2 Days Left

Chaia Frishman

Keeping Score

I am extremely competitive. In running, I tally up my weekly miles, or better yet, challenge myself to a streak of consecutive days that I run. I like to record numbers and total accomplishments — three batches of sourdough or 45 essays graded in a week — and boy, do higher numbers make me feel accomplished.

My most recent self-dare was to say Nishmas Kol Chai for 40 days in a row. I’m not necessarily one for segulos, but I am one for counting my blessings. Nishmas does the trick, and if it’s said to fulfill tefillos, who am I to complain? (See, it’s exactly that: Nishmas is the opposite of complaining.) There was an area in my life in which I desperately wanted to see siyata d’Shmaya, but I felt something was blocking it. Saying Nishmas for a prescribed amount of time gave me hope.

I did a few rounds of 40. At first, I couldn’t seem to make it to the end. Sometimes I would miss it on day three, sometimes on day 30. Since new rounds would begin at random times, even a several-day break got me out of the habit.

By round four, I decided to keep saying Nishmas even if I missed a day so I would flex my daily recitation muscle. I ordered booklets and placed them around the house to remind me, and I would play my favorite word game only if I had already said Nishmas. Slowly but surely, I became pretty good at completing the full 40.

Soon enough, I had a streak of saying Nishmas four times for 40 days. And slowly, things in the arena of my “yeshuah goal” were improving. The salvation, I believed, was around the corner.

And then my mother died.

I got the call on Tuesday afternoon. My mother died suddenly — we’d had no warning — and I was a mess of emotions. My brain was, simply put, fuzzy. I remembered to call Michal Frischman to cancel my Kichels game show gig that Sunday, but didn’t remember to call key family members to let them know about the levayah.

I also had to suddenly revisit the halachos from 28 years ago, when my father passed away. I remembered about being an onen — no meat or wine, no brachos or davening, no learning.

But wait.

What about my Nishmas? At that point, I was up to day 38, two days from completing what would be my fifth set of saying it 40 days in a row. I had to say it. Plus, I had lots of free time driving to my mom’s home to pick up my brother — I would definitely be able to say it on the way.

I could say it, right? Even as an onen? I checked with my rav — and he said no, I could not.

I was heartbroken.

I know that feeling dismayed about losing the chance to complete a 40-day consecutive Nishmas recitation seems pretty strange compared with dealing with my mother’s untimely death, like I was putting emphasis on mourning the wrong thing.

But I was devastated; this would ruin all the good the segulah could bring. And I was off by only two days; a mere 48 hours were standing between me and completion.

More than 15 years ago, I took a trip to Israel following a traumatic family event — a restorative and spiritual retreat, if you will. It included an audience with Rebbetzin Batsheva Kanievsky.

“Why did this happen to me?” I cried.

“V’mah im tefillah? — What is with your davening?” Rebbetzin Kanievsky replied.

I proudly answered that despite my busy life, I chapped a Shema and Shemoneh Esreh regularly.

She smiled and gently suggested that I add Pesukei D’zimra as well. I assumed she meant I should try my best, so I did, and by now, I was saying Pesukei D’zimra regularly, along with Nishmas, which Rebbetzin Kanievsky often told women to say as an enhancement of their connection to Hashem.

Was that why I was so disappointed that I couldn’t say Nishmas on the second-to-last day? Or was it that I was fixating on that disappointment and lack of control, in place of the bigger thing I couldn’t control: being plunged into aveilus. (I’m not a fan of sitting still.)

I laugh about it now, but did I really think Hashem was so petty as to say, “Ah, Chaiale, I was about to open up door number two for you and bring you gobs of salvation, but you didn’t complete the task of 40 days, so game over, thanks for playing”?

No. That’s not the relationship I have with Hashem.

I was supposed to complete only 38 days, the same way I was to lose my mother and become an onen on that very day. And my yeshuah will come exactly when it’s supposed to come.

These days, I no longer think about how many days I have left to complete my 40 days. I don’t obsess if I find only 36 women to bake challah for a choleh, and if I can give only 78 percent of myself to my family, then 100 percent of that lower threshold is still 100 percent.

