In the Courtyard of the Kabbalist

by Ruchama King Feuerman

  She sipped her cup of tea and patted a napkin against her lips. “So your heart was broken,” she concluded.

  He was reaching for his hat. “One might say such a thing,” he replied with a small ironic smile, as if to surgically detach himself from his own history. Gitty had broken it off two days before the wedding. She was tearful but wouldn’t explain the breakup, though he begged her to. The day of his canceled wedding, a black tornado of a flu descended upon him that he couldn’t shake for weeks, and he’d had to let all his plans for the school program drop. Anyway, he’d run out of funds. Four months later, Gitty married Heshy, his recruit, and Isaac finally understood everything. She had chosen his yeshiva buddy, quick-witted, extroverted Rabbi Heshy with the big arms, broad thighs, and slap-happy can-do manner, so different from Isaac, so similar, in fact, to his own father.

  “I’m curious. Whatever happened to the school you were planning?”

  At this, he signaled a waiter passing with a white teapot. “Care for more tea?” Another yawn overtook him that he tried to cover with his palm. What was wrong with him? Up since 6:00 a.m., he supposed.

  Her eyes darted from Isaac to the waiter. “I think it’s getting late,” she said firmly. The waiter shrugged and moved on.

  They walked out the hotel lobby, while Isaac viciously scratched his elbow, releasing flakes, he was sure. He waited like a gentleman for her bus to arrive while trying valiantly to stave off more yawns. The night air had a sting to it on this April evening. He wished he had brought a scarf. Cold, itchy, tired. The world—or maybe just his body—could be such an uncomfortable place sometimes. Mrs. Edelman said, “So you’ve been living in the rebbe’s home for a year now?”

  “That’s right.” His neck craned for the bus.

  “Don’t you want a place of your own? Or perhaps you can’t afford it.”

  Why oh why was she asking him these questions when she had already disqualified him? “I can certainly afford my own place. But what a privilege to be able to assist the rebbe. When I marry, I’ll rent my own place. Or maybe buy.” Scratch, scratch.

  Mrs. Edelman nodded and let out a big yawn of her own. “Excuse me for saying this,” she threw out as the bus rounded the corner, “but I can’t see you ever getting married, if you’ll forgive me.”

  A lump of silence. Then, “Just because you and I are probably not a match,” he said stiffly, “doesn’t mean I’m unmatchable.”

  “I know a serious man when I see one,” she stated, and a flush traveled from his itchy sock all the way to the black hat on his head. It was true. All his setups ended like this. Why he even bothered to date was a mystery to him.

  “So why waste my time?” the widow went on, reading his mind. “Or anyone’s?”

  He pondered this. “A single person can be compared to a captive held in jail, waiting to be redeemed,” he said at last. “He could be saved the next minute or in another twenty years. One never knows. Don’t the sages say that redemption can come in the blink of an eye?”

  Mrs. Edelman let out a faint snort. “I fail to see how that answers my question,” she said, and boarded the bus.

  Then he took his own bus back to the courtyard.

  At the cottage on Ninveh Street, he hung up his jacket in the tiny hallway closet. Certainly he could afford his own place—and a bigger closet—what with the $15,000 he got in interest every year from his old business he had sold. But a good atmosphere enveloped him here in the home of Rebbe Yehudah and his wife, Shaindel Bracha, not too hot, not too cold. Like a womb, he supposed, that was always the right temperature. When he married, he could always take a job as a clerk somewhere, to supplement his income.

  Rebbe Yehudah’s wife stuck her plump head out of the kitchen doorway, though it was late, already past ten in the evening. A piece of classical music played softly somewhere in the cottage—Dvorák? The rebbe favored the work of that composer. “How did it go?” Shaindel Bracha asked, her tightly woven snood covering every speck of hair. She glanced down at his arms, and her pale brown eyes went wide with alarm. “Oy vey, you’re bleeding!”

  He glanced down and past his scabby bloodied elbow toward a memory, the school Gitty and Heshy had started, modeled so closely after his own (they even had recruited his former students). It was a great success, he’d heard. The school had saved many a teen and young man. As for himself, he never did get his rabbinic ordination.

