Shimeon prepared for his bar mitzvah diligently.  From the time he first heard the word 'Hashem' which means 'G-d' in Hebrew, Shimeon prayed with all his might and played that viola with all his soul.  Music and liturgy floated together out the window in the back study during clement weather.  Passersby would stop on the side street and remark how beautifully Shimeon played on the viola.  On the day of his bar mitzvah, Shimeon chanted his portion of Torah while playing the viola in his mind between passages.  All the Jews attending the ceremony on that day never forgot Shimeon's rendition of ritual and his swaying style, as if he were playing the viola somehow on that occasion.
        After the death of his beloved Shayna, Rebbe Israel aged badly.  With his father's declining health and will to live, Shimeon took over more and more of the duties that the shul wanted in a successor rabbi.  He was already 18 and quite accomplished in the theology and philosophy of our religion.  Only one more obligation was left before Shimeon could take over the synagogue, and then his ailing father could retire in honor and glory.
        A rebbetsin.
        For that, all the rebbes around Volodsk were consulted who had any marriageable daughters.
        A beauty was finally found from the great dynasty of rabbinic scholars in the town of Piatowka along the Polish-Russian-Ukrainian border in those days.  Miriam bat Rebbe Shmuel and Rebbetsin Gittel Aronstein was everything both Rebbe Israel and Rebbe Shimeon could want.  Soon after their wedding, the first of four children came into the world.  Rebbe Israel performed the Covenant Rite on all three boys.  The last child, Rachel, was spared the knife, but not all the blessings of the occasion on her naming.
        Life wove its warp and woof on the lives of Rebbe Shimeon and his family.  Rebbe Israel died in 1937, almost 85 years old.  Shimeon and Miriam watched their infants and toddlers become children and adolescents in the turbulent years following the death of Lenin and the rise of Stalin.  As Shimeon's three sons prepared to be rabbis in their own right, and Rachel being brought up to be a proper rabbi's wife, Volodsk and Russia endured the brutal rule of Stalin during the 1930s.  Famine and purges swept that part of southern Russia like whirlwinds without season.

        Shimeon prepared for his bar mitzvah diligently.  From the time he first heard the word 'Hashem' which means 'G-d' in Hebrew, Shimeon prayed with all his might and played that viola with all his soul.  Music and liturgy floated together out the window in the back study during clement weather.  Passersby would stop on the side street and remark how beautifully Shimeon played on the viola.  On the day of his bar mitzvah, Shimeon chanted his portion of Torah while playing the viola in his mind between passages.  All the Jews attending the ceremony on that day never forgot Shimeon's rendition of ritual and his swaying style, as if he were playing the viola somehow on that occasion.
        After the death of his beloved Shayna, Rebbe Israel aged badly.  With his father's declining health and will to live, Shimeon took over more and more of the duties that the shul wanted in a successor rabbi.  He was already 18 and quite accomplished in the theology and philosophy of our religion.  Only one more obligation was left before Shimeon could take over the synagogue, and then his ailing father could retire in honor and glory.
        A rebbetsin.
        For that, all the rebbes around Volodsk were consulted who had any marriageable daughters.
        A beauty was finally found from the great dynasty of rabbinic scholars in the town of Piatowka along the Polish-Russian-Ukrainian border in those days.  Miriam bat Rebbe Shmuel and Rebbetsin Gittel Aronstein was everything both Rebbe Israel and Rebbe Shimeon could want.  Soon after their wedding, the first of four children came into the world.  Rebbe Israel performed the Covenant Rite on all three boys.  The last child, Rachel, was spared the knife, but not all the blessings of the occasion on her naming.
        Life wove its warp and woof on the lives of Rebbe Shimeon and his family.  Rebbe Israel died in 1937, almost 85 years old.  Shimeon and Miriam watched their infants and toddlers become children and adolescents in the turbulent years following the death of Lenin and the rise of Stalin.  As Shimeon's three sons prepared to be rabbis in their own right, and Rachel being brought up to be a proper rabbi's wife, Volodsk and Russia endured the brutal rule of Stalin during the 1930s.  Famine and purges swept that part of southern Russia like whirlwinds without season.
        The Jews of Volodsk were not always spared the horrors of starvation, sickness and death among their goyish neighbors in town and the nearby collective farms.  Still, whenever such calamites passed, many Jews felt sorrow and fear that any human beings should suffer so.  While most Jews never felt the iron rod Stalin wielded as hard on the backs of gentile Russians and Ukrainians, the NKVD did make occasional arrests and beatings of a few Jewish 'suspects' whenever in the neighborhood.
