It was a warm day in Jerusalem and our Bubie and Zada were coming to visit. This was a special day because our parents agreed to let my Bubie and Zada take us to the zoo. Normally we are not allowed to go to places where there might be a lot of people who are not modestly dressed, but it was a school day for most of the children and so they did not feel that it would be too crowded.

We had to take two cars because, thank God, there are so many of us. All the older children always want to ride in Zada’s car because it feels like he drives faster than Bubie, but I’m not sure if that is true. Also, Zada likes to sing, and we all love to hear Zada singing. He has a wonderful voice, and he makes us laugh.

We arrived at the Tisch family zoological gardens in Jerusalem https://www.itraveljerusalem.com/ent/tisch-family-zoological-gardens-the-biblical-zoo/ late in the afternoon with only a few hours to see all of the animals. It is impossible to see everything in one day there. We had to make some choices and we began to run first to the pond, which is at the entrance to the gardens.

The blue-green water was covered with patches of leaves and bubbling with fish, orange, white and black. Afloat on the calm waters of the pond were beautiful birds with many combinations of colors, browns, whites, and pinks. We threw pieces of bread into the pond to see who would be the first to retrieve it, the birds, or the fish. It was quite a competition between them!

Suddenly, one of my sisters pointed to the sprawling trees above the pond. There was a creature swinging from branch to branch, like we swing on the bars at the playground. “A monkey!”, Rivke yelled with surprise and delight. “I want to see lions and tigers and more monkeys and zebras and elephants and giraffes”, each of us yelled out a different animal. We could not imagine that those pictures, which we had seen in our books in black and white, were real, alive, in color and walking around in the very same place we were, at that very moment!

The race was on! We had so much to see and so little time. Who knew when we would again have the opportunity to come to this magical jungle of creatures again? Each animal drew us to their beauty, their size, their sounds, and their colors. The lions roared for us, the chimpanzees performed for us, the elephants stopped for us and threw dirt all around and the birds sang for us. Each animal had a message, if you listened to them closely. "I am not like you, but I share this planet with you and you are responsible for my survival, just as I am important to your survival. We are all put here for a reason. See my majesty, celebrate my uniqueness, and enjoy my behaviors. I sing, I dance, I roar, I laugh, I fight, and I play. Sometimes I am quiet, sometimes I want to be alone, sometimes I want to be with my family, sometimes I have more fun watching you, than you have watching me!"

I learned today that this world is far more exotic than what I experience in my day-to-day life. Every animal, bird, and reptile that I saw today caused us all to open our eyes, our ears and our mouths and say, “WOW”! what a gift our world is. What a wonder it all is. The colors, the textures, the bodies of each of the animals, created as part of a world that God has given us to take care of. When I read that some creatures are losing their homes because of things that people do to hurt the environment, I was so sad. How can we not take our task seriously? We are truly the guardians of this planet!

I decided that I would learn about ways we can help preserve the beauty and variety of our world. How when my children grow-up and we want to take them to the zoo or even on a safari in Africa, I can be proud that we helped to ensure the survival of many of these species of animals and the habitats in which they live.

My Bubie and Zada open our eyes to many possibilities, opportunities, and wonders in the world, but this trip to the zoo opened our eyes to the most stunning creatures that God has placed on our earth and for these, I will always be grateful!

Here is the link to the new book my Bubie wrote- Wow! A Child's Prayer to Wonder and Gratitude inspired by our first trip to the zoo. It is also the link to other books my Bubie has written.
​https://www.tellmeastorybubie.com/bubies-books.html

As Yossi was walking to the store, he saw an older boy poking a stick at a cat hiding under a porch. Yossi walked up to the boy and told him that he was not following the commandments against Tsar Baalei Chaim (cruelty towards animals).  The boy looked up at Yossi and began to hit him with the stick that he had used to poke and hurt the cat.

At first, Yossi used his hands to cover his head and his face. Then, he became angry and grabbed the stick. Yossi was about to begin hitting the boy with the stick that he had taken forcefully out of his hands. He stopped, took a deep breath, looked into the boy’s frightened eyes, and broke the stick in half over his knee.

“What did you think you were doing?” Yossi yelled. “Cruelty to animals is a big offence. Then, turning the stick on me because I was trying to stop you from hurting that poor little cat, what is the matter with you?”

The boy, realizing that he was no longer in danger of being hit by Yossi and the cat, seeing that she was no longer in danger of being poked by the boy, both turned around and ran as fast as they could away from Yossi and away from the place that caused them so much fear and grief.

That week at David’s, Yossi told him the story. “I don’t know why I was able to stop myself from hitting that boy. I was angry and then scared and then angry again. I tried to stop and think about what I was feeling, and I think in that second, I was able to restrain from hitting that boy with the stick that he had used to hurt me and the cat. I really don’t understand the need to be mean. It puzzles me.”

David, as usual, listened to everything that Yossi had to say. In the end, he praised him for controlling his anger. “To control the emotion of anger, which is one of the strongest emotions we as humans have, takes courage and maturity. I am very proud of you Yossi.”

David continued, “you know that God does not like us to lose our tempers. We have many instances in the Tanach (Bible) where people are punished for losing their tempers, even our great teacher, Moshe Rabenu, who hits the rock to get water from it rather than speaking to it. Some say, this was one of the reasons God did not let him into the land of Israel.”

“It is a lifetime challenge for many people to keep from getting angry, but it looks like you are able, when it is important, to stop from hurting another person, even in the heat of anger,” added David.  “This makes me more confident that you will not use your “special power” to harm another living being.”

Yossi was happy to hear David saying this. He believed that he could be in control of his anger when it counted the most; however, what happened to cause him to laser words off walls and replace them with others? If it wasn’t caused by anger, then what did cause it?”

Yossi expressed this to David and David responded, “Yossi, with your permission, I would like to speak with the reading specialist who taught you how to focus your eyes to help you learn how to read. Maybe he can give us some insight, in other words some ideas about his method and exactly what it causes the eye muscles to do.”

“That is fine with me”, said Yossi. I have his phone number and I am happy to bring you to his office. It is in the old city and a little confusing to find.”

“Wonderful,” said David. "I will call him and maybe next week we can visit him together. Until then, continue to write down your feelings. Especially the angry ones, during this week.”

“See you next week”, said Yossi as he walked out the door. “This was a great meeting”, he thought to himself. “Maybe I really do have a gift that can be used only for good!”

The following week, Yossi came to David’s office ready for him to tell him that they had a meeting with the reading specialist. Instead, when David opened the door for him, he said, “Yossi, I tried several times to reach the reading specialist and then I called the number for information. They do not have this number listed nor do they have his name listed anywhere in the country. I asked the operator to search past records and there is no one with that name, Avreimi Rachmi, in all of Israel, nor has there ever been someone in Jerusalem, listed as a reading specialist, with that name.”

“That can’t be!” exclaimed Yossi. “I went to him for a whole year. We worked almost an hour every week and then he sent me home with exercises. I think that I still have some of the exercises that he wrote down for me to do, at home.”

“Well,” said David, “why don’t we take a little walk over to where his office is, or was, and see what we find. Were you in contact with him after you finished your reading lessons?” David asked.

“Not really”, recalled Yossi, “he told me that he did all that he could do for me and the rest was up to me, to continue the exercises and reading. Only with hard work, would I become the ‘person I was meant to be’, he said. When I think about it, that was kind of a strange thing to say, to become the ‘person I was meant to be’. You would think that he would say something like to become a good reader, or a good student.”

“Let’s go,” said David. “Now I am becoming very curious. I want to meet this Avreimi if we can find him!”

