About forty years ago, a rather newlywed Ba'al teshuva lady, just about due with her first child, wanted to sleep over at our "single girls" Ba'al teshuva apartment on Eastern Parkway. in Crown Heights. She was living in Morristown, NJ. but needed to be in NYC first thing in the morning, the day after Tisha B'av...way too much of a shlep due to her condition and the day after the fast. "Of course," we said, and I even let her use my bed...well, that was Hinda Dukes, and that first baby she was expecting? Rabbi Chaim Shneur Zalman Yehuda Dukes, A"h. I could say that I've known him since before he was born!

Fast forward from that about another 20 years. My daughter was going to attend an "out-of-town" high school, instead of staying in Crown Hts and attending Bais Rivka. So off she went to Yeshiva Schools of Pittsburgh. One of the highlights of her 4 years there happened to be a very intuitive, smart, sensitive, and beautiful roommate, by the name of Sara Spangenthal!

Keeping going...until about 8 years ago.....my husband was looking for a Torah chevrusah, and of course, I had heard of JNET (hadn't we all) so he did the email intake, and, voila...found a great learning partner...and they're still going strong, after all this time. I was having the opposite experience, each woman that JNET paired me with didn't work out, they were too busy, too needy, too unsure of what to learn, or when to learn until I finally decided it just wasn't meant for me. The nice lady who had been texting with me said not to despair, she'd have someone give me a call to help me sort it out. (this was just about a year ago) That phone call was from Yudi. I was a bit embarrassed.....not only wanting to call it quits, but wasting his time over it as well. He was so pleasant and patient on the phone....and so positive and encouraging, too! He said that he was sure that I had it in me to do, and they'd try harder to find me a more suitable match. I even told him the story about his mom staying over by us, a few weeks before he was born......and he confirmed in a later phone call that it was, indeed, him.

Those are the "big stories" of how I know the Dukes family.....and then the Tehillim, months of Tehillim, and reading Sara's posts, being inspired and hopeful, learning more about bitachon, more about strengthening my connection with Hashem, as Sara showed us all. This past Shabbos, the Shabbos of the shiva, upon the request of Sara, we all continued with our Tehillim obligation, and I did my "traditional" yom 20 and yom 29. And as I read them I felt the letters flying up to shamayim.....

Malka Forshner