Isaac's Torah

by Angel Wagenstein

  On my right side was sitting as always my dear Uncle Chaimle, who as the director of the public “Refuse Disposal” department was concluding the last years of his life before retirement and was responsible for the only horse cart that gathered the town waste, with its driver and simultaneously chief garbage man, Avrom Morgenrot—the not-completely-normal albino.

  Uncle Chaimle said, “I heard a new joke. Someone asks banker Nahum why he’s not playing poker with Count Galitzki anymore, and he says: ‘Would you play poker with an outright thief?’ ‘Never!’ the other one says. ‘Well, Count Galitzki doesn’t want to either!’ ”

  We laughed, even though it wasn’t a new joke, but nothing can prevent a Jew from having a bit of a laugh. Only our former rabbi didn’t laugh. He was somewhat pensive and anxious, his spirit far away from where we were.

  And Uncle Chaimle went on: “By the way, Shmuel, it’s Shabbos now, isn’t it?”

  The former rabbi woke up; his spirit came back to where it belonged. “I think so. Why? Oh, yes, I know what you mean. Tell me to whom should I give the keys and I’ll hand them over.”

  “Which keys?” asked my mother.

  “The keys to the shul,” angrily explained Uncle Chaimle. “He closed it up and on top of that put a lock on it too!”

  “There are silver objects inside, Chaim,” said Ben-David in self-justification.

  “It’s not about the silver objects, but about your golden lips, Shmuel,” my father calmly interjected. Apparently this topic had been discussed before and we were involuntarily becoming witnesses to a coup that was intended to bring back our former rabbi to the kingdom of God. “We need to know right now: Who will read the prayer in shul tomorrow?”

  Our former rabbi was silent for a long time, cast a confused look at Comrade Esther Katz and finally said quietly, but firmly, “Not me. Whoever wants to can do it, but not me. I can’t be your rabbi, it’s not fair!”

  “Well, well now,” Uncle Chaimle said sarcastically. “You can be chairman of the Atheists’ Club and that’s fair, isn’t it? What would it cost you to combine that function, speaking in the Soviet way, with the position of rabbi? What’s stopping you, I ask you?”

  “I have reasons of a moral nature. Find yourself somebody else,” insisted Shmuel Ben-David.

  “And who’ll lead our tribe through the desert?” Uncle Chaimle asked somberly and the desert khamsin blew out of his words, and my teeth ground the dust of the sand.

  “Our people don’t want just anyone,” my father said, “just you, Shmuel Ben-David! You and nobody else, if you understand what I’m telling you.”

  Ben-David apparently understood, because he was being spoken to in Yiddish, but he quietly cursed in Russian, and then immediately, like a stray sheep that has found its sheepfold, went back to his mother tongue. “What are you all jumping on me for? And you, Chaim, since when did you become such a Hasid, when the last time you went to shul was the day of your circumcision? The desert! Look at him now—some anti-Soviet Moses! Why don’t you lead them through the desert, and split the Red Sea in two!”

  “You’re talking nonsense,” said Esther Katz flatly.

  But our former rabbi was already burning up. “Yes, you go ahead, Chaimle. I’m not going to waste my time because of a handful of religious idiots!”

  Esther Katz put her hand on his arm. “It’s not good to talk like this!”

  I was silent, because, honestly speaking, I wasn’t one of those who would get a bellyache if I didn’t go to the synagogue on Saturday. But unexpectedly, this quarrel, which I would compare to a theological dispute between hellenized Sadduccees and learned Talmudists, was joined by my son Yeshua. Apparently he already considered himself worthy of participating in such a debate—historic for the Kolodetz Jews—because he’d flown Soviet gliders. He said, “Uncle Shmuel is right a hundred times over! Haven’t you ever heard of something like the ‘opium of the people’? We must put an end to this medieval Hasidic Jewish stupidity!”

  Silence fell, during which Sarah quietly said, “Yeshua, leave the table…. Do you hear me? I said leave the table!”

  But he didn’t get up, stubbornly fixing his eyes on his plate.

  “And those who believe in the One Who Is? Eh? And believe seven times, and seven times seven times?” calmly asked my father, and as he gradually raised his voice I could hear in it the distant trumpets of Jericho, and feel the rage and power of our ancient ancestors. “If I, for example, believe in the only and fearful God of the Jews, Adonai, am I an idiot? I’m asking you, Shmuel! Or a medieval Hasidic dumbhead? I’m asking you, Yeshua!”

  Biblical lightning didn’t strike, nor did a bush burst into flame, but I don’t know where this old man’s hand found so much strength that when he struck hard, the dish of borsht flew off across the room, broke into pieces against the white wall, down which the red beets poured like blood.

