The Rabbi Who Tricked Stalin

by Mordechai Landsberg

It was Sabbath evening. Rabbi Aaron held his six years old son by the reins, leading him along the sidewalk. They were walking toward the main synagogue. There the Rabbi would teach Talmud to ten men, who liked to study the debates of the Wise Men about the Torah’s commandments, and the nice legends. His study class had become known to the last thousand or so - true God believers in Minsk, most of them elders. From time to time these lessons would attract even twenty men.

  The boy was trying to walk straight, though he crouched two or three times. Then His father would bend, and embrace his chest from behind, so that his balance would not break. His gaze was concentrated permanently on the kid’s moves, and Raf’l was laughing at his strict care, while he intentionally dropped his shoes into a rain’s pool.

  Suddenly the boy stopped to entertain himself.

  “Look there, Papa,” he said, moving his head aside, “On the right. I see a woman with a grey coat having a collar fur. She was used to come to us, when I was a little boy.”

  “She couldn’t be Natalya,” mumbled Rabbi Aaron. He pulled his kid by the rein to slow his attempt to step forward in a speed.

  “It’s impossible,” he said, as talking to himself, “that so soon…”

  “I tell you that she is there, what was her name?”

  “Natalya. She wrote letters to me.” The Rabbi thought, that if the Minsk Gepau Head- Antonov – had seen her, he won’t have believed, and then curse Menzhinsky.

  They were close to the Community’s Kitchen for elder Jews. It had still povided some boiled and cooked beans, and cabbage or potato soup - to very poor and old community members. Natalya remembered about its existance, and now she was standing in a line of five people, who were waiting to enter the old hut of ‘cabbage and rye bread restaurant,’ as it was called.

  Natalya disappeared from the sight of Aaron and his son, as she entered there. She soon got some plate with hard cabbage, which she tried to chew by her teeth (two of them had been uprooted by the Gepau, while being tortured in her investigation).

  She was seated alone at a crouched table, and the ‘inspector- cooker-waiter’ approached her. He asked what was her name, and if she had been Jewish and living in town. She told him the truth about her release from Siberia.

  “You should be registered,” he said, “in Rabbi Haneles’office”

  She said, “I’ll pay, if you insist on that.”

  He shook his head: “You’ll get your menu this time.”

  At that moment Aaron and his son walked in.

  Natalya saw them, and was aware that it was not the right place for her to demonstrate excitement and enjoyment, nor kiss him publicly; ‘but the boy is so sweet,’ she said to herself, ‘and religion would not prohibit me to express my love to him.’

  She looked at the Rabbi and his son, and murmured: ‘Oh, two familiar friends.’ Tears streamed on her cheeks. She was bending toward Rabbi Aaron, and said to the boy: “Yes, it’s me, Natalya. D’you remember me?”

  Aaron’s eyes were also wet, and he let the boy approach her and she caressed his hair, then bent and began kissing his cheeks again and again, saying: ‘Oh, how grown up you’ve become, Raf’l. You’re a grown up. I’ve seen you three years.”

  Rabbi Aaron invited Natalya to his home, telling her that she would surely be hosted at night by Blooma. On their way they were talking a lot, while walking slowly. They were following the short steps of the boy, who tried to demonstrate his ability to run forward like in a gallop. He was clicking with his tongue, making a noise of heeves. From time to time his father would stop him by pulling the reins and let him turn back, to look at the guest with curiousity.

  “A long time you’ve not seen us,” told her Rabbi Aaron, “but not much has changed here, you see.”

  “Yes, though Raphael has changed. And you yourself, I presume. Like you have written to me.”

  “Your letters were quite funny,” he said, “and some sentences had been an entertainment. Excuse me for telling that now.”

  “How could you think like that?” she protested, “I stand to back every word that I’ve written . I’ve meant it.”

  “You have shown bravery of a real Jewish woman. But … do you still think, that you can learn how to keep all our religious commitments to God?”.

  “Of course,” she said, “I know, that you have doubts about that. Therefore you have shortened your last letters to me. Isn’t it so?”

  “Yes,” he said, “It was wise of you to discover that. But let’s not talk any more about that now.” He pointed on the boy.

  “God helped me to return from the frost, and I see it as a miracle. Maybe you know - who has appealed for me to Gepau?”

