Magical Meet Cute

Chapter One

ONE

It was hard and magnificent.

Faiga Kaplan, otherwise known as Faye to her friends, ran her hands down the long shaft of her latest clay creation. An earthenware vase—at least three feet in length and bearing a perfectly crafted slit for sunflowers at the top—lay on her studio table. Having been painted twice and forged through fire in her kiln, it was now ready for placement in her storefront window. All she had to do was get the heavy, hulking piece of pottery through the first floor of Magic Mud Pottery without breaking it.

Cautiously, she lifted the vase from the table. Peeking out from the sides, carefully managing her balance with each step, she creeped slowly past the tables and chairs of her studio, bumping over the threshold into the hallway, heading through the first floor. She was halfway through the old wooden building, by the center staircase, when she felt something mushy and wet beneath her left foot.

Faye didn’t need to look down.

She knew exactly what she had stepped in.

“Hillel,” Faye groaned, rolling her eyes to the ceiling.

Carefully, she put the vase down beside the staircase, turning her attention to inspect the damage now seeping through her pink sock.

“Hillel,” Faye called out again. “I’m serious. Get in here!”

Hillel, a hairless and toothless Chinese crested, peeked around the corner. Faye had adopted the pathetic-looking creature when he was ten years old. At the time, she had considered it a mitzvah , a good deed, in the wake of a dreadful breakup. She thought she could funnel all her love into this poor creature—a dog riddled with back acne and without a home—and he would adore her forever.

“I know you did this on purpose,” Faye said, lifting one foot up to display the mess.

Hillel twisted away from her, tail up, his tiny butthole pointed straight in her line of vision. She swore that dog could speak English.

She also knew that his constant accidents had nothing to do with tummy troubles. After all, Faye was a responsible pet owner. She had taken Hillel to the vet a dozen times, run every expensive test to see if there was something physically wrong with him, only to be told that the tiny monster was in perfectly good health. Indeed, the vet had promised her that Hillel would likely live another decade. No, he defecated all over her apartment for the same reason Stuart had called off their engagement. She was too much.

“Keep acting this way,” Faye warned, narrowing her eyes in his direction, “and I’ll send you to go live with Nelly. You can wear frilly doll dresses and be the guest of honor at her Second Glance dog tea parties for the rest of your natural existence.”

Hillel strolled past her, unconcerned, before landing on a mess of blankets and pillow squares waiting for him by the storefront window.

Faye had made the tiny bed for Hillel there so he would be comfortable. She figured he could watch the people walking down Main Street, see the customers before they entered her store. It was also the sunniest, and therefore warmest, spot in her building, an absolute necessity for a dog without any fur. She did everything for Hillel. She gave him her best. Devoted her love, time, and energy to his well-being. And what did Hillel do in response?

Crap all over her.

The thought had crossed her mind more than once to return him to the shelter.

Faye never did, of course. No, as it turned out...no amount of snarling, or defecating in high-traffic areas, or trying to bite her with his gummy, toothless mouth, would ever steer her heart away from the four-legged fur demon.

The reason being simple enough. She had made a promise to Hillel. She had stood outside Woodstock Animal Shelter, placed him safely in the front basket of her bike, and told him she would care for him, and protect him— and never betray his love on a snowmobile in Lapland —until the bitter end.

Perhaps loving someone to the bitter end had always been her downfall.

Her mind wandered to her ex-fiancé, Stuart, when most applicably her nose wrinkled. The scent of dog feces was beginning to take up residence.

Faye hobbled on one foot up the stairs to the second floor. Finding her way to the bathtub, she set about cleaning up her foot.

For the last three years, Faye had been the sole proprietor of Magic Mud Pottery. She lived above her store and studio in a quaint one-bedroom apartment.

Magic Mud Pottery was one of a handful of old buildings made of wood and painted in bright colors that dotted the bucolic downtown of Woodstock, New York. Set between large trees, and decorated with Pride flags and double-hung windows, it was the type of town that, no matter the season, smelled like burning wood and cinnamon.

Her apartment was small, but as a single woman, she didn’t need much space. Plus, she had gotten an amazing price. On the second floor, a cozy bedroom sat towards the back of the building, overlooking a fenced-in yard and garden. In the front, a tiny living room was divided from a half kitchen by a counter. A bathroom rested in between.

