1.

The Graipewo RAV¹ and his wife had reached their later years. Their children were all married and lived in Horadna. The Rav, Rabbi Uri-Zvi Ha-Kohen Koenigsberg, was a huge, fleshy man, tall and wide, with wavy side-locks flowing into a snow-white beard and large, innocent light-blue eyes. Though widely respected as a scholar and preacher, Rabbi Koenigsberg had never sought a more prestigious pulpit. He remained in Graipewo, never arguing with his congregants or ruling them with an iron hand—and never flattering the wealthier of them either. It was his wish to avoid contention at all cost.

When litigants came before him for a ruling, he was so persistent in urging them to settle the dispute themselves that only rarely did he have to render a verdict. When the townspeople urged him to rebuke the young men who were straying from the right path, he would never publicly chastise the impudent youths in his sermons. Instead, he would come down where they congregated and talk to them behind the bimah; he would even seek them out in the marketplace. And there was a great deal to reproach these young men for: much desecration of the Sabbath, and cavorting with girls by the river—and just plain recklessness. But the Rav would simply ask them: “How long is one young?”—and continue plaintively, “You’re all going to be older someday. And you’ll be ashamed all your life for what you are doing now. Is this proper for children of such nice homes as yours?” He would say this with such anguish and sincerity that even the most brazen youths would not dare to answer back.

With the same solemnity and care with which he chanted the morning prayers, he conducted classes in Mishnah every morning after services. And so clear and simple were his explanations that even a child could understand. With that same patience did he eat, study, write out his Talmudic insights, and prepare his sermons. And when he grew tired, he would stroll down the path behind his house. Calmly, with his hands clasped behind him, he would walk, half murmuring, half chanting to himself a song of praise to God for such a beautiful day.

If he met anyone on the way, he would nod amiably without waiting to be greeted first, and then continue his brisk stroll to a pleasant, barely audible melody. But should a man approach him looking worried and say, “Rabbi, I’d like to ask you for some advice,” his entire demeanor would express concern and he’d listen to this man’s problem right there on the road. He would then take the troubled man into his home and, in private, continue to listen until the man had finished pouring out his heart and could leave consoled.

Even the more contentious among his congregants respected and admired the Rav’s humility. Once the president of the congregation remarked: “The Rav, may he live and be well, is beloved and esteemed by all of us, and Graipewo would not think for a moment of his leaving. But we wonder, why is it that he has never sought a larger congregation, as so many of his colleagues have done?”

“I have nothing against Graipewo,” he answered. “Except perhaps this: when our children were small, my rebbetzin and I worried about their education. But now that our children are grown and have, thank God, married well, we are only two people. So do we really need a larger house or a city with half-a-dozen synagogues? We can only sleep in one room at a time and pray in one synagogue.”

This reply endeared the Rav to the townspeople even more. Even so, the Jews of Graipewo knew that he was concealing from them the persistent urging of his wife that he seek a new pulpit.

The Rebbetzin Perele was the exact opposite of her husband in appearance as well as character: a slight woman with narrow shoulders and thin arms, with sharp, searching eyes and a tall rabbinic forehead inherited from her father, the great sage Rabbi Osherel Broido, the Gaon of Staropol. Perele suffered from headaches, extreme nervousness, and indigestion, and was given to fits of moodiness. She had a medicine chest bursting with bottles, and spent days on end lying on the sofa with a wet cloth on her forehead. She would suck valerian-soaked sugar cubes and take teaspoon after teaspoon of her medicines. The women of the town always insisted that there was nothing wrong with her. “Why, she’s as healthy as a hard, bitter radish,” they declared. “All these illnesses she imagines she has, come from her wretched personality.” It was a common saying among the people of Graipewo that, as nice as the Rav was, that’s how nasty was his rebbetzin.

Not that Perele minded what the townspeople said about her. She never befriended any of them anyway: if you let the ignorant get too close, they’ll jump all over you. And she would tell her husband that when he spent hours listening to someone’s problems, that person looked upon the Rav as a tzaddik, a saint, while he was unburdening himself. But if that same man should see him lavishing such attention on someone else, that first ignoramus would think, “What a fool the Rav is!”

In her father’s house back in Staropol, and later in her own home, Perele had heard many snatches of Talmudic lore, which she could cite with fluency and ease. Yet she did not attend services, except on an occasional Sabbath when the New Moon was blessed, or on a holiday. No one could have accused the Graipewo Rebbetzin of being too religious. But that didn’t stop her from complaining to her husband because they didn’t fear him as if he were a hetman with a mace.

No woman in town had as many dresses, coats, or fancy hats as Perele. But her clothes were all made in the old classic style; she even ordered that her new dresses be made in that old-fashioned way. And she had a saying for this, too: “The difference between a sacred book and one of your little secular books is that one reads an ordinary book and then throws it away, but a sacred book one kisses after reading and places it on the shelf to come back to again and again throughout one’s life. It’s exactly the same, if you’ll forgive the comparison, with clothes. The old styles you can wear and wear, but today’s styles you wear just today and throw out tomorrow.”

Emissaries from distant yeshivahs and itinerant maggidim who spent the Sabbath with the Rav could not praise the rebbetzin enough. Although it is not altogether proper for a pious scholar to talk about another man’s wife, these guests could not help making an exception in this case, declaring to the men of Graipewo that their rebbetzin was as keen as Bruriah, the wife of the Talmudic sage Rabbi Meir. When the men would go home and tell this to their wives, the women would sneer, “That show-off! She only wants to show that she’s smarter than her husband and that she’s the real boss in that house.”

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Even in the early days of their marriage the rebbetzin had nagged her husband to seek a new position. Reb Uri-Zvi had an answer ready for her. “In the first place,” he would say, “how can you be sure that another town will be any better than Graipewo? In the second place, it rarely happens that a rabbi assumes a new position without causing a storm of controversy. So what’s the use of moving?” Fed up as Perele was with the mud of Graipewo, she had had to admit that her husband was not entirely wrong. But now that the children were married and living in Horadna, she pestered him incessantly about moving there.

Reb Uri-Zvi would shrug. “There’s already a Chief Rabbi in Horadna, with a whole Rabbinical Court.”

“So who says you have to be a Rav all your life? We could just move there and live with the children.”

This Reb Uri-Zvi did not want to hear, and Perele understood why even better than her husband: as long as parents have their health and are able to get along on their own, they should not live with their children. So she would drop this kind of talk as suddenly as she had begun.

The Graipewo Rebbetzin was, however, quite well aware that it was not just to be near the children that she wanted to move to Horadna. There was another reason, a very secret one, and no one, thank God, not even her husband, knew the secret; she was ashamed to admit it even to herself. But to this day she often thought of the Rav of Horadna, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Ha-Levi Eisenstadt, to whom she had once been engaged—and against whom she still measured her husband, Rabbi Koenigsberg.

Perele was the only child of the Staropol Rav, Rabbi Osherel Broido, a small man with a wizened, parchment-like face and a thin, wispy gray beard. He wore a short fur overcoat in summer and winter alike, for he was constantly cold. The Jews of Staropol were aware that their Rav was considered a Gaon, a giant among scholars. Prominent rabbis, awesome men with great white beards—they looked like giant, snow-covered oaks—traveled from afar to Staropol just to spend a Sabbath with the Rav and discuss the Talmud with him.

Reb Osherel never talked about the goings-on in the town and never interested himself in communal matters. “A rabbi,” he would say, “must sit and study. There is no lack of those who can attend to the affairs of the community, but there is a lack of scholars.” The people listened quietly, but were very much annoyed by this attitude. They could only console themselves with the recognition that their Rav was indeed a renowned scholar and that he really did study Talmud day and night.

The Talmud and his daughter—these were Reb Osherel’s only consolations after his wife passed away. He had his daughter tutored in Hebrew, Russian, and even German literature, although her teachers had to come to the Rav’s house so he could be sure that his daughter was not, along with the secular subjects, being taught anything heretical. Though short and unattractive, Perele, even as a child, was thought to be very bright and very learned.

The groom chosen for her was the renowned young scholar Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt—the “Zhetler Prodigy,” as he was called in his youth. The young man was to study with his father-in-law, the Gaon of Staropol, after the wedding, and in’ time assume the position of Rav of Staropol.

The groom was even a houseguest in the bride’s home several times. Shortly before the wedding day, however, he unexpectedly returned the engagement agreement and all the presents he had received. He also sent a letter in which he described the leaders of the community as telling him plainly that they would not accept him as the new Rav of Staropol merely because he was the present Rav’s son-in-law. Reb Osherel was, after all, Reb Osherel. They had cherished him all these years, they had told him, but the new Rav would have to be a good speaker and a worldly person as well; and as far as rabbinic learning was concerned, it would be no calamity if he was not an earthshaking genius. “I, however,” wrote the young man, “do not know Russian or Polish, certainly not enough to talk to government officials. And I am even less inclined to public speaking, so that this arrangement would not seem to be entered into in good faith on either side.” It was thus that the groom explained to the old Rav his withdrawal from the marriage. But to his own family he told the truth: he did not want to marry Perele because he felt she was a shrew.

Perele understood this. The young scholar had often told her, “You may be intelligent, but you’re not good-natured.” At first he had said this in jest, but afterward she understood that her groom’s doubts about her were no laughing matter.

“Do you know why the Zhetler Prodigy doesn’t want me?” she said to her father, her lips taut. “Staropol is too small a town for him . . . and I’m too small a bride for him. He wants a big city and a big bride. A big, fat cow—a benign fool—is what he wants. But there is no such thing as a good-natured fool. A fool is a spiritual cripple,” she said with stern Talmudic resolve, “and a cripple cannot be good-natured.”

This was the tirade she would sing in her father’s ears. The old sage would listen with troubled, watery eyes and then bury his head once again in his sacred volumes, thinking that when it came to judging his daughter’s character, the Zhetler Prodigy did not err.

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2.

Perele was engaged a second time, to a student from Kaidan, Uri-Zvi Koenigsberg, a strong and handsome young man with bright eyes that shone from a clear face, and a tranquil manner. When she compared him to her first betrothed, she thought she really ought to be thankful that the first one had changed his mind—he, after all, was shorter and thinner, with a nose as long and as bent as a ram’s horn, and he spoke with a cloying, nasal twang. His only striking features were the clever, laughing eyes that sparkled like the silver brocade on a prayer shawl. Upon first meeting Perele, the Zhetler Prodigy had apologized for his lisp, telling her that although Moses had been a stammerer, he nevertheless had conquered the world with his teachings. But the young man from Kaidan, besides being a scholar, could speak beautifully. The bride, trembling in fear lest this splendid groom be snatched from her, hurried the wedding plans along. After living for a few years in the house of his father-in-law, immersed in study, Reb Uri-Zvi became the Rav of Graipewo—not wanting to force himself on Staropol merely because he was the Rav’s son-in-law, he assumed this smaller pulpit. And so, Perele became the Rebbetzin of Graipewo, and the mother of a girl and two boys.

From time to time, news of her first betrothed would reach her: Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt had married the Horadna Rav’s daughter, and soon attained his own eminence. He was not awarded any appointments, neither did he pursue any high position; yet he became head of the Rabbinical Court of Horadna during his father-in-law’s lifetime. In time, word reached Perele that Reb Moshe-Mordecai was deemed the outstanding scholar of the day; his responsa were sought by Jewish communities all over the world. He was invited to become the Chief Rabbi of Bialystok, even of Lodz. But the Jews of Horadna were ever watchful against any attempt to rob them of their jewel. When the Graipewo Rebbetzin heard such reports, her throat became parched. She could remember how young Moshe-Mordecai of Zhetler stood and how he walked, as clearly as if he were still her betrothed. His every movement and gesture spoke of brilliance; in his every answer there flashed the unmistakable mark of genius.

The more the world praised the Horadna Rav, the greater were the failings Perele found in her husband. To begin with, he was a simpleton—in every dispute that was brought before him, both sides were right. He was never firm in his opinions, so naturally his congregants had no cause to fear him. His sermons were adequate for a small town, but he was afraid to speak publicly in the large cities or to aspire to a pulpit there. Yet what a man truly knows, she declared, he is not afraid to display anywhere.

In matters of learning, needless to say, her husband could not compare to her father, of blessed memory. Perele found fault even with her husband’s appearance and mannerisms: a rabbi should not be so tall and husky. How many times had she not pleaded with him to comb down his sidelocks, yet they were always curled up like a goat’s. When he drank tea, he sweated and panted noisily, blowing in and out through thick, pursed lips as if he had burned himself.

Still, it was really only when her ears rang with praises of the Horadna Rav that Perele was disposed to deprecate her husband. On any ordinary day Reb Uri-Zvi was a crown on her head. She basked in his kindly gaze and fretted about his health. And yet, if some time passed without a word of the Horadna Rav, she felt an emptiness. This was not a matter she wished to discuss with her husband, and certainly not with the women of the town—women can have long memories, and she feared that they would recall how the Horadna Rav had once been her intended, but had rejected her. And Perele did not, in any case, care to waste her time with the town women. But when a rabbi was a guest in her home and her husband had not yet returned from the synagogue, Perele would remark casually, “We hear that the Horadna Rav is the outstanding rabbinical authority today. Tell me, is he really as great as they say? In what does his greatness lie?”

“A genius!” the guest would declare ecstatically, stroking his beard for emphasis. “A Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt appears only once in a generation.”

“And clever, too? Everyone says that he’s extremely clever,” the rebbetzin would add sadly, as she went back to the kitchen to get another glass of tea for her guest. Half the water in the kettle would already have boiled out, yet Perele stood lost in thought, staring blankly at the flame, a cold gleam in her wide eyes.

The Graipewo Rav’s daughter, eldest of his three children, married into a merchant family of Horadna, which invited the rabbis of the town to the wedding—and foremost among them, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt. Even before she could see his face, Perele recognized his gait—those same brisk movements as of old. But when she saw his face, she could hardly believe her eyes: she was certain that Reb Moshe-Mordecai was no more than fifty, yet he looked much older, with stooped shoulders and a great gray beard. After the ceremony the Graipewo Rebbetzin sat next to her daughter at the women’s table and observed the Horadna Rav’s friendliness toward her husband at the men’s table.

Reb Moshe-Mordecai stayed for a short time and then rose to leave, and Perele watched as all the rabbis and important guests rose to accompany him to the door. He was evidently in a jocular and convivial mood, because those around him were smiling and laughing. And yet, although the Rav was to all appearances at ease and did not look in her direction, it seemed to Perele that her presence in that great, crowded wedding hall had made him uneasy and that that was why he was so quick to leave.

The Graipewo Rav’s two sons, both yeshivah students at that time, later married into Horadna families as well, with their mother’s eager encouragement. Of all the matches proposed for her sons, Perele approved only of the girls of Horadna. In the frequent and long arguments between husband and wife, the ordinarily patient and soft-spoken Reb Uri-Zvi lost his temper and shouted, “What is this infatuation you have with Horadna?” Perele would reply very calmly that if he had greater understanding, he would not be so perplexed. Since their daughter lived in Horadna, it was only logical that their sons should settle there. First, the children would not feel like strangers if all of them were living in the same city. Second, their parents would not have to travel to three different cities to visit them. Besides, the girls of Horadna were all of fine families. And since the sons had been trained since childhood to obey their mother, they each took a Horadna bride.

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Perele had heard that Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt’s wife became pregnant a year after they were married and that she miscarried. She became very ill after that, and the doctors advised her not to have any children. But she did not listen to them, again became pregnant, and gave birth to a girl. Perele heard that the only daughter of the Horadna Rebbetzin had a weak heart and suffered from asthma. She was pale and fretful, and often cried for days at a time. Ashamed of her sickly, wan appearance, she did not attend the girls’ school and had no friends. She was continually sipping something from a bottle through a glass straw to ease her breathing. Her father would take her for walks or to the doctors, and her mother constantly gave charity in her behalf. Whenever her mother met a pious Jew, she would ask him for a blessing for her one and only child. Sometimes when the Graipewo Rebbetzin heard all this, she would sigh deeply, first in sympathy and then with relief that her children were, thank God, healthy. After a while the young girl’s health improved and it was reported that her parents were interested in arranging a marriage.

