Tellers Of Two Cities
Futterman, Donald
TELLERS OF TWO CITIES Irom Marrakesh to the Negev, I hey have brought their art DONALD FUTTERMAN This is a story about storytellers and storytelling. It takes place in Yeroham, a small...
...He sends letters to all the Jewish communities explaining the cause of their delegations' delay...
...He said in his half voice that his throat hurt too much to tell...
...Everyone got up and spoke from the side...
...And the students will get upset with you and they will tell you, 'Give us the rabbi...
...It takes place in Yeroham, a small development town in the northern Nege\-zantk bamidbar, tossed into the desert...
...They rejoice...
...if you wani to bring your child back on Rosh Chodesh, this coming new moon, then on this coming Rosh Chodesh I will take you...
...The hunger has killed me...
...For them this was not a record of an earlier experience to bring amusement and recognition, but a chance to hear Moshe's tale and actually relive it one more time...
...It began with a fight...
...That's what they called him...
...They loved hearing themselves yelling, sighing, talking to one another, telling a story...
...The sage went to him...
...I shook hands with all the women in the room, beginning what was to become a daily ritual...
...He drank it...
...The boy reveals himself and the family is joyously reunited...
...There was only one woman who told stories, my friend Aisha...
...She and her daughter are afraid to go near the boy until the sage returns from Shabbat services at the synagogue...
...Each pause, each clearing of his throat, wiping of his mouth, sipping of his tea, each action was part of the story...
...The boy insists that whatever-he has is enough This amounts to 600 silver pieces...
...King David said to him, "Dog, son of a dog...
...Of course he knows stories...
...They said to the wise man, they said to him, "How much remains for us...
...She stepped her way up the aisle between the two rows...
...The men were gathered already...
...We want a raise...
...A fish swallowed him...
...Does he know stories too...
...The congregation waits for them to catch up to them in the service...
...But when I came the next day, with the tape recorder, the microphone, the extension cords, Mahluf refused...
...Quikwik...
...I noticed that Mahluf was talking, only Mahluf was talking-a long monologue...
...They nicknamed him, "Son of the fish...
...She brought her chair from her office, Placed it at the end of the rows...
...The wise man buys land outside the city and builds a hotel on it...
...At first it was always Mahluf, who had made his case with a story to the social welfare office director and recited the Haggadah, barking out his stories, his voice rumbling louder and louder until the Indian knitting ladies would complain in chorus, or Moshe, the first recorded teller, talking in his softer tones...
...Tell me...
...On my last day with all my friends at the Center, Moshe had given me a unique gift...
...There was also a ship for the city of the boy, the son of Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair...
...Bring the tape recorder tomorrow," she said...
...He said to his wife, he said to hed "My daughter, tonight, tonight, it came into my head, I must depart...
...Until the boy spoke...
...The Christian king's daughter, entranced by the boy's beauty, opens the letter while the boy sleeps...
...Then he tells the sage to invite them back for breakfast...
...From God, the Blessed One, a stormwind came...
...She got up and set the table herself...
...He gave him his hand...
...You and I will go outside and I will show you our hidden king...
...They had already forfeited their ride home, already abandoned their strict lunch schedule...
...The second seven days passed...
...The boy brings the king to King Davidinthe Upper Garden of Eden...
...Everything on the table disappeared...
...I read the emotional journey of the tale in the listeners' responses...
...The secretary made phone calls, tracked her down at another town agency...
...The drama came in the empathising, in the reacting...
...The first three months passed, the second three months and the third three months...
...It came time for him to set the table...
...He said...
...The wise man came looking for his son...
...One day his wife said to him, "Ask for us, that the Holy One Blessed be He, will have mercy on us...
...I will deal with him...
...In the morning he told his wife...
...They brought him in...
...She said to him, "Wherever you go I wiH go with you...
...She said to him, "My brother, I do not know where he is or what happened to him today...
...After the brit milah, the circumsion, Elijah the Prophet comes to the house disguised as a poor man...
...The congregation gathers...
...The madrichah suggested that he did not want to be taped, out of humility or fear...
...But the boy turns down all the of...
...The van filled up with the men, some Moroccan women who had joined in, and a Rumanian woman...
...The fisherman throws it back three times because it is "huge like the hand of God," only to find it in his net again...
...And though they were still too intimidated by the machinery to try running the recorder themselves, they began to check first thing if we were dragging it along with us when we arrived at work each day...
...Higher stipends, .uhere is the director...
...As I moved for the first time through this maddening mix of non-Hebrew speakers, the women began to Don Futterman is a writer and storyteller living in Boston...
