𝙳𝚘𝚎𝚜 𝚃𝚑𝚎 𝚆𝚊𝚒𝚕𝚒𝚗𝚐 𝚆𝚊𝚕𝚕 𝙷𝚊𝚟𝚎 𝚆𝚒-𝙵𝚒?

“Five hundred word mitzvah” for $500, please.

“I’m sure it will pass without incident. Don’t be such a kvetch.”

Eli Levine ignored his wife, Rachel Levine, in favor of a hole, perfectly round, surrounded by poppyseeds, some cream cheese and a little lox. If the ring of dough represented his problems, boiled and airtight, preventing escape, then the gap in the middle must symbolize his solution, suspiciously absent. . .

“Stress will only exacerbate the issue. Just enjoy your nosh,” she continued.

A premature heart attack, an appropriate punishment, struck down by the deft hand of Hashem, vengeful and fair. . . but it certainly wasn’t her place to point this out.

“Ballbuster,” mumbled Eli.

“Excuse me?”

“My sweet balabusta, thank you for the concern for my physical health, however I’m more troubled by spiritual matters.”

He curled a finger through his peyos, an anxious expression of the despair that had nipped at the fringe of his bekishe since a young age.

Rachel offered an encouraging smile for her husband. “You yutz, I’m sure the rabbi will understand.”

“My modest shailah was far from urgent, it could have waited ‘til next week,” Eli said.

“He’s on our side here, honey. Don’t be such a noodge.”

“He is, truthfully, on God’s side, and if, because of my careless actions, I turn against God, then the rabbi will turn against me.”

“You’re overreacting, being meshuga. Besides, there’s nothing to be done,” Rachel said.

Eli glanced across the kitchen island, over the marble countertops, through the serving hatch, at the morning’s temptation, and the neighbor’s chagrin, which beckoned: his laptop computer, reserved strictly for business and powered off for Shabbat.

“Tayerinker, you must banish these thoughts from your—”

“I wouldn’t dare! Pardon the scare.”

Nevertheless, his mind, an organic calculator unto its own, was predicting binary decision-trees, crunching the numbers, performing cost-benefit analysis. Which was the greater aveyrah? To let the automatic process unfold, or transgress twice in search of digital intervention. . . he felt verklempt, half a klutz, half a heretic.

“You are real, a good man. You are not an online address. Don’t be such a schlemiel,” Rachel said. She caressed the cloth that covered his arm.

“I mean, ketzele, by God, it’s signed with my name!”

An accidental click, a calendar mistake, these were akin to rounding errors, but Hashem, ever patient, yet oh so exacting, held accounts. He, Glorious Creator, was also a tidy bookkeeper, and Eli’s vig was going up.

“All that remains is to pray,” Rachel said.

So Eli stood and swayed, shuckling for teshuvah: he faithfully requested a network crash, a machine glitch, an electromagnetic pulse, a power-grid failure, asking again and again for any vintage plague or contemporary apocalypse that would halt the scheduled email from leaving his inbox.

The message: wear [sic] can I park while the synagogue is under renovation?

If you appreciate my jive and want me to survive, perhaps even thrive, then consider picking up a copy of my debut novel, The Charlatan. Available here.