anything.
There is nothing to trade with, people go about empty-handed, seeking
quarrels to while away the time with; the proof is that in larger towns,
where each goes about his own business, there is quiet.
If someone, I opine, would throw into Tishewitz a few thousand rubles,
everything would be forgotten.
"To be sure, we know wealth is everything!" exclaims somebody. "If I had
only had _so_ much brains, I could put all Tishewitz into my pocket
to-day. It was just a toss-up--I had only to say the word."
"True! True!" was heard on all sides. "It is an actual fact."
The man who had only required to have _so_ much brains, or a little
determination, to become rich, looked like poverty itself: lean, yellow,
shrunk, "wept out," and in a cloak that had its only equal in the
dressing-gown of the Tishewitz rabbi.
Thereupon came the Maskil.
Of course, he laughed.
"Reb Elyeh, you must have bought the lucky number an hour before the
drawing!"
"Listen to his cheek!" says Reb Elyeh. "As if he couldn't remember the
story!"
"May my head not ache," swears the Maskil, "for so long as I have
forgotten--if ever I heard the lies at all."
"Lies!" retorts Reb Elyeh, much hurt, "is that so? Lies? According to
you, other things are lies as well."
I interfere and ask what the story may be.
"You've heard of the Tsaddik of Vorke of blessed memory?" begins Reb
Elyeh.
Of course!
"Naturally, _Kind und Keit_[78] knew of him. And you will have heard
that there came to him not only the pious men of the nations of the
world, but even 'German' Jews, even Lithuanians, knowing fellows that
they are. May I have as much money as I have seen Lithuanians at his
house! There is even a story about a discussion a Lithuanian had with
him. A Lithuanian must always be showing off his acumen! He asks a
question about the Tossafot on _Vows_. The Rebbe, of blessed memory,
explains a bit of the Mishnah to him upside down.
"'Well, I never, Rebbe!' exclaims the Lithuanian, 'why, the Tossafot on
_New Year_ dealing with the same subject says exactly the opposite of
your words.' Well, what do you say to that? It was a miracle the Rebbe
did not seize and strangle him on the spot. But that is not what I was
driving at. The 'Vorker' treated the Almighty like a good comrade.
"'Lord of the world (and he sat down in the middle of the room)! Would
it not have been enough to torment the Jews with persecutions? Now one
cannot even sit and study in peace.'
"Someone, it would appear, answered him from 'up there.'
"'So,' he said, 'that is another thing altogether! I give in; good pay
puts everything straight. But, Lord of the world! a little of it here as
well!'
"Again one could see in his face that he heard a response, and he
answered:
"'Well, if not--not! You are solvent, we will wait!'
"But that is not what I was after. His chief concern was whatever was
connected with circumcision. In the matter of circumcision he was steel
and iron. In that he would take no denial from the Powers above. And,
indeed, they waited for his word up there! Scarce had he given a sign,
when the thing he wanted was done and established. He said, that before
going to a circumcision, when he merely began to think of the
Mohel-knife, the quality of _Fear_[79] straightway diffused itself
through his being, and then there could be no doubt all would go as he
wanted, for 'the will of those who _fear_ Him He executeth.'
"He was very sorry that people had become aware of this peculiarity of
his. He knew that on this account he would not perform the ceremony here
much longer, that he would be called to join the Heavenly Academy. His
relations to the upper world having become known, the very stability of
the world was endangered. It ought to have remained a secret.
"Well, people had become aware of it. I, too. And even sooner than
others, because the treasurer, Mösheh, was my first wife's
brother-in-law, and he it was who let out the secret. For this he was
deprived of his place for half a year, but his distress was so great,
the Rebbe had compassion on him, and restored him to his office. But
that doesn't belong to the story either.
"Enough that I knew it.
"Well, 'and he kept the thing in his heart.' I waited, for I was not
going to plague the Rebbe about a trifle. I waited. I was living just
then a mile outside Vorke. My first wife was alive, and she did not fare
badly, though it was difficult to make both ends meet. But I earned
whatever it was by my match-making, and my wife supported us by means of
her stall. And not only us, but also she provided for a married couple,
my eldest daughter and her husband, who was an excellent scholar. What,
then, was lacking?
"And it came to pass on a day that my son-in-law was away at the Ger
Rebbe's, there was a fair in the town, and my daughter was in child-bed.
