Chapter 7 Fear Is Love
After Esther’s arrival, Dr. Larch had met with a rabbi and two men from the Auburn Jewish community.
The men were sympathetic to Esther’s plight, but they were candid with the doctor.
The rabbi would explain the abandoned child’s circumstances to Jewish families in his congregation, but the two other men feared some families would question the lack of documentation concerning Esther’s Jewishness.
The rabbi who told Esther about her mother had no name.
Was Esther’s mother Jewish? the rabbi in Auburn had asked.
The word documentation was sufficient to set Larch off. “Here in St. Cloud’s, many of our children lack documentation—yet we were expected to know the story of Esther’s mother!” Dr. Larch cried.
“No tirades, Wilbur,” Nurse Angela cautioned him.
No Jewish families came forward following Dr. Larch’s visit to the Lewiston-Auburn area.
The Winslows were wondering why Larch hadn’t begun by looking for Jewish families in Portland.
The second-largest seaport in New England, Portland was older and bigger than the twin cities of Lewiston and Auburn.
Wouldn’t Portland have an older, bigger Jewish population? the Winslows were thinking.
As she got older, the history of the Jews was of such interest to Esther—it was truly equal to her passion for novels.
In reading to her about Judaism, Larch and his nurses had learned more about the Jewish people than they could imagine.
Yet the new rabbi in the new synagogue in Auburn feared that some Jewish families in his congregation would think that Esther was old enough that she should have received some proper religious background and training.
This set Larch off on another tirade. “Here in St. Cloud’s, what has proper religious background and training done for us?” the doctor cried.
“Wilbur, you weren’t here—you were off in France,” Nurse Angela said. (She made it sound as if the doctor had been on vacation.)
Six months later, in early 1918, as Nurse Edna explained to the Winslows, a fire destroyed the new synagogue on Second Street. Angela and the rabbi would stay in touch, but no families in the Lewiston-Auburn area were interested in adopting Esther.
As little as the Winslows knew about Jews, they were right about Portland.
From the 1860s till the early 1900s, the Jews who immigrated to Portland came mostly from Eastern Europe.
They spoke Yiddish. However, since the early twentieth century, Portland’s Jewish population had changed.
There were Conservative and Reform synagogues in Portland, not only Orthodox synagogues.
When Larch came back from France, Esther was old enough to behave herself in a synagogue.
The girl was also old enough to be critical of an Orthodox synagogue, where men and women sat apart.
By the time Larch had corresponded and met with a rabbi in Portland—in a Reform synagogue, where men and women sat together—Esther had read the Torah, through Deuteronomy.
She’d already decided she didn’t believe in God.
“Right you are, Esther!” Thomas Winslow cried.
“Tommy,” Constance said. Then she asked Dr. Larch why Esther didn’t believe in God.
“What has God done for Esther?” Larch asked. Esther counted all the references to God’s strong hand or outstretched arm in the Exodus; yet she doubted that God did enough to help the Israelites. “God didn’t do enough to help Esther, or her mother,” Dr. Larch told the Winslows.
“Esther listens to you, Wilbur—she thinks what you think about God,” Nurse Angela said.
“The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,” was how Nurse Edna put it.
“Here in St. Cloud’s, what has God ever done for us?” Dr. Larch asked his nurses.
“That’s what we mean, Wilbur,” Angela said.
“The Book of Esther came from the Hebrew Bible—it’s one of what’s called the Five Scrolls,” Larch told the Winslows.
“The Book of Esther and Song of Songs are the only books in the Hebrew Bible that do not mention God,” Larch added.
“King Ahasuerus, a Hebrew name, comes from the Old Persian name for Xerxes I. Esther must be fictional,” Dr. Larch went on.
“Persian kings didn’t marry outside Persian noble families—there probably wasn’t a Jewish queen.
And Esther is a Jewish orphan—she doesn’t reveal her Jewish heritage when she’s crowned as queen.
Esther tells King Ahasuerus she’s Jewish only when she reveals that Haman is plotting to kill her people—including herself! ” Dr. Larch exclaimed.
“What a good story!” Thomas Winslow cried.
“Yes, but it’s just a story—Esther is the pick of Ahasuerus’s harem, so she gets her way,” Larch said.
“Wilbur,” was all Nurse Angela could say. All Constance could think was that Dr. Larch was like her Tommy, the way Larch went on and on.
Dr. Larch described a Rembrandt painting, Ahasuerus and Haman at the Feast of Esther.