As an old building, the layout—but especially the kitchen—was all types of weird. While the oven, stove, and sink were on the second floor, the refrigerator was too tall for the upstairs kitchen alcove. And so it sat downstairs, right behind the front counter, where Faye often rang up customers.

At first, it was a problem. Especially at night, as Faye often liked to sneak downstairs in nothing but her skivvies and have a late-night snack. But Faye quickly realized that most everyone who owned a business in downtown Woodstock lived elsewhere, and so, even though she had invested in curtains, she never bothered to use them.

Beyond all these things, she liked the quirkiness of the building. The fact it was strange and unusual. It reminded her of an apartment she had lived in on the Lower East Side while a young lawyer in Manhattan, with a shower in the kitchen and a bathroom outside the apartment, just down the hall.

Faye was finishing cleaning up when the bell above the front door to Magic Mud Pottery rang out.

“Faiga,” a voice called out moments later.

She recognized the voice as belonging to Nelly, who owned the building next door, where she ran the business Second Glance Treasures.

It was a gentle, lovely name for a store that was essentially extra storage space for a woman who had taken the hobby of hoarding to a professional capacity. Perhaps Faye was being too hard on the eccentric octogenarian. But No-Filter Nelly—as Faye sometimes called her behind her back—was a frequent, though not always welcome, visitor.

“One moment,” Faye called out.

Quickly, she finished drying off her foot. Spraying down her bathtub and the floor, she popped downstairs. Nelly was standing by the storefront window, arms crossed, her entire forehead wrinkling in displeasure.

“It smells like a porta-potty in here.” Nelly grimaced.

Faye huffed. “Hillel had an accident again.”

“Again?” Nelly looked towards the dog. “Maybe you should take him to the vet.”

“I’ve taken him to the vet,” Faye reminded her for the ten thousandth time . Grabbing a towel and some pet odor remover, she bent down to the floor and began cleaning up his mess. “Can I help you with something, Nelly?”

“I was wondering if you’re going to Single in the Sukkah tonight?” she asked.

“I’m not planning on it.”

“Why not?” Nelly said, following her. She always followed her. “Only twenty-four dollars a participant. For a good cause. Plus, you might meet someone.”

Faye tossed the turd in the trash. “I’m not interested in meeting anyone right now.”

“Why not?”

Faye slammed the lid shut. “You know the reason.”

“Because you were dumped by your fiancé of seven years after a snowmobile accident in Lapland?”

Busted.

Faye had first met Stuart Wutz during law school. After a seven-year engagement, the two-week escapade she had painstakingly planned to Lapland was supposed to be a pre-wedding getaway, a chance for them to have some fun before planning for their wedding, three months away, moved into hyperdrive.

Instead, everything about the trip had been a disaster.

Stuart complained constantly. About the cold. About the food. About his hemorrhoids. He nearly caused an international incident when he found out the hamburger he was eating was made of reindeer meat. But it wasn’t until that fateful snowmobile ride—when Stuart skidded out on a slick of ice, crashing into a snowy embankment—that their decade-long relationship came to an official end. Bringing her vehicle safely to a stop beside him, racing to check that he was okay, she was shocked when Stuart had stood up and lobbed his own attack.

You’re too much, Faye. Everything you do, everything you are...it’s just too much. No wonder your own mother couldn’t stand you.

The wedding was off. Faye was thirty-one years old, and having given Stuart the best years of her life—the best of her reproductive years, too—back to being single. It was more than betrayal. It was more than a hurt. It was an avalanche of pain that she had barely escaped from. And yet, she couldn’t completely blame Stuart for what had happened. He was simply a trigger point in a snowslip that had been building since her youth.

“So, you had one bad experience,” Nelly said.

“Not just one,” Faye grumbled.

“So, you had multiple bad experiences,” Nelly said, unfazed. “Lots of people hurt and disappointed you. Because of this, you give up on love forever?”

Faye spun around. “I don’t need a mother, Nelly!”

Her words pierced the air and turned into ice.

“Everyone needs a mother,” Nelly said, simply.

Faye scoffed, hardening herself against the admission. Against the confession. She had already had a mother in her life, and she sucked. Some nights, she could still feel the pain in her wrist—in her fingers—from where her mom had permanently disabled her.

Faye twisted away from Nelly. “If you’re done pestering me about—”

Nelly cut her off. “So come for the synagogue. They always need money.”

“How about I just write them a check and spend the night reading a book and eating hard kosher salami by myself?”