  “It’s nothing,” he said to the rebbetzin, pulling a tube of hydrocortisone from his pocket. He shmeared a fingernail amount onto his elbow, asked after the rebbe’s health, and shuffled off to sleep in his own room next to the study.

  On the way back from synagogue the next morning, Isaac saw a small man in a Russian-style cap waiting in the courtyard. “Where do I put this?” the man asked, a pencil tucked behind a cauliflower ear. He pointed to a crate at his feet.

  Isaac bent and read the return address on the box. Shaindel Bracha had been expecting a delivery of white silk fabric for the factory that she and the rebbe oversaw a few blocks away. War veterans stitched intricate pictures of wine goblets, candles, doves, and flowers onto Shabbos challah covers, using a special device that allowed amputees to work with their feet to operate the sewing machine. From this small business and German reparations from the rebbe’s Bergen-Belsen days, the courtyard survived.

  “I’ll take it,” he told the delivery man.

  Inside the cottage, Shaindel Bracha was stirring about, preparing a hot lemon drink for the rebbe and setting up a huge pot of chicken soup. The rebbe’s flu symptoms had lifted slightly. Isaac set the box against the wall in the hallway. He glanced out the kitchen window while pouring himself a glass of tea. People began drifting into the courtyard—a balding scribe, a depressed matchmaker, a businessman from South America, a Sephardic former soap opera actress. He always told them to come after eight thirty, but some couldn’t or wouldn’t wait.

  The morning began. Isaac fielded questions from a portly rabbi who hit his children and wanted to mend his ways, an ex-convict, an eighty-year-old woman who couldn’t sleep in the same room with her husband—the cries emanating from his nightmares destroyed her sleep. How did they all find their way? They just did. Isaac went back and forth, relaying people’s questions to the rebbe and then passing back the answers. And all the while, Shaindel Bracha cooked the food in the tiny kitchen and organized the volunteers who delivered the food packages at the end of the week to needy people. Twice a day, she checked on the sewing factory. The rest of the day she tended to her husband.

  Midday, a barren midwife got into a scuffle with the ex-convict, and Isaac had to intervene. Mazal the beggar kept releasing short blasts of flatulence, followed by softer, more elongated rumbles. Whenever she lifted one of her substantial haunches to one side, Isaac noticed how the courtyard people scurried to give her a wide berth. Before Isaac could properly address this situation, he caught sight of thirteen-year-old Dalya, just let out of school. She looked nearly starved, as she always did.

  “Here,” he said to the lank-haired girl, “have a banana.” He kept one in a paper bag, reserved for her.

  “I’m not hungry.” She brushed her limp brown hair off her cheeks, and her pinched hands and the boniness of her wrists made him avert his eyes.

  “Please eat it,” he entreated her.

  She rolled her blue eyes. “Why can’t the rebbe watch me eat it like he usually does?” Dalya was the only courtyard person who regularly got allowed inside since the doctor’s no-visitors edict. Usually she came in the morning when the rebbe was awake.

  “Dalya, Dalya, dear girl. The rebbe’s sleeping this very moment. He needs his rest. Please, I beg you—eat!”

  She rolled her eyes again as she grabbed the fruit and shoved it into her backpack.

  Oh, for goodness sake. He watched her open the iron gate. She wouldn’t eat it on her own in a million years. But how could he wake the rebbe?

  Later in the day, when the rebbe was up and about, Isaac entered his
study. The window shutters were closed, and a single lamp with a filigreed base let off a small halo of light. Books lined the shelves, wall to wall, as far as the eye could see, books that told the reader how to live as a human being and as a Jew. They were old, they were new, they were written in English, Hebrew, Aramaic, and Yiddish.

  “So, what do I tell the young man who has given up, thinks he’ll never get married?” Isaac gazed down at Rebbe Yehudah who lay half-propped on a couch fitted with a sheet, his fluffy white beard fanned out on his upper chest.

  The rebbe emitted a splintery cough. “Tell him to keep talking to girls,” he said, as Isaac patted his back to bring up the phlegm. “If he keeps doing that, he will get married.”

  Isaac nodded and scribbled a note. Truthfully, that’s all the fellow needed, the lightest hand of encouragement. “What about the woman who is praying for her grandchild to die?” He looked up from his notepad. “The baby was born with fingers missing.”

  The rebbe closed his eyes. “Such prayers are automatically disqualified in heaven. Give me both their names. I will pray for them.”

