The chutzpah  - to disregard, to defy with such carelessness and contempt, the stringent dress code clearly spelled out in crude block letters for all to see.

Her dewy innocence failed to soften the suspicious looks from, those who warily  watched her from the windows and doorways of shabby buildings, from the street corners where they stood enveloped in the shadows of the encroaching night.  She walked blithely, light-hearted and carefree, intent upon her adventure, unaware of its cost. She was inquisitive and open: to new people, to new ideas, to life itself.  And she innocently believed that the face you presented to the world was the face that greeted you back.  But the faces that watched her through the slats of the shutters that shielded their homes were cold and uninviting.

***

“Are you nuts?” her youth group leader had sputtered when she told him what she wanted to do with her day off. He had to shout to compete with the din of voices and discordant noises eddying all around them at Kikar Zion: teenagers’ raucous laughter,  the joyous singing of Bratzlover “na-nas” bobbing energetically as they grabbed the teenagers into their circles, the blasting of someone’s boombox from which a  legendary chareidi singer’s voice crooned the popular song V’Ahavata L’ Rayacha K’mocha.

“Are you nuts?” the leader repeated, rolling his eyes in pronounced disbelief.  “Everyone else is going to Ben Yehuda Street for some last-minute gift shopping.  Why do you want to go there?  I deliberately didn’t take the group there this time; I erased it from the itinerary when I heard about all those crazy riots.  Not only are they relics from the past, those people are insane. What do you want to go there for?”

“I came here to learn about my heritage,” she said.  “But except for the Western Wall where we watched them pray, all this time we haven’t really had any meaningful encounters with authentic Jews.  I want to go meet them, talk to them one on one, learn a little about their lives. Maybe they’ll even take me into their homes. Isn’t that what a trip to Israel should be all about?”

The tour operator studied her open, shining face for a moment, shifted from foot to foot and then answered churlishly, “What makes you think they’re the authentic Jews?”

“Are we?” she countered with a smile.

“Authentic Jews don’t throw stones,” he said stiffly.

“I’m sure it was only a few misguided individuals,” she insisted.  “Look, they care deeply about each other..  Isn’t that wonderful? To have so much passion?  To have so much concern and love for one person that they’d go to such lengths to protect the honor of one of theirs?”

“It wasn’t love,” he said angrily, “don’t you see that?  They hate us.”

“Authentic Jews can’t have hate in their hearts,” she reproached him gently.

“Precisely my point.”

“Look,” he continued to argue, “you had a wonderful time here in Israel.  Why spoil it for yourself the last day you are here? You are young, you are naïve. You think everyone’s good. Sadly, you’ll learn the truth soon enough.  But for now, it’s a belief to be cherished.  You shouldn’t go there. You are barking up the wrong tree. Trust me, it’s a futile mission. “

“It’s not a mission,” she corrected him.  “It’s a quest. My life won’t change if I go souvenir-shopping today. But going there….now that could be life-changing.”

“Yeah, it might rub out some of that wide-eyed innocence of yours,” he said with caustic humor.  “Okay, go if you want.  But mark my words, you’ll only come away disappointed. Nothing that you hope for will happen.” Add end quotes

“You’re wrong,” she said with all the certainty and conviction of a seventeen-year old.  “When you give love, you get it back.”

“If only that were always so….” the tour operator sighed.

“See you at six,” she waved jauntily, as she left his side and began to melt into the crowd.

“Hey!” he yelled after her, suddenly remembering.  “You have to change your

clothing before you go in there!”

She turned around, half a block away already, and gave him the thumbs up sign.

“CHANGE YOUR CLOTHING!” he yelled again.  She nodded.

“I hope she heard me,” he worried to himself.

She hadn’t.

