Ami Collections Pesach Edition 2020

BROUGHT TO YOU BY

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Dear Reader, At Bonei Olam we see pain, and we see miracles.

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Every day Bonei Olam receives requests ranging from doctor referrals to requests to pay for complex medical treatments. With every call for help, we understand that a couple yearns for a child.

Every story and every need is unique, and that is why every person calling is treated with care and dignity.

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JOIN NOW! sign up for your weekly $1 candle lighting donation www.boneiolammiracles.org

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646.506.3900

text ‘MIRACLES’ to 484848

vzakeini@boneiolam.org

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CONTENTS

The Clip

By Gershon Hellman 7

Not by Accident

By Naomi Raksin 21

Mothers and Daughters

By Roberta Chester 43

The Note

By Dina Neuman 57

The Divorcé

By Chaya Gross 71

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As I stand in candlelight With my hands upon my eyes There’s a passion in my prayers That rends the skies For a mother’s tears can shatter Every gate that bars the way All the heavens will echo those words that mothers say ‫ינכזו ינכזו‬ Take my children by the hand Help them walk along Your way May they never go astray May they know You As I know You Oh, Hashem , accept my plea Give me children who’ll give nachas To You and to me

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‫ינכזו‬ As I stand in candlelight While my home is dark and still There’s a void inside my heart I long to fill Will I ever be mother Will that blessing come my way Will I stand by the candles With gratitude and pray ‫ינכזו ינכזו‬ Take my children by the hand Help them walk along Your way May they never go astray May they know You As I know You Oh, Hashem , accept my plea Give me children who’ll give nachas To You and to me

The Bonei Olam Song, Released for the Vzakeini Initiative COMPOSED BY Miriam Israeli and Baruch Levine PERFORMED BY Baruch Levine, Benny Friedman, New York Boys Choir, Shir Vshevach Boys Choir Lyrics by Miriam Israeli Full song available on mostlymusic.com

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P R O L O G U E

T

hey say truth is stranger than fiction, and this has never been truer for all of us than right now, in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic, when we’ve been driven into our homes in the hopes of starving a powerful germ that has traveled the globe.

Before the coronavirus outbreak, if such an idea had been presented as fiction, it could have easily been dismissed as unrealistic. Now, as I write these words, it is the surreal reality of our lives.

At the heart of story-telling, the true story shines when it is told as compellingly as fiction, and fiction shines when it is told even more realistically than real life. There is truth in fiction, and fiction in truth, and in all of the dazzling ways that fiction and real life weave around each other, the most significant overlap between them is that amid the distraction of events, the same truths are waiting to be culled and remembered long after the story, or moment, is over.

Uncovering truths in ourselves, in each other, and in our world, feels natural in times of crisis, and it is ever more poignant this year as we pull away from our real life worries to tell a different story, the story of how our history began, the continuous tale that flows through the generations, speaking of trust, of faith, of the mystery of a nation’s survival against the odds and the great wonder of our Creator. It is in this story of our past that we unlock the meaning of the present.

I humbly hope that the fiction we present to you here today will momentarily take you away from reality, as they simultaneously work to uncover layers of truth and meaning in your own story.

Enjoy them in good health, Naomi Raksin

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BY GERSHON HELLMAN

The Clip

A fateful few seconds caught on video

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Y

ehuda Levy was in great spirits as he walked home after Shacharis. His date with Shira Kohn had gone wonderfully well last night, and he felt secure that they would soon be engaged. In addition to being a perfect match, Shira was also the daughter of none other than Reb Nachum Kohn, the philanthropist who supported every major yeshivah, was close to gedolim around the world and gave a Daf Yomi shiur that was attended by hundreds.

Shira’s qualifications were nothing to sneeze at either, having been valedictorian of her high school and a star student in BJJ. From their date last night, it was clear that she was expecting a proposal the next time they met. Her response to everything he’d said was a nod of approval, and she even looked at him adoringly. Best of all, the feeling was mutual. Yehuda felt like he was walking on air. As he walked along, he stretched out his arms as if he could fly. Hearing laughter across the street, he looked up and saw that he had inspired a bunch of little kids who were imitating him.

He smiled as he imagined the reaction of his friends when they heard he was getting engaged. Yes, he was only 21, but his friend Rafael Fisher had gotten engaged the previous year when he was only 20. When Rafael came back from the 8

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The Clip

States as a chasan, the chevrah had thrown a lavish celebration for him in Bernstein’s dirah. Now, that was some party!

Everyone had been in great spirits, celebrating the very first engagement of one of their own. Yehuda himself had been at his best, getting up and delivering a humorous extemporaneous monologue in Rafael’s honor to much applause and merriment. He secretly hoped that the chevrah would throw a similar bash for him so he could be the guest of honor.

The truth was that he hadn’t been planning on dating when he came home to New York for Pesach break. But his good friend in yeshivah, Nosson Aryeh, had insisted that he meet his sister Shira, and Yehuda had agreed. What followed was a whirlwind of pre-Pesach, Chol Hamoed and post-Pesach trips to hotel lobbies, natural attractions and parks, all of which were about to culminate in the young couple’s engagement.

His parents, insisting that he was still too young, hadn’t been so happy at first, as none of Yehuda’s brothers had dated before the age of 23. But once his mother met Shira it was love at first sight, and she realized that she couldn’t have imagined a better match for her son. Yehuda’s parents were also delighted that their son would be marrying into the prominent Kohn family.

Knowing that his friend Nosson Aryeh was the one who had convinced his parents to consider Yehuda for their daughter only served to further inflate Yehuda’s ego. Nosson Aryeh was clearly the top boy in their yeshivah. The fact that someone like that would want Yehuda as a brother-in-law was a feather in his cap, upping his own self-esteem. For now, though, he was just one happy fella flying down the street and humming a happy tune.

As he neared his house, he spotted Moishe and Zevi leaning against a wall and having a smoke. Both were students in the small yeshivah across the street, and their morning recess happened to coincide with Yehuda’s return from Shacharis.

The yeshivah was geared for boys who were in need of extra 9

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attention, often as a result of having gone through a rough time in the system. Sensitive to their situation, Yehuda had always made a point of being friendly and greeting them warmly. He was about to say hello when Zevi beat him to it.

“Look who’s here!” Zevi exclaimed loudly.

“It’s the celebrity himself!” Moishe hollered.

Their impish grins surprised Yehuda. “I’m a celebrity?”

“You bet,” said Moishe. “You’re a viral sensation.”

Totally baffled, Yehuda asked them to explain.

“You mean you don’t know? You’re a star!” Zevi enthused.

“Dude,” Moishe interjected. “Can’t you see he has no idea he’s famous? Why don’t you show him?” A second later a screen was shoved in his face. “It’s all over WhatsApp,” Zevi explained, not a little pleased that for once the “bad boys” from their yeshivah had something over the mainstream ones like Yehuda.

“Where on WhatsApp?” asked Yehuda, still baffled. The question only sent Zevi and Moishe into a paroxysm of laughter.

“That’s a good one,” replied Moishe, still laughing. “I’ll bet there’s no one in the whole world who hasn’t seen it yet!”

Zevi pressed “play” and Yehuda heard a voice offering a running narration on the video they were seeing: “Parents innocently send their sons off to learn in Israel,” the disembodied voice said ominously in Hebrew, “but do they really know if their boys are learning or spending their days partying?”

The clip showed a group of bachurim having a grand old time and acting rather childishly. After a few seconds, Yehuda shoved the phone back at Moishe and broke out in a cold sweat. He’d recognized Bernstein, Meltzer and himself sitting on the couch at Rafael Fisher’s engagement party. Bernstein’s hat was smashed in on one side, and Meltzer was cramming fistfuls of popcorn into his mouth.

Yehuda had then stood up to “rap,” showing off his impressive verbal skills as he freestyled silly rhymes about the young chasan and his unexpected engagement. Bernstein backed him up with an attempt at beatboxing with his mouth, but it dissolved into a fit of coughing as Yehuda’s performance was met by enthusiastic laughter and applause.

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The Clip

Meanwhile, the smug male voice droned on rhetorically: “How can we justify sending our sons to Israel when they’re engaging in behavior like this? Parents in America, do you really know what your sons are doing?”

“It’s all over the net,” Moishe offered excitedly. “It’s part of an exposé that was shown on Israeli TV to alert the public about what goes on in American dirahs in Israel. They really blasted you guys!”

As elated as he had been only moments before Yehuda was now demoralized. Remembering how he had just been flying down the street as light as a bird, it occurred to him that his wings had been clipped.

For the rest of the day he holed up at home, alone in the empty house. His parents were away at work and all of his siblings were married. He couldn’t face anyone, and wouldn’t have been able to pretend he was okay. It didn’t matter that the video clip had been taken totally out of context; no one would believe that they were just friends celebrating a happy event. Who would believe that their rowdiness was unusual and confined to an innocent engagement party?

Although Yehuda had never spent much time on the Internet he knew how powerful it was, and that it could destroy lives. This was a perfect example of how circumstantial evidence could threaten to ruin a person’s reputation—and probably already had. He was certain that the fallout from this clip meant that his shidduch was history. There was no doubt that Shira and her parents would hear about it and want nothing more to do with the bachur who symbolized hefkerus. His good mood of just a short time ago was now replaced by feelings of doom and gloom and a sense of foreboding.

Sure enough, as if right on cue, the call came at 7:30 that evening from Mrs. Eisenberg, the shadchan. Yehuda heard his mother pick up the phone, and from her silence he knew that she had come straight to the point. She’d also apparently asked to speak to him.

Yehuda’s mother called him over to the phone, handing it to him with a confused and crestfallen expression on her face. “I have no idea what you were thinking, being at such a party,” Mrs. Eisenberg told him angrily. “And which one of your idiot friends sent it 11

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around? The shidduch is on hold. I’ll see what I can do, but please don’t do anything stupid until I call you back!” Mrs. Eisenberg was yelling so loudly he had to hold the phone away from his ear.

Having expected no less of an upbraiding, Yehuda wasn’t surprised. He had no doubt that the shidduch was not only on hold but that it was definitely off. And it wasn’t just this shidduch; no one would ever let their daughter go out with him.

For his parents, it was like Tishah B’Av. Both of his parents were in chinuch and had little knowledge of social media or the workings of the Internet. They were ehrliche people who weren’t in the habit of gossiping or hearing the latest hock. All they understood was that Shira’s parents didn’t want Yehuda to marry their daughter.

That night, Yehuda had a nightmare in which he was expelled from his yeshivah in Israel and was now a student at the small yeshivah across the street, where he was responsible for tutoring Moishe and Zevi. In the dream, Moishe’s phone was on auto mode and kept playing the clip over and over again. Yehuda awoke, relieved that at least this nightmare wasn’t real.

For the next few days, Yehuda could hardly get out of bed and rarely left his room. He couldn’t face his parents and their obvious disappointment, or talk to his siblings who called to commiserate with him. They knew these parties were reserved for very special occasions and were by no means frequent, but it was hard to convince their parents. He did speak to Bernstein and Meltzer, who had been soundly reprimanded. But while they had definitely looked like jerks in the video, Yehuda had been the life of the party.

Three days after the clip went viral, he was awakened at 10:30 p.m. by the ringing of his phone and an unfamiliar number flashing on the screen. When he picked up, he heard the familiar voice of his rosh yeshivah saying, “We need to talk.” His heart lurched. First his shidduch was off, and now he was about to get kicked out of yeshivah, all because of a video clip that had been taken out of context.

“I was concerned when I heard what happened,” the rosh yeshivah began. “Your father told me about it, and I am certainly not happy that your actions caused a chillul Hashem. But I also know that you’re a good bachur and your behavior has otherwise always 12

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The Clip

been exemplary, so I’m going to chalk it up to a momentary lapse in judgment. Unfortunately, there is no way to undo the damage, but I want you to know that I am ready to look past it. Moping around all day and neglecting your learning isn’t the solution. Let’s pretend that it never happened. And most importantly, I think you’ve learned your lesson.”

Yehuda nodded, not trusting himself to say anything and barely managing to utter an “okay.”

“Good. I already spoke to the other bachurim in the video, and they also understand that they cannot let this shter their learning. As for the girl you were dating, everything is bashert. If it wasn’t meant to be, it wouldn’t have happened for other reasons. The bottom line is that I look forward to seeing you back in yeshivah next week.”

Yehuda’s mood brightened a bit when he hung up the phone, knowing that he would return to yeshivah with a clean slate, but that hardly compensated for the end of his shidduch with Shira. He would never find a girl with whom he clicked so perfectly, and even if he did, that video, forever floating around in cyberspace, would haunt any future shidduch and his prospects would be nil. It was hard to pull himself together.

The following evening Mrs. Eisenberg called him back. “The shidduch is back on,” she informed him. “Arrange a date for tomorrow and act like everything is normal. Shira is expecting you to propose.”

“But—why?” he gasped.

“Why what?” Mrs. Eisenberg replied without skipping a beat.

“Why not? Everything is fine. Just be happy and don’t ask questions.”

Yehuda was dumbfounded, wondering what had happened to make them change their minds. He thought he should be overjoyed, but he couldn’t shake his confusion.

Two days later he was at Shira’s front door picking her up for their date. Her father greeted him at the door just as warmly as he had before, making small talk about the weather, his studies and a bris they’d gone to that morning—everything but the elephant in the room. Yehuda certainly wasn’t going to broach the subject, so he went along with the charade.

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Only three days before, Yehuda had been under the impression that his offense was so unforgiveable as to break off the shidduch.

Now, however, it was as if nothing had happened—and he was even expected to propose!

And just like that, he and Shira were engaged. Everything was going great, except that it wasn’t. Despite all the congratulations and well-wishes, Yehuda couldn’t shake his confusion and feelings of anxiety. On the one hand, he was thrilled that Shira’s family was so eager to embrace him, but on the other, he was baffled as to why they seemed to be suffering from amnesia. How could his behavior, which was considered so deplorable and appalling, be so suddenly and totally forgotten?

Watching Mrs. Eisenberg laughing with his parents and all the Kohns beaming from ear to ear, it just didn’t make sense. He was starting to feel like the victim of an inexplicable conspiracy of silence.

Yehuda couldn’t stop thinking about what it meant, giving it the same intensity he would apply to a difficult Talmudic sugya, but with a lot less success. When he discussed it with Bernstein and Meltzer, they had nothing constructive to offer beyond the fact that the video was now a non-issue. They were also grateful that if someone like Reb Nachum was willing to accept a bachur who had appeared in the clip as a son-in-law, they themselves had nothing to worry about when the time came. Eventually they grew tired of Yehuda’s insistent questions and changed the subject whenever he brought it up. Yehuda also couldn’t discuss it with the rosh yeshivah, as he had been very explicit about putting the incident behind him.

Within a few weeks the whole brouhaha had faded into the past.

