The next day, we headed out, determined to work things out and get the game going. A few mothers were sitting on some bright green benches – I hadn’t noticed those in the evening – and some kids were on the swings. Cute.

Ari was already busy, setting up bases. Where the guy managed to get hold of that stuff in just a few hours was beyond me. He grinned as we came up.

“Look, guys, here’s our field, ready for a game!”

We laughed and divided into teams. At first it was awkward, since the area was much smaller than we were used to, but still, a game was a game. A couple of times, the ball landed in the middle of the new playground. The second time, I jogged over to get it back, dodging a few kids and a stroller.

I scooped up the ball and headed back to the game. The playground was much fuller than when we’d come, I realized. The jungle gym was teeming with clambering kids and there was a long line for the swings. Mothers were standing around since the benches were all full. Well, it was brand new, the playground. No wonder it was so exciting for all of them.

“C’mon, we gotta head back in a few minutes!” one of the boys called, and I quickened up, tossing the ball to Chaim, who was pitcher, and putting the playground occupation firmly out my mind.

But when we headed back to yeshivah, high-fiving and passing the ball between ourselves, I couldn’t help but notice that many pairs of eyes seemed to be watching us.

“Why are they all watching us?” I muttered to Shua.

“Are they?” he asked, blankly.

“Forget it,” I said.

Next day, one of the women came over as we entered the park.

“Are you boys planning to play baseball again?” she asked, slightly accusatory.

We were taken aback.

“Yeah, we always do, why?” someone said finally.

Another mother came over. “Oh, you told them?” she asked the first one. “It’s nothing personal, it’s just that this playground was made with the kids in mind, and your games are really disturbing to them. They can’t run around wherever they want, and then there’s the ball flying in all the time, we don’t want a little child to get hurt, chas v’sholom.”

Ari looked bewildered for once. “But – you’re saying we shouldn’t play here? But we’ve been using this lot for months. And our bein hasedorim is so short – we’ll be here an hour, max.”

“But you can play in the evenings,” the first woman objected. “Our kids won’t be here after six, seven p.m. Can’t you reschedule the games for later?”

We looked at each other. This wasn’t what we expected at all.

“Look, we’re sorry it bothered you yesterday,” I said, trying for diplomacy. “We’re gonna try to make sure the ball stays right at the end over there, on the grassy area. The kids aren’t playing there anyway…”

The other boys murmured in agreement and we beat a hasty retreat. The women didn’t look too pleased, though, as we headed for the makeshift pitch to start the game.

“What a chutzpah!” Shimmy fumed. “To kick us out of here as if the place belongs to them?”

“It’s not as if we’re getting in the way of the kids,” Yoni said. “We’re keeping all the way at the end… what’s their problem?”

“Forget it, let’s just get on with the game, we’ve wasted enough time,” Ari cut in.

I looked back at the women. There was a crowd of them now, huddled together, talking heatedly. I didn’t have a good feeling about this.

The next day, I hesitantly broached the idea of switching times, playing our game in the evening instead.

“I mean, if it wouldn’t make so much of a difference to us… and it seems to mean a lot to them…”

The response wasn’t too enthusiastic, but eventually the guys agreed to try it. But it didn’t go down too well. We had a much smaller turnout than usual; for some reason the new timing just didn’t appeal to everyone. The park wasn’t empty at 7 p.m. either, despite the women’s assertion. The mothers and babies weren’t around, but there were still plenty of bigger kids, and they kept getting in the way. One of the boys, maybe ten years old, seemed to enjoy kicking at the ball whenever it came near him. Then a group of kids came to watch at the side, calling questions and generally getting in the way.

“Forget it, Dovid,” Shimmy said when we finished. “It was nice of you and all that, but tomorrow, we’re back to afternoons here.”

There was a loud consensus.

I shrugged. We’d given it a good try, and now we didn’t have anything to feel guilty about.

