“Shall I take the bread back home?”
“No, leave it. Didn’t you prepare a Sabbath stew?”
“Maybe I did. I will go home.”
Not long after this incident Rachel developed cancer of the breast. She lay in bed and Leah took care of her. Dr. Katz, the Shebrin physician, maintained that if Rachel went to Warsaw they might be able to operate and save her. Though the community was ready to pay her expenses, Rachel refused to go, saying, “Here I was born and here I will die.”
In her pain and delirium she began to sing songs. Fragments of the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgies remained in her memory. It became obvious that she had a singing voice, though no one had ever heard her sing before. She even improvised words and melodies, as well as threnodies for her father and her long-dead mother—all in the plaintive tones inherited from generations. She now openly complained that Leah prevented Feigel and herself from marrying.
After Rachel’s death Leah stopped baking. She rented out two rooms and was somehow able to manage from the income. Her seclusion was complete. She went nowhere and didn’t even come on Rosh Hashanah to the women’s section of the synagogue to hear the blowing of the ram’s horn. The chimney stopped spewing smoke and sparks, and in Shebrin it was said the imp now lived behind Leah’s stove and slept with her in her bench bed. Although she was past her sixtieth year, her hair remained black as pitch.
When I left Shebrin, Leah was still alive. I heard that she died just before the Nazi invasion. For a long time I hadn’t thought about the sisters, but yesterday when I dozed off for a minute at my desk, I dreamed about Feigel. I saw her in a bridal gown, silken shoes, her hair streaming down to her waist, her face pale, and her eyes alight with an other-worldly joy. She was waving a palm branch and a citron fruit as though it were Sukkoth and saying to my mother, “What has a girl from her life? Nothing but a dance and a hop.”
Translated by the author and Ruth Schachner Finkel
Grandfather and Grandson
AFTER Beyle Teme’s death Reb Mordecai Meir sold his store and began to live on his capital. Someone figured out for him with a pencil on paper that if he spent eight rubles a week it would last him seven years—and how much longer could he live? He had reached the age at which his parents had died. Every minute after that was a gift.
His only daughter had died of typhus several years ago and he had a few grandchildren somewhere in Slonim, but they would have to get along without his inheritance. Reb Mordecai Meir’s daughter had married a Litvak, an opponent of Hasidism, an enlightened Jew, and her father had virtually cut her off as his child.
Reb Mordecai Meir was a small man with a yellowish-white beard, a broad forehead, bushy eyebrows beneath which peeped a pair of yellow eyes, like a chicken’s. On the tip of his nose there grew a little beard. Wisps of hair stuck out of his ears and nostrils. In the course of time his back had become bowed and he always looked as if he were searching for something on the floor. He didn’t walk but shuffled his feet. All year round he wore a cotton caftan with a sash, low shoes, and a velvet hat over two skullcaps. He spoke in half sentences, only to the initiated Hasidim.
Even among Hasidim, Reb Mordecai Meir was known as an impractical man. Though he had lived in Warsaw for years, he was not at all acquainted with the streets of Warsaw. The only road he knew was from his home to the Hasidic house of prayer and back. During the year, he occasionally traveled to the Rabbi of Alexandrow, but he always had difficulty finding the trolley to the railway station, changing cars, and buying tickets. In all this he had to be assisted by young men who knew their way around. He had neither the time nor the patience for such externals.
At midnight he arose for study and prayer. Very early each morning he recited the Gemara and the Tosephot commentary. After that came psalms, more prayers, delving into Hasidic books, and discussing Hasidic matters. The winter days were short. Before one had a bite to eat and a nap, it was time to return to the study house for evening prayers. Even though the summer days were long, there were not enough of them. First it was Passover, then the Feast of Omer, and before you could turn around it was Shevuoth. After that came the seventeenth of Tammuz, the three weeks of mourning for the destruction of the Temple, the nine days of refraining from meat, and then Tishe b’Av, the Sabbath of Comfort. These were followed by the month of Elul, when even fish in water tremble. Later there was Rosh Hashanah, the ten days of Penitence, Yom Kippur, Sukkoth, the Day of Rejoicing in the Law, and then, Sabbath of Genesis.
