יום שישי, י״ח תמוז תשפ״וFriday, July 3, 2026
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By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
A woman is a woman not for nothing. They desire. Perhaps more than we do. They are trying to wake themselves up, or us. It is not the way, but remember: They want to please us too.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Is it really forbidden, such a thing? I don’t take such a dim view of your father, as you know. Yes, he’s impossibly cheap and self-centered, but he wants to live.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
A shudder went through Yankel when he heard that. She likes the city – a place of gentile and Jewish tumah, impurities! He had to admire it in a way. She didn’t feel responsible for her ideas and she could fling them all into the wind and could care less what would come down where.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Yankel paused as though to ponder or measure his words. One could see in such moments the Eastern European rabbi in him. The white shirt with a floppy collar, the black suit, gray-patterned tie – the seriousness of Everything.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Quite frankly, I feel terrible, but also great. I had always felt old, but now I feel young even though it feels like my body has been broken into two.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Yankel had never before been physically assaulted. He was out of breath and overcome with adrenaline. One of the policemen helped Yankel down the subway stairs. He sat him down on a chair and spoke to him.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
The crafty caterer perked up in his chair: He knew he had a fish on the line. Yankel could see it all, with his new eyes that took in everything these days.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Leah’s father yawned and sat up and banged a hand on the dashboard. This car, zul’n zein a kapara – should be an atonement for all my sins.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
It pleased Leah’s father that the Rosh HaYeshiva had accorded him such respect. He was beside himself with pleasure.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Yankel was hurt by Leah’s remark, only more so because it was true. The chabura was a motley, ragtag crew. To even call them a chabura was an embarrassment.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
He couldn’t make up his mind if this was beautiful or ugly. Women – the torture of women!
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
At a corner table sat his father and Gila. He had a small planning book open and she was turned away slightly with her small red pocketbook on the table. Nothing could have prepared him for the assault on his senses that he experienced. It was like a nuclear flash.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Yankel was puzzled. He was young, he was old. It didn’t feel like a compliment either way. Now he wasn’t to talk about it – but they were full steam ahead anyway.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Meanwhile the older woman studied the younger hard, from a distance. It was bizarre for Yankel to watch his mother stare to the point of crudeness.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Leah feigned tossing a coffee cup at him. Yankel was concerned that people should see this kallus rosh, this sweet lightheadedness between them. It wasn’t proper to be standing in front of the yeshiva talking in this way with Leah.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Yankel’s father held on to his son’s hand for a brief moment. I was passing by and I was seized by the urge to see this place. I hadn’t planned on disturbing you, but I was recognized by one of your yeshiva bochur friends who insisted on fetching you.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Yankel was a bit pained and puzzled by this question. Surely, Leah was familiar with the way things were done in the yeshiva world. She had to know that this was a complicated matter.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Hat on his head, Yankel walked a brisk step to Leah’s house. His thoughts kept him lively company, and the twenty-minute walk felt like five. Leah was waiting at the door. He noticed the glint of her earrings and then looked away.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
This is reality. There will always be somebody you don’t like or doing something you don’t like. You can’t walk out. What will be with us when there is a problem? Are you going to walk out on us?
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
They waited in silence for the train to glide into the station. When they got on the train, Leah said, I missed you.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
A thought, any thought, was as good as any other perhaps, but it was isolated, cut off. Binyamin was an island.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Yankel would get out of there as soon as he could. What was there to linger for? Did his father want his approval?
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Yankel bore down so hard while slicing his perogie that his knife made a clink sound on the bone china. Could Abba actually be apologizing for… everything? He shrugged.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
True, he was the playful type, but his father was almost a compulsive salesman. With every word, with every gesture, he was out to prove that his way was right, that his ideology, the superior one.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
He was surprised by her self-possession. Here she seemed smitten by him and yet she was confident. She could just as soon leave him as take him.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Yankel had a few thousand dollars put aside from tutoring younger boys and a few summers as a camp counselor. If there was a time to spend, Yankel would spend it now on these dates.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Yankel enjoyed this exchange; and as evidenced by the smiles in the room, so did the others. But at the same time he wondered about what he had just said.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
It was strange that afterward, when he was back in his dormitory room, going over the evening in his mind, he could not even remember the color of Leah’s eyes.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Leah looked at him. She flashed a modest smile revealing small, white, polished-pearl teeth. To see them sent a fright through him.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
It had never before occurred to him in such stark terms that his G-d and the G-d of his father were not the same. In fact, they were very different.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
Yankel hated that question even as he knew it would always come. He understood the question wasn’t so much informational as it was a way that both he and his father and his family could be placed in a schnit, a familiar category.
By Alter Yisrael Shimon Feuerman
He knew he must marry, but it was like looking at the vast ocean from the shore, waiting for a ship that he couldn’t be sure even existed.
July 3, 2026 
