The Brothers Ashkenazi

by I. J. Singer

  He had long sought a rabbi whom he could invite to his soirees without feeling repulsed and embarrassed. The current chief rabbi was a wild-bearded fanatic, while the new candidate spoke Polish and Russian and was the recipient of an imperial medal. Rumor even had it that he had received a gold sword from the tsar, even though no one had actually seen it. The Lithuanian rabbi had his official meeting with the police chief and became the chief rabbi of Lodz.

  After this, teachers and bookkeepers, female dentists and midwives, preachers and sewing machine salesmen, insurance agents and commission men from every part of the far-flung Russian Empire poured into Lodz. Along with this wave, two strangers appeared one freezing winter day in Balut.

  It was early evening, when Jews, hunched over from the cold, with their beards tucked inside their lapels, were making their way to combined afternoon-evening services. The two strangers, wearing European dress, fur caps, bashlyks, and kits behung with teapots, brought to mind demobilized soldiers, but when the people took a closer look, they saw that there was nothing military about them. One was already middle-aged; the other, still young, but with a brooding face unlike any soldier’s.

  The older man stopped under a lamppost and by its dim light squinted at a scrap of paper.

  “Who are you looking for?” men asked the stranger.

  “Could you tell me the way to Keila Buchbinder’s place?” the elder man asked in a half-Lithuanian, half-Lodz accent.

  The men looked puzzled.

  “Keila, the wife of Tevye the weaver,” the stranger amended.

  “Why didn’t you say so in the first place? Tevye the World Isn’t Lawless’s Keila? Come, we’ll show you. She lives right on the corner in a cellar by the baker’s.”

  The strangers had hefted their kits and started to follow when suddenly one of the men turned around, looked sharply into the older stranger’s face, and clapped his hands. “Tevye, may I have such a good year if it isn’t Tevye himself! Greetings!”

  Before Tevye could get there, several boys beat him to Keila’s cellar and shouted breathlessly, “Keila, your husband has come! Keila!”

  It was even harder for Keila to recognize her husband. She gazed in shock at the stranger, glanced at his companion, blushed deeply, crammed the tip of her apron into her mouth, then commenced nervously to wipe off a bench.

  Tevye removed his bashlyk, but Keila still couldn’t believe her eyes. He was nothing like the man who had been torn from her side that night.

  “How have you been, Keila?” he asked.

  Even his voice rang strange to her. It had turned somehow sharp like a Lithuanian’s. Even after he had taken a kerchief from his kit and made her a present of it, she still couldn’t stop staring at him, her hands folded over her massive bosom. Nor could she bring herself to believe that the other man was the rabbi’s son, Nissan the depraved.

  He was so different now—older, taller, with a stubble upon his cheeks and the beginnings of what resembled Jewish earlocks. Actually he looked a lot like his father. He had the same bony, ascetic face, the same big black eyes that seemed to be gazing off into the beyond as if seeing celestial scenes hidden from all others. Rarely did a smile cross his sharp-featured, dark-skinned face. He wore a Russian blouse draped over black trousers. It was embroidered in gentile fashion around the collar and cinched with a colorful belt. His curly hair—so black that it seemed blue—covered his head in glossy waves. His thick brows were sharply etched and grown together over the bridge of his nose to lend him a stern, forbidding appearance.

  As if this weren’t enough, he kept removing book after book from his kit and satchel—densely printed Russian tomes that he wiped with the devotion pious Jews offorded a holy volume. When he spoke, it was more in Russian than Yiddish.

  “Can’t make head or tail of a single word,” Keila complained.

  The rest of Balut was just as puzzled. People came running from all over. Men greeted them; women measured them up and down; children stood with mouths open and fingers thrust up noses.

  Returning soldiers were greeted in the same fashion, but their strangeness wore off after a few days, when they donned their old Jewish clothing, let their beards grow, and lost their foreign accents. But the two men made no effort to turn back to their old ways.

