1
The old man sits alone in the dining room corner as the crowd danced in a crazed punkrock circle pit, like a loving mob arm-in-arm riot, drunk and unruly and joyous. Sid danced the same way many years ago in the old country at the weddings of friends, most of them dead now at the hand of the Nazis, and at his own; that wife was murdered too. He doesn’t remember much of this first wife, but he remembers his wedding dances, firstly for the wife of his youth that he loved and secondly for she he learned to love more than life itself. He smiled and pushed his small wireframe glasses up his nose bridge as he hunched over the open sefer on the table in concentration, a habit left over from the long-past days of Litvach learning in the grand yeshivot of the old country. Tonight, his slim pocket volume is a selection of Talmud Bavli and the Daf Yomi today is, prophetically, Masechet Kiddushin and the laws of marriage. Sid, that is the old man’s name, noticed these small evidences of Hashem’s Hasgacha Pratit in everyday life and, because he can recognize this constant attention of a higher power in all his personal affairs, his life is rich in all ways; nights like this are the best of all.
Over on the women’s side of the divided reception, things were a bit less manic, but there too it was joy and gladness all around. He imagined his ancient wife, the matriarch of his vast mishpacha, a robust family line reaching back to days long before the mass destruction of his every relative in the Churban. Exiled alone in the new world across the sea, Sid met his Esther six decades ago when she was likewise. The chances of finding a fellow Eastern European Orthodox Jew in this galut were slim in those awful days. Finding one you could love and marry in the dusty narrow streets and deep neighborhoods of Palestine the road from hell led them into while running for their lives was too fortunate to be luck and they were married within the week. From her came the ocean of his Jewish children before him, and those children’s children, and those children’s children’s children. He smiled again thinking of her queenly dance. The modest sheital covering her hair always sat a little crooked on her tiny tipsy head at these shindigs. With her and because of her, his life has been good and long and, Baruch Hashem, this is the first wedding of a great-great-grandchild. May it be the will of Hashem that there be many more. Amen.
The Chassan came to see how his Zadee was doing and to see if there was anything he could do to ease the patriarch and bring him comfort. “Thank you, Avi ben DavNaf. You’re a good boy, a smart boy, and I am very proud of the young man you have become on your wedding day,” Sid said. “Come close. I have something to tell you related to the comfort you mention and desire for me. As you know, it is a custom of Klal Yisroyal to remember the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash at our most joyful moments. You yourself crushed the glass beneath your heel for this reason as you stood under the chuppah with your beautiful callah. And, since this moment is one of the greatest and my loving heart is bursting with happiness, I am compelled to remind you now of The Churban.”
2
Clear skies over Israel. Blue sky. So much of it, stretching to the horizon and beyond. The Israeli fighter pilot couldn’t see the enemy border from the cockpit a mile high, but he was well aware of its location and his intention to cross with stealth, surprise and destructive intent; to “kill the infidel,” HaHaHa, he mused in daydream. “That whole Palestinian issue can be seen in a whole new light, and it isn’t a pacifist giveaway.” Every war Israel enters, they enter to win, and so they do. Ein Brerra. There is no choice for the tiny nation but to train their elite forces and build cutting-edge technology to blow the nuisance right off the map. “Never has there been an enemy in the entire history of the Jews that has won,” Avi concluded as he and his squadron slipped into attack formation and locked onto the target like a gander of deadly mechanical geese. Leading this highly engineered flying V was Avi, our chassan, his headset communicating the attack with his command in a scarily quiet voice mellowed by familiarity with death and violence.
“Incoming” was all he had to say, and the game was on. Briefed and trained exhaustively on the defense of their powerplant objective, this enemy thrust was expected. One expert maneuver from Avi’s team, and it was clear skies over Israel again. The anti-aircraft missiles came next, a bit more tricky than warplanes to destroy, but bypassed intact, this time with homegrown technological wizardry rather than the courage of those with everything to lose. Feeble ground fire peppered them annoyingly on the descent toward the twin domes laden with lethal force and little mercy. A big boom, a rapid ascent, and it’s done. “Time for a beer,” Avi said.
