“I WOULD LIKE you to stay in the hospital for one more night, Mr. Mendel. Just to be sure.” The doctor scribbled something on the chart that hung from the end of Jacob’s bed as he made his evening rounds. Jacob, however, wasn’t in the bed. Why lie around for no good reason? His bruised knees still ached from his fall to the sidewalk, but his legs weren’t broken, were they? Only his arm.
“To be sure of what?” Jacob turned away from the window and the uninspiring view. His sore throat made his voice sound hoarse, not at all like his own. His chest hurt every time he drew a wheezing breath.
“Your blood pressure is elevated. And there is always the risk of infection with third-degree burns.”
Jacob looked down at his bandaged hands and the cast on his right arm. Like the righteous Job in Scripture, Jacob had lost his family and now his health. But he wanted to go home and sleep in his own bed.
“I am fine. I would like to go home. Kindly give me my clothes.”
The sun had set, which meant that Shabbat had ended. He could travel now – not that it mattered. Why should he care about Hashem’s rules?
Habit. That was all it was, a lifetime of habit.
“I’ll discharge you, Mr. Mendel, but you will be going against my advice if you leave.”
“I understand. Thank you.”
Jacob could smell the aroma of smoke on his clothes as soon as the nurse brought them into the room. He went into the little bathroom to get dressed, and the sleeve of his shirt barely fit over his cast. It took a very long time to close the buttons and zippers with his useless hands. He had to leave half of his shirt buttons undone. When he came out, he was surprised to see his friend Meir Wolfe and Rebbe Grunfeld standing beside his bed. Naturally, they had waited until after Shabbat to visit him.
“Yaacov! There you are!” His friend wore a wide grin.
“I hope you came by car, Meir, because I am ready to go home. You can drive me there.”
“But the nurse said you would be here for one more night.”
“The nurse is misinformed. Will you take me home, please?”
Jacob sat in the front seat beside his friend while the rebbe sat in the back, surrounded by casserole dishes and fruit baskets and boxes of food. The aroma of potato kugel made Jacob’s mouth water. He had been unable to eat very much in the hospital. His sore throat made it painful to swallow.
The rebbe leaned forward from the back seat. “Several of the women have prepared food for you, Yaacov, as you can see. And I am going to arrange for them to come every day to help you clean, do the dishes, take out the garbage – anything you need.”
“Thank you, but that is not necessary.”
“You have bandages on your hands, Yaacov, and your arm is broken. Everyone wants to help. It’s the least we can do to thank you for saving the scrolls. What a blessing that you were nearby and noticed the fire. Of course, it wasn’t so good that you were injured – ”
“I will be fine. Did the firemen save the shul?”
“Well, no. It looks very bad. A great deal of damage. Some of us will go through the building and see what we can salvage once the fire department says it’s safe, but – ”
“Do they know how it started?”
“A fire inspector must come and make that determination. We won’t know until he is finished. But it seems to have started in the beit midrash in the rear of the building. That’s where the worst damage was. We have been trying to think what might have been in that room that could have started the fire, something electrical maybe, but nothing comes to mind.”
Meir Wolfe grunted angrily. “I cannot help thinking that it was deliberate. In the old country, such vandalism happened all the time, remember? And now the hatred has made its way here to America.”
“Let’s not think that way, Meir,” the rebbe soothed. “We don’t know for certain how the fire started.”
“But we do know that we are hated here in America, too. Everyone says what a pity it is that Hitler persecutes the Jews, but will anybody help us? No. Nobody wants the Jews to move to their country.”
The rebbe shook his head. “I’m sure they’ll discover that the fire was an accident. You’ll see.”
They arrived on Jacob’s street a few minutes later, and he saw the damage for himself. And even though he hadn’t attended shul in more than a year, the sight of the ravaged building still saddened him. So many milestones in his life had taken place there. He had presented his tiny son for pidyon ha’ben, redeeming his firstborn. Six years later, he had held his son’s hand as they’d walked across the street for Avraham’s first day of Hebrew school in the beit midrash. And he had watched in pride as Avraham put on tefillin to pray with the men for the first time when he turned twelve. Now Jacob turned his back on the destruction and a lifetime of memories and walked up the steps to his porch, his friends following him, balancing boxes and baskets of food.
The daily newspaper lay on the porch outside his door. Later, he would go through it and read the latest news about the war, cutting out the photographs and articles he wanted to save. But how could he cut anything if he couldn’t use his hands?
