How Could it Be?

On Friday, I accompanied a foreign student to a Dr’s office to pay her bill. On our way there, we had some basic idle chit chat, she told me she was having a hard time manipulating the administration to cut her some slack (she wanted to take a certain summer school class but there was some silly rule preventing her from doing so) and that she just wanted to do the right thing and do the best she could. After all for her, being in America was a golden opportunity. After a little bit of probing, she told me she didn’t have any real friends with her in college. She spent most of her shabbosim in her room alone. She came to America just to be near her boy friend. She missed the closeness that existed amongst peers, back in her home town. She told me that here, if you didn’t fit in a certain group, you were just left out. She wanted to badly to be responsible, to make some money but her foreign status prevented her and all it did was drive her crazy. All I wanted to do was break down and cry and tell her I would be her friend. I wanted to hold her hand and give her the strength to carry on. The strength that one day everything will be right.

I wondered how it could be that she, in a Jewish institution, was completely over-looked. How could it be, that no one had the heart to sit down next to her and be her friend? And she was so sweet and nice! She kissed me good-bye and I vowed in my heart that I would do my best to make her stay here in America, more pleasant.