Mishpacha Magazine

By the Light of My Mother’s Candles

Then, one Friday, my father called to tell me that my mother needed someone to spend Shabbos with her in the hospital

I couldn’t tell this to my friends, but while Mr. Lindberg’s tirade had been inexcusable, he had given me a lot to think about

“You really should have told me to come down to your office with my husband and broken this news to me in a nicer way”

“Moshe is going to live,” the doctors told Sarah, “but we don’t know what’s going to be with his vision.”

How could she possibly make it through school— and life— if we didn’t help her to succeed, or at least not fail dismally, in the academic realm?

When I saw these boys winking at her, I knew it was time to take drastic action

At the time of my diagnosis, when I was 35, I had struggled mightily with the question of whether to tell my parents

In those days, Jews were Jews, and I, the grandson of the Rosh Yeshivah, played ball with Bernie, the kid whose father worked on Shabbos

I resolved to show them that I was still their son and that they were not losing me to my kallah, Penina

Two years had passed since the petirah, and Avrumi still hadn’t gotten back to his easygoing self. He was always sad, stressed, and on edge

When Racheli was six, it occurred to me that perhaps we shouldn’t wait until we had finished raising our own children before taking in a foster child