He wanted quiet for his family. But what about the noise from his own heart?

IT

was close to three o’clock in the morning when Asher and Dina Rubenstein finally drifted off to sleep, after hours of taking turns pacing up and down their tiny dirah as their brand-new baby boy screamed.

Then, in the park below, the music started.

Elaytzur’s “Od Yoter Tov” coming from the phones of the rebellious teens who slunk around the local park like stray cats, in tight pants and white sneakers, boom box or nargillah pipes on their shoulders.

Asher usually saw them sprawled on the park benches when he went to Shacharis — he was a neitz kind of guy — but always averted his eyes.

These teens were a blight on an otherwise perfect neighborhood. Leafy green, low crime, full of cafés and medical clinics and small supermarkets. But none of the locals paid them much attention. They were their parents’ problem, not anyone else’s.

The noise woke the baby.

Asher turned on the lamp, and Dina looked at him from the rocking chair she was curled up in. Even in the dim light, he could see the dark half-moons under her eyes and the tears pooling in them.

“I can’t listen to him cry anymore, Ash,” Dina whispered.

Asher was too tired to move, even respond. He just lay there, arms folded under his head, staring at the ceiling.

He’d never imagined having a baby could be this hard. He had no energy. And he had to go to the airport to pick up his father in just a few hours.

Dina picked up the baby, but he continued to bawl, his screams mixing with the music and the shouts of the teenagers below.

Eventually he had enough.

He got out of bed, washed negel vasser, and grabbed his phone. Without saying anything to Dina, who raised her eyebrows in question, he went out into the living room and punched 101 into his simple kosher phone, explaining in his best Hebrew to the police officer who groggily answered that the teens in the park below were disturbing the peace.