It went hard with her, a first baby. Beile Bashe, the midwife, was at
her wit's end, and this was the third day of her pains. No cupping, no
blood-letting seemed to help--things were very bad. And I hear that the
Rebbe is coming to a circumcision.
"What do you think? 'There sprang up light for the Jews!' We were all
overjoyed. It put new life into us. We pray that God will preserve her
another day and a half, because people were only let in an hour before
the ceremony. But meanwhile things got worse and worse, she was near
death.
"An hour or two before the ceremony, however, she grew easier, or so it
seemed to me. She came to herself, opened her eyes, urged her mother to
go to the fair, and called me to her bedside. A foolish woman, they are
all alike--they blame us for it.
"She doesn't like Shmülek, she says, she never liked him, she didn't
want him from the very first. She can't stand him and had better die.
She had sent her mother out on purpose, because she was afraid of her.
She, peace be upon her, was a terror to the children--she wanted to slap
her daughter on her wedding-day.
"I, of course, gave her to understand that all women are the same, that
some even make a vow never to live with their husbands again; that the
sin-offering is there on that account--some even swear that--'but no one
may be held responsible for what he utters in pain and grief.' But she
keeps to it, she bids me farewell, she needs no vows, no oaths, she
says, smiling. I am going out, she says, like a candle.
"Well, I listen to her and can see all the while that she is better. She
is quite clear again in her mind, and it only wants half an hour to the
circumcision. And she looked quite pretty again.
"I sit by the bed and talk to her--even the midwife had gone to buy a
cradle at the fair. I look at the clock--it is time to go. I look at
her. Upon my word! Quite well! And yet I do not want to go and leave her
all alone, and nearly alone in the town.
"The fair, you see, comes once a year, and lasts three days, and it
means Parnosseh for the whole twelve months. So, you see, there was no
one left at the Rebbe's even--every soul was off to the fair.
"Well, I wait a bit.
"But in half an hour things got suddenly worse. She snatches at my hand,
falls back on the pillows, makes grimaces. Bad!
"She begins to moan. I call for help, no one answers. There is a great
noise from the fair--nobody hears _me_. Among a thousand men and
women--and we might have been in a wilderness. I want to pull away my
hands, go and call somebody, but she holds them tight.
"Two, three minutes pass, it grows late, things are bad. I tear away my
hands and I run thither. The circumcision was at the further end of the
town. I fly along roads, over bales of merchandise, I fly and fly! It is
all too long to me. It was July and yet I shivered with cold as I
ran--there, there is Tsemach's house, where the ceremony has taken
place."
* * * * *
"My heart beats as though I were a malefactor; I feel that _there_, at
home, a soul is about to escape. There I am at the first window! I will
not wait for the door, I will break a pane and get in that way. I run up
to the window, I see the Rebbe is really in the room, he is walking up
and down, I am about to enter like a housebreaker. I gather my remaining
strength--there is a cry in my ears: Father, father! I leap."
The narrator was out of breath. He takes a rest, lowers his eyes, which
are full of large tears, and ends quietly with a broken voice:
"But it was not to be! There was a heap of manure and stones before the
window--I fell, and nearly broke my neck. I have a mark on my forehead
to this day. When they brought me in to the Rebbe, he motioned me away
with his hand.
"When I got home (_how_ I got there, I don't know), she was lying on the
floor--either she fell out of bed dying, or I pulled her out tearing
away my hands."
The listeners were silent, a stone weighed on our hearts.
The Maskil soon recovered himself.
"Well," he said, "blessed be the righteous Judge! Where are the riches?"
The narrator wiped his eyes with his sleeve, gave a sad smile and
continued:
"Yes, I only wanted to show you what one means when one says, it was not
to be. There came trouble after trouble--my wife died--the stall went to
the bad because it was kept by a man--I was left alone with the
children, and there wasn't a crust--I married again--I took an elderly
woman on purpose, because I thought she would do for the stall, but I
was taken in. There was a baby a year. Meanwhile our fairs fell off, and
for a whole twelvemonth the stall wasn't worth a pinch of powder.
"I determined to make an end of it--to give up the match-making, grow
rich, and sit and study. _Aï_--how does one grow rich? I wrote to the
brother-in-law of my first wife, to the treasurer, and asked him for
God's sake to tell me when next there was a circumcision.
"I got a message before the month was out, and hastened to Vorke. I stop
nowhere, but go straight to the Rebbe."
"And--a larger manure heap?" laughs the Maskil. The narrator gives him a
vicious look.