        After the Purges and Famine eased by the late summer of 1939, no Jew in Volodsk understood why the Nazi Hitler and Communist Stalin signed a ketubah, or prenuptial contract, while each despised the other!  "What kind of shidduch is this?" pondered the local sages of Volodsk.  Even Rebbe Shimeon had no answer for this form of 'goyishe narrishkeiten,' or foolishness, between two enemies suddenly betrothed.  About 22 months passed before this marriage required a 'get,' or divorce, by one of the dictators.  The grounds were simple: spiteful hatred and calculating opportunity.  Stalin was ditched on June 22, 1941, much to his surprise and Hitler's glee.
        Volodsk and her synagogue eventually were not spared the consequences of this marriage breakdown.
        The Rebbe was sitting on a chair across from his overburdened desk.  On sagging shelves were tomes from the Talmud to the works of Rashi, Rambam, the Goan, and all the great sages up to his father's time when he was the Chief Rabbi of Volodsk.  "Ha Shalom!"  ("May He Rest in Peace!")  Seated at his favorite old leather wing chair in the corner with his legs spread apart, the Rebbe relaxed as the treasured viola leaned back against his chest.  Holding the creamy horsehair bow with his right hand, his left placed an arched finger on the G string.  Slowly swaying himself as the bow touched the strings, the melody of Kol Nidre emerged sinuously and sonorously towards Heaven and Hashem.
        "G-d", Rebbe Shimeon pondered as the melody rose and fell from the viola.  "Do You hear my prayer as You do my music?"  The study took on a different atmosphere.  Something, or someone, other than the violist was present.  He felt it despite the vibration made by the viola.  He sensed a sensation quite like peace fluttering across his mind.  Settling upon his soul as the minutes passed and the music wafted outside an open window on that warm September afternoon, Shimeon felt comforting peace come over him.  A few passersby heard the sounds of Judaism's song to Hashem.  Some stopped to listen for a moment; others kept on going.  All were themselves affected one way or the other by their rebbe's love of G-d and his People of Volodsk.
        Rumors of terrible catastrophes befalling Jews in other shtetls like Volodsk--barely a town really--reached Rebbe Israel's ears and drew his attention.  These flew back and forth, hither and yon, like ravens when a storm is approaching.  While pausing a beat from his playing, fear slithered across Shimeon's heart like a serpent in the grass.  "What if the Nazis come here and kill us?" was a thought moving like that serpent deeper into his mind.  "What can any of us do?  What am I supposed to do?  Oh, Hashem, please help us.  Shield and defend us from the newest scourge against our Faith, your People."  Questions and qualms mixed together poured out anew as Rebbe Israel reached the climactic notes to Kol Nidre.
        Just as silence returned to his study, the atmosphere changed back to the gentle warmth and soft breeze coming from the open window.  A gentle knock at the door caught his attention.  Miriam knocked again, and then entered when Israel told her to come in.  As she sat down next to him, noticing the red-gold viola reposing like a sleeping child on his body, Miriam asked him, "What should we do for the children?  The women at the market and mikvah all say the same thing: Jews are being slaughtered by Germans calling themselves 'SS'."
        Rebbe Shimeon looked at his wife, his love, his life.  Miriam had deep brown eyes, wavy auburn hair, and the slender body of her youth before childbearing was still there; albeit she was slightly fuller from time and hard work.  He thought back to their wedding night.  Both were scared, excited, confused.  But somehow he became a man physically, she a woman fulfilled on that night.
        Now a night was coming for them very different from the nuptial one.  A strange night filled with inexplicable evil, instead of the familiar ones bringing comfort and care.  "Miriam.  I really don't know what to do.  I am worried that the rumors are true about mass killings in the West.  I prayed and prayed to Hashem for answers, for help.  His Silence is all I hear."  Rebbe Shimeon sighed and saw in her eyes worry and anxiety.  "Miriam," he said quietly.  "Do you know if Shmuel, Azrael, Benyamin, and Rachel are aware of the situation we might face soon?"
        Miriam drew a slow breath and replied, "Shimelah, the boys are almost men, rabbis in their own right.  Of course they know.  So does Rachel.  She heard it from a friend of hers--Sarah Toveh--that a brother of Sarah's father Yankel was killed near Gromel along with his family and relatives by the Nazis.  Rachel told me, and we both thought to tell you, but you were busy with visitors and preparing for Yom Kippur this evening."
        "Well, we can discuss what to do after services when we go to bed.  Somehow I am sure Hashem will reveal His Will when we need it the most.  Let me put away the viola and finish my notes for tonight.  If we are lucky, the Red Army will push back the Germans from this part of Russia--at least for the time being.  "I smell roasting chicken.  Are the boys going to sit down with us before services?"
        "Yes.  Rachel baked extra challah for them and their ravenous appetites.  You should watch how much challah you take.  I let out your pant waist ha'bissel this morning for tonight's services.  Vershteh?"