He’s the expert who specializes in finding ‘disappeared’ husbands—men who leave their wives without Jewish divorces, or hope
By Batya Ungar-Sargon for Tablet Magazine
It was a sticky, overcast afternoon in April. The sky
seemed to be debating, like an undecided groom, between revealing a glamorous
sun and unleashing a ruinous rain. I waited in a rental car outside one of those
generic American hotels on the outskirts of one of those charming Southern towns
for my contact to emerge. I spotted him as he came through the sliding doors of his hotel. From the car he was all chest-length gray beard, wafting to one side as he strode purposefully toward me, his solid build swallowed up in a black suit and white shirt. Black New Balance sneakers and a black cap completed the look. As he got closer, though, I could see that the beard was sparse on his face, revealing smooth olive skin, high cheekbones, wide-set, almond-shaped eyes almost orange in color and completely opaque.
He got in the car and beamed at me. “So, now you’re going to see what I’m up against here,” he said. “I’ve really entered the lion’s den.” He spoke English flawlessly, with a strange accent not incompatible with nativity in some English-speaking country. His Hebrew and Yiddish were equally flawless.
I drove down one street, then another. He peered alternately through his window and through the windshield. The houses we passed were set close to the street with wrap-around porches, painted in pastels. The streets were tree-lined and almost completely deserted, though it was 5:00 in the afternoon. The clouds continued to roil overhead.
“I want you to understand,” he said. “This thing is not going to get solved here and now. But you will have an understanding of what we’re doing.” He paused. I nodded eagerly, a bobbing-head dog someone accidentally placed in the driver’s seat. He seemed to have a dangerous gift of turning strangers into accomplices.
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