The lumber merchant invited an architect from Lodz, and using only the finest oak for beams and the most graceful birch and maple for planking, he constructed at the marketplace a majestic building in which three hundred Jews with all their shuffling and rocking could pray comfortably—and in the very latest fashion there was an airy balcony for a hundred women. The brass fittings glowed with rich brilliance, and the massive chandelier held over two hundred candles and provided so much light that if it were lit during the day no one praying anywhere in the synagogue would know when the sun set. The holiest scribes in Warsaw wrote the synagogue’s holy Torah. Next to the holy ark, he had a massive chair built of specially matched pieces of walnut. It was as if God himself had grown a tree in the shape of a chair. This was to be the Krimsker Rebbe’s throne. The donor, in what he was sure was overwhelming modesty, planned to occupy a more modest chair on the eastern wall where the notables sat, closest to Jerusalem.
The week that the building was finished, the merchant went to the dilapidated small study hall. When the rebbe presided over his table, the merchant assumed his usual seat by the door. The third meal of the Sabbath went late into the night. When it ended, the merchant rose from his place on the simple bench and invited the rebbe to accept the newly built synagogue as his own, even to name it whatever he wished. The hasidim glowed with pride and pleasure. All eyes turned to the rebbe. The rebbe thanked him kindly, but said that he must refuse. Stunned, the merchant stood with his mouth softly opening and closing like a fish; there were those who said that his eyes began to roll. He fell back down onto the bench, and if Yonkel the tailor had not caught him he would have tumbled over backward into the corner.
The merchant recovered and jumped to his feet. “Is it a sin to build a synagogue?” he demanded. “No,” the rebbe answered. “Then why in heaven’s name won’t you accept it?” The rebbe paused, and then said very precisely, “The Talmud teaches us that a man should not enter a synagogue alone, for that is where the Angel of Death stores his tools.” “Alone? Alone?” the merchant mocked. “I’ll bring in half the province.” And he did, too. Half the province and almost all of Krimsk were present on the inaugural Sabbath; the donor stood blessing the Torah when the great chandelier fell from the ceiling and killed him. From then on, it was a ghost synagogue—except for Reb Zelig, all feared to enter. The town referred to the synagogue simply as the Angel of Death.
That’s a rebbe! Boruch Levi reflected. No doubt the rebbe could glance at his horse and tell him Thunder’s secret. But what hope did Boruch Levi have of speaking to the rebbe when not even the tsar himself could get in to see him? Boruch Levi begrudgingly admired the egalitarian ethic that equated him to the tsar of all the Russians, but it didn’t solve his problem, and Boruch Levi was one to solve problems. Thunder’s lightning message ceased, and his owner realized that his horse had stopped. Boruch Levi looked up to find himself at the final fork before Krimsk. The horse certainly knew the way, and there was no reason for him to hesitate. To the right lay Krimsk; to the left lay the peasant settlement of Krimichak—and—“Grannie Zara!” said Boruch Levi aloud, and as he did so his horse cut a fart like a cannon.
“Thunder, my boy, you should live and be well!” Boruch Levi called as he snapped him into a trot in the direction of the cat lady of Krimichak. Boruch Levi knew that he was on the right path now. Grannie Zara possessed dark powers. The Krimsker Rebbe had forbidden such visits, but not one pregnant woman dared not visit Grannie Zara lest the baby fall from her womb long before its time, or worse, lest she give birth to a cat. All the Jewish women went except for the rebbetzin, and she would have gone, too, had she not had her Minsker nose tilted high in Krimsk. In the distance Boruch Levi saw a wobbling black line inching toward him. Good, he thought, a funeral; Grannie Zara is sure to be alone in her hut. As he drew closer to the procession, he could make out the red-faced priest at its head, staff in hand. The staff played rhythmically across the wobbling creature’s path like the single antenna of a soft, crippled insect that carried death inside. To avoid kicking up hot, heavy dust, Boruch parked under a leafy tree by the roadside. When the procession finally reached him, he stood and removed his cloth cap. The funeral was different from the usual one. Behind the priest no family wailed and sobbed, yet everyone in the entire procession marched distressed, quiet, and fearful. Staring fitfully about, anxious eyes acknowledged the bareheaded Jew, and he respectfully nodded. As the corpse passed the wagon, Thunder fired a parting salute. Dizzy, Boruch Levi sat down. Wotek, the herdsman, turned aside from the tail of the procession.
