AIM Pesach Issue by Ami Magazine

ISSUE 463

r e h hig

12 Nisan 5780/2020

Pesach 5780

Pesach Royalty MITZVAH MOSAIC

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Mini Monarchs FEATURE

Walnuts 12 THINGS

01/04/2020 10:54 PM

missio

mail

DEAR AIM!!!!!!!!!!!,

DEAR AIM!,

Thanks for such a perfectly perfect, interesting, informative magazine geared for teens! One of my favorite pages is “News Navigator”; I wish you could somehow squeeze even more juicy news in there! I also love Dina Neuman’s freaky short stories; keep those ghost stories coming! Nevertheless, it is with a heavy heart that I get down on my knees and beg you to kindly remove Simcha Perlman’s nonsense, even though all the youngsters seem to idolize him; idolizing is bad and doing bad stuﬀ is bad. Can you please do a feature on myths?

Interesting ‘Mazing

HI, EVERYONE,

Tateh leben, ich vil dir ﬁr kashes fregen…

Irresistible Super

Do you start Mah Nishtanah with that Yiddish line? Or is Yiddish not part of your family tradition...and the Jewish language your family has chatted in for generations is Ladino? Or maybe, just maybe, your family converses in Bukori or Juhuri or Judeo-Arabic or Judeo-Aramaic or Judeo-Median or Judeo-Berber? Yes, these are ALL still-existing Jewish languages!

Terriﬁc

Yiddish, as you probably already know, developed around a thousand years ago; it’s a mash-up of German, Hebrew, some A ramaic and a dash of whatever language was spoken in the countries the Yidden brought it to. Ladino, on the other hand, was born in Spain and started out as a blend of old Spanish, Hebrew, Arabic and Aramaic...and then when the Yidden were kicked out of Spain, Ladino inherited words from the diﬀerent countries those Yidden landed in. Which Jewish language has the second-most speakers today, after Yiddish? That distinction goes to Judeo-A rabic, the language the Rambam himself often wrote in! It has several diﬀerent dialects, spoken by Yidden from Arabic lands. In case you’re wondering about the other languages I mentioned, Bukori is spoken by Bukharian Jews, Judeo-Berber is a Moroccan-Jewish language, Judeo-Median is from Iran, and Judeo-A ramaic hails from parts of Iran, Iraq and Turkey. What about Juhori? Turn to the feature to hear about that one....

The best

No matter what language you speak, and no matter what part of the globe you hail from, we all share the same wish: that this be the year we are redeemed from galus. L’shanah haba’ah b’Yerushalayim! Wishing you all a chag kasher v’samei’ach!

Waiting to hear from you,

Esty

Hilarious Enchanting Brimming with fun Enchanting Stupendous

I absolutely love you. You’re amazing. You entertain me from licht benshen till Havdalah. Thanks for being the best mag on planet earth. Love, LALI FEIN, ZURICH, SWITZERLAND P.S. Thanks again. P.S.S. Pretty pretty please interview me in the “Growing Up In” column. Thanks in advance.

Lali, thank you, thank you, thank YOU! It’s fans like you who keep us enthusiastic about our jobs even when we’re working under quarantine conditions. You guys are all stupendous and the absolute best on planet earth...and deﬁnitely the entire galaxy. (In the interim, we did Growing Up in Zurich. We would’ve loved to hear from you too... Maybe you have something else to be interviewed about?) KIT! —Esty

I sincerely hope that this epistle will still make it into the universe’s best magazine, even while it contains (constructive) criticism. You’re welcome! FEIGY THE (CONSTRUCTIVE) CRITIC Feigy, here it is, your epistle! And I’m sure you’re happy that Simcha Perlman’s column has been retired...oh wait, he actually has a guest spot in this week’s edition. We hope you ﬁnd the other 62 pages perfectly perfect, though. :) Thanks for your letter; it was perfectly perfect too—constructive criticism and all. KIT!—Esty

DEAR AIM!!!, Thank you so much for an amazing mag. I decided to try out your weekly Parshah Project. Obviously it isn’t as good as the creature from Yehudis Mann. I’d love if you could put me in your mag this week. It would mean the world to me. I can’t wait for this week’s mag. Thank you. FROM TSOFIA SOLAIMANI (10 YEARS OLD) Tsoﬁa, your cookie creature looks super-cute; Yehudis Mann totally approves! Thanks for sharing the pic— it means the world to us! KIT!—Esty

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DEAR AIM-AZING AIM!,

DEAR AIM!,

HI, ESTY,

We really enjoyed making these salty snack pops. We love your magazine and look forward to it weekly. A big shout-out to Sheva Wittler, our best auntie, for making Aim! more aim-azing.

Thank you so much for such a great magazine! I especially enjoy “Perfect Storm.” It’s so scary. I can’t wait every week to read what’s gonna happen next!

Thanks so much for your great magazine.

YITTY GREENWALD

Love, THE WITTLER KIDS Wittler kids, we think Sheva, a graphic artist on our staﬀ, is the best too! Thanks for sharing the cute pic of the pops— and yourselves!— and KIT!—Esty

Yitty, that teddy with the paciﬁer cookie is so cute...but our eyes are drawn to the smiling fan holding it! Thanks so much for writing and sharing the pic. We hope you’re enjoying “Blackout” just as much. KIT!—Esty

I love reading it with my mummy and sometimes my savta. I just lost my very ﬁrst tooth this morning while eating an apple! Can’t wait to see my picture in your magazine. FROM MIRI AND HER SAVTA Manchester, England Congrats on the tooth, Miri! Here’s to many more fallen (baby!) teeth and many more days reading with your savta. Keep smiling!—Esty

DEAR AMAZING AIM!, Every Shabbos I run to read the Aim!. I really enjoy reading the comic and doing the Fun Stuﬀ. Thank you for making the Aim!. I really appreciate it!! Love,

Esty, we really appreciate you sending us a pic of our #1 fan...and for letting us know your favorite parts of the mag. Keep smiling and don’t forget to always KIT! —Esty

ESTY, YOUR #1 FAN.

Published by Ami Magazine Editor-in-Chief: Esty Weiss Features Editor: Dina Schreiber News Editor: Eli Katz Copy Editors/Proofreaders: Sandra Grunfeld, Rivky Bergstein Executive Coordinator: Zack Blumenfeld Illustrator: Deveo Studio Design: Rachel Adler Layout: Sheva Wittler Technological Consultant: Reuven Gruber Write to us at Ami Magazine, 1575 50th St., 3rd Floor, Brooklyn, N.Y. 11219 Call us at: 718-534-8800 Fax us at: 718-484-7731 Email us at: esty@amimagazine.org

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s w ne ator

TENNESSEE ALABAMA

navig

By Eli Katz

SOUTH CAROLINA GEORGIA

FLORIDA miami •

A peacock in a gard en. Peacocks can ﬂy, despite their ma ssive trains— but not too high or for too long.

as a matter

•

es: Gorgeous nuisanc g in ad re sp k oc ac A pe . et its tail on a stre

of fact

It costs about $500 to trap and remove a single peacock!

GUESS WHAT’S FLYING

their human neighbors are trying to not be easy. “Removing them is almost worse than the damage they inflict,” a sleep. They like screeching during the day, too: “The other day I was driving. local trapper named Glenn Close said. It was noon. A nd I heard a screech. It “It’s a workout trying to catch them.” One danger: if the peacock screams for sounds like a murder. You’re like—you help and his buddies show up. Once, can’t believe the sound of them. And I Peacocks. They’re gorgeous, birdGlenn was chasing a peacock when he almost, like, had an accident because brained show-offs that are also, inwas attacked by the peacock’s friend; of that. I jumped,” said local resident cidentally, loud-mouthed nuisances. he had to kick him off ! Tom Falco. Also? The peacocks are not Just ask the residents of Coconut very bright: When they see their own So, bye-bye birdies? Not exactly. First, Grove, a neighborhood in Miami that refl ections in cars, they’ll attack the the city is conducting a study on the is currently being terrorized by these “enemy,” damaging the vehicles! peacocks. And they won’t start any pretty birdies. How did peacocks eviction until November, when peacome to roam the streets of this leafy, A ngry residents would love to evict tropical neighborhood? It’s believed the peacocks but these birds are pro- cock chicks leave their mommy birdies’ nests. “The number one priority is the they were brought here by folks tected by law; Miami is officially a bird safety of the birds,” said City Commiswho thought they’d make gorgeous sanctuary. But after intense pressure sioner Ken Russell. In any event, exlive lawn ornaments. Ha-ha-ha. You from residents, the Miami City Comperts doubt removing ten percent will see, the peacocks missed the memo mission recently approved a plan to help much. In the meantime, residents that they were supposed to just strut trap and remove some of these troulike Andrews Candela will just have to around looking pretty. Instead, they blemakers…except, because of local deal. “I don’t want to remain forgotten roam around in gangs of 20 to 40 or regulations, no more than ten percent in a filthy, dirty peacock land as hosmore, gobbling up flowers and making of these birdies will now be sent off. a huge mess. They also enjoy screechtage to a group of birds,” Candela said. ing in the middle of the night while Getting rid of even that number will I don’t blame him for crying fowl. ro tip: If you want a lawn ornament, consider getting a plastic fl amingo. Investing in live peacocks might seem like a great idea... until they ruin your life.

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tween news

GROW AND BEHOLD

bizarre news

ON THE LOOSE What’s if—gasp—your city is under quarantine and your tooth starts to shake?! The tooth malach/fairy will not be able to come pick up your tooth and leave you money in its place! What a crisis! Do you have to Krazy Glue any shaky teeth to your gums until the pandemic is over? We could all use good news now, so I’m happy to report that, nope. The quarantine rules do not extend to

the tooth fairy. A t least, not in A rgentina, where one seven-year-old boy named Joaquin asked President Alberto Fernandez “if the tooth fairy will be arrested by police if she comes to collect my tooth from under my pillow.” Luckily, the president decided to grant the tooth fairy an exemption, which I’m assuming extends worldwide. Whew!

What has four wheels and flies? No, this time the joke does not end with “a garbage truck,” but a...Kei truck. The Kei trucks over at the Kei Truck Garden Contest to be precise, which are full of flora and fauna…and flying insects that think these gardens are the real deal. Every year, landscaping experts from all over Japan compete in the Kei Truck Garden Contest. The challenge: Turn the bed of a small truck into a gorgeous miniature garden... in just a few hours. Contestants go all out, even including elements like aquariums and miniature waterfalls in their designs. Do you live in the city with no place for a garden? Maybe you should try growing one in your family car’s trunk!

jewish news

DIG THIS You gotta wonder: What kind of Canaanite objects did our zeidies and bubbies ﬁnd when they entered Eretz Yisrael after 40 years of wandering ‘round the desert? New clues have recently turned up: Archaeologists have been busily unearthing a 3,000-yearold Canaani temple in Lachish in southwest Israel for the past few years—and

they’ve made fascinating discoveries! Some of the ancient stuﬀ they’ve unearthed includes pottery, jewelry— including two gold earrings—bronze cauldrons, decorated dagger blades and axes, arrowheads, beads and avodah zarah objects. How did all the drama go down in that ancient city? For info on the fall of Lachish, check out Sefer Yehoshua, Perek Yud.

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ah v z t i m saic

Pesach Royalt

t’s that time of year again—the time you get to be king/queen for a night! Here’s how we ﬂ aunt our royal side on Seder night to show we gained freedom from being slaves—though, sorry, if you’re on kitchen duty you’ll still have to do the dishes.

DINE and recline!

Sure, the Queen of England might eat her dinner with a super-straight back these days, but that’s not how royalty in ancient times did it. Back then, the elite of society ate while lounging around on couches, leaning on their left... which is why we do that at our Seder. The room you see here can be viewed in Pompeii, Italy.

PILLOWS

CHECK out this reproduction of a formal Roman dining room in a Spanish museum. Each couch was meant for one VIP who reclined on his/her left side on cushions while household slaves rushed in and out with food.

don’t belong at the dinner table these days— end of dis-cushion—unless it's at the Seder table! Like the elites of the old days, we lounge on cushions while eating.

P Alsac

Pesach pillow from Bulgaria, 1700s.

SOME even have

the head of the Seder on a special oversized comfy chair or a couch called a “hessa bet.” Check out the chairs here:

Ukraine, 1800s.

Barcelona Haggadah, produced around 1350.

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Spain, 1300s.

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alty

BEHOLD: So

much gold and silver! One reason we bring out our best dishes, linens and accessories is that, you guessed it, we’re royalty for the night!

Matzah bag, 1800s.

Washing bowl, Istanbul, Turkey, 1849/50.

Pesach towel, Germany, 1842/43.

Kos Eliyahu, Prussia, 1768.

Pesach pillow from Alsace, France dating to the 1800s. Pesach towel from Alsace, 1828/29

IT’S a wipe! Another sign of royalty is

Matzah Cover, Greece, late 1700s-early 1800s

we have our drinks poured for us. The head of the Seder will also have his hands washed for him at Urchatz and he'll dry it in a fancy shmancy towel.

Moritz Daniel Oppenheim Seder painting, circa 1867.

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Seder table cover, northwest Italy or southern France, ﬁrst half 1800s.

Bohemia, Czech Republic, 1850-1875.

Matzah bag, Bialystok, Poland, c. 1860.

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jjuudgsmetnt

hoit? wn du

LAST WEEKâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;S ANSWER: The boy threw the basketball, which got stuck in the tree. He got a bat to shake it out when a strong wind blew the ball out of the tree into the window, breaking the vase. As for Donny, he was late because his watch stopped. You could tell because his watch was a diďŹ&#x20AC;erent time than the clock on the wall.

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Written by Rachel Berger

I think the boy didn't realize the window was open and he was trying to throw the ball in the hoop; he broke the vase by mistake. And Donny was late because his watch is broken!

Donny is late because his case lock is broken and his stuﬀ keeps falling. Also, the boy wasn’t the one playing basketball; he’s holding a baseball bat!

YISRAEL SHLOMO FRIEDMAN

CHAYA’LA WEISSMAN

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IS IT TRUE THAT GRAPE JUICE IS A RELATIVELY NEW INVENTION? Thank you, Thomas Bramwell Welch, for your grape invention. We juice, I mean Jews, really enjoy it! Used to be, grape juice didn’t exist. That’s because every time you squeeze grapes into juice it comes in contact with yeast—from the skin of the grapes—and then ferments. The yeast gobbles up the grapes’ sugar and releases alcohol as a waste, turning it into wine! Enter A merican physician and dentist Thomas Bramwell Welch, who in 1869 came up with a method of pasteurizing (cooking at high temperature) grape juice to stop the fermentation process. Little boys’ white shirts would never be the same!

GREAT BALLS OF FIRE!

Saved by the fire! That wine bottle on your table might’ve only made it there thanks to a fire...a whole bunch of fires, actually. Last May, temperatures in Italy unexpectedly dropped below zero and winemakers were faced with losing their entire crop, as emerging buds would’ve frozen and died. To save their vineyards, they lit hundreds of torches in their fields— from far, the vineyards looked ablaze! A ccording to The Local Italy, the heat from 300 torches in about one hectare raises the temperature about 6 Fahrenheit degrees, a lifesaving difference for the plants.

BY AARON HIRSCHSON

PYRAMID SCHEME

A re the makers of A urumRed Gold wine drunk, charging $30,000 a bottle? Well, probably, and also A urumRed is the only wine in the world that “once uncorked…doesn’t go sour in months or even years,” and “by turning glass to the left or to the right you get diﬀerent aromas and ﬂ avours.” Methods used to make this wine, the world’s most expensive, include sourcing the grapes from special vines, integrating the use of “pyramidal energy” (several pyramid structures cover the vine), treating it with ozone light therapy, and not letting anyone in a bad mood near the vines.

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TOMATO JUICE Grape wine, tomato wine—tomato, tomahto. That’s the thinking of Pascal Miche, producer of Omerto wine, a wine made of...tomatoes! The tomato wine is an heirloom: Miche’s zeidy began turning tomatoes into wine in the 1930s, and he gave his

einekel the recipe. Pascal uses red, yellow and black cherry tomatoes to create wine that resembles white wine so closely, even sommeliers (wine experts) think they’re tasting white wine. Tomato wine is made just like regular wine: The tomatoes are crushed, soaked and fermented just like grapes are.

OUT OF THE BLUE What’s blue and smells like red wine? Blue wine. LOL. There’s no such thing as blue wine, you say? Oh, but there is! Over in Spain, a firm called Gi ̈ k invented the world’s first blue wine several years ago. What great need were they fulfilling? “Gïk is born for fun,” says the company. “To shake things up a little and see what happens. To create something new. Something different. Why a blue wine, you wonder? And why not?” How does the wine turn blue? No, they didn’t manage to invent blue grapes; it’s thanks to mixing in anthocyanin, a natural pigment in the grapes’ skin, and indigo, a blue dye from indigo plants.

ALL GROWN DOWN

Mommy, when will I ﬁnally be as small as you? Eat your algae nicely and soon you’ll shrink like a big boy! Most creatures grow bigger the older they get. Which is why researchers

were so confused when they found a species of adult frogs in South America that were smaller than their tadpoles (baby frogs). Could it be that the adult frogs were the babies and the tadpoles the totties? Turned out, nope. This species simply shrinks as it “grows”!

A Pseudis paradoxa frog starts its life as an approximately 11-inch-long (27-cm.) tadpole—the biggest tadpoles in the world! But when they are fully grown they are about a quarter of their original size. These green-and-pink frogs live in lakes, rivers and ponds in South America. When threatened, they use their strong toes to stir up the muddy water bottom and hide!

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elebrated your little sib’s ﬁrst birthday by giving her a rattle? Hey, what a coincidence...Princess Charlotte got the same thing!

In honor of Britain’s Princess Charlotte’s ﬁrst birthday, she received gifts and cards from 64 countries, including: A collection of fairy tales from British Prime Minister David Cameron, a handmade coat from King Jigme and Queen Jetsun of Bhutan, wool teddy bears, baby blankets and booties from the Prime Minister of New Zealand, a jigsaw puzzle and a stuﬀed animal from President Barak Obama...and a rattle from the Natural Sapphire Company. The rattle really took the b-day cake: That’s because, made of white gold and dripping in jewels, it had a price tag of $44,000!

