by Ezra Glinter
86 Yiddish for “Mr.”
87 Deuteronomy 8:17
88 Polish for “Mr.”
89 An adherent of the Hasidic movement originating in the town of Kozienice, or in Yiddish, Kozhnitz.
90 According to Jewish law, wine handled by gentiles becomes nonkosher, for fear that it has been consecrated for idol worship.
91 A reference to One Thousand and One Nights, among many other literary and folkloric sources.
92 Spiritual leader of the Kozhnitzer Hasidic movement. Here a reference to Moshe Elyokim Bri’o Hopsztajn (c. 1757–1828).
93 In Hasidic practice a rebbe is typically presented with a written question or request from one of his followers, which is accompanied by a monetary donation.
94 Ritual fringes worn on a four-cornered garment.
95 Yiddish colloquialism for Russians.
96 Lit. “preacher,” a reference to Yisroel Hopsztajn (c. 1733–1814), also known as the Kozhnitzer Maggid, and the founder of the Kozhnitz Hasidic dynasty.
97 Literally, “opponent,” a reference to the Jewish adversaries of the Hasidic movement.
98 Kock in Polish, home to the Kotzker Hasidic sect.
99 Menachem Mendel Morgensztern (1787–1859). For the last twenty years of his life, Morgensztern lived in seclusion and refused contact with his followers.
100 According to Hasidic tradition, the Rebbe’s leftovers, or shirayim, are distributed among the Hasidim at communal gatherings as a source of blessing.
101 Part of the common Kaddish prayer.
102 The Babylonian general who, according to the Bible, laid siege to Jerusalem prior to the destruction of the First Temple. According to the Talmud (Gittin 57b) he later repented and converted to Judaism.
Chaim Grade
1910–1982
CHAIM GRADE, A native of Vilna, Lithuania, is best known today for his rich novelistic descriptions of the city’s prewar Jewish life and of its historic rabbinical culture. In his prose and poetry he depicts Vilna residents young and old, rich and poor, religious and secular, learned and ignorant, and makes the city itself into one of his central characters.
Born into an educated family, Grade suffered the loss of his father at a young age and was raised in poverty by his mother, an apple seller who lived in the basement of a blacksmith’s shop. At thirteen he left home to study in the network of Novaredok rabbinical seminaries, which focused on ethical instruction and self-improvement. Later he became a student of Avraham Yesha’yahu Karelits, also known as the Hazon Ish, one of the preeminent rabbinical authorities of the first half of the twentieth century.
At age twenty-two Grade abandoned his religious studies in favor of secular literature and became associated with the literary and political movement Yung Vilne (Young Vilna). His first volume of poetry, Yo (Yes), was published in 1936, followed by the epic poem Musarnikes (Musarists), whose title refers to the proponents of Jewish piety and ethical development he had encountered in his religious training.
Upon the German invasion of Vilna in 1941, Grade fled to the interior of the Soviet Union, leaving behind his mother and his wife, Frume-Libe, thinking that the Germans would not harm women. Only after the war did he learn that they had been murdered by the Nazis.
In 1948, Grade immigrated to the United States with his second wife, Inna Hecker-Grade, where he began writing prose works in addition to poetry. These included the 1951 philosophical story “My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner,” about the possibility of faith after the Holocaust; the autobiographical novel My Mother’s Sabbath Days; and the epic two-volume Tsemakh Atlas, translated by Curt Leviant as The Yeshiva, which also dealt with Grade’s formative religious experiences.
For most of Grade’s postwar career in the United States, his main journalistic outlet was the Tog-Morgn Zhurnal, a liberal daily newspaper. When the paper closed in 1971, Grade began contributing to the Forward, usually publishing once a week in its Sunday literary section. In the decade before his death he published novellas, short stories, and two serialized novels, one of them left unfinished. “Grandfathers and Grandchildren” appeared from December 17, 1972, to January 21, 1973, and was republished in 1974 in a book titled Di kloyz un di gas (Synagogue and Street) along with three other novellas. While those works later appeared in English translation by Harold Rabinowitz and Inna Hecker-Grade in the collection Rabbis and Wives (Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), which was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, “Grandfathers and Grandchildren” remained untranslated until now.
