More Stories From My Father's Court

by Isaac Bashevis Singer

  “In America one cannot be a Jew,” said Father.

  “They’re Jews, they’re Jews,” Wolf the shochet replied. “A shochet there is also a mohel, a profession that makes one rich. I once knew a little shochet, a perfect shlimazel, a clumsy oaf. He once slaughtered a rooster, and even though its throat was slit, it ran around and crowed. It even leaned over and ate.”

  The colors in Mother’s face changed. “Don’t tell us such stories!”

  “But it’s the truth. The shlimazel didn’t make the incision in the proper place. He couldn’t work as a slaughterer after that, so he went off to America. In New York he became a rich man. There a shochet doesn’t even wear a beard.”

  “They shave off their beards?” Father cried out.

  “They say it’s done with some kind of powder. We got a photograph of him and he’s standing there with a naked face, looking like a dandy from Marshalkovska Street. I couldn’t recognize him at all. He also divorced his wife and married a New York girl.”

  “And what happened to the first wife?” Mother asked.

  “Who knows?”

  My tongue itched. I wanted to call out, You cut your beard, too! But I restrained myself with all my might.

  Then Father said, “What does all this come down to? We don’t live forever and ultimately we’ll have to give an accounting. People don’t live forever in America either.”

  “No, but as long as one lives, one really lives!” Wolf the shochet maintained. “A shochet there is like a municipal scribe here. He puts in his couple of hours and then is free to do what he wants. The shochtim there wear modern clothes like Frenchmen or Germans, and take strolls in the park with their wives. And when they slaughter they wear white aprons.”

  “But who inspects their slaughtering knives?”

  “Who needs inspections? The shochet himself knows the law. And if he doesn’t know it, then too bad. In America a shochet does not study Tevuos Shor. He just looks through a little rule book or studies the Yoreh De’ah and the Be’er Hetev. And it goes without saying that he doesn’t consult the Pri Megadim1 either. The main thing over there is to do everything quickly. The goyim kill their animals with a machine …”

  “Enough!”

  The shochet left. A couple of days later his wife returned. “Rebbetzin, I can’t take it anymore.”

  She didn’t yell and didn’t cry but hissed like a goose, spat like a snake. She put a finger to her throat signaling how high the water had risen.

  “What is it now?” Mother asked.

  “Rebbetzin, he wants to go to America. What should I do? How can I go there? Either he’s crazy—may it happen to my enemies!—or he’s a heretic. There’s a dybbuk in him, no doubt about it, an evil spirit. What should I do? To whom should I go? Warsaw is such a big city.”

  “Does he want to go alone?”

  “You think I’m going to go to America with him? Warsaw isn’t trayf enough? I need America? Jews there work on the Sabbath, woe unto us! People walk upside down there, head on the ground, feet in the air. Everyone talks English and only the devil understands them. I’m not going to America.”

  “And he really wants to go?”

  “Rebbetzin, if he says he’ll go, he’ll go. Every other day another crazy notion takes hold of him. Now he wants to buy a gramophone, where music comes out of a huge trumpet. I tell him, Where in the world did you ever hear that a shochet should have something like that? That’s more appropriate for beardless musicians. But it’s like talking to the wall. He wants to give in to conversion. Rebbetzin, the truth is—he wants a new wife!”

  The shochet’s wife began to sob and blow her nose into her handkerchief with a harsh, grating sound. “What am I supposed to do?”

  “Does he want a divorce?” Mother asked.

  “Why shouldn’t he? He’s got a hankering for a young one. He wants a loose girl, a bareheaded piece who doesn’t keep Yiddishkeit. In America a shochet’s wife walks around with uncovered, messy hair and they go the the theater together … Who knows if they have a ritual bath over there? It’s a topsy-turvy world over there, and that’s where he wants to run off to and leave me here a deserted wife … So tell me what should I do?”

  “Let him give you money.”