...The parents agree...
...The ship went...
...He said to them, "You didn't visit the boy...
...He tells the sage and hi, wife that he wants to marry their daughter...
...And I will write a letter, and w father and my mother will come, and I will do the ritual immersion...
...For Mahluf the story was compelling, its message clear, its very existence and his telling of it irrefutable arguments...
...Until she felt her husband, until he found his wife beside He said to her, "You came too...
...A sanctified event is bound to its sacred time and I had missed the chance to record it...
...If he wants to comt he will come...
...The story would be told and recorded and Played back...
...She cuts the fish open and discovers the boy...
...He offers Elijah food, assures him of its kashrui and tells him the tale of his lost son j Elijah said to him, "You do not know who I am...
...The visitors, not used to such gentle treatment in this building- and always grateful for the slightest kindness, covered the social workers with blessings...
...I made you Sultan and put you in rule over the Jews...
...He is telling the story of the Jews' exodus from Egypt," she told me, "the Haggadah...
...A sign advertises that the hotel is kosher, but that the owner must not be bothered...
...It took him off the mast, made him fly and dropped him into the ocean...
...At Chaim's family seder Moshe is the special guest...
...You will stay hanging between them until your soul departs you...
...He held onto the mast of the ship...
...He orders every Jewish community in his realm to send representatives to a council at the palace or lose their heads...
...Seven angels and Elijah the Prophet appear and write the ketubah, the marriage contract, in gold ink...
...I will talk to you °ie at a time...
...What is the matter, my dear one...
...Yassidi...
...In the seventh group vou will find your son, clutching in his hand a golden staff, and with a golden crown, teaching children...
...Diamonds fell from his mouth...
...Try tomorrow...
...It is said that the Sultan will burn by fire...
...She brought him a plate of soup...
...His daughter rose...
...Each morning I would arrive and set up the tape recorder and ask who wanted to tell...
...It is the evening of the Seven Blessings...
...He has told the story for this Pesach," Suzan explained...
...For the first months I did not make any real contact with them...
...Part went from this side and part from that side, and he went back and forth in the middle of the path...
...At the end of seven years, Elijah comes to the boy in a dream, telling him the oath has expired and that he should ask the sage to be allowed to speak in the synagogue...
...He said to him, "By the life of Torah, I am waiting for a ship that will come...
...Along the right wall were Indian women, draped in silken saris, knitting or sitting straight up in their chairs...
...Days went and days came...
...He went to visit him...
...This is it...
...The fish with the boy inside it is caught by a local fisherman...
...Excuse me this day...
...On the second day, on the third day...
...The king accompanies the vizier and the vizier's informant, a water seller, and sees for himself that the report is true...
...The social welfare director was stymied...
...Right away the four of them entered...
...And I almost missed out on the master completely...
...They entered as an amoebic mass, knocking each other about, each at his or her own speed, the small bundled women scurrying quickly, pulling the stiff slow men guiding their canes...
...If he does not want to come, we will bless someone else...
...They rejoiced...
...He said to him, "I am he who took your son...
...The men came close around a table in the courtyard...
...They demanded to hear it again that day...
...The third seven days passed...
...He sat down...
...From the first word they were absorbed, and they reacted out loud, spontaneously, with all their feelings...
...Okay," I answered...
...He said to him, "Here, here, here The ship is coming...
...You go since you are not afraid to visit him...
...I brought my tape recorder for one last time and made sure to arrive early...
...Disguised as a poor man, Elijah appears at the hotel and calls out, "Quikwik...
...Did my daughter say something to you...
...Chaim's theory was more intriguing...
...They blessed them with the Seven Blessings...
...Allah," his father said, "Allah, my son...
...When I walked in for my first day I was met by overwhelming silence...
...Storytelling became a regular part of the day at the Center...
...Wahad, wahad," as she withdrew a cigarette and lit it, waving the match 111 the air to extinguish it with stylish "onchalance...
...The social workers appeared at the doors of their private offices life clock sentinels, lined up, immobile, amused by the presence of the group"What's going on...
...Elijah makes the boy swear three oaths: that he will not go outside for 40 days...
...I was disappointed...
...The hunger has killed The hotel workers welcome him ani offer him food, but he refuses to doth ritual washing and demands to see the hotel owner...
...It begins the day I arrived for my social work field placement in the Yeroham Center for the Elderly and Blind, a program 1 found housed in temporary quarters: two grey and chilly rooms in the local Youth Club...
...But the demonstration did have some benefits...
...The boy disappeared" brought on loud groans and tongue clicking...
...She protested that she was not a king, that she had no money to give them...
