•••

“She’s still awake,” Shifra told him when he stepped through the door.

She almost wished Dr. Barclay had never developed this innovative surgery and honed it to perfection. They might have been better off with their previous options — a painful series of cartilage implants, or just an artificial outer ear, without touching the auditory canal. If they’d never heard of Dr. Barclay, they would have chosen one of those and done the surgery here in Israel, without having to pay a cent.

She quickly banished that thought. She should be grateful that Dr. Barclay’s procedure existed. Softly, Gedalya went to the room Tovi shared with her sisters. She lay there with her face to the wall. The blanket pulsed, and he heard her sharp exhalations.

“Tovi?”

No response.

“Tovi, all this crying isn’t good for you.”

No response.

“Tovi, turn around toward me, please.”

“I can’t!” came a muffled cry from the pillow. He understood — she never showed the left side of her head when it was unconcealed by a hairband. “I’m not getting out of bed until I grow an ear.”

“What?”

“You heard me,” his broken little daughter muttered to the wall. “If Hashem can give me an ear with surgery, He can also do it without surgery.”

In the other beds, Chumi, Suri, and Chaiky breathed softly, dreaming sweet dreams.

“I don’t want people giving me tzedakah,” Tovi whispered fiercely.

Gedalya sighed. “Even if we were rich, Tovi, you’d still be receiving it as a gift — from us.”

“It’s not the same!” growled the lump in the bed. “Parents always give to their children. That’s normal.”

“Do you want us to postpone the surgery?” Gedalya asked. And he wondered, put it off until when? This is the optimal time to do it. Her right ear has reached its adult size, and at this young age, she’ll recover more quickly.

“No!”

“So what do you want?”

“I want Hashem to just give me an ear. Boing! An ear!”

What was going to be with this child? He couldn’t help smiling. But he quickly forced it back.

“And what if that doesn’t happen?” he asked.

“I’ll stay here until it does,” his stubborn little girl said. “Like Choni HaMe’agel.”

A flash of lightning lit up the room. Pbbbamm, the thunder answered. Gedalya laid his palm on Tovi’s forehead. The child was burning up with fever.

•••

In Jerusalem, too, streams of water collected, turning streets into lakes, seeking a way out. Nechami opened closets, took out shirts.

“Get some sleep,” Shua said. “Tomorrow, while the kids are out, you’ll have time to pack.” For himself, he just popped a couple of items in a plastic shopping bag. “At least not a bag from the shuk,” she would have pleaded with him back in their early days, when such things embarrassed her.

“Why? What’s the problem?” he’d once asked. The bag was perfectly clean. He’d only brought home a few apples in it. Why not reuse it?

“Because it says, ‘Achim Mizrachi, Machaneh Yehudah,’ ” she’d said. Fifteen years younger, she was annoyed.

Shua had taken it literally. He’d gone to the bag organizer and took a different one, a white one, that said “Levi’s Fruits and Vegetables.”

Now she bends over the suitcase, arranging pajamas. She goes to the kitchen and measures out portions of instant cereal for Yossi, placing them scoop by scoop in the divided container. She goes back to the closet, counts out pairs of socks. A flash of lightning illuminates the night, followed by another. She recites the brachah.

Shua wants to retire for the night. She stops him. She doesn’t know why — she’d planned to talk to him about this at the moshav, when they went for a walk along the cool pathways, avoiding the mud and the puddles.

“My mother was at her friend today,” she says.

“Beigel?”

“Yes.”

“Nu?”

She abandons the suitcase. There’s a certain anticipation in her eyes. “Yocheved’s son is here on a visit for a few weeks. He came alone.”

“Nu?”

“He agreed to learn a daily seder.”

“Nu?” Shua is perfectly calm; he just doesn’t know what she’s driving at.

“Well, first of all, show a little excitement.”

“I should get excited that his honor, Raphael the sheigetz from Dresden, has graciously agreed to open a Gemara?”

“It’s nice that he was willing… willing to hear about the idea.” She’s the defender now. Defending her mother’s friend, her friend’s happiness.

“All right. And therefore…?”

“He needs a chavrusa, someone on a high level,” Nechami says pointedly. “He’s willing to pay. And Yocheved wants to add to that out of her own funds.”

“Great. So let them find him a chavrusa.”

Nechami adds another hint. “This could be a gateway… to bring him back.”

But somehow, instead of flowing into Nachal Sorek and out to the ocean, the conversation goes off course, and slowly but surely, it finds its way down, down to the Dead Sea.

“Nu, nu.” Shua is doubtful. “I don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings, not Mrs. Beigel’s, and certainly not your mother’s. But that sort of chevreh isn’t the type that comes back. He probably just wants to learn for the intellectual challenge or to satisfy his nostalgia…” His words douse Nechami like cold water.

But she won’t give up. “What difference does it make why he wants to learn?” she asks. “Even if it’s shelo lishmah, the light of the Torah has the power to lead him back. And another thing — we were just talking about Beri’s tefillin. And I was thinking this might be a good opportunity…”

He gapes. He’s just realized that they haven’t merely been exchanging opinions; his wife has a practical goal in mind. “You — wanted — me — to learn — with Raphael Beigel? Me?” And she wants to use that money to buy tefillin for our son?!

She’s discomfited. “Well… yes. I mean, my mother asked it as a favor… and it’s really important to Yocheved.”

“Nechami, the fellow eats neveilos and treifos.” His feels his throat constricting, he wants to gag. “He lives like a goy.” Every word is another splash of cold water.

“Yes — but he wants to learn! He even said which sugya he’d like to learn. Something about a cow’s mouth in a courtyard.”

“Pi parah b’chatzer hanizak.” No pause, no confusion there. “So this Mr. Beigel really thinks that at night he can go out to eat… to eat I don’t want to know what in Abu Ghosh, or to have himself a good time in Tel Aviv in all those… those places there, and then in the morning he can open a Bava Kamma, just like that? He thinks he can touch it with those same hands?”

Nechami looks at Shua’s face. Suddenly he looks so much like Yehudit — the way she looks when she’s carsick, right before she opens the bag and vomits.

“His brother learns in Milkov sometimes,” he tells her. “I’ve heard a few things about darling Raphael. He puts pictures of himself on the Internet, eating in restaurants with a big smile. Do you know he had the chutzpah to write ‘Efshi v’efshi b’vasar chazir’ under those pictures? His brother was almost crying when he told me. Nechami, I can’t sit over a Gemara with such a person. I don’t want him with me when I open a Rav Shimon Shkop, when I look something up in Miluei HaChoshen. It’s too holy, too precious to desecrate it like that.”

“I hear,” Nechami says quickly. “I should have waited. I meant to bring this up on Shabbos, at the moshav, when you’d be feeling relaxed.”

“I wouldn’t have answered you any differently on the moshav,” Shua says. “Besides, it’s going to be all muddy there, and we’ll probably have to have our outing on the porch.”

“So I’ll tell my mother no, then.”

“Tell your mother no. And I’m sorry.”

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 878)