Hadassah Shvalb
Nachum Schwartz stepped out into the cold October night. A quick glance at his phone screen—he had silenced it during Maariv—brought no good news: Fried, the shadchan, still had not called, even though Nachum had remembered to add a request for this to his prayer. “I have to admit,” he thought, “that this shidduch was doomed from the outset, even before all the inquiries began, and it looks as though Fried is waiting for the Schwartz family to work that out on their own.”
Mr. Schwartz walked slowly toward home, considering how to break this unwelcome news to his wife, Chava. How could he calm her and restore her composure once she, too, realized that the shidduch that had seemed so promising at first had joined their long list of disappointments?
Nachum turned at the sound of approaching footsteps: his neighbor from the third floor was catching up with him. “How good to run into you, Mr. Schwartz!” Mr. Shulman said with a smile, buttoning his coat as he walked. “I was just planning to stop by and discuss something with you, but why not save us both some time and talk right now, since we’re heading the same way?”
A ray of hope lit up Nachum’s soul: perhaps a very good shidduch suggestion was about to follow!
In fact, the Schwartzes and the Shulmans had been good neighbors for many years, and surely the Shulmans understood perfectly well that all the rumors about the Schwartz family were completely unfounded, and that there was no connection between Nachum Schwartz’s family and what had happened to his brother. Mr. Schwartz was delighted by this unexpected encounter and by the prospect of hearing about another lovely young woman for his son—he would have something to tell his wife when he got home besides the fact that the shadchan still had not called back. After all, what difference did it make who suggested the next shidduch—a neighbor he happened to meet on the way home from synagogue, or Fried, the shadchan?
Unfortunately, the ray of hope faded before it had a chance to shine fully. All the upstairs neighbor wanted to discuss was his plans to extend his apartment. To add a balcony and another room adjoining his bedroom, he needed the signatures of all the building’s residents.
“You understand, our married children come for the holidays and Shabbat and bring the grandchildren. Thank G-d, we still have a house full of our own children, and when the older boys come home from yeshiva, there’s barely room to move!” Mr. Shulman explained as they turned onto the path leading to their building’s entrance. “We were advised to approach a particular construction company, and its director was recommended as a very dependable, G-d-fearing man and a true professional whom we could rely on in every respect. We have already submitted the documents to the relevant authorities. All we need before construction can begin is the neighbors’ signatures.”
It was just as well that Chava was not home. When Nachum stepped through the door, he was far too upset and drained by his dashed hopes for the conversation with his neighbor and by the fact that the shadchan still had not called back. Nachum hung his jacket and hat on the coat rack and took several deep breaths, trying to reconsider his conversation with Mr. Shulman and understand exactly what had upset him so much. It was certainly not the request to sign permission for the extension, but rather the peremptory manner in which his neighbor had presented it. If he had come, as was customary in such cases, to talk, explain his request, hear any arguments for and against, and discuss it—would Nachum really have refused a good neighbor? But the way he had casually remarked that a piece of paper needed signing made the extension seem no more consequential than, say, a request to leave a key for a child or lend a carton of milk. Mr. Shulman had behaved with such confidence, as though his extension were essentially a settled matter, nothing depended on the downstairs neighbor at all, and his signature was merely a formality, nothing more. You would think the whole building belonged to him alone, and he was free to do as he pleased with the shared space, and anyway…
Chava opened the door and came into the house laden with supermarket bags. She took her time putting away the groceries: milk and yogurts in the refrigerator, cookies and canned goods in the cupboard, potatoes in the special box under the table, and only then noticed that something had upset her husband.
Nachum briefly told her about his conversation with the neighbor, and together they went out onto the balcony to look at the sky where, very soon—it was obvious—the large balcony the Shulmans were adding would stand in all its glory.
“Doesn’t it bother you at all that their extension will block all our sunlight? And don’t you think our apartment will now lose a great deal of its value because of the balcony built above it?” Nachum asked in bewilderment. Chava looked up at the starry autumn sky and tried to imagine the view blocked by the Shulmans’ new balcony. She savored the silence and imagined how much noise the upstairs neighbors’ children and grandchildren would make as they ran around and played on Shabbat afternoons, when she and her husband would want to rest in peace. She sighed heavily and thought about her husband. “Clearly, Fried still hasn’t called back, or my husband would not be talking about the Shulmans’ building plans. Most likely, we can forget about that shidduch. The family has heard the rumors about our situation and joined all those who have already given up the idea of marrying into our family.”
