Our Finest
Published in Issue #36 Translated from Hebrew by Yardenne Greenspan(Excerpt from a Novel)
Menachem and Shoshana Laufer dedicated their retirement to an array of hobbies and endeavors they’d neglected over the years. When he wasn’t wandering among the offices of his political party, Laufer tended to the garden in his home in Kfar Pines, in the backyard that had previously served as the family’s dumping ground. Shoshana went to museums, attended literature and art lectures, enrolled in creative writing classes, and spent time with her grandchildren.
But their favorite pastime was travel abroad: at first they did this sparingly, a hesitant trickle of flights to standard destinations like Paris or Rome, thrilled with the variety of options that opened up to them in anticipation of their long years of aimlessness, returning with suitcases overflowing with gifts, excitedly regaling their relatives with stories of the short line outside of the Eiffel Tower.
Once they discovered Skybound, a tour company tailored for the religious population, the trips became an almost physical necessity, and the destinations grew more exotic. The Laufers had first heard of Skybound (originally named Heavenbound) from Eli and Nechama, who told them one Shabbat dinner about a new tour company started by Shabi, Eli’s brother-in-law. Two weeks later, religious weekend bulletins were inundated with Heavenbound ads, which featured an illustration of a smiling globe wearing a knit yarmulke. The brother-in-law, who had thought the devout-sounding name would enchant worshippers, quickly discovered that his potential clients were referring to the company as “hellbound,” and the very next week a new ad appeared...
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