  On the Sabbath, when the congregation sought to honor Tevye by granting him the privilege of reading from the Torah, he didn’t even show up for the services. The men assumed that he was praying at home, and they came to invite him to the benediction that had been prepared for him and Nissan, only to be told by Keila that neither of them any longer observed the Sabbath. “All they do is whisper, read books, and go around bareheaded like gentiles.…”

  “They’ve turned into real Litvaks.” Pious Jews sighed. “Forgotten God.…”

  For a while the people of Balut assumed that the men had brought money back from Russia. It happened more than once that exiles came back from Siberia with a bundle, and because of this, they were forgiven their non-Jewish ways. But when Tevye went immediately back to work in a factory and Nissan started giving Russian lessons to poor families, Balut concluded that they were only indigent heretics who had forfeited not only this world but the world to come, and the two were promptly forgotten.

  Soon queer-looking youths and girls began congregating in Tevye’s cellar. They had come with the wave of Russian and Lithuanian newcomers. The young men had great shocks of hair, wore glasses, Russian tunics, and soft broad-brimmed hats. The girls wore their hair short, acted tough, and smoked cigarettes. What they did in Tevye’s cellar, no one knew, but it was understood that they weren’t there for the purpose of praying. Soon after, young Balut weavers began to come as well, particularly on the Sabbaths and holidays. The neighbors tried to question Keila, but she could tell them nothing.

  “All they do is gab and read books,” she said. “I can’t make out even a word of what they’re babbling.…”

  Each Sabbath the congregation Love of Friends lost more and more young worshipers to Tevye’s cellar. Tevye, the former reader at the synagogue, and Nissan, the rabbi’s son, told them startling things which initially struck them as outlandish, but the more they thought about them, the more convincing they sounded.

  Tevye spoke to them about the life of workers in the Lithuanian cities, of their struggle against their bosses, of their solidarity, and of the funds they contributed to the fight against their exploiters.

  The young weavers in their Sabbath gabardines sat with mouths agape, trying to absorb all the new concepts to which they had never been exposed. “We’ll raise funds, too!” they said. “We vow to pay our dues on time!”

  Nissan spoke of more exalted matters—of the French Revolution, of the socialist movement abroad, of the valor of the Russian fighters for equality, of the struggles between capital and labor as well as tidbits of natural science and the history of peoples and races. Speaking simply and in easily understandable terms, employing the practiced orator’s warmth and sincerity, he explained to the weary, downtrodden men what went on in the great world outside Balut. The weavers sat with bedazzled eyes turned upward and mouths agape.

  “True!” they said. “Pearls of wisdom.…”

  They felt their insignificance melt away in the dark cellar and their spirits soar. For the first time in their lives they weren’t reminded of their worthlessness and vanity, which the preachers and rabbis constantly hammered into them. Instead, they were told of their strength, their importance, their esteem. Their life seemed to assume new purpose, and this feeling grew even stronger when Tevye and Nissan confided in them and drew them into their conspiracy. The very word, so strange and secret, sent shivers through them and burned itself into their blood and marrow, and they accepted the pamphlets and brochures distributed by Tevye’s disciples. Later, reclining on bundles of goods following the day’s mind-numbing labors, they turned down the wicks of smoky kerosene lamps so that the boss wouldn’t see and eagerly absorbed the context of the poorly prin
ted booklets.

  Tevye formed study groups and circles, enlisted new converts, and collected ten-groschen pieces from the weavers for the fund. Even the old weavers, shattered, toil-worn men, contributed their coins every Friday. Tevye’s cellar room grew so crowded on the Sabbaths there wasn’t even standing room for all those who sought to attend. Young weavers stopped taking strolls through the fields on Saturdays and instead came to listen and learn the new Torah.

  Like the wake caused by a rock thrown into a pond, the circles spread from the cellar through all Lodz. Workers met to discuss the new views in teahouses, in the Konstantin Forest, but mostly in the large, messy rooms of Feivel the rag dealer, which were stacked from ceiling to floor with books and more books.

  Feivel had no respect for the workers. What could those clods know of Enlightenment and heresy? His argument wasn’t with bosses, but with God. After all, he himself employed girls to grade his rags, and he was an employer like all other employers. Nissan’s theories, which he had brought back from abroad, meant nothing to him—he wanted to know only one thing: “Are you or are you not spreading heresy?”