“I think,” Chava began carefully when they returned to the kitchen, “that there is something else troubling you—or rather, troubling both of us—besides the state of the real estate market. It is hard for us simply to watch how easily the Shulmans marry off their children and hold celebrations for their grandchildren, and then want our permission to expand their home so that they can have even more space to enjoy their untroubled happiness. It is hard for us to see all this when we are in such a difficult position.”
“But, Chava,” Nachum objected, “the way you put it, it sounds as though this is nothing more than ordinary human envy!”
Nachum smoothed his beard, and a gray hair fell onto the table. He was nowhere near as young as he would have liked, and it seemed that every failed shidduch for his son gave him more gray hairs. Well, if things continued this way, with every family offered a shidduch with their son turning it down before the first meeting, he had a chance of going completely gray before the end of the year. “The world is not as black and white as you make it sound, but there is certainly some envy involved here,” Chava said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye.
There was little to say, and Chava began preparing dinner. She lit the gas under the frying pan and, while it heated, set plates on the table. She cracked eggs into a bowl and beat them for an omelet—but her thoughts were far from cooking. Their Tzvika was two years older than Meir Shulman, who was already a family man—and he was still single. Dini, next in line for a shidduch, was older than Mimi Shulman, who was already proudly taking her firstborn out in a stroller. And Nechama had already finished seminary—so where were the crowds of shadchanim besieging their door and making their phone ring off the hook? Her children were among the best prospects on the shidduch market, of that she was absolutely certain, but the poisonous rumors surrounding their family because of what had happened with their uncle kept the shadchanim as far away as possible, and that did nothing to brighten their lives…
Fried, the shadchan, never called back—not that evening or the next—and Mr. Shulman did not return with his signature sheet. One evening later that week, Mr. Schwartz found himself on the third-floor landing, ringing the Shulmans’ doorbell. “I’ve come to sign,” he told his neighbor, driving away negative thoughts. “Chava is right. I must not let envy take over my entire being. If the neighbors need to build, I should not stand in their way. I should be accommodating and sign the permission.”
Mr. Schwartz took a pen from his pocket and signed his name on the papers laid out on the desk in the study. Immediately afterward, Mr. Shulman simply said “thank you” without further conversation and showed him to the door, wishing him a good night.
Nachum felt something akin to resentment—as though he had been walked all over and spat on, and no one had even noticed. What made him any different from a worm?
“I wonder why Mr. Shulman took it so much for granted that I would agree to everything and come running to sign his papers. Why didn’t he even try to show some appreciation and express his gratitude more clearly? I tormented myself, lost several nights’ sleep, paced in circles trying to overcome my evil inclination, and he is so indifferent, as though I had done nothing special for him. As though my signature were purely a technicality and not even necessary, and everyone could take it for granted that I would sign whatever he told me to!”
As he worked himself up like this, Nachum was ready to run back to the third floor and tear the hateful papers to shreds, but common sense prevailed, and he silently entered his apartment. All he could do was wait for construction to begin and work on his own character in the meantime.
At last, construction began. Mr. Shulman brought the construction company’s director into the Schwartzes’ apartment, in his words, “just for a minute, to look at the layout of our apartment from another angle and work out the best way to reach the window in our room.” A minute passed, then five minutes, and somehow, half an hour later, the builder informed Mr. Schwartz that he would have to let the workers onto his apartment’s balcony, because this was the only way to carry out the construction, and there was simply no other way to do it.
And so, in a single day, the Schwartzes’ balcony adjoining the boys’ room became a building site, with builders coming and going, carrying tools and tracking dirt throughout the house. Once again, Nachum and Chava Schwartz had to bite their lips and endure the ever-increasing inconvenience, over and over again.
Even when the workers finished the exterior work and finally left their apartment for good, the Schwartzes could not breathe a sigh of relief. The noise, shaking, dust, and dirt from the construction upstairs were simply unbearable. To their credit, the Schwartzes bore all the inconvenience steadfastly and eagerly awaited the end of construction.
Need we say that Fried, the shadchan, never called back during all this time?
It was a particularly hectic day at the Shulmans’ building site. The workers had filled the entire staircase with bags of cement and were constantly hauling them into the apartment, carrying out buckets full of construction debris on their way back. The pounding of hammers and the screeching of drills were unbearable. Mr. Schwartz decided that this was too much.
