Light Years Away: Chapter 40
Oof! Why doesn’t she have any connections to wealthy donors? Doesn’t anybody have a philanthropic fund tucked away somewhere?
“It just makes more sense.”
“Ha’adam lo nivra ela lehis’anag al Hashem,” Shua quotes. “We’re meant to take pleasure in knowing Hashem. It sounds like maybe you’re only relating to the lehis’anag part.”
“Why?” she protests. “What could be more of a gilui Shechinah than the ocean?”
And what could more of a gilui Shechinah than that moment at 5 a.m. when Shua said to her, “Come, I ordered a taxi. It’s coming in ten minutes. You said you wanted to go to the beach on Friday morning, no?”
They drive to a beach somewhere along the coast, she has no idea where. Somewhere south of Gush Dan, perhaps. On the way, they try to think of a way to get hold of 30,000 shekels. They roll the number on their tongue. Shua doesn’t want to take a bank loan.
“You run into all kinds of ribbis problems that way,” he says. “I don’t want to rely on a heter iska.”
She remembers the days when he used to take a small gemach loan, enough to keep them out of overdraft, and run straight to the bank to deposit it. They couldn’t owe anything to the bank, because of ribbis. Once, when a neighbor heard about this rush to get to the bank before their balance dropped into the red, she’d said to Nechami, “But you’re taking it too far!” Nechami had just laughed.
“How about taking a gemach loan?” she suggests now.
“No gemach will give a loan that big. And the real issue is, if you borrow money, you have to pay it back.”
She stretches her mind, trying to think. Who does she know that might be a potential donor?
“Maybe I’ll try asking the men at kollel,” Shua says. “You never know — sometimes an avreich who looks just like all the others turns out to be the son-in-law of a big gvir.”
“No way are you becoming a schnorrer,” she says, adamant. “You’re not going to go from one person to the next, collecting coins in a plastic bag.”
Her husband laughs. “There are some very choshuve avreichim who collect money. Doing bad things is shameful. Collecting tzedakah to help a Yid? That’s an honor.”
“An honor I’d rather you forgo,” she says. Now she’s tense. Oof! Why doesn’t she have any connections to wealthy donors? Doesn’t anybody have a philanthropic fund tucked away somewhere?
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Her son looks at her directly. He’d gone to speak with his father, not with her. He’d intentionally come while she was out
“You don’t need to explain it to me,” Dudi whispers back. “Obviously that would be the right thing to do. But what happened to all your sacred principles?”
Shua points to a piece of jewelry. “This one here… is this suitable for a very chareidi woman?” he asks
“Maybe I was wrong to bring you here with me,” Abba says to him, with a look that silently adds, “Don’t you dare say anything uncalled-for in front of my daughter”
