From "Laybe-Layzar's Courtyard" (a story for the new year)
Grade, Chaim
FROM "LAYBE-LAYZAR'S COURTYARD" A story for the High Holidays CHAIM GRADE Chaim Grade, the celebrated Yiddish novelist and poet, died on June 26 at the age of 72. Grade was known for his eloquent...
...It was a long way from Utian to Slonim, and his father had not written him that his mother was coming...
...Only then, when he encountered the new generation of rebellious youth, did hi fully understand that the fanatic obsei vance of the endless minor Days of Atonement was responsible for the desecration and abandonment of the real Sabbath of Sabbaths...
...yet not even to humor him did they ask his opinion about running the business...
...Bodies and faces radiated heat, beads of sweat settled on brows and beards...
...In fact, if the Rav were to deliver the traditional discourse on the Sabbath of Repentance, surely the warring factions would be inspired to make peace with each other as befits Jews before the Day of Atonement...
...At first, Hindele could not believe these words were not uttered in jest...
...When Yoel returned home from Passover, it was with a long mourner's rent in his coat...
...She asked htm why he had wept so during his recitation of the Book of Jonah...
...But when she went to collect and said she could not wait because her wholesalers had to be paid, the customers berated her...
...they snickered...
...Paltiel rose again, this time to leave, for he felt unwelcome and alien...
...See how they sway, the way they shake their heads and cry and moan...
...He raised the curtain and then the door of the ark and gazed with misty eyes at the Torah scrolls in their white satin mantles with gold embroidery...
...Not wanting to upset her mother, she did not leave the women's section even for a minute...
...The sheaves of sunlight swarmed with sparkling specks of dust, which hovered like lost souls from the primordial chaos entering the bet midrash through the windows in search of succor on this Yom Kippur...
...It was because of this that he had resigned...
...Paltiel Shklar gazed into the Machzor with the cold, bulging eyes of a fish cast out onto dry land...
...Of course they understood perfectly well that it was impossible to move from Vilna to Zaskowicz in a day...
...The Porush also felt unburdened after having poured out all his tears and memories...
...He would only say that upon returning from her long wintry trek, his mother had contracted pneumonia and in the throes of her fever she had repeated over and over, "My son is a saint...
...This selection, set in a small Jewish neighborhood in Vilna in the early 1900s, is taken from the novella "Laybe-Layzar's Courtyard...
...So could you, Rabbi, perhaps bring my husband and his brothers together...
...Or had she said it with heartache and bitterness because he was more devoted to his prayers than to his own mother, and perhaps even felt so poor a mother was beneath him...
...Will my going to the cemetery here in Vilna be considered as if I had gone to his little grave in Zaskowicz...
...Later, in the evening darkness, Hindele heard her husband sighing through the stillness of the bedroom...
...His father told him how his mother had made her way from Utian to Slonim, halfway on foot with a band of beggars, halfway in the back of a wagon, and she had not been ashamed to beg in order to continue...
...I tell them that my husband is a Rabbi and I am a Rebbetzin...
...Random beams of sunlight mingled with the dark-red light of the electric lamps...
...Didn't he always, as she herself had said, become even more fanatical and frenzied, wild-eyed and penitent, just before the New Year...
...A bright, fiery yellow invaded the green thickness of shrubbery and trees...
...And then they didn't pay: "Next week, after Sabbath," they all said...
...All he had accomplished was to leave a town to seethe in its acrimony and recriminations, and to make a worn-out peddler of his Rebbetzin...
...The beggars were going from town to town collecting alms, but his mother was traveling with them only as far as Slonim to see her son, the pious scholar who could not leave the yeshiva to come home, not even for the holiday...
...With the Rav present, the solemn day of fasting and prayer would be entirely different...
...That chicken you sold me was thin and hard as a rock...
...You needn't go back to Zaskowicz just for that...
...In an argument, he was capable of flying into a deadly rage...
...The woman had said she was his mother and had come all the way from Utian...
...Hindele wept even louder as she explained to her husband that to spare him pain she had always kept her complaints to herself...
...It seemed to him that Hindele's sobs still hung in the room and were dripping from the ceiling onto his head...
...But she had hoped that after the disaster with ltka he would at least not say another word against the marriage of Serel and the gilder Henes...
...Then the housewife would haggle and demand an oath that she was not being cheated...
...She recognized one of the three men in the delegation as her husband's older brother, but instead of greeting the people from her hometown, she ran frantically to the bet midrash to give the Porush the news...
...When they went to collect their bills, the customers didn't dare tell them to come next week...
...There he was approached by a man who told him that he had been in the community hall of the bet midrash when Yoel's mother had come in and put down her bundle...
...You're nothing but a grouch...
...Eyes looked up at the heavens brimming with the melancholy of the clouds...
...If you feel faint, I have some valerian drops you can sniff...
...After the war he emigrated to France, and finally, in 1948, to the U.S...
...And farther down in the city gardens, and along the banks of the Wilja, strolled the young Jewish men and women who were estranged from the bet midrash...
...And he was, moreover, not at all certain that children would have given him joy...
...Hindele had felt such a sharp pain in her heart at being called a thief that she could not say a word, but just left hastily and could not even bring herself to return and demand the money owed her...
...One of the men sitting near the oven had asked the woman why she didn't wait longer...
...So now the insulted demons must have come to rebuke him and his Rebbetzin...
...Why had he resigned the Zaskowicz rabbinate—was it not to relieve himself of the responsibility for solving everybody's problems...
...So he had decided to leave them, rather than remain a hired hand whom his brothers could rob blind...
...Originally published in Di Kloyz Un Di Gas: Derseylungn...
...Reb Heskiah, meanwhile, had stood up in his nook in the bet midrash and was watching the scene in utter amazement...
...Another housewife ridiculed her: From a rebbetzin named Hindele who sells hens one could not expect very much...
...The young people of Zaskowicz had expected they would have to do battle with the new Rav...
...Everyone had been busy, day and night, with the gypsy Moishele Munvas and his venomous Nehamele, not to mention the sick Gracia and her miserable husband, the gardener...
...Rabbetzin Hindele stood next to her, in a dark-red velvet dress with long, narrow sleeves...
...And it's possible that my merchandise really was bad—after all, I've never sold chickens before," Hindele said, her voice trailing off in a quiet, meek tone, for now she felt ashamed of having cried and moaned like a foolish housewife...
...From time to time Serel would steal up to the curtain in front of the women's section and peek into the men's section...
...He tried to reassure her that since the wedding could not take place before the winter, there was still time for her husband to soften...
...You'd like to have a library...
...At the table sat her husband and around him sat four men: Three whom she knew from Zaskowicz, and the fourth, their neighbor Paltiel Shklar, her husband's bitter enemy, who had never before set foot in their house...
...whereas his mother had been a quiet, humble, hard-working woman, a maid in rich households, who worked to help her husband support the family and to allow her little boy to sit over the Talmud in the bet midrash...
...his eyes, laden with darkness, fixed intently on his Machzor...
...Suddenly, she was startled by weeping from the home of the Porush, the former Zaskowicz Rav...
...But, beyond that, his plan struck her as so absurd that she found herself laughing in the middle of her weeping, and asked him why he had particularly chosen to sell fish...
...But we will be able to discuss the matter more comfortably there...
...Grade was known for his eloquent and evocative portrayals of turn-of-the-century Eastern European Jewish life...
...And they wished the Rav a happy return to Zaskowicz, in good health...
...And in Laybe-Layzar's courtyard everyone felt the coming of autumn in the pale sunlight, no longer scorching and blinding...
...Fine, let there be a library, then...
...The older Shklar brother said little so as not to incite the younger, and indeed, whenever the older brother did speak, Paltiel did not fail to become agitated...
