by Rena Rossner
I must fall asleep at some point because the next thing I know, I’m dreaming of darkness. There is a black mist winding its way through the trees, creeping along the earth. Everything it touches turns black as tar and then withers, shrinking in upon itself. The mist creeps its way from the edge of the forest, down the stone-strewn muddy streets of town, up the street that runs through the Jewish quarter of Trnava, and through the cracks in the wall of our house. It feels like the darkness is coming for me.
As it starts to drift its way through the window, I sit up in bed and conjure a flame. I’m awake now and fully conscious of the fact that it’s Shabbat and I’ve set fire to my bed. I frantically try to put it out, but before I manage to smother it with a blanket, it rises up and takes the thin shape of a serpent, then slithers up from my bed and out the window. It chases the mist, which shrinks back into itself and goes away. I get up and look out the window—but there’s nothing there. I rub my eyes and keep staring, looking for the light snake and wondering if it was only a dream.
Levana
While my sisters are in the kitchen with Eema and Nagmama, I connect the stars. It’s a game I like to play. My eyes trace the shapes the stars make as they emerge.
Halfway through the meal, I pretend to fall asleep on the bench under the window. Now that everyone’s cleared out of the room, I’m free to open my eyes and stare up at the sky.
Nothing gets in the way of the stars—not the Šenkvický wood, nor the long wall around Trnava—not even the four church spires in our town. The stars shine as brightly in the Judengasse—the Jewish quarter, as they do anywhere else in our town.
Even if I could light candles the way my sisters do, I prefer the fire that shines in the stars. Inside our home, Shabbat is a day of rest, but outside, the stars don’t sleep. I feel them, shining bright like pinpricks on my skin. They want to be seen—like me. They want me to see them—I do. They have things to tell me.
I listen.
Today is an auspicious day. Sarah is bat mitzvah, and the skies are more restless than usual. She conjured flame and transferred it, but there are flames in the sky she doesn’t see.
I trace them now again—the arcs they make. One star leads to another, and another. Left, then right, and around in a curve that splits in three.
Three stars. Three sisters. Three paths light the sky.
The stars don’t lie. They change with the seasons, but they tell the truth.
Eema sits down next to me. She runs her hand softly through my hair. “What do you see out there, little one?” she says.
I am not little, I want to say. “Just stars,” I say instead.
“We are a nation of twinkling stars. Have you ever tried to count them?” Eema says.
I shake my head no.
“Hashem told Abraham to count the stars. He made him a promise that his children would number as many as the stars. Do you know the story?”
I shake my head.
“Come.” Eema gets comfortable.
I curl up on the bench and place my head in her lap.
The night that Abraham was born, a star fell from the sky. “It’s an omen,” everyone said. “Look how it swallowed all the stars in its path—this child will devour nations.”
Abraham’s father, Terach, said it was nonsense, that stars fall every night. But one of his guests went to tell King Nimrod how a star rose in the east, darted across the heavens, and swallowed all the stars in its path.
“What does it mean?” Nimrod asked.
“It means this star will conquer time. It will destroy your empire. You must kill the child so the prophecy will not come true,” his advisors told him.
Nimrod gave Terach three days to bring the child to him.
Terach told his wife, whose name was Amsalai, for she too was born of the heavens.
“I will not allow the king to kill our son,” she said. “Take another child and offer it to the king in his place. He will not know the difference, and I will take our son into a cave and go into hiding until there is a new king who knows not of this prophecy.”
So Terach took an ill child from the village and brought it to Nimrod, and the king killed the baby with his bare hands.
Amsalai took Abraham to a cave in a forest.
Terach visited his wife and son often, and when Abraham was ten years old, they let him out of the cave.
But Abraham had not been raised among the other children of the village, so he did not believe in their gods.
“It is clear to me,” Abraham said, “that the only things worth worshiping are the bodies that bring light into our world—the sun, the moon, and the stars. But who put the light into the sky? Perhaps that is who we should worship.”
Abraham asked his father this, and Terach told Abraham to ask the idols.
But when Abraham asked them, they had no answer, for they did not speak.
When Abraham asked his mother the same question, she told him everything he needed was already in his grasp—there was no need to look to the stars for answers.
But Abraham spent all his time looking at the sky, trying to read what was written on the face of the moon and the stars.
“Like me,” I say to Eema.
“Yes, just like you, my love,” she says, and kisses the top of my head.
But one day Abraham broke all the idols in his father’s shop, she continues. When he was blamed, Abraham said, “The largest idol devoured all the smaller ones.”
The news that he’d broken all the idols reached the king, and Abraham was summoned. The king demanded to know who broke the idols.
“I did,” Abraham admitted. “Because they have no sense.”
Nimrod said, “Then you should worship fire.”
“Water can put out fire,” Abraham said.
“Then you should worship water,” the king replied.