  “But … why the grandmother? Why does she need your prayers?”

  The rebbe shrugged his thin shoulders. “She must be suffering, too.”

  “But what do I tell her?” he said, his pen hovering above the pad.

  Rebbe Yehudah looked puzzled. “You cry with her,” he said.

  Here, Isaac set down the notepad and checked the rebbe’s pillow for dampness. Sometimes the rebbe got carried away praying so hard for everyone that his pillow got soaked with tears. Today—Isaac’s fingers probed discreetly—no need to change the pillow case, at least not yet.

  “I forgot. Dalya didn’t eat her banana,” he said, referring to the teen with the eating disorder. “She said she won’t eat the banana unless you sit with her. But you were sleeping.”

  The rebbe pressed a shaky hand against his narrow chest. “Why didn’t you get me up?” Isaac didn’t answer. “Surely you recognize a starving child when you see one,” the rebbe said. “Let her come in next time. Next time,” he said, a trenchant look in his deep-set silvery eye, “wake me.”

  Isaac bowed his head, chastened, and looked down at his hands.

  “Don’t feel so bad, Isaac.” The rebbe gently touched his wrist. “You’re usually right.”

  Isaac took a deep breath. “Why did you choose me?” he asked.

  “Choose you?”

  “To be your assistant.”

  Rebbe Yehudah shrugged. “You have a good heart and a good head. You know how to look at people.” He let out an explosive cough, and his beard hairs quivered. When Isaac leaned over, about to give another gentle potch to his upper back, Rebbe Yehudah raised a hand: Fine, fine. Just then, his eyes got alert, as if listening out for a baby crying. The rebbe sat up.

  Isaac was hovering at his side. “What is it, Rebbe?”

  Rebbe Yehudah struggled to his feet and made his way to the door. “The toilet,” he said and coughed a little. “It’s making that sound again.”

  “Rebbe!” Isaac remonstrated him. “You rest! Doctor’s orders. I’ll get the plunger.”

  But Rebbe Yehudah said, “Don’t take my mitzvah away,” and he insisted on working the plunger himself.

  Ten minutes later, the rebbe was settled back on the arm of couch, his freshly washed fingers emitting a liquid soap scent.

  A thought then struck Isaac. “What do I do about Mazal’s wind passing?”

  Rebbe Yehudah’s forehead crinkled a little. “Wind passing?”

  “She farts,” Isaac said shortly. “All the time, all over the place, even while I’m talking to her.”

  “Ah, yes. Passing wind, I understand.” Rebbe Yehudah nodded his head, his deep-set eyes half-closed in contemplation. “Do they smell very foul?”

  This gave Isaac pause. “Not especially foul, now that you mention it.”

  “Even still, it bothers you terribly. You feel as if she’s passing wind on you, in particular?”

  Isaac nodded vehemently.

  “It’s an unfortunate thing, but there’s not much one can do,” the rebbe said. “Maybe you want to ask yourself why it bothers you so much.”

  Isaac started. Did he have to provide a reason? “It’s unseemly,” he said feebly. “It disturbs the others.”

  “Hmm.” His eyes reflected. “Why not tell her you’ve noticed how she fills the courtyard with the most delightful scent and ask her what perfume she wears?” The rebbe nodded again. “I think this will help.”

  Before Isaac could ponder if the rebbe was making a joke, the rounded form of the rebbetzin entered the room with a bowl of noodles and vegetable broth. A plume of steam pinked her white cheeks and made her eyes tear. Rebbe Yehudah lifted his head and smiled—no, grinned at his wife—and his recessed eyes seemed to leap forward in their sockets in welcome. Isaac stood flat against the wall, as if caught in the crosscurrents of an electric field. Such a smile could be felt in the space between them. He had to admit, one of the job perks was watching the elderly couple. It reminded him of a Talmudic tale of a yeshiva student who followed his rabbi all day long, scrutinizing him as he prayed, ate, and studied. Once, the student even entered the scholar’s bedroom at night and hid under the bed to see what he could see. When the ancient scholar peeked under his bed and found his student staring back at him, the boy said, “This, too, is Torah and I have come to learn.” Not that Isaac would ever carry things that far.

