# Yiddish Tales/Abraham Raisin/Lost His Voice

Contents
LOST HIS VOICE
It was in the large synagogue in Klemenke. The week-day service had come to an end. The town cantor who sings all the prayers, even when he prays alone, and who is longer over them than other people, had already folded his prayer-scarf, and was humming the day's Psalm to himself, to a tune. He sang the last words "cantorishly" high:
"And He will be our guide until death." In the last word "death" he tried, as usual, to rise artistically to the higher octave, then to fall very low, and to rise again almost at once into the height; but this time he failed, the note stuck in his throat and came out false.
He got a fright, and in his fright he looked round to make sure no one was standing beside him. Seeing only old Henoch, his alarm grew less, he knew that old Henoch was deaf.
As he went out with his prayer-scarf and phylacteries under his arm, the unsuccessful "death" rang in his ears and troubled him.
"Plague take it," he muttered, "it never once happened to me before."
Soon, however, he remembered that two weeks ago, on the Sabbath before the New Moon, as he stood praying with the choristers before the altar, nearly the same thing had happened to him when he sang "He is our God" as a solo in the Kedushah, ​406 EAISIN
Happily no one remarked it anyway the "bass" had said nothing to him. And the memory of the unsuc- cessful "Hear, Israel" of two weeks ago and of to- day's "unto death" were mingled together, and lay heavily on his heart.
He would have liked to try the note once more as he walked, but the street was just then full of people, and he tried to refrain till he should reach home. Con- trary to his usual custom, he began taking rapid steps, and it looked as if he were running away from some- one. On reaching home, he put away his prayer-scarf without saying so much as good morning, recovered his breath after the quick walk, and began to sing, "He shall be our guide until death."
"That's right, you have so little time to sing in ! The day is too short for you!" exclaimed the cantoress, angrily. "It grates on the ears enough already !"
"How, it grates?" and the cantor's eyes opened wide with fright, "I sing a note, and you say 'it grates'? How can it grate?"
He looked at her imploringly, his eyes said: "Have pity on me ! Don't say, 'it grates' ! because if it does grate, I am miserable, I am done for!"
But the cantoress was much too busy and preoccupied with the dinner to sympathize and to understand how things stood with her husband, and went on :
"Of course it grates ! Why shouldn't it ? It deafens me. When you sing in the choir, I have to bear it, but when you begin by yourself what?"
The cantor had grown as white as chalk, and only just managed to say: ​LOST HIS VOICE 407
"Grime, are you mad ? What are you talking about ?"
"What ails the man to-day I" exclaimed Grune, im- patiently. "You've made a fool of yourself long enough ! Go and wash your hands and come to dinner !"
The cantor felt no appetite, but he reflected that one must eat, if only as a remedy; not to eat would make matters worse, and he washed his hands.
He chanted the grace loud and cantor-like, glancing occasionally at his wife, to see if she noticed anything wrong; but this time she said nothing at all, and he was reassured. "It was my fancy just my fancy !" he said to himself. "All nonsense ! One doesn't lose one's voice so soon as all that !"
Then he remembered that he was already forty years old, and it had happened to the cantor Meyer Lieder, when he was just that age
That was enough to put him into a fright again. He bent his head, and thought deeply. Then he raised it, and called out loud :
"Grune!"
"Hush! What is it? What makes you call out in that strange voice?" asked Grune, crossly, running in.
"Well, well, let me live !" said the cantor. "Why do you say 'in that strange voice'? Whose voice was it? eh ? What is the matter now ?"
There was a sound as of tears as he spoke.
"You're cracked to-day ! As nonsensical Well, what do you want?"
"Beat up one or two eggs for me !" begged the cantor, softly. ​408 RAISIN
"Here's a new holiday !" screamed Grune. "On a Wednesday! Have you got to chant the Sabbath prayers ? Eggs are so dear now five kopeks apiece !"
"Grune," commanded the cantor, "they may be one ruble apiece, two rubles, five rubles, one hundred rubles. Do you hear? Beat up two eggs for me, and don't talk!"
"To be sure, you earn so much money!" muttered Grune.
"Then you think it's all over with me?" said the cantor, boldly. "No, Grune!"
He wanted to tell her that he wasn't sure about it yet, there was still hope, it might be all a fancy, perhaps it was imagination, but he was afraid to say all that, and Grune did not understand what he stammered out. She shrugged her shoulders, and only said, "Upon my word !" and went to beat up the eggs.
The cantor sat and sang to himself. He listened to every note as though he were examining some one. Finding himself unable to take the high octave, he called out despairingly:
"Grune, make haste with the eggs !" His one hope lay in the eggs.
The cantoress brought them with a cross face, and grumbled :
"He wants eggs, and we're pinching and starving
The cantor would have liked to open his heart to her, so that she should not think the eggs were what he cared about; he would have liked to say, "Grune, I think I'm done for!" but he summoned all his courage and refrained. ​LOST HIS VOICE 409
"After all, it may be only an idea," he thought.
And without eaying anything further, he began to drink up the eggs as a remedy.
When they were finished, he tried to make a few cantor-like trills. In this he succeeded, and he grew more cheerful.
"It will be all right," he thought, "I shall not lose my voice so soon as all that ! Never mind Meyer Lieder, he drank ! I don't drink, only a little wine now and again, at a circumcision."
His appetite returned, and he swallowed mouthful after mouthful.
But his cheerfulness did not last : the erstwhile unsuc- cessful "death" rang in his ears, and the worry returned and took possession of him.
The fear of losing his voice had tormented the cantor for the greater part of his life. His one care, his one anxiety had been, what should he do if he were to lose his voice? It had happened to him once already, when he was fourteen years old. He had a tenor voice, which broke all of a sudden. But that time he didn't care. On the contrary, he was delighted, he knew that his voice was merely changing, and that in six months he would get the baritone for which he was impatiently waiting. But when he had got the baritone, he knew that when he lost that, it would be lost indeed he would get no other voice. So he took great care of it how much more so when he had his own house- hold, and had taken the office of cantor in Klemenke! Not a breath of wind was allowed to blow upon his throat, and he wore a comforter in the hottest weather​410 EAISIN
It was not so much on account of the Klemenke householders he felt sure they would not dismiss him from his office. Even if he were to lose his voice altogether, he would still receive his salary. It was not brought to him to his house, as it was he had to go for it every Friday from door to door, and the Klemenke Jews were good-hearted, and never refused anything to the outstretched hand. He took care of his voice, and trembled to lose it, only out of love for the singing. He thought a great deal of the Klemenke Jews their like was not to be found but in the inter- pretation of music they were uninitiated, they had no feeling whatever. And when, standing before the altar, he used to make artistic trills and variations, and take the highest notes, that was for himself he had great joy in it and also for his eight singers, who were all the world to him. His very life was bound up with them, and when one of them exclaimed, "Oi, cantor! Oi, how you sing !" his happiness was complete.
The singers had come together from various towns and villages, and all their conversations and their stories turned and wrapped themselves round cantors and music. These stories and legends were the cantor's delight, he would lose himself in every one of them, and give a sweet, deep sigh:
"As if music were a trifle! As if a feeling were a toy !" And now that he had begun to fear he was losing his voice, it seemed to him the singers were different people bad people! They must be laughing at him among themselves! And he began to be on his guard against them, avoided taking a high note in their ​LOST HIS VOICE 411
presence, lest they should find out and suffered all the more.
And what would the neighboring cantors say? The thought tormented him further. He knew that he had a reputation among them, that he was a great deal thought of, that his voice was much talked of. He saw in his mind's eye a couple of cantors whispering together, and shaking their heads sorrowfully: they are pitying him! "How sad! You have heard? The poor Kle- menke cantor "
The vision quite upset him.
"Perhaps it's only fancy!" he would say to himself in those dreadful moments, and would begin to sing, to try his highest notes. But the terror he was in took away his hearing, and he could not tell if his voice were what it should be or not.
In two weeks time his face grew pale and thin, his eyes were sunk, and he felt his strength going.
"What is the matter with you, cantor?" said a singer to him one day.
"Ha, what is the matter?" asked the cantor, with a start, thinking they had already found out. "You ask what is the matter with me ? Then you know something about it, ha !"
"No, I know nothing. That is why I ask you why you look so upset."
"Upset, you say? Nothing more than upset, ha? That's all?"
"The cantor must be thinking out some new piece for the Solemn Days," decided the choir. ​412 RAISIN"
Another month went by, and the cantor had not got the better of his fear. Life had become distasteful to him. If he had known for certain that his voice was gone, he would perhaps have been calmer. Ver- f alien ! No one can live forever (losing his voice and dying was one and the same to him), but the uncer- tainty, the tossing oneself between yes and no, the Oloni ha-Tohu of it all, embittered the cantor's existence.
At last, one fine day, the cantor resolved to get at the truth: he could bear it no longer.
It was evening, the wife had gone to the market for meat, and the choir had gone home, only the eldest singer, Yb'ssel "bass," remained with the cantor.
The cantor looked at him, opened his mouth and shut it again; it was difficult for him to say what he wanted to say.
At last he broke out with :
"Yossel !"
"What is it, cantor?"
"Tell me, are you an honest man?"
Yossel "bass" stared at the cantor, and asked :
"What are you asking me to-day, cantor?"
"Brother Yossel," the cantor said, all but weeping. "Brother Yossel !"
That was all he could say.
"Cantor, what is wrong with you ?"
"Brother Yossel, be an honest man, and tell me the truth, the truth !"
"I don't understand! What is the matter with you, cantor ?"
"Tell me the truth: Do you notice any change in me?" ​LOST HIS VOICE 413
"Yes, I do," answered the singer, looking at the cantor, and seeing how pale and thin he was. "A very great change "
"Now I see you are an honest man, you tell me the truth to my face. Do you know when it began ?"
"It will soon be a month," answered the singer.
"Yes, brother, a month, a month, but I felt "
The cantor wiped off the perspiration that covered his forehead, and continued:
"And you think, Yossel, that it's lost now, for good and all?"
"That what is lost?" asked Yossel, beginning to be aware that the conversation turned on something quite different from what was in his own mind.
"What? How can you ask? Ah? What should I lose ? Money ? I have no money I mean of course my voice."
Then Yossel understood everything he was too much of a musician not to understand. Looking com- passionately at the cantor, he asked :
"For certain?"
"For certain?" exclaimed the cantor, trying to be cheerful. "Why must it be for certain? Very likely it's all a mistake let us hope it is!"
Yossel looked at the cantor, and as a doctor behaves to his patient, so did he :
"Take do!" he said, and the cantor, like an obedient pupil, drew out do.
"Draw it out, draw it out! Four quavers draw it out !" commanded Yossel, listening attentively.
The cantor drew it out. 27 ​414 RAISIN
"Now, if you please, re!"
The cantor sang out re-re-re.
The singer moved aside, appeared to be lost in thought, and then said, sadly:
"Gone I"
"Forever?"
"Well, are you a little boy? Are you likely to get another voice ? At your time of life, gone is gone !"
The cantor wrung his hands, threw himself down beside the table, and, laying his head on his arms, he burst out crying like a child.
Next morning the whole town had heard of the mis- fortune that the cantor had lost his voice.
"It's an ill wind " quoted the innkeeper, a well- to-do man. "He won't keep us so long with his trills on Sabbath. I'd take a bitter onion for that voice of
LATE
It was in sad and hopeless mood that Antosh watched the autumn making its way into his peasant's hut. The days began to shorten and the evenings to lengthen, and there was no more petroleum in the hut to fill his humble lamp; his wife complained too—the store of salt was giving out; there was very little soap left, and in a few days he would finish his tobacco. And Antosh cleared his throat, spat, and muttered countless times a day:
"No salt, no soap, no tobacco; we haven't got anything. A bad business!"
Antosh had no prospect of earning anything in the village. The one village Jew was poor himself, and had no work to give. Antosh had only one hope left. Just before the Feast of Tabernacles he would drive a whole cart-load of fir-boughs into the little town and bring a tidy sum of money home in exchange.
He did this every year, since buying his thin horse in the market for six rubles.
"When shall you have Tabernacles?" he asked every day of the village Jew. "Not yet," was the Jew's daily reply. "But when shall you?" Antosh insisted one day.
"In a week," answered the Jew, not dreaming how very much Antosh needed to know precisely.
In reality there were only five more days to Tabernacles, and Antosh had calculated with business accuracy that it would be best to take the fir-boughs into the town two days before the festival. But this was really the first day of it. ​416 KAISIN
He rose early, ate his dry, black bread dipped in salt, and drank a measure of water. Then he harnessed his thin, starved horse to the cart, took his hatchet, and drove into the nearest wood.
He cut down the branches greedily, seeking out the thickest and longest.
"Good ware is easier sold," he thought, and the cart filled, and the load grew higher and higher. He was calculating on a return of three gulden, and it seemed still too little, so that he went on cutting, and laid on a few more boughs. The cart could hold no more, and Antosh looked at it from all sides, and smiled con- tentedly.
"That will be enough," he muttered, and loosened the reins. But scarcely had he driven a few paces, when he stopped and looked the cart over again.
"Perhaps it's not enough, after all?" he questioned fearfully, cut down five more boughs, laid them onto the already full cart, and drove on.
He drove slowly, pace by pace, and his thoughts travelled slowly too, as though keeping step with the thin horse.
Antosh was calculating how much salt and how much soap, how much petroleum and how much tobacco he could buy for the return for his ware. At length the calculating tired him, and he resolved to put it off till he should have the cash. Then the calculating would be done much more easily.
But when he reached the town, and saw that the booths were already covered with fir-boughs, he felt a pang at his heart. The booths and the houses seemed to be ​LATE 417
twirling round him in a circle, and dancing. But he consoled himself with the thought that every year, when he drove into town, he found many booths already covered. Some cover earlier, some later. The latter paid the best.
"I shall ask higher prices," he resolved, and all the while fear tugged at his heart. He drove on. Two Jewish women were standing before a house; they pointed at the cart with their finger, and laughed aloud.
"Why do you laugh ?" queried Antosh, excitedly.
"Because you are too soon with your fir-boughs," they answered, and laughed again.
"How too soon?" he asked, astonished. "Too soon too soon " laughed the women.
"Pfui," Antosh spat, and drove on, thinking, "Berko said himself, 'In a week.' I am only two days ahead."
A cold sweat covered him, as he reflected he might have made a wrong calculation, founded on what Berko had told him. It was possible that he had counted the days badly had come too late! There is no doubt: all the booths are covered with fir-boughs. He will have no salt, no tobacco, no soap, and no petroleum.
Sadly he followed the slow paces of his languid horse, which let his weary head droop as though out of sym- pathy for his master.
Meantime the Jews were crowding out of the syna- gogues in festal array, with their prayer-scarfs and prayer-books in their hands. When they perceived the peasant with the cart of fir-boughs, they looked ques- tioningly one at the other: Had they made a mistake and begun the festival too early? ​418 EAISIN
"What have you there?" some one inquired.
"What ?" answered Antosh, taken aback. "Fir-boughs ! Buy, my dear friend, I sell it cheap!" he begged in a piteous voice.
The Jews burst out laughing.
'What should we want it for now, fool ?" "The festival has begun!" said another. Antosh was confused with his misfortune, he scratched the back of his head, and exclaimed, weeping:
"Buy! Buy! I want salt, soap! I want petroleum."
The group of Jews, who had begun by laughing, were now deeply moved. They saw the poor, starving peasant standing there in his despair, and were filled with a lively compassion.
"A poor Gentile it's pitiful !" said one, sympathetic- ally. "He hoped to make a fortune out of his fir-boughs, and now !" observed another.
"It would be proper to buy up that bit of fir," said a third, "else it might cause a Chillul ha-Shem." "On a festival?" objected some one else.
"It can always be used for firewood," said another, contemplating the cartful.
"Whether or no ! It's a festival "
"No salt, no soap, no petroleum " It was the refrain of the bewildered peasant, who did not under- stand what the Jews were saying among themselves. He could only guess that they were talking about him. "Hold! he doesn't want money! He wants ware. Ware without money may be given even on a festival," called out one. ​LATE 419
The interest of the bystanders waxed more lively. Among them stood a storekeeper, whose shop was close by. "Give him, Chayyim, a few jars of salt and other things that he wants even if it comes to a few gulden. We will contribute."
"All right, willingly !" said Chayyim. "A poor Gen- tile!"
"A precept, a precept! It would be carrying out a religious precept, as surely as I am a Jew!" chimed in every individual member of the crowd.
Chayyim called the peasant to him; all the rest followed. He gave him out of the stores two jars of salt, a bar of soap, a bottle of petroleum, and two packets of tobacco.
The peasant did not know what to do for joy. He could only stammer in a low voice, "Thank you ! thank you !"
"And there's a bit of Sabbath loaf," called out one, when he had packed the things away, "take that with you!"
"There's some more!" and a second hand held some out to him.
"More !"
"More !"
"And more!"
They brought Antosh bread and cake from all sides; his astonishment was such that he could scarcely articu- late his thanks.
The people were pleased with themselves, and Yainkel Leives, a cheerful man, who was well supplied for the ​420 RAISIN
festival, because his daughter's "intended" was staying in his house, brought Antosh a glass of brandy :
"Drink, and drive home, in the name of God !"
Antosh drank the brandy with a quick gulp, bit off a piece of cake, and declared joyfully, "I shall never forget it !"
"Not at all a bad Gentile," remarked someone in the crowd.
"Well, what would you have? Did you expect him to beat you?" queried another, smiling.
The words "to beat" made a melancholy impression
THE KADDISH
From behind the curtain came low moans, and low words of encouragement from the old and experienced Bobbe. In the room it was dismal to suffocation. The seven children, all girls, between twenty-three and four years old, sat quietly, each by herself, with drooping head, and waited for something dreadful.
At a little table near a great cupboard with books sat the "patriarch" Reb Selig Chanes, a tall, thin Jew, with a yellow, consumptive face. He was chanting in low, broken tones out of a big Gemoreh, and continually raising his head, giving a nervous glance at the curtain, and then, without inquiring what might be going on beyond the low moaning, taking up once again his sad, tremulous chant. He seemed to be suffering more than the woman in childbirth herself.
"Lord of the World!'—it was the eldest daughter who broke the stillness—"Let it be a boy for once! Help, Lord of the World, have pity!"
"Oi, thus might it be, Lord of the World!" chimed in the second.
And all the girls, little and big, with broken heart and prostrate spirit, prayed that there might be born a boy.
Reb Selig raised his eyes from the Gemoreh, glanced at the curtain, then at the seven girls, gave vent to a deep-drawn Oi, made a gesture with his hand, and said with settled despair, "She will give you another sister!"
The seven girls looked at one another in desperation; ​422 RAISIN
their father's conclusion quite crushed them, and they had no longer even the courage to pray.
Only the littlest, the four-year-old, in the torn frock, prayed softly:
"Oi, please God, there will be a little brother."
"I shall die without a Kaddish !" groaned Reb Selig.
The time drags on, the moans behind the curtain grow louder, and Reb Selig and the elder girls feel that soon, very soon, the "grandmother" will call out in despair, "A little girl!" And Reb Selig feels that the words will strike home to his heart like a blow, and he resolves to run away.
He goes out into the yard, and looks up at the sky. It is midnight. The moon swims along so quietly and indifferently, the stars seem to frolic and rock them- selves like little children, and still Reb Selig hears, in the "grandmother's" husky voice, "A girl I"
"Well, there will be no Kaddish ! Verfallen !" he says, crossing the yard again. "There's no getting it by force!"
But his trying to calm himself is useless; the fear that it should be a girl only grows upon him. He loses patience, and goes back into the house.
But the house is in a turmoil.
"What is it, eh ?"
"A little boy ! Tate, a boy ! Tatinke, as surely may I be well !" with this news the seven girls fall upon him with radiant faces.
"Eh, a little boy ?" asked Reb Selig, as though bewil- dered, "eh? what?" ​THE KADDISH 423
"A boy, Eeb Selig, a Kaddish!" announced the "grandmother." "As soon as I have bathed him, I will show him you !"
"A boy ... a boy ..." stammered Eeb Selig in the same bewilderment, and he leant against the wall, and burst into tears like a woman.
The seven girls took alarm.
"That is for joy," explained the "grandmother," "I have known that happen before."
"A boy . . a boy !" sobbed Eeb Selig, overcome with happiness, "a boy ... a boy ... a Kaddish !"
The little boy received the name of Jacob, but he was called, by way of a talisman, Alter.
Eeb Selig was a learned man, and inclined to think lightly of such protective measures; he even laughed at his 'Cheike for believing in such foolishness; but, at heart, he was content to have it so. Who could tell what might not be in it, after all? Women sometimes know better than men.
By the time Alterke was three years old, Eeb Seng's cough had become worse, the sense of oppression on his chest more frequent. But he held himself morally erect, and looked death calmly in the face, as though he would say, "Now I can afford to laugh at you I leave a Kaddish !"
"What do you think, Cheike," he would say to his wife, after a fit of coughing, "would Alterke be able to say Kaddish if I were to die to-day or to-morrow?"
"Go along with you, crazy pate !" Cheike would exclaim in secret alarm. "You are going to live a long while ! Is your cough anything new ?" ​424 RAISIN
Selig smiled, "Foolish woman, she supposes I am afraid to die. When one leaves a Kaddish, death is a trifle."
Alterke was sitting playing with a prayer-book and imitating his father at prayer, "A num-num a num- num."
"Listen to him praying !" and Cheike turned delight- edly to her husband. "His soul is piously inclined !"
Selig made no reply, he only gazed at his Kaddish with a beaming face. Then an idea came into his head : Alterke will be a Tzaddik, will help him out of all his difficulties in the other world.
"Mame, I want to eat !" wailed Alterke, suddenly.
He was given a piece of the white bread which was laid aside, for him only, every Sabbath.
Alterke began to eat.
"Who bringest forth! Who bringest forth!" called out Eeb Selig.
"Tan't !" answered the child.
"It is time you taught him to say grace," observed Cheike.
And Eeb Selig drew Alterke to him and began to repeat with him.
"Say:Boruch."
"Bo'uch," repeated the child after his fashion.
"Attoh."
"Attoh."
When Alterke had finished "Who bringest forth," Cheike answered piously Amen, and Eeb Selig saw Alterke, in imagination, standing in the synagogue and repeating Kaddish, and heard the congregation answer ​THE KADDISH 425
Amen, and he felt as though he were already seated in the Garden of Eden.
Another year went by, and Eeb Selig was feeling very poorly. Spring had come, the snow had melted, and he found the wet weather more trying than ever before. He could just drag himself early to the synagogue, but going to the afternoon service had become a difficulty, and he used to recite the afternoon and later service at home, and spend the whole evening with Alterke.
It was late at night. All the houses were shut. Eeb Selig sat at his little table, and was looking into the corner where Cheike's bed stood, and where Alterke slept beside her. Selig had a feeling that he would die that night. He felt very tired and weak, and with an imploring look he crept up to Alterke's crib, and began to wake him.
The child woke with a start.
"Alterke" Keb Selig was stroking the little head "come to me for a little !"
The child, who had had his first sleep out, sprang up, and went to his father.
Eeb Selig sat down in the chair which stood by the little table with the open Gemoreh, lifted Alterke on- to the table, and looked into his eyes.
"Alterke!"
"What, Tate?"
"Would you like me to die?"
"Like," answered the child, not knowing what "to die" meant, and thinking it must be something nice. ​426 RAISIN
"Will you say Kaddish after me?" asked Eeb Selig, in a strangled voice, and he was seized with a fit of coughing.
"Will say !" promised the child.
"Shall you know how?"
"Shall 1"
"Well, now, say : Yisgaddal."
"Yisdaddal," repeated the child in his own way.
"Veyiskaddash."
"Veyistaddash."
And Reb Selig repeated the Kaddish with him several times.
The small lamp burnt low, and scarcely illuminated Reb Selig's yellow, corpse-like face, or the little one of Alterke, who repeated wearily the difficult, and to him unintelligible words of the Kaddish. And Alterke, all the while, gazed intently into the corner, where Tate's shadow and his own had a most fantastic and
AVRÒHOM THE ORCHARD-KEEPER
When he first came to the place, as a boy, and went straight to the house-of-study, and people, having greeted him, asked "Where do you come from?" and he answered, not without pride, "From the Government of Wilna"—from that day until the day he was married, they called him "the Wilner."
In a few years' time, however, when the house-of-study had married him to the daughter of the Psalm-reader, a coarse, undersized creature, and when, after six months' "board" with his father-in-law, he became a teacher, the town altered his name to "the Wilner teacher." Again, a few years later, when he got a chest affection, and the doctor forbade him to keep school, and he began to deal in fruit, the town learnt that his name was Avròhom, to which they added "the orchard-keeper," and his name is "Avròhom the orchard-keeper" to this day.
Avròhom was quite content with his new calling. He had always wished for a business in which he need not have to do with a lot of people in whom he had small confidence, and in whose society he felt ill at ease.
People have a queer way with them, he used to think, they want to be always talking! They want to tell everything, find out everything, answer everything!
When he was a student he always chose out a place in a corner somewhere, where he could see nobody, and nobody could see him; and he used to murmur the day's ​428 RAISIN
task to a low tune, and his murmured repetition made him think of the ruin in which Rabbi Jose, praying there, heard the Bas-Kol mourn, cooing like a dove, over the exile of Israel. And then he longed to float away to that ruin somewhere in the wilderness, and murmur there like a dove, with no one, no one, to interrupt him, not even the Bas-Kol. But his vision would be destroyed by some hard question which a fellow-student would put before him, describing circles with his thumb and chanting to a shrill Gemoreh-tune.
In the orchard, at the end of the Gass, however, which Avrohom hired of the Gentiles, he had no need to exchange empty words with anyone. Avrohom had no large capital, and could not afford to hire an orchard for more than thirty rubles. The orchard was conse- quently small, and only grew about twenty apple-trees, a few pear-trees, and a cherry-tree. Avrohom used to move to the garden directly after the Feast of "Weeks, although that was still very early, the fruit had not yet set, and there was nothing to steal.
But Avrohom could not endure sitting at home any longer, where the wife screamed, the children cried, and there wag a continual "fair." What should he want there? He only wished to be alone with his thoughts and imaginings, and his quiet "tunes," which were always weaving themselves inside him, and were nearly stifled.
It is early to go to the orchard directly after the Feast of Weeks, but Avrdhom does not mind, he is drawn back to the trees that can think and hear so much, and keep so many things to themselves. ​AVROHOM THE ORCHARD-KEEPER 429
And Avrohom betakes himself to the orchard. He carries with him, besides phylacteries and prayer-scarf, a prayer-book with the Psalms and the "Stations," two volumes of the Gemoreh which he owns, a few works by the later scholars, and the Tales of Jerusalem ; he takes his wadded winter garment and a cushion, makes them into a bundle, kisses the Mezuzeh, mutters farewell, and is off to the orchard.
As he nears the orchard his heart begins to beat loudly for joy, but he is hindered from going there at once. In the yard through which he must pass lies a dog. Later on, when Avrohom has got to know the dog, he will even take him into the orchard, but the first time there is a certain risk one has to know a dog, otherwise it barks, and Avrohom dreads a bark worse than a bite it goes through one's head ! And Avrohom waits till the owner comes out, and leads him through by the hand.
