I think my friend Esther’s roots are a mixture of Syrian and Salonikan — something like that. The truth is we’ve talked about everything under the sun but that. She’s from Brooklyn I’m from New Jersey were both Jews and we laugh and cry together.

That’s enough for us.

It’s funny how my son Dovid has introduced me to the greatest friends throughout the years by being their son’s friends. I’d talk to Esther on the phone about what our boys were doing where they were off to and what they were into. But Dovid kept nudging me “Ima my friend’s mother really wants to get together with you.”

Deep down I’m an introvert so I tried to avoid this at all costs but — how long can you put off the inevitable?

I remember the day I went to meet her. Esther’s mother was visiting from Brooklyn rolling kubeh and stuffing borekas. One daughter was washing dishes. Esther was somehow flying around never touching ground trying to make sure I had enough to eat and drink and felt totally comfortable while at the same time stuffing bags with food for me to take home.

Then we talked about something that made us both laugh and laugh as we hadn’t laughed in years — and we didn’t know why but that was it; we were friends for life.

Our daughters became friends. I’d even take them to the beach in the summer because Esther couldn’t. I’m not fond of sand and sun — but I loved them.

Sometimes her youngest daughter would talk about the Sephardi-Ashkenzi thing and I’d just keep saying “We didn’t know from that growing up. A Jew was a Jew.

I’d never heard the word Sephardi or Ashkenazi except as a label for the type of siddur you davened from. When I first heard of such a conflict I really felt the pain of separating Jews. For the first time I felt like an Ashkenazi instead of a Jew.

Growing up we spoke about who was a Jew “Elvis Presley Simon and Garfunkle Einstein.” We didn’t ask “Sephardi or Ashkenzi?”

Maybe that’s because in our American-Ashkenazi enclave little did we know that while we were eating knishes and kugel — across the city others were making kebab and shashlik.

Was anyone I knew Sephardi? I don’t think central Jersey had Sephardim yet. And the Lower East Side where we visited almost every Sunday was filled with herring pickles and chassidim. So where would I meet a Sephardi?

At Deal Beach. Deal Beach had all the Syrians. But they never came out of their houses and they all had private beaches anyway. So that was that.

When once in a while a Sephardi-Ashkenazi quip would come up I’d be thrown off for a few minutes but then I’d say “We’re sisters from different mothers.”

My husband’s great at nipping the Ashkenazi-Sephardi thing in the bud. When someone starts he says “I’m Sephardi.”

The guy usually stares incredulously at him with his blue blue eyes and Ashkenazic nose.

“We’re all from Padan Aram” my husband then explains. “No?”

If the guy’s not so quick he asks “What?”

“Avraham Avinu was from Padan Aram right?”

“Right.”

“And Padan Aram wasn’t in Poland.”

The guy usually smiles.

“That means all Jews are Sephardim” my husband concludes. “It’s just that when we got split up Yankel went to Poland and Moshe went to Spain.”

The whole of Klal Yisrael was shaken up scattered to the four corners of the earth.

I have a friend who’s Moroccan Moroccan Moroccan — in her bones. She married an Ashkenazi Ashkenazi Ashkenazi whose parents were from Hungry and Czechoslovakia before WWII. Once she invited me to a Sheva Brachos of her sister’s child. Her father a chacham from Morocco was sitting at the head table. I couldn’t believe my eyes: He looked exactly like her American-Hungarian-Czechoslavakian husband. But exactly!

My friend Esther eventually moved back to Tiveria (the city had probably missed her holy presence). Pretty far from Jerusalem. We hadn’t seen each other in months.

She hadn’t talked about it much but as long as I’ve known her Esther has The Disease that no wants to mention. She’s kept it at bay with natural remedies under doctors’ supervision. But it was always a shadowy figure in the background.

Last week it caught up to her.

She’s staying a few days a week after treatments at the Zichron Menachem bikur cholim hostel directly across from our house.

When I go there with my Ashkenazi chicken soup I don’t feel like I’m helping a stranger or a friend — but my own sister. Because that in essence is what we are.

A refuah shelaimah for Esther Hadassah bat Flora among all those who are ill in Klal Yisrael