by Vic Shayne
On rainy days I remember holding Zayde’s big, warm hand and looking skyward, as I tried to catch the rain in my mouth. Squinting my eyes and gazing up at him, I watched the water collect on his mustache and beard, then drip and slide over his lips and run down in a miniature, funny little waterfall onto the front of his coat. But his books—his holy books—he kept safe and dry beneath his coat.
When we stepped into our shul, the noisy rain drifted into the background but we knew it was still there. As prayers began, our feet and backs swayed to the rhythm of our music. It magically melded with the rhythm of the rain outside the thick walls of the synagogue. God was talking back to us. I could hear Him tapping on the roof. We sang to God, we questioned God, we pleaded to God, and we demanded His help and guidance. For a couple of hours in shul, we were protected from a ceaseless, steady course of rain and thunder.
Yiddish Culture
In the days of my youth, and even to this day, there were famous shtetls that everyone had heard of, like Vilna, Bialystok, Chelm, Mezritch, and Belz. These towns were made famous by the rabbis and the intensity of Jewish study. But few people today realize that Maitchet was also famous, at least to the most scholarly of all Yeshiva students and rabbis. Our little shtetl still remains connected to one of the brightest, most influential Jewish scholars, Shlomo Pelachek, and his life began like most others in eastern Poland.
Years before I came into this world, Shlomo was living far out in the country, tending cows and chickens. But soon it became apparent that Shlomo Pelachek was no ordinary boy. Even though he spent his whole life on a farm, he managed to learn Hebrew, the Torah, the Talmud, and any other teaching he could get his hands on. He was mostly self-taught, yet his hunger for knowledge brought him into prominence in all of Eastern Europe’s Jewish quarters—and eventually in America and throughout the rest of the world.
Shlomo Pelachek, born in 1877, was my grandmother’s cousin. By the age of twelve, he was recognized as a genius, a prodigy of tremendous rarity. A Yeshiva student from Volozhin, named Aaron Rabinowitz, happened upon Shlomo on a farm near Maitchet and after speaking with him for a short while convinced the bashful boy to go to Volozhin and meet Rabbi Berlin, the Rosh Yeshiva (head of the Yeshiva). It was suggested by Aaron Rabinowitz that Shlomo Pelachek be considered for enrollment in the Yeshiva without delay. Of course, this was no small order, because most Yeshiva candidates, if accepted at all, were not admitted until they reached seventeen years of age or older. Rabbi Berlin was taken aback at the mere suggestion of such a young boy joining his famous Yeshiva and mockingly asked Rabinowitz, “Why didn’t you bring his crib along?”
Aaron Rabinowitz thumbed his nose at this insult but knew what he had in this prodigy. He confidently said to the rabbi, “Let the Rosh Yeshiva test him and decide what crib he needs.” At this, Rabbi Berlin began to quiz Shlomo on the Torah and very quickly Shlomo proved his genius. He answered questions as if he were a sage, and his recall of the Torah was so precise that at times the rabbis had to pause, run their fingers through their long gray beards, stare blankly at one another, and check the facts for themselves. When Rabbi Soloveichik asked Shlomo Pelachek where he was from, the boy answered, “From Maitchet.” And this is how my grandmother’s cousin became known throughout all of Jewish Eastern Europe as the “Maitcheter Iluy,” the “Hiddushei Ha’iluy Mimaitchet,” which means the “prodigy from Maitchet.”
Once Shlomo Pelachek was accepted to the Yeshiva, he was given the task of covering ten pages of the Gemara daily, and his roommates were assigned to keep an eye on him, engage him in conversation on what he studied, and make sure he completed his homework. Every Friday night, Rabbi Soloveichik tested Shlomo on his newfound knowledge and always parted in a state of amazement. Nobody else at the Yeshiva could keep pace with him. When at last Shlomo turned thirteen and became a bar mitzvah, the head rabbi made a special breakfast in his honor, which, according to the rabbi’s son, was possibly the first time the Volozhin Yeshiva ever celebrated the bar mitzvah of a student.
In the winter of 1892, the Volozhin Yeshiva closed down and Shlomo spent time on his own studying in Minsk. Not long afterward, Rabbi Soloveichik, the rabbi of the shtetl Brisk, invited Shlomo to come join him.
