"Good mor . . . " I bit my lip as if willing it to take back my words. Since when does one open conversation with a hearty greeting on the morning of a black day such as Tisha B'Av?
"Can I please speak with Rivka?" I heard a familiar voice on the other end of the phone.
"What, it's you, Shulamis?" I forcefully subdued the shout of joy that threatened to explode from my throat. I wondered why my good friend was calling, today of all days.
"Yes, it's me," Shulamis apologized. "I didn't call just to chat. It isn't the right time. I just felt I needed to pour out my heart to you. You know," Shulamis sighed, "when you're so far away from Yerushalayim, you feel her destruction more deeply. The golus here screams out at you from every corner. Not that there's any severe antisemitism here, not at all," Shulamis emphasized. "But davka because of that, the Diaspora is much more dangerous!"
Why? I wondered at the absurdity of her words but I remained silent. The long years of our friendship had taught me to know Shulamis inside and out. Now her voice carried a deep hurt. Something terrible had happened there, in distant Australia.
"Can you hear me?" Shulamis's voice choked a little.
"Every word," I declared tensely. Why was she so shocked? What terrible situation had she gotten into?
"Our family is renting a nice two-story villa. There's another Jewish family at the end of the street, and that's it. The rest of the neighbors are non-Jews. I needn't add that we haven't forged any relationships with the non-Jewish neighbors. We were happy that in this quiet neighborhood, people live in single-family homes and that spared us from many prickly situations.
"Last Shabbos, a very uninvited guest invaded our home."
"Oy!" I cried, forgetting my determination not to interrupt or make any comment. "Was it a thief, or something worse?"
"Nothing like that," Shulamis hurried to reassure me. "Sorry for scaring you. It was just a small frightened creature, a puppy with wet fur trembling all over from cold."
"Wet fur?" I wondered aloud. "Trembling all over from cold, in the heat of Av?"
"You're forgetting that we're at the other end of the world? Now it's the height of winter," explained Shulamis briefly and returned to continue her dramatic story. "It seems that the puppy had been wandering around for several hours and became exhausted. He stopped to rest near our front door and the moment Abba opened the door to go out to pray, he burst in, with no manners at all, and planted himself firmly in our warm kitchen. You can imagine the noisy welcome we gave him.
"`Grab him, get him out of here immediately,' we all shouted in hysterics. Ruthy, Ruchami and I stood on the sofa and simply were terrified of the moment the hairy creature would jump at us (brrr . . . ) and rub himself against us. The boys were obviously braver than us.
'`What's the problem?' Shlomi announced self-assuredly. `Let's take a broom and a mop and guide him out the door.'
"`Don't go near him,' Imma said in a controlled voice. 'We don't know if he's healthy or not!'
"`There's no choice,' Abba sighed over the unanticipated delay, 'I'll go get help from outside!' " 'Oh Abba, don't leave us with the dog,' implored a chorus of frightened girls in a terrified voice. 'We're sc-a-a-red!'
"`We'll stay here and protect you,' the brave brothers volunteered to watch over their sisters. "After a quarter of an hour, Abba returned with a very tall black man. Without a word, the goy took the creature and both disappeared together. 'That it, you're free to leave the house,' I announced formally. Everyone laughed except Abba. His face looked more thoughtful than usual. Something had upset him. But he didn't share it with us because there was no time, I figured. After the Shabbos meal, it turned out that I hadn't been wrong.
"`I went to look for someone who'd agree to get rid of the dog,' Abba began his story. 'The street was empty. Having no choice, I went over to the next house, the Edwards family. Through the white gate, I saw our neighbor sweeping away the rainwater from the path to his house. Thank goodness, I breathed in relief; if he hadn't been in the yard, how would I have gotten to him? It wasn't possible to ring the bell in the gate.
"`Yes?' the neighbor cocked a surprised eyebrow at me. I explained my request to him in English.
"`What?' the goy hardly hid his chuckle. 'You can't handle a puppy? Okay, wait just a minute.' He gestured at his mud-stained work overalls and immediately went inside. After a few moments, the door opened. I was sure he was coming, but somebody accompanied him, an old bent-over woman.
