“So you are related? I thought so! You remind me so much of him! The same smile, the same voice… Shmili!” The salesman called into the back room and Shmili emerged, curling short peyos around his finger, wiping a damp brow with a paper towel. “Shmili, who does this customer remind you of?”

“Ummm…”

“Doesn’t he look just like Dudi Silver?”

“Yeah, he really does. Wow!”

“How do you know Dudi?” Gedalya asked again.

The salesman laughed. “Officially, from the classes we took together. But if you want to know the truth, Dudi’s a brother!”

• ••

“Of course, come on over!” said Nechami, his ever-patient sister. “At three thirty I pick up Yossi from his playgroup, and right after that we can talk. I’ll explain everything to you, and don’t worry, the filters they have today work really well, so everything will be fine, Gedalya.”

She was so kind and reassuring, but it still felt like a bitter pill stuck in his throat.

“I see how it is with everyone around me,” he explained to Shua, sitting in their living room 15 minutes later. The Bernfeld girls were playing jump rope at the other end of the room. “First you just have the computer. Then you need email. And as long as you have the computer already, you let your kids watch a wedding video, just family of course. And then you show them some old footage of a tish by the previous Rebbe that was just discovered in some archive. Then you want to do your banking on the computer. And next it’s Kupat Cholim and the local municipal services. And then your teenage talmid chacham wants to type up his chiddushim…”

Shua nodded.

“So then you buy Otzar HaChochmah. And once you start compiling your chiddushim you want to share them, of course, so you join some sort of forum for online harbatzas Torah. And as long as you’re online, you might as well buy some pajamas for the kids, because you can get them so much cheaper there….”

Shua was quiet. His eyes shifted toward the package Nechami had picked up from the post office just that morning.

“This is what I was trying to avoid!” Gedalya said, his fist clenched. “That’s not what I want for myself, and for sure not for my family. Shifra agrees — she always says that even if pajamas cost more in the store, the new ideas that machine will bring into our house have a much more painful price.”

Outside, with perfect timing, a passing loudspeaker summoned every man to come out and protest some breach in the fortresses of Yiddishkeit — in Geula, as usual — with impassioned cries of “Gevalt!” Inside, it was just the two of them.

“Excuse me, Shua, for talking like this,” Gedalya said, discomfited. “I know you’re a very choshuve lamdan, even if… even though Nechami uses a computer for her work. Your house is a model of Torah and yiras Shamayim, and I only wish I could learn at your level. I want to be sure you understand that… I’m not invalidating anyone’s derech. I just — I just chose to take a different approach, the one I found most suitable for me, for my family.”

“Let me give you something to drink,” Shua says, suddenly realizing he hasn’t offered his brother-in-law any refreshments. He looks in the fridge and sees that the kids have finished all the drinks left over from Shabbos. He opens Nechami’s secret stash behind the dish towels and takes out a couple of cans. He’ll buy her some more later to replace them.

“Hello!” The door opens and Nechami and Yossi come in, exuberant. They’ve been counting raindrops all the way home. “Look who’s here — a choshuve guest!”

After Nechami gets Yossi settled with a drink and some toys, they settle down to discuss the purchase in earnest. Gedalya needs to receive files from the office on a home computer, insert his edits and comments, and send them back. What equipment does that require? Should he buy a desktop computer that he can keep locked up in his little study, or a mobile computer he can take anywhere? Should he use a net stick or a wired connection?

Gedalya writes all the information down in neat lines with a fine-point, clear plastic pen, underlining the key words Nechami dictates to him.

“Call me from the store if you have any more questions,” she offers.

“Yes.” He stands up, nodding.

Suddenly, as she looks at him in profile, he looks so much like Dudi. Yet different. So refined, so principled — and so very troubled. She wants to protect him.

“And… Gedalya…” She knows it’s going to sound too emotional. But she has to say it. “You’ll still be able to stick to all your principles, and uphold your values, even with a computer in the house. Really.”

He doesn’t answer. Why does she feel the need to keep reassuring him like that?

• ••

Moriah laid down her verdict. “It’s frumpy.”

“Not at all,” Leah disagreed. “Don’t be like that, Moriah. It’s a really nice little dress, except for the length. It’s very well-made.”

Moriah wasn’t convinced. “Yaffa’le, why don’t you ask your mother-in-law to give you the money instead of buying clothes for Avital? Tell her that your taste is… um… a bit different.”

“She knows my taste is different,” Yaffa’le said drily, “and that’s exactly why she bought the dress herself. She doesn’t want me mortifying the family at the engagement party she hopes they’ll be making. She covered up that fact by buying the same dress for all the little granddaughters, so of course I’ll want Avital to match. And she made sure to go a size up, just to make sure the poor kid would be practically tripping over it….”

“Your mother-in-law was right, though, a size two would’ve been too small,” said Leah, squatting down next to the pudgy toddler who was proudly showing off her new dress to all the children in the indoor playground. “Stop kvetching, Yaffa’le, it’s going to be fine, and nobody’s going to be mortified. Look, we just need to shorten it and put some ruching here in the sleeves, with a drawstring or a strip of elastic, and you’ll have an adorable dress. We can cut a few inches off the skirt….” She crinkled her forehead, considering. “And then sew the lace trim back on to the new hemline. Buy her a pair of lace tights, and she’ll look perfect.”

The three women were standing at the entrance to an indoor playground, watching the little ones jump and roll in the ball pit.

“I want to go in,” Avital demanded.

“Just a second, sweetie,” Yaffa’le said. “We’re just going to mark the hem on your new dress, and then you can get back into your regular clothes and jump around in the balls.”

While Leah went back to her car to get some pins, Moriah turned to Yaffa’le and whispered, “Isn’t that shvigger of yours ever going to accept you?”

Yaffa’le spread out her hands. “What can I do? To her, I’m a symbol of all her disappointment in her son.”

“What disappointment? Who disappointed her?” Moriah demanded fiercely. “Her son is brilliant, he’s about to earn a degree with honors, he already has two job offers, he married a lovely girl and is building a happy home, he’s given her a sweet little granddaughter… what more does she want?”

“She wants a son with a long beard and curled peyos, Moriah. She wants to see him in a white shirt and black pants, plastic glasses, and black shoes. She wants a daughter-in-law with a short sheitel, like my sister-in-law Nechami.” She may want other things, too, things more spiritual in nature. But Yaffa’le doesn’t go there.

“She’s going to have to make her peace with reality sooner or later.”

“Or not. The truth is, I don’t care anymore,” Yaffa’le said, shrugging. “You’d think she’d be satisfied — she has three daughters-in-law who are just like her, two daughters who do what she tells them, and she can’t make her peace with the fact that one out of her six kids came out different from what she planned!”

Leah came back, holding pins, scissors, and a sewing kit. “Let’s get the job done right here,” she said, her deft fingers pinning up the skirt. “I’ll do the hem by hand while the kids play, easy-peasy. Come, Avital, let’s get you out of this dress. Did they stamp your wrist yet? Great — you can run right in and play with the balls.”

Seam ripper in hand, Leah was already removing the lace. Putting aside the ivory-colored bundle, she picked up her shears and paused. “Yaffa’le, do you want me to leave a couple of extra inches, in case you want to let down the hem later on?”

“No. Just chop it off.”

Leah checked once more, verifying the hemline, and with a practiced eye she began to cut. A long strip of dark-green velvet separated itself neatly from the dress and fell silently to the floor.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 864)