Have I Got a Story for You

by Ezra Glinter

  VII

  ALL YEAR LONG an old father is a burden. But when it comes to the Passover Seder he’s at the seat of honor. The invited guests like to look at the old man wearing a white linen robe, leaning on white pillows. The silver of his beard blends with the silver candlesticks and the dishes on the table. The wine in the goblets is reflected in his eyes. As much as the Seder guests would laud the lady of the house for the delicious food, they will later remember the essence of the evening: the old man sitting at the head of the table.

  “He’s a jewel in the house. A precious ornament.”

  But now one couldn’t recognize these elders. Instead of reciting the Haggada 163 with a beautiful melody and expressing joy that their children were making a Seder, the old men complained that nothing was done according to Halacha, and looked suspiciously at every dish that was served. Even the previous night at the ceremony of searching for chometz, the old men’s children noticed that their fathers had undergone a change. Police in the bright light of day do not search so diligently if illegal sales are being made through a shop’s back door or if merchandise is being sold without the state tax stamp as their fathers did in searching every little corner for a stray piece of chometz. And the children felt even worse during the Seder, when their elderly fathers took out their shmura matzo. The guests could not contain their smiles seeing the burnt shmura matzo, 164 black as earth—pieces of crumbled coal. And later, when their children reproached them: “You embarrassed us in front of our guests,” the old men replied with barely audible rage:

  “A father is not your Elijah the Prophet’s cup of wine that’s placed on the table once a year. 165 Do you really believe that when we open the door and say ‘Pour out Thy wrath,’ that Elijah the Prophet enters?”

  The grandsons too couldn’t fathom this biting attack by enfeebled old men who already stood with both feet on the Other Side. The entire week of Passover the graybeards looked at their grandsons with derision and bitterness.

  “The rabbinic judge, Reb Shloymele, and the Vilna town preacher, Reb Hirshele, have left grandsons—and we too are leaving grandsons!”

  During the intermediary days of Passover and after the holiday, both yeshiva students continued studying with the old men, who glowed with even greater pleasure. As much as they loved learning Halacha and Aggadah, they knew that they would never develop into scholars. What pleased them most was that the two yeshiva students were using the sacred books of the Old Shul and that the study house resounded with young singing voices. But just as the old-timers of the Old Shul had been afraid during the winter that the little boys would run away when the frosts subsided—a fear that was justified—now the old men were afraid of summer, and now too their fear was not gratuitous.

  Shloymele, the teacher of Halacha, was complaining to his white-bearded students that he wanted to return to the yeshiva but his mother had asked him to stay at home and join the family on vacation.

  “Going on vacation is time lost from Torah study, and according to the law, honoring one’s mother is not obligatory when it involves lost Torah study time. Nevertheless, I’m trying to persuade my mother in a nice way to let me go back.” Even though the old students were overjoyed with this, they didn’t show their delight and answered slyly:

  “Excuse us for saying this, teacher, but your mother isn’t wrong. She just wants you to rest up a bit.”

  Hirshele, the Vilna town preacher’s grandson, also complained to the old men: “My mother still isn’t well and I can’t return to the yeshiva.”

  Knowing that the genteel and sedate teacher of Aggadah would not get angry, the grandfathers spoke to him openly and forthrightly:

  “With God’s help your mother will get well soon, so why don’t you remain at home and study with us in the Old Shul? This way we will have a teacher and the bookcases won’t remain forlorn. In the Kletsk yeshiva there is no lack of famous scholars, may their numbers increase, while in our holy place we don’t hear the bell-like voice of a youngster studying Torah. There used to be a time when all the benches in the Old Shul were filled with the old, young and the very youngest learners. Now we are left, old folk who are not truly scholars. So stay with us and the merit of the Old Shul will help you be successful in your Torah studies. When one studies in the Old Shul, one is also rewarded by getting a good match.”