***

His face was contorted with anger as he watched her progress down his street.  His  street.  It belonged to him; his kind, his people- not intruders like her, who brazenly  trespassed his sanctuary and flouted the warnings posted on the walls.  The chutzpah  - to disregard, to defy with such carelessness and contempt, the stringent dress code clearly spelled out in crude block letters for all to see. Her appearance stabbed at him like the thorn of a rose from which one cannot wrench oneself free, her sheer presence a rebuke and mockery of everything he held dear and sacrificed for. Why wasn’t anyone on the street confronting her, waving her away, raining harsh words of censure upon her head, upholding the privacy, dignity and sanctity of the place where he lived? The camera that she insensitively wielded reminded him of the way a warrior would unsheathe and brandish his weapon for everyone to see with no attempt at concealment, no fear. What were they… animals in the zoo – specimens to be measured, assessed and photographed?  He saw his neighbors avert their eyes, look away, step across the street.  But no one was doing anything to stop her! His rage multiplied, spilled over into frenzy, a passion only the young knew.  He was seventeen.

***

When the first pebble skittered at her feet, she barely took notice. She was concentrating so deeply on the faces that passed her by, that she was oblivious to everything else.  The dilapidated buildings obscured by endless lines of laundry flapping in the wind held little interest for her; so she looked neither upward nor around her, but simply stared straight ahead at the people walking towards her.

Time stood still as she stepped into the world of faces that she knew so intimately but didn’t know at all.  They were the same faces as the ones that populated the old sepia photographs glued in her grandparents’ albums, the ones that she had thumbed through as a child countless times, and they were the same faces that she had been drawn to years later in Roman Visniac’s A Vanished World, a collection of photographs from pre-war Europe.  The faces in this book riveted her as much as those in her grandparents’ albums, absorbed her full attention as the parade of faces did now, faces attached to bodies that stepped up their gait as they passed her by. She raised her camera continuously, snapping away enthusiastically.

People tried to escape from her camera’s onslaught, covering their faces, whirling away. Was she simply too young to interpret body language effectively, too removed from the culture to understand its antipathy to being photographed?  In America, people were exhibitionists, vying for the limelight and “fifteen minutes of fame,” delighted to be filmed, taped, and preserved for posterity. How could she know that here the perpetual click-click of her camera eye was an irritant, not a compliment?  It was her fascination with these people that kept her finger on the shutter, not disrespect.

But without dialogue, no one could know what the other was thinking.

She tried valiantly to make contact with the faces, to smile broadly in camaraderie and fellowship, to create a momentary bond.   And she saw only the faces, never the fences that encircled them, nor did she notice even once the placards that warned of dire consequences to those who dared to breach the lines drawn in the sand, the lines of demarcation.  Those whose eyes are lifted heavenward rarely feel the earth beneath their feet. So she was surprised, confused even, when a small stone followed the pebble, grazed her arm, and landed at her feet.

“Now where did that come from?” she wondered aloud as she stared up at the half-crumbling buildings that leaned in towards her from both sides of the narrow street, blocking the light.  Were the structures where she stood literally falling apart?  She cast her gaze around the immediate area like a fisherman’s net, hoping to catch some small detail that would explain the first pebble, the second stone.  She saw everything: she saw nothing. For she was not looking with her eyes, but with her  heart . In the faces that she passed she saw no displeasure nor anger, only the faces of her ancestors. These faces bore the clues to her history and legacy, and they were the faces of the people with whom she longed to forge a connection. She did not see that to them she was “the Other,” the impure stranger to whom they closed ranks.  Although a glimmer of interest gleamed momentarily in the eyes of a few, most of the faces that she encountered were closed and impenetrable.

He, the one whom she could not see , the one who skulked after her but hid in the shadows when she turned around; he, too saw her only with his heart’s optic nerve: She was the licentious stranger who wished to tear down his values, his existence, his world; a scoffer, an infidel. By her shameless impudence and disrespectful passage through his neighborhood with her omnipresent camera, she derided his belief system. Her complete and utter disregard of his neighborhood’s injunction against immodest attire made his veins throb angrily in the temple of his head. He had flung the first pebble at her camera carelessly, his convictions not yet fully formed.  The second projectile – measurably bigger, a stone really -   reflected his mounting anger, his growing commitment to intimidating the stranger, frightening her away.  But she stood rooted to the spot, unmoving.  Chutzpahnik.   She had to be taught a lesson. The third rock was no longer lobbed with hesitation; his arm felt stronger now, his aim more powerful, vastly improved by faith in the righteousness of his cause.  Still, she didn’t flee.

