Gam zuh l'tova

Barak's aunt and uncle have a CD for Jewish children that they were playing in the car the last time they were here, over Succos. I don't remember which CD it was--I think it was the Marvelous Middos Machine, but I'm not sure--but there is one song on it that I really liked, about the idea of gam zuh l'tova. Literally, it means "also this is for the good," and it expresses the idea that everything is part of a divine plan, and therefore good, even though it may not seem that way at the time. The song is sort of like the book "Alexander's Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day," where everything bad happens--except throughout the song you hear the refrain, "Gam zuh l'tova."

So, MHH's box of books? This is a story of gam zuh l'tova.

But first, back to the beginning.

As I may have mentioned, MHH is a non-traveler in a family of non-travelers. His family do not even speak of traveling. They speak of shlepping. Travel is, at best, a necessary evil. It is not recreational. It is not fun. You only do it if you absolutely have to, and often not even then.

So when MHH's sister made aliyah, about two and a half years ago, and I said, "Well, we'll have to go visit," I don't think he really thought I was serious. Even though he saw my passport, with its extra pages put in where I'd run out of room, and even though we agreed before we got married that I wouldn't make him travel as long as he didn't try to stop me from traveling, I don't think he quite anticipated that yes, I did have every intention of piling him on a plane and getting us all to the Holy Land. I tried the first winter that we were married, and was foiled--he kept not deciding whether or not he was willing to do it, until Travelocity decided for us by pushing fares up above a thousand dollars. The next time we had enough money to go, he didn't have any vacation; then when we had vacation, we didn't have the money. But this past summer, I said, this is it: Barak will be two in the spring, we'll have to buy three tickets to go then, and that's just dumb. We're going in December, and I'm buying the tickets. And he said okay.

But even though he did want to go, in theory, he couldn't quite bring himself to believe he'd enjoy it, because who enjoys traveling? So I laid on the wifely psychology. As I am to yarn, MHH is to seforim (Jewish books). I love yarn because I love using it, but I also love acquiring it and decorating my home with it. So, too, MHH with his holy books. So I said, look, you've started doing this morning kollel that has a small stipend. Let's put aside some of that money for a book buying budget, so you can really go seforim shopping when we're in Israel. I saw him perk up. "How much were you thinking?" he asked. "I don't know, a couple hundred dollars," I said. He perked up more. So in the months to come, whenever I started hearing "I'm going to get airsick, I'll get sick from the water, I'll be jetlagged, Barak won't sleep, but it's a mitzva to go to Israel, right?" I reminded him that he was going to the Land of Falafel and Seforim, and what was he planning on doing with those two hundred dollars, again?

The trip there, as I don't think I've chronicled, was kind of nightmarish, beginning with a flight that was cancelled without anyone bothering to let us know and going downhill from there. When we arrived, there was no luggage waiting for us, and I could see all of MHH's convictions about travel being upheld. However, we discovered that El Al (generous that they are) was going to give us $75 each for our inconvenience. "It's to buy new clothes," I told MHH. "But I packed you a change of clothes in my carryon. So I guess you have some more seforim money now."

Perk, perk. "Hmm. Maybe I'll get..."

So, the whole ten days we were there, MHH was really on one prolonged book shopping trip. There was not a seforim shop we passed that we didn't go into, and I tried my best to make sure that he had all the time he wanted. He went seforim shopping by himself a few times, and once just with his BIL. He found something almost every day, and he'd come out of the store with his eyes glowing, saying, "Look at this print! Look how clear this print is! And look, it explains..."
and I'd nod and say hmm kind of the way he does when I rhapsodize about mitten gussets.

In the end, he had about twenty books, many of them impossible to obtain here, many hard to find even in Israel. I found a sturdy cardboard box, wrapped each book in a heavy plastic bag, packed them carefully with t-shirts and yarn as padding, wrote his name and our address on the side in permanent marker, and wrapped the whole thing in miles of strapping tape.

It was too heavy to check with the rest of our luggage, so at the airport we had to take it to a special oversized freight elevator. We put it on the elevator, and we waved bye-bye.

And bye-bye it went. It wasn't there when we arrived at our destination. And it didn't come the next day. Or the next. Or the next. Every day I called the number they'd given us, even though it only seemed to work on prime-numbered days when there was a full moon and a low tide. And sometimes not even then. And when you did get through, you got through to people who didn't speak English well enough to know what a stroller was when I told them I'd lost one. We got home on Thursday, and Sunday morning dawned with still no bags, no stroller--and no box. But they told us that we'd be compensated, at 58 Euros per person per day. So I bought a new stroller, and some new clothes, and some other things. And I sent MHH to the local seforim store with a mandate to buy some books, which he did. Sunday afternoon, the bags showed up. The stroller showed up, missing a big chunk of metal and a wheel.

But no box.

MHH tried to take this well. He tried. But there was no getting around it. He was very, very sad. He'd sit there glumly at dinner and reminisce about how nice the type was in this book, and how this book printed an attack on itself at the end of it, and how this book had a haskama that was a real haskama. He'd sigh. At work, he'd call me a few times every day. "Did you get through? Did they find it?" Alas, the answer was always no.

The following Sunday, I called as usual, and was told, as usual (after forty minutes on hold), that they had no idea where my box was, that I should call back in 24 hours, and that "that airport"--i.e., Ben Gurion-- was very slow to send luggage. (Funny, they were an awful lot better at dealing with it when you lost it in that direction...) MHH sighed again, and was about to head off to school to grade some art projects that were too big to carry home. I said, "Did you try that segulah? You know, the one on the magnet on the fridge?" He hadn't, so he put some money in the charity box, said it, and trudged sadly off to work, weeping bitterly (okay, not really, but he was really, really sad.)

I put Barak down for his nap, which didn't go terribly smoothly. And just when I had gotten him almost asleep--the doorbell rang. Argh! You'll wake up my kid! So I kicked off my shoes and ran to get it in my stocking feet before they rang again.

And it was the man from the airport. With the box. Or at least, what was left of it. Wrapped in miles of orange security tape, in a large plastic garbage bag.

I have never seen such a thoroughly smashed box. I'm not sure what they did to it, but it must have involved throwing it directly from the cargo hold of the plane to the tarmac, with enthusiasm, multiple times. It had labels on it from Madrid, Dublin, and New York. (We don't live in or anywhere near any of these places.) Our formerly sturdy cardboard box was reduced to wood pulp. And, inasmuch as it could still be said to contain anything, it now contained, mysteriously, two equally throughly smashed (but still wrapped in bubble wrap, with every bubble popped) pieces of tile painted with something very strange that I won't get into.

Of our own stuff, almost everything was there, although the books were pretty banged up--one out of its binding almost completely, some other ones scraped and bent. And one five-volume set was missing entirely, but fortunately it was one that you can get here if you are willing to spend the money on it (which we are, since we are getting reimbursed for it.) MHH hadn't taken his cell phone with him, so I couldn't call with the joyous news, but when he did call me on his way home, and I got to tell him that it came, I could literally hear the sounds of his feet in the background as he danced a jig in the empty office.

So, the gam zeh l'tova? He still got his books. He will now appreciate his books even more. And not only that, he got a whole bunch of extra books, courtesy of Iberia Airlines. Along with new socks, new undershirts, new underwear, and a new stroller for Barak.

If they ever actually send us the check. Stay tuned.