"`Oy!" she screamed in horror. She gave me a frightened look and was in shock! I lowered my eyes but the eyes of the goyte continued to bore into me relentlessly. It appears that she had grown up in a house saturated with antisemitism.
"`She must have been spoon-fed on fictional accounts of "Jewish plots." Perhaps when she had misbehaved they had threatened her with: "We'll call a Jew!" And so she was haunted by the threatening image of Jews that gave her nightmares and so was so frightened to find herself faced with a traditionally-clad Jew.
"`What's going on here?' she asked her son in a trembling voice. 'What's this man doing here?'
"`Her son, surprised by her unexpected response, quickly explained my request to her and turned to join me.
"`Oh, No! No!' The old woman tightly grabbed her son's muscular arm and in the local dialect added a flood of explanations. Her son glanced from me to her. Apparently her explanations stunned him. It seems that until then he hadn't absorbed enough hatred for Jews. Finally, he cast an apologetic smile my way and with submissive steps, accompanied the old lady back into the house.
"`Hashem took pity on me and on you terrified girls, and I immediately ran into the black man who was jogging. The truth is that I was a bit afraid to approach him but having no choice, I decided to ask him and he enjoyed the "good joke" — his words, and then agreed to get rid of the illegal alien.
"`I still don't understand why I was so amazed by the stubborn refusal of the old goyte. It's a known fact that Esav hated Yaakov.
"`It was just a reminder of the golus we're in,' Ima sighed. 'Even the most educated and enlightened goy stops being pleasant and modern when it comes to antisemitism. Baruch Hashem, this encounter ended only in uneasiness and not in more physical injury G-d forbid.'
"On the night of Tish B'av," Shulamis continued with her gripping story, "we stood together, almost all the women and girls of the community near the Beis Knesses. Because of an unforeseeable hitch, the women's section was closed and therefore we had to wait outside.
"`Are you the Levy family?" an older woman approached us. 'You're from Israel, right?' 'Yes,' Ima answered politely.
"`My husband told me about you,' the woman nodded her head. 'Yes, you're living in my sister's neighborhood.'
"`What, really?' My mother couldn't hide her surprise. In our wildest dreams we couldn't imagine that young Mrs. Samuel, our only Jewish neighbor, had such an old sister.
"`Yes, yes,' the old woman acknowledged with a sigh that overrode the unbelievable. "It's hard to believe but we're sisters!'
"Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction, I thought with wonder. She looked like Mrs. Samuel's mother, not her sister!
"`Your sister's not here now,' Imma's eyes scanned the congregation of women.
"`Of course she isn't!' The old woman looked at Imma resentfully, wishing to forgo having salt rubbed in a painful wound. 'Since when does my sister attend a synagogue?'
"`Nu, Baruch Hashem, there are good reasons for it,' Imma tried to get to the crux of the problem. It seemed that the older sister was angry or hurt at her sister's missing prayers. 'G-d willing, the children will grow up,' Imma continued to appease her, `and your sister Mrs. Samuel will return to the synagogue.'
"`Pardon me, but my sister isn't Mrs. Samuel,' the old woman corrected our grievous error. 'My sister is Mrs. Edwards. She's married to a local non-Jew!'
"`What! That's impossible!' Imma cried from her heart. 'The Edwards family are completely non-Jewish!'
"`Ay, ay ay," sobbed the broken sister. 'Unfortunately, it is possible.'
"I was completely shocked. Old Mrs. Edwards, the antisemitic goyte — Jewish?! In front of my astonished eyes passed the image of the old Jewish woman, tortured with guilt. She had abandoned her father's house, had left her Judaism behind. There remained only a Jewish spark flashing in the darkness of her heart not giving her rest.
"Now I better understood her stubborn refusal to allow her son to help Abba. She figured that Abba wanted a Shabbos goy; she didn't want him to sin with a goy who was a kosher Jew. And she isn't the only one trapped in the gilded cage of the bitter golus," Shulamis' voice cracked. Without seeing, I could feel tears filling her eyes.
"Shulamis," I whispered in a broken, dry and sad voice. "Don't despair! We have a great Father in Heaven. With Divine assistance, He will gather the scattered of Israel from their far-flung corners and will return them with Great Mercy."