  This long explanation exhausted the grandfathers and they stood before their young teacher with pleading eyes, open mouths, and lowered beards. Hirshel stared down at his pale and long elegant fingers and looked up at the old men with a smile in his tranquil eyes.

  “I’m still a student myself and indeed not one of the excellent ones. So how will I be able to improve in learning if I don’t hear lectures by the head of the yeshiva and if I don’t have friends with whom I can review the topic under discussion? My parents won’t agree to this either.”

  The old-timers saw that they were wrong. Nevertheless, their passionate wish that a couple of scholars would sit and study in the Old Shul had so fired them up that they still sought a way of holding onto these two grandsons. All the little golden bells on the Torah crowns did not tinkle as sweetly and merrily as the singing voices of these young Torah scholars. Perhaps it would be a good idea to go to their mothers and make their case to them. Your sons, may they live and be well, they would tell the mothers, your sons are grandsons of the Vilna rabbinic judge, Reb Shloymele, of blessed memory, and of the Vilna town preacher, Reb Hershele, of blessed memory. So, then, the oldest synagogue in our city has a greater claim to students than a yeshiva in the small town of Kletsk.

  But the oldsters realized at once that the mothers of these children of rabbinic descent would most certainly answer: Even though we’re mothers, we let our sons live away from home so they can develop into distinguished scholars. And now you come along and want our children to stay with you in your study house to keep you from feeling gloomy. Would that be right? That’s what the mothers would ask and to that the old men would have no response.

  “But the truth of the matter is that the mothers wouldn’t speak that way if we had proper brides for their sons. But if our own grandsons are out-and-out gentiles, what sort of impression would our grand-daughters make, girls who haven’t even been taught how to light the Sabbath candles? Fine brides they would make for the future Vilna rabbinic judge, Reb Shloymele, and the future Vilna town preacher, Reb Hirshele!”

  Thus the graybeards said to one another and laughed bitterly until they decided that it would be better not to go to the mothers at all and thus avoid subjecting themselves to disgrace and humiliation.

  The two youths returned to their yeshiva right after Lag B’Omer. As they bid goodbye to the Old Shul regulars they wished them long life and hoped they would remember the Torah precepts they had studied together. Both scholars realized that they could not wish the old men joy from their children for they had lost hope that their children would return to the strict observance of Judaism in their lifetimes. So wishing the old folk such joy would seem like they were making fun of them. The young master of Talmud, Shloymele, begged the old men’s pardon for his impetuousness if, while teaching, he seemed to be strict. Hirshele too apologized.

  “Please don’t take it amiss, gentlemen, that we’re not remaining here with you. We ourselves still need a teacher.”

  The elders murmured something but their lips trembled visibly and one could not hear what they were stammering. With great effort they just barely managed to stifle their sobs, for it would have been a terrible shame to see these young scholars off with tears, while their own mothers saw them off with joy. So they stroked their backs and arms silently, but their beards shook like torn spider webs. Even after the youths were gone, the old men stood by the door and remained silent together, like weak, abandoned birds in a meadow near a river in gloomy autumn, when the fit birds fly high in the sky to warmer lands. Later the graybeards crept back to their corners and hid behind the big prayer stands.

  The voices of the y
oung scholars at their Talmuds echoed for a long while in the grandfathers’ hairy ears. The sun once more moved from the northeast past the windows of the southern wall and headed northwest, radiant and delighted that in the meantime everything in the Old Shul was still the same. The engraved plaque with the Psalmist’s words, “I have set the Lord always before me,” 166 standing on the marble-topped reading desk shone along with the sparkling brass balls on the railing around the bimah. The stove’s glossy white enamel tiles glistened brightly by the western wall. The copper washstand at the entrance glimmered dark red like a sunset. The big Hanukkah menorah shed a cold silver light like a mist-wrapped moon. Only the old men behind their prayer stands sat there with lightless eyes. They became even more bent over, their beards even grayer and sparser, their faces even more wrinkled. The sacred texts that the two young masters of Talmud had used lay scattered on the tables. In the four big round stone pillars around the bimah, one could see the holes made by the shots from the “guns” fired by the street urchins during the Megillah reading on Purim—the abandoned elementary school of the Old Shul.