  “I can guess,” he half lied, “that it had been some combination of circumstances. You were condemned for helping Trotsky. Now he was drivn out of Russia.”

  “Oh, I know that. They typed important news on our announcements pillar. Of course we were told about Stalin’s Five years Plan, you know.”

  Then they talked about the woman, who replaced her in her Welfare Office. Rabbi told Natalya that the new woman there was a pure beaurocrat without a heart. She seemed like intentionally delaying the support payments to him. “She is not at all like you, Natalya. We won’t find anybody like you in the whole Soviert Union. Threfore you suffer. But that’s from God, you know. He tempts us, like he had done along the Jewish history.”

  “I know,” she said, “without Him - I could not have stood in those hard conditions. Three women there had died before my eyes in that cursed camp of ice.”

  “That you have reached such a degree of belief. . .is in itself very important,” he said. “To me - the Russian communists are the worst people in the world, because they deny God’s Existance. God likes better all the Christians or Muslims. At least they recognize in Him, pray to Him, and …Perhaps the communists kill us, Jews, less than others- but that should not delude us. They kill our belief, and are not messengers of Messiah. . .I know that in the past - you had thought differently, Natalya.”

  They arrived at his home, but went first to Blooma, who was busy in feeding her little one. She was very pleased to see Natalya, and the two women were kissing each other for long. She agreed that for the coming nights Natalya would stay with her; in daytime she would have many arrangements, she said, and Rabbi Aaron would help her as much as posssible.

  Next morning, Rabbi was feeding Raphael as usual, then brought him to Blooma’s hut, where Natalya had a good sleep at night. She rose up quickly and went with Rabbi Aaron to the public park nearby; though she lied to Blooma that she would be going straight to see her old office.

  “Let’s talk now very frankly- about our relationship”, Natalya told Rabbi Aaron, and he agreed. He restrained himself not to kiss her immediately, when she gave him her hand on their way to the neighboring city park.

  She told him: “You don’t have to fear, Aaron. Nobody would discern us there. We will be surrounded by the oak trees. Nobody would enjoy strolling in that garden in such a cold early morning hour.”

  Even when they were seated on a bench in an enclosed area, Rabbi Aaron still tried to avoid touching her. He preferred to talk about ‘practical religion matters’- as he said:

  “What you will have to learn, Natalya, is not easy. Perhaps you think about it as a shortened studying course, like the communists do with Lenin’s or Mark’s stupid theories… I mean, in our religion there are very precise and strict instructions of behaviour, and commandments what you are allowed to do or not do in daily life. These are not only Kosher food, or not mixing meat with milk, or keeping Sabbath and Holidays ceremonies, and so on. It is a long list that you have to learn and practice… Madmoiselle Natalya, so you had called yourself once, and I remember… You have to discontact from airy dreams, that you were having- while being in exile.”

  She was mainly listening to him, nodding by her head, meaning that she had well understood
his ‘private harangue’ to her. But it seemed that soon the Rabbi himself had become tired from his words. Or he suddenly felt unable to restrain his lust to touch her body and feel her very close to him.

  “Let’s return home,” he said, and knew she would be happy to do that. They soon went toward his hut, hardly talking, but looking at each other. Natalya was with this remarkable man, feeling her limbs like bubbling with a strange ‘happiness of the one who God had rescued,’ as she reflected..

  When they entered the hut she quickly took off her coat, and was looking at Aaron’s moves. He went to the dim bedroom. He had not lit the lamp, while the windows were still closed; but he put fire in the bedroom’s bricked fireplace.

  She was close to him and saw his bewilderness. He stood like helpless, while she began to undress. They were near the bed at the wall, that was covered with a white sheet and a thick blanket. She knew it was his bed. In the corner of that room was his late wife’s bed, covered with some pink colored rug. Natalya guessed that Aaron had not touched it for a long time, and perhaps it had become very dusty. Though she had heard once, that religious Jews shake out their bed covers and mattresses before Passover, according to the tradition of that Holiday’s neatness.

