Rav Alter found all the bustle wearisome. But he had no choice but to submit, sitting on a low stool and receiving the well-worn phrases in which religious Jews express their sorrow: “May God comfort you among the mourners of Zion and Jerusalem,” they murmured, shaking his frail old hand or putting an arm around his bent shoulders.

Women came, too, bringing meals and snacks for the mourners and their visitors, keeping the living room table groaning under numerous plates of cakes and cookies, drinks, and sweets. Fruma Esther was among them.

She went out of her way to make p’tcha, the strange calf’s foot jelly that none of the young, frum brides knew how to make anymore and which she knew Rav Alter loved. She also whipped up a huge batch of chocolate rugelach—prepared according to Rebbitzen Alter’s own famous recipe—which she covered with a festive blue napkin.

Of course, there was a mechitza in the house that separated the men from the women, and thus she was not allowed to serve her dishes directly to the rav. But she asked one of his daughters.

“He loves this,” she informed the married woman in her forties wearing a towering headdress of vertiginous height that according to the laws of gravity threatened to send her toppling backward. It was the new style. Fruma Esther shook her head, examining the turban’s many elaborate folds and tucks and wondering how the whole thing could be induced to stay in place without nailing it to the skull.

“God bless you, Rebbitzen,” the rabbi’s daughter thanked her.

But Fruma Esther wasn’t satisfied. “Tell your father it’s from me, Fruma Esther Sonnenbaum. I was dear friends with your mother, and these are made according to the same recipes.”

She sat among the other women relatives, neighbors, and friends in the roped-off and curtained section of the dining room, her eyes peeled for the moment her food was delivered. To her annoyance, the daughter took her time. But then, finally, she saw a white plate with a colorful blue napkin make its way from the kitchen to the little table before the rav. She watched as the rav’s daughter peeled off the napkin.

Did the rav’s face light up? Or was that her imagination? No, he was definitely picking up a rugelach, she saw, watching anxiously as he placed it in his mouth and took a bite. She saw him close his eyes for a moment, then open them. To her joy, he took two more quick bites, polishing it off rapidly. She waited only long enough to watch as he picked up another one. As for the p’tcha, they were no doubt saving it for dinner. She understood. You needed privacy to attack the quivering, Jell-O-like delicacy that was p’tcha.