There is something that is not commonly known about Israeli soldiers; the women fight harder than the men with deeper reserves of strength and courage, with the fierceness of Jewish Mothers. Avi loved the sole woman assigned to his squadron, although not at first. Over time, she became his callah, his beautiful queen-bride Leah all tricked out in flight gear. Girls with guns, now that’s living. And, his new wife had a jet fighter plane for a throne. So sexy!
“I have to go wash my hair,” Leah said with a cute little shoulder shrug that sent that wavy miracle shimmering. “I have to admit I sweated a bit when the defense found us and the pilots started shooting those damn guided missiles at us.” Avi countered, “you performed the Grand Sweep exactly as we practiced. You were perfect and glorious and wonderful. I love you so much!” None of this would do for Leah as she pushed off his hug. “Quiet, silly boy. I’ve told you over and over that it is not tzniut to act so immodestly in public” she said with a soft squint. Admiring the fit of her fatigue skirt as she turned toward the showers, he realized that he now could think anything he wanted of the way her behind moved while she walked because Leah was now his wife and he loved her and his whole world was to be found within her. A true Bat Yisroyal and Eishet Chile, a blessing to all, Hashem’s gift to the world.
3
Leah bat Ovadia was a third-generation Sabra, her mother born within the walls of the Old City of Jerusalem and the mother before that a Zionist pioneer. Her great-grandmother survived The Holocaust on a leaky boat to what would become Palestine. Softly strong, unbendable of will, insightful and an inspiration to all, Leah was well-loved from countless acts of kindness by most everybody. Mercilessly punishing and infinitely nurturing, that is the dual nature passed down to our blushing bride in battle boots. Leah too was born in the Old City, a Sabra. She wasn’t born to only pretty dresses and curls like the other girls, though. She prowled alone in the tunnels and old fortresses of her walled world as well. As she grew, walls and fences fell to her growing prowess and stealth. When her excursions reached into territories forbidden to Jews, a Sakana, a danger her community tried to curb within the reckless spirit developing within the developing breast of their princess. She was going to get herself killed, or worse, God forbid.
Little Leah didn’t see it that way. She was a quick study on minimizing danger and understood early on that true stealth, invisibility, is built upon good planning and fearless execution. Hesitation gets little Jew girls killed, so she learned to not hesitate, instead honing courage from recklessness into a sort of street-smart safety as she learned about those on the other side who share a common heritage and biblical patriarch. Her burning question, never really answered, was if they really were a murderous fanatic horde. She needed to know if her own people were thought of in the same way and acted the part of barbarian themselves. So, it’s under and over the walls she went with all the fervor that nationalism and a striving for truth could muster.
What she found was unexpected and beautiful and so forbidden as to never be mentioned, ever. She made friends with little girls on the other side and grew to love them as sisters. Together they dreamed and schemed and grew up into women, crafting a shared vision that was theirs alone, both manifesto and a hopeful plea for sanity in an insane world. Women will be women and it is there way to give birth and provide life, regardless of borders neither physical nor spiritual. To reach this utopia, together, and with their peoples, was the yearning that bound this disparate band of individuals with the single aspiration of blessing from The One God with many names, from Hashem and Allah both for all of his children, as well as their own.
4
Zadee Sid and Bubbe Esther were the only people on her side of Jerusalem that Little Leah, both as a young woman and then as a wife, soon to be a mother, could trust with her theology. In Israel, religion is a tangled mess; for the orthodox, worse. The narrow-minded fanaticism of the charadim on both sides hinders the mending of the biblical breach between Abraham’s wives that has killed his children ever since. The heart of Israel is broken in half and its people are crying. Leah doesn’t want her newborn to grow up crying that ancient song as well. She is not complacent. This truth is flavored by her life-long friends that most consider enemies, that she often has a greater concern and love for than her own people. Yes, Leah’s theology is a tangled mess, but she is squarely On The Derech and Frum from the top of her scarved head, past the covered collarbones, elbows and knees, to the bottom of her sensible stockinged shoes. Apikorsis and heresy are far from her, thanks to the influence of Rabbi Ahira ben Enon, Gaon of Jerusalem, Tzadik Gamor, the spiritual heart and chief rabbi of his corner in The Old City for almost half a century; a true Giant in Torah known simply as “Sid,” may we be blessed with his memory. Amen.
