“Rabbi, you have a call from your wife,” Rabbi Groh’s secretary said when she saw that he had just finished a phone conversation that had taken nearly thirty minutes.
“Yes, I saw that she was calling my cell, but I couldn’t interrupt the call I was on,” the rabbi answered.
“I think you’d better call her now. She sounded very upset about something,” said the secretary.
“Did she say what was wrong?”
“No, just that she needed to speak to you as soon as possible. She sounded like she was crying.”
“Okay, thanks. I’ll call her right now.”
As Rabbi Groh’s secretary returned to her small office down the hall, the rabbi grabbed his cell phone and immediately dialed Emma’s number.
“Where have you been? I’ve been trying to call you!” she said as soon as she picked up the phone.
“I was dealing with a funeral and a woman who just lost her husband. I’m sorry, I couldn’t hang up on her,” Eitan said apologetically.
“You need to come home right now. I need you here. Something happened,” Emma managed to say while crying into the phone.
“Emma, what is going on? Are you okay? Tell me what happened?”
“I can’t say it over the phone, just come now, please,” Emma pleaded.
Frustrated that Emma would not tell him what was wrong, but realizing he would not convince her otherwise, Eitan grabbed his keys from his desk and headed for his car. Moments later he was racing the two and half miles home, dodging the ever-present beach traffic. When he finally arrived, he found Emma waiting for him at the front door. She was calmer than Eitan expected given her tone on the phone, but it was clear she had been crying. Her blouse was stained with tears, her eyes were reddened, and there were several tissues at her feet.
“This is our fault. Why did we get involved?” she finally worked up the strength to utter.
“What do you mean, ‘our fault’? What is going on? What happened?”
“Yehoshua called. He said that Noam was dead.”
“Noam, dead? That’s terrible, what did Yehoshua say?”
“He was killed,” was all Emma could say.
“Killed? My God. Did Yehoshua tell you anything else?”
“He said we need to come to Israel, or we may be next.”
“This is completely insane. We are not Israeli agents. I am just a rabbi from Miami. I can’t keep running around the world for them,” Eitan responded. “How could Yehoshua ask this of us?”
“He wasn’t asking us to do anything for them. He wants us to go there for us, for our own safety. He said the Ukrainians know about you. They knew about Noam too and they killed him in Europe. Israel is the only place he can protect us now,” Emma explained.
Eitan looked deeply into his wife’s eyes. Taking her hand, he led her over to the couch of the living room without saying a word. Sitting beside her, for the first time he understood her fear. He too was scared now. If they could get to a professional like Noam, how hard would it be to track he and Emma down in Miami? This saga was not over. The Ukrainians still had their sights set on killing a few more Jews.