Yehuda was still the recipient of an occasional ribbing from someone who called out, “Hey look! It’s the guy from that dirah video!”

But for the most part, life went back to normal. Yehuda called his future father-in-law on the phone every Friday and engaged in friendly banter, but nothing beyond that. He also called his kallah twice a week, echoing her enthusiasm about the wedding plans and describing their cute almost-affordable apartment in Yerushalayim.

They chatted together, enjoying their conversation in anticipation of 14

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The Clip

the beginning of the next stage of their lives.

When Yehuda made the mistake of bringing up the incident again to Bernstein and Meltzer, they’d had enough. “Stop talking about it already! We don’t want to hear about it anymore. It’s over—ancient history! Do you think your kallah is perfect? No one is perfect, not even you. She probably has her own issues; everyone does. Maybe she has a secret you don’t know about, which is why she was happy to just forget about the stupid clip.”

Bernstein and Meltzer had no idea that they had just made matters worse. They’re right, Yehuda thought to himself. That’s exactly what’s worrying me! There must be something she’s hiding. Why else would she be willing to marry someone whose face is recognized all over the world as the symbol of disgraceful behavior?

Of course, he was unable to express his concerns to Shira. How could he accuse her of covering something up when he had no real proof, and his suspicions were probably nothing but the result of his fevered imagination? But try as he might, he couldn’t shake his feelings of uneasiness. His phone conversations were becoming tense, to the point that Shira finally asked him if everything was all right.

He assured her that everything was fine, but he felt anything but all right. Unable to explain his feelings to anyone, he was alone with his tortured thoughts.

As the day of the chasunah neared he was a ball of nerves. His stomach hurt and he had no appetite or patience. Whenever his mother called, excited about the aufruf and wedding plans, he felt like he was choking. She assumed that her youngest child was just a nervous chasan.

Yehuda flew home a week before the wedding with a heavy heart, unable to be excited and happy. His parents noticed that he was jumpy and told him that after living through his siblings’ weddings and calming their jitters, his own chasunah would be a piece of cake, but Yehuda did not find it amusing. His little nieces prancing around the house in their wedding finery vying for his attention barely elicited a smile and a half-hearted compliment.

While everyone else was in the best of spirits, Yehuda was not at all okay. Was he marrying someone with a dark secret? Maybe she 15

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had a split personality? Could he be on the verge of making the biggest mistake of his life? His head spun with multiple scenarios, none of them reassuring.

The chasunah was beautiful. Everyone said so, but Yehuda experienced it in a weird emotional state, going through the motions and acting the part of the happy chasan. He danced with his father, then with his shver, followed by his brothers, Shira’s brothers and his friends, and then with the waiters. He hardly knew whose hands he was holding as he switched from one person to the next. Nosson Aryeh, however, the kallah’s proud brother, was really in his element, chatting with all the relatives as he visited every table, dancing up a storm and being the star performer in an attempt to be mesamei’ach the chasan.

The sheva brachos passed by in a blur. Yehuda was waiting for some disclosure or confession, but Shira only became more and more endearing. She was cheerful and great company, and took pleasure in pleasing him with creative and delicious meals. Thoroughly ashamed of himself, he even looked through her stuff for hidden pills after remembering a story he’d heard about a chasan’s discovery.

On Shabbos, Nosson Aryeh gave a long impassioned speech about his new brother-in-law—long enough to annoy the relatives who were distracted by the scent of the cholent. He described Yehuda in the most glowing terms, focusing on his incredible ability to dissect a Talmudic passage and plumb its depths until every possibility and nuance could be analyzed. He went on to predict that Yehuda was destined to become one of the biggest scholars of the generation. Nor did he neglect to mention his lovely and scholarly sister, adding, “By the way, the shidduch was my idea—and it only survived because of me.” Lost in his own thoughts, these last words caught Yehuda’s attention, and he thought he noticed Nosson Aryeh give Shira a wink, although he couldn’t be sure. Anyway, by then Nosson Aryeh had already launched into a vort on the parshah that he tied in with the inyan of shalom bayis.

Days later, Yehuda and Shira put down their packages in their small but cozy apartment in Jerusalem. Shira couldn’t stop talking about how excited and blessed she was to finally be living in Eretz 16

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The Clip

Yisrael.

The living room was still mostly empty, but a friend had lent them two folding chairs, a folding table and two fold-up cots to use until their furniture would arrive. All they had were a few possessions and whatever else they were able to fit into their suitcases.

“You aren’t talking much, Yehuda,” Shira suddenly said, turning toward him with their toothbrushes in her hand.

“Yeah. I’m guess I’m just tired,” he replied.

“Have you been tired ever since we got engaged?” she wanted to know. “Something is bothering you, and now that we are in Yerushalayim you aren’t even excited. Don’t you think I’ve noticed?”

Now was the time to finally say something. Their real life was about to begin, and it needed to be based on honesty. He had to be totally forthright, no matter what he discovered.

“The truth is, there was a topic I didn’t want to talk about…”

“You mean that video clip?”

Just like that, after weeks of mystery and tension, it was out there!

So she did know. But why hadn’t she brought it up before?

Yehuda had so many questions but he found himself at a loss for words, unable to articulate any of them. All he managed to utter was, “Why? Why did you continue the shidduch after the video went viral?”

“You mean you don’t know?” she asked incredulously.

“Huh? What are you talking about?”

“Have you ever watched the whole video very closely?”

“No, not really. All I saw was a few seconds of me, Bernstein and Meltzer acting like idiots, but I was the worst.” Yehuda had a sudden flashback of shoving Zevi’s phone back at him almost immediately.

“You didn’t see the part about the party in the other dirah?”

“What other dirah?” Yehuda said, confused.

“Okay,” Shira said patiently. “Let me walk you through what happened. When my father first got the call from someone telling him he’d seen you in a clip from an Israeli exposé, acting, in the words of the caller, ‘like a bum,’ he was furious. He immediately called the shadchan and asked if she knew anything about it, adding that as far as he was concerned, the shidduch was off. There was no way 17

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his daughter would marry a boy like that. She tried to calm him down and at least think about it for a while but he was adamant. He insisted that she call you right away and cancel the following night’s date.”

Yehuda nodded, remembering the call from Mrs. Eisenberg.

“Two days later,” Shira continued, “we finally saw the entire clip.

Someone showed it to us on his phone, and my father was fuming as he watched it. He was furious at you—until he noticed another bachur in a different dirah laughing uproariously at the clip of you rapping.”

“Another bachur? Why would that matter?” Yehuda asked.

“It matters,” Shira explained, “because that bachur was none other than my brother, Nosson Aryeh! After he saw that, my father turned his anger from you to him. ‘Is that what I sent him to Israel for?’ he roared. ‘To joke around and waste his time?’

“After allowing my father to vent, my brother, true to form, put his natural charm to good use—the same charm he used to convince me to go out with you in the first place. He explained to my father that he was justified in being somewhat upset, but he should realize that it was only some bachurim acting silly at a simchah, and it wasn’t the end of the world. He begged him not to judge you based on that one clip and spent an hour extolling your virtues, finally convincing my father for the second time that you were more than worthy of his daughter—which I knew all along, of course.

“After my father had a chance to calm down, he realized that if his own wonderful son—you know my father thinks that the sun rises and sets on Nosson Aryeh—could act like that, it couldn’t possibly mean that everyone who did so was rotten. He actually felt bad about having yelled at Mrs. Eisenberg, and he called her back to say that everything was back on track. My father suggested that I never say a word about what happened, but I can see now that we can’t ignore it any longer or this can go on forever. Maybe he was embarrassed that he had jumped to conclusions, but the bottom line is that it was a bad idea. It was wrong not to tell you.”

“No, I was the one who was wrong” said Yehuda, feeling very contrite about the conclusions he himself had jumped to.

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The Clip

“It doesn’t really matter anymore, does it?” Shira asked. “Let’s agree that we were both wrong,” she said with a laugh, relieved that everything was finally out in the open.

Yehuda laughed too, his first real chuckle in months.

“Oh, and one more thing,” Shira added. “I just want you to know that we should both be thankful for that clip, regardless of the trouble it caused. I had only one reservation about you: You seemed so serious, and while I loved that quality, it was very important for me to marry a man with a sense of humor. It wasn’t until I saw that video that I realized I had nothing to worry about in that department. It was all I could do to stop myself from laughing out loud in front of my father.

“And now,” she continued, “I’d appreciate it if you could find the Nescafé and the kettle so we can enjoy our first cup of coffee in our new home, as we start our lives together with a perfectly clean slate.”

“Of course,” Yehuda said with a smile. “I prefer coffee to beer anytime.”

“This will be a great story for our children,” Shira said.

“I’ll drink to that,” Yehuda replied.

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BY NAOMI RAKSIN

Not by Accident

The bond between a mother and daughter

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T

he sound of Chavie’s heavy footsteps were like the thunder of an approaching storm. I tensed at the coffee station—my second cup for the night—and forced my features into a neutral expression before I faced my daughter. She stood rigid in the kitchen doorway, her shoulders tense beneath the tumble of black hair, her eyes blinking rapidly. A backpack was draped over one arm, while the handle of a small suitcase was held in the other.

“I’m going to Riki’s place.”

Of all the things I expected her to say, it wasn’t this.

“Riki?”

“Yeah. You won’t let me go to Talia, so I’m going to Riki.

She’s coming to pick me up now.”

I frowned. Why would she want to go to Riki? It wasn’t like she was close to her. I’d been careful not to encourage a relationship between Chavie and my intelligent but difficult little sister who had traded a life of spiritual wealth for Manhattan’s desolate wasteland.

“Chavie…”

“What? What’s wrong?” There was a cynical glint in Chavie’s eye. “She comes from a good family, doesn’t she?”

So that’s what this was about. Chavie was upset that I didn’t let her spend her winter break with Talia so she was doing this to spite me.

I touched a hand to my head, trying to still this rise of my anger. Why did she always have to find ways to be smarter, to get around things? Every conversation with her was a battle of wits, and she won it every single time.

“I’m calling Riki,” I said to Chavie. Her lips quirked in the corner, like she already knew she would win this round.

I slipped into the office and dialed. Riki answered on the first ring. “Hey Malky, long time!”

“Riki. Chavie said you’re coming to get her?”

“She called me to pick her up. She needs a break. She has a seven day winter vacation, what do you want her to do? She’ll go crazy at home!”

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“Why will she go crazy at home? This is her house! She doesn’t need to go anywhere! She can be with her family.”

“Malky—“ “But this is not even about that, anyway. She’s allowed to leave! Just not to Talia—who, by the way, is some random kid she met a few weeks ago!”

“Okay, okay. Relax. So she’s coming to me. She’ll chill with her aunt for a few days. She needs a change of scenery.”

“Riki, your place is not exactly… Don’t take this the wrong way…”

A pause. “So which way should I take it?”

“It’s nothing personal, it’s…”

“Just say it, okay? I’m a bad influence blah blah blah.”

“Riki…”

“No, you know what? It’s fine. Let me just tell you something, okay? I’m a far better choice than a lot of the other places she wants to be right now, and believe me, I would know.”

I opened my mouth to respond, but Riki already hung up.

There was a soft knock on the door, and Nechamia’s head poked through the doorway. I met his eyes—confused, helpless—and turned away. How many times recently had I turned to him, hoping he’d know what to do, what to say, only to find that he was looking at me the same way? There was so much guilt in being the mother, like I was supposed to be the one to know.

When Chavie had started to change, we bought books. I didn’t know if she was officially, “at risk” or, “at risk for being at risk,” but we bought enough to cover all categories: How to Talk So You’re Teenager Will Listen, The Teenager’s Brain, Finding the Derech. It was all nice reading, but what I needed was an instruction-style manual with detailed examples. What did I do with her cell phone? With her selection of friends?

Her style of dress? What did I do when she wanted to spend her winter break with her OTD aunt?

As I vacillated between more restrictions and more freedom, I held my breath, eyes half-closed, body tilted to the 23

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side, begging, praying, that she stayed on the path and did not cross an irreversible line, like a little kid in the bowling alley watching the ball snake toward the pins hoping it didn’t slip into the gutter.

Later, after Riki’s little red Fiat pulled out of the driveway taking Chavie away from our quiet New Jersey streets into the heart of Manhattan, I tossed and turned in my bed, as sleepless as the city that never sleeps.

I had made Riki promise that in the five days Chavie spent with her, she would give her a good, kosher time. I also wanted her to show Chavie regret for her life choices that I knew she felt on some subconscious level even though she’d never admit it.

Riki gave me her word, but now, as the darkness of night crept into my heart, I wondered if my 27-year-old sister—still so full of bitterness for the life she left behind, and so falsely enamored with her new one—would put on a compelling act of regret for her very smart 16-year-old niece.

At some point, the worrying thoughts drifted into dreams, and I slept deeply until the ringing phone pulled me through murky layers of semi-sleep into a drowsy state of alertness. I rubbed my eyes and squinted at my bedside clock. 1:25 a.m.

As the last bits of dreams migrated to the edges of my brain, I suddenly knew it was Chavie on the line. When Chavie was at the very beginning of this “at risk of being at risk” phase, she once called at midnight from 7-11, begging me to pick her up. The whole way home she’d been so tearfully apologetic, and I had been so full of forgiveness.

I had also been so full of naiveté, accepting her apologies and promises, without doubting for a single moment that she’d break them again and again and again.

As I slipped my feet over the edge of the bed and they hit the cold floor, I felt my anger return. What was she thinking? Riki didn’t even have a spare bedroom. She was probably on a cold leather couch wondering what on earth she was running away from. She hadn’t thought it through. She never thought it through because she knew I would drag myself out of bed and get her. Of course I would get her. I would go out in the cold, and shiver in the car in my snood 24

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and sweatshirt and drive to Manhattan and pick her up, and she would get in the car with lowered lashes and sheepish glances, and my hands would shake in exhaustion and anger as I threatened her that I would never pick her up again.

I grabbed the kitchen phone, wondering how everyone else in the house was sleeping right through it.

“Hello?”

“Hello, am I speaking with Mrs. Kornfeld?”

The voice on the other end sounded a little like Mr. Grodin, my boss. Still hazy from sleep, I tugged at my sleeve, confused.

“Yes, who is this?”

“My name is Arthur Lewis, a chaplain at Van Wyck Hospital in Tuckson, New Jersey. I’m so sorry to inform you of an accident on the Garden State Parkway involving your daughter, Chava Kornfeld...”

I blinked, the words hovering in my brain, but I couldn’t make sense of them. “Involving my…daughter?”

“Yes. Your daughter was in a car accident and was brought to the hospital in critical condition. How soon can you get here, Mrs. Kornfeld?”

In a split second, the words penetrated and my confusion transformed into panic. “Wait! What happened to her? Hello? Are you there?”

