HE said it as an imperative; I took it as a testament to his love for me.

My father was born in Chelm, Poland, in 1922. I’m not sure how religious his family was there. He had few memories of Chelm, though he did recall a communal fire in a courtyard where all the neighborhood families, including his own, would keep their pots of cholent every Shabbos.

Contrary to the tales you hear about Chelm, my father’s family wasn’t looking for the moon in a barrel of wine. They were hardworking, quiet people, seeking a better life. Chelm wasn’t an easy city for a Jew to live in at the time. The winds of anti-Semitism were blowing, and apparently, they were blowing strongly enough for my grandparents to save, pack up the family, and seek a better, calmer life in the goldeneh medineh. An uncle had moved to Omaha, Nebraska a few years before, and he was doing well there. He encouraged my grandfather to join him in the land of opportunity.

My father was only eight years old when his family settled in Omaha and opened a mom-and-pop grocery. There was an Orthodox shul in their new city, and at first, my father’s parents became members there.

When he met my mother, who’d been raised in a somewhat traditional Jewish home, the young couple married and set out to start a family in Omaha. Deeply traditional in thought and ideology, they joined the Conservative synagogue.

I was born in 1959. The Omaha I grew up in was a quiet city of hardworking folks. There was a large meatpacking industry, which brought frum shochtim to town, but I wouldn’t have met them. My parents were not observant.

My mother would often light candles on Friday night as the sun set over the Omaha flatlands. Their glow bounced off the walls of our small house and we would enjoy a traditional Friday night dinner complete with piping hot chicken soup and fluffy matzah balls and all, and then my three siblings and I would drift off to enjoy the rest of the evening as we pleased. My mother would never wash laundry on Shabbos and my father would refrain from yard work, but the TV buzzed. We drove to synagogue Shabbos mornings. I guess you could say our house was a mixed bag of Judaism.

Somehow, though, I was always thirsty for more Yiddishkeit. I went to public school, and attended after-school Talmud Torah once or twice weekly. My teachers weren’t really observant, and I can’t say I learned much there. But in public school, some of my more Orthodox classmates were part of NCSY, and I joined their chevreh.

I was about 15 when I met Rabbi David and Cynthia Levine, who’d recently moved to Omaha as part of NCSY. They invited the NCSYers for a Shabbos seudah, and from the start I knew—

I want this.

When I enthusiastically informed my parents that I wanted to keep Shabbos, my father raised an eyebrow or two. He got on the phone with Rabbi Levine — a phone conversation that repeated itself several times over the next few months. In the end, he allowed me my dream.

MYfather encouraged me to take my Shabbos observance really slowly. I started unobtrusively, trying not to make any big scenes. Like the mixed bag of Judaism that was my home, I was all over the place. I had a job working at McDonald’s on weekends, so I “kept Shabbos” — I tried not to touch the lights or drive to shul — until I went to work. Once I got there, I did my job diligently.

I became close with the Levines, lapping up anything they taught me.

“Mom?” I asked one day. “Can we start buying only kosher meat?”

My mother had an innate respect for Yiddishkeit, even if she herself wasn’t religious. She paused, spoke to my dad, and came back to me. “Only kosher meat it is,” she said with a warm smile.

That was enough for a while. Then I wanted more. “Mom? Would it be okay if I bought myself a separate set of dishes, for kosher?”

This gave my mother a longer pause. She came into my bedroom later that night. “Ronna,” she said softly. “We’re a family. You’re not going to eat on separate dishes.”

I was about to launch into my prepared defence of kashrus when she continued, “Instead, we’ll buy kosher dishes, and we’ll keep a kosher home. Daddy and I and everyone else will eat out when we want something that’s not kosher.”

A couple of months after my mother began to cook kosher, I attended a regional NCSY shabbaton in Denver, Colorado, led by Rabbi Moish and Judy Greenwald of St. Louis, Missouri. I flew to Denver with the little NCSY chevreh I’d befriended, and I had the time of my life. I drooled over the Bais Yaakov girls and came home certain that I wanted to join Bais Yaakov of Denver.

When I broached this to my parents, they were not as keen. My kosher and Shabbos habits notwithstanding, my parents were concerned that this was only a flighty teenage phase. They told me to finish high school in Omaha, and if I was still interested in becoming frum after that, they’d send me to seminary in Israel for a year.

