The hard-working & gifted frum caterer, Orit Dadon, lives in Haifa with her husband and their 8 children.

When Orit and her family first moved into this apartment, an 80-year-old neighbor knocked on the door.

"How many children do you have?" the elderly neighbor asked brusquely.

"Five," said Orit.

The neighbor then proceeded to warn Orit against allowing her family to make any kind of noise that might possibly bother this neighbor who lived in the apartment directly beneath theirs.

This woman lived alone and as time went on, she seemed to have nothing to do but harass the Dadons over the slightest noise.

Orit recalled, "It got so that if I dropped a cucumber on the floor at four in the morning, I immediately heard her banging her broomstick in rebuke."

(Yeah, some events — like an early morning bris — mean the caterer needs to be up at 4 in the morning to get the food ready on time.)

This ugly dynamic continued for a year, with Orit finding it progressively traumatic, even to the point of suffering nightmares from her neighbor's behavior.

She knew from the other neighbors this older woman had always been like this and nothing ever inspired her to show mercy upon her neighbors.

Finally, Orit decided to act.

She did not want her children to grow up feeling traumatized by living with a neighbor like this.

And Orit realized she could no longer go on like this herself.

That Erev Shabbat, Orit prepared extra challahs and more food, then told her children to bring them down to that neighbor.

"Because she's so difficult," Orit explained to them, "we must be even nicer!"

The children returned full of enthusiasm. "You should have seen how her eyes lit up when she saw what we brought her!" they said.

Orit decided to make this the Erev Shabbat family mission every week.

​However, she emphasized that it took a VERY long time for this lonely, bitter neighbor to mellow out.

It's not clear whether this elderly neighbor was ever married or never-married, whether she had kids or not.

Regardless, she lived totally on her own with no visitors, no friends, and no apparent family.

But the situation made a completely turnaround.

"Now she eats with us every Shabbat!" said Orit.

It turned out that the elderly lady is a Holocaust survivor.

And the Shabbat meals with the Dadons managed to take her back to the innocent years BEFORE the horrific genocide.

​If she's only in her Eighties now, that means she was a young child when the Nazis invaded. 

Without ever realizing it, she needed a way to reach back beyond those years of terror and decades of terrible grief, bitterness, and loneliness that followed. 

And the Dadons, without knowing what they were doing, provided that conduit for her.

It's amazing that Shabbat with a young Sephardi Israeli family provided the healing memories necessary for this elderly Ashkenazi woman originally from Eastern Europe.

But that's the unifying spirit of Shabbat.

And it also shows how breaking our middot — as Orit did by showering kindness on the source of her intense distress — can provide a necessary breakthrough that heals everyone involved. 

I've extracted a story from a previous post and given it its own post here because I think we desperately need to emphasize a story of TRUE Jewish heroism from regular run-of-the-mill Jews.

We need a REAL example, and not what the mainstream media or the mainstream-influenced Jewish media is promoting as "Jewish" heroism.

Miriam Cohen's Behind the Walls, Appendix A, page 331 describes a fortress in southern Belgium, which officially served as a government shelter for the children of parents serving on the battlefront of World War II.

It was like temporary foster care in a group home.

This facility also hid 87 Jewish children from the Nazis.

And even more secretly, this facility also hid "enemy" soldiers from the Nazis—mostly non-Jewish.

Yet one Jewish soldier (it doesn't say from what army) fled from a camp (presumably a POW camp) to hide in that fortress too.

Someone informed on the hidden soldiers to the Nazis, which sparked the arrival of German stormtroopers to search the fortress.

They found the Jewish soldier.

Assuming this was all they needed to do, the Nazis prepared to leave with the Jewish soldier.

But before they left, the housemother Sister Marie, managed to make a secret request of the Jewish soldier:

"Please do not try to run away from them again," she said, "for they will always come here to search for you, and then the lives of the Jewish children will be in danger."

This demanded superhuman self-sacrifice from the Jewish soldier.

Foreign Jewish soldiers in Nazi POW camps were treated cruelly. And this request came during a continent-wide genocide of Jews.

It does not say whether this soldier was religious at all.

And b'chasdei Hashem, this Jewish soldier survived!

One of those 87 hidden children met this same Jewish soldier after the war.

And this Jewish soldier described how he traveled under the guard of an elderly German soldier, from whom the Jewish soldier could have easily escaped.

Yet the Jewish soldier kept hearing the warning of Sister Marie in his head. Even though he knew the torment to which he was returning (or worse), he refused to endanger the 87 Jewish children hiding in the fortress.

He refused to exploit the opportunity for such an easy getaway.

And THIS is the authentic Jewish attitude toward our fellow Jews.

It's this behavior we should admire, emulate, and see as "accomplished" and really cool.

(And it's mind-boggling and awe-inspiring how he actually managed to restrain himself on their behalf. I do not know how much he suffered by returning to the camp.)

After all, all 87 Jewish children survived—and this Jewish soldier deserves credit for his part in their survival by endangering his own life so as not to endanger theirs. 

See the pinteleh Yid, the compassion & heroic kindness exemplified by this lone unnamed Jewish soldier—a regular guy who cared about his little Jewish brothers & sisters more than himself.

While I very much wish to believe I could do the same in his situation, one can never really know.

However, one thing I do know: HIS example is the one to emulate.

His example is the act deserving of praise, adoration, and accolades.

Please, let us always remember our real values.

Unfortunately, much of the world believes that seeing the negative aspects of things means you're honest.

However, the negative aspects are so easy to see, they often jump out at us.

Or, if someone seems oh-so perfect, we actively seek out his or her defects (unless we feel better served by raising him or her upon the highest pedestal possible in cultist adoration).

But according to authentic Torah Judaism, you've only seen the real picture when you've found the good aspects of the person or situation.

It doesn't mean you see a bad person or an evil situation as all sweetness & light.

Whitewashing isn't the goal here. (Whitewashing can even cause terrible damage.)

But simply find a point of light.

That's because everything comes from Hashem.

If you can't see Hashem's spark in there somewhere, you're missing something.

So here are a couple of stories of regular frum people behaving exceptionally...

...because good people always deserve more attention than bad people.

Once, as I was still pretty fresh in the baal teshuvah movement in Eretz Yisrael, I found myself sitting across the table from a beautiful young FFB seminary girl of Egyptian extraction.

She seemed so perfectly lovely, eidel, wholesome and so perfectly FFB, I felt a bit intimidated as we all partook of the Shabbat meal together.

She was a teenage Beis Yaakov girl, either from Lakewood or New York, and I imagined her life & knowledge as very different—and better—than mine.

While trying to remove the meat from my chicken drumstick with a knife & fork, I made a wrong move.

The drumstick shot off my plate and skidded across the table before coming to a stop when it hit the edge of the plate of the lovely girl.

"Oh!" she instinctively said in surprise.

I was so embarrassed, I couldn't even speak and instead just looked at her in open-mouthed consternation.

She blinked, then took on relaxed buddy-buddy persona. "Oh," she said, flapping her hand reassuringly. "That happens to me ALL the time." And she gave me an encouraging smile while nodding her head.

Her friend sitting next to her, Lakey from Lakewood, looked at her like, What? No, it doesn't!

But Lakey tactfully didn't say anything.