Nelly grimaced. “This is fun for you?”

“Yes, Nelly.” Faye threw her hands up, exasperated. “This is fun for me. Because I like being alone. More important, I’m better alone. I have no interest in meeting a man, starting a romantic relationship, or getting married. Going to a Single in the Sukkah event would be the equivalent of false advertising.”

Faye made her way back through her pottery studio. Picking up her vase, she turned to place it in her storefront window. And that was when she saw it. The vase she had thought was perfect...had a tiny bubble at the bottom.

“Haman’s hat,” Faye huffed. She tried not to use curse words.

“What’s wrong?” Nelly asked.

Faye shook her head. “I must have missed an air bubble before drying.”

Clay held memory. If you did something wrong at any part of the process, it would be reflected in the final work. A fingerprint at the edge. A lip all misshapen and wonky. A warp or scratch in the otherwise smooth facade, or worse...the entire thing exploding, shattering completely, when placed into the kiln for firing. Clay, contrary to popular belief, was not an easy material to work with.

“I’m just gonna throw it out,” Faye said, attempting to move it out of her window.

“Wha!” Nelly stopped her with both hands. “Why would you throw this out? You’ve already spent time to make it.”

“Because it’s awful,” Faye snapped back. “No one is going to want a vase with a bubble sticking out of it!” And because looking at that bubble was a constant reminder of all the things her mother had stolen from her.

Faye was only seventeen years old when it happened. When her mother—in another one of her random and totally unjustified rages—woke her up from a sound sleep because she had accidentally left clay out on the kitchen table. Grabbing Faye by the wrist and pulling her out of bed, she dragged her down the hall to clean up the supposed mess. Faye could still recall the sensation of her hand being twisted the wrong way, the sound of it snapping as the bone broke. But most of all, she remembered screaming for her father to help her.

The abuse Faye had endured as a child changed her. She lost the scholarship to a prestigious art school in Manhattan where she was planning to study ceramics. She became wholly focused on protecting herself, remaining independent... Changing paths, she became a lawyer instead. And when she met Stuart, she thought she had found the safe, unconditional type of love that she read about in her romance novels.

Instead, her clay memory bubbled up and formed blisters all over their love. She became someone unrecognizable. Desperate to keep Stuart happy—desperate to prove she was someone loveable and worthwhile—she lost herself completely. The breakup had been hard, but when she looked at her life now, at Woodstock and Magic Mud Pottery, she was grateful.

What life had taught her, most of all, was that she had to protect herself.

“Come on,” Nelly said, attempting to take the vase away from Faye. “Don’t be ridiculous. This is a lovely vase! A great vase. Someone is going to want it.”

Faye sighed, and met the old woman’s eyes. Occasionally, No-Filter Nelly had her good moments. Perhaps that was why, in spite of all their bickering and teasing, she considered the old woman a friend.

“You’re right.” Faye rolled her eyes.

She had already wasted several nights and not insignificant money on constructing the piece. Small business owners could not afford to throw out a piece simply because it had a small bubble in it.

Nelly smirked, pleased. “Of course, I’m right. I’m always right.”

Faye returned to putting her vase in the window. Moving over some ring dishes—she was always making ring dishes—she adjusted her now terribly warped vase so that the bulbous top with the thin slit would be facing outward. Then, she readjusted the gems that lay around it—pink quartz for clarity, blue lapis for prosperity—alongside a collection of antique hamsas, evil eye amulets, and various Hebrew blessings for the home.

After which, Faye went to find her grimoire. She had created it by taking the pages of her siddur—the very same prayer book she had used as a child in Hebrew school—and cutting out the prayers that resonated with her. Pasting them against its natural fiber pages, she had then gone through and written in her own additions, gluing bits of dried flowers to the sides, embellishing the edges with art and calligraphy meant to help beautify the words.

“Which spell is this?” Nelly asked.

“Spell for prosperity,” she said, before grabbing a few dried pomegranate seeds and sprinkling them on the storefront window.

She closed her eyes, and called on the Divine Hebrew Goddess.

Faye hadn’t always been a Jewitch. For most of her life, Judaism had been an afterthought. She had a limited Hebrew school education and had never celebrated her bat mitzvah. She couldn’t speak Hebrew. She had spent one summer at Camp Ahava, as a counselor beside her best friend, Miranda, but she went home early after finding the whole experience way too religious for her. And yet, she always felt Jewish. And she wanted to connect more, to her faith and her identity, but she just never seemed to be able to find an access point.