“I have no idea what is going on up there today,” he thought amid the pounding of the builders’ hammers. Tired and on edge, he went out onto the balcony and looked up. “I don’t understand what they’re do—…”
Crash! Bang!
A bucket full of cement mortar that had not been thoroughly mixed slipped from one of the builders’ hands and hurtled down onto the second-floor balcony. The entire floor and the walls were covered with splatters of disgusting gray, sticky mortar, while Mr. Schwartz himself, in his formal suit and a shirt that had been snowy white just a moment earlier, now looked no different from the workers in their old uniforms spattered with paint and cement.
That’s it! Enough! Everyone’s patience has its limits! This is too much!
Nachum did not even try to brush the lumps of cement off his suit or inspect the damage. The agreement was off. He was going to tell Shulman right now, without a moment’s delay, that he was withdrawing his permission and that Shulman had to stop all his construction immediately. The Schwartzes had suffered enough and did not intend to suffer even a little more.
Chava, for her part, was every bit as shocked as her husband. “This is terrible!” she exclaimed indignantly. “But please, let’s not forget what we discussed before signing the building permission: we will not let envy take over our hearts. We freely gave them permission to build the extension—with all the inconvenience it might entail.”
Her husband was somewhat taken aback by this response. “Well, what do you want, then? Are you going to let them keep harming us and destroying our home? Are you suggesting that we simply ignore what happened and let them go on doing whatever they please?” Chava did not answer. What could she say? She simply looked at her husband, her eyes pleading: please, summon all your willpower and do not let your evil inclination and anger get the better of your reason! In her heart, Chava prayed that her husband’s impulsive decisions would cause no harm to them, their upstairs neighbors, or their friendship of many years.
That day, Chava could rightly be proud of her husband. Nachum mustered his willpower, taking deep breaths as he climbed each step leading to the third floor.
He knocked softly on the Shulmans’ door and described the incident with the cement spilled all over their balcony and the damage it had caused as calmly as he could. He calmly asked the workers to clean what they had dirtied, and not a word of anger or reproach escaped his lips.
A week passed. The cement had been scraped off the floor and walls of the Schwartzes’ balcony, the damage had been fully compensated for, and construction on the third-floor apartment had entered its final stage—no more drilling or breaking down walls, only interior finishing, which caused almost no disturbance either to the downstairs neighbors or to the owners of the expanded apartment themselves. The Shulmans were happy that everything was nearly ready, and the Schwartzes were happy that they would no longer have to expect trouble from their upstairs neighbors.
As you have already guessed, Fried, the shadchan, had vanished completely from the Schwartzes’ horizon, but just as they were ready to begin looking somewhere entirely different, another shadchan called with an unexpected suggestion. The shadchan began enthusiastically describing the young woman’s exceptional qualities and her family’s good standing, adding that the other family was so interested in the shidduch that they had already agreed to a first meeting between their daughter and Tzvi Schwartz.
Nachum Schwartz could not believe his ears. “Uh… hmm… have they gathered all the information about our family?”
(Could it be that the rumors about my brother have not reached the prospective bride’s parents? Then it is only a matter of days, if not hours—after all, what happened has long been common knowledge throughout the city…)
The shadchan chuckled: “Actually, they hardly had to make any special inquiries about you. To tell the truth, you made the best possible impression on them. You probably have no idea that your future in-law (may it be at an auspicious time!) is none other than the director of the construction company your neighbor, Mr. Shulman, signed a contract with. He was recently in your home, and I think you will not soon forget that story,” the shadchan laughed again. “Well, he was so impressed by your dignified behavior in a situation where you had suffered damage and were entitled to be indignant and demand greater compensation—and you even had the power to stop all the construction! Yet you behaved so nobly, so much in the spirit of what our Sages teach in books of mussar… He was so impressed by what he saw in your home, so taken with your fine qualities, that he immediately realized yours was exactly the kind of home he had always sought for his daughter. They consider becoming related to you a special honor for their entire family!”
But the happy story did not end there. Within a year, Mr. Schwartz celebrated the weddings of all three of his grown children, and the sounds of joy and family celebrations became an inseparable accompaniment to life in yet another home—the apartment on the second floor. Nachum and Chava Schwartz even began to wonder whether they should build an extension.
Translated by A. Shvalb, based on material from the publication Mishmeret HaShalom