"Back already?" exclaims the owner, laughing and astonished.
"Why not?" murmurs Avrohom, shamefacedly, and feeling that it is, indeed, early.
"What shall you do?" asks the owner, graver. "There is no hut there at all last year's fell to pieces."
"Never mind, never mind," begs Avrohom, "it will be all right."
"Well, if you want io come !" and the owner shrugs his shoulders, and lets Avrohom into the orchard.
Avrohom immediately lays his bundle on the ground, stretches himself out full length on the grass, and mur- murs, "Good ! good !"
28 ​430 RAISIN
At last he is silent, and listens to the quiet rustle of the trees. It seems to him that the trees also wonder at his coming so soon, and he looks at them beseechingly, as though he would say :
"Trees you, too! I couldn't help it ... it drew me ..."
And soon he fancies that the trees have understood everything, and murmur, "Good, good!"
And Avrohom already feels at home in the orchard. He rises from the ground, and goes to every tree in turn, as though to make its acquaintance. Then he con- siders the hut that stands in the middle of the orchard.
It has fallen in a little certainly, but Avrohom is all the better pleased with it. He is not particularly fond of new, strong things, a building resembling a ruin is somehow much more to his liking. Such a ruin is inwardly full of secrets, whispers, and melodies. There the tears fall quietly, while the soul yearns after some- thing that has no name and no existence in time or space. And Avrohom creeps into the fallen-in hut, where it is dark and where there are smells of another world. He draws himself up into a ball, and remains hid from everyone.
But to remain hid from the world is not so easy. At first it can be managed. So long as the fruit is ripening, he needs no one, and no one needs him. "When one of his children brings him food, he exchanges a few words with it, asks what is going on at home, and how the mother is, and he feels he has done his duty, if, when obliged to go home, he spends there Friday night ​AVKOHOM THE ORCHARD-KEEPER 431
and Saturday morning. That over, and the hot stew eaten, he returns to the orchard, lies down under a tree, opens the Tales of Jerusalem, goes to sleep reading a fantastical legend, dreams of the Western Wall, Mother Rachel's Grave, the Cave of Machpelah, and other holy, quiet places places where the air is full of old stories such as are given, in such easy Hebrew, in the Tales of Jerusalem.
But when the fruit is ripe, and the trees begin to bend under the burden of it, Avrohom must perforce leave his peaceful world, and become a trader.
When the first wind begins to blow in the orchard, and covers the ground thereof with apples and pears, Avrohom collects them, makes them into heaps, sorts them, and awaits the market-women with their loud tongues, who destroy all the peace and quiet of his Grarden of Eden.
On Sabbath he would like to rest, but of a Sabbath the trade in apples on tick of course is very lively in the orchards. There is a custom in the town to that effect, and Avrohom cannot do away with it.
tf
Young gentlemen and young ladies come into the orchard, and hold a sort of revel; they sing and laugh, they walk and they chatter, and Avrohom must listen to it all, and bear it, and wait for the night, when he can creep back into his hut, and need look at no one but the trees, and hear nothing but the wind, and sometimes the rain and the thunder.
But it is worse in the autumn, when the fruit is getting over-ripe, and he can no longer remain in the orchard. With a bursting heart he bids farewell to ​432 RAISIN
the trees, to the hut in which he has spent so many quiet, peaceful moments. He conveys the apples to a shed belonging to the farm, which he has hired, ever since he had the orchard, for ten gulden a month, and goes back to the Gass.
In the Gass, at that time, there is mud and rain. Town Jews drag themselves along sick and disheartened. They cough and groan. Avrohom stares round him, and fails to recognize the world.
"Bad!" he mutters. "Fe!" and he spits. "Where is one to get to?"
And Avrohom recalls the beautiful legends in the Tales of Jerusalem, he recalls the land of Israel.
There he knows it is always summer, always warm and fine. And every autumn the vision draws him.
But there is no possibility of his being able to go there he must sell the apples which he has brought from the orchard, and feed the wife and the children he has "outside the land." And all through the autumn and part of the winter, Avrohom drags himself about with a basket of apples on his arm and a yearning in his heart. He waits for the dear summer, when he will be able to go back and hide himself in the orchard, in the hut, and be alone, where the town mud and the town Jews with dulled senses shall be out of sight,
HIRSH DAVID NAUMBERG
THE RAV AND THE RAV'S SON
The Sabbath midday meal is over, and the Saken Rav passes his hands across his serene and pious countenance, pulls out both earlocks, straightens his skullcap, and prepares to expound a passage of the Torah as God shall enlighten him. There sit with him at table, to one side of him, a passing guest, a Libavitch Chossid, like the Rav himself, a man with yellow beard and earlocks, and a grubby shirt collar appearing above the grubby yellow kerchief that envelopes his throat; to the other side of him, his son Sholem, an eighteen-year-old youth, with a long pale face, deep, rather dreamy eyes, a velvet hat, but no earlocks, a secret Maskil, who writes Hebrew verses, and contemplates growing into a great Jewish author. The Rebbetzin has been suffering two or three months with rheumatism, and lies in another room.
The Rav is naturally humble-minded, and it is no trifle to him to expound the Torah. To take a passage of the Bible and say, The meaning is this and that, is a thing he hasn't the cheek to do. It makes him feel as uncomfortable as if he were telling lies. Up to twenty-five years of age he was a Misnaggid, but under the influence of the Saken Rebbetzin, he became a Chossid, bit by bit. Now he is over fifty, he drives to the Rebbe, and comes home every time with increased faith in the latter's supernatural powers, and, moreover, with a strong desire to expound a little of the Torah himself; only, whenever a good idea comes into his head, it ​436 NAUMBERG
oppresses him, because he has not sufficient self-con- fidence to express it.
The difficulty for him lies in making a start. He would like to do as the Rebbe does (long life to him !) give a push to his chair, a look, stern and somewhat angry, at those sitting at table, then a groaning sigh. But the Rav is ashamed to imitate him, or is partly afraid, lest people should catch him doing it. He drops his eyes, holds one hand to his forehead, while the other plays with the knife on the table, and one hardly hears :
"When thou goest forth to war with thine enemy thine enemy that is, the inclination to evil, oi, oi, a " he nods his head, gathers a little confidence, con- tinues his explanation of the passage, and gradually warms to the part. He already looks the stranger boldly in the face. The stranger twists himself into a correct attitude, nods assent, but cannot for the life of him tear his gaze from the brandy-bottle on the table, and cannot wonder sufficiently at so much being allowed to remain in it at the end of a meal. And when the Rav comes to the fact that to be in "prison" means to have bad habits, and "well-favored woman" means that every bad habit has its good side, the guest can no longer restrain himself, seizes the bottle rather awkwardly, as though in haste, fills up his glass, spills a little onto the cloth, and drinks with his head thrown back, gulping it like a regular tippler, after a hoarse and sleepy "to your health." This has a bad effect on the Rav's enthus- iasm, it "mixes his brains," and he turns to his son for help. To tell the truth, he has not much confidence in his son where the Law is concerned, although he ​437
loves him dearly, the boy being the only one of his chil- dren in whom he may hope, with God's help, to have comfort, and who, a hundred years hence, shall take over from him the office of Eav in Saken. The elder son is rich, but he is a usurer, and his riches give the Kav no satisfaction whatever. He had had one daughter, but she died, leaving some little orphans. Sholem is, there- fore, the only one left him. He has a good head, and is quick at his studies, a quiet, well-behaved boy, a little obstinate, a bit opinionated, but that is no harm in a boy, thinks the old man. True, too, that last week people told him tales. Sholem, they said, read heret- ical books, and had been seen carrying "burdens" on Sabbath. But this the father does not believe, he will not and cannot believe it. Besides, Sholem is certain to have made amends. If a Talmid-Chochom commit a sin by day, it should be forgotten by nightfall, because a Talmid-Chochom makes amends, it says so in the Gemoreh.
However, the Eav is ashamed to give his own exe- gesis of the Law before his son, and he knows perfectly well that nothing will induce Sholem to drive with him to the Eebbe.
But the stranger and his brandy-drinking have so upset him that he now looks at his son in a piteous sort of way. "Hear me out, Sholem, what harm can it do you?" says his look.
Sholem draws himself up, and pulls in his chair, supports his head with both his hands, and gazes into his father's eyes out of filial duty. He loves his father, but in his heart he wonders at him; it seems to him ​438 NAUMBERG
his father ought to learn more about his heretical lean- ings it is quite time he should and he continues to gaze in silence and in wonder, not unmixed with com- passion, and never ceases thinking, "Upon my word, Tate, what a simpleton you are !"
But when the Kav came in the course of his expo- sition to speak of "death by kissing" (by the Lord), and told how the righteous, the holy Tzaddikim, die from the very sweetness of the Blessed One's kiss, a spark kindled in Sholem's eyes, and he moved in his chair. One of those wonders had taken place which do frequently occur, only they are seldom remarked: the Chassidic exposition of the Torah had suggested to Sholem a splendid idea for a romantic poem !
It is an old commonplace that men take in, of what they hear and see, that which pleases them. Sholem is fascinated. He wishes to die anyhow, so what could be more appropriate and to the purpose than that his love should kiss him on his death-bed, while, in that very instant, his soul departs?
The idea pleased him so immensely that immediately after grace, the stranger having gone on his way, and the Eav laid himself down to sleep in the other room, Sholem began to write. His heart beat violently while he made ready, but the very act of writing out a poem after dinner on Sabbath, in the room where his father settled the cases laid before him by the townsfolk, was a bit of heroism well worth the risk. He took the writing-materials out of his locked box, and, the pen and ink-pot in one hand and a collection of manuscript verse in the other, he went on tiptoe to the table. ​THE BAV AND THE EAV'S SON 439
He folded back the table-cover, laid down his writing apparatus, and took another look around to make sure no one was in the room. He counted on the fact that when the Bav awoke from his nap, he always coughed, and that when he walked he shuffled so with his feet, and made so much noise with his long slippers, that one could hear him two rooms off. In short, there was no need to be anxious.
He grows calmer, reads the manuscript poems, and his face tells that he is pleased. Now he wants to collect his thoughts for the new one, but something or other hinders him. He unfastens the girdle round his waist, rolls it up, and throws it into the Eav's soft stuffed chair.
And now that there is nothing to disturb from with- out, a second and third wonder must take place within : the Eav's Torah, which was transformed by Sholem's brain into a theme for romance, must now descend into his heart, thence to pour itself onto the paper, and pass, by this means, into the heads of Sholem's friends, who read his poems with enthusiasm, and have sinful dreams afterwards at night.
And he begins to imagine himself on his death-bed, sick and weak, unable to speak, and with staring eyes. He sees nothing more, but he feels a light, ethereal kiss on his cheek, and his soul is aware of a sweet voice speaking. He tries to take out his hands from under the coverlet, but he cannot he is dying it grows dark.
A still brighter and more unusual gleam comes into Sholem's eyes, his heart swells with emotion seeking an outlet, his brain works like running machinery, a ​440 NAUMBERG
whole dictionary of words, his whole treasure of con- ceptions and ideas, is turned over and over so rapidly that the mind is unconscious of its own efforts. His poetic instinct is searching for what it needs. His hand works quietly, forming letter on letter, word on word. Now and again Sholem lifts his eyes from the paper and looks round, he has a feeling as though the four walls and the silence were thinking to themselves: "Hush, hush! Disturb not the poet at his work of creation! Disturb not the priest about to offer sacri- fice to God."
To the Rav, meanwhile, lying in the other room, there had come a fresh idea for the exposition of the Torah, and he required to look up something in a book. The door of the reception-room opened, the Rav entered, and Sholem had not heard him.
It was a pity to see the Rav's face, it was so con- tracted with dismay, and a pity to see Sholem's when he caught sight of his father, who, utterly taken aback, dropt into a seat exactly opposite Sholem, and gave a groan was it ? or a cry ?
But he did not sit long, he did not know what one should do or say to one's son on such an occasion; his heart and his eyes inclined to weeping, and he retired into his own room. Sholem remained alone with a very sore heart and a soul opprest. He put the writing- materials back into their box, and went out with the manuscript verses tucked away under his Tallis-koton.
He went into the house-of-study, but it looked dread- fully dismal ; the benches were pushed about anyhow, ​THE EAV AND THE EAV'S SON 441
a sign that the last worshippers had been in a great hurry to go home to dinner. The beadle was snoring on a seat somewhere in a corner, as loud and as fast as if he were trying to inhale all the air in the building, so that the next congregation might be suffocated. The cloth on the platform reading-desk was crooked and tumbled, the floor was dirty, and the whole place looked as dead as though its Sabbath sleep were to last till the resurrection.
He left the house-of-study, walked home and back again; up and down, there and back, many times over. The situation became steadily clearer to him ; he wanted to justify himself, if only with a word, in his father's eyes; then, again, he felt he must make an end, free himself once and for all from the paternal restraint, and become a Jewish author. Only he felt sorry for his father ; he would have liked to do something to comfort him. Only what? Kiss him? Put his arms round his neck? Have his cry out before him and say, "Tatishe, you and I, we are neither of us to blame!" Only how to say it so that the old man shall understand ? That is the question.
And the Eav sat in his room, bent over a book in which he would fain have lost himself. He rubbed his brow with both hands, but a stone lay on his heart, a heavy stone; there were tears in his eyes, and he was all but crying. He needed some living soul before whom he could pour out the bitterness of his heart, and he had already turned to the Eebbetzin:
"Zelde !" he called quietly.
"A-h," sighed the Eebbetzin from her bed. "I feel bad ; my foot aches, Lord of the World ! What is it ?" ​443 NAUMBEEG
"Nothing, Zelde. How are you getting on, eh?" He got no further with her; he even mentally repented having so nearly added to her burden of life.
It was an hour or two before the Eav collected him- self, and was able to think over what had happened. And still he could not, would not, believe that his son, Sholem, had broken the Sabbath, that he was worthy of being stoned to death. He sought for some excuse for him, and found none, and came at last to the con- clusion that it was a work of Satan, a special onset of the Tempter. And he kept on thinking of the Chassidic legend of a Eabbi who was seen by a Chossid to smoke a pipe on Sabbath. Only it was an illusion, a deception of the Evil One. But when, after he had waited some time, no Sholem appeared, his heart began to beat more steadily, the reality of the situation made itself felt, he got angry, and hastily left the house in search of the Sabbath-breaker, intending to make an example of him.
Hardly, however, had he perceived his son walking to and fro in front of the house-of-study, with a look of absorption and worry, than he stopped short. He was afraid to go up to his son. Just then Sholem turned, they saw each other, and the Eav had willy- nilly to approach him.
"Will you come for a little walk?" asked the Eav gently, with downcast eyes. Sholem made no reply, and followed him.
They came to the Eruv, the Eav looked in all his pockets, found his handkerchief, tied it round his neck, and glanced at his son with a kind of prayer in his eye. Sholem tied his handkerchief round his neck. ​THE BAY AND THE EAV'S SON 443
When they were outside the town, the old man coughed once and again and said:
"What is all this?"
But Sholem was determined not to answer a word, and his father had to summon all his courage to con- tinue :
"What is all this? Eh? Sabbath-breaking! It is"
He coughed and was silent.
They were walking over a great, broad meadow, and Sholem had his gaze fixed on a horse that was moving about with hobbled legs, while the Eav shaded his eyes with one hand from the beams of the setting sun.
"How can anyone break the Sabbath? Come now, is it right? Is it a thing to do? Just to go and break the Sabbath ! I knew Hebrew grammar, and could write Hebrew, too, once upon a time, but break the Sabbath ! Tell me yourself, Sholem, what you think ! When you have bad thoughts, how is it you don't come to your father? I suppose I am your father, ha?" the old man suddenly fired up. "Am I your father ? Tell me no ? Am I perhaps not your father ?"
"For I am his father," he reflected proudly. "That I certainly am, there isn't the smallest doubt about it! The greatest heretic could not deny it!"
"You come to your father," he went on with more decision, and falling into a Gemoreh chant, "and you tell him all about it. What harm can it do to tell him ? No harm whatever. I also used to be tempted by bad thoughts. Therefore I began driving to the Eebbe of Libavitch. One mustn't let oneself go! Do you hear me, Sholem? One mustn't let oneself go!" ​444 NAUMBEEG
The last words were long drawn out, the Eav em- phasizing them with his hands and wrinkling his fore- head. Carried away by what he was saying, he now felt all but sure that Sholem had not begun to be a heretic.
"You see," he continued very gently, "every now and then we come to a stumbling-block, but all the same, we should not "
Meantime, however, the manuscript folio of verses had been slipping out from under Sholem's Four-Cor- ners, and here it fell to the ground. The Rav stood staring, as though startled out of a sweet dream by the cry of "fire." He quivered from top to toe, and seized his earlocks with both hands. For there could be no doubt of the fact that Sholem had now broken the Sab- bath a second time by carrying the folio outside the town limit. And worse still, he had practiced deception, by searching his pockets when they had come to the Eruv, as though to make sure not to transgress by having anything inside them.
Sholem, too, was taken by surprise. He hung his head, and his eyes filled with tears. The old man was about to say something, probably to begin again with "What is all this ?" Then he hastily stopt and snatched up the folio, as though he were afraid Sholem might get hold of it first.
"Ha ha azoi !" he began panting. "Azoi ! A heretic! A Goi."
But it was hard for him to speak. He might not move from where he stood, so long as he held the papers, ​THE KAV AND THE EAV'S SON 445
it being outside the Eruv. His ankles were giving way, and he sat down to have a look at the manuscript.
"Aha! Writing!" he exclaimed as he turned the leaves. "Come here to me," he called to Sholem, who had moved a few steps aside. Sholem came and stood obediently before him. "What is this ?" asked the Eav, sternly.
"Poems !"
"What do you mean by poems? What is the good of them?" He felt that he was growing weak again, and tried to stiffen himself morally. "What is the good of them, heretic, tell me!"
"They're just meant to read, Tatishe !"
"What do you mean by 'read'? A Jeroboam son of Nebat, that's what you want to be, is it? A Jeroboam son of Nebat, to lead others into heresy! No! I won't have it ! On no account will I have it !"
The sun had begun to disappear; it was full time to go home; but the Eav did not know what to do with the folio. He was afraid to leave it in the field, lest Sholem or another should pick it up later, so he got up and began to recite the Afternoon Prayer. Sholem remained standing in his place, and tried to think of nothing and to do nothing.
The old man finished "Sacrifices," tucked the folio into his girdle, and, without moving a step, looked at Sholem, who did not move either.
"Say the Afternoon Prayer, Shegetz!" commanded the old man.
Sholem began to move his lips. And the Eav felt, as he went on with the prayer, that this anger was cool- 29 ​446 NAUMBERG
ing down. Before he came to the Eighteen Benedictions, he gave another look at his son, and it seemed madness to think of him as a heretic, to think that Sholem ought by rights to be thrown into a ditch and stoned to death.
Sholem, for his part, was conscious for the first time of his father's will: for the first time in his life, he not only loved his father, but was in very truth subject to him.
The flaming red sun dropt quietly down behind the horizon just before the old man broke down with emo- tion over "Thou art One," and took the sky and the earth to witness that God is One and His Name is One, and His people Israel one nation on the earth, to whom He gave the Sabbath for a rest and an inheritance. The Rav wept and swallowed his tears, and his eyes were closed. Sholem, on the other hand, could not take his eye off the manuscript that stuck out of his father's girdle, and it was all he could do not to snatch it and run away.
They said nothing on the way home in the dark, they might have been coming from a funeral. But Sholem's heart beat fast, for he knew his father would throw the manuscript into the fire, where it would be burnt, and when they came to the door of their house, he stopped his father, and said in a voice eloquent of tears :
"Give it me back, Tatishe, please give it me back !"
And the Rav gave it him back without looking him in the face, and said :
"Look here, only don't tell Mother! She is ill, she
MEYER BLINKIN
WOMEN
A Prose Poem
Hedged round with tall, thick woods, as though designedly, so that no one should know what happens there, lies the long-drawn-out old town of Pereyaslav.
To the right, connected with Pereyaslav by a wooden bridge, lies another bit of country, named—Pidvorkes.
The town itself, with its long, narrow, muddy streets, with the crowded houses propped up one against the other like tombstones, with their meagre grey walls all to pieces, with the broken window-panes stuffed with rags—well, the town of Pereyaslav was hardly to be distinguished from any other town inhabited by Jews.
Here, too, people faded before they bloomed. Here, too, men lived on miracles, were fruitful and multiplied out of all season and reason. They talked of a livelihood, of good times, of riches and pleasures, with the same appearance of firm conviction, and, at the same time the utter disbelief, with which one tells a legend read in a book.
And they really supposed these terms to be mere inventions of the writers of books and nothing more! For not only were they incapable of a distinct conception of their real meaning, but some had even given up the very hope of ever being able to earn so much as a living, and preferred not to reach out into the world with their thoughts, straining them for ​450 BLINKItf
nothing, that is, for the sake of a thing so plainly out of the question as a competence. At night the whole town was overspread by a sky which, if not grey with clouds, was of a troubled and washed-out blue. But the people were better off than by day. Tired out, overwrought, exhausted, prematurely aged as they were, they sought and found comfort in the lap of the dreamy, secret, inscrutable night. Their misery was left far behind, and they felt no more grief and pain.
An unknown power hid everything from them as though with a thick, damp, stone wall, and they heard and saw nothing.
They did not hear the weak voices, like the mewing of blind kittens, of their pining children, begging all day for food as though on purpose as though they knew there was none to give them. They did not hear the sighs and groans of their friends and neigh- bors, filling the air with the hoarse sound of furniture dragged across the floor; they did not see, in sleep, Death-from-hunger swing quivering, on threads of spider-web, above their heads.
Even the little fires that flickered feverishly on their hearths, and testified to the continued existence of breathing men, even these they saw no longer. Silence cradled everything to sleep, extinguished it, and caused it to be forgotten.
Hardly, however, was it dawn, hardly had the first rays pierced beneath the closed eyelids, before a whole world of misery awoke and came to life again.
The frantic cries of hundreds of starving children, despairing exclamations and imprecations and other ​WOMEN 451
piteous sounds filled the air. One gigantic curse un- coiled and crept from house to house, from door to door, from mouth to mouth, and the population began to move, to bestir themselves, to run hither and thither.
Half-naked, with parched bones and shrivelled skin, with sunken yet burning eyes, they crawled over one another like worms in a heap, fastened on to the bites in each other's mouth, and tore them away
But this is summer, and they are feeling compara- tively cheerful, bold, and free in their movements. They are stifled and suffocated, they are in a melting- pot with heat and exhaustion, but there are counter- balancing advantages; one can live for weeks at a time without heating the stove; indeed, it is pleasanter in- doors without fire, and lighting will cost very little, now the evenings are short.
In winter it was different. An inclement sky, an enfeebled sun, a sick day, and a burning, biting frost!
People, too, were different. A bitterness came over them, and they went about anxious and irritable, with hanging head, possessed by gloomy despair. It never even occurred to them to tear their neighbor's bite out of his mouth, so depressed and preoccupied did they become. The days were months, the evenings years, and the weeks oh ! the weeks were eternities !
And no one knew of their misery but the winter wind that tore at their roofs and howled in their all but smokeless chimneys like one bewitched, like a lost soul condemned to endless wandering.
But there were bright stars in the abysmal dark- ness; their one pride and consolation were the Pid​452 BLINKIN
vorkes, the inhabitants of the aforementioned district of that name. "Was it a question of the upkeep of a Header or of a bath, the support of a burial-society, of a little hospital or refuge, a Rabbi, of providing Sab- bath loaves for the poor, flour for the Passover, the dowry of a needy bride the Pidvorkes were ready ! The sick and lazy, the poverty-stricken and hope- less, found in them support and protection. The Pid- vorkes! They were an inexhaustible well that no one had ever found to fail them, unless the Pidvorke hus- bands happened to be present, on which occasion alone one came away with empty hands.
The fair fame of the Pidvorkes extended beyond Pereyaslav to all poor towns in the neighborhood. Talk of husbands they knew about the Pidvorkes a hun- dred miles round; the least thing, and they pointed out to their wives how they should take a lesson from the Pidvorke women, and then they would be equally rich and happy..
It was not because the Pidvorkes had, within their border, great, green velvety hills and large gardens full of flowers that they had reason to be proud, or others, to be proud of them; not because wide fields, planted with various kinds of corn, stretched for miles around them, the delicate ears swaying in sunshine and wind ; not even because there flowed round the Pidvorkes a river so transparent, so full of the reflection of the sky, you could not decide which was the bluest of the two. Pereyaslav at any rate was not affected by any of these things, perhaps knew nothing of them, and certainly did not wish to know anything, for whoso dares to let his ​WOMEN 453
mind dwell on the like, sins against God. Is it a Jewish concern ? A townf ul of men who have a God, and reli- gious duties to perform, with reward and punishment, who have that world to prepare for, and a wife and children in this one, people must be mad (of the enemies of Zion be it said!) to stare at the sky, the fields, the river, and all the rest of it things which a man on in years ought to blush to talk about.
No, they are proud of the Pidvorke women, and parade them continually. The Pidvorke women are no more attractive, no taller, no cleverer than others. They, too, bear children and suckle them, one a year, after the good old custom; neither are they more thought of by their husbands. On the contrary, they are the best abused and tormented women going, and herein lies their distinction.
They put up, with the indifference of all women alike, to the belittling to which they are subjected by their husbands ; they swallow their contempt by the mouthful without a reproach, and yet they are exceptions, and yet they are distinguished from all other women, as the rushing waters of the Dnieper from the stagnant pools in the marsh.
About five in the morning, when the men-folk turn in bed, and bury their faces in the white feather pil- lows, emitting at the same time strange, broken sounds through their big, stupid, red noses at this early hour their wives have transacted half-a-day's business in the market-place. Dressed in short, light skirts with blue aprons, over which depends on their left a large leather pocket for the receiving of coin and the giving ​454 BLINKIN
out of change one cannot be running every minute to the cash-box they stand in their shops with mis- cellaneous ware, and toil hard. They weigh and meas- ure, buy and sell, and all this with wonderful celerity. There stands one of them by herself in a shop, and tries to persuade a young, barefoot peasant woman to buy the printed cotton she offers her, although the customer only wants a red cotton with a large, flowery pattern. She talks without a pause, declaring that the young peasant may depend upon her, she would not take her in for the world, and, indeed, to no one else would she sell the article so cheap. But soon her eye catches two other women pursuing a peasant man, and before even making out whether he has any wares with him or not, she leaves her customer and joins them. If they run, she feels so must she. The peasant is sure to be wanting grease or salt, and that may mean ten kopeks' unexpected gain. Meantime she is not likely to lose her present customer, fascinated as the latter must be by her flow of speech.
So she leaves her, and runs after the peasant, who is already surrounded by a score of women, shrieking, one louder than the other, praising their ware to the skies, and each trying to make him believe that he and she are old acquaintances. But presently the tumult in- creases, there is a cry, "Cheap fowls, who wants cheap fowls?" Some rich landholder has sent out a supply of fowls to sell, and all the women swing round towards the fowls, keeping a hold on the peasant's cart with their left hand, so that you would think they wanted to drag peasant, horse, and cart along with them. They ​WOMEN 455
bargain for a few minutes with the seller of fowls, and advise him not to be obstinate and to take their offers, else he will regret it later.