  Sarah and I looked at each other, and her eyes seemed sad and somewhat guilty, as if they were apologizing for her brother’s words.

  Ben-David stood up, and said quietly, “Excuse me. Excuse me, Aaron. All of you. I didn’t express myself well, I know. Forgive me. Tomorrow I will come and open the synagogue, and I will say the prayer. And you, Itzik, will read that piece from Book Three of Moses—about the idols. Excuse me.”

  He bowed respectfully and went out, and Itzik, if you remember, is me. Esther Katz said in confusion, “Don’t be angry with him, I beg you….”

  THREE

  Our people came triumphantly, as if they had won a small war, wearing the obligatory small kipas and the wraparound white ritual tallis shawls, and the Shabbos service took place. The rabbi Ben-David murmured briefly “Baruch ata Adonai elohenu…” —blessed be He, our one and only God.

  I wouldn’t say that the synagogue was crowded like it was in pre-Soviet times—mainly missing were the young people, and even the old people did not, as it were, put in an appearance. Some, I think, stayed away because of a loss of faith or because they just didn’t feel the spiritual need; I don’t exclude pragmatic reasons, such as an upcoming admittance to the Party, or the most commonplace fear, and about this one I’ve got my own opinion, may the old men devoted to the shul forgive me, because this fear has been speculated on quite a bit in recent times. I wouldn’t say that the Soviet authority was fond of churchgoing and religious rituals, just the opposite, but the times when these things were viewed askance and with spiteful iconoclasm had gone by, and anyway in Kolodetz I didn’t feel anything of the kind. Maybe in Novosibirsk or Karakoum it might have been different, I wouldn’t venture to say, but I know that the refuge of fear is the human soul. That is why I truly despise those who maintain today that they didn’t go to meet with God because of fear. If I were God—you understand, I’m just supposing, and have no such aspirations—I’d rather forgive the pagan and bless the one who doesn’t hide his disbelief in Me, than the one who hides his faith and is afraid to follow it, and looks around to check if there’s another eye, apart from the Eye of God. Or remembers Me from time to time and quickly buys himself off, “just in case”—with either a coin dropped in the cash box in the Christian church, or a small candle, or an absentminded murmur of “Amen” in the synagogue, while secretly looking around and calculating how Menachem Rosenbaum managed to acquire those new shoes, the elite kind produced by the “Red Proletariat” factory for high-ranking party comrades. Forgive my rude expression, but such chicken-livered religious hypocrites I would send to hell, if such an institution exists.

  You’ve probably sensed in these contemplations of mine the influence of, or even direct quotes from, Rabbi Shmuel Ben-David and so you should, he taught me to doubt belief and to believe in doubt. He taught me to look the celestial truths straight in the eye and if God doesn’t lower His eyes in confusion, it means that He and I think alike, at least on the issue in question. As far as earthly truths are concerned, the rabbi didn’
t teach me anything, because he considered himself a novice who was still just beginning to figure out the alphabet of a new and still unwritten Torah, with a new Book of Moses’ “Exodus” that would tell the story of how humankind went through the ordeal of the desert of the present day, and finally reached the Promised Land, the blessed Canaan of the future.

  I’ve strayed a little, but if you’ve forgotten where we were, let me remind you: we were at the synagogue of Kolodetz by Drogobych, Rabbi Shmuel Ben-David—or if you wish, Citizen Samuel Davidovich Zvassman—had just read, or rather sung and murmured, the prayer and now it was my turn. And so, according to the rabbi’s instructions, I started chanting, like a string of pearls, the words from the third book of Moses: “You shall not make idols for yourselves, or set up for yourselves carved images or pillars, or place figured stones in your land to worship upon, for I the LORD am your God.” And so on, you know it by heart. I was reading with feeling, but my thoughts were flying somewhere else: Why had the rabbi chosen exactly this chapter? And what was he trying to suggest?

  Now, as I write these lines, many, many years after that Saturday in the synagogue of Kolodetz, I think I know: his gods were Truth and Serving People, and he was deeply disturbed and confused by the clarity of this faith, its simple humanity, which blended with the celestial so much that the two became one and only one; but he was disturbed by the graven images about which I was reading from the Torah. To say it more clearly: over our newly annexed Soviet region a torrent of portraits of Stalin and Lenin came raining down, mostly of Stalin, and busts and statues of Stalin and Lenin, and again mostly of Stalin, and posters with slogans, and again busts and casts of leaders full-face and in profile, and were they not those forbidden idols and stones with images to which the Law says we’re not supposed to bow? And which were meticulously copying the One, glory to His Name, who claims with quite nebulous arguments that there exists no one but Him? And I’m convinced that Ben-David was ready to renounce all the gods—both earthly and heavenly—to leave his heart free for the Truth and only for the Truth, which is in fact only one and there exists no other but it. And where was the sense in giving up some idols, whom you considered outdated and unjust, in order to bump your nose, as you stared back into the past of the ancestors, on other, newer ones, toward which Ben-David also felt torturous suspicion, because they were letting out into the air a very identifiable smell of sulfur?