By Racheli Sofer

Yup, royals: They’re just like the rest of us...sort of. I guess when Princess Charlotte’s mother, Her Royal Highness Kate, and her father, Prince William—who is second in line to the British throne—insist that Princess Charlotte and her brothers, Princes George and Louis, are living a normal life, they’re not including the pricey presents and, well, you know, the actual palace where they live. These mini-royals call historic Kensington Palace, the mongo royal residence that dates back to the 1600s, home sweet home. They live with their parents in a—let’s call it cozy—22-room suite that’s far from all the tourists and events that the palace holds regularly. Obsessed with privacy, Prince William had gardeners plant a super-tall hedge outside to keep prying eyes oﬀ of his young princes and princess when they play outside. Moshe Rabbeinu wasn’t the only child to be raised by royalty in a palace. Your baby brother might try grabbing your tatty’s hat; while perched on the king of Egypt’s knee, little Moshe Rabbeinu tried to grab his crown! These days, there are 26 monarchies in the world, made up of kings, queens, sultans, emperors and emirs who rule over 43 countries. A nd lots of them are raising the next generation of rulers who bounce on their knees inside their palace walls. Read on to learn all about their lives.

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Prince George of Britain

Carpool is a royal pain for everyone— even the heir to the British throne. Prince George is currently third in the line of succession. (That means that when the current queen, his bubby, Queen Elizabeth, gives up the throne or dies, his tatty, Prince William, will be king, and after he abd i -

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cates or d i e s , Prince George will be in charge.) He attends a local private school and his royal parents take turns driving him there every morning. They made headlines when they announced before his first day of school that Prince George would not be addressed by his title at school. Yeah, you gotta admit, “Prince George” does sound kinda weird during roll call. He goes by the more basic moniker of George Cambridge (legally, the royal family doesn’t have a real last name, but George’s father is the Duke of Cambridge). The first grader suffers through the typical British curriculum at his regular school. He’s learning the same math and geography as your little sibs, plus French too. A nd, no, he isn’t exempt from doing homework.

Prince George, Princess Charlotte and Prince Louis’ main residence: Kensington Palace.

Prince George and Princess Charlotte on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.

Prince Christian of Denmark

Mazel tov! It was like any other exciting birth announcement. Sort of. At noon on the day of Prince Christian’s birth in 2005, a 21-gun salute (that’s when seven guns are fired three times) was fired from a castle. Oh, and public buses and official buildings all flew the Danish fl ag. Also, at sunset, bonfires were lit all over Denmark and the Navy’s vessels lit their searchlights and directed them toward the capital. After all, the newborn heir was next in line for the throne after his father, Crown Prince Fredrik; he’s the oldest grandson of the currently reigning Queen Margrethe II, so his birth was cause for national celebration. What do you get as a baby gift for the baby who has everything? Denmark’s national parliament gifted baby Christian with a pony called Flikfl ak. He might’ve enjoyed a pacifier more, but they didn’t ask me.

Prince Christian on his ﬁrst day of school in August 2011. Prince Christian’s oﬃcial residence in Fredensborg Palace located on Zealand island in Denmark.

While there was a dutiful nanny waiting to greet him at the end of the day, Christian attended nursery school—the very ﬁrst member of the Danish royal family to do so. He’s also the ﬁrst of his fam to attend a public state school. A prince bears responsibilities; it’s true, life for a young royal isn’t only about ponies. It’s also about elephants. In 2008, three-yearold Christian made international headlines when he attended the opening of the new elephant house at the Copenhagen Zoo, where he was the one to do the actual opening of said elephant house by pressing a button on an interactive console. The elephants were actually a gift from the king and queen of Thailand. Calm down; the prince himself doesn’t own an elephant! But his bubby does. The elephants were gifted to her royal highness on her last visit to Thailand.

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Princess Aikoof Japan Princess Aiko, aka the princess who never smiles, is the only child of Emperor Naruhito of Japan. Never smiles?! I know what you’re thinking: What does a princess have to be sad about? Well, a few things, most of which boil down to the fact that she’s a princess and not a prince.

You see, even though she’s the only child of Japan’s current emperor, because A iko’s a girl she can never get her totty’s job. Not only that, according to imperial rules, she can only marry a nobleman. Okay, well, no biggie...she’s a princess, right?! Surely she’s the catch of the century. Slight problem: There are no more men of noble

birth left in Japan. Talk about a shidduch crisis… Princess Aiko could, of course, marry a commoner—only she’ll be stripped of her title and lose access to the family’s fortune. Her aunt, Princess Sayako, did that very thing. She, gasp, married an ordinary guy and had to relinquish her title and move out of the Imperial Palace into a regular Tokyo apartment. Sure, she was given a dowry—but it was a pretty pathetic percentage of what the royal household “makes do” with. To prepare her for her fall from riches to rags, Princess Sayako had to learn how to drive and was taken to a supermarket and taught how to shop. No wonder Aiko is so miserable...

Prince H Moulay El Hassan of Morocco

If your brother refuses to be kissed by his own family, you can understand why the prince hates kisses from strangers. It’s not as though Prince Moulay El Hassan ever asked to be first in line to the Moroccan throne, or to accompany his father to one boring military procession after another. Yawn. He certainly didn’t ask for his hand to be kissed by a lineup of soldiers and other VIPs. That’s why, when he was 12 years old, he made headlines for refusing to let a row of foreign dignitaries kiss his hand when he met them. Though today he’s only 16, the prince is referred to as “mature for his age” and “always serious and strict.” He doesn’t attend a stuff y private school full of other high-profile students. Instead, he actually goes to school inside the royal palace with groups o f other children from various different backgrounds who are chosen for their intellect and skills. I bet no one ever plays hooky from the royal palace!

Tokyo Imperial Palace

It would be a pretty big adjustment,

to say the least, for Princess A iko to become a ho-hum regular Japanese lady. She has servants attending to her every whim and I’m betting she doesn’t know where they keep the mop—let alone how to mop a ﬂoor. Her father once told reporters how “relaxed the British royal family is” after he witnessed Queen Elizabeth pouring her own tea and serving sandwiches. The horror! You would think that a princess gets the royal treatment wherever she goes, but when she was eight years old, Princess A iko was actually bullied at school! She suﬀered anxiety attacks and refused to go back. And then, in October 2016, she missed two

months of school on account of stomach problems and Princess Aiko dizziness that palace oﬃcials attributed to exams and practice for an athletics event. You’ve been saying it for years: Studying can be hazardous to one’s health…. So if Princess A iko isn’t allowed to take over the throne, who will rule the roost in Japan once her father dies? Well, Aiko will be passed over for her uncle, Crown Prince Fumihito—whose heir is his 13-year-old

Prince Moulay El Hassan and his father, the king. son, Prince Hisahito. But if Princess A iko was ever feeling jealous of her cousin, she probably isn’t really anymore. Last year there was an assassination attempt on Prince Hisahito at school! According to security footage, two kitchen knives that were taped to either end of a stick were balanced between his desk and his neighbor’s by a man wearing a helmet. Apparently, though Hisahito has a police detail, they don’t follow him into his actual classroom. Yes, heavy lies the crown indeed…

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appy birthday to you! Princess Catharina-A malia, heir to the Dutch throne, likes to celebrate her big day every year with a cozy small party; her family enjoys a home-baked cake around the kitchen table. Nah. She has a concert at a famous building built in the 1300s. In honor of her seventh birthday, a military plane owned by her great-grandfather, Prince Bernhard, was named after her—though the little girl had to miss the naming ceremony because of school. Princess

CatharinaA malia and her

two sisters, Princess Alexia and Princess Ariane, live at the residence Villa Eikenhorst on De Horsten Royal Estates. A s you guessed by the fact that their home has an actual name, it ain’t too shabby. The plush mansion, located in an aﬄuent area, is sometimes used to host fancy foreign visitors. During a rare interview on King’s Day (a national holiday in that country) in 2019, Catharina-A malia told reporters that it is “sometimes unreal to realize that this really is my life.” Though these three Dutch princesses live in a palace, they go to a regular

school where their mother, Queen Maxima, is actually a “lice mother,” which means she inspects the kids’ hair for lice. Talk about down to earth! What about their safety, you ask? Sure, the princesses have security guards, though their father, the king, has told the media that he has an arrangement with them. He doesn’t want to know his daughters’ every move. “It’s about the safety of my children, not about us knowing what they’re doing or whether things are good or bad.”

Princesses of Netherlands

The princesses with their father, King Willem-Alexander.

Royal Palace in Rabat, Morocco.

Villa Eikenhorst on De Horsten Royal Estates.

“Why do people take so many pictures of us?” Princess Leonor once famously asked her parents when she was younger.

Princess

Leonor of Spain

Princess Leonor with her father, King Felipe VI.

Now 14 years old, Princess Leonor is the heir to the throne of her father, King Felipe VI. She studies at a private school—for now. Once she turns 18 she’ll be trained by the military to serve as commander in chief. Not every princess spends her days playing dress-up and twirling in her frilly dresses. Already two years ago, Princess Leonor gave her ﬁrst public speech in Madrid, where she read part of the Constitution of Spain and

Princess Leonor (right) with her sister, Infanta Soﬁa.

showed off her command of multiple lingos: A rabic, English, Spanish and Catalan; she’s also learning Chinese. A side from her sweaters, which most princesses probably don’t share with their sisters, Leonor also doesn’t share her title with her little sis. Because she’s second-born and won’t take the throne, Sofia isn’t considered a princess at all. Her title is Infanta Sofia. ⊙

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CHINA MYANMAR (BURMA)

Rivka and her brother ready to welcome all 500 of their Pesach guests.

Hanoi

, i o n a H nam t e i v NAME: Rivka Laine AGE: Almost 7 NUMBER OF SIBLINGS: I’m the

oldest of three.

t’s midday on an ordinary Tuesday; time for some R and R in a hammock on the street! People snoozing on hammocks on the street is a common sight in Hanoi, Vietnam, where it’s so hot, people need to rest in the middle of the work day. What’s it like living in this foreign city in Southeast Asia? Rivka Laine tells us all about growing up in this exotic place.

BY RACHELI SOFER

ET VI

g n i w grop in u

CAMBODIA

THAILAND

What brought your family to Vietnam? How long have you been living there? We moved here six years ago from America as shluchim. I was just a small baby.

What does Hanoi look like? It’s a hustling and bustling city—but an Asian city. What that means is that unlike, for example, Manhattan, it isn’t a grid city with the streets planned out so orderly; the streets are narrow and curvy. Street vendors and people wearing conical Vietnamese hats, which they call nón lá, walk as part of the traﬃc. It’s a busy city. We hear motorbikes and people walking and talking all the time. Motorbikes are more popular than cars here. While in an A merican city there are traﬃc lights and stop signs every few meters, we don’t have that here. In A merica, cars watch out for the people; in Hanoi, people need to watch out for cars!

Do people live in houses or buildings? Both, but mostly buildings. Our Chabad House, for example, is in a big villa. It’s not as though there are some neighborhoods with buildings and some with houses; it’s completely

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All ready for Rosh Hashanah.

Street vendors in Hanoi's Old Quarter.

Rice ﬁelds in the beautiful Sapa area.

mixed.

How many Jewish people live in Hanoi? Around 200, but they are mostly transient: People come to live in Hanoi for three to ﬁve years for work and then they leave. They come from A merica, Israel, Switzerland, London, A ustralia and Canada. Hanoi is the capital of Vietnam, so people come here to be ambassadors, diplomats, to work in the banks or as teachers, etc.

Are any of them frum?

the classes are in Hebrew, which is an exciting challenge for me!

So what’s your schedule? In the morning I go to school at Chabad. A fter lunch we have activities like tennis, art and dance. We have diﬀerent Vietnamese teachers for these activities. I also go to My Gym, an indoor play place, to do exercises and gymnastics. At 2 o’clock I join the Shluchim Online School until 5. A fter online school I eat dinner and then get ready for bed.

Not really.

What languages are spoken in Hanoi?

Where do you go to school?

Vietnamese. I speak a little bit. My father knows the most Vietnamese in our family.

We have a full-ﬂedged school at Chabad with Hebrew and English subjects. My mother is the teacher. Right now only my siblings and I are in the school. We have a Hebrew School and Jewish Kids Club that the Jewish children who live here join; I help my mother teach the kids alef beis and about Hashem. I also go to Shluchim Online School. I join in the afternoon when it is morning time in Israel. My teacher and all

What’s the kosher food situation? We get meat shipped from Bangkok, Thailand; there’s a big community with a kosher restaurant there. It’s 1½ hours away by plane. There are some kosher things like almond milk in the regular shops here and we have a kosher restaurant at Chabad.

Do you see a lot of poverty? There is poverty, but the people who are so poor live on the outskirts and in villages outside of Hanoi.

Can you drink the water? Yes, but we prefer to drink water bottles or water from our ﬁlter.

What’s different about the culture in Vietnam? The people are very laid back and patient. They have all the time in the world. In the middle of the day between certain hours everything is closed and people lie in hammocks on the streets. They are also very friendly and they loooove children. The people here always try to pinch my cheeks; they especially like foreign-looking kids.

Is it a dangerous place to live? It can be very dangerous to cross the street; that’s the most dangerous thing, though. It’s a very safe place to

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The bustling streets in the Old Quarter of Hanoi.

A passenger train crosses the city on a narrow street in Hanoi.

Rivka in gorgeous Halong Bay.

live. You could technically leave your door unlocked.

What’s the climate like? In most countries in A sia there’s only one season: hot all year round. We have four seasons, but they are not the same as in America. In the winter, at the most you need a sweater. A nd it gets very, very hot in the summer. You’re gonna be shvitzing for sure. We always come back inside with red, red cheeks. There are very high levels of pollution here from the factories and so many motorbikes. Sometimes it looks smoggy and you can’t see the buildings when driving.

What are some famous places in Hanoi? There’s one really tall building called the Lotte. There’s an observation deck on the 72nd ﬂoor from where you can see everything! Halong Bay is considered one of the seven natural wonders of the world. You go on a boat in the middle of this bay that has huge limestone isles with caves you can visit where you can go kayaking. We went there on a Chol Hamoed trip. There is a beautiful mountainous area called Sapa where you can see villagers harvesting rice.

Have you been to other areas within Vietnam? We went to Ninh Binh, a stunning area in northern Vietnam where you go on

boats through big mountains and bike through rice ﬁelds. We also went to Ba Vi, which is a huge national park in the mountains.

What do you like to do for fun? I like to make projects and paint. I like to play piano and read.

Tell us about Pesach in Vietnam. We usually rent a hotel and have 500 people at the Seder. This year we are not doing that because of the coronavirus.

Who comes to those huge Seders? Community members, visitors and mostly Israeli backpackers who just ﬁnished in the army. Last year we had to make two separate Sedarim because so many people wanted to come. We had a Seder in Hanoi and another one in Sa Pa, and Merkos Chabad Headquarters sent us eight bachurim to help; it was so much fun!

What’s it like to be part of such a big Seder? It’s so much fun! The room is noisy, but while my brother and I say Mah Nishtanah and explain things to the people it’s very quiet. My Bubby and Zeidy Laine usually come for Pesach. My bubby does a program for kids at

the Seder and I help her.

Tell us about preparing for Pesach. We are very, very busy. My zeidy and tatty and the bachurim kasher the kitchen in the hotel. We bring in special supplies after they kasher the kitchen, and the chefs in the hotel make the food.

What’s different about growing up in Hanoi? It makes me feel good that we have the opportunity to be the ones to have a Chabad House in Hanoi. We are able to help Jewish people who need kosher food and all Jewish things here and all around the north of Vietnam. Every Friday night, my brother and I stand on a chair and teach the parshah of the week and present it in a very hands-on way. We make a craft and sing special songs to get the crowd involved. I know how much our guests love to hear about the parshah and how inspired it makes them feel. Once, on a visit to Israel, people approached us on the street and reminded us of the divrei Torah I said at the Shabbos meal. That felt very good. ⊙

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QA &

f f o k l Tu h s i d a r e s r o H PHIL TULKOFF

BY RACHELI SOFER

is job is to make his customers cry—when they eat marror at the Seder! Phil Tulkoﬀ is the president of Tulkoﬀ Food Products, a business that his grandparents started, which is famous for its grated horseradish. He tells Aim! all about it.

How did you get into the horseradish biz? Bad luck! Ha-ha! I’m kidding. It’s part of my roots—literally! My grandparents started the business almost 90 years ago. They immigrated from Russia and ended up in Baltimore, where they opened a grocery. One day, a customer came into their store and picked oranges from the bottom of a three-foot-high pyramid. You could imagine what happened! The oranges started rolling all over the store.

Tulkoﬀ ’s Hot Horseradish.” Supposedly, my grandmother looked at him as though he had gone crazy. “You’ll go broke,” she said. But somehow he got her on board. They started grinding horseradish by hand. My grandmother loaded it, one teaspoon at a time, into jars and licked the labels onto the jars.

And now it’s a family business?

blazers to make sure he always had a clean one!

Yes. By the late 1930s, the business was successful and my grandfather changed its name to Tulkoﬀ Horseradish Products.

Why tiger skin?

“That’s it! I’m getting out of this crazy business,” my grandfather said to my grandmother.

My Uncle Sol entered the family business when he was a teenager. He actually had a great sense of humor. Whenever someone would ask him how business was going, he would respond, “It’s a grind.”

“You know, we’ve been selling a lot of horseradish in the store, and you see how many people asked for it to be ground? Let’s put ground horseradish in bottles, label it and sell it as

“It may be horseradish to you, but it’s my bread and butter,” he’d often say. He always wore a tiger-skin blazer and matching tie to trade shows, factory tours and interviews. He had six

Good question! The tiger has been the company’s oﬃcial mascot since my Uncle Sol returned home from Europe after World War II. He had fought in a tank division whose symbolic mascot was a tiger crushing a German tank. That’s also where he got the name for the tiger sauce he created. It’s a horseradish-mayonnaise sauce.

Where is your 19

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His job is a real "grind."

Phil's family has been in the horseradish biz for 90 years.

horseradish grown? Most is grown in the United States in an area called Collinsville, Illinois. It’s about a half hour east of St. Louis, Missouri, and we get some from Canada. There’s not much more grown in North A merica. The vast majority comes from Collinsville. Those farmers are third, fourth and ﬁfth generation. It was an Eastern European crop originally and they brought it over with them. The soil and climate is right and that’s where it stuck.

