Yiddish Tales
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Title: Yiddish Tales
Translator: Helena Frank
Release date: September 12, 2010 [eBook #33707]
Language: English
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Credits: Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
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*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK YIDDISH TALES ***
Produced by Chuck Greif and the Online Distributed
Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This book was
produced from scanned images of public domain material
from the Google Print project)
YIDDISH TALES
TRANSLATED BY
HELENA FRANK
[Illustration: colophon]
PHILADELPHIA
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1912,
BY THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
PREFACE
This little volume is intended to be both companion and complement to
"Stories and Pictures," by I. L. Perez, published by the Jewish
Publication Society of America, in 1906.
Its object was twofold: to introduce the non-Yiddish reading public to
some of the many other Yiddish writers active in Russian Jewry, and--to
leave it with a more cheerful impression of Yiddish literature than it
receives from Perez alone. Yes, and we have collected, largely from
magazines and papers and unbound booklets, forty-eight tales by twenty
different authors. This, thanks to such kind helpers as Mr. F. Hieger,
of London, without whose aid we should never have been able to collect
the originals of these stories, Mr. Morris Meyer, of London, who most
kindly gave me the magazines, etc., in which some of them were
contained, and Mr. Israel J. Zevin, of New York, that able editor and
delightful _feuilletonist_, to whose critical knowledge of Yiddish
letters we owe so much.
Some of these writers, Perez, for example, and Sholom-Alechem, are
familiar by name to many of us already, while the reputation of others
rests, in circles enthusiastic but tragically small, on what they have
written in Hebrew.[1] Such are Berdyczewski, Jehalel, Frischmann,
Berschadski, and the silver-penned Judah Steinberg. On these last two be
peace in the Olom ho-Emess. The Olom ha-Sheker had nothing for them but
struggle and suffering and an early grave.
[1] Berschadski's "Forlorn and Forsaken," Frischmann's "Three
Who Ate," and Steinberg's "A Livelihood" and "At the Matzes," though
here translated from the Yiddish versions, were probably written in
Hebrew originally. In the case of the former two, it would seem that the
Yiddish version was made by the authors themselves, and the same may be
true of Steinberg's tales, too.
The tales given here are by no means all equal in literary merit, but
they have each its special note, its special echo from that strangely
fascinating world so often quoted, so little understood (we say it
against ourselves), the Russian Ghetto--a world in the passing, but
whose more precious elements, shining, for all who care to see them,
through every page of these unpretending tales, and mixed with less and
less of what has made their misfortune, will surely live on, free, on
the one hand, to blend with all and everything akin to them, and free,
on the other, to develop along their own lines--and this year here, next
year in Jerusalem.
The American sketches by Zevin and S. Libin differ from the others only
in their scene of action. Lerner's were drawn from the life in a little
town in Bessarabia, the others are mostly Polish. And the folk tale,
which is taken from Joshua Meisach's collection, published in Wilna in
1905, with the title Ma'asiyos vun der Baben, oder Nissim ve-Niflo'os,
might have sprung from almost any Ghetto of the Old World.
We sincerely regret that nothing from the pen of the beloved
"Grandfather" of Yiddish story-tellers in print, Abramowitsch (Mendele
Mocher Seforim), was found quite suitable for insertion here, his
writings being chiefly much longer than the type selected for this book.
Neither have we come across anything appropriate to our purpose by
another old favorite, J. Dienesohn. We were, however, able to insert
three tales by the veteran author Mordecai Spektor, whose simple style
and familiar figures go straight to the people's heart.
With regard to the second half of our object, greater cheerfulness, this
collection is an utter failure. It has variety, on account of the many
different authors, and the originals have wit and humor in plenty, for
wit and humor and an almost passionate playfulness are in the very soul
of the language, but it is not cheerful, and we wonder now how we ever
thought it could be so, if the collective picture given of Jewish life
were, despite its fictitious material, to be anything like a true one.
The drollest of the tales, "Gymnasiye" (we refer to the originals), is
perhaps the saddest, anyhow in point of actuality, seeing that the
Russian Government is planning to make education impossible of
attainment by more and more of the Jewish youth--children given into its
keeping as surely as any others, and for the crushing of whose lives it
will have to answer.
Well, we have done our best. Among these tales are favorites of ours
which we have not so much as mentioned by name, thus leaving the gentle
reader at liberty to make his own.
H. F.
LONDON, MARCH, 1911
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
The Jewish Publication Society of America desires to acknowledge the
valuable aid which Mr. A. S. Freidus, of the Department of Jewish
Literature, in the New York Public Library, extended to it in compiling
the biographical data relating to the authors whose stories appear in
English garb in the present volume. Some of the authors that are living
in America courteously furnished the Society with the data referring to
their own biographies.
The following sources have been consulted for the biographies: The
Jewish Encyclopaedia; Wiener, History of Yiddish Literature in the
Nineteenth Century; Pinnes, Histoire de la Litterature Judeo-Allemande,
and the Yiddish version of the same, Die Geschichte vun der juedischer
Literatur; Baal-Mahashabot, Geklibene Schriften; Sefer Zikkaron
le-Sofere Yisrael ha-hayyim ittanu ka-Yom; Eisenstadt, Hakme Yisrael
be-Amerika; the memoirs preceding the collected works of some of the
authors; and scattered articles in European and American Yiddish
periodicals.
CONTENTS
PREFACE 5
ACKNOWLEDGMENT 8
REUBEN ASHER BRAUBES
The Misfortune 13
JEHALEL (JUDAH LOeB LEWIN)
Earth of Palestine 29
ISAAC LOeB PEREZ
A Woman's Wrath 55
The Treasure 62
It Is Well 67
Whence a Proverb 73
MORDECAI SPEKTOR
An Original Strike 83
A Gloomy Wedding 91
Poverty 107
SHOLOM-ALECHEM (SHALOM RABINOVITZ)
The Clock 115
Fishel the Teacher 125
An Easy Fast 143
The Passover Guest 153
Gymnasiye 162
ELIEZER DAVID ROSENTHAL
Sabbath 183
Yom Kippur 189
ISAIAH LERNER
Bertzi Wasserfuehrer 211
Ezrielk the Scribe 219
Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber 236
JUDAH STEINBERG
A Livelihood 251
At the Matzes 259
DAVID FRISCHMANN
Three Who Ate 269
MICHA JOSEPH BERDYCZEWSKI
Military Service 281
ISAIAH BERSCHADSKI
Forlorn and Forsaken 295
TASHRAK (ISRAEL JOSEPH ZEVIN)
The Hole in a Beigel 309
As the Years Roll On 312
DAVID PINSKI
Reb Shloimeh 319
S. LIBIN (ISRAEL HUBEWITZ)
A Picnic 357
Manasseh 366
Yohrzeit for Mother 371
Slack Times They Sleep 377
ABRAHAM RAISIN
Shut In 385
The Charitable Loan 389
The Two Brothers 397
Lost His Voice 405
Late 415
The Kaddish 421
Avrohom the Orchard-Keeper 427
HIRSH DAVID NAUMBERG
The Rav and the Rav's Son 435
MEYER BLINKIN
Women 449
LOeB SCHAPIRO
If It Was a Dream 481
SHALOM ASCH
A Simple Story 493
A Jewish Child 506
A Scholar's Mother 514
The Sinner 529
ISAAC DOB BERKOWITZ
Country Folk 543
The Last of Them 566
A FOLK TALE
The Clever Rabbi 581
GLOSSARY AND NOTES 589
REUBEN ASHER BRAUDES
Born, 1851, in Wilna (Lithuania), White Russia; went to Roumania
after the anti-Jewish riots of 1882, and published a Yiddish
weekly, Yehudit, in the interest of Zionism; expelled from
Roumania; published a Hebrew weekly, Ha-Zeman, in Cracow, in 1891;
then co-editor of the Yiddish edition of Die Welt, the official
organ of Zionism; Hebrew critic, publicist, and novelist;
contributor to Ha-Lebanon (at eighteen), Ha-Shahar, Ha-Boker Or,
and other periodicals; chief work, the novel "Religion and Life."
THE MISFORTUNE
OR HOW THE RAV OF PUMPIAN TRIED TO SOLVE A SOCIAL PROBLEM
Pumpian is a little town in Lithuania, a Jewish town. It lies far away
from the highway, among villages reached by the Polish Road. The
inhabitants of Pumpian are poor people, who get a scanty living from the
peasants that come into the town to make purchases, or else the Jews go
out to them with great bundles on their shoulders and sell them every
sort of small ware, in return for a little corn, or potatoes, etc.
Strangers, passing through, are seldom seen there, and if by any chance
a strange person arrives, it is a great wonder and rarity. People peep
at him through all the little windows, elderly men venture out to bid
him welcome, while boys and youths hang about in the street and stare at
him. The women and girls blush and glance at him sideways, and he is the
one subject of conversation: "Who can that be? People don't just set off
and come like that--there must be something behind it." And in the
house-of-study, between Afternoon and Evening Prayer, they gather
closely round the elder men, who have been to greet the stranger, to
find out who and what the latter may be.
Fifty or sixty years ago, when what I am about to tell you happened,
communication between Pumpian and the rest of the world was very
restricted indeed: there were as yet no railways, there was no
telegraph, the postal service was slow and intermittent. People came
and went less often, a journey was a great undertaking, and there were
not many outsiders to be found even in the larger towns. Every town was
a town to itself, apart, and Pumpian constituted a little world of its
own, which had nothing to do with the world at large, and lived its own
life.
Neither were there so many newspapers then, anywhere, to muddle people's
heads every day of the week, stirring up questions, so that people
should have something to talk about, and the Jews had no papers of their
own at all, and only heard "news" and "what was going on in the world"
in the house-of-study or (lehavdil!) in the bath-house. And what sort of
news was it _then_? What sort could it be? World-stirring questions
hardly existed (certainly Pumpian was ignorant of them): politics,
economics, statistics, capital, social problems, all these words, now on
the lips of every boy and girl, were then all but unknown even in the
great world, let alone among us Jews, and let alone to Reb Nochumtzi,
the Pumpian Rav!
And yet Reb Nochumtzi had a certain amount of worldly wisdom of his own.
Reb Nochumtzi was a native of Pumpian, and had inherited his position
there from his father. He had been an only son, made much of by his
parents (hence the pet name Nochumtzi clinging to him even in his old
age), and never let out of their sight. When he had grown up, they
connected him by marriage with the tenant of an estate not far from the
town, but his father would not hear of his going there "auf Koest," as
the custom is. "I cannot be parted from my Nochumtzi even for a minute,"
explained the old Rav, "I cannot bear him out of my sight. Besides, we
study together." And, in point of fact, they did study together day and
night. It was evident that the Rav was determined his Nochumtzi should
become Rav in Pumpian after his death--and so he became.
He had been Rav some years in the little town, receiving the same five
Polish gulden a week salary as his father (on whom be peace!), and he
sat and studied and thought. He had nothing much to do in the way of
exercising authority: the town was very quiet, the people orderly, there
were no quarrels, and it was seldom that parties went "to law" with one
another before the Rav; still less often was there a ritual question to
settle: the folk were poor, there was no meat cooked in a Jewish house
from one Friday to another, when one must have a bit of meat in honor of
Sabbath. Fish was a rarity, and in summer time people often had a "milky
Sabbath," as well as a milky week. How should there be "questions"? So
he sat and studied and thought, and he was very fond indeed of thinking
about the world!
It is true that he sat all day in his room, that he had never in all his
life been so much as "four ells" outside the town, that it had never so
much as occurred to him to drive about a little in any direction, for,
after all, whither should he drive? And why drive anywhither? And yet he
knew the world, like any other learned man, a disciple of the wise.
Everything is in the Torah, and out of the Torah, out of the Gemoreh,
and out of all the other sacred books, Reb Nochumtzi had learned to
know the world also. He knew that "Reuben's ox gores Simeon's cow," that
"a spark from a smith's hammer can burn a wagon-load of hay," that "Reb
Eliezer ben Charsum had a thousand towns on land and a thousand ships on
the sea." Ha, that was a fortune! He must have been nearly as rich as
Rothschild (they knew about Rothschild even in Pumpian!). "Yes, he was a
rich Tano and no mistake!" he reflected, and was straightway sunk in the
consideration of the subject of rich and poor.
He knew from the holy books that to be rich is a pure misfortune. King
Solomon, who was certainly a great sage, prayed to God: Resh wo-Osher
al-titten li!--"Give me neither poverty nor _riches_!" He said that
"riches are stored to the hurt of their owner," and in the holy Gemoreh
there is a passage which says, "Poverty becomes a Jew as scarlet reins
become a white horse," and once a sage had been in Heaven for a short
time and had come back again, and he said that he had seen poor people
there occupying the principal seats in the Garden of Eden, and the rich
pushed right away, back into a corner by the door. And as for the books
of exhortation, there are things written that make you shudder in every
limb. The punishments meted out to the rich by God in that world, the
world of truth, are no joke. For what bit of merit they have, God
rewards them in _this_ poor world, the world of vanity, while yonder, in
the world of truth, they arrive stript and naked, without so much as a
taste of Kingdom-come!
"Consequently, the question is," thought Reb Nochumtzi, "why should
they, the rich, want to keep this misfortune? Of what use is this
misfortune to them? Who so mad as to take such a piece of misfortune
into his house and keep it there? How can anyone take the world-to-come
in both hands and lose it for the sake of such vanities?"
He thought and thought, and thought it over again:
"What is a poor creature to do when God sends him the misfortune of
riches? He would certainly wish to get rid of them, only who would take
his misfortune to please him? Who would free another from a curse and
take it upon himself?
"But, after all ... ha?" the Evil Spirit muttered inside him.
"What a fool you are!" thought Reb Nochumtzi again. "If" (and he
described a half-circle downward in the air with his thumb), "if
troubles come to us, such as an illness (may the Merciful protect us!),
or some other misfortune of the kind, it is expressly stated in the
Sacred Writings that it is an expiation for sin, a torment sent into the
world, so that we may be purified by it, and made fit to go straight to
Paradise. And because it is God who afflicts men with these things, we
cannot give them away to anyone else, but have to bear with them. Now,
such a misfortune as being rich, which is also a visitation of God, must
certainly be borne with like the rest.
"And, besides," he reflected further, "the fool who would take the
misfortune to himself, doesn't exist! What healthy man in his senses
would get into a sick-bed?"
He began to feel very sorry for Reb Eliezer ben Charsum with his
thousand towns and his thousand ships. "To think that such a saint, such
a Tano, one of the authors of the holy Mishnah, should incur such a
severe punishment!
"But he stood the trial! Despite this great misfortune, he remained a
saint and a Tano to the end, and the holy Gemoreh says particularly that
he thereby put to shame all the rich people, who go straight to
Gehenna."
Thus Reb Nochumtzi, the Pumpian Rav, sat over the Talmud and reflected
continually on the problem of great riches. He knew the world through
the Holy Scriptures, and was persuaded that riches were a terrible
misfortune, which had to be borne, because no one would consent to
taking it from another, and bearing it for him.
* * * * *
Again many years passed, and Reb Nochumtzi gradually came to see that
poverty also is a misfortune, and out of his own experience.
His Sabbath cloak began to look threadbare (the weekday one was already
patched on every side), he had six little children living, one or two of
the girls were grown up, and it was time to think of settling them, and
they hadn't a frock fit to put on. The five Polish gulden a week salary
was not enough to keep them in bread, and the wife, poor thing, wept the
whole day through: "Well, there, ich wie ich, it isn't for myself--but
the poor children are naked and barefoot."
At last they were even short of bread.
"Nochumtzi! Why don't you speak?" exclaimed his wife with tears in her
eyes. "Nochumtzi, can't you hear me? I tell you, we're starving! The
children are skin and bone, they haven't a shirt to their back, they can
hardly keep body and soul together. Think of a way out of it, invent
something to help us!"
And Reb Nochumtzi sat and considered.
He was considering the other misfortune--poverty.
"It is equally a misfortune to be really very poor."
And this also he found stated in the Holy Scriptures.
It was King Solomon, the famous sage, who prayed as well: Resh wo-Osher
al-titten li, that is, "Give me neither _poverty_ nor riches." Aha!
poverty is no advantage, either, and what does the holy Gemoreh say but
"Poverty diverts a man from the way of God"? In fact, there is a second
misfortune in the world, and one he knows very well, one with which he
has a practical, working acquaintance, he and his wife and his children.
And Reb Nochum pursued his train of thought:
"So there are two contrary misfortunes in the world: this way it's bad,
and that way it's bitter! Is there really no remedy? Can no one suggest
any help?"
And Reb Nochumtzi began to pace the room up and down, lost in thought,
bending his whole mind to the subject. A whole flight of Bible texts
went through his head, a quantity of quotations from the Gemoreh,
hundreds of stories and anecdotes from the "Fountain of Jacob," the
Midrash, and other books, telling of rich and poor, fortunate and
unfortunate people, till his head went round with them all as he
thought. Suddenly he stood still in the middle of the room, and began
talking to himself:
"Aha! Perhaps I've discovered a plan after all! And a good plan, too,
upon my word it is! Once more: it is quite certain that there will
always be more poor than rich--lots more! Well, and it's quite certain
that every rich man would like to be rid of his misfortune, only that
there is no one willing to take it from him--no _one_, not any _one_, of
course not. Nobody would be so mad. But we have to find out a way by
which _lots and lots_ of people should rid him of his misfortune little
by little. What do you say to that? Once more: that means that we must
take his unfortunate riches and divide them among a quantity of poor!
That will be a good thing for both parties: he will be easily rid of his
great misfortune, and they would be helped, too, and the petition of
King Solomon would be established, when he said, 'Give me neither
poverty nor riches.' It would come true of them all, there would be no
riches and no poverty. Ha? What do you think of it? Isn't it really and
truly an excellent idea?"
Reb Nochumtzi was quite astonished himself at the plan he had invented,
cold perspiration ran down his face, his eyes shone brighter, a happy
smile played on his lips. "That's the thing to do!" he explained aloud,
sat down by the table, blew his nose, wiped his face, and felt very
glad.
"There is only one difficulty about it," occurred to him, when he had
quieted down a little from his excitement, "one thing that doesn't fit
in. It says particularly in the Torah that there will always be poor
people among the Jews, 'the poor shall not cease out of the land.' There
must always be poor, and this would make an end of them altogether!
Besides, the precept concerning charity would, Heaven forbid, be
annulled, the precept which God, blessed is He, wrote in the Torah, and
which the holy Gemoreh and all the other holy books make so much of.
What is to become of the whole treatise on charity in the Shulchan
Aruch? How can we continue to fulfil it?"
But a good head is never at a loss! Reb Nochumtzi soon found a way out
of the difficulty.
"Never mind!" and he wrinkled his forehead, and pondered on. "There is
no fear! Who said that even the whole of the money in the possession of
a few unfortunate rich men will be enough to go round? That there will
be just enough to help all the Jewish poor? No fear, there will be
enough poor left for the exercise of charity. Ai wos? There is another
thing: to whom shall be given and to whom not? Ha, that's a detail, too.
Of course, one would begin with the learned and the poor scholars and
sages, who have to live on the Torah and on Divine Service. The people
can just be left to go on as it is. No fear, but it will be all right!"
At last the plan was ready. Reb Nochumtzi thought it over once more,
very carefully, found it complete from every point of view, and gave
himself up to a feeling of satisfaction and delight.
"Dvoireh!" he called to his wife, "Dvoireh, don't cry! Please God, it
will be all right, quite all right. I've thought out a plan.... A
little patience, and it will all come right!"
"Whatever? What sort of plan?"
"There, there, wait and see and hold your tongue! No woman's brain could
take it in. You leave it to me, it will be all right!"
And Reb Nochumtzi reflected further:
"Yes, the plan is a good one. Only, how is it to be carried out? With
whom am I to begin?"
And he thought of all the householders in Pumpian, but--there was not
one single unfortunate man among them! That is, not one of them had
money, a real lot of money; there was nobody with whom to discuss his
invention to any purpose.
"If so, I shall have to drive to one of the large towns!"
And one Sabbath the beadle gave out in the house-of-study that the Rav
begged them all to be present that evening at a convocation.
At the said convocation the Rav unfolded his whole plan to the people,
and placed before them the happiness that would result for the whole
world, if it were to be realized. But first of all he must journey to a
large town, in which there were a great many unfortunate rich people,
preferably Wilna, and he demanded of his flock that they should furnish
him with the necessary means for getting there.
The audience did not take long to reflect, they agreed to the Rav's
proposal, collected a few rubles (for who would not give their last
farthing for such an important object?), and on Sunday morning early
they hired him a peasant's cart and horse--and the Rav drove away to
Wilna.
The Rav passed the drive marshalling his arguments, settling on what he
should say, and how he should explain himself, and he was delighted to
see how, the more deeply he pondered his plan, the more he thought it
out, the more efficient and appropriate it appeared, and the clearer he
saw what happiness it would bestow on men all the world over.
The small cart arrived at Wilna.
"Whither are we to drive?" asked the peasant.
"Whither? To a Jew," answered the Rav. "For where is the Jew who will
not give me a night's lodging?"
"And I, with my cart and horse?"