But the women at the park didn’t agree. It seemed like every day one or another of them was trying to explain why the entire park area should be exclusively for the use of young children until the evening. I tried explaining our point of view, but it sounded lame – the evenings don’t work for us, this is where we’ve played for months…

The confrontations usually ended with us promising unconvincingly that we wouldn’t get in their way, and marching off to start our game. And we tried to keep our promise, we really did. It hampered the game, having to be so careful about which direction we threw the ball, but we didn’t want to keep going back to get it from between the swings. We made our playing field even smaller so that there was less chance of interfering with the little children’s playing.

But apparently, no one asked the little children not to interfere with us.

At first, the younger kids kept far away from our area. They had the swings and the slide, after all. The mothers sat on benches and there were some see-saws and even a sand box. They had plenty to keep them occupied.

But as the days went by, some of the kids became more daring. They ventured off the soft playground and onto the grass. Some of the little boys batted around a soft ball of their own and ran around the bases shrieking, clearly imitating our moves. It was adorable. It was also super annoying.

“Kids, keep out of the way!” Ari yelled across at them once or twice. They retreated quickly, and we continued with the game. I wished that the mothers would keep them away. Couldn’t they simply tell their kids to keep to the playground part while we played? It was just an hour each day, after all.

But the mothers kept a stony silence. I wondered if they were encouraging the kids to venture into “our” territory, to give the message that we weren’t welcome there.

Who cares, we thought, and continued the game.

Until the inevitable happened.

It was Monday, the game was well underway, and we were winning – two-zero. I was in the outfield, shading my eyes from the sun’s glare. Someone was up at bat, I wasn’t near enough to see who, but all of a sudden there were voices, someone yelling a warning, a sudden high-pitched scream.

The game halted. Half the boys were crowding around something at the batter’s mound; the rest of us looked bewildered.

I jogged over. “What’s going on?”

A group of mothers came running. One of them was screaming. “Chezky! Chezky! Are you okay!”

Shua stepped forward from the huddled group. “He’s – it’s your son?” He was pale. “I’m so sorry – he ran directly ahead of us, I was swinging the bat and he ran straight into me – he’s – I think we should call Hatzolah…”

Someone had already called, because I heard a motorbike ride up, zoom across the edge of the lot, and a man in a neon jacket leapt off. The boys parted and I caught a glimpse of a little boy lying on the ground, blood trickling from his head.

I felt sick.

There was a hand on my arm. Shua.

“Dovid.” His lips were white. “I feel terrible. He just – he ran straight into me. The ball – I couldn’t stop in time. I didn’t realize he was there, the bat just knocked him over and he fell and started bleeding…”

“It’s not your fault,” I said automatically. The mothers were glaring at us like we were criminals. “Maybe we should head back to yeshivah…”

“You should be ashamed of yourselves!” One of the women screamed, suddenly. “We warned you! We told you! And look what happened! Look what’s on your conscience now!”

Shua was shaking. “I’m – I’m so sorry,” he stuttered.

I’m not the kind of guy who loses my cool, but that made me see red. “Just a second,” I said, too loudly. “Didn’t you hear what happened? The kid ran right in front of him. It’s not Shua’s fault. If a kid ran in front of the swings and got hurt, would you blame the child sitting in the swing?”

That set the women off. “We knew this was going to happen!” “What a chutzpah!” “I’m going to call the Rosh Yeshivah about this!”

The Hatzolah guy stood up. “Ladies, he’s fine, he just got a shock, that’s all.”

The boy on the ground was sitting up, sipping water, a dazed look in his face. With the blood wiped away, we could see it was just a small cut on his forehead. “It’s a surface scratch,” the man continued. “Keep it clean, and it shouldn’t take long to heal completely.”

The crowds dispersed. We slipped away, feeling awkward. No one stopped us from going.

“That was crazy,” Ari said, shaking his head.

“You said it great, Dovid,” another guy said, approvingly. “How could they blame us – that crazy kid ran straight into the game!”

But I didn’t feel good. I kept thinking of the angry face. I’m going to call the Rosh Yeshivah…

Were they serious? Would they really get the yeshivah hanhalah involved?

Apparently, the answer was yes.