"The Vorke Tsaddik," he said, "went in for ritual cleanliness, his whole
religion was ritual cleanliness."
"Only see," remarked the Maskil, "how he looks at me! Rascal! When you
came here first, who helped you? A Vorke Chossid? or perhaps your cousin
the Tsaddik? or was it I? _ha!_ You would have died of hunger long ago
if it hadn't been for me!"
And he turns to me:
"And what do you suppose he is now? He teaches my children, and if I
were to take them away from him, he would have no Parnosseh left!... not
a crust of bread...."
The other stands silent with downcast eyes.
The Maskil disgusts me more and more, although he made a sign to me with
his eyes a little while ago, to the effect that he had exerted himself
on my behalf, and with his hands, that to-morrow there will be taking of
notes.
I turn to the other:
"Well, my friend?"
"See for yourself," says he to the Maskil, "our note-taker is more of a
Maskil than you, on the face of him, and _he_ doesn't make game of
things ... one might say, on the contrary. Rambam[80] (lehavdîl) did not
believe in magic ... but at any rate, he answers seriously ... a Jew
should have manners ... to make fun of things is not fair ... man, it
cuts to the heart!"
"Well, well," says the Maskil, more gently, "let us have the rest!"
"I will make it short," says the poor Jew. "I come in without a ticket
of admission, nothing to speak for me, without even a money-offering,
but that would have been no help at such a time, only his face was
terrible! My feet shook under me! I stood there without opening my
mouth. He, may his merits protect us, took great strides up and down.
"Suddenly he saw me and gave a roar like a lion.
"'What do you want?'
"I was more terrified than ever and scarcely answered:
"'Riches!'
"It seemed as though the Rebbe had not quite understood.
"'Riches?' he asked, and his voice was like thunder.
"'If only ... Parnosseh!' I answer in a lower tone.
"'What, Parnosseh!' he cried as before.
"'Only not to die of hunger!'
"The Rebbe hurried up and down, stopped suddenly and asked:
"'What else?'
"I thought I should drop dead! It seemed to me (I don't know, but it
seemed to me) as if someone else, and not I, had control of my tongue,
and it replied:
"'I want Yòsef to be a learned man!'
"'What besides?' I hardly escaped alive, and he, may his merits protect
us, died the following week.
"Well? What lay between me and the riches? A hair's breadth! it was my
own fault. If I had stood up to him and kept to it! Well!"
"At least," I inquire, "is your son learned?"
"He _would_ have been," he replies in a broken voice, "only he won't
learn ... even a Rebbe can't help that ... he _won't_ learn--what can
one do?"
"And the moral," interposes the Maskil, "is that one shouldn't keep
rubbish heaps under the window, that you can do nothing without money,
and, above all, that one shouldn't be frightened of any Rebbe!"
In one second the livid-faced Jew had flushed scarlet, his eyes shot
fire, his person lengthened, and the room resounded with two slaps
received by the Maskil.
* * * * *
I fear that his first request will equally go unfulfilled: he will yet
die of hunger.
A LITTLE BOY
The innkeeper's pretty little boy, with his shrugs and pouts, and his
curls full of feathers, haunts me.
Now he stands before me with a small onion in his hand, and he cries--he
wants two; or I hear him at evening prayer, repeating the Kaddish in his
plaintive child-voice, so tearfully earnest that it goes to my very
heart. When the Chossid slapped the Maskil, the child turned pale and
green with fright, so that I took him by the hand and led him out of the
room.
"Come for a walk."
"A walk?" he stammers.
The pale face flushes.
"Do you never go out for a walk?"
"Not now. When my mother, peace be upon her, was alive, she used to
take me out walking Sabbaths and holidays. My father, long life to him,
says it's better to sit at one's book."
We were already in the long entrance passage. A "Shield of David" shone
redly from a lamp some way off. I could not see his face, but the thin
little hand trembled as it lay in mine.
We stepped out into the street.
The sky that hung over Tishewitz resembled a dark blue uniform with dim
steel buttons.
My companion found it like a curtain[81] sewn with silver spangles.
Perhaps he is dreaming of just such a blue satin "prayer-bag," with
spangles, some day to be his own. In five or six years he may receive it
as a gift from his bride.
The little town looks quite different by night. The rubbish heaps and
the tumbledown houses are hidden in the "poetical and silent lap of
darkness."