The Rav sat perplexed, but a Jew passing by heard the conversation, and
explained to him that Wilna is not Pumpian, and that they would have to
drive to a post-house, or an inn.
"Be it so!" said the Rav, and the Jew gave him the address of a place to
which they should drive.
Wilna! It is certainly not the same thing as Pumpian. Now, for the first
time in his life, the Rav saw whole streets of tall houses, of two and
three stories, all as it were under one roof, and how fine they are,
thought he, with their decorated exteriors!
"Oi, there live the unfortunate people!" said Reb Nochumtzi to himself.
"I never saw anything like them before! How can they bear such a
misfortune? I shall come to them as an angel of deliverance!"
He had made up his mind to go to the principal Jewish citizen in Wilna,
only he must be a good scholar, so as to understand what Reb Nochumtzi
had to say to him.
They advised him to go to the president of the Congregation.
Every street along which he passed astonished him separately, the
houses, the pavements, the droshkis and carriages, and especially the
people, so beautifully got up with gold watch-chains and rings--he was
quite bewildered, so that he was afraid he might lose his senses, and
forget all his arguments and his reasonings.
At last he arrived at the president's house.
"He lives on the first floor." Another surprise! Reb Nochumtzi was
unused to stairs. There was no storied house in all Pumpian! But when
you must, you must! One way and another he managed to arrive at the
first-floor landing, where he opened the door, and said, all in one
breath:
"I am the Pumpian Rav, and have something to say to the president."
The president, a handsome old man, very busy just then with some
merchants who had come on business, stood up, greeted him politely, and
opening the door of the reception-room said to him:
"Please, Rabbi, come in here and wait a little. I shall soon have
finished, and then I will come to you here."
Expensive furniture, large mirrors, pictures, softly upholstered chairs,
tables, cupboards with shelves full of great silver candlesticks, cups,
knives and forks, a beautiful lamp, and many other small objects, all
of solid silver, wardrobes with carving in different designs; then,
painted walls, a great silver chandelier decorated with cut glass,
fascinating to behold! Reb Nochumtzi actually had tears in his eyes, "To
think of anyone's being so unfortunate--and to have to bear it!"
"What can I do for you, Pumpian Rav?" inquired the president.
And Reb Nochumtzi, overcome by amazement and enthusiasm, nearly shouted:
"You are so unfortunate!"
The president stared at him, shrugged his shoulders, and was silent.
Then Reb Nochumtzi laid his whole plan before him, the object of his
coming.
"I will be frank with you," he said in concluding his long speech, "I
had no idea of the extent of the misfortune! To the rescue, men, save
yourselves! Take it to heart, think of what it means to have houses like
these, and all these riches--it is a most terrible misfortune! Now I see
what a reform of the whole world my plan amounts to, what deliverance it
will bring to all men!"
The president looked him straight in the face: he saw the man was not
mad, but that he had the limited horizon of one born and bred in a small
provincial town and in the atmosphere of the house-of-study.
He also saw that it would be impossible to convince him by proofs that
his idea was a mistaken one; for a little while he pitied him in
silence, then he hit upon an expedient, and said:
"You are quite right, Rabbi! Your plan is really a very good one. But I
am only one of many, Wilna is full of such unfortunate people. Everyone
of them must be talked to, and have the thing explained to him. Then,
the other party must be spoken to as well, I mean the poor people, so
that they shall be willing to take their share of the misfortune. That's
not such an easy matter as giving a thing away and getting rid of it."
"Of course, of course...." agreed Reb Nochumtzi.
"Look here, Rav of Pumpian, I will undertake the more difficult
part--let us work together! You shall persuade the rich to give away
their misfortune, and I will persuade the poor to take it! Your share of
the work will be the easier, because, after all, everybody wants to be
rid of his misfortune. Do your part, and as soon as you have finished
with the rich, I will arrange for you to be met half-way by the
poor...."
* * * * *
History does not tell how far the Rav of Pumpian succeeded in Wilna.
Only this much is certain, the president never saw him again.
JEHALEL
Pen name of Judah Loeb Lewin; born, 1845, in Minsk (Lithuania), White
Russia; tutor; treasurer to the Brodski flour mills and their sugar
refinery, at Tomaschpol, Podolia, later in Kieff; began to write in
1860; translator of Beaconsfield's Tancred into Hebrew; Talmudist;
mystic; first Socialist writer in Hebrew; writer, chiefly in Hebrew, of
prose and poetry; contributor to Sholom-Alechem's Juedische
Volksbibliothek, Ha-Shahar, Ha-Meliz, Ha-Zeflrah, and other
periodicals.
EARTH OF PALESTINE
As my readers know, I wanted to do a little stroke of business--to sell
the world-to-come. I must tell you that I came out of it very badly, and
might have fallen into some misfortune, if I had had the ware in stock.
It fell on this wise: Nowadays everyone is squeezed and stifled;
Parnosseh is gone to wrack and ruin, and there is no business--I mean,
there _is_ business, only not for us Jews. In such bitter times people
snatch the bread out of each other's mouths; if it is known that someone
has made a find, and started a business, they quickly imitate him; if
that one opens a shop, a second does likewise, and a third, and a
fourth; if this one makes a contract, the other runs and will do it for
less--"Even if I earn nothing, no more will you!"
When I gave out that I had the world-to-come to sell, lots of people
gave a start, "Aha! a business!" and before they knew what sort of ware
it was, and where it was to be had, they began thinking about a
shop--and there was still greater interest shown on the part of certain
philanthropists, party leaders, public workers, and such-like. They knew
that when I set up trading in the world-to-come, I had announced that my
business was only with the poor. Well, they understood that it was
likely to be profitable, and might give them the chance of licking a
bone or two. There was very soon a great tararam in our little world,
people began inquiring where my goods came from. They surrounded me with
spies, who were to find out what I did at night, what I did on Sabbath;
they questioned the cook, the market-woman; but in vain, they could not
find out how I came by the world-to-come. And there blazed up a fire of
jealousy and hatred, and they began to inform, to write letters to the
authorities about me. Laban the Yellow and Balaam the Blind (you know
them!) made my boss believe that I do business, that is, that I have
capital, that is--that is--but my employer investigated the matter, and
seeing that my stock in trade was the world-to-come, he laughed, and let
me alone. The townspeople among whom it was my lot to dwell, those good
people who are a great hand at fishing in troubled waters, as soon as
they saw the mud rise, snatched up their implements and set to work,
informing by letter that I was dealing in contraband. There appeared a
red official and swept out a few corners in my house, but without
finding a single specimen bit of the world-to-come, and went away. But I
had no peace even then; every day came a fresh letter informing against
me. My good brothers never ceased work. The pious, orthodox Jews, the
Gemoreh-Koeplech, informed, and said I was a swindler, because the
world-to-come is a thing that isn't there, that is neither fish, flesh,
fowl, nor good red herring, and the whole thing was a delusion; the
half-civilized people with long trousers and short earlocks said, on the
contrary, that I was making game of religion, so that before long I had
enough of it from every side, and made the following resolutions: first,
that I would have nothing to do with the world-to-come and such-like
things which the Jews did not understand, although they held them very
precious; secondly, that I would not let myself in for selling
anything. One of my good friends, an experienced merchant, advised me
rather to buy than to sell: "There are so many to sell, they will
compete with you, inform against you, and behave as no one should.
Buying, on the other hand--if you want to buy, you will be esteemed and
respected, everyone will flatter you, and be ready to sell to you on
credit--everyone is ready to take money, and with very little capital
you can buy the best and most expensive ware." The great thing was to
get a good name, and then, little by little, by means of credit, one
might rise very high.
So it was settled that I should buy. I had a little money on hand for a
couple of newspaper articles, for which nowadays they pay; I had a bit
of reputation earned by a great many articles in Hebrew, for which I
received quite nice complimentary letters; and, in case of need, there
is a little money owing to me from certain Jewish booksellers of the
Maskilim, for books bought "on commission." Well, I am resolved to buy.
But what shall I buy? I look round and take note of all the things a man
can buy, and see that I, as a Jew, may not have them; that which I may
buy, no matter where, isn't worth a halfpenny; a thing that is of any
value, I can't have. And I determine to take to the old ware which my
great-great-grandfathers bought, and made a fortune in. My parents and
the whole family wish for it every day. I resolve to buy--you understand
me?--earth of Palestine, and I announce both verbally and in writing to
all my good and bad brothers that I wish to become a purchaser of the
ware.
Oh, what a commotion it made! Hardly was it known that I wished to buy
Palestinian earth, than there pounced upon me people of whom I had never
thought it possible that they should talk to me, and be in the room with
me. The first to come was a kind of Jew with a green shawl, with white
shoes, a pale face with a red nose, dark eyes, and yellow earlocks. He
commenced unpacking paper and linen bags, out of which he shook a little
sand, and he said to me: "That is from Mother Rachel's grave, from the
Shunammite's grave, from the graves of Huldah the prophetess and
Deborah." Then he shook out the other bags, and mentioned a whole list
of men: from the grave of Enoch, Moses our Teacher, Elijah the Prophet,
Habakkuk, Ezekiel, Jonah, authors of the Talmud, and holy men as many as
there be. He assured me that each kind of sand had its own precious
distinction, and had, of course, its special price. I had not had time
to examine all the bags of sand, when, aha! I got a letter written on
blue paper in Rashi script, in which an unknown well-wisher earnestly
warned me against buying of _that_ Jew, for neither he nor his father
before him had ever been in Palestine, and he had got the sand in K.,
from the Andreiyeff Hills yonder, and that if I wished for it, _he_ had
_real_ Palestinian earth, from the Mount of Olives, with a document from
the Palestinian vicegerent, the Brisk Rebbetzin, to the effect that she
had given of this earth even to the eaters of swine's flesh, of whom it
is said, "for their worm shall not die," and they also were saved from
worms. My Palestinian Jew, after reading the letter, called down all bad
dreams upon the head of the Brisk Rebbetzin, and declared among other
things that she herself was a dreadful worm, who, etc. He assured me
that I ought not to send money to the Brisk Rebbetzin, "May Heaven
defend you! it will be thrown away, as it has been a hundred times
already!" and began once more to praise _his_ wares, his earth, saying
it was a marvel. I answered him that I wanted real earth of Palestine,
_earth_, not sand out of little bags.
"Earth, it _is_ earth!" he repeated, and became very angry. "What do you
mean by earth? Am I offering you mud? But that is the way with people
nowadays, when they want something Jewish, there is no pleasing them!
Only" (a thought struck him) "if you want another sort, perhaps from the
field of Machpelah, I can bring you some Palestinian earth that _is_
earth. Meantime give me something in advance, for, besides everything
else, I am a Palestinian Jew."
I pushed a coin into his hand, and he went away. Meanwhile the news had
spread, my intention to purchase earth of Palestine had been noised
abroad, and the little town echoed with my name. In the streets, lanes,
and market-place, the talk was all of me and of how "there is no putting
a final value on a Jewish soul: one thought he was one of _them_, and
now he wants to buy earth of Palestine!" Many of those who met me looked
at me askance, "The same and _not_ the same!" In the synagogue they gave
me the best turn at the Reading of the Law; Jews in shoes and socks
wished me "a good Sabbath" with great heartiness, and a friendly smile:
"Eh-eh-eh! We understand--you are a deep one--you are one of us after
all." In short, they surrounded me, and nearly carried me on their
shoulders, so that I really became something of a celebrity.
Yuedel, the "living orphan," worked the hardest. Yuedel is already a man
in years, but everyone calls him the "orphan" on account of what befell
him on a time. His history is very long and interesting, I will tell it
you in brief.
He has a very distinguished father and a very noble mother, and he is an
only child, of a very frolicsome disposition, on account of which his
father and his mother frequently disagreed; the father used to punish
him and beat him, but the boy hid with his mother. In a word, it came to
this, that his father gave him into the hands of strangers, to be
educated and put into shape. The mother could not do without him, and
fell sick of grief; she became a wreck. Her beautiful house was burnt
long ago through the boy's doing: one day, when a child, he played with
fire, and there was a conflagration, and the neighbors came and built on
the site of her palace, and she, the invalid, lies neglected in a
corner. The father, who has left the house, often wished to rejoin her,
but by no manner of means can they live together without the son, and so
the cast-off child became a "living orphan"; he roams about in the wide
world, comes to a place, and when he has stayed there a little while,
they drive him out, because wherever he comes, he stirs up a commotion.
As is the way with all orphans, he has many fathers, and everyone
directs him, hits him, lectures him; he is always in the way, blamed for
everything, it's always his fault, so that he has got into the habit of
cowering and shrinking at the mere sight of a stick. Wandering about as
he does, he has copied the manners and customs of strange people, in
every place where he has been; his very character is hardly his own. His
father has tried both to threaten and to persuade him into coming back,
saying they would then all live together as before, but Yuedel has got to
like living from home, he enjoys the scrapes he gets into, and even the
blows they earn for him. No matter how people knock him about, pull his
hair, and draw his blood, the moment they want him to make friendly
advances, there he is again, alert and smiling, turns the world
topsyturvy, and won't hear of going home. It is remarkable that Yuedel,
who is no fool, and has a head for business, the instant people look
kindly on him, imagines they like him, although he has had a thousand
proofs to the contrary. He has lately been of such consequence in the
eyes of the world that they have begun to treat him in a new way, and
they drive him out of every place at once. The poor boy has tried his
best to please, but it was no good, they knocked him about till he was
covered with blood, took every single thing he had, and empty-handed,
naked, hungry, and beaten as he is, they shout at him "Be off!" from
every side. Now he lives in narrow streets, in the small towns, hidden
away in holes and corners. He very often hasn't enough to eat, but he
goes on in his old way, creeps into tight places, dances at all the
weddings, loves to meddle, everything concerns him, and where two come
together, he is the third.
I have known him a long time, ever since he was a little boy. He always
struck me as being very wild, but I saw that he was of a noble
disposition, only that he had grown rough from living among strangers. I
loved him very much, but in later years he treated me to hot and cold by
turns. I must tell you that when Yuedel had eaten his fill, he was always
very merry, and minded nothing; but when he had been kicked out by his
landlord, and went hungry, then he was angry, and grew violent over
every trifle. He would attack me for nothing at all, we quarrelled and
parted company, that is, I loved him at a distance. When he wasn't just
in my sight, I felt a great pity for him, and a wish to go to him; but
hardly had I met him than he was at the old game again, and I had to
leave him. Now that I was together with him in my native place, I found
him very badly off, he hadn't enough to eat. The town was small and
poor, and he had no means of supporting himself. When I saw him in his
bitter and dark distress, my heart went out to him. But at such times,
as I said before, he is very wild and fanatical. One day, on the Ninth
of Ab, I felt obliged to speak out, and tell him that sitting in socks,
with his forehead on the ground, reciting Lamentations, would do no
good. Yuedel misunderstood me, and thought I was laughing at Jerusalem.
He began to fire up, and he spread reports of me in the town, and when
he saw me in the distance, he would spit out before me. His anger dated
from some time past, because one day I turned him out of my house; he
declared that I was the cause of all his misfortunes, and now that I was
his neighbor, I had resolved to ruin him; he believed that I hated him
and played him false. Why should Yuedel think that? I don't know.
Perhaps he feels one ought to dislike him, or else he is so embittered
that he cannot believe in the kindly feelings of others. However that
may be, Yuedel continued to speak ill of me, and throw mud at me through
the town; crying out all the while that I hadn't a scrap of Jewishness
in me.
Now that he heard I was buying Palestinian earth, he began by refusing
to believe it, and declared it was a take-in and the trick of an
apostate, for how could a person who laughed at socks on the Ninth of Ab
really want to buy earth of Palestine? But when he saw the green shawls
and the little bags of earth, he went over--a way he has--to the
opposite, the exact opposite. He began to worship me, couldn't praise me
enough, and talked of me in the back streets, so that the women blessed
me aloud. Yuedel was now much given to my company, and often came in to
see me, and was most intimate, although there was no special piousness
about me. I was just the same as before, but Yuedel took this for the
best of signs, and thought it proved me to be of extravagant hidden
piety.
"There's a Jew for you!" he would cry aloud in the street. "Earth of
Palestine! There's a Jew!"
In short, he filled the place with my Jewishness and my hidden
orthodoxy. I looked on with indifference, but after a while the affair
began to cost me both time and money.
The Palestinian beggars and, above all, Yuedel and the townsfolk obtained
for me the reputation of piety, and there came to me orthodox Jews,
treasurers, cabalists, beggar students, and especially the Rebbe's
followers; they came about me like bees. They were never in the habit
of avoiding me, but this was another thing all the same. Before this,
when one of the Rebbe's disciples came, he would enter with a respectful
demeanor, take off his hat, and, sitting in his cap, would fix his gaze
on my mouth with a sweet smile; we both felt that the one and only link
between us lay in the money that I gave and he took. He would take it
gracefully, put it into his purse, as it might be for someone else, and
thank me as though he appreciated my kindness. When _I_ went to see
_him_, he would place a chair for me, and give me preserve. But now he
came to me with a free and easy manner, asked for a sip of brandy with a
snack to eat, sat in my room as if it were his own, and looked at me as
if I were an underling, and he had authority over me; I am the penitent
sinner, it is said, and that signifies for him the key to the door of
repentance; I have entered into his domain, and he is my lord and
master; he drinks my health as heartily as though it were his own, and
when I press a coin into his hand, he looks at it well, to make sure it
is worth his while accepting it. If I happen to visit him, I am on a
footing with all his followers, the Chassidim; his "trustees," and all
his other hangers-on, are my brothers, and come to me when they please,
with all the mud on their boots, put their hand into my bosom and take
out my tobacco-pouch, and give it as their opinion that the brandy is
weak, not to talk of holidays, especially Purim and Rejoicing of the
Law, when they troop in with a great noise and vociferation, and drink
and dance, and pay as much attention to me as to the cat.
In fact, all the townsfolk took the same liberties with me. Before, they
asked nothing of me, and took me as they found me, now they began to
_demand_ things of me and to inquire why I didn't do this, and why I did
that, and not the other. Shmuelke the bather asked me why I was never
seen at the bath on Sabbath. Kalmann the butcher wanted to know why,
among the scape-fowls, there wasn't a white one of mine; and even the
beadle of the Klaus, who speaks through his nose, and who had never
dared approach me, came and insisted on giving me the thirty-nine
stripes on the eve of the Day of Atonement: "Eh-eh, if you are a Jew
like other Jews, come and lie down, and you shall be given stripes!"
And the Palestinian Jews never ceased coming with their bags of earth,
and I never ceased rejecting. One day there came a broad-shouldered Jew
from "over there," with his bag of Palestinian earth. The earth pleased
me, and a conversation took place between us on this wise:
"How much do you want for your earth?"
"For my earth? From anyone else I wouldn't take less than thirty rubles,
but from you, knowing you and _of_ you as I do, and as your parents did
so much for Palestine, I will take a twenty-five ruble piece. You must
know that a person buys this once and for all."
"I don't understand you," I answered. "Twenty-five rubles! How much
earth have you there?"
"How much earth have I? About half a quart. There will be enough to
cover the eyes and the face. Perhaps you want to cover the whole body,
to have it underneath and on the top and at the sides? O, I can bring
you some more, but it will cost you two or three hundred rubles,
because, since the good-for-nothings took to coming to Palestine, the
earth has got very expensive. Believe me, I don't make much by it, it
costs me nearly...."
"I don't understand you, my friend! What's this about bestrewing the
body? What do you mean by it?"
"How do you mean, 'what do you mean by it?' Bestrewing the body like
that of all honest Jews, after death."
"Ha? After death? To preserve it?"
"Yes, what else?"
"I don't want it for that, I don't mind what happens to my body after
death. I want to buy Palestinian earth for my lifetime."
"What do you mean? What good can it do you while you're alive? You are
not talking to the point, or else you are making game of a poor
Palestinian Jew?"
"I am speaking seriously. I want it now, while I live! What is it you
don't understand?"
My Palestinian Jew was greatly perplexed, but he quickly collected
himself, and took in the situation. I saw by his artful smile that he
had detected a strain of madness in me, and what should he gain by
leading me into the paths of reason? Rather let him profit by it! And
this he proceeded to do, saying with winning conviction:
"Yes, of course, you are right! How right you are! May I ever see the
like! People are not wrong when they say, 'The apple falls close to the
tree'! You are drawn to the root, and you love the soil of Palestine,
only in a different way, like your holy forefathers, may they be good
advocates! You are young, and I am old, and I have heard how they used
to bestrew their head-dress with it in their lifetime, so as to fulfil
the Scripture verse, 'And have pity on Zion's dust,' and honest Jews
shake earth of Palestine into their shoes on the eve of the Ninth of Ab,
and at the meal before the fast they dip an egg into Palestinian
earth--nu, fein! I never expected so much of you, and I can say with
truth, 'There's a Jew for you!' Well, in that case, you will require two
pots of the earth, but it will cost you a deal."
"We are evidently at cross-purposes," I said to him. "What are two
potfuls? What is all this about bestrewing the body? I want to buy
Palestinian earth, earth in Palestine, do you understand? I want to buy,
in Palestine, a little bit of earth, a few dessiatines."
