You feel for Michael, whose wife sides with Gershon and whose son is drifting from the community. But Michael is also the personable one, the one who can make anyone smile, and you know that he needs a different sort of support than Gershon, stiff and alone and furious with Michael.

If only they could keep a polite distance for the rest of their lifetimes, marching along parallel lines like dozens of other brothers-in-law you’ve seen over the years. If only they hadn’t, 12-and-a-half years ago, been delighted to discover that their wives had gone into labor in tandem, delivering two beautiful boys hours apart. If only they weren’t both members of the only shul in Beachwood, the only place where a bar mitzvah might be held.

You’ve been managing the bitter negotiations for weeks now, and the tension envelops the shul around you. “We still have another twenty minutes until Kol Nidrei. The seating chart is on the wall over there. It’s been updated since Rosh Hashanah.”

“I know where my seat is,” Gershon says. “I’m always by the corner shtender.” It’s a favor from the gabbai, who knows how much Gershon does for the shul. Michael, who is in no condition to support the shul like Gershon, saunters to the sign on the wall and finds his seat.

“Right next to Henoch Rosenberg.” He winks at you. Henoch is a broad man and vigorous shuckeler who isn’t prime seat-neighbor material, but Michael is easygoing and distractible. The gabbai puts them together because they’re difficult to pair elsewhere, and Michael takes that with good humor. “Dream team, together again.”

Gershon scoffs, low enough that you can easily ignore it. Michael does not, his ever-present smile fading into something dark and angry. “Look—” he begins, and you think, it’s Kol Nidrei night, can’t we have this one evening without this—

And then the shul collapses, tumbling into the ground, and all you all can do is scream.

GERSHON.

You like to be on time to shul. Is that a crime? Your wife jokes about it, nudges you when it’s an hour to Minchah with a light it’s about time for you to get ready, and you smile, because you can laugh at yourself when you aren’t surrounded by people looking for a reason to tear you down.

A rare thing, really. Everyone’s looking to tear you down. As a financial manager, you have to exude a sense of confidence and control, to stride through the office like you’re indestructible. You don’t make friends in the neighborhood: Everyone’s here to take something from you, and you’ve never learned a graceful way to turn them down. You have your family, your beautiful wife and four children, and you don’t need anyone else.

There had been a time when you were different. Three years ago. When you’d had a brother after a lifetime of sisters, a man who’d been your closest friend. You’d been awkward and terse with the kehillah until Michael moved to town, drawing in your neighbors like a lamp to a community of moths. For a wonderful year, your association with Michael  gave you more of a sense of belonging than all your donations had done, and you basked in Michael’s light, too, so bright that you hadn’t seen the faults underneath.

That’s passed. Now, you’re angry and alone, and Michael breezes through life as though none of that matters to him.

You hadn’t expected to see Michael at shul so early. It’s not like Michael to be early to anything. And now — now, you are both tumbling downward, your kittels rising up like a parachute canopy and the rubble closing in like a tomb. You take a moment to think — you are clear-eyed and methodical, and it’s why you succeed — and you remember David Miller in the back of the shul, weak with failing limbs.

You’re scrabbling against chairs and shtenders, but you see his pale arms flailing somewhere just above you and seize them, pulling him against you to shield him from the falling furniture. Siddurim rain down on your head, Michael is somewhere nearby, his face pale and afraid, the rav has wrapped himself around a chair, using it as a shield — and you are all shouting, screaming as you tumble downward.

It’s almost Yom Kippur. Is this how it ends, dead without a last-ditch plea to Hashem for mercy? Has your fate been sealed and delivered already? But then you hit the ground, your feet buckling beneath you as David lands on you in a heap, and you are still alive. Spared, somehow, by a miracle.

You look up. The shul has caved in above you, and parts of the walls have dropped around you. But enough of the first and second floor have smashed into each other to form a fragile roof that holds up the weight of a hundred tons of rubble. If it collapses, it’ll crush you all.

“A sinkhole,” the rav rasps out. “Right under the shul. They were putting in new pipes at the construction site behind us. I wonder if it triggered something.” He staggers to his feet, brushing at a bleeding cut on his face. “This must be what’s left of the basement.”

You’re a businessman, first and foremost, and your first thought is the insurance payout. The second is that you’re trapped. There’s rubble all around you, piled high and too dense to push through. Parts of the basement seem to have dropped into the ground fully intact — there are lights illuminating your area and you can see, through a heap of chairs and tables and sheetrock, what looks like the door to the rav’s office. But there’s no way to it. The four of you have been spared, locked in a bubble of safety beneath the ground, but you have no idea how anyone is going to get you out without collapsing the building atop you.