  He saw her vague figure and walked like blind to her nakedness and embraced her body. They kissed and halted for looking at each other very closely, then continued and kissed again and again. She threw her shirt on the floor and began to undress him, removing his white shirt and underwear. He saw now that she had no bra at all, and while looking at her breasts, he whispered: “Pomegranates in their shape - had been hanging on the Temple’s pillars in Jerusalem.” He kissed them lightly and laid her on his bed and she felt that his eyes were still surveying all her limbs. She advanced her left arm to his face and led his fingers to touch the rough skin there, telling him:

  “The Gepaus scorched me by a burned iron rod, as a sign of punishment. It had been already in the camp. We tried a fasting strike for their bad food. Then they improved it…”

  “I am still hesitating. . . with you,” he murmured, “a fire is set inside my body, but my soul cries, that maybe it’s not proper that we...”

  “God is merciful,” she whispered, “You have long years behaved like a monk, haven’t you?”

  “You are right. And our Torah warns against it. Moses- as well as our Wise Rabbies, warned us against living without a woman, which is opposite to human’s nature.”

  “You are just a normal male,” she said. “Come inside me, and feel my love, get into my warm hiding place. You will feel like surfing over the cursed land on which God has planted us.”

  “You were a man’s wife, though not officially married,” he suddenly said, “I had a problem with that, and sent my question to a famous Rabbi. He told me to think about your relationship with Elya - as if he had raped you, so…”

  “It had really been so for long. A woman’s nasty and erroneous relationship - with the wrong man…it brings a kind of forced intercourse. In many times she finds out all that quite late.”

  “When I was younger, a good natured Rabbi had told me: ‘Had not God wanted the flesh enjoyment, he would not have created a woman with so many pretty and rounded and colored limbs, that would attract a man.”

  “We, women - differ from you, men, by our cognition,” she said, “what is beautiful and pretty or ugly and bad-looking. At least - regarding human beings. . .Surely - animals have a sense of beauty too... Oh, I’m talking just to let the time elapse.”

  He closed his eyes and they were kissing again and he licked her hands and legs with his lips. His beard was just moving on her skin with them, and causing her to giggle.

  “an idea has just blicked in my mind.” Aaron said, “As it was doubtful – from the point of view of our Rabbies, if you would now be Kosher for a religious man like me…I have found in some Rabbi’s writing – a curious solution to my problem: With a concubine - a man is allowed to lie - even if he knows nothing about her marital situation. So, will you be my concubine, Natalya?”

  She nodded and kissed him ‘for your engagement in Talmudistic argumentation,’ she said... He tried to restrain himself from showing a storm of passions, and thought it would be the ‘devil’s win’ if his penetration comes all of a sudden. Though maybe she would wish it to be like that... Then Natalya was wrapped by a feeling of surfing and a kind good unconsciousness, and his bliss‘ moans were mixing with hers, and they did not know for how long they had been chained to each other…

  Then reality was creeping again into the white bed, and naked Rabbi Aaron slipped out of it. She knew he was embarrased, while he rushed to the front door, afraid that he had heard a knock. He came back and gathered his dress, after covering her with a sheet that he pulled out from the wardrobe drawer. That wardrobe reminded him his wife- and he told Natalya that he had given his wife’s dresses for the community’s donations collectors – a year after Esther’s death.

  “Oh, dear Aaron,” said Natalya, “Is there any benefit, in recollecting the remote past? Let’s turn our faces to the future.”

  Soon they both got dressed, and Aaron asked if she had thought about getting back a job in the Welfare Department.

  “I think,” he said, “that you can go to Elya and ask his help. I’ve heard that he had become the Komsomol leader in the district.”

  “Who knows if he would like to use his power to press the welfare ministrerium here.”

  “He has a big influence over everything going on,” said the Rabbi, still hiding from her that the whole story of her release would not have been possible without Elya’s connections…

  Elya Ruhin himself had not known about the results of Rabbi’s travel to the Kremlin. Rabbi Aaron was really asked by him what the leader had decided. He answered: “You understand, Elya, that he had no patience for me, and turned my case to the Gepau Head Menzhinsky. He did not promise me anything, but his assistant just said: Your case would take a long time. Temporary decision: ‘Niet’. So, I thank you again- Elya- whatever happens.”

  Rabbi had not mentioned to Elya about his request from Gepau’s Head about Natalya. He hoped that nobody would tell it to him…

  At night Rabbi Aaron felt remorse. It was his big sin, being seduced to lie with a woman, that had been living long years with his ex-friend: ‘God watches every step of a man. He would not forgive me- if I am repeatedly so seduced. I’ve to tell something to Elya…’

  CHAPTER 29