Mother and daughter were so focused on one another, they seemed to have forgotten Hanni entirely. Without waiting any longer, she went directly to the rabbi’s wife and sank to her knees. What she wanted, she must ask for now.

“I have no one else to ask for help, so I am here. I beg of you, please don’t turn me away.”

Embarrassed, the rabbi’s wife pulled Hanni to her feet. “I am nothing more than a woman. Get up!”

But it was precisely because she was a woman that she took pity on Hanni. What would make a woman venture out when breaking the curfew could mean prison or death? There was only one cause. This woman was someone’s mother. The rabbi’s wife understood this. Her gaze lingered on her own daughter, who was watching her with shining eyes. For no reason other than her fierce love for her own child, she gave in and signaled Hanni to join her at an old table that was riddled with indentations left in the wood by cleavers and knives used for preparing meals. Women came here when it was time to give birth, and it was here that life came into the world. Countless children had been born on her table, while the rabbi slept or studied in his chambers. Afterward, the wood was always cleaned with salt and prayers were said. No child was safe during the eight days after birth, and circumcision and naming could not occur before that time. Birth was the ultimate gift and the ultimate sacrifice, the time when malevolent forces in the natural and supernatural worlds conspired to claim both the baby’s life and the mother’s. To suffer so for another, from the moment of existence, marked a person forever. In The Book of Light it had been written that true compassion and true love existed only among children and for children.

“I want to send my daughter to France. I have a cousin there.”

“France!” The rabbi’s wife was contemptuous. “The Nazis are eating France in one bite.”

“When they do, she’ll move on to someplace safer.”

“Are you a fool?” the rabbi’s wife said. “Those safe places won’t take in Jews.”

Boats of refugees were being turned away, in New York and Cuba and England. Still, there were people who managed to forge papers, and those with relatives in another country had a better chance of finding asylum.

“It’s a beginning,” Hanni insisted. “What would you have me do? Let my child stay here, where she will certainly perish?”