"Ha? I didn't quite catch it. What did you say?" and my Palestinian Jew
seized hold of his right ear, as though considering what he should do;
then he said cheerfully: "Ha--aha! You mean to secure for yourself a
burial-place, also for after death! O yes, indeed, you are a holy man
and no mistake! Well, you can get that through me, too; give me
something in advance, and I shall manage it for you all right at a
bargain."
"Why do you go on at me with your 'after death,'" I cried angrily. "I
want a bit of earth in Palestine, I want to dig it, and sow it, and
plant it...."
"Ha? What? Sow it and plant it?! That is ... that is ... you only mean
... may all bad dreams!..." and stammering thus, he scraped all the
scattered earth, little by little, into his bag, gradually got nearer
the door, and--was gone!
It was not long before the town was seething and bubbling like a kettle
on the boil, everyone was upset as though by some misfortune, angry with
me, and still more with himself: "How could we be so mistaken? He
doesn't want to buy Palestinian earth at all, he doesn't care what
happens to him when he's dead, he laughs--he only wants to buy earth
_in_ Palestine, and set up villages there."
"Eh-eh-eh! He remains one of _them_! He is what he is--a skeptic!" so
they said in all the streets, all the householders in the town, the
women in the market-place, at the bath, they went about abstracted, and
as furious as though I had insulted them, made fools of them, taken them
in, and all of a sudden they became cold and distant to me. The pious
Jews were seen no more at my house. I received packages from Palestine
one after the other. One had a black seal, on which was scratched a
black ram's horn, and inside, in large characters, was a ban from the
Brisk Rebbetzin, because of my wishing to make all the Jews unhappy.
Other packets were from different Palestinian beggars, who tried to
compel me, with fair words and foul, to send them money for their
travelling expenses and for the samples of earth they enclosed. My
fellow-townspeople also got packages from "over there," warning them
against me--I was a dangerous man, a missionary, and it was a Mitzveh to
be revenged on me. There was an uproar, and no wonder! A letter from
Palestine, written in Rashi, with large seals! In short I was to be put
to shame and confusion. Everyone avoided me, nobody came near me. When
people were obliged to come to me in money matters or to beg an alms,
they entered with deference, and spoke respectfully, in a gentle voice,
as to "one of them," took the alms or the money, and were out of the
door, behind which they abused me, as usual.
Only Yuedel did not forsake me. Yuedel, the "living orphan," was
bewildered and perplexed. He had plenty of work, flew from one house to
the other, listening, begging, and talebearing, answering and asking
questions; but he could not settle the matter in his own mind: now he
looked at me angrily, and again with pity. He seemed to wish not to meet
me, and yet he sought occasion to do so, and would look earnestly into
my face.
The excitement of my neighbors and their behavior to me interested me
very little; but I wanted very much to know the reason why I had
suddenly become abhorrent to them? I could by no means understand it.
Once there came a wild, dark night. The sky was covered with black
clouds, there was a drenching rain and hail and a stormy wind, it was
pitch dark, and it lightened and thundered, as though the world were
turning upside down. The great thunder claps and the hail broke a good
many people's windows, the wind tore at the roofs, and everyone hid
inside his house, or wherever he found a corner. In that dreadful dark
night my door opened, and in came--Yuedel, the "living orphan"; he looked
as though someone were pushing him from behind, driving him along. He
was as white as the wall, cowering, beaten about, helpless as a leaf.
He came in, and stood by the door, holding his hat; he couldn't decide,
did not know if he should take it off, or not. I had never seen him so
miserable, so despairing, all the time I had known him. I asked him to
sit down, and he seemed a little quieted. I saw that he was soaking wet,
and shivering with cold, and I gave him hot tea, one glass after the
other. He sipped it with great enjoyment. And the sight of him sitting
there sipping and warming himself would have been very comic, only it
was so very sad. The tears came into my eyes. Yuedel began to brighten
up, and was soon Yuedel, his old self, again. I asked him how it was he
had come to me in such a state of gloom and bewilderment? He told me the
thunder and the hail had broken all the window-panes in his lodging, and
the wind had carried away the roof, there was nowhere he could go for
shelter; nobody would let him in at night; there was not a soul he could
turn to, there remained nothing for him but to lie down in the street
and die.
"And so," he said, "having known you so long, I hoped you would take me
in, although you are 'one of them,' not at all pious, and, so they say,
full of evil intentions against Jews and Jewishness; but I know you are
a good man, and will have compassion on me."
I forgave Yuedel his rudeness, because I knew him for an outspoken man,
that he was fond of talking, but never did any harm. Seeing him
depressed, I offered him a glass of wine, but he refused it.
I understood the reason of his refusal, and started a conversation with
him.
"Tell me, Yuedel heart, how is it I have fallen into such bad repute
among you that you will not even drink a drop of wine in my house? And
why do you say that I am 'one of them,' and not pious? A little while
ago you spoke differently of me."
"Ett! It just slipped from my tongue, and the truth is you may be what
you please, you are a good man."
"No, Yuedel, don't try to get out of it! Tell me openly (it doesn't
concern me, but I am curious to know), why this sudden revulsion of
feeling about me, this change of opinion? Tell me, Yuedel, I beg of you,
speak freely!"
My gentle words and my friendliness gave Yuedel great encouragement. The
poor fellow, with whom not one of "them" has as yet spoken kindly! When
he saw that I meant it, he began to scratch his head; it seemed as if in
that minute he forgave me all my "heresies," and he looked at me kindly,
and as if with pity. Then, seeing that I awaited an answer, he gave a
twist to his earlock, and said gently and sincerely:
"You wish me to tell you the truth? You insist upon it? You will not be
offended?"
"You know that I never take offence at anything you say. Say anything
you like, Yuedel heart, only speak."
"Then I will tell you: the town and everyone else is very angry with you
on account of your Palestinian earth: you want to do something new, buy
earth and plough it and sow--and where? in our land of Israel, in our
Holy Land of Israel!"
"But why, Yuedel dear, when they thought I was buying Palestinian earth
to bestrew me after death, was I looked upon almost like a saint?"
"E, that's another thing! That showed that you held Palestine holy, for
a land whose soil preserves one against being eaten of worms, like any
other honest Jew."
"Well, I ask you, Yuedel, what does this mean? When they thought I was
buying sand for after my death, I was a holy man, a lover of Palestine,
and because I want to buy earth and till it, earth in your Holy Land,
our holy earth in the Holy Land, in which our best and greatest counted
it a privilege to live, I am a blot on Israel. Tell me, Yuedel, I ask
you: _Why_, because one wants to bestrew himself with Palestinian earth
after death, is one an orthodox Jew; and when one desires to give
oneself wholly to Palestine in life, should one be 'one of them'? Now I
ask you--all those Palestinian Jews who came to me with their bags of
sand, and were my very good friends, and full of anxiety to preserve my
body after death, why have they turned against me on hearing that I
wished for a bit of Palestinian earth while I live? Why are they all so
interested and such good brothers to the dead, and such bloodthirsty
enemies to the living? Why, because I wish to provide for my sad
existence, have they noised abroad that I am a missionary, and made up
tales against me? Why? I ask you, why, Yuedel, why?"
"You ask me? How should I know? I only know that ever since Palestine
was Palestine, people have gone there to die--that I know; but all this
ploughing, sowing, and planting the earth, I never heard of in my life
before."
"Yes, Yuedel, you are right, because it has been so for a long time, you
think so it has to be--that is the real answer to your questions. But
why not think back a little? Why should one only go to Palestine to die?
Is not Palestinian earth fit to _live_ on? On the contrary, it is some
of the very best soil, and when we till it and plant it, we fulfil the
precept to restore the Holy Land, and we also work for ourselves, toward
the realization of an honest and peaceable life. I won't discuss the
matter at length with you to-day. It seems that you have quite forgotten
what all the holy books say about Palestine, and what a precept it is to
till the soil. And another question, touching what you said about
Palestine being only there to go and die in. Tell me, those Palestinian
Jews who were so interested in my death, and brought earth from over
there to bestrew me--tell me, are they also only there to die? Did you
notice how broad and stout they were? Ha? And they, they too, when they
heard I wanted to live there, fell upon me like wild animals, filling
the world with their cries, and made up the most dreadful stories about
me. Well, what do you say, Yuedel? I ask you."
"Do I know?" said Yuedel, with a wave of the hand. "Is my head there to
think out things like that? But tell me, I beg, what _is_ the good to
you of buying land in Palestine and getting into trouble all round?"
"You ask, what is the good to me? I want to live, do you hear? I want to
_live_!"
"If you can't live without Palestinian earth, why did you not get some
before? Did you never want to live till now?"
"Oh, Yuedel, you are right there. I confess that till now I have lived in
a delusion, I thought I was living; but--what is the saying?--so long as
the thunder is silent...."
"Some thunder has struck you!" interrupted Yuedel, looking
compassionately into my face.
"I will put it briefly. You must know, Yuedel, that I have been in
business here for quite a long time. I worked faithfully, and my chief
was pleased with me. I was esteemed and looked up to, and it never
occurred to me that things would change; but bad men could not bear to
see me doing so well, and they worked hard against me, till one day the
business was taken over by my employer's son; and my enemies profited by
the opportunity, to cover me with calumnies from head to foot, spreading
reports about me which it makes one shudder to hear. This went on till
the chief began to look askance at me. At first I got pin-pricks,
malicious hints, then things got worse and worse, and at last they began
to push me about, and one day they turned me out of the house, and threw
me into a hedge. Presently, when I had reviewed the whole situation, I
saw that they could do what they pleased with me. I had no one to rely
on, my onetime good friends kept aloof from me, I had lost all worth in
their eyes; with some because, as is the way with people, they took no
trouble to inquire into the reason of my downfall, but, hearing all that
was said against me, concluded that I was in the wrong; others, again,
because they wished to be agreeable to my enemies; the rest, for reasons
without number. In short, reflecting on all this, I saw the game was
lost, and there was no saying what might not happen to me! Hitherto I
had borne my troubles patiently, with the courage that is natural to me;
but now I feel my courage giving way, and I am in fear lest I should
fall in my own eyes, in my own estimation, and get to believe that I am
worth nothing. And all this because I must needs resort to _them_, and
take all the insults they choose to fling at me, and every outcast has
me at his mercy. That is why I want to collect my remaining strength,
and buy a parcel of land in Palestine, and, God helping, I will become a
bit of a householder--do you understand?"
"Why must it be just in Palestine?"
"Because I may not, and I cannot, buy in anywhere else. I have tried to
find a place elsewhere, but they were afraid I was going to get the
upper hand, so down they came, and made a wreck of it. Over there I
shall be proprietor myself--that is firstly, and secondly, a great many
relations of mine are buried there, in the country where they lived and
died. And although you count me as 'one of them,' I tell you I think a
great deal of 'the merits of the fathers,' and that it is very pleasant
to me to think of living in the land that will remind me of such dear
forefathers. And although it will be hard at first, the recollection of
my ancestors and the thought of providing my children with a corner of
their own and honestly earned bread will give me strength, till I shall
work my way up to something. And I hope I _will_ get to something.
Remember, Yuedel, I believe and I hope! You will see, Yuedel--you know
that our brothers consider Palestinian earth a charm against being
eaten by worms, and you think that I laugh at it? No, I believe in it!
It is quite, quite true that my Palestinian earth will preserve me from
worms, only not after death, no, but alive--from such worms as devour
and gnaw at and poison the whole of life!"
Yuedel scratched his nose, gave a rub to the cap on his head, and uttered
a deep sigh.
"Yes, Yuedel, you sigh! Now do you know what I wanted to say to you?"
"Ett!" and Yuedel made a gesture with his hand. "What you have to say to
me?--ett!"
"Oi, that 'ett!' of yours! Yuedel, I know it! When you have nothing to
answer, and you ought to think, and think something out, you take refuge
in 'ett!' Just consider for once, Yuedel, I have a plan for you, too.
Remember what you were, and what has become of you. You have been
knocking about, driven hither and thither, since childhood. You haven't
a house, not a corner, you have become a beggar, a tramp, a nobody,
despised and avoided, with unpleasing habits, and living a dog's life.
You have very good qualities, a clear head, and acute intelligence. But
to what purpose do you put them? You waste your whole intelligence on
getting in at backdoors and coaxing a bit of bread out of the
maidservant, and the mistress is not to know. Can you not devise a
means, with that clever brain of yours, how to earn it for yourself? See
here, I am going to buy a bit of ground in Palestine, come with me,
Yuedel, and you shall work, and be a man like other men. You are what
they call a 'living orphan,' because you have many fathers; and don't
forget that you have _one_ Father who lives, and who is only waiting
for you to grow better. Well, how much longer are you going to live
among strangers? Till now you haven't thought, and the life suited you,
you have grown used to blows and contumely. But now that--that--none
will let you in, your eyes must have been opened to see your condition,
and you must have begun to wish to be different. Only begin to wish! You
see, I have enough to eat, and yet my position has become hateful to me,
because I have lost my value, and am in danger of losing my humanity.
But you are hungry, and one of these days you will die of starvation out
in the street. Yuedel, do just think it over, for if I am right, you will
get to be like other people. Your Father will see that you have turned
into a man, he will be reconciled with your mother, and you will be 'a
father's child,' as you were before. Brother Yuedel, think it over!"
I talked to my Yuedel a long, long time. In the meanwhile, the night had
passed. My Yuedel gave a start, as though waking out of a deep slumber,
and went away full of thought.
On opening the window, I was greeted by a friendly smile from the rising
morning star, as it peeped out between the clouds.
And it began to dawn.
ISAAC LOeB PEREZ
Born, 1851, in Samoscz, Government of Lublin, Russian Poland; Jewish,
philosophical, and general literary education; practiced law in Samoscz,
a Hasidic town; clerk to the Jewish congregation in Warsaw and as such
collector of statistics on Jewish life; began to write at twenty-five;
contributor to Zedernbaum's Juedisches Volksblatt; publisher and editor
of Die juedische Bibliothek (4 vols.), in which he conducted the
scientific department, and wrote all the editorials and book reviews, of
Literatur and Leben, and of Yom-tov Blaettlech; now (1912) co-editor of
Der Freind, Warsaw; Hebrew and Yiddish prose writer and poet;
allegorist; collected Hebrew works, 1899-1901; collected Yiddish works,
7 vols., Warsaw and New York, 1909-1912 (in course of publication).
A WOMAN'S WRATH
The small room is dingy as the poverty that clings to its walls. There
is a hook fastened to the crumbling ceiling, relic of a departed hanging
lamp. The old, peeling stove is girded about with a coarse sack, and
leans sideways toward its gloomy neighbor, the black, empty fireplace,
in which stands an inverted cooking pot with a chipped rim. Beside it
lies a broken spoon, which met its fate in unequal contest with the
scrapings of cold, stale porridge.
The room is choked with furniture; there is a four-post bed with torn
curtains. The pillows visible through their holes have no covers.
There is a cradle, with the large, yellow head of a sleeping child; a
chest with metal fittings and an open padlock--nothing very precious
left in there, evidently; further, a table and three chairs (originally
painted red), a cupboard, now somewhat damaged. Add to these a pail of
clean water and one of dirty water, an oven rake with a shovel, and you
will understand that a pin could hardly drop onto the floor.
And yet the room contains _him_ and _her_ beside.
_She_, a middle-aged Jewess, sits on the chest that fills the space
between the bed and the cradle.
To her right is the one grimy little window, to her left, the table. She
is knitting a sock, rocking the cradle with her foot, and listens to
_him_ reading the Talmud at the table, with a tearful, Wallachian,
singing intonation, and swaying to and fro with a series of nervous
jerks. Some of the words he swallows, others he draws out; now he snaps
at a word, and now he skips it; some he accentuates and dwells on
lovingly, others he rattles out with indifference, like dried peas out
of a bag. And never quiet for a moment. First he draws from his pocket a
once red and whole handkerchief, and wipes his nose and brow, then he
lets it fall into his lap, and begins twisting his earlocks or pulling
at his thin, pointed, faintly grizzled beard. Again, he lays a
pulled-out hair from the same between the leaves of his book, and slaps
his knees. His fingers coming into contact with the handkerchief, they
seize it, and throw a corner in between his teeth; he bites it, lays one
foot across the other, and continually shuffles with both feet.
All the while his pale forehead wrinkles, now in a perpendicular, now in
a horizontal, direction, when the long eyebrows are nearly lost below
the folds of skin. At times, apparently, he has a sting in the chest,
for he beats his left side as though he were saying the Al-Chets.
Suddenly he leans his head to the left, presses a finger against his
left nostril, and emits an artificial sneeze, leans his head to the
right, and the proceeding is repeated. In between he takes a pinch of
snuff, pulls himself together, his voice rings louder, the chair creaks,
the table wobbles.
The child does not wake; the sounds are too familiar to disturb it.
And she, the wife, shrivelled and shrunk before her time, sits and
drinks in delight. She never takes her eye off her husband, her ear
lets no inflection of his voice escape. Now and then, it is true, she
sighs. Were he as fit for _this_ world as he is for the _other_ world,
she would have a good time of it here, too--here, too--
"Ma!" she consoles herself, "who talks of honor? Not every one is worthy
of both tables!"
She listens. Her shrivelled face alters from minute to minute; she is
nervous, too. A moment ago it was eloquent of delight. Now she remembers
it is Thursday, there isn't a dreier to spend in preparation for
Sabbath. The light in her face goes out by degrees, the smile fades,
then she takes a look through the grimy window, glances at the sun. It
must be getting late, and there isn't a spoonful of hot water in the
house. The needles pause in her hand, a shadow has overspread her face.
She looks at the child, it is sleeping less quietly, and will soon wake.
The child is poorly, and there is not a drop of milk for it. The shadow
on her face deepens into gloom, the needles tremble and move
convulsively.
And when she remembers that it is near Passover, that her ear-rings and
the festal candlesticks are at the pawnshop, the chest empty, the lamp
sold, then the needles perform murderous antics in her fingers. The
gloom on her brow is that of a gathering thunder-storm, lightnings play
in her small, grey, sunken eyes.
He sits and "learns," unconscious of the charged atmosphere; does not
see her let the sock fall and begin wringing her finger-joints; does not
see that her forehead is puckered with misery, one eye closed, and the
other fixed on him, her learned husband, with a look fit to send a
chill through his every limb; does not see her dry lips tremble and her
jaw quiver. She controls herself with all her might, but the storm is
gathering fury within her. The least thing, and it will explode.
That least thing has happened.
He was just translating a Talmudic phrase with quiet delight, "And
thence we derive that--" He was going on with "three,--" but the word
"derive" was enough, it was the lighted spark, and her heart was the
gunpowder. It was ablaze in an instant. Her determination gave way, the
unlucky word opened the flood-gates, and the waters poured through,
carrying all before them.
"Derived, you say, derived? O, derived may you be, Lord of the World,"
she exclaimed, hoarse with anger, "derived may you be! Yes! You!" she
hissed like a snake. "Passover coming--Thursday--and the child ill--and
not a drop of milk is there. Ha?"
Her breath gives out, her sunken breast heaves, her eyes flash.
He sits like one turned to stone. Then, pale and breathless, too, from
fright, he gets up and edges toward the door.
At the door he turns and faces her, and sees that hand and tongue are
equally helpless from passion; his eyes grow smaller; he catches a bit
of handkerchief between his teeth, retreats a little further, takes a
deeper breath, and mutters:
"Listen, woman, do you know what Bittul-Torah means? And not letting a
husband study in peace, to be always worrying about livelihood, ha? And
who feeds the little birds, tell me? Always this want of faith in God,
this giving way to temptation, and taking thought for _this_ world ...
foolish, ill-natured woman! Not to let a husband study! If you don't
take care, you will go to Gehenna."
Receiving no answer, he grows bolder. Her face gets paler and paler, she
trembles more and more violently, and the paler she becomes, and the
more she trembles, the steadier his voice, as he goes on:
"Gehenna! Fire! Hanging by the tongue! Four death penalties inflicted by
the court!"
She is silent, her face is white as chalk.
He feels that he is doing wrong, that he has no call to be cruel, that
he is taking a mean advantage, but he has risen, as it were, to the top,
and is boiling over. He cannot help himself.
"Do you know," he threatens her, "what Skiloh means? It means stoning,
to throw into a ditch and cover up with stones! Srefoh--burning, that
is, pouring a spoonful of boiling lead into the inside!
Hereg--beheading, that means they cut off your head with a sword! Like
this" (and he passes a hand across his neck). "Then Cheneck--strangling!
Do you hear? To strangle! Do you understand? And all four for making
light of the Torah! For Bittul-Torah!"
His heart is already sore for his victim, but he is feeling his power
over her for the first time, and it has gone to his head. Silly woman!
He had never known how easy it was to frighten her.
"That comes of making light of the Torah!" he shouts, and breaks off.
After all, she might come to her senses at any moment, and take up the
broom! He springs back to the table, closes the Gemoreh, and hurries out
of the room.
"I am going to the house-of-study!" he calls out over his shoulder in a
milder tone, and shuts the door after him.
The loud voice and the noise of the closing door have waked the sick
child. The heavy-lidded eyes open, the waxen face puckers, and there is
a peevish wail. But she, beside herself, stands rooted to the spot, and
does not hear.