In winter Graipewo sank in a sea of snow that lapped onto the sealed double windows of the houses. The gray daylight and the early nightfall cast a lethargy over the town, a deep gloom. After these long nights the people of Graipewo would arise with cold aches in their bones, as if they had been sleeping all night in a swamp. The only bright and cheerful times of the week were Friday night, with the golden flames of Sabbath candles in the houses, and the Sabbath day in the beth midrash—the cantor’s melodies in the morning services, the rabbi’s sermon in the afternoon after services, and the chanting of Psalms by the congregation in the dim twilight. But then, on the Friday before Hanukkah, one man disturbed the serenity of the Sabbath.

He had spent the week in Horadna and returned to Graipewo in time for the Friday morning services. As he removed his hood and his snow-covered coat, he announced the tragic news that the Horadna Rav’s daughter had suddenly died—there had not been time even to call a doctor. The man told how all Horadna had grieved at the funeral, looking pityingly on the broken and weeping father, and the mother standing beside him frozen as a stone. For an entire week the town had been shrouded in mourning and darkness, as if the sun had been eclipsed.

The men in the Graipewo synagogue that morning were stunned by this news. Although they murmured, “Blessed is the Righteous Judge,” they gazed questioningly at the Holy Ark all during the service. Why had such sorrow been meted out to the Gaon, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt? The worshippers hurried home afterward and told their wives of the tragedy; the women wrung their hands and carried the dark tidings into the marketplace. So that by the time Reb Uri-Zvi came home from the synagogue his wife knew everything.

Perele’s face was painfully drawn and ashen pale, and her eyes betrayed secret, troubled thoughts. The tragedy that had befallen the Horadna Rav gave her more cause to shudder than any other woman in Graipewo. She had the eerie feeling that she and her children had been spared from her onetime fiancé’s evil fate. Yet, at the same time, she seethed with anger to hear the women of the town say that this would indeed be a joyless Sabbath—they were talking as if the Rav of Horadna were also the Rav of Graipewo.

Reb Uri-Zvi, with characteristic sensitivity and delicacy, had always refrained from mentioning the Horadna Rav to his wife, not wishing to remind her of the embarrassment of her broken engagement. This time, however, he felt no need to be careful of her feelings. He sighed and moaned and wrung his hands: “Such a terrible edict from Heaven! Such a sorrow! The entire rabbinical world will be shaken!” Perele could not stand her husband’s moaning, his old-womanish hand-wringing, his foolish prattling about “the entire rabbinical world” being shaken—what, nothing less than the whole rabbinical world? The rebbetzin felt a sharp pain in her chest and started coughing. She lay on the couch for a long time, her silent lips parched.

The Graipewo Rebbetzin was suffering deeply, partly out of pity for the Horadna Rav, partly from an anger that she herself did not understand. Still and all, there remained much for her to do to prepare for the Sabbath. And so, rising painfully from the couch, she turned to her husband, who was reciting the Grace after meals, and said: “Nevertheless, after services tonight tell the men, and tell them to tell their wives, that mourning is not permitted on the Sabbath, especially since they are not relatives of Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt and he isn’t their Rav either.”

Reb Uri-Zvi’s eyes widened. Although his dear wife spoke in a dry and sober tone, she seemed to him as if possessed. And the rebbetzin, notwithstanding her concern that others avoid gloom on the Sabbath, herself spent the entire day lying on the sofa, grim and sullen. That Saturday night, when Reb Uri-Zvi returned from the synagogue, she was still lying there, and spoke to him through the darkness. Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt, she told him, had as a young man deluded himself, like every smart one who tries to be too smart. The girl he married had been sickly as a child, but this had not mattered to him. He had taken a sickly, cheerless bride because he was eager to become the Rav of Horadna.

“I feel very sorry for him,” she said finally. Then, with great effort, she rose from the sofa, walked toward her husband, and stood motionless while he recited the Havdalah.

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3.

For the rest of the winter, Perele relentlessly nagged her husband to move to Horadna. Reb Uri-Zvi interpreted this to mean that his wife had been terrified by the tragic death of the Horadna Rav’s daughter, and that she now simply wanted to be near her own children. He tried to reassure her: “What are you worried about, silly one? Our children, thank God, are strong and healthy. A Jew must believe in God’s will. The Talmud says that a man cannot hurt a finger in this world if it is not decreed in Heaven.”

Perele replied that she had her fill of Talmudic sayings. Had he forgotten, or was he just making believe he’d forgotten, that their daughter Serel was about to become a mother again? And while Serel was giving birth, who would be taking care of her twins? Their son-in-law was a busy man.

“So you’ll go there for a while, then. And when there will be a brith or a party for a baby girl, then I’ll come, too,” the rabbi said. He pleaded with her to let him study, prepare his sermons, and answer letters. But the rebbetzin only mocked him sardonically: “How wonderful that you’ll be able to come to our grandson’s brith! And just who is going to help Serel when she has a nursing baby at her breast and the twins tugging at her apron?”

The rebbetzin spoke calmly, with the dry, exact measure of a wall clock ticking loudly. The discussion did not prevent her from serving dinner, or interfere with her housework. But the Rav could not concentrate on his work and talk to her at the same time. When Perele had, for the time being, exhausted her concern for her daughter, she would start fretting about her sons. They, too, had children, thank God, and she was not being much of a grandmother to them—she saw her grandchildren once in a blue moon. She might have been proud of her sons had they not been so much like their father, a man with no ambition. Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah did not care to be rabbis, and they weren’t even good businessmen. They just took things as they came and never really accomplished anything—just like their father. Now, if she were living near her children, she could prod them not to fritter away their youth. Seeking to prove that her children had inherited their weak character from their father and not from herself, she never let him forget that he had not even tried to become the Rav of Staropol, where her father had been Rav all his life and where she had been born. His reply—that he did not want to start any arguments—was really no answer. Her father, may his soul rest in peace, used to say a rabbi should not look for a fight, but he shouldn’t be afraid of one either.

“And I say,” shouted the Rav, “a Torah scholar should run to the ends of the earth to avoid an argument!”

He felt as if his brains were glowing in the heat of his wife’s incessant complaints, like a teakettle that is left on the fire until all the water has boiled away. But to any visitor whom the rebbetzin greeted in the foyer of the Rav’s house she spoke about her husband with so much respect and admiration that one would think she was his humble servant. “You would like to see the Rav? Let me see if he isn’t taking a nap.” Perele also made sure the visitor’s business was important enough. She didn’t want to hear any details or confidences and she didn’t care to get involved in other people’s problems, but one must understand that she could not allow the Rav to be barraged with trivialities. He mustn’t be deprived of his time for study or rest. After these preliminaries she’d usher the visitor into the inner chamber and promptly leave. Reb Uri-Zvi would heave a sigh of relief at being free of his wife for a few moments. He was so upset by the way she dealt with people that he found it difficult to concentrate on his guest. Even old friends were made to. feel that they were being granted a formal audience.

The Rav found a way around this predicament: he simply stayed in the synagogue more than at home. Yet, his wife warned him, it is not fitting for the Rav of a town to stay all day in the synagogue like an indigent scholar who has no home to go to. He didn’t want to hear any more complaints? Very well, so be it. And Perele stopped talking to her husband, leaving all the housework undone. It seemed that she could arrange to be sick whenever she pleased. Once again she suffered from headaches and lay for days on the sofa with a wet compress on her forehead. She washed down teaspoons of medicine with sweet, lukewarm tea as she sighed and stared out the window.

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Outside, even the days were darkened by the thick gray snow which fell without end, whirling and rearranging every street, every porch, step, and threshold. And if the snow abated, Perele would watch the lowering clouds and feel them closing in on her heart, nearly smothering it. She broke into stubborn fits of dry, angry, rasping coughing. Then she’d resume taking spoonful after spoonful of concoctions and spend the day in silence once again. Her silence and coughing tormented her husband more than her nagging. So he approached the sofa and begged her: if she was so lonely for the children and grandchildren, then let her go to Horadna for a few weeks. He’d manage somehow without her. She listened quietly and then turned her head toward the window, as if to reproach him for wanting her to travel in a blizzard when it would be a sin to send a dog out into the street.

Reb Uri-Zvi returned to his study and Perele looked after him as he walked away with stooped shoulders, clad in a long knitted housecoat of green wool and wearing a worn, tall black-velvet yarmulke atop unkempt white hair. It hurt her to have to torment him so, but she couldn’t forgive him for getting stuck in Graipewo, in its dusty summers, its muddy autumns, and the mountainous snows of its winters. He never attended rabbinical gatherings, and he wasn’t even interested in seeing the children. Perele remembered that she had to prepare supper for her husband; he must be hungry, though he wasn’t saying anything. So she went into the kitchen and warmed some porridge, boiled a kettle of tea, and cooked two eggs. Afterward she went to him in the study. His head was bowed over an open book, but he wasn’t reading. “Go and wash and eat,” he heard her say.

Reb Uri-Zvi lifted his pleading eyes. “Perele, I don’t understand you. I often don’t know if I should take you seriously. Tell me, why should we leave a place where we’re earning a dignified livelihood and move somewhere where we’ll have to rely on our children for support?”

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The rebbetzin smiled like one who patronizes someone speaking nonsense. “And living in Graipewo at the whim of the congregation is more honorable than being supported by one’s own children?” And she again argued, this time lovingly, sufferingly, and with a quiet insistence. Instead of having a pulpit in a town no bigger than a fig, it would be more dignified to sit in the synagogue of Horadna and study for oneself. At least, then people would say, “That man could have been the Rav of a big city!” Perele pointed to the long sheets of paper covered with an elaborately twisted script that lay in a large pile on the table. For years he had been working on his treatise, and it still wasn’t finished. With no scholars in Graipewo to converse with, he often lost his enthusiasm for committing his insights and reflections to paper. In Horadna, though, there was no lack of scholars; there he’d have many with whom to discuss the intricacies of the Talmud and he’d be spurred on to complete his work and have it published.

“And as long as we’re talking about this wonderful living we’re supposed to be making here, tell your congregants that we can’t manage on your salary anymore. The cost of everything has tripled and we’re still getting the same forty-seven zlotys and fifty groschen a week.”

At this, the Rav was elated. When he received a raise and his dear wife saw how he was valued by the town, she’d certainly stop nagging him to move. But when, after morning services, Rabbi Koenigsberg broached the subject of a raise with the president of the congregation, he was startled by the response: “The people feel quite to the contrary. They feel that since the Rav has successfully married off his children and now he and the rebbetzin are but two people living alone, they should be getting less than they received when they were supporting a whole family. The town treasury doesn’t even have enough funds to heat the synagogue all day. The teachers in the school are getting a third of what they need to live, and the orphans are in rags and hungry.”

Reb Uri-Zvi grasped anxiously at his silver beard, fearful, it seemed, lest it fall off.

“The rabbis of other towns no bigger than Graipewo are getting seventy-five or even a hundred zlotys a week. I get barely fifty. In American money that’s less than ten dollars a week! And you’re telling me that it’s too much?”

To this the president replied, as cold and grim as the wintry day outside, that the shopkeepers of Graipewo were not making even thirty zlotys a week.

With a downcast heart and a chastened look the Rav related this conversation to his wife. To his amazement, she was not a bit perturbed. But the next day, while shopping, she was telling people that, God willing, they’d be leaving Graipewo after Passover. The Rav found out about this the following day in the synagogue when the president complained harshly: “For over twenty-five years, Rabbi, you have been our Rav. Suddenly you’ve decided to abandon us because you haven’t gotten a raise? And you didn’t even think it proper to inform the congregation of this—we had to find out from your wife in the marketplace!”

The anger Reb Uri-Zvi felt toward his wife he vented on the congregation. For all this time he had served’ as their Rav and never had he haggled with them about money. So if this one time he asked for a raise, was it right to answer that the shopkeepers made less? If that was the case, perhaps he really ought to consider leaving Graipewo.

At home, however, the Rav could not muster the strength to start an argument with his wife. “How could you do such a thing without telling me?” was all he could manage to say with a resigned sigh. But Perele answered him excitedly, fairly singing, as if she had become twenty years younger. “There was no doubt in my mind that they’d refuse to give you a raise. I just wanted you to see for yourself what kind of respect they have for your learning. They’re ready to do anything for you—as long as it doesn’t cost them an extra groschen.”

A dispute over the question now festered in the community. One side argued that if the Rav had no sympathy for the townspeople’s economic situation, then let him leave. The other side, the majority, felt that some settlement should be made. Finally the officers came to a decision, which they presented to the Rav one day in the synagogue. The community, they declared, simply couldn’t afford to give him a raise, but they were willing to grant the rebbetzin the sole right to sell yeast, and this would bring them a sizable additional income.

Rabbi Koenigsberg couldn’t tell them that his wife would never agree to this. It was perfectly true, he knew, that in years past every small-town rebbetzin had sold yeast; but Perele’s face blanched at the very idea, and for a minute she looked at her husband in trembling disbelief, as if he had asked her to remove her wig and shoes and go out prancing in the snow barefoot. Her next reaction was to laugh herself to tears. Why only yeast? Rebbetzins also used to sell candles, salt, and kerosene. But her mother, the Staropol Rebbetzin, had never sold yeast, and when her mother died and she, Perele, had been left alone with her father, neither had she sold yeast. So now, after decades of being a rebbetzin, was she to become a yeast merchant? She had always kept aloof from the women of the town; now they’d become her bosses: “Rebbetzin, you’re not giving me full weight,” she could hear one yente saying; “Rebbetzin, you’re charging too much,” from another yente.

“Now you see what their respect for your learning is worth, and here you’ve been a friend to everyone and served the town like a soldier. They couldn’t even show you the courtesy of coming to talk to me here in the house. They threw me this bone through you.”

The Rav became even more irritated. Perele’s every word stung him like a thorn. He quickly secluded himself in the study. When he returned to the dining room, the rebbetzin said not a word about the raise or about leaving. She knew that the words she had sown were warming themselves in her husband’s mind under his snowy white hair and would in time yield the blossoms she wanted.

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4.

As the winter passed, the rift between the Rav and his congregation developed into a serious quarrel. To the congregants it seemed that the Rav harbored real hostility toward them, “and all because we wouldn’t give him a few extra zlotys.” To the Rav it seemed that the congregants were no longer interested in his sermons and weren’t even greeting him with a warm “good Sabbath.” “And all because I asked them for a little raise. If that’s the case, then Perele is right!” So Reb Uri-Zvi told his wife to make preparations to move right after Passover.

The Rav and the congregation parted amicably, if somewhat stiffly. He had managed to put aside some money, and he owned the house in which he lived. The synagogue trustees assured him that the new Rav would have to buy the house and pay him in cash.

In his last moments in Graipewo, Reb Uri-Zvi felt a sharp pang in his heart at leaving the place where for twenty-five years he had lived in peace and with dignity. Nor did the couple find any joy upon their arrival in Horadna. Instead of welcoming them, the children reproached their mother for uprooting their father in his old age. Perele replied that when they had grandchildren of their own, they would understand a grandparent’s longing to be near grandchildren. Besides, they had nothing to worry about: so far, their parents did not have to depend on them and were not going to live with them.

The two sons, Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah, both the image of their father with their curly hair and thick, full faces, were like him in character as well: calm, gentle, none too talkative, they were men who valued their peace of mind. After their marriages, they had opened a shoe store together, glad to be living in Horadna, far from their mother’s meddling. They were not at all pleased about her arrival in town, knowing as they did that she would once again try to run their lives as she had right up to their wedding days. They realized all too well that she was fed up with being the rebbetzin in a small town. Was she going to be satisfied, then, with being just her grandchildren’s nanny? But the brothers did not discuss their feelings with anyone—not with their wives, not even with their sister.

