Sally woke up with the sun high in the sky, beaming its bright warm rays right down onto her face.   Quickly she rose to check her cellphone in the handbag by her bed, them stopped.  She tried to remember whether it was permissible to touch an object you couldn't use on the Shabbat.  In the end, she decided not to, just in case you aren't permitted to.  Although at home she wasn't so strict with herself, here at the Ben-Ari home she somehow felt it polite to respect the beliefs of her hosts.

On her way to the bathroom she noticed a set of towel laid out on a chair, a fresh bar of soap and a beautiful sky blue robe.  The kind she had seen women in the religious neighbourhoods wear when they went out to the local grocery store or to fetch the mail.  If it was acceptable for them, certainly it was acceptable here in the Ben-Ari home.  After doing her morning ablutions, she slipped the robe over her head and made her way downstairs to the kitchen.

"Good morning sleepy head" Sally heard a voice call to her from outside on the patio.  Following the sound she found Deborah sitting with a couple of her youngest, gently playing catch with her toddler.

"What time is it?" asked Sally.

"If I'm not mistaken, close to 9:30.  Did you get a good sleep?" responded Deborah.

"Yes, I guess ... I didn't know you could speak English!" said Sally, with a note of surprise in her voice.

"Of course we can.  Our parents made Aliyah from North America.  Father from Canada and mother from the United States.  Although our father makes it a rule to speak in Hebrew, unless we specifically ask otherwise, Mom always spoke to us in English." explained Deborah.

"You mean Yigal knows English?" asked a surprised Sally, when the significance of Deborah's words finally sunk in.

"You mean he never let you know?" laughed Deborah!   "In some ways he is worse than our father!" she continued.

"What do you mean by that?"

"Well, Yehuda doesn't speak English, so whenever he is in the room, my father will only speak Hebrew.  He doesn't want Yehuda to feel  like an 'outsider'."

With that amazing revelation understood, Sally made the decision to dress and hurry to the village synagogue.  She'd heard from friends who visited the community of the unique structure and the very musical praying that went on there.  Directed by Deborah she half ran, half speed walked through the village to the village square.  To one side stood a medium sized structure built of rounded field stones, not the chiseled white limestone most Jerusalem style buildings were built from.  The tall red tile roof loomed over the lowish stone walls, half roof, half steeple she thought.  Looking for some clue as to where the women's section's entrance was, she finally saw a couple of young teenage girls leave one of the synagogues doors.

Entering the structure was akin to entering a different world.  Israel was modern, plastered walls (or gypsum boards) and stone or stucco exteriors.  The interior of this building was entirely of wood.  The walls panelled with luxurious reddish pine boards, not inexpensive pretend wood panelling like she'd seen in people's homes in the states.  The entire inner surface of the high ceiling was panelled with a whitish pine.  The cupboard where the Torah scrolls were stored was exquisitely carved dark brown wood, polished to a bright shine.  Even the rows and rows of benches and book holders for each of the communities religious were made of wood.  The only surface in the entire room that wasn't wood was the floor.  It was made of flagstone. Like the outside walls, all natural, not hewn, not chiseled.  They must have done that on purpose she thought.

As she was standing in the door's entrance, taking all the beauty of the synagogue in with wide eyes, she suddenly felt a gentle touch on her elbow.  Shifra had come over and invited her to sit with her.  Together they sat in one corner of the synagogue, Shifra occasionally saying something about Sally being a friend-of-the-family to interested yentas.  Sitting on the book holder beside Shifra's place was an English-Hebrew prayer book.  This woman's gentle concern knew no boundaries.

Sally had arrived just in time to hear the weekly Torah portion.  It happened to be the Bar Mitzvah Shabbat of one of the community's boys, so the young man with a breaking voice read the entire portion with a painstaking perfection.  Sally could only dream of some day being able to read Hebrew without the cantillation half as good as that child was reading with the age old musical inflections.

The leader of the Musaf prayers was an older man with a long white beard.  Sally had heard chazanut and the synagogue she attended in the city, when she went, was in the neighbourhood bomb  shelter near her apartment, they prayed 'Carlebach Style' with the entire congregation joining in the lively musical versions of the traditional prayers.  This was something in between.  There were long sections the leader sang himself, and other sections when everyone joined in.  She wondered how they knew which was which.  She'd have to remember to ask someone afterward.

