This Chaim — Chaim who had concrete plans, who was actively charting a path for the future — was someone different

“Tatty, phone call,” Simi announced. “It’s Uncle Yechiel.”

She pranced into the kitchen, where Chaim and Perri were sitting over bowls of vegetable soup. Chaim took the phone and greeted his brother. Within minutes, his face was red and he was stammering.

Perri watched him curiously. Yechiel was very different from Chaim — he was a confident, gregarious businessman with multiple circles of friends and a growing real estate portfolio — but the two brothers always got along well. What had Yechiel said to throw her husband off guard?

Chaim put down the phone and very determinedly focused on his soup.

“Everything okay?” Perri asked.

He nodded. “Good soup.”

“Chaim, what—” Perri tried pressing. Then she noticed Simi lurking just beyond the kitchen. This should probably wait until all curious Weiss offspring were safely in bed.

Later that evening, after getting the little ones to sleep and cleaning up the kitchen, she checked her email and found out what had shaken Chaim.

“OUR CHAIM!!!!” Mommy Weiss’s exuberant email was titled. She included photos of three articles that seemed to have appeared that week in the local frum circulars. All featured a generic writeup about Kollel Zichron Shloime — Tatty must have fed the details to some PR guy — and the same photo of Chaim giving shiur to a small group of men in the Shaar Menachem ezras nashim.

Perri zoomed in on the photo. There were Chaim’s narrow shoulders and sparse blond beard. But there was something different about his bearing. His hazel eyes glinted with purpose, and his hand was uplifted in a motion confident and unfettered.

HaGaon HaRav Chaim Weiss, rosh kollel of the elite Zichron Shloime Kollel in Yerushalayim, delivers a shiur to the yungeleit, was the caption.