S trike a match. A spark. It wavers flickers sputters catches… and as the shadows dance the flame takes hold alights ascends.

Light a single candle.

And then another and yet another.

Eight nights of leaping flames reminder of miracles and our Father’s endless love.

Cycle of Kindness

Rivka Streicher

Summertime, lawns are dappled with light, bougainvillea blossoms purple, and streets are deserted and too hot. We want to get away a bit, my friends and I. Two of us have a simchah in New York and another has recently moved to the States. We make some tentative arrangements and turn up in the Big Apple.

Between limited schedules and first year working budgets, our grand plans get us as far as Deal, New Jersey. Decidedly unexotic, but there is a boardwalk and a frothing sea sparkling in the sun.

We book the first decent-looking hotel online, and are looking forward to a couple of days of peace and calm and meet-up.

We turn up at dusk to find an ambulance outside the hotel. Hmm. We’re not in the mood for action. But it isn’t just any old ambulance, it’s Hatzolah.

A little girl is carried out on a stretcher and into the hotel. Who? Why? What is she doing in this hotel on this August evening?

A couple of white-shirted guys, clearly yeshivish, come out and help her inside.

Seriously, how many Yidden could possibly have chosen the Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel, out of a whole street lined with hotels, on this particular night?

Turns out, flocks of them.

We trundle in and everywhere there are yarmulkes, sheitels, white shirts and blue.

“Good evening,” says a man in a suit, an expression of mild surprise on his face.

Who is he?

But beside me my friend is blushing. “Good evening, Mr. Fichsler,” she says.

When he is out of earshot she turns to us. “My boss. My boss. Aren’t we meant to be on vacation?”

Groan.

From the conference room, the smell of cholent and kugel. The sounds of Jewish music over the soft tinkle of classical as we check in at the front desk.

What have we gotten ourselves into?

“Are you here from Chai, too?” a woman in an elaborate kerchief asks us.

We shake our heads.

“What, you just happened to turn up tonight — on this huge night for the bikers?”

What?

“Tomorrow they set off. The bikers. The guys who are part of Bike-for-Chai. Tonight we’re celebrating, cheering them on, and tomorrow they’ll get a grand send-off.”

Oh. Oh.

Beautiful, really. But tonight? We wanted to get away. We love our own, but such a crowd, for a whole day of a two-day getaway?

We go to our room, bemused and more than a little annoyed.

“If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em, I suppose,” my friend says. “C’mon, who wants kugel?”

The kugel’s not half bad, hot and spicy with a rainbow of salads to go with it. Still, we weren’t banking on the heimish crowd, on the noise, on this matzav. We want out.

“You gotta see what happens tomorrow.” It’s the kerchiefed woman again. “My husband’s doing the ride for the second time. Once you’re part of this crowd, you wanna keep at it.”

So on the first day of vacation, we get up, part grudgingly, part curiously at 8:00 a.m.

The bikers are all over the lobby. Tens of them, maybe a hundred. Sporting blue and yellow gear, backs emblazoned with BIKE4CHAI, their names, bike numbers, and the logos of the sponsors. Full beards, no beards, white-haired, late teens, the various types of yarmulkes tucked under helmets. Some are biking pros, others are new, some are here because biking is in their blood, others because illness has hit too close to home and they want to give back. All have done the requisite practice. Today they are united for a cause. All blue and yellow. All for Chai.

They mill around, tying sneakers, applying sunscreen, pulling on gloves.

They move outside with their bikes.

A shout goes up. “Are you ready for a safe ride today?” calls a man atop a yellow ladder.

A cheer rises in response, and the men pump fists.

Music spills out of oversized speakers, and from the ladder a camera flashes.

A huge ribbon is strung over the entrance to the parking lot, held up by groups of people on either side. One of the organizers plunks himself onto that ubiquitous ladder in front of the ribbon and reads out Tefillas Haderech. The bikers repeat after him, and there is a rousing, heartfelt amen, the three of us as loud as the rest.

The men mount their bikes, start to pedal, the music hikes up, louder, faster.

And then it gets quiet.

A little girl is lifted out of the crowd. The one from the ambulance. Her head is bald save for a tuft of blonde hair, so she appears younger than her eight years. A purple summer dress, long and fairy-style, flaps about her but cannot hide her prosthetic leg.

She is propped up on either side by her parents. She is weak and sick, but there she stands before the ribbon, dress shining, eyes shining. Someone places a pair of oversized scissors into her hands, her mom helps her to hold it. She turns around to face the crowd, gives a tiny nod, as if asking for assent. Hundreds of heads nod back, grown men biting lips and wiping eyes with the backs of their hands. She smiles, a million watts, and with a flourish, cuts the ribbon.

The crowd claps and roars. The little girl is carried away as the music starts up again, and from all sides, the bikers stream through the cut ribbon.

She’s made it real for them, stark. It’s not just a ride in the countryside. It’s a journey for battle-worn children who still believe in fairy dresses, for an organization that eases a path no child should have to walk alone.

The music still blares, but for a moment the significance pervades the merriment. The men sit up straighter on their bikes — men charged with a mission.

And then they are off. Waving, waving as they go, wives and children and friends waving back until they are a speck of blue in the distance.

And three girls get something more out of their summer. We spend another day together on the Jersey shore, laughing, doing our teen thing, making memories. And it’s there, the experience we’d stumbled on to, under the surface. And then we go off our own ways, two of us back to England, one just an hour’s car ride home, and somehow, somewhere it’s done something; all those Yidden so energized for a cause; the fighting spirit of a tiny girl; and her parents — holding on to their miracle, giving her moments even if she might not have years.

Sometimes I think about that little girl. I wonder if she’s doing well. She would be a teen by now, struggling with a prosthetic limb. But more than that, there would be a picture on her wall of a long-ago day — an animated crowd looking toward her with love and tenderness and the hope that Jews have for one another. She inspired us on that day; we inspired her. And I’d like to think that a brilliant smile still breaks over her face at the memory.