Can you walk us through the production process? We get roots from the farmers. They come to us in a 1,200-pound [544kg.] bale on a pallet. The farmers have not cleaned them. They knock as much dirt oﬀ as they can by banging them into each other. We wash them. Our washing process doesn’t use any chemicals or soaps or solvents; it’s just water and friction. Once they are clean, they go into the grinding pro-

cess. We add the other ingredients: water, vinegar, oil, mustard and salt. Those are all combined. From there they go into a container to be sold to retail or food service.

What kind of equipment do you use? Our washer is one of a kind. We designed it for our use. You can’t go to a machine show and say you want to buy horseradish washing and grinding machinery. It doesn’t exist. We modiﬁed equipment that was used for washing sugar beets, and destoning [removing stones from] potatoes for our use. The grinding is a two-stage process: It chops the root into pieces. Then it goes through a screen that gets it to the right consistency. We have a ﬁne chop and a coarse grate that we use for some products, such as our cocktail sauce, where you see the horseradish more clearly.

How long does it take to get the horseradish from root to jar? Washing takes 45 minutes. Once it’s out of the washer we grind it and add everything in another half hour. We process horseradish for ﬁve days a week, eight hours a day. We produce 15 million pounds [nearly 7 million kg.] of horseradish a year. We make a

few diﬀerent kinds of horseradish, including extra hot and Inferno versions.

What’s the Inferno version? Well, it’s marketed as “only for the most daring who want heat and ﬂ avor.”

Sounds scary! Is there a different recipe for Pesach? Oh, yes! Two of the ingredients have to be changed. First, the beet juice we use to make some of our horseradish red needs to be kosher for Passover; ours comes from France. You can’t use regular vinegar, so we use apple cider vinegar.

How do you kasher the equipment for Pesach? What’s diﬀerent about Passover is that the rabbi must witness the cleaning of the grinding equipment and the vessels used to put the horseradish in and the ﬁlling machines. We start on the weekend doing the cleaning process, and by Monday we prepare all the horseradish we need for Passover all day. It’s one full day of running.

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The horseradish arrives at the factory in a 1,200-pound bale.

How far in advance do you prepare the kosher-for-Pesach horseradish? We try to prepare it as close as possible. We did it at the beginning of February this year.

How do you protect your eyes? My grandfather once described our horseradish as “Jewish Dristan” (Dristan is a decongestant). It can burn your eyes a bit—depending on the roots you are using and the weather, which aﬀect our exhaust systems. The guys who work in the grinding room on the washing and grinding process do have respirators they wear for comfort. But most people just get used to it. They just wear regular eye protection.

Are you personally immune or do you still feel the sharpness?

I don’t think you ever get immune! You do feel it on some days more than others. It’s pretty rare that I walk through that area and feel uncomfortable; it’s usually not too bad. We have very good ventilation that keeps the fumes moving outside the building.

Besides Jewish people, who else eats horseradish? Lots of people do! Most steakhouses use a lot of horseradish, both as a plain product and as an ingredient in their sauces. There are places that mix horseradish with mayonnaise to make a sauce. People also make their own cocktail sauce using horseradish that they mix with ketchup or chili sauce, which they serve with seafood. These days we actually mostly sell to distributors, who sell to restaurants, caterers and hotels. We also produce products like pesto, diﬀerent types of aioli [garlic-ﬂ avored mayonnaise], garlic spread and tartar sauce.

Don’t people use horseradish in sushi? Sorta... Wasabi is actually often made of horseradish powder mixed with spinach powder to get its green color, and then reconstituted with oil. We

Get your tissues ready... Tulkoﬀ 's Inferno Horseradish will deﬁnitely make you cry.

don’t do anything powdered. Most powdered horseradish comes out of China. Real wasabi is a diﬀerent root that’s similar to horseradish.

What makes your Pesach horseradish different? Our horseradish for Passover is unique...as I’ve told you, we use a speciﬁc recipe. We also prepare it really close to the holiday—because what gives horseradish its heat is that when you grind up the root it releases enzymes that cause the heat that makes your nose run and your eyes water. It’s a chemical reaction essentially. The older your horseradish is, the more that diminishes and it’s not as hot. The fresher the horseradish, the hotter it is. The fact that we do it really close to the holiday means our Passover horseradish is very hot. Every once in a while we will get a complaint after Passover that our horseradish was too hot! To which I always reply, “Then go buy Gold’s next time!” It’s supposed to be hot. Our job is to make you cry. ⊙

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Simcha Perlman Answers All of your Pressing and Difﬁcult

Questions with Skill and

Understanding That Surpasses The Likes of Which Humanity has

Ever Seen!*

Dear Simcha, Every year, we go to my grandparents’ house for Pesach, and during the Seder my grandfather throws things like plastic animals for arov, and cups of red Jell-O for dam. I am far too old to be impressed with props like that, but my parents say that while it’s mostly meant for the younger kids, I have to act excited. What’s a sophisticated tween supposed to do? Sincerely, Bored in Boro Park Dear Baby in Brooklyn, First of all, I have to applaud you for taking the ﬁrst step and consulting a professional such as me, Simcha Per-

lman. I can tell from the wording of your letter that you go to your grandparents every year for Pesach, and your grandfather throws things like plastic animals and cups of Jell-O at you, which, context aside, sounds pretty terrible and definitely grounds for a frank discussion with someone who is qualified. Someone like me, Simcha Perlman. Which you have done already, by writing to me, so well done, you. Well done. And as your qualified person, the first thing I will do is tell you a story. Once upon a time, there was a person, and his name was not Simcha Perlman but something else entirely, something that didn’t even sound like Simcha Perlman, something like Pimcha Serlman, and he was not taken seriously when he tried to run for president of the United States. “He’s far too young,” said the people. “He can’t be a president when he is so young!” Until, through a sophisticated network of spies and also bribes and also using the power of his own brain, he gained control of all the nuclear weapons of the whole world.

from Purim. Plastic balls for barad? How about chunks of ice the size of bowling balls, coupled with ﬂ aming torches? Plastic animals will be forgotten when you open the door to the basement and release the wolves you’ve been raising since infancy to help you in your mission to take over all the nuclear weapons in the world show your true age and sophistication to your grandparents. If you follow my instructions, this Seder will truly be one that everyone in your family will never, ever forget, and the stories will be passed on to the next generation. If anyone survives the wolves, that is. A kosher un freilichen Pesach! You’re welcome, Simcha P.S. I am rethinking the wolves. Forget about the wolves. In retrospect, if not for the wolves, Pimcha Serlman might have become the president of the United States instead of a fugitive from the law.

“A m I too young to be president now?” he said, and the people all agreed that he was not too young to be president now, but he was too much of an international terrorist, and the point is, if you want people to take you seriously, you need to make things a little more real. When your grandfather pulls out the Jell-O, you pull out your Super Soaker ﬁlled with fake blood saved

By Dina Neuman

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Dear Simcha, On Pesach, our rooms get reshufﬂed because we have many guests. I have to share a room with my brother, and his snoring drives me up a straight wall! I’ve tried pinching his nose and nudging him but it only helps for a few seconds before he starts snoring again. Any advice? Wide Awake in Washington

Dear Sleepy in Seattle, First of all, I have to applaud you for taking the first step and consulting a professional such as me, Simcha Perlman. I can tell from the wording of your letter that you have to share a room on Pesach with your brother, and his snoring drives you up a straight wall, and you apparently don’t know about this thing called ear plugs? Use them to plug up your ears and then you won’t hear your brother’s snores, you’re welcome. Unless you don’t have ear plugs. In which case, it’s very important to be flexible and learn how to deal with the situation you’re facing. In this case, learning how to be flexible and how to deal with the situation you’re facing means figuring out a way to live with your brother. Like, sure, he snores, and that’s annoying, but you probably also do a ton of annoying things, like you’re probably smelly. Or you have an annoying voice, or you like eating chrein and mayonnaise on your matzah, which is a crime worse than all matzah-related crimes, and your brother has learned to live with you. So, you just need to find a way to live with him too, which is really the secret to a happy life. Just kidding! Being flexible and learning how to deal with the situation you’re facing doesn’t mean figuring out a way to live with your brother;

* The silly designer claimed there was no space for my full and glorious title, but I just grabbed her computer and showed her how to squeeze things in. I think I am a better designer than she is!

who do you think I am, Rabbi Shais Taub? It means using aluminum foil! If your house on Pesach is anything like my house on Pesach (and it’s probably similar, except my house is ﬁlled with Simcha Perlman and yours, sadly, is Simcha Perlman-less), you go through an alarming amount of aluminum foil, but you have an even alarming-er amount of aluminum foil purchased but not used. That unused aluminum foil is your aluminum foil. Don’t use the foil to make ear plugs; use the foil to make a helmet for your brother, thus muﬄing the sounds of snoring not just for you but for everyone, because you’re nice like that. But why stop there? There’s still more foil! Use the aluminum foil to create a wall between you and your brother! Use the foil to build him a house in the backyard! Use the aluminum foil to build a rocket and send him to the moon, where he can snore as much as he wants! A kosher un freilichen Pesach! You’re welcome, Simcha P.S. The views, information or opinions expressed in this letter are solely those of the individuals involved and do not necessarily represent those of Reynolds aluminum foil and its employees. Reynolds aluminum foil takes no responsibility for any damages or angry, foil-covered brothers that occur as a result. ⊙

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CHANA L. TO

T R A E H T R A E H NS CONVERSATIO WITH KIDS

BY ESTY SHORE

azel tov, it’s sextuplets! That was the news all over Mitzrayim back in the day. Six bouncing babies bring a whole lot of joy...and a whole lot of work! What was it like to be the older sib of a family of multiples? Fourteenyear-old Chana L. of Kfar Chabad, Israel, the only “single” child in a family of twins and triplets, can clue us in! After eight years as the spoiled youngest, she went from being one of three siblings to being one of eight within the space of…16 months!

Hi, Chana. What is your family setup like? My family setup is pretty simple: Twins (girl and boy), me, twin girls, triplets (two girls and a boy).

What’s it like to be the only “singleton” in a family of all-multiples? Hectic! I don’t think of myself so much as a “singleton” as much as one of the older siblings in a family of near-quintuplets. People are constantly mistaking the younger twins and triplets for quints, and since I’m eight years older than them, and only three years younger than my older brother and sister, a lot of responsibility, and feelings of responsibility, fall onto my shoulders.

So, you don’t ever find yourself wishing that you were born with a twin? Nope. Honestly, the day before my triplet siblings were born, I found myself wishing: Please, please, just let Ima have a single baby this time. Things were just so busy with the younger twins, I couldn’t imagine any more hecticness. Of course, now I’m so thrilled they were actually triplets! Seriously, because my older siblings are a boy and a girl, it’s hardly obvious that they’re twins. I don’t even think that they really consider themselves twins. With my twin sisters things are diﬀerent and they’re forever getting into this “twin huddle” and playing together, which is sort of nice, I guess. Still, though, I never really wished to be born with a twin.

est to the “middle child” overnight? It was a total transformation! My parents had been married and davening for children for over eight years before my older siblings were born, so you can imagine how spoiled they, and I, were! My older brother and sister were the famous twins born after years of teﬁllos, and I was the pampered youngest child. We were used to getting our way for many hours of the day, receiving gifts even when they weren’t called for, and getting into all sorts of mischief. And then the twins entered the picture! To a certain extent, I was upset that my status as the youngest (and most spoiled!) kid in the family had been usurped, but on the

What was it like when the twins were born and you went from being the young-

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other hand it was very exciting and fun to know that our family now had two new babies.

And then a year and a few months later triplets joined your family. What was that like? Whoa! Talk about change, this was huge. I still remember exactly where I was in my room when my older sister came into the room to tell me: “Ima had triplets.” I jumped right up but it took time for her words to really sink in. I just couldn’t wrap my mind around it. Triplets. Triplets… It was such a huge announcement, things just became blurred in my mind after that.

What was your house like when the triplets came home from the hospital? First of all, the triplets didn’t come home until they were three months old, because they were born prematurely. I don’t really remember much about when they were in the hospital, but once they came home—whoa! Our house turned into one huge beehive of crying, diapers and laundry. Times ﬁve. Obviously, I helped out as much as I could, but in retrospect I think I probably only

brought the diapers or bottles when they were needed. I certainly didn’t do anything earth shattering. I was only nine, don’t forget!

Was there some sort of special celebration when the triplets actually made it home? Nah. We’re not that type of a family. We don’t do balloons, streamers and that sort of stuﬀ. Obviously, there was the bris, and tons of paraphernalia and that sort of thing, but nothing major. The only “newsworthy” events were the phone calls that my parents kept on receiving from journalists who wanted to interview them, but my parents turned down all of the offers.

How did you have room in your house for all the new babies? Interesting story: A fter the doctors told my mother that she was expecting triplets, my father immediately set to work hiring construction workers so that a second story could be added to our single-family, but one-ﬂoor, home. Our house doubled in size and we had eight bedrooms, plenty of room for the new babies and all of the helpers, but I didn’t suspect anything! When the triplets were born, the house became ﬁlled with people (junior people and aides) but there was/ is plenty of space for everyone.

What type of help was available for your family in the beginning? And now? In the beginning we had help 24/7. A foreign worker, a great-aunt, another worker… Four adults were constantly need-

ed on hand to be able to help out. If a baby was screaming because she was hungry, she needed food immediately. Times three newborns and two one-and-a-half year olds. So there were people who helped out with the babies, people who helped out with the upkeep of the house, people who helped out with meals. There were also a few sisters who’d take the babies out to the park to give my mother a break, and that was a real mitzvah. Obviously, over time, a lot of the help has dwindled out, and nowadays we only have one cleaner/aide who comes in and out of the house twice a day to tidy up. Baruch Hashem, these days my mother is the one who deals with all the meals and laundry.

How old are the younger twins and the triplets now? The twins are six and a half, and the triplets are ﬁve and a few months. They’re really cute, if you look at them as a casual observer, and as a sibling. I guess I’m sort of biased, but yes, even with the extra responsibility, they are seriously edible. Whenever I go places with them I see people watching us, and it looks as if their eyes might pop out of their heads. Five near-lookalikes of almost the same height—it really is adorable!

Do they make a lot of mischief? Tell us some stories. I honestly can’t think of any stories. The twins and triplets are like obedient soldiers; they’re really cute in that way. If you tell them to line up, they’ll all get into a line, if you tell them to clap their hands, they’ll clap… Lately the twins have been getting their own opinions on life, which can be annoying, but all in all they’re a very well-mannered bunch.

Which probably makes things much easier! What are some of your responsibilities as one of the older siblings of

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the “near-quintuplets. ” I help my mother bathe the younger children sometimes, and in the morning I help out with breakfast, spoon-feeding the triplets if necessary, and wiping up spills. Really, though, it’s not so much what I do, it’s more about the feeling in my heart. I don’t want my mother to feel like she has to take care of the younger children on her own. Even though we have lots of extra cleaning and folding and household help, I also want my mother to know that I’m around and there to help her if she needs.

How very responsible and mature! What is a typical day like in your household? Hmmm. There really is no typical, but in general my mother wakes up at about 6:30 a.m. to make sandwiches and then at about 7 o’clock she wakes up the kids. I try to be ready to help out with breakfast at about 7:30, and then I, my older sister and the younger twins go to school, while the triplets go to pre-1A . At about 2 o’clock I get back home and my mother picks up the younger kids at 2:30. When they come home they eat and play and play and play until about 5:30, when they eat supper, have baths and get ready for bed. A fter that, at about 7 o’clock, things settle down.

In terms of set activities outside of the house, I go to a fun gymnastics class once a week in a nearby city, and that keeps me out of the house for four hours every Wednesday.

What are some fun activities that your whole family has done together? We’re a pretty boring family; we don’t do much more than the typical go to school, come home and play, but we do fly from Israel to New York once a year, and then it’s a real party! Yeah, there’s nosh all over the plane, but that’s not what I mean. I mean that when we flew to New York five years ago when the triplets were a few months old and the twins were two and a half, my mother stood the entire plane ride to hold one or two of the babies who were crying. It was really not fun for her. I was only in fifth grade then, not really old enough to understand how important my help was, but we did not fly again the year after that; it was just too crazy. Last year, though, we did fly again, and things were a bit calmer. And this year we flew in two shifts. My father and the older five children in shift one, and my mother and the triplets in shift two.

Do you get a chance to get out or do you find yourself at home often?

Sounds like it’s been a series of “live and learn” with so many multiples. What were your trips themselves like?

I’m a teenager. I go out with my friends as much as the next girl, but I deﬁnitely have a strong sense of accountability toward my house. Things are also very exciting and happening at home; don’t forget, the younger kids are forever zooming in and out of rooms and making noise. Our house is a constant beehive of action and activity, which means that I don’t necessarily need to search for more action outside of the house. I’m more likely to ﬁnd quiet outside the house than within it, and sometimes that’s necessary, but not always.

On the subject of ice cream: Sometimes I’ll be licking an ice cream on a cone, when I’ll decide that I had enough and I’d rather give it to a younger sibling to enjoy. But whom to give it to? I can never just give it to one, because if I do I’ll have all ﬁve of them jumping all over me in no time ﬂ at, and to hold the cone and let them all have a lick isn’t really much fun!

Fun but chaotic. Things can never be completely organized and there is a constant tug and pull. One of the triplets wants to go here, one of the twins wants to go there, I want ice cream…

p Definitely a conundrum! Aside from trips out of the country, do you ever go around as a family, in Israel? A bit. My father recently bought a nine-seater, which makes it much easier for us all to travel together than it’s been in the past, and we’re still getting used to it. We’re one seat short, but my older brother is in yeshivah, which means that we can take some trips, which was something that was very hard for us to do right after the triplets were born. A few months ago we went to the zoo and that was fun. One of the twins looked at the monkeys and said: “Oh no, no one cut their nails!”

Adorable! And you probably have many more adorable quotes that you can repeat! What is one memorable story that you can leave us with? On Shabbos we often sit around the table, when my mother and father get that special look in their eye and one of them will say: “Baruch Hashem, we’ve made it; our family ﬁlls the entire table.” My mother picked out a large dining room set with 12 chairs when she got married, telling my grandmother that she was going to have a large family, im yirtzeh Hashem. Well, it took nine years until the ﬁrst set of twins were born, and then 12 more years until we truly became a large family. And that is the story of my family.