However, I was thinking the same thing as Lakey apparently was.

But the lovely girl's gracious response helped me recover enough to apologize. "I'm really sorry about that."

"It's fiiiiine," she said, still playing oh-so casual—as if she really did shoot drumsticks on a regular basis at Shabbos meals.

"That's really nice of you," I said. And I meant it.

In response, she just blinked & gave me an innocent smile as if she had no idea what I meant.

I got to know her (and Lakey) a bit more throughout the year, and found her to be consistently sweet & refined.

Lakey was also an exceptionally good & mature young woman with a solid head on her shoulders.

Another time, I was a guest at the Shabbat table of good friends of mine, an American baal teshuvah couple around 10 years older than me who'd also moved to Eretz Yisrael.

Across the table from me sat a brother-sister duo from Lakewood, doing their "year in Israel." They were younger siblings of a rebbetzin the hosts had known back in the USA.

When the host asked the brother where he was learning, the brother answered, "Ponovezh."

I innocently asked, "What's that?"

The brother frowned, then raised his eyebrows and said, "Ponovezh?"

"Yeah," I said. "What is it? Like, I'm assuming it's a yeshivah. But what kind of yeshivah is it?"

He blinked. "You don't know what Ponovezh is?"

He wasn't being rude or critical, just in a state of genuine disbelief.

Or maybe he thought I might be pulling his leg.

So that's not a comfortable situation for him either.

At that point, the couple started chuckling in a good-natured manner.

Meanwhile, the younger sister, Zissy, was looking at each of us with increasing consternation.

"Oh," I said, my shoulders drooping, but trying to be good-humored about it. "Is that like asking what Harvard is?"

Still chuckling, the couple nodded and said, "Yeah, kind of."

"Oh, okay," I said, nodding & still trying to act like I found it funny too. But inside, I felt a little embarrassed and like, Am I ever going to catch up? Clearly, I'm still not getting the really obvious stuff that everyone else seems to know already.

At this point, Zissy looked outright distressed as she kept glancing around at all of us.

Then a look of resolve came over Zissy. She turned to me with a smile and in the friendliest way, she said, "Why should you know what Ponovezh is?"

Immediately, everyone stopped chuckling and her older brother frowned in puzzlement.

Then Zissy leaned back and, taking on an oh-so-casual demeanor, she waved her hand as she said, "I mean, what is Ponovezh anyway? Like, who cares about Ponovezh?"

Her brother's eyes widened as if thinking: Why is my little sister suddenly speaking weirdness & kefirah?

Then frowning, he turned to her to say something, but Zissy immediately gave him a big clenched-jaw smile with eyes that clearly said, Nu, big brother, JUST PLAY ALONG WITH ME—got it?

Then she turned back to me with her oh-so-casual demeanor and said, "After all, if my brother wasn't attending Ponovezh, I'd have no idea what it is..."

Now her brother blinked & looked amused. He realized what had happened.

Then the host proceeded to offer a brief explanation of Ponovezh's history (punctuated by remarks from Zissy, like "Oh, wow!" and "Oh, great—I just learned something new!").

Zissy's attempt to lessen my discomfort with such transparent play-acting both amused & touched me deeply.

I also felt secretly gratified that I must look like someone who knew what Ponovezh was—and that a world existed in which Ponovezh mattered while Harvard didn't.

Also, the chuckling hostess was a good friend of mine, a friend who often behaved with exceptional nurturing & sensitivity. We were very comfortable with each other, which is why she felt comfortable chuckling & didn't immediately realize I might not feel equally humored.

While growing up in a secular world brought me into contact with compassionate & sensitive secular Jews & non-Jews, the level of these teenage Beis Yaakov girls introduced a whole new dimension of sensitivity toward others.

Both girls completely focused on the discomfort of a stranger—and focused so wholly that they ignored their own kavod (ego, honor) in their mission to save the other's kavod.

In fact, neither seemed to sense her own kavod in their heartfelt attempt to save mine.

And due to their youth & inexperience, they did so with profoundly charming transparency.

It was obvious to everyone (including me) what they were doing, that what they said wasn't true at all.

(Meaning, the first girl never shot food off her plate while Zissy, an excellent student at the finest schools Lakewood & Yerushalayim had to offer, certainly knew all about & held in great esteem Ponovezh yeshivah.)

But as young women who grew up learning how the Mishneh says embarrassment is like killing a person, and how the Chumash & mefarshim show Tamar preferred to die rather than risk embarrassing Yehudah ben Yaakov—young women who took these lessons to heart—they cultivated a whole new dimension of sensitivity toward others.

It's a dimension in which you're willing to downgrade yourself in order to upgrade the other.

And the fact they did so with an obviousness that seemed foolish to others—putting themselves at risk for embarrassment—made it all the more meaningful.

Probably they never even realized how meaningful & exceptional their actions were; they simply acted on their own innate sense of compassion.

It was a beautiful kiddush Hashem on their part.

This was a huge lesson to me: the lengths the Torah inspires us to go in sensitivity to others.

(And also to see how Hashem really does grant parents ruach hakodesh when naming their child—Zissy truly lived up to her name!)

​43 years ago in the Biblical city of Kiryat Arba, Chaviva Tzachor was 8 months pregnant with her 8th child when she happened to gaze at a notice in a newspaper as she stood in line at the grocery store:

"A baby girl is searching for a home."

As Chaviva read further, she learned that the baby girl was born blind and the institution holding her sought a permanent home with adoptive parents to care for her. 

​Against all logic, Chaviva felt she must adopt this baby.

Despite never buying newspapers, she decided to buy this one to show the ad to her husband, Tzvi Moshe.

​Tzvi Moshe Tzachor worked in Yerushalayim. When he came home that evening, the family ate dinner together, then Chaviva said, "I want to show you something I saw in the newspaper."

But Tzvi Moshe said, "Wait...first of all, I want to show you something that I saw."

And he took out a clipping from a newspaper he'd run across at work.

It was the same ad for the blind baby girl.

Deeply moved by this "coincidence," both parents saw this as a sign from Hashem telling them they were meant to adopt this baby.

So they called the number on the ad and discovered it belonged to an institution in Tel Aviv that housed disabled children.

The couple was invited to come the next day to see the baby (who was around a year old).

Chaviva admits that at the time, she did not consider the long-term consequences of their decision.

"It was clear to me that here was an abandoned baby in need of a home," she said. "What was needed at that moment was to help her; as far as we were concerned, it was saving a Jewish life — pure and simple."

With regard to the fact that Chaviva herself was only a month away from giving birth, she says matter-of-factly, "And what if I'd been having twins? Would I say I can only care for one of them? The attitude of mine and my husband's was to do what was necessary at that moment — including if it's not easy and even if it's complicated."

The institution was thrilled with their decision to adopt and promised to contact them once all the papers were ready.

All the bureaucracy took only 3 days. (Highly unusual at that time.) They contacted the Tzachors, who returned to pick up their new baby.

Chaviva immediately sought a medical examination for the baby girl.

At that time, Kiryat Arba lacked a proper health clinic, so the community was forced to use the services of an army doctor.

After completing his examination, the doctor told Chaviva, "Wrap her up and send her back to the place from which you brought her. Apparently, they prefer that she die in your custody and not in theirs."