The daughter, in contrast to the sons, had never listened to Perele, and when the rebbetzin wanted anything of her, she had to appeal to her husband to remind Serel of the respect due a mother. Serel was the very image of her mother in appearance, perhaps a little taller and broader; but, unlike her mother, she had particularly sought to marry a man whom she could obey. Her husband had a pockmarked face, happy eyes, broad shoulders, and large hands. His name was Ezra Edelman, though edelman—“gentleman”—was anything but the proper word for him. He owned a yard-goods store and conducted himself like a God-fearing, though not fanatically observant, Jew. By nature, he was too lazy for subtleties, so that when his wife asked him, “Don’t you realize what my mother’s purpose is in moving to Horadna?” he answered, “What are you worried about?” He knew that, whatever it was that his mother-in-law wanted, she’d get nowhere with him.

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Rabbi Koenigsberg expected they would rent a two-room dwelling and planned to give his children those volumes of his library he would not be needing. “Meanwhile we’re still alive,” Perele said, and she rented an apartment of five rooms. In addition to the old furniture she brought with them from Graipewo, she bought a new sofa, cupboard, a dining-room table, a linen chest, and half a dozen chairs, and had new shelves built for all her husband’s books. She had the faded wallpaper in the new home peeled off and hired painters to paint the walls dark blue and the ceilings white. When the house was painted and the furniture was arranged, Perele and a maid hired for the occasion washed the windows and hung the drapes and curtains. Reb Uri-Zvi beheld all this in glazed astonishment and said in a trembling voice, “Who ever heard of a rabbi who has given up his pulpit, and retired in his old age to have a little peace and quiet, who would ever imagine him moving into such a home?” His wife replied, “God is like a father; He will provide.” All his life, she said, he had urged everyone to have faith in God, yet he himself had no faith at all.

His wife even chose the synagogue in which he was to pray and study. Reb Uri-Zvi would have preferred settling into a wooden synagogue with a doorway so low that he’d have to duck his head to enter; with a bimah right in front of the Ark in a simple, homey atmosphere; with a large stove against the western wall to warm one’s back against in winter; and with long, bare tables where the old men could pore over their texts beneath the pale glow of a kerosene lamp. But Perele chose a big stone synagogue with a high ceiling. The smalltown Rav was always uncomfortably aware of the heavy bronze chandelier swaying over his head. Broad beams of sunlight streamed through the large windows, blinding anyone who tried to look outside. To ascend the bimah or the Ark, one had to climb stairs with wrought-iron handrails that made one think of a prison, God forbid. But since this was the synagogue his two sons attended, Perele insisted that he should pray and study there as well. On a holiday she could stand near the curtains of the women’s section and peer out at her husband and sons standing in front of the Ark with the other kohanim, blessing the congregation. “Grant me this joy,” she implored, and Reb Uri-Zvi thought: “So be it, why should I deny her this modest request?”

The Jews of Horadna spoke with excitement about the Graipewo Rav—how he had resigned his pulpit to devote himself to study and prayer. The congregants of the Stone Synagogue were particularly pleased that a new scholar had come to their sanctuary to illumine them with his Torah and his piety.

The first trustee of the Stone Synagogue, David Ganz, a man whose head constantly bobbed, was also the synagogue’s Torah reader. He was as thin as a needle, but his beard was thick, flowing in rings and curls, and his eyes were large, dark, and expressionless, as if he were frozen or had drowned. The second trustee, Meir-Michael Jaffe, loved to lead the congregation when the cantor didn’t officiate; his mouth was filled with gold teeth, and both his beard and his belly were smooth and round. On a holiday he wore a top hat and a dress coat.

The third trustee, by far the synagogue’s biggest noisemaker, was Moshe Moskowitz, a short, sprightly man with a prickly white beard and warts on his nose. How he earned his living depended on the time of year. Before Passover he took orders for matzoh, and before Sukkoth he sold citrons. In his home one could purchase a Hanukkah lamp, a new prayer shawl, or a used set of Talmud. If a town was looking for a rabbi, or a rabbi was looking for a son-in-law, Moshe Moskowitz could be relied on to provide a worthy candidate. On the High Holidays it was he who blew the shofar, and on Simchath Torah he was the one who called out the names of those chosen for the honor of carrying the Torah scrolls. And the rest of the year it was a firmly established tradition that he would recite the Havdalah at the close of the Sabbath day.

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The former Graipewo Rav, Rabbi Uri-Zvi Ha-Kohen Koenigsberg, had not yet managed to introduce himself properly to his fellow congregants when, on a bleak afternoon a week or so before Shavuoth, the three trustees surrounded him in the synagogue and addressed him in a manner at once friendly and respectful.

“We have decided, Rabbi, that this coming Shavuoth you must deliver a discourse on the giving of the Torah,” announced Moshe Moskowitz.

“The congregation is looking forward to it. We can assure you that the synagogue will be packed from wall to wall. There will be no room to breathe,” sang Meir-Michael Jaffe.

“‘Everyone that thirsteth, come ye to the waters,’ says the prophet, and water everywhere is the symbol of Torah. Our town longs to hear a good sermon at least once every Jubilee year, as a dry desert thirsts for water.” This from the Torah reader David Ganz, as he fixed his melancholy eyes on the rabbi.

Moshe Moskowitz, however, not being given to such florid sentiments, and much preferring a direct approach, interrupted his colleague: “Please understand that the rabbis of Horadna are fine rabbis. And the Rav, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Ha-Levi Eisenstadt, is a world-famous scholar. People come to him from every corner of the world. It’s just that not one of our rabbis can deliver an inspiring sermon. So could we prevail upon you to favor us in honor of the holiday that commemorates our receiving the Torah?”

When the rebbetzin learned from her husband of this invitation, her cheeks blazed with a rosy cheerfulness—and with anger at her simpleton’s reluctance. Of course he would deliver a sermon in that great stone synagogue, why shouldn’t he?, she sang out. The Rabbinical Court of Horadna should have had the decency to invite him to speak in the city’s main synagogue just as he had honored visiting rabbis in Graipewo by inviting them to speak, even though as scholars they didn’t come up to his ankles. Since no one at the Rabbinical Court had thought of it, all the more, then, were the trustees of the other synagogues to be commended for their invitation. Besides, it was an honor for the children. A fine thing it would be for the family if the Graipewo Rav were to settle in Horadna without so much as being noticed by the townspeople.

For Perele it was the fulfillment of her fondest dreams. During services on Shavuoth morning she peered through the curtains in front of the women’s section at her husband and sons standing on the bimah chanting the priestly blessing before the congregation. The other kohanim who stood there seemed to muffle their chants as if to allow the congregation better to hear the voices of the Graipewo Rav and his sons. And in the balcony the women showed the utmost respect for Perele. Nearest to her stood the wealthy elderly women, bedecked in broad-brimmed hats, some with ribbons, others with ostrich feathers. The middle-aged and less prominent women wore less elaborate hats and coats with deep pockets. The very young wives were wearing small hats and gay decorations and short veils. The richly attired matrons prayed from Redelsheimer mahzorim, prayer books with glossy covers of brown leather on which shone embossed gold lettering. The poorer women, with shawls covering their heads and necks, prayed from large mahzorim with simple dark-cloth covers, which had the Hebrew text on the top half of the page and the Yiddish translation on the bottom. But Perele, like a scholar, prayed from a delicate little siddur, printed in Jerusalem and bound in intricately carved wooden covers that depicted a palm tree hovering over Rachel’s Tomb. Though she murmured the prayers steadily, her thoughtful whisper just barely audible, she was very much aware that all the women’s eyes were trained on her and on her attire.

Another woman in such an outfit might have provoked derisive smirks, but on Perele these old-fashioned clothes only added to her noble bearing. The women in the balcony could not help thinking that this really was the way a rebbetzin should dress. Her dark-red dress had long, tight sleeves, a tightly drawn waist, and padding on her hips—a style that had long since seen its day. The sleeves barely revealed the tips of her fingers, and the skirt only the tips of her high-heeled shoes. Around her neck she wore a dark-gray fur collar, and on her wig was perched a hat no bigger than a little bird with fluttering wings. The wealthy women around her sparkled with strings of pearls, large rings, and heavy brooches. Yet somehow Perele appeared much more stately than they, even though she wore no jewelry except for simple gold earrings.

Perele’s cheeks were so smooth and free of wrinkles that to look at her one could not believe she was a grandmother. Her slight build and peculiar attire made her appear like a porcelain figurine or a carved figure that springs out of a wooden music box. But when Perele raised her huge, clear eyes and wrinkled her tall forehead, one felt that this little rebbetzin was the embodiment of wisdom itself. There was about her an aura of noble breeding and gentle ways. Her pricked-up ears caught the whispers of the women around her. And who is to say they weren’t talking just loud enough for her to hear?

“Her father was a great rabbi and her husband is a great rabbi. The Divine Spirit shines from his face. Her sons could have been rabbis, too, but they preferred being businessmen. And not only that—her husband even gave up his rabbinical position so he would not be dependent on people. Truly a blessed family.”

“A difference of night and day, really, between her and the Horadna Rebbetzin. She shines like the sun, and the other is a pathetic, broken shard. On the other hand, you can understand her, a heartbroken mother who’s lost her only child.”

Perele understood that they meant the wife of Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt. In the synagogue the services were over, and the women rushed to wish Perele “Good Yom Tov.” “Tomorrow we say Yizkor, and after lunch, God willing, we expect to hear your husband. In fact, the whole town is looking forward to hearing him.”

The rebbetzin closed her prayer book, gently kissed it, and told the women that her husband, may he live and be well, didn’t really want to deliver a sermon. That was why he had stayed in such a small town . . . and he’d even left there so he wouldn’t have to speak so often before a large audience. Even so, she had managed to persuade him to favor the people of Horadna with a sermon just this once.

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On the second day of Shavuoth the rebbetzin once again stationed herself right behind the curtains of the women’s section, surrounded by her entourage and surveying a packed synagogue listening to her husband’s sermon. She couldn’t see him, she could only hear his voice and see some of the men, including both her sons. Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah stood leaning on their lecterns at the front of the synagogue, listening to their father and staring intently at their fingernails. Their mother knew that this had been their habit from their yeshivah days. The harder they thought or concentrated on the discourse, the more glazed and intent was their stare at their fingernails. But today they should have had enough sense to look directly at their father so that the others could see how they hung on his every word.

Rabbi Koenigsberg did not deliver an intricate legal discourse; he spoke about the weekly Torah portion and its Midrashic interpretation in a manner which all could understand: “When the Israelites departed from Egypt, they knew that fifty days later they would stand at the foot of Mount Sinai and accept the Torah, as it is written, ‘When thou hast brought forth the people out of Egypt, ta’avdun—you shall serve—God upon this mountain.’ The proper word for ‘you shall serve’ is ta’avdu; the addition of the letter nun, numerically equivalent to the number fifty, teaches that the period of fifty days from the exodus from Egypt to the Revelation at Sinai was decreed by God. It is for this reason that the days between Passover and Shavuoth are counted. To what may it be compared? A king riding in his carriage passed by a ditch in which lay a prisoner. He told the man that upon his return trip he would rescue him from the ditch. So the prisoner began counting the days to the king’s return.”

He then told the story of Count Potocki of Vilna, who was burned at the stake on Shavuoth for converting to Judaism. “Because of this, the main synagogue of Vilna to this day says a special memorial prayer on the second day of Shavuoth for the martyr Abraham, the convert, son of Abraham the Patriarch. A poignant word comes to us from this righteous convert: Our sages tell us that at first the Almighty offered the Torah to other nations—to Edom and to Ishmael, to Ammon and to Moab. Not one of them, however, wanted to take upon itself the yoke of the six hundred and thirteen commandments. Yet it stands to reason that there must have been a select few in each of these nations who did stand ready to accept the precepts of Torah. It is from these descendants that the converts to Judaism come in each generation. For this reason we read the Book of Ruth on the day of the Revelation of Torah. The convert Ruth must have been a descendant of those children of Moab who wanted to receive the Torah.”

The majority of the listeners, simple people, enjoyed the sermon immensely, if only because they understood it all. Perele, though, watched her sons. It was obvious from their stolid reaction that they were less than overwhelmed by their father’s address. There were others, especially the more learned men, who sat twitching their beards and wrinkling their brows. They had been expecting, it seemed, deeper thoughts or perhaps a word on some complex Talmudic text. Perele bit her lip. Her husband, she was thinking, had become dried up and foolish in his old age. The sermon was for yentes.

Suddenly, from the rear of the synagogue a murmur could be heard that swept across the throng and grew into a commotion. The thickly occupied pews began to move. The people rose one after another like an onrushing wave. The crush of people in the aisles split to make a path for an old man with a white beard and stooped shoulders. Those closest to him bowed and quietly greeted him with great respect: “Good Yom Tov, Rabbi,” to which he responded with a slight, friendly nod. He walked to the very front of the synagogue and remained standing next to the Koenigsberg brothers. Someone soon brought over a lectern for the rabbi to lean on with his elbows. When Perele spied him from the balcony, she gasped to catch her breath: it was he, her first betrothed, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt. Her eyes widened and her heart shrank out of pity for him. She could see how gray he had become, gray as a dove, and hunched. His arm, like a tree’s half-broken branch, hung down from the lectern. His daughter’s death had dealt him a great blow. But Perele’s pity for him turned quickly into anger. She saw that every gaze continued to be fixed on him. Even her own sons could not take their eyes off him, as if they were anxious lest he disapprove of their father’s sermon. Perele felt her lips parch: was it possible that the Horadna Rav had come to display his authority over the townspeople? Now she was looking daggers at him, and as for her husband, she nearly hissed at him: “Just look at him! He’s so terrified he’s practically lost his tongue.”

As everyone knew, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt never delivered sermons and never came to listen to sermons. His sudden appearance at the synagogue was therefore nothing short of extraordinary, and even Rabbi Uri-Zvi Koenigsberg became flustered. After a moment he managed to recover his composure, and left his popular theme abruptly to discourse on a matter of Jewish law in honor of the esteemed guest: “We find a dispute in the Talmud about just when the Torah was given: was it the sixth day of the month of Sivan or the seventh? The dispute revolves around the interpretations of the verse ‘And you shall sanctify yourselves today and tomorrow,’ and is relevant in practical Halakhic matters pertaining to seminal discharges. . . .”

Perele could see that Rabbi Eisenstadt was listening with only half an ear. His wrinkled face had been consumed by his overwhelming grief. A matronly woman two heads taller than Perele leaned over and blurted out, “It’s quite an honor, Rebbetzin, that our Rav has come to hear your husband. Since his only daughter died, he never goes out.”

The woman had a square face that seemed to be made of kneaded clay. Wafting from her mouth came the essence of chopped liver and onions. Perele was nauseated by this tall, fat woman, but she managed to don a piteous face and sighed loudly, “Yes, yes, we heard about the sorrow, may every mother be spared.”

She remembered how her father had talked about young Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt, her betrothed: “He is so great a genius that there is no way to keep pace with his brilliance.” Now Perele looked at her two sons and tried to imagine what kind of children she and the Horadna Rav would have had if they had married. She could not see her husband standing in front of the Ark, but she could surmise from his unsteady voice that he was not for a moment unmindful of having in his audience none other than Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt. The Horadna Rav finally grew tired and sat down on the bench. Then Perele could see only a snatch of his silver beard and his aged profile with his eyes closed.

When Rabbi Koenigsberg had begun, a blue sky had been shining in through the windows. A golden holiday glow had announced the first strains of summer. Now, the sky grew darker, as the glow had fallen from the synagogue’s high windows. A green light looked through the windowpanes as if wondering why there were still so many people in the synagogue when the holiday was obviously over and the streets were already deserted. From everywhere the shadows crept out, wending their way through the crowd until they found a place to rest. But the speaker’s voice found no place to hide; it hovered momentarily over everyone’s head and then made its way out of the door.

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5.

