She can’t believe her ears. “No way. We’ve never taken a bank loan. We’ve never even gone into overdraft or bought on credit with interest. You always said it’s halachically problematic”

Two for the maggidei shiurim. One for the rebbi. One for the morah. One for the ganenet.

And one for the babysitter who takes care of the cutest toddler in the world.

Nechami curls the ribbons quickly. She adds two more cellophane bags, in case Chanochi and Bentzi also want to give mishloach manos to their afternoon maggidei shiur. Then she makes one extra-nice package for Odelia Gunter.

“We have a ton of people to give to,” five-year-old Yehudit observes, rubbing her eyes instead of going to bed.

“Baruch Hashem,” Nechami answers. And this isn’t even counting the ones she’ll send to the neighbors on Purim itself.

“Imas work really hard before Purim,” Yehudit continues to observe.

Imas work really hard all the time, Nechami refrains from saying.

“You work hard all the time,” says Yehudit, with a child’s uncanny intuition. “What are we bringing to Savta Bernfeld?”

“I made her some very yummy meat for the Purim seudah,” Nechami reassures her. “And Abba’s bringing Saba Bernfeld a bottle of whisky.”

The little munchkin is satisfied, apparently, because she puts her thumb back in her mouth and looks with interest at the dining room table that’s turned into a mishloach manos display.

The door opens, and Shua walks in. “Abba!” Yehudit abandons the table and runs to him in her pajamas. “Why are you home so early?” she asks reprovingly. “It’s not twelve o’clock yet! I know, because we learned how to tell time in gan.”

“I didn’t go to night seder today,” he says, swinging her up toward the ceiling. She shrieks. “I wasn’t feeling so well, and I also had to go to a friend’s chasunah. An old friend from yeshivah.”

“Was your friend the father of the kallah or of the chassan?”

“My friend was the chassan himself.”

Yehudit laughs out loud. “How could your friend be a chassan? All your friends are grown-up Abbas already.”

“My friend is a grown-up, too,” says Shua. “But it took him a long time to find his kallah. It was a very happy wedding. Everybody came, even though the date wasn’t convenient,” he goes on, addressing Nechami. “Of course the people from Yerushalayim came, but from outside the city they also came. Nobody wanted to miss the last wedding from our shiur.”

And Shua was alone.

Sirkis and Munitz are in real estate. Traub works with them as an agent. Azriel and Katz are in computers. A few others are salesmen in stores or work in marketing. After a while, Shua became almost obsessive. He was buttonholing every man from his former shiur and asking them, “So what are you doing these days, Reb Chaim Duvid? What about you, Reb Shloime — where are you holding in life?”

He was the only one!