one day someone told him a fine tale--the rebbitzin had bought some
timber. He came home, and sure enough, it was true. She had even engaged
some workmen, she was beginning to build a house. What is it? She won't
live in lodgings any longer. He interfered no further--let her build!
And she built, she took possession, he--he just carried over his Talmud.
"Now, I am a householder, too."
But it was a long way for him to go to the house-of-study.
"Not of you be it said, my feet have grown weak in my old age. I have
not many books of my own. They have a rule in the house-of-study not to
lend out any book, not to the rabbi, not to any head of the community.
When a question arose, I had nothing to lay my hand on. This gave me a
deal of trouble.
"But God helped me. There was a fire and several houses were burned
down, mine among them. God be praised! The other householders had no
great loss; they were insured. I was not, and Kohol, as you see, set
aside for me a little corner of the house-of-study."
LYASHTZOF
I arrived in Lyashtzof on a dark summer night, between eleven and twelve
o'clock. Another market-place with various buildings and little,
walled-in houses round about.
In the middle of the market-place, a collection of large, white stones.
I drive nearer--the stones move and grow horns; they become a herd of
milk-white goats.
The goats show more sense than the heads of the community of Tishewitz:
they are not frightened. One or two out of the whole lot have lifted
their heads, looked at us sleepily, and once more turned their attention
to the scanty grass of the Gass, and to scratching one the other.
Happy goats! No one calumniates you, _you_ needn't be afraid of
statisticians. It is true, people kill you, but what then? Does not
everyone die before his time? And as far as troubles go, you certainly
have fewer.
I recall what I was told in Tishewitz: "In Lyashtzof you will get on
better and faster. The people are sensible, quieter; no one will run
after you."
Kohol and the goats seem to be equally admirable; one like the other.
But my host, an old friend, is not encouraging. He says it will not be
so easy as people think.
"What will you do?" he asks. "Go from house to house?"
"What else?"
"I wish they may be civil."
"Why shouldn't they be?"
"A Jew hates having his money-box opened and the contents counted."
"Why so? Won't the blessing enter in afterwards?"
"No, it isn't that--the misfortune is that the credit will go out."
THE FIRST ATTEMPT
Early in the morning, before the arrival of the beadle, there come some
Jews--they want to see the note-taker.
My fame has preceded me.
I make a beginning, and turn to one of them:
"Good morning, friend!"
"Good morning, _Sholom Alechem_."[85]
He gives me his hand, quite lazily.
"What is your name, friend?"
"Levi Yitzchok."
"And your German name?"[86]
"Why do you want to know?"
"Well, is it a secret?"
"Secret or no secret, you may as well tell me why you want to know. I'll
be bound _that's_ no secret!"
"Then you don't know it?"
"Not exactly."
"Make a shot at it--just for fun!"
"Bärenpelz," he answers, a little ashamed.
"A wife?"
"_Ett!_"
"What does _ett_ mean?"
"He wants a divorce!" another answers for him.
"How many children?"
He has to think, and counts on his fingers: "By the first wife--mine:
one, two, three; hers: one, two; by the second wife...." He is tired of
counting: "Let us say six!"
"'Let us say' is no good. I must know exactly."
"You see, 'exactly' is not so easy. 'Exactly!' Why do you want to know?
_Wos is?_ Are you an official? Do they pay you for it? Will somebody
follow and check your statements? 'Exactly!'"
"Tell, blockhead, tell," the rest encourage him, "now you've begun,
tell!"
They want to know what the next questions will be.
Once again he has counted on his fingers and, heaven be praised, there
are three more.
"Nine children, health and strength to them!"
"How many sons, how many daughters?"
He counts again:
"Four sons and five daughters."
"How many sons and how many daughters married?"
"You want to know that, too? Look here, tell me why?"
"Tell him, then, tell him!" cry the rest, impatiently.
"Three daughters and two sons," answers someone for the questioned.
_"Taki?"_ says the latter. "And Yisrolik?"
"But he isn't married yet."
"Horse! They call him up next Sabbath![87] What does a week and a half
matter?"
I make a note and ask further: "Have you served in the army?"
"I bought exemption from Kohol, for four hundred rubles![88] Where
should I find them now?" and he groans.
"And your sons?"
"The eldest has a swelling below his right eye, and has besides--not of
you be it said!--a rupture. He has been in three hospitals. It cost more
than a wedding. They only just sent him home from the regiment! The
second drew a high number.[89] ... The third is serving his time now."