...One blind man felt the coins, counted them in his palm, and complained...
...Decorated with people exotic to me in all their strangeness and poverty, the Center was another world...
...The ship came and his father and mother came...
...He told his tale in a steady, monotonous tone, rarely expressing the emotion of the events in any change in his voice...
...The ship came...
...They send the sage to call him...
...Added to their sighs and clicks and groans and supplications that had been recorded the first time was a second round of exclamations for the beleaguered hero of Moshe s tale...
...She told him there was no more money in the budget, that it had all been allocated, that the Center members had to provide something for themselves, that they did not get any less than in Dimona...
...Once more, the things they had heard *hey had passed on to others...
...The bride goes to the mikveh to do the ritual immersion bit the boy goes to the seashore with a sack...
...The story told of a rabbi who was known for the success of his appeals to God on behalf of barren women who wanted to have children...
...The wise man recounts what has happened, to his wife...
...Who will speak first...
...the door guard asked...
...We have no food and winter is here...
...He said to him, "Seven days I've been on the road...
...And the things we have heard, we have passed on to others...
...They eat dinner and sleep...
...The following day, she played the tape for the Center members...
...They went around until they got tired...
...He said to him, "What's with you...
...then all of them emptying their offices of client chairs, seating the small mob in two facing rows in the office hallway...
...Do you want wages for the work you do for us...
...A sage in a seaside town sends his wife out to find a fish for their Shabbat meal...
...They seated him with the people...
...I rewound a little and turned it on...
...The director yelled at them, insulted, but their thick raspy voices gathered against her...
...There was no room left for the boy...
...Bring her...
...But they not only listened to the entire tale for another 30 minutes-they responded to it all over again...
...They "ere providing their own entertainment, their own activity...
...He said, "Yassidi...
...Because he asks for her...
...Of course he knows other stories...
...The child rose and said to him, the king, "Come...
...This was how he negotiated...
...Some were still engrossed, waitingtt see if Moshe had really finished, some were pondering the fate of the characters, others threw their heads back to absorb the sun now filling the courtyard with heat and light...
...And the tape Reorder had prompted a revival of an-°ther medium, from another culture...
...What...
...An oral Haggadah, a telling of The Telling...
...We are starving...
...At the entrance to the house he puts his finger in his ear and says...
...And he, peace be upon him, took him to the Upper Garden of Eden...
...with arguments, with sighs, with stories...
...His article "Encounters in Russia" appeared in these pages in December 1981...
...the seventh day arrived...
...They were entranced...
...Finally he gives in to his wife's urging to intercede on their own behalf...
...Muchan, Doni,-ready," Mahluf called out, "hokay, muchan...
...Give us our rabbi!' Ignore them and do not answer them...
...Does he know any other stories...
...Finally Elijah faints The wise man is summoned...
...When the king learns of the prophecy, he sends the boy to a neighboring Chrjs tian king, with a sealed letter demanding the boy's execution...
...He does not even practice religious observances while living with the family...
...As soon as Moshe had finished the men went into a blessing together-something I had never seen before-calling out, "Blessed be God forever, Amen...
...Miriam, the American volunteer at the Center, had tape-recorded the entire incident...
...fers, to go home with the sage who k% taken him in and had always taken care of him...
...And Moshe...
...He said, "Master of the World...
...The men pulled their chairs in closer, the women sat further back, a few gathering on the steps near Moshe's feet, their faces tilted up like children to catch the sunlight and Moshe's words...
...I looked around at the audience when Moshe stopped speaking...
...Perhaps another day...
...All who were dear to him went to search for him in the city...
...The boy insists that it is time for the wedding...
...She saw my disappointment...
...What I did not imagine was that I would discover among these people six traditional Moroccan storytellers, silent now...
...She asked him but he was too tired...
...I rushed to unravel the extension cords, fumbled with the microphone, as Suzan asked, then announced, that Moshe Biton would tell a story, that Doni would record it and play it back for everyone...
...Has the sage gone crazy today or what...
...The wise man went crazy...
...Will you break an oath of Elijah the Prophet...
...Son of the fish...
...He said to him, "Don't worry...
...Every city's delegation went on its own ship...
...How you are disgracing me...
...They revelled in hearing themselves fight the bureaucracy, defiant against the pow-ers-that-be in Yeroham...
...The way your husband went, with him...
...One eye was scarred shut, but the other smiled through his blindness whenever his face lifted in a grin...
...They always demanded to hear the Playback of the recorded story immediately so they could be caught up and swept away a second time...
...I will add to her ft,, you 1,000 pieces of silver...