Like much of Grade’s late work, “Grandfathers and Grandchildren” can be read as an elegy for the Vilna of his youth. But even within this lost world Grade presents the growing fissures between its young and old, religious and secular, inhabitants. While Grade presents the story from the perspective of the grandfathers, his own life split the difference between the young Talmud scholars Shloymele and Hirshele, on whom the grandfathers dote, and the grandfathers’ irreligious offspring, from whom they have become tragically estranged.
Grandfathers and Grandchildren
(DECEMBER 17, 1972–JANUARY 21, 1973)
Translated by Curt Leviant
I
UNDER THE COLD stone arches of the Old Shul 103 old men sit by oaken prayer stands. The tips of their beards, woven of silken threads, touch, stroke and caress the pages of yellowed sacred books. On their wrinkled, parchment-colored faces, full of tiny cross-hatched lines, their smiling, good-natured eyes squint in the sun. The attempt of the sun’s rays to melt the snow of their white beards and earlocks is in vain. The rays tickle the tufts of overgrown hair in the grandfathers’ nostrils and ears, just like the grandfathers love to tickle their grandsons. Oh, those grandsons! As long as the little demons are young and play with grandpa’s beard and earlocks, pluck prickly hairs from his nose and tug his ears, the grandfathers can hoodwink them into reciting a blessing over a sugar cookie. But when they are a couple of years older, the grandsons quickly sense that they don’t have to obey their grandfather; it’s the housemaid they have to obey. And if the daughter-in-law notices that her father-in-law is fussing over her youngest son, trying to get her little treasure to put on a yarmulke and tzitzis, 104 the daughter-in-law exclaims:
“Father-in-law, don’t torment the kid! He’s not going to be a rabbi!”
Foolish women! And if not a rabbi, does a Jewish child have to be raised a gentile? The old men hide behind the prayer stands, and the sun too hides behind a cloud, commiserating with these graybeards and their gloomy thoughts. When, with God’s help, the youngest grandson approaches bar mitzvah age, the parents will hire a tutor for him, one of the modern, enlightened fellows, to teach him to read his Torah portion and deliver a sermon. After the speech, the festive meal, and the celebration, the bar mitzvah lad will perhaps put on his tefillin 105 a couple of times—and that’s it! By then the grandfather will surely be lying under a mound of earth—but he will have no repose there, for even in the True World he will know that his grandson is not putting on tefillin.
And are their sons any better? The elders grumble to themselves and stir behind their prayer stands like thin, wind-shaken twigs of withered shrubs. Some sons! When they were young boys in kheyder, 106 their studies went fairly well. During their youth too and right after their weddings, when they went into business, they still put on tefillin every morning and went to synagogue every Sabbath. But the more successful they became, the more they shook off the yoke of ritual observance. Right after the wedding, the daughters-in-law too covered their hair for a while with a kerchief, out of respect for the master of the house and owner of the shop. But from the time all the earnings were gradually transferred to the children—and they too already had grown children—the now-fat daughters-in-law sought to outdo one another in beautiful apartments, clothing, and jewelry. And their husbands followed them like colts. After all, they even take their wives to the circus, where animals prance about on two legs like men, and men crawl around on all fours and leap and tumble like wild beasts. I
t’s an upside-down world.
Now why do they need one credenza after another and so much gold- and silverware? The laden shelves display big and small hand-cut crystal glasses that sparkle and gleam; they glint with a cold piercing light, glitter with an artificial luster. When guests sit in the house and the glasses are set on the table, only then does one first notice that the long-stemmed goblet with the wide base can hold only a couple of drops of whiskey. So why then is so much glass wasted on this? They fool everyone and play like children. During meals the masters of the house show off more with the dinnerware than with the food itself. The guests tap their knuckles on the plates and listen to the tone like to the movement of a clock. There’s no end to their cries of amazement at the hand-painted teacups. Does it make a difference what you eat or drink from? Even the Sabbath candlesticks adorned with flowers and candle-rings, and the Hanukkah menorahs with their little pitchers for oil, are for the young people more for display and decoration than for fulfilling the mitzvah 107 of lighting Sabbath candles and kindling the Hanukkah lights. And the old parents are also there for the sake of show and not for observing the mitzvah of honoring one’s father and mother.