  “Of a certainty, Reb Feivel. Very much so.”

  “In that case, my house is your house,” Feivel said, his face creased into a network of happy wrinkles. His large, neglected house was thronged with people on the holy days.

  Nissan even managed to enlist a number of wayward yeshiva students to the cause. Having been one himself, he knew the best way to approach them. He knew of their thirst for knowledge, and he taught them Russian and mathematics, natural science and history. At the same time he introduced other ideas—deep, forbidden, but logical views that fulfilled the emotional and intellectual needs of the scholars.

  He had gained extensive knowledge during his years of confinement. He had acquired it from university students who shared his exile and from his own studies. With his father’s zeal he probed and investigated. Just like his father, he wrote on the margins in a tiny script, making commentaries, annotations, additions.

  He had been strongly drawn to the Marxist dogma, which was still new in Russia but which had been enthusiastically taken up by Jewish revolutionaries in Lithuania’s towns and cities. To Nissan, its logic and depth, its directness and ingenious construction seemed to answer all his eternal questions. He never let his copy of Das Kapital out of his sight and carried it everywhere, as his father had carried his prayer shawl and phylacteries. And just like his father, who held that the Torah wasn’t to be studied only for one’s own edification but disseminated to all, he felt it his mission to spread the new Torah and to deride and belittle all those who refused to acknowledge its truth. Even in exile, he had used cold logic to discredit the narodniks with their silly romantic notions and had heaped scorn upon all those who dared refute the prophet Marx.

  Now he proselytized among the yeshiva students at Feivel the rag dealer’s, and they—with their minds honed by years of study and receptive to philosophical notions and abstract concepts—became true believers.

  Feivel beamed through all the tufts and bristles of his curly beard. He was as proud of Nissan as if he were his own son. “Light up, boys!” he encouraged them as he distributed cigarettes. “It’s good to smoke on the Sabbath.…”

  Inside the factories, new songs were heard, songs directed against the tsar which made the foremen blanch with fear. “Loafers!” they cried. “Walls have ears! Because of you, we’ll all go to Siberia in chains!”

  They grew even more enraged when the songs made ugly allusions to them and to the bosses. “May your mouths be twisted around to your backsides for biting the hand that feeds you!” they cursed the young men.

  The derogatory songs spread quickly, leaping from factory to factory like sparks. The bosses threatened to denounce the young workers to their fathers and to the rabbi, but the youths couldn’t care less. “We are our own masters now!” they replied. Such defiant words had never before been expressed in Lodz.

  Gradually the young weavers began to disobey their bosses’ orders. They refused to haul goods on their backs; they wouldn’t work long hours. “Enough!” they declared. “Time to knock off for the night.”

  Seasonal workers no longer cowered before their employers. They refused to take out the garbage or take the Sabbath meals to be warmed at the baker’s. In synagogues, fathers anxiously sighed about the sinful generation that rebelled against its parents.

  “They defy God and the Messiah!” some said.

  “They malign the tsar himself!” others whispered, looking around.

  “It’s all the fault of the Litvaks,” pious Jews observed bitterly. “One rotten apple spoils the barrel.”

  Police began to appear more frequently in Balut and to peer suspiciously into the open doors of the factories. “Just you wait, Jewboys,” they warned, waving threatening fists but leaving with nothing more than that with which they had entered.

  Twenty-Seven

  THE WARKA RABBI’S PROPHECY, which had so alarmed Abraham Hersh Ashkenazi, came true. Following his elder brother’s defection, Jacob Bunem too abandoned the ways of Jewishness.

  So long as his father lived, he took care to be discreet. In Warsaw he adopted European garb and caroused in cabarets, but when he came to Lodz, he put on the traditional dress and even accompanied his father to the Alexander Rabbi’s court. As soon as the father died unexpectedly of a heart attack, directly after the period of mourning, Jacob Bunem accomplished the total transformation and took the Polish name of Yakub.

