Free Swim

Three sons, three different worlds. Shimon was a rebbi’s dream. Moshe was a rebbi’s nightmare. Ovadia was somewhere in-between: an average student. Or so we thought.

S hortly after my father-in-law passed away at the relatively young age of 52 my mother-in-law had a dream in which he came to her leading two blue-eyed young boys and placed them on the rug beside her. “These two children will be gedolei Yisrael” he told her.

Within the next year I gave birth to a boy and so did my sister-in-law. Her son’s eyes were brown. My son’s eyes were blue — which was mighty strange since both my husband and I hail from purebred Sephardic families.

“These will be my two gedolei Yisrael ” my mother-in-law said happily. Although she and my father-in-law were not fully observant she still identified strongly with Jewish tradition and possessed deep reverence for rabbanim and gedolim as is typical of even nonreligious Sephardim.

A year and a half later I gave birth to another boy — also with blue eyes. Apparently my mother-in-law’s dream was destined to be fulfilled through my progeny exclusively and not through my nephew. At least that’s what my mother-in-law and others in the family thought. This notion was reinforced by the fact that the first of these two blue-eyed boys Ovadia was born on Yom Kippur while the second Moshe was born on Erev Rosh Chodesh Adar and had his bris on 7 Adar the yahrtzeit of Moshe Rabbeinu (hence the name).