How I had arrived to this dark place I could barely say aloud, the memory was too bitter to form into words. But as I was falling into the abyss and succumbing at this halfway point, weary and lost, there appeared before me a holy man from my deepest beginnings, like an angel with white hair flowing down his back parted in the center into two flanks like sidelocks, long white beard, robed entirely in white linen, starched and flowing. He clutched me by the waist, reaching up with two mighty arms strengthened by years spinning the wheels of his throne taking him along his destined path, and he halted my descent. “Let me go, Rebbie-ji, have mercy,” I cried. “Stay,” he said. “Even in this place of death, my message to you is, choose life.” His voice was my blood voice, my brother’s voice calling to me as if from the ground. There was no place to hide.

For his sake, conditionally, I continued in life, but not by choice. Choice was his domain. He had chosen for his sins to be a fugitive and wanderer on the face of the earth, marked and set apart. I had rejected all that when I had chosen to no longer count myself among the chosen. But he needed me now, he had asked me to stay, he had asked me to do him a kindness, to say I am his sister, in this strange and dangerous place he had asked for my help, never an easy thing for him to do. I remembered his youthful sweetness. He had been such a dear boy, my soulmate. My innards ached for him. I pitied him and could not refuse.