We met him years ago. He was standing outside our succah a gang of boys screaming some words in Hebrew at him we didn’t understand. When our children translated for us my husband ran out of the succah to save him. The gang left reluctantly especially one boy with a fistful of pebbles.
From year to year we’ve gotten to know Casplera. He learned it was safe to come and say hello. We’d see him slink or stalk through the streets. And each time we saw him our hearts hurt because he always looked like a trapped deer in foreign woods.
He grew older. He had a bar mitzvah. Put on a black hat and suit. And he roamed and roamed. Sometimes he’d wait an hour or two for a kiddush to start so he could drink cups of soda. And every so often his mother would send him to stores on errands and each time there’d be a scene.
At the butcher’s shop for example he held a bag over his head while the butcher kindly explained that he couldn’t take back an open chicken. “But my mother said to return the chickens ” Casplera said. Finally someone in line offered to buy the chickens themselves.
Or in the vegetable store where he’d come with a list and demand someone fill it. Not in a mean way but the way a drowning person asks you to jump in and save him.
Ten years passed then 15. He’s already a man which makes it even sadder as if the clay is already dry and there’s no way to reshape it.
There were so many things I saw in Casplera. And the scary side that lies just beyond from a slight pinch in the brain.
And I think of his mother and how hard that must be and how hard so many things for so many people must be. And how there’s always a Casplera for us to look at and reflect. Did we do we throw stones at him like that gang of boys? These are the moments when G-d tests our hearts. Does mercy rise to the surface or cruelty? Who offers to buy the half-defrosted unwrapped chickens? Who picks out the vegetables?
So it was that day when Yonatan one of the boys from that same gang who stood outside our succah hurling insults and small stones was standing in the vegetable store when Casplera came in.
The minute Yonatan looked at Casplera a burning flash ran through his body a pain so hot he had to grab on to the cashier’s counter. And it was Yonatan’s turn to check out when he heard the unmistakable voice begging demanding pleading for someone to put together the list in his hand that his mother had given him.
Yonatan had been the one holding the pebbles thrown at Caspera 15 years ago. Yonatan now held the hand of his six-year-old son who still couldn’t tell an alef from a beis and who wandered half blankly around the playground at cheder while other boys took up his own father’s old chant.
And as Casplera demanded louder and louder Yonatan saw himself as a boy getting laughs at the expense of another boy a boy very like the one whose hand he was now holding.
And Yonatan went over to Casplera took the paper out of his hand and began to fulfill each request on the list. Five tomatoes. Three cucumbers. Tears rolled down his cheeks as he picked out five onions. Two zucchini. Two peppers.
He knew he knew what he had done and looking at his own son he knew what it had done to both himself and Casplera.
From that day on Yonatan prayed harder than he’d ever prayed for anything before — he prayed
for Casplera. —