abbi Sokolov looks down at the half-finished yahrtzeit letter to the congregant and sighs. His handwriting is atrocious — it leans when it shouldn’t, stands straight when a curl is demanded, slips over or under the line he can’t really say which is more common. Large when small is demanded, left when right is needed, his signature is little more than a scrawl. It’s gotten so bad he replaces his moniker with a slash capital S much of the time, to spare himself the amused sideways glances. A child’s handwriting, his wife would sometimes needle him, though just last month the Rabbi crested fifty-five.

He’s tried everything. Practice printing on lined paper, holding the pen tighter or looser or with two fingers instead of three. Slowing down, speeding up, thinking and not. But always he ends up in the same place: in front of the computer, tapping on the keyboard, relying on his so-called wisdom to yield hopefully the personal touch.

Dear Mrs. Fishman, he begins typing.

He thinks he knows why it’s such a problem, it goes way back, to before his family emigrated to West Rogers Park when the Rabbi was only seven. Rabbi Sokolov is originally from Minsk, not far from the Svislach river, a descendant on his mother’s side of a desperate union of two of the remaining Jews after the war. Grandpa Itzik and Grandma Rivka, dark and light, the family used to say, though Rabbi Sokolov’s memory is restricted to Itzik, or Deda, as they all called him in Russian. Baba Rivka died of tuberculosis when Rabbi Sokolov was a mere toddler, a victim of the close quarters of her job as a seamstress, sewing in bulk the cheap clothing everyone still wore despite their advancement from peasants to proletariats, from ignorant farmers to citizens of the world, from mere scapegoats to the slaughtered and back once again.

Some things never change.

Like these first anniversary yahrtzeit letters, for example. They’ve been part of the presiding Rabbi’s responsibility at the synagogue since early in the 20th century, when the then-Rabbi Glickman hired a WWI veteran as a secretary simply to be charitable. Samuel was his name, supposedly. When Samuel complained about having little to do all day, Rabbi Glickman proposed Samuel pen letters to the war widows of the shul, asking if there was anything the congregation might do to help, and offering the Rabbi for any needed consultation. Samuel’s enthusiasm for the project was such that soon he was writing not just war widows, but others who’d completed their first year of mourning, and, verily, the yahrtzeit letters were born.

As you approach the first Yahrtzeit (anniversary) of the death of your beloved . . .

The rabbi before Rabbi Sokolov, Rabbi Hammer, delegated preparation of the letters to the Chevra Kadisha, who already handled everything after the first year. A mere reminder, he said, that probably wasn’t needed anyway. And a plea for a donation that would likely go unanswered. The Torah instructed not to mourn excessively, and far be it from him to encourage the bereaved otherwise.

Rabbi Sokolov views himself as a softer sort and isn’t so sure about the Torah’s command. Things are always so much easier said than done, and Rabbi Hammer’s experience with death had hardly been personal. When he left for the big job in New York — Manhattan no less — his family was intact, a wife, four children and four grandparents, behind the desk where Rabbi Sokolov now sits stood a family picture that changed every fall. Rabbi Sokolov remembers it well. During the month of meetings with Rabbi Hammer about the changing of the guard, the when-to-ignore-the-men’s-club and the-where-to-find-the-Rosh-Hashanah-tallit, so to speak, the photo flipped from that year’s to the next’s, everyone appearing a little fatter or skinnier, more fashionable or not.

Rabbi Sokolov has not been so lucky. And so he writes the letters himself because he knows, knows how the grieving feel that first time through, that morning when you wake up alone once again and realize it’s been a year. Once around the sun or however else you want to phrase it. When the memories have barely dimmed despite what everyone says about time healing all wounds.

Our synagogue family joins you in expressing its sincere respect . . .

It’s been twelve years since she passed, his Rivka, his light — there’s a candle on the Rabbi’s apartment stovetop right now that’s probably half-diminished. Their union was practically Itzik’s final act as grandfather, after making the match at a picnic for Soviet emigres in Evanston, he went rapidly downhill. A long-standing refusal to take his heart medication. It made him lethargic, he said, and all he’d ever really had in life other than Baba Rivka was a fearsome energy.

