The Rabbi's Wife

By Vincent Gray

A strange and unlikely romance begins on a night-train journey, the romance fraught with deception, contradictions and comedy borders on farce. The love between the two individuals requires them to negotiate impossible obstacles, and all the time the Rabbi remains completely oblivious of his beautiful wife's secret love life.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Vincent Gray
• Release date: Aug 8, 2017
• ISBN: 9781370756858

Vincent Gray

As a son of a miner, I was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. I grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg. I matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school, I was conscripted into the South African Defence Force for compulsory national military service when I was 17 years old. After my military service, I went to the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree I worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. As an obligatory member of the South African Citizen Miltary Force, I was called up to do 3-month camps on the 'Border' which was the theatre of the so-called counter-insurgency 'Bush War'. In between postgraduate university studies I also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales rep. In my career as an academic, I was a molecular biologist at the University of the Witwatersrand, where I lectured courses in microbiology, molecular biology, biotechnology and evolutionary biology. On the research side, I was involved in genomics, and plant and microbial biotechnology. I also conducted research into the genomics of strange and weird animals known as entomopathogenic nematodes. I retired in 2019, however, I am currently an honorary professor at the University of the Witwaterand and I also work as a research writing consultant for the University of Johannesburg.

Book preview

The Rabbi’s Wife

By

Vincent Gray

Smashwords 2017 Edition

Copyright © 2017 Vincent Gray

.This book is a work of fiction. All the characters developed in this novel are fictional creations of the writer’s imagination and are not modelled on any real persons. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead is entirely coincidental.

All rights are reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without prior permission of the author.

ISBN:9781370756858

For Melodie and Ruth

Author Biography

As a son of a miner, the author was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. He grew up in the East Rand mining town of Boksburg during the 1960s and matriculated from Boksburg High School. After high school, he was conscripted into the South African Defence Force (SADF) for compulsory national military service at the age of seventeen. On completion of his military service he studied courses in Zoology, Botany and Microbiology at the University of the Witwatersrand. After graduating with a BSc honours degree he worked for a short period for the Department of Agriculture in Potchefstroom as an agronomist. Following the initial conscription into military service in the SADF, like all other white South African males of his generation, he was then drafted into one of the many South African Citizen Military Regiments. During the 1970s he was called up as a citizen-soldier to do three-month military camps on the 'Border' which was the operational theatre of the so-called counter-insurgency 'Bush War' during the Apartheid years. Before and in between university studies he also worked as a wage clerk on the South African Railways and as a travelling chemical sales representative. The author is now a retired professor whose career as an academic in the Biological Sciences has spanned a period of thirty-three years mainly at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa. Before retirement, he lectured and carried out research in the field of molecular biology with a special interest in the molecular basis of evolution. He continues to pursue his interest in evolutionary biology. Other interests which the author pursues include radical theology, philosophy, and literature.

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Chapter 1

1

It was on the Botany field trip in January 1975 that Yael Kaplan joined me in a second class single sleeping berth on the Johannesburg-Durban overnight train. It would be just the two of us sharing the berth for the night. The leather upholstery was the usual green for second class coaches. I sat down next to the window. The seat was facing the direction in which the train would be travelling. I was familiar with the overnight sleeper train journey from Park Station to Durban, having on previous occasions travelled as a primary school child with Oupa and Ouma van Vollenhoven on holiday to Durban mainly during the July school vacations.

2

Both of us were not interested in joining in the drinking and partying at the other end of coach with the rest of the third year Botany class. Yael was pretty, dark-eyed, petit, and very inquisitive. She was also Orthodox, a Sephardic-looking Jewess who had been my Friday afternoon lab partner in our first year physics class in 1973. I originally thought that she was Portuguese. Then she was Yael Toledano, now she was Mrs. Yael Kaplan. At the end of our second year, she had married a Rabbi while still being at the tender age of nineteen.

3

‘I saw you at Stuttafords with Dr Jolly, the dress that you were trying on was gorgeous,