When all the children had climbed into bed, Shuly began reading Dr. Seuss's classic children's story. Horton the elephant had been minding his own business when Mayzie the bird asked him to do her a favor. She wanted Horton to take over sitting on her egg, just for a little while, so she could get some rest. But before long, the bird was having so much fun in Palm Beach that she decided not to come back. So there sat Horton with the headache, heartache, and responsibility of hatching someone else's egg, all the time declaring, "I meant what I said / And I said what I meant / An elephant's faithful / One hundred percent!"

Shuly looked around at her sleeping charges. Not one of them remained awake, but she read on. With a smile, she reached the end of the story, in which Horton finally hatches an "elephant-bird."

"Horton," she sighed as she closed the book, "that's the story of my life."

Shuly was 15 and still waiting for the first signs of womanhood. Then came visits to the doctors, tests, consultations. By 18, the doctors were certain that she would never be able to have children.

The news turned Shuly's world upside down. Like most of her teenage friends, she had never given much thought to raising a family. She was more concerned with the latest hairdos and records. But the image of herself as a mother had always been in the back of her mind, as a role for the future. Now she felt no greater purpose in life than satisfaction in the present. "Eat, drink, and be merry, for tomorrow I die" became her motto.

It wasn't until she read a book on reincarnation that Shuly considered the possibility of a spiritual world after this one. The idea brought her hope. "If I leave no children in this world and there is no afterlife, what will have been the purpose of my living at all?"

Searching for "meaning" had already taken on a social order of its own for thousands of young people in the early 1970s. Hitchhiking across America without money, Shuly always managed to find a meal and a warm place to sleep. Eventually she could no longer deny that there was a God in the world. "Who else is taking care of me?" she thought.

Shuly's vague concept of God told her that serving people was serving Him. She became a true explorer. Not only did she investigate her new surroundings as she traveled, but she also looked deeply within herself to see what could be discovered there.

The mysterious East beckoned. After several months of waitressing, Shuly had saved enough money to travel by bus through Afghanistan. Her itinerary included Greece by way of Israel. "I think I'll stop at a kibbutz," she decided. "I have always been curious about that way of life."

When the kibbutzniks saw Shuly, it was their curiosity that was piqued. As they drank their Turkish coffee, Shuly sipped herbal tea. While they ate fried chicken, she took out chopsticks and brown rice. Differences were not encouraged on kibbutz and neither was Shuly. "No matter. I'll be off to Greece soon enough," she thought.

Before her departure, Shuly checked her Israel guidebook. "Yad Vashem... I suppose I shouldn't miss seeing that," she said to herself as she boarded a bus to Jerusalem.

After her visit, she sat on a wooden bench outside the museum. She kept going over the experience in her mind.

"How could they have killed so many helpless children?" she demanded. She had long ago shut out any feelings about the children she would never bring into the world, but the thought of newborns being thrown into ovens brought back her pain.

"How could this have happened in civilized countries?" Shuly shook her head as she realized that the Nazis' plans could not have been carried out without the cooperation of numerous other countries. Shuly thought back to the many places she had traveled and the people she had met.

"Since I took to the road, I have claimed to be a Universalist. But in Nazi Germany, I would have been considered a Jew. And I am a Jew.

"I'm not going to Greece," she decided, "or anywhere else in the world, for that matter. I am a Jew and I'm home."

At a health food store, Shuly met a friendly woman who was living on a settlement not far from Haifa. She spoke of her home, a religious community that had attracted many vegetarians and naturalists. "Well, I'll try anything once," Shuly declared, with no inkling of what she was getting into.

When she walked into the office and was greeted with the traditional "Shalom," Shuly felt a warm sense of belonging. Three smiling faces looked up at her. "Have you eaten lunch?" one of them asked.

"I'm starved," Shuly answered.

For the first time in months, Shuly saw chopsticks other than her own. She dug into the tofu souffle prepared in the settlement kitchen, and felt genuinely accepted as she passed a plate of bean sprouts to a young girl reading an issue of East-West Journal.