Shlomo continued to gain a reputation as the preeminent scholar of his day while at the same time gaining the respect of everyone due to his kindness, humility, and charity. It is said that when Shlomo was in Volozhin, he would bring several shirts with him at the beginning of each semester but never returned home with more than one: he had given the other shirts away to students needier than himself. The chief rabbi spoke highly of our Maitcheter’s power to grasp the deeper meaning of the Jewish teachings and said in later years that, in all his life, he had never met as extraordinary an iluy—genius—as Shlomo Pelachek.
In 1896, when Shlomo was eighteen years old, he was convinced by a fellow student to leave the Yeshiva Brisk where he was then studying and to join a more advanced Yeshiva; and shortly after that he headed to Vilna—the most famous center for Jewish learning in the world at the time.
By 1905, eleven years before I was born, Shlomo Pelachek, now a rabbi of great fame, married a wealthy young woman from the town of Ivenitz. Unsuccessful in the business world, he went back to learning and teaching in the Lida Yeshiva until World War I broke out. To avoid the war, Shlomo fled deep into Russia where he wandered from place to place until the war’s end.
In 1921, Rabbi Shlomo Pelachek returned to Poland and settled in Bialystok. There, his lectures became famous, though he never wrote down what he said, and one of his associates filled a thousand pages with Shlomo’s teachings and gave them to him in a bulging leather briefcase.
My distant cousin, Shlomo Pelachek, the Maitcheter Iluy, was only fifty years old when he died. In memoriam, the scholarly Jewish community published a special paper called “Aidainu,” Our Tragedy, paying tribute to Shlomo, his work, and the sadness left at his passing. It has been said that nobody could meet Shlomo Pelachek and not be overwhelmed by his genius, though he was the only one who did not comprehend his own brilliance. To this day, his reputation as a scholar, a prodigy, and a man of virtue and charity among the most learned Jews of the world lives on. If you go to Israel, you will find a street named after Shlomo Pelachek in Jerusalem.
After the Holocaust, when I had just moved to New York City, I went looking for a synagogue to join. One day I walked into a shul in midtown Manhattan and introduced myself to the rabbi. He asked me where I was from and I told him Maitchet. The first words out of his mouth were, “Did you ever hear of the Maitcheter Iluy, Shlomo Pelachek?” I said, “Are you kidding? He was my grandmother’s cousin!” and I joined the synagogue on the spot.
Answering Questions with Questions
We Jews had three places of worship in Maitchet. We had our old synagogue that had been built years and years ago that we affectionately called the “cold synagogue” (kalte shul) because it had no heat. In the winter it was so cold that a steady cloud of steam came out of our mouths as we talked and prayed.
When you stepped inside the cold synagogue, after kissing the mezuzah on the old, weathered door frame, there was an anteroom, a lobby of sorts, with tables and chairs. Passing through the anteroom there were two large, sturdy wooden doors that opened onto a stairway going down below ground level. At the bottom of the stairs was the entrance to the floor of the synagogue made of well-polished, dark, wooden planks that ran beneath rows of seats. Our family always occupied the same spot in the cold synagogue—in the front row. To our left, and upstairs, opposite the entrance, was where, in traditional style, the women sat. And in the center of the room was the bimah.
When we entered the cold synagogue, we entered another world. Here we found ourselves in a special, holy place, and for this reason alone we wore our finest clothes as a show of our respect and reverence. We respected the fact that our synagogue was the home of the Torah, the sacred teachings of our people, housed in a hand-carved wooden Ark of
the Covenant.
Our Torah was more than just a gift from God. It was a symbol of who we were and where we were going. Like other Jewish boys, I began to learn Hebrew at around age four. I was eager to read. Something about languages always intrigued me. My heart filled with joy at the thought of picking up a pen, dipping it in a well of black ink, and forming Hebrew letters onto scraps of paper in Zayde’s home office. Sometimes, Momma used to keep me from getting to my lesson quickly. I so wanted to go—to be like a grown-up, like Papa and Zayde. Looking back now, I was honored to feel the warm comfort of Zayde’s hand holding mine, to help direct my pen, as I carefully drew each letter of the alphabet like it was a piece of art. “Beautiful, Motel,” Zayde would say. He would clap his hands and I’d beam with a smile. Zayde filled me with a kind of joy that I cannot describe.