The congregation left the synagogue very pleased after the Graipewo Rabbi’s sermon. But this didn’t prevent his rebbetzin from scolding him for speaking like an old woman or for having stood there dazed like a schoolboy when the Horadna Rav walked into the synagogue. Neither did Perele particularly care for her husband’s habit of praising the Horadna Rav to the skies. “Let him praise you first,” she would say, “and then you praise him.” Reb Uri-Zvi couldn’t understand what she wanted of him—the Horadna Rav had, after all, come to hear his sermon, which was most unusual for him. But, answered his wife, she was not at all certain whether Reb Moshe-Mordecai had really come to honor him or show he was not afraid of competition. At this Reb Uri-Zvi could only shrug his shoulders in exasperation: a scholar as great as Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt need have no fear of any competition.

“Is he so great a scholar?” she retorted mockingly. “Perhaps in comparison with you. But my father, may he rest in peace, was a greater scholar than he. And more famous, even though he was the Rav of a much smaller place than Horadna.”

His rebbetzin insisted he prepare new sermons; the people wanted to hear more. Why no discourse on Talmudic topics from the book he’d been writing all these years? And be sure to include some profound thoughts for the more sophisticated, not the fairy tales about the Vilna convert he had used in the first sermon. If he must tell stories for the common people, then at least let them be stories about the Maccabees from Josephus. She had read Josephus, and knew there were interesting stories in his works. “He may be a great scholar in your eyes, but a public speaker the Horadna Rav is not.”

Reb Uri-Zvi became incensed. “And what if I can speak? Is this why we came to Horadna? So I could become a maggid?” Perele answered this with silence. She lay down on the sofa and simmered quietly, just as she had always done in Graipewo.

Like many other things in their Horadna apartment, the sofa was brand-new, with a neat brown cover and firm springs. Gone was the soft, low sofa, frayed but comfortable, of their home in Graipewo. Their windows here did not look out on a sleepy town at which one could while away hours gazing, dreaming, thinking of the past. When Perele looked out at the big-city scenes of Horadna, she saw three- and four-storied white houses that reflected the sun blindingly. The windows of the building across the way looked foreign and indifferent, covered with curtains and drapes so that neither the sun nor the neighbors could look in. On the baconies, hidden by flower pots and shrubbery, people moved about half-clad in slippers and housecoats.

People were walking into and out of the stores on the ground floors of the buildings continually, like ants at the entrance of an ant hill. Large wagons laden with goods were hauled over the cobblestones, drawn by teams of huge horses. There were carts and wheelbarrows pushed by workers, and horse-drawn buggies filled with passengers. Outside the window of the room with the sofa was a square park enclosed by a metal fence; from that height, the leafy trees had a silvery gray veneer and looked as if they had been powdered with dust. The summer had already set in with its dry, hot days, and when the wind picked up, a swirl of blackened, discarded newspaper pages rose from the park.

As she lay on the sofa, it seemed to the Graipewo Rebbetzin that her headaches were more agonizing than ever before. Here in Horadna, however, she could no longer lie about with a wet rag on her head taking spoonfuls of medicine without end, as she had done in Graipewo. Their daughter, Serel, well into her ninth month of pregnancy, stormed into their home, shouting, “If you’re sick, we’ll call a doctor!”

Perele replied with restraint, lest their daughter suffer harsh punishment for the grave sin of disrespect toward her mother. She raised her head from the cushion and measured her words like drops of medicine. “Don’t worry about me,” she said. But at this Serel shrieked, “It’s not you I’m worrying about. You’re perfectly well. I’m worrying about my father; you’re wearing him out!” Serel would never talk like this when her father was home. She knew how it pained him to see her in any way disrespectful to her mother.

After her daughter left, Perele lay motionless like a cut-down, withered tree. Could any wife be more devoted to her husband than she? She doted on him even more than on her children. She knew very well that a husband of straw is better than children of gold. He was the crown upon her head, the apple of her eye. She never forgot for an instant how her father, of blessed memory, had admired his son-in-law’s clear-headed approach to study and his warm human qualities. But just because of her devotion to him she had suffered time and again from his lack of ambition and blindness to his own worth. “Some people are just like that,” she thought, “they crawl into a corner at every opportunity.” The Horadna Rav, by contrast, was not content to rely on the fact that the world hung on his every word. Wherever he went, he sat in front to make sure he was seen. Her husband joked that she liked the limelight and being seen by everybody because she was so short. She managed to turn this around, though, saying that because he was so tall and broad, he declined to sit in his rightful place so as not to eclipse anyone else.

Serel gave birth to a son, her third. There wasn’t even time to take her to the hospital when she suddenly went into labor, so the doctor had to rush to the house. She delivered with an angry, strident cry. Ezra Edelman remembered all too well how during Serel’s first delivery, when she had given birth to the twins, he had stood outside the door of the delivery room and torn at his thick shock of hair while the time seemed to stretch into hours and his wife’s cries became louder and more violent. Ezra tore at his hair this time, too, but from joy; he practically burst out laughing. “Finished already? All done, one, two, three? Thank God!” And by the third day the mother felt perfectly fine. Only her face bore a slight yellowish line, the same color as her long fingernails, and she shivered a bit.

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Now she lay in bed while her husband and her mother stood beside her talking about the forthcoming brith. They were discussing how many guests to invite and which persons should receive the various honors.

“The sandak really ought to be the Horadna Rav, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt,” Perele said faintly, as though conversing with her own thoughts.

“What do you mean?” Serel cried angrily, turning so violently as to make herself grimace with pain. “The sandak will be my father, the child’s grandfather. As far as I’m concerned, my father is the greatest rabbi there is.”

“Your mother also believes your father is the greatest rabbi. Why are you getting so excited?” Ezra calmed his wife, and then turned to his mother-in-law. “Why the Horadna Rav? Since when is he part of our family?”

The Graipewo Rebbetzin would have given her right arm to have those words back—she, who would have fought tooth and nail against the notion that anyone other than her husband, the father of their daughter and the newborn’s grandfather, should have the honor of holding the child during the ceremony. Perele couldn’t understand what had gotten into her to make such a foolish suggestion. She mumbled about having really meant . . . well, she really hadn’t meant anything at all. It was just that, after all, the Horadna Rav was still in mourning for his only daughter, yet he had come to hear their father’s sermon out of respect. It seemed to her that they ought to repay him in some way—that was all she had meant.

“For coming to hear Father’s sermon, Father will pay him back with a visit. He doesn’t owe him anything else,” Serel retorted, still angry; then she turned away and said nothing more. Her mother, she suspected, wanted to parade her children and grandchildren before her former betrothed. And yet, although the hot-tempered Serel was accustomed to speaking freely to her husband of all her arguments with her mother, she refrained from telling him about this particular suspicion, even after her mother left.

Whereas Perele was a quite fastidious housekeeper—not a thing left out of place or untidy—her daughter’s home was always strewn about with clothing and linens. Serel never had a moment to herself—the twins were always tugging at her apron. So the beds remained unmade until late afternoon, the dishes were left unwashed, and the broom stood vigil in the middle of the room. Whenever she needed a dress or a hat, she had no idea in which closet to look. Perele could not stomach this disorder, but she was afraid to say anything to her daughter—she could only console herself with the thought that Serel’s messiness, begun as just another way of annoying her mother, had become second nature to her after her wedding.

Serel’s husband, by contrast, was not in the least bothered by the disorder. Ezra, in fact, liked a home in constant commotion and with an open door to people coming and going all day. Naturally, then, he prepared for an expansive and tumultuous celebration of the brith, and invited a big crowd. Perele helped with the preparations, suffering in silence because such plain, ordinary food was being cooked: spleen, chicken giblets, stewed meat. Bowl after bowl was being filled with sauerkraut and pickled cucumber, and the platters overflowing with herring slices seemed endless. For whom were all these loaves of bread, all these bottles of whiskey, intended? Tables and benches were arranged haphazardly, with no sense of propriety. They were preparing for the brith of a rabbi’s grandson as if it were a peasant’s wedding in a village tavern.

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On the morning of the brith, the guests crushed into every room of the house. People sat wherever they could, on chairs, benches, stools, even on the beds. The grandmother herself, the Graipewo Rebbetzin Perele, elaborately dressed, could barely squeeze into the room where her children were and where her husband, in his prayer shawl, sat in a deep chair, waiting for his grandchild to be placed on his lap. But the grandmother quickly pushed her way back out of the room; she couldn’t stand the sweaty stench of the crowd. In the house of her father, the Staropol Rav, and even in her own house back in Graipewo, no such unruly rabble would even have been allowed to enter.

Suddenly she heard an outburst of “Mazel tovl Mazel tov!” as the infant’s father lumbered around the rooms with a bottle of whiskey in each hand, pouring into all the glasses stretched out toward him from every side. An army of hands grabbed every morsel of cold food from the plates on the tables, while others rushed to the kitchen for the hot food still in the pots. In the midst of all this, Perele stood stunned. Her son-in-law, drunk and sweating, stumbled toward her shouting boisterously, “Come on, Mother-in-law, give us a hand. My guests are also your guests. Here you’re no rebbetzin and no princess.”

The grandmother of rabbinical descent had enough sense to know when to answer and when to act as if she had heard nothing. Without meaning to, Perele turned her thoughts to the Horadna Rav. Thank God he had not been invited to be the sandak and would not see into what company the Staropol Rav’s daughter had fallen, and what sort of treatment she received from her son-in-law. She looked over at her sheepish husband; to him everything was just fine, he was enjoying himself even among this riffraff.

Not until late afternoon, when the hordes of strangers attending the brith at last thinned out, was Perele noticed by the guests. With delicate and nimble fingers she arranged platters of food and carried them to the table in the large living room, around which sat the three trustees of the large Stone Synagogue, engrossed in conversation with her husband. Her two sons were also there, as silent as ever. Behind the two brothers stood her son-in-law, hands in his pockets, listening intently to the discussion.

Meir-Michael Jaffe, gold teeth flashing from his full, rounded beard, had already offered many toasts, and now raised yet another glass of whiskey. “Le-hayyim, Rabbi. It’s settled, then. You will be the permanent rabbi of our synagogue. You’ll conduct a Talmud class every evening and deliver a sermon every Saturday and on holidays.” David Ganz, the frozen-eyed Torah reader, chewed slowly on a piece of dry cake that crumbled onto his broad gray beard. Even more slowly did he chew on his words. “We’ll pay you a salary every week or every month, whichever you prefer. Not that we’re going to make a case of it,” he joked. And the third trustee, the bantam Reb Moshe Moskowitz, licking a piece of hallah he had soaked in fish jelly, laughed: “And if you wanted to make a case of it, is there a rabbi to take it to? The Horadna Rav is busy with more earthshaking affairs, he has no time for trivial local matters.”

Rabbi Koenigsberg sat at the head of the table in a broad, tall velvet yarmulke and his Sabbath coat, a bit tired from talking all day with guests, his cheeks rosy and flushed from the many tots of whiskey he had downed in honor of his grandchild’s birth. The lights in the room stung his eyes, and drops of perspiration welled from behind his ears, from his forehead, from under his beard. He wiped off the perspiration with a white towel and listened attentively to the trustees.

“The head of the Rabbinical Court, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt, and the other rabbis, won’t they object?” he finally asked.

“Why should Reb Moshe-Mordecai and the other rabbis object to our having a rabbi and paying him out of our own pockets?” Meir Michael Jaffe wondered aloud. And Moshe Moskowitz added quickly that, logically, the Horadna rabbis should be very pleased—as long as it wasn’t at their expense, they ought to say, “Fine, the more Torah the better.”

Reb Uri-Zvi looked questioningly at his two sons and his son-in-law, but all three maintained a conspiratorial silence, as if they had met together beforehand and agreed not to get involved. Reb Uri-Zvi was afraid to look at his wife; he was certain she would want him to accept. So he was stunned to hear her argue against the trustees.

“If my husband will not be able to finish his treatise, then what was the whole point of our leaving Graipewo?” The rebbetzin fidgeted nervously with the lace collar of her blouse. “The world awaits my husband’s work, and that’s why we came here—so he could have time for study and for work.”

Her son-in-law smiled at her knowingly. “My mother-in-law can really sell the goods,” he thought. Her husband looked at her dumbfounded, and her sons stared down at the table, avoiding the mocking gaze of anyone who saw through their mother.

“Who’s going to disturb the rabbi in his research and prevent him from completing his work?” one trustee exclaimed. “No one is going to bother the rabbi with communal matters as in Graipewo,” added a second trustee. And the third sprang up in righteous indignation and waved his hands: how could the rebbetzin compare a little nothing of a town like Graipewo to Horadna’s big Stone Synagogue? More than one rabbi would give up his pulpit just to serve in one of the side rooms of the Stone Synagogue of Horadna. Besides, hadn’t the rabbi and rebbetzin moved to Horadna to be near their children?

Reb Uri-Zvi listened to the conversation and calmly stroked his thick silver beard, as if to reassure it that conducting a Talmud class with the men and delivering sermons would definitely not delay the completion of his book. Perele could hardly contain her joy at her husband’s ascending the pulpit of a synagogue more prestigious than the entire town of Graipewo. “And that simpleton,” she thought, “he’s still worried about whether the Horadna Rav is going to have any objections.”

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6.

Rabbi Koenigsberg began delivering his Sabbath sermons at a time of the year that was near to his heart—just after Tishah B’Av. “‘Comfort ye, comfort ye, my people, saith the Lord,’ as the prophet declares,” he chanted in the cantillation of the Haphtorah. “The great sage, the Malbim, interprets the prophet Isaiah as saying: ‘Comfort ye! once, should the Lord hasten the Redemption before its time, and once again, should the Redemption not come until its appointed time.’” The most important members of the congregation—well-to-do shopkeepers, small manufacturers, and landlords—were all religious Zionists of the Mizrachi party; this was not a synagogue in which the anti-Zionist Agudah people had much of a say. Understandably, then, Rabbi Koenigsberg’s sermon was very successful. He held that it was permissible to cooperate with Zionists who were not all that observant. And he enjoyed even greater success the next week, when once again he poured out in chant his thoughts on exile and redemption and the Return to Zion.

“But Zion said, ‘The Lord hath forsaken me, and my Lord hath forgotten me . . .’ Zion weeps that not only has the Lord abandoned her, but He has also forgotten her!” This time even young people came to hear the Graipewo Rav, youths who would otherwise have been riding the steamer on the Sabbath up the Neman River to a soft, sandy shore where they could bathe or frolic with girls in the bushes or play cards. Yet while in town they would not smoke in the street on the Sabbath; after all, they came from good homes. So this one Saturday they gave in to their fathers and stayed to hear the new rabbi, who, it was said, didn’t preach down to them but talked of the Land of Israel. True, until half-past four they could only loiter around the town, dying of boredom. When the day was hot and all the stores were closed, the hours wore on like thick tar. Time itself seemed to have come to a dead stop. Even the sun appeared to have fallen asleep in the sky, unaware that yellow molten brass was pouring out of it. The drooping branches, fainting from the heat, looked like thirsty animals stretching their necks into the dried riverbed. So these well-bred young men stood in the empty streets, dreaming of the soft, deep green grassy meadows and the tall cornfields where one could lie down with a girl, and they thought, “One has to be an idiot to pass that up in order to hear an old preacher with a beard.” But when they were seated in the crowded synagogue and listened to the rabbi, they no longer regretted giving in to their fathers. The melody of the rabbi awakened within them the memories of their schooldays, when they had studied the weekly portion of the Torah. A golden thread was drawn out of their childhood and entwined them with the silver-haired men sitting around them. The synagogue grew dark and the rabbi’s white head, high up on the pulpit, before the dark curtains of the Ark, seemed like the moon drifting out from among the clouds.

On the third Sabbath after Tishah B’Av, Rabbi Koenigsberg again interpreted the prophetic reading according to the great sage, the Malbim. “‘O thou afflicted, tossed with tempest, and not comforted’. . . the poor, tempest-tossed daughter of Zion,” expound the rabbis, “is yet unconsoled. Though her children have returned, she has not yet been rebuilt.”

