Free Then Sings My Soul by Amy K. Sorrells Page A

in silence.
    And with age, much pain. He couldn’t understand why everyone in America was so fixated on living as long as possible. His body reminded him of an old car, three out of his four major leg joints replaced, three heart catheterizations to keep his blood flowing, uric acid collecting in his gouty feet like oil sludge. He’d consider himself lucky if his alternator went ahead and gave out.
    More grief , Solomon had written.
    Indeed.
    He rubbed a large age spot on his hand, which trembled as he shoved the pew Bible back under the seat and grasped the handle of his cane.

1908
    Chicago, Illinois

CHAPTER 9
    When Peter and Jakob had learned English as well as could be expected, the Stewarts enrolled them in Saint Stanislaus Catholic School with many other lost and language-challenged children from the neighboring Eastern European immigrant sections of Chicago. Many of the children were from the Ukrainian Village neighborhood bordering Wicker Park, as well as from the surrounding Polish neighborhoods. This thrilled Peter and Jakob and all the children because they could talk in their native languages at recess, in the halls, and whenever a teacher wasn’t around to demand they use their English. No one cared whether they were Jewish or Orthodox or a combination either. Everyone honored whatever bits and pieces of faith—if any—had survived their journeys to the States.
    Jakob was in the second grade and Peter in high school, a couple of years older than many of his classmates so he could catch up with the language. On a Friday evening as the sun was setting, Jakob walked into Peter’s room to find him kneeling, holding the one frayed tassel from Papa’s tzitzit 1 in his hands.
    â€œDo you remember when Papa made this and the others he wore on the four corners of his garment?” Peter asked.
    Jakob nodded. He remembered. Papa wound the strings, teaching them both in what seemed a lifetime ago, what the pattern represented.
    â€œDo you remember what the first seven windings are for?”
    â€œCreation,” Jakob said without hesitation.
    â€œYes. And the second eight?”
    Jakob shook his head. He couldn’t recall.
    â€œThat one is harder,” Peter reassured him. “Eight is the number of days from when the Israelites left Egypt to when they sang their song of deliverance when they reached the Red Sea. And the reason for the four tassels?”
    Jakob did remember this, but he wouldn’t say.
    â€œYou don’t remember?”
    Jakob shook his head, unwilling rather than lying.
    â€œThen I’ll tell you.”
    Jakob wished he wouldn’t.
    â€œWe’re supposed to look for Yahweh, to remember He is with us, on all sides of us. Helping us. Guiding us. Jehovah-Shammah.”
    Jakob frowned.
    â€œYou don’t think so?”
    Jakob hesitated, then shook his head again. Where was Yahweh on the ship? Where was Yahweh in the woods? Where was he with the girl they’d found in the barn? And most of all, where was Yahweh in the horror that occurred in Chudniv? Yahweh had done nothing but abandon them.
    â€œPapa believed it. He said El Shaddai is always watching over us.”
    Jakob felt the sickness that always came deep from inside his belly whenever he remembered Papa. What he would give to see him again, to sink into his thick arms, to hear his laughter, his singing, his prayers. Yes, Papa had believed it. But if Papa had known everything that would happen to them, would he still have believed?
    â€œYou are mighty forever, my L-rd; You resurrect the dead; You are powerful to save …,” Peter recited from the Amidah.
    Jakob’s sick feeling turned to anger. “Go on and believe the Amidah, the Shema, and all that old nonsense if you want to. But that’s all it is. Nonsense.”
    â€œJakob—”
    â€œGod may be real, but He doesn’t keep His promises. At least not to us.”
    â€œYou don’t think