“There was a car accident, Mrs. Kornfeld. A truck hit the Uber your daughter was riding in. How soon can you get here?”

“Oh my goodness! What? Where is she? Which hospital?”

I grabbed a stray pen from the mess drawer and wrote Van Wyck Hospital on the back of my palm. Then I raced up the stairs, my heart beating erratically, my thoughts tumbling and crashing into each other in giant waves of panic.

“Nechemia! Chavie’s been in an accident!” I flicked on the bedroom lights and started grabbing things.

“Wha?” Nechemia sat up, shielding at his eyes with his hands.

“Wha?” “We need to go to the hospital! Oh my goodness, the kids! Let me call my mother.”

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My fingers trembled as I dialed her number.

“Wait, Malky,” Nechemia’s words were slurred from sleep. “It will take your mother at least 15 minutes to get here. Call the neighbors…”

Minutes later, we were on the road, me in Nechemia’s rain jacket, him in no coat at all. It had taken us a total of eight minutes to get into the car, and now that there was nothing more I could do to close the physical distance that separated us, I rocked in my seat, desperate to bypass it.

“Faster!” I yelled at Nechemia as he stopped at a stop sign. “Slow down!” I yelled a second later as he made a sharp turn.

Breathe, Malky, I thought to myself. Just breathe. Just breathe.

I squeezed my eyes closed. Just be okay, Chavie. You need to be okay. You need to be okay. Was she okay? Why hadn’t I asked? Or had I? Just be okay, Chavie.

Breathe, breathe.

I don’t remember parking. Maybe we just pulled up to the hospital doors. All I recall from those first moments was running through the labyrinth of corridors with doctors, nurses and bright lights, feeling completely lost and off kilter.

“Your daughter is in very critical condition. You need to understand that. Her skull is fractured in four places, her pelvis is shattered, two ribs are broken, and there is bleeding and swelling inside her brain. She is not conscious.”

“Where is she? Just bring us to her!”

“I don’t think you understand, Mrs. Kornfeld. Your daughter is in very, very bad shape.”

“I understand! I understand! Where is she?”

Down a hallway, around a bend, the ICU, room 411.

I turned the handle, my heart in my throat, my teeth chattering.

The room was dark, a shadowy, grayish kind of dimness, broken by blinking lights and beeping machines. While the hospital corridors were bright enough to mimic the day’s sunshine, this room in the ICU was perpetual night. I tiptoed through the entrance, suddenly conscious of my own breath and the shuffle of my feet. As I 26

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moved toward the bed I was instantly hit by the smell—a harsh, sterile, hospital scent.

“Chavie?” I whispered.

I could barely see her. Her head was wrapped in bandages, completely covering her hair except for a small space where a tube-like machine protruded through her skull. A ventilator covered the bottom half of her face. An IV pole, and various other tubes and wires snaked out of her. Whatever I could see—a bit of cheekbone, the bulges of swollen, black skin over closed eyes—were so shocking, that I went down like a stone at her bedside, my body curling over itself.

In that tight space right below Chavie’s bed, I could not think, could not cry, could not do anything, but feel my own stabbing heartbeat. As I inhaled in tight, little gasps, I tasted sweat gathering above my lip and I thought I was going to be sick.

“Malky…”

A shadow fell across the floor in front of me.

“Malky…”

I lifted my head slowly, and looked up at Nechemia. In the darkness of the ICU, his face was a stark blur of white. His feet on the ground beside me trembled against each other.

I held onto the bottom of Chavie’s bed and slowly, shakily, lifted myself up. Once standing, everything began to totter again, and a woman gently took my arm and led me toward the door.

“No! Let go of me!”

“Mrs. Kornfeld...”

“Stop! Let me go back!”

“Come. Here. Sit down. Don’t worry, we’re not going anywhere.”

A chair had materialized outside the room, and I sank into it as a cup of cold water was pressed into my palm. I did not drink it.

“My name is Samantha. I know this is a huge shock for you.”

“Are you the doctor? Is she going to be okay?”

“I’m a medical social worker, so I don’t know the extent of her injuries. I’ll have the doctor come to speak to you. I know you must have a lot of questions.”

For a second, I had the odd sense of slipping away. Perhaps it was 27

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the adrenalin seeping out of my system, perhaps it was the shock, but none of it felt real. It was like my brain was resisting the images, and I could not make sense of anything.

At some point, Samantha gave us more details about the crash.

Apparently a truck driver had fallen asleep at the wheel and crossed the meridian, hitting them head-on. The Uber driver was killed instantly. Chavie was thrown 50 feet out of the car and was resuscitated by EMTs at the scene.

The hospital was holding onto some of Chavie’s belongings that were rescued from the road, and Samantha brought them to us.

There was her velvet backpack, muddied and ripped along the seams.

A grey sweatshirt. Her wallet. Her cell phone. Her credit card. Some dollar bills. Her permit. But it was a sneaker, a single red Converse sneaker, missing its pair and half of the laces that made me fall apart.

I didn’t recognize that sneaker. When had Chavie bought it? Did she hide it in her closet, knowing I would lecture her about the color being too loud? I held the sneaker to my heart and went back into the room where Chavie lay so still, so silent, so unrecognizable, and as I sobbed, my mind slipped back to earlier that evening when I let Chavie go. I squeezed my eyes shut, trying to rewrite the narrative.

Come back to me, Chavie. Stay home. Stay home. Please, please, stay home. Don’t go to Riki.

Riki!

I suddenly started to panic. Where was Riki? Why had Chavie been in an Uber alone, anyway?

I dialed Riki’s number and as the phone rang and rang, I had the frightening thought that Riki had been overlooked. Maybe they were in the Uber because Riki’s car broke down and she was blown even further out of the Uber, and hadn’t been found.

“Hello?” Riki’s voice was thick with sleep. “Malky?”

“Riki! Where are you?”

“Um, in bed.”

Between sobs, I explained to Riki what was going on.

There was a gasp, and then silence, and then, “I’m coming!” before the line went dead.

When Riki arrived, the two of us sat in a mostly empty waiting 28

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area.

“Malky. Listen. When I picked up Chavie, she got in the car and begged me to take her to Brooklyn to that friend… Talia. She had her whole vacation planned and had no interest in coming to me.

I thought, what was the big deal? She would come back home for Shabbos and you would never know. It would be our little secret.

So… I drove her to Talia’s house….”

I stared at Riki, shocked.

“I’m sorry, Malky. Oh my goodness, I am so sorry.”

She brought Chavie to Talia. She went behind my back and brought Chavie to Talia. I should be furious. I should be burning in anger. Instead, I closed my eyes, imagining how guilty Chavie must have felt when she got to Talia’s house that she called an Uber to take her home because I had threatened her so many times I wouldn’t come rescue her again. Or maybe she finally started to think of someone other than herself and did not want to wake me up and drag me out to Brooklyn in the middle of the night. I could not bear the thought of her alone in an Uber, looking out the front window to see a truck crossing the meridian and heading straight for her. Was that the last image she saw?

As Riki sobbed into her hands, I turned away, too seeped in my own pain and guilt to handle the enormity of hers.

At some point during the night, I succumbed to fatigue and fell asleep in an armchair. It could have been minutes, it could have been hours. Inside the hospital walls where there was no distinction between night and day, time was forever distorted.

I startled awake when the doctor came by with an update.

“I’ll be honest with you, Mr. and Mrs. Kornfeld,” the doctor said.

“I wish I can tell you that her injuries look worse than they are, but that is not the case. We are doing our best to support her, but the chance of her surviving the night after such extensive trauma is slim.”

Slim? What did slim even mean? With Chavie’s life laid out on a timetable like that, I suddenly became super-focused. I sent Riki home to relieve the neighbor and I composed a mass text message to my friends and family to beg Hashem for a miracle. From there, messages continued to spread like a web across the country, 29

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and by morning, Jewish communities around the world were saying Tehillim and taking on kabbalos in the merit of a refuah for Chava bas Malka Esther.

My phone kept beeping with calls and messages from worried family and friends reaching out in support. I wasn’t ready for it and ignored them all.

At one point in the early morning, machines started beeping like crazy and a team of doctors and nurses ran in. We were pushed out into the waiting area, and in those frantic moments, I thought we’d lost her.

As I sat and waited, fear choking me in the base of my throat, I kept thinking about one minute. Just one minute. If only I could have one more minute so I could hold her hands and look into her eyes and tell her, I love you, Chavie.

I would do anything, anything at all, for one minute.

When the doctors came out, they told us that they had stabilized her. She was hanging on.

“I don’t want to get your hopes up,” the doctor said. “Her heart stopped, we got it started again, but her body wants to shut down.”

I ran into Chavie’s room and tried to hug her. “I love you, Chavie,” I said into the bandage that covered her ear. I could barely get the words out. Who was I fooling? I did not want one minute. One minute would never be enough. I wanted a lifetime.

Later that day, a doctor that I did not recognize, sat us down to talk about Chavie’s condition.

“The survival rate after a TBI, or traumatic brain injury, severe enough to cause deep coma and low Glasgow Coma Scale scores, is generally poor, even in young adults.” The doctor spoke slowly, factually, in a grating tone of voice. I flinched, looking down at the floor, neat tiles, all white and squeaky clean.

“Studies show a very high overall mortality, ranging between 76% and 89%. The Glasgow Coma Scale lets us know how deeply a patient is in a coma and it ranges from 3, which is the deepest, to 15. Chava’s score was 3 at the site of the accident, and is still 3 right now. In acute coma, like your daughter’s, most prognosis factors predict a negative outcome. Survivors will have permanent disorders of consciousness or severe disabilities. In fact, the chances 30

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of survival with a GCS less than 5 are considered so poor, that in regions with limited resources, they are not even admitted to intensive care units.”

The doctor was quiet for a long moment. No one said anything.

As he left, he said something softly that sounded like, “my condolences.” In his eyes, it was like she was already gone.

Still sitting in our seats, I rested my face in my hands, trying to breathe. Behind my closed lids I saw an image of Chavie— little Chavie, with her sun-lit eyes and rounded cheeks, wearing her favorite nightgown with the big rainbow in the front.

“Do you remember how Chavie… used to sing herself to sleep?” I asked Nechemia, my voice cracking over the words.

“She’s going to recover, Malky. We need to believe that.”

I nodded, but my mind pulled me back. I forgot about that Chavie.

For so long, I’d been preoccupied with the new version of Chavie, the “at risk of being at risk” Chavie, I had never stopped to remember the older versions of herself. Now it was like a window opened, revealing sweet Chavie in second grade, crying over her best friend who moved out of town. Then there was Chavie in fourth grade, standing tall and proud as she won the Conscientious Student Award. Chavie in sixth grade, so terrified of sleepaway camp that she vomited on the bus-ride there, but then loved it so much, she begged me to stay for a second month. Then there was Chavie at her eighth grade graduation, two weeks after my father passed away, shocking me to tears with a new speech she’d written about him.

I was seeing Chavie’s life flash in front of me, like they say happens to a person before they die.

I closed my eyes, shaking my head fiercely and digging my fingers into the hollow of my eyes so the images scattered in an eruption of bright lights.

She was not going to die.

She was not.

She was not.

Later, Samantha came by, offering to talk about things with us. I shook my head and sent her away. I didn’t want to talk about things.

Chavie was going to recover. She was going to be fine. She had to.

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Soon after, Riki was back with take-out food. We hadn’t eaten all day, but the smell of grilled chicken and balsamic dressing made me gag.

“What’s going on with the kids?” I asked Riki.

“Mommy’s with them now. They’re okay. I told them Chavie was in an accident and that you were with her and we should daven that she gets better. I said Tehillim with them.”

I looked at my sister incredulously and she gave a short bark of mirthless laughter. “I knew that’s what you would do.”

She was trying to make amends. I didn’t have the brain space to go there. There were already too many regrets between all of us. I needed to believe that Chavie was here because Hashem willed it, and it was not my fault, or Riki’s fault, or the truck driver’s fault.

“One of us should go home,” I said to Nechemia. “For the other kids.”

“Yeah,” he agreed.

But neither of us did. No one said it, but it was there in the air between us. Chavie’s condition was so precarious neither one of us wanted to risk being away for even a moment.

The next two days passed in a blur of testing, beeping machines, blinking lights, minutes of snatched sleep on hard chairs and morsels of food and drink shoveled down dry throats. At this point, we were in touch with local askanim, and were talking about potentially transferring Chavie to a better hospital in the city. As the hours passed, with no change in Chavie’s level of consciousness, her weak chance of survival plummeted further. A 10% chance became a 5% chance and then a 1% chance.

The numbers were infuriating. I could not understand how they could take an entire person and neatly file them into a percentage.

On the third day, Chavie underwent a crucial test, and we were called into another meeting to discuss the latest results.

“Mr. and Mrs. Kornfeld. I am sorry to inform you that the daughter you know is not here anymore. Her latest brain scan indicated her brain function is at 0%. Once a patient is brain dead, they will never recover. She is artificially breathing through a machine, but her body is no longer alive. Based on three doctors who have 32

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assessed her, we are ready to terminate medical treatment.”

“You mean…. pull the plug?” Nechemia’s voice was trembling whisper of outrage.

The doctor pursed his lips. “Pull the plug is not the right term.

It indicates that there is a living patient who is being denied treatment. Your daughter is dead, Mr. Kornfeld. I don’t know if you considered organ transplantation, but that is something you should think about at this time. There are five children whose lives could be saved with your daughter’s organs.”

Once again I had that sense of floating out of myself, like someone was ripping my brain and heart out of my body, taking it somewhere far away.

For the rest of the day, I was in a zombie-like state. Nechemia was zoning out in his own way, staring at his phone, scrolling aimlessly.

When the doctor came to talk to us the next morning, I closed my eyes, like a little kid trying to hide. Before he could say anything, Nechemia started to speak.

“Simon Lewis. Zack Dunlap. Trenton Mckinley.” I opened my eyes to find Nechemia facing the doctor, his jaw jutted forward, his hands clenched in his lap. ”Steven Thorpe. George Pickering.”

As I watched him rambling utter nonsense in my vague, dissociated state, I knew that the stress was taking over his mind too.

“Do those names mean anything to you? Those people were told they were brain dead. They were about to have their organs harvested when they showed signs of life, and at the last minute were saved from being killed before their time. They all lived to recover.”

The doctor tilted his head to the side, his sunken eyes briefly radiating pity. “There have been extremely rare cases of medical misdiagnosis which the media love to use for their sensationalistic agendas. A brain dead patient is truly dead. They don’t recover.”

“These people survived because they started to respond minutes before the plugs were pulled. Have you ever wondered what would have happened if their deaths were scheduled a few hours earlier, before they responded? Would anyone have known? How many people could have made full recoveries if they’d only been given that chance?”