"Ha!" comes hoarsely at last out of her narrow chest. "So that's it, is
it? Neither this world nor the other. Hanging, he says, stoning,
burning, beheading, strangling, hanging by the tongue, boiling lead
poured into the inside, he says--for making light of the Torah--Hanging,
ha, ha, ha!" (in desperation). "Yes, I'll hang, but _here, here!_ And
soon! What is there to wait for?"
The child begins to cry louder; still she does not hear.
"A rope! a rope!" she screams, and stares wildly into every corner.
"Where is there a rope? I wish he mayn't find a bone of me left! Let me
be rid of _one_ Gehenna at any rate! Let him try it, let him be a mother
for once, see how he likes it! I've had enough of it! Let it be an
atonement! An end, an end! A rope, a rope!!"
Her last exclamation is like a cry for help from out of a
conflagration.
She remembers that they _have_ a rope somewhere. Yes, under the
stove--the stove was to have been tied round against the winter. The
rope must be there still.
She runs and finds the rope, the treasure, looks up at the ceiling--the
hook that held the lamp--she need only climb onto the table.
She climbs--
But she sees from the table that the startled child, weak as it is, has
sat up in the cradle, and is reaching over the side--it is trying to get
out--
"Mame, M-mame," it sobs feebly.
A fresh paroxysm of anger seizes her.
She flings away the rope, jumps off the table, runs to the child, and
forces its head back into the pillow, exclaiming:
"Bother the child! It won't even let me hang myself! I can't even hang
myself in peace! It wants to suck. What is the good? You will suck
nothing but poison, poison, out of me, I tell you!"
"There, then, greedy!" she cries in the same breath, and stuffs her
dried-up breast into his mouth.
"There, then, suck away--bite!"
THE TREASURE
To sleep, in summer time, in a room four yards square, together with a
wife and eight children, is anything but a pleasure, even on a Friday
night--and Shmerel the woodcutter rises from his bed, though only half
through with the night, hot and gasping, hastily pours some water over
his finger-tips, flings on his dressing-gown, and escapes barefoot from
the parched Gehenna of his dwelling. He steps into the street--all
quiet, all the shutters closed, and over the sleeping town is a distant,
serene, and starry sky. He feels as if he were all alone with God,
blessed is He, and he says, looking up at the sky, "Now, Lord of the
Universe, now is the time to hear me and to bless me with a treasure out
of Thy treasure-house!"
As he says this, he sees something like a little flame coming along out
of the town, and he knows, That is it! He is about to pursue it, when he
remembers it is Sabbath, when one mustn't turn. So he goes after it
walking. And as he walks slowly along, the little flame begins to move
slowly, too, so that the distance between them does not increase, though
it does not shorten, either. He walks on. Now and then an inward voice
calls to him: "Shmerel, don't be a fool! Take off the dressing-gown.
Give a jump and throw it over the flame!" But he knows it is the Evil
Inclination speaking. He throws off the dressing-gown onto his arm, but
to spite the Evil Inclination he takes still smaller steps, and
rejoices to see that, as soon as he takes these smaller steps, the
little flame moves more slowly, too.
Thus he follows the flame, and follows it, till he gradually finds
himself outside the town. The road twists and turns across fields and
meadows, and the distance between him and the flame grows no longer, no
shorter. Were he to throw the dressing-gown, it would not reach the
flame. Meantime the thought revolves in his mind: Were he indeed to
become possessed of the treasure, he need no longer be a woodcutter,
now, in his later years; he has no longer the strength for the work he
had once. He would rent a seat for his wife in the women's Shool, so
that her Sabbaths and holidays should not be spoiled by their not
allowing her to sit here or to sit there. On New Year's Day and the Day
of Atonement it is all she can do to stand through the service. Her many
children have exhausted her! And he would order her a new dress, and buy
her a few strings of pearls. The children should be sent to better
Chedorim, and he would cast about for a match for his eldest girl. As it
is, the poor child carries her mother's fruit baskets, and never has
time so much as to comb her hair thoroughly, and she has long, long
plaits, and eyes like a deer.
"It would be a meritorious act to pounce upon the treasure!"
The Evil Inclination again, he thinks. If it is not to be, well, then it
isn't! If it were in the week, he would soon know what to do! Or if his
Yainkel were there, he would have had something to say. Children
nowadays! Who knows what they don't do on Sabbath, as it is! And the
younger one is no better: he makes fun of the teacher in Cheder. When
the teacher is about to administer a blow, they pull his beard. And
who's going to find time to see after them--chopping and sawing a whole
day through.
He sighs and walks on and on, now and then glancing up into the sky:
"Lord of the Universe, of whom are you making trial? Shmerel Woodcutter?
If you do mean to give me the treasure, _give_ it me!" It seems to him
that the flame proceeds more slowly, but at this very moment he hears a
dog bark, and it has a bark he knows--that is the dog in Vissoke.
Vissoke is the first village you come to on leaving the town, and he
sees white patches twinkle in the dewy morning atmosphere, those are the
Vissoke peasant cottages. Then it occurs to him that he has gone a
Sabbath day's journey, and he stops short.
"Yes, I have gone a Sabbath day's journey," he thinks, and says,
speaking into the air: "You won't lead me astray! It is _not_ a
God-send! God does not make sport of us--it is the work of a demon." And
he feels a little angry with the thing, and turns and hurries toward the
town, thinking: "I won't say anything about it at home, because, first,
they won't believe me, and if they do, they'll laugh at me. And what
have I done to be proud of? The Creator knows how it was, and that is
enough for me. Besides, _she_ might be angry, who can tell? The children
are certainly naked and barefoot, poor little things! Why should they be
made to transgress the command to honor one's father?"
No, he won't breathe a word. He won't even ever remind the Almighty of
it. If he really has been good, the Almighty will remember without being
told.
And suddenly he is conscious of a strange, lightsome, inward calm, and
there is a delicious sensation in his limbs. Money is, after all, dross,
riches may even lead a man from the right way, and he feels inclined to
thank God for not having brought him into temptation by granting him his
wish. He would like, if only--to sing a song! "Our Father, our King" is
one he remembers from his early years, but he feels ashamed before
himself, and breaks off. He tries to recollect one of the cantor's
melodies, a Sinai tune--when suddenly he sees that the identical little
flame which he left behind him is once more preceding him, and moving
slowly townward, townward, and the distance between them neither
increases nor diminishes, as though the flame were taking a walk, and he
were taking a walk, just taking a little walk in honor of Sabbath. He is
glad in his heart and watches it. The sky pales, the stars begin to go
out, the east flushes, a narrow pink stream flows lengthwise over his
head, and still the flame flickers onward into the town, enters his own
street. There is his house. The door, he sees, is open. Apparently he
forgot to shut it. And, lo and behold! the flame goes in, the flame goes
in at his own house door! He follows, and sees it disappear beneath the
bed. All are asleep. He goes softly up to the bed, stoops down, and sees
the flame spinning round underneath it, like a top, always in the same
place; takes his dressing-gown, and throws it down under the bed, and
covers up the flame. No one hears him, and now a golden morning beam
steals in through the chink in the shutter.
He sits down on the bed, and makes a vow not to say a word to anyone
till Sabbath is over--not half a word, lest it cause desecration of the
Sabbath. _She_ could never hold her tongue, and the children certainly
not; they would at once want to count the treasure, to know how much
there was, and very soon the secret would be out of the house and into
the Shool, the house-of-study, and all the streets, and people would
talk about his treasure, about luck, and people would not say their
prayers, or wash their hands, or say grace, as they should, and he would
have led his household and half the town into sin. No, not a whisper!
And he stretches himself out on the bed, and pretends to be asleep.
And this was his reward: When, after concluding the Sabbath, he stooped
down and lifted up the dressing-gown under the bed, there lay a sack
with a million of gulden, an almost endless number--the bed was a large
one--and he became one of the richest men in the place.
And he lived happily all the years of his life.
Only, his wife was continually bringing up against him: "Lord of the
World, how could a man have such a heart of stone, as to sit a whole
summer day and not say a word, not a word, not to his own wife, not one
single word! And there was I" (she remembers) "crying over my prayer as
I said God of Abraham--and crying so--for there wasn't a dreier left in
the house."
Then he consoles her, and says with a smile:
"Who knows? Perhaps it was all thanks to your 'God of Abraham' that it
went off so well."
IT IS WELL
You ask how it is that I remained a Jew? Whose merit it is?
Not through my own merits nor those of my ancestors. I was a
six-year-old Cheder boy, my father a countryman outside Wilna, a
householder in a small way.
No, I remained a Jew thanks to the Schpol Grandfather.
How do I come to mention the Schpol Grandfather? What has the Schpol
Grandfather to do with it, you ask?
The Schpol Grandfather was no Schpol Grandfather then. He was a young
man, suffering exile from home and kindred, wandering with a troop of
mendicants from congregation to congregation, from friendly inn to
friendly inn, in all respects one of them. What difference his heart may
have shown, who knows? And after these journeyman years, the time of
revelation had not come even yet. He presented himself to the Rabbinical
Board in Wilna, took out a certificate, and became a Shochet in a
village. He roamed no more, but remained in the neighborhood of Wilna.
The Misnagdim, however, have a wonderful _flair_, and they suspected
something, began to worry and calumniate him, and finally they denounced
him to the Rabbinical authorities as a transgressor of the Law, of the
whole Law! What Misnagdim are capable of, to be sure!
As I said, I was then six years old. He used to come to us to slaughter
small cattle, or just to spend the night, and I was very fond of him.
Whom else, except my father and mother, should I have loved? I had a
teacher, a passionate man, a destroyer of souls, and this other was a
kind and genial creature, who made you feel happy if he only looked at
you. The calumnies did their work, and they took away his certificate.
My teacher must have had a hand in it, because he heard of it before
anyone, and the next time the Shochet came, he exclaimed "Apostate!"
took him by the scruff of his coat, and bundled him out of the house. It
cut me to the heart like a knife, only I was frightened to death of the
teacher, and never stirred. But a little later, when the teacher was
looking away, I escaped and began to run after the Shochet across the
road, which, not far from the house, lost itself in a wood that
stretched all the way to Wilna. What exactly I proposed to do to help
him, I don't know, but something drove me after the poor Shochet. I
wanted to say good-by to him, to have one more look into his nice,
kindly eyes.
But I ran and ran, and hurt my feet against the stones in the road, and
saw no one. I went to the right, down into the wood, thinking I would
rest a little on the soft earth of the wood. I was about to sit down,
when I heard a voice (it sounded like his voice) farther on in the wood,
half speaking and half singing. I went softly towards the voice, and saw
him some way off, where he stood swaying to and fro under a tree. I went
up to him--he was reciting the Song of Songs. I look closer and see that
the tree under which he stands is different from the other trees. The
others are still bare of leaves, and this one is green and in full leaf,
it shines like the sun, and stretches its flowery branches over the
Shochet's head like a tent. And a quantity of birds hop among the twigs
and join in singing the Song of Songs. I am so astonished that I stand
there with open mouth and eyes, rooted like the trees.
He ends his chant, the tree is extinguished, the little birds are
silent, and he turns to me, and says affectionately:
"Listen, Yuedele,"--Yuedel is my name--"I have a request to make of you."
"Really?" I answer joyfully, and I suppose he wishes me to bring him out
some food, and I am ready to run and bring him our whole Sabbath dinner,
when he says to me:
"Listen, keep what you saw to yourself."
This sobers me, and I promise seriously and faithfully to hold my
tongue.
"Listen again. You are going far away, very far away, and the road is a
long road."
I wonder, however should I come to travel so far? And he goes on to say:
"They will knock the Rebbe's Torah out of your head, and you will forget
Father and Mother, but see you keep to your name! You are called
Yuedel--remain a Jew!"
I am frightened, but cry out from the bottom of my heart:
"Surely! As surely may I live!"
Then, because my own idea clung to me, I added:
"Don't you want something to eat?"
And before I finished speaking, he had vanished.
The second week after they fell upon us and led me away as a Cantonist,
to be brought up among the Gentiles and turned into a soldier.
* * * * *
Time passed, and I forgot everything, as he had foretold. They knocked
it all out of my head.
I served far away, deep in Russia, among snows and terrific frosts, and
never set eyes on a Jew. There may have been hidden Jews about, but I
knew nothing of them, I knew nothing of Sabbath and festival, nothing of
any fast. I forgot everything.
But I held fast to my name!
I did not change my coin.
The more I forgot, the more I was inclined to be quit of my torments and
trials--to make an end of them by agreeing to a Christian name, but
whenever the bad thought came into my head, he appeared before me, the
same Shochet, and I heard his voice say to me, "Keep your name, remain a
Jew!"
And I knew for certain that it was no empty dream, because every time I
saw him _older_ and _older_, his beard and earlocks greyer, his face
paler. Only his eyes remained the same kind eyes, and his voice, which
sounded like a violin, never altered.
Once they flogged me, and he stood by and wiped the cold sweat off my
forehead, and stroked my face, and said softly: "Don't cry out! We ought
to suffer! Remain a Jew," and I bore it without a cry, without a moan,
as though they had been flogging _not_-me.
* * * * *
Once, during the last year, I had to go as a sentry to a public house
behind the town. It was evening, and there was a snow-storm. The wind
lifted patches of snow, and ground them to needles, rubbed them to dust,
and this snow-dust and these snow-needles were whirled through the air,
flew into one's face and pricked--you couldn't keep an eye open, you
couldn't draw your breath! Suddenly I saw some people walking past me,
not far away, and one of them said in Yiddish, "This is the first night
of Passover." Whether it was a voice from God, or whether some people
really passed me, to this day I don't know, but the words fell upon my
heart like lead, and I had hardly reached the tavern and begun to walk
up and down, when a longing came over me, a sort of heartache, that is
not to be described. I wanted to recite the Haggadah, and not a word of
it could I recall! Not even the Four Questions I used to ask my father.
I felt it all lay somewhere deep down in my heart. I used to know so
much of it, when I was only six years old. I felt, if only I could have
recalled one simple word, the rest would have followed and risen out of
my memory one after the other, like sleepy birds from beneath the snow.
But that one first word is just what I cannot remember! Lord of the
Universe, I cried fervently, one word, only one word! As it seems, I
made my prayer in a happy hour, for "we were slaves" came into my head
just as if it had been thrown down from Heaven. I was overjoyed! I was
so full of joy that I felt it brimming over. And then the rest all came
back to me, and as I paced up and down on my watch, with my musket on my
shoulder, I recited and sang the Haggadah to the snowy world around. I
drew it out of me, word after word, like a chain of golden links, like
a string of pearls. O, but you won't understand, you couldn't
understand, unless you had been taken away there, too!
The wind, meanwhile, had fallen, the snow-storm had come to an end, and
there appeared a clear, twinkling sky, and a shining world of diamonds.
It was silent all round, and ever so wide, and ever so white, with a
sweet, peaceful, endless whiteness. And over this calm, wide, whiteness,
there suddenly appeared something still whiter, and lighter, and
brighter, wrapped in a robe and a prayer-scarf, the prayer-scarf over
its shoulders, and over the prayer-scarf, in front, a silvery white
beard; and above the beard, two shining eyes, and above them, a
sparkling crown, a cap with gold and silver ornaments. And it came
nearer and nearer, and went past me, but as it passed me it said:
"It is well!"
It sounded like a violin, and then the figure vanished.
But it was the same eyes, the same voice.
I took Schpol on my way home, and went to see the Old Man, for the Rebbe
of Schpol was called by the people Der Alter, the "Schpol Grandfather."
And I recognized him again, and he recognized me!
WHENCE A PROVERB
"Drunk all the year round, sober at Purim," is a Jewish proverb, and
people ought to know whence it comes.
In the days of the famous scholar, Reb Chayyim Vital, there lived in
Safed, in Palestine, a young man who (not of us be it spoken!) had not
been married a year before he became a widower. God's ways are not to be
understood. Such things will happen. But the young man was of the
opinion that the world, in as far as he was concerned, had come to an
end; that, as there is one sun in heaven, so his wife had been the one
woman in the world. So he went and sold all the merchandise in his
little shop and all the furniture of his room, and gave the proceeds to
the head of the Safed Academy, the Rosh ha-Yeshiveh, on condition that
he should be taken into the Yeshiveh and fed with the other scholars,
and that he should have a room to himself, where he might sit and learn
Torah.
The Rosh ha-Yeshiveh took the money for the Academy, and they
partitioned off a little room for the young man with some boards, in a
corner of the attic of the house-of-study. They carried in a sack with
straw, and vessels for washing, and the young man sat himself down to
the Talmud. Except on Sabbaths and holidays, when the householders
invited him to dinner, he never set eyes on a living creature. Food
sufficient for the day, and a clean shirt in honor of Sabbaths and
festivals, were carried up to him by the beadle, and whenever he heard
steps on the stair, he used to turn away, and stand with his face to the
wall, till whoever it was had gone out again and shut the door.
In a word, he became a Porush, for he lived separate from the world.
At first people thought he wouldn't persevere long, because he was a
lively youth by nature; but as week after week went by, and the Porush
sat and studied, and the tearful voice in which he intoned the Gemoreh
was heard in the street half through the night, or else he was seen at
the attic window, his pale face raised towards the sky, then they began
to believe in him, and they hoped he might in time become a mighty man
in Israel, and perhaps even a wonderworker. They said so to the Rebbe,
Chayyim Vital, but he listened, shook his head, and replied, "God grant
it may last."
Meantime a little "wonder" really happened. The beadle's little
daughter, who used sometimes to carry up the Porush's food for her
father, took it into her head that she must have one look at the Porush.
What does she? Takes off her shoes and stockings, and carries the food
to him barefoot, so noiselessly that she heard her own heart beat. But
the beating of her heart frightened her so much that she fell down half
the stairs, and was laid up for more than a month in consequence. In her
fever she told the whole story, and people began to believe in the
Porush more firmly than ever and to wait with increasing impatience till
he should become famous.
They described the occurrence to Reb Chayyim Vital, and again he shook
his head, and even sighed, and answered, "God grant he may be
victorious!" And when they pressed him for an explanation of these
words, Reb Chayyim answered, that as the Porush had left the world, not
so much for the sake of Heaven as on account of his grief for his wife,
it was to be feared that he would be sorely beset and tempted by the
"Other Side," and God grant he might not stumble and fall.
* * * * *
And Reb Chayyim Vital never spoke without good reason!
One day the Porush was sitting deep in a book, when he heard something
tapping at the door, and fear came over him. But as the tapping went on,
he rose, forgetting to close his book, went and opened the door--and in
walks a turkey. He lets it in, for it occurs to him that it would be
nice to have a living thing in the room. The turkey walks past him, and
goes and settles down quietly in a corner. And the Porush wonders what
this may mean, and sits down again to his book. Sitting there, he
remembers that it is going on for Purim. Has someone sent him a turkey
out of regard for his study of the Torah? What shall he do with the
turkey? Should anyone, he reflects, ask him to dinner, supposing it were
to be a poor man, he would send him the turkey on the eve of Purim, and
then he would satisfy himself with it also. He has not once tasted
fowl-meat since he lost his wife. Thinking thus, he smacked his lips,
and his mouth watered. He threw a glance at the turkey, and saw it
looking at him in a friendly way, as though it had quite understood his
intention, and was very glad to think it should have the honor of being
eaten by a Porush. He could not restrain himself, but was continually
lifting his eyes from his book to look at the turkey, till at last he
began to fancy the turkey was smiling at him. This startled him a
little, but all the same it made him happy to be smiled at by a living
creature.
The same thing happened at Minchah and Maariv. In the middle of the
Eighteen Benedictions, he could not for the life of him help looking
round every minute at the turkey, who continued to smile and smile.
Suddenly it seemed to him, he knew that smile well--the Almighty, who
had taken back his wife, had now sent him her smile to comfort him in
his loneliness, and he began to love the turkey. He thought how much
better it would be, if a _rich_ man were to invite him at Purim, so that
the turkey might live.
And he thought it in a propitious moment, as we shall presently see, but
meantime they brought him, as usual, a platter of groats with a piece of
bread, and he washed his hands, and prepared to eat.
No sooner, however, had he taken the bread into his hand, and was about
to bite into it, than the turkey moved out of its corner, and began
peck, peck, peck, towards the bread, by way of asking for some, and as
though to say it was hungry, too, and came and stood before him near the
table. The Porush thought, "He'd better have some, I don't want to be
unkind to him, to tease him," and he took the bread and the platter of
porridge, and set it down on the floor before the turkey, who pecked and
supped away to its heart's content.
Next day the Porush went over to the Rosh ha-Yeshiveh, and told him how
he had come to have a fellow-lodger; he used always to leave some
porridge over, and to-day he didn't seem to have had enough. The Rosh
ha-Yeshiveh saw a hungry face before him. He said he would tell this to
the Rebbe, Chayyim Vital, so that he might pray, and the evil spirit, if
such indeed it was, might depart. Meantime he would give orders for two
pieces of bread and two plates of porridge to be taken up to the attic,
so that there should be enough for both, the Porush and the turkey. Reb
Chayyim Vital, however, to whom the story was told in the name of the
Rosh ha-Yeshiveh, shook his head, and declared with a deep sigh that
this was only the beginning!
Meanwhile the Porush received a double portion and was satisfied, and
the turkey was satisfied, too. The turkey even grew fat. And in a couple
of weeks or so the Porush had become so much attached to the turkey that
he prayed every day to be invited for Purim by a _rich_ man, so that he
might not be tempted to destroy it.
