And yet both men, like her own husband, were good men who had loved their barren wives above all. A man’s helplessness and inadequacy in the face of a barren woman’s suffering was a theme in the Torah, whose sacred writings were filled with endless compassion for such unhappiness. In both cases, the women, despairing of their husbands’ understanding, had opted to open their hearts to God, Who had answered their prayers and opened their wombs.

“Please, dear God, help me!”

She sat there, her mind poring over all she knew about the divine, her imagination soaring like someone in a hot air balloon, up and up until she felt her consciousness expand so that she was in the clouds, above the highest mountaintops. And still her mind and soul rose, entering the blackness of outer space where stars were flung like diamonds across the firmament, sparkling with light from distant planets billions of light-years away.

It was unfathomable, the idea of God, the one, indivisible, supreme Creator who had designed and built the entire universe and every creature in it. How could you speak to such a Creator? How could your mind encompass Him? How could your tiny, human heart, beating for such a short time, ever contain more than a minute fraction of the gratitude you owed Him for all you’d been privileged to experience in your short, earthly sojourn?

This wondrous creation! she thought, overwhelmed by love. Who can know the astonishing, ineffable complexity of it? The beauty of it? Each thing that grew, each creature that lived, a whole universe of such magnificent and awesome diversity that the mind could never wholly grasp even one thing in its totality of being, let alone the combined marvel of it all. How is it possible to open my heart to Him, Who is the repository of all this power, all this creativity, all this goodness? How can I tell Him my petty woes and troubles?

She felt ashamed. But she, too, had been formed by His hand. She, too, was His creation.

“My tiny heart aches for You, dear Lord. Help me. Look into my heart and give me what I need, if not what I long for. Dear God, HaShem, My Father. Help me.”

All afternoon as she went back to her work for her clients, she felt a sense of renewed hope, as if her soul had made a connection, touched God. It was exhilarating and exhausting. She was looking forward to getting the children home and into bed so she could make an early night of it. But when she went to pick up Mordechai Shalom, he wasn’t waiting for her outside with the other children. “He’s sick,” his teacher said. “He’s inside, lying down.”