Villamsburg Diaries: Back Again

[Serial Readings]

“Don’t start again with the Internet!” Breindy says to me this morning. She is sitting with the kids at the kitchen table as I grab my tallis beitel. I tap my new EVO in my breast pocket. “Vus darfsti de tzuris?” she asks.

I say we’ll talk about it later. Shpayter.

“Eibig Shpayter,” she mumbles back, and she gives Yoily a potch on the back of the hand. “Stop!” she yells at him. The children are eating cheerios and milk, and she knows he’s kicking Esti under the table.

Yoily doesn’t bother denying it. “She started!” he yells, and glares at Esti.

“Oh no,” Esti says, and there she goes. She starts crying. She’s always crying.

Breindy will take care of it. I can’t deal with this now, I’m late for work. I step out and start the car, and while it warms up, I take out my EVO. It’s been months, but finally I have Internet access again.

I don’t need the tzuris, she says, and maybe she’s right. She doesn’t know how much tzuris, though. When Yidi’s menahel, Reb Mordche, called me several months ago, I didn’t breathe a word of it to Breindy. She’d never understand. “I heard you have Internet,” Reb Mordche said to me, and then he dropped the real bomb.  “And what’s this I hear, you’re writing for treifeneh websites?!” To be honest, I knew there was something wrong with that site. Friends claim it’s filled with apikorsus. But I rarely read the articles, the English is too hoyech-geshpritzt. But I was always a good writer. In yeshiva I wrote the Rosh Yeshiva’s lectures for the weekly Shierey Hura”m, and sometimes I wrote the sipierey tzadikim for the back page. So when someone told me of a website for Chasidim, I figured maybe I can write in English too.

I denied it all to Reb Mordche, geleikent shtein in bein, and he looked at me suspiciously. In the end he made me sign a document that said I’ll get rid of the Internet, which I did, and puter ahn eisek.

To Breindy I only said that the children were growing up and we should probably get rid of it. She was a little upset. Even though she was an ehrliche veibel and didn’t like the idea of the Internet to begin with (“I heard it caused a lot of people to go arup fin vayg”), eventually she found Ebay and Half.com and she became an expert on selling things laying around the house. She sold Faigy’s old baby clothes, Kivi’s old Little Tikes bike, and even the dresses she bought the girls for her brother Chaim Leib’s wedding, which they only used that one time. The next wedding, my brother Mordche Aron’s, was a year and a half later and by then the dresses were too yunchi.

It was a good thing the menahel didn’t call her. I know some chadorim where the mothers get involved and speak to the rebbes and menahelim just like their husbands, but the one time Breindy called Reb Mordche, all he said was “Missis Tahm, zugt pleez aiyer mahn zol riefen.” And then I got yelled at. She thought Yidi shouldn’t be learning Kiddishin. Her friend Baily Vayber said her son learns Makkes, and he loves it, even went for a farher on the entire masechte – auf ausenveinig! And when she asked Yidi why he can’t do they same, of course Yidi said, “Shkoyech! He’s learning Makkes. Everyone know Makkes is easy.” So she wanted to me to get Reb Mordche to change the masechte. Veiberish hasugehs. I told her it was ridiculous, you can’t change the masechte ten weeks into the year. It was already Parshas Vayigash.

I don’t know who told Reb Mordche about me, which is why I now have to be extra careful. Breindy probably said something to her sister about the stuff she sold on Ebay, and her sister probably told her husband, who studies bechavrisa with Nusi, Reb Mordche’s mechiten.  But he has no proof that I write those articles. There are a lot of Hershy Tams in the world.

The truth is, I’ve changed over the years. I’m no longer that temimusdig. Some might call me aufgeklert. The first time I missed rabeini Tam’s tefilin I had pangs of guilt. Now I don’t even feel guilty when I daven beyechidus. I’ll eat OU-D from time to time, even though Breindy gives me dirty looks. And sometimes I think word might have gotten around. We’re in shidiechim already for Nuchem – although ein bashefer veist that’s going nowhere – and even just a bad rumor can cause problems.

Now the editors of that website want me to start writing for them again. At first, when they told me how much they liked my pieces, I suspected they were making choizek. But they seem to like it for real. And why shouldn’t they? Like I said, I was always a good writer. So now with my new EVO, I can get on the Internet and start writing again. But if someone finds out about me, bin ich oif ge-hakte tzuris. I should put a password on my EVO, that’s what I should do. And as soon as I can find some quiet time at work, when Mr. V. isn’t around, and Niko isn’t badgering me, I’ll write something up.