...His tall, thin frame and the thistled beard on his wrinkled face gave him the appearance of a desiccated and shriveled pine tree thickly covered with clusters of withered brown needles that never fell off the branches...
...how could he just tear himself away from his studies that way...
...Rebbetzin Hindele was standing in front of him in a market smock, and near her were two baskets full of eggs...
...She would not pick a fight with these women peddlers with their burly shoulders, their faces as red as raw meat and the fire of hell spewing out of their mouths...
...If he had believed in magic, he would have said that he had somehow summoned these men of Zaskowicz by his concentrated thinking about returning there...
...It was in these years that he had become fanatically religious, and the more he missed his home, eating in the houses of strangers who took in yeshiva students and sleeping on the hard bench in the bet midrash, the more zealous was his piety and the more intense his devotion to learning, as he sought consolation in the study and observance of Torah...
...she had then walked back into the hallway and toward the door of the main bet midrash...
...The zealots had always looked at him suspiciously for not being strict enough...
...But he told her anyway, in the cheerless voice and hollow tone of an old wall clock...
...But the Rav seized his arm...
...Before his eyes hung a mist of light and tears, and in that mist hovered a small, poor cottage in the village of Utian...
...They all regarded him as a diligent student and a God-fearing young man...
...Only one good thing will come of that: We will once again live in Zaskowicz, so my Alterl will not have to look for us in strange places...
...About two o'clock that afternoon, Hindele hurriedly entered the house to gather together a few dozen eggs for her customers—but then stumbled backward to the door as if she had seen an apparition from the netherworld...
...He paused an instant beside Gracia who still stood as if entranced in the middle of the bet midrash...
...Fearful that she would continue to cry if she stayed, Hindele dashed out of the house with a basket of eggs on each arm...
...Since the Kol Nidre at the beginning of Yom Kippur the evening before, through the entire night and through the morning, he had not ceased studying and praying for even the briefest moment...
...The first one to notice the visitors was Gracia, who had been wandering through the courtyard as usual...
...But on Yom Kippur these young people felt no less strange in those tree-lined avenues among the strolling and laughing Gentiles...
...Unable to locate Yehiel-Michael in the crowded throng, she grew nervous, worried that he might be talking to someone during the services and that her father, God forbid, would notice it...
...Why don't I sell fish in the market on Friday, just as you sell eggs and chickens...
...They were strong and boisterous men, tall, with handsome, manly faces...
...She was bemoaning her fate: having to break her feet climbing scores of flights of stairs every day to sell her merchandise...
...And sitting at a table with no tablecloth and not a crumb of food to eat...
...And his tiny mother had looked very much like his own Rebbetzin, Hindele...
...But when she'd gone to one housewife after Sabbath to get paid, the woman called her a thief...
...Hindele forgot about delivering eggs to housewives...
...His children would either have been fanatics, like the yeshiva students who despised all things secular, or else would have forsworn Torah study altogether and renounced the authority of the rabbis...
...But he had no doubts or misgivings now...
...A man was haggling over a blue velvet tallit bag...
...All during the meal she stole furtive glances at her husband, as if they were newlyweds...
...The Almighty hears prayers wherever they are uttered...
...And how is your fast going, Serel...
...On the other two men from Zaskowicz lay the wretchedness of their poor town...
...But Serel replied with a wan smile and dry lips that the fast was going well...
...On this day, little boys and girls did not pull their hands away from their mother's warm fingers, but let themselves be coddled, looking around with big, quiet eyes, as if they understood that this day was different from all the other days of the year and they must be on their best behavior...
...Through the beams shone the hanging clusters of gold-green needles, and on the thick autumn spiderwebs draped over the bushes the raindrops flickered in the sunlight like radiant jewels...
...Rabbi Yoel Weintraub prayed facing the wall...
...He spoke only for himself, and all he asked was that the Lord help him to live only for Him...
...They told me that their allowance is not a third of what they need to live, and that the trustees would never agree to take on another porush...
...True, the Rav had in time become too lenient, and had reached the point where he could not bring himself to forbid something that was clearly and expressly forbidden in the Codes...
...In fact, he did not even care whether or not a place was being prepared for him in Paradise...
...But the merriment was short-lived...
...She herself, however, neither prayed nor wept...
...Rebbetzin Hindele clapped her hands and called out: "Such distinguished and dear guests...
...At first, he paced restlessly around the room and then collapsed into an easy chair with round, worn armrests—the only piece of furniture he had brought with him from Zaskowicz to Vilna...
...For a moment Gracia stood still, then ran into her house, terrified: "The Zaskowicz Rav said that demons were fantasy...
...Herzl on the anniversary of his death...
...It's lucky we still have the locksmith, Reb Heskiah, for a neighbor...
...And opposite him stood Hindele, beaming with joy...
...She stood on her toes and looked with frightened eyes through the curtains into the men's section...
...instead he would be wearing a small tallit katan with the fringes neatly tucked into his pants...
...But when he had seen the respect his brother enjoyed when he arrived with the Zaskowicz delegation, bitterness and melancholy had overtaken him anew...
...In the packed bet midrash, behind all the heads covered with yarmulkas and hats, stood the locksmith, Reb Heskiah, enfolded in his prayer shawl...
...The guests from Zaskowicz rose and sang out merrily: "Well now, here is our Rebbetzin...
...His father's veined hands with their crooked fingers had looked like the trees from which he drew pitch...
...Tell me, Yoel, when a wife has no children for ten years, the law demands she be sent away, divorced...
...She held no prayer book in her hands, not even a simple Yiddish techinah, nor did she utter any prayer...
...The famed courtyard of the Grand Synagogue of Vilna, with its scores of smaller synagogues—just a few yards away from Laybe-Layzar's courtyard—stood empty all summer long, sparkling in the sunlight, the crystal-blue sky reflecting on the windows and the plaster shining white on the walls...
...On the edge of the forests the leaden gray clouds hung, as if barricading the sky to prevent the birds from flying to warmer lands for the winter...
...Yehiel-Michael, no longer wearing the rumpled clothes of a bachelor, had bought a new suit...
...But in the crowded streets and courtyards of the Jewish neighborhood, where nothing green grew, the coming of fall was heralded only by the sound of the shofar at the morning services throughout the month of Elul, which preceded the High Holy Days...
...But he held on to her and, with a good-natured frown, grumbled, "Nu, nu," as he led his wife through the courtyard to their home, just as he had held her on those winter Sabbath mornings in Zaskowicz when they walked together on the ice-covered streets to the synagogue to bless the coming of the New Moon...
...Now you're an egg-peddler, not a Rebbetzin...
...Mother...
...Of Zlata's three daughters, only Serel prayed, from a small, thick Machzor with hard covers, silvered edges and a golden clasp...
...After the Afternoon Service the congregation recessed for an hour to rest and prepare for the Concluding Service, the Ne'ilah...
...As things turned out, before the Porush had time to plan his return to Zaskowicz, a delegation from the town came to Vilna, two days after Rosh Hashanah, to see their former Rav...
...The Porush felt a nudge at his shoulder...
...She had traveled in the wagon until her last grosz was gone and then had continued on foot...
...Gracia, wearing a long white dress and a pale blue silk kerchief over her hair, overshadowed the other women...
...They could not understand how the Rav could have given up the large house the town had provided for him to settle in this squalid little apartment in a forgotten corner of one of the poorest courtyards in Vilna, nor could they comprehend his having made a common peddler of his Rebbetzin...
...Slowly the thick darkness became thinner, grayer...
...A few men of the courtyard came to plead with the Zaskowicz emissaries: It was certainly their fault, they knew, that the Rav was leaving them and it was too late to set things right...
...Not until every last part of the service was over and the last Mourner's Kaddish recited did he go out to see her...
...They demand righteousness of others, not of themselves...
...Yoel fell into his father's arms and begged him to tell him if his mother had forgiven him for not going out to see her in the middle of the service...