David is still on top of you, eyes opening and closing in slow, woozy movements, and you sit up, inspecting him. He has a cut on his head, seeping blood, and you panic. “He needs medical attention.”

“Well, he isn’t going to get it down here.” Michael stands up. He moves unsteadily, too, as though he’s been hit by something in the wrong way, but you determinedly do not allow yourself to care. His back is bent as he comes over, your bubble of safety too low for his lanky frame. “Let me see.”

He crouches down and you move to straighten David out, leaning him against a half-shredded shtender. Michael glances over at the rav. “I can treat this now, right?”

The rav nods. “Regardless, it isn’t Kol Nidrei yet.” He stands, stooped a little, and makes his way to the far part of the bubble. You watch him, your heart sinking as you see what’s captured his attention.

It’s the aron, splintered at the molding and cracked, and it is part of the support that holds up your bubble. The thick shape has stopped anything else from falling, has saved you, but all you can think about are the sifrei Torah inside. “They’re all right,” the rav says, relieved as he inspects the frame. “The safe held.”

Beside you, Michael yanks off his tie and wraps it around David’s skull to stanch the blood. David teeters a little, then sits back with a groan. “Can you pull that a little tighter?” he demands, as cranky as ever, and you’re surprised at how relieved you are that he sounds lucid. “If I wanted a headband, I’d have my great-granddaughter come play with me.” He squints around at the rubble, then hacks out a cough. “You know, if she wanted to fall to her doom with us.”

“We’re going to be fine,” the rav says, his voice strong and calm. You are grateful for his confidence, though you don’t share it. “There’s no way that the shul fell in without anyone noticing. They’ll call the fire department and dig us out.”

You point out, “If they try digging us out, this whole thing is going to collapse and kill us.”

Michael scowls at you. “I know you’re a pessimist, but do you always have to be so obnoxious about it?”

Something about Michael’s hostility always makes your hackles rise. Maybe it’s because he is so rarely angry that it feels like a personal failing to set him off. As though you’re to blame for any of this. No.

Michael is the one who persuaded you to invest with him. Michael is the one who made the fatal mistakes, who left you in trouble, and he has no right to resent you for it. “I’m a realist,” you counter. “This is the real world, Michael. It doesn’t work out just because you’ve decided that it will.” You glance up. Maybe it’s your imagination, but you think that you can hear a faint banging, the early motions of firefighters coming for you.

But Michael is looking up, too, his brow furrowing. “Do you hear that?”

“It can’t be a rescue team already. It’s only been a few minutes.” The rav stands, pacing in that stooped way to avoid banging his head on the crossed beams above them. “And it sounds so close.”

Again, rhythmic and even. Bang. Bang. Bang.

You can hear it, a muffled noise as if from afar, except there’s no way you’d be able to hear something like that from afar right now.

No. There’s someone down here with you.

David lifts a hand, pointing across your bubble, and you follow his trembling finger to the door of the rav’s office, still intact beyond the wreckage, beating as though someone is struggling to get out.

Bang. Bang. Bang.

DAVID.

There had been a time when you were twenty-three and terrified, sweating under the heavy foliage that surrounded your platoon and your gun trembling in your hands, and you had seen your death right in front of you. You’d shut your eyes and prayed for the first time in a decade, images of Hue and Phu Loc swimming through your head, of lost comrades-in-arms and the impending doom that awaited you.

And then you’d survived. Unexpectedly.

War makes some lose their faith. For you, it had rekindled it, burning bright like never before. G-d’s world is unfathomable, beautiful and terrible at once, and you have learned to take comfort in Him against its senselessness. People, you think, are the problem. People have been gifted with free will and use it to destroy others, and war endures because of all the ways that they defy G-d instead of following Him.

You gave up on people long ago. They don’t deserve your politeness, your willingness to understand them. You’ve watched them wander through the shul lost in their petty squabbles and concerns, never once afraid for their lives, and you have sneered at them for it.

You sneer no longer. A freak accident on Kol Nidrei night, and you are back in the forests of Vietnam, in the dark with nothing but your comrades’ heavy breathing for company. That, and the staccato banging from the rav’s office.

It fills you with dread. The rav paces, his eyes fixed upon the door of his office. “I was in there just before we fell,” he says. “No one else was there. Are we sure that’s a person and not… I don’t know, falling bits of the building?”

