Did Her Curse Change My Life?

By Shimona Tzukernik, The Kabbalah Coach

My husband Avraham is always astonished at the fact that I dare actually express what I’m thinking – let alone think it at all. The cold, embarrassing truth is that I do think things like, “What the heck! Look at her cushy life. And mine is so hard! How does this even make sense?!” Or, “Oh yeah! My fiftieth birthday and you couldn’t acknowledge the invitation till after the party ‘cos you never intended on showing?! Inner circle friend? Not anymore! Don’t expect me to be part of your life!” As if the loss is all hers and not mine.

Not pretty, the inside of my mind.

The truth, thank G-d, is that, despite Avremel’s dismay at my expression of such ignoble feelings as resentment, jealousy and anger, he knows me better. He knows I don’t really wish the landlord harm G-d forbid.

I catch myself. I catch myself not only because of the Talmudic teaching “Better to be amongst those who are cursed than those who curse.” And not only because I want a good life for myself and loved ones. Or because I am embarrassed lest others become privy to my ego and inner menagerie. I may not be scheduling coffee at Starbucks with the gal I’ve got a grievance with but I catch myself because I know another person’s suffering does nothing to heal our world. More deeply, I do it because I’m realizing I don’t know why life goes down the way it does and that there really is a bigger picture and that G-d does have a handle on the whole deal. And deeper still, I catch myself because G-d doesn’t want me to wish bad on others. Even when a part of me is selfishly, shamefully seething.

I could tell you I don’t curse others because I was cursed – but that wouldn’t be true. I mean, it is true that I was cursed. It’s just not why I myself work on not invoking harm through my words.

The Bar of Soap

Years ago when I wrote up the story of how I met my husband, I left out the curse. I’m not sure why I can tell this part of the story now. Maybe it’s that twenty-six years have created enough distance. Maybe it is that I’m old enough to be able to admit, “I loved another man” without feeling I am betraying my marriage. There is something seemingly sacrilegious in admitting that fact even twenty six years of hours and days later. Life is subtle. I hold many parts and differing truths within my heart at any given moment.

Ten days before our wedding left little time to adjust to my new reality. Though would a year’s notice have made it easier? It was a very difficult loss. He was an extraordinary person.

I still have a bar of soap Yehoshua used. I found it sorting through his belongings alone in an apartment that belonged to a friend who’d gone upstate with her husband for the summer. There was also a cardigan, the faint smell of his body still in its armpits. Alone in the dark I held the sweater and soap to my face. I wrapped the arms of the cardigan around the back of my neck and breathed. I imagined the touch I’d never felt and spoke with him and wept.

The Fire

During my engagement, there was a fire at the dorm where I lived.

“After a fire comes wealth,” I was told. And so, with my trousseau in ashes, I optimistically went out and bought a lottery ticket.

“How will they notify me if I win?” I thought as I left the corner café.

As with his passing, her words came as a shock that flowed through my body. I was sitting on the bed playing my messages from one of those big black machines we used before cell phones. Looking back I was naïve to the point of foolish as I skimmed through them. It had just never occurred to me that someone would hate me as much as she seemed to. Amidst the “hello’s” and “love ya” or “caallll me!” messages – was hers.

“SheMOWnuah!” she hissed, “You lying…Wait till…” I must breathe now even as I write. Twenty one words and eons of ill will. At first I was in shock and then I was afraid. Each replay opened a new awareness of how much someone could not bear my happiness.

Weeks earlier, on the Sunday we had announced our engagement, the Rebbe had responded to my request for a blessing for our marriage with the words, “May G‑d Almighty bless you to hear good news all the days of your life.” As Rabbi Silberstein spoke to me now, that blessing rose to the surface of my mind like a plant to the surface of water. It floated there ever so briefly and then in silence sank back. I almost didn’t notice it.

Discovering Wealth

Two days before my scheduled departure to South Africa for our marriage, I still didn’t have my ticket. When it arrived in the mail that Friday at noon I excitedly called my mom to say, “No worries. The ticket arrived!”

My grandmother picked up.

“Bubby, I have it! The ticket arrived!” I cried.

She was silent.

“Bubby?”

Silence.

“Oh my! It must be Shabbos at you,” I said. “I’m sorry. Didn’t realize it was so late. Tell mom I love her and I’ll see you all on Sunday!”

I hung up.

What I didn’t know is that my mother already knew about the accident. Having lit candles, she was standing in the entrance vestibule mouthing to my grandmother to not say a word.

Later she would tell me, “As I was bathing for Shabbat, a dirge kept going through my mind. I couldn’t make sense of it. When the call came in about Yehoshua, I had minutes to candle lighting. I couldn’t bear the thought of telling you in a rush and you all alone and then having to leave you in midair with all that pain until Sunday. I had to leave it to G-d to reveal the facts to you the way He thought fit.”

“Eli, how is he?” I asked half an hour after leaving the bank.

Silence.

“Eli, will there be a wedding?” I asked.

“No,” he choked.

I sat down at the top of Shterna’s stairs. The moment I put down the phone, I was the most alone I had ever been. The kitchen was empty behind me and the stairs seemed to stretch like a canyon before me. So this was my wealth. I would not see him again. The loneliness felt like it would rip my body in two. I looked up at the ceiling and a deep cry lifted from my heart and rose through my throat and out into the space above the canyon staircase.

In that lonely and grief filled stairwell, I did for a moment think of the phone message. I was quite certain she didn’t know yet. But she would soon. Would she be happy? I was, after all, not going to marry Yeshoshua. Would she feel guilty? That somehow her jealous intent had killed him? I certainly didn’t think so!

I felt then, and still do, a pity for her. How to live with having a wish like that realized. And never being able to definitively say, “It was not my doing” even though she could not possibly have cut his life shorter by even a moment. That doubt. Maybe the thought never occurred to her. In the event it did, I have often wanted her to know I feel no malice. Quite the contrary, her words serve as a signpost for me that G-d’s remarkable world is abundant enough for all of us.

I guess her words did change my life and the fire brought me wealth after all.