After lunch, she went for a walk. Off in the distance, huge mountains dominated the landscape. Not far from a barbedwire fence, a forest had been planted. A light breeze carried the smell of pine her way.

Shuly could see where a surveyor had marked off the area for a sidewalk. She carefully stepped over the ropes. A bed of sweet pea was climbing up someone's wall.

From the other side of the hill, Shuly heard a ruckus. She looked up to see who was coming. Then she saw him: a man with a thick head of hair crowned by an oversized kipah. What particularly struck her was his quiet aplomb and smiling poise in the face of total confusion. Three -- or was it four? -- raucous children surrounded him, one pulling at his arm, another at his pants leg. A wailing baby was strapped to his back.

Days turned into weeks, and Shuly learned that her feeling of belonging, of having found a home, had not been a hopeful illusion. It went deeper than merely a shared propensity for health foods. These were people who truly cared for their fellow Jew, and could articulate what being a Jew really meant. There was Shabbat, a warm, glowing day that Shuly had never experienced in all her years of wandering; there was chessed (kindness), practiced as a total, inescapable, and beloved obligation; and there were all the mitzvot (commandments) that a Torah life brings.

During those heady weeks, Shuly caught glimpses of the tall, dark-haired man, always smiling, always surrounded by a group of youngsters. Shimmie was his name, she was told. He was divorced. His wife, a troubled woman, had left all four children, including an infant, in his care.

One afternoon, Shuly dropped by Shimmie's cottage with a telephone message. She looked into the kitchen. A large board raised off the floor by four cinderblocks served as a table. Pillows were scattered around. There were no other furnishings.

What riveted her attention, though, was the spectacle of the children eating lunch. Three of the youngsters were eating off chipped plastic plates; one had his food heaped on a Frisbee. Food was flying across the room, and fingers seemed to be the only cutlery available.

Shimmie thanked her for the message and, with a word of admonition to the children (which went largely unheeded), walked Shuly out. Under the clear Mediterranean sky, they talked, and talked, and talked.

Shimmie spoke of his first marriage. There was no blame in his voice as he talked about his wife and how she had deserted the family. "She was a woman unable to cope with life. It is difficult to understand how any mother could abandon her children, the youngest only ten months old. But that only gives you a picture of how deeply troubled she was. We sought help before she finally left, but it didn't stop her from leaving. I'm trying my best to make a living and care for the kids myself."

Shuly was moved by his quiet courage and selfless devotion to his family, and it wasn't long before she was standing beneath the chuppah (marriage canopy) with Shimmie at her side. After moving into Shimmie's house, she found that a lack of materialism had little to do with the lack of furnishings. Shimmie had been forced to sell all their possessions to pay his ex-wife's bills. He had been left with an empty house, in more ways than one. Shuly was determined to fill it.

The children were just as resolved to keep matters as they were. The house operated on the principle that whoever yelled loudest got his way. Since Shimmie rarely disciplined them, he had unintentionally conditioned them to cry on demand: "I demand this; therefore I cry."

Miriam was the oldest. At six, she was the little mother and resented Shuly's intrusion. Ruthie was five, but barely functioning. She couldn't comb her hair, and wiping her nose was out of the question. All the children, for that matter, looked like classic ragamuffins out of a Dickens novel.

In her days of wandering, Shuly had seen lives lived with careless abandon. With her realization that people are created in God's image, and that life has a purpose and the universe direction, she recognized that the mass search for "freedom" and "self-expression" had merely been an excuse for indolence. In this home, she told Shimmie, there would be self-respect. Furniture would not have to be luxurious, but it would be serviceable; clothing would be clean and mended.

One day Shuly was patching a pair of Yanki's jeans when the four-year-old walked in.

"Those are mine!" Yanki screamed as he pulled the garment away. The needle stabbed Shuly's finger, but the blood only provoked him more. "I didn't do that. You did. Who asked you to fix my pants? You're not my mother. Nobody wants you here."