  When it came time for the Shabbos preaching, the rabbi said, “I searched for God in this home called Heaven and I didn’t find Him, so don’t you go looking for Him either, because He isn’t here. Look into your hearts, brothers, and if you find Him there, let your hearts become your synagogues, your temples, your sacrificial pyres and Tables of the Law. Because if God is love, only in the heart can there be love, and not in stones. What is this building if not stones? And what will become of our hearts if they stop being a sanctuary or, to put it our way, an Ark of love to Man, and by this we do not mean one person, but all people, of all different skin colors, all tribes and tongues, all lands and seas—from the countries of eternal heat to the countries of eternal frost—because only all of them together are God. And there is no other God but this one. My dear brothers, frightful obstacles lie ahead of us that will bestow frightful suffering: take your eyes off the sky and look at your feet so as not to overlook the earthly pains of your fellow men, or sink into the first trap of indifference. The great ancestors left us the priceless spiritual treasures of the Word, the beginning of all beginnings, keep them, respect them, because they are the invisible bond of our dispersed tribe that has survived through the centuries and the millennia, through which other tribes have been created, risen up, and disappeared for ever. Be respectful to other faiths, but do not be obedient and submissive to your own, because this is exactly what you will be asked for by the paid priests of made-up gods, both earthly and heavenly. They will want to turn you into slaves and servants of masters’ tables, blind men in the darkness of ignorance and lies, and not free people striding toward the light—the enemy of ignorance. Our great father and prophet Moses brought the Tables from the Sinai mountains. They contain unfathomed depths of wisdom, and that is why they are the Law. Follow it, but with your common sense and not like cattle, in order to avoid falling into the Tables’ abyss, and don’t be afraid to violate the letter of the book in the name of His spirit. Do not be His obedient tools, but His courageous judges. And if your neighbor possesses castles built with the stolen stones of your huts, then, brothers, wish for the castles of your neighbor, and make of them your common home! And if he has a thousand sheep and a hundred camels and you have none, wish for the sheep and the camels of your neighbor, so that they will become your common herd! And if he seduces your women, do not accept it obediently as slaves, but go and seduce his! Amen and Gut Shabbos!”

  Indeed, what a pity that Karl Marx couldn’t hear this talmudic commentary on the Books of Moses!

  FOUR

  It may seem strange to you, but the old men didn’t become indignant at their rabbi’s Shabbos preaching, just the opposite—they went home satisfied that the shul was again a home for the gathering of the good Jews of Kolodetz. Apparently about the meaning of the Law they cared not so much, but, as Uncle Chaimle would say, about the Law as such, and this gives me some explanation of the noisy approval and even adoration with which some people listen to the speeches of the deputies in their own knessets, without even paying attention to their meaning. In any case Ben-David, full of compassion for the neighbors, agreed, temporarily, until a new rabbi was found, to fulfill simultaneously the role of tzaddik, or spiritual shepherd, both in the synagogue and the Atheists’ Club—in the first case for those who believed in God, and in the second, for those who believed in Marx. And to tell you the truth, he handled wonderfully his complicated mission of helping the spiritually blind and teaching them not to be the stupid servants of slave feasts, and leading them through the mazes of doubt, and he never let them live with the delusion that the curved elbow, especially if it ends with a clenched and ominous fist, either human or divine, is the whole truth about milk.

  The November celebrations dedicated to the twenty-third anniversary of the Revolution had passed long ago, and what in the beginning seemed to us new, unusual, or incomprehensible had gradually become Soviet routine, a way of living, and we were adjusting—each one as he could—to its requirements. In connection with the upcoming May 1st holiday, we were given from above—this is the exact phrase, “given from above,” a new immediate plan, according to which our workshop at Cartel #6 and so on—let’s not twist our tongues with that abbreviation—had to increase its level of “labor productivity” by 4.20 percent. Plans, you should know, used to be “given from above,” and there was something grand and mysterious about it. Somewhere on high above the clouds some invisible deity was “giving from above,” like the Tables of the Law from Sinai, file folders with percentages, deadlines, and commitments according to abilities whose fulfillment was later adjusted according to needs, just the way it was with the ancient Ten Commandments—in which theft, for example, if in particularly large proportions, could be qualified as an over-fulfillment of the plan for legitimate profits, and murder, if in bigger batches, as the fulfillment of the immediate plan for the defense of national interests. My father and I spent a long time pondering but in the end couldn’t come up with any efficiency improvements or changes, apart from the origin of the needles, and so the imported German ones were replaced by the local versions from the tractor factory—a little rough, but, because of that, easily adaptable to defense needs. I don’t even know if we managed to increase productivity by 4.20 percent, because we couldn’t figure out the baseline prerevolutionary percentage, but we received a triangular flag, which to this day may be hanging there somewhere on the wall, with a golden sign on a red background: “OUTSTANDING WORKER IN THE MAY FIRST COMPETITION.” This flag meant that we had participated—my father and I—in the aforementioned co
mpetition, even though it wasn’t clear with whom exactly we were competing and in what incomprehensible (at least to me) way we had excelled, but in all this, you understand, there was some kind of inclusion of our small atelier into something big, common, and meaningful, while in its old form Mode Parisienne was a lonely speck in the tailoring galaxy, a needle lost in a haystack of caftans, a basement workshop, in which the only larger event that connected it to God’s big world was the tailoring of a red uniform for some hussar of His Majesty’s Lifeguards—a myth in my father’s view comparable to the Odyssey, the Kalevala or The Song of the Nibelungs.