As a boy, Reb Mordecai Meir had already realized that if one wanted to be a real Jew there was no time for anything else. Praised be God, his wife, Beyle Teme, had understood this. She never asked him to assist in the store, to concern himself with business, to carry the burden of earning a living. He seldom had any money with him except for the few guldens which she gave him each week for alms, the ritual bath, books, snuff, and pipe tobacco. Reb Mordecai Meir wasn’t even certain of the exact location of the store and the merchandise sold there. A shopkeeper had to talk to women customers and he knew well that it was only one short step from talking, to looking, to lecherous thoughts.
The street on which Reb Mordecai Meir lived teemed with unbelievers, loose women. Boys peddled Yiddish newspapers which were full of mockery and atheism. The saloons swarmed with ruffians. In his library, Reb Mordecai Meir kept the windows shut, even during the summer. As soon as he opened the transom of the window, he immediately heard the playing of frivolous songs on the gramophone and female laughter. In the courtyard, bareheaded jugglers often performed their tricks, which he felt might be black magic. Reb Mordecai Meir was told that Jewish boys and girls went to the Yiddish theater where they made fun of Jewishness. There emerged worldly writers, writing in Hebrew and Yiddish. They incited the readers to sin. At every turn the Evil Spirit lay in wait. There was only one way to defeat him: with Torah, prayer, Hasidism.
The years passed and Reb Mordecai Meir did not know where or how. Overnight his yellow beard turned gray. Because he did not want to go to the barber shop and sit among the shaven transgressors, Beyle Teme used to cut his hair. She took off his skullcaps and he quickly replaced them. She would argue, “How can I cut your hair with the skullcaps on your head?”
In later years he became bald and only his sidelocks remained. When Beyle Teme stopped having children (five of the children had died and they were left with just the one daughter, Zelda Rayzel), Reb Mordecai Meir separated himself from his wife. What more was needed after he had fulfilled the commandment “Be fruitful and multiply”? To be sure, according to the Law a man was permitted to have relations with his wife when she could no longer bear children. Some were even of the opinion that one must not become a recluse. But when was this said? Only when one could copulate without any desire for the flesh. If a person had intercourse for the sake of pleasure, this could lead to temptations and lust. Besides, in recent years Beyle Teme was not in good health. She used to return home from the shop exhausted, smelling of herring and valerian drops.
After Zelda Rayzel’s death, Beyle Teme became melancholy. She wept almost every night and kept repeating the same words: “Why did this happen to me?” Reb Mordecai Meir reminded her that it was forbidden to complain against God. “All God does is good.” The reason there was such a thing as death was because the body was only a garment. The soul is sent to be cleansed in Gehenna for a short time and after that it goes to Paradise and learns the secrets of the Torah. Were eating, drinking, urinating, and sweating such a bargain?
But Beyle Teme became sicker from day to day. She passed away on a Wednesday and was buried on Friday afternoon. Since it was just before the Sabbath she was spared the pressure of the grave, which those who are buried on weekdays suffer. Reb Mordecai Meir recited Kaddish for the repose of her soul, prayed before the congregation, studied Mishnah. When the thirty days of mourning had passed, a relative took over the shop for four thousand rubles. Pesha, a neighbor who was a widow, came to Reb Mordecai Meir every day t
o clean and cook some food. For the Sabbath she prepared stew and a pudding for him. The Hasidim tried to arrange a match but he refused to remarry.
One summer morning, while reading The Generations of Jacob Joseph, he dozed off and was awakened by the sound of knocking. He opened the door and saw a young man without a beard, a head of long hair over which he wore a broad-brimmed black hat, in a black blouse tied with a sash, and checkered pants. In one hand he carried a satchel and in the other a book. His face was pale and he had a short nose.
Reb Mordecai Meir asked, “What do you want?”
Blinking his widely separated eyes, he stammered, “I am Fulie … You are my grandfather.”
Reb Mordecai Meir stood dumfounded. He had never heard the name Fulie. Then he realized that this was most probably the modern variation of the old Jewish name Raphael. It was Zelda Rayzel’s eldest son. Reb Mordecai Meir felt both pain and shame. He had a grandson who tried to imitate the Gentiles. He said, “So come in.” After hesitating a moment, the boy came in and put his suitcase down. Reb Mordecai Meir asked, “What kind—is that—?” and pointed to the book.
