MY WIFE USHERED in the couple who had been sent by the Minis- try of Tourism. The idea was for tourists to spend an hour or so over coffee with some of us who live here. We had done this once before but the conversation had not gone very well. The visitors had asked all sorts of questions that made no sense at all.

This time, the two appeared to be... well, more on our wave length. Their attire was that of strictly observant Jews, and we were hopeful that we'd have more in common. Two of my daughters had stayed around to meet these Jews from a foreign country.

This time, we decided, we would start. "Where are you from?" my little woman asked graciously, as soon as we were all seated.

"Oh, we're from Toronto," replied Mrs. Katz, patting her natural- hair sheitel affectionately.

"Really?" asked my 11-year-old Batya. "I thought goim live there."

"Well, yes.... But there certainly are a great many Jews there too' dear!"

"Tell me," I chimed in, to save the poor guests from trying to explain themselves to the little girls. "What made you decide to live in Toronto?"

The two of them looked at each other, shrugged, and giggled a bit as though we had asked why they have only two legs. "I was born in Toronto," said Mr. Katz. "And my wife is from Boro Park. Once she saw how beautiful Toronto was, I had no trouble convincing her to move away from her family, and all the things in Brooklyn she thought she couldn't live without...."

His voice trailed off as he watched our faces. It seemed he was expecting us to say: "Oh, naturally!" about the move of a Jew from Boro Park to Toronto. But we were not following his logic too well.

Still, one must try to be nice to guests, and sympathetic. "Was it awfully hard?" my wife asked Mrs. Katz, as she poured her a cup of coffee. After all, we had also made a wrenching move.

"My parents took it fairly well. That helped. For me, it was a bit painful at first. You don't have that feeling of being at the hub of Jewish life that you have back home."

Shulamis, 13, was thoroughly perplexed. Back home? She had been a little girl when we left Brooklyn, but she remembered it well. Hub of Jewish life? There were certainly plenty of Italians around. No one spoke Hebrew. No one knew the Jewish date. She hadn't even been allowed to play outside by herself and had repeatedly been warned to stay away from strangers. That memory did not jibe with her idea of "home" or Jewish life.

Now Batya said, in guileless bafflement: "If you were moving already, why didn't you move here?"

Mr. and Mrs. Katz were not prepared for this question. In fact, they were acting peculiar. It almost seemed that they were planning to ask us why we had moved here! (That was what the last couple had done.) We were all having trouble figuring these two out. They had requested a strictly Orthodox family to host them. They appeared to be religious Jews. They had made brachos before the cake and the coffee. But it didn't seem that they had ever learned anything about Eretz Yisroel.

Didn't they listen to the weekly Torah reading? This week alone, in parshas Va"schanan, there must have been half a dozen reiterations of the point:"... the rules that G-d commanded to be observed in the Land that you are about to occupy.... I had wondered why the same theme needed so much repetition. Now it crossed my mind that apparently even that many times wasn't enough.

Mrs. Katz was beginning to pull herself together. She looked at our daughter with some disdain, and addressed her as though she were mildly retarded.

"Toronto is very much like Israel," she said slowly. "We have many shuts and yeshivos. We have kosher restaurants, and Jewish bookstores, and all kinds of Jewish facilities. Not everyone lives in Israel, dear. There are other places in the world where we can be good Jews too."

"Yes," replied Batya, speaking at a similar pace.... "We are learn- ing about places like that in our history class. There were some cities in Germany and Austria where there were some terrific Jews and great rabbis. Like Vermaiza. I think it's called Worms in English." She giggled.

"There," said Mrs. Katz, "you see? Not all our great rabbis lived in Israel" But her husband did not look too comfortable.

"Actually," he said, "ours is an unusually vibrant community. There has been tremendous growth in recent years. The number of young people in full-time learning is increasing at a wonderful rate."

"Is that so?" I volunteered. While I searched for another encourag- ing remark, Shulamis decided to help her sister recall her history lessons. "In Spain, there were also some great Jews, and a very full Jewish life. Remember all those Rishonim?"

"Before the Inquisition, right?" Batya was remembering. "And don't forget all the yeshivos in Lithuania, Poland, and Hungary, with all the great rabbanim who lived there." Shulamis was showing of'; because she had just studied recent European history.

"We didn't learn about them yet," confessed Batya. "Was that before the Holocaust?"

Shulamis was about to elaborate. But my wife was dismayed at the turn the conversation had taken. The Katzes were looking a bit pale, and had begun to fidget.

"Girls," she said, "Could you bring in the rest of the cake, please?" To the guests she said: "Have you any children?"

Mrs. Katz gratefully whipped out some photos. "Here's Avremie at our kosher pizza place," she boasted. "And this is the whole family at the dedication of our new shul. Did you ever see anything so magnificent anywhere in the world?"

Batya looked carefully at the picture - a bit too carefully, I thought. "Do you suppose that might be the third Bets HaMikdash?" she inquired, ingenuously.

Mrs. Katz frowned at her, then said something about that being in Yerushalayim, after the Mashiach comes....

Her husband had put on his hat. Now he said, "I'm sorry, but we have another appointment in a little while...."

"Yes," agreed the lady quickly. "This has been just wonderful. It's always so nice to visit Eretz Yisroel. And it's so impressive to meet a family like you that actually lives here!"

All of us listened carefully to their bracha achrona. Surprisingly, the Katzes recited the same words as we do. They mentioned the Land G-d had bequeathed to our fathers, and then specified: Jerusalem and Zion. They even asked to be brought up into the Land, and to find joy in building it!

After they left, Batya said: "Did you hear 'Toronto' in their bracha?" None of us had. Strange. Awfully strange.

Chaim Aaronson Adopted from To dwell in the Pallace by Tzvia Ehrlich-Klein (ed.), Feldheim Publishers; Yerushalayim, 1991.

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