The sun reappears from behind the clouds and finds the old men still hidden behind their prayer stands, just like it seeks and finds rabbits in bushes. There is hope for the People of Israel, the sun consoles them. Jews are eternal, and the Torah is as eternal as the heavens above the Earth. About this the old folk have no doubt; of this they are absolutely certain. No trifle—God, the Glory of Israel! These men have no concerns about the Master of the Universe, but they are sad, immeasurably grieved at heart, at not having a bit of joy from their children and grandchildren. So the old ones run away from their homes to the Old Shul. But here too it’s dreary. In this holy place there are no young shoots, no young Torah scholars. Here no fresh young voice rings out like a little bell, no sweet melody resounds as if from a violin. Even men who have to say Kaddish 108 or observe a yortsayt 109 do not set foot here. The mourners know that the one minyan 110 in the Old Shul starts precisely on time and that here they don’t rush through the prayers. If a guest strays in accidentally, as soon as he sees the old men with their white beards perusing sacred books, the newcomer retreats at once, as if he had peeked over the fence at the World to Come.
And so the days and weeks of the summer months drag on. The longer sunlight streams through the windows, and the brighter it shines, the more profound is the stillness that hovers in the Old Shul. The graybeards do not talk to one another. They are done with talking. But in the sunny silence they clearly hear the Torahs sighing in the Holy Ark, longing for young hands to open them, to hold their wooden handles and roll the parchment forward; to hear a young man sing out the weekly Torah portion with the traditional melody and for the chanted words to reverberate cheerfully out through the open windows. The old men also hear the morose silence of the Talmuds in the bookcases. It is fair to say that these volumes now have to study with one another, because no one else uses them for learning. The Jews of the Old Shul are the sorts who prefer dipping into the stories of Eyn Yaakov 111 and reading a chapter of Mishna. 112 Their intellect, now in their old age, doesn’t appreciate the convoluted Talmudic passages. The big sets of Vilna Talmuds and the editions of Maimonides’ works have been on the bookshelves from days gone by, when the study house 113 was full of scholars. Exhausted by these gloomy thoughts, the old-timers doze off. From all sides the mute and loyal sentinels regard the men: the gleaming copper washstand, the big silver Hanukkah menorah, the small brass balls on the four corners of the iron balustrade around the bimah, 114 the decorated Holy Ark, the chandeliers, the bookcases.
A silence, otherworldly and mysterious, reigns in the study house until the old men wake up, happy and frightened, as if an angel had touched them. They notice that sunlight is still shining through the windows of the Old Shul. Compared to the age difference between them and their grandsons, the sun is much older. Oh, how much older is the sun than they and their grandsons combined. Nevertheless, it reappears every day as though newborn, as in the words of the prayer, “God in his beneficence renews daily His deeds of Creation.” The sun is always replete with radiance; yet its radiance is always different. When it appears mist-covered with thin gray clouds, its light is silver-white. At times it looks like brass, pouring out a blinding heat that stings one’s eyes. Occasionally, it sparkles like the dark red copper washstand. Before dusk the setting sun resembles a gigantic golden wheel, as if fallen off Elijah the Prophet’s fiery chariot. The wonders of the Creator! The sun illumines many millions of stones, trees, living creatures and human faces. The Creator of the World can surely see and hear everything at once, as it is written: “He who fashions all their hearts and discerns all their works.” 115 But alas, these modern grandsons who know everything ask: How can God be everywhere at the same time? They really know it all, these grandsons! And their silly parents swell with pride at their clever remarks.
The grandfathers wipe the gathered moisture from the corners of their mouths and attempt to immerse themselves in their sacred books. But in their old brains, overflowing thoughts chafe against one another. These modern grandsons of theirs don’t even believe in angels. “We haven’t seen them,” they say. What fools they are! A man born on a ship in the middle of the ocean who lives his entire life on water would be incredulous too if you told him that there is such a thing as land, where trees grow tall and each tree develops hands called branches with countless fingers called leaves. That a tree is not a person, a fish or a bird, but still lives its own sort of life, unlike wood or stone, which has no life at all. So, then, would a person who has spent all his life at sea believe that? Exactly the same thing is true about angels. How can someone born of woman in this World of Falsehood see an angel, a seraph, a cherub from the World of Truth? Only the great saintly souls whose thoughts are more engaged with the World to Come than with This World, only they can see angels. These grandsons of ours are really first-rate researchers, the grandfathers giggle to themselves—and then suddenly notice a little bird perched on the rim of a window.