“Water disappears into the clouds,” Abraham said. “And wind can blow clouds away, but when the wind blows, the stars stay fixed in the sky.”
The court magician realized what had happened.
“You are the star-child!” he said.
“Is it true?” King Nimrod asked. “If so, cast him into the fire.”
And so they put Abraham into a fiery furnace.
But Abraham was not consumed.
King Nimrod was scared. He said he would bow down to Abraham, for clearly his god was stronger.
But Abraham said, “Do not bow down to me: worship the god who created the sun and the moon and the stars. For it is His glory that lights the heavens.”
“You are my star-child,” Eema says, kissing the top of my head again. “But never forget who it was that made the stars. Come, it’s time for bed.”
She reaches her hand out for mine. Reluctantly, I follow her. She tucks me into my small feather bed under the window in the room I share with my sisters.
I want to tell her what I see in the stars. All is not well. All will not be well. There are stars falling every night and I know something is coming, something is about to happen that will split the shining star that is our family.
I’m scared, but it doesn’t stop me from looking at the stars. I keep hoping they will tell me more, that I will look at them and see something different. But I don’t.
Eema starts to sing the Sh’ma—“Hear O Israel, the Lord our God, the Lord is One,” I repeat after her.
May the angel who redeems me from harm bless the children and call them by My name and by the names of My forefathers, Abraham and Isaac, and may they multiply like fish in the midst of the earth.
I think about Abraham and the stars as I drift off. I am not a bat mitzvah like Sarah is, not yet a woman like Hannah. I am only me, Levana, Reb Isaac’s youngest daughter—still a child, or so they say, and so I stay silent. No one else sees what’s coming. No one wants to hear the story I have to tell.
Hannah
7 Nisan 5119
I went outside as soon as Shabbat was over and counted three stars in the sky. I said the right prayer—Ble
ssed is He who separates light from darkness—even though I know Abba prefers we say Havdallah with him, when he comes home from synagogue. But the garden had waited untended since sundown on Friday, and it called to me like a dog might bark for attention from its owner. It’s Eema’s garden, and it was Nagmama’s before that, but now it feels like it’s mine in a way that was never theirs.
I am connected to this land, to the earth. There is restlessness here—the soil shifts uneasily. It grows darker each day. Lately, I can’t drown out the sounds of the garden—the pops plants make when they burst through soil, the sound of leaves unfurling to light and freedom. I’m only able to silence the hum when I’m outside—my toes curled in the soil and my hands touching the red shoots of the dogwood and the green shoots of horehound, when purple flowers curl around my fingers at my command.
I hear Abba’s sonorous voice in my head: “Lest you should say in your heart—my power and the might of my hand did this wondrous thing.” I know it is not me who controls what grows—it is God, the Borei Olam—father of all living things. My hands channel His will. That’s what Abba would say. Still. Out in the garden, where every green thing responds to my touch, it is hard to think that it’s all divine energy.
I need to start documenting what I see. Eema writes down the recipes for her poultices and remedies, she writes down the stories she tells. Abba writes down everything lately as well—and I’ve become his scribe. It’s time for me to write down my own observations, but there is no room in a spellbook or a holy book for a young woman’s thoughts.
These are the things I know:
Our house sits at the edge of town in the Jewish section of Trnava.
Four gates and thirty-six towers make up the brick wall that surrounds the city—the Malženická gate is not far from our house and it leads to a road that takes you to the Šenkvický forest and the mountains, and eventually all the way to the kingdom of Poland.
I was a baby when we came here, to Trnava, and I’ve never left our town.
Though it’s large, and the brick wall and her guardians keep us safe, sometimes I want nothing more than to walk beyond the gate, to keep walking and never stop.
That’s also a fact, but perhaps it doesn’t belong in this list.
Still, lately I can’t help but think—There must be more to see out in the world than this village. Maybe these things are happening elsewhere too. I don’t know if it’s my own mind speaking, or the whisper of a trail I should follow.
Abba has been traveling more often lately to consult with the other Solomonar families in neighboring towns, Reb David Ben Zakkai in Nitra, Reb Daniel Bezalel in Bratislava. My father himself was born and raised in Vienna—a place I only dream of seeing one day.
The last few times he traveled, I wondered if he’d come back with a name—a son of one of these illustrious families who he’d hand-picked to be my groom, someone steeped in the Solomonar tradition. But he never did, and he’s never offered to take me with him. Perhaps my future is not the purpose of his visits. But that makes me want to know what is.
I know everything happens for a reason, every blade of grass has an angel that tells it to grow. But can’t he take me with him just once?
I also know that as quickly as King Béla granted free market privileges to our town, which he calls Nagyszombat—named for the very market that gives us so much freedom—those rights could be taken away again. Maybe that’s the reason Abba doesn’t take me with him. It’s not safe. Our town’s charter and protection could be revoked in an instant, and we, the Jews, could be cast out and set to wander again.
