***

“The Mirrers by us in the beis medrash are saying someone talked to your father about Shpinder… for your sister.” Shua is all excited. “I don’t know why I didn’t think of that idea myself.”

“You know the boy?”

“Yeah, sure. He comes to Rav Buruch’s shiur every Friday.” Shua’s face is all lit up. “He’s a genius, the real thing. And a hard worker too. He’ll be a huge talmid chacham one of these days.”

“And what’s he like… in other ways?”

“Ummm…” Shua looks confused. He chops the potatoes industriously. “Um, I think he’s a perfectly good bochur.”

“Ah.”

Now he has the onions gently frying, and he turns to take the barley out of the freezer.

Cautiously, Nechami asks, “Is he… is he nice-looking?”

“I don’t know,” Shua says, almost embarrassed. “I mean, to me he just looks like a regular bochur.”

“Ah.”

“But she’ll have a husband who’s a real talmid chacham.” That should reassure her. “I don’t know why I never thought to suggest him to your father myself. Do you remember that Friday when I got home at three thirty, just barely in time to put up the cholent? I was with Shpinder that day. We both stayed after Rav Buruch’s shiur. There was no way we could leave.”

“Yes, I remember.” She certainly remembered how the wind was beating on the windows. She’d been on her feet since seven in the morning, putting the kids on the school van and escorting them to gan, making Shabbos, running out into the freezing cold again at noon to pick up the little ones, bathing them, dressing them. Shua’s mother had called, looking for him. “Nechami, what’s with Shua? I keep calling and he’s not answering,” she’d complained, and Nechami had swallowed the retort that was on the tip of her tongue. Who raised him? Who let him grow up so oblivious — and sent him out into the world like that? She remembered.

Long ago, she’d tried to say something to him, gently, about all those Fridays when he stayed so late learning. He’d been so surprised. He didn’t learn enough, he claimed. Everybody else in Mikelov stayed later than him. He devoted less time than average to Torah.

She’d disagreed. He was only including the lamdanim of Yerushalayim in his equation, she said. And the men he was talking about were bochurim, or elderly men who never had to hurry home.

He didn’t see what that had to do with it. There were family men who learned long hours in Mikelov. “Even Goldis, whose wife had twins two weeks ago, stays later than me to talk in learning with Rav Buruch.”

She wanted to call Chavi Goldis and scream at her for letting her husband do that and raise the average for everyone.

“That was the day Rav Buruch was talking about hamoicher shtar choiv l’chaveiroi v’chuzar u’muchloi muchel.” He lets the peeler drop from his hand. The potatoes are forgotten.

“Hamoicher what?”

“Someone who sells a shtar chov to someone else. Let’s say I borrow money from Moishe Shpinder. I give him a shtar. And then he sells the shtar to Goldis. So now it’s Goldis’s loan.” And just like that, he’s off, gone. There are no onions, no barley, no cholent pot in Shua’s world now. Nechami looks at him and smiles at the way he looks when he’s doing what he loves most.

“Now, I come to Moishe with the money to pay back the loan.”

“But he sold it to Goldis, you just said.”

“Right! Exactly! The question is, what’s the din pir’oin.” He starts talking in chassidishe lashon kodesh again, but she understands. “How can it be that according to the Rishoinim, I can’t pay Moishe, but Moishe can be moichel the debt? For two hours I sat there with him, working it out.” The Baal Haterumos. The Ritva. The Shitah Mekubetzes. The Nesivos.

Of course I remember that Friday. I peeled and chopped everything, and had it all ready for you in bowls on the counter — onions and garlic, potatoes, and the thawed meat in a bag. L’kuvid Shabbos kodesh. And finally you came in like a glowing storm wind, emptied the bag into the pot, adjusted the flame, prepared the candles, and flew out the door to the mikveh. You came back and went out to Minchah. I remember.

“So why aren’t you enthusiastic about this shidduch offer?” he asks softly, once the pot is finally on the fire.

“I… think that according to your description, Shpinder could be a very suitable son-in-law for my father.”

“And for your sister Chaya?” He catches the nuance quickly.

How to answer that without answering, how to phrase it without saying it?

“I… don’t know if my sister… it might not be suitable for her.”

A line appears between Shua’s eyebrows. “What does that mean?” On the stovetop, barley and potatoes begin to simmer. “She should be thrilled with an opportunity like this. The Shpinders aren’t asking for much, either.”

They see how you’ve managed to grow in Toireh by your shver, the Mirrers told me. That’s the kind of house they want to put their son in.

The water bubbles. Steam rises. Shua waits for an answer.

She takes out a disinfectant wipe, runs it over the counter. Takes out foil and covers the pans. A talmid chacham, someone who makes Torah the melody of his life. That was what Morah Grosser wished upon the girls, back in seminary. She’d come specially from Rav Wolf’s seminary to give a lecture series on “The Jewish Home.” And it had sounded so mesmerizing when she talked about that melody of life, about everything being secondary to Torah. But what Nechami didn’t know back then was that when life gets intense, it can get a little hard to play second fiddle — remembering all the while what a privilege it is.

“It could be that Chaya… might want… something different.” Her words seem to twist and turn.

“Why?” It’s like a personal affront to him, to the Torah he so loves, to the melody of his life. “How could anyone turn down an offer like that? I thought she was a serious girl!”

“She is a serious girl, Shua. Very serious.”

“Nu? What’s the problem, then?”

Silence.

• ••

Tovi

I knew Dudi’s number by heart. It started with 052, but it didn’t continue with 76 or 71, like everyone else’s number in our family. It had other numbers.

“Hello,” Dudi answered stiffly, suspiciously. He must have thought it was my father calling.

“Hi, Dudi, this is Tovi.”

I looked at myself in the mirror, talking. I’m a pretty cute girl, I think. I’d even say very cute. Ima says so too. She loves to tell me about the day I was born, after the doctors scared her so badly. She was lying in the ward crying, and then, finally, they brought me to her, such an adorable, glowing baby with big blue eyes. It was like a little bomb of happiness exploded in her heart, and she didn’t care what I had or didn’t have, all she regretted was that she hadn’t been able to hold me all those hours that the doctors were examining me. But nisht geferlich, she made up for it over the years.

“Tovi!” He was glad it was me.

“I want to hear the end of that joke,” I said, a bit hesitantly. “The one about the cat with five legs.”

“A cat? With five legs?” He didn’t remember.

“You were starting to say you saw a cat with more than the average number of legs, but we were already going inside.”

“Oh, that, right.” He was coming to life now. “Yes, I saw a cat like that.”

“Was it creepy?”

“Not at all.” Dudi laughed. “You know how we always joke about what is and what isn’t? So tell me, Tovi, how many legs does a cat have, on the average?”

“Four,” I said.

“Wrong,” Dudi said. “Now and then there’s a cat with only three legs, or two. That brings down the average.”

“Um… okay.” I tried to recall what we learned in math class about medians and averages. Morah Bina Levi had explained it….

“So the average is somewhere around 3.999 per cat. That means every cat that has four legs is already above average!”

“Oof!” I spluttered, once I got the joke. “Your jokes are so silly!”

“Right,” he said, and I could hear him smile. “That’s the way I like them.”

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 848)