Hannah drew herself a glass of water. She motioned to him, Want some? “Tea,” he replied. She put the kettle on to boil. Then she sank down into one of the kitchen chairs, her face a misery.

“It’s true. I didn’t tell you I was going to Yad Vashem with Yehuda’s class because I normally don’t bother you with such things, but also because I knew you wouldn’t like it. And when I was there, I did a little checking into Rabbi Kobinski. I was going to tell you what I found out.” She stared down at her work-reddened hands. “But I chickened out. There was no way to show you what I found without having a scene. Like this one.”

A heavy sigh caught on a sob. Her face reddened. “Oh, Aharon! You can be so hard!”

Aharon’s anger had turned into something heavy and sour. It weighed down his stomach, his soul. He was thinking that she always did have that rebellious streak. Her father had married her off when it first showed itself. Smart man.

He went to the table so that he was standing right in front of her. He placed his fingertips on the wood, looked down at her with a stony face.

“Am I hard? Because I ask for a little respect? Because I think a man is a man and a woman is a woman?”

“But… many feel that…”

“Who is your husband, Hannah? The ‘many’ or me? Am I the head of this household? Am I to be listened to in my own home?” His voice sounded terrible, even to himself, but he would not feel guilty. The sages say, “A firm hand in the beginning will save a horse in the end.”

“All right, Aharon. I’m sorry.”

He grunted his acknowledgment of her apology. The teakettle began to whistle. He motioned to it with his hand and sank down into one of the kitchen chairs. Her repentance gave him the first relief of the entire miserable day. His anger drained away into weariness. That horrible place, now this fight with his wife. Such a waste!

When she brought him the tea she was biting her lip. She gave him a pregnant look from under her lashes. She was pretty. And that was another reason that she shouldn’t be traipsing all over town unescorted, so that young men like that nebbish at the Collections desk could ogle over a respectable rebbetzin, a wife and mother.

“What is it? What now?” he sighed, pulling the mug toward him.

“Well… I found something else at Yad Vashem that day. If you won’t be angry. I can just throw it away if you want.”

He stared at her, astonished. Now she was toying with him. And after he’d thought he’d succeeded in chastising her! But he had already spent his anger and, like a lover, could not dredge it up again so quickly. He settled for long-suffering, and rolled his eyes to Heaven. “Just say what you have to say.”

“I’ll show you.” She padded into the hallway and opened the folding closet door to get her purse. She brought back a few sheets of paper, sat down across from him, her face proud. “I looked up Rabbi Kobinski’s barrack. You see, they have a database with the names of all of the Holocaust victims and survivors, and many of them have barrack numbers and dates and—”

“The point, Hannah?”

“This is a list of the men who were in the same barrack as Rabbi Kobinski at the same time.” She smoothed out her pages proudly.

Aharon grunted, his eyes half-lidded in disinterest.

“I cross-checked every name on the list with the lists of survivors, and I found three names.”

She revealed the second page. “These three men lived with Rabbi Kobinski in the barrack—and they’re still alive.”

Aharon got up, added some cold water from the tap to his tea, and sipped it at the sink.

“Aharon, one lives in Tel Aviv. Maybe you could go see him. He might remember something about Rabbi Kobinski.”

Aharon rubbed his brow where a headache was beginning to stab with tentative thrusts of the knife. “I already wasted the whole day at Yad Vashem. I’ve heard all I want to hear about Auschwitz!” He dumped the tea into the sink. He felt so tired, completely drained. Perhaps he’d take a nap.

“But he might know something important. How can you know unless you talk to him?”

“Hannah,” he warned. He pointed toward the pages. “Now is this it?”

“Yes,” Hannah said, frowning.

“Are you sure? There’s nothing else you did at Yad Vashem? Rearrange their filing system maybe?”

“No.”

“Did you already call these three survivors? Get their life stories on tape?”

Hannah made a face. “I didn’t call them.”

“You’re sure?”

“Of course I’m sure!”

“So there’s nothing else?”

“That’s everything, Aharon,” Hannah’s lips were heading into that pout of hers.

“Thank Heaven for small miracles. Now I think I’ll lie down for a while.”

“Are you feeling bad?”

He gave her a look that said, After all this, you can ask if I feel bad? Of course I feel bad! and headed down the hall.

In their bedroom he shut the door and kicked off his shoes. He would sleep, dreamlessly he hoped, just like his baby lying in the children’s room next door. He was exhausted, and he was still worried about Hannah. What was he to do with her? Well, she would have to learn not to question his authority, and that was that. Then everything would be the way it should be.

Why does evil exist? Reb Zaks, may his name be blessed forever, says that evil is what happens when the sephirot are out of balance. I look at these monsters, these Nazis, who are my tormentors. What are they made of? I come up with gevorah. Restriction, judgment. How can it be otherwise? Is there any chesed in them? Mercy? Loving-kindness? No. You could argue that at home, with their families, there is chesed. But I don’t believe this. Can a snake turn into a rabbit at night?

There are only two possibilities. One: they are really snakes—on top of the mask and beneath it. Two: they are not really snakes but only act like snakes because they are surrounded by snakes and they try to pass. Perhaps there were a few of these, in the beginning. How can a whole nation be born snakes? But my mother used to say if you make a face it will stick that way! These snakes-who-are-not-snakes experience pain, regret, at first. But maybe they soon find that they become snakes period. In the ghetto, I saw pity in the eyes of a few of our tormentors. Now there is nothing in the eyes, ever.

This is important to know: you can change your sephirot. Oh, yes, you can change it completely! This in itself is chesed/gevorah—a great mercy and a terrible judgment. The great mercy is: you don’t have to remain what you are. The great judgment is: you will become what you deserve.

Here is a question I have been wrestling with: Is the gevorah of the guards the same as the gevorah of Rabbi Donel, the Hasid who gave my beloved teacher such a hard time, a strict YHWHist if ever there was one?

Yes. Judgment is judgment. Rabbi Donel says so-and-so is a sinner for doing such-and-such on the Sabbath. Mitigating circumstance? What mitigating circumstances? The Torah says, right here, that you are not to do thus-and-so on the Sabbath. The only exception is to save a life. Was he saving a life? No! So he was wrong! What does Rabbi Donel feel in his heart for this man? Pity? Empathy? Is he thinking: what would I have done in his shoes? He is not because such things are chesed and in this he is lacking.