“If you all want to break through the rubble to get hit by more rubble, don’t let me stop you. I’ll stay right here.” Your voice is dry and caustic, and you wonder if Michael is already regretting helping you. You’re regretting being helped, too, instead of fading into unconsciousness. The walls of your prison feel like they’re closing in on you, leaving your heart pounding and your lungs heaving. Your kittel is filthy with dust and dirt, and if you stare at it for too long, it begins to look like those standard-issue blankets you had in Vietnam, an impotent shield between you and the angel of death.

Gershon says, “We should get into there anyway.” He glances up. “If it’s intact, then it might protect us when the firefighters start digging and everything collapses.”

Michael scoffs. “Or we’ll pull everything down in the process.” He shakes his head. “I have a bad feeling about this.”

Gershon’s face is tight. “And I know better than to trust your feelings.” Michael recoils. You watch with growing irritation, and even the rav sighs audibly. Your body is trembling, the fear so primal that no rational argument could ever soothe it, and these men can’t put aside their family spat even now.

“Fine,” Michael grits out. “It’s always your way or the highway, isn’t it? So we’ll do your thing.” He grabs at a bent, twisted chair and hurls it to the side so it clatters to the ground. The aron creaks menacingly. He yanks at a wooden beam, shoves it to the other side. You crane your neck upward and shudder, the situation feeling ever more precarious.

“For the record.” Michael pulls at another beam, another cracking noise following. “I made a mistake, and I paid for it more than you ever did.” Gershon lets out a disbelieving sound. Michael glares at him. “Ruchie still blames me for it.” He kicks at a crushed box of what must have been Styrofoam cups. “Eli’s off doing… I don’t even know. We lost all our savings. And my son’s own uncle refuses to let him lein his bar mitzvah parshah in his shul!” He turns to glare at Gershon, defiant and flushed.

The rav intercedes. He looks weary, as though this is a conversation he’s already had a dozen times. “As I’ve said before, we’ll split the leining. But it’s going to be up to the two of you who gets the kiddush, unless you—”

They turn as one, eyes like knives. “We are not—” Gershon snarls.

“Sharing the kiddush,” Michael finishes, Gershon nodding vehemently, and then they glower at each other and yank more items from the rubble with recklessness that makes you tense.

You watch Michael’s shoulders drop, the defeat in his stance. “If there even is a kiddush,” he mumbles, and finally, you think, they’re starting to remember the direness of the situation. “If we make it to the bar mitzvahs.” He reaches for another piece of wood, one that’s wedged against what looks like a supporting wall of your little bubble, and you panic, struggling against the pounding in your head to rise and stop him.

But it’s Gershon who lays a hand on Michael’s, stopping him from pulling out the wood. Michael stops, startled, and Gershon nods shortly to another bit of wreckage. Michael tugs at it instead. “Whatever I am to you, he’s your nephew,” Michael mutters, his voice settled and low now. “I thought that meant something.”

“Yes, well.” You lean against the wall, eyes lidded as you watch Gershon turn reluctantly to Michael. “It’s for my son,” he says. “For—” He takes a breath, the words emerging with self-deprecation. “If you have a simchah that Shabbos, no one will bother to come to mine.”

Michael opens his mouth, then closes it.

The path to the door is clear enough that someone might be able to crawl through it. The banging is louder now, and when you strain to listen, you think that you can hear a voice beyond it. “There is someone in there.” Gershon looks pale. “Someone else is trapped with us.”

The rav twists the fabric of his dirt-gray kittel between his fingers. “The door opens outward. You won’t be able to get them out without clearing all the rubble.”

“But if we clear all the rubble….” You all look up, at the spot where the aron meets the rest of the wood and beams that hold up your shelter.

Gershon looks to the rav. “We can break the door, right? Even if it’s Yom Tov?” Even if it’s Yom Tov. In this desolation, you’d forgotten for a moment that it must be Yom Kippur by now, that you are standing before the Almighty in judgment right now. Never has it felt more clear that you have been found wanting, and you tremble with renewed fear.

The rav nods. “I’m not sure how you’d do it while crawling in,” he says carefully.

This, you know how to do, an old army trick. “The door is hollow,” you say. You’re getting dizzy, though you don’t know if it’s from the head wound, the dusty air, or the sense that you’re about to die. “You’ll need… one of those beams. A metal one, if you can find. Ram it into the door.”

You close your eyes — just for a moment, a reprieve from this death trap where you’ve been entombed — and then, you’re jolted by a loud crashing noise. Michael has managed to get the door open, and he rams the beam again and again, widening the area until a voice cries, “It’s okay! I’m out! I’m out!”