The way the nurses rolled their eyes, it was clear they’d heard about the Rembrandt before.
The Winslows were mystified when Larch started talking about Purim, the Jewish holiday celebrating the saving of the Jewish people from Haman—a day of feasting and rejoicing, a day of deliverance for the Jews.
“There are cookies that look like Haman’s ears,” Larch told the Winslows.
“They’re called hamantaschen, which means ‘Haman’s pockets’ in Yiddish. In Hebrew, it translates as ‘Haman’s ears,’ because of the cookies’ shape,” Nurse Edna explained. She could see the Winslows were lost, overwhelmed by their unfamiliarity with Jewishness.
“People wear Halloween-like masks and costumes—lots of drinking, there are also parades,” Larch went on.
“There are donations to the poor, Wilbur—it’s not just partying,” Nurse Angela said.
“I found passages about Purim in The Jewish Encyclopedia. I read the passages aloud to the kids one night, when Esther was twelve or thirteen,” Dr. Larch told the Winslows. “Your turn,” the doctor said to his nurses.
As Nurse Edna and Nurse Angela explained, the descriptions of Purim made all the children happy for Esther—the parades, the costumes and masks, the young people having fun.
But the Purim stories made Esther sob. “I’ll never learn how to be a Jew—I have too much catching up to do!
” Esther had cried. No one had seen her in tears before.
“We’ll help Esther catch up—we’ll put her in touch with other Jews. She’ll find her people,” Thomas said to Dr. Larch.
“You should know that Esther will want to go there one day,” Larch told the Winslows.
“Go where?” Constance asked the doctor.
“The historical kingdoms of the Israelites and the Hebrews, the historical Israel and Judah—as if she could travel there!” Dr. Larch cried.
“Wilbur,” was all Angela said.
“The Promised Land, the Holy Land,” Edna explained to the Winslows.
“Wilbur, Esther just wants to go to Jerusalem,” Angela said.
“Oh, what a relief—just Jerusalem!” Larch cried.
“Esther means she would like to go to Jerusalem when she’s older—when she’s an adult and she can make adult decisions,” Edna explained to the Winslows.
“Adult decisions!” Dr. Larch exclaimed, holding his head in his hands.
“You should tell the Winslows about Esther’s tattoo, Wilbur—speaking of adult decisions,” Angela said.
“Esther has a tattoo?” Constance asked the doctor.
“That’s putting the cart before the horse,” Nurse Edna said.
Edna meant that Portland was the horse that came before the tattoo.
Portland was the linchpin of where Esther came from.
Because Dr. Larch didn’t want to return to the city he’d left as a young man, he had put off making inquiries of the Jewish community in Portland.
What came of Larch’s first meeting with the Reform rabbi in Portland would change everything.
Larch had emphasized that Esther was only three (almost four) when she was left at St. Cloud’s; yet her pronunciation and enunciation were very grown-up.
She didn’t speak like a child. Esther had informed the doctor and his nurses that she didn’t know any children.
“Whoever her mother was, she did much more than read to Esther—the child had virtually memorized Esther’s story in the Bible,” Larch told the rabbi. “It must have been her mother who taught Esther how to speak.”
“It sometimes happens here, in Portland, that we see Jewish immigrants who’ve learned English as a second language before they get here,” the rabbi told Dr. Larch.
“When those new immigrants teach their children English, the children speak like adults,” the rabbi said.
His name was Leopold Herzfeld; he reasoned that Esther might have been born in Europe.
Her mother would have confided in a rabbi—if she’d landed in Portland when she was pregnant or Esther was only an infant.
Rabbi Herzfeld further reasoned that Esther’s mother would likely have turned to Congregation Shaarey Tphiloh, if she’d confided to a rabbi around 1905 or a little later.
In 1904, Shaarey Tphiloh built a synagogue on Newbury Street, in the Old Port district.
Most of its members were from Eastern and Central Europe—some newly arrived, some children of earlier immigrants.
Two groups of Orthodox Jews had come together to create the synagogue.
Shaarey Tphiloh means “Gates of Prayer,” Larch told the Winslows.
“You pronounce it Sha-a-RAY T’-FEE-la, Wilbur,” Nurse Angela corrected him.
“I don’t care how you say it—the synagogue had the goddamn documentation!” Dr. Larch exclaimed.
“The synagogue knew the story of Esther’s mother,” Nurse Edna told the Winslows. “You’ve still got miles to go before you get to the tattoo,” Edna added.