#378 (s5765-21/ 23 Shvat 5765)

Thailand Taught Me Torah

I was the only white person on an intercity bus traveling east from Chang Mai through Northern Thailand..


Thailand Taught Me Torah

The first few years I was learning Torah, while many beautiful aspects earned my respect and awe, I fought tooth and nail against every sentence that seemed outdated according to my sensitive liberal standards.

One day I came face to face with my shortsightedness about one such mitzvah. I was the only white person on an intercity bus traveling east from Chang Mai through Northern Thailand. It was 1992 and I was getting more and more uncomfortable as I saw the last white tourists get off the overcrowded, hot little bus. I was surrounded by curious, black-haired, dark-eyed, dark-skinned, waistless, thin peasants, all staring at me, some smiling and some less than friendly. And I needed help knowing when the bus would reach my town.

The Thai alphabet is different and the English signs had disappeared with the white tourists. I was now far off the beaten path. I turned around in my seat in every direction, clearly saying the name of my destination in a questioning voice. There was no sense in acting inconspicuous, everyone on the bus was wondering what I was doing there and where I was going. I was starting to wonder myself.

A smiling Thai woman answered me in English and said that my destination, Phu Kradung (Poo ka ding), located at the base of a beautiful mountain I intended to hike, was her home town. She would tell me when we got there. The further East we went, the less people there were on the bus and as soon as she could, the nice lady moved to sit next to me. I had made a friend.

She was an English teacher and her name was Jenta. She chattered on and on in very minimal, broken English and I realized that she might be the only English speaker in Phu Kradung. By the time we had reached our destination, Jenta had promised me a place to stay at her friends' guest house -- better than anything in my backpacker's handbook -- and we knew a little bit about each other's lives and families. I knew she was single and had nine cats and a 15-year old girl as a live-in maid, and she had seen pictures of my daughters and knew I was single and had been a teacher once too. Jenta invited me to go out with her for dinner and promised to come by for me on her scooter. She loved Americans.

Meeting Jenta for the evening would be safer than being alone in this town of high unemployment and restless youth roaming the streets. The next day I would set out on my mountain hike and would be in a safer environment.

I resolved to order a coke or a glass of water. There wouldn't be a thing I could eat kosher in this rural town where I couldn't read any labels or communicate with any degree of certainty. Jenta took me to her favorite restaurant, a lean-to shack on the main street with just a few casual tables under a tin roof. I brought with my "100 Thai Tourists' Phrases in Transliteration" pocketbook to help us communicate.

I told Jenta I was disappointed. She hadn't brought with her the young girl who was her live-in maid, as she had promised me. There was something suspicious about a single woman living with a live-in maid and nine cats. In every other way she seemed very normal. The girl might still show up, Jenta said.

About an hour later, my friend directed my attention to two teenaged girls sitting near the wall, whispering and giggling. I hadn't seen them come in. "That one," Jenta pointed to the one closest to me, "is my maid. She's my good friend's daughter. She's too shy to come over to meet you, but she came to the restaurant just because you were here."

I had found my opening. "Tell me something," I asked directly, "What does a single woman need a live-in maid for?"

Jenta leaned close to me and whispered frankly. "You're right, I don't need a maid. But her parents have a very large family and no money. In our country, if you don't work, or your crops are bad, you don't eat.

"She's the oldest girl in her family and a Japanese man offered 20,000 Bhatt for her." It was less than $200 US that year, I quickly calculated.

"They come here all the time to buy girls and take them back to Japan to do whatever they want with them. The luckiest ones become household slaves for their wives. The few bhatt that I pay her family, plus my feeding her, saved her from being sold this year. They don't want to sell their children, but on 20,000 Bhatt, all her brothers and sisters could eat for some years."

I peeked at the fifteen-year old girl again and saw a normal, shy, giggly, innocent teenager. My Western liberal brain and heart went into shock for a moment, then the tears welled up in my eyes. My new friend reached out and put her hand on mine. "It happens all the time here. It must be hard for you to understand," Jenta said in the tone of someone far wiser speaking gently to a new inductee.

"I've never seen it before," I said. "Now I understand the wisdom of the Jewish Torah." We had talked about my being Jewish on the bus, and I had told her that I believed in the Torah that Moses had given the Jewish people on Mt. Sinai. I was traveling around the world with a small Chumash and reading the weekly Torah portions and commentaries. It was winter and we had recently read the weekly portion called Mishpatim. Like the years before, I didn't understand the passage in Ex. 21:7-11 about slavery. Now, sitting in the midst of the poverty of Northern Thailand, I saw the Torah's beauty and kindness.

I hesitated. It wasn't her religion. She had only vaguely heard of Mt. Sinai. Communication would be difficult at best. She had been so kind to me, I wanted to reach out to her too, to leave her with a little hope. I decided to try.

"The Torah has a provision for just such poverty situations," I told her. "It is considered a great kindness for a wealthy family to take in a poor young girl and raise her as their own if her family can't, with matrimony in mind for when she comes of age, usually to one of their sons. They will grow up like sister and brother, and excellent marriages are said to come from it. Or when she grows up, she can marry the father of the family, with full rights as his lawfully wedded wife. She can work for them for up to six years or puberty, whichever comes first. If she comes of age and neither father nor son want to marry her, she must be given money and set free, they are forbidden to sell her. This way, her innocence is protected and her poor family has a dowry upfront to help feed the rest of the family."

It took a while to explain. When my friend finally understood, her eyes shone with appreciation. "I wish we had this Torah," Jenta whispered as we both stole a glance at her friend's daughter, wondering if next year she would be safe from the Japanese men.


~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Chana Besser was born in post-war Germany, grew up in Chicago, and raised her daughters in Denver, Colorado. She made aliyah in 1995 to Safed, where she teaches, learns Torah and is writing her first book. [Copyright February 10, 2002; first published in Heartbeats II, Targum Press, 2003]


 

Yrachmiel Tilles is co-founder and associate director of Ascent-of-Safed, and editor of Ascent Quarterly and the AscentOfSafed.com and KabbalaOnline.org websites. He has hundreds of published stories to his credit.

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