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After the doctor left, I stared at Nechemia, shocked. Where had those words come from? Even in his best moments, Nechemia did not have a single fight-bone in him. He was not a man of words.

Throughout the saga of Chavie, when it was his own daughter up against him, he could not find his voice, and I was forced to take the lead. I didn’t know this Nechemia who had sat all day researching on his phone, finding these stories, while I was not capable of holding onto a single coherent thought. This Nechemia was the father who knew exactly what to do, what to say, the father who fought back.

“That last person I mentioned, George Pickering, was from Texas,” Nechemia told me after the doctor left. “In Texas, hospitals have the final authority and families have no say in these matters. In Pickering’s case, his father felt him squeezing his hand in response to things he said, and he believed his son would recover. The hospital didn’t though, so to keep them from pulling the plug, the father pulled a gun. He literally waved it around and refused to leave his son’s side, and by the time he was arrested, his son was already displaying signs of consciousness. The father spent almost a year in jail for it, but his son recovered.”

Soon after the doctor left us alone, Samantha returned. She was our liaison between the medical staff, she told us, and she wanted to help us process everything we heard. It was so natural, she said, to want to hold on.

“We are not pulling the plug,” Nechemia told her. “The human body is not ours to tamper with. It belongs to G-d. He is the only one to determine when the time has come.”

“At a time of stress, it’s natural to look at the doctors as the enemy.

Remember though, all they want is your daughter’s best interests.

Everyone deserves to die with dignity.”

“I beg to differ. Pulling the plug is not an act of dignity. We will transfer her to another hospital if we need to, we will take this court if we need to. That plug will not be pulled.”

“We need to get someone involved.” Nechemia said after she left.

“She might be nicer than the doctors, but she has the same agenda.

They are trying to wear down our defenses. I’m going to make some 34

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calls.”

Alone with Chavie, I sat at her bedside, squeezing her hand. In the enormity of what we were dealing with, I had never considered that we’d be forced to worry about an entirely different threat to her life.

“Chavie,” I whispered. “It’s Mommy. Squeeze my hand, sweetie.

Please, please, squeeze.”

There was nothing, no flicker, no movement at all.

A few minutes later, Nechemia was back in the room.

“Malky? I need you to—” His phone rang, a loud blast in the silence. He looked at the screen and frowned.

“It’s the house line. They probably want to know our Shabbos plans.”

“Shabbos plans?”

“Yeah. Shabbos is in… four hours.”

I was stunned. Somehow, five days had gone by. It felt like minutes, but it also felt like eternity. I could not remember what it was like to not be in the hospital. I could not remember how I used to structure my day.

What were our Shabbos plans?

We would stay in the hospital of course. The kids would go to my mother.

I followed Nechemia into the waiting room at the end of the hallway as he took the call.

Nechemia’s parents had flown in from England and they were staying with friends nearby. Maybe they’d join us for Shabbos, or maybe they’d join the kids.

I looked at Nechemia, about to ask him, when I noticed him leaning against the wall, the phone against his ear, his face completely white.

“Nechemia?”

He was having a heart attack. Oh my goodness. Was he having a heart attack? The stress was too much for him. We were going on no sleep, no food, nothing, and now they were telling us they wanted to pull the plug. How could a heart take it all?

“Nechemia!”

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He blinked once, twice, and then passed me the phone.

“Hello? Hello!”

“Ma?” Chavie’s voice sailed through the line, a little too loud.

“Where are you?”

I screamed. Or maybe I tried to, but no sound came out. Suddenly I was running down the hallway, gasping, one arm flailing, the other gripping the phone, as my brain desperately tried to make sense of the senseless. My first thought was that Chavie had woken up. She was calling us from her room, wondering where we were, and with that came the fear that she would slip back into a coma and no one would believe it, and they would try to pull the plug, when she’d actually called us on a phone…

“Chavie! Chavie! Don’t go anywhere, okay? Don’t hang up. Do you hear me? Don’t hang up the phone! Say yes if you hear me.”

“Um…yes?”

A nurse was heading into Chavie’s room when I got there. I waved the phone at her.

“She’s on the phone! She’s on the phone!”

The nurse froze, staring at me with wide eyes.

“My daughter! Is on the phone!”

With shaking fingers I pushed passed her into Chavie’s room, where I found Chavie on the bed, still, silent, unmoving.

Oh my goodness.

I was going crazy.

I was hallucinating and going crazy.

Nechemia appeared at my side and grabbed the phone from me.

“Hello? Chavie? Are you there? Where are you? Where are you?”

“Um, I’m home. Where is everyone? What on earth is going on?”

The commotion in the entrance of Chavie’s room was attracting a crowd. Two nurses and Samantha were headed our way, their faces grim. There were strict rules about being noisy in the ICU hallways that we were clearly not following.

Nechemia waved his hands, his voice rising. “There’s a mistake!

This is not our daughter!”

This is not our daughter. This is not our daughter.

As Nechemia held out the phone, and the little crowd moved 36

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closer together, I suddenly became desperate for air and pulled away from the tight huddle in the doorway. I moved deeper into the room and took a close look at the inert figure on the bed.

There was not much visible with all of the tubes, and the swelling had distorted whatever could be seen.

This was not our daughter. This was not our daughter.

Who was she?

There was no time to unravel the chaos into perfect neat pieces.

Shabbos was coming and we just spent five days with a critically ill patient who somehow got mixed up with our own healthy daughter. Before we left the hospital, Chavie clarified one significant piece of the puzzle. After she’d arrived at Talia’s house, they went out somewhere late at night, and Chavie’s backpack with her wallet and ID was stolen in the subway station. The first responders must have found the backpack with Chavie’s identity near the victim and assumed it was her.

Chavie was waiting for us on the porch when we pulled up, her mouth quirked in the corner, her eyes unreadable.

I held her face in my hands, kissing her on her forehead, my tears running like rain. She stood stoically, rigid beneath my touch. We moved into the front entrance and just stood there. None of us spoke. We could not stop staring at her.

“Um,” Chavie said. “This is weird. I’m going up to my room now… yeah?”

Later, after the kids, my mother and Nechemia’s parents came bursting through the front door with food and drinks and hugs and tears, and we began the long journey of processing and healing, Chavie told us that on Tuesday, Talia had gotten a text to stop everything and say Tehillim for a 16-year-old girl named Chava bas Malka Esther who had been in a car accident.

“People pass along messages for Tehillim all the time, and I usually don’t do anything, but this was creepy. I mean, my name is not so unusual, but still, she was the same age as me and had the same name. I made Talia download a Tehillim app and we said Tehillim for this girl who had the same name as me… who was really me… who was really not me.”

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Shabbos passed in a blur of deep, dreamless sleep. During the hours that I was awake, I vacillated between moments of intense euphoria and a strange tightness in my chest that left me gasping for air.

“It’s the shock and the trauma,” Nechemia told me. “I’m feeling it too. Don’t worry, it will pass.”

“You know,” I told Nechemia. “It’s kind of strange, but I keep thinking of that… patient. Who is she? I’m just…. I feel like I left something behind. Like I abandoned her.”

On Sunday, Nechemia and I returned to Van Wyck. We had a meeting scheduled with the director of the hospital, but something else was drawing me back. Perhaps some part of my subconscious mind was lagging behind and hadn’t caught up to the news that the… patient wasn’t my own.

In the hospital, we were told that DNA testing had identified the patient as Natalie Batowski, a 15-year-old daughter of Russian immigrants, raised by her mentally ill mother. We also found out that after a similar case of mistaken identity, new laws had been passed about identifying victims, but protocol hadn’t been followed, and that was how the mistake occurred.

“I want to see her,” I told Nechemia on our way out.

“The… patient?”

That was what we were calling her. The… patient. But now she had a name. An identity. A history.

As we rounded familiar hallways, passed familiar nurses, and headed to the familiar room, my heart beat erratically and I felt like I would be sick. My body remembered. My mind knew these hallways no longer held the pain and terror, but my body did not.

In room 411, I tiptoed toward the bed and looked down at… the patient.

Natalie.

Natalie Batowski. A young girl from an underprivileged background who was so critically ill, and was about to have her life terminated through removing the life-saving machines that were keeping her alive.

“She’s going to die,” I whispered to Nechemia, who stood silently beside me.

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Not by Accident

He nodded. “Yeah…”

“We need to fight for her.”

I felt Nechemia’s eyes turn to me in surprise. “What do you mean?

Why?” What did I mean?

I couldn’t explain it. Or maybe I could. I had held this girl’s hand, cried into her bed sheet, sat beside her day in and day out for five eternally long days and nights.

“Malky, they barely listened to us when they thought we were her parents. They’ll never care about what we say now that we’re not.”

I knew he was right, but I could not get the image of her out of my mind. Sitting at her bedside and thinking she was my child had irrevocably attached me to her, and I couldn’t force my mind to let her go.

In the days that followed, a continuous flow of calls flooded our phones. As news of the story went viral, friends and relatives were calling, the yentas of the town were calling, random strangers were calling, the media was calling, and lawyers were calling and promising a major lawsuit.

But in the heart of all of this unexpected and very unwanted exposure, I did not forget about Natalie Batowski.

“You know,” I said to Nechemia, “We sort of have a hold over the hospital because we can sue them and drag them through the mud with the media. Maybe this happened because we are supposed to take this on and make a difference in the way people view life and death.”

Nechemia didn’t agree. Our story would be a sensation only until the next one hit the news. It wasn’t substantial enough to change the world. No one cared about what we thought about pulling the plug.

He was right. The media backed off with the arrival of coronavirus, losing interest in our little bizarre tale in the face of a fast-spreading pandemic and a global shortage of hand sanitizer. Lawyers stopped calling. People found other things to talk about.

But as our lives returned to normal, I continued to visit the hospital every day. Nechemia couldn’t understand it— and part of me did not understand it either—but he agreed to battle for the right to 39

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become Natalie Batowski’s legal guardian and keep her on the lifegiving machines for one more hour, one more day, one more week. It was a bureaucratic nightmare with small victories and many failures, but as Nechemia—who had always deferred the talking to me— took the stand to fight for the future of one young stranger battling for her life in a small hospital in Tuckson, New Jersey, I wondered how much the identities of the people we love are shaped by our own view of them.

“I don’t get it, Ma,” Chavie said one evening, after a particularly rough day at the hospital. “What are you doing this for anyway?

She’s brain-dead. She’s going to die regardless. I don’t think it’s even healthy to be so attached to her.”

Chavie had donned her I-am-16-and-know-everything voice.

Her words were condescending, and I felt the sharp edge of anger brew in my heart. It was the first time I felt that anger return. I had known it would. I knew I wouldn’t remain in an eternal state of gratitude; the old habits and patterns would slowly weave their way back. I opened my mouth to respond. I would lecture her about the sacredness of life and how one must never lose hope. I would tell her about her father who stared down the doctor and the father in Texas who wielded a gun to prevent the plug from being pulled on his son.

This lecture would be of love, of truth, of trust.

But suddenly I looked at her, really looked at her, and wondered if the uneasiness in her eyes hinted at a deeper meaning.

“What do you mean, Chav?”

“Nothing … but… Ma? How did you think some random person… was me?”

I shook my head, stricken. Chavie didn’t say it, but I saw it in the slight wobble of her chin. At the heart of her question, she doubted my love for her. If we truly loved her, shouldn’t we have known it wasn’t her on that bed?

How far apart had we drifted that she could question the intensity of my love?

My mind slipped back to those moments in the hospital when the doctors had rushed in and we thought we lost her. I knew then that if I had one minute with her, I would tell her she was loved. It felt 40

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Not by Accident

like the right thing to say, the only thing to say, but it somehow felt unnatural now when her life was not in jeopardy.

I opened my mouth, hesitating, and as I forced the words out, I wondered how I could have been oblivious that she was holding onto this notion that my love for her diminished when she made choices that I did not like.

“I love you, Chavie,” I said.

Chavie blinked. “I know that, Ma,” she said. “That’s why you’re fighting for that person to live. Because you thought she was me.”

She said it simply, like a fact as basic and intrinsic as love itself, and the relief was so intense, it brought tears to my eyes.

I didn’t know what Chavie saw in those tears—my relief that she was fine and healthy, my relief that she knew and felt my love, the horror of what we had lived through, the pain of what could have been— but she tilted her head to the side, sweet and gentle and just a little awkward as she reached out a hand and said, “I love you too, Ma.” I closed my eyes, letting those words wash over me. I love you too, Ma. Had it been the other way around? Was I the one who doubted her love back to me?

I had. Why would she do this to us, I had thought, if she really loved us?

It was complicated. It was all so complicated.

I love you too, Ma. I reached a hand out to her, and for one moment, as our fingers brushed together, I knew that no matter where the roads lead, and no matter what bumps were on the way, our journey had not ended that night, but in some way, began anew.

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BY ROBERTA CHESTER

Mothers and Daughters

There are no guarantees, but there’s hope

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I

t was Shabbat, and Anne stood in the synagogue in her usual spot next to the window in the last seat of the row.

Besides being the most inconspicuous seat, she could find, she could alternately rest her siddur or her Chumash on the ledge, depending on where they were up to. Here she could see without necessarily being seen. She was new to the neighborhood and to this particular congregation where all the women seemed to be good friends. One woman, who always sat in a seat opposite her and seemed to have a melancholy expression now and then, was the only one who greeted her with Shabbat Shalom at the conclusion of the service. “All the women there wear beautiful hats,” her friend Nechama warned her, giving her a black felt hat with a gold brocade band around the rim.

Anne thanked her, but she put it in the closet, preferring her dark beret. Besides she much preferred to observe the fancy hats rather than wear one herself. She didn’t envy these women their hats, their beautiful clothes, or even their husbands with whom they walked home after the service. But she would have given anything to be sitting next to her daughter or even to know that her daughter (ten hours from now) would be sitting in an Orthodox congregation in Seattle.

As she looked around her what she envied were the generations throughout the women’s section: mothers and daughters and granddaughters, davening together and intermittently exchanging smiles and hugs and kisses. One group in the middle row included a great grandmother holding a siddur in one hand and the sleeping infant of her granddaughter in the other. Even from where she stood the warmth of those exchanges was palpable. What she envied was the apparent implicit and rock-solid understanding in their lives, a certainty that the faith and tradition they had received from their parents had been passed on to their children and would be the heritage of their grandchildren. Watching them walk home from shul, the woman who greeted her among them, it seemed to Anne that this passage from one generation to the 44

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next occurred in a seamless, unquestioning exchange of what each generation could expect from the other, an unquestioned given that formed the basis of their lives.

Looking through the window, Anne could see the profusion of purple bougainvillea cascading over the balcony of the apartment across the street. Often, distracted from the prayers she would admire the young women with baby carriages and the children playing in the courtyard below, Staring at a little girl, delighted with the experience of taking her first wobbly steps she couldn’t help wondering about her own granddaughter, Michelle’s baby Julie, who would soon be a year old and might be also taking her first steps. .