You know the boy who crawls out of the rubble, 18 and wide-eyed and with the same rounded face as his father. Eli Oppen is shaking uncontrollably, and Michael rushes to embrace him tightly. “I thought I was going to die in there,” he splutters. “I was so— what happened?” His face falls as he looks around, as it must dawn on him that you’re all trapped, too. “Where are we?”

“A sinkhole, we think,” Michael says, but he takes a step back and looks at his son, eyes shining. “Eli, what were you doing here? I haven’t seen you go to shul in… in weeks.”

Eli’s eyes flicker to the side, and you know. You’ve seen that face in the mirror before, remember being 18 and convinced that you’ve experienced far more than your parents, that there is a world out there for you that they wouldn’t understand. You know what Eli is, and you know that whatever he says is going to break his father’s heart.

But it’s Gershon, whom you know by now is a keen businessman, who speaks next. “Eli came to shul for Yom Kippur.” There is something uncompromising about the way that he says it, as though he will allow for no other answer. “I never thought I’d see you here again.”

“Uncle Gershon—” Eli’s head droops, and his eyes catch yours. You have seen the looming shadow of death at 18, too, and there must be something that he recognizes in your eyes that makes him fall silent.

The rav clears his throat. “I think I’d better get in there and see if we can find shelter in the office.”

“I’ll come with you.” Michael’s face is still bright, an eagerness suffusing him. His son’s appearance has given him something to hold on to, and he has not yet thought about why, about what would have brought his son to the basement of the shul today, to the rav’s office. Michael has a simple mind, you think, and that is why he is so beloved by the rest of the congregation. You’ve never cared for him, but you can see what it is that draws the others in, the clear-eyed buoyancy that lets him believe the best in people.

And when he’s gone, only a muffled voice in the distance, it is Gershon who turns to the boy. “You were after the rav’s Succos fund,” he says, his voice like steel.

Eli looks defiant. “Yeah, well. I guess I learned my lesson.” There is an insolence to his tone, the sort of not caring that comes from a certainty that it’s all over. In Vietnam, your platoon had laughed at black humor and made hopeless jokes. Here, there is only Eli with his affected smirk and hollow eyes.

Gershon doesn’t flinch away from him. “Oh, you still have plenty left to learn,” he says, low and fierce. “You get a wakeup call like this one and you laugh it off?”

“This isn’t a wakeup call. It’s about to become a graveyard.” Eli sneers at his uncle. When his gaze flickers to you, he looks away quickly. Maybe he still has some shame. Maybe it’s only that he recognizes himself in your stare.

Gershon sneers right back, unintimidated by his nephew. “And if we do get out of this place, then what? You’ll go right back for the money? Your neighbors need that money. Your parents need that money.” His eyes are blazing, and Eli takes a step back. “No,” he says. “Here’s what you’re going to do. You’re going to turn this around. You’re going to stop making my sister cry. And you are never going to tell your father why you were here.” His voice is dangerous, velvety with power, and you have never heard him like this before, not in shul where he is awkward and quiet. “Understood?”

And beyond Eli’s pale face, beyond Gershon’s determination to protect a brother-in-law who has hurt him in the past, you see something else. Something small and sparking before you, so bright that you’re not entirely sure you aren’t hallucinating your way through a concussion. Fragile faith blooms within you, and you believe in humanity in a way you never thought you might experience again.

MICHAEL.

You don’t like machlokes. You’re always that guy who defuses the fights, who knows exactly what words to say to make people laugh and an argument fizzle. Ruchie says that you’re conflict-avoidant, in your couples therapy sessions, and you still don’t understand why that’s a bad thing. If you didn’t pretend everything was fine, then Eli would have come to you before running out into the world, she insists, and you’ve always thought that it was unfair.

You get along with everyone, so when someone doesn’t like you, you tend to assume it’s on them. You? You’re fine.

Except when it’s Gershon, who was basically your brother once, and it’s all you can think about. He’s always there, a constant reminder, at family parties and at shul, which used to be a place where you always felt safe. There is a bitter poetry to the fact that the whole thing had come crashing down, if you think about it, which you don’t. Gershon is tense and cranky. David is terrified and woozy. Eli is… well, you never know what Eli is thinking. And the rav is glancing down at his watch as though he’s about to miss Maariv, which he certainly is. It’s been over an hour since you’ve all fallen down here.

You don’t think about any of it. You’re the kind of guy who likes to take life as it comes, without any of the stresses that come from worrying or thinking things through. And yeah, maybe this is a rough night, but you don’t doubt that the firefighters are already here, that Hatzalah is standing on the fringes, that everyone who should be davening right now is around the shul, talking about the five of you.