Suddenly a voice thunders, "The peasants are com- ing!" and they throw themselves as for dear life upon the cart-loads of produce ; they run as though to a con- flagration, get under each other's feet, their eyes glisten as though they each wanted to pull the whole market aside. There is a shrieking and scolding, until one or another gets the better of the rest, and secures the peasant's wares. Then only does each woman remember that she has customers waiting in her shop, and she runs in with a beaming smile and tells them that, as they have waited so long, they shall be served with the best and the most beautiful of her store.
By eight o'clock in the morning, when the market is over, when they have filled all the bottles left with them by their customers, counted up the change and their gains, and each one has slipped a coin into her knotted handkerchief, so that her husband should not know of its existence (one simply must! One is only human one is surely not expected to wrangle with him about every farthing?) then, when there is nothing more to be done in the shops, they begin to gather in knots, and every one tells at length the incidents and the happy strokes of business of the day. They have forgotten all the bad luck they wished each other, all the abuse they exchanged, while the market was in progress; they know that "Parnosseh is Parnosseh," and bear no malice, or, if they do, it is only if one has spoken unkindly of another during a period of quiet, on a Sabbath or a holiday. ​456 BLINKIX
Each talks with a special enthusiasm, and deep in her sunken eyes with their blue-black rings there burns a proud, though tiny, fire, as she recalls how she got the better of a customer, and sold something which she had all but thrown away, and not only sold it, but better than usual; or else they tell how late their husbands sleep, and then imagine their wives are still in bed, and set about waking them, "It's time to get up for the market," and they at once pretend to be sleepy then, when they have already been and come back!
And very soon a voice is heard to tremble with pleasant excitement, and a woman begins to relate the following :
"Just you listen to me : I was up to-day when God Himself was still asleep." "That is not the way to talk, Sheine !" interrupts a second. "Well, well, well ?" (there is a good deal of curiosity). "And what hap- pened?" "It was this way: I went out quietly, so that no one should hear, not to wake them, because when Lezer went to bed, it was certainly one o'clock. There was a dispute of some sort at the Rabbi's. You can imagine how early it was, because I didn't even want to wake Soreh, otherwise she always gets up when I do (never mind, it won't hurt her to learn from her mother!). And at half past seven, when I saw there were no more peasants coming in to market, I went to see what was going on indoors. I heard my man calling me to wake up: 'Sheine, Sheine, Sheine!' and I go quietly and lean against the bed, and wait to hear what will happen next. Ijook here ! There is no waking ​WOMEN 457
her ! Sheine ! It's getting-up time and past ! Are you deaf or half-witted ? What' s come to you this morning ?' I was so afraid I should laugh. I gave a jump and called out, woe is me, why ever didn't you wake me sooner? Bandit! It's already eight o'clock!"
Her hearers go off into contented laughter, which grows clearer, softer, more contented still. Each one tells her tale of how she was wakened by her husband, and one tells this joke: Once, when her husband had called to rouse her (he also usually woke her after market), she answered that on that morning she did not intend to get up for market, that he might go for once instead. This apparently pleases them still better, for their laughter renews itself, more spon- taneous and hearty even than before. Each makes a witty remark, each feels herself in merry mood, and all is cheerfulness.
They would wax a little more serious only when they came to talk of their daughters. A woman would begin by trying to recall her daughter's age, and beg a second one to help her remember when the girl was born, so that she might not make a mistake in the calculation. And when it came to one that had a daughter of sixteen, the mother fell into a brown study; she felt herself in a very, very critical posi- tion, because when a girl comes to that age, one ought soon to marry her. And there is really nothing to prevent it: money enough will be forthcoming, only let the right kind of suitor present himself, one, that is, who shall insist on a well-dowered bride, because otherwise what sort of a suitor do you call that? She ​458 BLINKIN
will have enough to live on, they will buy a shop for her, she is quite capable of managing it only let Heaven send a young man of acceptable parentage, so that one's husband shall have no need to blush with shame when he is asked about his son-in-law's family and connections.
And this is really what they used to do, for when their daughters were sixteen, they gave them in mar- riage, and at twenty the daughters were "old," much- experienced wives. They knew all about teething, chicken-pox, measles, and more besides, even about croup. If a young mother's child fell ill, she hastened to her bosom crony, who knew a lot more than she, having been married one whole year or two sooner, and got advice as to what should be done.
The other would make close inquiry whether the round swellings about the child's neck increased in size and wandered, that is, appeared at different times and different places, in which case it was positively nothing serious, but only the tonsils. But if they re- mained in one place and grew larger, the mother must lose no time, but must run to the doctor.
Their daughters knew that they needed to lay by money, not only for a dowry, but because a girl ought to have money of her own. They knew as well as their mothers that a bridegroom would present himself and ask a lot of money (the best sign of his being the right sort!), and they prayed God for the same with- out ceasing.
No sooner were they quit of household matters than they went over to the discussion of their connections and alliances it was the greatest pleasure they had. ​WOMEN 459
The fact that their children, especially their daugh- ters, were so discreet that not one (to speak in a good hour and be silent in a bad!) had as yet ever (far be it from the speaker to think of such a thing!) given birth to a bastard, as was known to happen in other places this was the crowning point of their joy and exultation.
It even made up to them for the other fact, that they never got a good word from their husbands for their hard, unnatural toil.
And as they chat together, throwing in the remark that "the apple never falls far from the tree," that their daughters take after them in everything, the very wrinkles vanish from their shrivelled faces, a spring of refreshment and blessedness wells up in their hearts, they are lifted above their cares, a feeling of relaxation conies over them, as though a soothing balsam had penetrated their strained and weary limbs.
Meantime the daughters have secrets among them- selves. They know a quantity of interesting things that have happened in their quarter, but no one else gets to know of them; they are imparted more with the eyes than with the lips, and all is quiet and con- fidential.
And if the great calamity had not now befallen the Pidvorkes, had it not stretched itself, spread its claws with such an evil might, had the shame not been so deep and dreadful, all might have passed off quietly as always. But the event was so extraordinary, so cruelly unique such a thing had not happened since girls were girls, and bridegrooms, bridegrooms, in the Pid​460 BLINKIN
vorkes that it inevitably became known to all. Not (preserve us !) to the men they know of nothing, and need to know of nothing only to the women. But how much can anyone keep to oneself? It will rise to the surface, and lie like oil on the water.
From early morning on the women have been hiss- ing and steaming, bubbling and boiling over. They are not thinking of Parnosseh; they have forgotten all about Parnosseh; they are in such a state, they hare even forgotten about themselves. There is a whole crowd of them packed like herrings, and all fire and flame. But the male passer-by hears nothing of what they say, he only sees the troubled faces and the droop- ing heads; they are ashamed to look into one another's eyes, as though they themselves were responsible for the great affliction. An appalling misfortune, an overwhelming sense of shame, a yellow-black spot on their reputation weighs them to the ground. Unclean- ness has forced itself into their sanctuary and defiled it; and now they seek a remedy, and means to save themselves, like one drowning; they want to heal the plague spot, to cover it up, so that no one shall find it out. They stand and think, and wrinkle the brows so used to anxiety; their thoughts evolve rapidly, and yet no good result comes of it, no one sees a way of escape out of the terrifying net in which the worst of all evil has entangled them. Should a stranger happen to come upon them now, one who has heard of them, but never seen them, he would receive a shock. The whole of Pidvorkes looks quite different, the women, the streets, the very sun shines differently, with ​WOMEN 461
pale and narrow beams, which, instead of cheering, seem to burden the heart.
The little grey-curled clouds with their ragged edges, which have collected somewhere unbeknown, and race across the sky, look down upon the women, and whisper among themselves. Even the old willows, for whom the news is no novelty, for many more and more complicated mysteries have come to their knowledge, even they look sad, while the swallows, by the depressed and gloomy air with which they skim the water, plainly express their opinion, which is no other than this : God is pun- ishing the Pidvorkes for their great sin, what time they carried fire in their beaks, long ago, to destroy the Temple.
God bears long with people's iniquity, but he rewards in full at the last.
The peasants driving slowly to market, unmolested and unobstructed, neither dragged aside nor laid forcible hold of, were singularly disappointed. They began to think the Jews had left the place.
And the women actually forgot for very trouble that it was market-day. They stood with hands folded, and turned feverishly to every newcomer. What does she say to it? Perhaps she can think of something to advise.
No one answered; they could not speak; they had nothing to say; they only felt that a great wrath had been poured out on them, heavy as lead, that an evil spirit had made its way into their life, and was keeping them in a perpetual state of terror ; and that, were they now to hold their peace, and not make an end, God 30 ​462 BLINKIN
Almighty only knows what might come of it! No one felt certain that to-morrow or the day after the same thunderbolt might not fall on another of them.
Somebody made a movement in the crowd, and there was a sudden silence, as though all were preparing to listen to a weak voice, hardly louder than stillness itself. Their eyes widened, their faces were contracted with annoyance and a consciousness of insult. Their hearts beat faster, but without violence. Suddenly there was a shock, a thrill, and they looked round with startled gaze, to see whence it came, and what was happening. And they saw a woman forcing her way frantically through the crowd, her hands working, her lips moving as in fever, her eyes flashing fire, and her voice shaking as she cried : "Come on and see me settle them ! First I shall thrash him, and then I shall go for her! We must make a cinder-heap of them; it's all we can do."
She was a tall, bony woman, with broad shoulders, who had earned for herself the nickname Cossack, by having, with her own hands, beaten off three peasants who wanted to strangle her husband, he, they declared, having sold them by false weight it was the first time he had ever tried to be of use to her.
"But don't shout so, Breindel!" begged a woman's voice.
"What do you mean by 'don't shout' ! Am I going to hold my tongue? Never you mind, I shall take no water into my mouth. I'll teach them, the apostates, to desecrate the whole town!"
"But don't shout so !" beg several more. ​WOMEN 463
Breindel takes no notice. She clenches her right fist, and, fighting the air with it, she vociferates louder than ever:
"What has happened, women? What are you fright- ened of? Look at them, if they are not all a little afraid! That's what brings trouble. Don't let us be frightened, and we shall spare ourselves in the future. We shall not be in terror that to-morrow or the day after (they had best not live to hear of it, sweet Father in Heaven!) another of us should have this come upon her!"
BreindePs last words made a great impression. The women started as though someone had poured cold water over them without warning. A few even began to come forward in support of Breindel's proposal. Soreh Leoh said: She advised going, but only to him, the bridegroom, and telling him not to give people occasion to laugh, and not to cause distress to her parents, and to agree to the wedding's taking place to-day or to-mor- row, before anything happened, and to keep quiet.
"I say, he shall not live to see it; he shall not be counted worthy to have us come begging favors of him !" cried an angry voice.
But hereupon rose that of a young woman from somewhere in the crowd, and all the others began to look round, and no one knew who it was speaking. At first the young voice shook, then it grew firmer and firmer, so that one could hear clearly and distinctly what was said :
"You might as well spare yourselves the trouble of talking about a thrashing; it's all nonsense; besides, ​464 BLINKIN
why add to her parents' grief by going to them ? Isn't it bad enough for them already? If we really want to do something, the best would be to say nothing to any- body, not to get excited, not to ask anybody's help, and let us make a collection out of our own pockets. Never mind! God will repay us twice what we give. Let us choose out two of us, to take him the money quietly, so that no one shall know, because once a whisper of it gets abroad, it will be carried over seven seas in no time; you know that walls have ears, and streets, eyes."
The women had been holding their breath and looking with pleasurable pride at young Malkehle, married only two months ago and already so clever! The great thick wall of dread and shame against which they had beaten their heads had retreated before Malkehle's soft words; they felt eased; the world grew lighter again. Every one felt envious in her heart of hearts of her to whose apt and golden speech they had just listened. Everyone regretted that such an excellent plan had not occurred to herself. But they soon calmed down, for after all it was a sister who had spoken, one of their own Pidvorkes. They had never thought that Malkehle, though she had been considered clever as a girl, would take part in their debate; and they began to work out a plan for getting together the necessary money, only so quietly that not a cock should crow.
And now their perplexities began ! Not one of them could give such a great sum, and even if they all clubbed together, it would still be impossible. They could man- age one hundred, two hundred, three hundred rubles, but the dowry was six hundred, and now he says, that ​WOMEN 465
unless they give one thousand, he will break off the engagement. What, says he, there will be a summons out against him ? Very likely ! He will just risk it. The question went round: Who kept a store in a knotted handkerchief, hidden from her husband? They each had such a store, but were all the contents put together, the half of the sum would not be attained, not by a long way.
And again there arose a tempest, a great confusion of women's tongues. Part of the crowd started with fiery eloquence to criticise their husbands, the good-for-noth- ings, the slouching lazybones; they proved that as their husbands did nothing to earn money, but spent all their time "learning," there was no need to be afraid of them ; and if once in a way they wanted some for themselves, nobody had the right to say them nay. Others said that the husbands were, after all, the elder, one must and should ask their advice ! They were wiser and knew best, and why should they, the women (might the words not be reckoned as a sin!), be wiser than the rest of the world put together? And others again cried that there was no need that they should divorce their husbands because a girl was with child, and the bridegroom demanded the dowry twice over.
The noise increased, till there was no distinguishing one voice from another, till one could not make out what her neighbor was saying: she only knew that she also must shriek, scold, and speak her mind. And who knows what would have come of it, if Breindel- Cossack, with her powerful gab, had not begun to shout, that she and Malkehle had a good idea, which would ​466 BLINKIN
please everyone very much, and put an end to the whole dispute.
All became suddenly dumb ; there was a tense silence, as at the first of the two recitals of the Eighteen Bene- dictions; the women only cast inquiring looks at Mal- kehle and Breindel, who both felt their cheeks hot. Breindel, who, ever since the wise Malkehle had spoken such golden words, had not left her side, now stepped forward, and her voice trembled with emotion and pleas- ant excitement as she said : "Malkehle and I think like this : that we ought to go to Chavvehle, she being so wise and so well-educated, a doctor's wife, and tell her the whole story from beginning to end, so that she may ad- vise us, and if you are ashamed to speak to her your- selves, you should leave it to us two, only on the condi- tion that you go with us. Don't be frightened, she is kind; she will listen to us."
A faint smile, glistening like diamond dust, shone on all faces; their eyes brightened and their shoulders straightened, as though just released from a heavy bur- den. They all knew Chavvehle for a good and gracious woman, who was certain to give them some advice; she did many such kindnesses without being asked ; she had started the school, and she taught their children for nothing; she always accompanied her husband on his visits to the sick-room, and often left a coin of her own money behind to buy a fowl for the invalid. It was even said that she had written about them in the news- papers ! She was very fond of them. When she talked with them, her manner was simple, as though they were her equals, and she would ask them all about everything, ​WOMEN 467
like any plain Jewish housewife. And yet they were conscious of a great distance between them and Chaweh. They would have liked Chaweh to hear nothing of them but what was good, to stand justified in her eyes as (ten times lehavdil) in those of a Christian. They could not have told why, but the feeling was there.
They are proud of Chaweh; it is an honor for them each and all (and who are they that they should venture to pretend to it?) to possess such a Chaweh, who was highly spoken of even by rich Gentiles. Hence this embarrassed smile at the mention of her name; she would certainly advise, but at the same time they avoided each other's look. The wise Malkeh had the same feeling, but she was able to cheer the rest. Never mind ! It doesn't matter telling her. She is a Jewish daughter, too, and will keep it to herself. These things happen behind the "high windows" also. Whereupon they all breathed more freely, and went up the hill to Chaweh. They went in serried ranks, like soldiers, shoulder to shoulder, relief and satisfaction reflected in their faces. All who met them made way for them, stood aside, and wondered what it meant. Some of their own husbands even stood and looked at the march- ing women, but not one dared to go up to them and ask what was doing. Their object grew dearer to them at every step. A settled resolve and a deep sense of good- will to mankind urged them on. They all felt that they were going in a good cause, and would thereby bar the road to all such occurrences in the future.
The way to Chaweh was long. She lived quite out- side the Pidvorkes, and they had to go through the whole ​468 BLINKIN
market-place with the shops, which stood close to one another, as though they held each other by the hand, and then only through narrow lanes of old thatched peasant huts, with shy little window-panes. But beside nearly every hut stood a couple of acacia-trees, and the foam- white blossoms among the young green leaves gave a refreshing perfume to the neighborhood. Emerging from the streets, they proceeded tovards a pretty hill planted with pink flowering quince-trees. A small, clear stream flowed below it to the left, so deceptively clear that it reflected the hillside in all its natural tints. You had to go quite close in order to make sure it was only a delusion, when the stream met your gaze as seriously as though there were no question of it at all.
On the top of the hill stood Chavveh's house, adorned like a bride, covered with creepers and quinces, and with two large lamps under white glass shades, upheld in the right hands of two statues carved in white marble. The distance had not wearied them; they had walked and conversed pleasantly by the way, each telling a story somewhat similar to the one that had occasioned their present undertaking.
"Do you know," began Shifreh, the wholesale dealer, "mine tried to play me a trick with the dowry, too ? It was immediately before the ceremony, and he insisted obstinately that unless a silver box and fifty rubles were given to him in addition to what had been promised to him, he would not go under the marriage canopy !"
"Well, if it hadn't been Zorah, it would have been Chayyim Treitel," observed some one, ironically. ​WOMEN 469
They all laughed, but rather weakly, just for the sake of laughing; not one of them really wished to part from her husband, even in cases where he disliked her, and they quarrelled. No indignity they suffered at their husbands' hands could hurt them so deeply as a wish on his part to live separately. After all they are man and wife. They quarrel and make it up again.
And when they spied Chavvehle's house in the dis- tance, they all cried out joyfully, with one accord :
"There is Chavvehle's house !" Once more they forgot about themselves; they were filled with enthusiasm for the common cause, and with a pain that will lie forever at their heart should they not do all that sinful man is able.
The wise Malkehle's heart beat faster than anyone's. She had begun to consider how she should speak to Chavvehle, and although apt, incisive phrases came into her head, one after another, she felt that she would never be able to come out with them in Chavvehle's presence ; were it not for the other women's being there, she would have felt at her ease.
All of a sudden a voice exclaimed joyfully, "There we are at the house !" All lifted their heads, and their eyes were gladdened by the sight of the tall flowers arranged about a round table, in the shelter of a widely- branching willow, on which there shone a silver samovar. In and out of the still empty tea-glasses there stole beams of the sinking sun, as it dropt lower and lower behind the now dark-blue hill.
"What welcome guests !" Chaweh met them with a sweet smile, and her eyes awoke answering love and confidence in the women's hearts. ​470 t BLINKIN
Not a glance, not a movement betrayed surprise on Chavvehle's part, any more than if she had been expect- ing them everyone.
They felt that she was behaving like any sage, and were filled with a sense of guilt towards her.
Chavvehle excused herself to one or two other guests who were present, and led the women into her summer- parlor, for she had evidently understood that what they had come to say was for her ears only.
They wanted to explain at once, but they couldn't, and the two who of all found it hardest to speak were the selected spokeswomen, Breindel-Cossack and Malkehle the wise. Chavvehle herself tried to lead them out of their embarrassment.
"You evidently have something important to tell me," she said, "for otherwise one does not get a sight of you."
And now it seemed more difficult than ever, it seemed impossible ever to tell the angelic Chavvehle of the bad action about which they had come. They all wished silently that their children might turn out one-tenth as good as she was, and their impulse was to take Chavvehle into their arms, kiss her and hug her, and cry a long, long time on her shoulder; and if she cried with them, it would be so comforting.
Chavvehle was silent. Her great, wide-open blue eyes grew more and more compassionate as she gazed at the faces of her sisters; it seemed as though they were reading for themselves the sorrowful secret the women had come to impart.
And the more they were impressed with her tactful behavior, and the more they felt the kindness of her gaze, ​WOMEN 471
the more annoyed they grew with themselves, the more tongue-tied they became. The silence was so intense as to be almost seen and felt. The women held their breath, and only exchanged roundabout glances, to find out what was going on in each other's mind; and they looked first of all at the two who had undertaken to speak, while the latter, although they did not see this, felt as if every one's gaze was fixed upon them, wonder- ing why they were silent and holding all hearts by a thread.
Chavvehle raised her head, and spoke sweetly :
"Well, dear sisters, tell me a little of what it is about. Do you want my help in any matter ? I should be so glad "
"Dear sisters" she called them, and lightning-like it flashed through their hearts that Chavveh was, indeed, their sister. How could they feel otherwise when they had it from Chavveh herself? Was she not one of their own people? Had she not the same God? True, her speech was a little strange to them, and she was not overpious, but how should God be angry with such a Chavveh as this? If it must be, let him punish them for her sin; they would willingly suffer in her place.
The sun had long set; the sky was grey, save for one red streak, and the room had grown dark. Chavvehle rose to light the candles, and the women started and wiped their tearful eyes, so that Chavveh should not remark them. Chavveh saw the difficulty they had in opening their hearts to her, and she began to speak to them of different things, offered them refreshment ​472 BLItfKItf
according to their several tastes, and now Malkehle felt a little more courageous, and managed to say :
"N"o, good, kind Chavvehle, we are not hungry. We have come to consult with you on a very important matter I"
And then Breindel tried hard to speak in a soft voice, but it sounded gruff and rasping:
"First of all, Chaweh, we want you to speak to us in Yiddish, not in Polish. We are all Jewish women, thank God, together !"
havvehle, who had nodded her head during the whole of Breindel's speech, made another motion of assent with her silken eyebrows, and replied :
"I will talk Yiddish to you with pleasure, if that is what you prefer."
"The thing is this, Chavvehle," began Shifreh, the wholesale dealer, "it is a shame and a sorrow to tell, but when the thunderbolt has fallen, one must speak. You know Eochel Esther Leoh's. She is engaged, and the wedding was to have been in eight weeks and now she, the good-for-nothing, is with child and he, the son of perdition, says now that if he isn't given more than five hundred rubles, he won't take her "
Chavvehle was deeply troubled by their words. She saw how great was their distress, and found, to her regret, that she had little to say by way of consolation.
"I feel with you," she said, "in your pain. But do not be so dismayed. It is certainly very bad news, but these things will happen, you are not the first "
She wanted to say more, but did not know how to continue. ​WOMEN 473
"But what are we to do?" asked several voices at once. "That is what we came to you for, dearie, for you to advise us. Are we to give him all the money he asks, or shall they both know as much happiness as we know what to do else? Or are we to hang a stone round our necks and drown ourselves for shame ? Give us some advice, dear, help us !"
Then Chavvehle understood that it was not so much the women who were speaking and imploring, as their stricken hearts, their deep shame and grief, and it was with increased sympathy that she answered them:
"What can I say to help you, dear sisters? You have certainly not deserved this blow; you have enough to bear as it is things ought to have turned out quite differently; but now that the misfortune has happened, one must be brave enough not to lose one's head, and not to let such a thing happen again, so that it should be the first and last time! But what exactly you should do, I cannot tell you, because I don't know! Only if you should want my help or any money, I will give you either with the greatest pleasure."
They understood each other
The women parted with Chavveh in great gladness, and turned towards home conscious of a definite pur- pose. Now they all felt they knew just what to do, and were sure it would prevent all further misfortune and disgrace.
They could have sung out for joy, embraced the hill, the stream, the peasant huts, and kissed and fondled them all together. Mind you, they had even now no definite plan of action, it was just Chavvehle's sympathy ​474 BLINKIN
that had made all the difference feeling that Chaweh was with them! Wrapped in the evening mist, they stepped vigorously and cheerily homewards.
Gradually the speed and the noise of their march increased, the air throbbed, and at last a high, sharp voice rose above the rest, whereupon they grew stiller, and the women listened.
"I tell you what, we won't beat them. Only on Sabbath we must all come together like one man, break into the house-of-study just before they call up to the Reading of the Law, and not let them read till they have sworn to agree to our sentence of excommuni- cation !
"She is right !"
"Excommunicate him!"
"Tear him in pieces !"
"Let him be dressed in robe and prayer-scarf, and swear by the eight black candles that he "
"Swear! Swear!"
The noise was dreadful. No one was allowed to finish speaking. They were all aflame with one fire of revenge, hate, and anger, and all alike athirst for justice. Every new idea, every new suggestion was hastily and hotly seized upon by all together, and there was a grinding of teeth and a clenching of fists. Nature herself seemed affected by the tumult, the clouds flew faster, the stars changed their places, the wind whistled, the trees swayed hither and thither, the frogs croaked, there was a great boiling up of the whole concern.
"Women, women," cried one, "I propose that we go to the court of the Shool, climb into the round mill​WOMEN 475
stones, and all shout together, so that they may know what we have decided."
"Eight ! Right ! To the Shool !" cried a chorus of voices.
A common feeling of triumph running through them, they took each other friendly-wise by the hand, and made gaily for the court of the Shool. When they got into the town, they fell on each other's necks, and kissed each other with tears and joy. They knew their plan was the best and most excellent that could be devised, and would protect them all from further shame and trouble.
The Pidvorkes shuddered to hear their tread.
All the remaining inhabitants, big and little, men and women, gathered in the court of the Shool, and stood with pale faces and beating hearts to see what would happen.
The eyes of the young bachelors rolled uneasily, the girls had their faces on one another's shoulders, and sobbed.
Breindel, agile as a cat, climbed on to the highest millstone, and proclaimed in a voice of thunder :
"Seeing that such and such a thing has happened, a great scandal such as is not to be hid, and such as we do not wish to hide, all we women have decided to excom- municate "
Such a tumult arose that for a minute or two Breindel could not be heard, but it was not long before every- one knew who and what was meant.
"We also demand that neither he nor his nearest friends shall be called to the Eeading of the Law; ​476 BLINKIN
that people shall have nothing to do with them till after the wedding!"
"Nothing to do with them! Nothing to do with them !" shook the air.
"That people shall not lend to them nor borrow of them, shall not come within their four ells !" continued the voice from the millstone.
"And she shall be shut up till her time comes, so that no one shall see her. Then we will take her to the burial-ground, and the child shall be born in the burial- ground. The wedding shall take place by day, and without musicians. "
"Without musicians !"
"Without musicians !"
"Without musicians !"
"Serve her right !"
"She deserves worse !"
A hundred voices were continually interrupting the speaker, and more women were climbing onto the mill- stones, and shouting the same things.
"On the wedding-day there will be great black candles burning throughout the whole town, and when the bride is seated at the top of the marriage-hall, with her hair flowing loose about her, all the girls shall surround her, and the Badchen shall tell her, 'This is the way we treat one who has not held to her Jewishness, and has blackened all our faces ' "
"Yes !"
"Yes!"
"So it is!"
"The apostates !" ​WOMEN 477
The last words struck the hearers' hearts like poisoned arrows. A deathly pallor, born of unrealized terror at the suggested idea, overspread all their faces, their feelings were in a tumult of shame and suffering. They thirsted and longed after their former life, the time before the calamity disturbed their peace. Weary and wounded in spirit, with startled looks, throbbing pulses, and dilated pupils, and with no more than a faint hope that all might yet be well, they slowly broke the stillness, and departed to their homes.