When the services were over, everyone gradually exited the magnificent synagogue and gathered in the shade of the wide deep covered patio to the building's side.  There, on folding tables with blinding white tablecloths were mountains of cakes and fruits and 'nash' as they liked to call it.  Nash being chips and pretzels and other things you chew on, nash being Yiddish for chew, or so she thought.  All manner of women, including a great many Sally hadn't seen in the synagogue during the prayers, came over to Shifra to bid her a 'Shabbat Shalom' (Greetings of Shabbat or literally Peace of Shabbat).  Of course they all wanted to make Sally's acquaintance, and again Shifra very politely but all so deftly introduced her as Sarah, a friend-of-the-family, and then moved the conversation onto other directions.  Sally knew Shifra was doing that to make her feel more comfortable, less threatened by having dozens of women interrogate her or her 'availability'.

Some one made the kiddush blessing over the wine and a few seconds later Yigal showed up by her side with a small plastic cup of wine, from the large goblet used for the kiddush.

"So I see the women didn't eat you up?" said Yigal, a slight smirk upon his lips.  "Now you know why I avoid this place!  If you aren't married they come down on you like a bunch of vultures looking for fresh carrion." His tone was sharp and bitter and had lost the touch of mirth his original comment had been made in.

"I was protected the entire time by your mother.  No one could past her within striking distance, she is a very talented and formidable lady!" Sally said, with a great deal of sincerity and admiration for Yigal's mother.  "Beside, it couldn't be too bad, maybe I'll even find a shidduch here?' she said, using the Israeli religious slang for a soul mate or at least potential marriage partner.

"You're looking?" asked Yigal, suddenly aware of the fact that the topic somehow deeply interested him.

"It depends on who is asking!" smiled Sally in return.

Their exchange was interrupted when David Ben-Ari started speaking to the people still standing around the tables and under the shade cloth placed over the pillars of the patio.  Interestingly enough he took the thread of last night's conversation that Sally had raised, in the name of her teacher, and described how viewing the story of the Akeida from Yitzchak's perspective puts a new light on all the verses in that entire section of the Torah.  He then systematically went through them, all by heart, all clearly articulated and clearly explained until he came to the point of the message of his little sermon.  Here he tied it into Yitzchak's coming of age, just as the Bar Mitzvah boy, now considered a full member of the community for making a quorum or the public reading of the Torah, was considered to have 'come of age'.  He then closed his speech with a blessing for the boy, his parents and extended family, and finally the entire community of Shevut Ami and all of Israel.

Sally couldn't tell for sure, but her impression was that Mr. Ben-Ari was very well respected by the men and women who had stayed for the kiddush and short lecture or sermon.  She wondered why all the other people didn't stay.  Another question, but one she knew was probably 'loaded' with community politics.

On the way back to the Ben-Ari house Sally and Yigal walked with his parents.  Sally asked about the synagogue and why they chose to make it the way they did.  Part of the reason turned out to be simply aesthetics, but there was a certain echo of an idea that you shouldn't use chiseled stone to build the alter.   Although this was no alter, the echo of that commandment was relayed in the community's choice of building materials. 

Sally could see that the subject was one that irritated Yigal, so she turned to him and asked directly, in English. "What do you think?"

"Huh?" said Yigal, looking her straight in the eye.

"I know you speak English! Tagid et haemet! (Tell the truth)" she added in Hebrew.

Yigal looked at his mother, but she shrugged her shoulders and said, also in English, "I didn't tell her!"

David Ben-Ari decided to join the fray and echoed his wife's words, "Nor I", also in English.

"Well that leaves just one person I have to deal with," said Yigal, refusing to speak anything but Hebrew.

Thinking quickly Sally said, "But you'll never know which one told me!"

"Which one?" asked Yigal, perplexed, translating Sally's English to the Hebrew.

"Yes, silly," she said with a spark of mischief in her eye that Shifra saw and immediately recognized.  "You'll never know," said Sally, "which of the children told me that you speak English too!"

With a look of defeat and a smirk that said, "I'll get you!" Yigal let the issue drop.