...In the moonlight shining through the window she could see her husband's beard, its weave of copper and silver, and his arm in the rolled-up sleeve of his white nightshirt...
...Translated by Harold Rabinowitz and Inna Hecker Grade...
...Their mother, perhaps, would have enjoyed them...
...But when she realized from his despondent expression and hollow voice that he was in earnest, she wailed even louder than she had earlier that day in complaining of her shabby treatment at the hands of her customers...
...The morning of Yom Kippur cast a golden autumn hue over the empty streets and in the courtyards along the Jewish Street in Vilna...
...and she, a frail woman in an old-fashioned, long velvet dress...
...Over the multifarious coiffures of the married women in their lavish wigs and silken shawls, over the small, round caps and broad felt hats laden with ostrich feathers, adorned with flowers, studded with sparkling sequins and trembling golden tendrils, with dangling ribbons, hairnets, and veils—over all and over everything there triumphed the copper braids of Itka, the locksmith's daughter...
...It's too late for me to learn a trade, but maybe I can earn some money selling something...
...And just as his brothers were very different from him in appearance, so were they completely different in character...
...In the Porush's home the iron latch creaked hoarsely and Hindele appeared with two empty baskets...
...The forest lay still, steeped in quietude...
...She kept quiet...
...Such a Jew would never go about with his fringes flying out of his shirt...
...At last, exhausted and desperate, he returned to the bet midrash...
...They were all seduced by the brothers' silver-coated tongues and their sweet words, or else they simply sided with strength and success, as people are always disposed to do...
...The visitors told the Porush about the turmoil in the town over the selection of a new Rav...
...Even the Rabbi had been confident that her husband would at last relent...
...His father had been a distiller in a pitch factory all his life, and from his eyes had shone the gleaming darkness of the deep Lithuanian forests...
...Suddenly, darkness descended upon everything as if the daytime sky had in a trice become a starry night...
...One morning after the neighbors had gone off to workshops, stores or the marketplace, Gracia stood alone in the empty courtyard...
...They swindle each other the year through, stealing the bread right out of each other's mouths, but on Yom Kippur they all ask each other's forgiveness, put on their prayer shawls over their white kittels, and continue to fool one another from head to toe...
...As a young man, in the yeshi va's environment of students and scholars, he did not fully realize how strong his aversion was, not until afte his marriage he left the yeshiva and became the Rav of Zaskowicz...
...Sincey however, bands of Polish ruffians kept the peasants from walking into a Jewish store, the merchant's only customer was a Jewish housewife who came in on Friday to take—on credit—a quarter-pound of yeast, a pouch of tea and a few candles for the Sabbath candle-lighting...
...only his tall, vaulted forehead wrinkled above his closed eyes...
...Deeper into the thicket lay a clearing covered with dry silver moss...
...What is the—" "Don't ask me any questions, I'm not a Rebbetzin anymore and neither is my husband the Zaskowicz Rav," Hindele answered bitterly, and she hurried away, her dress tangled between her legs...
...The Zaskowicz men, well practiced in argument, immediately took them to task: "By what right do you ask that our Rav stay here with you for Yom Kippur and Sukkot...
...But he only said to them: "You'd like to use the community hall for meetings or to stage debates...
...A dazed Gracia now stood beside the locksmith, talking, as it seemed, to him and yet not talking to him at all...
...How can i bring your husband and his brothers together...
...From her tall, slightly bent figure and round, narrow shoulders there radiated a beauty that her garments could not conceal...
...Zlata departed as stealthily as she had come, leaving the Porush in a more painful and anguished state of mind than before...
...According to the holy Torah," they asked sanctimoniously, "is one permitted to beat a debtor over the head, to force him to pay...
...As Hindele prattled on, Reb Yoel lay on his bed like a giant boulder sunk in moss, listening to her chatter that sounded like running water...
...Standing beside Hindele was Reb Heskiah's wife, Zlata...
...That is surely no sin...
...A plague on such a trustee...
...The gray ran off like murky water down a drainpipe...
...and she pleaded for her youngest, Itka, who had nearly driven her poor old father to the grave with her pranks...
...But how could the wrong be righted, unless he were to come out of retirement and seek another pulpit...
...The neighbors understood Hindele's anger as clearly as if she had plainly added, "And what do you expect, after what my husband has had to put up with from all of you...
...The surprise and poignancy of his old flock's loyalty moved the Porush to the brink of tears, and it was some time before he was able to collect himself...
...He realized that the suit he was bringing against his brothers in the Oszmiana court was bound to drag on forever and would cost a fortune, and he had barely enough to get through the next day...
...They asked only that he stay in Vilna for Yom Kippur and Sukkot and pray with them in the bet midrash where he had prayed and studied the entire year...
...Gracia left the bet midrash with her hands folded across her chest, looking like a pious young housewife on Friday night after candle-lighting who has already put her children to sleep and awaits her husband's return from the synagogue to make Kiddush...
...The sun peeked into the cellar windows, through the crooked" panes of the garret windows and along the cold, narrow alleyways, but hardly anyone was to be found there—for everyone was in the synagogues...
...as he stood long and frozen during the Silent Prayer, moving only to bow at the appropriate blessing and to beat his chest solemnly during the confessional, the "?/ Cheyt"—Reb Heskiah kept praying over and over for but one thing: "Lord of the Universe, give me the strength to remain stubborn...
...They had, of course, long since heard that the Rebbetzin had become a peddler running from house to house...
...Tears were flowing not just from her eyes but even from her tall wig onto her prayer book...
...The Porush heard a stifled groan behind him and a loud wailing coming from the women's section...
...Let his daughters marry whomever they wished and let their mother side with them...
...He had heard, across the empty room, the conversation between the Rav and the delegation, but could hardly believe what he had heard...
...Surely, she thought, a cobweb-covered old man lived behind the window, and he came out only at night when everyone slept...
...He must be considering, she surmised, whether that place would be good for them...
...The tears melted from the pale faces of the people, faint from fasting, like the wax of the burning memorial candles...
...howled the market peddlers...
...Though now a man of 60, he had still not forgiven himself for his failure to leave his prayers to see his mother some 43 years before...
...She looked out the window off into the distance and chanted plaintively, as if reciting a Yiddish prayer from the Techinah...
...Some time later, she had returned to the community hall, picked up the bundle and left...
...a vindictive man.' They're all alike, the people of Zaskowicz and the neighbors in Laybe-Layzar's courtyard...
...He may be a fanatic, Lord help us, but even so he's a very learned man...
...Paltiel Shklar said sharply as he rose from the bench and stood at the table, turning his head to all sides, with mistrust, fear and rage...
...Someone had banged the bimah, calling for silence as the cantor cleared his throat in preparation for chanting aloud the repetition of the Silent Prayer of the Additional Service...
...Now, from out of the blue, he had changed his mind and announced: "Serel can marry anyone she chooses, even Yehiel-Michael Henes, but I will not attend the wedding...
...He sobbed with the rest of the congregation at the reading of "U'netanneh Tokef," the Prayer of Rabbi Amnon...
...It was .all he could do to stammer out, "My friends . . . ."before he had to pause again to regain his composure...
...The news had reached him that Zaskowicz had not yet chosen his successor and that a battle was brewing, no less heated than the war the Shklar brothers were waging among themselves over their inheritance...
...Frantic housewives noisily scurried about until late at night, and the crowing of the chickens in their cages, waiting for the kapporos ceremony, echoed from one end of the courtyard to the other...
...Had his mother sincerely and joyfully called him a saint, and was that why she hadn't dared disturb him in the middle of his prayers...
...The congregation, exhausted by the long Additional Service, chanted the Afternoon Service quietly with almost the calm indifference of an ordinary weekday...