In the wake of that disastrous breakup with Stuart, Faye had gone to her local bookstore. Perusing the aisles in a listless haze, trying to figure out the next steps for her completely shattered life, she had come across a book entitled The Jewitch Woman . The moniker alone was compelling. She had never heard of this concept before. In general, over the course of history, when Jews were linked with witchcraft...they died.

Out of curiosity, she pulled it off the shelf. It was the image on the cover that caught her in its spell. A Hebrew priestess. A wild and uninhibited woman leaping through the sky, a crown of stars upon her head, a tallit around her shoulders, long brown hair flowing behind her, held a full moon against her beating heart as lovingly as if it were her own child.

Faye took that book home and read it in one sitting. And she related with the words she found inside its pages. This return to the Hebrew Goddess. This idea that she could be like the priestesses of the Holy Temple of Jerusalem, someone powerful and respected—not only a magician, but a healer.

She found her Jewish connection. She didn’t need to sit in shul for three hours, speaking a language she didn’t understand, to commune with the Hebrew Goddess. She became a solo practitioner. And Faye knew a lot about Jewitch magic. She knew what spells to say to bring prosperity and luck. She knew what to feed a woman wanting a baby, and where to sew knots to keep a child safe. She even practiced her strongest magic in caves, thanks to some words she had gleaned from the Rashbam.

Most of all, Jewitch magic allowed her to rewrite the story of her life.

It gave her a center. It lifted her up, told her she was powerful, reminded her that she had full authority and ability to protect herself. She felt loved by the universe, and the Divine Goddess, the sacred mother whose light waxed and waned with each new moon. It helped her understand where she had gone wrong with Stuart...and then, it gave her the tools to return to her true self.

With a newfound courage, Faye went to the mikvah on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, and, immersing herself in that sacred bath full of rainwater three times, emerged renewed. From there, she sold her legal practice in Manhattan, moved upstate to Woodstock, New York, and opened Magic Mud Pottery.

It had taken Faye over three decades to find a place where she felt safe.

But finally, she could sleep without nightmares.

Faye finished her spell and turned to place her grimoire back on a shelf. Instead, she nearly plowed into Nelly. The old woman was standing there, invading her personal space once again, with her hand held out.

Nelly nodded to the dried pomegranate seeds. “Give me some.”

Faye squinted, confused. “For what?”

“For tonight,” she explained. “I want to put some in my bra.”

Faye angled her head, concerned. “Single in the Sukkah is being held outside. You’re not worried about getting attacked by an owl?”

“It depends,” Nelly snarked back. “How big is the owl’s—”

“Okay!” Faye said, cutting her off. She dumped all her seeds into Nelly’s hands. “Here you go. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.”

Nelly took a few minutes to jiggle and wiggle them into place, while Faye returned to her morning tasks. She went back to her counter, grabbing her phone to take a picture of the vase, before heading back to the computer to upload the details on Etsy.

“What are you going to call it?” Nelly asked.

“I don’t know.” Faye shrugged. “Almost perfect.”

“You should call it shvantz .”

“Really?”

Nelly shrugged. “It looks like a shvantz .”

“It does not—”

Faye stopped, cocking her head sideways. Now that Nelly mentioned it, her latest creation had taken on a distinctly phallic shape. A spherical head at the top. A thick shaft, at least thirty-six inches, to place long-stemmed roses in. Perhaps it had been unwise to paint it a rich pink color, which, after being forged in the flames, shimmered in swirls beneath the morning sunlight.

“All your vases look like shvantzes ,” Nelly said, before pointing with one finger towards a maroon vase, the opening of which Faye had designed to accommodate the large and budding leaves of tulips. “Except that one. That one looks like a pupic .”

The words were, clearly, an open accusation.

Not that Nelly was wrong. Faye might have sworn off love, but she was still a woman. It had been several years since Faye had engaged in a good shtupping .

Perhaps it was coming across in her art. “Maybe,” Nelly wondered aloud, “you should ask yourself, ‘Self...why am I always making ring dishes, and pottery that looks like giant—’”

“Okay,” Faye said, rising from her desk. Coming around the counter, she put her hands on Nelly’s back and began to physically push the old lady out of her store. For a woman in her eighties, she was surprisingly strong. Either that, or she had grips on the bottoms of her orthopedic sneakers. Faye went with grips. “You’ve had your say. You can leave now.”