  The old men flitter from dreams to daydreams. Itsikl’s former teacher suddenly jolts awake, frightened, and feels his beard. Into his sleepy brain a foolish thought had strayed and buzzed like a fly. While Itsikl was studying with him, he forgot to tell the boy that if he would come to the study house on Tisha B’Av, 167 when little boys have a custom of throwing thorn balls and wild pine cones into men’s beards, he’d let him do that too.

  “What am I dreaming about, and what am I thinking of? I’m dreaming about pine cones and already thinking of Tisha B’Av, when it’s still less than three weeks to Shavues,” the old man rebuked himself, groaned, and dozed off again, his wrinkled beard at the edge of the prayer stand.

  Another old man daydreams that he sees the stone huts built over the graves of the Vilna rabbinic judge, Reb Shloymele, and the Vilna town preacher, Reb Hirshele. Over the moss-covered roofs of these little gravesite huts, tall trees grow and their leaves sparkle and shine; they tremble with religious ecstasy and joy that they have the privilege of growing over the graves of such saintly men. The old man consoles himself that he too will be laid to rest in this same cemetery where these two profound scholars are buried and they will be a shield over him, for he had sat in the same study house where their grandsons had studied and had enjoyed their words of Torah.

  A third old man isn’t sleeping at all. He sits with tightly knitted brows and thinks: “It’s high time to carry out what I promised myself long ago. I will pay a recluse in the Gaon’s Shul in advance to say Kaddish for me three times a day for an entire year and study a chapter of Mishna every morning on behalf of my soul. Better to have the hired Kaddish of an honest stranger than the Kaddish of a son who does not keep the Sabbath.”

  Meirke’s teacher also dozed off, but when he woke, he did not remain absorbed in morose thoughts. By nature he was a man with a happy heart. He went to the wash basin to wash his hands and had in mind to review everything he had learned in Halacha and Aggadah from the two brilliant young scholars. While so doing he thought that the study house did a great deed by bringing in those frozen street urchins to warm up and study with them. Indeed, spring came and the little rascals ran off, but they did learn how to read Hebrew. Even if these students forget their teachers for the present, in later years they will remember, and they will long for the old men of the Old Shul.

  103 Yiddish for “synagogue” or “school.”

  104 Ritual fringes worn on the corners of a four-cornered garment.

  105 Phylacteries.

  106 Religious elementary school.

  107 Commandment.

  108 The mourner’s prayer

  109 Anniversary of a death.

  110 Prayer quorum.

  111 A sixteenth-century compilation of Talmudic tales and legends.

  112 The first major work of rabbinic literature, redacted in the third century C.E. and included as a component of the Talmud.

  113 Synagogues often served as centers of both prayer and religious study.

  114 The small platform in the center of the synagogue from which the Torah is read.

  115 Psalms 33:15.

  116 The ram’s horn, which is blown after morning services starting a month before the new year.

  117 The twelfth and last month of the Jewish year.

  118 Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish new year, is considered to be the day on which God passes judgment on the world for the year to come.

  119 The ten days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement.

  120 Paraphrase of Psalms 71:9.

  121 Married women traditionally cover their hair according to Jewish law, although that covering can be a wig.

  122 A reference to Proverbs 31:10.

  123 A Yiddish-language school in Vilna, founded by the teacher Dvora Kuperstein in 1912.

  124 Dvora Esther Gelfer (1817–1907), a philanthropist and founder of a charitable foundation that provided interest-free loans.

  125 Diminutive of Sarah.

  126 The fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Shvat, a holiday celebrating the “New Year of the Trees.”

  127 It is traditional on Tu B’Shvat to eat fruits from the Land of Israel, such as carob.

  128 According to Jewish law, texts bearing God’s name cannot be thrown out but must be buried in a cemetery.

  129 The Sabbath in which Exodus 15:1–18, the Song of the Sea, is read in the synagogue, which often falls close to Tu B’Shvat. In Ashkenazi Jewish communities it is customary to feed wild birds on that Sabbath.