And, as we intimated, _that_ temptation, anyhow, was spared him, for he
was invited to dinner by one of the principal householders in the place,
and there was not only turkey, but every kind of tasty dish, and wine
fit for a king. And the best Purim-players came to entertain the rich
man, his family, and the guests who had come to him after their feast at
home. And our Porush gave himself up to enjoyment, and ate and drank.
Perhaps he even drank rather more than he ate, for the wine was sweet
and grateful to the taste, and the warmth of it made its way into every
limb.
Then suddenly a change came over him.
The Ahasuerus-Esther play had begun. Vashti will not do the king's
pleasure and come in to the banquet as God made her. Esther soon finds
favor in her stead, she is given over to Hegai, the keeper of the women,
to be purified, six months with oil of myrrh and six months with other
sweet perfumes. And our Porush grew hot all over, and it was dark before
his eyes; then red streaks flew across his field of vision, like tongues
of fire, and he was overcome by a strange, wild longing to be back at
home, in the attic of the house-of-study--a longing for his own little
room, his quiet corner, a longing for the turkey, and he couldn't bear
it, and even before they had said grace he jumped up and ran away home.
He enters his room, looks into the corner habitually occupied by the
turkey, and stands amazed--the turkey has turned into a woman, a most
beautiful woman, such as the world never saw, and he begins to tremble
all over. And she comes up to him, and takes him around the neck with
her warm, white, naked arms, and the Porush trembles more and more, and
begs, "Not here, not here! It is a holy place, there are holy books
lying about." Then she whispers into his ear that she is the Queen of
Sheba, that she lives not far from the house-of-study, by the river,
among the tall reeds, in a palace of crystal, given her by King Solomon.
And she draws him along, she wants him to go with her to her palace.
And he hesitates and resists--and he goes.
Next day, there was no turkey, and no Porush, either!
They went to Reb Chayyim Vital, who told them to look for him along the
bank of the river, and they found him in a swamp among the tall reeds,
more dead than alive.
They rescued him and brought him round, but from that day he took to
drink.
And Reb Chayyim Vital said, it all came from his great longing for the
Queen of Sheba, that when he drank, he saw her; and they were to let him
drink, only not at Purim, because at that time she would have great
power over him.
Hence the proverb, "Drunk all the year round, sober at Purim."
MORDECAI SPEKTOR
Born, 1859, in Uman, Government of Kieff, Little Russia; education
Hasidic; entered business in 1878; wrote first sketch, A Roman ohn
Liebe, in 1882; contributor to Zedernbaum's Juedisches Volksblatt,
1884-1887; founded, in 1888, and edited Der Hausfreund, at Warsaw;
editor of Warsaw daily papers, Unser Leben, and (at present, 1912) Dos
neie Leben; writer of novels, historical romances, and sketches in
Yiddish; contributor to numerous periodicals; compiled a volume of more
than two thousand Jewish proverbs.
AN ORIGINAL STRIKE
I was invited to a wedding.
Not a wedding at which ladies wore low dress, and scattered powder as
they walked, and the men were in frock-coats and white gloves, and had
waxed moustaches.
Not a wedding where you ate of dishes with outlandish names, according
to a printed card, and drank wine dating, according to the label, from
the reign of King Sobieski, out of bottles dingy with the dust of
yesterday.
No, but a Jewish wedding, where the men, women, and girls wore the
Sabbath and holiday garments in which they went to Shool; a wedding
where you whet your appetite with sweet-cakes and apple-tart, and sit
down to Sabbath fish, with fresh rolls, golden soup, stuffed fowl, and
roast duck, and the wine is in large, clear, white bottles; a wedding
with a calling to the Reading of the Torah of the bridegroom, a party on
the Sabbath preceding the wedding, a good-night-play performed by the
musicians, and a bridegroom's-dinner in his native town, with a table
spread for the poor.
Reb Yitzchok-Aizik Berkover had made a feast for the poor at the wedding
of each of his children, and now, on the occasion of the marriage of his
youngest daughter, he had invited all the poor of the little town
Lipovietz to his village home, where he had spent all his life.
It is the day of the ceremony under the canopy, two o'clock in the
afternoon, and the poor, sent for early in the morning by a messenger,
with the three great wagons, are not there. Lipovietz is not more than
five versts away--what can have happened? The parents of the bridal
couple and the assembled guests wait to proceed with the ceremony.
At last the messenger comes riding on a horse unharnessed from his
vehicle, but no poor.
"Why have you come back alone?" demands Reb Yitzchok-Aizik.
"They won't come!" replies the messenger.
"What do you mean by 'they won't come'?" asked everyone in surprise.
"They say that unless they are given a kerbel apiece, they won't come to
the wedding."
All laugh, and the messenger goes on:
"There was a wedding with a dinner to the poor in Lipovietz to-day, too,
and they have eaten and drunk all they can, and now they've gone on
strike, and declare that unless they are promised a kerbel a head, they
won't move from the spot. The strike leaders are the Crooked Man with
two crutches, Mekabbel the Long, Feitel the Stammerer, and Yainkel
Fonfatch; the others would perhaps have come, but these won't let them.
So I didn't know what to do. I argued a whole hour, and got nothing by
it, so then I unharnessed a horse, and came at full speed to know what
was to be done."
We of the company could not stop laughing, but Reb Yitzchok-Aizik was
very angry.
"Well, and you bargained with them? Won't they come for less?" he asked
the messenger.
"Yes, I bargained, and they won't take a kopek less."
"Have their prices gone up so high as all that?" exclaimed Reb
Yitzchok-Aizik, with a satirical laugh. "Why did you leave the wagons?
We shall do without the tramps, that's all!"
"How could I tell? I didn't know what to do. I was afraid you would be
displeased. Now I'll go and fetch the wagons back."
"Wait! Don't be in such a hurry, take time!"
Reb Yitzchok-Aizik began consulting with the company and with himself.
"What an idea! Who ever heard of such a thing? Poor people telling me
what to do, haggling with me over my wanting to give them a good dinner
and a nice present each, and saying they must be paid in rubles,
otherwise it's no bargain, ha! ha! For two guldens each it's not worth
their while? It cost them too much to stock the ware? Thirty kopeks
wouldn't pay them? I like their impertinence! Mischief take them, I
shall do without them!
"Let the musicians play! Where is the beadle? They can begin putting the
veil on the bride."
But directly afterwards he waved his hands.
"Wait a little longer. It is still early. Why should it happen to _me_,
why should my pleasure be spoilt? Now I've got to marry my youngest
daughter without a dinner to the poor! I would have given them half a
ruble each, it's not the money I mind, but fancy bargaining with me!
Well, there, I have done my part, and if they won't come, I'm sure
they're not wanted; afterwards they'll be sorry; they don't get a
wedding like this every day. We shall do without them."
"Well, can they put the veil on the bride?" the beadle came and
inquired.
"Yes, they can.... No, tell them to wait a little longer!"
Nearly all the guests, who were tired of waiting, cried out that the
tramps could very well be missed.
Reb Yitzchok-Aizik's face suddenly assumed another expression, the anger
vanished, and he turned to me and a couple, of other friends, and asked
if we would drive to the town, and parley with the revolted
almsgatherers.
"He has no brains, one can't depend on him," he said, referring to the
messenger.
A horse was harnessed to a conveyance, and we drove off, followed by the
mounted messenger.
"A revolt--a strike of almsgatherers, how do you like that?" we asked
one another all the way. We had heard of workmen striking, refusing to
work except for a higher wage, and so forth, but a strike of
paupers--paupers insisting on larger alms as pay for eating a free
dinner, such a thing had never been known.
In twenty minutes time we drove into Lipovietz.
In the market-place, in the centre of the town, stood the three great
peasant wagons, furnished with fresh straw. The small horses were
standing unharnessed, eating out of their nose-bags; round the wagons
were a hundred poor folk, some dumb, others lame, the greater part
blind, and half the town urchins with as many men.
All of them were shouting and making a commotion.
The Crooked One sat on a wagon, and banged it with his crutches; Long
Mekabbel, with a red plaster on his neck, stood beside him.
These two leaders of the revolt were addressing the people, the meek of
the earth.
"Ha, ha!" exclaimed Long Mekabbel, as he caught sight of us and the
messenger, "they have come to beg our acceptance!"
"To beg our acceptance!" shouted the Crooked One, and banged his crutch.
"Why won't you come to the wedding, to the dinner?" we inquired.
"Everyone will be given alms."
"How much?" they asked all together.
"We don't know, but you will take what they offer."
"Will they give it us in kerblech? Because, if not, we don't go."
"There will be a hole in the sky if you don't go," cried some of the
urchins present.
The almsgatherers threw themselves on the urchins with their sticks, and
there was a bit of a row.
Mekabbel the Long, standing on the cart, drew himself to his full
height, and began to shout:
"Hush, hush, hush! Quiet, you crazy cripples! One can't hear oneself
speak! Let us hear what those have to say who are worth listening to!"
and he turned to us with the words:
"You must know, dear Jews, that unless they distribute kerblech among
us, we shall not budge. Never you fear! Reb Yitzchok-Aizik won't marry
his youngest daughter without us, and where is he to get others of us
now? To send to Lunetz would cost him more in conveyances, and he would
have to put off the marriage."
"What do they suppose? That because we are poor people they can do what
they please with us?" and a new striker hitched himself up by the
wheel, blind of one eye, with a tied-up jaw. "No one can oblige us to
go, even the chief of police and the governor cannot force us--either
it's kerblech, or we stay where we are."
"K-ke-kkerb-kkerb-lech!!" came from Feitel the Stammerer.
"Nienblech!" put in Yainkel Fonfatch, speaking through his small nose.
"No, more!" called out a couple of merry paupers.
"Kerblech, kerblech!" shouted the rest in concert.
And through their shouting and their speeches sounded such a note of
anger and of triumph, it seemed as though they were pouring out all the
bitterness of soul collected in the course of their sad and luckless
lives.
They had always kept silence, had _had_ to keep silence, _had_ to
swallow the insults offered them along with the farthings, and the dry
bread, and the scraped bones, and this was the first time they had been
able to retaliate, the first time they had known how it felt to be
entreated by the fortunate in all things, and they were determined to
use their opportunity of asserting themselves to the full, to take their
revenge. In the word kerblech lay the whole sting of their resentment.
And while we talked and reasoned with them, came a second messenger from
Reb Yitzchok-Aizik, to say that the paupers were to come at once, and
they would be given a ruble each.
There was a great noise and scrambling, the three wagons filled with
almsgatherers, one crying out, "O my bad hand!" another, "O my foot!"
and a third, "O my poor bones!" The merry ones made antics, and sang in
their places, while the horses were put in, and the procession started
at a cheerful trot. The urchins gave a great hurrah, and threw little
stones after it, with squeals and whistles.
The poor folks must have fancied they were being pelted with flowers and
sent off with songs, they looked so happy in the consciousness of their
victory.
For the first and perhaps the last time in their lives, they had spoken
out, and got their own way.
After the "canopy" and the chicken soup, that is, at "supper," tables
were spread for the friends of the family and separate ones for the
almsgatherers.
Reb Yitzchok-Aizik and the members of his own household served the poor
with their own hands, pressing them to eat and drink.
"Le-Chayyim to you, Reb Yitzchok-Aizik! May you have pleasure in your
children, and be a great man, a great rich man!" desired the poor.
"Long life, long life to all of you, brethren! Drink in health, God help
All-Israel, and you among them!" replied Reb Yitzchok-Aizik.
After supper the band played, and the almsgatherers, with Reb
Yitzchok-Aizik, danced merrily in a ring round the bridegroom.
Then who was so happy as Reb Yitzchok-Aizik? He danced in the ring, the
silk skirts of his long coat flapped and flew like eagles' wings, tears
of joy fell from his shining eyes, and his spirits rose to the seventh
heaven.
He laughed and cried like a child, and exchanged embraces with the
almsgatherers.
"Brothers!" he exclaimed as he danced, "let us be merry, let us be Jews!
Musicians, give us something cheerful--something gayer, livelier,
louder!"
"This is what you call a Jewish wedding!"
"This is how a Jew makes merry!"
So the guests and the almsgatherers clapped their hands in time to the
music.
Yes, dear readers, it _was_ what I call a Jewish Wedding!
A GLOOMY WEDDING
They handed Gittel a letter that had come by post, she put on her
spectacles, sat down by the window, and began to read.
She read, and her face began to shine, and the wrinkled skin took on a
little color. It was plain that what she read delighted her beyond
measure, she devoured the words, caught her breath, and wept aloud in
the fulness of her joy.
"At last, at last! Blessed be His dear Name, whom I am not worthy to
mention! I do not know, Gottinyu, how to thank Thee for the mercy Thou
hast shown me. Beile! Where is Beile? Where is Yossel? Children! Come,
make haste and wish me joy, a great joy has befallen us! Send for
Avremele, tell him to come with Zlatke and all the children."
Thus Gittel, while she read the letter, never ceased calling every one
into the room, never ceased reading and calling, calling and reading,
and devouring the words as she read.
Every soul who happened to be at home came running.
"Good luck to you! Good luck to us all! Moishehle has become engaged in
Warsaw, and invites us all to the wedding," Gittel explained. "There,
read the letter, Lord of the World, may it be in a propitious hour, may
we all have comfort in one another, may we hear nothing but good news of
one another and of All-Israel! Read it, read it, children! He writes
that he has a very beautiful bride, well-favored, with a large dowry.
Lord of the World, I am not worthy of the mercy Thou hast shown me!"
repeated Gittel over and over, as she paced the room with uplifted
hands, while her daughter Beile took up the letter in her turn. The
children and everyone in the house, including the maid from the kitchen,
with rolled-up sleeves and wet hands, encircled Beile as she read aloud.
"Read louder, Beiletshke, so that I can hear, so that we can all hear,"
begged Gittel, and there were tears of happiness in her eyes.
The children jumped for joy to see Grandmother so happy. The word
"wedding," which Beile read out of the letter, contained a promise of
all delightful things: musicians, pancakes, new frocks and suits, and
they could not keep themselves from dancing. The maid, too, was heartily
pleased, she kept on singing out, "Oi, what a bride, beautiful as gold!"
and did not know what to be doing next--should she go and finish cooking
the dinner, or should she pull down her sleeves and make holiday?
The hiss of a pot boiling over in the kitchen interrupted the
letter-reading, and she was requested to go and attend to it forthwith.
"The bride sends us a separate greeting, long life to her, may she live
when my bones are dust. Let us go to the provisor, he shall read it; it
is written in French."
The provisor, the apothecary's foreman, who lived in the same house,
said the bride's letter was not written in French, but in Polish, that
she called Gittel her second mother, that she loved her son Moses as her
life, that he was her world, that she held herself to be the most
fortunate of girls, since God had given her Moses, that Gittel (once
more!) was her second mother, and she felt like a dutiful daughter
towards her, and hoped that Gittel would love her as her own child.
The bride declared further that she kissed her new sister, Beile, a
thousand times, together with Zlatke and their husbands and children,
and she signed herself "Your forever devoted and loving daughter
Regina."
An hour later all Gittel's children were assembled round her, her eldest
son Avremel with his wife, Zlatke and her little ones, Beile's husband,
and her son-in-law Yossel. All read the letter with eager curiosity,
brandy and spice-cakes were placed on the table, wine was sent for, they
drank healths, wished each other joy, and began to talk of going to the
wedding.
Gittel, very tired with all she had gone through this day, went to lie
down for a while to rest her head, which was all in a whirl, but the
others remained sitting at the table, and never stopped talking of
Moisheh.
"I can imagine the sort of engagement Moisheh has made, begging his
pardon," remarked the daughter-in-law, and wiped her pale lips.
"I should think so, a man who's been a bachelor up to thirty! It's easy
to fancy the sort of bride, and the sort of family she has, if they
accepted Moisheh as a suitor," agreed the daughter.
"God helping, this ought to make a man of him," sighed Moisheh's elder
brother, "he's cost us trouble and worry enough."
"It's your fault," Yossel told him. "If I'd been his elder brother, he
would have turned out differently! I should have directed him like a
father, and taken him well in hand."
"You think so, but when God wishes to punish a man through his own child
going astray, nothing is of any use; these are not the old times, when
young people feared a Rebbe, and respected their elders. Nowadays the
world is topsyturvy, and no sooner has a boy outgrown his childhood than
he does what he pleases, and parents are nowhere. What have I left
undone to make something out of him, so that he should be a credit to
his family? Then, he was left an orphan very early; perhaps he would
have obeyed his father (may he enter a lightsome paradise!), but for a
brother and his mother, he paid them as much attention as last year's
snow, and, if you said anything to him, he answered rudely, and neither
coaxing nor scolding was any good. Now, please God, he'll make a fresh
start, and give up his antics before it's too late. His poor mother!
She's had trouble enough on his account, as we all know."
Beile let fall a tear and said:
"If our father (may he be our kind advocate!) were alive, Moishehle
would never have made an engagement like this. Who knows what sort of
connections they will be! I can see them, begging his pardon, from here!
Is he likely to have asked anyone's advice? He always had a will of his
own--did what he wanted to do, never asked his mother, or his sister, or
his brother, beforehand. Now he's a bridegroom at thirty if he's a day,
and we are all asked to the wedding, are we really? And we shall soon
all be running to see the fine sight, such as never was seen before. We
are no such fools! He thinks _himself_ the clever one now! So he wants
us to be at the wedding? Only says it out of politeness."
"We must go, all the same," said Avremel.
"Go and welcome, if you want to--you won't catch _me_ there," answered
his sister.
There was a deal more discussion and disputing about not going to the
wedding, and only congratulating by telegram, for good manners' sake.
Since he had asked no one's advice, and engaged himself without them,
let him get married without them, too!
Gittel, up in her bedroom, could not so soon compose herself after the
events of the day. What she had experienced was no trifle. Moishehle
engaged to be married! She had been through so much on his account in
the course of her life, she had loved him, her youngest born, so dearly!
He was such a beautiful child that the light of his countenance dazzled
you, and bright as the day, so that people opened ears and mouth to hear
him talk, and God and men alike envied her the possession of such a boy.
"I counted on making a match for him, as I did with Avremel before him.
He was offered the best connections, with the families of the greatest
Rabbis. But, no--no--he wanted to go on studying. 'Study here, study
there,' said I, 'sixteen years old and a bachelor! If you want to study,
can't you study at your father-in-law's, eating Koest? There are books in
plenty, thank Heaven, of your father's.' No, no, he wanted to go and
study elsewhere, asked nobody's advice, and made off, and for two months
I never had a line. I nearly went out of my mind. Then, suddenly, there
came a letter, begging my pardon for not having said good-by, and would
I forgive him, and send him some money, because he had nothing to eat.
It tore my heart to think my Moishehle, who used to make me happy
whenever he enjoyed a meal, should hunger. I sent him some money, I went
on sending him money for three years, after that he stopped asking for
it. I begged him to come home, he made no reply. 'I don't wish to
quarrel with Avremel, my sister, and her husband,' he wrote later, 'we
cannot live together in peace.' Why? I don't know! Then, for a time, he
left off writing altogether, and the messages we got from him sounded
very sad. Now he was in Kieff, now in Odessa, now in Charkoff, and they
told us he was living like any Gentile, had not the look of a Jew at
all. Some said he was living with a Gentile woman, a countess, and would
never marry in his life."
Five years ago he had suddenly appeared at home, "to see his mother," as
he said. Gittel did not recognize him, he was so changed. The rest found
him quite the stranger: he had a "goyish" shaven face, with a twisted
moustache, and was got up like a rich Gentile, with a purse full of
bank-notes. His family were ashamed to walk abroad with him, Gittel
never ceased weeping and imploring him to give up the countess, remain a
Jew, stay with his mother, and she, with God's help, would make an
excellent match for him, if he would only alter his appearance and ways
just a little. Moishehle solemnly assured his mother that he was a Jew,
that there was no countess, but that he wouldn't remain at home for a
million rubles, first, because he had business elsewhere, and secondly,
he had no fancy for his native town, there was nothing there for him to
do, and to dispute with his brother and sister about religious piety was
not worth his while.
So Moishehle departed, and Gittel wept, wondering why he was different
from the other children, seeing they all had the same mother, and she
had lived and suffered for all alike. Why would he not stay with her at
home? What would he have wanted for there? God be praised, not to sin
with her tongue, thanks to God first, and then to _him_ (a lightsome
paradise be his!), they were provided for, with a house and a few
thousand rubles, all that was necessary for their comfort, and a little
ready money besides. The house alone, not to sin with her tongue, would
bring in enough to make a living. Other people envy us, but it doesn't
happen to please him, and he goes wandering about the world--without a
wife and without a home--a man twenty and odd years old, and without a
home!
The rest of the family were secretly well content to be free of such a
poor creature--"the further off, the better--the shame is less."
A letter from him came very seldom after this, and for the last two
years he had dropped out altogether. Nobody was surprised, for everyone
was convinced that Moisheh would never come to anything. Some told that
he was in prison, others knew that he had gone abroad and was being
pursued, others, that he had hung himself because he was tired of life,
and that before his death he had repented of all his sins, only it was
too late.
