All I Wanted Was To Play Footsie

Dear Beruryah,

My dear lovely wife. You are sitting so close to me, just on the other end of the couch, yet you are so far. Only two or three feet are between us, yet it feels like we’re seasons apart. We both have our feet up on the couch, our toes are separated by barely an inch; one wiggle with the toe and we touch each other, but I can’t do it. I can physically do it, but my intuition tells me that this tiny brush will hurt you more than one hundred strikes across your face. It is so painful to be so close yet so far.

In the morning when I woke up, I was aching for you, I wanted you so badly, I longed for your touch, just a tiny caress, and even a pinch would suffice. But you weren’t there. You were merely a foot away from me in the next bed, an arm’s length from a lovely hug, yet somehow it felt like an ice mountain was separating us. You lay in your bed, read your book, smiled at me so nicely, you even prepared me a warm coffee which you placed nicely on the chair next to my bed, lest our fingers or even the tip of our nails touch.

I know how much you love me; I don’t need a kiss or a hug to assure me of that. I know that you want to embrace me in your arms but you can’t. You can’t because God doesn’t let you. You are a strong obedient woman, you never cheat or look for the easy way out, and you do what you’re supposed to do regardless of how difficult it is. Why? Why doesn’t God want us to be together, to feel each other and to tickle each other? What’s the point in all of these stringent rules? I understand the fear is that if we touch, it might break the barrier and lead us to actual physical relations. This is probably true, at least on my part. But I can’t go on like this. I will wiggle my toes and feel you for just one second and nothing will happen.

Last night, at the Shabbos meal, I tried playing footsie with you under the table, but you immediately pulled your leg away. Not too long ago you weren’t so rigid about these tiny details, and if it happened that we touched a bit by mistake, you wouldn’t react. But now it’s different; now you know already that these aren’t mistakes at all and you take them more serious. You are a pious and strongly religious woman, dedicated to God and the Torah as much, if not more, than you are to your family. You cannot allow yourself the tiniest transgressions, even while you don’t judge others who do.

You wonder why I can’t wait another few days, when you’ll be fully mine once again. I could wait a few days, I could wait for you many years, but I don’t want to wait. Why should I wait if I have you right here with me this second. The laws of nidah and separation are supposedly so beautiful, yet I fail to see any beauty in them at all. How can full physical separation from you have any beauty at all? I know that you love me; I know that you want me but you can’t touch me.

Being so close yet divided by an infinite God and an infinite Torah can hurt so much. I think that I’ll take a chance and wiggle my toes till they slightly reach yours. Maybe you won’t feel it at all; maybe you’ll feel it and you’ll smile inwardly for you want it too. As my toes reach out and get close, my heart beats fast with trepidation and hope. Swish! There it is, the toes touch but yours pull back a bit as if by natural instinct. My toes stretch a bit further with the inner excitement of a child, till they reach, but yours instantly pull back as if struck by electrical current. I look up to your face which is busily buried in your book, but I can see the hurt in your eyes, as if you were viciously stung by a bee. I know that the footsie play didn’t hurt you, rather the blatant transgression and disregard to what you regard as holy and precious. I don’t want to hurt you baby, I only want to make you happy. I promise that regardless how painful it is for me I’ll never try to touch you again.