Recap: Someone signals Zevi to come, and he drives him away from the palace to FBI headquarters. Jordie is there. They get tickets to go to Israel, they fly there, and they finally reunite with their parents. The head of the terror cell was caught, and they helped with their adventure in England. They open the journal to finish reading it. In the journal story, everyone was searching for Mr. Greenspan’s nephew who had left home before the earthquake struck.
We waited and waited for Zeidy and Mr. Greenspan to come back. Where could Ernest be? They just had to find him. Suddenly, I had a thought. It was like Hashem sent it to me. “Aunt Margie, I know where he is.”
“What?”
“I do,” I said jumping up on my good leg. Come on. We have to go get him.”
“It’s almost dark and the ground isn’t steady.”
“Please, we have to go. I know where he is.”
“How can you know?”
I told her about the caribou Ernest was interested in watching.”
“It’s worth a shot,” Betzalel said.
Aunt Margie didn’t want us to go because of the aftershocks, but Betzalel reassured her that we would be careful and we had to try to save Ernest.
I headed towards the playhouse. I knew where it was. It was hard walking through open places in the ground, and the tremors were scary, but I persevered hobbling the best I could without crutches. I had to try to save him.
We finally reached the neighbor’s yard with the playhouse. Betzalel stopped me. “There’s too big a fissure here. I’ll navigate it. You stay there.”
There was a caribou standing in front of the playhouse, but he somehow shooed it away.
Sure enough, Ernest was inside.
Betzalel led Ernest back to me. “Are you okay?”
He smiled. “Yeh, that caribou was like protecting me. It blocked the door.”
“Wow, Hashem sent it to help you.”
We headed back to Aunt Margie’s house.
It was time to start the Seder and Zeidy and Mr. Greenspan had just returned. Mr. Greenspan rushed over and hugged his nephew.
He got lots of hugs. “Where were you?” Aunt Margie asked when everyone had stopped exclaiming and saying how happy they were that he was safe.
“Baruch Hashem!” Ernest answered her. He was shivering, and Zeidy brought him a heavy blanket. “I was hiding in the playhouse. The earthquake hit just as I was leaving Uncle Beryl’s house. I know about earthquakes. I grew up in Los Angeles. I had to find a sturdy place like a doorway – something that could withstand the tremors and not collapse. I’d seen this wooden playhouse on my uncle’s neighbor’s lawn. It looked like a mini log cabin. There was a caribou that liked to visit it. Anyway, I managed to get to it. The ground was opening and shaking but I davened and I kept moving towards it. A tree fell a few feet from me. It was really scary but, baruch Hashem, I made it and waited for it to end. I was too scared to leave to try to get back to my uncle’s house.”
He told everyone how the caribou had stood guard over the playhouse.
“There was so much noise from tremors and the sirens, I don’t think he could hear us calling him. But, baruch Hashem, we found him,” Mr. Greenspan said.
“It was because of you, Akiva, that they knew where to find me,” Ernest said, smiling at me, and I smiled back.
…
As soon as Yom Tov ended, we headed to the airport. Zeidy, Aunt Margie, Estee, Rabbi Braver, and his family, and Teddy and his parents and Ernest and Mr. Greenspan were all heading to the airport, too. The aftershocks and lack of power made it impossible to stay.
“Those aftershocks felt like the real earthquake,” Betzalel said.
I nodded. “I’ll never forget that earthquake.”
Zeidy herded us towards the gate. “Your parents will be waiting to pick us up. I invited Teddy and his parents and Ernest and Mr. Greenspan to come to your bar mitzvah on the second day of Chol HaMoed.”
“But Zeidy, I don’t know the leining for Chol HaMoed.”
“You’re smart. You’ll learn it fast. It’s very short.”
He handed me a tikun and showed me the place. Now, I knew what I’d be doing on the plane.
Aunt Margie kept dabbing her eyes with her handkerchief. “I’m just so grateful we all survived. That was the worst thing I can ever remember.”
“People lost their lives from the falling debris and the tsunami,” Zeidy said. “We have to bentch Gomel this week,” he added.
The second day of Chol HaMoed was my “bar mitzvah.” Before davening, Teddy came over to me in shul and smiled and shook my hand. He gave me a thumbs up. Ernest came over to me and handed me my wool cardigan sweater. “I forgot to give this back to you. Oh, by the way,” he grinned at me, “there’s something in the pocket that you might be happy I found.”
I reached into the pocket and there was the sack with the seven silver dollars. “Did you know it was in your sweater pocket?”