...And then there was also Moshe Afinzar, whom my Moroccan friend Chaim praised as the expert storyteller of the group...
...The boy is rescued and raised by a Jewish fisherman and his wife, who have seven daughters...
...Finally the wise man serves the visitor with his workers and himself...
...And Elijah the Prophet raised the rock with the toe of his foot...
...Wahad, wahad, one at a time...
...The boy becomes the private tutor to the local Moslem king's children...
...And now your child is in the Upper Garden of Eden, teaching children...
...Days went and days came...
...It was too little...
...Why don't you ask Moshe Biton...
...Mahluf rose from his place in the ^nter of the row...
...The evening came...
...Others waited for sighted members to lead them to their ride home...
...You will bring your son from the Garden of Eden...
...The audience was inside the story...
...One of the men suddenly demanded that the driver stop at the Yeroham Office of Social Services instead of taking them to the regular drop-off points...
...I had not understood the story-I know almost no Moroccan-but as a storyteller 1 had a professional interest in watching Moshe tell...
...And every month for the rest of the year the king had food and money sent to the house of the widow...
...She is obligated...
...He said, "Give me a congregation and I will speak before it in your place tomorrow...
...Yassidi, what is there to tell...
...They come for another banquet...
...When the seventh day arrived, he said to them that he would not remain any longer in the room...
...When she heard from the van driver that a spontaneous demonstration was taking place, she ran across town to the social welfare office, tape recorder in hand...
...The Center director was in the second room, moving among the men, painting their thumbs with blue ink and pressing these to the page: simple signatures for the simple stipends she was distributing...
...Chaim listened to my tapes-he had volunteered to translate them into Hebrew-but dismissed the tellings I had recorded as the work of amateurs...
...Some shuffled toward the door, touching their ways with metal canes...
...He took pauses to sip his tea, to Wow his nose and clear his throat, elaborately withdrawing his handker-ehief, then secreting it back into the inner reaches of his coarse robe when he was done...
...How his father cried...
...The wise man's son convinces his father to let him go in his place as part of their city's delegation...
...The sage went to the synagogue...
...Allah...
...What will they do...
...As they noticed me the clusters began to talk, each in its own tone-high pitched twangs of the Indian dialect Majarati, complaints in Yiddish and Rumanian, gruff shrieks from the Moroccans...
...He did not come to set it as usual, to put out bread, wine and all the things...
...Mahluf, blind and P°°riy shaven, driving his cane into '* ground and pushing off with an a*kward limp, stepped cleanly past the others' feet, knocking aside legs of chairs with the small arc swing of his stick, until he grabbed the empty chair, feeling with his hand the place next to the director...
...He wrote what he wrote on a note...
...The delegation arrived at the city...
...One week passed...
...Elijah tells the assembled congregants to make an aisle for him to pass through the crowd...
...And Moshe began to tell and I began to watch, recording my first of many tales...
...but willing to revive their craft and themselves...
...The men would gather around one table and the Moroccan women would make the journey from where they were stationed in the other room...
...He had the crowd's attention, they were responding with sighs and exclamations...
...And he had neither a son nor a daughter...
...The pay they were demanding was miniscule, but still it was not in the budget...
...He returned from the synagogue...
...Moshe had relied on his style-his quiet, unforceful voice, his timing, the strength of his narrative...
...The wise man arrived from the synagogue...
...On my last day the Center members made a farewell party for me...
...Both times Elijah makes the food disappear and complains that the "hunger has killed me...
...He amazes them with his ability to buy everything needed for Shabbat for half the money the servant formerly responsible for this task would spend...
...Until the seventh group...
...We would talk-she knew some Hebrew-and she would hold my hand between hers for a long time, until I would cover her top hand with my left and she would give me a blessing...
...The congregation rose...
...The sage convinces himself that the boy wants to ask for his daughter's hand but is ashamed to say it...
...The people got on board...
...That's Moshe," they cried, but quickly followed with, "No, no, from the beginning...
...He was famished and wandered around the house...
...With their long beards and lack of Hebrew, they seemed impenetrable to me-druids accidentally gathered in this unfriendly place...
...Even if I knew he had corrupted her I would not give her to marry him...
...Suzan the madrichah translated my request to hear a story...
...The) had not moved from their places...
...The boy finished his swim, allah, and put on his clothes...
...The ship left...
...One man raised his arm and flung the coins she had given him against the wall...
...They are storytellers...
...And Moshe began: There was a wise man and his name was Pinchas ben Yair...
...You will have to wait for next year...
...The Upper Garden of Eden, we shall say, is closed with stones the size of a mountain...
