“He got your meaning,” Batya’s mother said. “He doesn’t need your advice. If He’d meant things to be different, they would be different.”

“I should write again to my brother in America to get us the tickets,” Batya’s father said.

“What brother?” his wife countered. “He hasn’t replied in years!”

“That’s a good sign that he’s doing well.”

All her uncle needed to do, Batya thought, was scoop up the gold in the street and exchange it for passages for them.

A tall man with a talis, a fringed prayer shawl, draped around his shoulders came out of the synagogue and approached. “Might you give us the honor of joining us for a minyan?” he asked Batya’s father, referring to the Talmudic requirement of a ten-man quorum for public prayer.

“As the Good Book says, ‘Completing a minyan is the greatest mitzvah a Jew can perform,’” Batya’s father replied, and went in.

The man turned to Batya’s mother. “Someone from the Benevolent Society will come to see to your needs.”

“It’s almost Shabbat,” Batya’s mother replied, her tone demanding. “She’d better hurry.”

Batya sat down on the cart to wait with her mother, while Surale milked Aggie into the bucket, then transferred the fresh milk into their large tin canister. Batya rose to pour a cup of milk for each of them in turn before buckling the canister’s lid.

Dusk was descending, and the air became colder. Batya pulled on her only warm garment, a long wool cardigan with holes she had patched with whatever color yarn she could find. She had hoped for a new coat, but now there would be no money for one, and she had outgrown the one Surale was now buttoning up. Soon, when Batya ventured outside, she would have to borrow her mother’s shawl.

“Do you know the story about Rabbi Chanina and his wife?” Batya’s mother began. The daylong carriage ride had tired her, but it had not exhausted her the way walking and pushing the cart had done. “They were so poor that often they had nothing to cook for Shabbat. Every Friday, before Shabbat, Rabbi Chanina’s wife would throw a burning coal into the oven, so that smoke would drift out of her chimney and the neighbors would assume that she cooked.

“A nasty neighbor said, ‘I know that they don’t have anything. Let me go and see what all that smoke is about.’

“When Rabbi Chanina’s wife heard the knock on the door, she was mortified and went to hide in the inner room. The nosy neighbor entered anyway and opened the oven. But a miracle occurred, and she found it full of loaves of challah.

“She called, ‘Come! Come! Bring the spatula. Your challah is starting to burn, and you need to get it out quick!’