Shalom Boston

"Shalom, Yerushalayim. Good-bye. I won’t be seeing you for a long time. I don’t want to go but I have to. I don’t know how to convince my mother to stay." “Shoshi,” Imma said to me a few days ago, “It’s done. We’re going to Harvard University in the United States. They accepted me.” The words burst like a lightning flash and a thunderbolt at the same instant – right over my head. I was stunned. I could not move or speak. Shoshanna thus began a new life adventure. Hashem dictates plans for our lives – She was accustomed to her friends in Yerushalayim, a family with Imma and Abba, but Abba left Imma so “Imma has to find work to make a living for both of us. Abba isn’t giving her any money…so she’s going where they offered her a job…” She tells herself “I suppose it’s going to be ‘Shalom, Boston’… I may never see my friends – or Abba – again. But I’m not giving up. I’m going to fight all the way – even after I get to America.” “Shalom, Boston” tells the story of a young lady, who is faced with multiple challenges in leaving the Holy City of Yerushalayim, leaving behind friends, and a way of life. She adapts to meeting new friends in a new school, and to her mother’s pressures of working and finding her own new life. Finally, Shoshanna makes new connections to Her and Our Jewish past through the mitzvah of being kind to others.