"And the wife?"
"At home with me, of course. Need you ask?"
"She might have been at _her_ father's."
"A pauper!"
"Have you a house?"
"Have I a house!"
"Worth how much?"
"If it were in Samoscz, it would be worth something. Here it's not worth
a dreier, except that I have a place to lay my head down in."
"Would you sell it for one hundred rubles?"
"Preserve us! One's own inheritance! Not for three hundred."
"Would you give it for five hundred?"
"_Mê!_ I should hire a lodging and apply myself to some business!"
"And what is your business now?"
"What business?"
"What do you live on?"
"_That's_ what you mean! One just lives."
"On what?"
"God's providence. When He gives something, one has it!"
"But He doesn't throw things down from heaven?"
"He does so! Can I tell how I live? Let us reckon: I need a lot of
money, at least four rubles a week. The house yields, beside my own
lodging, twelve rubles a year--nine go in taxes, five in repairs, leaves
a hole in the pocket of two rubles a year! That's it."
He puts on airs:
"Heaven be praised, I have no money. Neither I, nor any one of the Jews
standing here, nor any other Jews--except perhaps the 'German' ones[90]
in the big towns. We have no money. I don't know any trade, my
grandfather never sewed a shoe. Therefore I live as God wills, and have
lived so for fifty years. And if there is a child to be married, we have
a wedding, and dance in the mud."
"Once and for all, what are you?"
"A Jew."
"What do you do all day?"
"I study, I pray--what else should a Jew do? And when I have eaten, I go
to the market."
"What do you do in the market?"
"What do I do? Whatever turns up. Well, yesterday, for example, I heard,
as I passed, that Yoneh Borik wanted to buy three rams for a gentleman.
Before daylight I was at the house of a second gentleman, who had once
said, he had too many rams. I made an agreement with Yoneh Borik, and,
heaven be praised, we made a ruble and a half by it."
"Are you, then, what is called a commission-agent?"
"How should I know? Sometimes it even occurs to me to buy a bit of
produce."
"Sometimes?"
"What do you mean by 'sometimes'? When I have a ruble, I buy."
"And when not?"
"I get one."
"How?"
"What do you mean by 'how'?"
And it is an hour before I find out that Levi Yitzchock Bärenpelz is a
bit of a rabbinical assistant, and acts as arbiter in quarrels; a bit of
a commission-agent, a fragment of a merchant, a morsel of a match-maker,
and now and again, when the fancy takes him, a messenger.
Thanks to all these "trades," the counted and the forgotten ones, he
earns his bread, although with toil and trouble, for wife and
child--even for the married daughter, because her father-in-law is _but_
a pauper.
THE SECOND ATTEMPT
I am taken into a shop.
A few packets of matches, a few boxes of cigarettes; needles, pins,
hair-pins, buttons, green and yellow soap, a few pieces of home-made,
fragrant soap, a few grocery wares.
"Who lives here?" I ask.
"You can see for yourself!" answers a Jewish woman, and goes on combing
the hair of a little girl about ten years old, who has twitched her head
from under the comb and stares with great, astonished eyes, at the
Goï[91] who talks Yiddish.
"Lay your head down again!" screams the mother.
"What is the name of your husband?" I inquire.
"Mösheh."
"And his 'German' name?"
"May his name come home!" she scolds suddenly. "He has been four hours
getting a dish from the neighbor's!"
"Stop scolding," says the beadle, "and answer when you're spoken to!"
She is afraid of the beadle. He is beadle and bailiff together, and
collects the taxes, besides being held in great regard by the
town-justice.
"Who was scolding? who? what? Can't I speak against my own husband?"
"What is his 'German' name?" I ask again.
The beadle remembers it himself, and answers, "Jungfreud."
"How many children have you?"
"I beg of you, friend, come later on, when my husband is here; that's
his affair! I've enough to do with the shop and six children. Go away,
for goodness' sake!"
I make a note of six children, and ask how many are married.
"Married! I wish any of them were married, I should have fewer gray
hairs."
"Are they all girls?"
"Three are boys."
"What are they doing?"
"What should they be doing? Plaguing my life out with their open
mouths!"
"Why not teach them a trade?"
She turns up her nose, gives me a black look, and refuses to give any
further answers.
I have an idea: I buy a packet of cigarettes. She looks less
disagreeable, and I ask:
"How much does your husband earn?"
