L OV E OF MATHEMATICS Family picture albums reflect Mary s idyllic childhood; one photo shows her at her grandparents’ farm in the Midwest hugging a pet lamb. While Mary did not take her little lamb to school, she did cause a ruckus in other ways. A precocious child, she startled her kindergarten teachers with her ability to read and do arithmetic with double-digit numbers. Excelling in school and skipping a grade did not win her the esteem of her classmates. Indeed, the class bullies sometimes ganged up on her after school. Recalling this in her trademark self-critical manner, she admits she might have been stuck up and understands her classmate’s possible chagrin. Her feeling that she was an outsider throughout her school years later contributed to her attraction to the Jewish people, the ultimate outsiders. The situation improved in high school when she was able to take honors classes, and later in Swarthmore College in Pennsylvania, where her mathematical gifts were appreciated. She graduated with the highest honors and a Phi Beta Kappa key, which she still wears proudly. Although the barriers for women in the field of mathematics were becoming more surmountable, they still existed, formally and informally. She remembers an incident when the counselors in a math camp in Ohio were grading exams and the highest scorer was a girl. The counselors went over the tests again with a fine-toothed comb, looking for a point they could detract from the girl’s exam and searching for ways to boost the boys’ scores so that the girl wouldn’t receive the highest grade.
During her college years she met a shomer Shabbos Jew for the first time, a girl who was a co-counselor with her at a summer math camp. It would prove to be the first step on a religious quest that would eventually lead to Mary’s Orthodox conversion and her transformation from Mary Elizabeth into Malka Elisheva. I N TA N DE M At Swarthmore College there was a young classics major, David Schaps, who had grown up in a “semi-observant” Jewish family. As a graduate student of Greek and Latin at Harvard, he began his own uphill trek toward religious observance. Two years later, he and Malka were married; and not to be outdone, she too was accepted into Harvard to continue her mathematical studies at the graduate level. Together they intensified their Jewish study and observance, mentored by Grand Rabbi Levi Yitzchak Horowitz, the Bostoner Rebbe, and his son Mayer, now the Bostoner Rebbe of Jerusalem, at that time the dean of a small after-school yeshivah where David—now Dr. Schaps—studied for four years. They received their doctorates on the same day. Their spiritual aliyah was paralleled by a geographical one to Eretz Israel in 1972. “How did you decide to settle in Bnei Brak?” we asked. “We wanted to live in an area where there was a nearby shul in which to daven and a beis midrash to study,” said Dr. Schaps. “An old college friend had a cousin who had converted and moved to Bnei Brak, and he was our only connection there. He told us that there was a hill in Bnei Brak, using it as a metaphor. You can locate yourself, he said, at whatever point on the slope you think you belong, how religious you want to be. The higher up the hill, the greater the kedushah, so to speak. So we got an apartment towards the outskirts on the bottom.” Dr. Schaps said he was in for some competition.
In the local shul were baalei batim— storekeepers, craftsmen and clerks—who learned when they weren’t working, not a huge amount but more than the two daily mishnayos that had entitled Dr. Schaps and his chavrusa back at Harvard to consider themselves masmidim. Here he was “Herr Doctor Professor” and not quite up to the standards of his neighbors. He went to Rav Nosson Zvi Friedmann, zt”l, the rabbi of his neighborhood, wishing to remedy the situation and find a teacher. The next day Rav Friedmann partnered his own son, Rav Yaakov Peretz Friedmann, with Dr. Schaps and they started learning. Eventually Dr. Schaps received semichah from Rav Nosson Zvi, and today he himself gives a Daf Yomi shiur in nearby Petach Tikvah.At the time, Dr. Schaps was teaching classics at Tel Aviv University, a very secular environment. He and Malka periodically wondered whether they should stay in academe. The issue especially troubled David, whose field, Greek and Latin, is less neutral than mathematics. A student had once confided that he had never been interested in ancient history, but after taking one of David’s courses had decided to major in the subject. David was disappointed, preferring to have inspired a secular student to study Judaism. He wondered whether he was in the wrong place. Several times, the couple contacted the Bostoner Rebbe to ask whether they should continue with what they were doing.
The Rebbe said they were in a position that very few chareidi Jews occupy with respect to outreach to Israeli students. Later, one of the most respected gedolim in Bnei Brak told David to stay put because he had a parnasah that gave him maximum discretionary time to study Torah (the average university teaching load is only eight classroom hours a week). For the couple to waste their experience and earning capacity, he seemed to think, would be bal tashchis. (He may also have thought that if David was as dedicated to learning as he was to his career, he wouldn’t have asked the question.) Subsequently, both Schapses got positions at Bar-Ilan University in Ramat Gan. In the world of academia, the name of the game is “publish or perish”—and publish they did. Malka Schaps has over 50 publications to her credit, under her birth name, Mary. “I publish as Mary Schaps so that other mathematicians will know that a woman can do math. In many circles they wouldn’t know that Malka is a female name, so I stick with Mary.” Over the decades, both husband and wife rose slowly through the ranks to the position of professor, and then chair, David of the classics department and Malka of the mathematics department. ANOTHER FEATHER IN HER CAP When asked why his wife accepted the position of dean, David retorted, “She didn’t! Four times friends in the university asked her to take the position. She finally gave in when one of them pointed out that she would be a good role model for girls who were interested in science.” What exactly does a dean do? In a typical university there are several faculties. In Bar-Ilan there are eight: humanities, social sciences, life sciences, law, medicine, engineering, Jewish studies and David Schaps’s faculty, exact sciences. Each one is headed by a professor who is dean.
