The babka—a delicate crust smothered in mouthwatering chocolate filling—was scrumptious enough to send even the ghosts out the window. They washed it down with cups of deliciously brewed green jasmine tea, something Fruma Esther had discovered unexpectedly only recently.

“The tea is good, no?” she asked him.

“Wonderful! I never tasted such tea!”

“It was a present from a woman I know.”

“A frum woman knows about such things?”

“Not frum, frei. Someone I met from the hospital who drove me in her own car all the way from Manhattan to Brooklyn when I had my eye operation. Didn’t ask for even a penny! A volunteer. Such a schlep. We got to talking. I told her about my Zissele, and she told me she also lost a child, beautiful son, from that terrible sickness, that AIDS. I was surprised she even talked about it.”

“May HaShem watch over us! Such a tragedy.” He shook his head.

She nodded sadly. “A very kind woman, full of chesed. We still talk once in a while.”

“We frum Yidden have no monopoly on goodness.”

“It took me a while to understand that, Shimon Levi. But when Yaakov married a baalas teshuva, I began to see things differently. I saw things in the community—among our own kind, Shimon Levi!—that made me ashamed, may God forgive me! And I wasn’t any better. I also didn’t want. I was trying so hard to find him a kallah from a choshuva family, a frum-from-birth Bais Yaakov girl. But once I got to know Leah, his wife, I understood what a pure heart she has, just like him. It was bashert.”

“You know, in the Talmud, two sages, Rav Chisda and Rav Abbahu, discuss who is holier, the tzaddik or the baal teshuva. You would think for sure the tzaddik, who has lived a sinless life. But Rav Abbahu disagrees. He said, ‘Where the penitent stands, even the tzaddik cannot.’”

“Why is that?”

“The Rambam says it’s because the baal teshuva has tasted sin and yet separated himself from it, defeating his evil inclination. Their efforts are heroic and unceasing. While the tzaddik doesn’t have to work so hard. And the first Lubavitcher Rebbe said that the enthusiasm and passion of the baal teshuva makes his worship of God special.”

“I never thought of it that way,” Fruma Esther murmured, moved almost to tears of pride in Leah, and of shame for herself and all the others she knew who looked down on the newcomers to their community.

“So they’re happy, then, the young couple?”

She hesitated. “They were.”

He straightened up in his chair, alert. “What happened?”

She opened her purse and handed him a letter. “Yaakov asked me to give you this.”

He sat there reading, shaking his head, his silence punctuated by an occasional heartfelt oy vey. When he had finished, he folded it up and gave it back to her.