But Chaviva remained resolute.

​"With God's Help," she replied, "no baby will ever die in my custody."​

In a family of mostly boys, the best place for the new baby was in the room of the then-12-year-old daughter, Mina.

But the baby's appearance horrified Mina.

"I'm not prepared to sleep with her in my room!" she said.

Chaviva understood her daughter, but pleasantly told her, "You may sleep wherever you choose. But the baby stays here."

It took Mina 35 years to reveal her true feelings about their first hours together.

"I hated her," says Mina.

That first night, Chaviva (not knowing which side the baby preferred to sleep) lay the baby on her side and left her that way, figuring that the baby would find her favorite position on her own.

After all, the institution told her that the baby knew how to turn over on her own.

But that ended up being a lie.

But late at night, when everyone else was sleeping Mina got up to look at her new sister and noticed that the one-year-old remained on that same side.

As Mina gazed at her new sister, her heart seethed with hatred & rage. 

The crumpled little eyelids sunk into empty sockets. The little body full of repulsive bedsores that stank.

"Why did she come into my life?" Mina recalled thinking to herself. "I wanted a nice sister. And here, the baby girl who arrived was so ugly. She was a neglected baby and not at all according to my expectations."

Still seething with resentment, Mina approached the baby and jabbed her in the back with her finger.  

The jab caused the baby to flop onto her stomach, her face pressing into the mattress.

Mina waited for the baby to roll back over (as per the reassurance of the institution), but the little girl never moved.

"Suddenly, I panicked," said Mina. "I pulled her back onto her side and then heard her sigh a very deep sigh — 'Ahhhhhhhhhhh' — like a 100-year-old man. That alarmed me and I realized just how helpless she was."

This aroused the compassion trapped beneath Mina's anger & hatred.

And Mina's innate compassion won out.

In the dark quiet of the night, Mina found herself speaking a promise to her new sister:

​"Don't worry — I'll help you."

The blind baby's arrival upended life for the Tzachor family.

In addition to the smelly bedsores & the lack of eyeballs, Liat suffered terrible constipation that made her sweat & strain with each movement — yet she never uttered a sound because in addition to everything else, Liat had given up on crying.

​Crying never helped. So her little baby self had given up.

The only doctor who knew how to help with the physical problems worked in Tel Aviv, so Chaviva brought Liat all the way back there, then returned home to follow his instructions: For the constipation, a teaspoon of raisin wine every 15 minutes around the clock.

This became a full-time chore.

Chaviva could not even send Liat to the local daycare because they were not equipped to deal with her problems.

Over time, the family's dedicated treatment improved the baby's condition.

For the bedsores, Chaviva could only wipe clean the baby's skin between the sores; a full bath was against doctor's orders.

Eventually, the bedsores cleared up & allowed Chaviva to bathe her for the first time.

But it was a shock for the baby.

"Apparently, for a little baby who cannot see," remembers Chaviva, "the sudden sensation was very frightening. But after a moment, I saw her relax. And even her hand, which was always clenched in a fist that never opened, found release and went slack [in a good way]. Until then, we always joked how she must have stolen the midwife's ring, and how because of that, she never opened her hand."

With the warm bath, the little girl's entire body relaxed. Her legs were no longer stiff as a board and her knees now started to bend.

It seemed to Chaviva that the little girl was enjoying herself.

Finally, Chaviva finished bathing her, then lifted the baby to her shoulder for a cuddle.

And that's when Liat started crying for the first time — strong, lusty cries.

"I get emotional all over again every time I recall it because it was the first time she started to cry — to cry hard," says Chaviva. "It was as if she was trying to tell us, 'Look! After all this time, there is finally somebody who touches me and loves me!' 

"I will never forget that cry," says Chaviva.

The lesson learned from that moment carries into Chaviva's work today with parents of disabled children.

"That was a cry that expressed so much," she explains. "Today, when I counsel parents of children with special needs and the people at social services, I say the way to identify a child who is not being cared for properly is the inability to cry.

"A child who realizes that crying will not help him — he doesn't cry. And that is the worst situation." Chaviva returns to that moment with Liat's first bout of crying: "The cries of the baby conveyed to me that she feels our love. And at that moment, I joined in her crying, and together we both cried and cried. Amid all that, I telephoned my husband and sobbed, 'Mazal tov — a daughter has been born to us'."

​Now that their new daughter realized that she had someone to whom she could cry and be answered, everyone knew that the adoption had been finalized on "both" sides. They'd accepted & loved her as a true daughter — and now the little girl finally felt that love & acceptance that herself.

That Shabbat, Chaviva & Tzvi Moshe organized a big kiddush in the shul in honor of the new reality: This little girl was truly their daughter now.

In fact, Liat hadn't been her name; she'd come to them named Yael.

But the rav of the shul told Chaviva that since Chaviva had turned into the baby's actual mother, then Chaviva should call the baby a name of her own choosing.

So together, Chaviva & Tzvi Moshe decided to call her "Liat" — a name that contains the words li ("for me") and at ("you").

As Mina explains the meaning, "You are one of us; you aren't alone."

During that time of adjustment, Chaviva also gave birth to her eighth child, who eventually transitioned to the local daycare as Chaviva continued the full-time job of caring for Liat.

The family soon discovered that in addition to her blindness, Liat suffered developmental delays.

As Kiryat Arba lacked resources at that time, Chaviva sought what Liat needed in Yerushalayim.

She discovered a rehabilitation center associated with Bikur Cholim hospital for special-needs children.

So Chaviva woke up early each morning to prepare breakfast sandwiches for her other eight children, then made her way to the rehabilitation center.

The program finished in the afternoon, forcing Chaviva to return in the late afternoon.

In Israel, lunch is the main meal of the day and the Tzachor children were used to a hot dinner waiting for them when they arrived home from school.

As a solution, Chaviva hired a woman just to cook the children a hot & satisfying meal, but the children complained that they "didn't like the food."

"No problem," said their mother. "Then we'll start eating a hot meal in the evening hours."

​And that's what they did.

When Liat turned 13, her parents sought to establish a village for special-needs religious teenagers, but they soon discovered that many parents felt reluctant about sending their children to Kiryat Arba — a place that still demands heightened security due to political tensions. 

​So the Tzachors decided to establish a center to assist special-needs children and their families.

They called it Neve Avraham in honor of the loving-kindness exemplified by Avraham Avinu.

Mina joined the venture and has worked there for 29 years so far.

Chaviva retired from running the center around the time her husband passed away, and Mina has been running it on her own ever since.

The center assists around 350 children a year and serves all the surrounding communities.

"Our motto," says Mina, "is to believe in every single one of the children and to know that the sky is the only limit."

Mina asserts that the proof of their method lies with Liat. 

"In the merit that she lives with us, and always hears talking, laughing, and a natural life in which everyone is always hugging her endlessly and investing in her so much, she has mamesh progressed. Today, she's labelled as 'severely retarded' and not 'profoundly retarded' — and that is a significant difference."

Mina concludes, "We invest everything we have in every single one of the children at the center. And we are confident that with love and faith, everyone can develop beyond all expectations."

Chaviva never lost her hope for Liat's progress.

