• ••

The seminary events always began with speeches. Who cares if one alumna by the name of Nechami is on tenterhooks, worrying about the four little ones she left at home. Who cares if Nechami is silently praying not to feel the buzz of the phone on her lap urgently vibrating, hoping against desperate hope that the babysitter can manage long enough so that she won’t have to miss the choir. Eight hundred girls singing in unison, they said. Something unforgettable, they said.

Chanochi might get an asthma attack. His airways are so sensitive when the seasons are changing. There’s an inhaler in the kitchen cabinet. But the babysitter doesn’t know how to use it. Then again, he’d had a good dose from the inhaler in the afternoon. He should be okay. As long as no nasty virus suddenly rears its head in little Sari’s stomach, and no horrible little worm wakes up little Beri (she’d given him no sweets for two days and made him have hummus on his bread instead of chocolate spread), it might work out this time.

At least she was there for the choir.

Then it was time for the first scene of the play — and the babysitter called. This time, she has to answer.

“Nechami, I’m really sorry. Sari’s throwing up. I cleaned her up, and then she had a very dirty diaper… I guess it might be a virus? The whole room smells bad… I’m just not managing…. Maybe there’s someone who could come over and give me a hand?”

On the stage, Torah scholars were knocking on the door of the beis medrash. They paid their half-dinar entrance fee. Soon Hillel, shivering in the winter chill, would climb up onto the roof. Soon it would start snowing. And he would stay right there as the snow slowly covered him. No price is too much to pay for Torah, the girls would sing.

“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Nechami whispered into her phone.

The ticket to the show had cost forty shekels. There was no charge for leaving. None whatsoever.

As “Hillel” scrambled up to the roof, Nechami made her way down the stairs, out of the auditorium, out to the street in front of Binyanei HaUmah, where one could always find a taxi waiting. And she went home.

For the rest of that evening, she forced back her tears. She took care of Sari and soothed Bentzi back to sleep after his bad dream. When she thought, just maybe she could take a taxi back and catch a bit of the end — a song or a slideshow to warm her heart — Sari started to cry again. And all evening Nechami hummed the opening song to herself, because that was all she’d heard, and she didn’t know how they were going to get Hillel down from the roof, and to what melody they would bathe his frostbitten skin in warm water. She wouldn’t see them lighting a fire on Shabbos to heal Hillel, because bitulah zehu kiyumah — sometimes we fulfill the Torah by disregarding it. And who has the authority to decide what constitutes disregarding it? Surely not Nechami, yearning to soak up the music in that auditorium, but knowing that Shua would lose something priceless in return.

• ••

“Couldn’t Shua have learned at home that night, so you could go to the event?” Yoeli had asked her. He was asking for Chaya too, she knew that.

“I didn’t ask him to,” answers Nechami. Something in her stiffens. “Shua keeps his phone on silent when he’s learning — and that’s if it happens to be charged. Plus there’s no reception at Milkov. But anyway, that’s not the way it works. He has his chavrusas, his sedorim, his regular shiurim. It’s easy to take a young man and turn him into the household help. It starts with an alumnae event that you can’t miss because it happens only once in five years. Then it’s the wedding of a cousin that you’re really close to, so how can you not go? And then, little by little, you realize how hard it’s getting at night. Maybe at least once a week you can tell him to come home at ten, instead of after midnight. And then on Friday you really need his help. Kavod Shabbos, you know. It’s a slippery slope. I’ve seen it happen to friends. A talmid chacham can’t grow like that.”

You’re too rigid, Yoeli thinks — but he doesn’t say it out loud.

Because her rigidity, her refusal to compromise, is what allowed his brother-in-law Shua to grow into an unparalleled talmid chacham, the pride of their family. And who can criticize a soldier who’s given his life for his mission?

“Maybe there’s a middle way,” he suggests gently. The atmosphere in the room is tense and he opens the window. But the burst of air that comes in is too cold. He closes it. “Chaya, take me or Gedalya for example. For the first few years we were zocheh to learn a full day in kollel. Later on, as the situation at home changed, we made adjustments. It’s not all or nothing, you realize that?”

Chaya is very clear. “Yoeli, if I decide on something, I do it all the way. You see this computer? It cost 11,000 shekels. I took out a loan to buy it. I bought the most expensive programs, the best fonts, and I took private lessons to make sure I get the best out of the software.”

“And if you weren’t able to put all that money and effort into it,” Yoeli asks, “you wouldn’t do it at all? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Yes. What’s the use of being mediocre? Some of my friends didn’t see why they had to go for the top. They bought low-end computers, collected free fonts, downloaded free clipart from outdated collections they found online. Their computers were always crashing, so they’d squeeze in a little work time on the seminary’s computers. Now they’re whining that there aren’t any jobs in the field. One of those girls went to work for Hamehadhed at minimum wage.”

The window was closed now, but Nechami feels a cold wind on her back.

But Yoeli goes right on speaking to Chaya, probing. “So for you, the question isn’t at how high a standard you want to work in multimedia, but whether you want to go into the field at all. Right?”

“Right. The question is whether it’s really worth it. Because I’m not interested in being a run-of-the-mill video editor.”

“I hear,” Yoeli says, his voice soft and low. He keeps up the parable, talking about careers and software while really talking about the most important decision Chaya will ever make. “Maybe it would be a good idea to go to some multimedia experts who’ve been in the field for years, and hear what they have to say. You only see how much they’ve invested. They can tell you what they’ve gotten for all their efforts.”

“Yes, but everybody keeps pressuring me to figure this out right away,” Chaya says petulantly. She knows Yoeli’s game and she can keep talking about multimedia too, never mentioning the word Shpinder. “And those people — they won’t give me time to think. And when I try to figure out whether it’s really worth it to throw my whole self into this multimedia thing, because maybe I could be just as happy in some other field, all I get is pressure — decide, do it now, you’ll lose your chance…”

What a mess. What a terrible mess.

“Children? Havdala-a-h,” Abba calls from the living room.

Ima is back.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 856)