Now she made a conscious effort to lighten up the air. “Who’s coming to Chez Markowitz today, Jeremy and two friends, right?” she said, handing Elisheva dishes of matbucha and techinah to place on the table. “I hope they get here soon — it looks like it’s going to start raining any minute.”

Yaakov looked out the window. “You’re right. The gray clouds are rolling in. See them, Elisheva? Anyway, it’s Jeremy and two friends. One of them is Adam. You know him, right?”

“He’s the one with that funny accent!” Elisheva piped in. “He says oh mah goodness all the time!”

“It’s not funny, it’s just a South African accent,” Tamar berated her sister as she banged containers of mayonnaise, soy sauce, and honey down on the counter. “If you live in South Africa, that’s normal.”

Yaakov ignored them. “And the other one is a new guy. I think he grew up in Jeremy’s neighborhood back in the States, but they haven’t seen each other since their high school graduation.”

“That’s cute, for two guys from some public school in Arizona to end up in Lev V’Nefesh together,” Marissa said. “I can’t even remember the last time I saw someone from my high school.”

“Hmm,” Yaakov said.

“Abba, you also?” Elisheva asked curiously.

“Also what?”

“You also never saw your high school friends ever again? After you came to yeshivah and learned about mitzvos?”

Yaakov drew his shoulders in. “Most of them.”

Tamar looked up from the salad dressing she was mixing and appraised her father shrewdly. “So you did keep up with some.”

Yaakov turned toward her. His dark eyes glinted with something — was it pain? Marissa couldn’t tell.

“Tamar!” he barked. “What are you doing?”

Tamar dropped the fork. “I’m — I’m making salad dressing, like Ima asked.”

“But how are you mixing it?” Yaakov took a menacing step forward.

“What do you mean? I — I mean — with a fork, it has mayonnaise and I need to—”

Yaakov headed swiftly to the counter and knocked the fork out of her hand. “You can’t mix a thick mixture like that on Shabbos,” he thundered. “It’s breaking Shabbos. You need to use a shinui. You hear me? You’re breaking Shabbos!”

At first Tamar gaped. Then her face turned very white and tears began to leak out of the corners of her eyes. Yaakov didn’t seem to notice. He was clutching the two stumps on his left hand, eyes half-closed, breathing hard.

“How about I mix the dressing,” Marissa said as calmly as she could. “I remember learning about this in seminary — the best way is an X-type of motion. Like this, Tamar. Watch how I’m doing it.”

She took the fork and stole a quick glance at Yaakov. Standing there in their kitchen in Yerushalayim, he was clearly somewhere else.

“I think I hear knocking. It must be Jeremy and his friends,” Marissa said to her statue of a husband. “Ready to start?”

Yaakov swallowed hard. “Yeah.”

“Go open the door, Elisheva,” Marissa said. As Yaakov receded from the kitchen, she gave Tamar’s shoulders a quick squeeze. “It’s okay,” she whispered. “Everything’s okay.”

Rain began to patter on the kitchen window, like insistent needles trying to pierce the glass. Tamar dabbed fiercely at her eyes. “No it’s not.”

From the living room, Marissa could hear the deep voices of their guests. Elisheva was giggling at some joke Jeremy had made. Yaakov was showing everyone to their seats, the gracious host.

“Sounds like it’s almost time for Kiddush,” Marissa said in as casual a voice as she could muster. “Come, sweetie.”

Tamar leaned over the sink, dabbed some water on her glowering face, and pulled down the sleeves of her cardigan. Then she cocked her chin. “Now you and Abba are going to show these guys how beautiful Shabbos is, huh?”

Marissa didn’t have an answer.

The meal was over, the guests had left, and the leftover food was strewn over the kitchen counter. Yosef Shalom was at the Weisses next door — he loved their Playmobil collection — and Elisheva and her friend Dini were playing a game of Uno in the spare bedroom. Outside, the rain kept coming down, coating everything in cold, gray sheets of moisture. Inside was dry, serene — but Marissa kept replaying the slam of Tamar’s bedroom door.