Anne had seen her only once on a trip to Seattle the previous summer. Michelle had dressed her in the outfit Anne had sent as a gift, but she noticed that most of the pictures in the baby’s room were of Adam’s family. It was true that Michelle and Adam lived only a few miles away from his parents and sisters, and it was also true that Michelle had never been interested in taking photos. But why should she have been surprised? Ever since her marriage, Anne and Michelle had been estranged.

For the past few years they communicated superficially, both of them well aware of the level of pain just below the surface. It was ironic because their communication had once been so good and loving. Now they tiptoed on the few safe subjects they could discuss, avoiding the minefield of unresolved issues. “How could this have happened?” she asked herself. As it turned out, the values she had inherited were somehow not transmitted; rather, it had become a huge gulf between them.

Anne remembered what her father told her about her paternal grandmother Channah Bella, for whom she had been named. Channah Bella had won the battle to send her children to a public school, much to the despair of her husband and Anne’s grandfather, Moshe Chaim, for whom Michelle had been named. Strictly orthodox, an immigrant who came 45

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to New York alone at the age of 13, he was desperate to send his seven sons to a yeshiva. The oldest, Elias, always cantankerous even at five, had tied himself to the bedpost in protest. Channah Bella won the battle, “but Michelle’s father said “that victory was always the source of the arguments throughout my childhood.”

Many of Anne’s earliest memories were the stories her father had told her. When Anne’s father and two brothers – dressed in white robes with halos and wings - were angels in an Xmas play in their public school, Moshe Chaim ran into the school auditorium – his tzitzis flying, his beard disheveled, and grabbed the three little boys off the stage in full view of the startled audience. As a child Anne remembered being so relieved that her father hadn’t embarrassed her like that when she sang in the Xmas chorus, only asking that she mouth the words of the Xmas carols without actually saying them.

Once, this grandfather had been accosted in the hallway of a tenement on the Lower East Side of New York by a man who put a knife against his throat. “Swear you are not a Jew, and I’ll let you go,” he said, but Moshe Chaim refused just as a door opened and his life was saved. As he watched his seven sons depart, in varying degrees, from his strict observance, Moshe Chaim became more and more stern. Anne had a vague memory of sitting on her grandfather’s lap when she was two and pulling his beard. Anne’s mother told her it was one of the few times she had seen him laugh. Anne imagined him now in that other world turning to her grandmother who fought so hard to have her children become American, and shaking his head about Michelle, the ultimate effect of sending his sons to public schools so long ago.

But was that really fair, for what certainty did Anne have about anything, much less cause and effect? Even if her father had gone to a yeshiva, would he have sent her? And would she have sent Michelle to a Hebrew Day School? And on and on, she stood there, her siddur against her face, pursuing what had become an old and tedious argument.

Anne tried to recall that trip to Tzefat when she visited the grave of a rabbi who was given the moniker, Gam Zo, after his constant refrain, that everything is for the best. Anne wondered if she had 46

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whatever it takes to make that leap of faith.

Last week her sister in New Jersey had called Anne to tell her that their father’s grave appeared to be sinking, and that it was at least several inches below the surrounding grass. “It’s really strange,” she reported. “Of all the graves in the family plot, his is the only one.”

Coincidentally, it was just at this time that Anne had heard of a similar situation with the grave of her friend Bella’s father that had also sunk several inches.

Bella claimed that some woman, possessed of clairvoyance (there were no shortage of these in Jerusalem), had interpreted this to mean that Bella’s father was depressed, regarding a family situation. Anne immediately made the connection with her own father, his grave sinking, who had become literally and figuratively depressed over Michelle.

It was soon after she arrived in Jerusalem when she got the news.

She had just sublet a small apartment in Nachlaot, a neighborhood that had seemed charming and picturesque with its old buildings overgrown with ivy, its tiny gardens behind wrought iron gates, and winding alleys smelling of jasmine. All along her path, the green leaves and bright pink flowers of the cyclamen had broken through ancient rocks. The first night, in her newly rented apartment, however, she was rudely awakened by drops of water (“Raindrops are falling on my head,” she mused, trying to make a joke of it) from the leaky ceiling. She could now add that problem to a list of complaints beginning with falling plaster over the kitchen table, a stove that didn’t work, and the tap water that had a suspicious, oily odor.

But much as these annoyances disturbed her, it was the letter she received from Michelle that she read to the “ping pong” of the water dripping into her entire set of pots, that pained her far more. Written on yellow-lined paper during a break from her legal duties, she had informed her “…I have a boyfriend. His name is Adam, but you won’t like him because he isn’t Jewish.” She would always remember those words (a former but always English teacher reading critically), as out of joint with what she expected, as their lack of parallel structure.

But, she again argued with herself, hadn’t she been raised in a 47

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liberal midwestern town to value the worth and dignity of every human being, to believe in the family of mankind, and to fight for tolerance?”

Over the years Anne had been proud of Michelle’s accomplishments, especially the good projects she had undertaken on behalf of those unable to help themselves, like her pro bono work for AIDS patients and minority groups. In retrospect, Anne wished that Michelle had instead been committed to these values in a Jewish way and to living a Jewish life.

But Anne had never suspected that Michelle would someday abandon her obligation as a Jew, to the extent that during all the hoopla in progressive magazines about the dangers of circumcision, Michelle defiantly indicated that she if she ever gave birth to a boy she would seriously consider not circumcising him. Anne chalked up Michelle’s vehemence to plain and simple rebellion that she hoped would pass, but she knew that Michelle’s views were influenced by her close relationship with Anne’s brother, Danny, a proud progressive thinker.

Danny’s wife, Anne’s sister-in-law, who is Jewish, gave birth to a boy and Anne’s brother Danny announced that he and Lucy were considering not circumcising him. Their mother (of blessed memory) told Danny, without skipping a beat, that if their baby were not circumcised, she would not see him. Her mother’s quick and definitive response settled the matter before it became an issue.

Michelle was always in awe of Anne’s brother, a very accomplished lawyer, an ivy league honors graduate with left wing views and with whom Anne was careful never to discuss politics. Danny was thrilled when his niece decided to follow his example and study the law and Anne knew they were in close contact. Danny made it clear soon after their mother passed away that he would have no objection if Ethan married a non-Jew; certainly the coast would be clear now that he had nothing to fear from his parents. Michelle was aware of his position and approved; her close relationship with Anne’s brother would not have been so painful if Anne had not resented Danny’s influence on her daughter.

Anne debated going to Michelle and Adam’s wedding recep48

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tion. The ceremony, she was told, would be an elaborate affair, performed by a priest and a Reform rabbi. She decided she would go if Michelle agreed to one condition: “Will you raise your children as Jews,” she asked her, not mentioning how important that answer would be in terms of Anne’s decision.

“This will be a joint decision with Adam, who is not into any religious practices aside from having a Xmas tree (which really doesn’t count). Sorry, mom, it is really not something I can answer without consulting with Adam and to tell you the truth it’s not something we care about.” After Michelle’s response, Anne was inclined not to go at all. It was a blessing that the morning of the day she was to purchase her ticket she broke her ankle. She blessed Hashem for sparing her this experience where she would have been alone among her relatives shedding tears of sadness As Anne listened to the wonderfully familiar melodies that she always found very comforting, she could not suppress the painful images of her daughter and her brother, her parents and grandparents. Although she experienced these memories all week, it was in shul on Shabbat that they were more vivid and painful. She didn’t know any of her fellow congregants but she felt a comforting kinship knowing she was not alone in her loyalty to her ancestors for whom Judaism was nothing less than their life force, and to which they were faithful through countless centuries of persecution. Do we not owe them anything, especially because we are now free to express that life force? How, Anne wondered, can Michelle and Danny both take that for granted, when so many members of their family were killed in the Holocaust? Even though she might never exchange a single word with any of these people around her, she knew they would have the same feelings of allegiance and loyalty and the same commitment to maintain Jewish traditions from generation to generation.

Now Anne’s relationship with Michelle was confined to e mail messages every few weeks and on-line baby pictures of her new daughter. Regardless of everything that had happened, the eventual estrangement from half her family who condemned Anne for her intransigence, yet failed to notice Michelle’s inflexible attitude, she 49

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had to see that baby.

During her visit to Seattle, Anne learned that the baby’s paternal grandfather (who had died several years previously) was a refugee from Holland during the Holocaust, and was born a Jew. Anne was told, rather matter-of-factly that Adam’s dad never revealed the fact that he was born Jewish until just before he died after being very ill. Actually, Adam was, by any definition, the son of a survivor with all that designation connote. Anne listened to this news, remaining silent. Maybe, just maybe, Anne thought, this baby would redeem an entire family that had been lost. Anne couldn’t resist speculating about the fact that Michelle’s father-in-law had lived a lie, reaching the age of 65 (when he was almost “home free”) without owning up to the fact of his birth.

If these past six years in Jerusalem had taught her anything it was that the consequences of all our actions fulfill something so vast and inexplicable, it boggles the mind to even attempt to comprehend it.

Is this why, according to the Baal shem Tov, we are forbidden to be sad as if it is presumptuous of us to assume we know the whole story when it is a circuitous route where the only reality is constant surprise?

The baby was named Julie, after Adam’s maternal aunt. When Anne saw her she could feel that this baby had something special. If it were true that the soul is on a journey from one incarnation to the next, there was no telling who Julie might really be. Behind those bright dark eyes and her incredibly sweet and thoughtful expression, there was a Jewish soul, and who could know what her destiny would be and her role in the mystery of future events?

She sat in the back of their car, she and the baby staring at each other for at least half a minute during which Anne felt some communication. “Be a Jew,” Anne said to her with her eyes, “Be a Jew, little Julie. I will be waiting for you.”

In the months that followed, Anne was delighted to hear that the baby had an assertive, feisty personality and a definite mind of her own. “Someday,” she often thought to herself, “this child may rebel and search for the spiritual dimension in her life, something her parents expected her to find on her own. I will be the exotic grand50

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mother, and she will come looking for me, and I will be here waiting for her, here in Jerusalem. It was a reason to stay, not to be discouraged by difficulties, to put her physical roots in the same sacred ground as her spiritual roots. This child, searching to feed the spark within her, might find her way to Anne’s door; it was a daydream, but it could come true, especially if she focused on it heart and soul.

In Israel, didn’t they say that anyone who doesn’t believe in miracles isn’t a realist?

In the two years since the marriage, it was in the synagogue that Anne felt the power of her prayers, as if her own energy combined synergistically with the collective energy of the congregation. Looking down at the men below she felt that her prayers were riding on the energy of theirs, that her words were holding fast and flying on the strings of their tzitzis. She felt a surge of power, of hopefulness that somehow all would turn out for the very best. It was important to pray alone, too, but perhaps a minyon is the minimum requirement for a critical mass with enough energy to move heaven and earth.

And then she reminded herself of the strange, inexplicable experience she had had years ago in a shul in Connecticut. Anne had lost first her father and then her husband in a car accident and was feeling very despondent. Suddenly she had seen a brilliant light coming from the ark and had heard music, a sound she could only describe as being not of this world. Then she had had the overwhelming feeling that everything would be all right. It was only recently that she had begun to wonder whether it was a foreshadowing of what was to happen with Michelle, and that she had been given a message not to despair.

She was quite sure that only Divine intervention would inspire her daughter, so steadfast in a rebellion she couldn’t understand, to encourage her husband in that direction.

“Our children will make their own choices,” Anne had been told quite emphatically when she asked about how they would raise them. It sounded to Anne that they believed in the spiritual analogue of Dr. Spock’s claim that ten month old babies⎯ given a variety of foods to select on their own would automatically choose what 51

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they nutritionally needed If her daughter had any belief at all, it was in a political correctness based on the pursuit of happiness as each individual defined it. It was a credo for which she could find ample reinforcement in the prevailing values of the popular culture.

After invoking the names of her devotedly observant grandparents, the esteemed rabbis among her forefathers, the debt she owed countless family members who had perished just because they were Jews, there was nothing left to say to her that she hadn’t already said.

As often happens when you put your predicament “out there,” she heard countless stories of what parents had done in similar situations in which their children were marrying out. Perhaps she should have followed the example of a Holocaust survivor who was eating dinner with his daughter when she informed him she was marrying a non-Jew. Anne’s friend Ellen told her that “he pushed his plate way and said that this was the last meal he would eat.”

And when all the arguments she could muster failed, Anne had said, “you are breaking my heart,” risking the hyperbolic statement that was her last resort. Michelle only responded that Anne was breaking hers.

Anne had never told Michelle about the lengths to which she had gone in order to sabotage her daughter’s marriage. There was nothing she hadn’t tried within the limits of what was humanly possible.

She had gone to the Kotel every morning for 40 consecutive days to recite the Song of Songs, had every one of her mezuzot checked at considerable expense, made numerous long distance phone calls for advice. She had spent hours in the waiting rooms of many rabbis who promised to pray for Michelle and done more than she cared to remember that clearly crossed the line – at least in her mind – of what was considered permissible and what was an avoda zora, and therefore forbidden. Even if she hadn’t crossed that line, she had come dangerously close to violating the prohibition against consulting those who claimed supernatural powers.

But when pleading and prayers didn’t result in instant gratification, Anne had resorted to what could certainly have been called “hocus-pocus.” A well-meaning friend referred her to a woman in a distant section of the city. The woman, who was regularly con52

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sulted by eminent rabbis, or so Anne had been told, had been quite emphatic that it would be necessary to get Adam’s left shoe. What might have been, at best, remotely possible if Michelle and Adam lived in Israel, was impossible almost 3000 miles away in Seattle.

“Isn’t there anything else that would be just as effective,” she pleaded with the woman, practically in tears having exhausted her reserves after wandering about the neighborhood for two hours before finally finding the right apartment. Sitting across from Anne, her eyes closed, her expression pensive, the woman insisted that nothing but the left shoe would do. Anne briefly entertained the idea, imagining hiring a “hit” man for the job. Suddenly she imagined Max, Michelle’s and Adam’s enormous lab biting her surrogate thief as he fell out the window, shoe in hand. The whole story, “Jerusalem Mother-In-Law Pays Someone to Steal Son-in-law’s Left Shoe” would appear in that section of the paper reserved for offthe-wall situations.

On the advice of her friend’s husband, who claimed it was “beyond a doubt guaranteed,” she was advised to get a brick, inscribe it with a certain incantation, bake it in the oven with the challah for two consecutive weeks and then given it to him to place beside the kever of an esteemed rabbi.

An elderly man she met at the Kotel had advised her to break an egg into a glass which she was instructed to put behind her on the sill near an open window. To make sure the shutters wouldn’t close she had propped the heaviest books she could find - both her copies of the Norton Anthology of English Literature- to keep the shutters open. (A strong wind and she would have had a face full of egg – a somewhat appropriate punishment, she thought.)As soon as she awoke she had been instructed to say certain prayers and then – without a word to anyone – take the glass outside and throw it over her shoulder.