People around the Tzachor family felt bad for them and encouraged them to return Liat. "It's a mekach ta'ut," they remarked to Chaviva & Moshe Tzvi, referring to a situation in halacha in which making an acquisition under false pretenses nullifies that acquisition.

Another evaluation was given over like this: "Do neither of you understand that she's not only blind, but also retarded with severe disabilities?"

Needless to say, Chaviva & Tzvi Moshe refused to even consider returning Liat.

She was their daughter through and through.

Even today, with Liat unable to see, communicate, or even walk (she moves around the house on her knees), Chaviva holds on to the hope that Liat will still improve.

"The hope that Liat will advance still beats within me until today," says Chaviva. "I'm sure that the day will come when Liat will succeed in speaking and communicating with all of us. HaKadosh Baruch Hu is Great and He can do anything. I believe that every child needs one adult who will believe in him. It's true that Liat is already 44 years old, but as far as I'm concerned, she continues to be my little girl."

​Hashem rewarded Chaviva for her emunah.

On Chaviva's 78th birthday, Liat said "Ima" (Mommy) for the first time.

​Now Liat says it all the time & it's the first word on her lips when she wakes up in the morning.

Liat also says the name of her big sister: "Mina-Mina-Mina."

"​The truth is," says Chaviva, "that in recent years — despite it seeming unreal and impossible — Liat is actually making progress. Since my husband passed away 4 years ago, I feel like he's functioning as a Heavenly resource. She shows us a lot more emotion, she hugs me all the time, and always wants to sit with me. She also really enjoys music. When we play songs by Avraham Fried, we see how she delighted she gets."

When asked about everything she has been forced to give up for Liat, Chaviva acknowledges that since adopting Liat, they haven't lived according to the norms of society.

For example, when Liat was younger, Chaviva and Tzvi Moshe couldn't attend family simchas together because a responsible adult always needed to be with Liat. Instead, they took turns going to family simchas.

Even now, with her husband's passing making Chaviva Liat's sole caretaker, Chaviva doesn't feel like she's missing much by not living the social life of other women her age.

"When I don't feel good or something," says Chaviva, "my children come to my aid."

All the other children are married with families of their own. But they're still there for their mother and sister whenever needed.

Ultimately, Chaviva sums up her feelings and also illuminates the real purpose of disabled people in our world (and also shows why they shouldn't be aborted or discarded):

"It's not only that we help her," says Chaviva. "But it's also that she helps us and educates all of us. In her merit, I developed patience for all my children. In her merit, my children became more sensitive toward others. And in her merit, a center was established that helps so many children.

"I thank Hashem every single day that He sent her to us. And I hope that her life will continue to be good, relaxed, and happy."

There's a woman in our shul who came with her family from Iran when she was around 5.

She always struck me as a profoundly spiritual & modest person. She emanates serenity & intelligence, and she loves davening in the beit hakenesset.

I saw her in shul with her teenage & preteen daughters, and their body language as they followed the davening showed that they also absorbed their mother's appreciation of davening in shul.

It was beautiful to see them cradled over their siddurim without raising their eyes from the page. No sideways glances, no elbowing & gesturing & smiling, no whispering...just immersion in tefillah.

Another time, I got an important mussar lesson when observing how this mother responds to people who lack her level of derech eretz & reverence for the shul tefillah.

During the reading of Megillat Esther one year, an elderly Iranian lady sat next to this mother. (They aren't related.) Due to leaving Iran for America in her fifties and then to Eretz Yisrael more recently, this elderly Iranian lady never learned English or Hebrew very well, and understandably prefers to speak in Farsi if she possibly can.

Because the Iranian mother knows Farsi well, the elderly lady understandably likes speaking to her.

During the Megillah-reading, the elderly lady leaned over to the Iranian mother to make a few remarks.

This was very surprising because of the obligation to hear every single word of the Megillah, making absolute silence an imperative.

Also, people from the elderly lady's generation tend to display more reverence for these things because back in their old country (Iran, in this case), breaches in disrespect were not tolerated the way they are today. And those former communities behaved with such respect that people didn't really think to behave differently.

Anyway, the elderly lady shifted back into position and just stared ahead.

The Iranian mother turned her head to gaze at the elderly lady for a long moment with more sternness (not anger, but sternness) than I ever imagined she was capable of.

(Without knowing what the elderly lady said, it could be that part of the sternness related to inappropriate remarks, in addition to speaking when forbidden.)

The elderly lady did not notice.

The Iranian mother was clearly pondering how to handle this breach so it would not happen again.

It's not so straightforward because she cannot speak either, nor can she behave disrespectfully toward an elder.

That's when the Iranian mother rose with firm resolve, walked over to the curtained window of the mechitzah, and planted herself there for the rest of the reading.

This was an excellent resolution to the problem. No one can talk to her now!

And yes, her daughters were all observing this closely. What a beautiful example their mother set for them.

The whole family (with around 8 kids) exudes good middot. I knew the boys first because they went to school with my boys, and I was always impressed with their derech eretz. The older girls I also got to know a bit in shul and always admired their consideration and extra sensitivity toward others.

It's hard to imagine that this exceptionally refined & serene woman underwent a serious trauma as a child.

My children told me that when this Iranian mother left Iran with her family at the age of 5, she did so in a suitcase.

Distressingly, the escape did not go so well.

There was shooting & shouting, all of which she heard while trapped inside the suitcase.

She never spoke about it with the children; her husband (who is also an exceptionally fine person) told them. (She doesn't mind that he did that, but she just finds it too traumatic to relate it herself.)

I don't know exactly how the suitcase worked. Were there buckles or zippers? How dark or stuffy or roomy was it in there? Did she have a way to open it from the inside or was she dependent on someone knowing she was inside to set her free?

She feared she might be shot too or that everyone else would be killed, leaving her alone in the suitcase.

Obviously, she wasn't supposed to be in the group at all, hence the need to hide her in the suitcase. So if her presence was discovered, that was also a severe problem.

She couldn't get out, she couldn't move, and she couldn't even cry out.

​All she could do was listen to all the chaos around her & pray for the best.

Fortunately, her family survived the confrontation, she was not abandoned, and she was later released from the suitcase.

I think her parents were also exceptionally fine people and that she was raised very well, but I can't help thinking that the moments of terror inside the suitcase, her child's heart turning to Hashem in those moments, and then her eventual rescue might have a lot to do with her solid emunah & reverence.

She really does give the impression that she's absolutely knows Hashem is always with her and always watching and truly cares about her.

In other words, she behaves as if she is always in His Presence.

It was a horrific, traumatic experience. And maybe the trauma expresses itself in ways I haven't seen.

​But maybe it also defined for her how much Hashem is really there for her — always.

In Tel Tzion in Binyamin, coronavirus struck the Buchris family in an extreme manner: Both parents tested positive for infection, as did 3 of the children.

The father ended up in with a severe response to the disease and was hospitalized & put on ventilation.

The mother, only 2 weeks after her ninth(!) birth, experienced a much easier response to the infection, but still could not be at home. 

Even worse, 3 of the 9 children, including the oldest (a 13-year-old girl) who tested positive for coronavirus were also removed from the home, leaving the home without a capable caretaker.

Who would care for the 6 remaining very young children during this pandemic — and only a couple of weeks before Pesach?

That's when 16-year-old Tamar Heinman stepped up to plate.