“So, you’re coming tonight?” Nelly asked, wedging herself into the threshold.

“Not a chance.”

“Because I told the cantor you were coming.”

Faye released the old woman, anger bubbling over.

Nelly beamed, wide and victorious.

Of course, Nelly told the cantor she was coming. Nelly always told the cantor she was coming. Because Cantor Shulamit Amaral was married to Faye’s best friend, Miranda. Faye rolled her eyes to the ceiling, and then, telling herself it was a mitzvah to support the synagogue, leaned into the old woman.

“You,” Faye said, “are a villain.”

It was awful.

Faye was less than an hour into Single in the Sukkah, and was already regretting her decision. Her current suitor—Number Three, according to his name tag—was cramming a highlights reel of his lifetime achievements into the five-minute time slot they were allotted.

“And after I finished my residency,” he continued, barely coming up for air, “I was offered a teaching fellowship at the local university. It’s been a good experience, living and building a medical practice in Woodstock. Plus, I own my own house. Four bedrooms. Three acres. I’m hoping one day to build on an addition, maybe a pool. I’ve always wanted to build...”

Her eyes drifted to the side of the Sukkah. Cantor Shulamit, a rainbow-colored kippah on her head, was enjoying a slice of babka with apple cider while schmoozing with some of the members of the congregation. She noticed Faye looking and waved in her direction.

At the table next to her, Nelly was leaning in hard to her five-minute speed date. Despite the fact it was the end of September, and cold enough for jackets, she had unbuttoned the top of her blouse.

Number Three cleared his throat. “So, what do you do for a living?”

“I’m a ceramicist,” she explained, “and I own Magic Mud Pottery.”

“You mean the place downtown with the cauldron in the front window and the little crystals all around?”

“That’s the one.”

“I know that place,” he said, obviously pleased at his ability to find a connection between them. “You hold those arts and crafts classes for kids and their mommies?”

Faye blinked. “It’s not...arts and crafts.”

A damning silence settled between them. Perhaps Number Three had not meant to be rude, but his words diminished her passion. She couldn’t help but sense an air of misogyny in them. As if a craft done by women, for women— and God forbid, their children —was somehow less valuable in the scheme of the universe.

This was a teachable moment. She did her best to educate him. “Magic Mud Pottery is a place where people of all shapes and persuasions express their hearts through their hands.”

“Of course.” He shifted in his seat. “I didn’t mean to imply otherwise.” His eyes drifted towards the table, embarrassed. “So did you...study pottery in college?”

The question made her wrist ache.

“Unfortunately, no,” she said, returning to herself. “Magic Mud Pottery is my second career. Before that, I ran my own very successful law firm in Manhattan.”

“Really?” His eyebrows arched up towards the ceiling.

“I sold my firm at thirty-one and came up here to start over.”

“Wow.” He seemed genuinely impressed. “And what made you want to change your whole life around like that? Were you unhappy with law, or just looking for new ventures to explore—”

“Oh, nothing like that,” Faye interrupted him. “My fiancé dumped me during a snowmobile ride in Lapland.”

The look of surprise that landed on his face made the entire evening, plus the twenty-four-dollar donation to the synagogue, feel totally worth it.

“I’m sorry,” Number Three stammered, “your fiancé?”

“Well, obviously, he’s not my fiancé anymore. We had been engaged seven years,” she said, fully leaning into it now. “All through college and law school—those best reproductive years of a woman’s life—and then, when I was thirty-one years old, three months before the wedding, he told me he didn’t want to marry me.”

She laughed aloud. Maybe too loud. “But after he dumped me and left me to foot the bill and call all two hundred and twenty-six people on our guest list to tell them that the wedding was off, I decided it was time for a change. So I came up here, where my best friend and her wife lived, and decided to start over...to focus on the things I really love and care about...to focus on me.”

He squinted, still confused. “That’s good... I guess?”

“It’s very good.”

Number Three rubbed the back of his neck. “So, you were going to get married?”

“Correct.”

“But he dumped you. And now you live in Woodstock and run Magic Mud Pottery.”

“Well, look at that,” she quipped happily, “I suppose you can learn a lot about a person in five minutes.”

She could also see by the way he was looking at her—like she had snakes coming out of her head instead of hair—that their brief fling was over.

