Oh, the children are thrilled. He should climb out of the window! (It’s too high. Too small.) He should shout louder! (The mikveh is far from where people live.) Someone will see that he’s not coming to the seudah and will find him! (Yossel has no family, no friends….)

One by one the suggestions are shot down, and we start to worry about poor Yossel, locked away for Rosh Hashanah.

“Do you know, children, what Yossel has to do alllll those hours that he can’t daven? That he can’t ask Hashem for a good year? He has to know that Hashem put him there! He has to know that his avodah for Rosh Hashanah is to be stuck in a place where he can’t daven. He has to accept it with love because Hashem put him there!”

There’s silence, maybe disappointment that the story didn’t end with some heroic rescue, but the point has been made; the lesson taken. I wonder at the somewhat strange choice for a children’s Rosh Hashanah story, and then the men start singing, and the moment passes.

A few hours later I’m startled out of my sleep by a strange grunt.

I leap toward the crib and see the faint outline of my baby…. Something isn’t right. I scoop her up and run to the dining room, where the light is on. Her eyes are rolled back and she’s convulsing. It’s 3 a.m., but what can I do besides knock on my cousins’ bedroom door to ask where to go? By the time I’m back in the dining room, my baby has stopped shaking and has the pale, floppy, post-convulsion look I have come to fear. And she has a fever.

I get dressed and run to the nearest urgent care clinic. The doctor tells me to call an ambulance. I beg and plead — we have the entire Rosh Hashanah ahead of us! Maybe all she needs is antibiotics?

“No,” the doctor says. “An ambulance.”

I run back home and deliberate. Is this pikuach nefesh? Isn’t it? I dial 101 and request an ambulance.

I choke down tears as I climb inside. More than worry for my baby’s well-being (this is not her first convulsion, and it won’t be her last), I am heartsick at being mechalel the fledgling year, the Yom Hadin that has barely announced itself. I am devastated to think of the day that is soon to rise, a day that should have featured shul, tekios, Unesaneh Tokef, marred instead by a long drive, nurses, and machines.

The paramedic asks me which hospital I want to go to. I don’t want to go to any hospital, please. I want to have the Yom Tov I was planning. I don’t want flashing lights and squawking radios. Where’s the peace, the stillness, the holiness?

I sit on the stretcher in my Yom Tov clothes, and watch a pen record our details. Instead of delicious food, there’s the astringent odor of antiseptics. I hold my baby tight as the engine powers up, and look out the ambulance door as I’m pulled into a different reality.

Suddenly, a different door comes to mind. Yossel. Locked in a bathroom all Rosh Hashanah.

As we speed down the empty roads, I know who that story was meant for; Who it was from.

I have to know what my avodah for Rosh Hashanah is.

I will keep reminding myself as the hours are long, and I am far away from where I want to be; as my Yom Hadin consists of rocking a sick baby. This is where I am supposed to be.

Because it was Hashem Who put me here.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 961)