The Graipewo Rav’s two sons, Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah, came every Sabbath to hear these sermons, as a demonstration of respect for their father. But the truth was, they were a little embarrassed that he was not delivering learned Talmudic discourses on problems of Jewish law, as befitted a scholar of his stature; instead, he was speaking like a common preacher, a maggid. The synagogue’s leading members, however, were not bothered by this at all. “If there be among the listeners a scholar who doubts the depth of the Graipewo Rav’s erudition,” they said, “let him take the trouble to come down to the synagogue any Wednesday night and he’ll hear the rabbi deliver a profound and brilliant lecture on the Talmud. But when you speak to an audience, people must be able to understand. Now, the Chief Rabbi of Horadna is a great genius, but do we have anything to show for it? When he speaks, he mutters about some esoteric point intelligible only to a few select scholars, while the rest of us sit as wide-eyed and open-mouthed as an atonement chicken about to be slaughtered on the eve of Yom Kippur.”

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Toward the end of summer an early autumn wind shook the branches, rustling leaves that had been dried by the intense summer heat. The clouds fled in silent panic one over another, but no rain fell. It did not take long for the winds to pick up, chasing away all the clouds, until nothing stood between heaven and earth except a deep empty sky that gradually filled with darkness. In the back rows of the synagogue sat the laborers with worried faces and, with them, thin shopkeepers with pointed beards, wearing long cloth coats. They wanted the rabbi to speak still longer, to soothe their hearts with yet another word of consolation. The gloom in their eyes shone back at him like a silent mirror, reflecting a dark night sky.

After such a comforting sermon a new spirit infused the traditional recitation of Psalms before the Saturday evening service. A shadowy figure on the bimah sang out a verse and the crowded pews replied by repeating the verse with a special sweetness and intensity. The words came from the depths, struggling against despair like the Patriarch Jacob, who wrestled with the angel in the dark on the other side of the river Jabbok. The trees outside became a congregation unto themselves and recited the Psalms in their leafy, windswept tongue. The rustling of the leaves on the twisted branches drifted out to the shores of the Neman, where the wind-whipped waves and swaying treetops lamented together with the synagogue: “Lord be merciful unto us, and bless us; and cause His face to shine upon us, Selah.”

Perele stopped going to hear her husband’s sermons. She knew, however, that he was becoming very popular. The audience grew from week to week, although the other rabbis and some of the more learned men still hadn’t come to hear him. And this was his own fault, she rebuked him. He should have paid each of the other rabbis a visit after he arrived in Horadna—then they would have attended. Reb Uri-Zvi replied that he was pleased that the learned men didn’t come. He’d have to inject rabbinic material for them, but the trustees wanted him to talk as simply as possible about the Torah and Prophets and Midrash. The rebbetzin laughed at her simpleton of a husband who had been a rabbi for three decades and still hadn’t learned that when the people understand the entire sermon from beginning to end, they lose respect for the Rav. And when the common people saw that scholars didn’t come to hear their rabbi, he would be lowered in their eyes. The masses are asses.

“Have you already forgotten how your audience watched the Horadna Rav’s every move to see if he was pleased with your sermon? And why haven’t you paid the Chief Rabbi a visit, especially since he came to hear you?”

“I don’t know,” said a baffled Reb Uri-Zvi with disquietude in his large eyes. “You and Reb Moshe-Mordecai, after all, were once betrothed. I feel I ought to keep my distance from him. And he seems to feel the same way. That’s the way it’s been between us all these years, except when we had no choice.”

“So what does that have to do with you, that we were betrothed before I knew you?” Perele answered with even wider eyes, filled with amazement. “Things happen in life, so because of such a trifle you’re not paying him a visit? What’s more, he’s in mourning for his daughter, so you certainly ought to pay your respects.”

Reb Uri-Zvi had to admit that his dear wife was right again, and he promised her that on Saturday night, right after services, he would go directly from the synagogue to the Chief Rabbi. Perele had devised a plan to invite the wives of the town’s other rabbis to tea on Sabbath afternoon. During the week she went to each of the wives, and they all promised to come. They wanted to get to know the rebbetzin who had talked her husband into retiring from the rabbinate.

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On Sabbath afternoon, while Rabbi Koenigsberg delivered his sermon in the Stone Synagogue, analyzing the Haphtorah portion—“I, even I, am He that comforteth you”—the wives of the rabbinical judges of Horadna sat in his living room partaking of the delicacies Perele had prepared: a cake filled with cherries and lavishly sprinkled with powdered sugar and grated lemon peel; fluffy white meringues and dry sugar cookies. There were plates laden with fruit, and a large glass bowl of walnuts and filberts. The hostess took a kettle from the oven and filled the cups with clear, wine-colored tea.

The wife of the Wolkowysk Street Rabbi grasped two hard walnuts in her masculine hand and crushed them with one motion, as if with an iron nutcracker. A broad, stocky woman with a plain kerchief on her head, she had the steaming face of someone just emerging from the ritual baths. In her husky voice she shouted: “If only God would be so good to me, my husband could give up his post in Horadna. Better to be a wood-chopper than to be a public rag everyone uses to dry their hands when they leave the baths. If the rabbi declares the chicken not kosher, the housewife says he has a cruel heart; if he declares it kosher, the woman’s husband suddenly becomes pious and doesn’t trust the rabbi anymore. He tells everyone that the rabbi is putty in the hands of the women. And it hasn’t happened yet that one side in a litigation doesn’t become the rabbi’s bitter enemy. If he doesn’t talk enough to people, they say he’s arrogant; and if he does talk to people, they say he’s a gossip. They all watch him to see if he’s wearing a new hat, and they watch his wife to make sure she isn’t buying too good a piece of meat for Sabbath. A rabbi has to be a confirmed pauper for his congregation not to begrudge him the rabbinate. I tell you, we all can be envious of the Graipewo Rebbetzin for having rid herself of all this.”

“Please, don’t call me the Graipewo Rebbetzin. I am not that anymore.” Perele smiled sweetly as she moved the plates closer to her guests.

“My husband and I are not complaining about the Jews of Horadna,” sang out the wife of the Schloss Street Rabbi. “They’re all very fine Jews.”

“Well, your husband is chummy with everyone and you carry on with every woman as if she were your dearest sister. So naturally your husband has more income than just his salary. He’s the permanent officiant at a hall that caters expensive weddings, and the businessmen all come to him to settle their arguments,” burst out the husky Wolkowysk Street Rebbetzin as she cracked open another pair of nuts in her hands.

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Bashka, the Schloss Street Rebbetzin, did indeed get along very well with people. She was by nature a gentle person with a happy disposition and fanatically religious. Whole locks of chestnut hair winked attractively from under her hat. She had no qualms about wearing the latest styles: a white blouse with an embroidered neckline and a suit of black and gray stripes, with sharp, angular shoulders. She had placed her large black handbag and her long black gloves on the table. It was plain to anyone that she was very pleased with her appearance, as she constantly gazed approvingly at herself in a small hand mirror. When Bashka spoke, she cocked her head charmingly, like some innocent, slender, peaceful creature lapping water at a forest stream. One glance from her husband was enough for her wise and alert eyes to see all that was going on among the rabbis, but she never discussed anything except children, clothing, and food. So, instead of getting into an argument with the embittered Wolkowysk Street Rebbetzin, Bashka calmly chewed a small piece of cake and sipped tea.

“This cake melts in your mouth,” she declared with the assurance of a connoisseur. “It has sugar, crushed almonds, cinnamon, and cloves—am I right, Graipewo Rebbetzin?”

“True, but please don’t call me Graipewo Rebbetzin. I’m not the Graipewo Rebbetzin anymore.” Perele smiled sweetly once again.

“Our Rav’s wife, Sarah-Rivkah, also does not want to be called rebbetzin,” said the wife of the Old Marketplace Rabbi, nodding under a huge Sabbath headdress adorned in false pearls, with silver-plated beads that covered her ears. An elderly woman with a shriveled, wizened face, the Old Marketplace Rebbetzin had reached that stage in life when the head constantly shakes and the hands tremble. Not one of her teeth was left in her mouth. Yet, old and hunched as she was, she loved to dress up in brightly colored kerchiefs, layered one after another, and scarves on top of scarves, shawls on top of shawls. Everything on her was pleated, a blend of colors, and though faded and worn, her clothes had the exotic bearing of ancient Oriental nobility.

“Since the Rebbetzin Sarah-Rivkah lost her only child, she completely shuns people,” sighed Bashka goodheartedly.

“Please, I have nothing against the Horadna Rebbetzin. She has always been a kindly and outgoing woman, even if her husband is none other than Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt,” the burly Wolkowysk Street Rebbetzin said in as gentle a tone as she could manage. “Her husband, our town’s Rav, is, after all, the Jewish Pope.”

“What do you mean, the Jewish Pope?” Perele asked.

“Well, if you’ll forgive the comparison, as great as the Pope is to the Gentiles so is our Rav to the Jews. People come to see him from all over the world.”

Thick praise for the Horadna Rav oozed from the woman as if she were talking about an older brother. “Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt receives questions from every corner of the globe and he answers each one of them, the great and small alike. The rabbis and the organizations in America who collect money for yeshivahs and charities here in Europe send all of it to him to dole out. They say the great Hofetz Hayyim of Radun doesn’t make a move without consulting him. At the rabbinical conferences in Vilna and Warsaw, the Horadna Rav’s word carries as much weight as that of all the other rabbis put together. Even the Hasidic rabbis of Poland pay deference to him, though he’s a Lithuanian and a misnaged. And in spite of all this, his Sarah-Rivkah is his queen. The house may be packed with rabbis and the most important Jews of the town, but he’ll leave everyone the instant he hears his rebbetzin call him to her room. Since the death of their only daughter, may God have mercy on us, Sarah-Rivkah has been acting quite strangely. She calls him just when he’s overwhelmed with important business and keeps him for hours. But the Rav never loses patience with her. On the contrary, he talks to her understandingly until she has calmed herself. He has even stopped traveling to rabbinical gatherings, so as not to leave his wife alone.”

“But he has no talent for delivering a sermon, and the people of Horadna are very displeased about this,” Perele unthinkingly blurted out. She would have given anything to call back these hastily uttered words, but the Wolkowysk Street Rebbetzin lost no time in pouncing on her, bellowing, “It’s a sorry state we’ve come to when Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt has to depend for his living on being able to please the Jews of Horadna. The whole world regards him as the greatest Talmudic scholar of our time. Rabbis come from everywhere to hear words of Torah from him. But the boors of Horadna would like him to stand in front of the Ark and give them fairy tales, clever interpretations, and cute parables. Is there any justice in this world?” And the old woman from the Old Marketplace chimed in, her voice rasping through her toothless gums: “We have plenty of preachers, thank God, but the Horadna Rav is in a class by himself.”

Bashka alone felt pity for the Graipewo Rebbetzin, whose face was changing colors. “Don’t say that,” Bashka said sharply to the other two women. “Speaking before people is a difficult skill. My husband also speaks sometimes to the people in his synagogue, but he’s nowhere near as brilliant an orator as the Graipewo Rav. All of Horadna runs to the Stone Synagogue to hear him. They say he is a master of his craft.”

The Graipewo Rebbetzin wanted to shout that her husband was also a brilliant scholar, not just a preacher. But she realized that there was no way to salvage any dignity here, so she kept still. Her suppressed anger brought on needle-like pains in her chest and spasms in her knee. Desperate not to reveal her suffering, she intently peered out the window and reckoned aloud: “Let’s see, candle-lighting was five minutes to six, so when will we be able to make Havdalah and turn on the lights?” Pleased that the room was dark and no one could see her face, Perele bit her lip and heaved a heavy sigh to clear the choking feeling in her throat.

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7.

It had been the custom for the Horadna Rav’s inner circle to visit him every Sabbath afternoon to discuss matters of Jewish learning and converse about affairs of the day. But for the first few weeks of Rabbi Eisenstadt’s mourning for his only daughter these Sabbath get-togethers had ceased. His intimates came only for services in the morning and evening so that he would not have to go out to the synagogue. The young men in this group noticed how the Rav rushed through the prayers; he would be the first to finish the Silent Prayer, and would recite the mourner’s Kaddish in a rapid murmur. The group would leave in silence. Not until the young men were outside did they voice their observation that, whereas the Rav had cried bitterly at his daughter’s funeral while his wife stood frozen, now it was she who spent the entire day in the bedroom sobbing while he struggled to get back to his normal routine.

Eventually, the Rav asked them to resume their Sabbath afternoon visits. They came, but they noticed immediately that his scintillating observations on life and Torah were no more. He had become more hunched; his white beard was even whiter and had split into two pointy wisps. His mourning lay on his face, more in his silence than in his speech.

On a Saturday night in the middle of the Hebrew month of Elul, about mid-September, after the Havdalah ceremony, Rabbi Eisenstadt’s house was filled with people. He sat in his court chamber at a desk piled high with books and, as usual, was engaged in several activities at once. From time to time he looked into an open book that lay at his left on the table and copied from it onto a large white sheet of paper—a responsum to an intricate rabbinical problem. At one side of the desk stood a short woman wrapped in a shawl, pouring out the details of her hard life since her husband, a poor dedicated scholar, had died. On the other side of the desk stood the Rav of a small town, a man with sparkling light-blue eyes and a red beard, who had been expounding a point in rabbinics until his discourse was brought to a halt by the plaintive tale of the poor widow. “Speak, speak, I hear every word.” Moshe-Mordecai smiled at the Rav as he reached into a drawer and withdrew a blank piece of paper with his name printed at the top. With a neat, flowing script, the letters nestling and winding into each other, he wrote a few lines on the paper as straight as a ruler, addressed to the town’s charity committee. He folded the letter and handed it to the widow. The small-town Rav, pleased to be rid of this talkative woman, moved closer to Rabbi Eisenstadt and whispered to him of his eagerness to assume the Graipewo pulpit now that it had become vacant, and his hope that he would have in this the support of the head of the Horadna Rabbinical Court.

“I don’t know if I should get involved and thereby spoil the chances of the other candidates,” murmured Reb Moshe-Mordecai as he reached for the narrow red notebook in which he recorded the charity funds he had distributed each Friday. This did not perturb the red-bearded guest, who drew himself up and commenced delivering his full-blown discourse, in the hope of demonstrating to the Rav that he was more worthy of the Graipewo pulpit than other candidates. Engrossed in recording his disbursement of charity, Reb Moshe-Mordecai listened with only half an ear. Suddenly he interjected, in a casual nasal tone, an objection to the rabbi’s reasoning which left the latter frozen, open-mouthed, his woven beard lying as still as a sculpture and his thumb suspended in mid-air.

At that moment a restaurant proprietor approached to request the Rav’s endorsement of the kashruth of his establishment. He was a tall man with many rings on his fingers and a full face, with smooth red cheeks and a round, thick black goatee that flowed from under an upturned black mustache. The beard and mustache gave the impression of having been donned specifically for this occasion. The Rav darted a quick glance at the restaurateur and laughed a quiet laugh.

“Tell, me, my good man, are the people who eat in your restaurant so pious that they will not eat there unless there is supervision of the kashruth?”

“Such pious people don’t eat in my restaurant,” the restaurateur answered loudly with a cheerful, boisterous laugh. “I had heard, Rabbi, that, besides being learned, you’re also very sharp. Now I see they were right.”

Seeing that he had no chance of getting his endorsement, the man promptly left. Right behind him came two trustees of the Talmud Torah, wearing small Polish caps with visors, wrinkled boots, and long coats. They blew smoke from rolled cigarettes into the air like chimneys, and spoke angrily: “Those bratty orphans are turning the place upside down and breaking the furniture. Everything, from the mattresses to the Bibles, is in tatters, and they themselves walk around in filthy rags. The townspeople aren’t paying their weekly tax, and from the kehillah allocations there’s not enough for a bowl of kasha, and now the teachers are threatening to go out on strike if they don’t get a raise, just like the teachers in the public schools. That’s how they’re talking!” The trustees shouted, and pointed to two teachers who had come as a delegation.

