“The flight made an emergency landing in Cyprus after three cases of measles were discovered aboard”

llustrated by Esti Saposh

Previously:

Aryeh and Nachum plan to spend Pesach with Aryeh’s aunt but are forced to find new plans after Aryeh breaks up with her neighbor. They receive a letter inviting them to be mashgichim for a Pesach program at a hotel in northern Israel and accept the offer.

The next two weeks flew by in a flurry of packing, cleaning, playing with the Gershonowitz kids downstairs so Reb Elimelech and his rebbetzin could clean, and recleaning our apartment after Yehuda Gershonowitz ran through it eating a potato boureka.

The letter had instructed us to arrive at the hotel on Tuesday morning, March 31st, Erev Bedikas Chometz, so after davening neitz, we headed for the Tachanah Merkazit with our suitcases and caught a train from the Yitzhak Navon station. We had only just settled into our seats on the train when I noticed, out of the corner of my eye, Nachum removing a quill, ink, and a roll of parchment from his backpack.

“This is a moving train,” I reminded him, eyeing the ink.

“It better be,” he replied, setting the bottle down on his tray table and nonchalantly dipping his quill inside it, “or I want a refund on our tickets.”

“Right, but how do you expect to do whatever you expect to do with all that—”

“Write Shir Hashirim on a klaf in time for Shabbos Chol Hamoed,” he interjected.

“—while the train moves?” I finished.

“Hopefully, I’ll be helped along,” he said, his hand already moving swiftly across the parchment, leaving behind glistening black letters, “by your enriching commentary about such novelties as the fact that this train is in motion.”

“Are you saying you want quiet?” I asked, making a mental note that “conveying preferences without being offensive” should be our next social skills target.