  “He says he doesn’t have any money. And if he does, I don’t know where he keeps it. He cries he’s in debt. How much do we need? We’re only two. He slaughters all day long. He makes a living, he does. He puts money away, but if I buy half a pound of meat because chickens are coming out of my nose, he starts raving and ranting. Rebbetzin, it’s not right to say so, but I don’t want to eat the fowl that he’s slaughtered. He’s corrupt. I want glatt kosher meat under the strictest supervision. My grandfather, may he rest in peace, fasted every Monday and Thursday. When he died they put a Talmud folio on his stretcher. My grandmother, may she rest in peace, was a saintly, upstanding woman. In our house, three days before Pesach they kashered the stove till it glowed. We didn’t even eat knaydls until the last day of the holiday. In America he’ll become completely wild. If he trims his beard here, what will he do there?”

  “This is not a good situation,” Mother said.

  “Should I divorce him?”

  “It’s certainly better than remaining an agunah, a deserted wife.”

  The shochet’s wife left. We heard her crying on the stairwell. I went out into the courtyard, and of their own accord my feet led me to the dark cellar where Wolf was slaughtering. At first I couldn’t see a thing, but soon my eyes grew accustomed to the darkness. The cellar was full of blood and feathers and stacked cages filled with live fowl. Wolf stood working next to a washtub brimming with blood. He seized a chicken forcefully and, it seemed to me, with anger. He turned its head back, flicked out a little feather, made a cut, and threw the chicken to a girl in a bloody jacket who plucked feathers. She had a big bosom, thick hands, a broad neck, red cheeks, and eyes as black as cherries. Sitting on a kind of shoemaker’s bench, she plucked with a murderous fury while the bird was still quivering and thrashing about.

  I watched open-mouthed. A moment ago the bird had been alive and a minute later all its feathers were gone. The other birds stuck their heads out of the cages, looked around, clucked, and closed their red lids. How could God see all this and remain silent? I asked myself. Why did He need such a world? Why did He create all this? And who would repay all these little chickens for their suffering? I was angry at Wolf the shochet for committing these murders. I recalled that he came to his wife during her unclean days and felt nauseous.

  A couple of months later Wolf divorced his wife and gave her several hundred rubles. Even before he left for America, he began wearing Western dress in Warsaw, parading around the courtyard in a short jacket, long trousers, and polished boots. From the vest covering his fat paunch dangled the chain of a pocket watch. Word had spread that Wolf was having a love affair with the feather plucker and planned on taking her to America. My mother went to the window and gazed down at the transformed Wolf the shochet, who had abandoned all shame. She wanted Father to come to the window, too, but he said, “What for? It’s a waste of time.”

  Father brought the holy book he was studying closer to him, as if to hide his face from the world and from its lusts and temptations.

  A year passed. The shochet went off to America. His wife moved out of our courtyard. Then one day she sent regards through a neighbor of ours who told us that the shochet’s ex-wife had married a crude and common young butcher. She no longer wore her old-fashioned cap but had donned a curled marriage wig. She stood by the butcher block in a white apron like a born butcher’s wife. My mother listened to our neighbor in silence. A sadness radiated from her pale eyes.

  “Nu, that’s how human beings are,” she observed.

  A GUEST IN THE SHTIBL

  One afternoon a gigantic, broad-shouldered man with a ruddy face, blond beard, and wild eyes entered the shtibl, the small Hasidic prayer room, for the Mincha service. His garb was neither long n
or short. He wore a fur cape and a hooded caftan that looked as though it had been made in the Middle Ages. His boots had broad uppers into which he had tucked his baggy trousers. He removed a tiny siddur from his pocket and began reciting the Order of Sacrifices.

  He prayed with great devotion, but the words he uttered were hard and heavy as stones. People watched him and shrugged. “Who is that?” they asked.

  After prayers the worshippers greeted him with “Sholom aleichem” and asked where he was from.

  “Oh, from far away.”

  “From where?”

  “Russia.”

  “Which town?”

  He named one the Warsaw Hasidim had never heard of.

  “And what’s your name?”

  “Avraham.”

  The way he pronounced “Avraham” made them realize he wasn’t a Jew like other Jews. After several exchanges they discovered that Avraham was a convert. He was a peasant from a remote Russian province who had come to live on this Jewish street in Warsaw, where he was now a tinsmith.