Well, 12th grade came and passed, and I was still as interested as ever. Both the Levines and the Greenwalds — with whom I’d stayed in touch — agreed that Neve Yerushalayim was the best choice for me, and with my parents’ blessing, I enthusiastically applied, got accepted, planned, and packed.

When I left the door of our home in Omaha for that last time before seminary, I’m not sure where I thought my life would take me. I guess I figured I’d learn for a year or two, come back to Omaha more observant, and start a family somewhere nearby.

I flew off to Eretz Yisrael in August of 1978, with a stopover in New York where I joined a group flight of students from larger Jewish cities, such as Cleveland, Chicago, and New York.

When we landed, each of these groups had someone on hand to greet them in the airport. Only little me from Omaha had no one. Not only did I have no one to greet me, I was also immediately confronted by every sem girl’s worst nightmare: I had arrived, but my luggage hadn’t!

I was alone in the airport with no one to call a friend, no one who knew me, and few girls who even knew of a city called Omaha.

We took a sheirut from Tel Aviv to Yerushalayim. All the other girls piled their massive duffel bags into the trunk of the sheirut. I climbed in, sans luggage, my heart in my throat. Back in those days, Neve was in Bayit Vegan, and the students slept in apartments near the seminary. While my new roommates happily unpacked, I looked around and shyly asked these girls whom I’d met an hour ago for pajamas, skirts, and tops. Then I bravely headed out to find a store to shop for the rest of my essentials. A couple of days later, my luggage miraculously arrived at Neve. I never found out how it got there, but I did see on the luggage tags that my precious suitcase had taken a detour to New Zealand!

I cried a lot in the beginning of seminary. I loved being in Eretz Yisrael, I loved learning about Yiddishkeit, but I was hopelessly lost and homesick. I was sure I’d never learn the alef-beis. I also didn’t enjoy the food. And I had no one: no friends yet, no family, and not much Jewish knowledge, after all.

I stuck at it, though, sitting through classes, reviewing with the Neve tutors, reading books in the library.

A couple weeks after I arrived, just as I was starting to adjust, I awoke one morning to find myself looking at a man. He was leaving my room with my handbag. My handbag had all my essentials: my passport, my return ticket, my important documents.

I was so confused. My polite Omaha brain couldn’t grasp the concept of a real live thief. But as I watched the fellow leave the apartment, I sprung up in my pajamas and ran down the stairs and out onto the sunny streets of Bayit Vegan on a late summer morning.

The thief was an Arab worker, and I chased him for all I was worth.

“SLICHAH! SLICHAH! THAT’S MY BAG!” I shouted as loud as I possibly could. The guy finally stopped running, turned back, dropped his contraband and took off. I caught my breath and realized suddenly that I was standing in the middle of a Bayit Vegan street in my pajamas as all the chareidi men hurried past on their way to Shacharis. I slunk back to my dirah, still panting and wondering how I’d landed in this third world country.

I desperately wanted the journey to smooth out in front of me, but Hashem had other plans. In November, about two months after my arrival, I accidentally backed into a Shabbos urn of hot water. The scalding water poured down my arm, back, and shoulder. I screamed, and my roommate came running. In horror, she called for help as I stood, frozen and screaming.

This was my right arm, and I’m right-handed. My roommate wrapped a clean pillowcase around my arm and ran with me to a doctor who lived and practiced nearby.

Baruch Hashem, the doctor pronounced that the wound could heal without hospitalization. I left his rooms with my arm fully wrapped in a bulky bandage and clear instructions to return every few days for dressing changes and medications.

Without my dominant hand, I was helpless: I couldn’t take notes in class, couldn’t shower or do so many other basic activities.

My roommates quickly took up the call of duty. They wrote my notes, helped me shower, do laundry, and whatever else needed. They even sat with me and wrote letters to my parents (phone calls were a luxury back then), following my dictation as I told my parents about life in Israel and explained why they weren’t reading my handwriting. My roommates became like sisters. One day, I sat in class as one of our rebbeim expounded on the idea of deracheha darchei noam. As I listened, I thought of my roommates and all they were doing for me, without any thought of repayment. This is what darchei noam means, I remember thinking. These girls are the kindest I’ve ever met. I want this. I want the whole thing!

As my arm healed and our bonds of friendship sealed, I thought, Okay, now normal life can resume. I was ready for routine.

