To my dearest granddaughter,

You called last night to ask me about “Great Zaidy’s Box,” and I promised to call back because I was listening to a shiur. (I did try by the way.) Well, you got my literary juices flowing, so now you are getting a story to pass on to future generations.

Many, many years ago, Yaakov Boehm and Rochel Goldstein were growing up in Eastern Europe, on the Czech/Hungarian border. They both lived in small villages, not far from each other. Their families were quite poor, and they lived very simply. Great Bubby’s favorite doll was made of yarn, and Great Zaidy's favorite ball was made out of string. But, believe it or not, they were happy and content!

Without computers, telephones, radios, or even newspapers, they knew very little about the war that was brewing in Europe in the late 1930s and the early 1940s. They were young adults, out of their teenage years, actually the same age as your older siblings, when their world turned upside down.

There are moments in many of our lives when the unfathomable happens, and the first reaction is “Not me, not my family; this can’t be happening to us!”

At first, you walk around in an uncomprehending state of disbelief, shock, and utter dismay. After a while, when you realize that it’s not a bad dream or a temporary lapse of sanity but is really happening, you discover that you’ve got to accept it and deal.

Life is wonderful – we have so much to be grateful for – and then, bam, we get a blow that sends us reeling. It could be the sudden death of a loved one, a serious illness, a child who goes off the derech, a seemingly beautiful young couple who become incompatible and decide to get a divorce (often with young children in the crossfire), a family member who becomes unstable – and, sometimes, more often that not, a combination of these incomprehensible situations.

It has been an unreal year-and-a-half since our last trip to Eretz Yisrael. COVID ramifications took many forms for all of us, and no one was left untouched. Baruch Hashem, we felt very blessed. We were well, and family members who had gotten COVID, were also doing well, for the most part.

Today was an awesome, incredible, amazing day. As I write these words, and even before I begin, let me remind those of you who may have already forgotten that this was the day of the totally out-of-left-field snowstorm we experienced, beginning on Wednesday afternoon, the sixth day of Chanukah, and continuing into the night, also known as erev Zos Chanukah, a night of miracles for the Jewish people throughout the centuries.

On Erev Taanis Esther, my husband and I were en route to Eretz Yisrael to our grandson’s bar mitzva. We boarded the plane with very mixed emotions. Not only is Purim time the busiest, most hectic time of the year for my husband’s grocery business (pre-Pesach) but the shadow of COVID was just beginning to have an impact both here and in Eretz Yisrael. For some unfathomable reason, I felt an urgency to get to Eretz Yisrael before Purim that I couldn’t explain, even though the bar mitzva wouldn’t take place until more than a full week later. Our mechutanim, Rabbi and Mrs. Nota and Leah Gelb, would actually be arriving in Israel after Purim, and we could have travelled on the same flight. But, as I said, I refused to change our plans.