“That’s not possible,” he said, gripping the steering wheel hard. “But I’ll do my best.” And he stepped on the gas.

“Why isn’t it possible?” I asked. I knew he liked physics. Savta always got mad because he seemed to have no problem learning all sorts of other things, but not Gemara.

“Equations in your head!” Her voice would rise high, above the levers he built in his room, the spheres and the models. “I don’t have the head for Gemara,” she’d mimic him. And we, the little grandchildren, would shrink into the sofa, blocking it out.

The car sped down Rechov Nahar HaYarden. “Dudi, if they built a car with a very powerful motor, why couldn’t it travel at the speed of light?”

Dudi looked straight ahead, at the black pavement.

“Like the planes they used to have, that broke the sound barrier,” I explained. Talk to me. Say something, about forces and friction and acceleration, even if I won’t understand a word of it.

“Tovi, do you know what happens when someone travels very, very fast?” he said. “If he even gets close to the speed of light?”

“He gets to wherever he’s going very fast.” I drummed on the dashboard. There was a book there. Probably Yaffa’le’s. I turned my eyes away quickly. I looked at Dudi. He was relaxed, his shoulders loose again. I was glad.

“Let’s say we’re in a spaceship,” he said. “The faster we’re traveling, the greater our mass becomes. We actually get heavier and heavier.”

“What, we’d get fat?”

“No,” he laughed. “We’d stay the same size, but we’d weigh more. And time would move more slowly for us.”

“That can’t be.”

“That’s how it is, though. If someone is traveling in a spaceship, he’ll stay younger than his twin brother on earth. Time moves more slowly for him.”

“So people could travel in spaceships and never get old!” I loved these talks with Dudi. I loved it when he softened up, when he opened up.

“Yes, but what kind of life would that be, to spend your life in a spaceship?” And now his voice turned bitter. Again.

“So what happens to our spaceship as it gets close to the speed of light?” I asked.

“Our mass gets greater and greater. It becomes infinite. And time stops for it. Anyone who’s in that spaceship at the moment it touches the speed of light — time stands still for them.”

“They stay young forever!” I said. Imagine that.

• ••

When Shua touched the light, time stood still. Everything came to a stop. The space that enclosed him disappeared; everyday reality dissipated, evaporated into the world outside. Physical parameters ceased to exist near his shtender.

Nechami knew it was a big zechus. That light beamed upon her, broke up around her into thousands of sparks. But at the same time, it seemed to her that her mass grew heavier and heavier. In the mornings, she worked. In the afternoons, she was busy with the children. In the evenings she was busy with them, too. And also through the night. In despair she read stories of women who “moved about the quiet house at night,” folding laundry to their hearts’ content. She had no nights like that. Someone was always waking up crying.

In the park, a neighbor talked exuberantly about the miracles she saw — whenever she “sent her husband to learn,” the children always slept well that night. Nechami didn’t see those miracles. With ten aching fingers she hewed rocks, taking care of the children and the house, turning from a pampered princess into a depleted mother. In four years she’d earned a doctorate on the causes of small children waking at night. The thesis was all written in her head — ears, teeth, worms, nightmares, shortness of breath, thirst, needing a hug. Hernia operation. Infection. Fever. Her overriding concern each night was to soothe whoever was crying at the moment, before she had all three crying.

“So… you want me to come home?” Shua asked once, when she managed to get through to his chavrusa. At midnight.

“Well… could you?” she asked, hesitant. Generations of righteous women reprimanded her from the darkness.

“I’m kind of in the middle of something,” he said, full of light and joy, too immersed to notice her tension.

“Oh, you should stay, then, until you’re finished,” she said. A good girl, Nechami, so well brought up.

Tiredness enveloped her, loneliness pricked her like little tacks. Her little sister Chaya’le, sent around by Ima once in a while to help, was a lifesaver.

“Ima doesn’t let me go and babysit at Dudi’s house,” Chaya now informs her, as they walk together through the Mamilla Street Mall to daven at the Kosel.

“Dudi realizes what’s going on, and he’s insulted,” Nechami says. “Gedalya won’t sent Tovi to him, either.”

“Yes. And Dudi reminded Ima how much I used to help you when your kids were small.”

“And Ima said you can’t draw a comparison,” Nechami recites. “And Dudi said you’re supposed to help your siblings unconditionally, no matter what they are or aren’t doing with their time.” Oy, those arguments they all know by heart, yet they keep repeating in an endless loop, as if something new will come out of it this time.

“Yes.” Chaya laughs sadly.

“Are you really comparing Nechami, who is moiser nefesh for Shua’s Toireh, to you and Yaffa’le, who just want to go out and enjoy yourselves?”

“What difference does it make where we want to go? Isn’t building a Jewish home also important?”

“Oh, really!”

“As if you’d send Chaya to me like you send her to Nechami, even if I were going out to a shiur.”

“When your house is free of foreign influences like Nechami’s, then we’ll talk again about sending Chaya over there, amen, kein yehi ratzon.”

“You know, Dudi has a really close relationship with Ima. He talks to her all the time,” Chaya observes. “But only by fighting. It’s like they’ve forgotten how to speak normally to each other. It seems like the only way he has any relationship with her at all is by upsetting her.”

They stop at the window of an art gallery and examine the offerings, allow themselves to be pulled for a moment into a world of color, creation, and form.

“That one,” they say together, pointing simultaneously. Then they laugh. Their taste is identical. The vase of metal flowers would be perfect for Nechami’s office.

“First I need to buy a curtain, a shelf, and those cute chairs I saw in Talpiot,” says Nechami, running through her shopping list. “It’ll take a few months to finish fixing the place up. Let’s go.”

“If I end up like Dudi, chas v’chalilah, I won’t fight with Ima,” Chaya suddenly says as they pass through Shaar Yaffo. She’s sending out a test balloon.

Nechami doesn’t respond.

“You’re supposed to be shocked, dear sister,” the 19-year-old explains to her elder.

Nechami shrugs. “Why?”

“Because it’s not bad enough that I don’t want Abba’s dream son-in-law for my husband, I even have the nerve to think of a very different kind of home.”

“A house nobody will send a babysitter to.”

“You’ll send. There’ll be nothing on the bookshelves but Yaldei Shai and Tzviki Green — perfectly kosher stuff.”

“Which way are we going?” Nechami asks, emotionless. “Through the Rova, or through the shuk?”

“The shuk,” Chaya says. She’s not afraid. “Come on, try to talk me into it,” she demands, as they walk down, stone by stone, between the shuttered shops of the empty Arab shuk.

“Talk you into what?”

“Into marrying an illui who learns 16 hours a day. Tell me why I should do it.”

“Why should you, really?” asks Nechami. She’s not going to play angel’s advocate.

“Some people would be shocked at the very question.” Chaya almost misses a step. She stumbles, grabs her sister’s arm for support.

“Yes. But those people won’t take your place working a full-time job no matter what else is going on in their lives, they won’t take care of the kids for you, and they won’t visit you at night to break up the loneliness.” Nechami cuts it short. “And that means you’re the one who has to make the decision, not them.”

And they won’t toil in Torah for you either, my sister. It won’t expand their mind and illuminate their soul, slowly and quietly. It won’t be that invisible but almost-tangible presence in their house, bringing it to another dimension, beyond time and space. And it won’t lift them high.

You decide for yourself if this is something you truly value. I won’t talk you into it.

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 847)