“The Jew is always a wandering star,” my mother always says, but her stories don’t offer me comfort anymore. They make me nervous. Because as much as I’d like to travel, I don’t want to be a wandering Jew.
Every green thing in my garden has taught me that laying down roots is the most important thing we can do—it is only when we have roots that we can grow.
It’s only when I’m out here in the garden that I feel a modicum of control.
Out here, there are rules.
Out here, if anything winds beyond the confines of the garden, I tame it back. Nothing wanders unless I tell it to.
But lately, the wild strawberry vines follow me. They reach tendrils laden with plump red fruit in the direction of my bedroom window. This is also contributing to the wrongness I feel.
I could tame it back, but some things need to be allowed to grow free.
Back to my list:
Trnava is a big town—our market is one of the largest in the kingdom of Hungary, but the Jewish section of the town is small. “Man cannot live on bread alone,” Abba always says, but that doesn’t stop Dina and her husband Samuel from having the most popular bakery stall in the market. They light the ovens on Fridays and keep them burning all through Shabbat, so they can employ non-Jews to sell their wares on Saturdays.
I wonder if Abba will suggest a match with one of their sons. Their family is large and strong, their sons study at the yeshiva. But most of their boys are too busy helping at the bakery to take their studies seriously. So perhaps not.
My mind spins in circles all the time. What type of man do I want to marry? What type of life do I want to lead? A choice in one direction or another will set the course for the rest of my life. Like the Trnávka river, I want to know beyond a shadow of a doubt which way my life will flow.
What if I married someone who has the power to choose which way a river flowed (like Abba)? What if together we could chart our own course?
But these thoughts feel too big for the small life I lead, and I’ve digressed from my list again.
Maybe it’s better this way. Flowers don’t get to choose when they bloom—they depend on so many factors—the sun, the water, the soil they root themselves in.
Melech and Chaim Ben Yanai grin at me in the market like they’d smile at anyone. Even a flower. How much of what I feel is in my imagination?
Now that Sarah is a bat mitzvah, my future feels like an untamed vine.
Despite the fact that we believe that everything has a purpose and an order to it, as Jews we still dig our toes into the soil cautiously, silently, waiting and watching for the next storm to come and uproot us. A weed can be pulled out on a whim.
But all these thoughts are too heavy for a bright moonlit Saturday night, so perhaps I will stop here. Maybe if I read tomorrow what I wrote today, something will make sense.
It’s always after Shabbat that I feel the heaviest.
I’ll finish my list with some observations:
The anise flowers fanned their white bouquets at my touch tonight and seemed to glow more brightly, but their roots are tinged with gray. I gently pressed my fingers to the soil and watched the gray drift away.
The purple puffs of angelica felt like they leaned into me—but something is growing on the underside of their leaves. I stroked the leaves softly and the black spots disappeared.
The borage trembled. I reached my fingers to reassure their slightly fuzzy stalks and sent them warmth.
Sage leaves pressed their soft skin against my ankles.
Leaves of rue twined themselves around my fingers.
And strangest of all, the dill, lovage and hyssop were tangled. Everything vying for my attention.
It’s not much to go on, I know. Perhaps these are all just the musings of a young girl. Perhaps it means nothing. But something’s definitely wrong.
I heard something and got up to investigate. I stared out the window at the road that leads to the Dolna gate and eventually to Bohemia.
First, I saw a dot of movement on the horizon. I held my breath and made a wish. I continued to watch, and as the figure in the distance made its way in my direction I saw it was only Abba, walking home from synagogue.
I’ll draw the black spots I saw on the rose stems and the angelica leaves. That way, if they’re not back tomorrow, I’ll have proof.
It is unlike any blight I’ve ever seen.
From Osterreich to Trnava, I have traveled and found many communities where there are not even two or three men or women who know our ways and customs, so I have had to rely on neighboring communities for assistance. I am but a young man, but I have learned from my father and teachers, men like Rabbi Moshe HaLevi, may his lamp shine, and Reb Abraham Klausner, may his memory be for a blessing. One moment he was guiding his community with light, and the next moment he was gone, and they knew not how to behave. So I must record what we must say on the night of Simchat Torah, what holidays may fall during the seven days of wedding celebrations, and what to read on weeks where there are double chapters of Torah verse to read. Customs are uprooting laws everywhere, even in some cases when dealing with law mandated from the Torah itself.
I begin in the month of Nisan, for it is in that month that the world was created. I have done all of this not for my own honor, only for mankind so that they might know our ways and I might be a lamp that shines for them—a holy guide. May God bless this endeavor and may we see an end to suffering speedily in our days. Amen.
—The Book of the Solomonars, preface
The night the Black Mist first came to the Satu Mare forest, no one saw the small flame that slipped outside a bedroom window and roared at it like a dragon, chasing it all the way back to the tree line, keeping the darkness at bay.