He scooped up a handful of rocks and, emboldened by his zealotry, emerged from the shadows in which he had hidden, and began pitching them at the camera in her hand with increasing ferocity. “Hey!” she yelled as she ducked, imploring him even as she tried to dodge the volley of rocks, still not understanding why she was being attacked:  “What are you doing?  Stop! You’re making a mistake.  I’m JEWISH!”

She  tried to run for cover, screaming as she took flight, “Help, help!  Someone please help!”  But it was nearing dusk, and the women were inside their kitchens preparing their families’ suppers, and the men were inside their shuls, praying to G-d for mercy and compassion, and thanking Him for giving them the daily strength to live their lives as pious Jews.

He hadn’t meant to hurt her; just to frighten her out of his pure and saintly neighborhood, to remove the contaminant she represented, the evil she embodied.  But one particularly large stone aimed at the camera made contact with the soft spot of her head instead and she fell unconscious to the ground.  It was at this exact moment that mincha ended and the masses of men streamed out of the shuls. A passing American boy carrying a boombox he had just turned on was the first to spy her prone body. He dropped the boombox and ran shrieking to her side.  As he screamed and pointed and a growing cordon of men began to ring her side, the music played on, heedless of the tumult nearby.  As the voices lifted in pandemonium and the sirens of the advancing Hatzalah vehicles wailed their approach, Mordechai Ben David’s mellifluous voice sang in the background from the boombox:

Together we are brothers, sisters and friends till the very end

And the colors of the rainbows blend together forever…

…And though we seem to stand apart

Every one of us beats with a single heart

Together we remember we are one.

****

He bolted the moment he saw her fall, a loud roar filling his head, and he ran home, racing through the familiar labyrinthine alleyways, where shadows mingled with light. He paused before a dumpster to vomit his guts out, and when he arrived home, he dashed for the bathroom again, heaving a second time.  He emerged pale and trembling, and concerned, his mother asked if he were ill.

“I think I have a stomach virus,” he gasped.  “I think I’ll go to bed.”   “I’ll make you a tea,” his mother said.  “You look like death itself.”

Throughout the long, torturous night, in which he reviewed over and over again the details of the event that had led to the girl’s collapse, an icy cold hand seemed to grip his heart.  His sleep was restive: he would doze off for a few seconds, then awaken suddenly, his body jerking and his heart thumping wildly as he realized this is not a nightmare, this happened, this is true and I am responsible. Morning brought no reprieve.

The soft golden Jerusalem light which typically buoyed him only underlined with greater clarity the terrible crime he had committed, and the nausea from the night before began to gnaw at him again.  He threw off the covers, dressed quickly, and left his home before his parents rose.  He had to know how the girl was doing. Surely people at shul would be discussing the event.

“So, did you hear what happened to that girl?” he asked someone in a casual tone of voice, feigning an indifference he did not feel.

“I hear she’s in a coma,” his friend told him.  “They took her to Shaare Tzedek Hospital.”

A coma!  He had thought perhaps a concussion from which she would recover quickly.  But a coma!  He started to gag again, clutching the chair from which he had just risen to steady himself.

“Hey, are you okay?” his friend asked in alarm.

“Stomach virus,” he muttered.

***

He needed to talk to somebody, but who?  He didn’t want to devastate his parents nor disappoint his rebbeyim, and he was too horrified by what he had done to want to share it with his friends or siblings whom he felt would either judge him or breach his confidence.  He had to speak to someone whom he could trust, someone with whom he could maintain his anonymity.  To whom should he go?  And what was it that he actually was seeking?  Advice, absolution?  What if the person he consulted urged him to come clean with the authorities?  He could sit in jail for years, break his mother’s heart, destroy his siblings’ chances of good shidduchim, ruin his family’s name.   But wasn’t that secondary?  He had physically harmed another human being, someone who might die.  How could he do teshuva? How did he petition for mechila?   And to whom could he pose all these difficult questions?

****

His heart beat loudly inside his chest, the temerity of what he was doing causing his eye to twitch and his breathing to come out in short, shallow exhalations of air.  How many seventeen year old boys personally came to the Rebbe to supplicate, and for such a grave matter?

He assumed that he would have a long wait, and he swung his feet nervously as he sat in the reception area watching the hands of the clock on the wall make its rotations.  He was surprised when he was ushered into the o study of  the Rebbe,  Rav Aron Klapper, only ten minutes after he had arrived.  A luminous smile lit up the Rebbe’s gentle face, and the boy’s fear began to recede.

