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#Post#: 155--------------------------------------------------
Out of Exile!
DIR By: StoryGod
Date: February 25, 2020, 11:20 am
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Tikvah knew where she wanted to be. She would have to do
homework tonight before two precious hours of free time, but
homework here or in the Penthouse was about the same. The
library had treasures. The high school library had atlases,
though it might lack a really good map of Israel, and it was
Israel Tikvah wanted.
Tikvah approached the library mora, who was called a librarian.
She really was a mora, but a knowledgeable one. "Are you
interested in modern or ancient Israel?" she asked Tikvah. Eretz
Yisorel was in the Torah and Tanach and the books that men and
boys studied in Yeshiva. Tikvah guessed that had to be ancient.
Would a secular school have a properly drawn map of those times?
Tikvah remembered what happened to the sages who translated the
Torah into Greek. The atlas the librarian pointed out was in
English. Its first pages had a map of the entire Middle East
including the Cannanite tribes. Out in the secular world, one
had to give them equal time.
There was no map of Jerusalem and the Beit haMigdash, the First
or Second Temple, but there were maps of Judeah and Samaria.
"Maybe I'll go to Israel when I turn eighteen," thought Tikvah,
though she'd have to come home to New Square. They'd want her to
marry by then, and who would marry her? It was weird to be
thinking about marriage at age ten. Her parents hadn't thought
about marriage until they were past twenty-two, but they had met
in college and both knew what they wanted even then. They were
kindred souls, peas in a pod. Too bad it had all gone so sour.
"Mom," Tikvah asked as she stared at the map and felt it
dissolve into the past. "Why did you have to change your mind.
You changed everything." Mom was not there to answer. Grandma
and Grandpa had just made things worse, and Dad, how could he
know what to do.
It took an outsider like Albina to give Tikvah her hand to
squeeze and remind Tikvah of the police. Albina had her self
interest in the matter. She'd get fired if Tikvah ran away, but
Tikvah remembered the State Troopers, so Albina happened to also
be right. Dad was willing to take chances with the State
Troopers because they would not be driving him away or if they
did, he would be in jail only a night or two. Tikvah wished her
father would realize this.
She would see him Sunday. She could talk to him then and tell
him not to ask her to escape or try to make her run away. She
could suggest that he keep seeing her and that he write to the
judge. Maybe Albina could write to the judge to explain that Dad
was doing well with supervised visitation and needed to move to
unsupervised. Gradually he'd get more and more privileges and
maybe by high school, Tikvah could return to New Square or at
least visit for several weeks in the summer. "But Dad, you have
to work in the system!" Tikvah told her father rehearsing the
words she needed to say in her mind.
Of course this was not what a kid was supposed to be doing
before Rosh HaShannah, but none of Tikvah's teachers, not even
her social studies teacher mentioned the upcoming Jewish
holidays. They were just there on the calendar. A nonOrthodox
rabbi was going to do the Thursday night service on campus, and
then on Friday and Saturday, Tikvah would walk with the other
really observant kids to White Plains.
"I can walk. I can wait. If nothing really bad happens, I have a
chance," Tikvah said in her mind as she stared down at the
Israel of the late Tanach. Nebuchanezzer's kingdom was there and
the Assyrians had already taken over the north. The world even
back then was a dangerous place, and being a Jew was always a
precarious proposition.
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