...He pronounced the Blessed Name...
...They said to him, "Go to him...
...For a long time I did not know tjjj, there were storytellers among them that buried in their silence was an oral culture, a compendium of stories ranging from the simplest folk tales to the most intricate flights of fanciful imagery...
...And so he was rewarded for his good deed...
...The sage said, "For the sake of God, Blessed be He, a fast is forbidden on Shabbat...
...This one rode on a mare...
...And free lunches were a great expense...
...Each motion was part °f the story...
...And now, know...
...If you do not support him I will not speak with him...
...reach out...
...He had money...
...Without request or discussion, Mahluf would be the spokesperson...
...They wore long coarse robes with loose pointed hoods that enveloped their heads in shadow...
...This was not her discourse, but she knew she could not dismiss the tale as irrelevant...
...So will all of Israel rejoice, if it be His will, He will make a miracle for them...
...They scrambled off the van, knocking against each other, blind men waiting for women to direct them...
...The next morning the boy got up...
...And at the end of the year when the king looked in his storerooms, he was amazed to see that his grain and gold had doubled...
...The waiter served him at the table, where the people were sitting...
...The send a rider to call the boy but he will not come...
...Tell her to come here...
...The first seven days passed...
...Under sudden pressure from all but the Rumanian, the driver complied...
...Perhaps they knew the story, perhaps it was a sign of respect for Moshe or they knew al way s to end with him that way...
...They went...
...He took off his clothes and did the immersion...
...rewound the rest of the way, not expecting that they would really want to hear the whole story again...
...He went to go around town, from this street to that street, from here to there, there '"here, until he had gone around the whole town...
...The boy returns with the king to his palace...
...After 40 days, just then, he can go out...
...We will wait...
...He interpreted, and interpreted and interpreted...
...He spoke softly, almost inaudibly at times...
...that he will not shame his father by teaching Torah since "he is a teacher of pupils in Yeshiva and the learning in the Garden of Eden is not like the learning in the Land of Israel" ; and that he will not get involved in community affairs...
...He went to the birth giver and took the child...
...Moshe called out...
...Moshe cannot tell a short story...
...small bundled women, hunched over their tables, their heads wrapped in gaudy, gypsy-like kerchiefs...
...What can one do with seven shekels a day...
...He read and moved slowly forward...
...The wise man returns with his son to his wife...
...They went outside...
...were already in, reacting with no inhibitions...
...A slight moan was imbedded in his voice as words infrequently slipped out over his crooked teeth...
...An eminent rich man...
...And the congregation sat and was silent...
...They said to him, "We didn't visit o'clock in the morning...
...If you support the child I can speak with him...
...He is currently working on a collection of short fiction and on translations of the stories of the Yeroham tellers...
...The sage said, "So...
...And now the king said to them, "How has it happened among you that you are crowning a king in secret while I am the true king...
...The robbers came up to me and they took my clothes and they left me naked...
...the others had learned their stories originally from him...
...She said to him, "Father, if this fate was inscribed for us, what will you do...
...She yelled back and the battle became a blur of screaming in Moroccan...
...Not a thing remained...
...Together they demanded absolute silence from everyone in the area, something they had never done before...
...The boy serves everyone himself...
...Raise him up in your jams and go with him on the path...
...We have a hidden king...
...The boy instructs the sage to invite the congregation for 0 betrothal celebration after the evening service at their house...
...But now when Moshe heard them retell his stories (and twice at a shot) he heard how much they had changed the tates-the others made mistakes, events were confused, plots deliberately altered...
...But Moshe was silent...
...His beard sprayed out from under his chin, fuzzy, unstreaked by tobacco, like a new teased Halloween beard...
...And when you bring him, give him only dove soup, every day, so that he will grow strong...
...I asked Suzan, the madrichah la'ivrim (counselor for the blind), what he was saying...
...The judgment is the judgment of the Jews...
...The silence was broken by th honking horn of the mini-bus...
...they did not seem to react to my comings and goings from the room...
...And they talked about the boy only in Hebrew, in the holy tongue...
...The ship came...
...Her husband went to the ship...
...They reacted as I would have if I were hearing a story about someone I knew, or at least someone the teller Moshe, the storyteller, did not #ork hard to set the scene, to create haracters, to intensify the dramatic tension...
...The wise man went out to him...
...I have many children and no money at all...
...In their prescribed way of responding to the master, in the style of their interaction, I could see a moment of a storytelling culture and ritual...
...A maggid came, and told, him that a son would be bom to him and something bad would happen to the boy...
...He went out of his room...
...The sage went up to him...
...And now, congregation...