The mashgiach called me over the next day. “Dovid, could you just fill me in, please – what exactly happened in the park the other day? I heard, epes, a child got injured by one of the bochurim? What’s this all about?”

Seriously?

I shrugged, spread out my hands apologetically, told him the whole story. The mashgiach listened carefully and nodded, but he didn’t say anything more. A few days later, a small sign went up on the noticeboard: We ask the bochurim to please use their sensitivity and consideration when using the park next to the yeshivah. It was signed by all the hanhalah members.

I looked at the sign. Very smart. They didn’t outright stop us playing, but they issued some sort of concrete statement, to satisfy the parents. Good for them.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Shimmy asked. He had just seen the sign, too.

“Nothing,” I said. “We’ll just keep trying to keep out of the way of the little kids, and be extra careful to look out for them when we play. No one has any right to stop us.”

Shimmy nodded, satisfied. But I was uneasy. The mothers, I thought, were not going to be very happy.

If I could tell the parents one thing, it would be: How can you take away the one kosher, healthy outlet that we have, in our limited free time?

Batsheva

Some people talk about making things happen. I believe in less talk, more action.

Take the issue of the park, for example. We needed it, the community needed it. We were a small community, okay, but we were growing fast, and almost every family had little kids who would thrive on a playground. There was even the perfect location for it: the empty lot near the yeshivah, a large field overgrown with grass that was just begging to be put to better use.

There was a lot of talk about it, but nothing seemed to be happening. It was wintertime when I decided something had to be done: soon enough, spring would be upon us, and we’d be out in the sunshine – with nowhere to go. A few of us sprang into action.

We contacted the local councilman who told us that City Hall definitely had money for these types of projects – it was just a matter of petitioning them and keeping up the pressure until we saw results. So I formed a committee, and we went door-to-door, collected signatures for a petition. Once the money came through, though, we realized it wasn’t nearly enough for the whole project.

The committee wasn’t giving up so fast, though. We sent out letters to all the families in the community with young children, describing the proposed playground and asking for a small donation to the cause. When that wasn’t enough either, a couple of us arranged a Chinese auction. It was two months of frantic phone calls, complicated logistics, calculating profits versus costs of putting on a nice event – but we pulled it off, and we made the money that was needed.

Our job wasn’t over, but after that it was pretty smooth sailing. There was the playground design, which we also had a say in: we wanted it to be friendly for all ages, leave some space for running around, but with a nice amount of playground equipment for structured play. Plans were drawn up, rejected, revised, approved, and went through a huge amount of edits and legal checks until they were finally deemed cost-effective, safe, and child-friendly enough for everyone’s needs. When I got that email with the final go-ahead, I think I actually had tears in my eyes.

I couldn’t believe that it was actually happening, but over Pesach vacation, the playground actually came to life before our eyes. The kids, shooed out into the sunshine while we mothers were busy cleaning, found the bulldozers highly entertaining. They watched for hours, coming in just to get popsicles and report on progress.

“Ima, they put up two swings!”

“They chopped down all the grass!”

“I think they’re making a real slide!”

Their enthusiasm was so cute.

Finally, the park was complete. I headed out one afternoon, the baby gurgling in the stroller and my toddler running ahead to the swings.

My neighbor, Chani, was already there. She’d been on the committee too. “Can’t believe we pulled this off,” she said with a laugh. “I didn’t imagine we could really get results so soon…”

“Baruch Hashem, the kids really need this,” I said.

We were interrupted by footsteps and voices.

“Looks like we’re getting company here,” Chani said, frowning. “Just a second, this park isn’t meant for the yeshivah bochurim. What’s going on?”

We watched as the boys bypassed our little play area – okay, so they weren’t planning to hog the swings – and started setting up some game on the grass.

“I guess they have a right to be here, too,” I said, a little doubtfully.

Chani shook her head. “It’s a playground, we need this space for the little children to run around safely, without having half the space taken up by older boys playing games. They can use it in the evenings, whenever, not when there’s little children here who could get hurt…”

A baseball came rolling towards us. Chani sidestepped it, lips pursed. One of the bochurim hurried over, panting, and bounced it back to the grass.