Faye suddenly felt vulnerable, and that vulnerability—the realization that she could be hurt again—made her feel unsafe. She regretted opening up to this man. Even joking, presenting her trauma as an aside, she felt the bubbles in her clay memory rising up and twisting into blisters. All the broken parts of her life, which she had not patched correctly or smoothed over, lingered inside her.

If she continued this conversation, she would shatter.

The alarm on the five-minute timer went off. Number Three raced off to the next table. Faye found that sadness in her heart—the sadness she worked so hard to keep at bay—surging towards the center of her chest. Seeing Number Sixteen—a man old enough to remember the Revolutionary War—shuffling his way to her table, Faye reasoned she had been at Single in the Sukkah long enough. It was late. She wanted to go home. Gathering up her bag, she quickly made her way towards her bike, sitting in the rack in the synagogue parking lot.

Her goal was to slink out without much fanfare. But Faye was halfway through the parking lot when Cantor Shulamit put down her snack, excused herself from her friends, and caught up to Faye.

“Hey,” Shully said, “where are you going?”

“Home.”

“But the event’s not over yet,” Shulamit said, genuinely concerned. “You’re going to miss all the fun. Plus, you haven’t even had a slice of pumpkin-spiced babka. We brought it in fresh from Best Babka in Brooklyn this morning.”

Faye smiled politely. Dear, sweet Shulamit. Her intentions were good. Everything Shulamit did came from the purest of hearts. It really was no wonder that Faye’s best friend, Miranda—along with the entire congregation of Beth Tikvah synagogue—had fallen completely and totally in love with her. Everyone loved Shulamit.

“I’m just not feeling well,” Faye lied.

“Oh.” Shully frowned before glancing towards Faye’s bike. “Well, do you need a ride home?”

“Actually, I’m thinking the fresh air will be helpful. Just tell Miranda I said hi and that I’ll call her tomorrow. Maybe we can get together for a Shabbat later this month?”

“That would be wonderful,” Shully said genuinely, before leaning in for a long hug.

Faye accepted the embrace somewhat awkwardly, and then quickly skedaddled her way home.

It was approximately three miles from Congregation Beth Tikvah to downtown where Faye lived. Most of the ride was rural. Quiet. The same sense of magic that had provoked her to name her store Magic Mud Pottery now felt palpable. She forgot about Single in the Sukkah and Stuart, focusing instead on the pedaling of her wheels.

Approaching town, most of the storefronts had shuttered. Faye rode past the one business open late—an ice-cream shop called Pinky’s—and made her way down Main Street, towards home. The familiar crunch of leaves greeted her arrival.

It was only when one of those leaves found its way into her spokes, and caused her bike to stutter, that she realized she had misinterpreted. Faye braked and stepped off her bike to investigate. As it turned out, the crunching she had felt was no act of nature, but rather flyers. A glance down the street showed her entire neighborhood was littered in white sheets.

Bending down, she picked one up. The words splattered across the top of the page, in crass blue handwriting, were not what she was expecting.

THE JEWS CONTROL THE MEDIA.

THE JEWS ARE RESPONSIBLE FOR COVID.

It was followed by a long list of names and photographs of what were supposed to be Jews.

Faye scanned the images, shock tearing through her body. Flipping the flyer over, she realized that the attacker had not stopped with film executives and government officials. Whoever had made the flyers had also gone through their community, this time including addresses of businesses and homes.

She gasped. An image of her—one she recognized immediately as stolen from the About Us page of her Magic Mud Pottery website—was squeezed between a picture of Cantor Shulamit and Rabbi Devorah Aaronson. And beneath those photos, four tiny words:

JEWS ARE THE PROBLEM.

Her shock dissipated into straight rage. Her stomach twisted into knots. But all the “Best of Anti-Semitism” conspiracy theories were there. The photographs were meant to serve as proof, to provide evidence for some inane belief that Jews, with their space lasers and ability to control the weather, were secretly puppeteering the greater events of the world.

Standing on her street, watching those flyers blowing around in the wind, she had only one thought. How dare they? How dare they come to her town, to her home, and litter her community with such vile anti-Semitic hatred?

She wanted to throw it away. Give it no thought. Allow it no energy. But it was like passing a car wreck on the highway, everybody slowing down to watch the flames of an automobile on fire. Except this time, the car wreck was here. The fire was in her neighborhood. It had happened in a place she loved, where she had always felt safe, and where she thought...she thought she was welcomed.