him. “Stop badgering him with questions, Benjy. It’s a bit complicated to explain. He’s a cousin of Zeidy and Bubby who lived in Eretz Yisroel; you didn’t know the family. And when Arik was in eighth grade, he went on a summer trip to Eretz Yisroel and met him.” “Uh-huh,” twenty-year-old Arik said, from the other side of the table. He yawned. “Can we continue? I’m hungry already.” “A cousin of Zeidy or Bubby?” the boy pressed. “Zeidy. Now go back to your seat. And don’t get the drapes wet when you pass! How many times do I have to tell you that?” The guest sat, paging through the Haggadah in front of him. Drapes. He couldn’t imagine that the family in Bnei Brak had drapes, even for the Seder night. They probably did not have crystal glasses or pure silver napkin holders, either. But he hoped that they had managed to use a bit of the generous yom tov grant that they had received to buy some new things for themselves.
middle, to make the whole thing more symmetrical?” Elisheva retreated to the kitchen. “I don’t think the silver has to be in the center,” Eliyahu answered, in the same patient, respectful tone that he used when speaking to his oldest sister. “I think the seforim belong in the center, and it’s more appropriate for the silver to be placed on the side.” “So why wasn’t it like that in your old bookcase?” “Because I didn’t have the choice. The silver display was built into the middle of our old bookcase, and that was it. We bought a floor sample from the store twenty years ago. Here, the person who installed this asked me exactly how I wanted to plan the layout of the shelves.” “Nu, very nice. And what other furniture did they give you?” She looked up as Elisheva set a mug of hot tea in front of her. “Oy, Elisheva, I told you not to!” “It’s fine; let us host you with the honor you deserve. When do we ever have a chance to have you?” “That’s right. In your old apartment, it was nearly impossible to get into the dining room. So what’s with the furniture? I see your antique table is still here. And the chairs.” “We were supposed to get a table with eight chairs, and another coffee table with a couch and two armchairs,” Eliyahu said. “A coffee table,” she repeated. “Menachem, why aren’t you sitting down? Yehudah, you too. Take a drink or something to eat while I take another look around the apartment.” “The children are showing me the large porch,” her husband, Menachem, said. “I never would have believed there could be such open air in Bnei Brak at this time of year.” “Well, the sixth floor on the outskirts of the city — what did you expect?” she said. “Wait until some more buildings go up here, and you’ll want to run back to your little porch in our house in Yerushalayim.” She turned back to Eliyahu. “So, a coffee table, you said, Eliyahu? Really now. A set of matching chairs sounds good — better than this whole hodgepodge you have here. But armchairs? Why do you need them? And a couch?” “We always had a couch, but it’s old already. And I like this table and don’t really want to replace it. So we asked for only the chairs and the couch, and they let us exchange the rest of the stuff for bedroom furniture — dressers and beds. But they’ll only be coming in after Pesach.”
As it is, you spend most of your days trying not to think. Not about the past, not about the future, and not too much about the present either.
* * * * * “I don’t believe it, Eliyahu!” Yocheved stood gaping at the built-in bookshelves that were packed with seforim. Then she spun around to her brother. “Where is that very dignified, traditional bookcase of yours?” “In the storage room downstairs,” her brother answered patiently. Elisheva was bustling from the kitchen to the dining room, serving dates and nuts, Pesach cookies, cake, and homemade lemonade. “Don’t bring in so much food,” Yocheved scolded her. “Sit down for a minute. What is this? You’ve already let Eliyahu put his seforim into the wall?” “It’s not a wall.” Eliyahu looked over at the plaster shelves. “It’s a built-in bookcase. What difference does it make what a seforim shrank is made out of? It’s easier to use than the wooden bookcase.” “What’s easier about it?” Yocheved turned to look at her younger brother. “The shelves don’t sag.” “Oh, you think plaster is stronger than pressed wood?” she asked, hardly concealing her scornful tone. It wasn’t directed at Eliyahu, of course, but at the offending, modern new bookcase that she decidedly did not approve of. “Plaster is not stronger than wood, but metal is. And there are enough metal bars in those shelves.” “And the silver display,” she said. “Why is it on the side? Why didn’t you put your silver items in the
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