“Your face is full of pain,” the Rebbe said kindly.  “You have a big problem, yes?  Do you want to tell me about it?”

“I’m the bochur who threw the stones at the American girl,” he blurted out, propelled by the need to unburden himself as quickly as possible.  “I didn’t mean to hit her, I was aiming at her camera, but the stone struck her by mistake. I feel terrible about what I did,” he cried, dropping his head into his hands, “I feel terrible.”

The Rebbes smile vanished.  He looked at the boy sternly, without mercy.

“You should feel terrible. Violence of any kind is inimical to the teachings of the Torah. Violence is the way of Esav, not Yaakov. Not only does violence hurt the people who are its victims, it scars the perpetrators, too. There is a spiritual mark on all those who participate in violence of any kind.  We become what we do; we are our actions.  And how can the Redemption come if Torah Judaism is seen as ugly and violent by those to whom we must reach out?  We have to accentuate the beauty and positive qualities of Torah Judaism, not only in our own lives, but in how we represent ourselves to the outside world.  Otherwise, those who hunger for Hashem’s words will not seek it from us, but among foreign pastures.

“You have placed this Jewish girl’s life in jeopardy, and created an enormous Chilul Hashem. One seemingly small action can have the gravest of consequences. This is a serious crime that you have committed.  How do you propose to do teshuva?”

“That is why I came to the Rebbe.  To ask for advice and guidance.  Should I give myself up to the police?  My parents will be devastated, my siblings’ chances for good shidduchim could be ruined, and I might have to sit in jail for years.  Or should I go to the hospital and ask mechila from the girls’ parents who just flew in from America?”

“Hmmm,” said Reb Aron thoughtfully,” let me think this through.  You know,

Rav Amram Blau, the founder of Neturei Karta, chose the model of civil disobedience as the paradigm of protest and resistance. Hmmm….I think that what you should do is organize tehillim rallies for the girl throughout Yerushalayim…could there be a better way of doing teshuva?  No….no…wait….that’s not a good idea.  People will wonder why a seventeen-year-old bochur is doing such a thing.  They might get suspicious.  It’s too unheard of, too unusual. It might point fingers at you. Let me think about what you can do.  In the meantime, I myself will personally issue a call for city-wide tehillim for this girl, and if you had not come to me, I would never have thought of it, so it is in your merit.”

The Rebbes stern face softened.  “I see how truly sorry you are for what you did.  People make mistakes all the time; that is precisely what the concept of teshuva is all about.  I have every confidence that you will learn from your mistakes, and that is what constitutes growth in this world.  If we would be perfect, we would be malachim, not human beings.  I see how badly you want to atone for your sin.  I trust that Hashem will give you the opportunity soon.”

****

“It was a sin to send her here, Edith,” Sid Klein said bitterly as he looked at the sliver of the girl – his daughter -  buried beneath the white hospital sheets. “You remember, I never wanted her to go.  I told her it’s a dangerous place, but she wouldn’t listen.”

“Oh-my-goodness Sid!” his wife sighed in frustration.  “You thought it was dangerous because of Arabs, not yeshiva boys!”

“Either way, I didn’t want her to go.  It was you who encouraged her.”

“Listen, Sid, pointing fingers is counterproductive.  I know you’re angry, I am, too.   But venting our anger will not help our daughter.  The doctors said that the best thing we can do for her is talk to her, sing to her, let her know we’re here.  The patients who do come out of their comas often relate that they heard everything that was being said both to them and about them while they were unconscious.”

“It’s a pipe dream, her coming out of this coma.”

“Sid! You can’t say that, you mustn’t say that!” his wife rebuked him sharply.

How can you give up hope so quickly?!  People wake up from comas all the time!   It’s a sin to think like that!”

“Sin!” he retorted angrily.  “The sin is that a self-righteous yeshiva boy stoned our daughter as if she were an Arab woman in Mecca!”

“Sid,” she pleaded, “you have to look at it from their perspective.  There are signs plastered all over that neighborhood warning about immodest dress. She violated that code.”