“Yaakov,” Marissa said gently to the stiff form sitting at the table. “What was that all about, with the salad dressing? Why were you so rough with Tamar?”

“She was breaking Shabbos.” Yaakov’s voice was as cold as the rain.

“She was just trying to help!” Marissa protested.

“Okay, but she has to be taught. There’s a right way and wrong way to make a salad dressing on Shabbos.” He opened his sefer and lowered his eyes toward the fine print.

“And there’s a right way and wrong way to teach your kids these things,” Marissa countered.

Yaakov pressed his finger inside the sefer and looked up at her. His chin was tilted at that very stubborn angle that Marissa associated with Tamar. They looked so alike.

“This is what you wanted, isn’t it?” he said. “A home where we keep Shabbos.”

Just like today, it had been raining that February night 21 years ago when Marissa first met Yaakov. She had dashed from her taxi into the hotel and rubbed her hands together, trying to massage away her nerves along with the chill of the wet night, while watching the doorway for the tall, dark young man Rebbetzin Grossinger had promised was worth meeting.

She was able to pick out Yaakov right away. The other guys — cute young FFB yeshivah bochurim, she knew that the moment she saw them — all made their way tentatively into the hotel, sweeping the knot of waiting young women with wary eyes that didn’t quite make contact while fumbling with umbrellas or wet coats. Yaakov wasn’t like that. He stood straight and still — no fidgeting, no obvious nerves — cocked his head, and looked directly at Marissa. Then he walked toward her.

“Yaakov Markowitz,” he introduced himself. “Can I assume you’re Marissa Feld?”

For the next two hours, rivulets of rain obscured the world outside while Yaakov transported Marissa to the perpetually sunny suburban New Jersey of his childhood, where everyone had the right to their opinion, everyone was entitled to their truth, and self-expression was the most exalted ideal.

“Even the rabbi couldn’t stand up for religious principles,” Yaakov said. “Tolerance was the most important thing — more important than G-d. As a kid, it was great. I could wear whatever I wanted, be friends with whoever I wanted — at my friend Robin’s house, I could even eat treif — it was all good, all fine. I was into all kinds of alternative music, some really edgy stuff, and my parents just accepted it all. As long as it makes you happy, that was the mantra.”

He tapped his fingers together, and Marissa bit her lip as she took in the missing fingers Rebbetzin Grossinger had warned her about. Then she focused again on the conversation.

“But when I got older, it started to fall apart for me,” Yaakov was saying. “Wasn’t there something worth standing up for? Wasn’t there some absolute truth that was bigger than all of our petty self-interest? Because if I’m okay, you’re okay, it’s all okay… if there’s no objective right and wrong”— he pressed his hands into the table —“then it means we nothing we do really matters. And I couldn’t accept that there was no point, no purpose, beyond being happy. I couldn’t take that.”

Never before had Marissa heard someone put her own feelings in words this way. Her path to observance wasn’t purely intellectual — there were other things beyond logic that drew her to Torah — but she’d always been the kid who inconveniently saw through the fluff and focused on the essence. This young man with his deep dark eyes possessed the same rugged honesty that had fueled her to leave her family and find her true self.

She sensed, even on that very first date, that this was a person she could trust and respect. Someone who was willing to pay the price for truth. But now — decades later, with a shared life and family and an angry, rejected daughter closeted in her room — a wave of sadness swept over her. She sank into a chair and looked out the window at the gray clouds skimming the stone buildings.

“It’s what I wanted, yes,” she said softly, addressing the clouds. “But the Shabbos I wanted — it was beautiful, it was warm and inviting, it was something the whole family looked forward to. A positive experience. Not—” She gestured down the hall. “Not something they dread. Not something to be scared of.”

Yaakov raised his eyebrows. “Of course Shabbos should be beautiful. And yes, we should love it and look forward to it. But Marissa,” he said, “this is one of the Big Ones. It’s not optional. Even if you don’t love it, you can’t break Shabbos.”

Marissa stole a glance at her husband. She couldn’t tell what he was thinking, but she knew his deep-set eyes were focused on something far beyond the walls of their living room.

To be continued….

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 1039)