"No airline will allow her to board, no doctor will give her permission, and no insurance company will insure her in the condition she’s in"

“My wife needs to go to America with our daughter in a week and a half, for our daughter’s surgery,”

Gedalya tries to explain to the doctor.

“Your wife isn’t going anywhere except home and to bed,” Dr. Schechtman informs him in a heavy Ukrainian accent. She feels she’s put herself out a great deal already by staying ten minutes overtime for this patient, and has no patience for niceties. She hands them a referral to the emergency room, just in case. “She can get up and walk around the house a little — to the table, to the couch. But no exertion, no lifting.”

“If she stays seated for the whole flight, would that be all right?”

“What flight? Where?”

“To California,” he says faintly.

The doctor shows no mercy. “I see you’re having difficulty understanding me,” she says, then pronounces the next words with exaggerated emphasis. “She-cannot-fly-anywhere-in-her-condition. Is my Hebrew not good enough?”

“Your Hebrew is fine, it’s excellent,” says Shifra, trying desperately to soothe the doctor’s nerves. “But we’re just… shocked. We’ve waited a very long time for our daughter’s surgery. We paid a huge amount of money for it… hundreds of thousands of dollars.” She can’t hold back her tears.

“Then the abba should travel with the daughter,” the doctor says, turning off the computer and gathering up her things.

She doesn’t know that Gedalya doesn’t speak or understand English, barely knows the ABCs. That once caused a big mishap in the paper — very amusing to the more frivolous-minded readers. Ever since then, he’s been careful to ask Shimshon, the production manager, to check every word in foreign characters, and when he has a bit of free time, he tries to study one of those “English Made Easy” booklets.

“Just a second,” Shifra pleads, risking the doctor’s wrath. “I’m willing to take the responsibility on myself… to travel with my daughter.” She’ll put Tovi first, before everything — and everyone — else.

Two pairs of censorious eyes turn on her. Gedalya’s look speaks for itself: We don’t decide based on what we want. Who says it’s muttar to take such a risk? We have to ask a rav, and clarify what the halachah says.