“So for you, the question isn’t at how high a standard you want to work in multimedia, but whether you want to go into the field at all. Right?”
“Couldn’t Shua have learned at home that night, so you could go to the event?” Yoeli had asked her. He was asking for Chaya too, she knew that.
“I didn’t ask him to,” answers Nechami. Something in her stiffens. “Shua keeps his phone on silent when he’s learning — and that’s if it happens to be charged. Plus there’s no reception at Milkov. But anyway, that’s not the way it works. He has his chavrusas, his sedorim, his regular shiurim. It’s easy to take a young man and turn him into the household help. It starts with an alumnae event that you can’t miss because it happens only once in five years. Then it’s the wedding of a cousin that you’re really close to, so how can you not go? And then, little by little, you realize how hard it’s getting at night. Maybe at least once a week you can tell him to come home at ten, instead of after midnight. And then on Friday you really need his help. Kavod Shabbos, you know. It’s a slippery slope. I’ve seen it happen to friends. A talmid chacham can’t grow like that.”
You’re too rigid, Yoeli thinks — but he doesn’t say it out loud.
Because her rigidity, her refusal to compromise, is what allowed his brother-in-law Shua to grow into an unparalleled talmid chacham, the pride of their family. And who can criticize a soldier who’s given his life for his mission?
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