The Milsteins lived in the house just back of ours. In fact,
Mrs. Milstein's father, Mr. Levine, was a builder and had
built both houses. They were identical, except that ours was
white brick and theirs was red brick. No one noticed this,
though, because the front entrances were on two different
streets. You had to go completely around the block to get
from our front door to theirs, but I knew a shortcut -- out
through the kitchen door at the back of our house, cut across
our backyard, squeeze through the tall hedge that lined the
back of the yard, then through their backyard to their
kitchen steps, identical to ours.
The houses had identical floor plans but our decor was
formal, Provincial furniture, ornate turquoise and gold,
antiques, portraits in Victorian dress. The Milsteins' home
was ultra-modern, lots of bold, bright colors, abstract
paintings and knicknacks from Africa instead of Europe. It
was stange to feel that a place could be so familiar and yet
so different at the same time. I knew automatically how to go
through the den to get to the dining room and where the steps
were to the basement -- but the colors and styles were `all
wrong.'
Mr. Levine, the builder, was a lovely gentleman, rather
traditional minded. Since my parents bought our house just
before my brother Ryan's bar mitzva, he presented them with a
beautiful edition of Ethics of the Fathers inscribed
with blessings that Ryan should live up to its teachings. But
the Milsteins seemed thoroughly secular, a "typical" American
family.
Though we'd been back-to-back neighbors for some three years,
I'd never even glimpsed any of the Milsteins. What changed
that situation was that Candy Milstein turned sixteen. After
a spectacular Sweet Sixteen debut, she had been given the
green light to `socialize,' which meant that the family,
whose parents were also social and outgoing, needed a
babysitter. And so it was that Mrs. M. asked me if I was
available. Sure, why not? Not that I needed the money. Like
everyone else in the neighborhood, I had three of anything
material you could think of, but I had nothing better to do.
I was a bookworm, an extreme introvert, the class brain whom
everyone asked to help them with their homework -- and then
ignored. At that point, it was my third year of being
frum.
So I became babysitter to nine-year-old Joni and Jodi and
entered their make-believe world until they fell asleep. Then
I had the run of the house. I peeked into Candy's room, which
was basically my own room: size, shape, windows overlooking
the lawn, walk-in closets. But while mine had a rocking
chair, an antique grandfather clock, a music stand, a white
crocheted bedspread and Antique Rose flowered wallpaper, hers
was done in red and white with football pennants on the wall.
[We'll spare you the rest.]
I sometimes caught a glimpse of Candy -- petite and lively
with a 1000-watt smile, waving as she dashed down to an
impatiently honking car. A ton of gorgeous clothes, the
features of a porcelain doll, graceful -- everything I
wasn't. Like her name, she was as sweet as could be, and even
intelligent.
I remember a night when I'd forgotten to bring along
something to read. The glossy magazines in the living room
did not appeal to me and I pondered a pamphlet I'd been given
that day that discussed nitzozos, sparks of holiness.
It said that a Jewish person is sometimes sent to free sparks
of holiness in `unlikely' places.
What sparks have I been sent to release from here,
now? I wondered, as I munched on some kosher potato chips
that had been left out for me. To say the brocho I
just said? But it's said. So what am I supposed to do now?
I'm willing to do my part, but I don't know what it
is.
An idea popped into my head. It had never occurred to me
before. I could daven for the people in the house. But
none of the Milsteins were sick. Or poor. Or unhappy.
You could daven for them to be frum.
And I said out loud, in the silent kitchen, "Please let the
people of this house become frum."
Then I blinked. The sound of my own voice aroused me from my
reverie. If ever anything was unlikely and far-fetched, it
was that anyone in this picture-perfect American family
should be remotely interested in anything Jewish! I shrugged.
Is that what You wanted?
But it seemed to me that I felt some exquisitely subtle
change in the atmosphere, an energy of excitement, an
unfreezing . . .
Fast forward to a decade later. I am married and living in
Boro Park.
Early one rainy morning, a neighbor, recently arrived from
Israel, rang the doorbell. She needed to go to the hospital
for delivery; NOW. She was afraid to go alone and her English
wasn't very good. What if she had to fill in papers for
admission?
We went. She was admitted and I sat in the huge lobby saying
Tehillim. There was a family opposite me. They looked
Italian: a haggard young husband, parents, in-laws, five or
six siblings, all of whom had evidently been waiting for many
hours. The small table before them was littered with empty
coffee cups, candy wrappers, cigarette stubs. They looked
gray and exhausted. They weren't saying anything, just
waiting. Then a door opened and a nurse hurried over to them,
her face wreathed in smiles. "Congratulations!" she
exclaimed. (I don't remember what it was...)
Lost in anxiety for my neighbor, I hadn't really noticed the
tension that this family had been under until that moment
when it stopped abruptly, like the whoosh of a deflating
balloon. Tight faces relaxed into broad smiles, tight
shoulders slumped with great relief. Elation, backslapping,
handshakes. Only then did I notice, in retrospect, how
petrified and silent they'd been an instant earlier, unable
to move in any direction. Now they suddenly unfroze, like the
breaking up of an ice floe, bursting into free and jubilant
laughter and animated chatter. Everyone was suddenly moving
and busy, shaking out raincoats, gathering umbrellas, tidying
the littered table. Now their lives could move on...
And I, sitting there, perhaps in a somewhat heightened state
of awareness because of acute anxiety and a feeling of
responsbility for my neighbor, I thought, This reminds me
of something. At once, I remembered that moment in the
Milsteins' white and orange kitchen, years before. That's
what it had felt like, after I said my little prayer. As if
there had been a tense waiting, sensed only in retrospect.
Had, perhaps, that seemingly empty, gleaming, ultra-modern
kitchen been filled with the spirits of Milstein and Levine
ancestors hovering about the ceiling, waiting for someone in
the world to turn some kind of key with a simple plea?
Fast forward again, about another decade.
We'd been living in Yerusholayim for about nine years. A
letter came from my mother, who had long ago sold our house.
"I see that Mr. Levine passed away. Such a nice man. You
remember -- the one who built our house and the Milsteins' in
back of ours. Did I ever write you about their daughter,
Candy? She dropped out of college in her first semester and
went off to some Jewish seminary. I heard that she's married
with a slew of kids, and is now called Kreindy..."
What shall I make of this story?