...The boy teaches his wife to be a Jew...
...That one rode on a beast...
...At four he went up to the roof and did not want to come down and did not want anything...
...Nothing...
...What shall we say...
...I join with the listeners, and wish to Jhe storytellers and listeners of ¦eroham, "Chazak ubaruch, have strength and be blessed...
...The men sat in the next room, most of them at one table...
...And I noticed that half of those gathered were women...
...Did my wife say something to you...
...He said to him, "I do not know...
...He was sorry, because he would have liked to help her...
...His wife immersed herself, as commanded, and prepared herself to give birth...
...Until he came to the entrance of the house...
...Each year he tells stories, one-hour stories, two-hour stories, some for three hours...
...Then you, she said, must give us money from your private treasury so we will not starve...
...It's not your business...
...Nothing...
...He said to him, "Cover your eyes.' He covered his eyes...
...And how the congregation is despairing and wants to go and you are now busy...
...I hoped I could at least break through our lack of languages to discover the meandering paths of their lives, to weave together their tales to retell...
...I will deal with him...
...His story was laced with images that would recur in many of the Moroccan tales I heard, elements of universal folk tales with particular Jewish and Moroccan accents...
...It's an embarrassment...
...Hokay, Doni...
...They said to him, "Everything the child does for us we accept...
...The king commands the Jews to stay for a three-week celebration...
...The maggid came again to the wifc him...
...since he was not present for the circumcision he wants to be the "redeemer" at the pidyon haben...
...You can't go in...
...Play it from the start...
...Their requests would not be satisfied soon...
...Everything there was and they went in peace...
...He was in a generous mood, and let the visitors use the coffee mugs so carefully reserved for staff on any other occasion...
...It will still be Pesach...
...Nothing...
...Would he tell one of the others so 1 could tape it...
...What is there to do...
...The wise man comes and seats and serves Elijah at two other tables...
...Pass the second oroup- They will tell you, 'Shalom ^leichem.' Ignore them...
...Finally, the Indian members threatened their own demonstration if they had to listen to the unintelligible ruckus in Moroccan one more time...
...Itt forbidden that the bride will be a deserted wife...
...They had never heard an interpretation like this...
...Mourning was added to mourning...
...If you do not support him, since he is a little child, I will not speak with him...
...1 am a storyteller, performing my own mix of traditional telling and one-person theater...
...The hellos were always brief until I reached Aisha, a blind Moroccan woman with a permanent place at the center of her table...
...I did not know which theory was true...
...Doni-Doni," they would call me, reaching their hands out at once, waiting for me to pluck them out of space for a long warm handshake...
...The sage complains that he doe not have the dowry ready...
...The poor widow looked at the king...
...He went up onto the roof and sat down...
...She replaces the execution order with a counterfe, letter requiring the Christian king t0 marry his daughter to the boy...
...Allah," he said to him, "will you break the second oath of Elijah the Prophet...
...She added several cajoling pleas of her own...
...But, build a room next to the hotel, that will have 40 windows in it, and oper one window for him every day, because the air of the world is not like th air of the Upper Garden of Eden...
...Has he no sense...
...When a boy is born to them, a voice from heaven-a bat fa)/-warns that the boy will have no luck, but prophesies that he will become a sultan, that he will be wise, and that he will become a taleb-a judge or teacher...
...He knows hundreds of stories...
...We moved indoors, where the recording was better...
...We will give Tzedakah...
...The boy lives with the family...
...Now Elijah makes a request...
...he was a master...
...He refused to tell stories at the Center...
...We will make the Shabbat for the Holy One Blessed be He...
...he was a master...
...I offered not to tape Moshe but still he would not tell...
...The social workers hailed the oroup, hakavod-Good for you," first one...
...But the king's vizier reports that the Jews are praising another king, King David, during their Moon Blessing celebration...
...Many of the members had never before heard their own voices on tape, never heard themselves the way others hear them...
...They waited for the ship...
...He won't feel you until you cover his eyes with this sheet...
...On the next Rosh Chodesh Elijah the Prophet was at the entrance of the hotel, and the wise man met him at the entrance to the hotel...
...Only the good Lord...
...Mahluf persisted, arguing, leading the group in sighs and groans, silencing them so he could continue to speak...
...Everything Elijah has described takes place, but the wise man, following Elijah's instructions exactly, manages to return to Elijah with his son...
...The rock was moved and he sat down...
...He came and started to cry...
...For a moment she was drawn in, but then she returned to her world...
...The largest group, the Moroccans, was on the left...
...We will double it...
...He read and moved slowly forward...
...Everything you ask of me I will give you...