Miriam, who had been playing with the newest member of the menage, a spotted puppy, gleefully joined in. "Yeah, no one wants you here. Besides, you'll just leave like everyone else."

Little Ruthie came out of her room and began to cry. The orchestra was complete when the baby began wailing from the bedroom.

Shuly had only been married three weeks, but she was already drained. "No wonder your mother ran away from you!" she wanted to scream, but something held her back. With her bleeding finger still in her mouth, she angrily headed for her room. But before she had a chance to slam the door, the truth hit her. "Their mother didn't abandon these children because they are impossible. They are impossible because their mother abandoned them. A little compassion, Shuly," she told herself. She turned around and marched defiantly back into the living room.

"It doesn't matter what you kids do or say. I'm not going to leave. I'm never going to leave you or your father. And I meant what I said, and I said what I meant, Shuly is faithful, one hundred percent." Without another word, she sat back down in her rocker and continued patching the jeans.

But the children did not magically change their attitude with Shuly's declaration of loyalty. She still had an uphill battle ahead of her.

"If I can housebreak this puppy," she thought one evening as the little dog nipped at her feet, "I can tame these kids, too."

She armed herself with stern perseverance. Before serving dinner that night, she announced new rules: "There will be no more wandering during mealtime. No one will be allowed to leave the table until he is excused. And no one may come back to the table once he has left. Are there any questions?"

There were no questions. There were also no children at the dinner table that night. But that didn't worry Shuly. She knew that, sooner or later, their hunger would overcome their stubbornness. And indeed, in time, their manners were passable.

Little by little, the family was getting used to the fact that Shuly was there to stay. "Maybe you can boss us around, but you'll never be our Imma (mother)," claimed Miriam one day as she stalked out of the house.

Ruthie was the fearful, quiet one. If she woke up in the middle of the night and Shimmie was not there, she would sit on the porch crying until he returned.

Each of the children expressed his fear of abandonment in a different way. Miriam's came out in angry tirades, but Shuly responded to the merits of her demands rather than the rude way in which she expressed them.

"I need a new dress for Shabbat," Miriam announced.

That afternoon, Shuly looked into the girl's closet and saw that she could indeed use a new dress. Their financial situation was tight, but Shuly bought fabric the very next morning. Later, when she asked the girl to try on the pink, dropped-waist, eyelet dress she had sewn, Miriam said, "I have no time now. I'll be home later."

"She tries to see how far she can push me," Shuly told her husband that evening. "But it's not just Miriam, Shimmie. None of the kids acknowledges anything I do for him. If Miriam thanked me for the dress, she would be acknowledging that her mother didn't make it for her, that her mother abandoned her. She does not want to face that pain."

"I'll talk to the kids," Shimmie said sympathetically.

"No, no. They already feel that I'm a thief because I have stolen your attention," protested Shuly. "I don't need to be branded a tattletale, too. As much as it hurts, I'll try to weather it for now. But I'll win in the end because their anger is misdirected. It's not my fault their mother left them and deep down they know it."

Not a day went by that Shuly didn't receive a note from one of the children's teachers. The school's social worker made it clear that Miriam would not be able to enter first grade: "She lacks not only the required skills but the emotional stability to acquire them."

"Shimmie is gone all day, and I'm the one who has to deal with all these problems. What did I get myself into?" Shuly wondered during the long hours of the afternoon. "And when he's finally home, I rarely have his undivided attention."

The years passed. With each challenge successfully met, with each problem solved, Shuly felt her love and commitment to her family deepen. "Perhaps that's why God loves us so," she smiled to herself in a rare moment of quiet. "Because we give Him so much trouble."

"My mother called today," Shuly told Shimmie one summer day. "She would like me to come to America for a visit. And to tell the truth, I could do with a little mothering myself."

"You sure deserve a vacation. I promised you a honeymoon four years ago, but somehow..." Shimmie shrugged his shoulders. "We can't afford for both of us to go, but I think we could manage your fare."

