After the holidays are here – and there is no more convenient time than "after the holidays" to forget people who are still somehow remembered during the holidays.
""The holidays" are the time when all those in need of any kind receive help. For those in need of financial assistance, there is an abundance of donations and assistance from charitable organizations. Those who need a listening ear or a home to stay in also receive more attention, because everyone wants to do charity during the Ten Days of Repentance, and Sukkot is a holiday of guests.
But after the holidays, it is, supposedly, the time to forget. And so I am here, to remind. After the holidays, I am reminded of Abe, an American Jew, a tormented and joyful soul at the same time. Abe served in Vietnam, and like many other American soldiers – he returned from there with a broken soul. The sights he saw there shocked him and left him with what today would probably be called "post-traumatic stress disorder." His friends around him could not see this, at most they might have called him "weird" at times, but generally he was a very pleasant man to be around.
When the war ended and he returned to the United States, he learned a lucrative trade and worked at it for quite a few years before finding his match and getting married. When he was already close to the age when others start to smell the arrival of grandchildren – he began to think about becoming a father.
But when his wife was already pregnant with her first child, she left him. The various phenomena that characterized his life as a result of the war greatly affected his private life and their shared life, and she simply could not stay with him. Too hurt by what happened between them, she went one step further and obtained a court order prohibiting him from approaching his child. Abe was not even at his son's circumcision, and he has no idea where he lives today. At first, he tried to deal with reality as it was, but eventually he could no longer - and he immigrated to Israel, to escape the memories.
Now, think about the concept of "need." When we say "donate to the needy," we think, perhaps, of children with decaying teeth because their parents don't have the money to pay for the necessary treatments, of a child who didn't go on a trip without a budget, of a child who comes to school without food. Abe could have supported many such needy people from the salary he also made in Israel in his successful profession. But Abe was "needy" in every sense. He desperately missed the child he didn't know, and scorned the company of children his son's age, trying to fill the void that had formed within him. Abe could have thrown a feast fit for kings - but he didn't want to throw it alone. Abe was needy of a different kind - he needed the company of people, and all we could do was invite him to sit.
And he came, Sabbath after Sabbath, becoming my little brother's favorite and they became his favorite. When he returned, for his own reasons, abroad – they were very sorry. From "needy", Abe became part of the family and today, when he comes to visit, we don't deny him a visit – because we need him...
There are many people like Abe around. People whose family has broken up, and after they were used to sitting with two, three, or seven children, suddenly they are left alone, and long to fill the void. Open your eyes and look around you – it could be your good friend who seemed to you to have everything perfect, but at his Shabbat table he is lonely and abandoned. It could be an acquaintance from synagogue or the neighbor across the street. Next Shabbat, when you plan the Shabbat meal, plan for someone in need like this too – there are many divorced people around, and they also want a happy Shabbat table. You can provide that for them.
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