His relations heard all these reports, and were careful to keep them
from his mother, because they were not sure that the bad news was true.
Gittel bore the pain at her heart in silence, weeping at times over her
Moishehle, who had got into bad ways--and now, suddenly, this precious
letter with its precious news: Her Moishehle is about to marry, and
invites them to the wedding!
Thus Gittel, lying in bed in her own room, recalled everything she had
suffered through her undutiful son, only now--now everything was
forgotten and forgiven, and her mother's heart was full of love for her
Moishehle, just as in the days when he toddled about at her apron, and
pleased his mother and everyone else.
All her thoughts were now taken up with getting ready to attend the
wedding; the time was so short--there were only three weeks left. When
her other children were married, Gittel began her preparations three
months ahead, and now there were only three weeks.
Next day she took out her watered silk dress, with the green satin
flowers, and hung it up to air, examined it, lest there should be a hook
missing. After that she polished her long ear-rings with chalk, her
pearls, her rings, and all her other ornaments, and bought a new yellow
silk kerchief for her head, with a large flowery pattern in a lighter
shade.
A week before the journey to Warsaw they baked spice-cakes, pancakes,
and almond-rolls to take with her, "from the bridegroom's side," and
ordered a wig for the bride. When her eldest son was married, Gittel had
also given the bride silver candlesticks for Friday evenings, and
presented her with a wig for the Veiling Ceremony.
And before she left, Gittel went to her husband's grave, and asked him
to be present at the wedding as a good advocate for the newly-married
pair.
Gittel started for Warsaw in grand style, and cheerful and happy, as
befits a mother going to the wedding of her favorite son. All those who
accompanied her to the station declared that she looked younger and
prettier by twenty years, and made a beautiful bridegroom's mother.
Besides wedding presents for the bride, Gittel took with her money for
wedding expenses, so that she might play her part with becoming
lavishness, and people should not think her Moishehle came, bless and
preserve us, of a low-born family--to show that he was none so forlorn
but he had, God be praised and may it be for a hundred and twenty years
to come! a mother, and a sister, and brothers, and came of a well-to-do
family. She would show them that she could be as fine a bridegroom's
mother as anyone, even, thank God, in Warsaw. Moishehle was her last
child, and she grudged him nothing. Were _he_ (may he be a good
intercessor!) alive, he would certainly have graced the wedding better,
and spent more money, but she would spare nothing to make a good figure
on the occasion. She would treat every connection of the bride to a
special dance-tune, give the musicians a whole five-ruble-piece for
their performance of the Vivat, and two dreierlech for the Kosher-Tanz,
beside something for the Rav, the cantor, and the beadle, and alms for
the poor--what should she save for? She has no more children to marry
off--blessed be His dear Name, who had granted her life to see her
Moishehle's wedding!
Thus happily did Gittel start for Warsaw.
One carriage after another drove up to the wedding-reception room in
Dluga Street, Warsaw, ladies and their daughters, all in evening dress,
and smartly attired gentlemen, alighted and went in.
The room was full, the band played, ladies and gentlemen were dancing,
and those who were not, talked of the bride and bridegroom, and said how
fortunate they considered Regina, to have secured such a presentable
young man, lively, educated, and intelligent, with quite a fortune,
which he had made himself, and a good business. Ten thousand rubles
dowry with the perfection of a husband was a rare thing nowadays, when a
poor professional man, a little doctor without practice, asked fifteen
thousand. It was true, they said, that Regina was a pretty girl and a
credit to her parents, but how many pretty, bright girls had more money
than Regina, and sat waiting?
It was above all the mothers of the young ladies present who talked low
in this way among themselves.
The bride sat on a chair at the end of the room, ladies and young girls
on either side of her; Gittel, the bridegroom's mother in her watered
silk dress, with the large green satin flowers, was seated between two
ladies with dresses cut so low that Gittel could not bear to look at
them--women with husbands and children daring to show themselves like
that at a wedding! Then she could not endure the odor of their bare
skin, the powder, pomade, and perfumes with which they were smeared,
sprinkled, and wetted, even to their hair. All these strange smells
tickled Gittel's nose, and went to her head like a fume. She sat
between the two ladies, feeling cramped and shut in, unable to stir, and
would gladly have gone away. Only whither? Where should she, the
bridegroom's mother, be sitting, if not near the bride, at the upper end
of the room? But all the ladies sitting there are half-naked. Should she
sit near the door? That would never do. And Gittel remained sitting, in
great embarrassment, between the two women, and looked on at the
reception, and saw nothing but a room full of _decolletees_, ladies and
girls.
Gittel felt more and more uncomfortable, it made her quite faint to look
at them.
"One can get over the girls, young things, because a girl has got to
please, although no Jewish daughter ought to show herself to everyone
like that, but what are you to do with present-day children, especially
in a dissolute city like Warsaw? But young women, and women who have
husbands and children, and no need, thank God, to please anyone, how are
they not ashamed before God and other people and their own children, to
come to a wedding half-naked, like loose girls in a public house? Jewish
daughters, who ought not to be seen uncovered by the four walls of their
room, to come like that to a wedding! To a Jewish wedding!... Tpfu,
tpfu, I'd like to spit at this newfangled world, may God not punish me
for these words! It is enough to make one faint to see such a display
among Jews!"
After the ceremony under the canopy, which was erected in the centre of
the room, the company sat down to the table, and Gittel was again seated
at the top, between the two women before mentioned, whose perfumes went
to her head.
She felt so queer and so ill at ease that she could not partake of the
dinner, her mouth seemed locked, and the tears came in her eyes.
When they rose from table, Gittel sought out a place removed from the
"upper end," and sat down in a window, but presently the bride's mother,
also in _decollete_, caught sight of her, and went and took her by the
hand.
"Why are you sitting here, Mechuteneste? Why are you not at the top?"
"I wanted to rest myself a little."
"Oh, no, no, come and sit there," said the lady, led her away by force,
and seated her between the two ladies with the perfumes.
Long, long did she sit, feeling more and more sick and dizzy. If only
she could have poured out her heart to some one person, if she could
have exchanged a single word with anybody during that whole evening, it
would have been a relief, but there was no one to speak to. The music
played, there was dancing, but Gittel could see nothing more. She felt
an oppression at her heart, and became covered with perspiration, her
head grew heavy, and she fell from her chair.
"The bridegroom's mother has fainted!" was the outcry through the whole
room. "Water, water!"
They fetched water, discovered a doctor among the guests, and he led
Gittel into another room, and soon brought her round.
The bride, the bridegroom, the bride's mother, and the two ladies ran
in:
"What can have caused it? Lie down! How do you feel now? Perhaps you
would like a sip of lemonade?" they all asked.
"Thank you, I want nothing, I feel better already, leave me alone for a
while. I shall soon recover myself, and be all right."
So Gittel was left alone, and she breathed more easily, her head stopped
aching, she felt like one let out of prison, only there was a pain at
her heart. The tears which had choked her all day now began to flow, and
she wept abundantly. The music never ceased playing, she heard the sound
of the dancers' feet and the directions of the master of ceremonies; the
floor shook, Gittel wept, and tried with all her might to keep from
sobbing, so that people should not hear and come in and disturb her. She
had not wept so since the death of her husband, and this was the wedding
of her favorite son!
By degrees she ceased to weep altogether, dried her eyes, and sat
quietly talking to herself of the many things that passed through her
head.
"Better that _he_ (may he enter a lightsome paradise!) should have died
than lived to see what I have seen, and the dear delight which I have
had, at the wedding of my youngest child! Better that I myself should
not have lived to see his marriage canopy. Canopy, indeed! Four sticks
stuck up in the middle of the room to make fun with, for people to play
at being married, like monkeys! Then at table: no Seven Blessings, not a
Jewish word, not a Jewish face, no Minyan to be seen, only shaven
Gentiles upon Gentiles, a roomful of naked women and girls that make you
sick to look at them. Moishehle had better have married a poor orphan,
I shouldn't have been half so ashamed or half so unhappy."
Gittel called to mind the sort of a bridegroom's mother she had been at
the marriage of her eldest son, and the satisfaction she had felt. Four
hundred women had accompanied her to the Shool when Avremele was called
to the Reading of the Law as a bridegroom, and they had scattered nuts,
almonds, and raisins down upon him as he walked; then the party before
the wedding, and the ceremony of the canopy, and the procession with the
bride and bridegroom to the Shool, the merry home-coming, the golden
soup, the bridegroom brought at supper time to the sound of music, the
cantor and his choir, who sang while they sat at table, the Seven
Blessings, the Vivat played for each one separately, the Kosher-Tanz,
the dance round the bridegroom--and the whole time it had been Gittel
here and Gittel there: "Good luck to you, Gittel, may you be happy in
the young couple and in all your other children, and live to dance at
the wedding of your youngest" (it was a delight and no mistake!). "Where
is Gittel?" she hears them cry. "The uncle, the aunt, a cousin have paid
for a dance for the Mechuteneste on the bridegroom's side! Play,
musicians all!" The company make way for her, and she dances with the
uncle, the aunt, and the cousin, and all the rest clap their hands. She
is tired with dancing, but still they call "Gittel"! An old friend sings
a merry song in her honor. "Play, musicians all!" And Gittel dances on,
the company clap their hands, and wish her all that is good, and she is
penetrated with genuine happiness and the joy of the occasion. Then,
then, when the guests begin to depart, and the mothers of bridegroom and
bride whisper together about the forthcoming Veiling Ceremony, she sees
the bride in her wig, already a wife, her daughter-in-law! Her jam
pancakes and almond-rolls are praised by all, and what cakes are left
over from the Veiling Ceremony are either snatched one by one, or else
they are seized wholesale by the young people standing round the table,
so that she should not see, and they laugh and tease her. That is the
way to become a mother-in-law! And here, of course, the whole of the
pancakes and sweet-cakes and almond-rolls which she brought have never
so much as been unpacked, and are to be thrown away or taken home again,
as you please! A shame! No one came to her for cakes. The wig, too, may
be thrown away or carried back--Moishehle told her it was not required,
it wouldn't quite do. The bride accepted the silver candlesticks with
embarrassment, as though Gittel had done something to make her feel
awkward, and some girls who were standing by smiled, "Regina has been
given candlesticks for the candle-blessing on Fridays--ha, ha, ha!"
The bridal couple with the girl's parents came in to ask how she felt,
and interrupted the current of her thoughts.
"We shall drive home now, people are leaving," they said.
"The wedding is over," they told her, "everything in life comes to a
speedy end."
Gittel remembered that when Avremel was married, the festivities had
lasted a whole week, till over the second cheerful Sabbath, when the
bride, the new daughter-in-law, was led to the Shool!
The day after the wedding Gittel drove home, sad, broken in spirit, as
people return from the cemetery where they have buried a child, where
they have laid a fragment of their own heart, of their own life, under
the earth.
Driving home in the carriage, she consoled herself with this at least:
"A good thing that Beile and Zlatke, Avremel and Yossel were not there.
The shame will be less, there will be less talk, nobody will know what I
am suffering."
Gittel arrived the picture of gloom.
When she left for the wedding, she had looked suddenly twenty years
younger, and now she looked twenty years older than before!
POVERTY
I was living in Mezkez at the time, and Seinwill Bookbinder lived there
too.
But Heaven only knows where he is now! Even then his continual pallor
augured no long residence in Mezkez, and he was a Yadeschlever Jew with
a wife and six small children, and he lived by binding books.
Who knows what has become of him! But that is not the question--I only
want to prove that Seinwill was a great liar.
If he is already in the other world, may he forgive me--and not be very
angry with me, if he is still living in Mezkez!
He was an orthodox and pious Jew, but when you gave him a book to bind,
he never kept his word.
When he took a book and even the whole of his pay in advance, he would
swear by beard and earlocks, by wife and children, and by the Messiah,
that he would bring it back to you by Sabbath, but you had to be at him
for weeks before the work was finished and sent in.
Once, on a certain Friday, I remembered that next day, Sabbath, I should
have a few hours to myself for reading.
A fortnight before I had given Seinwill a new book to bind for me. It
was just a question whether or not he would return it in time, so I set
out for his home, with the intention of bringing back the book, finished
or not. I had paid him his twenty kopeks in advance, so what excuses
could he possibly make? Once for all, I would give him a bit of my mind,
and take away the work unfinished--it will be a lesson for him for the
next time!
Thus it was, walking along and deciding on what I should say to
Seinwill, that I turned into the street to which I had been directed.
Once in the said street, I had no need to ask questions, for I was at
once shown a little, low house, roofed with mouldered slate.
I stooped a little by way of precaution, and entered Seinwill's house,
which consisted of a large kitchen.
Here he lived with his wife and children, and here he worked.
In the great stove that took up one-third of the kitchen there was a
cheerful crackling, as in every Jewish home on a Friday.
In the forepart of the oven, on either hand, stood a variety of pots and
pipkins, and gossipped together in their several tones. An elder child
stood beside them holding a wooden spoon, with which she stirred or
skimmed as the case required.
Seinwill's wife, very much occupied, stood by the one four-post bed,
which was spread with a clean white sheet, and on which she had laid out
various kinds of cakes, of unbaked dough, in honor of Sabbath. Beside
her stood a child, its little face red with crying, and hindered her in
her work.
"Seinwill, take Chatzkele away! How can I get on with the cakes? Don't
you know it's Friday?" she kept calling out, and Seinwill, sitting at
his work beside a large table covered with books, repeated every time
like an echo:
"Chatzkele, let mother alone!"
And Chatzkele, for all the notice he took, might have been as deaf as
the bedpost.
The minute Seinwill saw me, he ran to meet me in a shamefaced way, like
a sinner caught in the act; and before I was able to say a word, that
is, tell him angrily and with decision that he must give me my book
finished or not--never mind about the twenty kopeks, and so on--and thus
revenge myself on him, he began to answer, and he showed me that my book
was done, it was already in the press, and there only remained the
lettering to be done on the back. Just a few minutes more, and he would
bring it to my house.
"No, I will wait and take it myself," I said, rather vexed.
Besides, I knew that to stamp a few letters on a book-cover could not
take more than a few minutes at most.
"Well, if you are so good as to wait, it will not take long. There is a
fire in the oven, I have only just got to heat the screw."
And so saying, he placed a chair for me, dusted it with the flap of his
coat, and I sat down to wait. Seinwill really took my book out of the
press quite finished except for the lettering on the cover, and began to
hurry. Now he is by the oven--from the oven to the corner--and once more
to the oven and back to the corner--and so on ten times over, saying to
me every time:
"There, directly, directly, in another minute," and back once more
across the room.
So it went on for about ten minutes, and I began to take quite an
interest in this running of his from one place to another, with empty
hands, and doing nothing but repeat "Directly, directly, this minute!"
Most of all I wonder why he keeps on looking into the corner--he never
takes his eyes off that corner. What is he looking for, what does he
expect to see there? I watch his face growing sadder--he must be
suffering from something or other--and all the while he talks to
himself, "Directly, directly, in one little minute." He turns to me: "I
must ask you to wait a little longer. It will be very soon now--in
another minute's time. Just because we want it so badly, you'd think
she'd rather burst," he said, and he went back to the corner, stooped,
and looked into it.
"What are you looking for there every minute?" I ask him.
"Nothing. But directly--Take my advice: why should you sit there
waiting? I will bring the book to you myself. When one wants her to, she
won't!"
"All right, it's Friday, so I need not hurry. Why should you have the
trouble, as I am already here?" I reply, and ask him who is the "she who
won't."
"You see, my wife, who is making cakes, is kept waiting by her too, and
I, with the lettering to do on the book, I also wait."
"But _what_ are you waiting for?"
"You see, if the cakes are to take on a nice glaze while baking, they
must be brushed over with a yolk."
"Well, and what has that to do with stamping the letters on the cover of
the book?"
"What has that to do with it? Don't you know that the glaze-gold which
is used for the letters will not stick to the cover without some white
of egg?"
"Yes, I have seen them smearing the cover with white of egg before
putting on the letters. Then what?"
"How 'what?' That is why we are waiting for the egg."
"So you have sent out to buy an egg?"
"No, but it will be there directly." He points out to me the corner
which he has been running to look into the whole time, and there, on the
ground, I see an overturned sieve, and under the sieve, a hen turning
round and round and cackling.
"As if she'd rather burst!" continued Seinwill. "Just because we want it
so badly, she won't lay. She lays an egg for me nearly every time, and
now--just as if she'd rather burst!" he said, and began to scratch his
head.
And the hen? The hen went on turning round and round like a prisoner in
a dungeon, and cackled louder than ever.
To tell the truth, I had inferred at once that Seinwill was persuaded I
should wait for my book till the hen had laid an egg, and as I watched
Seinwill's wife, and saw with what anxiety she waited for the hen to
lay, I knew that I was right, that Seinwill was indeed so persuaded, for
his wife called to him:
"Ask the young man for a kopek and send the child to buy an egg in the
market. The cakes are getting cold."
"The young man owes me nothing, a few weeks ago he paid me for the whole
job. There is no one to borrow from, nobody will lend me anything, I owe
money all around, my very hair is not my own."
When Seinwill had answered his wife, he took another peep into the
corner, and said:
"She will not keep us waiting much longer now. She can't cackle forever.
Another two minutes!"
But the hen went on puffing out her feathers, pecking and cackling for a
good deal more than two minutes. It seemed as if she could not bear to
see her master and mistress in trouble, as if she really wished to do
them a kindness by laying an egg. But no egg appeared.
I _lent_ Seinwill two or three kopeks, which he was to pay me back in
work, because Seinwill has never once asked for, or accepted, charity,
and the child was sent to the market.
A few minutes later, when the child had come back with an egg,
Seinwill's wife had the glistening Sabbath cakes on a shovel, and was
placing them gaily in the oven; my book was finished, and the
unfortunate hen, released at last from her prison, the sieve, ceased to
cackle and to ruffle out her plumage.
SHOLOM-ALECHEM
Pen name of Shalom Rabinovitz; born, 1859, in Pereyaslav, Government of
Poltava, Little Russia; Government Rabbi, at twenty-one, in Lubni, near
his native place; has spent the greater part of his life in Kieff; in
Odessa from 1890 to 1893, and in America from 1905 to 1907; Hebrew,
Russian, and Yiddish poet, novelist, humorous short story writer,
critic, and playwright; prolific contributor to Hebrew and Yiddish
periodicals; founder of Die juedische Volksbibliothek; novels: Stempenyu,
Yosele Solovei, etc.; collected works: first series, Alle Werk, 4 vols.,
Cracow, 1903-1904; second series, Neueste Werk, 8 vols., Warsaw,
1909-1911.
THE CLOCK
The clock struck thirteen!
Don't imagine I am joking, I am telling you in all seriousness what
happened in Mazepevke, in our house, and I myself was there at the time.
We had a clock, a large clock, fastened to the wall, an old, old clock
inherited from my grandfather, which had been left him by my
great-grandfather, and so forth. Too bad, that a clock should not be
alive and able to tell us something beside the time of day! What stories
we might have heard as we sat with it in the room! Our clock was famous
throughout the town as the best clock going--"Reb Simcheh's clock"--and
people used to come and set their watches by it, because it kept more
accurate time than any other. You may believe me that even Reb Lebish,
the sage, a philosopher, who understood the time of sunset from the sun
itself, and knew the calendar by rote, he said himself--I heard
him--that our clock was--well, as compared with his watch, it wasn't
worth a pinch of snuff, but as there _were_ such things as clocks, our
clock _was_ a clock. And if Reb Lebish himself said so, you may depend
upon it he was right, because every Wednesday, between Afternoon and
Evening Prayer, Reb Lebish climbed busily onto the roof of the women's
Shool, or onto the top of the hill beside the old house-of-study, and
looked out for the minute when the sun should set, in one hand his
watch, and in the other the calendar. And when the sun dropt out of
sight on the further side of Mazepevke, Reb Lebish said to himself,
"Got him!" and at once came away to compare his watch with the clocks.
When he came in to us, he never gave us a "good evening," only glanced
up at the clock on the wall, then at his watch, then at the almanac, and
was gone!
But it happened one day that when Reb Lebish came in to compare our
clock with the almanac, he gave a shout:
"Sim-cheh! Make haste! Where are you?"
My father came running in terror.
"Ha, what has happened, Reb Lebish?"
"Wretch, you dare to ask?" and Reb Lebish held his watch under my
father's nose, pointed at our clock, and shouted again, like a man with
a trodden toe:
"Sim-cheh! Why don't you speak? It is a minute and a half ahead of the
time! Throw it away!"
My father was vexed. What did Reb Lebish mean by telling him to throw
away his clock?
"Who is to prove," said he, "that my clock is a minute and a half fast?
Perhaps it is the other way about, and your watch is a minute and a half
slow? Who is to tell?"
Reb Lebish stared at him as though he had said that it was possible to
have three days of New Moon, or that the Seventeenth of Tammuz might
possibly fall on the Eve of Passover, or made some other such wild
remark, enough, if one really took it in, to give one an apoplectic fit.
