Shanna Spektor sighed with quiet joy when she spotted the Forverts hanging crisply as if ironed on a library rack. The Yiddish pages were as comforting as the smell of the challah her mother used to bake for Sabbath in their home in Kishinev. Reading the paper would take her back.
She was so thankful that Ori brought her to this library soon after she and Lev settled in New Bedford. “You will enjoy this paper very much, especially the letters. Very interesting stories,” her husband’s cousin told her. “It’s not easy being away from what we know. The paper is like having talks with a dear friend.”
Lev did not need such a friend. After just one night, he said New Bedford already felt like home. Shanna didn’t understand how it could become that more quickly than the time it took to make sauerkraut. She felt even lonelier after those words came from his mouth.
“Everything is so much better here,” he had scolded. “Yet you complain. If you can’t talk to people, study harder,” he said dismissively after she told him that few people she met spoke Yiddish. Yet he refused to share the dictionary that her brother had sent to them six months before they escaped Odessa.
She carried the rack with three issues to the table where she sat with Ori that first time. The wooden chair creaked as she settled in. Still cold from winter’s chill, she kept her coat on while scanning the front page. She blew on her hands to warm...
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