Then, on December 16, my Neve friends and I went out to a Chanukah party. We had a great time, singing together, playing a game that one of the girls had made up. When it was time to leave, we boarded the #12 bus near the Old City together with several Arab passengers. The bus wove its way down Hapisgah in Bayit Vegan and we stopped across the street from the bakery. It was a busy stop; passengers were boarding and disembarking the bus, and I had just turned around to say something to my friend who was standing behind me, when I saw a flash of light from the back of the bus, then a tremendously loud ripping noise.

There were shards of glass everywhere, and a mangled body of metal where what moments ago had been a bus.

Pigua!

People were screaming and running in every direction, trying desperately to get away. My friends and I screeched, probably loudest of all. Some Israeli women seemed to be asking us to stop screaming, but while I saw their lips moving, I couldn’t hear a word they were saying. My ears were very affected by the blast.

Finally, I calmed down enough to understand that while I couldn’t hear myself screaming, other people could. I looked around. There were injured people and lots of shocked passengers picking their way out of the rubble. Baruch Hashem, nobody was killed in the blast. We Neve girls were so lucky. We all had bits and pieces of shrapnel and glass in our skin and in our hair, and our ears were in agony, but other than that, we were fine.

I survived a bus bombing, I kept thinking. I couldn’t believe that my life contained a terrorist bombing, never mind surviving one.

By the time we staggered up the hill and back to Neve, Rabbi Refson, head of Neve at the time, had heard what we’d been through. He insisted that we go to the homes of the different shanah alef rabbis who lived in Bayit Vegan so their wives could take care of us and we could phone our parents before they saw the news and started to worry. This was a good idea, because although we had stopped screaming, we were all hysterical.

My friend Sue and I went to Rabbi and Mrs. Feinsod, whom I had already established a warm relationship with. When we got there, the kids were already sleeping, and Mrs. Feinsod hovered over us with tea, cookies, calm words, and a loving embrace.

Finally, I dialed home and my brother answered.

As I tried to tell him what I’d just lived through, I began to sob hysterically.

“Ronna,” my brother said.

I could barely hear his voice over the ringing in my ears.

“Ronna,” he said again, more urgently, and I focused enough to zero in on his voice. “Ronna, be cool. Try to be strong. If Mom and Dad hear that you’re hysterical, they’ll tell you to come home. You’ve worked so hard for this. Think about it.”

I managed to catch my breath a bit before my parents came on the line. They listened to my tale, and my parents thought for a moment in silence.

Then my very calm, very even-keeled father said, “Ronna, you can come home if you want to, but you’ll need help to process what happened now. You may need counseling of some sort. In Omaha, who will you talk to about a terror attack on a bus? In Israel, they know what to do for people when something like this happens. Here, you’ll be lost.”

I listened to my father, and with my mother’s agreement stuck it out. (My friend Sue from St. Louis who was on the bus with me decided to return home. She said she’d come back after she calmed down. She never returned.)

Finally, Hashem decided it was time to smooth the path for me. I recovered from the bombing, and indeed, in Israel, I had all the support I needed to feel normal again. I fell in love more and more with Yiddishkeit, and I felt strongly that this was the life for me.

After a year, fully keeping kosher and wearing skirts, it was time to go home. I was terrified; would I be able to sustain all that I’d built for myself in Israel?

Back in Omaha, my friends didn’t understand the changes they saw in me. They’d ogle at my skirts, and wonder aloud if I was auditioning for a cover of Fiddler on the Roof or something. “Come on, you can’t come out to eat with us?” they cajoled. They were agog that I wouldn’t go out on Shabbos. Even my Orthodox friends were surprised by my level of observance. I remember one of my male cousins telling his mother that he wanted to go to Israel, and his mother gasping and replying, “No way, do you want to become like Ronna?!”

Still, I needn’t have worried about slipping. My parents, who’d stopped keeping a kosher home when I wasn’t around, fully kashered their kitchen and purchased new dishes in honor of my arrival; then they toiveled the dishes just for me. They were so supportive of my journey and encouraged me in my observance.

When I told them I wanted to return to Neve, they were understandably nervous. If all that craziness had happened to me in shanah alef, who knew what was in store for shanah bet? But they’d watched me struggle during my high school years without Yiddishkeit, and they saw that I was happy being frum. As the summer progressed, we bought return tickets for me to Israel.