"_He?_ He earn anything? What use do you suppose _he_ is, when I can't
even send him to fetch a dish from a neighbor's? He's been four hours
already. It won't be thanks to _him_ if we get any supper to-night!"
She goes off into another fury. I have to go outside and catch the
husband in the street. I knew him--he was carrying a dish!
AT THE SHOCHET'S
I am greeted by a mixture of different voices. A hero of a cock gives a
proud crow, as though there were no such thing as a slaughter-knife in
the world. Contrariwise, a calf lows sadly--it would seem to be hungry,
while between the boards under the holes in the tall roof chirp
quantities of small birds. They have wings and laugh at the Shochet. It
is summer, the air is full of insects, men, even the poorest and
stingiest, leave crumbs about. Zip! zip! and zip! and zip! zip! zip! The
bed in the nest is made, the "he" is decked out in bright colors, the
"she" is modest and silent, and the children have had enough to eat!
They are warm, and are not "down" in someone's note-book for military
service or in connection with the matter of a license.
But ask them what is the meaning of a "blemish in the holy offerings!"
This question is being discussed by two young men, barefoot, in
skull-caps, and undressed to their "little prayer-scarfs."[92]
The young men are only unfit for inspecting licenses or wares in the
shop, but calves for the altar--as fast as you please!
When God portioned out the world, the peasant took the soil, the fisher
the river, the hunter the forest, the gardener the fruit-trees, the
merchant the weights and measures, and so on; but the poet lingered in a
wood. The nightingale sang to him, the trees whispered all sorts of
wood-gossip into his ear, and his eyes, the poetical eyes, could not
look away from the girl kneeling by the stream, from the tadpole in her
hand. And he came too late for everything! The world, when he arrived,
was already divided up. God had nothing left for him but clouds,
rainbows, roses, and song-birds. He did not even find the young
washerwoman on his way back, she had engaged herself somewhere as nurse.
You have fancy! Create a world for yourself, said God.
And people envied the poet--his world was the best! The peasant tilled
his land with sweat and toil. The fisher is not idle--breaking ice in
winter time is no joke. The hunter wearies hunting and pursuing. Pippins
are not so easily made out of crab-apples! The merchant must bestir
himself, if only about falsifying the weights and measures, else he dies
of hunger. _One_ is the poet, who lies on his stomach and creates
worlds!
But it was a mistake. It turned out that his soul was only a
camera-obscura that reflected the outside world with all its mud and
pigs. So long as the pig keeps its place, it is not so bad, but when the
pig gets into the foreground, the poet's world becomes as piggish as
ours.
The only people who remain to be envied are our two young men, the
Shochet's son with the Shochet's son-in-law. Our world with its pigs
doesn't fit in with their world of "blemish in the sacrifice." There is
no connection between the two, no bridge, no link whatever.
And as I have come into _their_ world out of _our_ world, the Gemorehs
are shut, while the young faces express fear and wonder.
The Shochet is not at home, he has gone to a neighboring village; that
is why the calf is still lowing in the house. The wife has a little
draper's shop.
The daughter and a daughter-in-law stand by the fire and their faces are
triply red.
First, from pride in their husbands with their Torah; secondly, from
the crackling fire, and thirdly, with confusion before a stranger, a
man, and a "German" to boot. One caught a corner of her apron in her
mouth, the other moved a few steps backward, as in the synagogue at the
end of the Kedushah. Both look at me in astonishment from under low
foreheads with hairbands of plaited thread.
The young men, however, soon recover themselves. They have heard of the
note-taker, and have guessed that I am he!
The note-taking goes quickly. The Shochet gets four rubles a week,
besides what he earns in the villages; were it not for the meat brought
in from the villages round about, he would be doing very well.
The shop does not bring in much, but always something. Parnosseh, thank
God, they have! As for the children, they will live with the parents,
and when, in God's good time, the parents shall have departed this life,
they will inherit, one, the father's profession, the other, the shop;
the house will be in common.
They look better off than any in the town; better off than the traders,
householders, workmen, better off even than the public-house keeper and
the Feldscher together. There will come a time--I think as I go
out--when even teaching will be one of the best paid professions.
It is all not so bad as people think: besides being a rabbi, a Shochet,
a beadle, and a teacher, there is yet another good way of getting a
living.