Itzik was a stubborn Gus, a Litvak, whose obduracy kept the family in the USSR until 1978; if the Nazis hadn’t chased him out of Minsk, there was little chance of the Russians succeeding. Even as Stalin and Khrushchev and then Brezhnev did their best to make it attractive to leave. Free trips to Siberia or a labor camp near the Urals if you stepped out of line. And a passport that simply read “Jew,” whether you were born in Vilnius or Vladivostok, so that the kids with the peach fuzz and the rifles could treat you just that much worse than average.

Itzik made his living as a teacher, a profession well-suited in post-war Minsk to the unyielding. He worked the ins and outs of the Soviet school system as well as anyone, including the university entrance exams, infamous for their extraordinary difficulty and invidious administration, even for the well-connected. His tutoring was so prized amongst the nomenklatura in Minsk that the family was often fed from gifts from his pupils’ parents, meats and cheeses and fruits unavailable to the masses, from the party store so well hidden that not even Itzik knew where it was.

You may wish to light a Yahrtzeit candle for twenty-four hours beginning at sundown the day before . . .

Among the students Itzik tutored was, of course, the young Rabbi Sokolov, along with his baby sister Sima. For Jews, the exams were not just difficult, but filled with questions designed to be nearly impossible to answer correctly, lest the universities in the Soviet Union become havens for the children of Israel. There was also the issue of semantics and appearance — answers to problems needed not only be technically correct, but given in the right way and with the Jewish applicant presenting himself properly. A Jew might fail where a non-Jew would pass for a missed quotation mark or a dangling preposition, or a shirt not tucked in or a belt loop clumsily missed.

So Deda Itzik began training Rabbi Sokolov and Sima for the exams as soon as their mother went back to work and the two entered kindergarten, when Sima was three and Rabbi Sokolov was five. And this is where the mystery began, Rabbi Sokolov is certain of it, though he has no evidence to support his theories. Alongside those fairly maligned university entrance exams, the Soviet school system remained well-known in West Rogers Park for perhaps only one other thing, one further dehumanizing sin that still casts a shadow to this day. A scar, if you prefer to see it that way, even if the blemish might be nearly invisible: forcing those who were left-handed to operate with their right, the sinister turned into the angelic New Soviet Man, regardless of the underlying behavior.

His beloved Rivka would tell him to let it go in that way she had, she was nothing if not blunt. A fellow refugee from Minsk, her family lived on the floor below and Rabbi Sokolov went to their place for baby-sitting from time to time along with a few other of the building’s Jewish kids. She was a year ahead of him in school, and emigrated the year after. First to Montreal, and only fifteen years later to Chicago for graduate work in economics. The same issues with the Soviet schools, though, she told her stories of the ritual harassment with a particular flair, her French-Canadian accent making her all the more lovely in Rabbi Sokolov’s eyes.

But he’s unable to let bygones be bygones, for reasons he finds difficult to explain. And so he wonders, he speculates, even as he manipulates effortlessly his computer mouse with his slender right hand. Rabbi Sokolov’s mother was left-handed, and while he’s since read the trait is only infrequently genetic, he’s convinced it was passed down to him, though she steadfastly denied it whenever he questioned her on the matter in the years before she died. “All I ever saw in your lessons with Deda was you using your right hand,” was her typical response, missing the point entirely, deliberately or not.

Things were no different with Rabbi Sokolov’s father, who, may his memory be blessed, was a meek soul who deferred to his wife in almost everything. The odds of the man contradicting her in matters of the heart were next to zero, though the Rabbi queried him from time to time all the same.

“Go ask your mother,” was the unfailing reply.

We will read the name of your beloved at Shabbat services on . . .

Though in one thing Rabbi Sokolov’s father’s resolve thankfully stiffened, even as his mother would have forever left things to Itzik, someone she rarely denied. When Brezhnev inked the bargain of Soviet Jews in exchange for American wheat at the end of the 1970s, Rabbi Sokolov’s father said enough was enough, and put the family on the list to leave.