If I try my best but still come short, I’ve learned, 40 minus two is just right.

Chaia Frishman is an educator, business owner, and writer who lives with her family in Far Rockaway, New York.

3 Heirlooms

Reva Kaiser Barbalatt

Treasured Gifts

Growing up, I lived no more than a block from my grandmother. Babbi filled our morning plates with fried eggs and buttered toast, our dinner bowls with mushroom barley and split pea soups, our Shabbos tables with flaky apple strudel and hand-rolled rugelach. Her blue eyes sparkled when she sang songs with her grandchildren in her warm, fragrant kitchen, ditties I now sing to my own children but still hear in her accented tongue. She played rummy with her friends as they drank coffee with sugar cubes clenched between their teeth, and quipped Jackie Mason jokes and laughed heartily at the relatable punchlines.

My Babbi died more than 15 years ago, when I was 29 years old, and I realized I barely knew her.

After a bout of cancer to which she succumbed quickly, after the levayah in the heavy heat of August, after the shivah that covered her polished mirrors and packed a community into her home, all that was left were the things.

My aunt — her only daughter — took on the gargantuan task of emptying a home of its lifetimes of purposes. I was invited to come select keepsakes of my grandmother.

I didn’t want things; I wanted my grandmother, but perhaps I could find her here. I lifted an orange plastic bag of jumbled threads and unfolded a nearly finished needlework, with a heavy palette of smoky grays, olive green, and muddy browns: four diversely dressed Jews leaned into the Kosel, prayerbooks in hand. Only a few narrow columns on the right edge were devoid of thread.

“Babbi did needlework?” I quizzed my aunt; I didn’t recall seeing her with a canvas in hand.

“Of course — she did all the pieces hanging in here.”

And suddenly, I saw how most of the framed, moody-colored artwork were finely crafted needlepoints: the rust-colored flowers, the ochre fruit, the pastoral landscapes. No other piece, though, was religiously themed. Did Babbi know this would be her last? That was the first piece I selected to take home with me.

After the needlework, I unearthed her cookbook.

Babbi used a cookbook?

When we begged for recipes, her eyes danced as she laughed and invited us to watch her bake. A glass of this, a pinch of that, enough flour until it feels right. We thought her recipes were her. Maybe her essence was in this cookbook, its plastic spiral long gone, a collection of stained and tattered pages bound by rubber band and marked by my grandmother’s neat printing: “Chaya’s Chocolate Cake” and “Lola Buchsbaum’s Chocolate Torte.” A survivor of Nazi labor camps who experienced their horrors, including starvation, Babbi used these pages to feed her family and express her love.

I placed the cookbook atop the orange plastic bag and returned to surveying the effects of a full, hard life.

When I spotted the pedestal porcelain cake plate, gold-rimmed with hand-painted flowers, I was transported to Babbi’s Shabbos and Rosh Hashanah tables, where it stood bearing her iced chocolate Bundt or powdered-sugared pound cakes. Nothing made Babbi happier than to banter and kvell with us as we took turns slivering “just one more taste.” The plate was my third take.

Babbi’s needlepoint is still in the orange plastic bag, unfinished. Is it my place to interfere with Babbi’s handiwork, to complete her art? I should frame it as is. The yellowed cookbook pages are encased in a Ziploc bag, reminding me how Babbi literally fed us her affection, and the cake stand holds my glazed chocolate cake or cinnamon Bundt at family gatherings and special occasions.

On that final visit to Babbi’s home, I was looking for my grandmother in her possessions, in what she held dear. I did find Babbi: in her passions, her values, and her love. In the three gifts I took from her home, I found Babbi in me.

Reva Kaiser Barbalatt has a background in public relations and community work. She lives in Boca Raton, Florida, and her writing has appeared in various media outlets.

4 Bedrooms

Sarah Rivkah Kohn

Open House

Growing up I had two beds: one was in my bedroom, and one was an army-style fabric cot in the corner of my parents’ room. I was an only child in our home in Monsey, New York, with four oversized bedrooms — there should have been plenty of room for me to sleep! Except that we had “the girls.”