...So she was in the market every morning before dawn, haggling with the churlish merchants around the wagons laden with caged birds, just like all the other peddlers of chickens and geese...
...she only sighed incessantly, as if she thought her sighs would help her mother to pray...
...Now Laybe-Layzar's courtyard would once again become a den of churls and boors...
...The implacable zealots persecuted the free thinkers, warning them that if they continued in their ways, they would find themselves cast out of the community and their parents would rend their clothes over them as if they had converted...
...The harmonious chorus of the chanting worshippers, not yet fatigued by prayer or fasting, echoed through the stony emptiness of the winding streets outside the courtyard, reaching all the way to Zamkowa Street, where greenery still gleamed behind the iron fences surrounding the houses and gardens of the Polish gentry...
...Her decision, furthermore, had nothing whatever to do with any fears of suffering the upholsterer's wife's bad luck if she were to choose that apartment...
...Serel asked Yehiel-Michael how he liked the services in his new bet midrash...
...But his crusty, clotted piety kept him from leaving the bet midrash to see his mother while they were reading from the Torah...
...it was the sexton, who was bestowing upon him the honor of opening the ark...
...Rabbi, should I visit the Vilna cemetery during the Ten Days of Repentance...
...He had not been able to sleep, and neither could Hindele, although she had labored the entire day, running all over and trudging up and down countless stairs to peddle her merchandise...
...You too are a dear guest here, a very dear one...
...He looked at his brother with jealousy and awe— how did he manage to win everyone over with his glib tongue and even with his appearance...
...Who could he be, that hoary man who hides there in the darkness...
...He usually lay in bed on his back facing the ceiling, his head on a high pillow and his arms folded behind his head...
...Go, gentlemen, in good health and good speed, and tell the people of Zaskowicz that I wish them a happy and healthy New Year, and that after the holidays, with God's help, I will be returning to become once again their Rav...
...But above all the prayers of contrition and confession the Porush's heart cried over the shamed image of his mother ever present before him...
...He stayed as well for the cantor's repetition of the Prayer, the recitation of the invocations, hymns and psalms associated with the fast, and finally the Prayer of Confession of Rab-boni Nissim...
...he would have had to bear the burden of providing for a family...
...Since then, on each solemn Day of Atonement, he would recall the minor Yom Kippur he had taken upon himself in the yeshiva of Slonim when he was a boy of 17...
...But meanwhile the money has all run out and he hasn't found partners here to buy orchards for him to cultivate...
...Young people were by nature hot-blooded and did not believe in treading the middle path, especially not these days...
...Bands of light and shadow played on the shutters and bolted doors of the closed shops, which looked as if they, too, were immersed in prayer in the thick, hazy quietude, wrapped in prayer shawls woven from sunbeams...
...He prayed only for his corner in Laybe-Layzar's bet midrash where he could serve his Creator...
...A third woman deducted a zloty without asking her, and a fourth, a very wealthy one, paid the full amount but told her in a harsh tone never to darken her door again...
...If only her customers really did regard her as they did the butcher's wife or the grocer's or the fruit vendor's...
...These nice people would trample to death anyone who tried to cheat them out of a barleycorn...
...As we hear it, you haven't made a fortune in Vilna and neither have you attained any great position—you haven't even the tranquility and peace of mind you so longed for...
...The Porush's heart was heavy for his Rebbetzin—35 years now they had been married, and still she thought of this...
...Stylishly clad in a broad, brown-flecked suit, she stood still and erect, her face cool and aloof...
...But whenever he was not locked in combat over spiritual matters, his eyes looked about with the sad weariness of a merchant waiting, as if for the Prophet Elijah himself, for a customer to come in and buy a few ounces of salt, a few pounds of groats, a herring or a can of kerosene...
...You ought to know...
...In a corner near the bimah stood Paltiel Shklar, wearing a weekday hat and his weekday prayer shawl hung low over his shoulders so that the fringes dragged on the floor...
...Let anyone besmirch their honor in the slightest and they would never forgive, let alone forget...
...To tnc piercing glances of the busybodies she replied wordlessly with her heavy braids of copper hair tucked up on her neck...
...Throughout the service, the student who had told him about his mother sauntered around the bet midrash, looking at him with a mischievous sneer...
...The packed women's section of Laybe-Layzar's bet midrash was all abuzz...
...Serel's mind, however, was already made up: The Rav's apartment was roomier and more comfortable...
...Rabbi, three men from Zaskowicz are here, and one of them is a brother-in-law of mine," she gasped out, clutching at her chest as if to keep her heart from leaping out of her...
...So the Porush did not want to delay answering any longer...
...I will have to think about that," the Porush answered and then invited his guests to partake of the food his wife had served...
...Gracia wanted to escape from her thoughts and from the women around her, all of whom still had their children...
...Not until his friend had repeated this several times did he believe that his mother was really waiting to see him...
...It would distress her to know that he had interrupted his studies...
...The people of the courtyard were not about to keep silent at this, but the Rav waved his hands, indicating that he wished to speak...
...She was deeply hurt at the thought that her husband felt she wanted him to be a breadwinner...
...It was the middle of the morning service...
...But this was the Day of Judgment—he did not want to accuse his fellow Jews on this...
...A golden late-afternoon glow lit the faces of the mothers as the residents of the courtyard and the people from the Jewish Street chatted pleasantly and coddled their children...
...That" was where he had been born, had gone to cheder and studied in the bet midrash...
...Translation copyright © 1982 by the Estate of Chaim Grade...
...Though it was not yet noon, the fast had already given her a headache...
...In every overflowing bet midrash, large electric bulbs burned all day beneath the lampshades and tiny bulbs sparkled in the chandeliers...
...From the other man's crumpled hat and from the fact that he wore a shirt and tie, it was clear that he represented the "enlightened" faction of the townspeople...
...In fact, he exuded the very opposite: Here was a man who would clearly stop at nothing to have his way...
...In his heart he even accepted the community's grievance against him—left unsaid but clearly visible on the emissaries' faces—for having left Zaskowicz in the first place and thrown it into turmoil and decline...
...In Zaskowicz he knows just where our little home is and I know just where his little grave is...
...A hunched, wrinkled old woman leafed through the pages of a techinah with her long, thin fingers, as lovingly as if she were petting a grandchild's head...
...Well, Paltiel, do you agree...
...Then he sat down on a little bench and sighed...
...Her tall, prominent, pale forehead, always lined with tiny wrinkles, was now creased even more in puzzlement: Near a window in a black, soot-covered wall there stared blindly the outline, dark and crooked, of what once must have been another window, now walled up with bricks but not yet plastered over...
...He could feel only the rock-hard anguish in his heart, the heavy, tear-laden sorrow that he would have liked to cry out like a raincloud so that his soul could become clean and pure once more, fit to serve his Creator...
...The Porush was the last to leave the bet midrash for the recess, but on his way out he noticed that among those who had decided not to go out into the courtyard for fresh air were his old adversaries...
...Grade settled in the Bronx, where he continued to write in Yiddish...
...In a corner of the courtyard the gilder Yehiel-Michael Henes was talking to Serel Teitelbaum for all to see...
...she prayed for the good fortune of her middle daughter, Serel, who would soon be marrying Yehiel-Mi-chael Henes...
...See if you can persuade your husband to join us," he whispered to her and then made for the door, followed by the visitors...
...The rest of the time she was not a Rebbetzin, but when it came to getting paid, she was a Rebbetzin...
...The minor Days of Atonement which some observed on the eve of the first of the month were a later tradition, handed down from the mystics who wanted to assume more hardships than were demanded by the Codes...
...So he stayed away from any manner of extreme, refusing to build fence upon fence...
...My son is a saint...
...But in one corner of his mind a thought twitched: If he had had children, he would not have been able to leave Zaskowicz...