“We will no longer live in a place where we are held for ransom or are little more than currency,” he announced at the dinner table one evening. “My children will grow up free.” When Itzik opened his mouth to protest, the spoon with his nightly borscht pausing just before his lips, Rabbi Sokolov’s father cast a baleful stare from his seat at the end of the table by the drafty kitchen window, as Itzik glowered from the other end by the warm stove.

“Not a word, Deda. Not a word.”

And that was that.

When their turn came a year later, the journey to America was the stuff of small miracles, from time to time Rabbi Sokolov crafts sermons about it. Trains barely caught, kindnesses never forgotten, they ended up in Chicago purely by chance. But one last indignity sticks with Rabbi Sokolov as he ponders the right way to close the letter to Mrs. Fishman, one last poke in the family’s eye from their Soviet masters. At the border with Poland they were forced to disrobe down to their underwear to make certain they hadn’t hidden any valuables on their persons, and most of their meager possessions were confiscated. One suitcase each was the ultimate allotment, no more than twenty kilos, they should be grateful they were allowed even that.

“Deti armii Denikina,” Rabbi Sokolov heard the guards repeatedly inveighing, as they made sport of various articles of clothing and trinkets, and took for themselves whatever they chose.

Children of Denikin’s army. Traitors.

Included among the relinquished items were most of the family photos — Rabbi Sokolov’s mother was able to save only two albums, and the box with the hundreds of loose pictures was seized by the guards. Rabbi Sokolov can see it still today, sitting in the office in the train station in Brest, a prized small samovar that one guard surmised was silver and ripe for the taking resting on top. He closes his eyes and pictures Deda Itzik sitting next to the box on the floor in his undershorts, disconsolate at the loss of the tea dispenser, which he’d had since his days in the Nazi ghetto. Rabbi Sokolov’s father tried to rescue the family heirloom with a jolt of humor, a gesture that to this day speaks well of the man, but, alas, there was never a chance.

“Comrade, since when do Jews have the money for silver?”

“Since when do they not,” the guard replied.

Many congregants choose to make a donation to the synagogue at this time, or some other charity they prefer . . .

Inside that box was everything and nothing, Rabbi Sokolov came to understand years later. Everything in that it held several lifetimes of memories, of Rabbi Sokolov’s parents as they struggled to make a life with two children in Soviet Minsk, of Deda Itzik’s as his days ebbed away in the same. And nothing because the family was leaving behind the place where those memories had been made, never to return, headed for somewhere they knew nothing about, and in which they would be of no past concern to anyone. Neither the loved nor the hated, the despised nor the envied, their lives a tabula rasa. “We are reborn,” Rabbi Sokolov’s father said when they finally set foot in the train station in Vienna, three months of travel to Chicago still ahead of them. “This we shall remember.”

But there’s no denying one thing the box contained, lost forever now, to the whims of history and a few churlish Belarusians. The evidence, one way or the other, that might prove Rabbi Sokolov’s theories. A picture at the kitchen table perhaps, of Rabbi Sokolov coloring with Sima, before Deda Itzik got his hooks into them both. Or one maybe of the Rabbi helping Mama with dinner, slicing up some mushrooms. One photo to ease his mind, to answer the complaint that Rivka gave no quarter, that would let him know finally who he was, and who he is, even as he sits at his grand desk at the synagogue as a great man of West Rogers Park. That would permit him finally to live down his given name, perhaps as false as everything else turned out to be in those years in Minsk, that samovar was made of mere tin after all.

Venya, to his family, short for Veniamin. Benjamin, in English, which the Rabbi uses almost exclusively now.

My right hand man.

I am with you in this time of remembrance.

B’Shalom,

/S

Rabbi Benjamin Sokolov

***

Rabbi Sokolov returns to his apartment that evening and prepares a small dinner. It’s summertime, so it’s still light out, and as he sits down to his roast chicken and green beans, the candle on the corner of the stove still flickers. He kindled it last sundown as he has on her Yahrtzeit every year, just as he led the prayer at this morning’s minyan venerating the God who chose to take her. Yiskadal vyiskadash, shmai raba. Magnified and sanctified is the great name of God. On this day, it’s always so hard.