One teacher—with a broad snow-white beard and a thick mustache that completely netted his lips as if to conceal any desire to imbibe of the pleasures of this world—stood calm and unruffled. The second teacher was a thin, dark-eyed young man, beardless, intense, and still wearing the student’s cap of a Polish university. Speaking with the melodious accent of Warsaw, he heatedly declared that he was under no obligation to starve. He was teaching in the Talmud Torah only because he was an observant Jew, but if he was not paid, he’d have to teach in a secular school. The teacher with the dignified mustache suggested similarly that he could, if he wished, become a teacher in a fine religious school for higher-class children.

The trustees, in reply, accused them of acting like Bolsheviks: “We have to worry about orphans and care for them, but you don’t?” The Rav, by this time totally exhausted, raised his hands and pleaded with both sides to stop arguing. A meeting of the kehillah would have to be called, and he’d be there as well. A solution would be found, they could be sure of that, but, please, let the teachers not interrupt the poor children’s schooling.

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In the next room sat the men of the Rav’s inner circle. He had asked them to visit him in the afternoon and to remain after Sabbath ended at nightfall. But after Havdalah, when the townspeople besieged the Rav with problems, the disciples moved to another room.

Rabbi Eisenstadt’s circle consisted of young men native to Horadna who had studied in yeshivahs all over Lithuania, and were now being supported by their fathers-in-law. They were all favorite sons, with rosy cheeks, moist lips, soft, youthful beards, blond or black, piercing gazes, and quick, abrupt movements. Some had already started a business, others had entered the rabbinate, and still others had not yet decided whether to become businessmen or assume pulpits. For the time being, they were living with their parents or in-laws and busying themselves with Agudah politics. They looked upon Rabbi Eisenstadt, who was chairman of the Rabbinical Association of Poland, as their leader. Although he never came into open conflict with the Mizrachi, it was well known that he stood behind these fiery zealots of the Agudah.

Two young men, wearing their fine Sabbath frock coats with silken lapels, sat on a bench. Another lifted the bottom of his coat about his waist and half sat on the edge of the table. Two others stood near the bookcase, engrossed in conversation as they leafed through Talmudic commentaries. And two others gazed out the window at a couple strolling by. The main topic of conversation was the Graipewo Rav; they were all seething over him.

“Since he’s been speaking in the Stone Synagogue every Sabbath about returning to the Land of Israel, the Mizrachi have come into their own.”

“We ought to talk to his sons, the Koenigsberg brothers. They may be only shoe merchants, but they are, after all, yeshivah graduates. Let them explain to their simpleton of a father that he’s playing with fire.”

“The sons weren’t happy about his becoming a maggid in the first place. They say their mother, the Graipewo Rebbetzin, is behind all this. She maneuvered him into becoming the maggid in a synagogue crawling with Mizrachi.”

One of the group opened the door to the Rav’s room and looked in to see if the visitors had left yet. He quickly closed the door and turned suddenly to the others with his finger on his lips. “Shh! Speak of the devil, there he is! The Graipewo Rav!” The young Agudahniks looked at one another, surprised and pleased: Divine Providence had guided him into their hands to be given the lesson of his life.

One by one, they entered the other room with careful, quiet steps and took their places along the wall behind the Horadna Rav’s chair, like a king’s retinue.

All the townspeople who had come to see Rabbi Eisenstadt had left. Seated now at the table were only himself and his guest. The reddish glow of the lamp cast shadows into the corners of the room as the two rabbis talked in friendly, hushed voices. The Horadna Rav asked about the people of Graipewo and the Rav’s salary there: several rabbis from smaller towns were interested in assuming the post, and had inquired about some details. Rabbi Koenigsberg answered guardedly that, though the salary was modest, the congregants of Graipewo were fine people.

Since he had come to console the Horadna Rav, Reb Uri-Zvi now uttered a deep sigh and said he had heard even in Graipewo about the tragedy. . . . Reb Moshe-Mordecai shuddered and hastily interrupted to ask his guest about his grandchildren—were they going to school yet? Reb Uri-Zvi replied about his grandchildren and then sighed again as he continued: he had left Graipewo in order to get the peace and quiet he needed for his study and writing; but now too much of his time was devoted to preparing sermons for the great Stone Synagogue. But Reb Moshe-Mordecai did not want to hear about this either, so he made another inquiry this time with a broad smile on his face: hadn’t he heard that the Graipewo Rav’s daughter had made him a grandfather again? He owed him a “Mazel tov!”

“The Stone Synagogue had no right to install a maggid without the permission of the Horadna Court,” a young man standing behind Rabbi Eisenstadt said sharply. “It seems the Graipewo Rav is unaware that the congregants of the Stone Synagogue are the ringleaders of the Mizrachi and that they’re using his sermons about the Return to Zion to further their cause.”

Reb Uri-Zvi looked up, his eyes filled with surprise and apprehension; till now, he hadn’t even noticed the young men standing in the shadowy corners of the room.

Reb Moshe-Mordecai turned and spoke harshly to the angry young man: “The Graipewo Rav does well to be talking to Jews about returning to the Land of Israel. Is there, then, a God-fearing Jew who wouldn’t like to see the Holy Land rebuilt?” He turned quickly back to his guest and, in a soft voice, excused his rash disciple: “When we were young, scholars never meddled in party politics. But these days the danger of heresy is much greater and the forces of doubt are much more cunning. The rabbis of the older generation often cannot recognize where this heresy lies, or its many guises. So the young scholars are forced to become embroiled in politics.”

The young men looked knowingly and smiled at one another through the dimness. They understood very well that Rabbi Eisenstadt was in full agreement with them, and was simply phrasing it more politely.

Just then a maid came into the room and said to the Rav in a low, weary voice, “The rebbetzin is crying again. She’s calling you.” Instantly a look of sadness passed over Reb Moshe-Mordecai’s face; he rose abruptly and, muttering some words of apology to his guest—“I don’t know how long I’ll be gone. You’re welcome to stay, if you care to wait”—he hurried from the room.

The moment Rabbi Eisenstadt left, the young men descended on Rabbi Koenigsberg. They shouted at him with such vehemence that he sat flustered, open-mouthed, unable to say a word, his eyes wide with astonishment at the way. these youngsters were berating a rabbi many years their senior. Finally the scholar in him became enraged and he rose, his face aflame with indignation. He grabbed his overcoat from the hook near the door and went out into the street without a word.

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At first he walked quickly, panting as if he were being chased. Then he stood still, wiping the sweat from under his collar, straining his face toward the heavens as if asking the Almighty what heresy he had been espousing in his sermons that he deserved such abuse? “A Mizrachi rabbi is as bad as a heretic!” one young man had screamed at him. Overhead a pale light seeped through the thick clouds as they flew across the sky. A sudden gust of wind blew his broad, flat hat off his head. He just managed to grab it by the brim with one hand as he held his yarmulke by its edge with the other hand. For an anxious moment he feared they would both blow away and he would have to walk through the streets of Horadna bareheaded. His ears still rang with a sarcastic remark by one of Reb Moshe-Mordecai’s young followers: that he should thank God he hadn’t another daughter to marry off—“a Mizrachi rabbi can’t get a son-in-law in the yeshivahs.”

As if that weren’t enough, when he arived home he found his wife lying on the sofa with a damp cloth on her forehead. All the lights in the house were on, as if she had awakened from a bad dream and was afraid of the shadows. Strewn over the fine linen tablecloth were the nearly empty platters from the rebbetzins’ tea. Perele’s full afternoon of conversation with her guests had made her ill.

This one time, however, her husband was unmindful of her frayed nerves, and he let all his anger out on her. To shame and humiliate him, that was why she had taken him out of Graipewo and made him a maggid in Horadna. And to shame and humiliate him, that was why she had sent him to Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt. He proceeded to give a full account of his visit to the Rav, in the course of which he remembered something else an Agudahnik had yelled at him: that he and his entire Stone Synagogue weren’t worth an onion compared to the Chief Rabbi of Horadna, the Rav of all Jewry.

“Do you hear? An onion! That’s what I am, compared to the Horadna Rav, and to them he is no less than the Rav of all Jewry. And not only that, one of his followers insulted me in front of him just before he was called away to his wife, and he didn’t appear to me to be much disturbed by this, even if he did pretend to speak harshly to them.”

“My guests today, the rebbetzins, also prattled on about how he is the Jewish Pope, how he is in a class by himself, while of maggidim there are plenty.” Perele spoke very quietly and pointed weakly to a chair near the sofa, motioning him to sit down near her. “When I saw how angry you were when you came in, I thought it was because of something the Rav had said about me.”

His heavy hands resting on his knees, a perplexed Reb Uri-Zvi sat down beside his wife. Why on earth should the Horadna Rav speak ill of her? Because they had once been engaged to be married? He hadn’t seemed to remember at all that Perele had once been his betrothed. Reb Uri-Zvi went on to say that no matter what he had tried to talk about, the Rav had interrupted him abruptly and inquired about their grandchildren, as if it was beneath him to discuss such matters with the former Graipewo Rav.

Perele looked at her husband with eyes that seemed made of molten glass as she dampened her dry lips with the tip of her tongue. She was lying on her back with her hands stiffly at her side, as if unable to move. “He’s forgotten already that I was once to be his bride? Never mind, he’ll remind himself yet!” she whispered to herself. She asked her husband why he hadn’t taken their sons with him to the Rav. After all, Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah had attended his sermon as usual that afternoon in the synagogue. He should have taken them along.

“And if I had taken them along, would they have made me more important in the Rav’s eyes? Do you think his followers would have been afraid to insult me before my own sons? I don’t know.” He shrugged as he turned in his chair. “Today you’re talking sheer nonsense. Did you hear what I said? To his followers I am a nothing; in their eyes he is nothing less than the Chief Rabbi of all the Jews in the world!”

Perele wanted to say that Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah also had a higher regard for the Horadna Rav than for their own father, but instead she said in a choking, sickly voice, “The wives of the Horadna rabbis are right, and that gang of Moshe-Mordecai’s followers, that band of underlings, they’re also right. A maggid in a synagogue is one thing and the Rav of a city is quite another. A maggid doesn’t command the respect of a Rav.” From now on, he would not be speaking in the Stone Synagogue. If he was so dear to the trustees as they claimed, then let them arrange, by hook or by crook, for him to become a member of the Horadna Rabbinical Court and be paid from the treasury like all the other rabbis. Only then would he deliver sermons in their synagogue. And if he wouldn’t listen and continued to speak before becoming a rabbinical judge, then he might as well start preparing a eulogy for her.

Rabbi Koenigsberg had been about to make an angry retort when her talk of dying startled him. And in truth, he was quite pleased that Perele was so concerned to fight for his honor. The Horadna Rav might indeed be the Horadna Rav, but he, Uri-Zvi, had also dedicated himself to the study of Torah for many years, and as a Rav he was not allowed to demean his own standing as a scholar or to accept any diminution of the respect that was his due.

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8.

After the summer dryness, the wind had by early autumn already shaken many of the scorched leaves from the trees. Then came the rainy days, and the remaining clusters of leaves hung here and there, soaked and swollen. A cold, lazy mustiness stung the nostrils. Dampness seeped into the bones and stiffened the joints. Not until late in the fall did the weather suddenly clear and the last remaining leaves on the bared branches shine delicately with a transparent golden hue. The townspeople took off their galoshes and raincoats and left their umbrellas home. Faces were smiling once more at the cleansed blue sky as they basked in the fall’s last rays of sunshine. But the pious and learned Jews of Horadna were not soothed by the healing wings of the sun; their beards and eyes were ablaze with dissension.

At the head of the table in his court chamber sat Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt. On one side of the table sat the other judges of the Rabbinical Court, and opposite them sat the trustees of the Stone Synagogue. This session had already dragged on for quite a long time. There had been ample opportunity for both sides to argue in anger and then apologize several times. The rabbi from the Old Marketplace, a kindly old man with a small beard and spectacles, was forever warding off evil eyes and bestowing blessings on everyone; but now his anger caused him to sputter in a deep, rusty giggle: “Heh, heh, heh, just because some maggid from some small town can explain a simple verse of the Bible, does that mean we have to make him a judge on the Horadna Court?”

The Schloss Street Rabbi, a man with a soft beard and broad shoulders and wise, quick eyes, was known to be soft-hearted by nature, yet thoroughly adept in business matters and in dealing with people, as was his good-natured and fashionable wife, Bashka. But now he stroked his long, downy beard into two neat parts and nervously rocked to and fro in great agitation. “We mustn’t belittle the Graipewo Rav by calling him just a small-town maggid. He is really a fine scholar and a decent human being. The question, however, is: how can we afford to share the meager salary of the court with yet another judge?”

“Impossible!” shouted the Wolkowysk Street Rabbi, a fastidious man with a stooped back, a long gray beard, and thick black eyebrows like bundles of wire. “Even if the Graipewo Rav were as great as Rabbi Akiva Eiger and even if the court treasury were brimming with gold, we could not permit ourselves to seat another judge just because the Stone Synagogue requests it. Tomorrow the trustees of every other synagogue will come to demand that we seat their rabbis on the court. Impossible!”

“Even a rabbi of Horadna cannot bring his son or son-in-law onto the court unless he is of equal stature in scholarship, and even then only with the consent of the entire court,” Rabbi Eisenstadt declared in support of the other judges, though he spoke calmly and softly.

But the committee of trustees was not to be silenced. Meir-Michael Jaffe, his gold teeth shining, was the first to answer the judges: “But if the Graipewo Rav were to denigrate the Mizrachi people and call them ‘worse than Karaites,’ instead of talking about building the Land of Israel, you wouldn’t be arguing against him.”

“And how are the Mizrachi any better than Karaites?” retorted the Wolkowysk Rabbi in sharp, mocking tones. “Neither of them has any respect for the words of the rabbis.”

David Ganz fixed his melancholy eyes on the judge. “Are we supposed to have respect for the rabbis? In our synagogue we have ordinary worshippers who are greater scholars than the judges on the Horadna Court!”

Moshe Moskowitz no longer cared to argue with the other judges; he addressed himself directly to the Rav: “Two of our members are on the town council, and they can arrange matters with the other councilmen at any time. So, if the court will not seat the Graipewo Rav, then we’ll have the council appoint him to the bench.”

“Well, if that’s the case, we have nothing further to discuss,” an incensed Reb Moshe-Mordecai said curtly as he rose from his seat; he particularly disliked Moshe Moskowitz for his impudence. But Moshe Moskowitz, not the least bit fazed, answered, “Indeed, there is nothing more to discuss. If the court is looking for an argument, so be it. Come, gentlemen!” he said to the others.

As they stood at the doorway, Moshe Moskowitz turned and said to the Rav, “None of this is our fault. The Chief Rabbi’s supporters, they’re the ones to blame—if they hadn’t insulted the Graipewo Rav in this very house about his sermons, his rebbetzin would not have forbidden him to preach in our synagogue and we would not have had to defend his honor.”

Instantly, Rabbi Eisenstadt saw to the bottom of the whole affair. Aha! So this was the work of the Staropol Rav’s daughter! Not wanting the others to see the angry light of understanding that flashed in his eyes, he cast them down on his beard, murmuring to himself, “Yes, even as a young girl she was a shrew.”

After the committee had left the court chamber, the long table, with the judges sitting all on one side and the other side empty, seemed like a man with only half a beard. The judges fidgeted in their places, like the rattling covers of pots of boiling water. “Such gall! Such hutzpah!” But Reb Moshe-Mordecai, addressing himself wearily to the white tips of his beard, observed that their enemies would now have something to use against them: the Horadna rabbis refuse to allow anyone else to join them.

His colleagues looked at their Chief Rabbi in bewilderment. True, he was a compassionate man, but he was also known as one who stood his ground and would not budge unless there was no other way out. And the Graipewo Rav did not, after all, have such a strong case for being seated on the Horadna Court. “We’ve got to think this over carefully,” Moshe-Mordecai repeated, and long after the others had left, he sat lost in thought.