Anne was glad to be doing this at dawn when the neighborhood was asleep, but it was only later after she’d had time to think about it that she realized it was only the egg she was to throw, and not the whole glass. She was already depressed, and then felt totally undermined by her own gullibility. Out she went to clean up the mess she 53

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had made on the sidewalk, quite sure that after all that trouble, she had canceled out the desired effect.

And besides all this and more, she had spent countless hours waiting to speak with mekubalim, made numerous phone calls to anyone she thought might help, recited so many Tehillim in a specified order that she needed a score card to keep them straight, and spent a small fortune supporting a subculture whose income, she realized, was dependent on women who wanted husbands, babies, and errant sons and daughters to return to the fold. But if she laughed, she was – like Sarah – eager with all her heart to believe.

Obviously, whatever she had done or tried to do had not been enough.

The afternoon of the Seattle wedding, which was late at night – allowing for the ten hour time difference in Jerusalem, Anne sat at the Kotel, eager to pray in the holiest possible place during this unholy wedding. During most hours of the day she would have had to edge her way in to get close to the wall, but late at night she could sit anywhere. Nowhere to be seen was the crowd of women begging, who would encircle her pleading in Yiddish and with their palms outstretched. She wouldn’t dare refuse them for fear that her prayers in addition to tzedakah would be more effective.

Thankful for the immense quiet, she brought her chair quite close to the wall, and pressing her face against the cool stone, Anne took a deep breath of the delicious scent that was unique to this spot.

The caper bushes were in full bloom, their blossoms resembling tiny fireworks, and here and there she saw turtle doves perched in their nests. The cracks and crevices of the huge stones were stuffed with tightly rolled pieces of paper, and there were even plastic bags full of messages tied to the twigs of the bushes. The papers that had fallen out of the cracks were heaped in small piles at her feet. It’s like G-d’s mailbox, she thought.

Tonight, she was one of only a handful of women coming and going in the cool night air and over the smooth, worn stones. She sat there all night sitting, alone except for one or two strange, disheveled women carrying cups of coins who were hovering about, and seemed to disappear and then materialize out of nowhere. The 54

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Mothers and Daughters

strange women, the echo of footsteps on the stones, the sound of the wind while she sat close to the wall; it was all so surreal as she imagined how a world away, in Seattle, her daughter was getting married.

She thought about her ancestors and how devoted they were to Judaism and imagined they were weeping with her. And she imagined her daughter’s wedding, her only daughter whom she loved, how it was all happening without her, her absence terribly conspicuous.

Now, almost two years later, she no longer frequently broke into tears, but it was still painful. Her relationships with other members of her family had suffered, and she could feel the distance from her brother and his wife, several first cousins, and other relatives who no longer spoke to her the same way or spoke to her at all. And there were in-laws she would never meet, wedding pictures she would not see, and anniversaries she would not celebrate. Often in the darkness of the night, she would ask herself whether she had handled the entire situation correctly.

In the shul in Israel where she was simultaneously lost in these thoughts and davening, she looked over the railing as the Torah was placed within the ark, and as she heard the familiar melody to the words “the Torah is a Tree of Life,” she wept. “Bring my daughter back,” she prayed, “help me to merit the blessing of watching her observe Your commandments.”

At the conclusion of the service, a speaker who announced various events, spoke about this being the yahrzeitt of a girl, the daughter of one of the congregants, who had been killed in a terrorist attack five years before when the entire country was reeling from a series of bus bombings. When Anne notice several people turning to the woman who nodded acknowledging their condolences, Anne realized that this was the only woman who always greeted her with a smile and “Shabbat Shalom. This was the same woman Anne watched as she walked down the street with her husband and married children. Anne was sure that there was hardly a moment that this woman was not thinking of her daughter’s absence, and the pain of that absence. Then Anne noticed an older woman whom 55

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she would have assumed was the grandmother of the baby girl she very gingerly cradled in her arms. From the snippet of conversation Anne overheard she understood that this woman, unable for years to conceive, had finally had a child and with tears in her eyes was acknowledging the many women giving her a mazal tov. Suddenly Anne was one of three mothers of daughters…all weeping different tears that morning.

There was so much she had to take on faith, and so little she really understood. She thought about the Baal Shem Tov who said we are forbidden to be sad. Could she hope for the possibility that a child might one day knock on her door looking for the connection to her heritage that Anne could give her? Imagining a grown-up version of Julie, this beautiful child with the large dark eyes suddenly appearing at her door in Jerusalem with the words “Hello, Grandma, I’ve come home.” Anne wondered whether this lovely dream would be the end of the story.

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BY DINA NEUMAN

The Note

Does sister know best?

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I

t wasn’t like I pulled the note out on purpose; what kind of person does that? It was there, stuck to the palm of my hand when I finished davening—please, Hashem, help me find Gav a shidduch! He’s nearly 30!—and it would have fluttered to the ground if I hadn’t clenched my fist around it.

I turned to put the note back into the crack between two stones, already jammed full of notes of every color and size, but the space that I had been standing in just moments earlier had been filled by a trio of pocket-sized Yerushalmi women in black scarves.

I guess, if you’re going to get all technical about it, I probably shouldn’t have opened it.

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The Note

Dear Hashem: Thank You! For everything good in my life—and I have so much good in my life! My parents, who unexpectedly respect and support my dream of living here, even though I miss them terribly. My friends, with whom I can have deep conversations about man’s search for meaning and also the relative merits of sock boots versus Uggs for an astonishingly long time. I have the cutest nieces and nephews in the world, and I have a great job in a totally frum female environment. I have a selection of amazing shiurim mere steps from my house that I get to choose from every single day, and—saving the best for last—I get to live in Yerushalayim! And Amazon ships to Israel! Thank You, Hashem!

(In retrospect, I should reverse the order of those last two things, I think.)

Well, this is nice, this writing down my tefillos on a piece of paper instead of saying them out loud! Because I don’t know if it’s like stage fright or what, but whenever I press my face against the Kosel stones, I can’t think of the right words to say. I end up mumbling, “Please shidduch me” or something extraordinarily eloquent like that, and then stumbling away apologetically and trampling half a dozen women’s toes as I trip my way backwards out of the plaza.

So for the sake of my pride, and other women’s feet, I decided to embrace my inner Asian tourist—and I didn’t even know I had one of those, because, weird—and write a note and find a nook to cram it into in the wall, where it will either stay until it disintegrates or falls to the ground and gets swept up in someone’s feet or the cleaner’s broom, which sounds like a really deep mashal for something deep, so let’s just pretend that that’s how I meant it.

Ack. See, this was going so well, and now I’m getting all tongue-tied—finger-tied? Is that a thing?—again. It’s so funny how I can talk to You in my room, in shul, and that one time when I totally wasn’t even a little bit lost on that 59

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ill-conceived hike in the desert when Rivky said, “Hey, let’s go on a hike by ourselves in the desert,” and instead of saying something sane like “Counteroffer, let’s get a coffee at English Cake,” we instead went on a hike by ourselves in the desert, because to be honest, I would do it again in a second, but this time, I’m thinking we should probably follow the markers, Rivky. Thank You, by the way, for sending those rangers out to get us before the coyotes did.

I’m sorry; when I started writing this note, I sincerely didn’t think it would include the word “coyotes.”

I don’t know. Maybe I get speechless because I feel so small in the face of the kedushah here, which leaches into your bones and your soul while you gaze up at that ancient wall, your hand upon a stone, knowing what’s there, just beyond reach…

Anyway. Hashem. I have an advanced degree in accounting and therefore make far too much money for a single girl living alone. It’s practically indecent.

Please, Hashem. If I’m supposed to be doing something else before I am zocheh to meet him—like, I don’t know, figuring out how to make Boston cream pie, or something? —please let me know, because I’m kind of stumped. I’m 27 years old. I’m ready.

Hashem, I know that before the dawn of the world, You made him just for me and me just for him. So I know he’s here, somewhere. Can You tell me where he’s hiding, because he must have found the world’s best hiding place, and I’m a little too old to be playing hide-and-go-seek.

I want to get married because everything I’m learning and— hopefully—implementing feels like rehearsals for the real thing.

I want to build a bayis ne’eman b’Yisrael for real. I want to build a household in which You would be proud to dwell.

Your daughter,

Hadassah Rivka bas Chava Chaya P.S. See You next Tuesday as per usual; same time, same place. * 60

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The Note

“No,” said Gav. The day that I found the note and accidentally put it in my pocket was hot and dry. As hot and dry as that pile of bleached bones I had seen while out on a hike—my first and definitely last—with my brother. “Isn’t this wonderful?” he had marveled, stretching his arms out to encompass the hard, compact earth at our feet, which had dried in a pattern of cracks and craters and swirls, the stunted, tough-looking trees, the mountains floating in the cloudless sky.

But all I could see was the pile of bones.

“Yes,” I countered, sidestepping a group of yeshivah bachurim, a gaggle of slow-walking high school girls in pleated skirts, a crowd of African women in matching clothing, Asians with cameras and big smiles, beggars with hands outstretched, baskets of bracelets made of red thread and silver at their feet, before coming up for air at the top of the staircase, away from the butter-colored stone, peppered with green shrubbery, of the Kosel. “Yes, Gav, and why not?

She’s perfect. She’s perfect for you!”

I tucked the phone under my ear so I could use my fingers to count the ways in which the girl I had tirelessly researched for my ungrateful brother and with whom he had gone out once—just once!—was perfect for him. “She is beautiful, inside and out. And she comes from a good family. And they have money, and they’re willing to support. And yichus! Did I tell you that she’s a direct descendant of —” “So you marry her,” Gav interrupted, which is exactly the kind of thing he says that makes me sort of wish I was an only child.

“Look, Bracha, I really appreciate everything you do for me,” he added, which is exactly the sort of thing he says that makes me forgive him in spite of myself. “But she’s not for me. We had nothing to talk about at all. She asked me what my idea of a vacation is. I told her a hike in the desert. She shuddered and asked, ‘Would I have to wear sneakers?’ She said the word ‘sneakers’ like someone else would say the word mucus.”

I shuddered myself, thinking of that pile of bleached bones, white and hot to the touch. “So who cares? You don’t need a wife to go hiking with you. You need a wife so that your tired sister can finally 61

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stop finding a wife for you.”

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“Don’t be sorry,” I countered. “Just take your head out of the clouds and come down here for a bit, to the normal world.”

“I don’t need someone to—to—make me homemade Boston cream pie,” Gav said. “Although, mmm, Boston cream pie, so that would be nice; find me someone who knows how to make Boston cream pie. But more importantly, I need someone who is sort of out of the box, someone who is witty, someone who sees the bright side of life, you know? Someone who likes real things. Someone who will understand me.”

“You sound like you’re around two years old when you whine like that,” I told my little brother. I sighed. “Okay. If it’s no, then it’s no. Onward and upward,” which is when a tour guide wielding a bright pink umbrella emerged from the street above. “Gotta go,” I said and hung up, ducking up and around just in time to avoid the hordes of wide-eyed, camera-wielding tourists following in his wake, asking me to take their picture. * For no reason at all, on the train home, I thought about Boston cream pie. And the next morning at work, when the talk in the office revolved around shidduchim, I felt a strange sense of unease.

And also of Boston cream pie.

“Shidduchim,” I started. “Don’t talk to me about shidduchim.”

“No one was,” Leora pointed out, looking up from a stack of forms she was collating.

“Looks,” said Esther, taking the bait. “That’s what shidduchim have been reduced to. Looks and money and family. Surface stuff.

Not what a girl is like.”

“Family isn’t surface,” I said, “and neither are looks and money.

It’s all sort of like a cognitive shortcut. Like, how much can you tell about a girl from a date? Nothing, really. Only what she wants you to see. So you find out about her family. You find out about how she presents herself. What else can you do?”

“Not say no because a girl has a brother that, I don’t know, went off, or isn’t as frum as everyone else?” Dassy joined in, calling from 62

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The Note

the open window of the office adjoining ours. “Not say no because she’s not a size four? Not that I speak with the voice of experience.

Okay, yes, you’ve twisted my arm—I speak with the voice of experience.”

“Size four?” Esther snorted. “As if. What’s wrong with a two?”

Leora waggled a finger at no one in particular. “It’s true. I say it all the time, don’t I? I We are focused on the outside without ever giving the inside a chance. The shidduch crisis is happening because everyone is so, so shallow.”

“What do you mean everyone?” Esther shook her head. “We are a bunch of married ladies—sorry, married ladies and im yirtzeh Hashem soon-to-be married ladies”—that was in the direction of Dassy and her office mate, Rivi—“who are just trying to help our friends and siblings. We’re not part of the problem, we’re part of the solution. Speaking of the solution...” Esther lowered her voice and raised her eyebrows at me as she asked, “Anything new with your brother?”

I sighed. I thought about Gav. I thought about how he had come to Israel yeshivah after high school and just stayed, in spite of my parents’ protests and then threats and then pleading. And how his shidduchim had more or less fallen to me as a result.

I thought of the countless dates I had set him up with—gems of girls, amazing girls, pretty girls from the best families—only to have him nix them immediately. I thought of the list of girls he had not yet gone out with, and a wave of weariness filled me with a desire for coffee and a nap, not in that order.

And then I thought about Boston cream pie.

“No,” I said to Esther as the strangest idea I had ever had formed in my head. “No, not yet, but maybe very soon.” * It wasn’t impossible, but it was close to impossible. After all, sure, the girl in the note said that she had an advanced degree in accounting and a good job, but who said the good job she had was even in accounting? Lots of people have degrees from the States and then come here and do something completely different. Like me; I worked as a copy editor, while my degree in special ed could 63

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be used to plaster the leak in the roof so that it would serve an actual purpose.

What else did I know about her? I studied the note under my desk. She lived near a place that had a daily shiur. Well, that could be anywhere. The shiurim could be in someone’s apartment, although that wasn’t likely; most people didn’t have a daily shiur in their house. So she lived near a school, or a shul, of which Yerushalayim had probably...a billion, give or take.

Okay. What else? She liked coffee at English Cake. How many English Cakes could there be in Yerushalayim?

“Like, dozens,” Leora said, looking up from her desk when I asked the question out loud. “One in Ramat Eshkol. One on Agripas. One on King George. And there’s more. Why?” “I like keeping track of them,” I said lamely. “In case I…need one.”

“Better English Cake than Irish Republican Army Cake,” called Dassy from her office. “A lot less violence with your coffee.”

I laughed, even though I wasn’t one hundred percent sure what she was talking about. I also wasn’t one hundred percent sure what I was doing. I had a list for Gav as long as my arm of all the right kinds of girls from the right kinds of families that I could set him up with tomorrow, if I wanted to. Why was I thinking about this one girl whom I knew nothing about?