...They sent the sage...
...And they went down to the entrance to the Upper Garden of Eden...
...Elijah the Prophet said to him, "Lift up the rock and enter the Uppe[ Garden of Eden...
...An hour and a half later the director arrived...
...I wanted to pull them out of their passivity and learn their stories in the process...
...I shook hands with each of the men and sat down next to Moshe Afinzar...
...He gave his promise that whatever the boy requested would be granted...
...So the congregation did...
...The boy serves barrels of Arak, spices, the good things of the Lord...
...Just the blessing that he blessed on the tzitzit shook the synagogue for them...
...Thirteen years less one month pass...
...We will wait...
...He threw his father out of the Yeshiva and he sat to teach the pupils...
...She told him it could not be done...
...He became a pupil who teaches...
...The wife of the sage called him: "Son of the fish...
...They gave it to him...
...He did not use the dramatic techniques I do to draw listeners in...
...Immediately the men rose...
...We will bless the wine, we will eat and God will have mercy...
...In the middle three Ashkenazi women guarded a small table, doing needlepoint while one of them smoked, sending suspicious looks to the Moroccans, ignoring the Indians...
...They were warm, friendly, ready to suck visitors right in...
...Another agreed...
...He said to him, "What's the matter...
...While the boy had been inside the fish he had made an oath to Elijah the Prophet that he would not reveal any of his knowledge ofTorah for seven years...
...It was all used up...
...and made tea for everyone...
...He directed his face constantly toward whoever was responding the loudest, the most vocally in his blindness listening carefully to hear who was with him...
...The custom is that the first person to enter the city gates after the Sultan's death takes his place, and so the boy is named the new Sultan...
...the sage's wife...
...It was not until the week of Pesach, our chag of stories, that I really found out that I was among storytellers...
...My discovery of their gift requires, of course, a story...
...Chazak ubaruch...
...Immediately after the boy's brit milah, ritual circumcision, he is taken away and cast into the sea by the Sultan, who fears the prophecy...
...He sat under the feet of David the King...
...The woman had no children" set off a round of sighs and supplications to God on her behalf...
...The social workers helped him serve, the eligibility worker helped him serve, the director's secretary watched and then finally announced that the director was not in...
...We want free lunches for the blind, like they get in Dimona...
...If I hear that you did something bad to the Jews, I will place you neither in the heavens nor in the water...
...I was about to put our usual music on the cassette player when I asked her if he knew any other stories...
...He opened his book and read and moved slowly forward...
...They sang...
...Moshe was quieter than the others, his presence humbler...
...He stopped his father and said to him that he should not teach his pupils any more...
...The Hebrew-English translations were done by the author...
...The group became" Ifiet, watching her...
...Yallah, yallah...
...When I had gained the trust of the women I finally overcame my fear of the men...
...The king rose and spoke, saying, "What do you say, Jews...
...Moshe was not merely an expert...
...Their shoes, some of them, were white leather and pointed like the hoods...
...They sat locked into their silence, occasionally growling together in their quick and loud Moroccan...
...He said to him, "Allah...
...He says his name is Avraham Hakohen...
...Perhaps because I was leaving, she suggested, Moshe would share one of his tales...
...Allah, joy came to them because he had not asked for their daughter...
...And he [gacted to them...
...He said to him, "Give me your hand...
...He will speak in my place...
...Moshe would not give other tellers who had corrupted his tales the privilege of hearing them one more time the way they were supposed to be...
...The children of sages came, the children of wealthy people came, neighbors, to ask for my daughter...
...In short, he stopped the sermon, they finished the service, they returned the Torah, and everyone who said "Shabbat Shalom" said to him, "I have a daughter...
...And Miriam would faithfully play the tape of the demonstration upon request...
...And again the next day, and every day...
...He said, "Yes, you are right, yassidi...
...The king of the land is friendly toward the Jews and has placed them in a position superior to that of the Moslems...
...They opened one window for him...
...And they dispersed...
...The con gregation is despairing and waiting...
...And the wise man...
...The parents were reunited with the child" delivered praises to God-"BaruchHashem, Elokim Gadol"-Blessed be His Name, God is great...
...He said to him, "Allah, yassidi, how can I lift it up...
...The boy will not answer...
...Moshe was not just an ex-Pert...
...They said to him, "Your son fell into the sea...
...Chaim told me that with Moshe's telling, each word was considered...
...He cut the nails of his feet and his hands, he immersed himself, he conjured up a dream and he petitioned the Holy One, Blessed be He...
...He went to the Yeshiva where his father taught his pupils and he saw the learning that his father was teaching his pupils and it did not find favor in his eyes...
