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“the good Lord chose me.”
    “Really?”
    “Mm-hmm.”
    “But how did you … how did He …?”
    “Many years ago when I first moved to this town, I was at my Bible study reading Deuteronomy 7:6: For thou art an holy people … the Lord thy God hath chosen thee to be a special people …. Just as we read that verse, the good Lord spoke to me and said, Who is the chosen? Who are the ones going to the Promised Land?
    “That would be the Jews , I answered.
    “Correct , He said. Why then are you not among them, if they are the holy people?
    “I told my Bible study about this conversation, and they prayed for me. However, they could not point to the text and deny that the chosen are the Jews. After many weeks and arguments, I took my Bible with me to the Berkeley Bialystok Center.”
    Reentering her apartment with her clean clothes piled high in her laundry basket, Jess found Theresa studying for orals at the table.
    “Mrs. Gibbs is a Jew,” said Jess.
    “Yeah, right,” said Theresa, scarcely looking up from her Kristeva.
    “Seriously.”
    “Has she offered to debate the merits of Jesus Christ with you?” Theresa asked.
    “No.”
    “Has she asked you to come with her to Bible study?”
    “No. She wants me to meet her rabbi.”
    Now Theresa shut her book. “Do not go anywhere with that woman.”
    “Why?”
    “Look, I grew up with evangelicals,” said Theresa. “I understand them. Mrs. Gibbs wants to steal your soul. I’m serious. Stay the hell away from her. You’ll end up dropping out of school, marrying some holy roller, and becoming a Jehovah’s Witness in the Philippines.”
    “I think you might be a little prejudiced,” said Jess, and she began telling Mrs. Gibbs’s story.
    “Where have you been?” Theresa interrupted. “That is a standard conversion narrative. Listen to me. I grew up with these people. I wasn’t allowed to date ’til I was sixteen. Then I only dated Christians. Then I took a vow of abstinence. I had to spend my weekends saving souls door-to-door. You have no idea.”
    “But you escaped,” Jess pointed out. “You aren’t evangelical now.”
    “Ha. You never really escape,” Theresa shot back. “You’re naïve if you think you can.” And she spoke from long experience growing up in Honolulu where her strong-willed father had not allowed her to get a driver’s license. She spoke remembering her mother’s thousand prayers, offered up on every occasion, even for the family dog, a toy terrier who sat up front in the car and panted in the tropical heat. But Jess had never seen the little dog with its pink tongue, and she had never met Theresa’s parents.
    “I’m not naïve,” Jess said.
    “Didn’t I see you give money to Crazy Al on Telegraph? Didn’t you say you got your cards read, quote unquote, for fun?”
    “Not for fun. As a thought experiment, and by the way, the guy knows his ‘Prufrock.’”
    “You have something about you that attracts fanatics,” said Theresa. “You have this way of letting them in. It’s dangerous. It’s like you’re blowing some kind of high-pitched dog whistle: Take me, take me….”

4
    T he Bialystok rabbi of Berkeley, known affectionately as the Berkinstoker, had come west from Brooklyn fifteen years before with his wife and baby. The family had grown, as had Rabbi Helfgott. He’d gained a few pounds with each of his wife’s pregnancies, and after the birth of their tenth child, he was a substantial man indeed. He wore the traditional garb of the Bialystoker sect: black frock coat and black gabardine trousers, a white dress shirt, and, when he went out, a broad-brimmed black hat. Burly, bearded, and gregarious, he was a familiar sight near campus, and Jess remembered him well from Sproul Plaza where she leafleted for Save the Trees. She had often seen the rabbi marching through the crowds with leaflets of his own for anyone who looked Jewish. He’d even approached Jess once and suggested, “Why don’t we