“Since I lost my Zissele, so many things no longer make sense to me. And so many of the things I trusted blindly, so many of the things I was taught, the community itself has stopped believing and observing, if they ever did.”

Meir, gentle, trusting Meir, was shocked. “Really?”

“Yes, Meir. Are we not taught to welcome the stranger? And yet, how was my Leah treated when she decided to live among us as a God-fearing woman? The matchmakers treated her like dirt. They matched her with the mentally ill, the physically disabled. They even gave her phone number to an African convert who had abandoned a wife and six children back home!” Yaakov put up his hand to halt Meir’s attempts to comment. “I know what you are going to say. The sins of a few. But it isn’t a few. Remember how I had to beg you to play matchmaker because not a single matchmaker in Boro Park was willing to get involved when I wanted to go out with Leah, simply because she was a baalas teshuva?”

“I remember.” He shifted uncomfortably. His brief foray into the murky realm of go-between to facilitate romantic liaisons was something he had still not gotten over.

“Everyone was against her, despite all the things written in the Torah about welcoming the stranger. So now I don’t care what anyone else thinks, Meir. I will do exactly what I know is right according to the Torah I learned all those years.”

Both of them knew this wasn’t true. Yaakov—perhaps even more than Meir—cared deeply, passionately, about the exalted and honorable place he had earned over so many years among his peers and neighbors. “What will the neighbors think?” had been drummed into him—into all of them—from earliest childhood, like a mantra. It was inescapable.

“And what about the rav, his opinion?”

“Of course I care about the rav! But he is not an ordinary person.”

“Maybe you should talk it over with him, then, one last time?”

Yaakov shook his head. “No, I’ve made up my mind. I’m going to work. If it was just to help pay the rent and buy food and clothes, maybe I would hold on a little longer. But it isn’t. It’s all those loans I took out. Why should my Leah work so hard to pay off my debts?”

“Debts you made to keep a roof over your children’s heads, food in the refrigerator, when you lost your income from Zissele’s teacher’s salary! What else could you do?”

“Exactly. So now I also have no choice, Meir. I have to work to pay it all back.”

“Will it take a long time?”

“It will take what it will take. I know my obligations. Is it not written in my wife’s marriage contract that I must provide for her?”