Shira

by Agnon, S. Y.

  From the moment he became involved in the business, Herbst made an effort to adapt his manners to those of his employer, whom he regarded as a model Berliner, a title which since childhood signified real distinction. After marrying the daughter, he became more and more relaxed about the manners he had acquired in Berlin and reverted, though not consciously, to his earlier ways. After his father-in-law’s death, he took charge of the entire business. He became less careful about his language, sprinkling his conversation with Yiddish and Polish words from his childhood. He often reminisced about his town, describing it in detail: the teachers there who had studied in the great academies of Poznan and Lysa, and were so intimidating that the rabbis with doctorates didn’t dare to challenge them in matters of ritual slaughter or anything else pertaining to religion, although whatever the former allowed, the others forbade, and vice versa. Even his father, Manish, may he rest in peace, for whom Manfred was named, knew the basic texts and studied Mishnah every day in a group that included the town’s leading citizens, led by Rabbi Eliyahu Gutmacher. Moritz still had his father’s books though he himself had never studied very much, because his father had died when he was young. His mother had married a man whose son by his first wife was already enrolled in a teachers’ seminary and depended on his father for support, so there was no money to pay the stepson’s tuition. Though he didn’t study much Torah, Moritz Herbst was blessed by a man immersed in Torah and even received a coin from him.

  This is what happened with the coin. It was the custom in Moritz’s town, and probably in many others like it, that, as long as no worm was seen in the cherries, they could be eaten without inspection. But, as soon as the first worm was seen, an announcement would be made in the rabbi’s name that the cherries had to be inspected. To facilitate this, the children were alerted to report to the rabbi when they saw the first worm. One year, he was the first to spot a worm in the cherries. He ran and informed the rabbi. The rabbi gave him a coin and blessed him, expressing the hope that he would grow up to follow the straight path, observing the Torah and commandments. Some of this blessing was fulfilled, but not all of it. He never veered from the straight path, but he was lax about the Torah and commandments. On the face of it, he kept kosher; his house was equipped with separate dishes for dairy and meat, as well as for Passover, but his wife occasionally “borrowed” a Passover dish for ordinary use without bothering to scour it properly before putting it back. Similarly, if some ritual question arose in the household, she didn’t take the trouble to consult an expert. Nevertheless, they considered themselves proper Jews until the Great War broke out, adding to the hardships of observant Jews and undermining those who were lax. At first these Jews were careful not to defile themselves with forbidden foods. But, as the war continued, food was in short supply. When they were lucky enough to find something to eat, they were no longer exacting about keeping kosher. If they found a food that needed to be certified, they didn’t ask whether it was certified, who the certifying rabbis were, or the source of their authority. In Herbst’s home, too, kosher standards were relaxed, because Moritz Herbst came down with one of those illnesses that became rampant in the wake of the war and was no longer able to oversee the household, while his wife from the very beginning wasn’t strict about these rules.

  Moritz Herbst died from that illness. At this point, Manfred was a soldier in the war, knee-deep in blood, and none of the affairs of the world seemed meaningful to him, certainly not business. From the beginning, he was not groomed for business; his father had kept him at a distance from it, coaxing him to study instead. His mother, Amelia, though she was a merchant’s daughter, was not skilled in business either. Neither her father nor her husband had included her in it. As she couldn’t handle the business left to her by her husband, not only did she fail to derive profit from the store, the equipment, the accounts, and all the rest, but they were a burden to her. Neither mother nor son knew what to do with this inheritance. After consulting relatives, they sold the business for several thousand marks. Like most of the population, they were unaware that the value of the mark was declining steadily, so that a thousand marks were worth a hundred and a hundred marks were worth one. In the end, all that money was worthless.

  As I mentioned, when his father died, Manfred was at the front. When he returned, he resumed his studies. A son whose father dies without leaving him any resources ought to learn a trade that can be a means of support. If he is eager for learning, he ought to pursue the sort of knowledge that can be a means of support after a few years’ study. But Manfred was drawn to a profession involving a great deal of effort and minimal return. While he was a student, he didn’t have to worry. Tuition had been provided for him. Even before he entered the university, an allowance had been set aside to cover his expenses. How? This is how it came about.

  When Manfred’s father, Moritz, was a boy, his father died. His mother then married a man from Rawicz. The husband had a son by his first wife who was studying at the teachers’ seminary in Cologne. The husband joined his mother in her town. Moritz lived with his mother, while the son of his mother’s husband lived in Cologne, so they never saw each other. When Moritz grew up, he couldn’t find anything to do in his own town and went to seek his fortune elsewhere. He came to Berlin, where he had the good fortune to find a livelihood and a wife. He took over the first store that hired him, and the daughter of his employer became his wife.