“Last I heard,” he said sarcastically, “the Ten Commandments included an injunction against killing. Didn’t mention anything about immodest dress, far as I know…” He stopped short in middle of his sentence as a nurse entered the room, gesticulating for their attention.

“Sorry to interrupt, Mr and Mrs. Klein,” she said, “but the media is camped outside the hospital and they’re asking for a statement…”

“We had a press conference this morning,” Sid said.  “I don’t have anything new to say.”

“But they want to know what you think about this latest development…”

“What latest development? I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

“Thousands of chareidim are streaming to the Kotel right now to recite tehilim, psalms for your daughter. And dozens of shuls throughout the chareidi neighborhoods are holding tehillim rallies of their own….”

“Why isn’t that a beautiful thing to do?” Edith declared warmly.  “I am so pleasantly surprised and deeply moved.  Sid, you stay here, and I’ll go talk to the press.”

‘Bout time they did something right, those chareidim,” he grumbled.

****

“Mrs. Klein!” shouted a journalist from Haaretz, as the mob of reporters and photographers surged around her on the steps of Shaare Tzedek.  “What’s your response to this unprecedented action on behalf of the chareidim – massive tehillim rallies all over the city and at the Kotel too for your daughter, a non-Orthodox girl?”

“I just heard about it a minute ago, but I must say that I am profoundly moved and very grateful,” she said softly, swiping at a tear that moistened her cheek.  “It is very kind of them to go to this effort to help her.”

“But Mrs. Klein,” interjected the Haaretz writer, “it’s because of them that your daughter is in a coma in the first place.”

“Sir,” she said quickly, “it’s because of one of them – not all of them – that she’s in the hospital, and I cannot condemn an entire group because of the actions of a single individual. Would you?

“But don’t you think this individual is the product of his environment?” challenged the journalist.

“I think that every group has its good people and its bad people, its sinners and its saints, its heroes and its criminals, and the chareidi community is no different from any other.”

“How can you be so philosophical and cavalier about this,” shouted a writer from Maariv,  “when it’s your own daughter who’s in the coma?  Can chanting psalms really save your daughter’s life?

“Look, I’m not a religious Jew; I don’t know what Psalms are supposed to do.  But I can tell you that I am a former hippie from San Francisco and what we believed in then and I still believe in today is positive energy.  Thank you. I have to go back to my daughter, now. I’ll let you know later on today if the Psalms achieved any tangible success.”

****

“Come quick! Everything’s failing!” Edith heard an intern down the hall shouting at the resident and attending physician as she returned to her daughter’s room from the press conference.

“What’s going on?” Sid and Edith screamed in unison as the doctors rushed into the room, while the different monitors and machines to which the girl was hooked up beeped and clanged wildly, a cacophony of ominous alarms.

“Crash cart!” the attending yelled.

“What’s happening? What’s happening?” Sid bellowed at the doctors who ignored him.

“You have to leave the room immediately!” one of the doctors snapped.  “Get these people out of HERE!” he barked at a nurse.

“Paddles!” he commanded, as the parents were removed from the room, Edith weeping softly, Sid clenching his fists and demanding over and over again: “Will someone tell us what’s going on?  We’re her parents!”

****

“I’m sorry,” the attending physician apologized to them later in the evening. “I know I was rough with you; but I had to get you out of the room so we could work on her.

“How is she?  What’s wrong?” Edith asked anxiously.

The doctor avoided her eyes, sighed.  “Apparently the urinary tract catheter caused a serious staph infection and all her systems are failing. I’m sorry, I know what a terrible shock this is for you, how suddenly everything is happening, but she needs a kidney transplant.  If she doesn’t get one, she’ll never even have a chance to wake up from the coma. According to our records, she’s a rare blood type O negative.  I assume that one of you is also?”

“No, we both happen to be A positive.”

“That’s strange,” the doctors brows knitted together in puzzlement.  “How did two A positive parents produce an O negative child?”

“She’s adopted,” Edith said softly.  “She was actually born here in Israel; we adopted her when she was two weeks old.”

“Does she know that she’s adopted?” the doctor asked.

“No,” Edith whispered, “we never told her.”