Well, because maybe the note had stuck to my hand because I was davening for a shidduch for him.

And maybe I was trying to do what Gav had asked of me: I was thinking out of the box.

Way out of the box. Like, so far from the box that I couldn’t even see the box. This was silly. I should toss the note, or take it back to the Kosel and get back to my list.

Except I didn’t. Instead, I opened the note again.

What else did I know about her? She went to the Kosel every Tuesday. But when? The day was long. And even if I managed to bump into her at the right time and place, how would I even know it was her?

Well, it wouldn’t hurt to go to the Kosel on Tuesday. And it 64

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The Note

wouldn’t hurt to leisurely get a cup of coffee at the various English Cakes around the city, would it? And call a few accounting firms?

And go to a shiur for the first time in years? * “Gav said he hasn’t gone out since he said no to that last girl,” my mother said in lieu of “Hello, how are you.” “What’s going on, Bracha? Is it all getting too much for you?”

“No,” I said. “Ma, it’s been, like, a few days.”

“Well, he’s not getting any younger, Bracha, and neither am I.” “Well, I’m just working on…something.”

“Something?” My mother sounded wary, but not as wary as she would have sounded if I had told her just what the something that I was working on was.

“Listen, Ma. I just think—Gav is not saying yes to any of the girls you and Ta approved of. Sometimes I think we must be going about this the wrong way somehow.”

“Of course we’re going about this the wrong way!” my mother cried. “It’s all wrong! A boy, a single boy, who stays in Eretz Yisrael instead of coming home and letting his parents find the right girl for him? A boy relying on his sister for his shidduchim? It’s not right—any of it!”

“Gav is different,” I countered, and suddenly my doubts about my crazy quest eased, because I knew what I had just said to be true.

I had been setting up my dreamy, spacey, brilliant and utterly frustrating brother with girls who were exactly right.

Just not exactly right for him.

But the girl in the note would be. Her wit, her optimism, her love of the outdoors… There was no such thing as coincidence, and in this case, there wasn’t even room to pretend that there was.

“Ma,” I said, and I sat up straight even though she couldn’t see me, “I have a really good feeling about this next girl. I think she might be the one we’ve been looking for.”

I didn’t tell my mother how literal that last sentence was. * Two weeks later, I had been to the Kosel twice; I had gone to several fascinating shiurim, drunk more coffee than I had all year, and 65

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asked multiple all-frum, all-female accounting firms whether or not they employed 27-year-old single accountants, all while trying not to sound like a creepy stalker.

“But you are exactly a creepy stalker,” my husband pointed out.

“Everything you’re doing is exactly what a creepy stalker would do.”

“I’m not a stalker!” I shouted, waking up the baby and probably several of the neighbors. “I’m just—look, don’t you think Hashem dropped this note practically in my hands for a reason?”

“Maybe in the hope that you would respect the cherem d’Rabbeinu Gershom? Look, Bracha, you know nothing about this girl. And you have no real way to find her. Why don’t you just take a break from Gav’s shidduchim? Hand it over to someone else for a while. Or convince him to go back home, and let your parents take over.”

I probably would have, and maybe even should have, done something like that.

Except that the next day, I found her.

She was walking toward the Kosel on a Tuesday at Minchah time, wearing a tapered cream-colored top and a black skirt with two small pleats. The plaza was relatively empty, and I had just scanned all of the faces of the people there, looking for someone who would fit the mental picture I had formed of the girl who had written the note. I had come up empty—no one was even the right age—when a girl standing at the fountain called out, “Hadassah!”

And another girl, not half a foot away from me, turned her face in the caller’s direction and smiled. “Over here!” she said. Her carrying voice was demure and cultured. Her makeup was understated but perfectly applied. A pearl earring glinted in each ear. I watched as she took slow, measured steps toward her friend at the fountain, and then both of them walked toward the Kosel, and the chills rose from the base of my spine and all the way up to my neck.

I watched her daven, her perfectly ironed hair blowing slightly in the breeze that had stirred, lifting the heaviness of the heat for one wonderful moment.

When she finished davening, I walked over to her. “I hope you don’t think this is too weird,” I said, “but I know someone perfect for you.”

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The Note

Her cheeks flushed a becoming pink. “I mean, that’s really nice of you,” she said.

“See, I found your note,” I started to say, at the same time that she added, “But this is a little weird, no?”

I nodded hastily, because she was not wrong; this was a little weird, but that’s exactly what I was trying to do: something a little weird, a little different. “But see,” I tried again, “it’s because I found your note that you left in the Kosel.”

“My note?” She wrinkled her perfect little nose. “I would never leave a note in the Kosel.” She glanced at her friend who was standing at her side, and they both giggled, and in that second, I saw how young she actually was. Her eyes were open, merry, bright, untried by life and years of trying to find her other half. How could I not have seen it right away?

“How old are you?” I asked her.

“Nineteen,” she said, and giggled again.

“Sorry, too young,” I said, and she took her friend by the arm, both of them still laughing behind their open palms, and I walked stiffly away from them, keeping my flaming cheeks hidden.

What in the world was I thinking, looking for a girl whom I didn’t even know the first thing about? See, this is what happens when you try to do things differently, out of the box; you get humiliated. And rightly so.

The note wasn’t a sign; this was a sign, a sign that my husband was right. The note had come into my hand, yes. And all I was supposed to do with it was put it back where it came from.

I took the note out of my pocket. I squeezed it into a small, tight square and stuck it into the wall.

When I turned around, I saw that in spite of my care, it had fallen to the ground below. * When I arrived at work the next day, Dassy’s chair was empty.

That was mildly strange; Dassy was always at work before me. She lived practically next door, in that small, ancient walk-up right in between work and the community center that had always had this amazing lineup of speakers for women all day long. I’d thought of 67

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going to one after work, or maybe before, but who had the time?

Only single girls had time for things like that.

When I had first started working here, I had, of course, thought about Dassy for Gav. For one split second. First of all, her story was complicated; she was a whole lot frummer than her family. And she just…I don’t know. Out of town, maybe? Something about her was just not the type. It was the sort of thing you could see the second you looked at her.

“I was talking to my husband about what we were talking about,” Leora said as I settled behind my desk. “About how we’re all focused on the outside without ever giving the inside a chance.”

“In shidduchim, you mean?” I asked, but even as I did, I suddenly didn’t want to have this conversation.

“In shidduchim, in life, yes, exactly. And he said it was true, and not only that, but it shows a real lack of emunah. Do people think their life will be without problems if they marry someone who doesn’t have any problems on the surface? That’s what my husband said, and he’s one hundred percent right. It doesn’t work that way.”

“It’s true!” Esther looked up from her desk. “I’m glad he agrees.

No life is problem-free, and we do everyone a disservice by pretending otherwise, especially those wonderful girls who are just a little bit different, waiting for someone to see past all those externalities to who they are underneath.”

The door to the office opened. It was Dassy, holding a large Tupperware container, and after greeting her, the other women carried on with the conversation and I listened, biting the inside of my cheek. They talked about shidduchim as if finding the right someone was like selecting chocolates at Chocolove and you were intrigued by the one covered in the foil with the unusual pattern.

So you buy it. But when you unwrap it, you find yourself looking at an unfamiliar chocolate, one you might not like when you bite into it.

“Sure,” I said, interrupting Esther, my voice too loud even to my own ears. “See, it sounds so nice when you put it like that, like, sure, just look past the surface and give everyone a chance! But neither of you is speaking from current, real experience! You don’t realize that 68

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The Note

when it comes down to it, there’s a reason we stay in our boxes! It’s because the world is big and unknown, so why not hedge your bets and find something—whatever, someone—as close to picture-perfect as you can?”

“Isn’t that a lack of emunah, though?” Dassy interjected, her voice soft. “To reject everyone you see as less than perfect? Who are you to decide what it means to be perfect, anyway?”

I opened my mouth, and then closed it, because she didn’t get it.

How could I explain to her, and to the others, and most of all to Gav, with his wide-eyed idealism, his bizarre love of the outdoors and the unknown, that he most of all needed someone normal?

Someone vetted, on my list, not someone who fell from the sky? Or from the stones of the Kosel?

Dassy put her Tupperware container down next to the coffee station. “Help yourselves,” she said.

“What is that?” Leora, who was highly pregnant, waddled forward to see. She lifted the top of the container. “What did you bring?”

Dassy smiled. “Boston cream pie,” she said. “I just learned how to make it. But there’s a limit to how much of it you can eat when you live alone.”

Leora cut herself a generous piece, oohing and aahing. “Perfect texture!” she said. “This looks amazing! Dassy, will wonders never cease? An accountant who can bake!”

I looked at Dassy. She looked at me. I pushed away a fleeting thought—Gav would love a piece of Boston cream pie—and looked away first.

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BY CHAYA GROSS

The DivorcĂŠ

An unfair advantage

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A

s soon as Avrumi walked out of shul he knew that something had happened. It was only 8:30 in the morning, but he’d already missed dozens of calls and texts, all from coworkers. He was debating which person to call back first when his phone rang again. It was Yanky, the guy from the advertising department.

“What’s up?” Avrumi asked as he picked up.

“I guess you didn’t hear the news.” His tone was unusually somber. Avrumi’s heart skipped a beat. “What happened?” he asked.

“Ruvi’s wife,” he said. “She never woke up this morning.”

Avrumi stopped short. It wasn’t possible. How could this have happened? He had just seen her a few days ago in the office that he and Ruvi shared.

“They think it was an aneurysm,” Yanky continued. “She was fine when she went to sleep. The levayah is at 11 o’clock.”

Avrumi hung up the phone in shock. She was so young, probably not even 30.

He scrolled through his messages. They all basically said the same thing.

Baruch Dayan Haemes. Ruvi’s wife was niftar. Levayah at 11.

The levayah was packed. Ruvi’s wife had been a popular mechaneches in a local high school. The women’s section was jammed with high school girls all bawling loudly. Everyone was in shock. The men’s section was filled to capacity as well.

Ruvi was a man with a lot of acquaintances. Every member of his shul was there, as well as everyone from work. His family members were sitting up in front with him. They all looked terrible, crying hysterically. His father-in-law looked like he had aged 20 years since the last time Avrumi had seen him.

Ruvi’s wife had left behind four children. The oldest was nine, and the youngest, only a year old.

The levayah began. First, Ruvi’s father-in-law got up and spoke. He was sobbing so loudly that it was hard to make out he was saying. Afterwards the rav of the shul said a few words, followed by some of Ruvi’s brothers-in-law. Then Ruvi 72

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The Divorcé

took the mike. His eyes were red, but he was composed as he extolled his wife’s virtues.

Avrumi couldn’t help but wonder what Ruvi was really thinking as he spoke about his wife. Did he feel guilty about the years they’d spent together? Did he have any regrets about how he’d treated her? After sharing an office with Ruvi for many years, Avrumi was well aware of the kind of relationship they’d had, and it wasn’t pretty.

Avrumi had been privy to many of their conversations, as well as those that had never taken place. Whenever his wife called, Ruvi would groan loudly and often swipe Ignore. “I wish she wouldn’t badger me so much,” he’d say, rolling his eyes.

Ruvi’s wife didn’t badger him. Avrumi knew this because she hardly ever called. And even when Ruvi answered the phone, the conversations were short and clipped.

Ruvi didn’t have patience for family life. “I married much too young,” he would explain with a sigh. “I’m only 30 and I’ve been married for a decade and have four kids. I should have married late, like Shuey. He was a free man until the age of 25. I don’t know why my parents were in such a rush.”

Ruvi would often remain in the office until late and tell his wife that he was swamped with work, when he was really on the computer or his phone. He liked his kids, but he enjoyed hanging out at work more. He also loved going on vacation, but he preferred to go with friends. The one time he went on vacation with his wife, he told Avrumi that he needed another vacation when he got back.

“My wife is nice,” he said, “but maybe she’s a little too nice.

Know what I mean?”

Ruvi was the kind of guy who had opinions about everything and everyone. Most of the time they were negative.

That man who davens next to me in shul is very annoying...

The guy in the office across the hall is a dimwit... The gas attendant this morning was a total moron...

Surprisingly, or maybe not surprisingly, Ruvi had a lot of friends. He was the life of the party—but woe to the person 73

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who got on his bad side. Ruvi’s wife had never stood a chance. She was a gentle and soft-spoken woman who had endless patience for her children and students, but Ruvi had no patience for her. She got on his nerves. She irritated him.

Everyone wept as Ruvi choked up and thanked his wife for everything she had done for their family. When the levayah was over, Avrumi went to the cemetery for the burial. He watched as the body was put in the ground and covered with dirt. Then he went back to his car.

He thought about the poor young woman whose life had ended too soon, and the fact that she had never been appreciated by her husband. He understood what that meant, because he too was stuck in a miserable marriage. His wife had never valued him, respected him or wanted to spend time with him. He could have stayed in the office 24/7, and his wife wouldn’t have cared.

Something had died in Avrumi after he got married. As the years passed he had given up hope and resigned himself to his fate. Now, however, after being confronted with death, he suddenly realized how much he wanted to live. He didn’t want to die so unloved, so unappreciated. As he drove home, he couldn’t stop thinking about it. He came to the conclusion that where there is life there is hope, and he resolved to make the most of it. When he got home, he sat down with his wife and told her he wanted to start fresh.

“I want a real marriage,” he said. “And the only way it’s going to work is if we go for help.”

At first she reacted with shock, then with cynicism. “Nothing will ever change unless you change,” she sneered. But he was determined not to lose this battle. After lots of begging she finally agreed to one session with a therapist.

“But only one,” she said. “It’s going to be the biggest waste of time.”

The first available appointment was in two weeks. Avrumi felt cautiously optimistic.

A week after shivah, Ruvi was back in the office.

“You didn’t have to come back so soon,” Avrumi greeted him. “I could have filled in for you.”

“I needed to get back,” Ruvi replied. “I have to keep myself busy.”

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The Divorcé

Ruvi was more subdued than usual but he threw himself back into his work, and if Avrumi hadn’t known it, he would have never guessed that Ruvi’s wife had died a mere two weeks ago.

“How are your kids taking it?” Avrumi asked.

“It’s tough,” Ruvi said with a sigh. “My wife was everything to them. You know me; I’m not as good a parent as their mother was.

I never saw them much during the week. She was the one who sat on the floor and played with them for hours. I can’t do that. I wish I could, but a tiger doesn’t change its stripes. I’m never going to be that kind of parent.”

Avrumi thought about his own wife and wondered if she ever played on the floor with their kids. She probably did when she was in one of her good moods. But if anything set her off she was a wreck for days, ignoring the kids, the house and her husband. He often took over when she was in a snit. He wondered what kind of mood she’d be in tonight when they went for their first session with the therapist.

