recommended that they go to a chamber opera on the Great Yiddish Dictionary.

Eli turned out to be a boy from Lakewood. He wasn’t so beautiful in person, but he seemed expedient and intelligent, and Judith was excited to be at YIVO, looking at the academic monographs in the bookstore. There was an art exhibition of the works of Samson Schames, which they entered and conversed in. He began by asking her if she had any relationship with Judaism; she said no, that she was interested in Judaism as an outsider, and had known and been close to various Jews. He wondered if she had grown up Christian, and she countered that she hadn’t grown up with religion at all, that her parents were atheists, and that things were complicated because they were from two different cultures. Then Eli made a remark before a stark collage made of gypsum and nails, depicting a Christ-like face with the eyes crossed out, called “Crown of Thorns,” which he echoed out loud. Then they were silent, and then he asked about the contents of Judith’s first class on psychoanalysis and literature, of which she managed to recall more and more details. He admitted he was more of a Jungian. After a while Judith ask him about his upbringing. He grew up Orthodox. What kind of Orthodox? she asked, Modern? Yeshivish? Yeshivish, he confirmed. I’m surprised you know that term, you must be in pretty deep, he said, and Judith smiled, some of the tension released, though she continued to wonder if he had somehow expected her to be Jewish, and if he was disappointed to realize that she was not. When would she tell him that she’s thinking of converting, and what might she add to that statement? They continued to look at the art somewhat independently, and he took photos of certain paintings. He’s a pretty active looker, she thought, and I like this work of Samson Schames. The small painting of a pair of lobsters was especially attractive to her.

In the lobby outside they sat at a table before the opera began. Eli answered some of her questions; he had five siblings: an older sister, three younger brothers, and a younger sister, whom he described as sort of bratty, which made Judith wonder if he found that hot. Eli told her that he was surprised to have learned that some secular Jews speak Yiddish; he found this out when he went to see some plays by Isaac Bashevis Singer. He can understand Yiddish, but didn’t grow up speaking the language; his dad’s parents were baal teshuvas and spoke English in the home. In Yeshiva the rabbis would speak English with a large number of Yiddish words mixed in. He doesn’t like the opera, neither does she really, but she’s unsure if he simply doesn’t have much patience for classical music, or if he simply has good taste. They walk fast to the West Side highway and then to Hungry Llama and talk more about religion and aesthetics. A man says shalom to him and he responds, then asks Judith, how does he know I’m Jewish? As they near the café she asks him about his thoughts on religion, and he says he’s interested in the Passion, he feels Judaism is a dead end. He notices a man selling paintings on the street in the West Village and expresses interest in one of them, but he can’t afford it. Judith marvels at this, at Eli’s strange steadfast confidence in pausing to examine the paintings. She begins to engage in a little bit of a debate with him on the topic of whether or not Judaism is an aesthetic dead-end. Haven’t the Hasidim figured out a way to reinject it with mysticism and ecstatic appreciation for G-d? Isn’t a charismatic tzadik good enough, why do you need the Passion of Christ? She asks her questions haltingly, cautiously, but he seems to know what she’s saying, and the debate flows with grace and elegance. He uses a few words that she doesn’t really know, like antinomianism and apologetics, and reveals that he’s influenced by Jordan Peterson. She recommends to him D.H. Lawrence’s “The Man who Died,” which she describes as a very funny and interesting story about Jesus and his sexual relationship with Isis. She tells him that she’s also interested in the paucity or problematic of Jewish visual art, and what might come out of that. She’s also interested in the prohibition of iconography, and she’s particularly interested in Jewish involvement in classical music. Their conversation leads to a resounding close as Judith tells Eli that she doesn’t feel she’s going to be missing anything by becoming Jewish because she’s so embedded in an aesthetic tradition. She talks about Kant a little. Eli asks her if she’d like to go to the MET with him to look at what I imagine to be Christian art. Yes, I’d happily go to the MET to look at Christian art with this young man from Lakewood, because I want to understand what he feels he’s missing.

Is he self-hating, one of her Jewish exes asks over text. I feel he is a young man trying to figure things out, Judith writes back. Getting caught up with the mediocre goyishe Jung and his rather limited but accessible disciplinarian Jordan Peterson is just teenage rebellion. He doesn’t seem self-hating, just ambitious. The next night she looks for him on social media and finds out that his last name is Tarlow. This is a town in Poland. In 1942 everyone was sent to Treblinka. Here’s the Tarlow synagogue in 2011:

Looking at the picture of the Tarlow synagogue makes something turn in her stomach. She reads the word “exterminate” several times on the Wikipedia page for the town, which leads her to recalls the efficient details of the process which she had learned about between the ages of 8 and 12. It strikes her as interesting that she was so capable of reading about the details of the Shoah as a child, and now the topic is impossible for her to think of without wanting to become totally blinkered. In this world full of proud Jews it is hard to imagine the world of a generation or two before and maybe the reason not to date Judith for the average Jewish man has something to do with that.

The next morning she wakes up with what can only be described as a feeling of guilt. It is an interesting guilt, a fresh feeling of guilt which she’s never known before, clear as day. The guilt she’s known has always been tied to a cause, and thus muddled: one might be guilty of not working today, or guilty of hurting someone’s feelings, but the cause tends to cover up the feeling, as it gives a person a thought to focus on, a problem to solve. But this morning she wakes up with the feeling of guilt with no cause. She goes to analysis and speaks of this and other things; it lightens her a bit. Nevertheless the next day she wakes up with the same feeling of objectless guilt.

A week later Jerry came back from the D.R. and had his dream about being in Israel, while lying in bed with Judith. She told him about her attempt at infidelity, and he was angry and jealous. But the next morning, he wanted to see her again, and all was good. Better than good. Jerry’s gecko-like adorableness became addictive and sweet like apples dipped in honey or raisin challah. She told him of how the second date with Eli hadn’t turned out in her favor. The conservative young man had been scared off by something in her. He had admitted that he found her too masculine, and she guessed that this was because of the way they engaged in theological and philosophical arguments, perhaps in the way only yeshiva boys could. From Judith’s point of view it seemed pointless to go on wishing for or dreaming about a Jewish husband when she missed her true Jewish husband, from whom she was in exile, a certain Adam H, whom she was simply waiting for, and for whom Eli was a brief experimental substitute. But even then, the act of waiting for Adam seemed not to align with her moral values, her sense that the reality of the here and now should take precedence over any fantasmic ideal. And there before her was the overwhelming beauty of Jerry, the gecko, whose hair reminded her somewhat of an Irish setter’s ears, whose pleasant habits reminded her of a dolphin and an isopod and a springtail and a myrtle branch and one of Botticelli’s goddesses. What does it mean to dedicate oneself to the care of a goddess-gecko while affirming belief in and engaging in the practice of an absolutely monotheistic religion? This seemed to be the essence of her galut, if we find it permissible to appropriate the word for Jewish exile under these conditions.