He wonders how long the candle will burn, how long he’ll have until he’s alone in the dark. Sometimes twenty-six hours, sometimes twenty-five, never less than twenty-four and three quarters. He’s developed the habit of writing in a journal by its light, right until it’s extinguished and the tendrils of smoke rise to the ceiling. An annual letter to his beloved, its length determined by the duration of the dancing flame, he records the candle’s lifespan after he authors the concluding word. And then a shot of slivovitz, her favorite, which always roils his intestines. Though he never failed to join her in a nip whenever she suggested.

The topics of the letters have run the gamut, from pleas for advice that first year as he consoled their two daughters, to updates on his and the girls’ lives as they finished school and left home, to his labors at the synagogue to keep the flock engaged and off their phones. To longing and loneliness and the utterly mundane.

The furnishings in this apartment were a topic one year — the rabbi sold the old house three years ago now, he didn’t need all the space anymore with the girls off to college. That was hard, he remembers, choosing which things to keep, all of them filled with her spirit, whether stuffed with feathers or sculpted of tempered glass. The plain copper vase where she displayed Sabbath flowers made the cut, it’s right over there on the counter next to the refrigerator, reflecting the candle’s glow, though he stopped putting the blooms in years ago.

Tonight of all things, it’s his handwriting, the letter to Mrs. Fishman is bothering him. That he didn’t — or wouldn’t — even pen his signature by hand. Like Rabbi Sokolov’s, Mrs. Fishman’s spouse passed far too young, and she was left to finish raising her two teenage boys alone. He feels a kinship, a bond, though he doesn’t know her all that well, she attends shul only on the high holidays, that last year without her ailing husband in tow.

Still, her loss nettles him, reminding him as it does of his situation with Rivka, and as he wrestles with how to begin this year’s letter, regret seizes him, though he knows using the computer was probably for the best. He should’ve finished Mrs. Fishman’s letter in longhand, the message would have resonated more, meant more. That he, the Rabbi, took the time, made the effort, to compose a missive in blue ink on heavyweight bond. Hashem loves those who bother.

But then he looks through the journal and his momentary guilt is overtaken by cold reality. He thumbs through the pages filled with words only he can decipher, the inks a spectrum of blacks and blues, but finds himself having trouble, even his finely-tuned decoding skills aren’t enough to make sense of it. Is that misgiving or missing? Lost or loud? Terrible or tenable? Lord knows what might have happened had he completed Mrs. Fishman’s letter by hand — she might have missed the Yahrtzeit entirely, or waited to mourn until the fall.

At least in his journal his scribbling has no potential consequences. How many times did Rivka return from the grocery — he did much of the cooking — with unneeded foods raised in triumph, sometimes tending towards the exotic? Dragon fruit instead of dill pickles, Fontina instead of flour; random treasures from the baking aisle. A smile warms his face as he remembers one particular misapprehension between tomatoes and turmeric and basil and beets, rendering impossible that evening’s planned meal. “You can make that borscht you said your Deda loved so much instead,” she remarked upon being informed of the error. “I never had much use for your spaghetti sauce anyway.”

My, how he misses her.

He pushes aside the remainder of his dinner, the green beans gone cold, his pen poised in anticipation above the page. He doesn’t usually have such trouble collecting his thoughts, most of the time it’s a battle to contain them. But tonight his hand seems paralyzed, as he hears Rivka scolding him over his actions with Mrs. Fishman. His concerns over his handwriting are a trifle, mere vanity in a world filled with sorrow. Give in to it, she used to say, surrender, there are far worse things in life to be afflicted with than poor penmanship and no firm explanation why. And then as if to prove the point, the cancer ate her alive before she turned forty-four.

Surrender — it’s a concept Rabbi Sokolov grapples with. People view Rabbis as in charge all the time, that they surrender to no man. And who’s really to blame them? Up there on the bema, dispensing wisdom and sympathy, voices rendered booming by the echoes off the walls. He’s an intimidating sight, he imagines, an authoritative figure, though really it’s mostly for show. Not so different than his former Soviet overlords, he sometimes thinks, they were particularly practiced at guile. That new Soviet man they were creating was just the old one wrapped in different garb. Potemkin villages, Potemkin people. Right down to the way Rabbi Sokolov holds his pen tonight, though when he’s tried writing left-handed it’s no better than with his right.