  But what was this, a scuffle at the door? A black-frocked Hassid barreled into the rebbe’s study. The rebbetzin jerked back and the soup sloshed a little. The three stared at the fleshy-cheeked man. “I don’t have enough money!” he shouted. “I can’t make ends meet. Bless me. I need a miracle”—he smacked his meaty hand—“right now!”

  Isaac strode toward the Hassid. “Maybe you are unaware,” he said firmly, “but this is a private home. And the rebbe is sick. I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to leave.” He pointed at the door.

  The rebbe held up a veiny hand like a stop sign. Then he propped himself up by degrees. “Ahem. Wait a minute. What’s your name?”

  “Moish,” said the Hassid in a truculent tone.

  “Ah, Moish.” The rebbe, with effort, leaned on a flinty elbow. “So it’s a miracle you want?” Moish nodded his chin, up and down. “Can’t help you, Moish. Miracles tire out an old man like me.” The rebbe laughed softly to himself and then groaned a little. “Anyway, for me, life after the camps is miracle enough.”

  Moish raised his large head and looked at him through woebegone eyes. “But you’re a kabbalist …” he trailed off.

  “Come here, Moish.” The rebbe beckoned him. “Closer.”

  And Isaac wondered, as he did each time, what the rebbe would say to yet another Yid with his own peckel of sorrow.

  “So tell me, what exactly do you do for a living?” the rebbe asked.

  “I’m a computer programmer,” Moish said in a begrudging voice.

  “How much do you make?”

  The Hassid told him.

  “That’s a good salary for a computer programmer. I don’t think you could get more than that.”

  “But it’s not enough,” Moish said in a low voice. “I have seven children.”

  “So, what kind of blessing could I possibly give you,” the rebbe reasoned. “Should I bless you that your boss should go crazy and double your salary? Is that fair to him?”

  “No,” he mumbled, “I guess not.”

  “You know who miracles happen to?” The rebbe’s eyes seemed to wink and grin. “Realists. Come up with a business plan. An idea. Lay the groundwork. Then come and I’ll be happy to give you a blessing for success.”

  Moish the Hassid mulled this, pulling a little on his hairy lower lip. “That’s what my wife has been saying all along. Only people in business make real money, she says. And you know, I do have a certain business idea.”

  Moish kissed the rebbe’s hand and left.

  Isaa
c stared after him. “How do you do it, Rebbe? Such simple advice, but did you see his face when he left? He had such hope!”

  “If a man can be made weak,” the rebbe said, “a man can be made strong.”

  All men? Isaac wondered. But said nothing.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Mustafa fingered the trinkets in his pocket. A warm April breeze blew in the courtyard, making the tips of the yahudi men’s beards and the women’s long skirts stir in the wind. And he wondered for the fifth time why he had returned. Why should he bring the Jew a gift? He had a feeling it would lead to no good. But what was that beautiful smell coming from the cottage windows? An aroma from paradise. “Here,” he said to the rabbi when he passed by. He thrust his gift at the yahudi. “Take this. I brought it for you.”

  “Me?” Rabbi Isaac asked. “Why?”

  Mustafa’s arm remained outstretched and he proudly refused to explain. “It’s from the Haram al Sharif,” he said. The Jew looked confused. “The Noble Sanctuary,” he explained. Finally he threw in, “The Temple Mount.”

  The rabbi’s hands jumped as he opened the pouch. Mustafa watched how he stared at the spout and touched the tip tenderly. The rabbi put the jug handle next to his cheek. “Extraordinary. So beautiful,” he said.

  Mustafa stared at the spout and handle. “Why so beautiful?”

  “Come, Mustafa.” The rabbi beckoned him closer. “This spout is dirty, true. Nothing special to look at, right? A piece of garbage. But don’t you wonder who might have used it, for what purpose, and how long ago? No one sees its beauty, its value.” He wiped away a trickle of sweat before it disappeared into his speckled beard. “No one knows how to look anymore, how to see with good eyes.”

  Mustafa breathed deeply. A tiny pain throbbed under his rib, like a pointed jewel pressing there. No one knew how to look anymore. The truth of these words made him go still inside. Then he shook off these words with an angry quiver of his head. “Well, Rabbi Isaac, does anyone see my village? It’s a poor village, you know. We don’t have things like the Jews have.”