“That’s how it is, friend. A man dies and a horse farts—even for a witch.”
Boruch Levi nodded blindly.
“A witch for sure,” Wotek said. “The cats camped on the body and wouldn’t let anyone come close. They had to drive them off with torches.”
The peasant turned back to the procession. Boruch Levi, not knowing where to turn, just sat, but his horse continued toward Krimsk, gently loosing piffle farts all along the way.
CHAPTER THREE
SQUIRMING IN DISCOMFORT, REB BERYL SOFFER SAT behind the large hardwood desk in his magisterial office. He felt the treacly, clutching, sweaty grasp of his collar in the summer heat and was tempted to remove his jacket just this one time. Heat or no heat, however, today was a business day, and the master of Soffer and Company would not succumb. Still, he was only human, even if he did own one of the greatest match factories in the province. True, Reb Beryl wasn’t unchallenged as Volhynia’s match king. And the challenge came from his own former assistant, Yitzhak Weinbach, who had founded the rival firm of Weinbach and Company. Unlike Reb Beryl, “Mr. Weinbach” resented being called “Reb Yitzhak” in the warm, personal Yiddish idiom with which Krimsk’s Jews had bestowed honor upon one another for generations; rejecting the genteel tradition for the modern, secular world, Yitzhak preferred the cold, impersonal “mister.”
Whatever Reb Beryl called him, Yitzhak Weinbach was a bright young man, and very ambitious, too. Reb Yitzhak had already offered twice in the past year to buy Beryl out. Reb Beryl had no doubt that Yitzhak could do it, too, although the devil only knew where he could raise that kind of capital; but Mr. Weinbach—he said the name more in sorrow than in bitterness—would certainly do it if he said he could. Reb Beryl admired bright young men; once Reb Beryl had been one himself, but Reb Beryl had known enough to keep his jacket on, and Reb Yitzhak didn’t. No, on very hot days he would strip down to his undershirt—like a wagon driver. Reb Beryl kept his shirt, tie, and jacket on like the governor, a duke, or even better like a rebbe, except for the fact that a rebbe doesn’t wear a tie, but if he did he clearly would never take it off, and that was the point. Reb Beryl might not know how to learn a folio of Talmud, but he could make a point. There were those who dressed like leaders, and there were those who didn’t.
It was as simple as that, and the world knew the difference, too. In the bathhouse on Sabbath Eve who could tell Rothschild from a wagon driver? The butchers were, maybe, a little stronger; the yeshivah students were, maybe, a little paler. Nicholas II himself might pass for a tailor in the Krimsk bathhouse, provided the tsar was circumcised, of course. In fact, nobody looked better in the altogether than the Angel of Death’s beadle, Zelig. Zelig stood straight, moved without the afflicting self-consciousness of his body’s shame. No more concerned about exposing his genitalia than his earlobes. Not that Reb Beryl was preoccupied with such things, but it was striking the way such a bearded Jew strolled about the bathhouse like a Cossack. Of course, Zelig didn’t seem to let the evil eye bother him anywhere. How else could he serve as a beadle in the Angel of Death synagogue without congregants? How else could he arise with alacrity, plunge into the ritual bath—on the bitterest freezing days —and scurry to open the great wooden doors when he knew that no one was coming to pray? Only his footsteps would echo off the hard, reflecting varnish of emptiness. Reb Zelig would soothe tempers, but there were none. He could keep honest accounts, but
there were no numbers. He treated everyone with kindness and warmth, but even the poor would not go inside. For all the good he did the Jews, Reb Zelig might be a gypsy strumming a mandolin.
