The Short Vort by Rabbi Eisenman

The Chupah had ended; it was time for me to leave.

The one-hundred-and-fifty-mile round trip to Lakewood is grueling, and I longed to get home. 

The ride is getting longer and longer.

I was moving quickly from the Chupah room through the lobby, attempting to make a beeline to my car.

Suddenly, a man whom I did not recognize came over and said his wife was waiting for me in the lobby.

The woman introduced herself and added her maiden name.

I remembered Sorah G* from her time in Passaic twenty years ago.

She was then a single woman just back from Seminary.

She had secured a position as a second-grade Morah and would occasionally ask me questions.

Although we had lost touch, I recalled her situation.

She rented an apartment with Leah H*, and they became good friends.

The only issue they had was cleanliness, or to put it more bluntly, orderliness.

Leah was obsessively and compulsively insistent that “everything had its place.”

If Sorah left her coffee cup out in the morning, with intentions to wash it when she returned, Leah would descend into a frenzy of anxiety.

Leah would wash the cup thoroughly - multiple times- and place it back into the cupboard in the exact spot Leah deemed it must sit.

Leah, who worked from home, could not tolerate even a siddur left on the table.

It soon became apparent to Sorah that Leah’s obsessive and compulsive need for order was unusual.

Sorah realized from observing the severe anxiety within Leah that her friend was suffering greatly.

She decided to speak to Leah directly.

Leah broke down and revealed to Sorah just how agonizing her condition was and how she had attempted for years to get help.

However, in the interim, Leah’s behavior put stress on the friendship.

Sorah reached out to me for advice, yet,  besides lending a sympathetic ear, there was little else I could do.

Things came to a head one Monday morning.

Sorah had been up late filling out the report cards for her students until finally, at 4 AM, she left the completed report cards on the table and fell asleep on the couch.

When she awoke at 7, she quickly gathered her papers and was on her way to school.

Yet, to her disbelief, the reports were nowhere to be found.

She frantically confronted Leah, who was always up by five, cleaning and organizing.

Leah agitatedly replied that the papers were left messily on the table, and she disposed of them.

Sorah looked at Leah with incredulity. How could Leah have done that?

She had known that not handing in the report cards on time could cost Sorah her job.

Sorah was beside herself with grief as Leah looked at her friend apologetically while simultaneously feeling helpless and hopeless.

Sorah called me early that morning and asked me if she was allowed to inform the school that her roommate, who suffered from OCD, had discarded her completed report cards.

Was this Loshon Hora? Was there a Toeles?

During the too-brief time we had to discuss this difficult and sensitive issue, Sorah independently declared, “I just finished teaching the class about the severity of embarrassing another person. I will remain silent and trust that just as Hashem hears my Tefillos, He will 'hear' my 'silence.”

I was very moved by Sorah’s decision to lose her job rather than embarrass her friend.

Not knowing what to say, I ended the conversation with the perfunctory Brocha, “We should meet again at a Simcha.”

Sorah headed to school sans report cards, and indeed, she was not invited back the following year.

And now, here at the Chasunah was Mrs. Sorah surrounded by her children.

Before I could say a word, Sorah said,  “Rabbi, do you see? The Brocha has been fulfilled; we are meeting by a Simcha!”