Tamar also lives in Tel Tzion and when she heard about the desperate situation, she volunteered to go live in the Buchris home and care for the children for as long as necessary.

Not only did this up her risk for infection (remember, the virus remains alive on some surfaces for an extended time), it meant that in addition to caring for 6 young children whom she never met and who don't know her either, she must clean their home & ready their kitchen for Pesach, and also prepare and conduct the Pesach Seder — all by herself.

No help & no reprieve, no matter how tired or stressed she felt.

​​In an interview that took place outside as Tamar stood on the Buchris porch, Tamar said,

It's wasn't easy for Tamar.

She needed to be both father & mother to all 6 children from morning until night.

The children didn't know her and she needed to establish gentle, loving authority without the on-hand support of the children's parents (who are in phone-contact with their children, but cannot provide backing any other way).

Tamar's parents helped as much as they could from the outside: laundry, supplies, shopping, etc.

It has been very difficult for them as parents themselves to allow their daughter into such a situation, but Tamar was so committed to the idea of helping, plus the thought of leaving 6 young children on their own was chilling.

Social services also assisted in whatever they could.

In an interview three days before the Pesach Seder, Tamar said,

Probably some people think that Tamar took too big a risk.

But she speaks intelligently about the virus, clearly knowledgeable that the death rate (especially in Eretz Yisrael) is pretty low and also affecting only those who are decades older than she, and with underlying health problems.

For what it's worth, I think Tamar's decision to help the family shows good sense, plus tremendous compassion and fortitude.

​Ultimately, I hope she merits as shidduch who is as sensible, compassionate, and dedicated as she obviously is, b'ezrat Hashem.

She seems so quiet & tzanuah and just like any other frum girl, but what an amazing person she is!

Also, it's worth noting that Tamar & the Buchris family are not of the same ethnic group. Clearly, they also follow different rabbanim, which includes different customs for Pesach. There's no doubt Tamar received halachic guidance about everything and that local rabbanim made themselves available for any halachic issues that came up, but putting everything together, Tamar shows profound ahavat Yisrael.

Mi k'Amcha Yisrael? Who is like Your Nation Israel?

(BTW, the father is healthy now and I believe the Buchris family is back to normal.)

I was moved to tears by the last paragraphs of this article:

Amid Coronavirus, Israel Modifies Funeral Rituals for First Victim

In the coronavirus ward, medical workers mostly communicate via video with the patients. And the new protective protocols prevent them from giving the hands-on care the patients also need.

So the younger & healthier coronavirus patients have taken upon themselves to care for the older, suffering coronavirus patients.

These younger, less affected patients fluff the pillows of the more severely affected, adjust their oxygen masks, and help them call their family members.

As 88-year-old Aryeh Even's situation deteriorated, the other patients refused to allow him to feel alone. They cared for him and remained with him in his last moments when his own family were not allowed to be at his side.

Two patients even said Shema Yisrael with Mr. Even at the end of his life. 

It takes compassion to respond as these patients have.

But it also takes courage, seeing the effects of the same disease from which they themselves suffer, to face Aryeh Even's suffering & death head-on — with beautiful Jewish compassion.

May this courage & compassion be a zechut for all Am Yisrael.

And may all the ill merit a complete & speedy refuah of the nefesh & the guf.

And may Hashem erase this epidemic immediately from our midst, with no more victims.

​After coming to Eretz Yisrael, I met a 30-something French woman living in a dorm at a seminary for French-speaking baalot teshuvah.
 
Born in France to Moroccan parents, she’d grown up in Paris. I liked her from the first. She spoke English and exuded a charismatic combination of iron self-assurance and a cheerful vibrancy.
 
When I asked her how she got to know English so well (nearly all the French I’ve met in Eretz Yisrael don’t seem to know English, so all the communication is in Hebrew), she mentioned that she lived in America for a year.
 
“Where?” I asked.
 
“Beverly Hills,” she said.

​ 
“Oh,” I said.

Beverly Hills is only for the rich and not where your average French mademoiselle would be able to spend a year. “What did you do there?” I asked.
 
She gave me a smile and a shrug. “I just wanted to experience America. I rented an apartment there, bought a Mercedes, and just lived life.”
 
“Okay,” I said. “But what do you do?”

I was intrigued as to what kind of a job she’d snagged to support that lifestyle.
 
Her smile became more self-conscious. “Shopping,” she said. “Mostly shopping. Clubs. I made a lot of friends and we did stuff together. The beach.”
 
Okay, but what job did she have?
 
“I didn’t have a job,” she finally explained with her slight smile. “I was taking a break from my job.”

This just did not compute in my mind.

​“Wait a minute,” I said. “You lived in Beverly Hills for a year with a Mercedes and shopping—just from your savings?”
 
She nodded.
 
“What kind of job did you have before?” I needed to know.
 
In short, she specialized in a niche branch of law, which made her fabulously wealthy.
 
And as I got to know her, I discovered some amazing stuff about her.

​While many of the super-rich spend a lot of time at the office, there is apparently another society of the super-rich who desire to live in a state of permanent relaxation on an island paradise.
 
At first, she enjoyed herself quite a lot.
 
But as time went on, she noticed that many of her colleagues needed to drink or drug themselves in order to deal with the sheer meaninglessness of living in the perfect paradise.

​Others turned to Eastern belief systems and meditation.
 
I’m not sure if she’d even hit 30 at this point, but she realized that she had her whole life ahead of her.
 
And this was it.
 
At one point, one of the men on the island said something to her that for the life of me, I cannot remember. But he basically pointed out that this level of luxury was kind of a curse and that whether people were meditating or partying, it was all sort of pointless.
 
The truth of this struck her smothered pinteleh Yid, and not long after, she decided to leave the island.
 
“I wonder if he ever left?” she mused. “He was also Jewish. I hope he’s religious now.”

​Back in Paris, she met a nice Jewish doctor and they married.

Then she started attending shiurim and decided to become fully mitzvah-observant.

​Unfortunately, the doctor wasn’t on-board with that, so after 2 years of marriage, they divorced.
 
“I was sad for a very long time,” she told me with a soft heaviness. “He was a very nice man.”
 
Then she came to the French seminary in Eretz Yisrael, where I met her.
 
I remained gob-smacked by how content she seemed sharing a mediocre dorm room with 2 other French girls—much younger than she, BTW—after all that luxuriant living.
 
She married another French baal teshuvah. The wedding took place in a very normal, not-extravagant Jerusalem hall, then they lived in a small apartment in the middle of Jerusalem.

The rent in that area is pricey, but the apartment was unimpressive and stood in an old dumpy building on a street full of the exhaust and noise of constant traffic.
 
(Okay, and I know this is impolite of me, but I couldn’t help wondering what happened to all her money that she had such a non-opulent wedding and lived in such a plain apartment. I think she decided to put a big chunk of it in savings and live under their means—which was yet another good decision on her part.)
 
I ran into her one day as she stood leaning against the rail on an outside stairway.

Her shoulders sagged and her mouth pouted in the charming way mouths do among the French when they're feeling glum. After greeting her, I asked her what was wrong.
 
Giving me a doleful gaze, she explained that “all the stuff about mitzvot and halachot sounds so inspiring in class, but really, checking rice is very tedious.”
 