He didn’t need to wonder long. As soon as he came home from work he could figure out the lay of the land. The house was in shambles and the kids were watching an Uncle Moishy video while his wife was holed up in her room. Avrumi didn’t think she’d attend the session, but to his surprise she did.

It took only a few minutes to realize why; she viewed it as an opportunity to vent. Rather than listen to what the therapist was saying, she went on and on about being the victim of her rotten, clueless husband. Avrumi cringed as she hurled accusations at him that weren’t true. By the time the session was over he was emotionally drained, but determined to continue.

After three sessions his wife called it quits.

“I refuse to go there anymore,” she told him. “If you need help, go on your own.”

The next morning Avrumi couldn’t get out of bed. He was enveloped in a thick fog of despair. It was the first time he ever showed up late for work. The next day wasn’t any better. He did everything by rote—get up, daven, come home—and was totally unmotivated to do anything. When he found himself spending more time in bed 75

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than being productive, he knew he had to do something. He wasn’t in a good place, so he continued going to therapy by himself. He needed to speak to someone he could tell the truth and pour out his heart. To the world, he looked as if he had everything going for him, but inside he was a broken man who desperately longed for a peaceful, loving home. The therapist prescribed antidepressants and helped him work through his pain and disappointment.

Avrumi tried everything he could think of to save his marriage.

He helped out more at home, took his wife out, and refused to be baited into fighting with her. But nothing helped. Some days were better than others, but most days he went to bed feeling like a failure. The only time he felt a semblance of normalcy was at work.

There, he could be a regular, normal person who was respected and treated like a valuable human being.

Then his therapist told him what he suspected all along.

“Your marriage is never going to change unless your wife goes for real help,” the therapist said. “She has some serious issues she needs to work on.”

Their marriage was beyond hope. He could either suffer through it for the rest of his life, or he could get out. It was a brutal decision to make because there were three children to consider. But he knew deep down that he would be a better father if he didn’t live with their mother. Living at home, he was barely functioning. He’d lost a considerable amount of weight, and even some coworkers had asked him if he was feeling all right.

It was ironic that something had changed in Avrumi the day Ruvi’s wife died, but it didn’t seem that much had changed in Ruvi.

“How you are holding up?” Avrumi asked him.

“I’m okay,” Ruvi replied. “Maybe I shouldn’t say that. I should probably be overwhelmed with sadness, but I don’t feel that way.”

“Everyone reacts to grief differently,” Avrumi replied.

“I get so many letters in the mail from students telling me how much they miss my wife. My children don’t stop crying. I feel bad for them, but I don’t have a gaping hole in my heart the way others have described it. I never go to bed at night wishing I could tell my wife something.”

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The Divorcé

That’s because you never liked her, Avrumi wanted to tell him, but instead he said, “You must be a very strong person.”

Avrumi wondered if his wife would pine for him if he suddenly died. Probably not. His children certainly would. He spent a lot of time with them, reading books and just hanging out. He loved them more than he loved himself.

After a year of trying to save his marriage, talking to rabbanim and seeing his therapist, Avrumi gave his wife a get. She hadn’t even fought to stay together, but she fought him on everything else. By the time he was done, he had lost most of his money as well as his reputation. He moved into a small apartment across town and tried to go on with his life but it was hard, as there was no one to brace his fall. Society wasn’t very kind to divorced people. When Ruvi lost his wife, so many organizations had stepped in to offer their assistance. Friends and strangers alike had rallied around the young widower. But when Avrumi’s marriage crumbled, no one picked up a telephone or even commiserated with him. Seemingly overnight, he went from being a respected family man to a selfish lout who had abandoned his family, and he was treated as a pariah. Conversations stopped when he walked into the coffee room at work, and in shul he felt like an outcast. And while Ruvi’s children were being showered with love and attention, his children were regarded with pity.

Avrumi had always been too proud to share with anyone what was really going on behind closed doors. His wife, who could be so cruel to him in private, was a put-together, confident woman in public.

No one understood why he’d gotten divorced. It didn’t help that his wife was blaming everything on him. It always amazed him how she could be so sweet in public and so wretched in private. Wherever he went, he felt as if people were silently judging him for his actions. He had made an unavoidable choice, but he had lost his standing in society.

Fortunately, the one thing he didn’t lose was his precious children.

He had joint custody, but even that could never replace being a fulltime father. On the days he didn’t have them he felt a void in his heart, and sometimes he second-guessed his decision to terminate his marriage. But after even the briefest interaction with his ex-wife 77

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he knew he’d done the right thing, no matter how heartbreaking it was.

“You were jealous of my singlehood,” Ruvi joked to him at work.

“See? Being single isn’t so bad after all.”

For Ruvi perhaps, but for him it was torture.

“We should hang out together and enjoy our freedom,” Ruvi suggested.

Avrumi had never felt so distant from another human being. The similarity between the two of them began and ended in the fact that they were both single; they had nothing else in common. Avrumi would never characterize his existence as “free.” For half the week the children lived with him, and the other half was devoted to working in order to replenish his bank account.

“How do you have time to hang out?” he asked Ruvi. “Aren’t you busy with the kids?”

“Between my parents and my in-laws, I hardly ever see them.

They’re somewhere else every night.”

Avrumi’s parents were still struggling to understand why he’d gotten divorced. They felt that there was no excuse for breaking up his family, and they weren’t very forthcoming when it came to lending a helping hand.

“In my day, you just rode it out,” said his mother. “No one ever said that life is a bowl of cherries.”

His father voiced the same sentiments, and so did his siblings.

They all thought he’d committed a very selfish act by getting divorced.

“And that’s aside from all the organizations that keep calling and offering their help,” Ruvi continued. “I never knew there were so many.”

Avrumi didn’t either. Not one organization had reached out to him to see if he could use a little assistance. When children lose a parent, people are more than willing to pitch in. But when a parent gets divorced, the children are left to flounder.

“I keep getting invited to these Shabbatons for single parents,” Ruvi went on. “I’m not really sure I want to go. But maybe if you go, I’ll tag along.”

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The Divorcé

“I haven’t gotten any invitations,” Avrumi replied.

“That’s strange,” Ruvi replied. “Maybe you haven’t made it onto their lists yet.”

It wasn’t strange. Avrumi knew that he would never be invited. He was learning very quickly that there were different rules for widowers and divorcés.

But the biggest difference between them had to do with remarriage.

“Have you thought of getting married yet?” Ruvi asked him after he’d hung up with yet another shadchan.

“Yes,” Avrumi admitted, “but I haven’t gotten any serious offers.”

“I should have known,” Ruvi said with a laugh. “You were always a family man. I’m just not ready to tie myself down to someone again so fast. But the shadchanim don’t stop hounding me. The truth is that I’m kind of enjoying my independence. There’s no pressure. No one wants to know where I am every second of the day or why I came home late. No obligations—it’s a mechayeh!”

Avrumi was ready for the obligations. He really wanted to have someone with whom to share his life, but it was hard to find an eligible match when his reputation was in shambles and no one wanted to date him. The shadchanim barely called, and when they did, the women they suggested were a far cry from what he was looking for.

At first, he assumed that it was always harder the second time around. He was no longer the fresh-faced bachur with the top name in yeshivah whom every father wanted as a son-in-law. Eventually he realized that it had nothing to do with his stage in life, and everything to do with his status as a divorcé. People were afraid of marrying someone who was blemished, not to mention the fact that he shared custody of three children. He knew this because Ruvi was being bombarded with calls.

Avrumi had almost despaired of ever finding his match when Mrs. Spira the shadchan called him up one day. Mrs. Spira wasn’t just any shadchan; she was the only one who truly believed his version of events and not the rumors being whispered behind closed doors.

“I have the perfect woman for you!” she said excitedly.

Avrumi wondered cynically if “perfect” meant that she was a 79

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woman with a pulse who was interested in meeting him.

“Her name is Sheva Green,” Mrs. Spira continued. “She lost her husband to cancer a few years ago and has two children. Everyone has only the nicest things to say about her.” The shadchan continued to rave about her, and Avrumi felt his first glimmer of hope.

After making a few calls about her he knew that Mrs. Spira wasn’t exaggerating. Everyone did have only the nicest things to say about her! She was everything he’d ever dreamed of, someone who was warm and always put her family above everything else. She was grounded and smart, and most important of all, kind. She’d had a beautiful marriage and been extremely devoted to her husband until his untimely death.

He was ready to meet her. He called Mrs. Spira, and she promised to get back to him as soon as she’d spoken to Sheva.

“She’s looking into it,” Mrs. Spira informed him a day later. “I have a good feeling about this! Just from talking to both of you I can see that you’re compatible. You have the same interests and goals.”

For the first time since his divorce Avrumi finally allowed himself to envision a rosy future. All of his pain and suffering would have been worth it if he married a woman who was not only like-minded but caring. He waited anxiously for Mrs. Spira to call back, but the phone remained silent. Unable to bear the suspense any longer, he called her.

“I’m sorry,” she apologized. “But she isn’t ready yet.”

Avrumi was devastated. “Did she give you a reason?” he wanted to know.

“Honestly, I knew it would be a hard sell,” Mrs. Spira admitted, “being that she’s an almanah and you’re a divorcé.”

“Is that the only reason she’s saying no?” Avrumi asked.

“Of course not,” the shadchan said quickly. “I mean, she heard wonderful stuff about you, but she’s still nervous.”

“About what?” Ruvi asked.

“Everyone is more careful the second time around. Her first husband was really very special, and family is her top priority,” Mrs. Spira explained. “It told her that that is exactly the kind of man you are, but she’s worried that where there’s smoke there’s fire. I’m sure that in the end she’ll be able to sift through the rumors and get to 80

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The Divorcé

the truth, but you need to be patient.”

Waiting was sheer agony. A week later he called Mrs. Spira again.

“Another man was redt to her who’s a widower and she’s pursuing it,” Mrs. Spira informed him. “Right now, she’s waiting to hear back from him. If he’s not interested, she’ll go out with you. But between you and me, I think you have a very good chance. He’s a chashuveh guy who had a beautiful marriage but I think he’s being too picky.”

“I hear you,” Avrumi said quietly.

“It’s not like you don’t have a good reputation,” she reassured him.

“I just think she feels they’ll be more on the same page. A divorce is a whole different thing from a death.”

Avrumi didn’t need to hear anymore. He knew what she was really saying. A divorce is something that is looked down upon. Having a spouse die is an unfortunate circumstance.

He had given selflessly of himself for all the years he’d been married, swallowing bucket after bucket of verbal abuse for the sake of shalom bayis. He’d only thrown in the towel when his life became unbearable. People assumed that divorce was a choice, but many times there was no other option.

He tried to distract himself at work from his lack of success at shidduchim, but Ruvi kept bringing it up. “I wish everyone would stop pressuring me to get married,” Ruvi sighed as his phone buzzed for the umpteenth time that day.

“Who’s pressuring you?” Avrumi asked.

“My parents, the shadchan—even my in-laws. Everyone is laying a guilt trip on me, but I’m not ready to do it yet.”

“So don’t!” Avrumi advised him.

“It’s not so simple,” Ruvi said with a sigh. “Everyone is saying I have to move on with my life and that I need to do it for my children.

But the thought of getting married again makes me claustrophobic.”

Avrumi wished he had such problems.

“Then there’s this woman who keeps getting redt to me,” Ruvi continued. “Everyone says I should go for it, but I think the only thing we have in common is that we’re both widowed. The information I’m getting about her reminds me of my wife.” He was silent a minute. “Maybe I shouldn’t say this, but I don’t think my wife and I 81

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were ever such a good match.”

“Then why are you even contemplating it?” Avrumi wanted to know.

“I don’t know,” Ruvi said. “I’m getting so much pressure from all sides to settle down. At least she has only two children. Most of the women who are redt to me have more. But I can’t imagine having to parent someone else’s kids. I barely have the patience for my own.”

“Maybe you should find someone who’s single,” Avrumi suggested.

“Ha! That’s not going to happen. This is the best I can do. But I have a feeling that she’d be a better match for you.”

“Who is she?” Avrumi asked.

“I’ll redt her to you when I say no,” Ruvi said. “But I’m not ready to say no just yet.”

Mrs. Spira never called back. And when Avrumi called her, her answer was the same. “She heard nice things about you, but she’s still waiting for the other man to get back to her.”

As much as he wanted to escape talking about shidduchim at work, he had no choice but to listen to Ruvi’s musings.

“I just can’t do it,” Ruvi said. “I don’t want to. I think I’m going to tell the shadchan no. I married the wrong person once. I don’t think I should do it again.”

But despite all his misgivings, the next day Ruvi came to work and said that he’d scheduled a date. He dragged out the dating process for a while and was having panic attacks because the woman reminded him of his first wife. But the shadchan pushed, his parents encouraged and his in-laws even gave their stamp of approval, even though no one could ever take the place of their daughter. And so, Ruvi said yes to the girl he never wanted to marry, Sheva Green.

Standing at the vort, noticing the genuine smiles of happiness on everyone’s face, Avrumi knew that if he ever found a girl who was perfect for him, no one would rejoice like this. They would still blame him for tearing his family apart.

As he walked out of the hall and went home to his small apartment, he wished he had a grave to cry over, and that the world would cry along with him.

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3/22/20 8:16 PM

As I stand in candlelight With my hands upon my eyes There's a passion in my prayers That rends the skies For a mother's tears can shatter Every gate that bars the way All the heavens will echo those words that mothers say

The Bonei Olam Song Released for the Vzakeini Initiative COMPOSED BY Miriam Israeli and Baruch Levine

‫וזכני וזכני‬ Take my children by the hand Help them walk along Your way May they never go astray May they know You As I know You Oh, Hashem , accept my plea Give me children who'll give nachas

‫וזכני‬ PERFORMED BY Baruch Levine Benny Friedman New York Boys Choir Shir Vshevach Boys Choir

As I stand in candlelight While my home is dark and still There's a void inside my heart I long to f ill Will I ever be a mother Will that blessing come my way

Lyrics by Miriam Israeli

Will I stand by the candles with gratitude and pray

Full song available on mostlymusic.com

‫וזכני וזכני‬ Take my children by the hand Help them walk along Your way May they never go astray May they know You As I know You Oh, Hashem , accept my plea Give me children who'll give nachas

‫וזכני‬ ‫וזכני וזכני‬ ‫יעדער איינער וויל דאס זעהן‬ ‫בעטן מיר ביי דיר אצינד‬ ‫נחת פון א יעדע קינד‬ ‫זרעא חיא וקיימא‬ ‫און מ'לאזט א טרער דערצו‬ ‫יעדע משפחה מיט די ברכה‬ ‫וזכני‬

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www.boneiolammiracles.org 646.506.3900 text ‘MIRACLES’ to 484848 vzakeini@boneiolam.org

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