As dean of the faculty encompassing physics, chemistry, computer science and mathematics, Malka Schaps has to be knowledgeable about subjects other than her own, such as quantum dots, nuclear magnetic resonance, natural language processing and normal families of complex functions. In addition to representing his or her faculty at innumerable meetings and ceremonies, the dean’s main job is to act as a “defense lawyer” for those seeking promotions when their files come in front of the Appointments Committee, the most powerful committee in the academic hierarchy. Professor David Schaps is on the humanities faculty and serves on the Appointments Committee. In order to avoid a conflict of interest, it was decided that when his wife defended the files of members of her faculty, he would absent himself. “One time, I was outside the meeting room awaiting my turn to defend the promotion of one of my researchers,” Malka recalls. “Sandwiches—kosher, of course—had been delivered because someone years back had done research showing that hungry judges give harsher judgments. Eventually I was called in. At the exact moment the chair of the committee announced, ‘And now the dean of exact sciences will present her candidate for promotion,’ my husband walked back into the room, having just washed mayim acharonim; he adjusted his black hat and sat down to bentch. “Everyone paused in consternation and looked at each other. What were they supposed to do with both Schapses in the room, against protocol? Then one of the committee members gave a bang on the table and announced, ‘Rabbosai, nevarech!’ By the time they finished Birkas Hamazon, my husband had left the room and I could defend my file, which passed unanimously.” M A L K A S C H A P S , A K A R AC H E L POMERANTZ, THE WRITER By 1981 Malka was teaching and doing research regularly at the university, where her position had finally been declared permanent, and she received tenure.
Wishing to improve her Hebrew during summer vacation, a neighbor who was a rebbetzin suggested that instead of taking a course at the university she read a chareidi novel. In those years, adult fiction for chareidim was almost nonexistent. Malka started reading the book her neighbor lent her and found it poorly structured. “I can do better,” she said to herself. She decided to use her six weeks of vacation to write her own novel, in English, for a chareidi audience. With children underfoot, she sat on the mirpeset and typed. This was the pre-computer age, so she touch-typed on an oldfashioned typewriter with carbon paper while her children complained that their mother seemed to be in another world. When she had written and revised 110 pages, she showed it to friends for feedback. At this point Malka Schaps got cold feet. Perhaps her colleagues at the university would look askance at her literary endeavors, and it might endanger her academic advancement. Maybe their acquaintances in Bnei Brak would object to her writing chareidi fiction, something uncommon at the time. She became so concerned that one morning when she was at the daily netz minyan near her home, she began to cry. Rebbetzin Batsheva Kanievsky, a”h, who always davened at her husband’s netz minyan along with a few other earlyrising women, came over to comfort her. After Malka confided the reason for her tears, Rebbetzin Kanievsky suggested a solution: a pen name. Malka chose the name Rachel Pomerantz (not to be confused with two other writers, Riva Pomerantz and Rachel Pomerance, who write under their own names). Thus was born A Time to Rend, A Time to Sew, the first of eight books of fiction under her nom de plume. It became a chareidi best seller and was translated into Hebrew and French, as were several of her subsequent works.
Bits and pieces of the lives of the Schaps family find their way into the plots. In her first novel, an issue that preoccupied Malka Schaps at the time took central stage: How can academically talented Jewish women who have become religious learn to balance their professional aspirations and newly adopted Orthodox way of living? At the time such issues were not openly discussed, certainly not in print. Another issue central to several of her books grew out of the Schapses’ experience as foster parents. With two children of their own, they wanted a larger family and took in a foster child who was a few months old. Two years later, the baby was abruptly taken back by the natural mother. Malka Schaps, aka Rachel Pomerantz, worked through the trauma of this loss by writing the novel Wildflower based on this wrenching experience, as reflected in this quote from the book: “‘I consulted with the social worker,’ answered Mr. Artzi [father of the baby]. ‘She thinks the best thing for both you and the child would be a clean, quick, complete break. “‘Mr. Artzi,’ Barbara pleaded, ‘you can’t do that! For a year now I have diapered your son, bathed him, fed him, played with him, taught him. The fact that he’s a darling boy is in good part because of me. You can’t take him away and never let me see him again!’ Tears were running down her cheeks.” Several other foster children were later successfully integrated into the Schaps household, although in one case there was a court battle to persuade the secular authorities that living with this warm, loving chareidi family would be beneficial to the children.