David and Yossi walked through the streets and alleyways of the Old City of Jerusalem. Yossi seemed very sure of where he was going, after all, for a full year he had gone to Avreimi’s office to learn his method of strengthening the eye muscles and focusing on the words to help him read. Yossi was sure that the exercises had helped because he saw his progress in the Cheder and he had been accepted to the Yeshiva (Junior high and high school) since he was able to pass the tests. He never would have been able to do this if he had not learned with Avreimi and practiced his reading and eye exercises every day.

As he and David approached the place where Yossi was sure that he would find Avreimi’s office there was a small store selling religious items. Yossi walked in. “Excuse me. I am looking for Avreimi Rachmi. He had an eye clinic here where I learned for a year,” he said.

“Welcome”, answered the man behind the counter. “We are the Leiter brothers, and this has been our shop for five generations. We have sold religious items from this store for over 100 years. Sometimes they were religious items for Muslims, sometimes for Christians and other times for Jews. We carry many important objects that people from all the three main Religions in this area use. There has never been an eye clinic here and I have no idea who your friend Avreimi is, but I am happy to show you some beautiful Kippot (head coverings for religious Jewish males)!”

“This can’t be,” exclaimed Yossi. “I am sure this is the place where I came to learn how to strengthen my eye muscles and become a reader, I’m sure of it!”

“Let’s look around this area a little, Yossi. Maybe things have changed over the past couple of years since you came here and with all these little streets and alleys, anyone could make a mistake,” David calmly said.
Yossi and David walked around for almost an hour. Yossi always came back to the same place, the small store with religious items.

“See,”, said Yossi. “That blue gate in front of the house over there. That was one of the signposts that helped me to find this place when I first started coming. And look over there, the tile on the wall that has the drawing of the deer baked on it. All of these were markers that pointed to Avreimi’s office so that I would never get lost.”

“It seems that you didn’t get lost”, said David, “but maybe Avreimi did.”

“What do you mean?” asked Yossi.

“Well, maybe Avreimi was here for a short period of time, with a specific 'mission' to accomplish and after he finished his job, he left, disappeared, until he was called on for completing another mission.”

“I don’t understand”, said Yossi. “What do you mean, ‘left, disappeared’? People do not just disappear. Maybe something bad happened to him, God forbid!  Maybe we need to call the police! I am worried about him. He was a very special man, and he took it upon himself to help me. I’m not even sure if he was paid regularly, but he was always there for me! Can you imagine the gift of helping someone to learn to read? There is no greater gift! Especially for a boy like me who was put at a table in first grade with toys for little children while the other children learned together! A boy like me who was made fun of for being stupid!” Yossi cried.

Yossi said to David, “I never told you the story about how one day I was walking home with the boys, and they were beginning to read signs and writing on the wall. One boy said, ‘Oh look what this says.’ Everyone stopped and looked at the wall. ‘It says Yossi is a stupid boy who should leave the Cheder and learn how to cook with the girls!’ Everyone began to laugh, even the boys who I thought were my friends! Instead of going home, I ran as fast as I could to Avreimi’s clinic, knocked on the door and fell on the sofa crying. I wanted to run away forever!” Yossi was crying as he told this story to David.

“We have to try to find him!” Yossi shouted.

David tried to calm Yossi down. Then he said to him, “Yossi, we may not be able to find Avreimi. Think about what gifts he gave you. Maybe it was more than teaching you how to read.”

Yossi stopped sobbing and looked up at David. “What are you saying? I don’t understand. What other gifts could he have given me?”

As the expression goes, a light turned on, and Yossi remembered why he was meeting with David in the first place, the laser beam eyes that erased the hateful words on the walls and replaced them with words of loving kindness.

That evening Yossi, David and Yossi’s Rabbi sat in the Rabbi’s office discussing all the events that had happened over the last two months and even before that, when Yossi was learning with Avreimi.

Yossi’s Rabbi turned to Yossi and David and said, “Hashem (God) works in mysterious ways. Many times, He sends people to us who change our lives. Even those who are mean and hateful to us are part of a bigger plan to make the world a better place for everyone. It seems to me, Yossi, that you are a very important part of God’s plan for making our world a better place. Your 'special power', which God willing will always be used for the Good, has the capacity to turn hateful words into words of loving kindness. Imagine if all over the walls of our neighborhood, instead of reading words that caused us to want to separate from or hurt someone who is different, they read words that encouraged us to love one another and therefore look for what we have in common.”

David added, “I think that your Rabbi is right Yossi. We don’t know the reason that you have this special gift, but words are very powerful, and the written word is the most powerful of all words. Written words have built and destroyed nations. They have the power to create or destroy. Reading is the key to entering the world of the written world. It is one of the most precious gifts. All of us remember who taught us to read and the feeling of reading stories on our own. Your Avreimi, gave you an additional gift, a rare gift. You have the power within you to always use it for Good. You have the power to change the world with your words of love and kindness.”

Yossi listened closely to what his Rabbi and David said. He thought about the responsibility he had been given, not just the power. That night, Yossi had a dream. Avreimi came to him in his dream. Yossi cried out, “Avreimi, we looked for you everywhere and we could not find you. Where have you gone? Are you well? Did you give me the gift of the laser beam eyes?”

Yossi had so many questions but finally stopped and listened. Avreimi looked into Yossi’s eyes. “You have done well my pupil”, he said. “I knew that you would work hard on your exercises, and I understood how badly you wanted to learn to read. It wasn’t just so your classmates would stop making fun of you, it was that you truly wanted to read, to learn, to grow. ‘This is a special boy,’ I said to myself. 'This is a boy who could grow up to be someone who will help unite the Jewish people. This is a boy who will be able to control his temper and use all of his gifts for the Good'.”

Then, Avreimi stopped talking, he placed his hands over Yossi’s head, and he gave him a blessing. “Go with God my Yossi. May your light always shine bright and bring light where there is darkness and blessings where there are curses. Always remember that you are loved and that is the power that changed you and will help you to change the world.”

When Yossi woke up that morning, he called David on the phone. “David, Avreimi came to me in a dream. It was he who gave me this power. I must use it carefully and bring light where there is darkness. I hope that we can continue to meet so that you might guide me as I grow and discover what my true purpose here is.”

“With much happiness”, David said. “We will learn together and who knows, maybe someday Avreimi will return, and we will sit with him and learn the true meaning of the words that we read.”

His Rabbi introduced him, “Yossi, this is David. David works with many people helping them to control their emotions, especially anger. I have told David about you and your special ability, and he would like, with your permission, to meet with you for a while, once a week, to help you to develop the skills you need, to be in control of your feelings.”

Yossi looked at his Rabbi, then at David and again at his Rabbi. He was confused that a person, who was not dressed like the Rabbi, seemed to be so respected by the Rabbi. This sense of curiosity encouraged Yossi to want to meet with David and to find out who he was and why the Rabbi was recommending him to help Yossi with his situation.

“If my Rabbi says that you can help me, then I will try”, said Yossi.

“Wonderful”, answered David.  “Let’s get started right now!”

Yossi told David what had happened to him and one other time, more recently, when he saw the most hateful words written on a stone wall by his home and once again, he felt the lasers shooting out from his eyes. 
“When I regained my eyesight, the words had been replaced by words of loving kindness”, Yossi whispered. “I am just afraid that if I see someone or something happening between people, that makes me angry, I could actually hurt someone with these eyes of mine.”

David listened carefully to everything that Yossi told him. He asked him if he would feel comfortable showing him some of the places where he thought that he had changed the writing on the wall. Yossi was less enthusiastic about walking around his neighborhood with David as people might stare at him with this man who is not a part of their community.

“Yossi, you could give me a tour of your neighborhood, as if I were a tourist here.” David realized that Yossi might feel uncomfortable walking around with him.