The Shabbat lunch was as sumptuous and lively as the dinner.  The difference, Sally noticed, was that David and Yehuda spent most of their time focused in on each of the children.  Every child was given his moment of glory to share what he or she had learned, and especially the questions that perplexed them.  Even the songs were chosen by the children and more than once the same song was sang twice and once even three times, each time with a different tune, just to keep all the children happy and feeling their needs, wants and desires were important too.

After the meal Sally tried once again to sneak some utensils into the kitchen, only to be laughingly reprimanded, this time by Shifra, as she took the plates out of her hands and sent her back to the living room.

"You must take her to the 'Path of the Forefathers' Yigal", his father said to him when they were all finally sitting around in the large air living room.

"That's quite a Shabbat walk?" protested Yigal.

"Can I come too?" asked Shifra.  "I haven't been there in over a year and nice long walk would be a perfect way to finish the Shabbat."  Looking at Sally she explained, "We'd have to go late in the afternoon, otherwise its too hot to walk there and back in the heat of the day.  Besides, we can drop by Kibbutz Kefar Etzion and let Yekutiel drive us home after havdalah.

Seeing that his parents had decided to go, and Sally was definitely interested in seeing more and learning more, Yigal figured it safer to tag along that stay at home.  Otherwise who knows what the two women might talk about.

After tea they all broke up and retired to their various rooms.  Sally went upstairs to Yigal's room, and changed her Shabbat skirt and peasant blouse for the sky blue robe she had discovered in the morning.  She had just finished drawing the zipper front shut when she heard a fainest knock on the bedroom door. Opening it she discovered Yigal standing like a forlorn lost boy looking in every direction except hers.

"Can I help you Mr. Ben-Ari?" she asked, with the tone of a home owner interrogating a stranger at its gates.

"Ah, if you wouldn't mind, I'd like to take one or two of my books so I have something to read," he said, by way of explanation.

"Please feel free!" said Sally, and playfully added, "But do try to return them before the end of the Shabbat."

Yigal ignored her playful comment, searched his bookshelves until he found what he was looking for and start to turn toward the door to leave.

"I sense I've ruined your Shabbat for you." Sally stated, flatly, in a matter-of-fact voice. "I'm sorry if I had.  I would never have accepted your invitation if I had known."

"What the hell are you talking about?" Yigal responded shortly, finally looking directly into her eyes and wishing he hadn't.

"I mean, every time we have any kind of exchange it always seems to be weighed with some negativeness or some sort of hidden anger." Sally explained.

"Like what for instance?" Yigal demanded.

Sally then listed the handful off exchanges that she felt were tinged with anger or some sort of bitterness, starting from the women at the synagogue, including the sparing match over English-Hebrew and culminating with his decided lack of desire to take her to the 'Path of the Forefathers'.  "I mean I know its probably petty of me, but somehow I feel wronged.  First you invite me to spend Shabbat here, and then every time I speak to you it is tinged with this negativeness."  She could see Yigal deflate right before her eyes.  The man, the archaeologist, the officer in the paratroopers, they simply faded away and all that was left was a troubled young man with a look of pain on his face.  Yigal slowly let himself down on his bed.

"Its not you, its me, its this place, these people ..." he mumbled, his voice trailing off.

"Yigal, tell me about it.  Share with me, I'll listen." Sally said, quietly, gently coxing him to share with her.

"Do you mind closing the door?" he asked, then seeing the look of questioning on her face he added, "You don't have to shut it all the way, just close it a little more?"  When Sally had done as he had bid and taken a position on the throw run on the floor in front of him he started to cry.

  "She was my friend all throughout high school.  Every time I'd come home from yehiva ready to throw it all away, drop out of school, run away from home, whatever, Avital was always there.  Always capable of talking some sense into me, building my willingness to return and try again. Toward the end of high school, when I went to the army, I told her she must wait for me.  I told her I wanted no one else for a wife except her." His voice breaking he added, "she said 'of course' like who else would she marry but me."

Yigal explained how they would meet in Jerusalem when he could get away from the army and she from her National Service.  Just to spend an hour or two talking.  They never touched.  "I never even had the opportunity to kiss her or hold her." he explained in yet another spasm of tears and choked up voice.

"What happened?" asked Sally in a low soft voice, already cringing at what she expected to hear.