...Only the fowls in their cages, held in readiness for the upcoming holidays and for kapporos, crowed, cackled, quacked and gobbled...
...A native ofVilna, he fled the city in 1941 when the Nazis invaded...
...In the afternoon the Porush locked his house and went to the Gaon's bet midrash in the courtyard of the Grand Synagogue...
...In him, there was not a trace of charity or compassion...
...Then, in the third week of the month of Adar, only a week before he was to leave for home, he received a letter from his father telling him that he must say Kaddish for his mother...
...Paltiel Shklar's older brother was a full head taller than his two companions...
...he wrote with a passion for keeping alive the memory of the Yiddish civilization destroyed by the Holocaust...
...He, broad-shouldered, wearing a black rabbinic frock, his velvet yarmulka perched atop his tall, wrinkled, sagacious forehead...
...Was he not to blame for a town of good people being torn by strife...
...Though she had time and time again renounced her title of Rebbetzin, she still wore a rebbetzin's long, modest dress...
...But more than the people of Slonim, he would be ashamed to face his mother: Wasn't it she who had said, "My son is a saint...
...Around the bookstands, people were gathered, leafing through and buying prayer books for the High Holy Days...
...A wedding without the father of the bride...
...But when it's someone else who's been wronged, they very sweetly advise him not to fight back...
...Gracia had never noticed it before and now asked herself why the sun shone only on the walled-up window and not on the window with glass panes...
...Autumn had come early, and the leaves were already ablaze in shades of orange, deep wine-red, fiery red, brown and yellow, as though the gardens themselves were a giant bet midrash with lamps burning in the daylight, interwoven with the waxen flickering of the memorial candles...
...He grunted and said that he would have felt much happier, much more at home, with his friends at Tiferet-Bachurim...
...To us you're no different than any other peddler.' " And Hindele once again broke into bitter weeping...
...She was to this day still moved by a story of her husband's childhood: While a student in a small town, he had given one of his two pillows to two old women who were putting together a dowry for a poor bride...
...Then let the wedding go on without him...
...He placed an open volume of Maimonides on the table so he would not be left alone with his disturbing, soul-rending thoughts...
...I haven't any more strength to fight with my old husband," Zlata began, lifting her hands and letting them drop to her side as if to show how her strength had been drained...
...So let the Rav come just for the rest of the High Holy Days, for the Sabbath of Repentance and Yom Kippur...
...The eldest daughter, Malka, wore a dark-gray dress of knitted wool and a kerchief on her hair...
...But his mother's death had changed him...
...Even a rabbi, the Porush, believed in bargaining with God...
...This added to his thoughts a painful sharpness, like the thoughts of a man who muses over the vanity of life while wandering in a cemetery...
...As he spoke, the Porush realized that he must not exhibit too much joy or jump at their offer too quickly, lest he undermine the respect a town should feel for its Rav...
...Yoel, you're not sleeping...
...Good day, Rabbi...
...And Zaskowicz, too, had to prepare the Rav's house, and arrange a fitting reception for him and the Rebbetzin...
...My husband threw it in my face...
...So she closed her eyes and thought back to her maiden days when she used to walk alone through the vast forests around Zaskowicz...
...Rabbi Yoel Weintraub and the Brothers Munvas are surely from the same mold, aren't they...
...He knew that lately she had also started selling chickens, since she could not make a living from eggs alone...
...When the Zaskowicz delegation finally left and Hindele went out into the courtyard, her neighbors were already waiting for her: "Is it true, Rebbetzin, that your husband is going to be the Rav of Zaskowicz again...
...Even as a child in his father's house, Paltiel had felt unwanted and unloved...
...the Porush stammered as he looked at the gardener's wife, fearful that she too would start crying just as Hindele had...
...But when another demands justice for his suffering and humiliation, they admonish: 'For shame...
...A few years passed without his seeing his parents, although from time to time he would send them a letter...
...The shofar blasts blew a cold, raw wind through the bones and tore at the heart...
...But Hindele was by nature as joyous and sensitive as a child, though at times not above shouting a bit in order to get her way...
...Bedraggled, huddled in her rags, weary and humiliated, she had disappeared into a winter blizzard because she did not want to disturb her son in his observance of a minor Yom Kippur...
...His own children and even the supposedly pious Jews were strange to him...
...He could not stay in the house, nor could he settle down to study in Laybe-Layzar's bet midrash...
...And so, he remained in Slonim and resolved to leave the yeshiva at the beginning of the month of Nisan for the Passover recess...
...On such nights, when sleep eluded her, she could not stop marveling at her good fortune at having so tall and splendid a man for a husband, and she delighted in him like a little girl who has her father all to herself...
...Doors, windows and roofs began slowly to creep out of the night...
...But things are even worse with us in Zaskowicz...
...And yet now, as a porush, he still found himself embroiled in other people's problems, in the affair of the upholsterer and his wife and now in that of the locksmith and his daughters...
...In the turbid light of dawn the damp nakedness of Laybe-Layzar's courtyard rose up into the day like a golem from a lagoon...
...My friends, I am prepared to return to Zaskowicz and assume once again, with God's help, the yoke of the rabbinate...
...So he stayed and listened to the chanting of the reader and strained not to miss a single word, even though his heart was imploring him, screaming, "Your mother waits...
...One day in Slonim, while he was observing the fast of the minor Yom Kippur on the eve of the month of Shevat, along with some old men, one of his friends, another student, came to him during the Torah reading of the afternoon service and said, "Yoel— you from Utian—your mother is waiting to see you out in the hallway...
...As you know, my Alterl, my child, is buried in Zaskowicz...
...The Zaskowicz representatives waited for him to lead the way...
...Gracia asked him in her lilting, melancholy voice...
...He did not notice her until she was standing directly in front of him with her weary, haggard face and her large, dark, pathetic eyes...
...Around him was an aura of grated radish, onion and sauerkraut, all from his own little backyard garden, and the odor as well of herbs, sour milk and the dung of his one half-starved cow...
...His eyelids drooped and his thoughts congealed in his dimming mind, like a film over still waters...
...All things seemed lonely, permeated with the sadness of fall...
...So the courtyard simply had forgotten, in all this confusion, that in its midst lived a great tzaddik...
...But when the arguing broke out over how to divide the business, all Zaskowicz sided with his brothers— because everyone was counting on favors from them...
...My Paltiel says that the case in Oszmiana may drag on for years, though he is certain that he will win in the end...
...Though the demons had turned out to be only Nehamele banging on the wall, Gracia's belief in otherworldly powers remained unshaken...
...Together with the rest of the congregation, the Porush labored under the heavy yoke of the Yom Kippur services...
...But this only made him more determined to quell his evil inclination and not go out even after the Torah reading, so he stayed for the Silent Prayer...
...But as the night took on a blue-black hue, thick as the swirls in a full ink bottle, she could no longer see him...
...Do you know, Yoel, when I fell in love with you...
...The men took their psayer shawls off their heads and wiped the sweat from their necks and foreheads...
...And she had returned from Slonim to Utian in the same way...
...Oy, Ribbono-shel-olam, Lord of the Universe, give me the strength to stay stubborn...
...The delegation wanted the Rabbi to return with them to Zaskowicz immediately...
...By all means...
...His quick "It's permitted" had finally led him as far astray as the fanatic locksmith's incessant "It's forbidden...
...His slow, deliberately measured movements and his calm gaze attested to his status, his awareness of being the head of the entire Shklar clan...
...Did you think we were going to stay with you here forever...
...Since you left, the town has been torn apart by flaming controversy...
...As he knelt on his weary knees during the cantor's recitation of the Temple Service for the Day of Atonement...
...She could only sense that he was still not asleep, and she wanted to hear his voice...
...My neighbors are right...
...So now what was she to do...
...As long as one lived among people, it seemed, one could not help but get involved...