  Now that you have heard the story of Moritz Herbst, I’ll tell you his stepbrother’s story. His good fortune was not in abeyance either. He completed his studies and began teaching religion in a small town. His salary did not satisfy his material needs; teaching did not satisfy his spirit. He suffered, regretting both these facts, but he seemed resigned to his fate, like most teachers, who were in no way inferior to him. In the town where he taught religion, there was an agent for writing equipment and school supplies, whom he sometimes helped with his accounts, letter writing, and the like. Whatever he did was done with no thought of reward. In time, the salesman became paralyzed. His wife invited the teacher to help her with the business. He became the agent’s agent. The woman realized he was more adept than she was and left most of the business in his hands. Once he got a taste of commerce, he lost interest in the school.

  He gave up his pupils and his fellow teachers, who had lorded it over him because the subjects they taught were needed by the world, whereas he taught religion, and who can say whether it exists to gratify God or to serve man? As soon as he went into business, earning in one month twice what he used to earn as a teacher in half a year, he became ambitious and was not satisfied with being a middleman. He wanted to own a factory. He heard of one that was about to come on the market: a factory that had been producing slates for schools and was operating at a loss, because in most countries students were being given notebooks rather than slates, in order to assess the progress of their handwriting. He quickly bought the factory, confident that he could recover what the original owners had lost. And he was not mistaken. In a few years he had repaid what he had borrowed to buy the factory and made enough profit to convert from the production of writing slates to that of roofs, like those produced by the big slate factories in Thuringia. All those years, the two stepbrothers were blessed by fortune and engaged in the acquisition of wealth; one, as we already mentioned, through office equipment and the like; the other, as we already mentioned, through religion, writing equipment, and slate roofs. Both were determined not to waste a minute on anything unrelated to the acquisition of wealth. They never asked about each other, and, if their paths hadn’t crossed, they would have gone through life without knowing one another.

  How did they become acquainted? The manufacturer came to Berlin for a board meeting of the Academy for Jewish Studies. Strolling through the streets of Berlin, he passed the showroom of Rosenthal and Co., and went in to see what was new in the way of office equipment. He was browsing through the store, cane in hand, and smoking a thick cigar, since it was Saturday
and it was his custom to honor the Shabbat with a cigar, making do with cigarettes on weekdays. The owner stared at him and said, “Didn’t you have a father in Myloslow?” He took the cigar out of his mouth, flicked the ashes, and said, “That’s right. My father’s second marriage was to a woman from Myloslow, whom he followed to her town.” The owner said, “And is your name Ringer?” He said, “Yes, my name is Ringer.” He said, “Then we are somewhat related.” “How?” “My mother, may she rest in peace, was your father’s wife.” He said, “How did you recognize me, considering that you never saw me?” He said, “I looked at you and thought to myself: I know this man, and I don’t know where I know him from. My stepfather’s image came to mind. I thought to myself: If I were to dress him in elegant clothes, replace his beard with a mustache, and stick a cigarette in his mouth, a fashionable cane in his hand, and a gold chain on his belly, I wouldn’t be able to distinguish between the two of you. Logic led me to conclude that, since you are not my stepfather, you must be my stepbrother. I immediately asked what I asked, and then you answered as you answered. Now, in the name of brotherhood, we ought to have a drink, though I’m hoping for more than that. I have a wife and son. Won’t you do me the honor, on behalf of my wife and son, of coming home with me and having dinner with us?” He agreed, and they went off together.

  During dinner, Moritz talked about his favorite subjects: the elderly teachers in his town who used to irritate the rabbis with doctorates by sending the slaughterers to them with defective knives, in order to test how well versed they were in the rules of ritual slaughter, and other similar ruses to make a mockery of them. He also told the story of the cherry, the worm, the rabbi, and the coin. He told other things, most of which I have already written in my book. In the course of conversation, he referred to a biblical verse and stumbled over it, like an ignoramus. He laughed and said, “It’s because of you that I’m so ignorant.” “How?” He explained that, because his stepfather had to pay tuition for his own son, he couldn’t afford to have his wife’s son study Torah. As a result, both he and the Torah were deprived; he, alas, remained totally ignorant. Mr. Ringer listened and laughed. He had drunk a great deal of wine, and he said, “An injustice that can be corrected should be corrected. I would like to make up, through your son, for what my father did to you. Allow me to pay his tuition while he studies for his degree.” Moritz Herbst laughed and said, “How can a little brother turn his big brother down? If that’s what you want, fine. Whatever you say.” He said, “Let’s shake hands on it.” He said, “If that’s what you want, I give you my hand.” Herbst considered the agreement a joke. Ringer considered it an actual commitment. He didn’t leave the house before writing a check. He continued to pay Manfred’s tuition until his death and then left him enough stocks to pay his future tuition. These funds made it possible for Manfred Herbst to study wherever his heart desired.

