Before we knew it, we were the Felds with the Chair Gemach

I

am wrist deep in my first batch of sourdough when the phone buzzes.

Life’s dilemmas. I nudge the phone by scooting the bowl along the counter, and squint at the screen. Sari Berman. Poor Sari. Sharing a two-family home with my juvenile delinquents is probably not easy, but she never complains. Until she does.

Hi Ahuva, happy sourdough Tuesday.

Gotta love neighbors who share a wall with you and can smell when you’re baking. And of course, when you’re burning things.

I wait for the next message.

Can you just remind people not to knock on my door for the gemach? Should I put up a sign?

The chair gemach started by accident. We rented out our apartment for Pesach two years ago when we’d gone to Detroit, and the cute young couple we sublet to, the ones with only one baby, so everything was going to be sparkling clean and no one would color on the couch, had decided to play big host on campus and invited around ten bochurim every meal. The scuff marks on my floors were quite the welcome sight after ten hours in the car. But aside from the fact that they’d treated our apartment like a hotel conference room, they had also purchased ten plastic chairs and then proceeded to charge us for them.

Oh, the joys of tenants.

So as we suddenly became the proud owners of ten plastic chairs that we quite honestly didn’t need, we did what any good Jew would do: We started a gemach.

It was easy, honestly. We put the chairs in the shed, locked it up, and told anyone who called not to knock on our door. Our only rule was you return the chairs, relock the shed, and keep the gemach confined to its space. Binyamin didn’t want strangers knocking on our door, he didn’t want the kids opening for strangers and calling me down from feeding the baby or anything else, and he didn’t want to bother the Bermans.

“Our mitzvah can’t be at their expense,” he insisted.

Then the Greenbaums moved to Monsey and donated seven more chairs, and the shul gave us the old chairs when it redid the simchah hall, and before we knew it, we were the Felds with the Chair Gemach.

Which was fine, better than the Felds with the Noisiest Kids in Town.

Still, no matter how many chairs were stuffed in that shed, we kept to the same rule. Stack your chairs when you’re done, relock the shed, and keep the gemach confined. And please, please, don’t knock on any of the front doors.