“Ok”, said Yossi. “We can try it. If someone asks me, I will say that I am just showing you around.”

Yossi and David left the Yeshiva and began their “tour” of the neighborhood. The first place they went, David saw what was written on the wall and it was words of kindness, which expressed love for your neighbor. The
next place Yossi took him, the words on the wall had been painted over. There wasn’t anything written in its place, but they were simply covered with white paint.

The third place, there was writing on the wall; however, as they came closer, they could see that the writing was in red paint. It was covering something written in black paint. The words were evil and hateful. As Yossi stared at the red letters and read them slowly, he began to shake.

David watched what was happening but decided not to interfere and to let Yossi continue. Yossi stepped back and his eyes began to turn red, like the letters on the wall. White light beams began shooting from his eyes towards the wall, burning up all the red letters. When the letters were all erased, another beam, more of a yellow light, began shooting from Yossi’s eyes. All the words of hate were transformed into words of love. When the writing was completed, Yossi fell back with his eyes closed. It took a few minutes before he opened his eyes, looked at the wall, then at David, then he began to regain his strength and stand up.

“Yossi”, asked David, “do you remember what happened here?”  “Yes,” answered Yossi. “I remember everything. I just am not in control of it.”

David walked with Yossi back to the Yeshiva. They went into the Rabbi’s office and David said to them, “I had a hard time believing what Yossi told me until I saw it happen with my own eyes! Does anyone else know about this, Yossi?” David asked.

“No”, Yossi answered. “But I think it is only a matter of time before someone sees me doing this. Our neighborhood has a lot of people, and it won’t be long before someone sees me, especially since I can’t seem to control this. Can you help me to stop doing this, David?” Yossi pleaded.

David thought for a few minutes. “Yossi, before we can solve this problem, we need to try and understand what exactly the problem is here? On the one hand, what you are doing is actually very beautiful. You are erasing the hateful words on the walls of your neighborhood and replacing them with words of loving kindness. That is not a problem. It is a solution to a problem, of evil words against others! “

Yossi thought about what David said, “yes, this could be good until someone sees me doing it and tells others and I become like a boy with ‘superpowers’ that everyone makes fun of!”

“Well, that is a possibility, Yossi, but there are many other possibilities. You could become someone people admire and look up to for helping to bring a love of one another to our divided community. That is another possibility.”

“Do you think that could really happen?” Asked Yossi. 

“It is possible”, answered David. “However, we still haven’t figured out what the problem is that we have here. When I watched those laser beams coming from your eyes, erasing the paint on the wall, and engraving new letters into the wall, I wondered, what would happen if those lasers were aimed at a person and not a wall? Could they injure someone? Does this only happen when you read something that makes you angry or does it happen whenever you are angry? If this only happens when you read something that makes you angry, we just need to make sure that no one is near the letters, but, if it happens any time that you are angry, this is a much bigger problem.”

“How can we find out?” asked the Rabbi.

“We will need to do some experiments”, answered David. “In the meantime, Yossi. Please do not tell anyone else about this. Let’s see what causes these beams to come out of your eyes before we worry about other problems. It was very nice to meet you Yossi. Let’s meet again next week at the same time in my office, which is not far from here.”

“I will take you to David’s office the next time”, the Rabbi said. “We will all work together to try to understand this special gift that Hashem (God) has given to you Yossi.”

Yossi left the Rabbi’s office. He felt better that the Rabbi and David would help him with his “problem”; however, he had a feeling that he was the one who would really have to get this under control and make sure that he would never use this “power” to hurt others. He would pray that Hashem would help him to control his laser beam eyes.

The following week, Yossi went to David’s office after Yeshiva. David wanted to ask Yossi some questions and listen to his answers. They were questions about his family and his friends. Yossi’s favorite games, trips, foods. Then David looked at Yossi and asked, “Yossi, do you become angry easily with family members or friends?”  Yossi didn’t even have to think about that answer, “No”, he said. “I am very fortunate that I have a lot of patience with my younger sisters and even the boys in my school who sometimes annoy people. Sometimes I get sad or frustrated. When I couldn’t read in first grade and all the other boys had started reading, I felt frustrated and stupid.”

“What did your parents do?”, asked David. “They sent me to a reading specialist who had me doing exercises with my eye muscles. The problem is with the muscles connecting the eyes to the brain. The specialist had me wear special glasses in addition to doing the eye exercises.”

“Did this help?” asked David

“It did help, but I am still not a strong reader. Reading is hard for me and so often I memorize things, so I don’t have to read the passages or prayers that we say often. Now, however, I notice that I am reading more and more. For example, I read street signs and store signs that I used to ignore. This is why I noticed the hateful writing on the walls in the streets.”

“Let’s go back to how you felt when you became angry after reading what was written on the walls” David asked. “Close your eyes, relax and try to think back to how you felt when you saw those hateful words.”

Yossi sat back in the chair, closed his eyes, relaxed, and tried to put himself back in front of the wall with the words. At first, he couldn’t remember anything. David told him not to try so hard, just let his mind gently think about one of those times.

Suddenly, Yossi jumped up from the chair, looked at David and said, “I remember! I remember that I was thinking about a boy in my Cheder in first grade who made fun of me because the teacher put me in a chair away from all the children reading together and gave me toys to play with, as if I were a child in Gan (nursery school). He would call me names and tell me that I was stupid, and I should go home and learn how to cook with my sisters. I wanted to punch him and yell at him and tell him that he was the stupid one!”

“In our school”, Yossi continued, “if you started a fight with someone you could get hit by the teacher. The teacher would blame me because the boy spoke to me softly, with his hateful words. I was the only one who had heard him. So, I kept my mouth shut, but what I really wanted to do was to keep his mouth shut. Why did he have to be so mean to me, I thought to myself? I started not feeling good and telling my parents that I wasn’t feeling well enough to go to school.”

“What happened then?”, asked David.

“My parents found someone to begin to help me with my reading, after the teacher told my parents that I wasn’t learning and maybe I needed a special school.”

“Did you think about this boy while you were reading the hateful words on the walls, Yossi? asked David.

“Yes. I remember thinking about him and suddenly my eyes became very focused, as they sometimes did while I was doing my eye exercises. The muscles in my eyes became hard and then I felt as if I lost my eyesight. I don’t know how long it lasted, but when it was over, I was on the ground, tired and confused. Then I remembered to look up at the wall and I saw different words from what was originally written there.”

“My first thoughts”, added Yossi, were that I must not have correctly read what was written. However, the next two times, when I saw the writing, I paid special attention and read the words twice, focusing the way the reading specialist had taught me to.”

After listening to Yossi, David had an idea. David had a book in his office of many pictures of people in many situations. In one of the pictures, there was a boy making fun of another boy. David asked Yossi to look at that picture for several minutes. When he saw that nothing was going to happen, his eyes didn’t change and begin to shoot laser beams, he asked Yossi how the picture made him feel.

“I see in this picture what happened to me in first grade. It makes me sad and a little angry too. I am grateful that I can read better now, but I will never forget how hurt I was and how stupid that boy made me feel!” Yossi expressed to David.

“What is interesting to me”, responded David, “is that looking at the picture didn’t cause you to shoot the laser beams at the boy who was bullying the other boy. You expressed some strong feelings about anger and being hurt, but that didn’t result in destroying the picture. That is a good sign”, he added.

“Yossi, this week I would like you to concentrate on your feelings. When you see something happening around you, think about how it makes you feel. If there are things that you see that make you angry, I want you to write them down in a notebook or diary and we will discuss them next week. Do you think that you can do this?” David asked.

“Yes, I think I can”, answered Yossi. He then said goodbye to David and thought about his “assignment” for the week.

(Yossi and the Laser Beam Eyes- part III- will appear next week.)

