The Boy Who Listened

by Lloyd B. Abrams

I first noticed the boy through a gap in the mechitza curtain that was hung along the aisle. He was sitting beside Sadie Appelbaum, next to the window, in the women’s section of my aging, worn-out shul.

What struck me first was his appearance. He looked to be about ten or eleven and was dressed in the usual religious boy’s garb – black velvet skull cap, white dress shirt, black pants that looked like hand-me-downs, and scuffed leather shoes. But he didn’t hold himself like most of the standoffish pre-teens I know. Instead, his face was open and receptive. And his deep, dark eyes seemed to have seen more than he should have for his obviously young age.

Sadie’s husband Seymour had recently died and Sadie had been bereft and often unconsolable. Their children and grandchildren had all drifted away and “Sy” was her whole life. It was agonizing when she sobbed as I tried to ease her sorrow. Her overwhelming sense of loss was so palpable and pitiful.

Yet the boy sat beside her just listening, for I never saw his lips move. Their one-sided conversation, such as it was, lasted for many long minutes. And as she was leaving, Sadie mentioned she’d be back tomorrow for Sabbath services. She was dry-eyed and appeared composed and comforted. It was unnerving, for, I was now the one with tears … tears of gratitude.

I wanted to talk to the boy but I could never seem to get him alone. Somehow he was even able to slip away after having a nosh and some cake from the kiddush table after Shabbos services.

But later, I saw the boy in a pew in the back corner talking with – rather, listening to – Dov Schreiber, whose son and daughter had both been abducted during the Hamas-led attacks in Israel. Eitan and Tamar had been at the rave where so many young people had been attacked and slaughtered. Worse yet, their bodies had neither been found nor identified. And I wondered, as I often did, how a just and merciful God could let something so appalling and loathsome like that ever happen.

After Dov’s time with the boy, he strode out of shul with his head held just a bit higher. He no longer looked hopeless, but rather like a man who was rediscovering his self and his purpose, despite having to carry the weight of an impossible, irreparable loss.

And by the time I went back to look for the boy, I couldn’t find him anywhere. Once again, he seemed to have disappeared.

Several mornings later – it was a Tuesday – he was on the women’s side again, but this time he was with, of all people, my wife, Shoshana. I was dumbfounded. She was talking animatedly, with the elegant, theatrical hand motions which she’d practiced when she had studied ballet – dreams which she had given up when we married. The boy just listened and, as usual, remained silent.

I felt a pang of jealousy – yes, even rabbis can get jealous – and I wanted to interrupt and ask exactly what was going on.

But then I realized … who else could she talk to about the loss of the daughter we almost had? Her friends in the synagogue? Women from her book club? Parents from the Hebrew school? Seekers from the outreach program? Or worse, her embittered, inaccessible parents? A therapist might have been the best choice, but for us, it was all still too raw.

Our daughter would’ve been our first and, quite possibly, our only child. There had been so many agonizing months and years of planning and testing and fertility medications and careful timing, with miscarriages and failed IUI and IVF attempts and on and on and on. We’d tried it all, done it all. Counting days like counting the Omer. Marking-up calendars that had become a curse rather than a promise. And she’d carried her pregnancy almost full term.

Then came the checkup and the ultrasound, and another just to make sure. But the little one’s heart had stopped … just stopped. We were stunned, heartbroken … and broken inside.

After all that.

“Sometimes it happens,” the obstetrician softly said, sadly shaking his head but avoiding eye contact with us, perhaps out of shame, perhaps because he simply couldn’t find the words, except for, “Only God knows why.” And then he, too, began sobbing.

And, devastatingly, there was still the still baby that had to be delivered.

I felt so bereft and unconsolable …

As Shoshana finished talking to the boy, he turned and locked eyes with me. He somehow made me understand something – not something explicit, not something tangible, but something nevertheless indescribably holy and revelatory – and that something started to bring back to me the self that I was so fearful of losing.

And as the boy slipped away, I stared – really stared – at Shoshana and saw, in wonderment, a look of relief and acceptance, and just the faint beginning of a smile.

Rev 19 / May 15, 2024

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May 15, 2024 … Copyright © 2024, Lloyd B. Abrams