LÖB SCHAPIRO
IF IT WAS A DREAM
Yes, it was a terrible dream! But when one is only nine years old, one soon forgets, and Meyer was nine a few weeks before it came to pass.
Yes, and things had happened in the house every now and then to remind one of it, but then Meyer lived more out of doors than indoors, in the wild streets of New York. Tartilov and New York—what a difference! New York had supplanted Tartilov, effaced it from his memory. There remained only a faint occasional recollection of that horrid dream.
If it really was a dream!
It was this way: Meyer dreamt that he was sitting in Cheder learning, but more for show's sake than seriously, because during the Days of Penitence, near the close of the session, the Rebbe grew milder, and Cheder less hateful. And as he sat there and learnt, he heard a banging of doors in the street, and through the window saw Jews running to and fro, as if bereft of their senses, flinging themselves hither and thither exactly like leaves in a gale, or as when a witch rises from the ground in a column of dust, and whirls across the road so suddenly and unexpectedly that it makes one's flesh creep. And at the sight of this running up and down in the street, the Rebbe collapsed in his chair white as death, his under lip trembling.
Meyerl never saw him again. He was told later that the Rebbe had been killed, but somehow the news ​482 SCHAPIEO
gave him no pleasure, although the Eebbe used to beat him; neither did it particularly grieve him. It prob- ably made no great impression on his mind. After all, what did it mean, exactly? Killed? and the question slipped out of his head unanswered, together with the Rebbe, who was gradually forgotten.
And then the real horror began. They were two days hiding away in the bath-house he and some other little boys and a few older people without food, without drink, without Father and Mother. Meyer was not allowed to get out and go home, and once, when he screamed, they nearly suffocated him, after which he sobbed and whimpered, unable to stop crying all at once. Now and then he fell asleep, and when he woke everything was just the same, and all through the terror and the misery he seemed to hear only one word, Goyim, which came to have a very definite and terrible meaning for him. Otherwise everything was in a maze, and as far as seeing goes, he really saw nothing at all.
Later, when they came out again, nobody troubled about him, or came to see after him, and a stranger took him home. And neither his father nor his mother had a word to say to him, any more than if he had just come home from Cheder as on any other day.
Everything in the house was broken, they had twisted his father's arm and bruised his face. His mother lay on the bed, her fair hair tossed about, and her eyes half-closed, her face pale and stained, and something about her whole appearance so rumpled and sluttish it reminded one of a tumbled bedquilt. His father walked up and down the room in silence, looking at no ​IF IT WAS A DREAM 483
one, his bound arm in a white sling, and when Meyerl, conscious of some invisible calamity, burst out crying, his father only gave him a gloomy, irritated look, and continued to span the room as before.
In about three weeks' time they sailed for America. The sea was very rough during the passage, and his mother lay the whole time in her berth, and was very sick. Meyerl was quite fit, and his father did nothing but pace the deck, even when it poured with rain, till they came and ordered him down-stairs.
Meyerl never knew exactly what happened, but once a Gentile on board the ship passed a remark on his father, made fun of him, or something^ and his father drew himself up, and gave the other a look nothing more than a look! And the Gentile got such a fright that he began crossing himself, and he spit out, and his lips moved rapidly. To tell the truth, Meyerl was frightened himself by the contraction of his father's mouth, the grind of his teeth, and by his eyes, which nearly started from his head. Meyerl had never seen him look like that before, but soon his father was once more pacing the deck, his head down, his wet collar turned up, his hands in his sleeves, and his back slightly bent.
When they arrived in New York City, Meyerl began to feel giddy, and it was not long before the whole of Tartilov appeared to him like a dream.
It was in the beginning of winter, and soon the snow fell, the fresh white snow, and it was something like ! Meyerl was now a "boy," he went to "school," made snowballs, slid on the slides, built little fires in the ​484 SCHAPIRO
middle of the street, and nobody interfered. He went home to eat and sleep, and spent what you may call his "life" in the street.
In their room were cold, piercing draughts, which made it feel dreary and dismal. Meyer's father, a lean, large-boned man, with a dark, brown face and black beard, had always been silent, and it was but seldom he said so much as "Are you there, Tzippe? Do you hear me, Tzippe?" But now his silence was frighten- ing ! The mother, on the other hand, used to be full of life and spirits, skipping about the place, and it was "Shloimeh!" here, and "Shloimeh!" there, and her tongue wagging merrily! And suddenly there was an end of it all. The father only walked back and forth over the room, and she turned to look after him like a child in disgrace, and looked and looked as though for- ever wanting to say something, and never daring to say it. There was something new in her look, something dog-like ! Yes, on my word, something like what there was in the eyes of Mishke the dog with which Meyerl used to like playing "over there," in that little town in dreamland. Sometimes Meyerl, waking suddenly in the night, heard, or imagined he heard, his mother sobbing, while his father lay in the other bed puffing at his cigar, but so hard, it was frightening, because it made a little fire every time in the dark, as though of itself, in the air, just over the place where his father's black head must be lying. Then Meyerl's eyes would shut of themselves, his brain was confused, and his mother and the glowing sparks and the whole room sank away from him, and Meyerl dropped off to sleep. ​IF IT WAS A DEEAM 485
Twice that winter his mother fell ill. The first time it lasted two days, the second, four, and both times the illness was dangerous. Her face glowed like an oven, her lower lip bled beneath her sharp white teeth, and yet wild, terrifying groans betrayed what she was suffering, and she was often violently sick, just as when they were on the sea.
At those times she looked at her husband with eyes in which there was no prayer. Mishke once ran a thorn deep into his paw, and he squealed and growled angrily, and sucked his paw, as though he were trying to swallow it, thorn and all, and the look in his eyes was the look of Meyerl's mother in her pain.
In those days his father, too, behaved differently, for, instead of walking to and fro across the room, he ran, puffing incessantly at his cigar, his brow like a thunder- cloud and occasional lightnings flashing from his eyes. He never looked at his wife, and neither of them looked at Meyerl, who then felt himself utterly wretched and forsaken.
And it is very odd, but it was just on these occasions that Meyerl felt himself drawn to his home. In the street things were as usual, but at home it was like being in Shool during the Solemn Days at the blowing of the ram's horn, when so many tall "fathers" stand with prayer-scarfs over their heads, and hold their breath, and when out of the distance there comes, un- folding over the heads of the people, the long, loud blast of the Shofar.
And both times, when his mother recovered, the shadow that lay on their home had darkened, his father ​486 SCHAPIEO
was gloomier than ever, and his mother, when she looked at him, had a still more crushed and dog-like expression, as though she were lying outside in the dust of the street.
The snowfalls became rarer, then they ceased alto- gether, and there came into the air a feeling of some- thing new what exactly, it would have been hard for Meyerl to say. Anyhow it was something good, very good, for everyone in the street was glad of it, one could see that by their faces, which were more lightsome and
gay-
On the Eve of Passover the sky of home cleared a little too, street and house joined hands through the windows, opened now for the first time since winter set in, and this neighborly act of theirs cheered Meyerl's heart.
His parents made preparations for Passover, and poor little preparations they were: there was no Matzes- baking with its merry to-do; a packet of cold, stale Matzes was brought into the house; there was no pail of beet-root soup in the corner, covered with a coarse cloth of unbleached linen; no dusty china service was fetched from the attic, where it had lain many years between one Passover and another; his father brought in a dinner service from the street, one he had bought cheap, and of which the pieces did not match. But the exhilaration of the festival made itself felt for all that, and warmed their hearts. At home, in Tartilov, it had happened once or twice that Meyerl had lain in his little bed with open eyes, staring stock-still, with terror, into the silent blackness of the night, and feeling as if ​IF IT WAS A DREAM 487
he were the only living soul in the whole world, that is, the whole house; and the sudden crow of a cock would be enough on these occasions to send a warm current of relief and security through his heart.
His father's face looked a little more cheerful. In the daytime, while he dusted the cups, his eyes had some- thing pensive in them, but his lips were set so that you thought: There, now, now they are going to smile! The mother danced the Matzeh pancakes up and down in the kitchen, so that they chattered and gurgled in the frying-pan. When a neighbor came in to borrow a cook- ing pot, Meyerl happened to be standing beside his mother. The neighbor got her pot, the women ex- changed a few words about the coming holiday, and then the neighbor said, "So we shall soon be having a rejoi- cing at your house?" and with a wink and a smile she pointed at his mother with her finger, whereupon Meyerl remarked for the first time that her figure had grown round and full. But he had no time just then to think it over, for there came a sound of broken china from the next room, his mother stood like one knocked on the head, and his father appeared in the door, and said :
"Go !"
His voice sent a quiver through the window-panes, as if a heavy wagon were just crossing the bridge outside at a trot, the startled neighbor turned, and whisked out of the house.
Meyerl's parents looked ill at ease in their holiday garb, with the faces of mourners. The whole ceremony of the Passover home service was spoilt by an atmos- phere of the last meal on the Eve of the Fast of the ​488 SCHAPIRO
Destruction of the Temple. And when Meyerl, with the indifferent voice of one hired for the occasion, sang out the "Why is this night different?" his heart shrank together; there was the same hush round about him as there is in Shool when an orphan recites the first "Sanctification" for his dead parents.
His mother's lips moved, but gave forth no sound; from time to time she wetted a finger with her tongue, and turned over leaf after leaf in her service-book, and from time to time a large, bright tear fell over her beautiful but depressed face onto the book, or the white table-cloth, or her dress. His father never looked at her. Did he see she was crying? Meyerl wondered. Then, how strangely he was reciting the Haggadah! He would chant a portion in long-drawn-out fashion, and suddenly his voice would break, sometimes with a gur- gle, as though a hand had seized him by the throat and closed it. Then he would look silently at his book, or his eye would wander round the room with a vacant stare. Then he would start intoning again, and again his voice would break.
They ate next to nothing, said grace to themselves in a whisper, after which the father said :
"Meyer, open the door!"
Not without fear, and the usual uncertainty as to the appearance of the Prophet Elijah, whose goblet stood filled for him on the table, Meyerl opened the door.
"Pour out Thy wrath upon the Gentiles, who do not know Thee !"
A slight shudder ran down between Meyerl's shoul- ders, for a strange, quite unfamiliar voice had sounded ​IF IT WAS A DEEAM 489
through the room from one end to the other, shot up against the ceiling, flung itself down again, and gone flapping round the four walls, like a great, wild bird in a cage. Meyerl hastily turned to look at his father, and felt the hair bristle on his head with fright: straight and stiff as a screwed-up fiddle-string, there stood beside the table a wild figure, in a snow-white robe, with a dark beard, a broad, bony face, and a weird, black flame in the eyes. The teeth were ground together, and the voice would go over into a plaintive roar, like that of a hungry, bloodthirsty animal. His mother sprang up from her seat, trembling in every limb, stared at him for a few seconds, and then threw herself at his feet. Catching hold of the edge of his robe with both hands, she broke into lamentation:
"Shloimeh, Shloimeh, you'd better kill me! Shloimeh ! kill me ! oi, oi, misfortune !"
Meyerl felt as though a large hand with long finger- nails had introduced itself into his inside, and turned it upside down with one fell twist. His mouth opened widely and crookedly, and a scream of childish terror burst from his throat. Tartilov had suddenly leapt wildly into view, affrighted Jews flew up and down the street like leaves in a storm, the white-faced Eebbe sat in his chair, his under lip trembling, his mother lay on her bed, looking all pulled about like a rumpled counterpane. Meyerl saw all this as clearly and sharply as though he had it before his eyes, he felt and knew that it was not all over, that it was only just begin- ning, that the calamity, the great calamity, the real calamity, was still to come, and might at any moment ​490 SCHAPIRO
descend upon their heads like a thunderbolt, only what it was he did not know, or ask himself, and a second time a scream of distraught and helpless terror escaped his throat.
A few neighbors, Italians, who were standing in the passage by the open door, looked on in alarm, and whispered among themselves, and still the wild curses filled the room, one minute loud and resonant, the next with the spiteful gasping of a man struck to death.
"Mighty God! Pour out Thy wrath on the peoples who 'have no God in their hearts ! Pour out Thy wrath upon the lands where Thy Name is unknown ! 'He has devoured, devoured my body, he has laid waste, laid waste my house !' ' ;
"Thy wrath shall pursue them, Pursue them o'ertake them ! O'ertake them destroy them,
SHALOM ASCH
A SIMPLE STORY
Feigele, like all young girls, is fond of dressing and decking herself out.
She has no time for these frivolities during the week, there is work in plenty, no evil eye! and sewing to do; rent is high, and times are bad. The father earns but little, and there is a deal wanting towards her three hundred rubles dowry, beside which her mother trenches on it occasionally, on Sabbath, when the family purse is empty.
"There are as many marriageable young men as dogs, only every dog wants a fat bone," comes into her head.
She dislikes much thinking. She is a young girl and a pretty one. Of course, one shouldn't be conceited, but when she stands in front of the glass, she sees her bright face and rosy cheeks and the fall of her black hair. But she soon forgets it all, as though she were afraid that to rejoice in it might bring her ill-luck.
Sabbath it is quite another thing—there is time and to spare, and on Sabbath Feigele's toilet knows no end.
The mother calls, "There, Feigele, that's enough! You will do very well as you are." But what should old-fashioned women like her know about it? Anything will do for them. Whether you've a hat and jacket on or not, they're just as pleased.
But a young girl like Feigele knows the difference. He is sitting out there on the bench, he, Eleazar, with ​494 ASCH
a party of his mates, casting furtive glances, which he thinks nobody sees, and nudging his neighbor, "Look, fire and flame!" and she, Feigele, behaves as though unaware of his presence, walks straight past, as coolly and unconcernedly as you please, and as though Eleazar might look and look his eyes out after her, take his own life, hang himself, for all she cares.
But, Feigele, the vexation and the heartache when one fine day you walk past, and he doesn't look at you, but at Malkeh, who has a new hat and jacket that suit her about as well as a veil suits a dog and yet he looks at her, and you turn round again, and yet again, pretending to look at something else (because it isn't proper), but you just glance over your shoulder, and he is still looking after Malkeh, his whole face shining with delight, and he nudges his mate, as to say, "Do you see?" Feigele, you need a heart of adamant, if it is not to burst in twain with mortifica- tion!
However, no sooner has Malkeh disappeared down a sidewalk, than he gets up from the bench, dragging his mate along with him, and they follow, arm-in-arm, follow Feigele like her shadow, to the end of the avenue, where, catching her eye, he nods a "Good Sabbath!" Feigele answers with a supercilious tip-tilt of her head, as much as to say, "It is all the same to me, I'm sure; I'll just go down this other avenue for a change," and, lo and behold, if she happens to look around, there is Eleazar, too, and he follows, follows like a wearisome creditor. ​A SIMPLE STOKY 495
And then, Feigele, such a lovely, blissful feeling comes over you. Don't look, take no notice of him, walk ahead stiffly and firmly, with your head high, let him follow and look at you. And he looks, and he follows, he would follow you to the world's end, into the howling desert. Ha, ha, how lovely it feels !
But once, on a Sabbath evening, walking in the gardens with a girl friend, and he following, Feigele turned aside down a dark path, and sat down on a bench behind a bushy tree.
He came and sat down, too, at the other end of the bench.
Evening: the many branching trees overshadow and obscure, it grows dark, they are screened and hidden from view.
A breeze blows, lightly and pleasantly, and cools the air.
They feel it good to be there, their hearts beat in the stillness.
Who will say the first word?
He coughs, ahem ! to show that he is there, but she makes no sign, implying that she neither knows who he is, nor what he wants, and has no wish to learn.
They are silent, they only hear their own beating hearts and the wind in the leaves.
"I beg your pardon, do you know what time it is?"
"No, I don't," she replies stiffly, meaning, "I know quite well what you are after, but don't be in such a hurry, you won't get anything the sooner."
The girl beside her gives her a nudge. "Did you hear that?" she giggles. ​496 ASCH
Feigele feels a little annoyed with her. Does the girl think she is the object? And she presently pre- pares to rise, but remains, as though glued to the seat.
"A beautiful night, isn't it?"
"Yes, a beautiful evening."
And so the conversation gets into swing, with a ques- tion from him and an answer from her, on different subjects, first with fear and fluttering of the heart, then they get closer one to another, and become more confi- dential. When she goes home, he sees her to the door, they shake hands and say, "Till we meet again !"
And they meet a second and a third time, for young hearts attract each other like a magnet. At first, of course, it is accidental, they meet by chance in the company of two other people, a girl friend of hers and a chum of his, and then, little by little, they come to feel that they want to see each other alone, all to them- selves, and they fix upon a quiet time and place.
And they met. ,
They walked away together, outside the town, between the sky and the fields, walked and talked, and again, conscious that the talk was an artificial one, were even more gladly silent. Evening, and the last sunbeams were gliding over the ears of corn on both sides of the way. Then a breeze came along, and the ears swayed and whispered together, as the two passed on between them down the long road. Night was gathering, it grew continually darker, more melancholy, more delightful.
"I have been wanting to know you for a long time, Feigele."
"I know. You followed me like a shadow." ​"What are you thinking about, Feigele?"
"What are you thinking about, Eleazar?"
And they plunge once more into a deep converse about all sorts of things, and there seems to be no reason why it should ever end.
It grows darker and darker.
They have come to walk closer together.
Now he takes her hand, she gives a start, but his hand steals further and further into hers.
Suddenly, as dropt from the sky, he bends his face, and kisses her on the cheek.
A thrill goes through her, she takes her hand out of his and appears rather cross, but he knows it is put on, and very soon she is all right again, as if the incident were forgotten.
An hour or two go by thus, and every day now they steal away and meet outside the town.
And Eleazar began to frequent her parents' house, the first time with an excuse— he had some work for Feigele. And then, as people do, he came to know when the work would be done, and Feigele behaved as though she had never seen him before, as though not even knowing who he was, and politely begged him to take a seat.
So it came about by degrees that Eleazar was continually in and out of the house, coming and going as he pleased and without stating any pretext whatever.
Feigele's parents knew him for a steady young man, he was a skilled artisan earning a good wage, and they knew quite well why a young man comes to the home ​of a young girl, but they feigned ignorance, thinking to themselves, "Let the children get to know each other better, there will be time enough to talk it over afterwards."
Evening: a small room, shadows moving on the walls, a new table on which burns a large, bright lamp, and sitting beside it Feigele sewing and Eleazar reading aloud a novel by Shomer.
Father and mother, tired out with a whole day's work, sleep on their beds behind the curtain, which shuts off half the room.
And so they sit, both of them, only sometimes Eleazar laughs aloud, takes her by the hand, and exclaims with a smile, "Feigele!"
"What do you want, silly?"
"Nothing at all, nothing at all."
And she sews on, thinking, "I have got you fast enough, but don't imagine you are taking somebody from the street, just as she is; there are still eighty rubles wanting to make three hundred in the bank."
And she shows him her wedding outfit, the shifts and the bedclothes, of which half lie waiting in the drawers.
They drew closer one to another, they became more and more intimate, so that all looked upon them as engaged, and expected the marriage contract to be drawn up any day. Feigele's mother was jubilant at her daughter's good fortune, at the prospect of such a son-in-law, such a golden son-in-law!
Reb Yainkel, her father, was an elderly man, a worn-out peddler, bent sideways with the bag of junk continually on his shoulder. ​Now he, too, has a little bit of pleasure, a taste of joy, for which God be praised!
Everyone rejoices, Feigele most of all, her cheeks look rosier and fresher, her eyes darker and brighter. She sits at her machine and sews, and the whole room rings with her voice:
"Un was ich hob' gewollt, hob' ich ausgeführt, Soll ich azoi leben! Ich hob' gewollt a shenem Choson, Hot mir Gott gegeben." In the evening comes Eleazar.
"Well, what are you doing?"
"What should I be doing? Wait, I'll show you something."
"What sort of thing?"
She rises from her place, goes to the chest that stands in the stove corner, takes something out of it, and hides it under her apron. "Whatever have you got there?" he laughs.
"Why are you in such a hurry to know?" she asks, and sits down beside him, brings from under her apron a picture in fine woolwork, Adam and Eve, and shows it him, saying:
"There, now you see! It was worked by a girl I know-for me, for us. I shall hang it up in our room, opposite the bed."
"Yours or mine?"
"You wait, Eleazar! You will see the house I shall arrange for you-a paradise, I tell you, just a little paradise! Everything in it will have to shine, so that it will be a pleasure to step inside." ​"And every evening when work is done, we two shall sit together, side by side, just as we are doing now," and he puts an arm around her.
"And you will tell me everything, all about everything," she says, laying a hand on his shoulder, while with the other she takes hold of his chin, and looks into his eyes.
They feel so happy, so light at heart.
Everything in the house has taken on an air of kindliness, there is a soft, attractive gloss on every object in the room, on the walls and the table, the familiar things make signs to her, and speak to her as friend to friend. The two are silent, lost in their own thoughts.
"Look," she says to him, and takes her bank-book out of the chest, "two hundred and forty rubles already. I shall make it up to three hundred, and then you won't have to say, 'I took you just as you were."
"Go along with you, you are very unjust, and I'm cross with you, Feigele."
"Why? Because I tell you the truth to your face?" she asks, looking into his face and laughing.
He turns his head away, pretending to be offended. "You little silly, are you feeling hurt? I was only joking, can't you see?"
So it goes on, till the old mother's face peeps out from behind the curtain, warning them that it is time to go to rest, when the young couple bid each other goodnight.
Reb Yainkel, Feigele's father, fell ill.
It was in the beginning of winter, and there was war between winter and summer: the former sent a ​snowfall, the latter a burst of sun. The snow turned to mud, and between times it poured with rain by the bucketful.
This sort of weather made the old man ill: he became weak in the legs, and took to his bed. br There was no money for food, and still less for firing, and Feigele had to lend for the time being.
The old man lay abed and coughed, his pale, shrivelled face reddened, the teeth showed between the drawn lips, and the blue veins stood out on his temples.
They sent for the doctor, who prescribed a remedy. The mother wished to pawn their last pillow, but Feigele protested, and gave up part of her wages, and when this was not enough, she pawned her jacket-anything sooner than touch the dowry.
And he, Eleazar, came every evening, and they sat together beside the well-known table in the lamplight. "Why are you so sad, Feigele?"
"How can you expect me to be cheerful, with father so ill?"
"God will help, Feigele, and he will get better."
"It's four weeks since I put a farthing into the savings-bank."
"What do you want to save for?"
"What do I want to save for?" she asked with a startled look, as though something had frightened her.
"Are you going to tell me that you will take me without a dowry?"
"What do you mean by 'without a dowry'? You are worth all the money in the world to me, worth my whole life. What do I want with your money? See here, my ​five fingers, they can earn all we need. I have two hundred rubles in the bank, saved from my earnings. What do I want with more?"
They are silent for a moment, with downcast eyes. "And your mother?" she asks quietly.
"Will you please tell me, are you marrying my mother or me? And what concern is she of yours?"
Feigele is silent.
"I tell you again, I'll take you just as you are—and you'll take me the same, will you?"
She puts the corner of her apron to her eyes, and cries quietly to herself. There is stillness around. The lamp sheds its brightness over the little room, and casts their shadows onto the walls.
The heavy sleeping of the old people is audible behind the curtain.
And her head lies on his shoulder, and her thick black hair hides his face.
"How kind you are, Eleazar," she whispers through her tears.
And she opens her whole heart to him, tells him how it is with them now, how bad things are, they have pawned everything, and there is nothing left for tomorrow, nothing but the dowry!
He clasps her lovingly, and dries her cheeks with her apron end, saying: "Don't cry, Feigele, "don't cry. It will all come right. And tomorrow, mind, you are to go to the postoffice, and take a little of the dowry, as much as you need, until your father, God helping, is well again, and able to earn something, and then. . ." ​"And then..." she echoes in a whisper.
"And then it will all come right," and his eyes flash into hers. "Just as you are. . ." he whispers.
And she looks at him, and a smile crosses her face. She feels so happy, so happy.
Next morning she went to the postoffice for the first time with her bank-book, took out a few rubles, and gave them to her mother.
The mother sighed heavily, and took on a grieved expression; she frowned, and pulled her head-kerchief down over her eyes.
Old Reb Yainkel lying in bed turned his face to the wall.
The old man knew where the money came from, he knew how his only child had toiled for those few rubles. Other fathers gave money to their children, and he took it—
It seemed to him as though he were plundering the two young people. He had not long to live, and he was robbing them before he died.
As he thought on this, his eyes glazed, the veins on his temple swelled, and his face became suffused with blood.
His head is buried in the pillow, and turns to the wall, he lies and thinks these thoughts.
He knows that he is in the way of the children's happiness, and he prays that he may die.
And she, Feigele, would like to come into a fortune all at once, to have a lot of money, to be as rich as any adds Alamel great lady. ​And then suppose she had a thousand rubles now, this minute, and he came in: "There, take the whole of it, see if I love you! There, take it, and then you needn't say you love me for nothing, just as I am." They sit beside the father's bed, she and her Eleazar.
Her heart overflows with content, she feels happier than she ever felt before, there are even tears of joy on her cheeks.
She sits and cries, hiding her face with her apron.
He takes her caressingly by the hands, repeating in his kind, sweet voice, "Feigele, stop crying, Feigele, please!"
The father lies turned with his face to the wall, and the beating of his heart is heard in the stillness.
They sit, and she feels confidence in Eleazar, she feels that she can rely upon him.
She sits and drinks in his words, she feels him rolling the heavy stones from off her heart.
The old father has turned round and looked at them, and a sweet smile steals over his face, as though he would say, "Have no fear, children, I agree with you, I agree with all my heart."
And Feigele feels so happy, so happy. . .
The father is still lying ill, and Feigele takes out one ruble after another, one five-ruble-piece after another. The old man lies and prays and muses, and looks at the children, and holds his peace.
His face gets paler and more wrinkled, he grows weaker, he feels his strength ebbing away. ​Feigele goes on taking money out of the savings-bank, the stamps in her book grow less and less, she knows that soon there will be nothing left.
Old Reb Yainkel wishes in secret that he did not require so much, that he might cease to hamper other people!
He spits blood-drops, and his strength goes on diminishing, and so do the stamps in Feigele's book. The day he died saw the last farthing of Feigele's dowry disappear after the others.
Feigele has resumed her seat by the bright lamp, and sews and sews till far into the night, and with every seam that she sews, something is added to the credit of her new account.
A JEWISH CHILD
The mother came out of the bride's chamber, and cast a piercing look at her husband, who was sitting beside a finished meal, and was making pellets of bread crumbs previous to saying grace.
"You go and talk to her! I haven't a bit of strength left!"
"So, Rochel-Leoh has brought up children, has she, and can't manage them! Why! People will be pointing at you and laughing—a ruin to your years!"
"To my years?! A ruin to yours! My children, are they? Are they not yours, too? Couldn't you stay at home sometimes to care for them and help me to bring them up, instead of trapesing round—the black year knows where and with whom?"
"Rochel, Rochel, what has possessed you to start a quarrel with me now? The bridegroom's family will be arriving directly."
