“But maybe … I hope it’s not chutzpah for me to say … you should take some time now, do what you always wanted, planned, before…”

He lifted his cup and drained it. “HaShem Yishmor, who knows what will become of me now?”

“What will become of you? What’s to become?” she scoffed. “Until a hundred and twenty! But maybe, like I used to tell my Yitzchak Chaim—and he was much younger than you—I used to say: A mentsh tracht und Gott lacht. Who can know what HaShem, May His Name Be Blessed, has in store for us, and when? My Yitzchak Chaim never got to finish that book, and it’s a book we all need so much today. There is so much piety, but so few middos. What goes on in this world…” She shook her head, scandalized. “Even in Boro Park! I don’t have to tell you.”

He nodded in sorrowful agreement. “This is something that troubles my soul, too. People keep to the letter of the law but forget its spirit. So much loshon hara. So much unkindness. What does HaShem ask of us? To be like Him! To be just, and kind and loving. This is the hardest of all the mitzvoth! To love human beings.”

“Gentiles, too?”

“Why not? They are God’s children. He loves them. He created them.”

“But, Rav, look what’s happening on our own streets!”

“What’s happening? A few lunatics. But the police, the doctors, they care for us, protect us, and they are mostly gentiles. And who’s to say if we are not ourselves responsible? We need to be more involved in the world around us, to be kinder, and not just think about our own community’s needs, our own poor. Selfishness brings hatred.”

The great well of emptiness that was inside her ever since losing her Yitzchak Chaim yawned open for a moment, swallowing his words. She remembered all those private conversations between husband and wife in which her husband’s wise and compassionate words of Torah sank into her soul, making her want to be a better person. Now, there was only silence, or the poor substitute of rabbis up at their lecterns on Shabbos and holidays in crowded synagogues with screaming children and their gossiping mothers and grandmothers so you could hardly hear a blessed word! And even when your hearing aid was dialed up enough so that miraculously a few sentences came through whole, somehow it was never what you longed for, but some boastful, abstract erudition that threw around the names of ancient rabbis arguing over donkeys or kegs of wine, or goring oxen. So few rabbis talked about what was really important in life. But when you lived with a pious, learned man, the wisdom fell like manna all day long. All you had to do was collect it.

“Another rugelach?” she tempted him, seeing his plate was empty. “More tea?”