A life in charge is an exhausting one however, even when a fair bit of it is a put-on. It wasn’t just sarcasm he received from Rivka about his miserable script, and advice to move on, but also that lesson of surrender. They liked to do word games together after dinner sometimes, crosswords usually, as it so happened they’d both been aficionados when they were young as a diverting way to learn English (and for her, French, as well). But always she held the pencil, even to the point of re-writing any answers he might complete if he worked the puzzle alone. The result? Books filled with answers with little evidence he’d even participated, he keeps them on his living room shelf as a tribute, though he hasn’t had the heart to attempt a puzzle since.

At first it irritated him when she did this, her whitewashing of his print like so much graffiti. It also brought back bad memories. Not of his time in Minsk, but here in Chicago, at the local public school in West Rogers Park. Rabbi Sokolov’s halting English combined with his inability to write legibly left a serious misimpression at first, of a boy who would struggle to become a man. His three months with the rest of the kids deemed too slow or too difficult, too wild or too different, left a mark, whenever he thinks of it a shudder overcomes him. Like his recollection of those guards at the railway station in Brest, the Rabbi listens to the radio sometimes and hears only their chortling.

Even when he proved not just to be a good student, but a great one, his handwriting still shadowed him. His choice to attend rabbinical school was a source of consternation to his college professors in Hyde Park, coming as it did out of the blue. Rabbi Sokolov was on track to becoming a high-powered engineer or a world-famous mathematician, someone who used a computer or a calculator all day long. Didn’t he know he’d need to learn Hebrew and Aramaic? It was hard to master languages once you were an adult, and don’t forget, he’d have to learn to write them as well.

And they were right, he did and it was, and it almost broke him, silly as it seems now. He barely passed the language courses in rabbinical school, the worst grades he’d ever received, and began to wonder if those South Side professors hadn’t been correct. When he shared his concerns with his student advisor, Rav Schulman, along with samples of the tortured print, the bearded man with the permanently yellowed tzitzit merely smiled.

“Who would become a Rabbi who would worry about such a thing? It’s probably nothing more than your thoughts racing ahead of your hand — once you learn to control the one, the other will follow.”

Which was more or less what Rivka said when he shared his wounded feelings about her editing one day. He was taking it the wrong way, she told him when her laughter died down. It wasn’t an act of hostility, or some secret yearning to be rid of him. Or anything else a psychologist might fashion. Just something she was better at than him, the shaping of lines to make letters — why should they strain to read that which they enjoyed? It would do him good to let her take care of more things, to not be the man in charge all the time. “To surrender,” she said. “To someone else than God.”

Just like he should surrender that little bit of him he left behind in Minsk, she insisted, whether he really was right-handed or left, Veniamin or not. It didn’t matter, did it? He had her and they were going to spend a lifetime together in a country where they were free, where their choices were their own. That box at the train station held more than its share of bitter memories too, she reminded him, just like their old drab apartment building in Minsk, perhaps Hashem had done them all a favor by now and it had met with the wrecking ball.

He steps away from the kitchen table and retrieves one of the puzzle books from his living room, their last one, the only one that isn’t filled from front to back. Tears come to his eyes as he finds the page where they left off, marking the day she was unable even to hold a pencil anymore. She’d be mortified, he thinks, that he couldn’t bring himself to sign a letter to a woman in need, and that he abandoned something they both loved so.

Dearest Rivka, he finally begins when he returns to the kitchen. I love you and miss you. Remember those crosswords we used to do? I’ve decided to pick them up again after all this time, and assume you’ll want to correct my work. Let’s get started. Do you know a four-letter word for surrender?

The remainder flows out of him like water, as he surrenders again to her love. Twenty-five and forty, he writes when the smoke finally appears, the slivovitz burning a hole in his stomach. And retreats to his bedroom to meet the night alone once more.