"And what do you expect me to do, Moishehle, eh?! For God's sake! Go in to her, we shall be made a laughing-stock."
The man rose from the table, and went into the next room to his daughter. The mother followed.
On the little sofa that stood by the window sat a girl about eighteen, her face hidden in her hands, her arms covered by her loose, thick, black hair. She was evidently crying, for her bosom rose and fell like a stormy sea. On the bed opposite lay the white silk wedding-dress, the Chuppeh-Kleid, with the black, ​A JEWISH CHILD 507
silk Shool-Kleid, and the black stuff morning-dress, which the tailor who had undertaken the outfit had brought not long ago. By the door stood a woman with a black scarf round her head and holding boxes with wigs.
"Channehle! You are never going to do me this dishonor ? to make me the talk of the town ?" exclaimed the father. The bride was silent.
"Look at me, daughter of Moisheh Groiss ! It's all very well for Genendel Freindel's daughter to wear a wig, but not for the daughter of Moisheh Groiss? Is that it?"
"And yet Genendel Freindel might very well think more of herself than you: she is more educated than you are, and has a larger dowry," put in the mother.
The bride made no reply.
"Daughter, think how much blood and treasure it has cost to help us to a bit of pleasure, and now you want to spoil it for us? Remember, for God's sake, what you are doing with yourself ! We shall be excom- municated, the young man will run away home on foot"!"
"Don't be foolish," said the mother, took a wig out of a box from the woman by the door, and approached her daughter. "Let us try on the wig, the hair is just the color of yours," and she laid the strange hair on the girl's head.
The girl felt the weight, put up her fingers to her head, met among her own soft, cool, living locks, the strange, dead hair of the wig, stiff and cold, and it flashed through her, Who knows where the head to which this hair belonged is now? A shuddering enveloped ​508 ASCH
her, and as though she had come in contact with some- thing unclean, she snatched off the wig, threw in onto the floor and hastily left the room.
Father and mother stood and looked at each other in dismay.
The day after the marriage ceremony, the bride- groom's mother rose early, and, bearing large scissors, and the wig and a hood which she had brought from her home as a present for the bride, she went to dress the latter for the "breakfast."
But the groom's mother remained outside the room, because the bride had locked herself in, and would open her door to no one.
The groom's mother ran calling aloud for help to her husband, who, together with a dozen uncles and brothers- in-law, was still sleeping soundly after the evening's festivity. She then sought out the bridegroom, an eighteen-year-old boy with his mother's milk still on his lips, who, in a silk caftan and a fur cap, was moving about the room in bewildered fashion, his eyes on the ground, ashamed to look anyone in the face. In the end she fell back on the mother of the bride, and these two went in to her together, having forced open the door between them.
"Why did you lock yourself in, dear daughter. There is no need to be ashamed."
"Marriage is a Jewish institution !" said the groom's mother, and kissed her future daughter-in-law on both cheeks.
The girl made no reply. ​A JEWISH CHILD 509
"Your mother-in-law has brought you a wig and a hood for the procession to the Shool/' said her own mother.
The band had already struck up the "Good Morning" in the next room.
"Come now, Kallehshi, Kalleh-leben, the guests are beginning to assemble."
The groom's mother took hold of the plaits in order to loosen them.
The bride bent her head away from her, and fell on her own mother's neck.
"I can't, Mame-leben ! My heart won't let me, Mame- kron !"
She held her hair with both hands, to protect it from the other's scissors.
"For God's sake, my daughter, my life," begged the mother.
"In the other world you will be plunged for this into rivers of fire. The apostate who wears her own hair after marriage will have her locks torn out with red hot pincers," said the other with the scissors.
A cold shiver went through the girl at these words.
"Mother-life, mother-crown!" she pleaded.
Her hands sought her hair, and the black silky tresses fell through them in waves. Her hair, the hair which had grown with her growth, and lived with her life, was to be cut off, and she was never, never to have it again she was to wear strange hair, hair that had grown on another person's head, and no one knows whether that other person was alive or lying in the earth this long 33 ​510 ASCH
time, and whether she might not come any night to one's bedside, and whine in a dead voice :
"Give me back my hair, give me back my hair !"
A frost seized the girl to the marrow, she shivered and shook.
Then she heard the squeak of scissors over her head, tore herself out of her mother's arms, made one snatch at the scissors, flung them across the room, and said in a scarcely human voice:
"My own hair ! May God Himself punish me !"
That day the bridegroom's mother took herself off home again, together with the sweet-cakes and the geese which she had brought for the wedding breakfast for her own guests. She wanted to take the bridegroom as well, but the bride's mother said: "I will not give him back to you ! He belongs to me already !"
The following Sabbath they led the bride in proces- sion to the Shool wearing her own hair in the face of all the town, covered only by a large hood.
But may all the names she was called by the way find their only echo in some uninhabited wilderness.
A summer evening, a few weeks after the wedding: The young man had just returned from the Stiibel, and went to his room. The wife was already asleep, and the soft light of the lamp fell on her pale face, showing here and there among the wealth of silky- black hair that bathed it. Her slender arms were flung round her head, as though she feared that someone might come by night to shear them off while she slept. He had come home excited and irritable: this was the fourth week of his married life, and they had not yet ​A JEWISH CHILD 511
called him up to the Reading of the Law, the Chassidim pursued him, and to-day Chayyim Moisheh had blamed him in the presence of the whole congregation, and had shamed him, because she, his wife, went about in her own hair. "You're no better than a clay image," Reb Chayyim Moisheh had told him. "What do you mean by a woman's saying she won't ? It is written : 'And he shall rule over thee.' "
And he had come home intending to go to her and say : "Woman, it is a precept in the Torah ! If you persist in wearing your own hair, I may divorce you without returning the dowry," after which he would pack up his things and go home. But when he saw his little wife asleep in bed, and her pale face peeping out of the glory of her hair, he felt a great pity for her. He went up to the bed, and stood a long while looking at her, after which he called softly:
"Channehle . . . Channehle . . . Channehle ..."
She opened her eyes with a frightened start, and looked round in sleepy wonder:
"Nosson, did you call? What do you want?
"Nothing, your cap has slipped off," he said, lifting up the white nightcap, which had fallen from her head.
She flung it on again, and wanted to turn towards the wall.
"Channehle, Channehle, I want to talk to you."
The words went to her heart. The whole time since their marriage he had, so to say, not spoken to her. During the day she saw nothing of him, for he spent it in the house-of-study or in the Stiibel. When he came home to dinner, he sat down to the table in silence. When he wanted anything, he asked for it ​512 ASCH
speaking into the air, and when really obliged to exchange a word with her, he did so with his eyes fixed on the ground, too shy to look her in the face. And now he said he wanted to talk to her, and in such a gentle voice, and they two alone together in their room !
"What do you want to say to me ?" she asked softly.
"Channehle," he began, "please, don't make a fool of me, and don't make a fool of yourself in people's eyes. Has not God decreed that we should belong together? You are my wife and I am your husband, and is it proper, and what does it look like, a married woman wearing her own hair ?"
Sleep still half dimmed her eyes, and had altogether clouded her thought and will. She felt helpless, and her head fell lightly towards his breast.
"Child," he went on still more gently, "I know you are not so depraved as they say. I know you are a pious Jewish daughter, and His blessed Name will help us, and we shall have pious Jewish children. Put away this nonsense ! Why should the whole world be talking about you? Are we not man and wife? Is not your shame mine?"
It seemed to her as though someone, at once very far away and very near, had come and was talking to her. Nobody had ever yet spoken to her so gently and con- fidingly. And he was her husband, with whom she would live so long, so long, and there would be children, and she would look after the house !
She leant her head lightly against him.
"I know you are very sorry to lose your hair, the orna- ment of your girlhood, I saw you with it when I was a ​A JEWISH CHILD 513
guest in your home. I know that God gave you grace and loveliness, I know. It cuts me to the heart that your hair must be shorn off, but what is to be done? It is a rule, a law of our religion, and after all we are Jews. We might even, God forbid, have a child conceived to ue in sin, may Heaven watch over and defend us."
She said nothing, but remained resting lightly in his arm, and his face lay in the stream of her silky-black hair with its cool odor. In that hair dwelt a soul, and he was conscious of it. He looked at her long and earnestly, and in his look was a prayer, a pleading with her for her own happiness, for her happiness and his.
"Shall I?" ... he asked, more with his eyes than with his lips.
She said nothing, she only bent her head over his i lap.
He went quickly to the drawer, and took out a pair of scissors.
She laid her head in his lap, and gave her hair as a ransom for their happiness, still half-asleep and dream- ing. The scissors squeaked over her head, shearing off one lock after the other, and Channehle lay and dreamt through the night.
On waking next morning, she threw a look into the glass which hung opposite the bed. A shock went through her, she thought she had gone mad, and was in the asylum ! On the table beside her lay her shorn hair, dead!
She hid her face in her hands, and the little room was
A SCHOLAR'S MOTHER
The market lies foursquare, surrounded on every side by low, whitewashed little houses. From the chimney of the one-storied house opposite the well and inhabited by the baker, issues thick smoke, which spreads low over the market-place. Beneath the smoke is a flying to and fro of white pigeons, and a tall boy standing outside the baker's door is whistling to them.
Equally opposite the well are stalls, doors laid across two chairs and covered with fruit and vegetables, and around them women, with head-kerchiefs gathered round their weary, sunburnt faces in the hottest weather, stand and quarrel over each other's wares,
"It's certainly worth my while to stand quarrelling with you! A tramp like you keeping a stall!"
Yente, a woman about forty, whose wide lips have just uttered the above, wears a large, dirty apron, and her broad, red face, with the composed glance of the eyes under the kerchief, gives support to her words.
"Do you suppose you have got the Almighty by the beard? He is mine as well as yours!" answers Taube, pulling her kerchief lower about her ears, and angrily stroking down her hair.
A new customer approached Yente's stall, and Taube, standing by idle, passed the time in vituperations.
"What do I want with the money of a fine lady like you? You'll die like the rest of us, and not a dog will say Kaddish for you," she shrieked, and came to a sudden stop, for Taube had intended to bring up the ​A SCHOLAR'S MOTHER 515
subject of her own son Yitzchokel, when she remembered that it is against good manners to praise one's own.
Yente, measuring out a quarter of pears to her cus- tomer, made answer:
"Well, if you were a little superior to what you are, your husband wouldn't have died, and your child wouldn't have to be ashamed of you, as we all know he is."
Whereon Taube flew into a rage, and shouted :
"Hussy ! The idea of my son being ashamed of me ! May you be a sacrifice for his littlest finger-nail, for you're not worthy to mention his name !"
She was about to burst out weeping at the accusation of having been the cause of her husband's death and of causing her son to be ashamed of her, but she kept back her tears with all her might in order not to give pleasure to Yente.
The sun was dropping lower behind the other end of the little town, Jews were hurrying across the market- place to Evening Prayer in the house-of-study street, and the Cheder-boys, just let out, began to gather round the well.
Taube collected her few little baskets into her arms (the door and the chairs she left in the market-place; nobody would steal them), and with two or three parting curses to the rude Yente, she quietly quitted the scene.
Walking home with her armful of baskets, she thought of her son Yitzchokel.
Yente's stinging remarks pursued her. It was not Yente's saying that she had caused her husband's death that she minded, for everyone knew how hard she had ​worked during his illness, it was her saying that Yitzchokel was ashamed of her, that she felt in her "ribs." It occurred to her that when he came home for the night, he never would touch anything in her house.
And thinking this over, she started once more abusing Yente.
"Let her not live to see such a thing, Lord of the World, the One Father!"
It seemed to her that this fancy of hers, that Yitz- chokel was ashamed of her, was all Yente's fault, it was all her doing, the witch!
"My child, my Yitzchokel, what business is he of yours?" and the cry escaped her:
"Lord of the World, take up my quarrel, Thou art a Father to the orphaned, Thou shouldst not forgive her this!"
"Who is that? Whom are you scolding so, Taube?" called out Necheh, the rich man's wife, standing in the door of her shop, and overhearing Taube, as she scolded to herself on the walk home.
"Who should it be, housemistress, who but the hussy, the abortion, the witch," answered Taube, pointing with one finger towards the market-place, and, without so much as lifting her head to look at the person speaking to her, she went on her way.
She remembered, as she walked, how, that morning, when she went into Necheh's kitchen with a fowl, she heard her Yitzchokel's voice in the other room disputing with Necheh's boys over the Talmud. She knew that on Wednesdays Yitzchokel ate his "day" at Necheh's table, and she had taken the fowl there that day ​on purpose, so that her Yitzchokel should have a good plate of soup, for her poor child was but weakly.
When she heard her son's voice, she had been about to leave the kitchen, and yet she had stayed. Her Yitz- chokel disputing with Necheh's children? What did they know as compared with him? Did they come up to his level? "He will be ashamed of me," she thought with a start, "when he finds me with a chicken in my hand. So his mother is a market-woman, they will say, there's a fine partner for you!" But she had not left the kitchen. A child who had never cost a farthing, and she should like to know how much Necheh's children cost their parents! If she had all the money that Yitzchokel ought to have cost, the money that ought to have been spent on him, she would be a rich woman too, and she stood and listened to his voice.
"Oi, he should have lived to see Yitzchokel, it would have made him well." Soon the door opened, Necheh's boys appeared, and her Yitzchokel with them. His cheeks flamed.
"Good morning!" he said feebly, and was out at the door in no time. She knew that she had caused him vexation, that he was ashamed of her before his companions.
And she asked herself: Her child, her Yitzchokel, who had sucked her milk, what had Necheh to do with him? And she had poured out her bitterness of heart upon Yente's head for this also, that her son had cost her parents nothing, and was yet a better scholar than Necheh's children, and once more she exclaimed:
"Lord of the World! Avenge my quarrel, pay her out for it, let her not live to see another day!" ​518 ASCH
Passers-by, seeing a woman walking and scolding aloud, laughed.
.flight came on, the little town was darkened.
Taube reached home with her armful of baskets, dragged herself up the steps, and opened the door.
"Maine, it's Ma-a-me !" came voices from within.
The house was full of smoke, the children clustered round her in the middle of the room, and never ceased calling out Mame ! One child's voice was tearful : "Where have you been all day ?" another's more cheerful : "How nice it is to have you back!" and all the voices mingled together into one.
"Be quiet! You don't give me time to draw my breath !" cried the mother, laying down the baskets.
She went to the fireplace, looked about for something, and presently the house was illumined by a smoky lamp.
The feeble shimmer lighted only the part round the hearth, where Taube was kindling two pieces of stick an old dusty sewing-machine beside a bed, sign of a departed tailor, and a single bed opposite the lamp, strewn with straw, on which lay various fruits, the odor of which filled the room. The rest of the apartment with the remaining beds lay in shadow.
It is a year and a half since her husband, Lezer the tailor, died. While he was still alive, but when his cough had increased, and he could no longer provide for his family, Taube had started earning something on her own account, and the worse the cough, the harder she had to toil, so that by the time she became a widow, she was already used to supporting her whole family. ​A SCHOLAR'S MOTHER 519
The eldest boy, Yitzchokel, had been the one conso- lation of Lezer the tailor's cheerless existence, and Lezer was comforted on his death-bed to think he should leave a good Kaddish behind him.
When he died, the householders had pity on the deso- late widow, collected a few rubles, so that she might buy something to traffic with, and, seeing that Yitzchokel was a promising boy, they placed him in the house-of- etudy, arranged for him to have his daily meals in the houses of the rich, and bade him pass his time over the Talmud.
Taube, when she saw her Yitzchokel taking his meals with the rich, felt satisfied. A weakly boy, what could she give him to eat ? There, at the rich man's table, he had the best of everything, but it grieved her that he should eat in strange, rich houses she herself did not know whether she had received a kindness or the reverse, when he was taken off her hands.
One day, sitting at her stall, she spied her Yitzchokel emerge from the Shool-Gass with his Tefillin-bag under his arm, and go straight into the house of Reb Zindel the rich, to breakfast, and a pang went through her heart. She was still on terms, then, with Yente, because immediately after the death of her husband everyone had been kind to her, and she said :
"Believe me, Yente, I don't know myself what it is. "What right have I to complain of the householders? They have been very good to me and to my child, made provision for him in rich houses, treated him as if he were no market-woman's son, but the child of gentle- folk, and yet every day when I give the other children ​520 ASCH
their dinner, I forget, and lay a plate for my Yitzchokel too, and when I remember that he has his meals at other people's hands, I begin to cry."
"Go along with you for a foolish woman!" answered Yente. "How would he turn out if he were left to you ? What is a poor person to give a child to eat, when you come to think of it?"
"You are right, Yente," Taube replied, "but when I portion out the dinner for the others, it cuts me to the heart,"
And now, as she sat by the hearth cooking the chil- dren's supper, the same feeling came over her, that they had stolen her Yitzchokel away.
When the children had eaten and gone to bed, she stood the lamp on the table, and began mending a shirt for Yitzchokel.
Presently the door opened, and he, Yitzchokel, came in.
Yitzchokel was about fourteen, tall and thin, his pale face telling out sharply against his black cloak beneath his black cap.
"Good evening !" he said in a low tone.
The mother gave up her place to him, feeling that she owed him respect, without knowing exactly why, and it was borne in upon her that she and her poverty together were a misfortune for Yitzchokel.
He took a book out of the case, sat down, and opened it.
The mother gave the lamp a screw, wiped the globe with her apron, and pushed the lamp nearer to him. ​A SCHOLAR'S MOTHER 521
"Will you have a glass of tea, Yitzchokel ?" she asked softly, wishful to serve him.
"No, I have just had some."
"Or an apple?"
He was silent.
The mother cleaned a plate, laid two apples on it, and a knife, and placed it on the table beside him.
He peeled one of the apples as elegantly as a grown-up man, repeated the blessing aloud, and ate.
When Taube had seen Yitzchokel eat an apple, she felt more like his mother, and drew a little nearer to him.
And Yitzchokel, as he slowly peeled the second apple, began to talk more amiably:
"To-day I talked with the Dayan about going some- where else. In the house-of-study here, there is nothing to do, nobody to study with, nobody to ask how and where, and in which book, and he advises me to go to the Academy at Makove; he will give me a letter to Eeb Chayyim, the headmaster, and ask him to befriend me."
When Taube heard that her son was about to leave her, she experienced a great shock, but the words, Dayan, Eosh-Yeshiveh, mekarev-sein, and other high-sounding bits of Hebrew, which she did not understand, overawed her, and she felt she must control herself. Besides, the words held some comfort for her : Yitzchokel was hold- ing counsel with her, with her his mother !
"Of course, if the Dayan says so," she answered piously.
"Yes," Yitzchokel continued, "there one can hear lectures with all the commentaries; Eeb Chayyim, the ​523 ASCH
author of the book "Light of the Torah," is a well- known scholar, and there one has a chance of getting to be something decent."
His words entirely reassured her, she felt a certain happiness and exaltation, because he was her child, because she was the mother of such a child, such a son, and because, were it not for her, Yitzchokel would not be there at all. At the same time her heart pained her. and she grew sad.
Presently she remembered her husband, and burst out crying:
"If only he had lived, if only he could have had this consolation !" she sobbed.
Yitzchokel minded his book.
That night Taube could not sleep, for at the thought of Yitzchokel's departure the heart ached within her.
And she dreamt, as she lay in bed, that some great Rabbis with tall fur caps and long earlocks came in and took her Yitzchokel away from her; her Yitzchokel was wearing a fur cap and locks like theirs, and he held a large book, and he went far away with the Rabbis, and she stood and gazed after him, not knowing, should she rejoice or weep.
Next morning she woke late. Yitzchokel had already gone to his studies. She hastened to dress the children, and hurried to the market-place. At her stall she fell athinking, and fancied she was sitting beside her son, who was a Rabbi in a large town; there he sits in shoes and socks, a great fur cap on his head, and looks into a huge book. She sits at his right hand knitting a ​A SCHOLAR'S MOTHER 523
sock, the door opens, and there appears Yente carrying a dish, to ask a ritual question of Taube's son.
A customer disturbed her sweet dream.
After this Taube sat up whole nights at the table, by the light of the smoky lamp, rearranging and mending Yitzchokel's shirts for the journey; she recalled with every stitch that she was sewing for Yitzchokel, who was going to the Academy, to sit and study, and who, every Friday, would put on a shirt prepared for him by his mother.
Yitzchokel sat as always on the other side of the table, gazing into a book. The mother would have liked to speak to 'him, but she did not know what to say.
Taube and Yitzchokel were up before daylight.
Yitzchokel kissed his little brothers in their sleep, and said to his sleeping little sisters, "Remain in health" ; one sister woke and began to cry, saying she wanted to go with him. The mother embraced and quieted her softly, then she and Yitzchokel left the room, carrying his box between them.
The street was still fast asleep, the shops were still closed, behind the church belfry the morning star shone coldly forth onto the cold morning dew on the roofs, and there was silence over all, except in the market- place, where there stood a peasant's cart laden with fruit. It was surrounded by women, and Yente's voice was heard from afar:
"Five gulden and ten groschen, and I'll take the lot !"
And Taube, carrying Yitzchokel's box behind him, walked thus through the market-place, and, catching sight of Yente, she looked at her with pride. ​524 ASCH
They came out behind the town, onto the highroad, and waited for an "opportunity" to come by on its way to Lentschitz, whence Yitzchokel was to proceed to Kutno.
The sky was grey and cold, and mingled in the distance with the dingy mist rising from the fields, and the road, silent and deserted, ran away out of sight.
They sat down beside the barrier, and waited for the "opportunity."
The mother scraped together a few twenty-kopek- pieces out of her pocket, and put them into his bosom, twisted up in his shirt.
Presently a cart came by, crowded with passengers. She secured a seat for Yitzchokel for forty groschen, and hoisted the box into the cart.
"Go in health! Don't forget your mother!" she cried in tears.
Yitzchokel was silent.
She wanted to kiss her child, but she knew it was not the thing for a grown-up boy to be kissed, so she refrained.
Yitzchokel mounted the cart, the passengers made room for him among them.
"Remain in health, mother!" he called out as the cart set off.
"Go in health, my child! Sit and study, and don't forget your mother !" she cried after him.
The cart moved further and further, till it was climb- ing the hill in the distance.
Taube still stood and followed it with her gaze; and not till it was lost to view in the dust did she turn and walk back to the town. ​A SCHOLAR'S MOTHER 525
She took a road that should lead her past the cemetery.
There was a rather low plank fence round it, and the gravestones were all to be seen, looking up to Heaven.
Taube went and hitched herself up onto the fence, and put her head over into the "field," looking for something among the tombs, and when her eyes had discovered a familiar little tombstone, she shook her 'head :
"Lezer, Lezer! Your son has driven away to the Academy to study Torah !"
Then she remembered the market, where Yente must by now have bought up the whole cart-load of fruit. There would be nothing left for her, and she hurried into the town.
She walked at a great pace, and felt very pleased with herself. She was conscious of having done a great thing, and this dissipated her annoyance at the thought of Yente acquiring all the fruit.
Two weeks later she got a letter from Yitzchokel, and, not being able to read it herself, she took it to Reb Yochanan, the teacher, that he might read it for her.
Reb Yochanan put on his glasses, cleared 'his throat thoroughly, and began to read :
"Le-Immi ahuvossi hatzenuoh" . . .
"What is the translation ?" asked Taube.
"It is the way to address a mother," explained Reb Yochanan, and continued.
Taube's face had brightened, she put her apron to her eyes and wept for joy.
The reader observed this and read on. 34 ​526 ASCH
"What is the translation, the translation, Eeb Yocha- nan?" the woman kept on asking.
"Never mind, it's not for you, you wouldn't under- stand it is an exposition of a passage in the Gemoreh."
She was silent, the Hebrew words awed her, and she listened respectfully to the end.
"I salute Immi ahuvossi and Achoissai, Sarah and Goldeh, and Ochi Yakov; tell him to study diligently. I have all my 'days' and I sleep at Eeb Chayyim's," gave out Eeb Yochanan suddenly in Yiddish.
Taube contented herself with these few words, took back the letter, put it in her pocket, and went back to her stall with great joy.
"This evening," she thought, "I will show it to the Dayan, and let him read it too."
And no sooner had she got home, cooked the dinner, and fed the children, than she was off with the letter to the Dayan.
She entered the room, saw the tall bookcases filled with books covering the walls, and a man with a white beard sitting at the end of the table reading.
"What is it, a ritual question ?" asked the Dayan from his place.
"No."
"What then?"
"A letter from my Yitzchokel."
The Dayan rose, came up and looked at her, took the letter, and began to read it silently to himself.
"Well done, excellent, good ! The little fellow knows what he is saying," said the Dayan more to himself than to her. ​A SCHOLAR'S MOTHER 527
Tears streamed from Taube's eyes.
"If only he had lived ! if only he Bad lived !"
"Shechitas chutz . . . Rambam . . . Tossafos is right ..." went on the Dayan.
"Her Yitzchokel, Taube the market-woman's son," she thought proudly.
"Take the letter," said the Dayan, at last, "I've read it all through."
"Well, and what?" asked the woman.
"What? What do you want then?"
"What does it say?" she asked in a low voice.
"There is nothing in it for you, you wouldn't under- stand," replied the Dayan, with a smile.
Yitzchokel continued to write home, the Yiddish words were fewer every time, often only a greeting to his mother. And she came to Reb Yochanan, and he read her the Yiddish phrases, with which she had to be satisfied. "The Hebrew words are for the Dayan," she said to herself.
But one day, "There is nothing in the letter for you," said Reb Yochanan.
"What do you mean ?"
"Nothing," he said shortly.
"Read me at least what there is."
"But it is all Hebrew, Torah, you won't understand."
"Very well, then, I won't understand ..."
"Go in health, and don't drive me distracted."
Taube left him, and resolved to go that evening to the Dayan.
"Rebbe, excuse me, translate this into Yiddish," she said, handing him the letter.
The Dayan took the letter and read it. ​528 ASCH
"Nothing there for you/' he said.
"Kebbe," said Taube, shyly, "excuse me, translate the Hebrew for me !"
"But it is Torah, an exposition of a passage in the Torah. You won't understand."
"Well, if you would only read the letter in Hebrew, but aloud, so that I may hear what he says."
"But you won't understand one word, it's Hebrew !" persisted the Dayan, with a smile.
"Well, I won't understand, that's all," said the woman, "but it's my child's Torah, my child's!"
The Dayan reflected a while, then he began to read aloud.
Presently, however, he glanced at Taube, and remem- bered he was expounding the Torah to a woman ! And he felt thankful no one had heard him.'
"Take the letter, there is nothing in it for you," he said compassionately, and sat down again in his place.
"But it is my child's Torah, my YitzchokePs letter, why mayn't I hear it? What does it matter if I don't understand ? It is my own child !"
The Dayan turned coldly away.
When Taube reached home after this interview, she sat down at the table, took down the lamp from the wall, and looked silently at the letter by its smoky light.
She kissed the letter, but then it occurred to her that she was defiling it with her lips, she, a sinful woman!
She rose, took her husband's prayer-book from the bookshelf, and laid the letter between its leaves.