A most beautiful story indeed! Thank you for sharing. ⊙ Are you a kid with a special story or circumstance that you would like to share? Tell Aim! readers what it’s like to be you! Contact us to be featured in our “Heart to Heart” column.

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ah parsjhect pro

pesach These banana split pops look very impressive—and they're ﬁnger-lickin' good.

INSTRUCTIONS KIWI BANANA PINEAPPLE SKEWERS MELTED CHOCOLATE

mini banana splits

2 3 4

CHOPPED NUTS, COCONUT FLAKES Cut the kiwi into quarters, the pineapple into cubes, approximately 1½-2 inches, and slice the banana into pieces approximately 1½-2 inches in size. Skewer the fruits onto sticks.

Dip one side into melted chocolate, and then into toppings. Optional: Serve over ice cream.

BY YEHUDIS MANN

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All the way back when the Yidden were enslaved by the Mitzriyim, the people were already using nilometers to measure the Nile’s depth. Too low and it wouldn’t overﬂow; too high and it might overﬂow too much.

Another Another type type of of nilometer nilometer was was aa canal canal that that carried carried the the Nile Nile water water into into aa cistern cistern (a (a tank tank for for storing storing water); water); markers markers were were carved carved into into its its wall wall to to measure measure the the depth. depth. It It too too was was accessible accessible by by staircases. staircases. The The one one you you see see here here dates dates to to 180–47 180–47 BCE. BCE.

SYRIA ISRAEL

IRAQ

LIBYA EGYPT

SAUDI ARABIA Nile

SUDAN

Today the nilometer is covered by a modern building; tourists can walk all the way down to examine it.

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NILOMETERS

Here you can see a nilometer on Rhoda Island in Cairo: It’s a massive column/measuring stick in a deep well; there were markings to show where the water level was. It even had a staircase so that people could walk down and examine the column. This nilometer dates “only” to 750 CE, though it was built on the site of a much older nilometer.

You know the famous line from poet Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, “When she was good she was very, very good and when she was bad she was horrid”? That pretty much sums up the story of the Nile River, aka the Nilus. When the Nile was “good,” she overflowed and flooded the surrounding land, leaving behind super-fertile black mud—and the Egyptians grew rich and fat. But when she was bad and didn’t overflow...or overflowed too much...there was poverty and hunger. It’s easy to understand why the Egyptians were obsessed with measuring the Nile’s depth to see what kind of year lay ahead...

Ever wondered why the Nile doesn’t overﬂow anymore? It’s thanks to the Aswan Dam, a massive $1-billion dam built in 1970 to end the cycle of ﬂood and drought in the Nile River.

into into er); r); lll

e you you

The third type of nilometer, like the one you see here on Elephantine Island, had spaced steps that led straight down to the Nile; there are markings on the walls at diﬀerent levels so you could measure where the water went up to.

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01/04/2020 10:59 PM

Next Year in

a hot summer day as hundreds of women climb a narrow path up to a huge cemetery. There, they each head to a relative’s grave, where they sit down...and sing! Not happy tunes, of course, but sad mournful melodies in a language very few speak, called Juhuri. Never heard of it? Well, maybe your zeidies spoke it! Juhuri is a mashup of Farsi (Persian) and Hebrew with some A ramaic and Turkish thrown in. Hebrew?! Yes—this is a Jewish language, spoken only by the Mountain Jews of the Caucasus! This once-a-year wailing at the graves takes place on Tisha b’Av—some participants have even ﬂown across the world to Azerbaijan to join!

Mountain Jews?! Thousands of years ago, Yidden arrived here in the Caucasus Mountains from Persia...their first stop after being kicked out of Eretz Yisrael after the first Churban Beis Hamikdash. Krasnaya Sloboda, one town of Mountain Jews, is the world’s only all-Jewish village outside of Israel and the United States—and the last surviving shtetl! Us Yidden have been scattered around the globe...but hopefully, not for too much longer. Here’s hoping this is the year of the fifth kos, when Hashem will gather us from the four corners of the world for the final geulah.

Mountain Jews in the mid to late 1800s.

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BY Batya Kohn

YERUSHALAYIM

It’s

01/04/2020 10:59 PM

Back in the 1930s, the basketball team players of Woodbine, New Jersey—though many of them weren’t even Jewish— would shout at each other in Yiddish. Yiddish? Yup. Allow me to explain. Back in 1891, a rich Jewish banker named Baron Maurice de Hirsch decided to help the poor persecuted Jewish Russians by setting them up in their own town in America. And so, he purchased 5,300 acres of farmland in Woodbine, New Jersey; within the year, 760 Jews called Woodbine home sweet home. What’s a Jewish town without a shul? The locals built one with their bare hands. Literally. They’d go out at night after work, dig up clay, m a k e

Birobidjan is the capital of the JAO. A menorah stands outside the main railway station.

By 1902, the all-Jewish Woodbine had 1,400 Yidden, 52 farms and seven factories. All public office, police and fire department positions were filled by Jews. Dubbed “the first self-governing Jewish community since the fall of Jerusalem,” the Jews of Woodbine even convinced the New Jersey government to allow them to close their businesses on Shabbos instead of Sunday. (The law back then was no working on Sunday.)

Woodbine shul, now a museum.

So why doesn’t Woodbine look like Lakewood or Monsey today?! By 1920, more and more non-Jews had moved into town... while the Yidden‘s numbers were shrinking, their einiklach having left for more exciting opportunities elsewhere. What’s still in Woodbine? The old shul, now registered as a national historic site and described as “the largest synagogue still standing built entirely by its congregation.” And just a handful of Jews.

Jewish AUTONOMOUS

Birobidjan entrance sign in Russian and Yiddish.

bricks and cut wood. Eventually, Woodbine boasted four shuls.

OBLAST

Woodbine

How do you say “dribble” in Yiddish?

Farmers harvesting potatoes at the Woodbine Agricultural School.

Welcome to the only place in the world where Yiddish is one of the two oﬃcial languages. Nope, not Brooklyn, good guess, but the Jewish A utonomous Oblast, a remote area near the Chinese-Russian border!

Whose idea was it to start a Jewish “homeland” in this frozen swampland? The same brain behind a bunch of other terrible ideas: Josef Stalin. The point? Who needed Zionism, when you could live in a Jewish homeland in the communist utopia! A ttention Jews: free farms. Never mind the harsh climate and mountainous land, just come!

The Jewish schoolchildren circa 1900.

Come to the newly named Jewish A utonomous Oblast the Yidden did. Sadly, things didn’t turn out too rosy there, thanks to Stalin’s disastrous policies and persecution of Yidden. But still today, there’s a Yiddish radio station in this remote area and Yiddish is taught in some of the schools—even though there are only an estimated 1,600 Jews left here. It is one of two oﬃcial Jewish territories in the world today, the other being “Jewish” Israel, obvs. sculptures dot Birobidjan as a testament to its history.

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DJERBA

Yivarechechah There’s a place in the world where, until recently, kohanim faced the aron kodesh during birkas kohanim. Why? There were no Yisraelim for them to bentch inside the shul!

Welcome to Djerba, a 16- by 17mile (25- by 27-km.) island oﬀ the coast of Tunisia, A frica. Nickname: The Island of Kohanim—because approximately 80 percent of the Yidden living here are kohanim! Why?

Well, right after Churban Bayis Rishon, a few kohanim escaped to this distant land. According to local tradition, they carried a stone with them that they had taken from the Beis Hamikdash and incorporated it into the building of their famous shul, the El Ghriba synagogue. The Yidden of Djerba are mostly their direct descendants.

The famous El Ghriba Synagogue.

Which explains why they’re still there! These days the Jews of Djerba mostly live in one neighborhood—all of the approximately 1,000 of them, the last remaining fully intact Jewish community in an A rab country. Though they have modern homes with ovens just like you and me, still today, the Jews of Djerba bring their pots and challot to the local bakery on Friday afternoon to have them heated in a warm oven over Shabbos. And every Erev Shabbos, the rabbi blows a ram’s horn to remind everyone that Shabbos is coming.

Iquitos

According

to the tradition of Djerba’s Jews, life was pretty comfy on the island, and when the Second Beis Hamikdash was built they weren’t in the mood of relocating back to Eretz Yisrael. Ezra Hasofer was pretty disappointed and cursed them, promising that their descendants would never return to Eretz Yisrael.

Deep in the treacherous A mazon rainforest, in Iquitos, the largest city in the world that is inaccessible by road—reachable only by airplane or boat—there’s a tiny community that descends from Jewish settlers. How did Yidden get to this remote corner of Northern Peru? Rubber!

For centuries, South A mericans knew how to extract a useful white liquid out of the rubber tree. Once Europeans discovered rubber, everyone wanted a pair of galoshes, which led to a rubber boom in the 1880s. Remember learning about the gold rush? It was kinda like that; thousands of people from across the world, including lots of young Moroccan Jews, rushed to South A merica ISO fortune from the

Iquitos today.

rubber trade. Some of them decided to start a Jewish community, which they formally registered with the government in 1909. The descendants of those Moroccan Jews are now learning more about and becoming interested in their Jewish heritage. Lots of them have last names like Cohen, Ben-Zaken or Ben-Shimol. These guys try their best to keep kosher, avoiding the local delicacies of hog and turtle (I guess we can thank them for not causing the next pandemic) and try to keep the Jewish Yomim Tovim, and... they’ve been brushing up on their Hebrew in anticipation of ﬁnally making their way truly home—to Eretz Yisrael. ⊙

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Kaifeng

In a country of 1.4 billion people who apparently sometimes eat bats, there’s a community of 1,000 people who say they are part of the Jewish people. How did Jews get here? Experts aren’t sure. Kaifeng used to be a major city on a branch of the Silk Road (remember the network of trade routes connecting East and West?). Some say that a small community of Sephardim from Persia or India, or maybe a group that was running away from the Crusades,

A Kaifeng Jew and his son.

somehow found their way here and built a shul in 1163. Their shul, which faced Yerushalayim, ﬂooded 150 years ago and was never rebuilt. Locally, the Kaifeng Jews* are known as “blue-capped Muslims” or “the sect that plucks out the sinews”—because they don’t eat the sciatic nerve, aka, gid hanasheh. A sefer Torah of theirs from the 1600s turned out to be identical to Torahs in the rest of the world! *Halachically, they would need to be megayer to be considered Yidden.

Model of the Kaifeng shul.

CRIMEA

Methinks if you would’ve met one of our Jewish brethren called the Krymchaks a century ago you wouldn’t greet them with “Vos macht a Yid?” The men wore a black or red Turkish cap, a wide blue overcoat, loose pants—and the obligatory dagger hanging on his belt. The women? Colorful caps, huge earrings, and gold and silver chains around their necks.

R’ Chaim Chizkiyahu Medini, the Sdei Chemed, came from Eretz Yisrael to serve as rav for the Krymchaks. He married a Krymchaki woman.

The Crimean Karaites, without peyos.

The Krymchaks lived in simple clay homes without any furniture—minus a low table. They ate and slept on rug-covered ﬂoors.

The Krymchaks’ Greek-speaking ancestors actually arrived in Crimea, a Ukranian peninsula that juts into the Black Sea, before Churban Bayis Sheini. They developed their own lingo, which was a combo of Turkish, Tatar, a sprinkle of Hebrew and a dash of Aramaic, written using the alef bais. The Krymchaks actually called themselves Srel Balalary, which translates to Children of Yisrael—to distinguish themselves from the Karaites who eventually came to the same area too. But the locals called the Krym-

chaks zuluﬂu chufutlar (Jews with peyos)—as opposed to the Karaites whom they called zulufsuz chufutlar (Jews without peyos). The Krymchaks actually got along pretty nicely with their Muslim neighbors—obvs if they paid them “special” taxes and followed certain demeaning rules, you know, like carrying their neighbors over mud or slush. Things took a turn for the worse after Russia took over in 1783. Thousands of A shkenazi Jews made their way to Crimea, so that by the end of the 19th century there were actually 60,000 A shkenazi Jews and just 6,000 Krymchaks living in Crimea. Still, they stuck to their minhagim. For example, in order to prevent silly chatter in shul, the Krymchaks would wait for everyone to arrive and enter the shul together. (Gotta pity the poor guy who overslept; nope, not his rebbi and class, but the entire town was waiting for him to start Shacharis. Yikes.) They’d also all exit shul at the same time. Between the Nazis and then Stalin, tragically, many Krymchaks were murdered. In the 1990s, lots of Jews from Crimea immigrated to Israel and other countries. ⊙

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01/04/2020 11:00 PM

AS TOLD TO LEAH GREENSTEIN

OH, SISTER

“O

ne day,” my mother always tells me and my sister Bina, “you two are going to

be great friends.”

“I highly doubt it,” Bina always promptly responds, which would be kind of hurtful if not for the fact that I could not agree with her more...and sometimes I even beat her to saying that. “No, no, never, ever, uh, uh, uh,” I say. “You’ll see,” my mother always says. “When my sister Pessy and I were teenagers we couldn’t stand to be in the same room as each other. A nd if we were in each other’s proximity...Pessy would tell me I breathed too loudly, I would point out every blackhead on her nose, Pessy would tell me my teeth were crooked, I would tell her she was getting fat. We were obnoxious and we pretty much drove each other nuts. But today…” Today, my aunt Pessy and my mother cannot manage 15 minutes without talking to each other. They go walking every morning around the local lake, they go shopping together, they schmooze on the phone while washing dishes, etcetera, etcetera. It’s hard to believe that there was ever a time they hated each other’s guts. “We didn’t hate each other’s guts,” said my mother when I told that to her once. “It’s hard to explain. I think we didn’t like ourselves. We were teenagers and ﬁnding ourselves and not always comfortable in our own skin, and a sister felt like a safe place to dump our negative feelings. Or maybe we felt like we were competing for the same resources and had to knock each other to bring ourselves up? Or maybe—”

My mom loves to psychoanalyze things. But whatever had gone down between Pessy and my mother when they were young aside, there was no way Bina and I were ever going to be friends. Unless my older sister had a personality transplant. Bina is annoying. Everything about her gets me nervous, from the way she tells my mother stories that go on and on and on to the way she chews her food. She even sleeps in an annoying way, with her mouth half open. And Bina loves giving mussar. If I’ll dawdle before davening or if my skirt is a tad too short, she’ll launch into a whole mussar schmooze that’ll go on and on and on...until I tell my mother, who will tell Bina she’s not the morality police...while also telling me to go daven/change, which is highly annoying because even though Bina was told off, it’s like she won. Luckily for the both of us, between school and extracurricular activities we hardly have time to bicker. We’ll annoy each other in the mornings before school and if we have time before bed, but usually one or the other of us is rushing off to do something. Sometimes whole weeks will go by with hardly any contact between me and Bina, other than some put-downs as we rush off in different directions. Life would probably have continued in just this way until Bina left to sem and then hopefully got married and then I left to sem and hopefully got married and then, if my m o t h er was

right—and she always is—we’d wake up one day and be friends. But then came coronavirus and quarantine. When I first heard we wouldn’t be able to leave our houses for a little while, I’m embarrassed to say I was secretly a little thrilled. No school! Sleep till noon! Yay! A nd I would’ve slept till noon, if the morality police, aka Bina, hadn’t woken me up and told me it was almost chatzos. The first day stuck at home was relaxing and enjoyable. The second day was okay. By the time day three rolled around I was going stir-crazy. It didn’t help that Bina and I kept arguing over the house phone. We both were desperate to schmooze with our friends, but between school teleconferences and everybody wanting the phones, time was limited. We had epic showdowns. “Chana'la, you are the most selfish human being to walk the planet,” Bina shrieked after I pulled out the phone plug mid-conversation. “Look at the pot calling the kettle black! Who’s been hogging the phone for the last hour?!” I yelled back. Bina threw the phone at me and missed. I threw it back and didn’t miss. Bina started howling and chasing me. I ran to lock myself in the pantry.

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“One day you guys will be best friends,” my brother Yirmy said in a perfect imitation of my mother, and then started laughing so hard he began choking on the Fresca he’d been drinking. A nd then came Shabbos. Twent y - f o u r- p l u s hours with no access to any of my friends or a phone to contact them with. By Shabbos morning I’d exhausted all reading material in the house. By two in the afternoon, Bina and I sat on opposite ends of the couch, bored out of our minds.

My mother put the AmiLiving down. “Chana’la, allow me to introduce you to a lovely girl named Bina. Bina, allow me to introduce you to Chana’la. I can personally vouch for the wonderful personalities of these two girls.” My sister and I looked at each other. I made a face. Bina made one back. Then Bina said the last words I expected to hear, “Want to play Uno?” I was ﬂoored. But like my sister, I was desperate. “Okay, I guess.” There was the sound of applauding. It was my mother. “Girls, there’s double fudge ice cream pops in the freezer that I bought for myself. But I’m willing to share—” Double fudge ice cream pops?! Gimme, gimme, gimme!

“Did you know there are exactly 304 fringes on the rug?” I said at one point.

“—on one condition: that for the next hour, you refrain from giving each other any criticism…unless you give at least three compliments at the same time.”

“There are 306,” Bina corrected me. “I counted three times.”

For double chocolate ice cream pops I could do that.

“Not true.” I counted again. She was right.

How did our game of Uno go? It was actually fun, certainly a lot funner than sitting on the couch. At ﬁrst we just focused on the game but then we got to talking about school. Bina had a lot of the same teachers as I have now and she had some interesting insights to share. At one point I accused her of being a world-class nag, but then I quickly had to follow that putdown with compliments about her hair, beautiful singing voice and nice davening. Bina criticized me at least three times, which meant I got nine compliments. I had never known my sister thought I was smart!

“What I would give for a friend right now,” I moaned. “One friend. Is that too much to ask?” “I’m with you, sister,” said Bina. Her eyes gleamed. “I say we break the quarantine for one friend. Let’s live dangerously.” “A bsolutely not,” said my mother, not even looking up from her AmiLiving. “Fun fact,” I said. “People can die of loneliness.” Bina narrowed her eyes. “That’s not fun. Or true.” It was quiet for another minute. My mother looked up from her magazine. “Why don’t you girls do something instead of just sitting there?” “There’s nobody to do something with!” I wailed.

