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that dealt with body sores full of pus and the minutiae of the laws involved in animal sacrifices. “Blind or broken, or maimed, or having a wen or a dry or moist scab, ye shall not bring these near unto God and as an offering made by fire shall ye not bring aught of them unto the Altar.” Even in this, Rivkie Lifschitz would manage to find some redeeming little detail, something about the priest’s wife, and how the rabbis say that a man’s house is his wife. How a woman completely bears the character of the home, and how holy that is. And a woman who is the wife of a temple priest—or his daughter—has a higher degree of holiness… . Only Rivkie could ferret out these details.
    Once, she’d even had a discussion with Rivkie about bedikot, those mandatory self-examinations pious women performed for a week following their menstrual period to check if their vaginal discharges were completely free of blood before immersing in the ritual baths and resuming relations with their husbands. If the inserted cloth came out white, no prob. If it came out red, big prob. But if it came out yellow or brown, a woman had to ask a rabbi to examine it and decide whether she could count it as a clean day, and go on toward the finish line and her husband’s arms, or if she had to return to Go, and start counting all over again.
    “It really isn’t as bad as you think. You can FedEx it to any rabbi in the country. He doesn’t even have to know who you are. Or you can give it to the rebbitzin.”
    “You’ve got to be kidding!”
    Rivkie had looked at her, surprised. “Look, we’re all just trying to do God’s will because we love Him so much. If He is asking us to separate until we can count seven clean days, we have to do it in the best way possible, because He is so good to us, and asks so little… . It would be terrible to separate a couple more than is necessary, and terrible to allow them to be intimate when it’s against God’s will. It’s part of a rabbi’s job description to help couples keep their marriage holy in God’s eyes. And if I, as the rabbi’s helpmate, can help him, or help the women in my congregation feel more comfortable about asking, then it would be a tremendous good deed, no?”
    That was Rivkie. The perfect future rabbi’s wife, whom no detail of ritual observance, no matter how gross, demeaning, or disgusting, could derail her from her earnest pursuit of true holiness.
    No one could dislike Rivkie. It was impossible. She was so giving, so sincere. And even though you might smile behind your hand at herearnestness and the way she bounced around the world with love and enthusiasm, there would be no way you could fault her. There wasn’t a mean or selfish bone in her body. Whatever she learned, she put into practice.
    They’d been roommates for about six months. They hadn’t spoken much. This, Rivkie chalked up to the fact that Delilah was a little older than she was and perhaps from a family of lesser means, which forced her to be extra busy earning money to finance her studies. The few times they had had a conversation, Delilah had wound up borrowing clothes, which Rivkie was only too happy to lend her—overjoyed, in fact.
    She felt guilty sometimes for coming from such a wealthy family, being engaged to such a wonderful young man, having her health and her whole future ahead of her. She wanted to thank God every waking minute, and any good deed she managed to do she felt gave God back some pleasure. She felt this way even when her clothes came back to her wrinkled and stained—or failed to come back at all, which she viewed as an even bigger mitzva, because Delilah obviously needed new clothes badly, enough to take someone else’s.
    Rivkie sat down at her bedside, shocked. “Delilah, what’s wrong?”
    Her voice, so sweet and kind, filled with true concern, demolished the floodgates. Delilah sat up and sobbed—loud wet sobs full of the breathless sucking up of phlegm.
    Rivkie,