  Simha Meir (now Max), despite all the modifications, had remained the quintessential Hasid. He still talked to himself, plucked at his wisp of beard, spoke in singsong (albeit in German), answered questions with questions, resorted to half words and insinuations. He still seized people by their lapels or buttons when addressing them, groped for their beards regardless if they wore them. His lapels were always sprinkled with ashes, as was his vest; his tie lay inevitably askew; the European fedora or top hat he now affected sat well back on his skull, as had his Hasidic hat. The checked English suits he now favored in order to lend his figure dignity and elegance quickly assumed the shape of a Hasidic gabardine upon his stooped shoulders.

  Jacob (now Yakub) Bunem on the other hand, seemed to be made for modern attire. He wore the half-bohemian outfits with verve and dash. Even his black Vandyke lent him a rakish, debonair, un-Jewish air. In his top hat, with his broad black cape thrown over his shoulders, white gloves, and cane, he resembled some wealthy patron of the arts to the manor born.

  Just as he had been the favorite of the children in his father’s courtyard, his popularity with adults was legendary, and Max spent sleepless nights writhing over his younger brother’s successes.

  To begin with, he couldn’t forgive him their father’s inheritance. Following the period of mourning his father had observed over him, the old man had cut Max out of the will without leaving him so much as a shoelace. The entire inheritance now went to Yakub and the sisters. It came to quite a sum, more than Max had conceived, and Yakub’s share alone totaled in the tens of thousands.

  Max went about in a stew. He had made quite a show of grief at his father’s funeral; he had torn the lapel of a perfectly new suit and even observed the seven-day period of mourning. But the heirs wouldn’t even answer when he tried to discuss his claims with them. Besides, he still owed them money from the sums he had borrowed in behalf of the Huntze brothers. No court would find in his behalf, but he did consult rabbis in an effort to break the will. None of his old obfuscating tricks had any effect, however, and in the end, Max collected nothing.

  He was also disturbed that Yakub had made the transition from Jewishness with so little difficulty, while his had evoked such animosity and ill will. The injustice of it all rankled within his bosom. Everything that came so hard to him evolved to Yakub without a hitch. Surely his brother had been born under a lucky star. He was handsome, rich, popular. He was welcome in the wealthiest homes, to which, he, Max, couldn’t
even aspire.

  Yakub now spent more time in Lodz than in Warsaw. He maintained a handsome pied-à-terre in the city’s most extravagant hotel, drove a fancy coach over Lodz’s poorly paved streets, greeting passersby with regal geniality. He quickly became a member of the city’s fast set, socialized with artists, writers, and actresses. He was known in the best restaurants, theaters, cabarets, and nightclubs. Headwaiters and doormen greeted him by name; ladies gazed at him with burning eyes.

  His wife, Pearl, was his direct opposite. While he loved life, she hid from it. She was forever ailing, sour, depressed. She took no joy in the material pleasures her wealth might have afforded her, and she resented others who did. She adored her husband, but she couldn’t keep up with him. She couldn’t bear his enduring joy, his abounding good humor. Even as she couldn’t swallow a bite, he ate with a wolfish appetite. When she tossed and turned despite the sleeping potions, he snored through the nights, and this drove her to fury.

  “Yakub.” She prodded him awake and asked irrationally, “How can you sleep like that when I can’t even close an eye?”

  She couldn’t stand the people who flocked around him or his unfailing geniality toward one and all. She was jealous of everyone, of women to whom he indolently tipped his hat, of actresses he applauded lustily in the theaters. “And who is that flirt?” she would ask, eyes narrowed, guts churning.

  She wouldn’t accompany him when he went out, yet she threw tantrums when he went without her. He therefore stayed away from Warsaw and ran to Lodz, in the raucous, flashy atmosphere of which he could indulge his senses.

  Women, from nightclub singers to bored young matrons, were drawn to him. As they strolled Piotrkow Street, he tipped his hat to them from his flying carriage. He reserved his most extravagant greeting for his sister-in-law, Dinele, whenever he chanced upon her strolling with her mother, both of them elegant in their high feathered hats.