“The girls” was the term my Israeli mother, Rosy Cutler a”h, used for the host of women who lived in our home.

My mother worked as a secretary for kiruv rabbi Rav Yosef Yagen, and when he and his brother Rav Nissim Yagen ran seminars in Israel, they saw that the women would be inspired, but then they’d head back to the street life of Tel Aviv. Nightlife beckoned, and it was hard for these women to stick to their growth commitments when peer pressure struck.

Together they came up with a plan: “The girls” would be offered a free trip to America to live with a frum family, anywhere from several months to a couple of years. The immersion in frum life would enable them to learn more about Yiddishkeit, plus they could visit all of the New York sights.

This worked for my mother, who was terribly worried that as an only child I might grow up spoiled. The more girls she brought in, the more I would have to learn how to share, she reasoned, and so it began. First a couple of women arrived, followed by more… and then even more. At minimum we had three girls with us, sometimes we had as many as seven. Our house was noisy and fun, and the girls brought such joy into my life. I even picked up a fluent Israeli-accented Hebrew.

And then, when I was two and a half years old, my mother was diagnosed with stage four cancer — and she doubled down on hosting. The new narrative became “they’ll help,” and they did. My mother was hooked up to a pump on the couch and the girls asked her for cooking instructions, which she’d holler from the couch. She’d continue to encourage them to get jobs and date, and she would wait up for them to come home from each one.

“I can’t sleep anyway — the medicines mess with me,” my mother would say.

My father a”h was a full partner in this hospitality. Together, they married off 27 young women, most of whom headed to the wedding halls from our home.

But my parents didn’t stop there. One of “the girls” called my parents in hysterics one night that squirrels were running around the roof of her attic apartment. She and her husband didn’t have money for a better place, but this apartment with squirrels wasn’t okay! My parents got a handyman to put a door at the bottom of the three steps off the kitchen that led to the study and playroom, effectively creating a new apartment in that area. There was an entrance from the backyard for privacy, and it had its own bathroom. My parents gifted the couple a small fridge and two electric burners, hung sheets as room dividers, and brought down a folding table and chairs. For a year or so, they would knock on that door to see if it was convenient time to head to the basement to access the washer-dryer.

Shabbos meals were a story in and of themselves. Many girls would walk over to enjoy the good food, great company, and most of all the fabric L-shaped couch where they could talk their hearts out while I played with my Fisher-Price menschies in the space behind it. I didn’t always follow the conversation, but I could tell it was passionate, loving, and full of laughter.

When I was nine years old, my mother passed away on Tzom Gedalyah, and that was the end of our girl-hosting era (it would be an issue of yichud with my father). I have the best memories of those early years, but as an adult I sometimes wonder: Did my parents never need privacy? As my mother got sicker and sicker, did she never want to sit in silence and brood? Did my father ever feel overwhelmed by a houseful of women who took up every room?

If they ever felt that way, I wouldn’t know it. My mother lit 27 extra candles every Friday night for each of those women. My father fundraised for every one of those 27 weddings with love and happiness.

I know where some of those “girls” are — most of them live in Israel and we meet up once in a while — but there are so many I haven’t kept up with. By now they’re in their fifties and sixties and even seventies, but to me they’ll always be “the girls” who filled a four-bedroom house to capacity, giving an only child older siblings and gifting me the gift of a legacy: a mother who, though she wasn’t there to raise me, showed me how to open your heart and home to those in need.

Sarah Rivkah Kohn is the founder and director of Links Family for children and teens who lost a parent.

5 Dollars

Rabbi Moshe Dov Heber

Lasting Dividends

G

rowing up, we had minimal technology and distractions, so even on long, sticky summer days in ’90s Baltimore, we spent much of our time riding bikes and playing baseball despite the heat. One afternoon, it hit me: After all that outdoor activity, the boys were thirsty, and the fourth-grade entrepreneur in me decided to start a soda sales business.