“You will have to help me unlock both doors,” he said when he reached the first one. He hated his helplessness. “The key is in my pocket, if you don’t mind.” When he stepped inside he realized he had left a window open and a haze of gauzy smoke lingered inside the apartment.
“Can we talk, Yaacov?” the rebbe asked when he and Meir had finished carrying in the food.
“No one is stopping you.”
“I wish to ask you for a favor. We will need a place to meet now that the shul is damaged, and I wondered if we might say prayers here? Your apartment is spacious and very close to the shul.”
“What makes you think I want to start praying again?”
Rebbe Grunfeld smiled gently. “You risked your life for the scrolls, Yaacov. Surely that must mean something.”
Jacob had no idea what it meant. He had lain awake in the hospital most of the night, his eyes burning, his lungs aching, wondering the same thing.
“We need each other now more than ever before,” Meir said. “These are terrible times we are living in, and we must stick together. Our people haven’t seen this much persecution since Queen Esther’s time, when the wicked Haman ordered our destruction.”
“We don’t know how long it will be until the shul can be rebuilt,” the rebbe added.
“Ask me another day,” Jacob said. “I need time to think. . . . But even if I do allow you to meet here, I cannot promise that I will join you.”
“Thank you. And one more thing, Yaacov. I know how concerned you’ve been for your loved ones in Hungary. Many of us have been awaiting news, and now a group of congregations with families in Europe is trying to get an appointment with the State Department. I thought you might like to join us.”
“Yes, of course I would.” Jacob would spend every dollar he had to find Avraham and his family. He would empty his bank account, sell this apartment building, sell everything he owned. He would look for work in one of the new armament factories to earn even more money if they would hire him at his age. “Tell me where and when.”
“Yes, I will let you know the details. Also, a group of some four hundred rabbis are planning a march in Washington in October.”
“If only it would do some good,” Meir grumbled. “The government knows what is happening. They’ve known since last November that Hitler is persecuting Jews. Remember the National Day of Mourning we held? What good did it do? They still won’t do anything.”
“It’s because no one wants to believe it is true,” the rebbe said.
“How can they deny it?” Meir asked. “They know that people have hated us for hundreds, maybe thousands, of years. How is that new? It’s why we moved here, isn’t it?”
“Yes, they know it is true,” Jacob said. His throat ached each time he spoke, making his eyes water. “But there are high officials in Washington who hate us, too.”
Rebbe Grunfeld held up his hands. “Please, let’s not speak ill of our government. We need their help.”
“If they wanted to help us,” Jacob said, “they could have changed the immigration quotas back when all this madness began so the Jews in Europe would have had a place to go. My son is an American, born here in America, yet he could not get papers for his wife and child who were born in Hungary. And he would not leave them.”
“And remember that ship full of refugees that no country wanted?” Meir’s voice was growing louder, angrier. “Hitler said, ‘Go! Every Jew in Germany can leave! Good riddance to you!’ But would our government step forward and allow even one of them to come here? No. More than nine hundred Jewish passengers were left with no place to go except back to Germany. Don’t try to tell me our government is eager to help.”
“I think we should leave now,” Rebbe Grunfeld said. “Yaacov needs peace and rest, Meir, not strife. But you will think about what I asked, Yaacov? About meeting here to pray?”
Jacob nodded and walked with Meir and the rebbe as far as the door. His throat felt raw, so it was good that they left when they did. Afterward, he wandered out to the kitchen to eat a few spoonfuls of kugel, right out of the casserole dish. It tasted wonderful, just like Miriam used to make, but he could only eat a few bites. The potatoes scratched his throat when he swallowed them. He pulled a banana from one of the fruit baskets, struggling to open it with his bandaged hands before finally biting the end off and peeling it with his teeth. At least the banana was easier to swallow.
Later, he sat down at his desk and looked through his collection of old letters from his son. Jacob had put them all in order according to the dates that Avraham had written them, and he allowed himself to reread one each day. He lifted the top letter, gazing at the neat printing, remembering the rainy afternoon that he and Miriam Shoshanna had taken their son to the pier to board the ship for Hungary. He remembered the pride he had felt in his son and in his desire to study Torah – but also his overwhelming dread as he had watched him sail into the maelstrom of another European war. Jacob had come to America to escape pogroms and war and hatred. Why, then, had Hashem led Avraham back there?
Jacob struggled to pull the letter from the envelope, but finally managed by blowing into the envelope and pulling out the letter with his teeth. It was one of Avraham’s very first letters. Jacob spread it out on his desktop.