My Bubie gets upset when she comes to our home in Mea Shearim and sees writing on the walls that say hateful things about other Jews. She knows that most people do not agree with what is written but, every time she comes, the writing is still there. This story is one about the power of words, to hurt or to heal. It is in three parts, one for the next three weeks. My Bubie says words are more powerful than weapons and we must always be careful with how we use them.
Fradella

​Part I
There was once a boy named Yossi. Yossi loved to play, he loved to laugh, and he loved to learn. The only problem was he had trouble reading and when it is difficult to read, it can also be difficult to learn.  His parents sent him to special doctors to check his eyes and special tutors to help him to learn how to read. All these things did make a difference, but it did not really solve the problem and so he continued to struggle with his reading.

One day, while Yossi was walking home, he noticed something written on the wall outside the building across from his school. Normally Yossi did not stop to read notices or graffiti on walls because he needed to stop and concentrate in order to read, and he was usually in a rush. However, there was something about the writing that attracted Yossi’s attention, and so he paused, looked at it and read it.

What he read was a hateful statement about another group in his community. Yossi was bothered by what he read and almost wished that his reading would not be improving if it meant he could now read things that hurt other people. Yossi stood closer to the words on the wall, stared at them and began to feel angry.

Without Yossi intending it, something began to happen to his eyes. Suddenly, he could not see; everything became white and bright, and he felt his eyes vibrating. Something began shooting out from his eyeballs! It happened so quickly that Yossi did not have time to become scared. He fell backwards, with his eyes shut tight, and slowly he began to open his eyelids. 

At first it was difficult to focus, but then everything became clear, and Yossi regained his normal eyesight. “What happened to me?” He thought. It was a strange feeling, and, in some ways, Yossi felt afraid, except it happened very quickly and he regained the eyesight he lost before this strange incident. He felt fine. He did not hurt himself when he fell backwards, so he stood up, brushed himself off and decided to continue walking home.

Just as he was about to turn around, he looked at the writing on the wall again, focused his eyes and much to his surprise, the words that had been written before, which were hateful, had turned to words of love! Now, instead of saying, “Death to…..” the words read, “Love….. with all of your heart.”

How could that have happened? The writing was in a non-erasable black paint on a stone wall! The only way that those words could have changed would be to paint over them in white paint and then write over the white paint with new black paint.  There was no white paint and those words looked like the original ones that were written on the stones of the wall.

Yossi began to doubt what he had originally read. “Perhaps,” he thought to himself, “my reading has not improved that much, and I misread what was written from the beginning.”

In any case, Yossi was much happier with what was written on the wall now and he decided that he had made a reading mistake (not the first time that it had happened to him) and he went on his way. He wanted to get home, eat dinner, and go to his clarinet lesson.

The next few days were uneventful for Yossi. He went to Yeshiva, went to the Shul (Synagogue) to pray, learned with his Chevruta (his learning partner), and practiced his clarinet. One evening, on the way home from his clarinet lesson, Yossi noticed writing on the stone wall across from where his clarinet teacher lived. As he approached the writing on the wall, he noticed another negative sentence about another group of Jews. Yossi knew that the holiday of Tisha B’Av was soon approaching and that it commemorated the loss of two Holy Temples of the Jews in the city of Jerusalem. The Rabbis agreed that the Temples were destroyed because of the hatred that different groups of Jews had for one another and here Yossi was faced with the same situation!  On the wall, in black paint was a horrible sentence calling for the death of Jews who did not agree with other Jews!

Suddenly, Yossi could not control himself. Anger welled up inside of him, his eyes only saw white flashes and he felt something strong shooting out from his eyes towards the wall. Before he even knew what was happening, he fell backwards, eyes closed, and he felt very tired. When after a few minutes he opened his eyes, he looked up at the wall and instead of some hateful words he saw words encouraging his fellow Jews to accept one another and embrace each other with love, not hate.

“What was going on here?” Yossi thought to himself. He had always had problems with his eyes, focusing and reading. “Who was doing this to him?” He wondered. Yossi, knew for sure that he was the one changing the writing on the wall, and he looked around to see if anyone else had seen what had happened. There did not seem to be anyone else around, which he was grateful for, but still he felt nervous, uncertain, and even afraid, because of this strange beam that came from his eyes without any warning.

Yossi thought about the two times that this had happened to him, trying to figure out what brought it on and if he could in any way control it. He remembered reading the messages on the walls and becoming angry because they were hateful messages towards other Jews. Yossi did not agree with every group of Jews in Israel, but he also felt that to show hatred towards fellow Jews was not the answer. He was not sure what the answer was, maybe meeting and talking with each other or maybe not meeting, staying away from each other. But he knew, in his heart, hatred was not the answer.

Yossi was not a person who was known to lose his temper easily. Sometimes his sisters made him angry. He might yell or chase them but never hurt them. He remembered that before he saw the bright, shining light in his eyes he felt great anger, even a kind of rage, which was not a familiar emotion for Yossi.

Yossi decided that he needed to talk to his Rabbi and try to discover what was happening to him and why. The next day, he went to the Rabbi’s office to make an appointment to meet with him. He was not sure that he could explain what had happened to him and he was also concerned that the Rabbi would not believe him. Would you believe someone who told you that his eyes became like laser beams and re-wrote words in black paint on stone walls? It is kind of unbelievable!

The Rabbi set an appointment for the next day to meet with Yossi and he decided that he would just tell his Rabbi what he had experienced, what he saw, before his eyes saw bright shining lights, and what he saw on the wall after his eyesight returned. What could he do? He could only tell the truth of what he experienced.
The next day, during a break from his Yeshiva studies, Yossi walked to the Rabbi’s office, knocked on the door and went in.

“Welcome,” said his Rabbi. “What can I do for you, Yossi?” He asked.

Yossi sat down and began to explain to the Rabbi what had occurred the last two times he had seen hateful writing on the walls of his neighborhood, how it had angered him, and how he seemed to lose control as some kind of laser beam shot out from his eyes.

The Rabbi listened silently as Yossi told his story. He did not show surprise or any other kind of emotion, he just listened. When Yossi finished talking, the Rabbi looked into his eyes and asked,
“Yossi, this beam that comes from your eyes, has it ever come out when you are angry at a person?”

“No, God forbid!” Answered Yossi. “I don’t know what I would do if I hurt someone. I don’t think that I could ever forgive myself!”

“Alright. Let us not worry about this now. There are stories of people who have special kinds of power. We read about them in the stories in the Bible and in the Rabbinic literature. The problem with a special power, is that it can be used for good purposes or evil purposes. It is especially dangerous if the person who has the power is not in control of it. Do you understand what I am saying to you Yossi?”

“Yes”, Yossi answered. On the one hand he was relieved that his Rabbi believed him, but on the other hand, he now understood that whatever was happening to him, when he became angry, he was not in control and the results could be very devastating. Yossi could really end up seriously hurting someone!

“What should I do?” Yossi asked his Rabbi. “How can I get rid of this power? How can I make it go away?”

“I have not had experience in these things, Yossi, however, from what I have read this is not something you can get rid of. This is something, a gift or a curse, that you must learn to live with and learn to control.”

Yossi became quiet and sad. He sat in front of his Rabbi and could not think of what to say. Finally, he looked up and asked, “What can I do to learn to control this?”

His Rabbi thought and responded, “you said this occurs when you feel angry, very angry. Perhaps the answer is to learn how to control your anger, Yossi. If you can control your anger, then you might be able to control the laser beams. There are two positive things I see here. One is that you are not a person who easily becomes angry, that is very good. In addition, you do not only erase or destroy the hateful writing, but you also replace the hateful words with words of love and unity. This is a very good sign.”