“We don’t have much time then,” the doctor said abruptly, “we’ll have to put out a call for potential donors. Let me get to work. It won’t be hard to put the word out though; the press has been camped outside all week. For once we can use them to do something good.”

*****

Reb Aron Klapper hung up the phone thoughtfully, and summoned his secretary to  his room.  “Call all the yeshivas and tell them that we are looking for a kidney donor for the American girl.  They’ll have to be tested for other markers, too, but the first and foremost requirement for prospective donors is that they be Blood Type O Negative.  It’ s a very rare blood type.  If they don’t know what blood type they are, Shaare Tzedek Hospital will test them for free.   Spread the word immediately.  It’s an emergency, top priority. Forget about printing posters; we don’t have time.  Get cars with megaphones to canvas the streets.”

*****

Hours later, the gabbai knocked timidly at Reb Aron Klapper’s door.

“Someone here to see you.  That boy…from yesterday….says it urgent.”

“Send him in!”

The boy’s face was transformed.  The pain that had been so deeply etched in his features only the day before was gone, replaced by a countenance that radiated purpose and redemption.

“Rebbe, I have something important to tell you…”

“Sit down my boy, what is it?”

“Last year, I had a hernia operation, a simple procedure, and I’d almost forgotten about it.  But I was walking down the street a half hour ago when I heard the announcement about the American girl. That they’re looking for donors who are Blood type O negative.  And when I was in the hospital for my operation, the doctors and nurses kept on making a huge fuss about the unusual blood type I am.  O negative. Same as the girl! I want to give her my kidney, but I think I’ll need my parents’ consent since I’m only seventeen.  What should I do?”

“Give me your parents’ phone number and I’ll give them a call. Don’t worry, I won’t tell them about your complicity, but I’ll convince them that it will be a huge Kiddush Hashem for a chareidi boy to donate his kidney to a chiloni girl. I’ll take care of everything, don’t worry.”

The boy’s eyes glowed brightly. “To hopefully be able to save the girl who I almost killed…..it  seems  unbelievable, doesn’t it? To have the same blood type as her, such a rare blood type.  What are the chances?  Like Hashem is showing me clearly that I can right my wrong in such a positive way….This can’t be a coincidence, can it? How do you explain this?”

“Look, my boy, I don’t want you to get overly excited.  There are other tests that you’re going to have to take, other markers that need to be the same, before you can donate your kidney.  It might not happen, after all.  But I have a strong feeling that it will.  Hashem’s ways are mysterious, my boy.  We understand so little. But you are right: this is an incredible way for you to atone. Let me call your parents right away and make the arrangements, time is of the essence.”

“Rebbe, I have  just one question, I know it might sound strange, but I was wondering: if my kidney becomes this girl’s kidney, does that mean that there will be a part of me that is now a part of her?”

“Oh, my tierela neshama, that is precisely the point.  You don’t need to share kidneys to be One.  You were One all along.  All of Klal Yisroel is one.”

***

Before he and his parents ascended the steps of Shaare Tzedek Hospital together,  the boy paused to look at the scene unfurling before him, riveted by the parallel, dissonant action taking place in alternate universes co-existing right there on the street.  (A frequent tourist to Israel might have rolled his eyes and sighed affectionately, “Only in Jerusalem!”)

On one side surged the reporters and photographers, pushing and shoving to catch glimpses and snap photos of the various people marching up the steps of the hospital to be tested as prospective donors for the American girl.  On another patch of sidewalk stood a gathering of left-wing demonstrators, holding anti-chareidi signs and spewing hatred.  They jostled with a third set nearby, a crowd of chareidim who loudly chanted tehillim.  And still on another piece of concrete twirled a group of dancing “Na-nas” singing V’Ahavata L’Rayacha Kamocha with fervor and joy.

“Just one second,” the boy muttered, as he detached himself from his parents and ran to join the Na-Nas.

He clasped hands with a Dati Leumi boy wearing a kipa seruga and a Carlebachian whose long hair was topped by a Bukharian yarmulke.  He felt his soul sprout wings as they danced together in ever-increasing intensity, the barriers melting into nothingness, the illusions of separateness dissipating faster and faster as they spun and whirled and snaked around the adjoining groups, encircling them, consuming them, until they were all one amorphous mass.

(Originally featured in Calligraphy, Issue 278)