The windows and door-panes look like great, fiery, purple eyes. By the
hearth-sides pots of boiling water must be standing ready for the
potatoes or the dumplings.
The statistics give an average annual expenditure of thirty-seven and a
half rubles a head--about ten kopeks a day. Now calculate: school fees,
two sets of pots and pans, Sabbaths and holidays, an illness, and a
wonder-working Rebbe--besides extras. You see now why there is not
always a meal cooking, why the dumplings are of buck-wheat without an
egg, and why the potatoes are not always eaten with dripping. Many of
the houses are stone-blind. In these it is a question of a bit of bread
with or without a herring, and perhaps grace without meat. In one of
those houses must live the widow who requires so little, beating her
hollow chest through the long confession. Perhaps she measures her
winding-sheet, or thinks of her wedding dress of long ago with its gold
braid, and from her old eyes there drops a tear, and she whispers,
smiling, into the night: "After all, what does a Jewess need?"
My motherless companion is thinking of something else. Hopping on one
little foot, he lifts his face to the moon, swimming with a silly,
aristocratic air in and out of the light clouds.
He sighs. Has he seen a star fall? No.
"_Öi_," he says, "_wollt ich gewollt, Meshiach soll kimmen!_" (How I do
wish the Messiah would come!)
"What is the matter?"
"I want the moon to be made bigger again. It is so dreadfully sad about
her! She committed a sin, but to suffer so long! It will soon be six
thousand years."
Altogether, two requests! one of his earthly father for a second little
onion, and one of his Father in Heaven, for the enlargement of the moon.
A wild impulse seized me to say: "Let alone! Your father will soon marry
again, you will soon have a step-mother, become a step-child, and have
to cry for a bit of bread! Spare the little onion, forget about the moon
..."
It was all I could do to refrain.
We left Tishewitz behind, the spring airs blew toward us from the green
fields. He drew me to a tree, we sat down.
He must have sat here, it occurs to me, with his mother. She must have
pointed out to him the different things that grew in the narrow plots
belonging to the townspeople. He recognizes wheat, rye, potatoes.
And those are briars.
Nobody eats briars, do they?
Donkeys eat briars.
"Why," he asks, "did God make all creatures to eat different things?"
He does not know that if they ate the same, they would be all alike.
THE YARTSEFF RABBI
The Yartseff rabbi is a man who has all that heart desireth. He gets
four rubles a week, and that is really more than enough. How? Are they
not an old couple without children? He used to be Dayan in a larger
town. There also he had four rubles a week, and nearly cut his fingers
to bits over dried herring from week's end to week's end.
Here it's different. He goes through his daily fare for my benefit. For
breakfast, what shall he say? a little milk-gruel; for dinner,
sometimes, half a pound of meat; and in the evening, a glass of hot tea
with stale rolls--he really cannot hold more! When one lives in the
country, one must follow country customs, and they are much the best!...
Dinner in the large towns is a ruination and a misery!... If there
should happen not to be any meat for dinner, well, he can afford to
wait to eat till supper-time. Sometimes, early in the day, there is a
little vegetable soup with dripping--that is how one lives in Yartseff
and one does very well. In the large town it was often difficult to get
on. Not that _he_ cared! He really doesn't like meat. On week-days it is
heavy food; on week-days he likes an onion with a little sour milk, he
prefers sour milk even to Purim herbs, it is his nature, but the
rebbitzin, she wouldn't look at it (he smiles as he glances at her)--her
feelings used to get hurt. It was jealousy! _How_ was that? Well, the
Shochet's wife had sausage, and she, the Dayan'te, not so much as a
bone--wasn't that humiliating, _ha_? Now he has done with all that; in
Yartseff, thank God, they all eat meat every Sabbath and even mutton,
and week-days all fare much alike, too. So long as the rebbitzin has no
one to envy, it's all right!
"To envy!" throws in the rebbitzin. "I know, I know!" laughs the rabbi's
head with the tiny wrinkles, the beard with the soft end quivers, the
old eyes grow moister. "I know, it was not the sinful body you were
thinking of, but the honor of the Law. Of course, a Shochet sausage and
a Dayan--no, that was very wrong! A Dayan is distinctly greater than a
Shochet! Well, well, anyhow, here I am quit of all that--where they
don't kill for a whole week at a time."
He is still better pleased with the fresh country air. In the large
towns, the householders must live in large houses. The rich householders
live in the middle; below, in the cellars, and above, in the attics,
poor people, including paid officials of the community like himself.