...She was already accustomed to her Heskiah's redoubled piety and crazy observances during the month of Elul, in anticipation of the High Holy Days...
...It's all the fault of the trustee, Sheftel Miklishansky...
...Deep in the thicket was hidden the secret world of the poisonous mushrooms, speckled with a rainbow of color...
...Yoel ran out into the courtyard and then through the snowy streets, shouting, "Mother...
...Come to my house, gentlemen...
...but now she could no longer keep silent...
...In the gardens of the city and along the river, the early fall had already singed the tips of the leaves and the edges of the plants...
...Under the thick tangle of branches, the late-blooming sage was already in full flower, sparkling with cool violet blossoms amid the luscious green of the leafy ferns...
...That's why I came along,"said the elder Shklar, "to urge you to agree to take the matter to a rabbinical court over which the Rabbi will preside...
...And still farther into the pine forest the damp, deep-red rust of the overgrown ivy adorned the rotted tree stumps...
...At first, when Father, may his soul rest in peace, brought you to the house, I was frightened...
...Rebbetzin Hindele, in the women's section, also heard her husband's weeping...
...I was in the Gaon's Bet Midrash today, talking to the p'rushim about the possibility of joining them and receiving a stipend...
...Today must be my day with the women," he thought as he regarded her wearily...
...All this time he had been convinced that Rabbi Weintraub was hated by the townspeople of Zaskowicz for being so liberal, a man of compromise...
...Peering into her Machzor, she luxuriated in the prayers, pronouncing each word with diligence and care, as if to make up for all the days, weeks and months she had neglected prayer for the sake of her eggs and chickens...
...you were so tall, broad and handsome, and I was so small...
...His face was clear and placid, his round white beard neatly trimmed, his broad mustache carefully combed...
...Hindele answered harshly: "Of course it's true...
...He knelt when the cantor recited the order of the Temple Service on the Day of Atonement...
...He read the Warsaw Yiddish paper every Friday night, and at services the next morning he would be prepared to do battle if a memorial prayer was not said for Dr...
...After crying away the morning and evening, Hindele longed, in her bed, in the dead of night, to be pampered and soothed by her husband's sweet voice...
...his own prospects, then, were all but nonexistent...
...we do not take oaths, even on the truth...
...I myself was thinking that I ought to spend Yom Kippur and Sukkot among the people I have lived with all year...
...She took the birds to her customers, who blew aside the tail feathers to see if the hen was fat enough...
...Hindele was a bit embarrassed that her husband, the Rav, was grasping her arm and she tried to pull away...
...he knew that, come what may, he must return to Zaskowicz as Rav...
...The bands of light were blinding to the eye and cut across faces like knives...
...Divine Providence had caught up with him and brought him back to fulfil his mission, just as every man was put on earth to fulfil a mission...
...Gracia did not want to' open her eyes and look out onto the barren earth of Laybe-Layzar's courtyard, where, she knew, the only greenery was the moss on the plastered walls...
...Though his heart fluttered and thrashed about with his longing to see his mother, he had quelled the temptation, because "fear of God" came before honoring one's father and mother...
...If you return, Rabbi, perhaps peace will also return to our family," said the elder Shklar brother, glancing at his sister-in-law Gracia...
...But my child, my little Alterl, will not come to lifejthrough that...
...only an occasional beam of light managed to pierce the vault of the branches, quivering like a torn violin string...
...yet she did not ask him where he had been...
...Now, however, when they saw her burst in, evidently in great haste, with two empty baskets, bent and darkened, with a worn, crumpled shawl around her shoulders and a market woman's apron around her waist, they became confused, ashamed, saddened and finally angry...
...Rebbetzin Hindele waited for her husband near the door to the men's section of the bet midrash, and the two of them stood there together for a time...
...Instead of loving him all the more for being the child of his old age who might have brightened his later years, his father had hated him for having come so late and unexpected...
...The Porush rose from the seat wide-eyed, but before he could ask Gracia for details, the three men were suddenly standing before him, like the three angels who had appeared before Abraham...
...She had convinced her Yehiel-Michael not to spend Yom Kippur in his regular synagogue, the Tiferet-Bachurim, but to pray instead in the bet midrash of Laybe-Layzar's courtyard to show her father his uprightness and piety...
...Yet younger men, accomplished orators who could speak Polish as well, with large, untouched dowries which they were prepared to use for communal needs—even such dedicated young men had to look long and hard before they found a pulpit...
...A few minutes later the Porush appeared, troubled by Hindele's tears...
...As she listened to the pious murmuring and sighing around her, Gracia felt glad to be among her friendly neighbors, simple and kind, who were praying so devoutly on this Day of Awe...
...Two old men who always sat there to warm themselves near the oven told him that a small, frail woman had appeared in the hallway while he was praying and had asked for him...
...In Tiferet-Bachurim there was more chanting and in Laybe-Layzar's bet midrash there was more weeping...
...Zlata's three daughters all stood behind her as if bearing witness to her prayers and pleading...
...Zaskowicz has sent us to you with a mission: to bring you back with us...
...What do you think, Hindele...
...It was a new world, a world of cutting corners, of bargaining and compromise: half for the Almighty and half for...
...In the same affectedly playful tone he replied: "But we don't know which of us is at fault, so, according to the law, I don't have to divorce you...
...And when Hindele walked out of the courtyard into the narrow, winding Jewish Street, she saw a long line ahead of her, women with empty baskets, peddlers and suppliers who, like her, were running to the market for their merchandise...
...For all the refinement they could put on display, there was not a drop of human kindness in their veins...
...For over 40 years he had sought to divine his mother's true meaning, and for over 40 years that truth had eluded him...
...In fact, she almost didn't feel that she was fasting at all—she must be getting to be like her father...
...She watched how careful he was not to let the crumbs fall on this beard, and how gingerly he ate his chicken so his fingers would not get greasy...
...So tell me, why haven't you divorced me...
...These were the thoughts that boiled inside Paltiel Shklar as he stood with tightly pressed lips, not saying a word or batting an eyelash...
...even so, she felt it would be more dignified to live in the former home of the Porush than in the former home of that gypsy Moishele Munvas...
...From time to time he would sit down for a second to catch his breath, then at once leap to his feet again...
...All those who had gone out earlier to cool off were coming back inside for Yizkor...
...But he was the only one who worked, and like a horse...
...For, he reasoned, he was the tenth man of the minyan who was fasting that day and if he left, there would then be lacking a quorum of fasters for the reading of the Torah portion read on fast days: "And Moses besought the Lord his God, and said, Lord, why doth Thy wrath wax hot against Thy people...
...Such a bitter quarrel has never happened before, in all of Zaskowicz's history as a Jewish town, and especially not at this time of the year, in the days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur—and just because we can't agree on a new rav...
...Gracia wondered...
...The congregation chanted the Keddushah with fervent exaltation, and the Porush's voice pealed out each word of "Holy . . . Holy . . . Holy...
...After their father died, they had be-grudgingly allowed Paltiel his portion of the inheritance and taken him in as a partner in the orchards...
...He lay as still and rigid as a wooden beam...
...It never occurred to him that a Rabbi, too, has to eat...
...Since he always liked to sleep with his head high, he sorely missed the other pillow...
...And so, after all the prayers were over, he left his place near the western wall of the bet midrash and went into the hallway, but he did not find his mother...
...though trembling at the thought that he might yet refuse...
...And yet the factions there that couldn't agree on the appointment of a new Rav were certain to agree on one thing—that they did not want him back...
...Only in recent years have his works begun to appear in English translation...
...Her usually pale face, today even paler from the fast, suddenly flushed a warm and rosy color...
...They shook hands with the Rav and proceeded at once to the reason for their visit...
...The women had their own scapegoat: The fault really lay with the outsiders who had moved into the courtyard...