  When asked why he had become a Jew, he cried out, “Because the Jews have the truth!”

  The Jews were amazed. They were even more amazed that he had come to pray in a Hasidic shtibl rather than a regular shul, but everyone was welcoming and friendly to him. When he was called to the Torah for an aliyah—summoned as “Reb Avraham ben Avraham”—the convert touched the Torah with the tzitzis of his tallis, kissed it, and recited the blessing in a deep bass voice that seemed to come from a barrel or a tomb. The younger boys giggled and pinched one another. The Torah reader just managed to contain his laughter by swaying and frowning. Yes, here before us was a Jew, a pious Jew—in the shape and form of a goy.

  Before long the convert began causing trouble. Hasidim habitually talk during prayers, but when the convert heard someone chatting, he turned red and then pale with anger and yelled: “Nu—shh!”

  And put a finger to his lips.

  During the Silent Devotion he stood immersed in prayer for a long time. The prayer leader hadn’t the patience to wait for him to conclude and began the repetition of the Silent Devotion. This caused the convert to miss the Kedusha, which angered him.

  “You’re rushing through the prayers,” he complained. “You’re forgetting that you’re speaking to God.”

  The convert had apparently studied the holy texts and knew the laws, for he asked, “Do you count money so quickly, too? One has to pray like one counts money.”

  The Hasidim conceded that the convert was right, but Hasidim are still not Misnagdim.2 They would apologize to the convert and admit that he was right, but the next day the scene repeated itself. The convert yelled, pounded the table with his heavy fist, and shouted that the Messiah wasn’t coming because the Jews were sinning.

  But the boys had even more problems with him. They all talked during prayers, ran around, pinched one another, and snickered. The convert raised the roof. What annoyed him most was that the youngsters did not say “Blessed be He and blessed be His name” and “Amen” at the proper places. His own resonant “Blessed be He and blessed be His name” and “Amen” shook the walls. His goyish piety awakened in the boys and even in the grownups an irresistible desire to laugh. Even the chazan himself had to laugh into his fist in the middle of his prayers.

  On Yom Kippur the convert did something wild: instead of wearing socks, he stood barefoot. His feet were gigantic and his unusually wide big toes were topped by misshapen toenails. A mere glance at those feet and one couldn’t help laughing. On Yom Kippur night, during the cantor’s Kol Nidrei, the entire congregation was in a paroxysm of laughter. They beat their chests during the “For our sins” prayer and chuckled into their High Holiday prayer books.

  The convert stood with a tallis wrapped over his white linen robe. When he pounded his chest, it echoed throughout the sanctuary, as did his pitiful weeping. His form stood out from all the other tallises and linen robes. He wore a gilded yarmulke that made him look not like a Jew but like one of the saints the gentiles paint on church walls. The Hasidim concluded that they would have to rid themselves of this Ivan—but how? Can Jews drive away a goy who has taken upon himself the yoke of Yiddishkeit? Wasn’t he a tzaddik, a saintly man?

  After the Evening Service the convert did not go home. Instead, he spent the night in the shtibl. All night long he recited psalms. The next morning, before the Torah was taken out of the Ark, the convert made a scene. The trustee began auctioning off the aliyahs to the Torah. Hasidim outbid one another. The trustee chanted, “Six gulden going once, six gulden going twice, six gulden … going … going … six gulden and ten …” As soon as the trustee had called out the last words, the convert screamed at the top of his lungs, “What’s going on here? Money, money, money!”

  He stamped his bare feet, waved his fists, and shouted, “Gulden, gulden, gulden … It’s Yom Kippur! You boors! … You’re sinning! It’s a desecration of God’s name!”

  “Peasant!” someone screeched.

  “A goy remains a goy,” a youngster called out.

  “You’re a goy yourself,” the convert replied. “Yom Kippur is a holy day. The holiest day of the year. God forgives our sins and you’re doing business, business … just like they did in the Holy Temple long ago … That’s why it was destroyed … That’s why the Messiah isn’t coming!”

  And the convert broke into tears—a hoarse, manly weeping that sent a shudder through everyone. The congregants fell silent.

