Eli

Eli is Devorah’s arranged husband: a twenty-two-year-old yeshiva student who enters their marriage with little experience of women or married life. At first he seems courteous and willing to please, but the relationship soon exposes a gap between his attempts to meet communal expectations and Devorah’s need for privacy, understanding, and a life she can choose. His departure from home and later return briefly restore the marriage in practical terms; they do not repair the emotional break that leads Devorah to leave.

Identity and Introduction

Eli is introduced at the family meeting that will determine Devorah’s match. He is older than the age at which most boys in their community marry and is still studying in yeshiva. Because his engagement has not yet taken place, his younger siblings have had to wait before being matched themselves, a circumstance that makes his unmarried status a source of pressure. Devorah registers his pale complexion, blond earlocks, blue eyes, and youthful appearance, while also noticing that his name carries a history in the divided Satmar leadership. She wonders whether he regards the community as an identity he cannot shed, as she fears others expect her to do.

Devorah has little opportunity to assess him privately or to refuse the arrangement without an audience. In their short conversation, she asks about his age and life in yeshiva, aware that the question touches an uncomfortable subject. Eli answers with a light joke that he had to wait for her to grow up. When she asks about the people he befriends, he presents himself as someone drawn to difficult, interesting personalities rather than dull conformity. His replies give Devorah a glimpse of a possible individual beneath the match, but they cannot change the fact that the decision is already being made around them.

The Match and Its Expectations

During their meeting, Eli appears to Devorah to be trying to win her over, as though the encounter might become a romance despite the arrangement already being settled. She is relieved to hear him describe himself as open to a partner with a personality, and she makes clear that she is not easy to manage. Yet the exchange leaves her with only a little more knowledge of him than she had before. When Chaya comes to the doorway, Devorah gives the expected nod; in the hallway, with family waiting in the kitchen and no alternative room or exit available, she nods again. The engagement celebration follows quickly, with liquor set out for the men to pronounce them engaged and relatives and classmates called to share the news.

The marriage proceeds within a system that offers Devorah scant power over the match and gives the families a significant role in the couple’s private life. Eli’s relatives become involved when the newlyweds struggle to consummate the marriage. The first week is dominated by repeated unsuccessful attempts, while the pressure to resolve the problem grows. Eli becomes increasingly anxious; by the third attempt he cannot summon the confidence needed to continue, and the couple remain awake into the early morning trying to calm themselves. Devorah understands from his account that years in a male-only yeshiva setting have left him uncertain about women and about his own response to his new wife. His uncertainty makes her feel self-conscious, as though her body were unfamiliar territory he did not know how to approach.

Intimacy, Anxiety, and Family Pressure

The difficulty in their marriage is not confined to the bedroom. Eli’s family exerts pressure for the couple to complete what is expected of them, and he shares private information about their difficulty with his father, leaving Devorah feeling that their situation has been exposed without her consent. She sees Eli as failing to protect their privacy when his family is involved. His father’s attention to religious sexual rules only makes the private struggle feel more subject to outside judgment.

Later, Eli repeatedly tells Devorah that men in their community are forbidden to masturbate and that she is therefore obligated to satisfy him. In his framing, her refusal would make her responsible for his wrongdoing. The account shows how a religious rule becomes a claim on Devorah’s body, while Eli appears unable to understand why she feels tense or resistant. As her pregnancy advances, she has more reason to avoid sexual contact, and Eli too becomes afraid of hurting the baby. His mistaken belief that the baby might see him provides Devorah with respite, which she does not correct.

Eli also witnesses Devorah’s worsening anxiety and panic attacks without understanding what she is experiencing. She works through breathing exercises in the evenings while his presence can intensify her distress. The narrative does not present him as able to interpret or respond to those episodes; Devorah fears he may think she is losing her mind. In June, he does not return from work, ignores her calls, and leaves her to learn from his mother that he does not intend to come home or speak with her.

Departure, Return, and Emotional Rupture

Eli comes home at seven the next morning and apologizes, prostrating himself before Devorah. She agrees to take him back, and he embraces her with relief. Outwardly, the marriage resumes; inwardly, she believes she has already cut him out of her life. She expects that remaining married will require her to perform the part of a loving wife without recovering affection for him. His return therefore resolves the immediate absence but not the damage she associates with his conduct or his failure to stand up for her against his family.

The aftermath also narrows Devorah’s remaining independence. Eli’s mother tells him to prevent Devorah from reading library books, treating her reading as part of the problem. Devorah, tired of having to conceal the books and afraid that her mother-in-law will learn about them, gathers them into a large plastic bag for Eli to take to the dumpster outside his office. That disposal stands in contrast to the earlier pleasure of keeping books openly in her own home. Eli is not shown negotiating a way to preserve that freedom; the episode instead places him within the family’s restrictions on her.

Separation and Narrative Role

Before leaving Airmont, Devorah and Eli attend a religious marriage counselor. Eli regards the appointment as evidence that he wants to make things better, but Devorah already knows she will not return to the marriage. She recounts the first year, including his leaving when they could not have intercourse and his failure to defend her when his relatives disparaged her. The counselor, who is a rabbi rather than a therapist, says the problems are serious and recommends professional help. Afterward, Eli raises divorce as the likely outcome, and Devorah says it is possible if that is what he wants. The account establishes their separation as a decision reached after a long collapse of trust, not as a reconciliation set in motion by counseling.

Devorah then packs a small white Kia with what she can carry and puts Yitzy in his booster seat. On the highway, with boxes and garbage bags filling the car, she grips the wheel as traffic slows on the Tappan Zee Bridge and recalls the crash of a few days earlier. Eli’s role in this final movement is defined by his absence from the departure: Devorah is the one who leaves with their son and the possessions she can take. The narrative follows her perspective rather than giving Eli an independent account of the marriage. He is shown through what he says and does, and through the consequences Devorah describes; his initial politeness, anxious return, and late effort at counseling never become the recovery she might once have imagined.