Once upon a time three people ate. I recall the event as one recalls a
dream. Black clouds obscure the men, because it happened long ago.
Only sometimes it seems to me that there are no clouds, but a pillar of
fire lighting up the men and their doings, and the fire grows bigger and
brighter, and gives light and warmth to this day.
I have only a few words to tell you, two or three words: once upon a
time three people ate. Not on a workday or an ordinary Sabbath, but on a
Day of Atonement that fell on a Sabbath.
Not in a corner where no one sees or hears, but before all the people in
the great Shool, in the principal Shool of the town.
Neither were they ordinary men, these three, but the chief Jews of the
community: the Rabbi and his two Dayonim.
The townsfolk looked up to them as if they had been angels, and
certainly held them to be saints. And now, as I write these words, I
remember how difficult it was for me to understand, and how I sometimes
used to think the Rabbi and his Dayonim had done wrong. But even then I
felt that they were doing a tremendous thing, that they were holy men
with holy instincts, and that it was not easy for them to act thus. Who
knows how hard they fought with themselves, who knows how they
suffered, and what they endured?
And even if I live many years and grow old, I shall never forget the day
and the men, and what was done on it, for they were no ordinary men, but
great heroes.
Those were bitter times, such as had not been for long, and such as will
not soon return.
A great calamity had descended on us from Heaven, and had spread abroad
among the towns and over the country: the cholera had broken out.
The calamity had reached us from a distant land, and entered our little
town, and clutched at young and old.
By day and by night men died like flies, and those who were left hung
between life and death.
Who can number the dead who were buried in those days! Who knows the
names of the corpses which lay about in heaps in the streets!
In the Jewish street the plague made great ravages: there was not a
house where there lay not one dead--not a family in which the calamity
had not broken out.
In the house where we lived, on the second floor, nine people died in
one day. In the basement there died a mother and four children, and in
the house opposite we heard wild cries one whole night through, and in
the morning we became aware that there was no one left in it alive.
The grave-diggers worked early and late, and the corpses lay about in
the streets like dung. They stuck one to the other like clay, and one
walked over dead bodies.
The summer broke up, and there came the Solemn Days, and then the most
dreadful day of all--the Day of Atonement.