Avraham Avinu, father of Jew and Arab “Palestinians” both, was promised that his descendants from his wives Sarah and Hagar would be numerous as the stars and the grains of sand with the sacrifice of the parts, the Brit HaAvraham. That covenant of familial abundance was passed to Sid’s loins as well and the progeny his Esther brought into the world are recognized by the child naming scheme of the Jews, a practice from the Egyptian exile. There, the family names were preserved, along with clothing styles and yeshivot for passing the oral law. Thus, there is a recorded genealogy beginning with Adam HaRishon, passing through Noach and Avraham, branching out to Moshe Rabeinu and down to Sid and Avi and Leah, never-ending.
Rabbi Ahira ben Enon was named Ahira by his parents, Enon and Miriam, eight days after his birth in 1922. The “Rabbi” part came when he earned his Smicha in 1934, an outrageous feat for even such an illuy, to become ordained an Orthodox Rabbi at such a tender age based on Torah scholarship alone. His mother gave him the nickname that stuck in memory of her father. This formula of “Son Name son of Father Name” just keeps going and going like an irrepressible freight train, lumbering from the distant Jewish morning to its prophetic evening. Sid met Esther in 1942, giving birth to their bechor, Avraham ben Ahira the next year. “Avi” met Shoshana in 1958 and from her came Rabbi David Naftali ben Avraham, “The DavNaf,” in 1960. This esteemed grandson of Sid’s married Rachel Leah in 1978, but the birth of her first-born was postponed by Hashem and granted with prayers. In 1989, a great-great-grandson was born to Sid and named Avraham ben David Naftali to remember those in the family who came before him. Irrefutable, like the biblical borders of Israel. Avi was 28 in 2017 when he married Leah, and now she is with child. On and on it goes, from the beginning and with no end.
To be ordained an Orthodox Rabbi by his Litvach Yeshiva at age 14 was entirely due to his brilliant scholarship and deep understanding of how the ancient Torah can be understood and, more importantly, applied to practical living today. Leah was, and remains, drawn to the rational approach to divine service as dictated by Torah Law. Several deep concepts expressed by the Rabbi over the course of a lifetime, Emunah, Bitachon, Behira, and Hashgacha, both Calit and Pratit, have had a profound impact on Leah’s aspirations and motives. Refuting the randomness that science and culture embrace, she sees herself as only a small part of a much larger objective controlled by a higher power, to bring holiness into the world one act of kindness at a time.
5
It is often said that it is a small world. The world of the Jews is much much smaller; Orthodoxy a tiny fraction of that. This sheltered world is subdivided yet again into cliques and clans fiercely loyal to their own and not to much to the others, all under the banner of Torah Law. These communities of Orthodox Jews dress and pray alike, learn from the same elders, and interpret halacha by the poskim of their sect. United in principle and practice, they tend to marry from within to keep the Mesorah pure.
Cloistered within such narrow confines, all knew everyone (and every thing). They celebrated each other’s wedding and bar mitzvah celebrations, often several different places in a single day. Walking about on Shabbos and on the Yomin Tovim, it was a social circus of felicitation among friends. Naturally, the boys liked the girls they liked. Unnaturally, they never approached them all through school until marriageable age brought the match together through a Shadkin. Arranged as such from the ranks of peers, it was inevitable, if not fated, that Leah and Avi would meet and marry. Everyone thought they were cute together, their own dashing duo of peacekeeping lovebirds. And so handsome!
6.
Avi: off the derech, career soldier, empty soul, redemption in wife
7.
Hashgacha Pratit led them together & Hashgacha Calit mended the breach together)
8.
Sid: Litvach Exodus to Israel 1942
Avraham ben Ahira: Rabbi? (supported poor chacham father & bucher growing vegetables)
DavNaf: Illuy like Sid, Shalom Bait book, mastery of mood, happiness in giving
The Churban
Avi gets shot down in a dogfight!
homegrown technological wizardry
the fierceness of Jewish Mothers A true Bat Yisroyal and Eishet Chile
Sakana, Mefirot Nefesh, Pecuach Nefesh?
mending of the biblical breach between Abraham’s wives