This is how Peter Decker and Rina Lazarus first made their public appearance. But to truly understand them, let’s look into their backgrounds.
My characters talk, and I transcribe what they say. I actually hear dialogue as conversation in my head. When I don’t get the words down correctly, my characters correct me. They repeat their conversation to make sure I heard it right. It’s as if I have a tape recording of what they say, and when I make a mistake, I put the tape recorder on rewind and listen again.
“I would never say that,” Decker tells me more often than not. “You’re translating my words like a woman. Understand that I am a six-foot-four, 220-pound man. Write it over.”
“You’re swearing,” Rina tells me all the time. “I don’t swear, and even on the rare occasions that I might use foul language, I wouldn’t use those words in that situation.”
I met Rina before Peter because we had the most in common, specifically our Judaism. By way of introduction, she said to me, “I am Rina Lazarus and I know you very well. Probably a lot better than you know me.”
I told her to go on.
She said, “I know you like reading novels that introduce you to all sorts of people and places. For those two or three hours, you like to be whisked away into an alternate universe involving people of different religions and ethnicities-Catholic priests, American Indians-on the racetracks, in the heart of the Deep South. I bet there are people out there who might enjoy reading and learning about our customs and religion as much as you like reading and learning about other customs and religions. Although we’re not exactly alike, we have much in common. Why don’t you write a story that includes me?”
“Who are you?” I asked her.
“Write me into a story and I’ll let you know.”
I agreed. When Rina first started talking to me, I felt that although she was smart and pretty, she was overly analytical and a little bossy. But that was before I got to know her well. So I decided that it wasn’t enough for Rina to tell me who she was going to be in my story, she also had to let me know who she was before I met her.
Rina Miriam Elias, born Regina Elias, is a child of Holocaust survivors. Her parents, Magda Laslow and Stefan Elias, were born in Budapest, Hungary, and were transported to Birkenau-Auschwitz in 1943, roughly a year and a half before the end of the war in Europe. They knew each other very briefly before the war, and they met again in the camps. Magda worked in the kitchen and helped her husband-to-be survive by stealing food and sneaking it to him. It was a very big risk. Had she had been caught, she would have been put to death immediately.
After the war, Magda and Stefan were sent to a DP camp in Cyprus. They married there and emigrated to the United States two years later, sponsored by Magda’s uncle. Eventually, they settled in Southern California and went about the business of making a living and raising a family. Stefan went into the “schmata” business, manufacturing clothing for Sears, Penney’s, and later for Target. He did very well, allowing him to send his three children to private religious school. Rina’s older brother, David, is an ophthalmologist and lives back east with his wife and their children. Her middle brother, née Scott now Shlomo, lives in a religious area of Tel Aviv, Israel, and he and his wife have seven children.
Rina was the youngest child and only daughter, a beautiful little girl with thick black hair and bright blue eyes, just like her mother. She was a daddy’s girl with an impish sense of humor, but she was always a bit on the serious side. She grew up in a Conservative home, she was a spiritual girl, and was greatly influenced by her religious day school training. When she was only eighteen, she married, even though her parents were very disapproving at her taking such a permanent step at such a young age.
But at least they liked the boy.
Yitzchak Lazarus was smart, handsome, and very idealistic. Within a year of their marriage and at Rina’s urging, the couple packed up their belongings and moved to a religious outpost in Kiryat Arba in the Judean and Samarian area of Israel. Within two years, they had two sons, Shmuel and Yaakov. Life was not only hard on an outpost of civilization, it was dangerous. The area was surrounded by enemies. To prevent the infiltration of suicide bombers, the vast acreage was enclosed with barbed wire, and when the men of the community weren’t learning Talmud, they were doing guard duty. Just a simple trip into Jerusalem to buy food and supplies was a perilous trek. The rigors of life finally began to take a toll, and a few years later, Yitzchak and Rina moved back to the States.
Yitzchak and Rina were still committed to an ultra-religious Jewish life. Since Yitzchak was from New York, they debated moving to the East Coast, where he could study at any one of the many fine established yeshivot, or seminaries. But then Yitzchak heard of a new yeshiva called Ohavei Torah in the North San Fernando Valley in California. It was headed by Rabbi Aaron Schulman, who was not only a renowned scholar but also a dynamic human being. The community was built in the middle of a large area of undeveloped land and bordered by mountains. The rural setting appealed to Yitzchak. He had grown up in Brooklyn and after two years in the wilderness of Israel, he wasn’t anxious to go back to city living. He was also very considerate of his young wife. He thought it might help her if she was a little closer to her parents.
About a year into his studies, Yitzchak began to get headaches. Rina pressed him to go to a doctor, and when he did, the news was devastating. He had an inoperable brain tumor. Within a few years he passed on, and at the age of twenty-four, Rina was a widow with two young sons to care for.
There is no role or place for a single woman in the community of a yeshiva, which is essentially a men’s college of Torah learning. Rina had made friends with some of the married women, but now that she was single, she was the odd one out. Although couples continued to be polite, most social interaction revolved around Rina inviting people to her home for one of the two main Sabbath meals or someone inviting her to eat with them. She had a few girlfriends, but without Yitzchak, she felt awkward and alone. She knew she didn’t belong, but with no college education and no real skills, she had nowhere else to go-except back home with her parents. It was a move she considered until Rabbi Schulman insisted that she stay at the yeshiva in order to regain her equilibrium.
The kindly rabbi, or rav, told her to remain in her house on the premises for as long as she wanted. This way, while she was formulating a life plan, her children could continue to go to school at the yeshiva. In exchange for room and board, Rina would help with day care of the younger children and she could also run the yeshiva’s ritual bath, or mikvah.
For the next two years, she settled down into a bland, monotonous, loveless life. Though many couples tried to set her up with other religious men, nothing clicked. After a year of shidduch dating-matchmaking-she gave up altogether and went about the business of raising her sons without a father.
Then one night while Rina was working in the mikvah, the unthinkable happened. A woman walking back to her house was abducted into the thick brush surrounding the yeshiva and raped. The unfortunate woman, Libba Sarah, was traumatized but managed to escape with her life. When Rina found her, she was dazed. Rina took her back into the mikvah and immediately called her husband, Zvi, who wasn’t home. The second call Rina made was to Rabbi Schulman, who was teaching a class. The third call was to the police.