"She was coming home of the 32 bus.  We take it from the Central Bus Station to Gilo and from there we all hitchhike home.  When the bus passed the France Square on Keren HaYasod the suicide bomber destroyed the bus and twenty two of the passengers on it.  Avital was sitting in front of the bastard."  He quietly wept another few moments until he had the ability to try and compose himself.

"They all kept on telling her parents she shouldn't see me, that I was a bad influence on her, that I would corrupt her" Yigal continued, the hardness returning to his voice.

"Who are 'they' Yigal?" Sally asked softly, knowing already what his answer would be.

"All those self-righteous bitches who have nothing better to do than mind every body's business but their own.  You know one of them once had the gall to say to me to my face that Avital was better off in heaven that to end up married to a man like me!" his voice cracking again.

She was so torn.  On one hand she wanted so much to stand up and hold him, the caress him, to physically absorb some of the anger, some of the hurt.  On the other she knew it would be wrong to do so. Also somewhere deep down inside she realized that Yigal would not want her to do that.  As much as this minute he would this minute drink up her compassion and affection like a man dying of thirst, eventually it would return to haunt her.  What to do?  How to comfort him?

"It hurts eh?" she said, a little tinge of insolence in her voice.

Responding to her shift in tone, Yigal responded with an angry "Yes! What do you think?"

"I think," said Sally, speaking slowly and weighing her words, fully cognizant that this moment might end any hope of a potential relationship with this pain racked man who was openly crying in front of her. "I think," she said, repeating herself, "that you are letting Avital down."

"What kind of none-sense are you talking about," retorted Yigal, the anger rising in his voice. "Who the hell are you and how can you speak for Avital,  a woman you never even met, let alone knew!"

"You're right," answered Sally, "I didn't know her, but I know what she wanted for you!"  Yigal looked at her silently, implying she was as mad as he if she thought she could speak for Avital.  "Everything you yourself said makes it so clear that Avital wanted you to be happy, to live life, to realize your dreams.  She never gave up on you no matter how much trouble you made yourself, she believed in you!" There was nothing Yigal could say to discount any of her words, they all rung true.  "Well you are letting her down because in some ways you have stopped believing in yourself!"

"What do think Yigal," challenged Sally, "Would Avital want you to be crippled with grief nine years after her death?"

"Its eight.  Its eight years."  He said, his face turned down towards the tear stained floor.  "You're right.  I'm so immature and plain stupid to wallow in self pity after all these years."

"You hurt," she said.  "Its real and honest to hurt, but there comes a time when you have to heal, the have to look forward and not back.  You have to take the best of what you've been given and use it to build a future.  It sounds to me like that is Avital's legacy to you," said Sally, wondering where she herself was getting all this insight from, but letting go of her apprehensions and letting the words flow out from her inner most being. "Start believing you can be happy.  Start looking forward to love and life.  It doesn't mean forgetting her, only changing the way she affects your present and future, not as an anchor but as a compass.  You can do it, Yigal, Avital believed you could ..." and Sally finally catching up with her own words and their import to herself, finally blurted out, " and I believe you can."

Yigal stared at her, sitting crossed legged on the floor, her cheeks stained with the tears of his shared pain and something more.  Sally said something but he wasn't certain what, something that touched him to his core and started to  wash away the bitterness and anger.  It was still there.  It would be there for a long time, but suddenly he realized it didn't have to be.  He could change, could banish it, if he only wanted to.

"Thanks!" Yigal said to her in English.  The first time she had heard him speak to her directly in that language.  "Todah rabbah!" (Many thanks) he said again, this time in Hebrew.

Getting up, he collected the books he'd dropped to the floor when he had collapsed on the bed. "I guess if we're going on this walk with my parents we should get some rest," he intoned in a voice much more like the man she was used to hearing.

As he turned toward the door Sally could see out of the corner of her eye the slight shiver of movement as the door closed shut just an inch or two.  "I wonder who that was?" she thought.  When he walked out to the hall she quietly said to him, "Thank you!"

"You're thanking me?" asked Yigal, echoing her English remark.

"Yes.  Thank you for opening up and sharing with me.  That meant a lot to me!  Get some rest!" and with a final "Shabbat Shalom" she closed his bedroom door on him and flew herself with a running leap onto his bed where she let out all the pent up tears she had held back while he bared his heart. "Where, oh where is this going?" she wondered, as she finally, gradually fell asleep. 
 

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