Dear Mama and Abba,
I know it has only been six months, but you will be happy to know that I feel very much at home here already. My studies are still challenging, but I am learning so much – and loving what I am learning. Each layer of text that I peel away reveals even more of Hashem’s treasures, and I have come to see that I can never mine all the richness of these jewels, even after a lifetime of study.
I also have news of another jewel that I have discovered. Samuel, my study partner, invited me to celebrate Shabbat with his family last weekend, and I met the most wonderful woman – his younger sister, Sarah Rivkah. I know this will sound unbelievable, but the moment I saw her, I understood how our ancestor Jacob felt when he saw his Rachel for the first time. Not only is Sarah beautiful, but she is sweet-tempered and righteous, as well. I would gladly serve her father for seven years to win her hand!
I know that I came here to study, and I am working very diligently at that. But I have never met a woman who has captivated me the way that Sarah Rivkah has. . . .
The doorbell rang, interrupting Jacob’s reading. He shuffled to the door, then out to the foyer, and finally managed to fumble open the outside lock. A gray-haired man in an odd-looking uniform stood on his doorstep. Experience in the old country had given Jacob an instinctive distrust of men in uniform. He opened the door a mere crack. “Yes?”
“Jacob Mendel?” the man asked. He looked too old to be in military service, and besides, the uniform was not the right color for any of the usual branches.
“Who is asking, please?”
“I’m Inspector Dalton from the fire marshal’s office.” He produced an identification badge and held it up to the crack. “I’m conducting the investigation into the fire at the synagogue across the street. I’m told that you went inside the building to rescue some scrolls, and I wondered if you would be willing to answer a few questions for me.”
“Yes, I suppose.” Jacob widened the crack a few more inches, letting in a swirl of cool night air. He would not invite the man to come inside. He wanted to be left alone.
“Could you tell me what you remember from last night – in your own words?”
Jacob frowned. Whose words would he use, if not his own? “I went for a walk – ”
“Do you recall what time you left home?”
“No, but it was after sunset. On my way back – ”
“How long were you gone?”
“I don’t know. I paid no attention to the time.”
“Okay, go on.”
“On my way back I saw smoke and flames in the rear of the shul, in the beit midrash and – ”
“Excuse me, I’m not familiar with those words.”
“The shul. You would call it the synagogue. And the beit midrash is the room in the back where we study. Where all the books are kept.”
“Thank you. Go on, please.”
“I was walking down the street, approaching the shul from the rear when I noticed the fire. I had just passed a cigar store a little ways back, and so I ran in there and told the clerk to call the fire department.”
Jacob paused. The man was writing everything down in a little notebook, and Jacob worried that he was talking too fast. But the inspector nodded without looking up and said, “Yes, continue please.”
“I looked around to see if there was a way I could throw water on the fire while I waited for the trucks to arrive, but there was nothing I could do. It was spreading too quickly. Then I realized the sacred Torah scrolls were going to burn and I could not allow that to happen. So I ran around to the front door – ”
“Why did you go to the front?”
“Why? Because the fire looked worse in the back, and besides, it is easier to get to the Aron Ha Kodesh – the place where the scrolls are kept – from the front door.”
“Weren’t you concerned for your own safety, entering a burning building?”
“I did not think; I simply reacted. It had to be done.”
“I understand that you were able to save the scrolls, Mr. Mendel. But you were injured in the process?”
“Yes.” He opened the door a scant inch wider and lifted his broken arm. “Some burns on my hands, I inhaled smoke, and I broke my arm when I fell.”
“How did you burn your hands?”
“How? . . . I don’t know how, exactly,” he said with a shrug. “I must have touched something hot. Everything happened very quickly.”
“I see. Is there anything else you can tell me about the fire? Anything else that you recall?”
Jacob shook his head. “No. That is all I know.” He wanted the man to leave. He didn’t want to remember the fire or think about the devastation to the shul he had once loved.
“Well, if you think of anything else, Mr. Mendel, please contact the fire marshal’s office.”
“Do they know how the fire began?”
“I couldn’t say. It’s still under investigation.”
Jacob pondered the inspector’s answer as he closed the door. Did it mean that they still weren’t sure or that he wasn’t allowed to tell? What if the fire had been deliberate, as his friend Meir seemed to think? Everyone knew that the Nazis had set fire to synagogues and Jewish businesses in Germany. And his son had described the hatred he’d experienced in Hungary – before his letters had stopped coming, that is. And while Jacob knew there were anti-Semites in America, surely they wouldn’t burn down a synagogue in Brooklyn or make every Jew wear a yellow star, would they?
He didn’t know the answers to these questions. Nor did he know how to push away his disquieting thoughts.