Yossi thought about what the Rabbi said, and it caused him to become calmer and more hopeful that he would learn how to control this ability and only use it for the good.

“I think Yossi, that I would like to speak with a friend of mine who may be able to help. In the meantime, let us keep this between each other. I do not think that it is a good idea to speak to others about what you have discovered about yourself.  I am happy that you have come to me. We will work on this together. Now go home, do you homework, practice your clarinet, and try not to look up at the walls in the street to read what is written, at least for now. We will talk again soon.”

Yossi was happy that he had spoken to his Rabbi. Now he did not feel alone with his problem. He was still worried about hurting someone, but he tried to focus on his work, his music and all the blessings which he had in his life. 
(Part II of Yossi and the Laser Beam Eyes will be published next week)

Sara wanted a camera so badly that she dreamed about having it, thought about it every day and whenever someone asked her what she wanted, she answered the same thing each and every time. She had wanted a camera since the first time her Auntie brought her camera to take pictures of her and her siblings to send to their grandparents. She was so fascinated that this small little metal box with a funny flash could, when you pushed a button, freeze the image it focused on and save it in a tiny, square screen. Oh, after that she knew she had to have one of those magical image makers. Whenever anyone in the family brought their camera, she would scoop it up and run inside and outside snapping away at whatever interested her.  

Sara was so excited. Her parents told her that for her 12th birthday she could have a camera. This was six months away and she had decided to research where to go to purchase her “dream birthday gift”.  She spoke to friends who owned cameras to get recommendations, she visited camera shops near her home, and she asked her Bubie and Zaidi to look on the computer for the best price for a camera. All of this work would take some time, but she was sure it would all be worth it when that glorious day arrived in which she would own her very own camera! 

Every day, after school, Sara began visiting the camera shops in her neighborhood. She learned a lot about the different types of cameras, from mirrorless cameras, point and shoot cameras, bridge cameras, instant cameras, action cameras, rugged cameras and others which she knew no one could afford to buy a 12-year-old for her birthday. She wondered if it made sense to buy a regular point and shoot camera or an instant camera that printed her pictures immediately after taking the picture. The paper used to print the picture can be expensive. With a regular point and shoot camera you have to buy a memory card to save all of the pictures you take. Then, you need to take it to a photo store to develop the pictures and that too can be expensive. 

Sara pondered her choices. She knew that whatever camera she received for her birthday, she would somehow need money to develop her pictures, so she needed to take that into consideration when deciding what camera she wanted to buy.  

“By the time I turn 12, I should have this all figured out”, thought Sara to herself. This was actually part of the enjoyable aspect of her receiving her gift, learning about what would be best for her to buy. The pursuit of something you dream about can sometimes be as good or even better than the gift itself, her Bubie had once told her. 

The day of Sara’s birthday was soon arriving and she had decided to buy a point to shoot camera. She thought that she would purchase a few memory cards so that she would not run out of space too quickly, for all of her pictures. She was prepared to take other money that she received for her birthday and Chanukah to pay for the developing of her photographs. 

On Sara’s birthday, her Bubie and Zaidi took her to the camera store in her neighborhood and there they bought her camera! You have never seen such an excited and happy child as Sara was, on the day she had realized her dream of owning her very own camera! “Nothing is better than having a dream and seeing it fulfilled,” thought Sara to herself. 

The very next day, Sara, with camera in hand, went out to shoot some photos. At first, when she looked into the lens, she saw her subject and simply, clicked. There on the screen was her photo, “too exciting she thought!” However, something began to change with each picture she took. 

At first, she didn’t pay attention to what she was looking at through the lens, but then, she could not help but pay attention. “What am I seeing?” She asked herself. “This is strange, this is something more than what I see when I am looking at someone or something not through the lens of my camera.” 

To explain this phenomenon, we must go back to the first time it occurred. Sara was looking at a young boy walking to school. She raised her camera, looked into the lens and suddenly the boy turned around, stopped and stared directly into the camera. His eyes were red and sunken into his cheeks. He looked like someone who had not eaten for many days. He tried to smile, he tried with all of his heart but then a tear rolled down on his cheek and he turned and ran away. Sara followed him to his school. She stopped when he turned around and ducked behind a wall so he wouldn’t notice that he was being followed. He went into the school, one of the boys waved to him and called him Yisroel and he waved back with a smile. Sara turned around to go back home.  

​She suddenly understood what she had to do. She went into the small grocery store near the school, bought a sandwich, a juice, a candy bar and an apple. She put it all in a small plastic bag and returned to the school. When she arrived, she went to the office and told the secretary sitting behind the desk that Yisroel had forgotten his lunch at home and she, his sister, was asked to bring it to him on her way to her school. The secretary gave her a curious look, took the bag with the food, and told her that she would make sure that he got it. “That was lucky”, thought Sara, “there seems to be only one Yisroel at this school” and off she went without thinking too much about what had just happened. 

The next afternoon, Sara took her camera out of the house, looking for more interesting subjects to photograph. This time she came upon a beautiful black cat licking her paws. “Ah, this will make a beautiful picture”, said Sara to herself. The cat was lying on the light stone of the cobblestone street and the background was a painted green fence in the front of a small apartment house. Sara carefully and quietly pointed her lens, hoping not to scare the creature away, and suddenly, she looked in the lens and the cat was staring into the camera, eyes bright green and she began to “Meow, meow, meow”.  Sara suddenly realized that she understood, at some deep level inside of herself, what the cat was saying.  

Sara ran to the street across the way where a veterinarian lives and asked her to follow her. They arrived at the place where the cat was still sitting, licking its paw quietly, not making any sounds. The vet began to examine the cat while the whole time, Sara was taking picture after picture, clicking away. The vet turned to Sara and asked, “How did you know that this cat has a broken leg? She is not moving and not making any noise.” Sara was stunned! She had no idea how she had known that the cat was injured. At this point, she had still not connected her knowledge and understanding of the subjects she photographed to the camera that she was carrying almost everywhere she went. “I’m not sure”, answered Sara. “It just came to me.”  The vet thanked her for getting her and took the cat gently back to her clinic. 

The next day Sara and her family were invited to a wedding. Sara was so excited to bring her camera, knowing that she could take pictures of the bride, her friends the ceremony under the chuppah (wedding canopy) and the dancing. “How lucky am I to have a camera to take pictures of all the things that are happening around me! How lucky to be able to freeze a moment in time and look at it at another time, a later time,” thought Sara to herself. 

She and her siblings dressed in their nicest clothes for the wedding and off they went, gift in hand and camera in pocket! As soon as they arrived, Sara began clicking and flashing away. The weddings in Sara’s community are a very long event. First, all of the women and girls spend time with the bride. They sing to her and she blesses them. It is like a party. On the groom’s side, the men and boys are also having a party. The men and women are separated until the time of the wedding ceremony under the chuppah, or wedding canopy.  

​After the ceremony, the bride and groom, who have been fasting all day, go into a separate room and break their fast and the men and women go to their separate sides of the room, with a divider or mechitza and eat and continue the festivities. When the bride and groom emerge from their time together, the groom goes to the men’s side and the bride to the women’s side and the dancing and music commences. It is a great party! There is a mitzva (an obligation) to rejoice with the bride and groom on their wedding day and to make them happy.  

Later in the evening, there is the mitzva dance, in which the men and women sit in the same room and the men in the family or close friends, take a long belt (gartle), hold one end out to the bride (who is wearing her veil) and they take one end and they dance. It is a lot of fun. Sometimes there is a Gramman, an entertainer, who makes up songs and poems about the people in the families of the wedding couple. He makes everyone laugh, most importantly entertaining the bride and the groom.  

