Guest Blogger – Joyce Klein – Jerusalem and the Passover Egg Miracle
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[Joyce Klein is my friend. She grew up in Seattle and as an adult moved to Israel. I share this piece she wrote because it is a wonderful story to remind us about how kindness can be a part of our world – if we just make it so. Thank you Joyce for allowing me to share this with my readers.]
“What a world,” the Wicked Witch said as she melted. I thought I’d send you this only-in-Jerusalem story as the world seems to be melting in front of our eyes.
When they announced the lockdown, except for buying medicine or food, people here truly freaked out. Among other things, they started buying huge quantities of eggs for Passover 2 weeks ago — I mean a shopping cart full of egg cartons for a family, far more than anyone could eat. So suddenly there were no eggs to be found.
I had 5 eggs in one of those egg trays on my refrigerator door and was hoping to find more. Yesterday, I took something out of the refrigerator, knocked the tray and it fell! One egg bit the dust, but the other 4 were just cracked, and I managed to salvage them and was allocating them to the most important things I wanted to make. But I needed a whole egg for the Seder Plate!
Then Nabil called. Nabil is a Palestinian who was in my Arab Jewish Theater group 30 years ago. He is now a lawyer in East Jerusalem, and we keep in touch. He called to see how I was doing and if I needed any help. I asked him if there were eggs on his side of town. He told me not to worry, and that he would get eggs for me. I asked for 2 dozen.
He texted me to ask if they had to have a hechsher, which did make me laugh. I mean, those of us kosher people who travel all over the world rely on hard boiled eggs for survival, wherever we may be! I said no.
Then he showed up with 30 eggs, in two flats — they looked like farm eggs; there was even some chicken shit on a couple of them! And they were really big! He left them outside my door and backed up 6 feet so I could retrieve them and talk to him. He wouldn’t let me pay for them. I asked where they were from and he asked if I really wanted to know. I said yes, and that they looked like they were from a farm. “Well, they are,” he said.
It turns out that the Jews had figured out that there were eggs in East Jerusalem and emptied the shelves there, too. But Nabil has friends who lives in a village near Jericho — in the West Bank — and they have a farm. So he called the husband up and arranged to meet him at the army checkpoint on the way to Jericho in order to pick up eggs for himself and for me . As he put it, “It took a military operation, but I got your eggs for you!”
He showed up wearing rubber gloves and a serious mask — and needing a haircut, as we all do, since the barbers and hairdressers are closed. But he saved me from an eggless Pesach and he’s my hero!
That’s today’s entertainment. I hope all of you are coping, and healthy. I found out this morning that the husband of one of my sister’s lifelong friends from Seattle is on a ventilator in a New York Hospital. That’s up close and personal for sure.
But someone said to me yesterday that perhaps this awful virus is also showing that people are capable of amazing levels of chesed. Everywhere, the younger people are staying away from senior citizens (us!) to protect them — and offering to help them with whatever they need. Like Nabil.
I’m going to think about chesed at my solitary Seder and be grateful as I look at the egg on my Seder Plate.
Joyce Klein