In summer he had felt suffocated there. It went so far that the
rebbitzin stole away his snuff-box, so that he might at any rate not
stuff snuff up his nose, but she had to give it him back--without snuff
he was nowhere; he cannot even sit and read without it; even when not
taking any, he must have the root snuff-box to finger while he studies,
and even as now, when talking, he would lose the train of his thought
and not find suitable words in which to express himself if he had not
got it.
What do you think? When he first saw Yartseff with the wide, grass-grown
market-place, he would have liked a band to play--and a band _played_!
On that day all Kohol was at home, and they came to meet him with
chamber-music! And he was charmed by the little, tiny houses, like
pieces of root tobacco; there is one walled in, the big one in the
centre of the market-place--it is the lord's.
And the stairs he got away from when he left the large town! He is
naturally weak in the legs, in another year he would have been without
feet! Then--the restfulness of it here!... quiet!... not a dog barks,
and the children (lehavdîl) don't shout. There are thirty boys and
perhaps six teachers, so they're kept well in hand, not as in the large
towns. At Purim and Chanukah, then they shout, yes! they make a fearful
noise! But otherwise you don't hear a sound.
Above all, a blessing from His dear Name, there are no quarrels! Two or
three Chassidîm with blue fringes,[82] but he prays for their life,
because when they die, may it not be for a hundred years, there will be
a to-do over their burial.[83] Meanwhile there is peace. The inhabitants
of the place are all peddlers or "messengers." Even the artisans do not
remain at home, but go and work in the villages, even the Feldscher goes
about the district with the "cuppers." Early on Sunday you can see the
whole male population coming out of the little houses. Outside the town
they take off their boots, hang them upon a stick across their shoulder
and start off in all directions. Friday evening they return. Even the
Shochet sometimes goes away for a whole week, so when should they find
time to quarrel? Sabbath and holidays are the time for disputes, and
every now and again they get up a discussion, start a hare ... but it is
not their line! The thing halts. People are sleepy and tired.
He just sits and studies. Occasionally (he smiles) there is a
dispute--only it is for the honor of God--between him and the Shochet.
You understand, it is seldom a ritual question arises. All the week the
people use milk dishes, Sabbath--meat dishes. They don't stand at the
fire-place together. Questions about the fitness of slaughtered animals
happen along once a year! But on that very account, they make the most
of it, turn over the whole Talmud, all the codes, and there you have a
quarrel. The Shochet is very obstinate and pig-headed, and has a way of
shifting his bundle of faults on to other people's shoulders; says, the
rabbi is obstinate and pig-headed! Even here he had terrible bother
with two things: the yeast and the house, and all (he smiles again)
through the rebbitzin. With the yeast it befell in this wise; he had
agreed with Kohol for four rubles a week. The previous rabbi got four
rubles with the yeast, but they cheated _him_ out of the yeast--he got
none!
On the first Great Sabbath he preached a long sermon on leaven at
Passover. "The town was beside itself with delight. Everyone knows a
good thing, when he hears it, even the most ignorant. I say it is
because all the souls were present at Mount Sinai, and there everything
was revealed, even what scholars in time to come will deduce from what
was explicitly given, so that even when the soul has forgotten, she
recognizes whence things are ... and soon the town gave me the yeast.
"Just at the moment I felt a little exultation, for which His dear Name
quickly punished me. I had trouble with the yeast! I had disputes to
settle all week between the housewives and the rebbitzin; one found her
Sabbath loaf too hard, another too heavy, a third said her yeast ran,
and people suspected the rebbitzin watered it. What could I do? I hadn't
seen her do it, and she said no!
"Well, it was all such nonsense! I can't pass a decision in a case
between the rebbitzin and the housewives, and I arbitrate; if they come
on Friday, I exchange their loaf for mine, and a whole week I give a
little extra yeast for Kliskelech.[84] Altogether a dreadful worry! God
be praised, a tailor brought some dried yeast, and there was an end of
it."
Then as to the house: he observed the rebbitzin was saving money--let
her save! Was it his affair? The children are doing well, but may-be she
wishes to buy a present for a grandchild--so be it! He is not much in
favor of that himself, but he is not going to fight a woman. Perhaps (he
reflects) she means differently; he knows, many prepare for later. He
doesn't. He says, Blessed be His Name, day by day! When they die, there
will be a winding-sheet, but he does not concern himself about it.