When Sara entered the women’s side before the ceremony, she started to focus her camera on the younger sister of the bride. She was a very beautiful girl and Sara approached her and aimed her camera. Suddenly, the sister of the bride, Pesia, looked straight into Sara’s camera and Sara almost dropped it when she saw into Pesia’s eyes. Sara realized that Pesia, was in love with the Chatan (the groom)! She then moved around to the edge of the room divider to get a picture of the groom, and saw in her camera that he was thinking about Pesia, his true love and not her older sister which the parents had chosen for him. 

“How could this be?” thought Sara. “How could the groom marry Pesia’s sister when he really wants to marry Pesia?”  

Sara thought to herself, “I must do something here. This is not right.” But what could a young girl of 12 do? Sara sat on a chair in the corner of the room and began to doze off. As she was sleeping, she started to dream. In her dream, the Bubie of the girls appeared to her. Sara had only met the girl’s Bubie once before she had died a few months ago. She was very old and one day closed her eyes and never woke up. The Rabbi at the funeral said that it was as if she had been, “kissed by an angel” and that it was a blessing to be called to the next world in that way. 

So here was Sara and right next to her was Pesia’s Bubie. If that wasn’t surprising enough, Pesia’s Bubie began to talk to her and this is what she said: 
“You must go up to my daughter-in-law, and you must tell her that she is marrying the wrong daughter to the wrong boy. Heaven has declared that this groom is to be Pesia’s husband and she must stop this wedding right now. Now child, wake up and off you go to my daughter-in-law and tell her that her mother-in-law, who loves her very much, Brydle, came to you in a dream with this important message!” 

​Sara woke up with a start, went directly to Pesia’s mother and told her about her dream. Pesia’s mother, Masha, immediately went up to her two daughters, the bride, Kayla and her sister Pesia and said, “Come with me quickly”, and they went to a quiet room near where the women were having their party. She told her friend to tell everyone that they would be back shortly and not to worry. 

“What is happening?” asked Kayla. “What is the matter, mother?” asked Pesia. Their mother looked at both of her daughters, then she asked Sara to come into the room with them and to please tell the girls about her dream. Kayla looked down at her hands; Pesia looked out the window and their mother Masha said, “Well, tell me. Is this true? Is there something I need to know that your Bubie had to come back from Shamayim (heaven) to tell me that the two of you couldn’t tell me?” 

Pesia began to speak and then Kayla interrupted her and said, “Let me speak Pesia. Mother, because I am the older daughter, you and Papa felt that I should be the first to be married. You know in our community; the parents choose the groom or the bride. We met three times and David (the groom) is a very sweet man, so I agreed. Then, I saw Pesia’s face and after many times, asking her what was the matter, she finally told me that she was in love with David. They had met in the library where they were both reading books and began a conversation on one of the books.  Pesia was so surprised and happy to see him coming to our house, but had no idea that he was coming to meet me.” 

“Let me continue,” said Pesia. “We know that you didn’t want me to be the first to marry and I knew that David would be a good husband for Kayla so I wouldn’t let her talk to you or Papa about this. I thought, there will be someone else for me and this is what heaven and our parents had decided.” 
​
The girls’ mother, Masha let out a big sigh. “Oy, girls. Now we are in a bit of a situation here. However, I have an idea. Pesia you come with me. Kayla, you go back out to the party. We will be back shortly and I will send Sara to get you.” 

So where did Masha take Pesia? She took her to the ritual bath, the mikveh, where religious Jewish brides go before their wedding. Pesia prepared herself, immersed into the waters of the mikveh, said the blessings, emerged, dried her hair and got dressed. Masha and she quickly walked back to the wedding party.  Once there, Masha told Sara, who was waiting for them at the entrance, to go and ask Kayla to come into the room where they all had met earlier. 

Within 10 minutes, the bride emerged, her veil covering her face, and she resumed sitting in her special chair. Shortly after that, the groom came to give his bride-to-be a blessing and to adjust the veil, which to his surprise was already in place, and then the groom, escorted by his father, mother and friends went to the chuppah.  

The bride, escorted by her parents followed. The parents of the bride walked under the chuppah and placed their daughter next to her husband-to-be. It was a beautiful and holy ceremony. The Rabbi gave the couple many blessings. There is a belief in Sara’s community that the souls of relatives are also present at family weddings and Masha could feel the soul of her beloved mother-in-law hovering over the chuppah as her granddaughter was being married. 

The groom stepped on the kiddush cup (wine glass) to symbolize that even in our greatest time of joy, we remember the destruction of our Temple (Beis Hamikdash) and pray for the rebuilding of it and the coming of the Messiah. Then, the crowd clapped and the bride and groom were ushered off with music and escorts to their yichud (private) room where they would break their fast and speak to each other for the first time as wife and husband. 

​You could imagine how this wedding yichud room might be different from most; for when the bride removed her veil, the groom almost fainted. As in the Bible, when Jacob discovers that, instead of his beloved Rachel, his bride has been switched to her older sister Leah, David too has a different bride than he expected. Except in this case, David had before him, his beloved Pesia! After he calmed down, Pesia told him the whole story. He was so grateful to Hashem (G-d), Bubie Brydle and of course Sara that he didn’t think there could be a happier man in the world at this time. 

Masha approached Sara and asked her to wait outside the Yichud room and when the couple emerged, she wanted Sara to take the first picture of the two of them. Sara waited and when David and Pesia opened the door, Sara was there to take their picture. What she saw in her camera lens was the happiest couple she had ever seen at a wedding.  

You might be curious as to what happened with Kayla. Kayla and Pesia were always switching clothes and shoes as girls. This just happened to be the most important switch that they had ever made! Kayla fit perfectly into her sister’s dress for the wedding and Pesia fit perfectly into the wedding dress. That night, some people noticed that the bride looked different, but she was so joyful as were all of the guests, that no one said anything and anyway, during the mitzva dance, the bride had her veil over her face. 

Of course, there is the matter of Masha explaining what happened to her husband, Anshel. However, in Sara’s community when a loved one comes to someone in a dream, this is a very serious matter. You listen, and you listen well, because there is a belief that there are very rare times when the corridor between heaven and earth is opened. This is only to impart messages of the utmost importance, and we are obligated to pay attention to those messages. 

Kayla too had in mind who her bashert (the right groom) was, and wanted to approach her parents, or have him approach them to ask permission to marry her. She fervently hoped that she would not have to call on the aid of her Bubie Brydle, but if she did, she knew whom to look for, Sara and her camera. This, however, is another story. 

​By now, Sara had realized that her camera was something special. She could help to repair the world (Tikkun Olam) with her camera. The question is, was it the camera that was special or the person looking through the lens that had the power to see “inside”?  ​

​My Bubie says that as soon as we are big enough to talk and to understand we are told what is acceptable and what is not. These are rules. Sometimes they are written down and sometimes we are just told them, orally.  Each group and every society have a set of rules that the people are expected to follow. Usually, if you don’t follow the rules you get punished. That is why most people follow the rules. Some people follow the rules because they understand that it is good for them and for others.
 
I asked my Bubie if there was ever a time when a person shouldn’t follow the rules and how would they know if it was that time or not?  My Bubie told me that was a good question but not an easy one to answer and then she told me the following story.
​
Fradella

Miri was now an old woman but she remembers when she was a child and how much fun she had playing with her friends and coming home to the warmth of her Mother’s kitchen where the air smelled like a place where there were hundreds of ovens cooking and baking the most delicious foods you had ever tasted in your whole life. There was one small oven in their tiny home but it filled up the entire house with its scrumptious aromas . 

One day, Miri remembers coming home and finding her sister Eli crying. “What’s the matter?” asked Miri. “Why are you crying?” 

“The principal at school told me that I cannot stay in the school anymore”, she said in between her sobs.