Reb Lebish said never a word, he gave a deep sigh, turned away without
wishing us "good evening," slammed the door, and was gone. But no one
minded much, because the whole town knew Reb Lebish for a person who
was never satisfied with anything: he would tell you of the best cantor
that he was a dummy, a log; of the cleverest man, that he was a
lumbering animal; of the most appropriate match, that it was as crooked
as an oven rake; and of the most apt simile, that it was as applicable
as a pea to the wall. Such a man was Reb Lebish.
But let me return to our clock. I tell you, that _was_ a clock! You
could hear it strike three rooms away: Bom! bom! bom! Half the town went
by it, to recite the Midnight Prayers, to get up early for Seliches
during the week before New Year and on the ten Solemn Days, to bake the
Sabbath loaves on Fridays, to bless the candles on Friday evening. They
lighted the fire by it on Saturday evening, they salted the meat, and so
all the other things pertaining to Judaism. In fact, our clock was the
town clock. The poor thing served us faithfully, and never tried
stopping even for a time, never once in its life had it to be set to
rights by a clockmaker. My father kept it in order himself, he had an
inborn talent for clock work. Every year on the Eve of Passover, he
deliberately took it down from the wall, dusted the wheels with a
feather brush, removed from its inward part a collection of spider webs,
desiccated flies, which the spiders had lured in there to their
destruction, and heaps of black cockroaches, which had gone in of
themselves, and found a terrible end. Having cleaned and polished it, he
hung it up again on the wall and shone, that is, they both shone: the
clock shone because it was cleaned and polished, and my father shone
because the clock shone.
And it came to pass one day that something happened.
It was on a fine, bright, cloudless day; we were all sitting at table,
eating breakfast, and the clock struck. Now I always loved to hear the
clock strike and count the strokes out loud:
"One--two--three--seven--eleven--twelve--thirteen! Oi! _Thirteen?_"
"Thirteen?" exclaimed my father, and laughed. "You're a fine
arithmetician (no evil eye!). Whenever did you hear a clock strike
thirteen?"
"But I tell you, it _struck_ thirteen!"
"I shall give you thirteen slaps," cried my father, angrily, "and then
you won't repeat this nonsense again. Goi, a clock _cannot_ strike
thirteen!"
"Do you know what, Simcheh," put in my mother, "I am afraid the child is
right, I fancy I counted thirteen, too."
"There's another witness!" said my father, but it appeared that he had
begun to feel a little doubtful himself, for after the meal he went up
to the clock, got upon a chair, gave a turn to a little wheel inside the
clock, and it began to strike. We all counted the strokes, nodding our
head at each one the while:
one--two--three--seven--nine--twelve--thirteen.
"Thirteen!" exclaimed my father, looking at us in amaze. He gave the
wheel another turn, and again the clock struck thirteen. My father got
down off the chair with a sigh. He was as white as the wall, and
remained standing in the middle of the room, stared at the ceiling,
chewed his beard, and muttered to himself:
"Plague take thirteen! What can it mean? What does it portend? If it
were out of order, it would have stopped. Then, what can it be? The
inference can only be that some spring has gone wrong."
"Why worry whether it's a spring or not?" said my mother. "You'd better
take down the clock and put it to rights, as you've a turn that way."
"Hush, perhaps you're right," answered my father, took down the clock
and busied himself with it. He perspired, spent a whole day over it, and
hung it up again in its place.
Thank God, the clock was going as it should, and when, near midnight, we
all stood round it and counted _twelve_, my father was overjoyed.
"Ha? It didn't strike thirteen then, did it? When I say it is a spring,
I know what I'm about."
"I always said you were a wonder," my mother told him. "But there is one
thing I don't understand: why does it wheeze so? I don't think it used
to wheeze like that."
"It's your fancy," said my father, and listened to the noise it made
before striking, like an old man preparing to cough:
chil-chil-chil-chil-trrrr ... and only then: bom!--bom!--bom!--and even
the "bom" was not the same as formerly, for the former "bom" had been a
cheerful one, and now there had crept into it a melancholy note, as into
the voice of an old worn-out cantor at the close of the service for the
Day of Atonement, and the hoarseness increased, and the strike became
lower and duller, and my father, worried and anxious. It was plain that
the affair preyed upon his mind, that he suffered in secret, that it
was undermining his health, and yet he could do nothing. We felt that
any moment the clock might stop altogether. The imp started playing all
kinds of nasty tricks and idle pranks, shook itself sideways, and
stumbled like an old man who drags his feet after him. One could see
that the clock was about to stop forever! It was a good thing my father
understood in time that the clock was about to yield up its soul, and
that the fault lay with the balance weights: the weight was too light.
And he puts on a jostle, which has the weight of about four pounds. The
clock goes on like a song, and my father becomes as cheerful as a
newborn man.
But this was not to be for long: the clock began to lose again, the imp
was back at his tiresome performances: he moved slowly on one side,
quickly on the other, with a hoarse noise, like a sick old man, so that
it went to the heart. A pity to see how the clock agonized, and my
father, as he watched it, seemed like a flickering, bickering flame of a
candle, and nearly went out for grief.
Like a good doctor, who is ready to sacrifice himself for the patient's
sake, who puts forth all his energy, tries every remedy under the sun to
save his patient, even so my father applied himself to save the old
clock, if only it should be possible.
"The weight is too light," repeated my father, and hung something
heavier onto it every time, first a frying-pan, then a copper jug,
afterwards a flat-iron, a bag of sand, a couple of tiles--and the clock
revived every time and went on, with difficulty and distress, but still
it went--till one night there was a misfortune.
It was on a Friday evening in winter. We had just eaten our Sabbath
supper, the delicious peppered fish with horseradish, the hot soup with
macaroni, the stewed plums, and said grace as was meet. The Sabbath
candles flickered, the maid was just handing round fresh, hot,
well-dried Polish nuts from off the top of the stove, when in came Aunt
Yente, a dark-favored little woman without teeth, whose husband had
deserted her, to become a follower of the Rebbe, quite a number of years
ago.
"Good Sabbath!" said Aunt Yente, "I knew you had some fresh Polish nuts.
The pity is that I've nothing to crack them with, may my husband live no
more years than I have teeth in my mouth! What did you think, Malkeh, of
the fish to-day? What a struggle there was over them at the market! I
asked him about his fish--Manasseh, the lazy--when up comes Soreh Peril,
the rich: Make haste, give it me, hand me over that little pike!--Why in
such a hurry? say I. God be with you, the river is not on fire, and
Manasseh is not going to take the fish back there, either. Take my word
for it, with these rich people money is cheap, and sense is dear. Turns
round on me and says: Paupers, she says, have no business here--a poor
man, she says, shouldn't hanker after good things. What do you think of
such a shrew? How long did she stand by her mother in the market selling
ribbons? She behaves just like Pessil Peise Avrohom's over her daughter,
the one she married to a great man in Schtrischtch, who took her just
as she was, without any dowry or anything--Jewish luck! They say she has
a bad time of it--no evil eye to her days--can't get on with his
children. Well, who would be a stepmother? Let them beware! Take
Chavvehle! What is there to find fault with in her? And you should see
the life her stepchildren lead her! One hears shouting day and night,
cursing, squabbling, and fighting."
The candles began to die down, the shadow climbed the wall, scrambled
higher and higher, the nuts crackled in our hands, there was talking and
telling stories and tales, just for the pleasure of it, one without any
reference to the other, but Aunt Yente talked more than anyone.
"Hush!" cried out Aunt Yente, "listen, because not long ago a still
better thing happened. Not far from Yampele, about three versts away,
some robbers fell upon a Jewish tavern, killed a whole houseful of
people, down to a baby in a cradle. The only person left alive was a
servant-girl, who was sleeping on the kitchen stove. She heard people
screeching, and jumped down, this servant-girl, off the stove, peeped
through a chink in the door, and saw, this servant-girl I'm telling you
of, saw the master of the house and the mistress lying on the floor,
murdered, in a pool of blood, and she went back, this girl, and sprang
through a window, and ran into the town screaming: Jews, to the rescue,
help, help, help!"
Suddenly, just as Aunt Yente was shouting, "Help, help, help!" we heard
_trrraach!--tarrrach!--bom--dzin--dzin--dzin, bomm!!_ We were so deep in
the story, we only thought at first that robbers had descended upon our
house, and were firing guns, and we could not move for terror. For one
minute we looked at one another, and then with one accord we began to
call out, "Help! help! help!" and my mother was so carried away that she
clasped me in her arms and cried:
"My child, my life for yours, woe is me!"
"Ha? What? What is the matter with him? What has happened?" exclaimed my
father.
"Nothing! nothing! hush! hush!" cried Aunt Yente, gesticulating wildly,
and the maid came running in from the kitchen, more dead than alive.
"Who screamed? What is it? Is there a fire? What is on fire? Where?"
"Fire? fire? Where is the fire?" we all shrieked. "Help! help! Gewalt,
Jews, to the rescue, fire, fire!"
"Which fire? what fire? where fire?! Fire take _you_, you foolish girl,
and make cinders of you!" scolded Aunt Yente at the maid. "Now _she_
must come, as though we weren't enough before! Fire, indeed, says she!
Into the earth with you, to all black years! Did you ever hear of such a
thing? What are you all yelling for? Do you know what it was that
frightened you? The best joke in the world, and there's nobody to laugh
with! God be with you, it was the clock falling onto the floor--now you
know! You hung every sort of thing onto it, and now it is fallen,
weighing at least three pud. And no wonder! A man wouldn't have fared
better. Did you ever?!"
It was only then we came to our senses, rose one by one from the table,
went to the clock, and saw it lying on its poor face, killed, broken,
shattered, and smashed for evermore!
"There is an end to the clock!" said my father, white as the wall. He
hung his head, wrung his fingers, and the tears came into his eyes. I
looked at my father and wanted to cry, too.
"There now, see, what is the use of fretting to death?" said my mother.
"No doubt it was so decreed and written down in Heaven that to-day, at
that particular minute, our clock was to find its end, just (I beg to
distinguish!) like a human being, may God not punish me for saying so!
May it be an Atonement for not remembering the Sabbath, for me, for
thee, for our children, for all near and dear to us, and for all Israel.
Amen, Selah!"
FISHEL THE TEACHER
Twice a year, as sure as the clock, on the first day of Nisan and the
first of Ellul--for Passover and Tabernacles--Fishel the teacher
travelled from Balta to Chaschtschevate, home to his wife and children.
It was decreed that nearly all his life long he should be the guest of
his own family, a very welcome guest, but a passing one. He came with
the festival, and no sooner was it over, than back with him to Balta,
back to the schooling, the ruler, the Gemoreh, the dull, thick wits, to
the being knocked about from pillar to post, to the wandering among
strangers, and the longing for home.
On the other hand, when Fishel _does_ come home, he is an emperor! His
wife Bath-sheba comes out to meet him, pulls at her head-kerchief,
blushes red as fire, questions as though in asides, without as yet
looking him in the face, "How are you?" and he replies, "How are _you_?"
and Froike his son, a boy of thirteen or so, greets him, and the father
asks, "Well, Efroim, and how far on are you in the Gemoreh?" and his
little daughter Resele, not at all a bad-looking little girl, with a
plaited pigtail, hugs and kisses him.
"Tate, what sort of present have you brought me?"
"Printed calico for a frock, and a silk kerchief for mother. There--give
mother the kerchief!"
And Fishel takes a silk (suppose a half-silk!) kerchief out of his
Tallis-bag, and Bath-sheba grows redder still, and pulls her head-cloth
over her eyes, takes up a bit of household work, busies herself all over
the place, and ends by doing nothing.
"Bring the Gemoreh, Efroim, and let me hear what you can do!"
And Froike recites his lesson like the bright boy he is, and Fishel
listens and corrects, and his heart expands and overflows with delight,
his soul rejoices--a bright boy, Froike, a treasure!
"If you want to go to the bath, there is a shirt ready for you!"
Thus Bath-sheba as she passes him, still not venturing to look him in
the face, and Fishel has a sensation of unspeakable comfort, he feels
like a man escaped from prison and back in a lightsome world, among
those who are near and dear to him. And he sees in fancy a very, very
hot bath-house, and himself lying on the highest bench with other Jews,
and he perspires and swishes himself with the birch twigs, and can never
have enough.
Home from the bath, fresh and lively as a fish, like one newborn, he
rehearses the portion of the Law for the festival, puts on the Sabbath
cloak and the new girdle, steals a glance at Bath-sheba in her new dress
and silk kerchief--still a pretty woman, and so pious and good!--and
goes with Froike to the Shool. The air is full of Sholom Alechems,
"Welcome, Reb Fishel the teacher, and what are you about?"--"A teacher
teaches!"--"What is the news?"--"What should it be? The world is the
world!"--"What is going on in Balta?"--"Balta is Balta."
The same formula is repeated every time, every half-year, and Nissel the
reader begins to recite the evening prayers, and sends forth his voice,
the further the louder, and when he comes to "And Moses declared the
set feasts of the Lord unto the children of Israel," it reaches nearly
to Heaven. And Froike stands at his father's side, and recites the
prayers melodiously, and once more Fishel's heart expands and flows over
with joy--a good child, Froike, a good, pious child!
"A happy holiday, a happy holiday!"
"A happy holiday, a happy year!"
At home they find the Passover table spread: the four cups, the bitter
herbs, the almond and apple paste, and all the rest of it. The
reclining-seats (two small benches with big cushions) stand ready, and
Fishel becomes a king. Fishel, robed in white, sits on the throne of his
dominion, Bath-sheba, the queen, sits beside him in her new silk
kerchief; Efroim, the prince, in a new cap, and the princess Resele with
her plait, sit opposite them. Look on with respect! His majesty Fishel
is seated on his throne, and has assumed the sway of his kingdom.
* * * * *
The Chaschtschevate scamps, who love to make game of the whole world,
not to mention a teacher, maintain that one Passover Eve our Fishel sent
his Bath-sheba the following Russian telegram: "Rebyata sobral dyengi
vezu prigatovi npiyedu tzarstvovatz," which means: "Have entered my
pupils for the next term, am bringing money, prepare the dumplings, I
come to reign." The mischief-makers declare that this telegram was
seized at Balta station, that Bath-sheba was sought and not found, and
that Fishel was sent home with the etape. Dreadful! But I can assure
you, there isn't a word of truth in the story, because Fishel never
sent a telegram in his life, nobody was ever seen looking for
Bath-sheba, and Fishel was never taken anywhere by the etape. That is,
he _was_ once taken somewhere by the etape, but not on account of a
telegram, only on account of a simple passport! And not from Balta, but
from Yehupetz, and not at Passover, but in summer-time. He wished, you
see, to go to Yehupetz in search of a post as teacher, and forgot his
passport. He thought it was in Balta, and he got into a nice mess, and
forbade his children and children's children ever to go in search of
pupils in Yehupetz.
Since then he teaches in Balta, and comes home for Passover, winds up
his work a fortnight earlier, and sometimes manages to hasten back in
time for the Great Sabbath. Hasten, did I say? That means when the road
_is_ a road, when you can hire a conveyance, and when the Bug can either
be crossed on the ice or in the ferry-boat. But when, for instance, the
snow has begun to melt, and the mud is deep, when there is no conveyance
to be had, when the Bug has begun to split the ice, and the ferry-boat
has not started running, when a skiff means peril of death, and the
festival is upon you--what then? It is just "nit guet."
Fishel the teacher knows the taste of "nit guet." He has had many
adventures and mishaps since he became a teacher, and took to faring
from Chaschtschevate to Balta and from Balta to Chaschtschevate. He has
tried going more than half-way on foot, and helped to push the
conveyance besides. He has lain in the mud with a priest, the priest on
top, and he below. He has fled before a pack of wolves who were
pursuing the vehicle, and afterwards they turned out to be dogs, and not
wolves at all. But anything like the trouble on this Passover Eve had
never befallen him before.
The trouble came from the Bug, that is, from the Bug's breaking through
the ice, and just having its fling when Fishel reached it in a hurry to
get home, and really in a hurry, because it was already Friday and
Passover Eve, that is, Passover eve fell on a Sabbath that year.
Fishel reached the Bug in a Gentile conveyance Thursday evening.
According to his own reckoning, he should have got there Tuesday
morning, because he left Balta Sunday after market, the spirit having
moved him to go into the market-place to spy after a chance conveyance.
How much better it would have been to drive with Yainkel-Shegetz, a
Balta carrier, even at the cart-tail, with his legs dangling, and shaken
to bits. He would have been home long ago by now, and have forgotten the
discomforts of the journey. But he had wanted a cheaper transit, and it
is an old saying that cheap things cost dear. Yoneh, the tippler, who
procures vehicles in Balta, had said to him: "Take my advice, give two
rubles, and you will ride in Yainkel's wagon like a lord, even if you do
have to sit behind the wagon. Consider, you're playing with fire, the
festival approaches." But as ill-luck would have it, there came along a
familiar Gentile from Chaschtschevate.
"Eh, Rabbi, you're not wanting a lift to Chaschtschevate?"
"How much would the fare be?"
He thought to ask how much, and he never thought to ask if it would take
him home by Passover, because in a week he could have covered the
distance walking behind the cart.
But as Fishel drove out of the town, he soon began to repent of his
choice, even though the wagon was large, and he sitting in it in
solitary grandeur, like any count. He saw that with a horse that dragged
itself along in _that_ way, there would be no getting far, for they
drove a whole day without getting anywhere in particular, and however
much he worried the peasant to know if it were a long way yet, the only
reply he got was, "Who can tell?" In the evening, with a rumble and a
shout and a crack of the whip, there came up with them Yainkel-Shegetz
and his four fiery horses jingling with bells, and the large coach
packed with passengers before and behind. Yainkel, catching sight of the
teacher in the peasant's cart, gave another loud crack with his whip,
ridiculed the peasant, his passenger, and his horse, as only
Yainkel-Shegetz knows how, and when a little way off, he turned and
pointed at one of the peasant's wheels.
"Hallo, man, look out! There's a wheel turning!"
The peasant stopped the horse, and he and the teacher clambered down
together, and examined the wheels. They crawled underneath the cart, and
found nothing wrong, nothing at all.
When the peasant understood that Yainkel had made a fool of him, he
scratched the back of his neck below his collar, and began to abuse
Yainkel and all Jews with curses such as Fishel had never heard before.
His voice and his anger rose together:
"May you never know good! May you have a bad year! May you not see the
end of it! Bad luck to you, you and your horses and your wife and your
daughter and your aunts and your uncles and your parents-in-law and--and
all your cursed Jews!"
It was a long time before the peasant took his seat again, nor did he
cease to fume against Yainkel the driver and all Jews, until, with God's
help, they reached a village wherein to spend the night.
Next morning Fishel rose with the dawn, recited his prayers, a portion
of the Law, and a few Psalms, breakfasted on a roll, and was ready to
set forward. Unfortunately, Chfedor (this was the name of his driver)
was _not_ ready. Chfedor had sat up late with a crony and got drunk, and
he slept through a whole day and a bit of the night, and then only
started on his way.
"Well," Fishel reproved him as they sat in the cart, "well, Chfedor, a
nice way to behave, upon my word! Do you suppose I engaged you for a
merrymaking? What have you to say for yourself, I should like to know,
eh?"
And Fishel addressed other reproachful words to him, and never ceased
casting the other's laziness between his teeth, partly in Polish, partly
in Hebrew, and helping himself out with his hands. Chfedor understood
quite well what Fishel meant, but he answered him not a word, not a
syllable even. No doubt he felt that Fishel was in the right, and he was
silent as a cat, till, on the fourth day, they met Yainkel-Shegetz,
driving back from Chaschtschevate with a rumble and a crack of his
whip, who called out to them, "You may as well turn back to Balta, the
Bug has burst the ice."
Fishel's heart was like to burst, too, but Chfedor, who thought that
Yainkel was trying to fool him a second time, started repeating his
whole list of curses, called down all bad dreams on Yainkel's hands and
feet, and never shut his mouth till they came to the Bug on Thursday
evening. They drove straight to Prokop Baranyuk, the ferryman, to
inquire when the ferry-boat would begin to run, and the two Gentiles,
Chfedor and Prokop, took to sipping brandy, while Fishel proceeded to
recite the Afternoon Prayer.
* * * * *
The sun was about to set, and poured a rosy light onto the high hills
that stood on either side of the river, and were snow-covered in parts
and already green in others, and intersected by rivulets that wound
their way with murmuring noise down into the river, where the water
foamed with the broken ice and the increasing thaw. The whole of
Chaschtschevate lay before him as on a plate, while the top of the
monastery sparkled like a light in the setting sun. Standing to recite
the Eighteen Benedictions, with his face towards Chaschtschevate, Fishel
turned his eyes away and drove out the idle thoughts and images that had
crept into his head: Bath-sheba with the new silk kerchief, Froike with
the Gemoreh, Resele with her plait, the hot bath and the highest bench,
and freshly-baked Matzes, together with nice peppered fish and
horseradish that goes up your nose, Passover borshtsh with more Matzes,
a heavenly mixture, and all the other good things that desire is
capable of conjuring up--and however often he drove these fancies away,
they returned and crept back into his brain like summer flies, and
disturbed him at his prayers.