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Reb Moshe-Mordecai had always tried to be very friendly to the Graipewo Rav’s sons, thinking that the sedate and dignified young Koenigsberg brothers must surely take after their father. And it just might have been that their mother was not the shrew he had thought her to be when, as a young man, he had broken off their engagement. Now he felt certain that his first impressions of her were not at all mistaken. No doubt about it, she was the one fanning the flames of this controversy. And yet, he felt it would be unseemly to contend with the husband of his former betrothed.

“Why did you allow them to argue so? And what harm is there in having another rabbi on the court?”

These words came from behind his chair, where Sarah-Rivkah stood. She was ten years younger than her husband, not yet fifty. Her thin frame, her gaunt, clear face, the pitch-black hair under her kerchief, and her coal-black eyes made her appear even younger. But her long, bony chin and the flat chest under her clothes robbed her of womanly appeal. Outside, the fall day was dry and warm, but Sarah-Rivkah shivered and rubbed her arms as if she had just gotten out of a bed with frozen covers.

“The new rabbi will not take your place or overshadow you in the eyes of the Horadna Jews, nor in the eyes of the Jews who come to you from elsewhere.”

Reb Moshe-Mordecai could see in the smile in his wife’s eyes that she, too, felt it would be best for him to avoid any dispute with the husband of the Staropol Rav’s daughter.

“I’m not afraid, and I’m not at all worried that he will overshadow me,” he answered, opening and peering into one of the volumes that lay on the table. He wanted to avoid discussing his old fiancée with his wife, especially while they were both still in mourning for their only child. But Sarah-Rivkah was not reluctant to discuss this openly. Since he had once shamed the Staropol’s daughter by calling off their engagement, he ought to take special pains not to shame her again by refusing to allow her husband to sit on the court.

“You talk as if everything depended upon me,” Reb Moshe-Mordecai said curtly, closing the volume and rising from the table. “In seating another rabbi on the court, the other judges have just as much of a say as I. And they simply don’t want him! They don’t! If this happened in another town and I were asked to rule on the case, I would rule against the Graipewo Rav, and find him in the wrong to try and force his way onto the court by creating a public outcry.”

At that moment two young men, well dressed and reserved in manner, entered the Rav’s house. Sarah-Rivkah watched as her husband went to greet them with great warmth, while his face betrayed a greater anxiety. “Sholem Aleichem! These are the Koenigsberg brothers,” Rabbi Eisenstadt introduced the guests to his wife. “The sons of the Graipewo Rav, both married into Horadna families.” Sarah-Rivkah understood by her husband’s wink that he wanted her to leave. She looked at the young men first with surprise, then with curiosity and warmth, and finally with a confused stare . . . and then quietly left the chamber.

The Koenigsberg brothers politely answered the Rav’s friendly queries about their families and businesses, but they could not muster the courage to tell him the reason for their visit. Rabbi Eisenstadt tried to help them: no doubt they had come to say that they had no part in their father’s quarrel with the Horadna Court. Well, they could rest assured that he was aware of this. Elated that the Rav laid none of the blame on them, the younger brother said that he, as well as his brother and sister, did not feel that their father’s leaving the Graipewo pulpit had been the best thing for him.

“Your father probably didn’t want to bear the burden of a congregation any longer,” the Rav said in an innocently probing tone. “Yes, our father no longer cared to remain in Graipewo,” the older brother replied, heaving a long sigh. And at the same moment the thought flashed through Reb Moshe-Mordecai’s mind: “More likely, their mother no longer cared to remain in such a small town.”

Silence flooded the room. Bands of light played on the leather spines on the bookshelves. A large, buzzing fly was crashing rhythmically against a windowpane with heavy thuds. The two brothers shot glances at each other, each urging the other to speak—they shouldn’t be wasting the Rav’s time like this. Finally, the elder brother coughed, loudly cleared his throat, and asked if there wasn’t something they could do to help end the controversy. This feigned innocence annoyed the Rav, who answered sharply that indeed there was a great deal they could do: they could prevail upon their father to drop his demand for that which was neither legally nor morally his due.

“It’s not our father,” replied the younger brother. “It’s the trustees of the synagogue that are behind all this.”

The Rav dismissed this argument with an impatient wave of his hand. He rose and walked to the window: “Don’t tell that to me. You have studied Talmud, haven’t you? ‘It is not the mouse that is the thief, but the hole!’”

Again the brothers looked at each other. The Rav’s standing at the window with his back toward them, they decided, meant the conversation was over and they must depart.

As they were leaving, Gedaliah, the younger brother, screwed up his courage and resolutely told the Rav that if his father was not seated on the court, the dispute would get hotter. The Rav acknowledged with a nod that he had heard, and as soon as the two brothers left, he went into the bedroom excited and upset.

“First they tell me they have nothing to do with this,” he said to his wife, who was sitting on the edge of the bed, “and then they threaten that if their father isn’t made a member of the court, the dispute will get worse.”

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Sarah-Rivkah had quickly hidden their daughter’s photograph under the pillow when she heard her husband’s approaching footsteps—she did not want him to be aggrieved over her inability to let go of their little Blumele’s picture. When Reb Moshe-Mordecai entered the room, Sarah-Rivkah was sitting stiffly, staring at a large portrait photograph of her mother on the wall. A heavy wig framed her long face and sharp-angled jaw; a pained, taut smile played on her lips. Sarah-Rivkah remembered that her father had never wanted to be photographed—“idolized,” he would call it. “What am I, a sacred inscription, the name of the Almighty engraved on the cover of the Ark, that the living have to look at me?” He hadn’t wanted to leave any remembrance of himself for the children. That was why, Sarah-Rivkah thought, her mother’s smile had been so pained when she had had her picture taken without her husband.

Engrossed in his own thoughts, Reb Moshe-Mordecai at last declared loudly that the Graipewo Rav’s sons were, at least, not nearly so brazen as the trustees of the Stone Synagogue. The brothers had stammered and stuttered a long time before they could come out with what their father had forced upon them as obedient sons. “And how do you know it was their father who forced them?” Sarah-Rivkah said, her dim eyes suddenly coming to life. “Perhaps they were pushed into this by their mother. The Graipewo Rebbetzin imagines that you will soften when you see her sons.”

Her husband looked at her quizzically for a moment and then remembered the passage in the Talmud: “A wife knows her guests better than her husband.” With his hands clasped behind him, he turned abruptly and walked about the bedroom muttering that it really didn’t matter who sent them. The Graipewo Rav was a newcomer to Horadna, he had no standing here and no basis for any claim.

Sarah-Rivkah again gazed on her mother’s elaborately formal portrait and said, as if she were reading the answer from it, “The Graipewo Rav has every right. His children live in Horadna and a Horadna synagogue wants him as a rabbi.” She then turned from her mother’s portrait and smiled at her husband. “And besides, you mustn’t stand in the way. Don’t let people say that you’re jealous of him because his wife was once your bride-to-be and you are still upset that the engagement was broken.”

Reb Moshe-Mordecai, alarmed and angry, shouted at her, “What nonsense!”

Sarah-Rivkah laughed anxiously, but her face became even paler and her long, bony chin quivered. “I’m not saying you really feel that way, only that the townspeople will say that.” She was silent a moment and then laughed even more sadly. “Really, Moshe-Mordecai, why didn’t you marry the Staropol Rav’s daughter? I think you would have fared much better with her. You would have had beautiful children with her, just like her two handsome sons. I understand she has a daughter, too, and from all her children she has grandchildren! Maybe God has punished us because you shamed her as a young girl.” Large, cold tears ran from Sarah-Rivkah’s eyes.

Reb Moshe-Mordecai’s anger left him. He lovingly stroked her head, and in a trembling voice he pleaded with her not to cry. Why should they be punished because of the Staropol Rav’s daughter? She hadn’t been shamed, after all, or left an old maid. She had a husband and children and grandchildren.

Sarah-Rivkah clung to her husband, breathing heavily into his warm beard. “You mustn’t stand in the way of the Graipewo Rav’s becoming a judge here,” and her husband promised her he would not oppose it. But how was he going to get the other rabbis to agree?

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9.

The Horadna Rebbetzin, Sarah-Rivkah, was named after her great-grandmother, the mother of the sage Rabbi Alexander Ziskind, author of The Foundations and Principles of Prayer. In it he examined the holy thoughts which must flow through one’s mind during prayer and how one, must reach the point where at any moment one is prepared to lay down his life in the name of God. When Rabbi Alexander Ziskind passed away, he left two testaments to his children which came to be called the major and minor testaments, and a separate set of instructions for the burial society. He directed those who prepared his body for burial to place a stone on his heart, then to throw his body onto the earth from a high place, then to singe his beard with a candle’s flame, and then to place a blade at his throat—symbolically administering to his corpse the four kinds of capital punishment that could be meted out by a Jewish court, as outlined in the Talmud. If he had even sinned in his thoughts at any time while in this world, he hoped this would expiate his transgressions before he came to be judged before the Heavenly Court. In addition, he instructed that two monuments be placed on his grave;, one at the head and the other at the foot, both inscribed on the inner side so that the inscriptions would be facing each other. And these inscriptions, he warned, should not extol his righteousness, but simply say that he was the son of Reb Moshe, born of the woman Rivkah, and that he was a servant of God.

This servant of God and holy man of the two monuments had never wanted to become the Rav of Horadna, and he told his children that neither they nor their children should seek high clerical office. In time this proved impossible, however, and before long these admonitions against high office were interpreted by his descendants as not including the rabbinate. His son, Aryeh, and his grandsons were already members of the Rabbinical Court of Horadna, and the position passed on to Alexander Ziskind’s great-grandson Reb Yitzhak-Isaac, son of Reb Shmuel Sender. With the passing generations, the family married into the most eminent rabbinical families of Lithuanian Jewry and even wove their way into the Hasidic dynasties of Wolyn and Karlin. Only Sarah-Rivkah’s mother, the old Horadna Rebbetzin, had come from humble beginnings. Her father, a wealthy village merchant, had married off his daughter to the great-grandson of the venerated author of The Foundation and Principles of Prayer by offering a huge dowry.

For as long as Sarah-Rivkah could remember, her father’s house had always bustled with her rabbinical uncles, who traveled to Horadna to buy books or to have their own books published, or with her rebbetzin aunts, who came to see doctors or to have new clothes made by the big-city dressmakers. Her father often traveled to attend the funerals of relatives who had been rabbis or famous scholars, and Sarah-Rivkah and her mother went with her father to weddings. The Rav of Suprasl might be marrying a son. Another time the Rav of Tyktin, a distant cousin through Reb Shmuel Sender, married off a daughter. At each wedding the bride and groom were cousins on both their fathers’ and their mothers’ sides.

Blumele, the old Horadna Rebbetzin of humble origins, now trapped within this aristocratic rabbinical family, complained to her daughter, Sarah-Rivkah: “For heaven’s sake, why can’t one find in your father’s family at least one ordinary Jew, a common laborer or shopkeeper? They’re all rabbis and rabbis, like a dynasty of kings. So where are the plain soldiers, the simple, honest Jews? Being always surrounded by such aristocrats, one can become very conceited.”

The old rebbetzin was not alone—even her husband, Reb Yitzhak-Isaac, harbored a grievance against his father and grandfather for having made their livelihoods as rabbis and for preparing him only for the rabbinate. “Our Patriarchs, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, were shepherds, and our own great-grandfather, the saintly Rabbi Alexander Ziskind, wouldn’t hear of becoming the head of the Rabbinical Court. Why was it decreed that I should have to deal with an entire city of congregants when all I really wanted was to be a carpenter, just a simple carpenter?” he sufferingly lamented to his wife and daughter. When he said this, he looked like a child, a schoolboy whining that he just can’t manage to carry a huge log on his weak shoulders. Reb Yitzhak-Isaac was a small man with thick sidelocks and clean, smooth cheeks where no beard grew. Only on his chin did a small, stark beard barely hang. He had kind, tearful eyes and a pair of delicately pious hands fit for leafing through books, for writing complex responsa, or for feeling the gizzard of a chicken in which a housewife had found a splinter, to determine if it was still kosher.

“But, Father, how could you have lifted those heavy boards, or driven nails with a heavy hammer, or carried a heavy chest on your shoulders?” Sarah-Rivkah laughed, as her mother, Blumele, the old Horadna Rebbetzin with her high cheekbones, smiled sadly.

“And why couldn’t I? I certainly could,” Reb Yitzhak-Isaac said, vexatiously tugging at his narrow gray beard. He told his wife and daughter of the men of the Talmud who were cobblers and blacksmiths, and about Reb Mordkele of Pokrow, who was a Rav as well as a carpenter. “Now, there was an extraordinary man, that Reb Mordkele! He was the greatest saint of all the countless humble saints in Zamut. He lived during the time of the Vilna Gaon, who delighted in him. Reb Mordkele surely lived by the words of the sages: ‘Love work and eschew the pulpit.’ And what about our own Rabbi Akiva Eiger? The whole world lives off his brilliance, yet here he is, the Poznan Rav, asking one of his students in a small town if there is perhaps an opening there for a sexton in a small synagogue. So why couldn’t I be a worker?” Yitzhak-Isaac asked his wife and daughter. These words never left the innermost chambers of the Rav’s house; no carpenter in Horadna could have imagined that he was the object of the Rav’s envy. To all appearances, Reb Yitzhak-Isaac was quite satisfied with his lot, and his family realized full well that outsiders must not know anything about the Rav’s dreams.

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The sprawling family of the venerable Horadna Sage, the author of The Principles, had become a dense primordial forest. With the passage of generations and the inevitable bolts of lightning, the great oaks are broken, the tall pines are twisted, and pieces of bark lie beside the smoothed trunks that look like forlorn, ragged, old people. Instead of fresh green grass, a silvery moss spreads out and blankets the dried creeping vines. At the same time, at the edge of the forest the fresh saplings of the nut trees, alders, and birch trees already rustle. Their bark sparkles with a dark silver luster as they whisper confidences to the centuries-old trees, their stately ancestors in the impenetrable thicket. Yet even the sun never reaches the inner sanctum of this wood. A tranquility reigns there, a hush and a darkness even at noonday. So did the family of Rabbi Alexander Ziskind grow and proliferate while the main trunk, his children and grandchildren, shriveled. Sarah-Rivkah was an only daughter of Reb Yitzhak-Isaac, just as he was the only son of Reb Shmuel Sender. Sarah-Rivkah grew up pale and sickly, as if she were paying the price for her saintly great-grandfather’s fasting and asceticism. An anemic girl, this rabbi’s daughter was fatigued by her formidable ancestry, which burdened her like a train of night shadows. In her quiet smile one saw the last faint glimmer of a faded, ancient tapestry. Just as her father complained to her that he should have become a carpenter, her mother constantly grumbled to her as well.

“At my wedding I dreamed of having a half-dozen healthy, bouncing children like my country brothers and sisters, and as I myself looked as a young girl. Even your father hoped you’d take after my family instead of his. But your great-grandfather, the Tzaddik of the Two Monuments, looked down from the heavens and decreed that you should look like one of his own, who consider even laughing out loud a transgression.”

Nevertheless, the old rebbetzin, Blumele, agreed with her husband that their only daughter must marry a great Torah scholar. And Sarah-Rivkah’s groom was indeed a flaming genius, descended from generations of brilliant scholars who turned the pages of the Talmud as easily as the wind turns the leaves in the forest. The rabbis of the Eisenstadt family had steadily ascended to higher and higher positions, like the High Priest who would use progressively bigger vessels during the Temple service on the Day of Atonement. A Hasid could no more be found among them than could a piece of leavened bread in their homes during Passover. Plain, pious Jews and all sorts of miracle-workers they would dismiss with a wave of the hand, and they looked down upon preachers for the common people. They would rush through prayers, the sooner to sit down and study. The Eisenstadts knew nothing of retreat or compromise. When they issued a decree or even just expressed an opinion, everyone had to bow down to their wishes.

“Your Moshe-Mordecai will conduct the Horadna rabbinate with an iron hand,” Reb Yitzhak-Isaac said prophetically to his daughter. “He has inherited from his fathers the strength and the authority to govern a city, a state, even the whole world. Anyway, you won’t find him throwing himself about with a yearning to become a carpenter.”