...She only smiled and every now and then raised her brows, creasing her high forehead as she recalled how happy Yom Kippur used to be when her little boy was alive and she had prayed to the Almightly to grant him a good year...
...No, you need not," and he turned quickly and went into his house...
...Her straight, smooth, chestnut hair, plainly combed to either side of a straight part in the middle, glowed with a soft aura of chastity...
...He could not afford to travel home in the middle of the term, and besides, he would be ashamed before his Rav and before the other students if he did so...
...The Rebbetzin curled herself up under the covers and soon fell asleep...
...Yom Kippur was already knocking on everyone's door and it .looked as if the entire courtyard would soon be buried in chicken feathers...
...But she had said only, "My son is a saint"—and then she had left...
...And what about me...
...He wandered from one yeshiva to another—a year in Lachowicze, another in Kobryn—until he settled down to some years of serious study in Slonim...
...It's perfectly permissible," the Porush answered, but thenrecoiled from his words with the thought: "What am I saying...
...Serel noticed this, and noticed as well that he did not take his eyes off the now-empty apartment where Moishele Munvas had lived...
...Besides, it would be embarrassing to go begging after having spurned all their pleas for him to stay...
...finally she composed herself and became silent as she set the table...
...Some stole outside for a breath of cool air and waited for the bang on a lectern that would signal the beginning of the Yizkor Service...
...He saw in this the hand of Divine Providence, the "Finger of the Lord...
...You may go to the Vilna cemetery during the Ten Days of Repentance...
...They all laughed at her: "Just look at our competitor...
...They know, those rich women, that I cannot send a 'ruffian' husband to collect the money—and could I, in any case, ask you to collect my bills for me...
...His work appeared regularly in The Jewish Daily Forward and other Yiddish papers, he wrote many poems and books, including The Aguna and The Yeshiva...
...She cast a knowing sidelong glance at him, her eyes sparkling like faceted, polished jewels: It was most unusual for her husband to be neither at home nor in Laybe-Layzar's bet midrash...
...In the front row, right next to the curtain that overlooked the ark in the men's section, stood three women: Gracia Shklar, the Rebbetzin Hindele, and Zlata, the wife of the locksmith Heskiah Teitelbaum...
...But from the other bed words still poked at him like rays of light, and a joyful, almost childlike voice was arousing him once again from his sleep...
...My Rebbetzin is not in and, alas, I do not know how to go about serving guests...
...So she had turned and gone out once more into the blizzard, disappearing into the freezing cold and the driving snow, and leaving him but one utterance, one keepsake that had become for him an eternal mystery...
...They had commanded him to fast and atone only on the tenth day of the month of Tishrei, on Yom Kippur...
...Like an onrushing flood whose waters rise until the waves tower over the trees and the houses, so did the tears and the wailing swell over the heads of the worshippers when they reached the liturgical poem in memory of the Ten Martyred Rabbis executed by the Romans...
...Reb Heskiah paid no attention to the bristly pieces of straw underfoot that pricked the soles of the worshippers' shoeless feet as a Yom Kippur penance, nor did he mind that his shirt, his white kittel and even his prayer shawl were drenched with sweat...
...When he had turned 15, he had fulfilled the injuction of the Sages: "Exile yourself to a place of Torah...
...He did not move his lips, yet he did not take his eyes off the Machzor he was holding with both hands as if it were a heavy stone...
...the words of the Sages were his only friends, the Code of Law his only mentor...
...And because she was carrying a basket on each arm, Hindele was unable to wipe away the tears that continued to flow from her eyes...
...Yes, I can arrange for my husband to make peace with his brothers...
...And the greatest injustice was the one he had done his own Hindele: He had left Zaskowicz because he felt unable to continue ruling that everything in sight was forbidden...
...And his punishment was that he was never to see her again...
...Why not...
...A green dawn sky spread cold and gloomy...
...Or else he can arbitrate the case himself, and we can dispense with the suit in the Gentile court in Oszmiana—a suit that's eating us up alive...
...The Porush took his Rebbetzin by the arm and led her to their home...
...My son is a saint...
...Women were sitting on benches, bathing their faces in the cool sunlight...
...Nonetheless, when he saw that he could not have his way, he was prepared to compromise—unlike his younger brother, that cantankerous loner with a tuft of thin, prickly hair on his chin and the thick, mossy brows over his eyes...
...The Porush closed the ark and returned to his seat...
...And when she had finally reached the hallway outside the bet midrash, this son, this righteous fool, refused to interrupt his prayers to see her...
...He knew that the scrolls were not to blame...
...He answered that he had always found it overwhelming to read the story of the Prophet who refused to carry out his mission and tried to run away from the Almighty Himself...
...Beards hung limp like dead carcasses...
...as he shut his eyes tight and clenched his teeth during the " Hear O Israel...
...This generation was strange to him...
...Itka also had no prayer book...
...She had hurried to the market for her merchandise that morning and met a neighbor from the courtyard, another peddler, who was on her way to the market ahead of her...
...The Porush didn't answer as he felt sleep overtaking him...
...Hindele laughed until her laughter turned into tears...
...But now he saw the hand of Providence compelling him to return to Zaskowicz...
...Her lips were still quivering when Gracia Shklar, who had again come into the courtyard, stopped her: "Rebbetzin, may you live and be well, I have a question on a matter of ritual...
...A steamy white mist hovered around the copper laver and polished the brass balls atop the iron railing around the bimah...
...And that's what the people wanted—witness the fact that the people of Zaskowicz had come to the Porush, Rabbi Yoel Weintraub, and begged him to return and become their Rav once again...
...Reb Heskiah groaned into the prayer shawl which was drawn over his head and eyes, making him look like a sheeted ghost that had risen from the grave to pray among the living...
...Paltiel stood silent, and when such a stubborn, ill-tempered man hangs his head in silence, it means he agrees...
...He sought no friends among the members of the congregation and no accolades from the scholars for his conduct...
...let some other Rav sit and imperiously shake his head "no...
...What about the injustice done me...
...Outstretched hands with wrenched fingers groped blindly in the air, searching for something to hold onto...
...The next day the Zaskowicz representatives came to the bet midrash in Laybe-Layzar's courtyard for morning services and afterward stood around their Rav...
...His hands clutched the silver-brocaded collar of the prayer shawl draped over his head as the tears ran down his cheeks into his beard...
...Still, he could never understand a prophet suffering over the fact that a city was not destroyed—even so sinful a city as Nineveh...
...True, since he had told her the story before they were married, she could not then know how much he liked to sleep on high pillows...
...In one corner, with his back to the congregation, stood the gardener from Zaskowicz, Paltiel Shklar, and in another, swaying over a holy tome, was the locksmith, Reb Heskiah...
...you're a Rebbetzin who will not even be seen ir public with your head uncovered...
...But now, close to the High Holy Days, though the Grand Synagogue's courtyard looked dirt-gray from the dampness of the autumn rains, it was filled with worshippers going to and from services in the numerous synagogues, with beggars on the steps of the Grand Synagogue itself, and, in the deep round niches, the wooden stands of the vendors of sacred books and religious articles...
...She bemoaned the bitter lot of her eldest daughter, Malka, the divorcee...
...and the not-so-pious, and even his former supporters, were angry with him for having left them and so created a great conflict...
...Nonetheless, the young free thinkers did not mend their ways, and neither did they break away from the Jewish community...
...Young Yoel, knowing that the student was a scoffer and did not fast on the minor Yom Kippur, began now to suspect that the story about his mother was a fabrication, designed to distract him from his precious prayers...
...But you were allowed to find out," Hindele jested, and then teased: "You should have left me and married another woman and then you'd know...
...But the delegation, having no idea of the Rabbi's thoughts and emotions, looked at him fearfully, as if they expected he would, God forbid, turn them down...
