“He has no home, Raizele. I thought you realized that”

“We’re going to Har No-of, we’re going to Har No-of,” Bentzi sang in the stairwell. They’d just finished the second night meal, and now they were going to Raizele’s parents, where they would sleep over and spend the second day.

We’re going to Har No-of, we’re going to Har No-of, Yanky sang inwardly. Thanks to Har Nof, he’d escaped another day of davening in the beis medrash. Instead, he’d be going to a nice, friendly neighborhood shul where he wouldn’t feel all eyes were on him. At his parents’ house last night, he’d told them all with a sigh that “it’s too much for my shver to walk an hour each way to the beis medrash of the chassidus, so he’s davening close to home. I think I’ll have to go and daven with him in his shul.”

“Who says you have to?” Nochumku challenged him. “Plenty of people daven in their usual place even when they’re eating at their shver. You’re young and healthy — it won’t hurt you to get up at a quarter to six and come to the beis medrash. Lots of people walk long distances to daven with the Rebbe.”

“Of course I’d walk, that’s not a problem,” Yanky declared. “But what can I do, the davening is long by us in the beis medrash. And then it takes at least an hour to get to Har Nof. I can’t make them all wait for me so long, it’ll spoil the seudah for them.”

“So let them eat when they want, and you eat when you get there — what’s the big deal?”

“No, that would make extra work for my shvigger. She’s very organized, you have to know the type. She’d be on her feet, taking all the food out of the fridge and reheating it for me, and knowing her, she wouldn’t sit down until I bentshed and everything was cleaned up and put away again. I can’t do that to her, especially on Rosh Hashanah.”

“Well, if you have no choice, you have no choice,” Nochumku conceded.

Of course I have no choice. One day of tekios and Zichronos and Shofros and piyutim in the beis medrash with all eyes on me is more than enough. In the neighborhood shul it will all be so much simpler.

Now, as Yanky walked with his children on Rechov Yaffo, listening to their chatter, he suddenly stopped. “Wait a second, boys. Wait for me here — I see someone I know.”

Bugi waved hello from a bench on the street, and Yanky went over and exchanged a few words with him.

“That was the fellow who wanted to rent our apartment,” Raizele remarked when Yanky rejoined them, and like every curious woman in the world, she wanted to know, “What were you saying to him?”

“Nothing much, just chag samei’ach, where are you eating, and so on. Last night he ate at a soup kitchen, and tonight a family hosted him. You know Ben Shem, the ones with the open house? Tzaddikim — they cook up huge pots of food and invite all the poor people who have nowhere to go.”

“Why is he sitting out here so late at night, instead of going home? Is he waiting for someone?”

“He has no home, Raizele. I thought you realized that.”

“What do you mean, he has no home?”

“I mean that he has no home. I don’t know any other way of saying it.”

“So where does he live? In a hotel? In a dormitory? With relatives?”

“A hotel?” Yanky smiled sadly. “He wishes he could live in a hotel. That’s his dream, to take a vacation in a fancy hotel. A dormitory? He’s 29, and he’s not a yeshivah bochur or a student. Relatives? He’s an orphan without relatives.”

(Excerpted from Mishpacha, Issue 774)