And Eli is here! After struggling so long to get him to shul, you’ve finally gotten Eli here. Granted, it had been to watch the entire thing crash into the ground, but it’s all right. It’s going to be all right. Eli stands a safe distance away from you, sitting on the rav’s desk, but his head is down and he’s quiet, like he’s thinking.

Gershon leans against the wall of the office. In here, it’s almost like you can pretend that you aren’t trapped underground. The ceiling has held, the room is almost exactly as it had been, save for a few chunks of wall that have come down. You’ve helped David through to sit on the rav’s chair, leaning back with his eyes closed, and you’re all crowded into the small office, waiting to be saved. And Gershon stands not too far from you, a watchful eye on Eli, the way he used to keep an eye on him at the park when he was young.

You remember Gershon’s aside, that single remark that dug into your chest and held on, refusing to be shaken free. If you have a simchah that Shabbos, no one will bother to come to mine. It’s strange to consider Gershon a victim of the failed business that took everything of yours. Because Gershon is fine, has everything he’s ever had, and he isn’t suffering like you are. It has never occurred to you that Gershon lost something, too, not until now.

Gershon isn’t the sort of man who has friends, who needs people, not like you. But he’d tried, hadn’t he? He’d stood beside you and chatted with the kehillah until he’d made tentative friends, and now they’re all gone, standing firmly with you after your conflict.

You don’t have anything to prove at your simchah, don’t have anything to worry about. Gershon, though — you don’t like to imagine Gershon alone in his house, tables set up for a kiddush, and no one present. You can’t do that to your nephew. You can’t even do that to Gershon.

You lean over, just a bit, and you say abruptly, “I would push it off a week. My kiddush, I mean. Ruvi won’t mind — he’s suggested it before, and we’re doing the nighttime simchah on Monday night, anyway. You can have the week that the boys lein.”

You half expect Gershon to smile, to offer that you can share the kiddush instead, for everything to be forgiven with this one concession. And yes, you’re a little miffed when he just says stiffly, “Thank you,” and nothing more, no further overture from him. But it’s all right. These things take time, even if you’re both willing. And you’ll have time.

You hope you’ll have time.

You’ve been waiting to be saved for a very long time.

The rav comes in through the tunnel. He’d left a few minutes ago without explanation, heading out to the bubble where you’d been before, and now he shuffles as he crawls, something held tightly to him. Gershon breathes, “Oh.”

The rav holds something out triumphantly. “It took a few minutes, but I finally found some of them wedged in a broken bookcase.” You see what it is. Five machzorim, the old Metzudah ones that are big and hardy. The rav holds them as tightly as a parent might grasp his child. “We can’t daven Maariv without a minyan, not really. But we can at least say Kol Nidrei.”

“It’s too late,” David says. His eyes are open, and he stares at the machzorim with naked longing. “It must be past sunset by now.”

The rav smiles. He’s been frazzled by the sinkhole, just like the rest of you, but he holds those machzorim with renewed serenity. “It’s never too late,” he says.

You take a machzor. You’ve never really found that perfect kavanah when davening — there are always too many friends around you, always too much to do. Your mind is so pleasantly blank some of the time that it’s a miracle how it fills up when it’s time to daven. But the others cling to the machzorim you’re offered, and you open yours in this tiny space below the ground and feel something colossal shift around you, something that grips you to the machzor and doesn’t let go.

“Kol nidrei, v’esarei, u’shvuei…” the rav begins, and you echo him, murmurs that grow with strength as you repeat the tefillah again and again. And you don’t know anymore — not if you’ll make it out, not if you’ve already been judged, not if you’ll ever have a chance to contend with every shift in perception that opened your eyes down here — but you know this: the words on the page, blurring as you blink away tears; the whispers of the men around you, shaky and devout; your son, standing beside a man who has seen war, and reading the prayer with the same intensity. You know that whatever happens next, you have been changed.

Something crashes as you finish the tefillah, another falling beam or bookcase, and you tear your eyes reluctantly from the machzor as another crash sounds. You set it down on the desk, and the others follow: one, two, three, four, five: and then the five of you crawl out the broken door in a single file and through the tunnel of rubble to the spot where you’d first fallen.

Something else drops to the ground, making the wreckage around you shake, and then you see it.

It is a sliver of illumination, a flashlight beaming through a tiny gap just above the aron kodesh, casting a single, thin ray of light onto the ground.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 914)