Kaparot -or- This Country is Going Down the Toilet -or- My Neighbor the Angel

Well, I will spare you the pictures on this one, but all of the waste drainage for my brand new apartment was backed up at an unreachable, underground juncture. Every last water dispenser in the apartment be it sink, shower, or other, was draining itself on the floor of my bathroom. I won't name names, but let's just say that someone who lives in the apartment started flushing multiple baby wipes down the toilet.

This has not been the first kapara, or spiritual cleansing punishment, our family has faced in the past several months. In consecutive recent hail and wind storms, one could find me outside rebuilding the five-month-old Keter shed I build next to our home for extra storage. The entire roof flew off, soaking all the valuables stored within. Critical pieces of the shed broke, and were fixed with metal brackets and a great deal of ingenuity.

Much of that ingenuity came from my new neighbor, Nati. Nati has helped me countless times in several weeks. In addition to the aforementioned episodes, Nati drove me to the gas station when my car was sitting outside my apartment out of gas.

Nati is a chef, and a good one. He cooks for the girl's high school Ra'aya here in Bet El. Previous to his arrival here, he lived and worked an identical job in N'vei Dekalim before being forcibly evacuated from his home of eight years with his wife and three children.

They didn't live in Gush Katif on settlement principles. It was an affordable place to live, close to the beach, and just minutes from their family in the now battered town of Sderot.

When the government offered Nati money for his home following the expulsion, he quickly took it and invested the entire sum in an Ashdod apartment, choosing not to link his fate to the rest of the Gush Katif residents that now are dependent on the government for support.

Nati, who was not a farmer like many of his former neighbors, was able to land a comparable job as a chef here in Bet El, following a short stint in a hotel restaurant. Let me tell you, Nati is an excellent chef.

Being of Algerian descent, his wife is Moroccan, Nati's attitude to life is different than my own. Nati, who doesn't speak a word of English, making communication for me challenging, has said time and again: "We family."

It seems that lately, many of my kaparot, and there are others, have become Nati's as well. For some reason, he doesn't seem to mind.

I'm sure there is a lesson to be learned in his behavior. The kapara of one Jew is often the kapara of the entire Jewish nation. And sometimes one Jew's problem cannot be easily overcome without a little support. And with some support and empathy from our fellow Jews, particularly in times of uninviting distress(Did I mention that Nati and I were up to our elbows in sewage?) we can keep this Jewish nation from literally going down the toilet. After all, "We family."