***

The visit from Mrs. Fishman three days later is completely unexpected. Rabbi Sokolov returns to his office after Shacharit Friday morning and finds the widow sitting in the chair next to his long-standing secretary’s desk. Her purse rests in her lap, her oversize black glasses halfway down her nose, and she seems to be napping. In a whisper Rabbi Sokolov inquires of Ida how long his visitor has been sitting there, but Mrs. Fishman responds instead.

“I can hear you. I’ve been waiting here for over an hour.”

In her words of protest, Rabbi Sokolov is surprised to catch the accent he hasn’t heard in a dozen years, Rivka’s lilt from Montreal. He catalogues in his memory the few times he’s met Mrs. Fishman previously beyond her husband’s funeral, the handshake at a Yom Kippur break fast or two, the meetings with her and her boys for schooling for their Bar Mitzvot, and can’t say he’s noticed it before, that distinctive French-Canadian inflection. He’s missed something about Mrs. Fishman, but then why wouldn’t he have — it was the father who handled the Bar Mitzvah training the Rabbi now remembers, a beefy man of six feet two, it’s hard to believe someone like that could pass from what began as the flu.

“If you’ll just let me wash up from services, I’ll be with you in a moment, ok? You’re welcome to a coffee from the pot by my desk.”

In front of the mirror in his office bathroom — a recent extravagance bestowed by a wealthy donor — the Rabbi looks refreshed. He’s slept well these past several nights, each of them concluding with a crossword at the kitchen table. Like she was right there with him, cramming the letters into the tiny spaces. What a joy it has been. His handwriting even seemed improved at the end of each session, though perhaps it was just a trick of the light — while he didn’t work the puzzles by the glow of a candle, he dimmed the lamplight all the same.

When he returns to his desk, Mrs. Fishman is seated in the guest chair slurping coffee, though now her eyes are open and aware. She takes in the trappings of his office with a jaundiced gaze, one brow raised in apparent disapproval, and jumps right into it, the yahrtzeit letter dropped unceremoniously astride the brass clock on the Rabbi’s desk, the hand that released it shaking just enough to betray her nerves.

“What does this mean? ‘I am with you in this time of remembrance?’”

“I’m sorry?”

“This clever line at the bottom. What did you mean by it?”

Rabbi Sokolov glances at the letter and then across at her, though quickly she looks away. He’s offended her it seems, his bumbling typewritten efforts at the personal touch. If he couldn’t be bothered even to sign his name, he should’ve stuck with the basic letter, the one that no one has brought in here before with an accusatory tone and a tremulous hand.

“I’m sorry – I’ve upset you. I—”

“It’s about Rivka, isn’t it,” Mrs. Fishman interrupts.

“Rivka?”

“Yes. Your wife? We went to school together in Montreal, and I knew her in Minsk. We lived in the same apartment building, remember?”

“What?”

“My maiden name is Abramovich, does that ring a bell?”

And then the fog of over forty-five years lifting, her voice softens and she explains, the story they all share. Hers is a bit more dramatic, a harrowing night for her parents in a KGB office in Moscow, a run-in with thieves in Milan. Followed by a journey through Cairo of all places before landing in Montreal, where Rivka was waiting for her in third grade English class. They were friends all through high school and college and kept in touch for a while when Rivka moved away to Chicago. Rivka even connected her with her late husband indirectly, a client of Rivka’s from her consulting work. She married quite late you know, and but for the fact that she and Marty both knew Rivka, might never have married at all. Another year or two and she probably would have been unable to bear the boys.

“I never even knew you were friends,” the Rabbi says when she finishes.

“Well, we moved to Chicago after Rivka had passed, and Marty and I were never much for shul and we were so busy with the kids, things just slipped away from us.”

“I understand. But still, you should have said something last year. Irina Abramovich — you lived down the hall, yes?”

“The floor below. Right next to Rivka. Though everyone calls me Irene now.”

“And me, Benjamin. It’s a different world.”