REALLIFE real tweens

We earned cream.

that

WE LOOKED AT EACH OTHER. I MADE A FACE. BINA MADE ONE BACK.

the ice cream. It was nice to have a girl around my age to sit and share a snack with, even if she was my sister. We cleaned up after ourselves too, so my mother said she’d let us bake my grandmother’s legendary seven-layer Pesach nut cake. We did just that the next day and we laughed so hard when it ended up as a no-layer mush of cake and cream that my mother actually cried happy tears to see us getting along. And miraculously, we got along for the rest of the week. I’m not going to end this story by saying that my sister and I are now BFFs. Life is rarely that neat. For all I know, the quarantining will end tomorrow and we’ll both go oﬀ on our separate ways. But right now we’re marooned on an island together so I may as well enjoy the other humans I'm stuck with. Even if one sleeps with her mouth open. But when this quarantine ends? Well, I, for one, am realizing that I don’t want to wait for my sister and I to grow up to appreciate each other. My mom says it’s inevitable…so we may as well start now. ⊙

ice

That night we baked Pesach cookies together. Then we ate them, with

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01/04/2020 11:00 PM

A+

How would you react if you found out something that totally upended your life? I love to read, the more dramatic the novel the better, and I’d always imagined that if I were the hero faced with shocking news I’d fall to the ﬂoor in a dramatic faint or something like that.

O+

AB+

Instead, when it happened to me, all I felt was numb.

It was two weeks before Pesach. It was crowded in the doctor’s waiting room, where we waited for 40 minutes for my annual physical, but that was nothing compared to the wait in the actual examination room, where I sat and twiddled my thumbs and curled my toes and counted ceiling tiles while waiting for Dr. Stepak to make his appearance.

“Remind me why we’re doing this again?” my long-suﬀering mother asked, as the one-hour mark passed since our appointment and there was no sign of Doc. We’d left the house in shambles, because, apparently, Pesach cleaning means chaos, and my younger siblings kept calling to kvetch that they were starving because, yes, Erev Pesach. “You want me to go to camp,” I reminded her. “The deadline to hand in health forms is this week so I need my physical now.” “That you do,” said Mommy, “that you do.” She sighed and closed her eyes. Was she really going to take a nap on the chair?! Apparently, yes. I looked around the room, noticed my chart on the table and decided to take a peek. There was my name, Shaya Ganz, my birth date, my weight, height and blood type, which was O positive. Wow, that was cool. I hadn’t known I was O positive. We’re learning about blood types in science class, and my teacher, Mr. Richter, mentioned that Os are universal donors, which means they can donate blood to just about anyone. “It’s great that my blood type is O positive,” I enthused to Mommy, who opened one eye. “O? That’s nice,” Mommy said sleepily,

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AB–

O+

A– O–

B+

As told to Chaya Silber

In my Blood A O+

B–

A–

01/04/2020 11:01 PM

+ B–

A–

“So that means you and Totty are Os, too?” I pressed on. “A ctually, I’m a type B,” Mommy replied, yawning. “B positive, if I recall correctly. It’s almost like a cute expression. Just be positive.” And that was the news that upended my life. Mommy had B positive blood. I had O. What do you do when you realize that you are not biologically related to your mother, that there is no chance on earth that she gave birth to you, which means you must have been adopted or something?

AB–

I didn’t fall on the ground in a dead faint. I did feel stunned, but in a frozen kind of way. No tears or shouting followed. Instead, I felt numb, as if I had no feelings at all.

AB+

B+

O– B+

I guess it was the shock of it all. A few minutes later Dr. Stepak ﬁnally appeared, making his usual jokes about the pre-Pesach camp rush and asking about yeshivah. I guess my answers made sense because neither he nor my mom said otherwise, but my mind was a million miles away.

But did my mom understand that? Nope. There’s a reason for all the evil stepmother stories out there. My adoptive mother is not evil but she just didn’t have the feelings toward me a real mother would have. A real mother wouldn’t slave-drive me like this! I did my jobs, of course, because I didn’t have a choice, but I sure didn’t do them happily. And then my mom kept snapping at me about my attitude and how everyone in the family had to pitch in. Everyone in the family. If only she knew that I knew. I had a lot of proofs...and not just the blood types. I was the only one in my family with reddish hair, even though Totty claimed that his father, Zeidy Berger, had red hair before it turned white. Late one night, as I tossed and turned and thought about this resemblance, and the fact that I did look a bit like Totty, I came to a sudden realization. It had me gasp and sit up in bed, nearly waking my brother Mendy.

What do you do when you ﬁnd out your life is a lie? Do you yell, scream, demand answers? Do you go through oﬃcial documents in the dead of night, looking for a clue? Do you confront your parents and ask for an explanation?

The reason I looked like Totty, and had red hair like Zeidy, is because I was Totty’s child! Apparently, my father had been married to someone else, who either was niftar or they got divorced, and then Mommy took me in when she married Totty. It all made sense! That’s why there was a three-year break between me and my younger sister, Hudis! That’s why my mom never displayed her wedding pictures. She said she hated how she looked in them but when I got a peek once I saw the entire wedding seemed low-key! That’s why my father kept all the documents in a safe instead of in a shoebox on a shelf or something!

I’m not sure what the right thing to do is, but I can tell you what I did, which is, in one word, nothing.

Was my real mother out there? Or was I actually an orphan? I had to ask. I had to know.

I didn’t yell, scream or kick up a tantrum. I didn’t go hunting, because my birth certiﬁcate and all our family’s papers were in my father’s locked safe, and I was never very good at picking locks. Instead, I looked for the clues, which I soon realized were all around me.

Five days before Pesach was K-day, or kashering day. The kitchen had been scrubbed spic and span, including the ceiling and every available inch of space.

On the way home, Mommy was on the phone with my sister Chevy, giving instructions for heating up dinner. She was too busy and distracted to realize that my mind was racing, my hands were clammy and at the same time I felt nothing.

I don’t know what Erev Pesach looks like in your house, but from the moment I came home from yeshivah it was “Shaya, do this” and “Shaya, can you do that?” and “Shaya, what’s taking so long?”

odA+

I’ll tell you what’s taking so long. I’m exhausted, I had a hard day in yeshivah, and I need some time to relax, to shoot hoops in our backyard. I don’t want to spend three hours cleaning the corners of Shimmy’s high chair with

Issue 463.indd 37

toothpicks, and I’m not interested in dusting the bookshelves. If Hashem created dust, I’m sure He had a plan. Why mess with it?

Totty came home early from work, heated up the huge, oversized pot, and prepared a clean stone and lots of rags. My ﬁve siblings stood around and waited, excited to see the messy process, eager to start bringing down the Pesach dishes from the attic, to line the cabinets and stock up the fridge, to make enough chocolate cake to feed an army. “Shaya, where are you?” Totty asked, his voice penetrating my consciousness from far away. “I could use your help with the kashering.” “Coming in a minute,” I grumbled. I had just started A ngry Birds on my Game Boy, and if I stopped now—

37 01/04/2020 11:01 PM

“Shaya!” Mommy was at the door, and she didn’t look pleased. “Almost done—” “I don’t understand you, Shaya!” Mommy said. Her face was tired, her mouth stretched into a thin line. “Everyone is standing near Totty, ready to help, and you’re nowhere to be found, not today, and not any day! You’re the oldest! I expect more from you!” I just stood there, a million retorts buzzing in my brain, but not a word came out of my mouth. It was so unfair! Not any day?! I was working like a dog! “Don’t just stand there looking at me as if I have two heads. Let’s go! To the kitchen, now!” My “mother” never snaps at my sister Hudis like that. Never. I added it to my mental list of proofs. I followed my mother, or, to be more speciﬁc, my adoptive mother, and helped Totty with the gallons and gallons of water that was ﬂooding our kitchen, mopping and drying and bringing down the boxes and setting them up, until my bones ached and I was seeing stars. And what did I get in return? Not a word of appreciation or encouragement or much of anything. Just a sizzling frank in a bun, with lots of pickles and mustard and some sauerkraut for dinner, washed down with a Coke. Take-out was okay, but it wasn’t nearly enough for the hours and hours of slave labor I was forced to do. I woke up in a sour mood and went twice to the grocery and came home and played basketball and watched my little brothers and peeled a case of apples. But that wasn’t enough, oh no! I was chastised for taking too long to come home after Maariv and for leaving my shoes in the front hallway and for my “attitude.” But it wasn’t all bad. I did go shopping with Totty for a new suit, because I grew a couple of inches, and we got ice cream afterward. I almost told him I knew the truth but I couldn’t get the words out.

38 Issue 463.indd 38

The last few days before Pesach dragged, and then it was the night of bedikas chametz, the traditional night of the all-nighter. For those who live in families where everything is organized to a T, where the Pesach food is cooked and wrapped and the Seder table set and the suits hemmed and the shoes shined, you probably won’t know what I’m talking about. But for everyone else, it was the night that most of the Ganz family members stayed up for hours and hours to ﬁnish the hundred and one things that needed to be done. Things like grating the maror and cooking the eggs and mashing the potatoes and squeezing the lemons and making just one more batch of Pesach cupcakes and washing down another grimy countertop. The night started okay, but by 2:00 a.m. we were all dropping from exhaustion. My father ﬁnally called it a night at 2:30, after he’d fallen asleep over a bucket of potatoes in water and gotten his beard wet. Hudis took the last batch of snow kisses out of the oven and tottered up to her room. That left Mommy and myself in charge of cleanup. We worked quietly for a while, and then my mother began to sing. She sang old camp songs, ancient Yiddish songs and the newest hits from 8th Day, as I, the boy with the croaking frog voice (I told you we weren’t related), tried to harmonize. Then we collapsed into gales of laughter as we washed and dried and scrubbed and mopped and did more of the same. It must have been sometime around 4:00 a.m. but it might have been later when it hit me. This was a lot of fun. I haven’t had such a good time with my mother in, well, like forever. “Penny for your thoughts,” said Mommy during a lull in the conversation. “You’ve been awfully quiet lately, Shaya.” I was thinking a lot

“M I lo m an fo di te

of things, but mostly how even if she wasn’t my real mother, my mother was still okay, still doing her best to manage our family and a stressful job and making Pesach without losing it, most of the time. “Are you okay, honey?”

This would have been the perfect opportunity to change the subject, to speak about the price of tea in China, or the weather in Timbuktu, or our Chol Hamoed plans, or whatever. Instead, perhaps because it was so late at night and my brain wasn’t on high gear, I found myself blurting it out. “Mommy,” I said, lowering my voice and leaning forward. “Why didn’t you tell me?” “Tell you what?” asked Mommy, her burrow creased in puzzlement. “What should I have told you?”

“The real story. You know, about me.” “The real story?” This was beginning to sound like the plot of a very tired novel. I decided to go for broke.

B–

“You know, the story of where I was born. And who my real mother is.” I sat back, crossed my arms and waited. I expected a lot of things…pain, regret, fear and perhaps guilt. What I didn’t expect was what actually happened. My mother looked utterly confused. “What in the world are you talking about?!” I told Mommy about my discovery in the doctor’s oﬃce, which was proof that I wasn’t my mother’s biological son, because how could someone with type B have a child with type O? It simply wasn’t scientiﬁcally possible. Ergo, I was not my mother’s real son. I confessed my suspicions that my father had been married before, and that I was never told the truth because my parents wanted to protect me. Mommy was too stunned to speak.

A+

B–

“Wow,” she ﬁnally said. “You’ve been dealing with this, alone, for how long?”

A– 01/04/2020 11:01 PM

“Mommy,” A– I said, lowering AB– my voice and leaning forward. “Why didn’t you tell me?” A+ AB+

AB+

O+

Mommy didn’t respond. She went to her home office, turned on the computer and printed out a few pages of scientific research. “Read this,” she said, handing it to me. Although it was late, and my eyes were sticking, I began to skim over the paperwork. I’ll spare you the medical jargon. Suffice it to say, Mr. Richter, my science teacher, was dead wrong. A parent with type B can definitely have a child with type O, beyond a shadow of a doubt.

“But what?” I thought about all the evidence I’d gathered. All the ways I’d realized I was being maltreated, and that’s when I realized, sure, I had lots of it. My mother, like all human beings, is not perfect, so I’d found plenty of “evidence” to support my thesis.

O+

B+ B+

O– A–

I just looked at my shoes.

O+ O–

B–

“And why didn’t you say anything?”

I thought of all the other proofs I had. “B-b-but!”

B–

A+

“Ever since the doctor’s visit. Two weeks, I think. More or less.”

Because that’s what I’d gone looking for. If I searched for the signs that my mom loved me they were all over the place, too, just waiting to be found. They were there in the way my mom ordered hot dogs from the more expensive place because she knew I liked it better, the way she was singing with me in the kitchen instead of listening to the books-on-tapes she enjoyed, the way she was there for me and my siblings every single day from the day I was born. “Nothing. I’ve kind of had an attitude lately.” I couldn’t meet my mother’s eyes. “Sorry about that.” “Related or not, I’ll always love you to the moon and back,” my mother said. “Related or not?!” I raised an eyebrow. “You’re mine,” said my mom with a laugh. “Shall we cover the counters now, son?”⊙

– Issue 463.indd 39

01/04/2020 11:02 PM

“Perry?”

they waited for the next ride to Israel.

My mother poked her head into my room. “You up yet?”

I blinked at the ceiling and then glanced at the clock. It was my ﬁrst day of Pesach vacation and it wasn’t even nine a.m. yet. I yawned and stretched. “Now I am.”

“So what’s going on, Perry?” “Nothing.” I tensed, waiting. What was it going to be this time? Someone was for sure going to Israel for Pesach. She probably wanted to send me on a bus across town in order to get those towels to her.

My mother tossed the phone onto my bed. “Tirtza wants to talk to you.”

“You sound tired. But guess what, Perry? Good news! We decided to come home for Pesach!”

“Tirtza? What does she want?” Talking to my sister ﬁrst thing in the morning was a pretty depressing way to start my day.

I inhaled slowly as my thoughts shifted. No towels, no buses. That was just about the only good news there was.

I washed negel vasser and then lifted the phone, turning it in my hands. “Hello?” “Hey, Perry! What’s going on? I haven’t spoken to you in a long time.” “Yeah,” I said. “Long time.” “I don’t think we spoke since before Sukkos…did we?” “Um, don’t think so.” We deﬁnitely didn’t. She called me multiple times an hour that week before Sukkos, because her sister-in-law was going to Israel for Yom Tov and she wanted me to buy her a set of brandname kitchen towels, and then send her pictures of it, and then describe the texture of the material, and then exchange it three times. A fter all that, her sister-in-law forgot them at home, and those towels sat on the bottom of Tirtza’s old closet eating dust while

“The whole Pesach?” “The whole entire!”

in my heart. And that was what worried me most. It’s what got me every time. Tirtza might not care about me the littlest bit, and she might have used me out until I was a balled-up wad of brand-name kitchen towel, but there was still a little Perry inside of me who looked up to her with big, adoring eyes, holding out my hands and waiting for a crumb of her love. I needed a plan. I grabbed a sheet of paper from my desk and wrote in bold letters over and over again: I CHA NGED, I CHA NGED, I CHANGED. If I made sure to remember that, I would be just ﬁne.

“Oh…no hotels this year with your inlaws?” “Nope. Done with that. I miss Pesach at home…. Just wanted to tell you the good news personally! Gotta run.” The phone went dead and I listened to the static-y silence for a long minute. A s always, when it came to my sister, my feelings were a mess. You know how to deal with her, I whispered to myself. You’re not little, innocent Perry anymore.

g n a h C But still, even as I thought of Tirtza’s arrival with dread, it was hard to stop a little glimmer of excitement from rising

a r o F 40 Issue 463.indd 40

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** Tirtza arrived on a Monday. I was in the Pesach kitchen behind a tower of potato peels when I heard the front door open. “Hiiiiii! The Orensteins have ariiiiiiived!” My heart beat faster as I continued to peel. Tirtza poked her head into the kitchen, Zevi in one arm, a massive leather tote in the other. “Perry! Hi! Where’s everybody?” Behind my potato mountain, I rolled my eyes. It was just like Tirtza to expect everyone to be waiting for her at the front door with red carpets and balloons and trumpets.

“Mommy’s shopping with the boys. Totty’s running errands. Lunch is in the kitchen.” Tirtza maneuvered around the counter and put her free arm around my shoulder. “I missed you, Perry! Let me just see if Avi needs help with the suitcases. Grab Zevi a second?” In Tirtza lingo, “grab Zevi a second” meant I would be stuck with the kid all afternoon. I held out a semi-peeled potato. “Um, I’m in middle of making kugel.” “Literally a second, Perry. I’ll be right back.” Suspended between the two of us, Zevi started to cry. “One second literally,” I said, closing my arms around him. I gave Tirtza three minutes before storming out of the kitchen. I found her in the front entrance with Avi, two massive suitcases and several smaller pieces of luggage crowded around them. “Here,” I said, dumping Zevi in her arms. “Wow,” Tirtza said. “I can’t believe he’s not crying! He loves you already, Perry.”

e g n

I started to smile, but quickly wiped it away. That was how Tirtza did things. She made me feel good, and then she asked for favors, and I would do them because I felt like I owed her something back.

“Do you mind helping Avi bring the suitcases upstairs?” There it was.

“I’m busy making kugel.” “Oy, Perry, are you working too hard?