  130 Genesis 8:7.

  131 Babylonian Talmud, tractate Yoma 35b.

  132 A story often told about Rabbi Elijah ben Shlomo Zalman, better known as the Vilna Gaon (1720–1797).

  133 The Feast of Tabernacles.

  134 A palm branch that is shaken together with a citron and the branches of myrtle and willow plants on the holiday of Sukes, per Leviticus 23:40.

  135 Citron.

  136 A holiday immediately following Sukes, during which the cycle of weekly Torah readings is completed and begun anew. Literally “The Rejoicing of the Torah.”

  137 A holiday celebrating the salvation of the Jews from the genocidal plans of the Persian vizier Haman, as described in the biblical Book of Esther.

  138 A triangular stuffed pastry supposedly in the shape of Haman’s purse, traditionally eaten on Purim.

  139 The beadle or sexton of a synagogue.

  140 The prayer marking the end of the Sabbath and the beginning of a new week.

  141 Great scholar or genius.

  142 Literally “scroll,” but in the context of Purim a reference to the Book of Esther.

  143 During the reading of the Book of Esther in synagogue it is customary to symbolically drown out the names of Haman and his family with noisemakers.

  144 A mixture of wool and linen, or other mixtures prohibited by the Torah.

  145 Leviticus 19:19, Deuteronomy 22:9–11.

  146 That is, the one who will say the mourner’s prayer for her after her death.

  147 Matzo, or unleavened bread, which has been supervised from the time the wheat is harvested, to ensure that it has never had a chance to leaven.

  148 A commentary by Rabbi Jonathan Eybeschutz (1690–1764) on the Code of Jewish Law by Rabbi Yosef Karo (1488–1575).

  149 Eybeschutz was a rabbinical judge in Prague from 1736 to 1741 before becoming the rabbi of Metz and then of the three communities of Altona, Hamburg, and Wandsbek.

  150 Yiddish for “Mr.”

  151 Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan (1839–1933), known as the Chofetz Chaim (literally, “the one who desires life”) after the title of one of his works.

  152 The blessing on the new moon is traditionally said outside the synagogue on the first Saturday night after its appearance.

  153 Literally, “The Desire of Shloyme.”

  154 Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg (1220–1293).

&nbs
p; 155 The parts of rabbinic literature consisting of stories and legends.

  156 A commentary on the first section of the Code of Jewish Law by Rabbi Israel Meir Kagan (1838–1933), otherwise known as the Chofetz Chaim.

  157 Leavened bread or other baked goods, which are forbidden on Passover.

  158 The counting of days between Passover and Pentecost, as per Leviticus 23:15–16.

  159 The thirty-third day of the Counting of the Omer, traditionally a day of celebration.

  160 The holiday of Pentecost, celebrating the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai.

  161 Legal subjects.

  162 The third to fifth days of Passover, which are still part of the holiday but when most kinds of work may be performed.

  163 The rabbinic text detailing the biblical Exodus from Egypt, which is read at the table on the first and second nights of Passover.

  164 In addition to being specially supervised, shmura matzo is also often baked by hand rather than by machine.

  165 An additional cup of wine is traditionally poured at the Seder for Elijah the Prophet.

  166 Psalms 16:8.

  167 The ninth of the month of Av, a day of mourning commemorating the destruction of the two temples in Jerusalem.

  SECTION FIVE

  New Horizons

  IN THE LATE nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the Yiddish press was the most popular outlet for literary publishing. This was not unique to Yiddish, of course—authors from Charles Dickens to Harriet Beecher Stowe published most of their works in serialization. While books were expensive to produce and buy, a newspaper paid for itself in advertising and could be bought by readers for just a few cents.