Some of the graybeards with keen eyesight clearly see the bird turn its head and tail, jump with its long legs, raise and lower its wings, and chirp and peep merrily, as if wanting to call to its kin. And indeed, another half-dozen winged rascals soon join him at the window, hopping about seeking seeds. They tweet and twitter, open and close their pointy beaks and roll their round little eyes—until one of the old men coughs and suddenly all the birds lift up from the window, flutter, tremble like sparks and disappear. The other old men cast angry glances at the cougher, and he too feels vexed with himself at his lack of restraint. On the other hand, he reconsiders, the sparrows didn’t necessarily flee because he scared them off. Maybe they weren’t frightened at all, but since sparrows have wings, they want to fly. The elders gaze for a while at the window and, even more dejected now, lower their eyes to their books. Of course, it’s nice to see and hear birds singing and hopping about. But it’s much nicer to see and hear Jewish children studying Torah. Birds will chance upon the Old Shul again, but young learners never chance upon this place.
Nevertheless, the old men of the Old Shul will not go to pray and study in a livelier study house. They know full well that their synagogue is even older than the Vilna Great Synagogue. They have prayed here all their lives, shed a sea full of tears and reveled in joy. As long as their feeble legs can still drag them up the steps to the Old Shul, they will not seek out any other holy place. During the summer their children plead with their fathers to spend a Sabbath in the woods, where the family has a dacha. But they decline and smile scornfully into their beards: as if they have nothing better to do than yawn in the woods and watch their children desecrate the Sabbath! They wouldn’t even go to the Chief Rabbi of Vilna’s dacha and leave the Old Shul without a minyan for the Sabbath.
All summer long the sunlight coming in through the synagogue’s windows shines into all the c
orners to see if maybe one of the elders who awaits its refreshing warmth is missing. Gradually, the sun begins to rise later and sets earlier, until the day comes when one of the old men climbs up on a bench to close the windows before the onset of the first autumn winds. With the daily blowing of the shofar 116 starting the first day of the month of Elul, 117 a cold wind also begins to blow in the graybeards’ wizened bones, and one’s heart shudders at the coming Day of Judgment. 118 The wrinkled faces become even more wrinkled and furrowed, replete with hard roots and prickles, like mown fields. Their silken beards, each of whose hairs shone individually in the summer, now become matted and ashen gray like cobwebs in the fall. Raindrops roll down the windowpanes and tears stream down hairy cheeks. All their lives they have hustled and bustled, turned the world upside down for their children, everything for the children, and now these grandfathers are superfluous to them. The elderly father is considered senile because he wants his children to be a bit more observant before the approaching Days of Awe. 119 What fools they are! If it’s inevitable that an old man becomes senile, then the same thing will befall you too. But judging by their laughter and self-confidence, it’s perfectly obvious that they either don’t think of man’s ultimate destiny or assume it’s not applicable to them. There is a dyers’ club and there is a diers’ club, but it doesn’t occur to them that every human being is a member of the latter group. Man is the sort of creature who doesn’t believe that fire burns until he gets singed. Oh, Master of the Universe! Cast us not into old age; do not forsake us when our strength is ebbing! 120
II
DURING THE WINTER the old men do not sit in their corners. They gather around the big white-tiled stove. Some sit on the nearby benches, their faces towards the small, open door of the stove, where the wood has already burned up and only the embers glow. Their shimmer plays on the yellow skin of the elders’ lined foreheads, mossy eyebrows and white beards. Reflected too on their faces is the light of the bulb in the big flat lamp hanging over the table and the flames of the melting candles on the prayer stands. For a while their beards and earlocks take on a greenish cast, like the old bronze of the chandelier and the mold on the books. Soon the wrinkled faces start to look like the yellow parchment of old scrolls. Three old men sit huddled together warming themselves, but each one is seemingly enchanted by a different light. The skin of one man’s face is furrowed like the hard brown bark of a tree in the woods at sunset. Another man’s face gleams with the reddish blight of moss soaked with autumnal dampness. In the beard of a third man burns a hellish fire that gradually darkens until it is filled with the mysterious glitter of a golden treasure. Outside of this illuminated circle the entire study house sinks into darkness. The heavy candelabras that hang on iron chains from the ceiling, the round stone pillars under the arches, the tall Holy Ark, and the east-facing part of the bimah all hover in a deep otherworldly blackness. The bluish snow from the nearby roofs and the distant frosty, star-filled sky shines through the darkened windows. In the snow-glow and the greenish twinkle of far-off stars, the front of this holy place, mute and still and engulfed in gloom, looks like a frozen ship in the Sea of Ice.