YESTERDAY’S CHILD

Is a Jewish Get, or Divorce  SO important ? Can it affect one’s whole life, and the life of future generations? Surely not !

YESTERDAY’S  CHILD

CHAPTER 1

 “ The ambulance flew along the South Coast road of Natal, its sirens screaming, its lights flashing. The stillness and darkness of the pre-dawn hour seemed accelerate its urgency.

     To the left were the occasional lights from the houses of people who could not sleep in total darkness. To the right was the sea, inky black against the sky. Was there the suggestion of approaching dawn?

     In the ambulance lay a young woman. Her face was a dusky red, almost purple, and beads of sweat stood out on her forehead. She was wearing an oxygen mask, and her breath­ing was very heavy and labored. Next to her on the monitor, her heartbeat traced its unsteady way in luminous green across the screen.

     A doctor with a sense of urgency about him was adjusting her intravenous infusion, a paramedic assisting him.

In the corner of the ambulance, seeming to almost shrink into its walls, was a twelve-year-old boy. His face was chalk - white, his hair blue-black in comparison. His green eyes were

wide with terror, and he kept biting his lips to keep them from trembling out of control.

     His name was Anthony, and the woman lying on the stretcher, looking so different from the woman he knew as his mother, was Mrs. Sylvia Isaacson. A shiver ran through the boy. Maybe it was too late. Perhaps he should have called the doctor sooner. His mind went back to the evening before. Was it only a few hours ago?

     "Tony, please get me a blanket to put on top of this quilt. The weather must be changing. It has suddenly become very cold."

Anthony frowned. He was still perspiring from the heat of the day, and it had been a scorcher. As far as he was concerned, it had hardly cooled down at all. He would certainly not be able to sleep with anything warmer than a sheet.

Nevertheless, his mother was shivering and coughing a little as he went to the cupboard in the hallway. He stood on a chair to reach the top shelf where the blankets had been stacked at the end of the winter. He brought one down and went to his mother.

She smiled at him gratefully.

"I'm sorry, Tony, I will use it later. I don't feel so cold any more." Her face suddenly contorted into a coughing spasm. Why was she coughing like this?

"What's the matter, Mum?" he asked. "Are you feeling all right?"

"Oh, it's just a bad cough, I think," she said. "Maybe I have a slight temperature. It's nothing important." “

……………The story continues…..

This was a book which was written with a very definite purpose.

Published by CIS in Lakewood, New Jersey in1992 and then again in 2002. It was an attempt and in actual fact was a successful attempt to highlight a problem in the Modern Day Jewish world, and to make it as real and as understandable as possible.

It focused on, in novel form, the importance of obtaining a ‘get’ or Jewish divorce, before the party, especially the woman, would enter into a secomd marriage.

Because there are so many people not yet keeping various aspects of Judaism, they do not realize the importance of some of the motzvos  and that some of these have a very negative , devastating , serious and deep effect on a family’s and individual person’s life.

 

Let me quote from towards the end of the book:

"Anthony," said his father, a few minutes away from his home, "Anthony, I want to tell you that I am sorry for all kinds of things. Sheila and I have been talking, and we realize that we gave you a very difficult time about your commitment to Judaism.

"Now we see that our distance from Judaism nearly caused a tragedy for you. I hope we can rectify it. We must do something to change it. But Anthony, I didn't know the laws about a get. I had, of course, heard of a Jewish divorce, but I thought it was just some traditional religious thing of no real importance. I thought the civil divorce was important, and there is no way I would have married your mother without that."

They arrived at the house and Mr. Isaacson led Ari inside. "We will have plenty of time to talk in the days ahead. I have taken leave from work to help you resolve the situation, full time.

"And Anthony," he said, "perhaps you can teach me a little bit also. Just enough, maybe, to follow in shul.

ony," said his father, a few minutes away from his home, "Anthony, I want to tell you that I am sorry for all kinds of things. Sheila and I have been talking, and we realize that we gave you a very difficult time about your commitment to Judaism.

"Now we see that our distance from Judaism nearly caused a tragedy for you. I hope we can rectify it. We must do something to change it. But Anthony, I didn't know the laws about a get. I had, of course, heard of a Jewish divorce, but I thought it was just some traditional religious thing of no real importance. I thought the civil divorce was important, and there is no way I would have married your mother without that."

They arrived at the house and Mr. Isaacson led Ari inside. "We will have plenty of time to talk in the days ahead. I have taken leave from work to help you resolve the situation, full time.

"And Anthony," he said, "perhaps you can teach me a little bit also. Just enough, maybe, to follow in shul.

                                                     

However this book was becoming very difficult to obtain especially in paperback and I republished it with an Independant Publishing Platform (Create Space.com) and on Jewish ebooks.com and on Amazon Kindle.

 I felt it could "not be ‘allowed’ to go out of print and is now freely available