Then with trembling lips she kissed the covers of the
THE SINNER
So that you should not suspect me of taking his part, I will write a short preface to my story.
It is written: “A man never so much as moves his finger, but it has been so decreed from above,” and what- soever a man does, he fulfils God’s will—even animals and birds (I beg to distinguish!) carry out God’s wishes: whenever a bird flies, it fulfils a precept, because God, blessed is He, formed it to fly, and an ox the same when it lows, and even a dog when it barks— all praise God with their voices, and sing hymns to Him, each after his manner.
And even the wicked who transgresses fulfils God’s will in spite of himself, because why? Do you suppose he takes pleasure in transgressing? Isn’t he certain to repent? Well, then? He is just carrying out the will of Heaven.
And the Evil Inclination himself! Why, every time he is sent to persuade a Jew to sin, he weeps and sighs: Woe is me, that I should be sent on such an errand!
After this little preface, I will tell you the story itself.
Formerly, before the thing happened, he was called Reb Avròhom, but afterwards they ceased calling him by his name, and said simply the Sinner.
Reb Avròhom was looked up to and respected by the whole town, a God-fearing Jew, beloved and honored by all, and mothers wished they might have children like him. ​530 ASCH
He sat the whole day in the house-of-study and learned. Not that he was a great scholar, but he was a pious, scrupulously observant Jew, who followed the straight and beaten road, a man without any pride. He used to recite the prayers in Shool together with the strangers by the door, and quite quietly, without any shouting or, one may say, any special enthusiasm. His prayer that rose to Heaven, the barred gates opening before it till it entered and was taken up into the Throne of Glory, this prayer of his did not become a diamond there, dazzling the eye, but a softly glistening pearl.
And how, you ask, did he come to be called the Sinner? On this wise: You must know that everyone, even those who were hardest on him after the affair, acknowledged that he was a great lover of Israel, and I will add that his sin and, Heaven defend us, his coming to such a fall, all proceeded from his being such a lover of Israel, such a patriot.
And it was just the simple Jew, the very common folk, that he loved.
He used to say : A Jew who is a driver, for instance, and busy all the week with his horses and cart, and soaked in materialism for six days at a stretch, so that he only just manages to get in his prayers when he comes home on Sabbath and sits down to table, and the bed is made, and the candles burning, and his wife and children are round him, and they sing hymns together, well, the driver dozing off over his prayer-book and for- getting to say grace, I tell you, said Reb Avrohom, the Divine Presence rests on his 'house and rejoices and ​THE SINNER 531
says, "Happy am I that I chose me out this people," for such a Jew keeps Sabbath, rests himself, and his horse rests, keeps Sabbath likewise, stands in the stable, and is also conscious that it is the 'holy Sabbath, and when the driver rises from his sleep, he leads the animal out to pasture, waters it, and they all go for a walk with it in the meadow.
And this walk of theirs is more acceptable to God, blessed is He, than repeating "Bless the Lord, my soul." It may be this was because he himself was of humble origin ; he had lived till he was thirteen with his father, a farmer, in an out-of-the-way village, and igno- rant even of his letters. True, his father had taken a youth into the house to teach him Hebrew, but Reb Avrohom as a boy was very wild, wouldn't mind his book, and ran all day after the oxen and horses.
He used to lie out in the meadow, hidden in the long grasses, near him the horses with their heads down pull- ing at the grass, and the view stretched far, far away, into the endless distance, and above him spread the wide sky, through which the clouds made their way, and the green, juicy earth seemed to look up at it and say : "Look, sky, and see how cheerfully I try to obey God's behest, to make the world green with grass !" And the sky made answer : "See, earth, how I try to fulfil God's command, by spreading myself far and wide !" and the few trees scattered over the fields were like witnesses to their friendly agreement. And little Avrohom lay and rejoiced in the goodness and all the work of God. Suddenly, as though he had received a revelation from Heaven, he went home, and asked the youth who was ​532 ASCH
his teacher, "What blessing should one recite on feeling happy at sight of the world ?" The youth laughed, and said : "You stupid boy ! One says a blessing over bread and water, but as to saying one over this world who ever heard of such a thing?"
Avrohom wondered, "The world is beautiful, the sky so pretty, the earth so sweet and soft, everything is so delightful to look at, and one says no blessing over it all!"
At thirteen he had left the village and come to the town. There, in the house-of-study, he saw the head of the Academy sitting at one end of the table, and around it, the scholars, all reciting in fervent, appealing tones that went to his heart.
The boy began to cry, whereupon the head of the Academy turned, and saw a little boy with a torn hat, crying, and his hair coming out through the holes, and his boots slung over his shoulder, like a peasant lad fresh from the road. The scholars laughed, but the Eosh ha-Yeshiveh asked him what he wanted.
"To learn," he answered in a low, pleading voice.
The Rosh ha-Yeshiveh had compassion on him, and took him as a pupil. Avrohom applied himself earnestly to the Torah, and in a few days could read Hebrew and follow the prayers without help.
And the way he prayed was a treat to watch. You should have seen him! He just stood and talked, as one person talks to another, quietly and affectionately, without any tricks of manner.
Once the Rosh ha-Yeshiveh saw him praying, and said before his whole Academy, "I can learn better than ​THE SINNEE 533
he, but when it comes to praying, I don't reach to his ankles." That is what he said.
So Eeb Avrohom lived there till he was grown up, and had married the daughter of a simple tailor. Indeed, he learnt tailoring himself, and lived by his ten fingers. By day he sat and sewed with an open prayer-book before him, and recited portions of the Psalms to him- self. After dark he went into the house-of-study, so quietly that no one noticed him, and passed half the night over the Talmud.
Once some strangers came to the town, and spent the night in the house-of-study behind the stove. Sud- denly they heard a thin, sweet voice that was like a tune in itself. They started up, and saw him at his book. The small lamp hanging by a cord poured a dim light upon him where he sat, while the walls remained in shadow. He studied with ardor, with enthusiasm, only his enthusiasm was not for beholders, it was all within; he swayed slowly to and fro, and his shadow swayed with him, and he softly chanted the Gemoreh. By degrees his voice rose, his face kindled, and his eyes began to glow, one could see that his very soul was resolving itself into his chanting. The Divine Presence hovered over him, and he drank in its sweetness. And in the middle of his reading, he got up and walked about the room, repeating in a trembling whisper, "Lord of the World ! Lord of the World !"
Then his voice grew as suddenly calm, and he stood still, as though he had dozed off where he stood, for pure delight. The lamp grew dim, and still he stood and stood and never moved. ​534 ASCH
Awe fell on the travellers behind the stove, and they cried out. He started and approached them, and they had to close their eyes against the brightness of his face, the light that shone out of his eyes ! And he stood there quite quietly and simply, and asked in a gentle voice why they had called out. Were they cold?
And 'he took off his cloak and spread it over them.
Next morning the travellers told all this, and declared that no sooner had the cloak touched them than they had fallen asleep, and they had seen and heard nothing more that night. After this, when the whole town had got wind of it, and they found out who it was that night in the house-of-study, the people began to believe that he was a Tzaddik, and they came to him with Petitions, as Chassidim to their Rebbes, asking 'him to pray for their health and other wants. But when they brought him such a petition, he would smile and say: "Believe me, a little boy who says grace over a piece of bread which his mother has given him, he can help you more than twenty such as I."
Of course, his words made no impression, except that they brought more petitions than ever, upon which he said:
"You insist on a man of flesh and blood such as I be- ing your advocate with God, blessed is He. Hear a par- able : To what shall we liken the thing ? To the light of the sun and the light of a small lamp. You can rejoice in the sunlight as much as you please, and no one can take your joy from you; the poorest and most humble may revive himself with it, so long as his eyes can behold it, and even though a man should sit, which God forbid, ​THE SINNER 535
in a dungeon with closed windows, a reflection will make its way in through the chinks, and he shall rejoice in the brightness. But with the poor light of a lamp it is otherwise. A rich man buys a quantity of lamps and illumines his house, while a poor man sits in dark- ness. God, blessed be He, is the great light that shines for the whole world, reviving and refreshing all His works. The whole world is full of His mercy, and His compassion is over all His creatures. Believe me, you have no need of an advocate with Him; God is your Father, and you are His dear children. How should a child need an advocate with his father?"
The ordinary folk heard and were silent, but our people, the Chassidim, were displeased. And I'll tell you another thing, I was the first to mention it to the Rebbe, long life to him, and he, as is well known, com- manded Eeb Avrohom to his presence.
So we set to work to persuade Reb Avrohom and talked to him till he had to go with us.
The journey lasted four days.
I remember one night, the moon was wandering in a blue ocean of sky that spread ever so far, till it mingled with a cloud, and she looked at us, pitifully and appeal- ingly, as though to ask us if we knew which way she ought to go, to the right or to the left, and presently the cloud came upon her, and she began struggling to get out of it, and a minute or two later she was free again and smiling at us.
Then a little breeze came, and stroked our faces, and we looked round to the four sides of the world, and it seemed as if the whole world were wrapped in a prayer​536 ASCH
scarf woven of mercy, and we fell into a slight melan- choly, a quiet sadness, but so sweet and pleasant, it felt like on Sabbath at twilight at the Third Meal.
Suddenly Eeb Avrdhom exclaimed: "Jews, have you said the blessings on the appearance of the new moon?" We turned towards the moon, laid down our bundles, washed our hands in a little stream that ran by the roadside, and repeated the blessings for the new moon.
He stood looking into the sky, his lips scarcely moving, as was his wont. "Sholom Alechem I" he said, turning to me, and his voice quivered like a violin, and his eyes called to peace and unity. Then an awe of Eeb Avrohom came over me for the first time, and when we had fin- ished sanctifying the moon our melancholy left us, and we prepared to continue our way.
But still he stood and gazed heavenward, sighing: "Lord of the Universe! How beautiful is the world which Thou hast made by Thy goodness and great mercy, and these are over all Thy creatures. They all love Thee, and are glad in Thee, and Thou art glad in them, and the whole world is full of Thy glory."
I glanced up at the moon, and it seemed that she was still looking at me, and saying, "I'm lost; which way am I to go ?"
We arrived Friday afternoon, and had time enough to go to the bath and to greet the Rebbe.
He, long life to him, was seated in the reception-room beside a table, his long lashes low over his eyes, leaning on his left hand, while he greeted incomers with his right. We went up to him, one at a time, shook hands, and said "Sholom Alechem," and he, long life to him, ​THE SINNEE 537
said nothing to us. Eeb Avrohom also went up to him, and held out his hand.
A change came over the Eebbe, he raised his eyelids with his fingers, and looked at Eeb Avrohom for some time in silence.
And Eeb Avrohom looked at the Eebbe, and was silent too.
The Chassidim were offended by such impertinence.
That evening we assembled in the Eebbe's house-of- study, to usher in the Sabbath. It was tightly packed with Jews, one pushing the other, or seizing hold of his girdle, only beside the ark was there a free space left, a semicircle, in the middle of which stood the Eebbe and prayed.
But Eeb Avrohom stood by the door among the poor guests, and prayed after his fashion.
"To Kiddush !" called the beadle.
The Eebbe's wife, daughters, and daughters-in-law now appeared, and their jewelry, their precious stones, and their pearls, sparkled and shone.
The Eebbe stood and repeated the prayer of Sancti- fication.
He was slightly bent, and his grey beard swept his breast. His eyes were screened by his lashes, and he recited the Sanctification in a loud voice, giving to every word a peculiar inflection, to every sign an expression of its own.
"To table !" was called out next.
At the head of the table sat the Eebbe, sons and sons- in-law to the left, relations to the right of him, then the principal aged Jews, then the rich. ​538 ASCH
The people stood round about.
The Rebbe ate, and began to serve out the leavings, to his sons and sons-in-law first, and to the rest of those sitting at the table after.
Then there was silence, the Rebbe began to expound the Torah. The portion of the week was Numbers, chapter eight, and the Rebbe began :
"When a man's soul is on a low level, enveloped, Heaven defend us, in uncleanness, and the Divine spark within the soul wishes to rise to a higher level, and cannot do so alone, but must needs be helped, it is a Mitzveh to help her, to raise her, and this Mitzveh is specially incumbent on the priest. This is the meaning of 'the seven lamps shall give light over against the candlestick,' by which is meant the holy Torah. The priest must bring the Jew's heart near to the Torah ; in this way he is able to raise it. And who is the priest? The righteous in his generation, because since the Temple was destroyed, the saint must be a priest, for thus is the command from above, that he shall be the priest ..."
"Avrohom!" the Rebbe called suddenly, "Avrohom! Come here, I am calling you."
The other went up to him.
"Avrohom, did you understand? Did you make out the meaning of what I said?
"Your silence," the Rebbe went on, "is an acknowl- edgment. I must raise you, even though it be against my will and against your will."
There was dead stillness in the room, people waiting to hear what would come next. ​THE SINNER 539
"You are silent?" asked the Rebbe, now a little sternly.
"You want to be a raiser of souls? Have you, bless and preserve us, bought the Almighty for yourself ? Do you think that a Jew can approach nearer to God, blessed is He, through you? That you are the 'handle of the pestle' and the rest of the Jews nowhere? God's grace is everywhere, whichever way we turn, every time we move a limb we feel God ! Everyone must seek Him in his own heart, because there it is that He has caused the Divine Presence to rest. Everywhere and always can the Jew draw near to God ..."
Thus answered Reb Avrohom, but our people, the Rebbe's followers, shut his mouth before he had made an end, and had the Rebbe not held them back, they would have torn him in pieces on the spot.
"Leave him alone !" he commanded the Chassidim.
And to Reb Avrohom he said :
"Avrohom, you have sinned !"
And from that day forward he was called the Sinner, and was shut out from everywhere. The Chassidim kept their eye on him, and persecuted him, and he was not even allowed to pray in the house-of-study.
And I'll tell you what I think: A wicked man, even when he acts according to his wickedness, fulfils God's command. And who knows? Perhaps they were both
ISAAC DOB BERKOWITZ
COUNTRY FOLK
Feivke was a wild little villager, shout seven years old, who bed tumbled up from babyhood among Gentile urchins, the only Jewish boy in the place, just as his father Mattes, the Kozlev smith, war the only Jewish householder there. Feivke had hardly ever met, or even seen, anyone but the people of Kozlov and their children. Had it mot been for his black eyes, with their moody, persistent gaze from beneath the shade of a deep, worn out leather cap, it would have puzzled anyone to make out his parentage, to know whence that torn and battered face, that red sear across the top lip, those large, black, flat, unchild-like feet. But the eyes explained everything—his mother's eyes.
Feivke spent the whole summer with the village urchins in the neighboring wood, picking mushrooms, climbing the trees, driving wood-pigeons off their high nests, or wading knee-deep in the shallow bog outside to seek the Black, slippery bog-worms; or else be found himself out in the fields, jumping about on the top of a load of bay under a hot sky, and shouting to bis companions, till he was bathed in perspiration. At other times, be gathered himself away into a dark, cool barn, scrambled at the peril of his life along a round beam under the roof, crunched dried pears, saw how the sun sprinkled the darkness with a thousand sparks, and—thought. He could always think about Mikita. the son of the village elder, who had almost risen to be conductor on a railway train, and who came from a long way of to visit ​544 BERKOWITZ
his father, brass buttons to his coat and a purse full of silver rubles, and piped to the village girls of an evening on the most cunning kind of whistle.
How often it had happened that Feivke could not be found, and did not even come home to bed ! But his parents troubled precious little about him, seeing that he was growing up a wild, dissolute boy, and the dis- pleasure of Heaven rested on his head.
Feivke was not a timid child, but there were two things he was afraid of: God and dawening. Feivke had never, to the best of his recollection, seen God, but he often heard His name, they threatened him with It, glanced at the ceiling, and sighed. And this em- bittered somewhat his sweet, free days. He felt that the older he grew, the sooner he would have to present himself before this terrifying, stern, and unfamiliar God, who was hidden somewhere, whether near or far he could not tell. One day Feivke all but ran a danger. It was early on a winter morning; there was a cold, wild wind blowing outside, and indoors there was a black stranger Jew, in a thick sheepskin, breaking open the tin charity boxes. The smith's wife served the stranger with hot potatoes and sour milk, whereupon the stranger piously closed his eyes, and, having reopened them, caught sight of Feivke through the white steam rising from the dish of potatoes Feivke, huddled up in a corner and beckoned him nearer.
"Have you begun to learn, little boy?" he questioned, and took his cheek between two pale, cold fingers, which sent a whiff of snuff up Feivke's nose. His mother, standing by the stove, reddened, and made ​COUNTRY FOLK 545
some inaudible answer. The black stranger threw up his eyes, and slowly shook his head inside the wide sheepskin collar. This shaking to and fro of his head boded no good, and Feivke grew strangely cold inside. Then he grew hot all over, and, for several nights after, thousands of long, cold, pale fingers pursued and pinched him in his dreams.
They had never yet taught him to recite his prayers. Kozlov was a lonely village, far from any Jewish set- tlement. Every Sabbath morning Feivke, snug in bed, watched his father put on a mended black cloak, wrap himself in the Tallis, shut his eyes, take on a bleating voice, and, turning to the wall, commence a series of bows. Feivke felt that his father was bowing before God, and this frightened him. He thought it a very rash proceeding. Feivke, in his father's place, would sooner have had nothing to do with G-od. He spent most of the time while his father was at his prayers cowering under the coverlet, and only crept out when he heard his mother busy with plates and spoons, and the pungent smell of chopped radishes and onions pene- trated to the bedroom.
Winters and summers passed, and Feivke grew to be seven years old, just such a Feivke as we have described. And the last summer passed, and gave way to autumn.
That autumn the smith's wife was brought to bed of a seventh child, and before she was about again, the cold, damp days were upon them, with the misty mornings, when a fish shivers in the water. And the days of her confinement were mingled for the lonely ​546 BEEKOWITZ
village Jewess with the Solemn Days of that year into a hard and dreary time. She went slowly about the house, as in a fog, without help or hope, and silent as a shadow. That year they all led a dismal life. The elder children, girls, went out to service in the neigh- boring towns, to make their own way among strangers. The peasants had become sharper and worse than for- merly, and the smith's strength was hot what it had been. So his wife resolved to send the two men of the family, Mattes and Feivke, to a Minyan this Yom Kippur. Maybe, if two went, God would not be able to resist them, and would soften His heart.
One morning, therefore, Mattes the smith washed, donned his mended Sabbath cloak, went to the window, and blinked through it with his red and swollen eyes. It was the Eve of the Day of Atonement. The room was well-warmed, and there was a smell of freshly- stewed carrots. The smith's wife went out to seek Feivke through the village, and brought him home dishevelled and distracted, and all of a glow. She had torn him away from an early morning of excitement and delight such as could never, never be again. Mikita, the son of the village elder, had put his father's brown colt into harness for the first time. The whole contin- gent of village boys had been present to watch the fiery young animal twisting between the shafts, drawing loud breaths into its dilated and quivering nostrils, looking wildly at the surrounding boys, and stamping impa- tiently, as though it would have liked to plow away the earth from under its feet. And suddenly it had given a bound and started careering through the village with ​COUNTRY FOLK 547
the cart behind it. There was a glorious noise and commotion! Feivke was foremost among those who, in a cloud of dust and at the peril of their life, had dashed to seize the colt by the reins.
His mother washed him, looked him over from the low-set leather hat down to his great, black feet, stuffed a packet of food into his hands, and said :
"Go and be a good and devout boy, and God will forgive you."
She stood on the threshold of the house, and looked after her two men starting for a distant Minyan. The bearing of seven children had aged and weakened the once hard, obstinate woman, and, left standing alone in the doorway, watching her poor, barefoot, perverse- natured boy on his way to present himself for the first time before God, she broke down by the Mezuzeh and wept.
Silently, step by step, Feivke followed his father between the desolate stubble fields. It was a good ten miles' walk to the large village where the Minyan as- sembled, and the fear and the wonder in Feivke's heart increased all the way. He did not yet quite under- stand whither he was being taken, and what was to be done with him there, and the impetus of the brown colt's career through the village had not as yet sub- sided in his head. Why had Father put on his black mended cloak ? Why had he brought a Tallis with him, and a white shirt-like garment? There was certainly some hour of calamity and terror ahead, something was preparing which had never happened before. ​548 BERKOWITZ
They wenf by the great Kozlov wood, wherein every tree stood silent and sad for its faded and fallen leaves. Feivke dropped behind his father, and stepped aside into the wood. He wondered : Should he run away and hide in the wood ? He would willingly stay there for the rest of his life. He would foregather with Nasta, the barrel- maker's son, he of the knocked-out eye; they would roast potatoes out in the wood, and now and again, stolen-wise, milk the village cows for their repast. Let them beat him as much as they pleased, let them kill him on the spot, nothing should induce him to leave the wood again!
But no! As Feivke walked along under the silent trees and through the fallen leaves, and perceived that the whole wood was filled through and through with a soft, clear light, and heard the rustle of the leaves beneath his step, a strange terror took hold of him. The wood had grown so sparse, the trees so dis- colored, and he should have to remain in the stillness alone, and roam about in the winter wind !
Mattes the smith had stopped, wondering, and was blinking around with his sick eyes.
"Feivke, where are you?"
Feivke appeared out of the wood.
"Feivke, to-day you mustn't go into the wood. To- day God may yet to-day you must be a good boy," said the smith, repeating his wife's words as they came to his mind, "and you must say Amen."
Feivke hung his head and Iboked at his great, bare, black feet. "But if I don't know how," he said sul- lenly. ​COUNTEY FOLK 549
"It's no great thing to say Amen !" his father replied encouragingly. "When you hear the other people say it, you can say it, too! Everyone must say Amen, then God will forgive them," he added, recalling again his wife and her admonitions.
Feivke was silent, and once more followed his father step by step. What will they ask him, and what is he to answer? It seemed to him now that they were go- ing right over away yonder where the pale, scarcely- tinted sky touched the earth. There, on a hill, sits a great, old God in a large sheepskin cloak. Everyone goes up to him, and He asks them questions, which they have to answer, and He shakes His head to and fro inside the sheepskin collar. And what is he, a wild, ignorant little boy, to answer this great, old God ?
Feivke had committed a great many transgressions concerning which his mother was constantly admonish- ing him, but now he was thinking only of two great transgressions committed recently, of which his mother knew nothing. One with regard to Anishka the beggar. Anishka was known to the village, as far back as it could remember, as an old, blind beggar, who went the round of the villages, feeling his way with a long stick. And one day Feivke and another boy played him a trick: they placed a ladder in his way, and Anishka stumbled and fell, hurting his nose. Some peas- ants had come up and caught Feivke. Anishka sat in the middle of the road with blood on his face, wept bit- terly, and declared that God would not forget his blood that had been spilt. The peasants had given the little Zhydek a sound thrashing, but Feivke felt ​550 BEEKOWITZ
now as if that would not count: God would certainly remember the spilling of Anishka's blood.
Feivke's second hidden transgression had been com- mitted outside the village, among the graves of the peasants. A whole troop of boys, Feivke in their midst, had gone pigeon hunting, aiming at the pigeons with stones, and a stone of Feivke's had hit the naked fig- ure on the cross that stood among the graves. The Gentile boys had started and taken fright, and those among them who were Feivke's good friends told him he had actually hit the son of God, and that the thing would have consequences; it was one for which people had their heads cut off.
These two great transgressions now stood before him, and his heart warned him that the hour had come when he would be called to account for what he had done to Anishka and to God's son. Only he did not know what answer he could make.
By the time they came near the windmill belonging to the large strange village, the sun had begun to set. The village river with the trees beside it were visible a long way off, and, crossing the river, a long high bridge.
"The Minyan is there," and Mattes pointed his finger at the thatched roofs shining in the sunset.
Feivke looked down from the bridge into the deep, black water that lay smooth and still in the shadow of the trees. The bridge was high and the water deep ! Feivke felt sick at heart, and his mouth was dry.
"But, Tate, I won't be able to answer," he let out in despair. ​COUNTRY FOLK 551
"What, not Amen? Eh, eh, you little silly, that is no great matter. Where is the difficulty? One just ups and answers!" said his father, gently, but Feivke heard that the while his father was trying to quiet him, his own voice trembled.
At the other end of the bridge there appeared the great inn with the covered terrace, and in front of the building were moving groups of Jews in holiday garb, with red handkerchiefs in their hands, women in yellow silk head-kerchiefs, and boys in new clothes hold- ing small prayer-books. Feivke remained obstinately outside the crowd, and hung about the stable, his black eyes staring defiantly from beneath the worn-out leather cap. But he was not left alone long, for soon there came to him a smart, yellow-haired boy, with restless little light-colored eyes, and a face like a chicken's, cov- ered with freckles. This little boy took a little bottle with some essence in it out of his pocket, gave it a twist and a flourish in the air, and suddenly applied it to Feivke's nose, so that the strong waters spurted into his nostril. Then he asked :
"To whom do you belong ?"
Feivke blew the water out of his nose, and turned his head away in silence.
"Listen, turkey, lazy dog ! What are you doing there ? Have you said Minchah?"
"N-no ..."
"Is the Jew in a torn cloak there your father?"
"Y-yes ... T-tate ..."
The yellow-haired boy took Feivke by the sleeve.
"Come along, and you'll see what they'll do to your father." ​552 BERKOWITZ
Inside the room into which Feivke was dragged by his new friend, it was hot, and there was a curious, un- familiar sound. Feivke grew dizzy. He saw Jews bow- ing and bending along the wall and beating their breasts now they said something, and now they wept in an odd way. People coughed and spat sobbingly, and blew their noses with their red handkerchiefs. Chairs and stiff benches creaked, while a continual clat- ter of plates and spoons came through the wall.
In a corner, beside a heap of hay, Feivke saw his father where he stood, looking all round him, blinking shamefacedly and innocently with his weak, red eyes. Round him was a lively circle of little boys whispering with one another in evident expectation.
"That is his boy, with the lip," said the chicken-face, presenting Feivke.
At the same moment a young man came up to Mattes. He wore a white collar without a tie and with a pointed brass stud. This young man held a whip, which he brandished in the air like a rider about to mount his horse.
"Well, Reb Smith."
"Am I ... I suppose I am to lie down ?" asked Mat- tes, subserviently, still smiling round in the same shy and yet confiding manner.
"Be so good as to lie down."
The young man gave a mischievous look at the boys, and made a gesture in the air with the whip.
Mattes began to unbutton his cloak, and slowly and cautiously let himself down onto the hay, whereupon the young man applied the whip with might and main, and his whole face shone. ​COUNTRY FOLK 553
"One, two, three! Go on, Rebbe, go on!" urged the boys, and there were shouts of laughter.
Feivke looked on in amaze. He wanted to go and take his father by the sleeve, make him get up and escape, but just then Mattes raised himself to a sitting posture, and began to rub his eyes with the same shy smile.
"Now, Rebbe, this one!" and the yellow-haired boy began to drag Feivke towards the hay. The others assisted. Feivke got very red, and silently tried to tear himself out of the boy's hands, making for the door, but the other kept his hold. In the doorway Feivke glared at him with his obstinate black eyes, and said:
"I'll knock your teeth out !"