When Fishel had repeated the Eighteen Benedictions and Olenu, he betook
him to Prokop, and entered into conversation with him about the
ferry-boat and the festival eve, giving him to understand, partly in
Polish and partly in Hebrew and partly with his hands, what Passover
meant to the Jews, and Passover Eve falling on a Sabbath, and that if,
which Heaven forbid, he had not crossed the Bug by that time to-morrow,
he was a lost man, for, beside the fact that they were on the lookout
for him at home--his wife and children (Fishel gave a sigh that rent the
heart)--he would not be able to eat or drink for a week, and Fishel
turned away, so that the tears in his eyes should not be seen.
Prokop Baranyuk quite appreciated Fishel's position, and replied that he
knew to-morrow was a Jewish festival, and even how it was called; he
even knew that the Jews celebrated it by drinking wine and strong
brandy; he even knew that there was yet another festival at which the
Jews drank brandy, and a third when all Jews were obliged to get drunk,
but he had forgotten its name--
"Well and good," Fishel interrupted him in a lamentable voice, "but what
is to happen? How if I don't get there?"
To this Prokop made no reply. He merely pointed with his hand to the
river, as much as to say, "See for yourself!"
And Fishel lifted up his eyes to the river, and saw that which he had
never seen before, and heard that which he had never heard in his life.
Because you may say that Fishel had never yet taken in anything "out of
doors," he had only perceived it accidentally, by the way, as he hurried
from Cheder to the house-of-study, and from the house-of-study to
Cheder. The beautiful blue Bug between the two lines of imposing hills,
the murmur of the winding rivulets as they poured down the hillsides,
the roar of the ever-deepening spring-flow, the light of the setting
sun, the glittering cupola of the convent, the wholesome smell of
Passover-Eve-tide out of doors, and, above all, the being so close to
home and not able to get there--all these things lent wings, as it were,
to Fishel's spirit, and he was borne into a new world, the world of
imagination, and crossing the Bug seemed the merest trifle, if only the
Almighty were willing to perform a fraction of a miracle on his behalf.
Such and like thoughts floated in and out of Fishel's head, and lifted
him into the air, and so far across the river, he never realized that it
was night, and the stars came out, and a cool wind blew in under his
cloak to his little prayer-scarf, and Fishel was busy with things that
he had never so much as dreamt of: earthly things and Heavenly things,
the great size of the beautiful world, the Almighty as Creator of the
earth, and so on.
Fishel spent a bad night in Prokop's house--such a night as he hoped
never to spend again. The next morning broke with a smile from the
bright and cheerful sun. It was a singularly fine day, and so sweetly
warm that all the snow left melted into kasha, and the kasha, into
water, and this water poured into the Bug from all sides; and the Bug
became clearer, light blue, full and smooth, and the large bits of ice
that looked like dreadful wild beasts, like white elephants hurrying and
tearing along as if they were afraid of being late, grew rarer.
Fishel the teacher recited the Morning Prayer, breakfasted on the last
piece of leavened bread left in his prayer-scarf bag, and went out to
the river to see about the ferry. Imagine his feelings when he heard
that the ferry-boat would not begin running before Sunday afternoon! He
clapped both hands to his head, gesticulated with every limb, and fell
to abusing Prokop. Why had he given him hopes of the ferry-boat's
crossing next day? Whereupon Prokop answered quite coolly that he had
said nothing about crossing with the ferry, he was talking of taking him
across in a small boat! And that he could still do, if Fishel wished, in
a sail-boat, in a rowboat, in a raft, and the fare was not less than one
ruble.
"A raft, a rowboat, anything you like, only don't let me spend the
festival away from home!"
Thus Fishel, and he was prepared to give him two rubles then and there,
to give his life for the holy festival, and he began to drive Prokop
into getting out the raft at once, and taking him across in the
direction of Chaschtschevate, where Bath-sheba, Froike, and Resele are
already looking out for him. It may be they are standing on the opposite
hills, that they see him, and make signs to him, waving their hands,
that they call to him, only one can neither see them nor hear their
voices, because the river is wide, dreadfully wide, wider than ever!
The sun was already half-way up the deep, blue sky, when Prokop told
Fishel to get into the little trough of a boat, and when Fishel heard
him, he lost all power in his feet and hands, and was at a loss what to
do, for never in his life had he been in a rowboat, never in his life
had he been in any small boat. And it seemed to him the thing had only
to dip a little to one side, and all would be over.
"Jump in, and off we'll go!" said Prokop once more, and with a turn of
his oar he brought the boat still closer in, and took Fishel's bundle
out of his hands.
Fishel the teacher drew his coat-skirts neatly together, and began to
perform circles without moving from the spot, hesitating whether to jump
or not. On the one hand were Passover Eve, Bath-sheba, Froike, Resele,
the bath, the home service, himself as king; on the other, peril of
death, the Destroying Angel, suicide--because one dip and--good-by,
Fishel, peace be upon him!
And Fishel remained circling there with his folded skirts, till Prokop
lost patience and said, another minute, and he should set out and be off
to Chaschtschevate without him. At the beloved word "Chaschtschevate,"
Fishel called his dear ones to mind, summoned the whole of his courage,
and fell into the boat. I say "fell in," because the instant his foot
touched the bottom of the boat, it slipped, and Fishel, thinking he was
falling, drew back, and this drawing back sent him headlong forward into
the boat-bottom, where he lay stretched out for some minutes before
recovering his wits, and for a long time after his face was livid, and
his hands shook, while his heart beat like a clock, tik-tik-tak,
tik-tik-tak!
Prokop meantime sat in the prow as though he were at home. He spit into
his hands, gave a stroke with the oar to the left, a stroke to the
right, and the boat glided over the shining water, and Fishel's head
spun round as he sat. As he sat? No, he hung floating, suspended in the
air! One false movement, and that which held him would give way; one
lean to the side, and he would be in the water and done with! At this
thought, the words came into his mind, "And they sank like lead in the
mighty waters," and his hair stood on end at the idea of such a death.
How? Not even to be buried with the dead of Israel? And he bethought
himself to make a vow to--to do what? To give money in charity? He had
none to give--he was a very, very poor man! So he vowed that if God
would bring him home in safety, he would sit up whole nights and study,
go through the whole of the Talmud in one year, God willing, with God's
help.
Fishel would dearly have liked to know if it were much further to the
other side, and found himself seated, as though on purpose, with his
face to Prokop and his back to Chaschtschevate. And he dared not open
his mouth to ask. It seemed to him that his very voice would cause the
boat to rock, and one rock--good-by, Fishel! But Prokop opened his mouth
of his own accord, and began to speak. He said there was nothing worse
when you were on the water than a thaw. It made it impossible, he said,
to row straight ahead; one had to adapt one's course to the ice, to row
round and round and backwards.
"There's a bit of ice making straight for us now."
Thus Prokop, and he pulled back and let pass a regular ice-floe, which
swam by with a singular rocking motion and a sound that Fishel had never
seen or heard before. And then he began to understand what a wild
adventure this journey was, and he would have given goodness knows what
to be safe on shore, even on the one they had left.
"O, you see that?" asked Prokop, and pointed upstream.
Fishel raised his eyes slowly, was afraid of moving much, and looked and
looked, and saw nothing but water, water, and water.
"There's a big one coming down on us now, we must make a dash for it,
for it's too late to row back."
So said Prokop, and rowed away with both hands, and the boat glided and
slid like a fish through the water, and Fishel felt cold in every limb.
He would have liked to question, but was afraid of interfering. However,
again Prokop spoke of himself.
"If we don't win by a minute, it will be the worse for us."
Fishel can now no longer contain himself, and asks:
"How do you mean, the worse?"
"We shall be done for," says Prokop.
"Done for?"
"Done for."
"How do you mean, done for?" persists Fishel.
"I mean, it will grind us."
"Grind us?"
"Grind us."
Fishel does not understand what "grind us, grind us" may signify, but it
has a sound of finality, of the next world, about it, and Fishel is
bathed in a cold sweat, and again the words come into his head, "And
they sank like lead in the mighty waters."
And Prokop, as though to quiet our Fishel's mind, tells him a comforting
story of how, years ago at this time, the Bug broke through the ice, and
the ferry-boat could not be used, and there came to him another person
to be rowed across, an excise official from Uman, quite a person of
distinction, and offered a large sum; and they had the bad luck to meet
two huge pieces of ice, and he rowed to the right, in between the floes,
intending to slip through upwards, and he made an involuntary side
motion with the boat, and they went flop into the water! Fortunately,
he, Prokop, could swim, but the official came to grief, and the
fare-money, too.
"It was good-by to my fare!" ended Prokop, with a sigh, and Fishel
shuddered, and his tongue dried up, so that he could neither speak nor
utter the slightest sound.
In the very middle of the river, just as they were rowing along quite
smoothly, Prokop suddenly stopped, and looked--and looked--up the
stream; then he laid down the oars, drew a bottle out of his pocket,
tilted it into his mouth, sipped out of it two or three times, put it
back, and explained to Fishel that he had always to take a few sips of
the "bitter drop," otherwise he felt bad when on the water. And he wiped
his mouth, took the oars in hand again, and said, having crossed
himself three times:
"Now for a race!"
A race? With whom? With what? Fishel did not understand, and was afraid
to ask; but again he felt the brush of the Death Angel's wing, for
Prokop had gone down onto his knees, and was rowing with might and main.
Moreover, he said to Fishel, and pointed to the bottom of the boat:
"Rebbe, lie down!"
Fishel understood that he was to lie down, and did not need to be told
twice. For now he had seen a whole host of floes coming down upon them,
a world of ice, and he shut his eyes, flung himself face downwards in
the boat, and lay trembling like a lamb, and recited in a low voice,
"Hear, O Israel!" and the Confession, thought on the graves of Israel,
and fancied that now, now he lies in the abyss of the waters, now, now
comes a fish and swallows him, like Jonah the prophet when he fled to
Tarshish, and he remembers Jonah's prayer, and sings softly and with
tears:
"Affofuni mayyim ad nofesh--the waters have reached unto my soul; tehom
yesoveveni--the deep hath covered me!"
Fishel the teacher sang and wept and thought pitifully of his widowed
wife and his orphaned children, and Prokop rowed for all he was worth,
and sang _his_ little song:
"O thou maiden with the black lashes!"
And Prokop felt the same on the water as on dry land, and Fishel's
"Affofuni" and Prokop's "O maiden" blended into one, and a strange song
sounded over the Bug, a kind of duet, which had never been heard there
before.
"The black year knows why he is so afraid of death, that Jew," so
wondered Prokop Baranyuk, "a poor tattered little Jew like him, a
creature I would not give this old boat for, and so afraid of death!"
The shore reached, Prokop gave Fishel a shove in the side with his boot,
and Fishel started. The Gentile burst out laughing, but Fishel did not
hear, Fishel went on reciting the Confession, saying Kaddish for his own
soul, and mentally contemplating the graves of Israel!
"Get up, you silly Rebbe! We're there--in Chaschtschevate!"
Slowly, slowly, Fishel raised his head, and gazed around him with red
and swollen eyes.
"Chasch-tsche-va-te???"
"Chaschtschevate! Give me the ruble, Rebbe!"
Fishel crawls out of the boat, and, finding himself really at home, does
not know what to do for joy. Shall he run into the town? Shall he go
dancing? Shall he first thank and praise God who has brought him safe
out of such great peril? He pays the Gentile his fare, takes up his
bundle under his arm and is about to run home, the quicker the better,
but he pauses a moment first, and turns to Prokop the ferryman:
"Listen, Prokop, dear heart, to-morrow, please God, you'll come and
drink a glass of brandy, and taste festival fish at Fishel the
teacher's, for Heaven's sake!"
"Shall I say no? Am I such a fool?" replied Prokop, licking his lips in
anticipation at the thought of the Passover brandy he would sip, and the
festival fish he would delectate himself with on the morrow.
And Prokop gets back into his boat, and pulls quietly home again,
singing a little song, and pitying the poor Jew who was so afraid of
death. "The Jewish faith is the same as the Mahommedan!" and it seems to
him a very foolish one. And Fishel is thinking almost the same thing,
and pities the Gentile on account of _his_ religion. "What knows he, yon
poor Gentile, of such holy promises as were made to us Jews, the beloved
people!"
And Fishel the teacher hastens uphill, through the Chaschtschevate mud.
He perspires with the exertion, and yet he does not feel the ground
beneath his feet. He flies, he floats, he is going home, home to his
dear ones, who are on the watch for him as for Messiah, who look for him
to return in health, to seat himself upon his kingly throne and reign.
Look, Jews, and turn respectfully aside! Fishel the teacher has come
home to Chaschtschevate, and seated himself upon the throne of his
kingdom!
AN EASY FAST
That which Doctor Tanner failed to accomplish, was effectually carried
out by Chayyim Chaikin, a simple Jew in a small town in Poland.
Doctor Tanner wished to show that a man can fast forty days, and he only
managed to get through twenty-eight, no more, and that with people
pouring spoonfuls of water into his mouth, and giving him morsels of ice
to swallow, and holding his pulse--a whole business! Chayyim Chaikin has
proved that one can fast more than forty days; not, as a rule, two
together, one after the other, but forty days, if not more, in the
course of a year.
To fast is all he asks!
Who said drops of water? Who said ice? Not for him! To fast means no
food and no drink from one set time to the other, a real
four-and-twenty-hours.
And no doctors sit beside him and hold his pulse, whispering, "Hush! Be
quiet!"
Well, let us hear the tale!
Chayyim Chaikin is a very poor man, encumbered with many children, and
they, the children, support him.
They are mostly girls, and they work in a factory and make cigarette
wrappers, and they earn, some one gulden, others half a gulden, a day,
and that not every day. How about Sabbaths and festivals and "shtreik"
days? One should thank God for everything, even in their out-of-the-way
little town strikes are all the fashion!
And out of that they have to pay rent--for a damp corner in a basement.
To buy clothes and shoes for the lot of them! They have a dress each,
but they are two to every pair of shoes.
And then food--such as it is! A bit of bread smeared with an onion,
sometimes groats, occasionally there is a bit of taran that burns your
heart out, so that after eating it for supper, you can drink a whole
night.
When it comes to eating, the bread has to be portioned out like cake.
"Oi, dos Essen, dos Essen seiers!"
Thus Chaike, Chayyim Chaikin's wife, a poor, sick creature, who coughs
all night long.
"No evil eye," says the father, and he looks at his children devouring
whole slices of bread, and would dearly like to take a mouthful himself,
only, if he does so, the two little ones, Fradke and Beilke, will go
supperless.
And he cuts his portion of bread in two, and gives it to the little
ones, Fradke and Beilke.
Fradke and Beilke stretch out their little thin, black hands, look into
their father's eyes, and don't believe him: perhaps he is joking?
Children are nashers, they play with father's piece of bread, till at
last they begin taking bites out of it. The mother sees and exclaims,
coughing all the while:
"It is nothing but eating and stuffing!"
The father cannot bear to hear it, and is about to answer her, but he
keeps silent--he can't say anything, it is not for him to speak! Who is
he in the house? A broken potsherd, the last and least, no good to
anyone, no good to them, no good to himself.
Because the fact is he does nothing, absolutely nothing; not because he
won't do anything, or because it doesn't befit him, but because there is
nothing to do--and there's an end of it! The whole townlet complains of
there being nothing to do! It is just a crowd of Jews driven together.
Delightful! They're packed like herrings in a barrel, they squeeze each
other close, all for love.
"Well-a-day!" thinks Chaikin, "it's something to have children, other
people haven't even that. But to depend on one's children is quite
another thing and not a happy one!" Not that they grudge him his
keep--Heaven forbid! But he cannot take it from them, he really cannot!
He knows how hard they work, he knows how the strength is wrung out of
them to the last drop, he knows it well!
Every morsel of bread is a bit of their health and strength--he drinks
his children's blood! No, the thought is too dreadful!
"Tatinke, why don't you eat?" ask the children.
"To-day is a fast day with me," answers Chayyim Chaikin.
"Another fast? How many fasts have you?"
"Not so many as there are days in the week."
And Chayyim Chaikin speaks the truth when he says that he has many
fasts, and yet there are days on which he eats.
But he likes the days on which he fasts better.
First, they are pleasing to God, and it means a little bit more of the
world-to-come, the interest grows, and the capital grows with it.
"Secondly" (he thinks), "no money is wasted on me. Of course, I am
accountable to no one, and nobody ever questions me as to how I spend
it, but what do I want money for, when I can get along without it?
"And what is the good of feeling one's self a little higher than a
beast? A beast eats every day, but I can go without food for one or two
days. A man _should_ be above a beast!
"O, if a man could only raise himself to a level where he could live
without eating at all! But there are one's confounded insides!" So
thinks Chayyim Chaikin, for hunger has made a philosopher of him.
"The insides, the necessity of eating, these are the causes of the
world's evil! The insides and the necessity of eating have made a pauper
of me, and drive my children to toil in the sweat of their brow and risk
their lives for a bit of bread!
"Suppose a man had no need to eat! Ai--ai--ai! My children would all
stay at home! An end to toil, an end to moil, an end to 'shtreikeven,'
an end to the risking of life, an end to factory and factory owners, to
rich men and paupers, an end to jealousy and hatred and fighting and
shedding of blood! All gone and done with! Gone and done with! A
paradise! a paradise!"
So reasons Chayyim Chaikin, and, lost in speculation, he pities the
world, and is grieved to the heart to think that God should have made
man so little above the beast.
* * * * *
The day on which Chayyim Chaikin fasts is, as I told you, his best day,
and a _real_ fast day, like the Ninth of Ab, for instance--he is ashamed
to confess it--is a festival for him!
You see, it means not to eat, not to be a beast, not to be guilty of the
children's blood, to earn the reward of a Mitzveh, and to weep to
heart's content on the ruins of the Temple.
For how can one weep when one is full? How can a full man grieve? Only
he can grieve whose soul is faint within him! The good year knows how
some folk answer it to their conscience, giving in to their
insides--afraid of fasting! Buy them a groschen worth of oats, for
charity's sake!
Thus would Chayyim Chaikin scorn those who bought themselves off the
fast, and dropped a hard coin into the collecting box.
The Ninth of Ab is the hardest fast of all--so the world has it.
Chayyim Chaikin cannot see why. The day is long, is it? Then the night
is all the shorter. It's hot out of doors, is it? Who asks you to go
loitering about in the sun? Sit in the Shool and recite the prayers, of
which, thank God, there are plenty.
"I tell you," persists Chayyim Chaikin, "that the Ninth of Ab is the
easiest of the fasts, because it is the best, the very best!
"For instance, take the Day of Atonement fast! It is written, 'And you
shall mortify your bodies.' What for? To get a clean bill and a good
year.
"It doesn't say that you are to fast on the Ninth of Ab, but you fast of
your own accord, because how could you eat on the day when the Temple
was wrecked, and Jews were killed, women ripped up, and children dashed
to pieces?
"It doesn't say that you are to weep on the Ninth of Ab, but you _do_
weep. How could anyone restrain his tears when he thinks of what we lost
that day?"
"The pity is, there should be only one Ninth of Ab!" says Chayyim
Chaikin.
"Well, and the Seventeenth of Tammuz!" suggests some one.
"And there is only one Seventeenth of Tammuz!" answers Chayyim Chaikin,
with a sigh.
"Well, and the Fast of Gedaliah? and the Fast of Esther?" continues the
same person.
"Only one of each!" and Chayyim Chaikin sighs again.
"E, Reb Chayyim, you are greedy for fasts, are you?"
"More fasts, more fasts!" says Chayyim Chaikin, and he takes upon
himself to fast on the eve of the Ninth of Ab as well, two days at a
stretch.
What do you think of fasting two days in succession? Isn't that a treat?
It is hard enough to have to break one's fast after the Ninth of Ab,
without eating on the eve thereof as well.
One forgets that one _has_ insides, that such a thing exists as the
necessity to eat, and one is free of the habit that drags one down to
the level of the beast.
The difficulty lies in the drinking! I mean, in the _not_ drinking. "If
I" (thinks Chayyim Chaikin) "allowed myself one glass of water a day, I
could fast a whole week till Sabbath."
You think I say that for fun? Not at all! Chayyim Chaikin is a man of
his word. When he says a thing, it's said and done! The whole week
preceding the Ninth of Ab he ate nothing, he lived on water.
Who should notice? His wife, poor thing, is sick, the elder children are
out all day in the factory, and the younger ones do not understand.
Fradke and Beilke only know when they are hungry (and they are always
hungry), the heart yearns within them, and they want to eat.
"To-day you shall have an extra piece of bread," says the father, and
cuts his own in two, and Fradke and Beilke stretch out their dirty
little hands for it, and are overjoyed.
"Tatinke, you are not eating," remark the elder girls at supper, "this
is not a fast day!"
"And no more _do_ I fast!" replies the father, and thinks: "That was a
take-in, but not a lie, because, after all, a glass of water--that is
not eating and not fasting, either."
When it comes to the eve of the Ninth of Ab, Chayyim feels so light and
airy as he never felt before, not because it is time to prepare for the
fast by taking a meal, not because he may eat. On the contrary, he feels
that if he took anything solid into his mouth, it would not go down, but
stick in his throat.
That is, his heart is very sick, and his hands and feet shake; his body
is attracted earthwards, his strength fails, he feels like fainting.
But fie, what an idea! To fast a whole week, to arrive at the eve of the
Ninth of Ab, and not hold out to the end! Never!
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