My mother helped me scout local stores for the best sales in town, and I charged a mere 25 cents per can of soda — that was with a 50 percent markup! Sales were great, and after a few weeks, I had earned $50, a small fortune for a young boy. My father suggested that I give my maaser money to an organization that helps those in need, so off we went to the home of Mr. Eli Schlossberg, an askan and a trustee for the local tzedakah fund, Ahavas Yisroel of Baltimore. We explained why we were there, and I handed him the five dollars.

A few days later, an envelope arrived for me in the mail. The letter read:

Dear Moshe Dov,

You are a great businessman. Soda sales must have been good. What’s even more special is you are sharing your success with others who need help….

Thank you for your generous contribution of $5.00.

Eli W. Schlossberg

I was elated at the recognition and put the paper for safekeeping in a drawer.

A few years ago, I was cleaning through some papers and came across Mr. Schlossberg’s letter. I now saw that the letter was on Ahavas Yisroel cardstock, which was usually for large donations, as evidenced by the long line after, “Thank you for your generous donation of _________.” In his ingenuity, Mr. Schlossberg filled up that line by writing “$5.00” in big letters.

I like to tell this story to my sixth-graders in Yeshiva K’tana of Waterbury to teach them the importance of tzedakah even at a young age, so we get used to a life of giving. In our tzedakah lesson, I stress how often we think we are the givers, but in essence, we are the receivers, and I share the Baal HaTurim who observes that the word v’nasnu — “and they gave” — is a palindrome, a word that reads the same backward as forward: vav, nun, saf, nun, vav. The Baal HaTurim says that one who gives tzedakah does not lose his contribution — in the end it comes back to him. Hashem sees to it that one’s good deeds are not forgotten; what we give to others will eventually come back to us.

This lesson really hit home this February, when we held a raffle in my class as part of the national Masmid Govoha program. We had earned $20, which I split into three to raffle off to the boys. Once the numbers were chosen, I announced that Akiva Hirtz had won the largest prize: $10.

“Rebbi, I just gave $5 to our shul’s campaign yesterday!” he said excitedly. “It’s like what we learned about with tzedakah. My tzedakah came back.”

His voice was tinged with wonder.

Five dollars is a significant sum for a sixth grader — and now Akiva and the rest of the class witnessed the Baal HaTurim’s “V’nasnu.” And for me, Mr. Schlossberg’s letter came to mind: Sharing your success with others who need help. What we give to others, my talmidim learned firsthand, comes back around.

Rabbi Moshe Dov Heber is a middle School rebbi in Yeshiva K’tana of Waterbury, Connecticut, and Division Head in Camp Romimu. He is a frequent writer and he speaks publicly.

6 Homes

Rivki Silver

On the Move

“It’s like you’re destroying my childhood!” my 12-year-old moaned as she stood in the living room — which had very recently been the dining room — and looked around forlornly.

Considering that we had rearranged the main floor of our house in order to provide her with her own bedroom, I would venture to say that we had not, in fact, destroyed her childhood. We had, however, radically rearranged the only home she remembers.

My five-year-old was also unnerved by these sweeping changes.

“I want it to go back to how it was!” she insisted.

I hadn’t anticipated these emotional reactions; I was actually a little irritated. They were getting their own rooms! Who cared that the house was different? Houses change!

Growing up, I lived in six different houses, moving roughly every two to four years because of my father’s job as a vice-president in a large insurance company (he was tasked with managing offices in different cities). I was frequently the new kid in a new neighborhood with a new room in a new house. I was used to starting over, of finding new ways to organize my things in a new space.

There were always tradeoffs, of course, and each house had its perks. One bedroom had green carpet that was perfect for playing with my toy ponies (my mother has decidedly less fond memories of that carpet). But leaving that room meant gaining a walk-in closet in my next bedroom. When we left the house with the glorious closet, the next one featured a real, live pony in the field behind it. (Not the actual pony — it belonged to the farmer who owned the field — but I did get to feed it apples and carrots on a regular basis.)