Well, yes. It is.
 
Soon enough, she started having one child after the other. She was happy, busy, frazzled, and determined all in one.
 
Then with my own marriage, child-bearing-and-rearing, plus moving around, we lost contact.

But I never lost my respect and admiration for her.
 
I never heard her yearn for any part of her old life.

But did she?

Did she ever look at her life on a particularly vexing and sleep-deprived day and say, “I gave up my Tahitian Paradise for THIS?!!”
 
I have no idea.
 
But the point about her journey is this: She is a regular person who did a very special thing.
 
She gave up Paradise on Earth for a life of Torah and mitzvot in Eretz Yisrael.
 
And as far as I know, she never looked back. (Or if she did, she never complained out loud. Well, not to me, anyway.)
 
Yet there’s another lesson here. 

She didn’t go straight from Paradise Island to full Torah-observance in a crammed in a city apartment with a new husband and 2 kids.
 
It was a journey.
 
In fact, even the decadent life in Beverly Hills wasn’t meaningless enough.

​It was only when she luxuriated in the perfect life of an island paradise among the super-wealthy that she hit rock-bottom, and Hashem sent her the exact words she needed to hear.
 
And then it took another few years to start becoming frum, realize her first husband would not adjust, get divorced, then move to Eretz Yisrael.

​And when she arrived back in Paris after Tahiti, did anyone realize she was on her way to a fully religious life in Eretz Yisrael?
 
No.
 
Did she even realize it herself?
 
No.
 
But she was.
 
And the entire journey of mesirut nefesh started with one step:
 
She left the island.
 
Before anything else, she needed to come to the realization that lounging around in tropical extravagance was not an appropriate way to live the rest of her life.

Then she needed to act on it.
 
And that’s the big special choice (and 3rd lesson) here:

​She chose to leave the island.
 
And making that correct choice led to a series of other correct choices falling into place.
 
I think these stories are so important because while she’s a wonderful person, she is not a tzaddekes. (Most people aren't.) If you knew her, while you’d probably like her, you wouldn’t think she is this incredibly special person capable of such astounding mesirut nefesh (which she herself didn't consider astounding).
 
She struggled with the stresses and tedium of life just like everyone else. She had her ups and downs just like everyone else.
 
She was a wholly regular person.
 
Yet she made this extraordinary decision (which she doesn’t consider extraordinary at all because to her, the truth was fairly straight-forward and she is a decisive proactive person).
 
She left the island.
 
And this shows that anyone is capable of extraordinary acts.
 
You don’t need to be “special” or “great” to do great things.

Based on new information, I re-wrote this post.

In the words of Rabbi Yisrael Goldstein, Lori Gilbert Kaye was "a woman of chesed and kindness," a very special and cherished member of his congregation.

Tears welled up in his eyes as he spoke about this special Jewish woman.

Lori had come to shul to say the Yizkor prayer for her recently deceased mother.

With this as her last intention, Lori was suddenly shot to death in the foyer of the shul.

And according to the new information, Rabbi Goldstein was the hero of the hour, along with a Jewish off-duty border patrol guard.

If you haven't already, please see 2 important posts at Shirat Devorah:

• Rabbi Goldstein Speaks from His Hospital Bed

And it's essential to see Devorah's comment in the following post, where she describes what she heard first-hand from Rabbi Goldstein's sister, who also lives in Australia:

• San Diego

The media accounts are so different than Rabbi Goldstein's account. I don't even know how the media came up with the information they did, some of which is outright false according to the above.

May Rabbi Goldstein (Yisroel ben Chana Priva) and the other injured merit a complete and speedy healing.

And may Rabbi Goldstein's amazing courage and exemplary selflessness (even as blood poured from his wounds, he first concerned himself with the safety of the children in the area, then later gave powerful chizuk to his congregants, and refused to leave until everyone was accounted for) stand as a merit for himself and for us all.

​What a kiddush Hashem!

It goes without saying that Lori Gilbert Kaye was murdered al kiddush Hashem.

She was murdered in the middle of doing worthy deeds - simply because she was a Jew.

May Hashem yinkom damah and may she be a melitz yosher for all Am Yisrael.

And may those injured merit a speedy and complete healing.

Mi k'Amcha Yisrael? Who is like Your Nation Yisrael?

​Like other only-in-Israel stories, I met a spectacular yet undercover baalat chessed on the city bus over 20 years ago.

(A ba'alat or ba'al chessed is a person who excels at acts of loving-kindness, compassion, and generosity.)
 
Let’s call this baalat chessed Malka.

The couples, many of whom were young Russian immigrants alone in Eretz Yisrael, could not afford a wedding. So Malka hosted the chuppah in her own yard.
 
Malka also provided the food.
 
She hosted a wedding anywhere from once a week to every couple of months, depending. Noting her age and her slow rhythm, I asked her how she managed to cater the weddings (from her rundown narrow kitchen).
 
“They aren’t big weddings,” she explained languidly. “Just the friends and whatever family is here.”
 
Yes, except that Malka wasn’t doing simple foods – meat-stuffed zucchinis, for example, take time and skill. 
 
“When neighbors stop by,” she said, “they see what I’m doing and offer to help. Sometimes, I ask them if they wouldn’t mind helping me in the kitchen while we chat.”
 
“It doesn’t bother them?” I asked.
 
“No,” she said, her eyes widening slightly over her smile, “they’re happy to help.”
 
She also specialized in re-marrying divorced couples and took extra satisfaction in that. She described how she introduced them to mitzvah observance and gave them in her own brand of pre-marital counseling (though she didn’t call it that), explaining that there usually weren’t very serious problems, but that these couples divorced because they didn’t know what else to do.

They were decent people who simply didn’t know how to get along.

She also felt that a lack of Torah values was a serious problem in the marriage and that by getting couples to observe halacha and proper Jewish hashkafah, they could end up with a successful marriage.
 
“See this?” she said tapping long her rose-manicured fingernail on one kallah’s very low neckline. (The kallah’s face was covered in a veil so I couldn’t see her.) “I was concerned about this under the chuppah – especially with Rav Mordechai Eliyahu officiating.”
 
I frowned. Though still new to the frum scene in Eretz Yisrael, I’d already heard of Rav Mordechai Eliyahu and couldn’t imagine that such a big and important tzaddik was being mesader kiddushin for some impoverished barely-frum couple in someone’s untended backyard.
 
I still wonder if my memory is playing tricks on me. But I have clear memories of her referencing the rav several times in conversation and also seeing photos with him in front of the couple with his eyes glued to the page in front of him as he went through the Kiddushin.
 
Anyway…she continued, “But the rav said that I shouldn’t say one word!”

She made a stern face and slashed her finger through the air in recollection of his firmness about the issue.

​“He reassured me that he would just keep his eyes down so not to see anything he shouldn’t and that I should continue to be mekarev them. Eventually, he said, the kallah would realize on her own.” Her eyes widened and her eyebrows arched as she looked at me. “And you know what? That’s exactly what happened! This kallah” – she tapped the low neckline again – “this kallah now wears her neckline up to here” – Malka indicated just under her chin – “and she covers her hair too. Just like the rav said would happen. So I never tell them anything. Patience. That’s what people need. Just be patient and keep working with them and they’ll get there on their own.”
 