I shook my head. Of course: I put the sack in my sweater pocket that day when Mr. Greenspan gave it to me. And here I’d been accusing people of stealing. It was me all along. What a musar.
“Thanks, Ernest. You really gave me a present.”
“I’m glad your gift was rescued from the earthquake. By the way, my friends call me Ernie.”
It was funny how I started out not liking Ernie, and now we were friends.
After leining, everyone threw candies. Mr. Greenspan gave me a hug and said I did great. Ernie patted me on the shoulder and Teddy shook my hand and gave a thumbs-up signal.
I told Betzalel about the silver dollars, and he laughed.
When it was time for my speech, I knew exactly what I wanted to say.
I looked around the shul and at my family and my new friends, and I cleared my throat.
“I’m so thankful to Hashem for this day. For being able to become and to celebrate being a bar mitzvah. For all of us surviving the earthquake.”
I thanked each of my family members and then I said, “I want to share two things I’ve learned. First, it’s so important to give the benefit of the doubt. I see in my life how sometimes things seem a certain way and they are totally different. Sometimes we think someone did something wrong and actually it was something we did ourselves.”
(I thought of how I originally thought Teddy was cold and unfriendly. I had no idea that he was deaf and how I hadn’t wanted to be friends with Ernie who, in the end, was a really nice kid and who needed a good friend. Then there was the whole silver dollars incident, where I was accusing that someone stole them when in reality I’d hidden them from myself.)
“The other thing is that Hashem is always with us, no matter where we go or what happens.” Hashem sent this Alaskan husky just when we needed him. He was there when the earthquake struck, and he saved me and Estee from the fire.” Then I shared the story of how Hashem sent the moose when the wolf was there and how He’d sent the caribou to protect Ernie.
Suddenly, there was a knock on the shul door. Zeidy went to open it. Then he called to me. “There’s someone outside who wants to wish you mazal tov.”
I wondered why that someone couldn’t come in, and then when I stepped outside, a huge Alaskan husky barreled into my arms. “Star!” Joe was there. “He didn’t want to miss your big day. I was having trouble with him. He wasn’t eating, so I flew here to see if we could get him some medical help. The vet didn’t think there was anything wrong. Then I figured out that he missed you, Akiva.”
Sure enough, when I brought out some chicken from the seudah, he gobbled it up.
“Well now you’re even,” Joe said.
I shot him a questioning glance.
“Star saved you, and look, you brought him back to himself.”
Estee ran outside to pat him.
Thanks for bringing him,” I said. I felt a lump in my throat.
Star licked my cheek and then he followed Joe back to the car.
“When you visit your Zeidy, come say hi,” Joe called.
“Will do!” I waved and watched the car disappear down the road. Then I went back inside to enjoy the bar mitzvah seudah.
THE END
Historical Note About the Alaskan Earthquake of 1964
The earthquake that hit Alaska in 1964 is known as the Great Alaska Earthquake. It had a magnitude of 9.2. To understand how high that is, you have to know that the highest an earthquake could be measured on the Richter scale is 10+ and there never was one that high, so we see how strong the Alaskan Earthquake was. It began at 5:36 p.m. on March 27, 1964. It was a Friday, and the first Seder that year was that night. It was the strongest earthquake in the recorded history of the United States and of North America. It lasted almost three minutes.
Near the Port of Valdez, there was a 27-foot-high tsunami. Tsunami. A tsunami is a huge wave that accompanies an earthquake and brings flooding and devastation.
Someone who was in kindergarten when the quake hit said that there were terrible aftershocks and no power, so people had to leave. There were thousands of aftershocks and they lasted for three weeks. It took a whole year for the aftershocks to subside.
Sadly, the quake caused 131 people to lose their lives and $311 million worth of damage to properties, houses, and buildings. This amount in 1964 is equal to around $2.3 billion today.
Look for a new historical fiction serial starting next week, im yirtzeh Hashem: “Escaping”
Susie Garber is the author of an historical fiction novel, Flight of the Doves (Menucha Publishing, 2023), Please Be Polite (Menucha Publishers, 2022), A Bridge in Time (Menucha Publishing, 2021), Secrets in Disguise (Menucha Publishers, 2020), Denver Dreams (a novel, Jerusalem Publications, 2009), Memorable Characters…Magnificent Stories (Scholastic, 2002), Befriend (Menucha Publishers, 2013), The Road Less Traveled (Feldheim, 2015), fiction serials and features in Binah Magazine and Binyan Magazine, “Moon Song” in Binyan (2021-2022), and Alaskan Gold ( 2023-2024).