Nine years from the time I began to learn Hebrew, I became a bar mitzvah and earned the right to take my place among the other men and read from the Torah in shul. I cannot begin to tell you what a great honor it was for me to ascend the steps in the center of the synagogue and stand beside my father, grandfather, and uncles. I was a proud part of something so much greater than myself; I was a part of a special history of learning and respect for knowledge; I was a part of a proud family; I was a part of the richest Jewish culture that ever existed; I was carrying on the tradition, and the eyes of my entire family were on me as I sang from the Torah in shul.
When the Torah was opened in the kalte shul, not one person failed to understand that this old scroll with its yellowed edges and coiled pages was a treasure beyond words. Our old, handwritten Torah held within its pages a treasury of prose, poetry, and metaphor wrapped around the history of our people and brought to this point by blood and suffering. The Torah spoke to us of Abraham and his covenant with God and of the exodus of the Jews from Egypt when the nation of Israel was formed. All of our past, present, and future were wrapped up beneath the velvet cloth and the brass breastplate. This was our Torah. We alone, as a People, treasured it and brought it with us from place to place, through fires and floods, through pogroms and exiles, to this place, to this cold, old synagogue in Maitchet. Not a one of us would dare forget this. I remember it still.
Each Shabbos we opened the Torah, read a portion of it, then paraded it around for all to kiss—a kiss of respect and love of the word of God. To the non-Jews it may have looked as if we worshipped the Torah, but this couldn’t be farther from the truth. The Torah inspired us to sing and dance, to think and celebrate, and to hold our heads high with pride and bow them low in humility. Our Torah was the sea and we were the tide, ebbing and flowing, rising and falling, moaning and davening in cascades of minor notes flooding every corner of the synagogue.
Our music was the kind of music you could not find anywhere else. Sometimes it sounded like crying, wailing; other times it lulled you into a deep well of contemplation or was light enough to lift your heart and prayers to heaven.
Each time our service was finished, the Torah would be dressed again and returned to the Ark until the rebirth of Shabbos when we would read the next portion of our people’s history. The sounds of our synagogue still resonate in my ears. I hear the music, yet the voices are gone. Forever lost in silence are the voices of the kalte shul of Maitchet. I stand in my synagogue now, across the world from Maitchet, but behind my closed eyes I am there in the kalte shul drowning in the music.
Our cold synagogue was certainly a special, holy place for us, but it was not the sole center of Jewish life in our town. Our stiebl (little community synagogue) was a smaller building used for intense study, where we sat crowded in a minyan around big tables and pored over the meanings and the subtleties of the Talmud. I used to go to the stiebl with Zayde who taught me the Gemara, a text that poses a variety of questions on issues that still have relevance in today’s world.
Through the Gemara, Zayde taught me that life is full of unanswered questions. The law is never concrete—even the law of God has to be discussed and interpreted. The Gemara made us think about some of the more difficult questions of law. Many times, the answer would be, “This cannot be answered until the Moshiach comes!” Wait for the Messiah? I’d think. How can a problem be so big that you need outside help to solve it? This is a question whose answer I would one day discover the hard way.
The law, we learned, was not simple; it made you think about the far-reaching effects of your actions: be careful, be considerate, think ahead, watch your step. The Gentiles always complained about how we had our heads in the books and that we were too clever. How could we not be when all we thought about was the law? But this jealousy was a very insidious thing, growing into a hate and fear that would soon prove unimaginably destructive.
For three thousand years we learned to examine the law under a magnifying glass. I recall one conversation in particular about brotherhood. The rabbi in our stiebl posed this scenario, one that would be all-too real for me later in life: A man has to cross the desert and it will take him ten days, and so he takes enough water and bread for that time. He is walking and sees a man coming the other way. The man has no bread or water. Now the question: If he shares the bread and water, they will both continue for another five days and then die. But if he gives the man nothing, he will cross the desert but he will leave his fellow man to die. It is not his fault, but he will violate Jewish law. How can you make a decision about this kind of dilemma?
