Gedalya shrugs and closes his Gemara. “I thought that was another joke from your never-ending comedy routine”

“Calm down. I know this is your first time, but we’ve done this procedure hundreds of times!” Dudi chirps in a mock-feminine voice.

“I’m perfectly calm, nurse,” he says in a deeper voice, now playing the part of the patient.

“Oh, but I wasn’t talking to you,” he chirps in the nurse’s voice. “I was talking to the surgeon.”

“Hahaha!” Tovi loves it.

Gedalya shifts uncomfortably in his aisle seat. Maybe he shouldn’t have changed seats with Dudi. He wishes he were in the middle seat, a barrier between Tovi and his brother.

They’ve been flying through the black night for three hours, and Dudi’s still keeping Tovi happily occupied, with no sign of tiring.

“Look,” Dudi says. “We’re flying over Europe now, and there are no clouds at all. Can you see the outline of Italy down there?”

“Yeah, I see it!” she says, pressing her small nose against the dark window, her eyes wide open with excitement. “It’s a boot — just like the picture in the atlas! I have to tell the girls in school!”

“What’s bothering you?” Dudi whispers to Gedalya, while Tovi’s attention is diverted, while she’s peering at the dim terrain far below, trying to make out the Apennine Mountains.

“I don’t know… all those jokes of yours.”

“They’re squeaky clean,” Dudi assures him, scrutinizing his face. “You could put them into Hamehadhed’s joke column without having to censor a single word.”

“Hamehadhed doesn’t have a joke column.”

“That was a joke,” Dudi explains. “You know I wouldn’t tell your daughter anything not kosher.” You don’t know I spent hours this past week putting together this repertoire, sifting out anything remotely distasteful. For her. And you never will know.