In the Shochet's house there is a female lodger; she pays fifteen rubles
a year. The door is locked; through the window, which looks into the
street, I see quite a nice little room. Two well-furnished beds with
white pillows, red-painted wooden furniture; copper utensils hang on the
wall by the fire-place; there is a bright hanging-lamp. The room is full
of comfort and household cheer.
She has silver, too, they tell me. I see a large chest with brass
fittings. There must be silver candle-sticks in it, and perhaps
ornaments.
What do you think? they say. She has a lot of money, the whole town is
in her pocket. She is a widow with three children. The door is locked
all through the week, because she only comes home every Sabbath,
excepting Shabbes Chazon.[93] She spends the whole week going round the
villages in the neighborhood, begging, with all three children.
THE REBBITZIN OF SKUL
Esther the queen was sallow,[94] but a gleam of graciousness lighted up
her countenance. Esther, the Skul rebbitzin, was also plain-featured,
but it was not a gleam, rather a sun, of kindliness that shone in her
face. An old, thin woman, her head covered with a thin, wrinkled, pale
pink skin, droops like a fine Esrog over her red kerchief. Only this
Esrog has two kind, serious eyes.
She is a native of the place, and lives by herself; she has married all
her children in various parts of the country, but nothing would induce
her to live with any one of them.
It is never advisable to let oneself be dependent on a son-in-law or
daughter-in-law. The husband stands up for the wife--the wife for the
husband (not without reason saith the holy Torah: "And therefore a man
shall leave his parents, etc."). She will not give them occasion to
transgress the command to honor a mother, that is a real case of "thou
shalt not cause the blind to stumble."
"God, blessed be His Name, created man so that he should not see the
faults of those nearest him, otherwise the world would be as full of
divorces as of marriage contracts!"
Secondly--as the rabbi of Skul observed more than once--a widow who
depends on her children is a double grass-widow, and "the words of the
rabbi of Skul should be framed in gold and worn about the neck as an
_Öibele_." True, she says with a low sigh, _Öibeles_ are not worn
nowadays, imitation pearls are considered prettier!
She could not stay on in Skul. Since her husband the rabbi died, the
place has become hateful to her. "Really," she says, "'its glory has
departed, its splendor, and its beauty.'" She goes there once a year,
for the anniversary of his death, but she cannot remain long--"it has
grown empty."
She lived with the Skul rabbi forty years. Those that knew him say that
she grew to be his second self.
He, may he forgive me! was a Misnagid; so she thinks nothing of "good
Jews!" His "service" was the Torah in its plain meaning. She sits all
day over the Pentateuch in Yiddish, or learns the Shulchan Aruch;[95]
she quotes the Skul rabbi at every second word and it is his voice, his
motions, his customs!
After the Skul rabbi's Kiddush and Havdoleh, she will listen to no
other; she says her own over cake or currant wine. And _her_ Kiddush is
_his_ Kiddush--the same low, dignified chant, the same sweetness. She
eats "just kosher" and is very learned.
She can answer ritual questions! Forty years running she has stood by
the hearth with her kind face turned to the table at which her husband
sat and studied; her dove's eyes took in his every movement, her ears,
half hidden under the head-kerchief, his every word, she was his true
helpmeet, she hid his every thought in her brain and his goodness in her
heart.
A river may have lain a hundred years in another bed, and all its
previous twists and bends are wrought into the rocks of its first one.
The Skul rabbi's life may have run more peacefully than a river, but the
rebbitzin was no rock to him, rather a sponge that absorbed the whole of
him.
She is not satisfied with the world as it is to-day. "If it is no longer
pious, the Almighty must have a care; if His people behave so, it is
doubtless because He wishes it. Only, there is no 'purpose' in it all;
the present-day stuffs are spider-webs, and people don't sew as they
used to, they cut it all up into seams!
"Don't talk to me of the curtains before the Ark, you can't make so much
as a frock for a child out of them! The old-fashioned head-dresses get
dearer every day, a head-kerchief ought to last forever, and even out of
a bosom-kerchief you can always draw a gold or silver thread, but
imitation pearls and glass spangles are good for nothing. And, believe
me, it is all much uglier, in my opinion!"
But she bears no one a grudge: "My husband, the Skul rabbi, was a
Misnagid, but he never persecuted a Chossid, heaven forbid!"
She remembers how the householders once came crying out that the
Chassidîm of the place were late in reciting the Shema,[96] and she
heard from his own lips the reply: "There are," he said to them,
"different armies, and they have different weapons, different customs,
but they all serve the same kingdom. Even boots," he added with his
smile, "are not all made by the same pattern."