A similar custody case surfaces in fictional guise in Cactus Blossoms. It was daring of “Rachel Pomerantz” to broach these topics. She was also among the first to tackle other sensitive issues such as full-time learning versus working and learning, shidduchim for baalei teshuvah and converts, Sephardim and Ashkenazim, the disabled, secular versus religious, aliyah, frum Jews who become less observant, family discord, and Arabs who are loyal to the State of Israel. The Schaps children are unique in Bnei Brak in having two parents who are university professors. “When asked by a neighbor what his parents do, one of our children piped up and said that we’re teachers. I thought that was a way to finesse the situation,” Malka comments. “In an interview I did 15 years ago, the first I had given in 25 years, I claimed that the children thought my writer persona gave them more kavod, but they staunchly objected. It was one of my sons who set off the recent media storm by notifying the papers when I became dean.” (Interviews with the “first chareidi dean in Israel” appeared in both secular and religious publications in English, Hebrew, Spanish and Russian. The corner flower seller asked Rabbi Schaps what he had done to get his picture “spread across the magazine” with the caption “The Professors of Rashbam Street.” “My wife was elected dean,” he explained.) Many of the 50 women who pray at the sunrise minyan, especially the Englishspeakers, no doubt knew that Rebbetzin Schaps taught at the university, but they were probably unaware of her true stature. With a knit beret perched on her sheitel and understated, modest clothing, she looks every bit the Bnei Brak matron.
Not one to take the easy road, she kashers her own chickens, bakes challos and grinds matzah (baked by her husband for Pesach) into matzah meal. The Schapses adhere to some of the more stringent customs in Bnei Brak, such as following the Chazon Ish’s approach in not using electricity and water from the national grid on Shabbos in order not to benefit from melachah done by Jews. MIND THE GAP Admittedly, Professor Schaps has an intellectual approach to life. Soon after her arrival in Bnei Brak she was cautioned by one of the prominent rebbetzins that it wouldn’t be good if there were a yawning gap between her secular academic pursuits and her Jewish studies. She therefore made it a point to pursue regular limudei kodesh in various formats—classes for women, studying with a chavrusa, learning alone and with her husband. On her self-imposed schedule she is now in the midst of Navi with Metzudas David, and the halachos of Yom Tov with the Mishnah Berurah. Particularly encouraging was Rebbetzin Batsheva Kanievsky, a”h. (David is also a regular at Rav Kanievsky’s daily netz minyan.) On trips to the States, usually for academic conferences, they try to stay in touch with Rav and Rebbetzin Shmuel Kamenetzky.
Some of their Bnei Brak friends are uncertain about what a university professor does besides teach. “I explained to a friend of mine, a granddaughter of the Steipler Gaon, that class preparation was a minor part of my week and that most of my time before becoming dean was spent on research. ‘How can there be anything else to know in mathematics?’ she wanted to know. The couple’s Bar-Ilan colleagues are ignorant in the reverse. Most didn’t know that the dean of exact sciences wrote fiction under the pseudonym Rachel Pomerantz. The fact that there is a geographic separation between the world of academe on the east side of Highway 4 and Bnei Brak, five minutes away on the western side, helps Malka keep her identities separate. A M E TA PHOR F OR A COMPLEX LIFE With G-d’s help, the Schapses will travel to California this summer to celebrate Malka’s mother’s 100th birthday. Her father passed away 30 years ago and left Malka one of his prized possessions: a wall tapestry sewn by Malka’s mother that had hung in her father’s office in the National Science Foundation in Washington, DC. The tapestry now hangs in the office of Dean Schaps. “Maybe it will bring us luck in getting more grants from the Israel Science Foundation, which is one of my priorities as dean.” Malka’s father had been a college teacher who never got tenure and a writer who never published a book. “Perhaps achieving some of his unfulfilled aspirations is an engine that drives me in my endeavors,” she muses. Indeed, that tapestry could be used as a metaphor for the integration of Malka Schaps’s many identities.
The dominant techeilet of the background symbolizes Jewish tradition: mitzvos, study, halachah and family. This biblical blue stands for the all-pervasive foundation of her life. The two conspicuous reddish-brown geometric designs are completely separate; one might imagine that the larger one on the right represents the mathematical vocation of Professor Schaps, and the smaller one on the left the literary avocation of Rachel Pomerantz. Here and there are rectangles of bright yellow and other color, which might represent some of the other activities we haven’t even mentioned. For example, Professor Schaps, a former president of the Harvard Alumni Club of Israel, is famous among the mispallelim in the Lederman shul for her cakes and cookies, and rarely has a Shabbos without guests. All of these facets are integrated into a life of kedushah and service to Hashem and the Jewish people. “And Ruth said: Let me now go to the field and glean among the sheaves after the one in whose sight I shall find favor” (Megillas Rus, 2:2). The biblical Ruth gleaned among the sheaves and ultimately became the wife of Boaz and the great-grandmother of David; Malka Schaps gleaned knowledge of Judaism and mathematics, and ultimately became the wife of Rabbi David and grandmother of 17, ka”h, and still counting.
