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Book Excerpt from Just Between Friends

Just Between Friends A Novel By Sara Wiederblank A compelling Jewish women's novel about real life & real issues, Just Between Friends depicts four Jewish women as they navigate through life's challenges, and learn to confront them with wisdom, faith & grace. Buy Just Between Friends at a special online price at www.targum.com

Chapter 4

Nava sat on the floor of her carpeted bedroom, the phone lying beside her and her chin resting on her hand. The room was a bit messy, clothes scattered about, but it was her room, decorated the way it had been when she’d chosen its fixings at the age of eleven - fourteen years ago. Was she already twenty-five? How had it happened?

Slowly her bulletin board had been divested of its spelling tests and camp certificates and become plastered with graduation photos and seminary trinkets. Lately, she’d removed those too, and tacked up official memorandums from her speech master’s program and job, and some snapshots of her nieces and nephews. There were no smiling friends decorating the bulletin board. She felt funny about posting ancient pictures of peers that she no longer had; they were all long married.

Bracha Friedman, in fact, had been the first to get married from their group. They had been twenty years old, just back from seminary, and only beginning to excitedly toy with the idea that they were now eligible for shidduchim. Nava, of course, had been out on a few dates already, but that was what was expected. Of the four, Nava was the front-runner for a fast engagement. She was from a reasonably well-off family and was pretty, and tall, and clever, but not too clever, and charming, and kind, and witty. She had smooth dark brown hair, straight white teeth, and big green eyes, and always wore the right type of clothes. But she was not off-putting to people less put together than she was, and her eyes reflected light and laughter.

Her friends looked at her as an expert in matters relating to their new and mysterious stage in life, and in fact a few weeks earlier, Bracha had confidingly asked Nava her opinion about dressing for a first date. Nava had come over, gone through the contents of Bracha’s closet, and advised her friend to wear the lavender suit with her silver necklace, accompanied by subtle black pumps, all the while feeling quietly but smugly confident that she’d be planning her own vort dress before Bracha was up to queries about second-date attire. Not that Bracha wasn’t a catch. She was refined, intelligent, and well-respected by her peers. She wasn’t tall, or particularly elegant, with her curling mild brown hair, but she radiated a certain appeal and was rightly considered a charming person.

But four weeks later, while Nava was actually between boys, Bracha had called up and announced her engagement. Nava had been delighted, shocked, and...somewhat jealous. Bracha was engaged to Ephraim Jacobs, who was one of the Names. He was touted as a huge masmid, destined to become something in learning. Only certain girls could aspire to dates with him. Nava’s parents had recently put out feelers, and it was likely that he would have come through, but they’d heard he was busy. And now he was engaged...to Bracha.

After the first pang of shocked dismay had worn off, Nava had wholeheartedly enjoyed the simchah. After all, she loved Bracha, and it was easy enough to wish someone joy of what you were sure you would also soon attain. Nava had danced and smiled her way through the celebrations attending Bracha’s marriage. At the vort she had been confident that she would be sporting a ring at the chasunah, and at the chasunah she was sure she would be joining Bracha in Lakewood before the summer. It was fun, really, to be able to devote herself entirely to the simchah of such an old friend. Their foursome went back since kindergarten. And surely she would be next.

But quiet, calm Chana Rivka Pollack, one of Nava’s other close friends, was next, announcing her engagement to Tzvi Heller, another fine bachur, marrying him, and moving with him to Lakewood. Nava was alarmed. Two years since seminary, and of her close friends, there were just herself and Shifra Tannenbaum left. Another year passed, incredibly, and they were twenty-two. The strain of those years of waiting was mitigated by Shifra’s company. Together they attended vorts, griped about the difficulties of the shidduch system, kvetched about dating, and kept each other company...and then, suddenly, Shifra became the kallah of Meir Katz. Nava had been shocked. Not because Shifra was engaged - that was bound to happen, sooner or later - but because it meant that she, Nava, was the last. And that was not the script that Nava had been rehearsing for her whole life.

But oddly enough, the world didn’t stop in its tracks as a result of this aberration. Another year had passed, and Nava had begun to realize that not only wasn’t she last - she wasn’t even part of the group. She was still hanging, still single, still unattached. Slowly but surely, she did not become engaged. It was hard to figure out why. She had no idea. Neither did anyone else. Sometimes she said no, sometimes the boy did. She didn’t feel she was being unreasonably picky, but then she wasn’t a pushover either. She was, after all, Nava Weiss. But it just didn’t happen.

With her two older sisters married and only two younger brothers left in the family scene, Nava’s parents hadn’t worried much in the early years either. After all, the Weisses were the sort of family that did everything right. It was hard for anyone in the family to consider Nava’s situation a disaster - disasters just didn’t happen to people of their social standing. This was just a short...delay. Even Nava’s mother, who tended to be anxious regarding matters of shidduchim, had not yet begun to seriously panic, although she did often, vociferously, express her frustration at Nava’s pickiness. Her father was a quiet ally, not quite feeling, in the time-honored way of many fathers before him, that any of the young prospects were worthy of his prize. Still, time was marching by, and they had begun to notice it, too.

Nava’s friends all redt her shidduchim. Shifra seemed to be able to get hold of prospects more easily than the rest. Nava sometimes wondered if that was because Shifra’s husband moved in a less prestigious circle than Bracha and Chana Rivka’s husbands did. In any event, she hadn’t been too impressed with the caliber of any of Meir’s friends. Chana Rivka tried the hardest but had the least to show for it - her ideas never seemed to pan out. But then, she had the most time. This was the first shidduch Bracha had pulled through for her. It wasn’t a friend of Ephraim’s, exactly...Bracha kept insisting that Ephraim’s friends were all married. And that made sense, when you remembered that Ephraim was twenty-eight already. It was the younger brother of a friend of Ephraim’s. His name was Nechemiah Schwartz, and she had just committed to going out with him.

Nava sighed. Long gone were the days when merely the name of a prospective shidduch was enough to throw her into a tizzy of imagination in which she pondered everything from the monogram on the wedding invitation to the cut of her gown. Now, a name was just a name, and the person that accompanied the name was just a person...not her person. She kept dating, and she wasn’t bitter, or burnt out, or anything like that, no. She was just sort of...flat. Dull. And uninterested.

Here, she thought, goes nothing.

Buy Just Between Friends at an online discount at www.targum.com