“Economics.”
“Of what use is that to you?”
“Well …”
“What’s new in Slonim?” Reb Mordecai Meir asked. He didn’t want to mention the name of his former son-in-law, who was an anti-Hasid. Fulie made a face as if to indicate that he did not fully comprehend his grandfather’s question.
“In Slonim? Just like everywhere else. The rich get richer and the workers have nothing to eat. I had to leave because …” and Fulie stopped himself.
“What will you do here?”
“Here—I’ll look around—I’ll …”
Well, a stutterer, Reb Mordecai Meir thought. His throat scratched and his stomach started to turn. It was his daughter Zelda Rayzel’s son, but as long as he shaved his beard and dressed like a Gentile, what would he, Reb Mordecai Meir, do with him? He nodded his head and gaped. It seemed that the boy took after the other side of the family with his high cheekbones, narrow forehead, and wide mouth. His bedraggled and famished appearance reminded Reb Mordecai Meir of the recruits who starve themselves to avoid conscription.
“Wash your hands. Eat something. Don’t forget that you are a Jew.”
“Grandfather, they don’t let you forget.”
In the kitchen the boy sat down at the table and began to leaf through his book. Reb Mordecai Meir opened the kitchen closet but found no bread there; only onions, a string of dried mushrooms, a package of chicory, a few heads of garlic.
He said to Fulie, “I’ll give you money, go to the store and buy a loaf of bread or something else you might like to eat.”
“Grandfather, I’m not hungry. And besides, the less I’m outside the better,” the boy answered.
“Why? You’re not sick, God forbid, are you?”
“All of Russia has the same sickness. Everywhere it is full of denouncers and secret agents. Grandfather, I am not altogether ‘clean.’ ”
“Have you been called by the military?”
“That too.”
“Maybe you can be saved?”
“All mankind needs to be saved, not only I.”
Reb Mordecai Meir had decided not to get angry, no matter what his grandson did or said. Anger won’t win anyone over to piety. There were moments when Reb Mordecai Meir wanted to spit on the impudent fellow and drive him out of his house. But he restrained himself with all his might. Even though Fulie spoke in Yiddish, Reb Mordecai Meir did not fully comprehend what he was saying. All of his talk boiled down to one complaint: the rich live in luxury, the poor suffer deprivation. He continuously mentioned the workers in the factories, the peasants who tilled the fields. He spoke against the czar. “He resides in a palace and lets others rot in cellars. Millions die of hunger, consumption. The people must wake up. There must be a revolution …”
Reb Mordecai Meir clutched his beard and asked, “How do you know that a new czar would be better?”
“If we have our way, there will be no new czar.”
“Who will rule?”
“The people.”
“All the people can’t sit in the ruling chair,” Reb Mordecai Meir answered.
“Representatives will be chosen from the workers and peasants.”
“When they get power, they may also become villains,” Reb Mordecai Meir argued.
“Then they’ll be made one head shorter.”
“It is written: ‘For the poor shall never cease out of the land,’ ” Reb Mordecai Meir spoke. “To whom would one give charity if there were no paupers? Besides, everything is ordained in Heaven. On Rosh Hashanah it is decreed in Heaven who shall be rich and who shall be poor.”
“The Heavens are nothing but air,” Fulie said. “No one decrees anything.”
“What? The world created itself?”
“It evolved.”
“What does that mean?”
The boy began to say something, then got stuck. He mentioned names which Reb Mordecai Meir had never heard. He mixed Polish, Russian, and German words. The sum total of his talk was that everything was accident, chance. He babbled about a mist, gravitation, the earth tearing away from the sun and cooling off. He denied the exodus from Egypt, that the Red Sea was split, that the Jews received the Torah on Mount Sinai. It was all a legend. Each of Fulie’s words pained Reb Mordecai Meir’s insides, as if he had swallowed the molten lead which, in ancient times, was given to those who were condemned to be burned. A cry tore from his throat. He wanted to shout, “Blackguard, Jeroboam, son of Nebat, get out of my house, go to the devil!” But he remembered that the boy was an orphan, a stranger in the city, without means. He could, God forbid, become a convert, or commit suicide.