By Naomi Raksin

Issue 463.indd 41

You must be. I remember how much work it was every year.” I looked at my sister, her eyes open wide, her forehead creased. A sudden image surfaced in my mind of me sitting at the kitchen table, building 28 houses out of graham crackers and marshmallow fluff for Tirtza’s school project. She hadn’t been very concerned about how much work that had been. Back in the kitchen, I put my head in my hands, breathing deeply. The image of little, innocent Perry carefully applying fluff to the seams of crackers in order to please her big sister made me furious. A nd that wasn’t the only time Tirtza had used me. It had gone on all through elementary school and then high school. I had packed mishloach manos for her, baked cookies for her, washed dishes for her, done a hundred little things for her every single day, like bring her cups of water, and fetch her books from her room, and look for her missing stuff. Then she left to seminary and got married, and she did not call me once, ever, unless she wanted something like a recipe, or clothes, or brand-name kitchen towels. That was Tirtza. Always a user. And that had been me. Always used. Except I was not little, innocent Perry anymore and I was not going to be taken advantage of. The next two days were busy with last-minute preparations. Tirtza was mostly out of the house, shopping and catching up with friends. “Can I just leave Zevi on the floor here?” Tirtza asked on Erev Yom Tov while I whipped up the ice cream. “He’ll play by himself.” “No,” I said. “Sorry.” “What’s going on, Perry? Everything okay?” “Fine.” Later, after candle lighting, I noticed that my mother and Tirtza were not around, so I went to the Pesach kitchen to see if my help was needed. “What’s going on with Perry? She’s act-

41 01/04/2020 11:02 PM

ing so strange…” Tirtza’s voice floated through the open door. I froze. “…She’s so out of it. She seems almost… depressed?” I rolled my eyes. I was “out of it” and “depressed” because I wasn’t babysitting for her all day and tripping all over myself to do favors for her. It was so like Tirtza to view everything through her own selfish lens. A s I set the table, I put Tirtza and A vi on one end of the table, and set myself up next to my brothers on the other side. The last thing I needed was to be goaded into conversation with Tirtza, think she actually cared about me, and then get hurt when she used me again. It was easier to remain distant. The next morning I bumped into Tirtza in the kitchen. It was the first day of Yom Tov and everyone else was at shul. “Oh my goodness, Perry, these cookies are insane! How’d you make them?” I grabbed a handful from the jar. “I don’t know, the usual. Potato starch. Eggs, sugar.” I moved toward the table, and Tirtza followed. “You’re an amazing baker... Uch, I’m so tired, you have no idea. This jetlag is killing me. Zevi was up at five a.m.” She was trying to make me feel bad for her so I would offer my services all on my own. Once, Tirtza had invited friends to study, and I’d hovered at the fringe of the group, listening to their conversation. “You have no idea how hard it is to be in high school, Perry,” Tirtza had suddenly said, and I perked up, secretly thrilled to be included. “We

have tests and stuff all the time. Can you imagine that? We literally have no time for anything. We can’t even take a break to pick up our pizza order.” Eager to please, I put on my winter boots and trudged in the snow to the pizza shop, waited endless minutes in an endless line, and walked back bearing the weight of pizza and fries and cups of ice cream. When I finally got home, toes numb from the cold, fingers aching from the load, Tirtza took the package from my hands, marched upstairs with her friends and closed the door behind her. “Perry? What’s going on? Everything okay?” “Fine.” “How’s school?” “Fine.” “Perry? Are you upset about something? Or at me?” I opened my mouth, closed it. This was Tirtza, trying hard to gain control over me. “I think I hear Zevi crying...” “You’re right…. Uch, he barely slept. Do you want to get him and bring him down?” “No.” The truth was, I sort of did. He was a cute baby, all babbly and chubby-faced, but bringing him down for Tirtza meant I’d be stuck with him for who knows how long. She’d probably tell me she was going to lie down for a quick nap and then wouldn’t resurface until the men got home from shul.

Tirtza went upstairs, and then came down a few minutes later, dressed, heel-ed and sheitel-ed. “Pretty dress,” I said, before I could catch myself. “Thanks. It’s actually old and not so practical for me now. You can try it on and if you like it, I’ll leave it for you.” My eyes widened, and then narrowed. This was Tirtza getting desperate. “I’m taking Zevi on a walk to the park. Want to come?” Tirtza asked. “No, thanks.” I actually did, but I did not want to chat for three minutes, and then be left with Zevi for the rest of the day. “Okay. You sure?” “Yes.” Tirtza fumbled with the stroller and started walking toward the door. Then she turned back and gave a half-smile. “You sure-sure?” I hesitated. Self-preservation warred brieﬂy with the little Perry in my heart who still longed for her sister’s attention. “Not in the mood,” I said. “Maybe next time.” The door closed softly behind her, and I paced through the empty rooms of the house, feeling restless. I was dressed, I had davened and the table was set. I wished I could have gone to the park with Tirtza, while I simultaneously hated myself for

d e rr a w n o ati v r e s Self-pre briefly with the little Perry in d e g n o l ll ti s o h my heart w for her sister’s attention.

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still wishing my sister would want to spend time with me. Sometime later the front door barreled open, and Tirtza stepped through the entrance, looking frazzled in her windblown sheitel. She was trying to get the stroller through the door with one arm, while the other held a squirming Zevi. The stroller tipped over, releasing baby bottles, diapers and rattles, and Tirtza bent down, gathering the items with her free hand, her jaw all tight and tense. I watched her struggle from my perch on the couch, feeling detached and slightly fascinated. When all the items were gathered, Tirtza brought Zevi upstairs, and I didn’t see them again until the meal. “Really, Mommy, something is wrong with Perry. She’s not acting like herself.” My mother and Tirtza were in the kitchen, preparing dessert. There was a clink of dishes and a rattling noise. I inched closer. “You haven’t been home for a long time, Tirtza. Perry is older now, she’s changed.” In the moment of silence that followed, I replayed my mother’s

words. Perry is older now, she’s changed. I smiled to myself, proud. Even my mother had recognized that I changed. After years of being used by my sister, I had learned from her how not to treat other people, but mostly, I learned how to treat myself. I knew how to protect myself from being hurt. “I don’t know, Mom. I’m really worried about her.” I rolled my eyes, but then I wondered: Why was she telling my mother this? What did she stand to gain by saying she was worried about me? I puzzled it out and did not come up with anything. If she had nothing to gain, could that possibly mean she actually…cared? A part of me grew anxious at that thought. This was classic Perry—the little, innocent Perry—getting fooled into thinking that Tirtza cared when I had already established the fact that she didn’t. But another part of me persisted. Things were so diﬀerent since Tirtza had last been home. I had grown from an insecure, puppy-eyed kid to an older and wiser teen. A nd things were diﬀerent for Tirtza too. She was a mom now, caring for a husband and a baby in a country far from home. It had been so easy to protect myself from being taken advantage of these past few days… What if that

was simply because Tirtza wasn’t trying to take advantage of me at all? Everything was so messy with Tirtza, I didn’t even know what was normal behavior and what wasn’t. Was it normal to ask your sister to watch her nephew for a short time? Surely it was. And that was all she had asked of me. Knowing how Tirtza had been through the years, I had assumed she would have left him with me for hours, but there was no way to know for certain. If I had changed in the years she’d been gone, was it not possible that Tirtza had changed in that time too? “Perry?” Tirtza walked through the kitchen door and found me standing still against the wall. I startled. “Um,” I said. “I didn’t mean… I’m just… Are you okay, Perry? Really okay?” I looked my sister in the eye. She seemed genuinely interested and concerned, but with Tirtza it was hard to tell. I blinked and turned away, my thoughts a chaotic mess. Should I dare believe that Tirtza had changed and then possibly get hurt if she hadn’t? Or should I believe she was still a user and possibly lose out on forging a relationship with her? Should I remember everything she did to me and never trust her again? Or let go of the past and see her for who she was right now? “I’m just…thinking about things, I guess,” I said, cautious. “Maybe…we can take Zevi to the park and you can tell me about it?” “Maybe,” I said, still cautious, but knowing in my heart that I would give her this chance. Of course I would. How could I not? As we walked toward the table, I found myself thinking back to young, innocent Perry, and for the ﬁrst time I allowed myself to wonder if maybe I hadn’t only been an insecure and naïve child, being taken advantage of by my sister over and over again, but also a girl whose heart was big enough to never stop believing that it was possible for people to change. ⊙

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THE SECOND I realized what I was holding in my hands, I should have destroyed it. I should have put it in the incinerator, or better yet, brought it to the Contraband Office. It would have been gone in a split second, and no one would have been the wiser. But I didn’t. I had found it in the attic last night while cleaning for Pesach. The attic was illuminated only by a naked bulb hanging from the ceiling, and a thin ray of light coming through the small round window under the curve of the roof. The attic was full of interesting stuff, like an old rocking horse that used to belong to my mother, and a huge mirror in a gleaming gold frame, cracked across the top, that used to belong to my grandmother. I stood in front of it, peering through the dust dancing in the weak gleam of light, wondering at the line that the break seemed to form across my face. It was an optical illusion, of course. My face was smooth and perfect. I had then moved over to the bookshelves, to dust the books that my parents couldn’t bear to throw out and yet didn’t have room for in the living room, and that’s where I had found it. It was underneath the shelf, so lost in the damp darkness that I might have missed it. It was in a soft, velvet bag, coated in sticky dust and wispy cobwebs that got all over my hands when I gingerly slid it out. The drawstring was soft with age and rot, and came away in my hands when I untied it. I lifted whatever it was—it felt like a book—out of the bag, and slid it onto my lap. It looked like a book, too. A t least, it did until I opened it to the first page. The pages were not paper, but plastic, and thick. The book, or whatever it was, had no words at all—just pictures, but not on a screen; these were fl at, and you could touch them with your hands. They were inserted into slots in the plastic pages. Curious, I angled the odd book so that the page caught the light com-

44 Issue 463.indd 44

ing in from the window, illuminating it. A second later, I wished that I hadn’t. What I saw on that page made me slam the book shut, then shove it into its bag and back into the dark recesses under the bookshelf where it had come from. But even when I closed my eyes, I couldn’t un-see what I had seen. My stomach lurched, and I put my head between my knees to keep from being sick. “Finished already?” my mother asked when I had come down the stairs, clutching the bannisters with both of my hands. “No,” I had said hoarsely. I cleared my throat. “No, I choose not to clean the attic anymore.”

PERFECT EQUALITY THE FAIR WAY

Her face had fallen, and I pictured her climbing up the stairs herself when she ﬁnished the work she was doing down here, but more importantly, I pictured her reaching underneath the bookshelf and ﬁnding the book thing herself.

YOU

She would do the right thing. She would get rid of it. I wouldn’t have to think about it anymore. But all night, I did just that: I thought about what I had seen. I only fell into an uneasy sleep when I convinced myself that it was the poor light of the attic, playing tricks on my eyes. What I had seen couldn’t be as terrible as I remembered it. It couldn’t possibly be. This morning I had been brave enough—or, to use an outdated word (if you used this word on someone else, it’s punishable by public shaming, or worse), foolish enough—to climb back up-

BY PERMISSION

ARE

PERSON NEUMAN

DINA

01/04/2020 11:02 PM

T HE FAIR

stairs. The book was still there, and I slid it out, and opened it again. I managed to turn a few pages this time before my stomach began to turn. I shoved the thing away again, raced down the wooden stairs, slamming the door shut behind me. “Can I ask you permission to ask you a question?” Liba asked me a few minutes later, as we walked together to school. We were running late because the shaming square on Main was setting up for a public shaming, and I wanted to stop and watch. It is sort of satisfying when you see someone being shamed, because it’s just such an effective punishment. There are very, very few repeat oﬀenders. Not that it matters, though. Once you’ve been shamed, you’re pretty much done; you have to wear the red mask so everyone knows you’ve been shamed, so nothing you say is taken seriously. Nothing at all. They deserve it, though. A s they say, if you don’t want the shame, don’t do the blame.

YOU

“Shame!” the people setting the chairs up around the square were chanting softly. “Shame, shame, shame!” “Hindy, do I have your permission?” Liba asked again as we finally walked on. “Yes,” I said. “I grant you permission to ask me a question, although, if you think about it, asking me permission to ask me a question is also asking me a question, and who said I agreed to let you ask me the first question in the first place?” “What?” Liba’s eyes grew wide. “I just said—you’re supposed to say—”

SONAL

“Yes, yes, sure, why not.” Poor Liba; she didn’t deserve this, and it was borderline Oﬀensive to make her so upset. What was wrong with me today? “I grant you permission to ask me another question.” Liba’s face smoothed in relief. “Okay, thank you. I just wanted to know if something was wrong, because usually when we stop at the shaming square you tell me all kinds of inter-

esting stuﬀ about the person they’re going to shame, like about that boy who got shamed because he kicked a cat, but this time you were super quiet. Is something wrong?” Okay; so this is what I was going to do. I would come straight home from school, grab the book thing, and bring it straight to the Contraband Oﬃce, where I would put it into the incinerator myself. Knowing I would do that was a huge relief, and I took a deep breath. “Permission to smile at you,” I asked Liba. “Permission granted,” she said promptly, and I smiled. “Nothing is wrong,” I said. “Nothing is wrong at all.” Mrs. Drexler’s class had already started, but she stopped abruptly when Liba and I walked in. She would start the lesson over, of course, because otherwise the other students would have an unfair advantage over us. It wasn’t our faults that we were tardily challenged this morning. “Good morning, unless it’s not,” Mrs. Drexler greeted us. “Did you choose to do your homework?” “No, I chose not to do my homework,” said Liba, as always.

would have called on someone who did not raise their hand, she would be guilty of invading a student’s personal space by asking them a question without their permission. That was not enough to take someone to the shaming square, but it was usually enough to get the ball rolling. Liba’s hand shot up. “Personification,” she said. “Liba, Hindy and Yaffa are all people. That’s an example of personification.” “Wrong,” said Mrs. Drexler, and my mouth fell open. Wrong? “Liba is not wrong,” I said without asking permission to tell her this, because when someone is guilty of Offense, the normal rules do not apply. “Just because her explanation doesn’t match yours, that makes it wrong?” Mrs. Drexler’s face drained of color. “Personification,” she said in a sort of wavering voice, “is defined—can be defined by some people—as when human characteristics are given to a non-human entity. But,” she cleared her throat, “other people might define it…differently. And I’m sorry if I indicated otherwise, Liba. You’re perfect just the way you are.” In the dead silence that followed, I felt, rather than saw, all the eyes of the class fall on me. I don’t know; I don’t do anything all that special. I guess I’m pretty good at being able to pick out the next person due for a public shaming. I guess I’ve got a little bit of a reputation.

“You are perfect just the way you are,” Mrs. Drexler said, but her eyes shifted as she said it, and my own narrowed. She looked a little…insincere. “Now. Who can give me an example of personiﬁcation?”

The government recognized all the way back in 2020 that people have the right not to be oﬀended by other people. That was when the bill that made it illegal to intrude into someone’s private space without asking permission was passed. A nd of course, that was just the beginning. Personal space was quickly interpreted not just as physical space, but also as mental space and emotional space, which is why you have to ask permission before even asking a question, or giving an opinion.

Mrs. Drexler waited until someone put a hand up. If she

Because an opinion can make someone feel bad, and a question can feel

“You are perfect just the way you are,” Mrs. Drexler recited. “A nd you, Hindy. Did you choose to do your homework?” “I chose to do my homework.”

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intrusive. Making facts—like what “personiﬁcation” really means—into something more important than someone’s feelings was the worst Oﬀense of all. The bell rang and we all got up, out of our seats. I was nearly out the front door when someone clamped a hand around my upper arm. Mrs. Drexler. “I did not give you permission to touch me,” I said, and she let go immediately. “Please, Hindy,” she said. “My husband got publicly shamed last year, and he hasn’t been able to get a job since. Please, please don’t tell. I’ll do anything. I have six kids at home to support.”

I had to ask her. I had to know. Slowly, I opened the book on my lap, and my mother let out a sudden, sharp hiss. “Where did you get that?” she asked. Instead of answering, I asked one of my own. I pointed at the pictures. “Please,” I said. “Do I have your permission to ask you a question?” “Yes,” my mother whispered to me, but she wasn’t looking at me. She was looking at the book in my lap.

Her eyes were luminous with tears, and this made me even more upset. What right did she have to make me feel all sorts of weird feelings inside, like guilt, or pity? She was invading my mental space!

“Are these…people?”

I left the classroom and headed straight to the principal’s oﬃce. As a mandated reporter, she would have to pass on my report to the authorities, or risk losing the school.

“Happened to them?”

Look. The laws are in place for our own good, and what’s the point of them if they’re not enforced? As soon as I got home, I went upstairs to the attic. I pulled the dusty book into my arms and headed for the stairs. Then I stopped. If I was going to give this thing to the Contraband Offices, it only made sense that I made sure it was actual contraband, right? I opened it to the first page. I didn’t feel nauseous anymore. I guess I had gotten sort of immune, after so many exposures. Now I was just sort of…intrigued, in a horrified way. The way you might feel looking at a natural disaster. There was a creak on the floor behind me and I slammed the book shut. I whirled around, my heart in my throat. It was my mother. “I thought you chose not to clean here,” she said. “Pesach is next week,” I said numbly. “I changed my mind.” “You’re perfect either way,” said my mother, and in that moment, I made a decision.

46 Issue 463.indd 46

SHAME

I knew that if I brought this book to the Contraband Oﬃce, it would be gone, but it would be burned into my mind forever.

REPORTING

My mother hesitated. Then she nodded. “What happened to them?”

“It’s just…well, they’re all so ugly. So strange-looking. Look at that girl’s nose! It has a…bump on it! A nd what are those dots all over her face? A nd how about that girl, over there, with her ears—” I swallowed hard “sticking out?” What horrible things I had just said! How judgmental and terrible! I put a shaking hand to my burning cheeks. A nd yet…the people in the pictures were so terrible to look at. I closed my eyes, and when I opened them, my mother was sitting beside me, and her hand was resting on the open page.

JUGEMENT

“This belonged to my mother,” she said. “Your grandmother. It’s an album. A sort of book that people used to put pictures of themselves in. I think this one is called a yearbook. It’s pictures of everyone in Bubby’s class.”

“I know what an album is,” I said, because of course, I had learned about them in history class. I had never understood them, though. Since all people looked so exactly alike, the only thing setting us apart are our name tags bearing our names, what was the point of pictures of ourselves? If we want-

HORROR 01/04/2020 11:03 PM

ed to know what we looked like for some weird reason, we can just look at the girl standing next to us. And of course, our eyes. Our eyes were another way to tell us apart from each other.

ING

But the people in this…album…they looked diﬀerent from each other. It was hard to explain. A small face versus a big face. Hair that came in all shades instead of an even, uniform brown. Some people were even…

“Fat,” said my mother. “Some people used to be fat. Or thin. Or had moles or freckles, or dimples.” I knew, of course, of the Equality Procedures that every newborn undergoes when they are born. The government had scientifically calculated the perfect face and ﬁgure and skin tone, height and weight and shoe size, and through a series of surgical procedures and DNA editing had ensured that we all looked exactly alike. This was the norm, and had been the norm since…well, for decades. Longer than I was alive. Longer than my mother was alive. I just didn’t really understand what it meant, until now.