She remembers all his sayings and lives according to his ideas.
He used to get very angry if a workman rose and stood before him as a
sign of respect, for he was greatly in favor of people working with
their hands, therefore when she came here with her few hundred rubles,
she set up soap-making--sooner than live on others.
She knows that even a woman is under the law bidding every one do
something for his own support--it is not one of the laws bound to a
certain time, from which women are exempt. When they "kept" her money,
she remained dependent on the soap only. "It wouldn't be a bad
business," she says, "blessed be His Name! I make three to four rubles a
week before a holiday. My soap, may His Name be praised! has a
reputation in the whole neighborhood, only--just now it's all on credit.
Some day the business will fail."
I look round on all sides, I see no utensils, no instruments for the
work.
Nothing extra is wanted for it, she gives me to understand: "You take
some ashes from the hearth, potatoes, and other vegetables, work them
together in water, let them steam and then simmer over the fire; in that
way you get 'unclear' soap, and if you do the same thing over again, you
get _liter_, that is, good soap!" When I leave, she asks a little
troubled and ashamed:
"Tell me, I beg of you, when your writings come into the hands of the
great people, will they not say I must take out a license?"
INSURED
A quiet summer night. Over there the celebrated wood shows black on the
sky-line; our forefathers engraved in its trees the names of the
divisions of the Talmud they completed as they went along. Yonder, not
far off, they halted, and the "head of the dispersion" said "Pöh lîn!"
(here abide!), and the land has ever since been called "Pöhlin;"[97] but
the other nations cannot make out the reason.
And the wood has a short cut to Jerusalem. There was once a goat
belonging to one of the native Làmed-Wòfniks, and the goat knew the
road; she used to trot every morning to pasture on the Temple Mount, and
return with three pitcherfuls of milk for the holy man.
To the right of the wood, beside a river, lies the town. It is divided
into two parts. One part is a long strip--a straight, paved street with
walled-in houses under sheet-metal roofs, quite substantial, fastened to
the earth with foundations. The inhabitants of the street know for
certain that they will live and die in them; that all the winds of
heaven may blow without causing them to move an inch.
Then comes the second part, another world, quite spiritual: flimsy
"hen-houses" entirely built of straw and fir planks, with only an
occasional slate-roof. A breeze blows over them, and they are gone. Do
their dwellers hope to find the short cut to the Temple Mount, like the
immortal goat, or do they speculate on the fire-insurance?
And how like are the houses to their inhabitants! These are
narrow-chested, with darkened eyes, and crouch under crooked straw caps.
Cocks crow out of the huts, ducks quack, and geese cackle. From out the
marsh, which licks the threshold with seventy tongues, croak well-fed,
portly frogs. A Jewish calf frequently contributes a bleat, and is
answered out of the long street by a Gentile dog. I shall begin to take
notes early in the morning.
I know beforehand what it will be: if not thirty-six rubles a year, it
will be thirty-three or thirty-two.... I shall find "many trades and
few blessings,"[98] more soap factories, any number of empty houses....
The beadle will reckon up for me: _he_ is a messenger, _she_, a
huckstress; two daughters are out in service in Lublin, in Samoscz....
one son is a "helper" in a Cheder, the other serving his time in the
army, and the daughter-in-law with three, four, five children has gone
home to her father and mother....
I shall find neglected children tumbling about in the swamp with the
ducks and geese; mites of babies screaming their throats out in the
cradles; sick people left alone in bed; boarded-out children sitting
over Gemorehs; young women in furry wigs and with or without shyness; I
hardly shut my eyes, before these same weary, livid, pale, twisted
faces, walking sorrows, rise before me ... there is seldom one who
smiles, one with a dimple ... all the men so unmanly, so mummy-like,
women with running eyes, carrying a load of fruit, a sack of onions, or
else an unborn child together with the onions. I know I shall come
across an unlicensed third-rate public-house, two or three
horse-stealers, and more than two or three receivers of stolen goods.
But what about the statistics? Can they answer the question, how many
empty stomachs, useless teeth? how many people whose eyes are drawn out
of their sockets as with pincers at the sight of a piece of dry bread?
how many people who have really died of hunger?
All you gain by statistics is that you find out about an unlicensed
public-house, or a horse-thief, or a receiver of stolen goods.