Perri tapped her coffee mug absently. Last week, Mommy had sent a link to an “amazing TV interview that BLOWS THE LEFTIST NARRATIVE TO PIECES.” The week before, she had sent a long email crowded with photos and lots of bolded text about the Soros Infiltration (what was a Soros? Perri had never heard of it before. Was it the acronym for some government agency?). And there was the “Watch our stalwart Congressmen in action at this congressional hearing” email — was that title meant to be sarcastic? She wasn’t sure.

Perri had never followed politics and she wasn’t planning to start now, but last week, things had gotten a little awkward when Mommy tried to follow up on her emails during their Erev Shabbos phone conversation.

“Did you see that clip I sent?” she had asked. “The one where the TV anchor starts stuttering when Ben Shapiro stated the plain facts? It was unbelievable, no?”

Perri hadn’t been sure whether to admit that she never clicked on the link. Instead, she tried changing the subject. “For sure, Mommy,” she said. “Totally unbelievable. I was wondering, I’m looking for a new salad recipe for Shalosh Seudos — something without a lettuce base, so I can make it in advance. Did you try anything new recently?”

It didn’t work. “A salad recipe? Try asking Chevy, she’s the salad queen. Tatty and I don’t really switch our menu that much,” Mommy had pushed her request aside. “But can you believe the chutzpah of the mainstream media these days? The way they completely twist everything Trump says and does? Do they really think we’re that stupid, not to realize how they take everything out of context?”

“Mmm,” Perri said. “It’s really crazy.”

That must have been the right response. “Totally crazy,” Mommy agreed. “Remind me to send you this clip from Shaindy Mintz, it’s on our bungalow colony WhatsApp group. Some guy visited a college campus and tried to tell these college students the truth about the Palestinians. He almost got killed. It’s hard to believe this is America.”

“Whoa, sounds really upsetting,” Perri said, davening that Mommy would find something else to talk about.

“Oy, there’s Chevy clicking in,” Mommy said. “I’ll speak to you later.”

Perri silently blessed Chevy as she pulled the ready pans of Shabbos food out of the fridge and set them on the hotplate. The chicken, with its abundant sweet sauce and bed of onions, went straight onto the hotplate. The green beans would do better without direct heat; she put them on top of the chicken.

Chaim came through the door, hair and beard slightly wet, mikveh bag in one hand, two seforim under his other arm. “Smells good here,” he said.

“Thanks,” Perri said. She pulled the plate of potato kugel she’d set aside earlier out of the fridge and popped it into the microwave. “Why don’t you sit down for a minute? I have kugel for you.”

Chaim slipped into a kitchen chair gratefully. “Sounds perfect.”

Perri put a bottle of seltzer down on the table.

“I just hung up with your mother,” she said.

“I’ll call her to wish her good Shabbos as soon as I finish the kugel,” Chaim promised. “How’s she doing? Anything new?”

Perri shrugged. “She seems fine.”

The microwave beeped and she pulled the plate of hot kugel out.

“Chaim, was she always like this?” she asked as she put the plate down in front of him.

“Like what?” he asked, forehead wrinkled.

“Like — obsessed. Totally, totally obsessed with the news,” Perri said. “You know, ranting about the leftists and Obama and the mainstream media. I don’t remember her being like this when we got married.”

Chaim swallowed a piece of kugel. “Delicious,” he said.

Perri waited for an answer to her question. Instead, Chaim poured himself some seltzer. “How much longer to Shabbos?” he asked.

E

arly Monday morning, Yaakov slipped out of his house and gently closed the door behind him. The silver edges of the “Mishpachas Markowitz” sign glinted in the harsh light of the fluorescent bulb overhead. Marissa was working a night shift in the NICU — she wouldn’t be finished until 7 a.m. and then there was the commute back home.  He’d have to get the girls and Yosef Shalom out this morning, after an early Shacharis. But he didn’t mind an early wakeup.

Soon the sun would come up, painting the neighborhood in its glaring, glowering light, erasing all the subtle vagueness of this early predawn hour. But as long as it lasted, he loved the way the world looked now, the usual straight, unforgiving edges and stark shadows of the stone buildings fuzzy and undefined. Even the trees looked more flexible.

Flexible. Pliable. Tolerant. Live and let live. Growing up in suburban New Jersey, those were the mantras that shaped his life, his parents’ approach to childrearing, his neighborhood’s approach to politics, the temple rabbi’s approach to religion, the college campus approach to morality. Who’s to say you’re righter than anyone else? What gives you the authority to impose your views on your neighbor? Why can’t each individual arrive at their own definitions of right and wrong?

Yaakov shook his head at those long-ago questions. Because there is a G-d, and He is the One who decides. Even if it doesn’t always feel soft and fuzzy, you have a commander and you follow His rules. In the glare of the Mideast sun, there was no vagueness. In his life as an observant Jew in Yerushalayim, right and wrong were sharply delineated, irrefutable.

He climbed up the staircase to the shtibel, entered the sparsely occupied room, and pulled out his tallis and tefillin. The room was still dim as the 13 other men murmured birchos hashachar. With practiced fluidity, Yaakov wrapped his tefillin over his left arm, drawing the strap down toward his fingers. He pulled it past the two stumps where his pinky and ring finger once were and drew it tightly around the middle finger.

“Marko-veetch?” Someone was calling him. It was Krishevsky, the gabbai.

Yaakov raised his eyebrow. “Hmm?”

“Chazzan?” Krishevsky asked.

Yaakov pointed toward himself. “Ani? You want me?”

Krishevsky nodded emphatically. “Ein af echad po she’yachol — there’s no one here who can do it.” At Yaakov’s grimace, he added, “I tried. Believe me.”

Yaakov shrugged and headed toward the front of the little room. As the sun rose and bathed the 14 men in its bold glare, he let his voice rise and expand, filling the room with sweet supplication.

Fifty minutes later, he was folding his tallis and watching the room fill with the next shift of men, when he felt someone tapping his shoulder.

“I thought I knew you, but this I never knew,” Krishevsky said. “What a voice! What a talent!”

Yaakov brushed off the hand on his shoulder like a pesky fly. “Nu,” he said. “It’s just a weekday Shacharis. No singing, even.”

“Still,” Krishevsky said firmly. “I know what I’m saying. Menachem Toker I’m not, but I do have an ear. You’re not just another yungerman. Even in a weekday Shacharis, there’s something special in your voice.”

Yaakov stuffed his tallis into the tallis bag and held the edge tightly with the three fingers of his left hand as he tugged the zipper closed with his right hand. “I hear,” he said noncommittally.

But Krishevsky didn’t let up. “So tell me,” he said, blocking Yaakov’s path out the door with his ample shoulders. “We’ve been living together in this neighborhood for almost 20 years and this is the first time I’ve heard you daven. Why did you keep so quiet all this time? Why don’t we hear you more?”

Yaakov bit his lip. His eyes flashed to the two stumps of his flesh on his left hand and then, in desperation, to the door.

“Selichah,” he said, thinking of the three sleeping children who still needed to be wakened, fed, packed up, and sent to school. “I have to hurry home… my wife…. Maybe we’ll talk later?”

Krishevsky smiled mischievously. “The oldest excuse in the world,” he said, shifting his large frame away from the door. “Go, go. But don’t be surprised if I ask you to daven again.”

To be continued….

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1035)