“What are you talking about?”, asked Miri. “Calm down and tell me what happened.”

Eli took a few deep breaths and began to tell Miri her story. “The other day”, she said, starting off quietly and slowly, “I was in the store buying flour for Mama to make bread.  One of the girls came up to me and asked me if I liked school. She started to complain about the homework and the teacher who sometimes got angry with her. I was trying to be her friend and so I said, 'I know what you mean. There is a lot of homework and I also don’t like when the teacher gets angry'."

Eli paused and then she continued with her story. “When I went to school that afternoon the principal called me into his office and said to me, 'You know Eli, we have a rule in this school that you are not allowed to say bad things about the school.'  I told him that I didn’t know about that rule but it didn’t matter because I like school and I would never say anything bad about it."

“Well,”, he said. “Someone in the store heard you complaining about our school and as far as I am concerned, you broke the rule and you must leave our school.”

“But that is ridiculous,” said Miri. “Did you explain to him what happened and the situation you were in?”  "Well, I tried to but I also didn’t want to get my friend in trouble, who was the one who really said something bad about the school!” said Eli, starting to cry again.

“We must tell Mama and Tata (Father)”, said Miri. “They will understand and be willing to help.”  Mama tried to call the principal and Tate tried to meet with him, but the principal had insisted that Eli had broken a very important rule and the only way he would consider letting her back in is if she told him the name of the girl who was complaining to her about the school.

“Maybe you should tell him”, Miri said. “After all, why should you not be able to go to school because someone else broke the rules?”

“But Miri, maybe there are some rules that are not good rules and we must break them," said Eli. 
Miri thought about what Eli said and then she answered her. “Eli, maybe there are rules that are not good, but if you break them you can get punished and getting punished is never good!”

“Well,” said Eli. “I would say that getting punished is never fun, but sometimes you have to take a punishment that is less painful. For example, if I told the principal the name of my friend who really was the one who said something bad about the school, maybe he wouldn’t expel me from the school but then he would expel her.  How would I feel about that? She was just telling me her feelings. It is a bad rule anyway Miri!”

“It may be a bad rule Eli, but it is a rule and why should you have to be punished for something that you didn’t do in the first place, save yourself in this situation. If your friend doesn’t like the school, she should leave and find a better school for herself. That’s what I think,” said Miri. “I don’t like coming home to a sister who is crying and being punished for something which she didn’t even do!”

Eli thought about what Miri had said. Now she was confused, but deep in her heart she couldn’t see telling on her friend. She needed to go and speak to someone else. Someone who had more experience than she did. So, Eli decided to go and speak to the old lady who lived in their neighborhood. She had no family but everyone called her “Baabie” because she was always kind to the children. She would give them cookies and little books to read and sometimes tell them stories when they came over to visit her. She seemed to know a lot about the world and about people and sometimes even the adults went to her for advice.

Eli grabbed her sweater and off she went to Baabie’s house. Once there, Baabie welcomed her, gave her a nice cup of hot cocoa and offered her a comfortable chair by the fire.  “What is happening with you?”, Baabie asked Eli. “I haven’t seen you for such a long time!” 

Before Baabie finished asking Eli how she was, Eli burst into tears and told her the whole story about her friend, what was said in the grocery store and the reaction of the principal.

“Now, now”, said Baabie. “Calm down. Let’s think about what is happening here and what our choices are. You know in life, there are always choices. We just need to think about what they are and which one is best for us.”

Baabie continued, “let me tell you a little story when I was a girl in Russia, in the Shtetle (Jewish village). The Russians had a law, which is a rule that a country makes, which said that all young men of a certain age must join the Russian army. The Jews in our Shtetle did not want our Jewish boys going into the Russian army because they would disappear forever. Either they would get killed or they would become like the Russians, abandon their Jewish practice and never want to see their families again.”

“So, what did the people in your Shtetle do Baabie?”, Eli asked. “Well, we decided that we had to hide the boys before their 16th birthday when the Russian soldiers would take them. We had many places to hide the boys.”

“Like where”?, asked Eli.

“We hid them in the cellars, with the potatoes, when the soldiers came through our village. We hid them in the barn, where we kept our horses for our wagons, and in the dairy where we kept our cows. Sometimes, people made secret hiding places in the roof of their homes and would hide the boys there, if it was too cold to keep them in the cellar or the barn. It was very scary when the Russian soldiers came riding through our villages looking for our young boys to take them away from us.”

“But Baabie, what does this have to do with my situation?”, asked Eli. “I am not hiding from the principal. He already caught me and threw me out of school.”

“Here’s the story Eli. There was one woman in our village who believed that we had to follow the law, the rules. Maybe she made some money too or maybe she just wanted to do what she was told. Apparently, she found a soldier and told him about all of the hiding places we had for our boys and the next time they came into our village, they found and took five of our young boys. You cannot imagine how much crying there was in our village on that day. Those parents, brothers and sisters, who knew that they would probably never again see their children and their siblings again, could not stop mourning for their loss.

After everyone calmed down a little, the Rabbis in the community, as well as many of the older people began to wonder, “how in the world did the soldiers know exactly where to find the hidden boys?”  Then I think they began to realize that there was someone in the village who had told the soldiers where all of our hiding places were.

I am not sure, because I was a young girl at the time, exactly how they discovered which lady told the soldiers, but I do know that once they found out they called a Beit Din (a court) and they tried that lady. When it was all over we never saw her again in our village.”

“What happened to her?”, asked Eli. “What did they do with her?” 

“I’m not really sure”, said Baabie. “There were many stories that the children made up about what happened to her. One thing that I know for sure, we never saw her in our village again. Now, what does this have to do with your story, you might ask? “

“Yes, what?”, asked Eli again.

“This woman, who reported to the soldiers where we were hiding all of our young boys, thought that what she was doing was the right thing to do because she was following the law, the rules that the country had made. However, there are some rules that are truly bad, or one can even call them horrible rules that not only should we not follow, but we must sometimes be punished for not following them to protect ourselves, our family, people we care about and maybe others we don’t know but who are in our community. 

Even though it is a rule that we must always tell the truth, if telling the truth would really hurt someone then we might not be able to tell the truth. Can you think of an example when this could happen?”

Eli thought for a few minutes and suddenly her eyes lit up, “Yes, in my case! If I tell the principal which one of my friends complained about the school she could really get hurt. They would make her leave the school and she would have a hard time getting into another school!"

“Good example”, said Baabie. “Some rules, that can hurt people who are really good people are not good rules. Sometimes we can fight to change those rules and sometimes we just need to stay away from places that have bad rules. That isn’t always possible, so sometimes we just have to be punished for breaking a rule to protect someone else."

“When you get older, Eli,” continued Baabie. “You will meet many different people and experience many different situations. It is difficult to learn the lesson about the 'rule of the rules' when you are so young, but I believe that the younger you are when you learn these lessons, the stronger you will be as you grow up and are faced with more difficult challenges. You will find another school that will eventually accept you and when you do, you will be happier. But mostly you will be happy because you already have learned, 'the rule of the rules', and that is that not all rules are good rules and if a rule causes good people to suffer for no reason, it must be changed and even sometimes broken, in spite of the consequence of receiving a punishment.”
​
“Now finish your hot chocolate and if the principal does not change his mind about expelling you from the school, until you are accepted to another school, you will come here every day for private lessons. We shall discover many things together, Eli, if you are learning with me. Just keep reading, practicing your math and studying Torah and you will grow to be a very smart and caring woman."

When Eli returned home she knew exactly what she would do. She made an appointment to meet with the principal and told him that she would not tell him which girl had spoken to her in the grocery store. She, herself did not say anything bad about the school, and in her opinion, neither did her friend.  

