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  • Essay / In The Time of Butterflies Summary - 1505

    The story is about a 12 year old boy named Mauro, who is hurriedly dropped off at his grandfather's motel, by his parents who are political activists of left on fleeing for fear of being captured by the brutal military regime. The parents tell Mauro that he is going on vacation and will return for the World Cup. Unfortunately, Mauro finds himself at the door and discovers that his grandfather has died. His father and grandfather were Jewish, and the neighborhood in which he was dropped off was composed primarily of Jewish residents, whose language was primarily Yiddish. After waiting at the door for a while, his grandfather's neighbor and friend Shlomo comes home to find the boy waiting for him. Shlomo and the rest of the Jewish community now face a moral dilemma. Should the community welcome a boy, raised as a “goy”, but the grandson of a recently deceased member of its community? And if so, should Shlomo himself take on this task? Being the compassionate and caring community that they were, however, most of them agreed that the boy should be taken into care; the chief rabbi tells Shlomo that God brought the boy to your door and therefore Shlomo should take the boy, which I agree with. Not just because of God, but because we are talking about a 12 year old boy. It would be our duty as human beings to care for someone in such circumstances, aside from the fact that Judaism requires that