It was starting to look like all three of his children would end up in the ground beside their ancestors,
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B enjamin had spent his whole life in Katerynoslav Ukraine and never once did he imagine leaving it.
He’d married his wife in his own backyard on a cold spring morning surrounded by cherry blossoms. He’d buried his parents in the cemetery down the road right beside his grandparents and great-grandparents.
In Katerynoslav he’d become a parent himself — three separate times he’d fallen in love with a squirming pink body. But it was starting to look like all three of his children would end up in the ground beside their ancestors Moshe and Yechiel both gone from cholera before reaching even the age of one. Then he came home one day to find his only remaining son Chaim just as ill.
His heart sank straight into the pit of his stomach like an anchor; Chaim had just turned two. He and his wife Rivkah had already celebrated Chaim’s birthday relieved that G-d had at least spared them one child. But there he was quiet in Rivkah’s arms with the same tomato-red cheeks and parched lips Benjamin had witnessed too many times. His wife’s hands were raw from washing the poor child’s cloth diaper so many times in one day. More than that she looked defeated.
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