“May God forgive you. You are deluded,” he said.
“You asked, Grandfather, so I answered.”
From then on, grandfather and grandson stopped debating. They actually didn’t speak. Reb Mordecai Meir sat in the living room, Fulie stayed in the kitchen and slept there on the cot. When Pesha cooked something, she also gave him a plate of food. She bought him bread, butter, cheese. She washed his shirt. Fulie was given a key to the outer door. Though he was not registered, the janitor let him in at night. Each time Fulie gave him ten groschen. Some nights he didn’t come home at all.
Reb Mordecai Meir slept little. Right after evening prayers fatigue overcame him and he went to bed, but after an hour or two he awoke. In the morning Fulie was gone before Reb Mordecai Meir began to recite the Shema. “One must not estrange them,” Reb Mordecai Meir said to himself. “The birth throes of the Messiah have begun.”
In the kitchen, in a box of books, Reb Mordecai Meir found a Yiddish pamphlet with frayed pages. He tried to read it but could understand little of what was written there. The writer seemed to argue with another writer of his kind. He mentioned such strange names as Zhelyabov, Kilbatchitch, Perovskaya. One, it said, was a martyr. A bitter taste came to Reb Mordecai Meir’s mouth. In his old age he had to room with a heretic who was his grandchild. In the Alexandrow study house he asked what was going on in the world and was told things which utterly amazed him. Those who, years, before, had murdered the czar had begun to arouse the populace anew. Among them were many Jews. Somewhere in Russia a bomb had been thrown, a train derailed, sacks of gold robbed. In some faraway city a governor had been shot. The jails were full. Many rebels were sent to Siberia. The Hasid who recounted these events said, “They kill and are killed. It is each man’s sword in his neighbor!”
“What do they want?” Reb Mordecai Meir asked.
“That all should be equal.”
“How is this possible?”
“Sons of the rich have joined their group.”
The Hasid reported that the daughter of a wine dealer, a Hasid of the Rabbi of Gur, got mixed up with these instigators and was imprisoned in the Citadel. There she fasted for eighteen days and had to be fed by force.
Reb Mordecai Meir was stunned.
The Redemption must be near! He asked, “If they don’t believe in the world to come, why do they torment themselves so?”
“They want justice.”
That evening, when Reb Mordecai Meir returned home after evening prayers, he saw Fulie seated at the kitchen table, his black blouse unbuttoned, his hair unkempt, chewing on a piece of bread and reading a book.
“Why do you eat dry bread? The woman cooks for you too.”
“Pesha? She was taken to the hospital.”
“Really? We must pray for her.”
“She had an attack of gallstones. If you like I can make something.”
“You?”
“I’ll make sure it’s kosher.”
“You believe in it?”
“For your sake.”
“Well, no.”
From that day on grandfather and grandson ate only dry food. Fulie brought rolls, sugar, cheese from the store. He brewed tea. Reb Mordecai Meir was not sure he should trust such a one even with the making of tea. It was one thing to be a Gentile cook, who, the Talmud presumed, would not damage his livelihood and so could be trusted, and something entirely different to be a renegade Jew. However, bread and sugar could not be made unclean. Fulie bought the cheese from David in the dairy store across the street. If Fulie looked for a Gentile shop on another street, it meant he was an apostate out of spite, of whom it is said, “He knows his master and wants to defy Him.” But so low he had not fallen.
The Sabbath meal was prepared by another neighbor. Reb Mordecai Meir lit the Sabbath candles himself. He sat at the table alone, in his threadbare satin coat, worn-out fur hat, chanting Sabbath chants, dipping a piece of hallah into the glass of ritual wine. The boy (which was what Reb Mordecai Meir called Fulie) didn’t show himself on the Sabbath. The neighbor’s daughter brought in rice soup, meat, carrot pudding. Reb Mordecai Meir half sang, half moaned.
If the old rabbi were still alive, Reb Mordecai Meir would have gone to live with him. But Reb Henokh was dead. The new rabbi was still a young man who cared more for the young Hasidim than the old. It was whispered that he was learned in worldly affairs. Many of the older Hasidim had died out and no new ones joined.