The Widow As An Ushpizin In The Sukkah

When my brother-in-law disappeared from my life, shortly after the death of my husband, I believed that it was my fault. As I was so deep in mourning perhaps I wasn’t sensitive enough to his needs. But after talking to many other widows, and especially after I opened the Facebook group "Widows Move On" (that has over 900 Israeli widows) I realized that the disappearance, some say evaporation, of the relatives of the deceased husband is a very common reality.
Bur since it is so troublesome, and even humiliating, to feel unwanted, excluded and even cut and erased from the world where you used to occupy all the years of your marriage, widows tend not to mention it, because of the shame.
Of course the relatives of the dead husband, his brothers and sisters, suffered a terrible loss. But naturally they go on with their lives surrounded by their nuclear family. However the life of the widow basically stops, and the family, as she and the children have known it, ceases to exist.
In the Bible widows and orphans are regarded as the most vulnerable members of society and it is the duty of the community to take care of them. As today is the eve of Sukkot and many people are busy with Mitzvot and going to Shul, here are some reminders:
Exodus 22:22-3 Ye shall not afflict any widow, or fatherless child. If thou afflict them in any wise, and they cry at all unto me, I will surely hear their cry
Deuteronomy 27:19 “‘Cursed be anyone who perverts the justice due to the sojourner, the fatherless, and the widow.’ And all the people shall say, ‘Amen”.
It is true that widows, especially new widows, and their children are not the life of the party, and probably it’s not that much fun to have them as Ushpizin (Aramaic for "guests") in the Sukkah.
But being a mensch or a wo/mench is not always fun, or easy. So perhaps next time before you tell your late brother’s wife that it is too early for you to meet her, or that it is just too hard, remember it is much harder on her and her children

https://blogs.timesofisrael.com/the-widow-as-an-ushpizin-in-the-sukkah/

Kindness Of Strangers": A Different Holiday

 When we were in the US, we always dreamt about going back to Israel so that our daughters would grow up there. When they were in second and first grade respectively it finally happened. My husband got a position in Ben Gurion University in the southern city of Beer Sheva, and I got a job teaching English in a public high school.

 We arrived to Beer Sheva late in August few days prior to the start of the school year. Our daughters spoke Hebrew, but they needed extra help with their reading and writing.

I started teaching at the high school, but as I have never taught before, I was not at all ready for what  happened in class. Instead of teaching my students the wonders of the English language, like I had planned, the noise in the class forced me to constantly discipline them. I had no experience and had no idea on how to make the students sit quietly and  listen to me, and as a result I could not engage them. I felt uprepared and  helpless.

 At the end of an especially exhausting day, some ten days after the beginning of the year, I realized  that I was not up to the job. Moreover, I felt  that I would not have the needed energy to help my own girls with their  Hebrew if I kept on struggling with the students to teach them  English.  When my husband came home that afternoon I told him that I decided to quit, he understood.

 I went down to the public phone to call my supervisor;  it was simply not done to quit after the beginning of the year, and I expected  that she would be furious with me. But instead she listened and said that she understood, she told me that she would come to visit me the following day.

 When she came over she was most sympathetic and  shared with me the  difficulties she encountered after she immigrated to Israel some fifteen years  earlier. She arrived here as a young woman and started teaching right away, it was hard but she got used to it.

Like her, we were young when we moved to tohe US and faced some challenges in our new country, but we too managed. However, moving back home we were sure that since we knew the place it would be easy and familiar to adapt to Israel again. My failure as a teacher came as a shock.

As it was several days before the High Holidays, my new friend invited our family to her home for dinner. Our families got along well and it was a beginning of a lifelong friendship. Although in quitting my job at the  high school, I obviously created a problem, she recommended me for another job. About  two months later when we wanted to buy a house, she and her husband had known, even before we did,  that we needed  someone to cosign for the mortgage loan. At a great financial risk if we defaulted on the loan, they offered their help and cosigned our loan.

 Although this is not a Christmas story, the kindness of my former boss is surely in the spirit of the season. We were strangers, but she and her husband were never suspicious toward us, quite the contrary: they were generous and made us welcome.  This experience has changed not only our reality at the time, but it also affected the way we viewed the world: it inspired us to become more accepting and in a way made us better people.

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Lonely In Jerusalem

12.31.2013 - 

After the army, my brother moved to Jerusalem to study at the Hebrew University. For me, seven years his junior, his life there seemed like pure magic, and I knew that this was exactly what I wanted for myself. So when the time came, I too enrolled at the Hebrew University, fully expecting the same.

However, in the meantime, between enrollment and the start of Fall semester, something significant and unexpected had happened. I fell in love with a young man who eventually became my husband. Tzvi was a student in Haifa, some 200 km north of Jerusalem. As Haifa was my hometown, the idea of attending school there seemed out of the question; besides, my boyfriend never explicitly asked me to stay.

Because of our new circumstances, Tzvi and I looked for an apartment in Jerusalem which could accomodate both of us on the weekends. We  found a studio apartment in a residential neighbourhood; there were no students around, but it promised privacy.

Together we fixed up the apartment and made it cozy and attractive; everything was perfect. But when the semester started and Tzvi went back to Haifa, I was left there all alone, and knew no one in  that city.

My brother was no longer in town, and he had left me the phone number of his good friends. I decided to call them and they invited me for dinner on  that same night.  I had never met them before, and thought that they were much older than me, they were married, had a little boy, in short they were a family. In reality they were graduate students in their late twenties, yet everything about them seemed sophisticated and glamorous.

They were also warm and hospitable, and encouraged me to come over as often as I wished. If I hadn’t had pride I would have gone there almost every day, but I spaced the days between my visits carefully so that I wouldn’t seem desperate. I didn’t want them to know that I was lonely.

I was a student at the university of my choice, and had my own studio apartment, and still I was unhappy. In my enthusiasm about having a place for us on the weekends, I had forgotten about all the days in between. I spoiled my university experience by isolating myself and ended up not living the life that I had hoped to have. But I was only 19 and didn’t know how to fix it. Visiting the lovely family and seeing their happy life emphasized all that was wrong with my own.

I decided to move  back to Haifa, and several months later got married. Haifa University wasn't that bad after all, and while we didn’t have a typical university experience, it was fine, and we were very happy.

Afterwards as an adult, I only saw the kind  family from Jerusalem once or twice.  I always believed that we would meet again, and yet we didn’t. On this day, December 31st 2006, the lovely lady whom I met as a student passed away. I deeply regret that I never got to tell her how meaningful she was to me as the time, and how those happy visits with her  family influenced my decision to marry and start my own family

My sorrow over this missed opportunity brought about change: as "tomorrow is promised to no one," I try, whenever possible, to see those who are dear to me today.