The hardest was at the end of my eighth-grade year, when we moved to a new school district. I chatted with the “wrong” girl on orientation day and for the entire first semester, no freshman would befriend me; I cried every night for weeks. In that district, the students had been together since preschool, something I couldn’t even fathom. What would it be like to know someone for that long? To be known for that long?

Growing up, the moving around itself was almost a part of my family. My mother would often remark how the one criterion she had in a spouse was that he wouldn’t move her around a lot, as she had moved all throughout her childhood and hated it. This was one of those stories that was often trotted out at family gatherings and holiday events.

“G-d had a good laugh at that,” she would say.

I had no such requirements in my search for a spouse. My husband was nearly finished with medical school when we got married. You can predict what’s coming next: We moved. A lot. We lived in six different homes in the first seven years of our marriage: Cleveland for his residency, Baltimore for a job, back to Cleveland for family, including some intracity moves during those early years.

Six homes as a child, six homes as a married woman — which is why our modest renovations were no big deal to me.

But my children have mainly grown up in one home (my oldest was just six when we moved in). They learned to ride bikes on the same sidewalk, enjoyed hot dogs on the same back porch, and watched the same beautiful tree grow tall and strong on our lawn. When people ask where they’re from, they can comfortably say, “Cleveland,” not my complicated mishmash of multiple hometowns that I summarize as “the Midwest.”

This stability also means that rearranging the entire house was a jarring experience for them rather than an invigorating one, but now that we’ve finished with our home improvements, they agree the setup is much better.

“Why didn’t we think of this before?” we ask ourselves.

“It’s like a different house!” my 12-year-old remarks, thanking us for her new bedroom.

And we smile, marveling at what a gift it is to see our old house with new eyes — and without having to pack up a single box.

Rivki Silver is a regular contributor to Family First and cohost of the Deep Meaningful Conversations podcast.

7 Days

Rabbi Ron Yitzchok Eisenman

The Good Doctor

IT

was Sunday, day seven, just minutes before nightfall when the phone rang. We were anxiously awaiting this call, but I picked up the receiver in my usual carefree manner — until I heard rapid-fire Yiddish and realized this was the call. I knew how important this was, so I handed the receiver to my mother. She conversed in Yiddish for a few minutes before handing the phone back to me. But instead of the long-anticipated clarity I was expecting, her face conveyed greater confusion than before.

Seven days earlier, my parents had made the 15-minute drive to 770 Eastern Parkway to seek the advice of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. My father was facing the most critical decision of his life. He had been diagnosed with coronary artery disease and could no longer walk even a short distance without experiencing severe and debilitating chest pain. I can still vividly recall how each walk to shul would require him to stop and take a nitroglycerin tablet, and how I would silently say Tehillim with the intensity of Shema Yisrael at Ne’ilah’s conclusion as I waited for my father’s pain to subside.

Coronary artery bypass surgery was in its early stages, and there was a dispute among my father’s doctors about whether he should opt for the then-somewhat-experimental surgery. Some encouraged him to go under the knife, while others argued against the new, untested procedure, insisting it would shorten his life.

My parents could not decide, so they sought the advice of the Lubavitcher Rebbe. They had met with Rabbi Leib Groner, the Rebbe’s personal secretary, who instructed them to write a letter to the Rebbe.

“The Rebbe will respond within seven days,” Rabbi Groner said.

My father was scheduled to meet with his primary physician on Monday morning and inform him whether he would proceed with the surgery. The call arrived less than 24 hours before the scheduled appointment.

The Rebbe’s advice, as conveyed by Rabbi Groner and understood by my mother, was, “Follow the advice of a doctor who is a friend.”

This seemingly vague and ambiguous answer was our family’s topic of conversation that entire evening and in the car ride the next morning to the doctor’s office.

What did the Rebbe mean? Did he mean a friendly doctor? Or a doctor who happens to also be a friend? The Rebbe’s advice seemed cryptic, and the possible interpretations seemed endless.

Finally, my father entered the doctor’s office.

His physician, an Egyptian Christian who had graduated from the American University in Cairo, looked at my father, his Yerushalmi-born patient.

“What have you decided?” he asked.

My father hesitated, unsure of his answer.