In addition to making shiddichum, and hosting and catering weddings, Malka also provided these couples with furniture and a couple months of rent.
 
And not just for these couples either.

Malka opened one of the mammoth folders to show them bursting with thank-you notes. Page after page from grateful recipients and social workers:

Thank you so much, Malka, for the 200 shekels! It really helped us out in a pinch.

Thank you, Malka, for providing the family with much-needed beds. (from a social worker)

​Malka, thank you SO MUCH for the cart full of groceries! You literally saved us!
 
Money, groceries, beds – page after page showed that those were the items Malka provided most.
 
I scanned the shelves full of thick folders exactly like the one on my lap.
 
“Where do you get all that money to give all this to people?” I asked.
 
She gave a ladylike laugh and an elegant shrug. “Oh…just here and there…”
 
I never did find out how she was able to finance all this.

​I found myself fascinated with her.

​This dainty, elegant petite Moroccan lady with her Queen Anne heels and her unhurried pace and serene smile – tending to the emotional, spiritual, and financial needs of people who were desperate, lost, broken, living in miserable circumstances, or just needed a hand.
 
I shadowed her when I could, spending a couple of Shabbats with her and accompanying her on her rounds.
 
One time, she took me around to different hovels.
 
I had no idea there was this whole underground in Jerusalem. Old Arab hovels made of stones – and no plaster or paint on the inside either. Just an old stone edifice. They’re easy to miss because to access them, you need to turn off the sidewalk into a grassy, pebbly area until you reach a flight of stairs leading down to the door of the hovel.
 
From ground level, you just see the roof, which looks like a pile of stones or an abandoned hovel (which it is).
 
But one flight down into the ground stands the door.
 
Equipped with a basket of tea, food, and a thermos of hot water, we stood at one door as Malka knocked.
 
No answer.
 
But she kept knocking until Malka decided to open the door a crack and peeked in, telling the person who she was and that she’d brought a friend. I was scandalized by this breach of etiquette. What was Malka doing? She gestured for me to come in with her and whispered reassurance that this was definitely okay.
 
So I hesitantly followed her in.
 
I just remember slate gray stone all around when we entered into what seemed like a very narrow kitchen. The kitchen opened up into a narrow room with a bed upon which lay a person with an arm over the face.
 
Malka spoke in a quiet neighborly way as the person tried to sit up, then fell back again, then sat up again. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or woman. The person had extremely cropped salt ‘n’ pepper hair and wore a T-shirt and sweat pants over a pudgy non-descript body. The voice could also belong to a high-pitched man or a low-pitched woman.
 
I tried to catch the person’s name when Malka made introductions, but it was also something ambiguous like “Yonah.”
 
Inwardly, I grimaced with discomfort.

​Because Hebrew pronouns and verbs are either masculine or feminine with no gender-neutral form, I couldn’t say a word to this person for fear of getting the gender wrong and causing offense.
 
Malka seemed perfectly at home and offered tea, to which the person replied there was no electricity. With a smile, Malka held up the thermos and proceeded to make tea for all of us.
 
The person seemed very grateful for Malka’s visit and the tea, and as I strained to hear how Malka addressed the person, I realized it was a woman. A very butch-looking woman.
 
Having roused herself to sit up in the bed chair, she invited Malka to sit down and graciously invited me to take a seat in the only chair. Malka perched herself on end of the mattress.
 
Then Malka started chatting and the woman brightened up. She mentioned that she wasn’t well and Malka responded with sympathy. But our “hostess” included me in the conversation too and I wondered at the transformation from impoverished homeless neglected nebbuch to a hostess with guests and dignity.
 
Here we were, three ladies taking tea and making polite conversation – in an abandoned underground hovel with no electricity or indoor plumbing.

​As a side note, when my husband found out I was accompanying Malka to these places during our first year of marriage, his eyes widened in horror and he started shaking. Growing up in one of Israel’s poor delinquent immigrant neighborhoods, he was bit more familiar with these types.
 
“These people are drug addicts!” he said. “How can you go to their homes? That’s so dangerous!”
 
That had never occurred to me. “I didn’t see any sign of drugs,” I protested.
 
“Well, their children then,” said my husband. “Even if those people are okay, their children could just show up.” He got shaky again.
 
Then he explained that in Israel, it was very odd to have an older person abandoned to living in a primitive hovel. There are family, friends, social services, and the like. Why can’t the person avail herself of these resources?
 
“Because they don’t have them,” said my husband. “Either their children want nothing to do with them after all they put them through or their children are addicts and criminals who don’t care about their parents – and if so, why did those children turn out so badly? Who let’s their mother or father live in such conditions?”
 
And regarding social services and health funds, etc., my husband pointed out that there must be a reason why these people to don't use these services. Maybe they want to stay under the radar? Maybe they have unsavory reasons?
 
Ohhhh….
 
(And now Malka’s confidence at entering uninvited made sense. The person indeed wanted her company and her goodies, but wasn’t able to rouse herself to respond.)
 
Yet everyone was so lovely and sympathetic as seen through Malka’s eyes!
 
Yet I had to admit that my husband’s points made a lot of sense.

​Also, growing up in secular America, it’s perfectly natural to find older people neglected and ignored by their offspring, so I didn’t think anything of it.
 
While there are many dedicated adult offspring in the US, I’d noticed the vehemence with which many adult children wanted to rush their aging parents into a home. Yeah, of course it’s often necessary, but these adult children do so without much sympathy or compassion for what their aging parent is facing. And once shut away, some people rarely talk to or visit their parents.
 
Too many adult children seem all too ready to pull the plug on aging parents in hospitals under the faux compassion of not “wanting them to suffer.” And after the funeral, your sympathy is met with a blithe, “Well, it was just her time to go!” or a cheery “Well, she’d been deteriorating anyway, so it was better this way!” – with cheerful music blasting in the background.
 
So I didn’t realize that abandoned parents might be the sign of serious dysfunction in the parent or criminal activity on the part of the children.   

​It fascinated me how a classy lady like Malka put on no airs when she was with these people. They felt totally comfortable with her. Also, there was something about the way she related to them that gave them back their self-respect and human dignity.
 
But she didn’t view herself as better than these people, just luckier. And I think that’s the secret to being a truly humble baal chessed. It has to come from inside, that you don’t approach such people as a queen lowering herself to extend largess to the needy.
 
I’ve noticed that other baalei chessed are the same; they feel lucky not superior. They just feel like they could be in the same place as these people, except they were given better lives.
 
Yet how had Malka found these people?
 
She just noticed, she said. She’d see these hovels and go to investigate. Or people noticed and told her.

​As I got to know Malka, it became obvious the she was the address people turned to when they discovered deprivation of some sort. And not just regular people, but social workers and cops also turned to Malka.
 
In fact, several decades earlier when she was raising teenagers herself, she got calls from the police in the middle of the night:
 
“We found this Jewish girl wandering around the Muslim Quarter and she refuses to give her name or say where she lives. She doesn’t want to go home. Can we bring her to you?”
 
Malka always said yes.
 
(If a teenage Jewish girl in Israel prefers being among Arabs in the middle of the night, then her home is BAD.)
 
