Down to the Last Drop   

While the other woman’s husband ducked into the store, Sari chatted with the wife, making the usual hollow small talk. After a moment’s lull, the woman turned to Sari, her eyes darkening, and whispered, “Why didn’t anyone tell us?” She nodded meaningfully toward the liquor store that had swallowed their spouses.

Sari felt her stomach drop, the question piercing through the fantasy she so carefully concocted every morning. She was struggling for an appropriate answer when her husband appeared with a bulging bag. Sari waved a quick goodbye, but the question remained hanging in the air like stale cigarette smoke. Why didn’t anyone tell us?

Uneasy Beginnings

Sari Freedlin* grew up in a bubble. Her father was a rosh kollel and her mother a beloved elementary school teacher.

“Insular doesn’t begin to describe my upbringing,” Sari explained to me over a Zoom interview. “I knew nothing from nothing. I went to the top Bais Yaakov in my area and I naturally gravitated toward the good girls. I had very little exposure to anything outside school, camp, friends, homework — my life was totally predictable.”