Staring off into the summer heat looking for a gypsy, Reb Beryl turned his thoughts back to the matter at hand. He, Beryl Soffer, was going to secure the contract to provide Nicholas II’s armies west of Minsk with enough matches to burn down half of Russia. Wasn’t he the match king of Volhynia? Yes, yes, but the dark shadow of Yitzhak Weinbach crept across his cushioned throne. It suddenly seemed very hot in the office of Soffer and Company. But not hot enough to remove his jacket or loosen his collar. An itch came welling up to plague his bottom like the insidious challenge of his former employee. As Reb Beryl scratched, he had the itch of an idea. The general of the Quartermaster Corps should be made to understand that it was in the Holy Tsar’s interest to deal with a conservative loyalist—that is to say, the match king—rather than with a grasping pretender, an upstart with no respect for tradition. A man who flings off his jacket at the slightest discomfort and plunges into things with a brazen rashness—almost, God forbid, a revolutionary fervor. Not a Communist, but perhaps a social revolutionary. Or at least the tsar’s army might think so.
Reb Beryl, like any good conspirator, loosened his tie. Could he do such a thing? Say such a thing about a fellow Jew? If only he had his rebbe to talk to; but his rebbe wasn’t speaking to anyone. Reb Beryl would be in the beis midrash tonight for Tisha B’Av, but the Krimsker Rebbe wouldn’t. Why did that holy man have to punish the Jews, too? Didn’t God and the goyim do enough between them? That was the story of Tisha B’Av. Reb Beryl wondered if the Jews were so much worse than everyone else. Immediately he was ashamed: to have compared his people, who were His people, to “them,” the gentiles, who belonged to those ugly little wooden statues, blocky, dry, and dwarfish, that they were forever parading through the unpaved streets with such violent reverence. The Jews flew from the marketplace faster than a beggar stuffs himself at a wedding. Of course, blockheads or not, they did own Krimsk, Volhynia, Russia, and all of Europe. The Jews once had a land, but that was lost on Tisha B’Av, along with the holy Temple. Now the Jews had the World to Come, where Reb Beryl couldn’t conceive of the angels needing matches. Here, in this world, the owners needed tons of them—if only the tsar would give him, the worthiest recipient, the man of jacket and collar and loyalty beyond question, the contract.
CHAPTER FOUR
MANY THINGS BOTHERED YECHIELKATZMAN, THE talented young talmudist, as he followed the dusty path that morning from the study hall to Reb Gedaliah’s house, where he had promised to teach the primary class. Had the pious Reb Gedaliah the least hint of the heretical notions flooding Yechiel’s head beneath his black scholar’s skullcap and long side curls, he never would have permitted him near his young charges. Yechiel had been his prize pupil—favorite one, too. The young man—only eighteen years old—already far surpassed Reb Gedaliah in his knowledge, not to mention his overwhelming intellectual acumen. Honest and conscientious, Reb Gedaliah felt no pangs of conscience when he left his students with Reb Yechiel. Yechiel, he believed, would one day become a great communal rabbi or even a Rosh Yeshivah, dean of one of the great talmudic academies. He had a brilliant future.
As luminous as his future might be, however, it did not illuminate the present, for he had just come in from the brilliant morning sunlight; he blinked as his eyes fought to adjust to the heavy shadows that did nothing to cool the dark room. As he took his seat at the head of the table, the small nondescript forms that were his pupils emerged into familiar detail. Waksman’s skullcap perched precariously to one side as usual, but Waksman sat so still there was no danger of it falling. The Berman boy huddled forward as if it were the coldest day in winter; Yechiel wondered what he would do when winter came. All of them so still and quiet. Why didn’t they leap up and flee into the sunny fields? Here they sat in half-darkness, sweated, and observed their nine-year-old bodies becoming as unfeeling and crooked as the wan, warped benches they sat upon day after day.
