Recap: Dovid’s parents have bags and bags of postcards that are being sent to world leaders to let them know the terrible plight of Syrian Jews and asking for help to get the Jews out of Syria. Dovid’s father suddenly experiences chest pain while lugging the bag of post cards.
“I’m okay now,” Daddy said. “The pain went away.”
“You should go to the doctor, Zellie. It’s not normal, this chest pain.”
“I will. I will. After the meeting. It’s just a couple of days till then, and then I’ll go.”
My neck muscles tightened. I stayed close to Daddy the rest of the day. He had to be okay. He just had to.
…
It was a few days later when a group of activists along with our rabbi came to our house. They were going to try to phone Syria to reach a rabbi in the Syrian community. “We can’t help if we don’t have any contacts there. We need a contact in the Jewish community in Syria,” Mommy said. Mommy let me and Aliza come to the meeting. “Dovid, you and Aliza are old enough to know what we’re doing.”
“I have the name of a rabbi and the Jewish school in Syria,” Rabbi Davis said. He dialed the international operator. One of the activists, Mr. Morris, spoke Arabic. He got on the phone with the operator and said in Arabic, “Please connect a person-to-person call to Rabbi H. in Damascus.”
There was a crackling sound on the line. Silence. Then, the Canadian operator said, “Are you still on the line? I will put the call through to an operator in Rome.”
There was more crackling and then another operator said, “I will put your call through to an operator in Damascus.” We could hear the voice of the operator. “Please connect this call to Rabbi H. in the Jewish community.”
There was a long silence. Mr. Morris put his hand over the receiver. “I got through now to a Syrian operator. She’s speaking English.”
Everyone held their breath.
Minutes passed slowly. Then the operator’s voice came back on.
“There is no number for him. I’m sorry.”
Mommy stamped her foot. “I can’t believe it.”
“Maybe he doesn’t have a phone,” Daddy said.
Rabbi Davis paced across the room. “Hang up. Let’s try to figure out another option.”
The Canadian operator tried one more time. “I’m sorry—”
Mr. Morris yelled in Arabic into the phone: “I demand to be put through to the Jewish community.”
There was another long silence and then Mr. Morris put his arm up in a victory sign. “We got through to the Jewish school.”
My heart was thumping. This was amazing! My parents could do anything. Thank you, Hashem!
Mr. Morris said, “They gave us another number. They’re going to go get Rabbi H. He doesn’t have a phone. Jews aren’t allowed to have phones.”
A few minutes later, “Yes, this is Rabbi H.”
“We want to help the Jews in Syria,” Mommy got on the phone. “We’d like to send siddurim, Chumashim, and other religious items to your community.”
“We are fine. Religious articles would be fine. I have to go. Thank you.”
Mr. Morris hung up. Mommy rose. “He’s being listened to by the Mukhabarat. He had to say that. How will we help them when he can’t tell us what’s really happening.”
Daddy strode towards her. “Rena, listen. We got through to a rabbi in Syria. This is huge. We have a contact now. We can work out a code with him. Something will work out.”
The meeting went on, but I left the room. Mommy needed me to tell Zevi to get ready for bed.
“I’ll be upstairs to say Sh’ma with them in a little while,” she called to me.
It was late that night when it happened.
I woke to a loud scream. I put on my bathrobe and stumbled downstairs.
The scream was coming from Daddy’s study.
Mommy rushed in. “Zellie, what’s wrong?”
Daddy was lying on the floor writhing in pain.
“Mommy, what’s wrong?”
“Dovid, quick. Go call 911.”
I raced to the phone in the kitchen. My hand shook as I dialed. “Please, Hashem, let Daddy be okay. Please let them come in time.”
Daddy’s scream stopped. It was eerily quiet when I ran back into the study. Mommy was crying when the ambulance drivers arrived and whisked Daddy onto a stretcher.“
Mommy turned to me. “Dovid, I’m driving to the hospital. You’ll stay here with the girls.”
“Mommy, what was it? What’s wrong with Daddy?”
“Heart attack,” Mommy said as she raced out the door.
I sank onto a chair and began reciting T’hilim.
I didn’t know then that it was already too late…
…
It was the last day of shiv’ah, and Mommy was speaking with a rav who came to pay a shiv’ah call.
“I have to do something to keep his memory alive. I want to continue our work for the Syrian Jews. It was so important to both of us to help them,” Mommy said, tears streaming down her cheek.
I still couldn’t believe my daddy was gone. “He’s with Hashem,” Mommy said.
The next day, a group of our family’s friends met with Mommy and told her the idea of making a tz’dakah in Daddy’s memory that would be a fund to help Syrian Jews.
Mommy was really touched. She told Aliza and me about it and how much it meant to her, but she didn’t know how she could help them. There had to be a way to do more.
“I have to reach that rabbi in Syria again and find out how to help more,” Mommy told me.
It was late at night but I couldn’t sleep. Too much had happened. I found Mommy in the study sifting through a pile of papers.
I felt a sudden surge of anger. All these papers. All this was what killed Daddy. “Mommy, please, can’t you stop. You and Daddy did so much already and look what happened to him.”
“Dovid, it was a huge mitzvah there can’t be anything bad from doing a mitzvah. It was Daddy’s time.
Come, I want you to see this journal.” She handed me a leather-bound journal.
“It was written by a young Jewish girl in Syria. When you read this, you’ll see how dire the situation is…”
To be continued…
Susie Garber is the author of an historical fiction novel, Flight of the Doves (Menucha Publishing, 2023), Please Be Polite (Menucha Publishers, 2022), A Bridge in Time (Menucha Publishing, 2021), Secrets in Disguise (Menucha Publishers, 2020), Denver Dreams (a novel, Jerusalem Publications, 2009), Memorable Characters…Magnificent Stories (Scholastic, 2002), Befriend (Menucha Publishers, 2013), The Road Less Traveled (Feldheim, 2015), fiction serials and features in Binah Magazine and Binyan Magazine, “Moon Song” in Binyan (2021-2022), and Alaskan Gold ( 2023-2024).