...Have strength and be blessed...
...The Center members started calling my name...
...The boy approached the platform...
...In the morning the sage rises late, gives the boy tzitzit, and the two of them come late to synagogue...
...They rejoiced...
...They wait until one He said to her, "How is it your hus-JLd is traveling and you are staying hThind...
...He would teach them in his place...
...Moshe was always the expert and had been telling the longest...
...for him there is no other...
...He repented, saying, "Allah...
...The rabbi had no children himself...
...One who has never once in his life been in synagogue will speak to us...
...Otherwise if the guard contfS jjd closes it on you, you won't have olace to go out...
...And the king pitied the poor widow and gave her money from his own pocket...
...I had arrived near the end of the story, and watching the intense involvement of the listeners, realized how few could read a Haggadah today...
...The young couple goes in search of the boy's parents and enters his home kingdom just after the Sultan who had tried to drown him has died...
...few women had arrived...
...most of the men were blind, all the women were illiterate...
...As they rolled to their stops, there was silence...
...And you want to listen to the vizier and make a pyre of the Jews...
...They became acquainted with his father and mother, and they remained, and they were happy...
...Now," he said to 1^, "when you pass near the first jfoup, and they will say to you, 'Shalom,' ignore them...
...One by one I learned their names-Mahluf, Memchluf, Moshe and Moshe-and learned to distinguish between them...
...Just as they were happy, let it be His will, so will Israel soon be happy, let it be His will...
...How did they get entangled...
...It came close to the evening that Elijah the Prophet had spoken to him about...
...A maggid came to his father's head "Tonight, tonight you must depart...
...He said to his wife, "Where is 'Son of the fish' today...
...She bore a boy...
...He explains the boy's restrictions to her...
...Tables were placed near three walls, with women, quiet yet colorful, like stitches in a pattern, embroidered around them...
...She said to him, "If something bad happens to him, remember, Tzedakah saves from death...
...On the first day they made him dove soup...
...The members were passive, still, often silent or asleep, having long since given up expecting much or demanding anything...
...He thought, going crazy in his head, "What is there to do...
...And, to my delight and surprise, Moshe agreed to tell-and agreed to be recorded...
...A confident woman, half Moroccan half Ashkenazi, their calls assaulted her...
...Nothing...
...He said to him, "Listen...
...The traditional stories retold in this article were translated into Hebrew from the original Mugrabi, a Moroccan dialect, by Penina Tokatli...
...The Lord freed her from her pains...
...Most of them were blind...
...He fled from them with the child and left them...
...Mikhail, the door guard, forgot his usual warning calls ("Who are you looking for...
...Then others asked to tell, to be recorded, to be played back...
...The king told the woman that all the money allocated to feeding the poor had been given out for that year...
...He said to his wife, "Go and bring him a plate of soup...
...In the morning they were happy...
...There was no one to answer...
...Tell me...
...He saw he was starving...
...I asked the madrichah if he would tell the story again, so I could tape it...
...And I should give her to an ignoramus...
...The sage rises to speak...
...Perhaps they would meet him...
...Moshe would not give in to the urgings of the staff or other members...
...Such an interpretation...
...Moshe Afinzar was the star teller of the community...
...He ran away from them with him and left them...
...Will you give us money from the royal treasury so we will not go hungry...
...The rush to get seats on the bus, to be home for lunch, took priority, whatever was happening...
...They gave it to him to drink very slowly until he drank and returned to his strength...
...I am hungry...
...And then, in the middle of their argument, as part of their argument, without any introduction, Mahluf slid into telling a story: "There was a poor widow who came to ask the king for money...
...They argued...
...More sighs, rambling discontent in Moroccan, more tea...
...To miss him tell would be to miss storytelling in Yeroham...
...They wanted to hear the tape...
...He lugs it home and sells it to...
...And you are the revealed king...
...The boy asks the sage to agree in advance to grant the request he will make...
...1 came in one day and found 15 of the Moroccan members, including all of the men, gathered outside, in the late morning sun of the courtyard...
...His parents, who have been fighting for the 20 years since the boy's disappearance, appear before the new Sultan because his mother is suing for divorce...
...There was nothing left...
...She promised to do what she could, careful to make no guarantees...
...He said to him, "You know, I will sit here...
...Otherwise, neither you nor he will depart...
...He put his finger in his ear and said, "Quikwik...
...They filled the ship...
...When they arrive in the capital city, all the delegations are summoned to appear before the king...
...She will come as soon as she can, but it will be a while...
Vol. 10 • March 1985 • No. 3