  Then the trustee called out, “We must support our shtibl … We need coal for the winter. We have to pay rent.”

  “On Yom Kippur one is forbidden to do business in the presence of the Torah,” the convert replied.

  “You don’t have to teach us how to be Jews.”

  “It’s forbidden,” he said.

  After a while the Hasidic shtibl got rid of the convert and he went to pray in a study house. But he still caused problems on the street. He preached morality to the prostitutes who stood by the gates. He went to the square where the thieves hung out and delivered a sermon half in Yiddish, half in Russian, showing them where in the Bible the phrase “Do not steal” appeared in the Ten Commandments. Even at that time there were homes on the street where women cooked on the Sabbath, and the convert went there to rebuke them, predicting catastrophes, epidemics, even pogroms. It wasn’t long before the children were tagging after him and teasing him with “Ivan, Ivan, there you go. Ivan, Ivan, stub your toe!”

  But his greatest outrage was reserved for the young girls who wore short-sleeved, low-cut dresses. The convert ran after them, called them wantons and whores; they were sinning, he shouted, and causing others to sin.

  On the street there was a teahouse where boys and girls would gather on the Sabbath to crack pumpkin seeds, flirt, and dance. The proprietor went about with her hair uncovered and would occasionally pour cold water into the urn or surreptitiously push the iron poker into the fire. The convert, seeing what was going on, appointed himself guardian of Sabbath observance. The thieves and hooligans who frequented the place cursed the convert and told him he’d wake up one day with a knife in his back. The girls laughed at him and escorted him out of the teahouse with catcalls.

  The convert complained to Father, rebuking him for not tending to the street. Father justified himself before the convert as if he were one of his own, telling him how little attention today’s generation paid to ethical pronouncements. Father hinted to the convert that he should rather pray, learn to be a Jew, and not try to improve others, for it was wasted effort. But the convert pointed out to Father the verse in the Pentateuch where one is commanded to rebuke one’s fellow man.

  Father agreed, but showed him a law stating that if one knew for certain that one’s moralizing would not be efficacious, and that the next fellow was sinning wantonly and willfully, then one should no longer preach to him. “Everything has its limit,” Father declared.

  “Because of them the Messiah won’t come and we’ll remain in ex
ile forever.”

  “Forever? God forbid!”

  “They’re inviting a new destruction.”

  The convert refused to be consoled. The sinning on the street caused him endless anguish. His pale eyes shone with a non-Jewish bitterness.

  One Sabbath people witnessed another bizarre scene: the convert was being led away, flanked by two police officers. Because it was forbidden in Russia to convert to Judaism, the convert had committed a crime against the regime. Apparently someone had informed on him to the authorities. Or perhaps he had committed another offense. The police closed his workshop, hung a lock on the door, and sealed it.

  Some Jews suggested that they should make inquiries and find a lawyer for the convert, but no one had any money or time for such endeavors. After a while the lock on his door was removed and a soda-water shop opened up. The convert seemed to have vanished. Only now did the people on the street begin to understand what had happened. A goy had sacrificed his life for Yiddishkeit and Jews had mocked him. He was locked up somewhere and no one was making any effort to free him. Some said that the convert had been sent to Siberia. The cheder lads concluded that he had been either hanged or burned at the stake and that his soul had expired with the words “Hear O Israel.” People on the street felt guilty.

  They thought that they would never see the convert again. But not long after the Germans occupied Warsaw during World War I, a youth named Chaim told the following story:

  Walking along Dluga Street one day he felt hungry. He saw a shop with Hebrew lettering. A young man stood in the doorway and asked Chaim, “You’re hungry, eh? Then come in.”

  Chaim entered. He was served a bowl of grits and a heel of a bread. Other young men sat at a long table. After the meal a bareheaded Jew with the beard of a teacher and the gold-rimmed glasses of a rich man entered and began preaching: The true Messiah had already come and his name was Jesus of Nazareth. This Jew then talked about the little lamb, the paschal sacrifice, and Isaiah’s prophecy that a virgin would become pregnant and give birth to a son. He explained the difficult verse in Psalms 2:12 by saying that it meant: kiss God’s son.