“What do we do?” my wife asked anxiously. “Ruta’s grandmother just passed away!”
It was a pressing issue. Ruta was one of our students. She lived with her grandmother and had no other family at all. We were about to leave on an extended trip, but Ruta couldn’t be left alone by herself!
“I don’t see the problem,” I replied. “We’ll just take her with us, as one of the family!”
As Ruta had no other relatives, we took her in and became her legal guardians. She slept in our daughter’s room, and joined us for all our family activities. That is, until Shabbos came, and we were all ready to go to shul.
“I don’t want to go to shul!” Ruta protested. “On Saturdays, I go to church!”
We were dumbfounded. How could a Jewish girl, who’d been enrolled in a Jewish school for years, say such a thing? When had she ever visited a church?
We discovered that a group of missionaries had snuck themselves into Ruta’s life a while before. It was clear that Ruta’s grandmother wouldn’t live for too much longer, and they saw a quick and easy conquest. They offered Ruta’s grandmother financial aid she desperately needed, and began introducing Ruta to Christianity.
Grateful and trusting, Ruta fell right into their trap. Meanwhile, the situation was growing worse and worse. In school, Ruta began exhibiting signs of defiance throughout the Jewish classes. Our daughter, with whom she shared a room, showed us the Bible Ruta kept in her bedside table. Trembling, I removed the Bible and disposed of it. We were out of our depths, and contacted an anti-missionary group for advice.
“Put it back!” they told me. I could hardly believe my ears. “She needs to be the one to remove it,” they explained. “It does nothing but harm when you remove it against her will.”
I put the Bible back where she’d left it, davening that Hashem would soon show us how to reach this poor, misguided neshama.
A while later, we hosted a group of students from Kaunus (Kovno). One of them, Jakob*, hit it off with Ruta. In her personal desire to settle down and begin a Jewish family, Ruta forgot all about her Christian leanings. She and Jakob eventually married, and now live in Jerusalem with their beautiful children.