During the summer, I went back to the Conservative synagogue of my youth to schmooze with the rabbi and staff there. The assistant rabbi at the synagogue told me that he had a nephew who had married a South African girl and had lived in Israel. The nephew had sadly been killed in the Yom Kippur War, and the rabbi asked I could look up his niece when I went back. I was happy to help and promised that I would.

Shanah bet was a study in contrasts to shanah alef. I wasn’t new anymore. I thrived in Eretz Yisrael and took on every mitzvah that I learned about.

I remembered my promise to the assistant rabbi in Omaha, and I called his niece. She was a frum woman, and she invited me for Shabbos.

“Sure,” I said. I was always happy to meet new people.

“I hope you don’t mind,” she added, “but I also invited my nephews.”

I envisioned a ten-year-old kid, and when I came, I was surprised to see a bochur around my age with his brother and sister-in-law. Well, I was already quite frum, and so was he, so we didn’t interact at all over Shabbos.

A few weeks later, one of my tutors at Neve asked me if I would want to meet a boy who was, in her words, “Short like you.” I agreed to the date, and we made up through the shadchan to meet up near the “robot on Rechov Yaffo.” I was excited to see a mechanical man, and I marched up and down Yaffo for quite a while searching for the robot. How was I supposed to know that in South Africa, a robot is a traffic light?

When we finally managed to meet, I saw that my date was the bochur I’d just spent Shabbos with!

We hit it off, and I made a rare and expensive call from the Neve office phone to my parents to tell them that I was seriously dating.

When we got engaged a couple of weeks later, we decided that we’d start off in Eretz Yisrael, and then move to the States, where I’d been accepting into a nursing program.

But then we found out that my chassan’s father was ill. As the “free-agent” couple of the family, we were asked to fly to South Africa immediately after our wedding to help care for my chassan’s father. Of course, we wanted to help, so we did just that.

Sadly, my father-in-law passed away three months after our wedding. We stayed in South Africa so my mother-in-law wouldn’t be alone.

When we moved to Johannesburg, South Africa was still under apartheid rule. Remember, I’d only been out of Omaha for under two years. I was a well-bred, post-civil-rights-movement American girl. And here in Johannesburg, I’d watch “Coloreds Only” buses pass by. I was appalled.

It didn’t help that almost no one in South Africa had heard of Omaha. When I introduced myself, I’d get one of three responses:

Either they never heard of it, or they’d say, “Omaha? But I thought there were only cows there!” The third reply was my favorite: “Omaha? Do you know Dorothy? The one with the munchkins?” I laughed so hard when I heard that first. I could barely get out my reply, which was, “First, that’s Kansas! Second, it’s not a true story!”

In South Africa, I comforted myself through the initial adjustment by telling myself that I’d return to America soon enough. I’d deferred my enrollment into nursing school for two years. Then I deferred another two years. My mother-in-law decided to fulfill her lifelong dream of making aliyah, but my husband had arranged for parnassah for us in South Africa, and we decided to stay there.

MY parents and a couple of my siblings stayed in Omaha all these years, and I try to go back to visit as often as I can.

In the beginning, my cousins and old high school friends would drive over on Shabbos afternoons to visit, no matter how much I told them not to. They’d unabashedly finger my sheitel and ask me how I managed it, fascinated and slightly horrified by the life I’d chosen.

My parents, though, were always amazingly supportive. They kept a kosher set of dishes for when we arrived, and they made sure I unpacked it and packed it away whenever I came. Whenever we ended up in Omaha for Chanukah, which is during summer vacation in South Africa, my mother would go around and collect enough menorahs for my children from all her Jewish neighbors and extended family.

Today, my children are grown and married, living in all corners of the world. When I go back to visit my mother, I go alone. My mother has dementia now, but in her love for me, the one thing she hasn’t forgotten is my love of Shabbos. Before my recent visit, my sister told me that my mother reminded her no less than 50 times, “Ronna is coming! Make sure you have grape juice for Kiddush and challah for her!”

When I think about it, I can’t understand what moved me, a regular girl from Omaha, to the life I have now. My parents, who were never frum and never knew of the importance of leading a frum life, bravely supported me in my journey every step of the way.

My father may have never really known his Avinu Malkeinu, but he did everything so that his daughter would.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 959)