“This is horrible,” I said. “I’m glad we don’t have to deal with all of these differences now. Differences can be offensive, or a way to offend.” My mother nodded slowly. Her eyes were still on the album. “Of course,” she said. “Of course, you’re right. Of course it’s better for us all to be equal so that no one is ever made to feel lesser than.” She looked up. Her perfect face with its fl awless skin was identical to mine. “We should bring this to the Contraband Office right away. No one can own such a display of inequality.”

But she didn’t move, and neither did I. We looked at the pictures, and I didn’t feel nauseous at all. I felt a sort of weird feeling. Like a kind of homesickness, looking at the rainbow array of diﬀerent faces, which is so silly. How can I feel homesick for something I never had?

ROR

There was a sudden sound behind me, a sort of choked-oﬀ groan, and when I spun around a second time, I knew there was someone standing there, by the attic door, but the light was in my eyes and blinded me. A second later I saw from the nametag who it was. “Liba!” I choked. The book—the album—

Issue 463.indd 47

THE GOVERNMENT HAD SCIENTIFICALLY CALCULATED THE PERFECT FACE AND FIGURE AND SKIN TONE, HEIGHT AND WEIGHT AND SHOE SIZE, AND THROUGH A SERIES OF SURGICAL PROCEDURES AND DNA EDITING HAD ENSURED THAT WE ALL LOOKED EXACTLY ALIKE. was open in my lap. “What are you—”

My mother stood quickly, blocking me from view. She looked stricken. “I…actually came up here to tell you that Liba was here. Liba,” my mother said, “do I have your permission to lead you downstairs, and Hindy will be down in a moment?” “Yes,” said Liba, but her eyes were not meeting my mother’s. They were fixed firmly on the album in my lap, and I knew from the expression of horror on her face—her face that was in every way identical to mine—except for the eyes—that she had seen everything. A nd probably heard everything, too. “Please,” I said to her, and grabbed her arm. This was Liba, after all. My best friend. She wouldn’t tell on me. “I didn’t give you permission to touch me,” Liba said in a soft voice. They came to take me to the shaming square less than an hour before the Pesach Seder. I had thought of taking off my name tag and pretending to be someone else, but that would just be putting off the inevitable. They always find you. I was put on the platform, and the cries of “Shame! Shame! Shame!” were like thunder roaring from the heavens. “Owning

contraband! Mocking people! Shame, shame, shame!” In front of the platform was Liba, her perfect face twisted in righteous indignation, but the eyes…the eyes always give it away. In their depths, I saw glee. She would be the top of the class with me gone, I thought. Was that why I had done it? Was that why I had sent so many people to the shaming square? Because to push someone else down is a really easy way of pulling yourself up? Surely not. Surely I had done it because it was the right thing to do; because people who violate others with their own opinions, who say things that are oﬀensive, who make you question yourself and your identity deserve to face justice. Maybe I had. But when you stand on this side of the shaming square, looking out at everyone’s faces, you realize: it’s not the ultimate democracy that they say it is. It’s an angry mob, serving as judge, jury and executioner, gleefully punishing the slightest infractions, destroying your life not for some higher purpose, but just because they could. I could drag her down with me. A fter all, even before she knew about the album she had come into the attic without my permission. I could holler, “Counter-shame! Shame on Liba! She came into my personal space without asking permission!” But I didn’t. Somehow, it all seemed so futile. How would ruining her life help me now? The shrieking got louder and louder. I would have to wear the red mask of shame, making me stand out from all the others. I would lose my position in class. I would get hate mail, death threats. I would be a person shamed for the rest of my life. I closed my eyes to the angry faces, and I saw them again: the pictures in my grandmother’s album, those faces that suddenly I realized were not hideous at all but wonderfully imperfect, beautifully human, from a time when we were not so frightened of imperfection that in order to distract ourselves from our own, we saw it always in the identical faces of each other. ⊙

47 01/04/2020 11:03 PM

There’s a Zeroa in your Pocket

Monday

Sneakily sticking something into someone else’s pocket without them noticing is hard. But when they know that you’re trying to stick something into their pocket, it’s not hard. It’s basically impossible. Which is why, while I’m sure my mother and sisters are having a challenging time cooking for the second days of Pesach, their jobs are nothing compared to mine.

“What are you doing?” Yochonon whirred around to face me in the narrow hallway, his ﬁsts in the air like he was going to punch something. Or someone.

“Nothing! Nothing!” I lifted my hands over my head to show him that they were empty and also to arouse his pity by showing him how puny I was compared to him. “See? Nothing in my hands at all!”

By rachel berger

Yochonon visibly relaxed and shot me a wry look. “You’re not gonna be able to do it, you know.” “Do what?” I blinked innocently. He rolled his eyes. “I know what you’re trying to do, and it’s sorta sweet, I guess, in a horrifyingly gross way, but it’s not gonna work. I have the reﬂexes of a ninja. You have the grace of a baby elephant. You’re not gonna get anything past me.” He walked away from me, toward the kitchen, and I shot forward, closing the distance between us in a fraction of an instant. Who is the ninja now, Yochonon? I slipped the zeroa out of my pocket, where it had been hiding all this time, and, silent and graceful as a cat, I slipped it into his— “Yeah, no,” said Yochonon. He didn’t even turn around to face me as he blocked his pocket with his hand. “Is that seriously the best you’ve got? You’re never going to get that zeroa in my pocket!”

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A Little Background

Just so you don’t think that my family is the kind of family that puts roasted shank bones from the Seder plate into our older brother’s pockets for no reason, I should probably explain that we are totally the kind of family that puts roasted shank bones from the Seder plate into our brother’s pockets, but for a reason. See, my brother Yochonon is really, really desperate to get married. I know this for a fact because it’s one of those things you just know, like you know the sky is up and the ﬂoor is down, and also because I heard my mother on the phone with my aunt, saying, “Yochonon is really desperate to get married.” Since he came out of the freezer at the beginning of this z’man, Yochonon has been on three shidduch dates with three diﬀerent girls, and each time, after it was over, he went straight up to his room and closed the door behind him, and, using my brotherly intuition, I feel like that’s not the best sign. A nd even though he’s a pain in the neck to me, he sort of has to be because he’s my older brother, and it says in the older brother handbook that you have to be a pain in the neck to your younger s i b li n g s , so I don’t take it personally. So, w h e n my friend Shmueli told me that his family has a mesorah of a

sure-ﬁre segulah for ﬁnding your zivug, I knew I had to try it no matter the cost to me or to the lining of my brother’s pocket.

Tuesday

I’m sure you’ve ﬁgured it out by now, but basically, you’re supposed to take the zeroa from the Seder plate and stick it in the pocket of the person who wants to get married, and presto change-o, he’ll get married before next Pesach, hooray, throw the rice! Except after Pesach, because, kitnyios!

My cousin Shmuel is sort of like an alien. But in a good way. No, in a bad way, but in a good way when you need him. Like, the way he thinks is diﬀerent from the way everyone else in the whole world thinks, and the things he says and does can be startling and scary. A nd while he probably should be in a lab somewhere, having his brain analyzed for the sake of science, that’s what I needed right now. I needed results, and I needed an out-of-thebox plan in order to get there.

“But you have to make sure that he doesn’t know about it,” Shmueli told me. “Because it only works if you put it in their pocket when they don’t know about it.”

“What’s the scoop, what’s the story?” My cousin Shmuel burst into my room 15 minutes after I made the call. He stuck his hand out in front of my face. “Where’s the zeroa?”

Which is why my decision to tell Yochonon what I was planning to do was probably a very, very bad one. What was I thinking, telling him? Well, I was thinking that if he caught me putting a roasted meat bone in his pocket he would probably leave his dirty socks under my pillow for a month, or worse, so this way, when he ﬁnds the zeroa in his pocket after I had successfully put it there, he would understand.

“Right there,” I said, pointing at the thing. It was sitting on my desk. A faintish smell emanated from it.

“We’re planning on doing the segulah this Pesach for my sister,” Shmueli said. “It always works!”

What I didn’t bank on was the fact that now that he knew what I was doing, he was on high zeroa-in-my-pocket alert. I had tried ﬁve times already, starting literally the second the Seder was over, and I had been thwarted every single time. A nd I didn’t have a lot of time. Yochonon was going back to yeshivah until the summer the week after Pesach, and, maybe more importantly, I realized now that there’s a reason that we keep meat in the fridge. The zeroa was getting kind of gross. And a little oozy. I had three days at the most to get that thing in his pocket before it literally just upped and walked out of mine. I would have to up my game. I would have to take this task far more seriously than I had been. I would have to call in the big guns. I would have to call my cousin Shmuel.

“A lright, alright, alright,” said Shmuel, and grabbed it. “Leave it all in my hands, little buddy. I got this all covered.” “Wait, one sectered, and ran door. “What are to do with it?”

ond,” I blusto block the you going

Shmuel looked at me like I was a talking plant, and he found that vaguely annoying. “Gonna put it in Yochonon’s pocket. Wasn’t that the plan?” “No!” “No?” “I mean, yes, but that’s not a plan! You don’t just plan to put it into his pocket! You need a plan how to put it into his pocket!” Shmuel tapped his forehead and winked. “I got a plan. It’s all in my noggin.” “I don’t even know—no! Shmuel! I brought you here to help me come up with a plan, not for you to just take over!” A nd then I said a sentence I never thought I would ever say. “Give me back my zeroa!” I shouted, and I

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reached for it, and I missed, and as I was stumbling forward, Shmuel raced out the door of my room, the zeroa in his hands. “This is a job for Shmuel!” he yelled over his shoulder before disappearing down the stairs. Fifteen seconds later, he was back. The zeroa was not in his hands. “You did it!” I shouted. “You really did it!” But Shmuel was shaking his head. “Nope,” he said. “This is not a job for Shmuel. Shmuel quits.” “Wait. If you didn’t do it, then…where’s the zeroa?” “My plan was brilliant,” said Shmuel, ignoring my question. “My plan was foolproof. My plan was to kidnap Yochonon and tie him up in the basement. And then, while he is distracted by his own fears for his life and also by all the rats and cockroaches down there, I would sneak the zeroa into his pocket.” “We don’t have rats and cockroaches in my basement,” I said. Shmuel rolled his eyes. “I put some there ﬁrst, obviously,” he said, and ignored my yelp of dismay. “But anyway, as I came up from behind him with a length of stout rope in my hands and a kerchief soaked with chloroform…” I take it back. Shmuel doesn’t belong in a lab. He belongs in jail. “He must have known I was coming, probably because you basically gave my position away by yelling like that when I took the zeroa. He tackled me and held me down and said that if I wasn’t his cousin he would call the police, and then he said that you were in big trouble for getting me involved in this.” “Me?” I yelped. “I didn’t do anything! And how did all of that happen in 15 seconds?” Shmuel ignored me again. He was bad at putting zeroas in people’s pockets, but excellent at ignoring me. “Anyway, he took the zeroa and he said he’s not giving it back.” “No,” I moaned, and put my head in my hands. Well, I tried to, but it turned out that my hand was already full. With zeroa. “Ew!” I shouted as the meat came into contact with my forehead. I stared at it in awe

50 Issue 463.indd 50

and amazement. “How did you get it back?” “Easy,” said like Yochonon He put it in

Shmuel. “It was almost wanted me to take it back. the garbage.”

“Ew,” I said. “Right underneath a stack of dirty plastic plates, the shells of a dozen eggs, a startlingly large amount of chicken bones, and some sort of goop—” “Yeah, okay, thanks,” I said, and wiped gingerly at my forehead. “Let me know if I can help you further,” said Shmuel, “except I won’t help you because it’s impossible,” and then he climbed out of my window instead of using the door.

Wednesday

I was not going to entrust this task to anyone else. I had learned my lesson. If you want something done, you can’t depend on your psychopathic cousin; you have to do it yourself.

And anyway, I had a plan. Yochonon loves bowling. Well, more than loves it. He thinks he is Bowling King. Like, we should crown him bowling king because he is so good at bowling. He has said this more than once, and so we always go bowling one day of Chol Hamoed. And today was the day, and I had rummaged through the Purim costume box for the occasion. When Yochonon won, I clapped and cheered and yelled, “Bowling King!”

“Get the zeroa out of my pocket,” he said. “Do you have any idea where that thing has been?”

Yochonon grinned and bowed and said, as he always does, “Then crown me already!”

“One step ahead of you,” I said, and whipped out the plastic crown, and more importantly, the purple cape I had brought along with me.

I walked over to him, and he smiled and inclined his head as I placed the crown on it. Then I held out the cape. “Your majesty,” I said. I almost did it. I almost managed to slip the zeroa into his pocket as I clipped the cape on. But at the last second he sort of moved, and he felt what I was doing, and his smile turned into a ferocious glare. “Get the zeroa out of my pocket,” he said. “Do

01/04/2020 11:04 PM

you have any idea where that thing has been?”

Thursday

Yochonon always closes his eyes on the upside-down rides, which would have been perfect, but, did you know this? A pparently, you are not allowed to bring food into Fantasy Park. Security did not seem impressed when I told them that the zeroa was the furthest thing from food, like literally the polar opposite of everything that food stood for, especially at this point. The zeroa went back to the car, where over the course of the day it ripened and turned a fascinating shade of green.

Friday

And Erev Yom Tov. This was probably it. It had to be today, or it was all over. The zeroa had developed a sort of leathery texture, and I was pretty sure that last night

I had heard it speak. “Do you need some help?” The voice was right near my ear, and I yelped and jumped around ten feet in the air. “Whoa,” said my sister Menucha, the source of the voice. “You okay?” “No,” I said. “Right,” she said. “Which is why I asked you: Do you need some help?” “How do you know?” I asked her, and she rolled her eyes at me, because these days, everyone rolls their eyes at me. “Everyone knows what you’re trying to do,” she said. “I mean, you would have to be blind and deaf not to know what you’re trying to do. A ctually, Bubby is pretty deaf, and she knows what you’re trying to do. So my question is, once again, do you need some help?” “Yes,” I said. “A s long as your help doesn’t involve rats. Or chloroform.” She made a face when she saw the state of the zeroa, but she whipped out a napkin and took it from me gingerly. “Leave it up to me,” she said. “Give me some words of encouragement.” “You will fail,” I said encouragingly. She made a face at me and left the room. Five minutes later she was back, without the zeroa.

eroa

he you idea at

“How,” I said. “Wait,” I said. “Yochonon took it.” “No,” she said. “I mean, yes. But no. His pocket took it. He doesn’t know about it at all.” “How,” I said. “Simple,” she said. “I asked him what brand his tie was.” “Ahhh,” I breathed. Yochonon does this thing where he casually ﬂips over his tie and reads the name of the brand printed there out loud. I don’t know why, but he does that. A nd then he stares at it lovingly, like he made the tie himself, or something, instead of just spending enough money on it to feed a small island population for a

month. “A nd while he stared at his tie like he wanted to marry it, Yudi stuck the zeroa into his pocket. I told him I would give him a candy.” Yudi is my little brother. He’s ﬁve. You can bribe him to steal the rims oﬀ of cars for a candy. He likes candy. “You,” I said to Menucha, “are a genius.” “You were going about this like a battering ram,” said Menucha. “You need subtlety, not brute force.” “Uh-huh,” I said, not listening. “Hooray! I did it!” “You did it?” said Menucha, raising her eyebrows. “Yudi did it,” I conceded, and was rewarded with an eye roll.

Weeks Later

The thing is, all of this could have been avoided if Yochonon had only been normal and, I don’t know, washed his pants. I mean, don’t get me wrong. I’m really happy that the segulah worked, and that tonight is Yochonon’s l’chaim. A nd honestly, it was probably a good thing that when he went out with his kallah—who happens to be my friend Shmueli’s sister—he put his hand into his pocket and came out with the zeroa. “It wasn’t going so well,” I heard my mother say on the phone to my aunt. “He said it was super quiet and awkward. And then he stuck his hand into his pocket and came out with a furry and smelly piece of roasted meat— which he thought for a second was alive—and he yelled and threw it to the ground, and it broke the ice. They commiserated about interfering younger siblings, and how they don’t stop trying to put zeroas in your pockets, and the rest is history!” So really, Yochonon should be thanking me instead of leaving a month’s worth of dirty socks under my pillow. And I’m sure that if not for the rules written in the older brother handbook, he would be. ⊙

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Dear Mommy and Totty, Here is the apology letter you said I needed to write to you.

who is a terrible teacher and an even worse human being , even if she does like the color pink.

A nd as I told him the whole story, I realized that all of my Love, problems were about to be Miri solved! Because, as anyone has read the same sheer P.S. But you should just who er of book s that I have know that I am so embar- numb can tell you, the main rassed and humiliated and read cter always gets a total also very, very upset. I’m chara any and her dilemma pract ically a grown-up. epiph solved for her when she has Well, almost a teenager. Point a casual conversat ion with is, I can make decisions like someone like this, someone flying across the world by myyou would never expect to self. have all the answers. Like, the A nyway, I never even got on bus driver, the hairdresser, the the plane. I never even got to old woman in the park feeding the airport. Shouldn’t that be the pigeons, or…the car service considered time off for good driver. behavior? When I finished talking, I This was the conversat ion I leaned forward eagerly to hear had with my car service driver: his words of wisdom. Me: How much does it cost to Him: That will be 7 dollars. go to the airport? Me: What? But we only drove Him: Well, very expensive, two block s! because first you have to A nyway, I stopped arguing buy ticket. with him prett y quickly and Me: Well, duh, obvious- handed him the money and ly I already bought a ran back to the house because ticket! I realized I’d better get rid of found it, Him: By yourself, the note before you I got When but I was too late: you bought ticket? my, Mom you, home, I found Me: Yes! the with e phon already on the the Him: Well, maybe you fool police and the airport and same the at all t travel agent, but you cannot travel agen fool airport secur ity. They time, which is amaz ing. send you right home, little girl. Oh, Mommy, Totty. Don’t you ding Me: But I have to go! I have to see the irony in groun left I n reaso get to Israel! It’s an emergen- me for life? The ing listen is one is because no cy! me ding groun by to me! A nd Him: This is interesting. What two for ever, what or, for life, kind of emergenc y? week s, same thing , you are y fl to have I how making sure that no one can So I told him to Meir ince conv to l pay me the slightest bit of atto Israe his nd fi and uchim tention ever again . start shidd in ing learn he’s while rt bashe P.P.S. Can you make me lasayeshivah, or he’s going to get gna for dinner? marr ied to Miss Goldfeather,

I’m sorry.

ina D y

Issue 463.indd 52

rr ible r ’s te i e M was li e f, so u p h is n y’s re o k i l n a on al o To M l li n g y s t ic ed fa uddenly he m b t e o h t s ft ion w he learn use o reac t beca up, but no needs to y l l a ig y order e so ac tu d . Fa ot th m in e t i e n t r , r s d y a ticke hs hea tm uy s a to ge e shidduc b i s t r i n wa t th nd M a bo u t it , a or t . more st agains o the airp e t t s o to pr l and goe ae r s I o t

REcap:

Ma N eu

01/04/2020 11:04 PM

ChapTer 14

Dear Malky, Can you help me out here? This is what I have written so far : Name: Meir Mil stein Height : 5”11 Yeshiva: Yeshivas Mir DOB: 7/6/1999 Yichus: We can trace our ancestry all the way back to Noach, but all our records got lost in the ﬂood .