A few weeks later, Shuly followed Shimmie to the car as he carried her overnight bag on his shoulder. The rest of the luggage was in the trunk. Ruthie and the boys were in the back seat, excited by the trip to the airport. Only Miriam stood watching from her bedroom window. The girl had not come out to say goodbye.

Throughout her trip, Shuly's heart was torn between the warmth of the family she had grown up with and the family she married into. She was surprised to find that she missed the children as much as she did Shimmie.

Four weeks later, the car was once again packed with Shuly, Shimmie, three of the children, and luggage in the trunk. But this time, when they pulled up in front of the house, Miriam was waiting at the front door.

As Shuly approached, Miriam stepped forward and said "You came back. I guess you're my Imma."

Shuly hugged her and cried.

Now that she had become accepted as "Imma," Shuly's long-buried desire began to surface. The "baby" was already in kindergarten. Living in a religious community, where most were blessed with large families, she couldn't help but face her own childlessness at every turn.

The summer brought many visitors to the settlement. Shuly was carrying home a basket full of fruit when her attention was drawn towards the playground. A toddler on top of the slide was crying hysterically. Not far away was a woman pushing a baby carriage, with three screaming children pulling at her clothes "Imma! Imma!" Shuly could barely make out the words as the toddler gasped for breath. She put down the basket and ran to lift the child down. "Shah. It's all right now. You're all right," she kept repeating as she rubbed his back to calm him.

Slowly, Shuly carried the child over to the woman. "Imma Imma," he began to sob again. The flustered mother didn't even have a free arm to offer him.

As Shuly left the playground she could not help but wonder, "Why should one woman have more children than she seems to be able to handle while I can't even have one?"

There was no answer.

Shuly walked into her friend Chava's house later that day. There sat Devorah, Leah, and Yehudit nursing their infants. Chava, in her seventh month of pregnancy, offered Shuly a chair.

"Yehudit, he's so beautiful," Shuly gushed as she cradled the newborn in her arms.

The next day, she went to talk with the rebbetzin of the settlement. "When I held that child," she told her, "I felt a sadness that I had never experienced before. I looked at that baby and I wanted one, too. I literally ached with longing. I had to make up an excuse and run home.

"Sometimes I don't feel like part of the human race," Shuly continued. "I'm not a man, yet I can't do what a woman does. Everyone is brought into this world to do something. It is obvious that bringing children into the world is not what God created me for. My head tells me that whatever is on my plate is what I'm supposed to eat. But my heart still feels the hunger.

"When I think of the things people say to me, I'm amazed at their insensitivity. I recently met someone who asked, 'How many children do you have?' 'None yet,' I answered. 'What are you waiting for?' was her reply.

"Last week a woman who has to have caesarean deliveries was complaining to me that she can't have any more children. I felt outraged. I don't even have one and she's complaining about not having number six!"

"Shuly, I can understand your anger, but try to see that everyone's pain is valid. Not having number six for her hurts as much as not having number one for you."

"I know. It's just that sometimes my emotions outweigh my logic..." She was crying now.

"It is not an easy test," answered the rebbetzin. "But it has an important purpose. The Midrash says that God tests the strongest of us, just like a merchant bangs on his strongest clay pots to show their durability. He made each vessel so he knows which ones he can bang and which or he can only tap lightly. In that case, why test at all? To impress the customer with the value of his wares. And that's why God tests Jews -- to impress us with our own strength. God shows us that we are capable of more than we think."

"But having children is so important," protested Shuly. "It is the connection between the past and the future. I am composite of all those who came before me. With children of my own I would have shaped the future."

"Shuly, you are shaping the future. You didn't give birth to Shimmie's four children, but it's as if you are giving them new life every day. Before you came, their lives were miserable. You have nurtured them into full human beings an good Jews. You have given them a second chance."

Shuly remained silent for several minutes. "I suppose that God has given me a second chance, too."

It was getting late and Shuly had to hurry home to the children. "They are my children. I have been sitting on those eggs for the last four years." She laughed out loud. Smiling all the way home, she thought of her own little "elephant-birds."