One day in the not-so-distant future, I would find myself in just this situation with hardly enough bread to survive on my own. Yet, how could I deny a share of my bread with the shivering living skeleton starving next to me in Mauthausen concentration camp? Thinking back on this, I feel as though our Jewish teachings prepared us for difficult situations, for impossible, choiceless choices.
In Hebrew, Jewish law is called Halacha and to the Jews, the law is a living and breathing thing. This is how we see all of our teachings. You study these things your entire life, as did my father, my grandfather, and so many of the others from my world, but you find out that it is more of an exercise in thinking and reasoning than it is in finding concrete solutions. You get an idea but rarely a concrete solution. This is why it is said so often that when you have a room with ten Jews, you get eleven opinions.
In our Yeshivas we learned to read between the lines. That’s the way life is, and that’s the way we were trained as religious scholars. The old stories of the Torah were not just some literal explanation of history; they were metaphors giving us insight into how people think and act. The story of Abraham wasn’t just about a man who blindly followed the voice of God. It was a story of man’s struggle with himself, his commitment to ideals, and the power of his love for both his God and his son. The story of Moses in the desert with the nation of Israel was about doubt, questioning, and the fear of the unknown, moving from generations of hardships in Egypt into a dark void of uncertainty.
The specific, carefully chosen words that are used in our teachings are sometimes as important as the sentences. We used to study the words themselves, why certain words were chosen instead of others, words with double meanings.
Zayde taught me that the Gemara began with questions—clever, thought-provoking questions. And questions lead to other questions. In this way we live in an eternal discussion.
In the Yeshiva I learned that the Jewish Sanhedrin (a council of seventy-one people) was set up to tackle these questions and to mete out justice in ancient Jerusalem. This led to Jewish scholars all over the world attempting to find conclusions to ethical questions. This promoted competition in shul, with each person trying to make a valid argument based on his understanding of the law. While the competition only made us think harder, nothing could fully prepare us for the senseless times to come.
Dreaming of a New World
Yeshivas dotted the landscape all over Eastern Europe, so when we Yeshiva bochers traveled around, we always had a place where we could stop and study the law.
Maitchet had its own Yeshiva, bu
t so did shtetls near and far. There were Yeshivas all over Poland, Lithuania, and Russia, in the towns of Baranowicze, Slonim, Nowogrudek, Malaat, and Mir. When I went to another town to study at the Yeshiva, some nice family would take me in for a couple of days. Somebody’s momma would feed me and give me a bed so I could study the law with the men of the shtetl. When you did this enough, you found out whose mother was the best cook, so the next time you came to town you knew where you wanted to stay.
An hour before the sun rose, I was standing by my bed, loading my books in my knapsack. When I was dressed, I made my way into the kitchen. Momma was already awake and had my breakfast ready. I sat down at the table as she set a bowl of hot cereal in front of me, gave me a spoon, and kissed me on the forehead. “Did you have a good sleep?” Momma would ask me. Sleep? I couldn’t sleep for the anticipation of traveling. I loved it. Momma was worried about me but hardly voiced her concerns. I could just see it in her eyes. I, on the other hand, couldn’t wait to hit the road. My little sisters, rubbing their eyes, wandered into the kitchen and nestled up to Momma. As soon as I finished my breakfast, I kissed them all good-bye and flew out the front door. I couldn’t wait to get started.
The experience of being a Yeshiva bocher meant more than just studying Torah and Talmud—it was about all the different people I met along the way. I came to know students and their families from many miles around Maitchet. I got to know the lay of the land, the major roads, back roads, the forests, and the fields. It was one big, welcomed adventure.
Once in a while, as I began to get older, I would hear stories of impending pogroms and of the stirring political situation to the west. Many times I would arrive at a stranger’s house and, over dinner, we would end up in a discussion about growing hatred toward the Jews in Germany, Poland, and Russia. Wherever I went, people were worried about the future of Jews in Europe. All over, including at home in Maitchet, groups were forming to discuss leaving Eastern Europe altogether. We all knew it was never safe for Jews and never would be. With each passing year of my youth, discussions of Palestine entered conversations more and more frequently. This was reinforced by our teachings, reminding us of our goal to return to our homeland. Zionism was a train picking up steam.