SHIDDUC

D.O.B.

alayim,

uc tion to introduce This is a let ter of introd lstein, who wants to you to one Faigy Mi sterious reasons that learn your ways for my ret but will tell you she wants to keep a sec xt paragraph. about anyway in the ne me to my attention See, it has recently co against the shidduch that while I am ﬁrmly neral , except when ge crisis —and crises in lent ideas for artthey generate excel know all that much work— I don’t actually cess. about the shidduch pro f out to you, free of So! I am hir ing mysel you, cook for you, orcharge. I will clean for ke you tea, massage ganize your papers, ma ur personal shopper, your ankles, become yo and recite poetr y for and babysit your kids t of thing in exchange you if you like that sor ur feet and learn from for let ting me sit at yo ﬁgure out what this your ways in order to is all about. whole shidduch thing ainst it. So that I can protest ag ing for ward to workThanks so much! Look ing with you!

Faigy

ple of a poem that I P.S . A ttached is a sam u can see if my poetcan recite to you, so yo te: ry reciting is to your tas Tree and Me

and that girl was me Once there was a girl, and not a tree, And she was a person

mock her roots, So don’t bark at her, or steal her fruits . Don’t branch out and when a wind is blown, She’s strong as a trunk As long as you don’t lea

f her alone.

What else am I supposed to put on a shidduch resum e? Can I come over to your hou se right this second and you can help me? I need to do this right away. I’m out side your front door right now.

MEIR MILSTEIN

7/ 6/ 199 9

Dear Shadchanim of Yerush

Interests: Learning, psycho log y, not being killed by my roommate

HEIGHT 5”1 1

YESHIVA Ye shi vas

Mir

Because I need to get ma rried as soon as possible. Thanks,

Meir

H RESUM E

YICHUS WE CA N TR AC E OU R AN CE ST WA Y BA CK RY AL L TH TO NO AC E H, BU T AL RE CO RD S L OU R GO T LO ST IN TH E FL OO D.

INTERESTS LE AR NIN G, PS YC HO LO GY , NO KIL LE D BY T BE ING MY RO OM MA TE

Dear Rebbetzin Hershberg,

He sounds like som eone else. And I did that to him . I gave him some sor t of magical soup that made him into a diﬀ erent person . I manipulated him, Rebbetz in, and I feel horrible abou t it.

I hope you underst and my terrible Hebrew in thi I asked my husband if s note. I he think s knocked on your do tha t soup can change a or but no person, one answered. Where and he laughed at me are you? and said You’re always home , but now what are you even talking about, that I need you, you’re soup can’t change a pe not here! rson, and when I started cry ing he said, a Sorry. I don’t mean to be disre- look of alarm in his eyes, that spec tful. I’m just kind of desper- my chicken soup on Shabbos ate. See, here’s the thing. The can change a person, because thing is, your soup wo rked! My it’s so deliciou s, because I guess brother wants to ge t married! he thought tha t’s what I wanted He wants to get ma rried right to hear? now! He’s in my house right now, and he wants me to But I couldn’t tell him the whole work on his shidduch resume story, Rebbetz in, be right now, cause I’m and he wants me to talk to my too embarrassed. Because what parents right now and kind of sister manip ulates her conv ince them that he’s ready brother via soup? right now, and it’s all exactly as I hoped Please. Can you he lp me? Can it would be. I should be so, so you give me a sor t of reverse happy! soup to make Me ir himself Except…well , Rebbetz again? in, I’m not. I have this wild, crazy, panicky Thanks, feeling in my heart . Be cause he Malky just doesn’t sound lik e himself.

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"Really nothing," Yael lied to Florence. “We're not hiding anything. We were just trying to work out if the disappearance of your cat had anything to do with these intruders.”

The old woman looked pleased that they were giving her case the attention it deserved. “I’m sure it has. Ginger hasn’t gone missing in all the years I’ve had her. Why now?” This was true; it was too much of a coincidence. “I can’t promise we’ll find Ginger alive and well,” Yael said honestly, and the woman clutched at her pearls again at this, “but I’ll certainly do my best to find out what happened to her, and who was responsible.” “I said I’d pay you five thousand pounds up front, and that’s for your efforts, whether you find her or not. The other five is if you bring her safely home. Let me write you a check…can you pass me my handbag?” Feeling embarrassed, Yael did so. Florence sat up in her chair, rummaged in the bag, produced a checkbook and pen, and wrote the check with a flourish. She handed it over. Yael couldn’t look at it; it was a ridiculous amount of money for doing very little. She just stuffed it in her pocket along with the plastic evidence bag and note from the kitchen table. “We’ll come in and check on you regularly,” Doron promised. “A nd we’ll update you on our extensive search for your cat.”

Yael waited until they were back in their own apartment before telling him how the other neighbour had claimed to see a ginger cat being abducted into a white van. “I kind of brushed it oﬀ,” she confessed, “but now…I’m not so sure.” “Did you check CCTV?” Doron asked. Yael stared at him. “No, I hadn’t thought of that yet.” He looked at her. “It should be the ﬁrst thing you think of! Yael Yair, you’re getting…what’s the word, rusty?” Yael blushed. “You’re right. Too much hanging around with recalcitrant schoolgirls and not enough doing real criminal investigation. Though the truth is, there wasn’t any time to give this case proper thought. Let’s go.” Yael showed him where she had spoken to the neighbour with Harry, the ginger cat, and where the neighbour had said the other ginger cat had been abducted. In fact, Harry was still skulking about, looking for scraps or risk-taking rodents, and Yael just felt obliged to check his collar and tab once again to make sure he hadn’t morphed into a girl cat called Ginger in the meantime. He hadn’t. Doron meanwhile was looking around for the street cameras. “Oh, good,” he said, pointing. “That one up there should have picked up anything.”

Doron was already fiddling with his phone. “Oh, you have an app that enables you to check in the street cameras?” she said, awed. “Perk of the job,” he said, opening the app. He used its zoom function to find the number of the camera, then input that data. The app thought to itself for a while, and then Doron was able to view the footage and review it. “Got it!” he said at last. “She did say a white van, didn’t she? Look…there it is.” He pointed to it on his phone screen. Yael squinted at the small screen, then gave a shout. “Oh my! Look!” A figure was approaching the van, holding a struggling cat in his arms. They both stared at it, openmouthed. There was no way on this planet that cat was going willingly. The figure opened a door at the rear of the van. There seemed to be a second person inside the van because the first figure handed the struggling animal to someone else, and the door to the van closed. Then the first figure got into the driving seat, and within seconds, the van was gone. The creature had been catnapped. “So that neighbour was right,” Yael said. “A nd so was Florence,” Doron said.

“Yeah, ﬁne, but how…?” Yael began, but

They left, having made sure Florence was comfortable and recovering, and had both their phone numbers.

Recap

Chapter 11

Yael and Doron discover a note in Florence's house that was intended to intimidate her but they decide not to tell her about it. Florence is suspicious that they are hiding something from her.

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“She knew her cat wouldn’t disappear willingly. Just a second, let me see the date and time stamp on this.” He peered at his phone. “Three days ago, at 11:25 a.m.” He closed the app. “I’ve saved that. Now we have to figure out…why would anyone want a cat?” ************************ Simmy and Meira were in their room. Simmy, born and bred British and used to the inclement weather, had wrapped up warm in thermal nightwear and a hoodie after Tanya had made the two of them run around the sports field in the icy rain, and was fine. Meira, however, was used to warmer climates, a lot more sunshine and pleasant weather. Her experience at the hand of Tanya had left her miserable and feeling sick. She was huddled miserably under her blanket, coughing, and her throat felt sore. “I could have the coronavirus!” she coughed to Simmy, who was trying to sleep. “And it would be all Tanya’s fault if I did!” Simmy smothered a giggle because Meira really did sound miserable. “You won’t get the coronavirus from running around the sports field,” she said. “It’s caught by touch, or airborne droplets being transmitted from one person to

They both stared at it, openmouthed.

the other. On that sports ﬁeld, I think we were the best example of social isolation in the entire school. No one in the school has it. You don’t have it. You have probably caught a cold.” “A cold? I’ve had colds before. None of them felt like this.” “That’s because this is an English cold,” Simmy said, trying to sound knowledgeable. “It’s diﬀerent from Israeli colds.” Despite herself, Meira grinned at this. “You talk such garbage sometimes, Simmy Sommers!” She coughed again. Ten minutes of coughing later, Simmy had had it. “Wanna sleep,” she moaned. “Please stop coughing and let me sleep!” Meira stomped out of bed, put on her robe and slippers, and made for the door. “I’m going to see the nurse,” she said. “Whew, peace at last,” Simmy murmured into her pillow after the door had closed. The two bodyguards were instantly alerted to her leaving the room by signals on their phones. “Where are you going?” they asked her in Hebrew. “I’m ill,” she replied in the same lan-

guage. “I’m going to the nurse.” “Keep us informed. We’ll check in on you in an hour or two.” Nurse examined Meira. “Hm, it’s a bit chesty to be an ordinary cold, I’ll give you that,” she said in her soft Irish brogue. “A nd since you are a…er…special pupil at our school, I can’t be taking any chances. I’ll put you in the infirmary, at least for tonight, and keep an eye on you.” Feeling vindicated, Meira got into the bed in the infirmary, where she was the sole patient at that time. Nurse dosed her up with some cough medicine and nose drops, and feeling much better, she drifted off to sleep. However, she woke up at three a.m., coughing again, her nose blocked, feeling wretched. “This is all Tanya’s fault!” she said aloud. “I want her sent back home! Not only has she made me ill, she’s turning all the other girls against me, because they think I brought Tanya here! A nd they’re right!” Yigal and Yossi came to check on her at just that moment. “What?” they asked. “Give me your phone,” Meira said. “I’m going to phone my father and tell him to bring Tanya back to Israel right away. Everyone hates her and she made me sick.” “No,” Yossi said. “Absolutely not,” Yigal said. “Go back to sleep. I’ll ask the nurse to come and give you more medicine. You’re not phoning your father.” They left, with Meira calling after them: “Hey! Hey! Come back! Where are you going?” Nurse came back in soon after that and administered another dose of cough medicine and nose drops. Meira couldn’t settle back to sleep. She was furious. She thought the two bodyguards were on her side, but now she was thinking otherwise. Were they conspiring to keep Tanya here? Why would they do that? What side were they on anyway? To be continued...

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It’s time to go walnuts...after all, it’s Pesach, likely the only time of year you ever ingest walnuts. Ever wondered about this common charoses ingredient? Walnut trees ﬁrst grew in Persia, where walnuts were reserved for royalty, but soon spread far and wide. One oﬀ-thewall reason people ate them: From the time of the Greeks through the 1600s, the “doctrine of signatures” was popular. This meant that if a plant looked like a body part, it could heal it, so lots of people ate walnuts, obvs, to cure brain issues. Of course, it turned out there was nuthing to that theory.

Pliny the Elder

No need for Colgate…here’s some Pesachdik walnut cake? Roman scholar Pliny the Elder was convinced that walnuts could cure bad breath (which some people today say works, though I think I’ll stick to toothpaste). And in 16th-century England, walnuts were believed to prevent the plague. While washing their hands would probably have been more eﬀective, it is true that walnuts are good for you since they are full of antioxidants. They also have high levels of omega-3s, which are good for the health of your brain. Hmmm….maybe the Greeks weren’t actually that oﬀ-base.

I’ll put it right down here in ink: You can use walnuts to make ink! Walnut ink, an ink made from the green husk surrounding the nut of walnuts, has been a thing for centuries. Famous artists like Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci used it for their sketches, while the Romani communities of Europe would stain the hands of criminals with it because it wouldn’t wash oﬀ for months!

Look out below! The walnuts that originated in Persia are called English walnuts because British merchants shipped them ‘round the world. But when explorers came to North A merica, they found a second type of walnut, the black walnut. Black walnuts grow to be the size of limes, and they can really hurt you if they fall off a tree and bop you on the head! Though black walnuts are edible, they have a stronger, earthier fl avor and can be hard to find in stores, which pretty much exclusively sell the more popular-to-eat English walnut. Black walnut trees are mostly used for their high-quality wood to make cabinetry and flooring.

THINGS YOU MAY NOT KNOW ABOUT...

WALNUTS BY SIMA MANDELBAUM

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There’s nuttin nutty about walnuts...’cause like pistachios and peanuts, walnuts are not really nuts! A real nut is a seed that’s sealed inside a hard shell with no ﬂesh on the outside—think: acorn or chestnut. But if you would pick a walnut oﬀ a tree, you would see that it has a soft green husk on top of what we consider the walnut’s shell. The shell is actually the pit of the walnut—similar to the pit of a peach—and the meaty inside that we eat is the seed that grows inside the pit. This type of fruit is called a drupe. Other examples of drupes are dates and olives.

Don’t toss those shells! For many years, crushed walnut shells have been used for cleaning and polishing everything from airplane engines to oil drills to...people! Check the label: Walnut shells show up in facial, body and foot scrubs.

Shell-shocking: In 1893, Frank Wiggins came up with the idea of assembling an 800-pound (363-kg.) elephant made out of California walnuts for Chicago’s World Fair. California is home to nearly 325,000 acres of walnut orchards, and he hoped that seeing so many walnuts in such an impressive display would convince people to move to California for its many agricultural opportunities. A replica of the walnut elephant was created in 2018 for an exhibit at LA’s central library.

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When I’m stressed out, I take an aspirin, but when a walnut tree gets stressed, it produces its own aspirin! Granted, walnut trees aren’t stressed out from Pesach prep, but they have their own issues, like drought or unseasonable temperatures. Stressed walnut trees produce a chemical form of aspirin that boosts their biochemical defenses and reduces injury.

No nutcracker? Do nut use your head to crack open walnuts, like Muhammad Rashid. He is the world record holder for the most walnuts cracked using one’s head in one minute: He opened 256 of them! His method is lining the walnuts up on a table and smashing his head down on them to crack them open—ouch! Nutty, indeed.

A nickel for a pickled...walnut! Pickled walnuts have been a delicacy in England since at least the early 18th century. Salivating? Here’s how to make them: The walnuts are picked while they are still green and before the shells have set. The soft walnuts are then soaked in brine and left to dry in the air. The now-black walnuts are then placed into jars and a pickling solution poured over them. The walnuts are sealed and then left in the jars for anywhere between ﬁve days and eight weeks—and then eaten during tea time...with raised pinkies, optional.

Aﬁkoman present inspo: Here’s a walnut. Little princes and princesses in China were given walnuts as toys thousands of years ago...and walnuts still have a special status there. The Chinese believed that rolling a pair of walnuts around in your hands can improve circulation and it is still a very popular pastime. The larger, rounder and more symmetrical and dark brown the pair is, the more prized, and therefore the more expensive, it is. A matching set of “high-quality” walnuts can sell for $30,000!

This headdress is just stunning. The fish take one look and are stunned!

Here’s a stunning fact: Native Americans would sometimes use black walnut hulls to fish! You see, walnut husks contain a chemical named saponin. Humans break down saponin in their digestive systems, but fish aren’t so lucky. The chemical stuns them, causing them to float to the surface of the water for an easy catch. But don’t try this at home—if your home has a body of water... Many countries have banned the practice due to the damage it can cause to local wildlife. Also you need a looooot of walnuts to try it.

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fun stuff FOLLOW THE STEP-BY-STEP INSTRUCTIONS TO DRAW A FACE.

Answers to last week's puzzles:

FIND THE TEN HIDDEN OBJECTS IN THE PICTURE. ITEMS MAY BE IN DIFFERENT COLORS.

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COLOR BY NUMBER TO REVEAL THE PICTURE.

STARTING WITH 1, CONNECT THE NUMBERS TO REVEAL A PICTURE.

FOLLOW THE LINES TO MATCH THE NUMBERS WITH THEIR PATTERN ICONS.

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WHO SAYS YOU CAN'T GO ON A FUN CHOL HAMOED TRIP WHILE IN QUARANTINE? USE NUTS OR ANY SMALL OBJECTS AS YOUR GAME PIECES. TAKE TURNS ROLLING THE DICE, FOLLOWING THE INSTRUCTIONS ON THE CELLS YOU LAND IN. PRIZE MOVE MEANS YOU GET AN EXTRA TURN. FIRST ONE TO THE FINISH LINE WINS THE TREASURE!

WRITE YOUR OWN SCRIPT FOR A FINGER PUPPET SHOW OF A FAMILY TRIP TO THE ZOO. CUT OUT THE PUPPETS AND LET THE SHOW BEGIN!

FILL IN THE SUDOKU PUZZLE.

FIND TEN DIFFERENCES BETWEEN THE PICTURES.

ONE OF EACH SYMBOL MUST APPEAR IN EACH ROW, COLUMN AND BOX.

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Blackout

Recap: There is a blackout. Mimiâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s father never comes home.

Episode 4 written by Daniel Hagar illustrated by Deveo Studio

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To Be Continued...

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Heart.Works

For those with higher standards.â&#x201E;

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