"Mine? You? You booby, you lazy thing! This is our house ! Do you know, on New Year's Eve I went with my grandfather to the town ! I shall call Leibrutz. He'll give you something to remember him by!"
And Leibrutz was not long in joining them. He was the inn driver, a stout youth of fifteen, in a peasant smock with a collar stitched in red, other- wise in full array, with linen socks and a handsome bottle of strong waters against faintness in his hands. To judge by the size of the bottle, his sturdy looks belied a peculiarly delicate constitution. He pushed towards Feivke with one shoulder, in no friendly fashion, and looked at him with one eye, while he winked with the other at the freckled grandson of the host.
"Who is the beauty?" ​554 BERKOWITZ
"How should I know? A thief most likely. The Kozlov smith's boy. He threatened to knock out my teeth."
"So, so, dear brother mine !" sang out Leibnitz, with a cold sneer, and passed his five fingers across Feivke's nose. "We must rub a little horseradish under his eyes, and he'll weep like a beaver. Listen, you Kozlov urchin, you just keep your hands in your pockets, be- cause Leibrutz is here ! Do you know Leibnitz ? Lucky for you that I have a Jewish heart: to-day is Yom Kippur."
But the chicken-faced boy was not pacified.
"Did you ever see such a lip? And then he comes to our house and wants to fight us !"
The whole lot of boys now encircled Feivke with teasing and laughter, and he stood barefooted in their midst, looking at none of them, and reminding one of a little wild animal caught and tormented.
It grew dark, and quantities of soul-lights were set burning down the long tables of the inn. The large building was packed with red-faced, perspiring Jews, in flowing white robes and Tallesim. The Confession was already in course of fervent recital, there was a great rocking and swaying over the prayer-books and a loud noise in the ears, everyone present trying to make himself heard above the rest. Village Jews are simple and ignorant, they know nothing of "silent pray- er" and whispering with the lips. They are deprived of prayer in common a year at a time, and are distant from the Lord of All, and when the Awful Day comes, they want to take Him by storm, by violence. The ​COUNTRY FOLK 555
noisiest of all was the prayer-leader himself, the young man with the white collar and no tie. He was from town, and wished to convince the country folk that he was an adept at his profession and to be relied on. Feivke stood in the stifling room utterly confounded. The prayers and the wailful chanting passed over his head like waves, his heart was straitened, red sparks whirled before his eyes. He was in a state of continual apprehension. He saw a snow-white old Jew come out of a corner with a scroll of the Torah wrapped in a white velvet, gold-embroidered cover. How the gold sparkled and twinkled and reflected itself in the illumi- nated beard of the old man ! Feivke thought the moment had come, but he saw it all as through a mist, a long way off, to the sound of the wailful chanting, and as in a mist the scroll and the old man vanished together. Feivke's face and body were flushed with heat, his knees shook, and at the same time his hands and feet were cold as ice.
Once, while Feivke was standing by the table facing the bright flames of the soul-lights, a dizziness came over him, and he closed his eyes. Thousands of little bells seemed to ring in his ears. Then some one gave a loud thump on the table, and there was silence all around. Feivke started and opened his eyes. The sudden stillness frightened him, and he wanted to move away from the table, but he was walled in by men in white robes, who had begun rocking and swaying anew. One of them pushed a prayer-book towards him, with great black letters, which hopped and fluttered to Feivke's eyes like so many little black birds. ​556 BERKOWITZ
He shook visibly, and the men looked at him in silence: "Nu-nu, mi-mi!" He remained for some time squeezed against the prayer-book, hemmed in by the tall, strange men in robes swaying and praying over his head. A cold perspiration broke out over him, and when at last he freed himself, he felt very tired and weak. Having found his way to a corner close to his father, he fell asleep on the floor.
There he had a strange dream. He dreamt that he was a tree, growing like any other tree in a wood, and that he saw Anishka coming along with blood on his face, in one hand his long stick, and in the other a stone and Feivke recognized the stone with which he had hit the crucifix. And Anishka kept turning his head and making signs to some one with his long stick, calling out to him that here was Feivke. Feivke looked hard, and there in the depths of the wood was God Himself, white all over, like freshly-fallen snow. And God suddenly grew ever so tall, and looked down at Feivke. Feivke felt God looking at him, but he could not see God, because there was a mist before his eyes. And Anishka came nearer and nearer with the stone in his hand. Feivke shook, and cold perspiration oozed out all over him. He wanted to run away, but he seemed to be growing there like a tree, like all the other trees of the wood.
Feivke awoke on the floor, amid sleeping men, and the first thing he saw was a tall, barefoot person all in white, standing over the sleepers with something in his hand. This tall, white figure sank slowly onto its knees, and, bending silently over Mattes the smith, ​COUNTRY FOLK 557
who lay snoring with the rest, it deliberately put a bottle to his nose. Mattes gave a squeal, and sat up hastily.
"Ha, who is it?" he asked in alarm.
It was the young man from town, the prayer-leader, with a bottle of strong smelling-salts.
"It is I," he said with a degage air, and smiled. "Never mind, it will do you good! You are fasting, and there is an express law in the Chayye Odom on the subject."
"But why me?" complained Mattes, blinking at him reproachfully. "What have I done to you?"
Day was about to dawn. The air in the room had cooled down; the soul-lights were still playing in the dark, dewy window-panes. A few of the men bedded in the hay on the floor were waking up. Feivke stood in the middle of the room with staring eyes. The young man with the smelling-bottle came up to him with a lively air.
"0 you little object! What are you staring at me for ? Do you want a sniff ? There, then, sniff !"
Feivke retreated into a corner, and continued to stare at him in bewilderment.
No sooner was it day, than the davvening recom- menced with all the fervor of the night before, the room was as noisy, and very soon nearly as hot. But it had not the same effect on Feivke as yesterday, and he was no longer frightened of Anishka and the stone the whole dream had dissolved into thin air. When they once more brought out the scroll of the Law in its white mantle, Feivke was standing by the table, and 36 ​558 BERKOWITZ
looked on indifferently while they uncovered the black, shining, crowded letters. He looked indifferently at the young man from town swaying over the Torah, out of which he read fluently, intoning with a strangely free and easy manner, like an adept to whom all this was nothing new. Whenever he stopped reading, he threw back his head, and looked down at the people with a bright, satisfied smile.
The little boys roamed up and down the room in socks, with smelling-salts in their hands, or yawned into their little prayer-books. The air was filled with the dust of the trampled hay. The sun looked in at a window, and the soul-lights grew dim as in a mist. It seemed to Feivke he had been at the Minyan a long, long time, and he felt as though some great mis- fortune had befallen him. Fear and wonder continued to oppress him, but not the fear and wonder of yes- terday. He was tired, his body burning, while his feet were contracted with cold. He got away outside, stretched himself out on the grass behind the inn and dozed, facing the sun. He dozed there through a good part of the day. Bright red rivers flowed before his eyes, and they made his brains ache. Some one, he did not know who, stood over him, and never stopped rock- ing to and fro and reciting prayers. Then it was his father bending over him with a rather troubled look, and waking him in a strangely gentle voice :
"Well, Feivke, are you asleep? You've had nothing to eat to-day yet ?"
"No ..." ​COUNTRY FOLK 559
Feivke followed his father back into the house on his unsteady feet. Weary Jews with pale and length- ened noses were resting on the terrace and the benches. The sun was already low down over the village and shining full into the inn windows. Feivke stood by one of the windows with his father, and his head swam from the bright light. Mattes stroked his chin-beard continually, then there was more davvening and more rocking while they recited the Eighteen Benedictions. The Benedictions ended, the young man began to trill, but in a weaker voice and without charm. He was sick of the whole thing, and kept on in the half-hearted way with which one does a favor. Mattes forgot to look at his prayer-book, and, standing in the window, gazed at the tree-tops, which had caught fire in the rays of the setting sun. Nobody was expecting anything of him, when he suddenly gave a sob, so loud and so pite- ous that all turned and looked at him in astonishment. Some of the people laughed. The prayer-leader had just intoned "Michael on the right hand uttereth praise," out of the Afternoon Service. What was there to cry about in that ? All the little boys had assembled round Mattes the smith, and were choking with laugh- ter, and a certain youth, the host's new son-in-law, gave a twitch to Mattes' Tallis:
"Reb Kozlover, you've made a mistake!" Mattes answered not a word. The little fellow with the freckles pushed his way up to him, and imitating the young man's intonation, repeated, "Reb Kozlover, you've made a mistake!" ​560 BERKOWITZ
Feivke looked wildly round at the bystanders, at his father. Then he suddenly advanced to the freckled boy, and glared at him with his black eyes.
"You, you kob tebi biessi!" he hissed in Little- Russian.
The laughter and commotion increased; there was an exclamation : "Rascal, in a holy place I" and another: "Aha! the Kozlover smith's boy must be a first-class scamp !" The prayer-leader thumped angrily on his prayer-book, because no one was listening to him.
Feivke escaped once more behind the inn, but the whole company of boys followed him, headed by Leib- rutz the driver.
"There he is, the Kozlov lazy booby!" screamed the freckled boy. "Have you ever heard the like? He actually wanted to fight again, and in our house ! What do you think of that?"
Leibnitz went up to Feivke at a steady trot and with the gesture of one who likes to do what has to be done calmly and coolly.
"Wait, boys! Hands off! We've got a remedy for him here, for which I hope he will be thankful."
So saying, he deliberately took hold of Feivke from behind, by his two arms, and made a sign to the boy with yellow hair.
"Now for it, Aarontche, give it to the youngster!"
The little boy immediately whipped the smelling- bottle out of his pocket, took out the stopper with a flourish, and held it to Feivke's nose. The next mo- ment Feivke had wrenched himself free, and was mak​COUNTRY FOLK 561
ing for the chicken-face with nails spread, when he received two smart, sounding boxes on the ears, from two great, heavy, horny hands, which so clouded his brain that for a minute he stood dazed and dumb. Suddenly he made a spring at Leibrutz, fell upon his hand, and fastened his sharp teeth in the flesh. Leib- rutz gave a loud yell.
There was a great to-do. People came running out in their robes, women with pale, startled faces called to their children. A few of them reproved Mattes for his son's behavior. Then they dispersed, till there remained behind the inn only Mattes and Feivke. Mat- tes looked at his boy in silence. He was not a talk- ative man, and he found only two or three words to say:
"Feivke, Mother there at home and you here?"
Again Feivke found himself alone on the field, and again he stretched himself out and dozed. Again, too, the red streams flowed before his eyes, and someone unknown to him stood at his head and recited pray- ers. Only the streams were thicker and darker, and the davvening over his head was louder, sadder, more pene- trating.
It was quite dark when Mattes came out again, took Feivke by the hand, set him on his feet, and said, "Now we are going home."
Indoors everything had come to an end, and the room had taken on a week-day look. The candles were gone, and a lamp was burning above the table, round which sat men in their hats and usual cloaks, no robes to be seen, and partook of some refreshment. There ​562 BERKOWITZ
was no more davvening, but in Feivke's ears was the same ringing of bells. It now seemed to him that he saw the room and the men for the first time, and the old Jew sitting at the head of the table, presiding over bottles and wine-glasses, and clicking with his tongue, could not possibly be the old man with the silver- white beard who had held the scroll of the Law to his breast.
Mattes went up to the table, gave a cough, bowed to the company, and said, "A good year !"
The old man raised his head, and thundered so loudly that Feivke's face twitched as with pain :
"Ha?"
"I said I am just going going home home again so I wish wish you a good year!"
"Ha, a good year ? A good year to you also ! Wait, have a little brandy, ha ?"
Feivke shut his eyes. It made him feel bad to have the lamp burning so brightly and the old man talk- ing so loud. Why need he speak in such a high, rasp- ing voice that it went through one's head like a saw?
"Ha ? Is it your little boy who scratched my Aaront- che's face ? Ha ? A rascal is he ? Beat him well ! There, give him a little brandy, too and a bit of cake ! He fasted too, ha? But he can't recite the prayers? Fie ! You ought to be beaten ! Ha ? Are you going home? Go in health! Ha? Your wife has just been confined? Perhaps you need some money for the holi- days? Ha? What do you say?"
Mattes and Feivke started to walk home. Mattes gave a look at the clear sky, where the young half​COUNTKY FOLK 563
moon had floated into view. "Mother will be expect- ing us," he said, and began to walk quickly. Feivke could hardly drag his feet.
On the tall bridge they were met by a cool breeze blowing from the water. Once across the bridge, Mat- tes again quickened his pace. Presently he stopped to look around no Feivke ! He turned back and saw Feivke sitting in the middle of the road. The child was huddled up in a silent, shivering heap. His teeth chattered with cold.
"Feivke, what is the matter? Why are you sitting down? Come along home!"
"I won't" Feivke clattered out with his teeth "I c-a-n-'t "
"Did they hit you so hard, Feivke ?"
Feivke was silent. Then he stretched himself out on the ground, his hands and feet quivering.
"Cold."
"Aren't you well, Feivke?"
The child made an effort, sat up, and looked fixedly at his father, with his black, feverish eyes, and sud- denly he asked:
"Why did you cry there? Tate, why? Tell me, why?!"
"Where did I cry, you little silly ? Why, I just cried it's Yom Kippur. Mother is fasting, too get up, Feivke, and come home. Mother will make you a poul- tice," occurred to him as a happy thought.
"No ! Why did you cry, while they were laughing ?" Feivke insisted, still sitting in the road and shaking' like a leaf. "One mustn't cry when they laugh, one mustn't !" ​564 BEKKOWITZ
And he lay down again on the damp ground.
"Feivele, come home, my son !"
Mattes stood over the boy in despair, and looked around for help. From some way off, from the tall bridge, came a sound of heavy footsteps growing loud- er and louder, and presently the moonlight showed the figure of a peasant.
"Ai, who is that? Matke the smith? What are you doing there? Are you casting spells? Who is that lying on the ground?"
"I don't know myself what I'm doing, kind soul. That is my boy, and he won't come home, or he can't. What am I to do with him?" complained Mattes to the peasant, whom he knew.
"Has he gone crazy? Give him a kick ! Ai, you little lazy devil, get up!" Feivke did not move from the spot, he only shivered silently, and his teeth chattered.
"Ach, you devil ! What sort of a boy have you there, Matke? A visitation of Heaven! Why don't you beat him more? The other day they came and told tales of him Agapa said that "
"I don't know, either, kind soul, what sort of a boy he is," answered Mattes, and wrung his hands in des- peration.
Early next morning Mattes hired a conveyance, and drove Feivke to the town, to the asylum for the sick poor. The smith's wife came out and saw them start, and she stood a long while in the doorway by the Mezuzeh. ​COUNTRY FOLK 565
And on another fine autumn morning, just when the villagers were beginning to cart loads of fresh earth to secure the village against overflowing streams, the village boys told one another the news of Feivke's
THE LAST OF THEM
They had been Rabbonim for generations in the Misnagdic community of Mouravanke, old, poverty- stricken Mouravanke, crowned with hoary honor, hidden away in the thick woods. Generation on generation of them had been renowned far and near, wherever a Jewish word was spoken, wherever the voice of the Torah rang out in the warm old houses-of-study.
People talked of them everywhere, as they talk of miracles when miracles are no more, and of consolation when all hope is long since dead talked of them as great-grandchildren talk of the riches of their great- grandfather, the like of which are now unknown, and of the great seven-branched, old-fashioned lamp, which he left them as an inheritance of times gone by.
For as the lustre of an old, seven-branched lamp shining in the darkness, such was the lustre of the family of the Rabbonim of Mouravanke.
That was long ago, ever so long ago, when Mouravanke lay buried in the dark Lithuanian forests. The old, low, moss-grown houses were still set in wide, green gardens, wherein grew beet-root and onions, while the hop twined itself and clustered thickly along the wooden fencing. Well-to-do Jews still went about in linen pelisses, and smoked pipes filled with dry herbs. People got a living out of the woods, where they burnt pitch the whole week through, and Jewish families ate rye- bread and groats-pottage. ​THE LAST OF THEM 567
A new baby brought no anxiety along with it. People praised God, carried the pitcher to the well, filled it, and poured a quart of water into the pottage. The newcomer was one of God's creatures, and was assured of his portion along with the others.
And if a Jew had a marriageable daughter, and could not afford a dowry, he took a stick in his hand, donned a white shirt with a broad mangled collar, repeated the "Prayer of the Highway," and set off on foot to Volhynia, that thrice-blessed wonderland, where people talk with a "Chirik," and eat Challeh with saffron even in the middle of the week with saffron, if not with honey.
There, in Volhynia, on Friday evenings, the rich Jewish householder of the district walks to and fro leisurely in his brightly lit room. In all likelihood, he is a short, plump, hairy man, with a broad, fair beard, a gathered silk sash round his substantial figure, a cheery singsong "Sholom-Alechem" on his mincing, "chiriky" tongue, and a merry crack of the thumb. The Lithua- nian guest, teacher or preacher, the shrunk and shrivelled stranger with the piercing black eyes, sits in a corner, merely moving his lips and gazing at the floor perhaps because he feels ill at ease in the bright, nicely- furnished room; perhaps because he is thinking of his distant home, of his wife and children and his marriage- able daughter; and perhaps because it has suddenly all become oddly dear to him, his poor, forsaken native place, with its moiling, poverty-struck Jews, whose week is spent pitch-burning in the forest ; with its old, warm houses-of -study ; with its celebrated giants of the Torah, ​568 BERKOWITZ
bending with a candle in their hand over the great hoary Gemorehs.
And here, at table, between the tasty stuffed fish and the soup, with the rich Volhynian "stuffed monkeys," the brusque, tongue-tied guest is suddenly unable to contain himself, and overflows with talk about his corner in Lithuania.
"Whether we have our Eabbis at home ? ! N-nu ! !" And thereupon he holds forth grandiloquently, with an ardor and incisiveness born of the love and the longing at his heart. The piercing black eyes shoot sparks, as the guest tells of the great men of Mouravanke, with their fiery intellects, their iron per- severance, who sit over their books by day and by night. From time to time they take an hour and a half's doze, falling with their head onto their fists, their beards sweeping the Gemoreh, the big candle keeping watch overhead and waking them once more to the study of the Torah.
At dawn, when the people begin to come in for the Morning Prayer, they walk round them on tiptoe, giving them their four-ells' distance, and avoid meet- ing their look, which is apt to be sharp and burning. "That is the way we study in Lithuania !" The stout, hairy householder, good-natured and cred- ulous, listens attentively to the wonderful tales, loosens the sash over his pelisse in leisurely fashion, unbuttons his waistcoat across his generous waist, blows out his cheeks, and sways his head from side to side, because one may believe anything of the Lithuanians ! ​THE LAST OF THEM 569
Then, if once in a long, long while the rich Volhynian householder stumbled, by some miracle or other, into Lithuania, sheer curiosity would drive him to take a look at the Lithuanian celebrity. But he would stand before him in trembling and astonishment, as one stands before a high granite rock, the summit of which can barely be discerned. Is he terrified by the dark and bushy brows, the keen, penetrating looks, the deep, stern wrinkles in the forehead that might have been carved in stone, they are so stiffly fixed? Who can say? Or is he put out of countenance by the cold, hard assertiveness of their speech, which bores into the conscience like a gimlet, and knows of no mercy ? for from between those wrinkles, from beneath those dark brows, shines out the everlasting glory of the Shechinah.
Such were the celebrated Eabbonim of Mouravanke.
They were an old family, a long chain of great men, generation on generation of tall, well-built, large-boned Jews, all far on in years, with thick, curly beards. It was very seldom one of these beards showed a silver hair. They were stern, silent men, who heard and saw everything, but who expressed themselves mostly by means of their wrinkles and their eyebrows rather than in words, so that when a Mouravanke Rav went so far as to say "N-nu," that was enough.
The dignity of Eav was hereditary among them, descending from father to son, and, together with the Rabbinical position and the eighteen gulden a week salary, the sou inherited from his father a tall, old read- ing-desk, smoked and scorched by the candles, in the old ​570 BERKOWITZ
house-of -study in the corner by the ark, and a thick, heavy-knotted stick, and an old holiday pelisse of lustrine, the which, if worn on a bright Sabbath-day in summer-time, shines in the sun, and fairly shouts to be looked at.
They arrived in Mouravanke generations ago, when the town was still in the power of wild highwaymen, called there "Hydemakyes," with huge, terrifying whiskers and large, savage dogs. One day, on Hoshanah Kabbah, early in the morning, there entered the house- of-study a tall youth, evidently village-born and from a long way off, barefoot, with turned-up trousers, his boots slung on a big, knotted stick across his shoulders, and a great bundle of big Hoshanos. The youth stood in the centre of the house-of-study with his mouth open, bewildered, and the boys quickly snatched his willow branches from him. He was surrounded, stared at, questioned as to who he was, whence he came, what he wanted. Had he parents ? Was he married ? For some time the youth stood silent, with downcast eyes, then he bethought himself, and answered in three words: "I want to study !"
And from that moment he remained in the old build- ing, and people began to tell wonderful tales of his power of perseverance of how a tall, barefoot youth, who came walking from a far distance, had by dint of determination come to be reckoned among the great men in Israel; of how, on a winter midnight, he would open the stove doors, and study by the light of the glowing coals; of how he once forgot food and drink for three days and three nights running, while he stood ​THE LAST OF THEM 571
over a difficult legal problem with wrinkled brows, his eyes piercing the page, his fingers stiffening round the handle of his stick, and he motionless; and when sud- denly he found the solution, he gave a shout "ISTu !" and came down so hard on the desk with his stick that the whole house-of-study shook. It happened just when the people were standing quite quiet, repeating the Eighteen Benedictions.
Then it was told how this same lad became Rav in Mouravanke, how his genius descended to his children and children's children, till late in the generations, gathering in might with each generation in turn. They rose, these giants, one after the other, persistent investi- gators of the Law, with high, wrinkled foreheads, dark, bushy brows, a hard, cutting glance, sharp as steel.
In those days Mouravanke was illuminated as with seven suns. The houses-of -study were filled with students; voices, young and old, rang out over the Gemorehs, sang, wept, and implored. Worried and tired-looking fathers and uncles would come into the Shools with blackened faces after the day's pitch- burning, between Afternoon and Evening Prayer, range themselves in leisurely mood by the doors and the stove, cock their ears, and listen. Jewish drivers, who convey people from one town to another, snatched a minute the first thing in the morning, and dropped in with their whips under their arms, to hear a passage in the Gemoreh expounded. And the women, who washed the linen at the pump in summer-time, beat the wet clothes to the melody of the Torah that came floating into the street through the open windows, sweet as a long- expected piece of good news. ​572 BERKOWITZ
Thus Mouravanke came to be of great renown, be- cause the wondrous power of the Mouravanke Rab- bonim, the power of concentration of thought, grew from generation to generation. And in those days the old people went about with a secret whispering, that if there should arise a tenth generation of the mighty ones, a new thing, please God, would come to pass among Jews.
But there was no tenth generation; the ninth of the Mouravanke Rabbonim was the last of them.
He had two sons, but there was no luck in the house in his day: the sons philosophized too much, asked too many questions, took strange paths that led them far away.
Once a rumor spread in Mouravanke that the Rav's eldest son had become celebrated in the great world because of a book he had written, and had acquired the title of "professor." When the old Rav was told of it, he at first remained silent, with downcast eyes. Then he lifted them and ejaculated :
"Nu !"
And not a word more. It was only remarked that he grew paler, that his look was even more piercing, more searching than before. This is all that was ever said in the town about the Rav's children, for no one cared to discuss a thing on which the old Rav himself was silent.
Once, however, on the Great Sabbath, something happened in the spacious old house-of-study. The Rav was standing by the ark, wrapped in his Tallis, and expounding to a crowded congregation. He had a clear, resonant, deep voice, and when he sent it thunder​THE LAST OF THEM 573
ing over the heads of his people, the air seemed to catch fire, and they listened dumbfounded and spellbound.
Suddenly the old man stopped in the midst of his exposition, and was silent. The congregation thrilled with speechless expectation. For a minute or two the Rav stood with his piercing gaze fixed on the people, then he deliberately pulled aside the curtain before the ark, opened the ark doors, and turned to the congre- gation :
"Listen, Jews ! I know that many of you are think- ing of something that has just occurred to me, too. You wonder how it is that I should set myself up to expound the Torah to a townful of Jews, when my own children have cast the Torah behind them. Therefore I now open the ark and declare to you, Jews, before the holy scrolls of the Law, I have no children any more. I am the last Rav of our family !"
Hereupon a piteous wail came from out of the women's Shool, but the Rav's sonorous voice soon reduced them to silence, and once more the Torah was being ex- pounded in thunder over the heads of the open-mouthed assembly.
Years, a whole decade of them, passed, and still the old Rav walked erect, and not one silver hair showed in his curly beard, and the town was still used to see him before daylight, a tall, solitary figure carrying a stick and a lantern, on his way to the large old Bes ha- Midrash, to study there in solitude until Mouravanke began to ring with the fame of her Charif, her great new scholar. 37 ​5?4 BERKOWITZ
He was the son of a poor tailor, a pale, thin youth, with a pointed nose and two sharp, black eyes, who had gone away at thirteen or so to study in celebrated, dis- tant academies, whence his name had spread round and about. People said of him, that he was growing up to be a Light of the Exile, that with his scholastic achievements he would outwit the acutest intellects of all past ages ; they said that he possessed a brain power that ground "mountains" of Talmud to powder. News came that a quantity of prominent Jewish communities had sent messengers, to ask him to come and be their Rav.
Mouravanke was stirred to its depths. The house- holders went about greatly perturbed, because their Rav was an old man, his days were numbered, and he had no children to take his place.
So they came to the old Rav in his house, to ask his advice, whether it was possible to invite the Mouravanke Charif, the tailor's son, to come to them, so that he might take the place of the Rav on his death, in a hundred and twenty years seeing that the said young Charif was a scholar distinguished by the acuteness of his intellect the only man worthy of sitting in the seat of the Mouravanke Rabbonim.
The old Rav listened to the householders with low- ering brows, and never raised his eyes, and he answered them one word :
"Nu!"
So Mouravanke sent a messenger to the young Charif, offering him the Rabbinate. The messenger was swift, and soon the news spread through the town that the Charif was approaching. ​THE LAST OF THEM 575
When it was time for the householders to go forth out of the town, to meet the young Charif, the old Rav offered to go with them, and they took a chair for him to sit in while he waited at the meeting-place. This was by the wood outside the town, where all through the week the Jewish townsfolk earned their bread by burning pitch. Begrimed and toil-worn Jews were continually dropping their work and peeping out shamefacedly between the tree-stems.
It was Friday, a clear day in the autumn. She appeared out of a great cloud of dust she, the travel- ling-wagon in which sat the celebrated young Charif. Sholom-Alechems flew to meet him from every side, and his old father, the tailor, leant back against a tree, and wept aloud for joy.
Now the old Rav declared that he would not allow the Charif to enter the town till he had heard him, the Charif, expound a portion of the Torah.
The young man accepted the condition. Men, women, and little children stood expectant, all eyes were fast- ened on the tailor's son, all hearts beat rapidly.
