Shulamis Rosner
Recap from last week: Velvel and his daughter Zahava decide to ask their neighbor, Mrs. Shulamis Rosner, for advice about their huge debts.
“Shulamis, it’s Velvel,” Shulamis heard when she picked up her house phone. She had been neighbors with Velvel since well before cellphones, so he’d never bothered to learn her cell number. She put down the pile of essays she was correcting on the kitchen table and wondered what he could possibly want now, at 9:30 at night.
“Listen,” he was saying, “I have apparently gotten myself into a bit of a bind, financially speaking. I was wondering if you maybe could help me?”
Shulamis paused and absently scribbled “B-” on Blimi Katz’s uninspired essay. Was this Velvel’s not-so-subtle way of asking her for a loan? Shulamis was loathe to extend one. She felt quite sure she’d never see the money again if she did. She was far from poor, but she was a widow still helping support some of her children, and she balked at the idea of extending her money to someone whose financial issues were so clearly the result of his own extravagance. “What’s going on?” she asked, stalling.
“We just seem to, um, have acquired a significant amount of debt,” Velvel said, sounding mystified that such a bizarre turn of events could have occurred. “Zahava and I were thinking you might have some ideas for us. Like where we could trim the budget, or maybe other sources of income…”
“You mean like finding a job?” Shulamis said wickedly. She knew Velvel would consider a regular job beneath his dignity. She could feel him squirm.
“Ah, I wasn’t really thinking of that…I mean, I’m practically at retirement age! Who would hire a 55-year-old man? I always had my own business. Can you really see me as someone’s employee?”
Why not? she wanted to shout. Wasn’t she an employee, like just about every other person on the planet? On the other hand, what could Velvel even put on a resume? All he had ever done was to practically destroy the business his father had left him, in a classic example of the second generation destroying what the first had so painstakingly built up.
“Are there ways to cut back?” she asked practically, doodling on a notepad. “Other ways to bring in more income? Zahava and Chani work some. Maybe they could contribute to the family budget.”
“I refuse to ask my daughters to support me,” Velvel huffed.
“Did you speak to Izzy Shapiro?” she asked. “He’s your accountant, after all. Maybe he’ll have some ideas.”
“Yes, we did think of that,” Velvel said. “I guess I should call him. He is supposed to be an expert.”
“I’ll try to brainstorm with Chani, and Zahava too if she’s interested,” Shulamis said. “They know better than me what your expenses are, and how you might, er, restructure a little. Okay. I’ll do my best to give it some thought.”
She put down the phone and sighed. Why did Velvel Elman think that she could come up with a solution to his financial woes? You’d think a grown man in his fifties would be capable of managing his own finances. But Velvel had never once in his life bothered to look at a bank balance or credit card bill, preferring to leave those tedious, plebian tasks to his wife or accountant. Velvel must have been an aristocrat in his former life, she thought to herself. As far as he’s concerned, it’s beneath him to think about finances. He just assumes money will always be there, a perk of his royal endowment, and he shouldn’t have to soil his manicured fingers digging into the details.
But look at the results of that entitled attitude! Velvel had been a miserable failure in business. Only his brother’s dogged efforts had kept the family business from sinking completely, and Yankel had ultimately bought him out while the company still had a good name. Today the business owned no more retail stores and had moved almost completely online, and a cousin named Yerucham had been named to inherit it.
“This financial mess would never have happened when Dina was alive,” Shulamis sighed to herself. Dina had been her closest friend, but the Elmans’ marriage had always been a bit of a mystery to her. True, she could see that, while still young and inexperienced, Dina might have fallen for Velvel’s good looks and charisma – he had been a blond-haired, blue-eyed looker in his day, and could be charming when he set his mind to it. Dina had come to New York from the Midwest, where her father was the rav of a community, and the shadchan had greatly harped on Velvel’s stellar yichus and his reasonably respectable yeshiva record, telling Dina’s parents Velvel would surely continue in learning, since his family’s business pretty much ran itself at that point. To be fair, who could have predicted that Velvel would manage to avoid being terribly assiduous either in the study hall or the business?
Velvel, for his part, was quite taken with the dark-haired Midwestern beauty who exuded so much refinement and quiet poise. He was looking for a classy girl, and he had found one. “Her father is a very respected rav,” he liked to tell people, imagining it was proof she was worthy of the Elman yichus. It never occurred to him that Dina’s class came from real depth and intelligence as well as fine middos. Intellectually, they were never a match.
After their marriage, Dina must have surely realized Velvel was a case of “nice house, nobody home.” But the charisma that had drawn her to him in the first place did not completely fade, and during the moments when it did start to flag, she felt herself tied to him knowing he depended on her so completely. He did love her, and he wasn’t a bad husband – he remembered birthdays, showed her affection, and relied on her for everything, even when it bordered on shirking responsibilities that normally should have been his. He gave her three children and a comfortable life, which she kept on an even financial and emotional keel for everyone.
Dina kept herself busy raising the kids, getting involved with tzedakah causes, and attending shiurim. She had occasional longings to take a teaching job like Shulamis’s, but Velvel had cried in horror, “Why would a wife of mine go to work?” She couldn’t really fault her husband for a lack of substance or depth, and she wasn’t a quitter. To her credit, she did her best to keep her husband feeling like the lord of his castle even if he often fell short of being worthy of the title.
“Poor Dina!” Shulamis thought to herself wistfully. “First she married a guy who was amiable but irresponsible, when what she really deserved was a rosh yeshiva. Then she got sick and went through Gehinnom. Hashem is in charge, of course. But sometimes it seems that certain people really have no mazel!”
She shook her head and again picked up her red pen and the stack of essays. Then she put them down. After this conversation, what she really needed was a cup of tea – preferable herbal, so she’d be able to sleep later – and some of the leftover cranberry-orange biscotti she’d made for Shabbos. The heck with the calories.
“Desperate times call for desperate measures,” she said to her empty house.
(To be continued)