"Really", she said to the principal, "whoever said that I said something bad about the school is the one who broke the rule, the rule against gossip and speaking lies about people. I hope that you will consider what I said and let me come back to school."

The principal looked at Eli, thought for a few minutes and responded. "You know Elie, maybe you are correct. It was not right for someone to report what he had heard. I think that we both learned something today. Be careful what you say in public and be careful what others tell you they heard. Both can be hurtful. We want you to come back to school."

So, the next day, Eli returned to school. All of her friends were happy to see her and she was happy to be back to her learning. She thought to herself, "sometimes the most important lessons we learn outside of the classroom!"

​There are times when we are young and we need to take a lot of responsibility to do the things that must get done. When you have a large family, everyone has to help and often what is important to you doesn’t happen. My Bubie says that this can be difficult but it also has its blessings. It means that you learn how to do things by yourself and after that, you become stronger in your belief that you can do things on your own. However, my Bubie thinks that it is important to get help too. Sometimes help can come from a parent, a friend, a neighbor, a Bubie, a Zada, a Rav or a teacher. Sometimes help can come from a person in a uniform or a person who seems like a simple worker who just wants to aid you in fulfilling the mission that you have set for yourself. Bubie says that help comes if your mission is important, true, real and if you make your own efforts, what we call, hishtadlut.  

Here is a story about a very motivated young boy who had a desire to build his family a succah for the Succoth holidays.

​Fradella

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There was once a boy who knew that if he wanted something done, he would have to rely on his own efforts. He had a family, but his parents were always busy with many of their own interests and when he asked for their help they would say, "Later, of course we will get to this later". 

Now the boy, David, knew that it is important to be patient, but what he learned also, was that sometimes "later", meant "never" and things just didn't happen. So he decided that if something was really important to him, he would have to figure out a way to do it himself.

The holiday of Succoth was coming and the family still  did not have the walls, the schach (roof fronds), or the decorations for a succah. Last year David remembered that the succah was barely built on time. It happened so late that he had fallen asleep and not been able to take part in building the succah. This year, he decided that he would build the succah with or without help .

How can a young boy of 12 buy and build a succah by himself? Then he remembered that once his Bubie and Zada had told him that he was never alone. All he had to do was to begin his mission and help would come from many different places so that he could complete what he had started. This help would only come if the mission he was on was “real”. 

What did it mean, "if it was real"? David remembered his Bubie telling him a story about how a friend had bought her a cactus plant and for three years, every two weeks, his Bubie would water the plant and even talk to it, telling the plant how beautiful it was; his Bubie had a friend who believed that even plants needed words of encouragement! 

One day, Bubie decided that the cactus needed a bigger pot, and so she took it outside to replant it in a newer and larger pot. When Bubie took the plant out of its pot, she noticed that in fact, this was not a real plant but a plastic cactus!  "Oy", said Bubie, "how could I have been fooled all of these years into thinking that I was taking care of a real plant!" 

She started laughing at how silly she had been and then she turned to David and said, "David, there are many things in the world that appear beautiful and real, but in the end they turn out to be fake. They turn out to be not real at all. Sometimes it is difficult to figure out what is  'real' and what is 'fake' but this is also part of our life's work."

So now David was faced with the decision, was his desire to build a succah a "real" mission, one for which he would receive help, or was it something that he should wait for, until his father eventually built the succah, and he was just looking for some project to keep himself from being bored? He decided that he would never know until he started. If he received the much needed help, then he surmised that in fact, this was "real"!
The first action that David took was to find the measuring tape and to measure the area on the patio where he would put the succah. He wrote down all of  the dimensions on a piece of paper. 

Next, he went to the store where they were cutting wood for the walls of the succah and gave the dimensions to the owner." I need four wooden walls according to these dimensions", he told the carpenter sawing the wood.
"How much will that cost?"  The carpenter took the piece of paper and looked carefully at the measurements.

"Well", he said, "Do you want windows in any of these walls? That will cost you more." 

David thought and then he said, "No windows, just the walls".  

The carpenter gave him a price and David almost lost his breath. "That is very expensive!" he said. "Can you do better? I'm building this succah for my family and we do not have a lot of money for something so expensive".

David reached into his pocket, took out his wallet, to look at how much money he had saved working in stores and selling Succoth decorations with his friend. Just as he opened his wallet the carpenter gave him a different price that was less because he could see the earnestness and honesty in the young boy's eyes. 

In their community having a beautiful succah meant that you took the holiday seriously and wanted to create a "real" home for your family during the seven days. You could have the smallest and most simple house, but your succah and its decorations should reflect how grateful you are to God for protecting you and giving you everything that you needed throughout the year.

David took out all of the money he had in his wallet, knowing that it would not cover the costs the walls, and began to count, "100, 200, 300, 400, 500, 600, 700, 800, 900, 1,000 Shekels”! He knew he had not earned that much money. "How in heaven’s name did 1,000 Shekels end up in his wallet?” Then, he heard a voice in is head. It was his Bubie's voice. " It is hard to tell what is real in this world, but when you find it you will be able to complete your mission." 

There, on the table of the carpenter's shop was the exact amount of money that David would need for the walls of his succah!  The carpenter told him to return later that day to pick up the walls. 

When David left, he thought to himself, "how in the world am I going to move all of these walls to my house? I'm only a young boy."

When he returned to the shop, his friend Simcha was there to pick up his walls and he had a big dolly that he had borrowed from another store. "You help me take my walls home and afterwards, I will help you take your walls to your home. Then we will return the dolly to the vegetable store," said Simcha, joyfully (like his name).

So the two boys worked late into the evening, rolling the walls first to Simcha's home and then to David's home. It was a lot of work but it felt good to do because it meant that this year, David and his family would have a succah in time for the holiday and it was David's efforts that had made it happen!

After Yom Kippur, when it was time to build the succah, David and his Tate (father) and his Zada (grandfather) began to build it. To David's surprise, there was a big window sawed out in one of the walls! 

The next day he returned to the carpenter; it was a different man than the one who had been there the week before. David asked to speak to the other carpenter and the man said, "I am the only carpenter who works here. Maybe you went to a different store last week."

David said, "No, I was in this store and I bought my succah walls here and I didn't have enough money to have a window put in one of the walls, but to my surprise, when we put up our succah, there was a window in it! I want to thank the carpenter who did that for me, free of charge."

"I'm sorry," said the carpenter. "I am the only carpenter who works here. What day did you come last week? I don't remember you and I am very good at remembering faces.”

"It was two days before Rosh Hashana", said David. "Two days before Rosh Hashana", said the carpenter, "the store was not even open! We closed three days before Rosh Hashana to get ready for the holiday. My wife just gave birth and she needed my help at home. You must have made a mistake!"

David opened his wallet to find the receipt and the only thing that he found inside was a little piece of paper and on it was written, "David, I wish you and your family a Chag Samaach (Happy Holiday). It was your efforts and hard work that built your succah this year and you should always remember, that whatever happens in your life, your hard work and efforts are seen in Shamayim (heaven) and they are written down. This is a receipt for your deeds." David thanked the man and told him that, in fact he might have been mistaken and gone to another shop where they were cutting wood for the walls of succoth.  

He returned home, thinking to himself that his Bubie was right when she had told him, when he pursued what was" real", whether it was hard work, friendships, learning, or being honest, he would receive help. Sometimes that help would come in the form of a friend, like Simcha, or in the form of family, like his Tata and Zada helping him to build the succah and his Mommy, Bubie and sisters helping to decorate the succah, and sometimes the help would come from a different place, from a "man" dressed as a carpenter, helping David to build something here on earth whose dimensions were made on high in the heavens.

​Chag Succoth Samaach to everyone!