Yechiel could see them all now, and as he looked over the long table at his young charges he felt as if he were inside an ancient tomb. He thought that this was how pharaoh’s commander, the captain of the Ship of the Dead, must have felt as he gazed over his crew, plucked from life to serve a lifeless master. But no, he spied a hint of motion. Matti Sternweiss was sneaking candies one by one in his fat, stubby fingers from his stuffed, bulging pockets into his stuffed, bulging cheeks. After appropriate digestive activity, his circulatory system would return the overabundance of chemical sugars to his fingers so they would remain stubby and fat when he plunged them into his bulging rich-man’s-son pockets. Sternweiss was too active for an occupant of the tomb, yet he participated in his own burial. It is the much-vaunted Jewish genius, Yechiel thought bitterly, that we can bury ourselves. The whole world is striding into the twentieth century, and Krimsk can’t even manage to stand still. No, it has to burrow deeper and deeper into the past.
Yechiel Katzman was supposed to teach them the laws concerning the terumah, the priest’s portion of all produce. All Jews who were not priests set aside a portion of their produce exclusively for the priests. According to the Mishnah, the terumah became holy as the priests’ property; the terumah had to remain ritually pure; and it could be consumed only by priests or members of their families who themselves were in a state of ritual purity. The matter quickly developed great complexity, as it involved two populations (priests and nonpriests), two categories of produce (holy and profane), and even two states (pure and impure) that applied to both populations and to both categories. Once these complex, precise laws had guided the Jews’ daily behavior, but no Jew in Krimsk had ever offered a priest his holy portion of terumah because no priest had received an offering of terumah since the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem almost two thousand years ago. Yet Yechiel was about to teach these ancient, intricate rituals as defined by the Mishnah, the oral commentaries on the Torah. Codified in writing about the time of the Temple’s destruction, the Mishnah served as the basis for further oral commentaries, the Gemara, which were committed to writing several centuries later. Together the Mishnah and Gemara form the Talmud. Two thousand years ago the Jews had their temple destroyed, had lost their sovereign state, and had even been exiled as slaves from their very land, but in spite of such catastrophes, their ancient, arcane library had continued to grow and grow and grow.
Why didn’t Yechiel himself flee? That was the real question. Perhaps he would, taking his forbidden books with him. For the moment he sought temporary refuge in the promise that he had made to Reb Gedaliah to teach his class today. After all, this ship, any ship, even of the dead, couldn’t be left without a captain. Yechiel looked around, felt the suffocating heat, and began the daily funeral oration.
“What does the Mishnah say?”
In dull expectation, the little heads slowly turned toward Matti Sternweiss. Avoiding responsibility, Matti continued to chew his sweets behind fat-smothered eyes.
“Nu? ” Yechiel urged.
Matti gamely swallowed the thick, sweet mass and leaned forward to the table. His fat, stubby fingers rooted themselves on the open page like fleshy tree stumps in a small, flat field where the rain has dried long ago into little black memories.
“The Mishnah says,” the boy began in his singsong chant, “that a barrel of ritually pure, priestly terumah wine has broken in the upper chamber of a wine press and begins to flow down to the lower chamber, which is filled with profane, nonpriestly, impure wine. If you can save a liter of the pure terumah wine in a ritually pure vessel, then both Rabbi Eliezer and Rabbi Yehoshua agree that you should run and get a ritually pure vessel to collect the pure priestly wine; and if you cannot save that minimal amount in that way, then Rabbi Eliezer says that you let the terumah flow down to the lower chamber even though it will mix with the impure, profane wine.”
“Very good, Sternweiss, that’s wh
at the text says. What’s so bad about the priestly terumah wine flowing into the impure ordinary wine?”
“Even plain, ordinary, impure wine is valuable in that it can be drunk by any ritually impure Israelite. No one, however, is permitted to drink the new admixture in the lower chamber of terumah wine and impure, profane wine. This forbidden admixture is called impure medumah.”
“Yes, that’s right. Very good, Sternweiss.” In spite of his earlier hostility, Yechiel found himself liking the fat little fresser. He consumed the Talmud as effortlessly as he consumed candies, even if his appetite wasn’t quite as strong. Eight years ago, he, Yechiel, had sat at the long table giving exact answers, and Reb Gedaliah’s eyes would light up as he entered into a dialogue with Yechiel. But Yechiel’s eyes didn’t light up now; he felt them grow heavy.
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