Malka and her family lived in a larger home back then and she set up chairs and sofas in an alcove off the main living area. When the cops dropped the girl off, Malka led her to the alcove, where the girl would huddle up with her head down and not speak or eat.
 
Fortunately (yet unfortunately), she wouldn’t be the only girl there.
 
Malka explained how she just let them sit there until they realized there were other girls around them in the same position. Slowly, they started talking to each other:
 
“Do you live here?”
 
“No. I was brought here by the police.”
 
“What? You were? So was I!”
 
“Really? What were you doing?”
 
“I was wandering around the streets in the middle of the night because I didn’t want to go home and I didn’t have anywhere else to go.”
 
“Really? Me too.”
 
“Really? You too? I thought I was the only one who felt that way. Why didn’t you want to go home?”
 
And hesitantly, they started talking about what was going on at home.
 
“Really? That happened to you too? I thought it was just me!”
 
These girls teetered between their silent huddled positions and raising their heads to lean forward and whisper with their fellow traumatized girls.
 
After 3 or 4 days of this, they were able uncurl themselves and come out of their lethargy, at which point Malka could approach them.
 
Malka nurtured them into becoming frum. She taught them how to run a home by allowing them to become full participants in running her home. They stayed for 2-4 years, depending. Eventually, she found them shidduchim and married them off.
 
“How did you find husbands for them?” I wanted to know.
 
“They needed sensitive boys, of course,” Malka answered. “Understanding boys. But boys from a background like theirs, boys who also hadn’t grown up frum, but became religious later. So that’s who I found for them.”
 
“And these boys didn’t mind marrying girls from such a dysfunctional background?” I said, still perplexed because this flew in the face of what American society said and stereotypes about frum people.
 
Now Malka looked as stern as she was able. “It’s not the girls’ fault,” she stated. “These are very nice girls! It’s not their fault how their fathers were.”
 
“Of course it’s not their fault!” I rushed to defend myself against the misunderstanding. “And I’m really glad for them that they landed in your home and that you did so much for them.”
 
But then I needed to know if they became functional mothers and wives.
 
“Yes,” said Malka, cocking her head to one side and looking totally mystified by the question. “Why not?”

And she emphasized again how these were very good girls who just needed a leg up, girls who wanted to cultivate warm homes and loving families of their own. And were just fine once they were given the skills to do so.
 
“How many girls did you do this for?” I asked.
 
“Oh, I don’t remember exactly…” she said. “Ten? Twelve?”
 
“You had ten or twelve traumatized teenage girls living in your home?” I said.
 
“Well, not all at one time,” she said. “It was spread out over the years.”
 
“Okay, but still!” I said. “How did you do that?”
 
Her eyes widened at the question, then her face her lovely smile expanded over her face. “We had a large home,” she said.
 
“Okay…” I said.
 
But as we all know, a large home is not enough to explain chessed on this level.

​You need so much patience, empathy, insight, and wisdom to nurture profoundly traumatized teenagers back into good emotional health.
 
So I kept probing to discover where she had the emotional and mental resources to do all this for so many girls for so many years, but she honestly did not understand my mystification.
 
So she just kept repeating the following:
 
“Well,” she said, “our sons didn’t live at home, so that wasn’t a problem. We sent them to learn in yeshivah abroad to avoid the draft…”
 
“They were basically good girls who just needed a good home and some nurturing.”
 
“It’s easy to understand them after all they suffered. I never judged them.”
 
“Hayah lanu bayit gadol – We had a large home.”
 
And her husband was okay with everything. Heck, he financed the whole thing! 

Anyway, I finally came to the conclusion that she saw dysfunctional people not as dysfunctional, but as basically decent people who are down on their luck. They encountered difficult circumstances and some made mistakes (if you can call lifelong drug addiction a “mistake”), but that can all be remedied with a lot of time, patience, and gentle guidance.

​And even if it can’t be remedied – like maybe the androgynous woman living in a hovel will never get her act together – it’s still important to be kind and compassionate.
 
Also, Malka wasn’t just empathetic, she was an empath.
 
She intuited what people needed, even people who were very different than herself. And while I think empathy can be cultivated, I also think that her special depth of perception is a gift. And she used it well!
 
Throughout all this, I imagined that Malka grew up with a very special mother. But when I asked her about her parents, she immediately denied that her mother was the source of influence and described their family life back in Morocco:
 
“My mother sat all day on silk cushions eating bon-bons,” she said. “Merchants came to the home to display different fabrics from which she could choose to have yet another dress made.”

​Then her face lit up as she said, “But my father…! My father was a wealthy man who kept two boxes by the back door. One was full of clothes and the other was full of money. We weren’t ever allowed to answer that door. When someone knocked, my father hurried to answer it. He opened it a crack and asked what the person needed. If they said clothes, he sank his arms into the box of clothes and heaved out a pile of clothes while closing his eyes tight and he thrust his armful of clothes through the slightly open door to give the person the clothes. If they needed money, he sank his arms into the box of money and passed handfuls of money through the opening. If they still needed more, then he gave them more.”

​She paused. “He never saw to whom he was giving. He never knew who received the money and clothes.”
 
In this way, her father kept the dignity and privacy of the recipient, as per the laws of tzedakah.
 
Malka’s face glowed as she spoke of her father’s chessed.
 
When they came to Israel, Malka was fifteen and ended up being the oldest of 10 children. In severely reduced circumstances, her father did what he could to keep his wife as close as possible to the lifestyle to which she was accustomed. He toiled at more than one job, including that of a streetsweeper.
 
Malka balked at her respectable formerly successful father sweeping the streets. She even voiced her objection to him working so hard and at such menial jobs – only to keep her mother in the role of pampered princess.
 
“I prefer sweeping the streets of Yerushalayim to being a businessman in chutz l’Aretz,” he declared. Then he explained to Malka that he felt it was his duty to care for his wife in this way, explaining that the reduction in circumstances was a lot to ask of her.
 
“But you’ve made the adjustment!” Malka protested.
 
Yes, her father said. But he felt he was man enough to take it.
 
I think that also, without the servants they’d had in Morocco, a lot of the housework and childcare fell on Malka. Plus, if I remember correctly, the indulging of the mother came at some expense to the other family members.

​At seventeen, they married off Malka to a local Moroccan boy who’d fought in the Irgun and learned chevruta with another teenage boy who later became one of the Sefardi gedolei hador.

There weren’t many committed religious boys to choose from at that time and he seemed a good prospect. And indeed, Malka’s husband remained committed to Torah and mitzvot and raised their sons to become yeshivah bachurs, which was an impressive feat in those times. (Apparently, sending them to yeshivah abroad was indeed the saving of them.)
 
But he was never Malka’s equal in middot or wisdom and he never achieved much in Torah. When I knew him as an older man with a white beard, he clearly wasn’t a knowledgeable Jew either.
​
(If you’re wondering how that can be when he originally learned chevruta with a budding gadol hador, I can tell you that a more skilled partner can carry the chevruta. Meaning, one partner is doing most of the learning and explaining while the other listens – but doesn’t necessarily retain.)
 
And that was another remarkable thing about Malka: She went through life with a partner who was not close to her level and didn’t have much to give her spiritually, as ideally there should be within a Jewish marriage. But certainly, he deserves credit for financing Malka’s chessed activities and for hosting a dozen runaways in his home over the years.