...But: she was suffering greater pain from the way the women around her gossiped with their eyes even while they piously muttered prayers with their lips...
...So he just stood in the courtyard looking up at the sky, half his face alight in a patch of sun, the other half in shadow as if cloven in half with a knife...
...Laybe-Layzar's courtyard now bustled with the thick crowd in their holiday finery...
...She was just moved by the idea of a pious youngster, a budding scholar, studying in a strange town, giving up one of his two pillows for a poor bride...
...Tall memorial candles stood in wooden boxes filled with sand to prevent fire...
...She was wearing her black suit over a white cambric blouse...
...It mattered jiot to him that everyone looked upon Him as a figure out of the past...
...She folded her hands on her chest under her heart and a wan smile played on her lips—the sorrowful resignation of motherhood denied and shamed...
...He could see his mother standing before him in her tattered winter cloth, her feet bound in rags, trudging along with a band of beggars through the deep drifts of snow and the frost of the blizzard...
...He continued to study and observe the laws, but came to hate fanatics and avoided zealots like the plague...
...My word is my bond...
...After intense and prolonged deliberation, he came at last to a decision: He would go to Zaskowicz and perhaps, with the Almighty's help, he could convince the people to take him back as their Rav...
...He was a constant source of wonder to everyone...
...Instead of paying attention to the prayers, he became lost in his own thoughts: "It's a world of thieves and swindlers...
...Was it right that so small and frail a woman should support so husky and healthy a husband...
...He did not return until evening, when he found Hindele in the kitchen preparing dinner...
...She drew closer to Reb Yoel as though to entrust him with a secret...
...The Torah, he believed, must not look like a town of battling neighbors, each carefully marking the boundary of his property with a picket fence or a high, thick wall topped with barbed wire so that no one can pass through...
...He did not want to just get by, he wanted to accept stricter laws, to bend under a still heavier yoke of ritual and custom...
...He need not have, nor should he have, let his mother wait in the hallway, especially when they had not seen each other for so long a time...
...Yoel felt at that moment ready to kill himself from grief and shame...
...The smile on her lips quivered like a trapped bird struggling to escape from a net...
...The deeper he sank into the chair and into his thoughts, the more heavily his hands drooped over the armrests, as limp as branches soaked by a heavy rain...
...They knew that these women were perfectly capable of opening their mouths and attracting quite an audience...
...Why are you hurrying off, Reb Paltiel...
...Many times, so many times, it happened that the fathers disowned the children but the children did not disown the fathers...
...But on the next bed her husband remained wide awake—exhausted, yet far removed from sleep...
...Zlata looked at Rabbi Weintraub suspiciously, wondering if he might be laughing at her...
...But was letting Hindele toil so hard and be subjected to such humiliation any less forbidden...
...How could he leave then, in the middle of the Torah reading...
...The representative of the more observant faction had a tall, round cap with a hard visor and a worn gray frock coat with patches here and there...
...But she had other plans, so she asked him softly whether he had heard that the Porush was returning to Zaskowicz after the holidays and his house would be vacant...
...Meanwhile, Zlata Teitelbaum had quietly stolen into the Porush's house...
...But as busy as everyone was with the preparations for Yom Kippur, the people of the courtyard still found time to get together in little groups and look for someone to blame for losing the Porush'whom they had all come to regard as their Rav...
...From the forthcoming book Rabbis and Wives by Chaim Grade, to be published by Alfred A. Knopf, Inc...
...He asked after her in the inns of Slonim, in the town hostel, he approached strangers in the street—no one had seen or heard of her anywhere...
...But either his father did not know or he did not wish to tell him...
...The longer they talked, the more he felt the same old heartaches he had known day in and day out in Zaskowicz whenever the poor townspeople would ask him for a ruling and he would have to answer that, according to the law, this or that was forbidden, prohibited, unfit...
...There the services were brighter, more cheerful...
...The two sides have become nothing short of mortal enemies...
...But the first time we went for a walk, before our betrothal, you told me the story of the pillows and I fell in love with you immediately...
...He himself wants it...
...he finally said, and he turned from house to house, trying to determine which would be more suited for them...
...Nearby a boy stared in wonder at a large black spiral shofar that lay among the piles of books, like the ram caught by the horn in the thicket near the altar where Abraham had bound his son Isaac...
...Our guests are right," Hindele intruded—something she had never done in all the years she had been the Zaskowicz Rebbetzin...
...He stood quietly for a while, filling the narrow room with his tall-framed body...
...Everyone's out for his own good...
...Perhaps his only chance was to inquire if his old pulpit in Zaskowicz was still vacant...
...She scurried about, spreading the Sabbath tablecloth on the table, rushing to the kitchen to prepare food for her guests, yet all the while listening to the conversation of the men around the table in the next room...
...He was using even the break in the Yom Kippur services to study the Codes...
...Who could say whether he was even praying...
...Your mother...
...Though they had not formally announced their betrothal and Serel's stubborn father had not yet given them his blessing, everyone knew that their wedding was inevitable and so they had no need to hide from anyone or be ashamed to be seen together...
...So they answer that nobody pays for what used-to-be...
...At first he did not believe him...
...The Porush was standing in the middle of his living room, his hands clumsily outstretched, his shoulders drawn up as if he expected the low ceiling above his head to sag even lower at any moment until he would have to support the beams with his shoulders...
...let him at least get some part of his inheritance...
...Even the Porush, Rabbi Yoel Weintraub, took the prayer shawl off his head for a short respite from the heat, though he did not turn his face away from the wall in the front of the bet midrash where he had been standing throughout the service...
...The older women were wearing long black or white shawls, or tall wigs, while the younger ones wore intricately styled small or big hats, all of them together creating the effect of a bed of flowers...
...Her deep, round little hat looked surprisingly fashionable, worn stylishly back on her head, perhaps even a bit too far back...
...In Laybe-Layzar's courtyard there remained a throng of people, men in their prayer shawls and neighbors breathing in the cool air of the early evening...
...The air in the bet midrash grew musty from the fumes of the burned-out candles on the reader's lectern and the tall memorial candles still burning in their wooden boxes...
...Is that so...
...Yehiel-Michael had not heard, and as he was somewhat slow anyway, it took him a moment to realize what Serel was driving at...
...Her gaunt face shone with a silent happiness...
...In this world we are all nothing but guests," the elder Shklar said with something of the piety of Yom Kippur eve...
...Is it for the large salary, the splendid home and the great honor you offered him...
...You say you'd like to prepare to settle in the Land of Israel...
...But their hearts were as false and black as the night...
...First the customer would look at an egg as if eyeing it through a microscope, until satisfied that it was fresh and as clear as the sun...
...Hindele suppressed a smile as she thought that she was ready to work harder and endure even more humiliation for the honor of having so refined and fastidious a talmudic scholar for a husband...
...The Porush had not yet collected himself long enough to consider this question when Gracia asked him another: "Perhaps, Rabbi, you could prevail on my husband to make peace with his brothers...
...But when a student told her that her son did not want to interrupt his prayers, she had stood at the door and watched him awhile and then gone away...
...Thief that you are, you're cheating us all...
...But when he was called upon to read the Book of Jonah, he held the rollers of the parchment scroll tightly and wept as he read the prayer of the Prophet Jonah from the belly of the fish, crying so loudly that everyone in the bet midrash held his breath...
...He saw no choice but to return to Zaskowicz and reach a settlement with his brothers through the Rav...
...You may not...
...Everyone was looking for dispensations, interested only in finding out that they were permitted to do whatever they wished, desiring nothing more than to get by with the minimum of precepts in service to the Creator of the Universe and His Torah...
...You may not...
...Was it because he had to deal with fish handlers recently, with Moishele Munvas' brothers...
...And here the town had actually sent emissaries to beg him to return and be their Rav again...
Vol. 7 • September 1982 • No. 8