The Charif expounded the Torah standing in the wagon. At first he looked fairly scared, and his sharp black eyes darted fearfully hither and thither over the heads of the silent crowd. Then came a bright idea, and lit up his face. He began to speak, but his was not the familiar teaching, such as everyone learns and understands. His words were like fiery flashes appear- ing and disappearing one after the other, lightnings that traverse and illumine half the sky in one second of time, a play of swords in which there are no words, only the clink and ring of finely-tempered steel. ​576 BERKOWITZ
The old Rav sat in his chair leaning on his old, knobbly, knotted stick, and listened. He heard, but evil thoughts beset him, and deep, hard wrinkles cut themselves into his forehead. He saw before him the Charif, the dried-up youth with the sharp eyes and the sharp, pointed nose, and the evil thought came to him, "Those are needles, a tailor's needles," while the long, thin forefinger with which the Charif pointed rapidly in the air seemed a third needle wielded by a tailor in a hurry.
"You prick more sharply even than your father," is what the old Rav wanted to say when the Charif ended his sermon, but he did not say it. The whole assembly was gazing with caught breath at his half- closed eyelids. The lids never moved, and some thought wonderingly that he had fallen into a doze from sheer old age.
Suddenly a strange, dry snap broke the stillness, the old Rav started in his chair, and when they rushed forward to assist him, they found that his knotted, knobbly stick had broken in two.
Pale and bent for the first time, but a tall figure still, the old Rav stood up among his startled flock. He made a leisurely motion with his hand in the direction of the town, and remarked quietly to the young Charif :
"Nu, now you can go into the town !"
That Friday night the old Rav came into the house- of-study without his satin cloak, like a mourner. The congregation saw him lead the young Rav into the corner near the ark, where he sat him down by the high old desk, saying: ​THE LAST OF THEM 577
"You will sit here."
He himself went and sat down behind the pulpit among the strangers, the Sabbath guests.
For the first minute people were lost in astonishment ; the next minute the house-of-study was filled with wailing. Old and young lifted their voices in lamenta- tion. The young Eav looked like a child sitting behind the tall desk, and he shivered and shook as though with fever.
Then the old Eav stood up to his full height and commanded :
"People are not to weep !"
All this happened about the Solemn Days. Mou- ravanke remembers that time now, and speaks of it at dusk, when the sky is red as though streaming with fire, and the men stand about pensive and forlorn, and the women fold their babies closer in their aprons.
At the close of the Day of Atonement there was a report that the old Eav had breathed his last in robe and prayer-scarf.
The young Charif did not survive him long. He died at his father's the tailor, and his funeral was on a wet Great Hosannah day. Aged folk said he had been summoned to face the old Eav in a lawsuit in the
A FOLK TALE
THE CLEVER RABBI
The power of man's imagination, said my Grandmother, is very great. Hereby hangs a tale, which, to our sorrow, is a true one, and as clear as daylight.
Listen attentively, my dear child, it will interest you very much.
Not far from this town of ours lived an old Count, who believed that Jews require blood at Passover, Christian blood, too, for their Passover cakes.
The Count, in his brandy distillery, had a Jewish over seer, a very honest, respectable fellow.
The Count loved him for his honesty, and was very kind to him, and the Jew, although he was a simple man and no scholar, was well-disposed, and served the Count with heart and soul. He would have gone through fire and water at the Count's bidding, for it is in the nature of a Jew to be faithful and to love good men.
The Count often discussed business matters with him, and took pleasure in hearing about the customs and observances of the Jews.
One day the Count said to him, "Tell me the truth, do you love me with your whole heart?"
"Yes," replied the Jew, "I love you as myself."
"Not true!" said the Count. "I shall prove to you that you hate me even unto death."
"Fold!" cried the Jew. "Why does my lord say such terrible things?"
The Count smiled and answered: "Let me tell you! I know quite well that Jews must have Christian blood for ​582 A FOLK TALE
their Passover feast. Now, what would you do if I were the only Christian you could find ? You would have to kill me, because the Eabbis have said so. Indeed, I can scarcely hold you to blame, since, according to your false notions, the Divine command is precious, even when it tells us to commit murder. I should be no more to you than was Isaac to Abraham, when, at God's command, Abraham was about to slay his only son. Know, how- ever, that the God of Abraham is a God of mercy and lovingkindness, while the God the Rabbis have created is full of hatred towards Christians. How, then, can you say that you love me ?"
The Jew clapped his hands to his head, he tore his hair in his distress and felt no pain, and with a broken heart he answered the Count, and said: "How long will you Christians suffer this stain on your pure hearts ? How long will you disgrace yourselves? Does not my lord know that this is a great lie ? I, as a believing Jew, and many besides me, as believing Jews we ourselves, I say, with our own hands, grind the corn, we keep the flour from getting damp or wet with anything, for if only a little dew drop onto it, it is prohibited for us as though it had yeast.
"Till the day on which the cakes are baked, we keep the flour as the apple of our eye. And when the flour is baked, and we are eating the cakes, even then we are not sure of swallowing it, because if our gums should begin to bleed, we have to spit the piece out. And in face of all these stringent regulations against eating the blood of even beasts and birds, some people say that Jews require human blood for their Passover cakes, ​THE CLEVE& MBBI 583
and swear to it as a fact ! What does my lord suppose we are likely to think of such people? We know that they swear falsely and a false oath is of all things the worst."
The Count was touched to the heart by these words, and these two men, being both upright and without guile, believed one the other.
The Count believed the Jew, that is, he believed that the Jew did not know the truth of the matter, because he was poor and untaught, while the Eabbis all the time most certainly used blood at Passover, only they kept it a secret from the people. And he said as much to the Jew, who, in his turn, believed the Count, because he knew him to be an honorable man. And so it was that he began to have his doubts, and when the Count, on different occasions, repeated the same words, the Jew said to himself, that perhaps after all it was partly true, that there must be something in it the Count would never tell him a lie !
And he carried the thought about with him for some time.
The Jew found increasing favor in his master's eyes. The Count lent him money to trade with, and God pros- pered the Jew in everything he undertook. Thanks to the Count, he grew rich.
The Jew had a kind heart, and was much given to good works, as is the way with Jews.
He was very charitable, and succored all the poor in the neighboring town. And he assisted the Eabbis and the pious in all the places round about, and earned ​584 A FOLK TALE
for himself a great and beautiful name, for he was known to all as "the benefactor."
The Eabbis gave him the honor due to a pious and influential Jew, who is a wealthy man and char- itable into the bargain.
But the Jew was thinking :
"Now the Eabbis will let me into the secret which is theirs, and which they share with those only who are at once pious and rich, that great and pious Jews must have blood for Passover."
For a long time he lived in hope, but the Eabbis told him nothing, the subject was not once mentioned. But the Jew felt sure that the Count would never have lied to him, and he gave more liberally than before, thinking, "Perhaps after all it was too little."
He assisted the Eabbi of the nearest town for a whole year, so that the Eabbi opened his eyes in astonishment. He gave him more than half of what is sufficient for a livelihood.
When it was near Passover, the Jew drove into the little town to visit the Eabbi, who received him with open arms, and gave him honor as unto the most power- ful and wealthy benefactor. And all the representative men of the community paid him their respects.
Thought the Jew, "Now they will tell me of the commandment which it is not given to every Jew to observe."
As the Eabbi, however, told him nothing, the Jew remained, to remind the Eabbi, as it were, of his duty.
"Eabbi," said the Jew, "I have something very par- ticular to say to you! Let us go into a room where we two shall be alone." ​THE CLEVER RABBI 585
So the Rabbi went with him into an empty room, shut the door, and said:
"Dear friend, what is your wish ? Do not be abashed, but speak freely, and tell me what I can do for you."
"Dear Rabbi, I am, you must know, already ac- quainted with the fact that Jews require blood at Pass- over. I know also that it is a secret belonging only to the Rabbis, to very pious Jews, and to the wealthy who give much alms. And I, who am, as you know, a very char- itable and good Jew, wish also to comply, if only once in my life, with this great observance.
"You need not be alarmed, dear Rabbi ! I will never betray the secret, but will make you happy forever, if you will enable me to fulfil so great a command.
"If, however, you deny its existence, and declare that Jews do not require blood, from that moment I become your bitter enemy.
"And why should I be treated worse than any other pious Jew? I, too, want to try to perform the great commandment which God gave in secret. I am not learned in the Law, but a great and wealthy Jew, and one given to good works, that am I in very truth !"
You can fancy said my Grandmother the Rabbi's horror on hearing such words from a Jew, a simple coun- tryman. They pierced him to the quick, like sharp arrows.
He saw that the Jew believed in all sincerity that his coreligionists used blood at Passover.
How was he to uproot out of such a simple heart the weeds sown there by evil men? ​586 A FOLK TALE
The Eabbi saw that words would just then be useless.
A beautiful thought came to him, and he said : "So be it, dear friend ! Come into the synagogue to-morrow at this time, and I will grant your request. But till then you must fast, and you must not sleep all night, but watch in prayer, for this is a very grave and dreadful thing."
The Jew went away full of gladness, and did as the Eabbi had told him. Next day, at the appointed time, he came again, wan with hunger and lack of sleep.
The Eabbi took the key of the synagogue, and they went in there together. In the synagogue all was quiet.
The Eabbi put on a prayer-scarf and a robe, lighted some black candles, threw off his shoes, took the Jew by the hand, and led him up to the ark.
The Eabbi opened the ark, took out a scroll of the Law, and said:
"You know that for us Jews the scroll of the Law is the most sacred of all things, and that the list of denun- ciations occurs in it twice.
"I swear to you by the scroll of the Law : If any Jew, whosoever he be, requires blood at Passover, may all the curses contained in the two lists of denunciations be on my head, and on the head of my whole family !"
The Jew was greatly startled.
He knew that the Eabbi had never before sworn an oath, and now, for his sake, he had sworn an oath so dreadful !
The Jew wept much, and said:
"Dear Eabbi, I have sinned before God and before you. I pray you, pardon me and give me a hard penance, ​THE CLEVER RABBI 587
as hard as you please. I will perform it willingly, and may God forgive me likewise !"
The Rabbi comforted him, and told no one what had happened, he only told a few very near relations, just to show them how people can be talked into believing the greatest foolishness and the most wicked lies.
May God said my Grandmother open the eyes of all who accuse us falsely, that they may see how use- less it is to trump up against us things that never were seen or heard.
Jews will be Jews while the world lasts, and they will become, through suffering, better Jews with more Jewish
GLOSSARY AND NOTES
[Abbreviations: Dimin. ═ diminutive; Ger. ═ German, corrupt German, and Yiddish; Heb. ═ Hebrew, and Aramaic; pl. ═ plural; Russ. ═ Russian; Slav. ═ Slavic; trl. ═ translation.
Pronunciation: The transliteration of the Hebrew words attempts to reproduce the colloquial "German" (Ashkenazic) pronunciation. Ch is pronounced as in the German Dach.]
Additional Service. "See" Eighteen Benedictions.
Alef-Bes (Heb.). The Hebrew alphabet.
Äus Klemenke! (Ger.). Klemenke is done for!
Azoi (= Ger. also). That's the way it is!
Bar-Mitzveh (Heb.). A boy of thirteen, the age of religious majority.
Beigel (Ger.). Ring-shaped roll.
Bes Ha-Midrash (Heb.). House-of-study, used for prayers, too.
Bittul-Torah (Heb.). Interference with religious study.
Bobbe (Slav.). Grandmother; midwife.
Borshtsh (Russ.). Sour soup made of beet-root.
CHALLEH (Heb.). Loaves of bread prepared for the Sabbath, over which the blessing is said; always made of wheat flour, and sometimes yellowed with saffron.
CHABIF (Heb.). A Talmudic scholar and dialectician.
CHASSIDIM (sing. Chossid) (Heb.). "Pious ones"; followers of Israel Baal Shem, who opposed the sophisticated in- tellectualism of the Talmudists, and laid stress on emotionalism in prayer and in the performance of other religious ceremonies. The Chassidic leader is called Tzaddik ("righteous one"), or Rebbe. See art. " Ha- sidim," In the Jewish Encyclopedia, vol. vi.
CHATTED ODOM. A manual of religious practice used exten- sively by the common people.
CHEDEB (pi. Chedorim) (Heb.). Jewish primary school.
CHU-UUL HA-SHEM (Heb.). "Desecration of the Holy Name"; hence, scandal.
CHIBIK (Heb.). Name of the vowel " i " ; in Volhynia " u " is pronounced like " i."
DAWENING. Saying prayers.
DAT AN (pi. Dayonim) (Heb.). Authority on Jewish re- ligious law, usually assistant to the Rabbi of a town.
DIN TORAH (Heb.). Lawsuit.
DBEIER, DREIEBLECH (Ger.). A small coin.
EIGHTEEN BENEDICTIONS. The nucleus of each of the three daily services, morning, afternoon, evening, and of the " Additional Service " inserted on Sabbaths, festivals, and the Holy Days, between the morning and afternoon services. Though the number of benedictions is actually nineteen, and at some of the services is reduced to seven, the technical designation remains " Eighteen Benedictions." They are usually said as a " silent prayer " by the congregation, and then recited aloud by the cantor, or precentor.
EBETZ YISBOEL (Heb.). Palestine.
EBEV (Heb.). Eve.
EBUV (Heb.). A cord, etc., stretched round a town, to mark the limit beyond which no " burden " may be carried on the Sabbath. ​GLOSSAKY AND NOTES 591
FAST OF ESTHEB. A fast day preceding Purim, the Feast of
Esther. " FOUNTAIN OF JACOB." A collection of all the legends, tales,
apologues, parables, etc., in the Babylonian Talmud. FouB-CoBNEBS (trl. of Arba Kanfos). A fringed garment
worn under the ordinary clothes; called also Tallis-
koton. See Deut. xxii. 12.
FOUB ELLS. Minimum space required by a human being. FOUB QUESTIONS. Put by the youngest child to his father
at the Seder. GANZE GOYIM (Ger. and Heb.). Wholly estranged from
Jewish life and customs. See Goi. GASS (Ger.). The Jews' street. GEHENNA (Heb.). The nether world; hell. GEMOREH (Heb.). The Talmud, the Rabbinical discussion
and elaboration of the Mishnah; a Talmud folio. It is
usually read with a peculiar singsong chant, and the
reading of argumentative passages is accompanied by a
gesture with the thumb. See, for instance, pp. 17 and
338. GEMOBEH-KOPLECH (Heb. and Ger.). A subtle, keen mind;
precocious.
GEVIB (Heb.). An influential, rich man. GEVIBISH, apper- taining to a Gevir. Goi (pi. Goyim) (Heb.). A Gentile; a Jew estranged from
Jewish life and customs.
GOTTINYU (Ger. with Slav, ending). Dear God. GBEAT SABBATH, THE. The Sabbath preceding Passover. HAGGADAH (Heb.). The story of the Exodus recited at
the home service on the first two evenings of Passover. HOSHANAH (pi. Hoshanos) (Heb.). Osier withe for the
Great Hosannah. HOSHANAH-RABBAH (Heb.). The seventh day of the Feast
of Tabernacles; the Great Hosannah. HOSTBE CHASSIDIM. Followers of the Rebbe or Tzaddik who
lived at Hostre. ​592 GLOSSARY AND NOTES
KADDISH (Heb.). Sanctiflcation, or doxology, recited by mourners, specifically by children in memory of parents during the first eleven months after their death, and thereafter on every anniversary of the day of their death; applied to an only son, on whom will devolve the duty of reciting the prayer on the death of his parents; sometimes applied to the oldest son, and to sons in general.
KALLEH (Heb.) Bride.
KALLEH-LEBEN (Heb. and Ger.). Dear bride.
KALLEHSHI (Heb. and Russ. dimin.). Dear bride.
KASHA (Slav.). Pap.
KEDUSHAH (Heb.). Sanctification; the central part of the public service, of which the " Holy, holy, holy," forms a sentence.
KERBEL, KEBBLECH (Ger.). A ruble.
KIDDUSH (Heb.). Sanctification; blessing recited over wine in ushering in Sabbaths and holidays.
KLAUS (Ger.). "Hermitage"; a conventicle; a house-of- study.
KOB TEBI BIESSI (Little Russ.) " Demons take you! "
KOL NIDRE (Heb.). The first prayer recited at the syna- gogue on the Eve of the Day of Atonement.
KOSHER (Heb.). Ritually clean or permitted.
KOSHER-TANZ (Heb. and Ger.). Bride's dance.
KOST (Ger.). Board. AUF KOST. Free board and lodging given to a man and his wife by the latter's parents during the early years of his married life.
"LEARN." Studying the Talmud, the codes, and the com- mentaries.
LE-CHAYYIM (Heb.). Here's to long life!
LEHAVDIL (Heb.). "To distinguish." Elliptical for "to distinguish between the holy and the secular " ; equiva- lent to " excuse the comparison "; " pardon me for men- tioning the two things in the same breath," etc. ​GLOSSARY AND NOTES 593
LIKKUTE ZEVI (Heb.). A collection of prayers.
LOKSHEN. Macaroni. TORAS-LOKSHEN, macaroni made in approved style.
MAABIV (Heb.). The Evening Prayer, or service.
MAGGID (Heb.). Preacher.
MAHARSHO (MAHARSHO). Hebrew initial letters of Morenu ha-Rab Shemuel Edels, a great commentator.
MALKES (Heb.). Stripes inflicted on the Eve of the Day of Atonement, in expiation of sins. See Deut. xxv. 2, 3.
MASKIL (pi. Maskilim) (Heb.). An "intellectual." The aim of the " intellectuals " was the spread of modern general education among the Jews, especially in Eastern Europe. They were reproached with secularizing He- brew and disregarding the ceremonial law.
MATZES (Heb.). The unleavened bread used during Pass- over.
MECHUTENESTE (Heb.). Mother-in-law; prospective mother- in-law; expresses chiefly the reciprocal relation between the parents of a couple about to be married.
MECHUTTON (Heb.). Father-in-law; prospective father-in- law; expresses chiefly the reciprocal relation between the parents of a couple about to be married.
MEHEBEH (Heb.). The "quick" dough for the Matzes.
MELAMMED (Heb.). Teacher.
MEZUZEH (Heb.). " Door-post; " Scripture verses attached to the door-posts of Jewish houses. See Deut. vi. 9.
MIDBASH (Heb.). Homiletic exposition of the Scriptures.
MINCHAH (Heb.). The Afternoon Prayer, or service.
MIN HA-MEZAB (Heb.). "Out of the depth," Ps. 118. 5.
MINYAN (Heb.). A company of ten men, the minimum for a public service; specifically, a temporary congregation, gathered together, usually in a village, from several neighboring Jewish settlements, for services on New Year and the Day of Atonement. ​594 GLOSSAKY AND NOTES
MISHNAH (Heb.). The earliest code (ab. 200 C. E.) after the Pentateuch, portions of which are studied, during the early days of mourning, in honor of the dead.
MISNAGGID (pi. Misnagdim) (Heb.). "Opponents" of the Chassidim. The Misnagdic communities are led by a Rabbi (pi. Rabbonim), sometimes called Rav.
MITZVEH (Heb.). A commandment, a duty, the doing of which is meritorious.
NASHEBS (Ger.). Gourmets.
NISHKOSHE (Ger. and Heb.). Never mind!
NISSAN (Heb.). Spring month (March-April), in which Passover is celebrated.
OLENU (Heb.). The concluding prayer in the synagogue service.
OLOM HA-SHEKEB (Heb.). "The world of falsehood," this world.
OLOM HA-TOHU (Heb.). World of chaos.
OLOM HO-EMESS (Heb.). "The world of truth," the world- to-come.
PABNOSSEH (Heb.). Means of livelihood; business; sus- tenance.
PIYYUTIM (Heb.). Liturgical poems for festivals and Holy Days recited in the synagogue.
POBUSH (Heb.). Recluse.
PBAYEB OF THE HIGHWAY. Prayer on setting out on a journey.
PBAYEB-SCABF. See TALLIS.
PUD (Russ.). Forty pounds.
PUBIM (Heb.). The Feast of Esther.
RASHI (RASHI). Hebrew initial letters of Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac, a great commentator; applied to a certain form of script and type.
RAV (Heb.). Rabbi.
REBBE. Sometimes used for Rabbi; sometimes equivalent to Mr.; sometimes applied to the Tzaddik of the Chassidim; and sometimes used as the title of a teacher of young children. ​GLOSSAKY AND NOTES 595
REBBETZIN. Wife of a Rabbi.
ROSH-YESHIVEH (Rosh ha-Yeshiveh) (Heb.). Headmaster of
a Talmudic Academy. SCAPE-FOWLS (trl. of Kapporos). Roosters or hens used in
a ceremony on the Eve of the Day of Atonement. SEDEB (Heb.). Home service on the first two Passover
evenings. SELICHES (Heb.). Penitential prayers.
SEVENTEENTH OF TAMMUZ. Fast in commemoration of the
first breach made in the walls of Jerusalem by Nebuchad- nezzar. SHALOM (Heb. in Sefardic pronunciation). Peace. See
SHOLOM ALECHEM. SHAMASH (Heb.). Beadle. SHECHINAH (Heb.). The Divine Presence. SHEGETZ (Heb.). "Abomination;" a sinner; a rascal. SHLIMM-MAZEL (Ger. and Heb.). Bad luck; luckless fellow. SHMOOREH-MATZES (Heb.). Unleavened bread specially
guarded and watched from the harvesting of the wheat
to the baking and storing. SHOCHET (Heb.). Ritual slaughterer. SHOFAB (Heb.). Ram's horn, sounded on New Year's Day
and the Day of Atonement. See Lev. xxiii. 24. SHOLOM (SHALOM) ALECHEM (Heb.). "Peace unto you";
greeting, salutation, especially to one newly arrived
after a journey. SHOMEB. Pseudonym of a Yiddish author, Nahum M.
Schaikewitz.
SHOOL (Ger., Schul'). Synagogue. SHULCHAN ABUCH (Heb.). The Jewish code. SILENT PRAYEB. See EIGHTEEN BENEDICTIONS. SOLEMN DAYS. The ten days from New Year to the Day of
Atonement inclusive. SOUL-LIGHTS. Candles lighted in memory of the dead. ​596 GLOSSARY AND NOTES
STUFFED MONKEYS. Pastry filled with chopped fruit and spices.
TALLIS (popular plural formation, Tallesim) (Heb.). The prayer-scarf.
TALLIS-KOTON (Heb.). See FOUB-COBNEBS.
TALMID-CHOCHEM (Heb.). Sage; scholar.
TALMUD TOBAH (Heb.). Free communal school.
TANO (Heb.). A Rabbi cited in the Mishnah as an authority.
TABABAM. Noise; tumult; ado.
TATE, TATISHE (Ger. and Russ. dimin.). Father.
TEFILLIN-SACKLECH (Heb. and Ger.). Phylacteries bag.
TISHO-B'OV (Heb.). Ninth of Ab, day of mourning and fast- ing to commemorate the destruction of Jerusalem; hence, colloquially, a sad day.
TOBAH (Heb.). The Jewish Law in general, and the Penta- teuch in particular.
TSISIN. Season.
TZADDIK (pi. Tzaddikim) (Heb.). "Righteous"; title of the Chassidic leader.
U-MIPNE CHATOENU (Heb.). " And on account of our sins," the first two words of a prayer for the restoration of the sacrificial service, recited in the Additional Service of the Holy Days and the festivals.
U-NEsANNEH-ToiKEr (Heb.). "And we ascribe majesty," the first two words of a Piyyut recited on New Year and on the Day of Atonement.
VEBFALLEN! (Ger.). Lost; done for.
VEBSHOK (Russ.). Two inches and a quarter.
VIEBEB (Ger.). Four kopeks.
VIVAT. Toast.
YESHIVEH (Heb.). Talmud Academy.
YOHBZEIT (Ger.). Anniversary of a death.
YOM KIPPUB (Heb.). Day of Atonement.
YOM-TOV (Heb.). Festival.
ZHYDEK (Little Russ.). Jew. ​GLOSSAEY AND NOTES 597
P. 15. " It was seldom that parties went ' to law ' . . . . before the Rav." The Rabbi with his Dayonim gave civil as well as religious decisions.
P. 15. " Milky Sabbath." All meals without meat. In con- nection with fowl, ritual questions frequently arise.
P. 16. f "Reuben's ox gores Simeon's cow." Reuben and Simeon are fictitious plaintiff and defendant in the Talmud; similar to John Doe and Richard Roe.
P. 17. " He described a half-circle," etc. See under GEMOBEH.
P. 57. " Not every one is worthy of both tables! " Worthy of Torah and riches.
P. 117. " They salted the meat." The ritual ordinance re- quires that meat should be salted down for an hour after it has soaked in water for half an hour.
P. 150. "Puts off his shoes!" To pray in stocking-feet is a sign of mourning and a penance.
P. 190. " We have trespassed," etc. The Confession of Sins.
P. 190. " The beadle deals them out thirty-nine blows," etc. See MALKES.
P. 197. "With the consent of the All-Present," etc. The introduction to the solemn Kol Nidre" prayer.
P. 220. " He began to wear the phylacteries and the prayer- scarf," etc. They are worn first when a boy is Bar- Mitzveh (which see) ; Ezrielk was married at the age of thirteen.
P. 220. " He could not even break the wine-glass," etc. A marriage custom.
P. 220. "Waving of the sacrificial fowls." See SCAPE- FOWLS.
P. 220. " The whole company of Chassidim broke some plates." A betrothal custom.
P. 227. " Had a double right to board with their parents ' forever.' " See Kb'st. ​598 GLOSSARY AND NOTES
P. 271. " With the consent of the All-Present," etc. See
note under p. 197. P. 273. " Nothing was lacking for their journey from the
living to the dead." See note under p. 547.
P. 319. " Give me a teacher who can tell," etc. Reference to the story of the heathen who asked, first of Shammai, and then of Hillel, to be taught the whole of the Jewish Law while standing on one leg.
P. 326. " And those who do not smoke on Sabbath, raised their eyes to the sky." To look for the appearance of three stars, which indicate nightfall, and the end of the Sabbath.
P. 336. " Jeroboam the son of Nebat." The Rabbinical type for one who not only sins himself, but induces others to sin, too.
P. 401. " Thursday." See note under p. 516.
P. 403. " Monday," " Wednesday," " Tuesday." See note under p. 516.
P. 427. " Six months' ' board.' " See K8st.
P. 443. " I knew Hebrew grammar, and could write He- brew, too." See MASKIL.
P. 445. " A Jeroboam son of Nebat." See note under p. 336.
P. 489. " In a snow-white robe." The head of the house is clad in his shroud at the Seder on the Passover.
P. 516. " She knew that on Wednesdays Yitzchokel ate his ' day '," etc. At the houses of well-to-do families meals were furnished to poor students, each student having a specific day of the week with a given family throughout the year.
P. 547. " Why had he brought .... a white shirt-like gar- ment? " The worshippers in the synagogue on the Day of Atonement wear shrouds.
P. 552. " Am I .... I suppose I am to lie down? " See MALKES. ​ P. 574. "In a hundred and twenty years."-The age attained by Moses and Aaron; a good old age. The expression is used when planning for a future to come after the death of the person spoken to, to imply that there is no desire to see his days curtailed for the sake of the plan.