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Poor Yocheved. Every bully has a scapegoat and Yocheved was Chana’s. Chana claimed Yocheved’s habits drove her up the wall; Yocheved had allergies and was constantly blowing her nose and leaving tissues everywhere and she was also extremely disorganized. Whenever a teacher asked for our homework assignments Yocheved would be frantically searching through the piles of loose papers in her book bag used tissues scattering everywhere. It could have been comical but Chana would be sitting like a queen loudly commenting things like “She’s walking around with a garbage bag on her back ” and “Watching her is enough to turn me off from eating my lunch.” 

As I mentioned really mean comments. And while Yocheved’s face turned redder and her search increasingly more frantic the rest of us would avoid her eyes — because who wanted to associate with someone like that? And more importantly if we did what would Chana say? Would we be next? 

Chana even went so far as to take Yocheved’s belongings and hide them around the classroom or school making Yocheved feel like she was losing her mind. Shabbos was more of the same; we had Bnos groups and Chana continued to act horribly to Yocheved there too. Eventually Yocheved stopped attending. 

One Shabbos I remember my Bnos group was sitting in the ladies section in shul schmoozing before Minchah. Suddenly I became aware of a scratching sound. I turned to look — and there was Chana sitting beside me scratching something into the wooden pew with her key. My mouth dropped open. It was Shabbos! She’d etched a nasty sentence beginning with “Yocheved is…” 

I exchanged horrified glances with our friend Devory (whom Chana also approved of). There was no point in urging her to stop. She wouldn’t have. And no one else had seen what she had done.