Finally, the doctor broke the silence.

“Mr. Eisenman, I know this is a difficult decision for you. Let me tell you — and I am speaking to you as a friend and not as your doctor — you must have the surgery, there is no question it will lengthen your life. I am saying this as your friend,” he reiterated.

My father had the surgery as his doctor-friend recommended. He would live for more than 20 more years, marrying off his children and being privileged to see grandchildren — all because he waited seven days and followed a holy man’s advice.

Rabbi Ron Yitzchok Eisenman is the rabbi of Ahavas Israel in Passaic, New Jersey, and the author of three books.

8 Minutes

Elisheva Vladimirskiy

All Aboard

IT was 1998, and I had just moved to Chicago after a year of learning in a Jerusalem seminary.  I was missing my inspirational teachers, intense friendships, the gorgeous Har Nof mountain views, and the tangible holiness of our land.

When I had first arrived in Israel, I felt like I was reconnecting with a part of myself I hadn’t even known existed. Overjoyed at the discovery, I embraced it and cultivated my relationship with our holy land — and now, separated from that newly acquired element, I felt a deep internal emptiness. Here in Chicago, I didn’t yet know many people. I was thrown into a hectic college routine and felt uninspired and distant from G-d. Come Elul, I was completely unprepared for Rosh Hashanah.

In Israel, I had connected to my Creator in prayer, but how could I pray without the Western Wall, without air permeated with holiness? Without bus rides to the Old City at the crack of dawn, davening Shacharis at the Kosel as the sun rose and the Wall filled with light and my whole being filled with an intense awareness of Hashem’s existence and involvement in my life?

Here in Chicago, there was a morning rush also, but so much more mundane. Yet I kept trying to connect, continually asking G-d to make it easier for me to feel just a little more spiritual in my new circumstances.

I tried to daven at home every morning before I ran out the door to catch my bus to the train, but quite often I ran out of time and ended up saying brachos on the bus. One morning, I had a final exam. I finished the Shema on the bus, and now at the train station, it was time for the Shemoneh Esreh.

Should I say the Shemoneh Esreh on the train or wait till I get to my college campus?

Neither option appealed to me — what if I ran into someone I knew before I had a chance to daven? I couldn’t talk to them, it would be awkward. Davening on the train also was less than ideal — I was too self-conscious to stand in front of all kinds of people and talk to a book. In a desperate attempt at doing the right thing, I asked myself, “What does G-d want?” and in that moment of clarity, I made a split-second decision to stand in the corner of the train station behind a billboard and recite this important prayer.

If I miss the train, so be it — I’ll take the next one. If I’m late to my exam, at least I know I tried to do the right thing.

As Murphy’s Law would have it, the train arrived as soon as I took my three steps forward. I ignored it, swaying in my own world of trying to connect.

The doors opened behind me, and some passengers got off as others got on and… the doors remained open. The train just stood there, waiting. For me? I noticed this out of the corner of my eye, but I was determined not to allow it to interfere with my concentration or speed me up.

Eight minutes later, I finished my Shemoneh Esreh and took three steps back. Then I cautiously walked onto the train, which remained in its place, doors still open. I took a seat — and the doors closed and the train took off.

I turned to the very stressed-looking woman next to me.

“Do you know why the train stood at the station for so long?” I asked.

“No idea. Maybe construction workers on the tracks? But I’ve taken this train for two years and this never happened before.”

Hmm… construction workers. For just the right amount of time to finish the entire Shemoneh Esreh?

I smiled. All of a sudden, I didn’t feel so distant anymore. The very same G-d who drew me to Him in the City of Gold orchestrated this morning’s events in the Windy City.

Be it the Jerusalem Hills or a Chicago train station, G-d always welcomes my prayer, I realized — and even if I must be away from Israel, I shouldn’t despair. Instead, I should use my time and resources to become the kind of person who brings holiness to the world in whatever circumstances G-d, in His infinite wisdom, decides to place me.

Even if it’s a train station.

Elisheva Vladimirskiy is a Chicago-based psychotherapist and a remote time-management/ADHD coach.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1041)