“This is what I mean,” she said.

I nodded. “Look, let’s not say anything today, if they make a regular thing of it, we’ll speak to them.”

The boys, apparently, did make a regular thing of it. In fact, as we found out the next day, they used the park every single day for their baseball games.

We had a quick conference between mediating swing disputes and supervising kids on the slide. The ball made one or two appearances, but mostly, the boys kept to themselves. Still, it meant cutting off half of our children’s play area, and trying to stop them from running into the middle of the game.

“This park was built for the kids,” Tova Weiner insisted. “I think we should tell them again that they can come in the evenings, but not now. It’s just not safe.”

“But how can we stop them?” another woman asked uncertainly. “I mean, it’s public property, no?”

“Speak to the rosh yeshivah, maybe,” Chani suggested.

Then someone’s baby started to cry, and my Ruchi needed a drink, and that was the end of the conversation.

The boys didn’t come the next day, which made me wonder if they’d just come to the same conclusion as us – that sharing space wasn’t working, and we had to give the little children their time. But no – after that, it was back to square one. The weather was beautiful, I took my kids to the park most afternoons, and had full view of the rising conflict levels between the families of the neighborhood and the yeshivah bochurim.

The kids didn’t like it either. My Binny complained that he and his friends couldn’t play tag while the “big boys” took up all the space. The little girls were frightened of the bats and refused to use the slide near the grass, in case the ball would come and knock into them. There just wasn’t enough space for all these conflicting interests and people. Something would have to change.

And then Chezky, Chani’s son, got hurt.

Iwas standing beside the slide when it happened, and it gave me the perfect view. Ruchi slid down and I lifted her back onto the ladder for another round. Binny, Chezky, and a few other boys were playing tag around the playground equipment, weaving in and out, until one of the mothers told them it was dangerous to be running around near the swings, and they should move further away.

Of course, that took them right into another danger zone: the baseball game.

I saw it coming before it happened: the pitcher raised his arm, a tall, lanky bochur swung his bat through the air, and little Chezky ran straight into it, flew a yard or two, and landed face-down.

Instant outcry. Someone – my Binny, maybe – screamed. Chezky was lying on the ground. The boys came running, mothers huddled near the prone little boy… and I dialed Hatzolah.

It took about ten minutes after that: flustered apologies, Hatzolah’s arrival, Chezky sitting up again. After cleaning the blood, he looked okay, and I was relieved. He was fine, the boys were fine, everything was okay – but now, it was clear that the situation couldn’t continue.

Tova really gave it to the boys. She yelled at them, how this was all their fault, and if they wouldn’t have been so stubborn about playing here in the afternoon, this would never have happened. Of course, the boys had some lame defense, that it was Chezky’s own fault for getting in the way. What a chutzpah.

That decided things. After the kids were in bed – not without some difficulty with Binny, he’d been really scared by the accident – I called the rosh yeshivah. I explained the situation, how long we’d petitioned for the play area to be built, how the kids needed their space, what had been happening due to the bochurim’s games. Finally, I told him about the accident that had happened simply because there wasn’t enough room for the children to play freely with the older boys around.

“I hear you,” the rosh yeshivah said, slowly. “I hear you.”

That didn’t sound reassuring.

“Is – will the rosh yeshivah be able to speak to the bochurim about it?” I asked, pressing the matter delicately. “Perhaps to suggest a compromise – that they should use the park only later on, in the evenings?”

“I will discuss the matter with the other members of the hanhalah,” the rosh yeshivah replied simply. “Thank you for bringing it to my attention.”

I hung up the phone, feeling like the conversation ended too early.

What was that supposed to mean? Why was the answer so evasive? Surely this was a simple black-and-white situation, the bochurim should be told not to use the park while little children were around. What was the discussion all about?

I’ve always been a doer, a go-getter, the person who makes things happen. But now, for the first time in the entire park saga, I felt completely and utterly helpless.

If I could tell the bochurim one thing, it would be: Our children need the space that was created especially for them.

(Originally featured in Mishpacha, Issue 807)