  When Germany collapsed, most of its industry and commerce was disrupted. The value of Mr. Ringer’s securities declined, and there was a chance Manfred Herbst would have to interrupt his studies, since everything his father had left him was lost. He was rescued by a relative. He had an old aunt in Leipzig, the sister of his mother’s father, who was married to a noted singer, adored by all the music lovers in Leipzig. When he realized he was losing his voice, he turned away from music and established an advertising agency, which was patronized by all his fans. So it thrived and prospered, and after his death – even during the war and in the years that followed – his widow was able to support herself and to help the son of her brother’s daughter, who was the only one of her relatives to survive the war.

  Chapter nine

  I will now go back to Manfred’s beginnings, when there was still peace in the world, when Moritz Herbst was alive and Manfred was a student. In addition to his secular studies, Manfred took classes in religion and Hebrew. If the teacher was a scholar, he would call on a student to read something while he sat at his desk proofreading an article on Jewish studies. When the student paused, he would look up, call on someone else, and go back to his proofreading, giving no further thought to his teaching. If the instructor was not a scholar, he would pass the time with words that imparted neither Torah, wisdom, Talmud, nor Hebrew. In any case, Manfred learned neither the elements of religion nor anything related to Hebrew from these teachers. He didn’t feel he was missing anything; he pored over the literature of Germany and all the other nations without being aware that, although he was taking in foreign wisdom, his own people’s wisdom remained foreign to him.

  As I said, there was peace in the world, but woe unto a world that is governed by hooligans. There was harsh news, from a land not so distant, about Jews being massacred. As a boy, he had heard about pogroms, about Herzl, about Zionism. Even before this, he had had a deep understanding of the issues and already tended toward Zionism. The Jewish community in Germany was still serene, diverted by the notion that there was no evil in Germany, that all the Zionist activity there concerned Jews in other countries whose governments oppressed them and instigated pogroms, that it was the duty of German Jews to assist their persecuted brethren in seeking a land that would offer them a haven. And where would these driven, worn-out people find such a haven? In Palestine, under the wing of consuls who would protect their subjects more effectively there than in their native lands. No one realized yet that Germany would be the major source of trouble for Jews, that they would seek refuge and not find it except in the Land of Israel. Since Zionism in no way interfered with the boy’s studies, his father didn’t interfere with his Zionist activities. He, too, would occasionally glance at Zionist pamphlets and nod affirmatively, saying, “What I see here makes sense, but, if the situation were really as the Zionists see it, our leaders would all be Zionists. Since they are actually hostile to Zionism, it’s best not to get involved.” Manfred’s mother was of another mind. Amelia Herbst loved life, and she loved enterprises that rewarded the people who undertook them. Zionism had neither of these attributes, so she should have rejected it. But, since her son, Manfred, was interested in Zionism, it could not be dismissed outright.

  Zionism added little to Herbst’s knowledge, beyond the words that are familiar to every Zionist: shekel, hovev ziyon, yishuv, Ahad Ha’am, the names of all the settlements in the Land of Israel. From Zionist literature, he learned that those weary, tormented Jews, considered uncultured in Germany, had two libraries in two languages – one in the language they spoke and one in the language of the holy books.

  From the time Herbst heard about this, a tune began to sing out from his heart, playing itself in those two tongues. It sounded sometimes like the dirge of an exile lamenting his devastated domain, sometimes like a noble cry. Victims from every era appeared, pouring out their souls in epic poems and stories. Countless events, from the binding of Isaac to the Damascus blood libel and the most recent pogroms, all spoke to him in verse. God’s spirit hovered over these poems, stories, and liturgical works, some of which he read in German translation, along with visions of the End of Days, glimpsed only by poets who suffered Israel’s pain. When he first read Yiddish literature in German translation, he didn’t eat, drink, or go to class. He curled up in a corner and sat reading these stories and poems. His eyes swallowed the letters; he fingered the text, hoping there was more there than was being revealed to him. When he had read an entire book, he studied the title page on the chance that there had been an error, that this volume was actually not from the body of literature he was after. He didn’t find what he was after, and whatever he found was not what he was after. Whether it was merely fine or very fine, he knew its counterparts in other languages and was not impressed. This happened again and again. Whether the book was merely fine or very fine, he had seen the genre elsewhere. He tried his luck with Hebrew, to see if he could find there what he hadn’t found in Yiddish. No complete works were available in German, only fragments. It is easy to translate from Yiddish into German, because the languages are akin, but it is hard to tr
anslate from Hebrew into German, because they are so alien to each other. I can see, Herbst used to tell himself, that Hebrew poetry refuses to appear in borrowed finery.