“Yes it is.” The conversation dies for a spell, and the two sit in silence, Rabbi and congregant, widow and widower, neighbors from another time. Rabbi Sokolov eyes the yahrtzeit letter sitting open between them, the “/S” stark and cold, and his regret from a few days before returns as outright shame, the letter the embodiment of it, his pride having failed to deliver to Mrs. Fishman the courtesy of his handwritten name.

“You’re right,” the Rabbi says. “That last line was about Rivka. Her Yahrtzeit was on the day of the letter and I was thinking of her.”

“I can imagine. She was a great beauty in Montreal when we were growing up. All the boys wanted her. You’re a lucky man.”

“Yes, I am. Or was.”

The widow gives the Rabbi a half-smile and looks around the office again as she finishes her coffee. Her gaze lands on a picture of Deda Itzik and Baba Rivka Rabbi Sokolov keeps, as a reminder of those days in Minsk. Something Mama squirreled away in her brassiere, along with a ruby necklace, thankfully the female guard at the border went no further than her underclothes. Mrs. Fishman opens her mouth to say something but then apparently thinks better of it and reaches into her purse instead. Out comes a small envelope labeled “RIVKA” in red marker, which she lays on the Rabbi’s desk next to the letter.

“Anyway, I have some copies of pictures of the two of us when we were younger I thought you might like. Did she tell you we all planned to be old ladies together in the park drinking tea and playing durak someday?”

“That sounds like Rivka.”

“I didn’t even know she’d passed until we came to Chicago. I guess I always thought there’d be more time.” Her voice catches on the “t” in “time” and it’s clear to Rabbi Sokolov she’s talking about her husband now. He retrieves a box of tissues from a desk drawer and hands them over to her, watches as she dabs at the corners of her eyes.

“Oh, Rabbi. I miss him so much. Does it get any better?”

Rabbi Sokolov avoids her stare for a moment as he considers her question. Would Hashem permit a little lie here, a tiny fib to ease someone’s pain? Not if Rivka had anything to say about the subject, the truth was all that ever mattered to her.

“Easier is the word I’d use. The dark times will always be dark, I’m afraid, but they will come around less and less often, Irene.”

“An honest answer. Thank you for that, Rabbi. And it’s Irina. The old names are so much better, don’t you think?” The widow picks up the yahrtzeit letter and rises, telling the Rabbi she’d best be going, she has some shopping to do for the boys. It’s unbelievable how much the two of them eat these days, she visits the grocery store every other day, it seems. The Rabbi invokes his daughters and says with girls it’s a little more hit and miss, more weird diets than anything else, almond milk and avocadoes, he remembers lots of avocadoes. At his door, the two survivors stop to shake hands, and she tells him how much she appreciates him meeting with her.

“And I meant to say it was a very nice letter before I started interrogating you. Your sentiment at the end was just what I needed to hear, Rabbi.”

“Venya,” the Rabbi corrects, still holding her hand. “From now on, call me Venya. And don’t be such a stranger – worship is good for the soul.” A bright smile lights her face, it’s easy to see what her husband must have seen in her, as she squeezes his hand one final time.

“Yes, Venya. The boys and I will come tonight. Shabbat Shalom.”

“Shabbat shalom.”

The Rabbi returns to his desk and, after pouring himself a coffee, begins going through his email. The envelope with the photos of Rivka beckons him but he’s reluctant to get into it. He’s a busy man on Fridays, trying to take care of everything before sundown, and he’s worried if he opens it, an hour or two will go by before he even knows it, or worse, he might break down. One of those dark moments he warned Mrs. Fishman about, that rise up and strike him given half a chance.

But after forty minutes or so, he knows it’s pointless and opens the envelope. Inside is what she promised, a dozen or so photos of Rivka and Mrs. Fishman from long ago, arranged in reverse chronological order. The first couple are from their college days, at a dance it looks like, Rivka and Irina with two young men wearing bolo ties. A country and western affair, Rabbi Sokolov guesses, he chuckles as he remembers his own experience with one of those. Then there are scattered shots from high school and middle school, and Rabbi Sokolov sees that Rivka wore lengthy braids for several years, in one of the photos the cords rest on a red velvet jumper.

