she really doesn’t know who in this house would have such particles of science, such bits of biology, in their possession
“Did you know that Dudi raised almost the whole amount Gedalya needs for Tovi’s surgery?” Nechami asks Ima. She picks up the receipt lying on the table — it’s from the sheitelmacher, for Chaya’s sheitel —turns it over, and writes “NIS
185,000” on the back, underlining it with a flourish. “The family fundraising drive was his idea. He coordinated everything, and he raised so much money.”
Nechami piles it on. She has to get Ima to see that Dudi is a good person, that he cares, that he does mitzvos.
“In my Torah, the one I learned when I stood at Har Sinai, it doesn’t say you have to wear baggy black pants and a white shirt,” he’d said to her yesterday. “It does say a lot about chesed and tzedakah, though.”
Nechami hadn’t let that go by without reminding him of what he already knew: all about communal codes of dress and conduct and how they keep a person anchored, and what a zechus it is to live by defined standards…. But now, when she’s in Ima’s house, she focuses on all the good Dudi has done for Gedalya.
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