Shaindele nodded, coming to the door and opening it, then returning to sit on her bed. She pulled several stuffed animals—relics of her childhood—into her lap, wrapping her arms around her favorite, a brown teddy bear bedraggled of fur. Her face was streaked with dried tears and reddish splotches, Leah noticed. She looked like a frightened child.

Leah sat down next to her, putting an arm around her. “Tell me.”

“On the way home, a Hasid crossed the street and yelled at me. The names he called me, Leah! In the middle of the street! And then he opened a bottle and threw some liquid at me.” She lifted her feet. “My shoes and socks are soaked.”

“Take them off immediately! And take off the rest of your clothes. I’ll wash everything! Do it now! Then take a bath and scrub yourself.”

Leah lifted the wet shoes and stockings gingerly. They had a strong, acrid stench.

“It was urine. But it could have been acid,” she told Yaakov later, hiding in his arms, exhausted. The children had been put to bed early. Shaindele was still in her room, and Fruma Esther had not yet arrived.

They sat side by side on the fraying brown couch in the living room whose walls badly needed a fresh coat of paint; a place that had sheltered them since their wedding day and had been home to Yaakov and his first wife and five children. It was a home like many in their community, modest in size and poor of furnishings but rich in love and devotion and piety. Always in the past, they had convinced themselves that the physical discomforts of such a place were more than compensated for by the joy of living securely among their own kind, sharing in the bounty of their rich, spiritual life. But now doubt chipped away at that certainty as they clung to each other, Leah describing her visit to Halpern, the incident with the car, and what had happened to Shaindele. When she finally handed him the letter, she did so wordlessly.

Yaakov sat up, opening it, then shooting to his feet as he read. He paced the room. He was furious, appalled, frightened, and completely helpless. “May the God of Abraham protect us!” he cried out as the range and depth of the attacks on his family merged in his mind into one unbearable assault.