If it’s possible, she appears even more beautiful than he remembers, the sharp brown eyes that didn’t miss a thing, the lips parted in an enigmatic smile. In one picture he lingers on she’s standing at the edge of a pool, looking at some unknown object in the distance, the sun shining through her luxuriant brown hair. She’s about to laugh it seems to Rabbi Sokolov, as she and Mrs. Fishman hold hands right before jumping in.

It’s the last photo that’s really something, though, the two friends as children standing side-by-side in someone’s living room. It’s back in Minsk, the Rabbi quickly realizes, at one of the baby-sitting sessions with Rivka’s mother, the girls can’t be over five. They both have bows in their hair, as was so common in the Soviet days, the girls presents to be wrapped. The boys by contrast were outfitted as serious little men, even the Jews, much of what Rabbi Sokolov remembers from being that young he associates with a collared shirt and a clip-on tie.

And then, as if by magic, he appears. Behind them, seated at a card table, with Sima and Rivka’s mother. He and his sister are blurry in the photo and so tiny — if the girls were five, he would be four and Sima just two, their legs nowhere close to reaching the floor. Working on a papier mâché project, he decides after a few seconds, in front of them is a bowl filled with the tell-tale gray liquid. With Rivka’s mother’s help, Sima is placing a ribbon of paper on a balloon they will pop at the end, yielding a half-sphere they’ll turn into a mask or some other childhood creation. While he is busying himself with the newspaper, Pravda or Izvestiya probably, cutting it with a scissor into strips short and long.

With his right hand. Pravaya ruka, in Russian.

He brings the photo closer to his face to be sure, but there’s really no doubt about it. There it is, plain as day, the evidence he’s been seeking for decades, in the background of a photo from a world long lost. His former self brought to the fore, no different than his present as it turns out. He sets the picture down and inspects his hands, only moments before objects of such curiosity, the one the potential subdued master, the other the counterfeit Soviet replacement. He flexes them several times, the fingers knifing through the air, the tension releasing from his knuckles. The hair on the back is still black, he idly notices, and wonders how much longer he has before it’s run through with gray.

And Rabbi Sokolov bursts out laughing.

Softly at first, but then gradually louder, until ultimately it’s nearly a roar. A dam breaking, an avalanche falling, whatever you prefer. It goes on for long enough that Ida pops her head in, wondering what the fuss is about, is everything ok? It’s nothing, he assures her, just a slice of humble pie, he’s sorry to have disturbed her, if she could close the door on her way out he’d appreciate it.

“I don’t think I’ve heard you laugh like that since Rivka,” she says. “It was nice.”

The door swings shut as Rabbi Sokolov takes a sip on his cold coffee. A thank you letter is in order, though the gift was not quite what Irina perceived. He could write it by hand, he supposes, highlighting the significance of the photo, but best not to press his luck. Besides, it’s only been a year for her, he reminds himself, when everyday concerns still border on the maddening, even if he knows she’d be one of the few to understand.

So he turns to his computer instead.

Dear Mrs. Fishman:

It was a pleasure to see you today and learn about your friendship with Rivka. I’m still amazed I never knew. The two of you were lucky to have each other in Montreal.

And thank you for the photos – did you know I was in one of them? That’s me with my sister Sima at the table behind you and Rivka in her parents’ living room. Minsk is never far away it seems.

In any event, always know that I am here if you need any spiritual advice or just someone to talk to. The dark in front of us is never as black as it seems, mainly for the people on the road who light the way.

B’Shalom,

He hits print and retrieves the letter, scrounges a pen for the signature. The picture rests against his clock, he’ll have to frame it, a conversation starter if ever there was one. And another reminder, not so much of his days in Minsk, though there is that, but of the folly of those everyday concerns, and of the man who created them.

The left hand man. Who is no more.

He lifts the pen to sign his name. His mind is lucid, crisp. Settled, Rav Schulman might say, having laid the past finally to rest, whether it resided near the Svislach River or the Ile de Montreal.

Venya, he writes.

The signature is clear as a bell.

Copyright 2025

© 2024. All rights reserved.