Someone once told Debie that Wisconsin doesn’t have a thing you want but has everything you need. It was, she was told, a lesson for life.

At that time, Debie thought that was all country mumbo-jumbo. For her, Wisconsin didn’t have much of anything. Their town held a handful of Jews, most of whom were very old. When the weather was good, there were Saturday morning services because the chazzan (cantor), a man with a big heart who sold insurance during the week, made sure there was enough food. For many of those people, that luncheon was the only warm meal they had all week.

But when the weather got bad, no one came to the synagogue at all. And that’s when Jack had the idea.

Debie listened. “Menorahs and candles?” she asked. “You want to deliver menorahs and candles? Jack, they’re old. They’ll burn their houses down.” “Whether they light them or not isn’t the point,” Jack said. “The point is we’re a community.”

“Community’s what you make,” Jack said, “not what exists.”

“Community’s what you make,” Jack said, “not what exists.”

No matter what he said, Debie still didn’t like it. But they did it anyway. They picked the worst possible day. By late morning, snow fell in sheets blown by a cold westerly wind. Still, Jack reasoned that snow was snow. If they had a good car (which they did), a full tank of gas (they had a half, but Jack wasn’t worried), and knew where they were going ... everything would be fine.

But it wasn’t.

Like everything else of real importance, they discovered their error a bit too late—when it was very dark and they were lost on a county road named Y. To make matters worse, Jack had swerved to avoid first one, then three deer that bolted across the road. Now they were stuck in a ditch. After the car went off the road, Jack and Debie didn’t say anything at first. They were too shocked. Suddenly, their worldview had taken on a completely different slant. To be exact, 45% on the passenger side. Fortunately, the engine was still running. They switched on the headlights and Debie watched as Jack trotted out to inspect the damage. “There’s no way I can get us out,” he said, ducking back in the car. His eyelashes were white, and melting snow made his face slick. “And the front tire on your side is flat. I think the axle’s gone.”

He didn’t have to say that things were bad. They already knew the cell phone didn’t work; there was no way to get a signal this far out. Debie said, “Well, someone will come along.”

Jack stared at the snow slicing through their high beams. “How long has it been since we’ve seen another car?”

“Right.” Jack turned to look at her. “A really long time.”

Debie let this sink in. “I’ve heard,” she said finally, “that you’re not supposed to run the car much. Carbon monoxide.”

“Right,” Jack said again. He switched off the motor. “We’ll turn it back on every hour. In the morning, when it’s light and the snow lets up, maybe we can see if there’s a house around or something.”

“Okay,” said Debie, though it wasn’t.

They used the car mats for their legs and an old Milwaukee Journal Sentinel they found crumpled beneath Jack’s seat for their feet.

They started the car every hour and ran it for 10 minutes to get some heat going. After two hours, they got thirsty. Jack cracked his window and grabbed a double handful of snow. They melted it in their hands and drank. It was too cold to sleep. They ran out of gas at 11:00 that night. Either that, or the battery quit. It didn’t really matter.

with the candles burning, they didn’t feel quite so alone