  And it was exactly at this, so to say, festive May 1st peak of my story, marked by a red triangular flag, that trouble came: through Kolodetz, like thunder and lightning, the news that early that morning our fellow citizen, veteran of the Russo-Turkish war, and bearer of the honorary badge of Posts and Communications, Abraham Mordekhaevich Apfelbaum, more commonly known as Avramchik, had been arrested by the institution of the NKVD, which stood for the People’s Commissariat of Internal Affairs, or, as we put it, the political police. The first, and maybe the only one who beamed at this news, was our Catholic priest, who, as I’ve already informed you, was a militant anti-Semite, and any trouble that fell upon any Jewish head he viewed as God’s punishment and an expression of supreme justice. But just as his beaming smile had reached its apogee, and was approaching its perigee, the priest himself was arrested, it was said, for being an accomplice. An accomplice in what? Nobody knew. And even as early as the next morning Pan Voitek was arrested, our former police chief, former mayor, and also already former head of the ZAGS—the department for the registration of citizens and so on. In this case, the situation was a little clearer, the case, so to say, spread in whispers and went from one ear to another. That is, the case was a half-liter bottle of vodka, which Citizen Voitek had brought secretly in his pocket into the club “October Fireworks,” which unlike the petty bourgeois ways of the times when this club was David Leibovitch’s café, now prohibited the consumption of alcohol, so our Voitek was secretly pouring from the bottle into his glass, pretending it was drinking water. But it is not what the NKVD would arrest you for—they too were full of bearers of the shield and sword of revolution who would pour down their throats the same liquid in the same water glasses. They did it mostly in secrecy and behind closed doors and maybe this is why they were called “fighters at the quiet front.” No, not for this, but because after two and a half glasses, which exactly meets the Soviet standard for a half-liter bottle of vodka, Citizen Voitek announced that Stalin was a piece of shit and that he had sold Poland to the German shitheads in return for half the amount from the deal. From the law’s point of view, with this he was on the one hand undermining the prestige of an authority figure, and Comrade Stalin was without doubt exactly this type of figure, and on the other he was heaping an insult on a neighboring country, with which the USSR was having diplomatic and, we could even say, friendly relations. This meant, according to the Kolodetz legal experts, no less than a public reprimand, and if the authorities wanted to be strict about it, a fine of up to five rubles. But what this failure of Voitek’s could have had to do with the arrest of Avramchik and the Roman Catholic priest, for the time being no one could say. We could only gather our patience and wait till the next day, when Citizen Voitek would no doubt get out of detention, after he had been reprimanded or had paid the five rubles for his reckless, drunken chatter. Then he would probably be able to explain to us what the connection might be between a drunken Pole, an old Jew, and a Catholic priest, apart from the one that all three were loyal Soviet citizens, residents of the little town of Kolodetz by Drogobych. Some other unknown person spread another rumor, specifically that Avramchik, at the time when he was still a postal officer, had received and illegally appropriated a check for a hundred thousand dollars, sent by Baron Rothschild to his compatriots in Kolodetz, and together with the priest and the head of the ZAGS, Citizen Voitek, had secretly drunk away the money at the local railway station bars. But hardly anyone believed this version, composed apparently by extreme admirers of the baron, who were mixing up their pure dreams with the rough, so to say, Soviet reality. This rumor about the railway station bars was even more unbelievable because of the fact that in our region, all the way up to Truskavetz, any bar tab exceeding two rubles, with the only exception being three rubles fifty kopecks on the eve of May 1st of the October Revolution, paid in one evening by the same fellow, caused well-founded suspicions of shady deals, illegal income, or that the payer of the above-mentioned tab was a cashier, and maybe even a spy, with one foot in jail.