Reb Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt was in fact a gentle person, and one could have even called him witty. “It’s because your husband is very bright, and because the times are different, that he knows how to conceal the arrogance for which his family is famous,” Reb Yitzhak-Isaac told his daughter.

While yet a young wife Sarah-Rivkah asked her husband why he had broken off his engagement to the Staropol Rav’s daughter. “Was it because you wanted a lamb for a wife?” she would ask teasingly. “You’re cleverer than she,” he answered, adding that in his family the women were women, not men. A Rav’s wife has to know how to get along with people and be friendly to guests and not mix in communal matters. But the Staropol Rav’s daughter would have been the kind who hides under the Rav’s prayer shawl and prompts his every move. In the end, the people lose all respect for such a Rav and call him “our worthy rebbetzin’s husband.”

Reb Yitzhak-Isaac had lived to see Sarah-Rivkah’s first miscarriage before joining his sainted ancestors. Her mother suffered through a few years more with her daughter yearning for a child in the face of the doctor’s warning that another pregnancy would be dangerous. When Sarah-Rivkah at last gave birth to a baby girl, they named her Blumele after the old rebbetzin who had died just before the baby was born, as if Heaven had called her away in order to spare her the grief of seeing how sickly was her only grandchild.

Throughout all her seventeen years of life, Blumele was almost always either crying or suddenly screaming because of her asthma, until even her father was utterly broken. In his own mind, Reb Moshe-Mordecai made peace with his lot, resigning himself to a life very different from that of his ancestors. True, he had become the outstanding scholar of his day, famous the world over, but he seemed to merit no personal joy or peace from the Almighty.

As for Sarah-Rivkah, her unending anxiety over her daughter utterly exhausted her; and she would constantly plead with her husband to be lenient in his decisions, even when the very authority of the Torah was being challenged. Even after their daughter had been torn away from them, she would beg him to give way to his opponents, as in the case of the Graipewo Rav. At long last, she succeeded in extracting from Moshe-Mordecai a promise that not only would he not object, but would do his utmost to persuade the other rabbis to accept the Graipewo Rav on the Horadna Rabbinical Court.

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10.

The rains fell steadily until late in the fall, and then the ground became icy with the first frosts. In his rabbinic winter attire, a long fur coat and a tall fur hat, Rabbi Koenigsberg presented a splendid and stately appearance; he radiated dignity and confidence over the town.

It was only in the chambers of the Rabbinical Court that he sat on pins and needles. There his colleagues either suffocated him with their hostile silence or addressed him in tones of anger. When the court adjudicated minor cases or ruled on matters of ritual law, it convened without the town’s Rav, in a small room maintained by the kehillah. When an important case arose, however, the judges gathered in the Rav’s home. Although Rabbi Eisenstadt was less obvious about it than the others, it was clear that he, too, was keeping his distance from the court’s new member.

One Thursday, around noon, the court was in session and the rabbis were seated with the Rav. Rabbi Koenigsberg gazed through the window at the darkening gray sky and watched a flurry of snowflakes dancing gaily through the air, trying to decide where to alight. The snow grew thicker every minute, transformed before his very eyes from thin, wispy ribbons into white sheets and swirling linen canvases. Reb Uri-Zvi recalled how on such winter mornings in Graipewo he would walk to the early morning services, met by every passerby’s warm good-morning. After the services the men would sit with him around a table and study Mishnah, eager to hear some profound insight of Torah. Afterward he went home and had his breakfast, then sat down in his study to read, and later lay down to rest. When he arose, a man would come for some advice or a housewife for a ruling in some ritual matter. They all showed him the greatest respect and love—he was the Rav, the shepherd watching over his flock. But what was he now?

The case now before them would at any other time have been considered trivial; but the other members of the court were apparently prepared to seize every opportunity to embarrass the Graipewo Rav. The trustees of the Stone Synagogue were planning a Hanukkah concert. Besides the town’s cantor and his choir leading the services for the lighting of the menorah, an orchestra was to perform, followed by a sermon on the Hasmoneans to be delivered by Rabbi Koenigsberg. The plan called for selling tickets, which would bring in a great deal of money, half of which was to go to the synagogue and the other half to the Orthodox community in the Land of Israel.

“I know from experience that at the lighting of Hanukkah candles with musicians, men and women will be crowded together. Such anarchy should not be permitted. We must declare it forbidden!” the Wolkowysk Street Rabbi argued vehemently.

“They can’t fool me. The money will fall into Mizrachi’s coffers,” the Schloss Street Rabbi declared with great assurance. “None of it will go to the synagogue or to the poor pious Jews in the Land of Israel.”

“Musicians, like at a peasant wedding? That’s an abomination of the Gentiles!” cried the Old Marketplace Rabbi, boiling over in outrage.

Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt sat at the head of the table, half stooped over, his fingers fidgeting with his beard as if he were looking for some clever way out. “Perhaps the trustees could be made to understand how important it is that men and women not sit together. The musicians and choir really ought not to concern us very much. Our main concern should be that people not forget the miracle of Hanukkah and think that Judah the Maccabee was victorious through his own strength.”

By this Rabbi Eisenstadt meant to hint strongly to Rabbi Koenigsberg that he feared the Graipewo Rav was planning to speak on a Zionist theme instead of emphasizing the Providential aspects of the miracle. The other rabbis, however, found this much too tame a rebuke, and this time they told the Rav that, with all due respect, he was making a big mistake. The trustees of the Stone Synagogue would never be able to ensure separate seating for men and women, especially since they really wanted the opposite: mixed seating would guarantee a bigger crowd. Thereupon the Wolkowysk Street Rabbi turned to Rabbi Koenigsberg and pointed a finger menacingly at him. “Your congregants have placed you in charge in order to get permission for something clearly prohibited and which they never before had the nerve to do.”

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Dazed by this open display of hostility, Rabbi Koenigsberg mumbled something that no one could make out. Just then Rabbi Eisenstadt’s wife entered the court chamber. Her gaunt, pale face looked even paler against the snow that was falling outside. With both hands she was carrying a tray laden with glasses of tea, sweet, dry cookies, ground sugar in a porcelain bowl, and slices of lemon on saucers. Sarah-Rivkah placed the refreshments on the table and said to the Graipewo Rav—a bit too loudly, it seemed—“Have some tea.” And then, turning to the others, “And you, too, please. Your mouths must be dry from all that screaming and shouting.”

The rabbis gaped at the Rav and he at his wife. This was the first time since her daughter’s death that Sarah-Rivkah had set foot in the court chamber when the rabbis were there—and she was even bringing refreshments. The Rav quickly surmised that she wished to silence the tirade being launched against Rabbi Koenigsberg.

“Drink, Rabbis. Please have some tea. Let’s all have some tea, and don’t forget the cake,” the Rav said cheerfully to his guests.

The rabbis muttered a blessing, spread apart their mustaches with their fingers, and sipped tea as they chewed the hard, crumbling cookies. Sarah-Rivkah remained standing beside the table and spoke in an excessively loud voice about Henka Lapidus, the wife of Reb Hayyim-Yonah, the ritual slaughterer in Graipewo. Henka, she said, had been her friend since childhood, and on a visit a couple of days earlier had told her that Graipewo really missed their former Rav: no matter who applied for the position, they couldn’t seem to find a satisfactory replacement. They said they would like a Rav just like the Rabbi Uri-Zvi Ha-Kohen Koenigsberg.

“I would really like to meet your rebbetzin,” Sarah-Rivkah said and looked innocently at her husband, as if unaware of his motioning for her to leave. Not until some people entered the court chamber on other business, and she could be certain that the rabbis would not return to their previous argument in the presence of laymen, did Sarah-Rivkah leave the room.

At dusk the Horadna Rebbetzin looked from her bedroom window at the thick snow falling outside, and with a frozen smile listened to her enraged husband’s complaint. What was the meaning of this—coming in and purposely disrupting the deliberations of the rabbis? She’d never done that before!

Sarah-Rivkah sat motionless, her pale hands on her lap, her gaze fixed on the scene outside the window. “You must see to it,” she replied, “that your colleagues don’t embarrass the Graipewo Rav. To me, he’s a much finer man than any of them.”

This vexed the Rav even more. “How could you tell him you’d be happy to meet his wife? It’s not nice, it’s not proper.”

Sarah-Rivkah just smiled and answered in a weary voice, “I’m not all that eager to meet her. But what’s not proper about it? Rabbi Koenigsberg was never engaged to me as his wife was once to you.”

This quiet answer addled Reb Moshe-Mordecai completely, and he could only murmur into his beard that he hadn’t the time to stand guard and protect the Graipewo Rav from insult. He had much studying to do and hundreds of letters to answer. Since they had lost their Blumele, he hadn’t written a single word of Talmudic analysis and had made no progress at all in completing his book.

Sarah-Rivkah angrily turned her head toward her husband, and her eyes shone with eerie derision and cold melancholy. “It’s really a wonder that because of your one and only daughter’s death you haven’t finished your sixth book—or is it your seventh?”

Reb Moshe-Mordecai, still hunched over, was dumbfounded and regarded his wife fearfully. Sarah-Rivkah’s high cheekbones quivered violently, but she steeled herself to speak calmly. Her father had managed not to write any books at all. Of course, Rabbi Eisenstadt was certainly a more famous scholar than her father—so what of it? Books were not children. . . . At that Sarah-Rivkah also fell silent. She peered out through the window and thought that this was the first snow to fall on Blumele’s grave—Blumele’s wedding veil.

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“Don’t go to the court anymore, or to the Rav’s house!” Perele shouted at her husband that same night after he told her what he had to put up with from the other rabbis, and that only the Horadna Rebbetzin was friendly toward him. “Don’t you dare set foot in the Rav’s house, do you hear? The Horadna Rebbetzin is polite to him, and this fool repeats it yet.”

Reb Uri-Zvi stood lamely before his wife, his hands hanging heavily at his sides, his beard disheveled. He was totally bewildered by his wife’s fury; Perele seemed to be standing on her toes so she could yell louder. Reb Uri-Zvi pleaded with her. What did she want of him? She had schemed and plotted to make him a member of the Horadna Rabbinical Court. Now, how could he continue to accept a salary for sitting on the court if he refused to go there, especially when they met in the Rav’s house? His critics were already complaining that he was getting a double salary, first as a rabbinical judge and then as rabbi at the Stone Synagogue.

Perele’s face blanched from anger and her lips became parched as if she were in a desert. She scoffed at her foolish husband’s worries about what people were saying, especially since everyone knew that the other rabbis on the court were making two and three times as much as he at their other positions—even ten times as much. The other judges would be more than happy to send him his salary at home if only he’d promise not to come to the court. They had seated him, after all, gritting their teeth because they’d had no choice but to accept him. True, she had wanted him to have the title “judge” so that the other rabbis’ wives could not flaunt their husbands’ positions at her. But she had never intended that he should go running to the Horadna Rav’s house where the Rav would lord it over him and the Horadna Rebbetzin could do him a favor and be friendly to him. She deserved a pinch on her cheek for that, didn’t she?

Reb Uri-Zvi reminded his unpredictable wife that it had been her idea that he visit Rabbi Eisenstadt in the first place. And why was she so furious with Reb Moshe-Mordecai’s wife? “After all, she specifically said she’d like to meet you.”

Perele bristled anew and sarcastically replied, “Oh, really? She would like to meet me, would she? Perhaps she thinks that just as you don’t know how to thank her enough for being friendly, she’s also doing me a favor.” Reb Uri-Zvi listened, mesmerized, for a long time, until he suddenly waved his hand and went away to his books. He had never come across a single passage of the Talmud with as much confusion or as many contradictions as the words and deeds of his wife.

Perele now went about her housework in the same manner as once in Graipewo, when she had succeeded in convincing her husband to move out of that town. She cooked supper and set the table, all the while talking to herself aloud: “He wants to have it all. He has grabbed everything, that Reb Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt. He’s the Rav of Horadna and sits at the head of the Rabbinical Court. He’s the leader of the Agudahniks and yeshivahs in Lithuania. When they send money from America for the yeshivahs or for the poor of Horadna, it’s up to him alone to decide who gets what. When rabbis and solicitors come to Horadna, they have to pay him the first visit, that ‘Jewish Pope,’ as the women call him. He writes books, has them published immediately, and is already selling them, while my husband has been writing all his life, struggles to get his one and only book ready to be published—and still isn’t close to finishing it.”

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11.

It all happened exactly as Perele had predicted. Although Rabbi Koenigsberg no longer showed his face in the Rabbinical Court, they sent him his salary with the sexton, yet breathed not a word about his returning. At first he was greatly distressed, but then he came to see this as a fortunate development. It would give him more time to study and to prepare his sermons. Perele, however, twisted her mouth bitterly as she realized that her words had come to pass and that the Horadna Court could get along very well without her husband. She relieved her anger in heaving long sighs and finally seized upon the consolation that she had, after all, moved to Horadna to be near the children, God bless them. So she began visiting her daughter more often.

It was simply not in Perele’s character, however, to play the role of the kindly old grandma bringing treats for the grandchildren; she wanted to help her Serel run the house. By nature a meticulous and orderly woman, Perele was pained to see the house become even more of a dump after her daughter had yet one more child. Everything was thrown about, rumpled and overturned; underwear hung out of dresser drawers, clothes were stuffed into the closets, and linens were strewn all over the beds. The foyer floor was muddied by the slush trodden in from outside. Serel, an infant at her breast, went about in a loose housecoat, her hair disheveled and Uncovered. The twins either wandered aimlessly from room to room getting filthier and hungrier, or else they’d wrestle, tweaking each other’s noses and whimpering. At the last moment before her husband was due to come home from work, she’d pause to decide what to start cooking for his dinner.

Perele could hardly believe her eyes as she sat at the table. The twins were so identical that even she, their own grandmother, would get them confused. Yet each one did all he could to spite the other. If one wanted to eat dairy, the other demanded only meat. Serel screamed at them while her husband sat at the table either laughing at it all or reading a newspaper, hearing and seeing nothing of what was going on around him. Perele asked her daughter why she didn’t hire a maid, and although her mother had asked quietly and sweetly, Serel shouted her reply.

“I can’t stand being helped by strangers—or by my own family either! I hate it when someone does me a favor and then becomes my boss.”

The rebbetzin kept still. In her rabbinical family a mother and daughter would never argue in front of the son-in-law. But another time, when they were alone in the house, Perele rebuked her daughter for her slovenly appearance. “Today’s women dress up for strange men,” she said, “but for their own husbands they’ll walk around in housecoats until the husbands come to detest them. You are a rabbi’s daughter; did you ever see such things in your father’s house? How can a man love his wife if he comes home for dinner and finds the children squirming on the floor like piglets in the mud?” The mother had much more to say, but the daughter interrupted her with a screech.

“Listen, you’ve already gnawed my father clean to the bone! Did you come here to gnaw at me, too?”

And when her husband came home at last, she greeted him, too, with a screech.

“Are you listening, Ezra? My mother was here today and she told me you don’t love me.”

Ezra Edelman knew that nothing could quiet his wife faster than telling her she was just like her mother. So this time, too, he sternly raised his finger and said, half seriously, half jokingly, “The more you argue with your mother, the more you prove that the two of you are alike—two sides of the very same coin.” And to his mother-in-law he had once said, “Come on the Sabbath. Everything will look just the way you want it. Meanwhile, during the week we’re busy people.” .

Perele was by now accustomed to hearing her son-in-law—with the sweet name of Edelman—speak to her in such a churlish manner. She knew that if she answered him as he deserved, he would tell her that she could play the boss in her husband’s home but not in his, and Serel would surely side with him. So Perele bit her lip and decided that she would not set foot in her daughter’s house again. Serel was already teaching the twins to have no respect for their grandmother. Her sons would remain her only comfort in life; both Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah had always shown great respect for their mother.

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Winter set in with a thick, dry snow that fell so steadily it seemed as if a heavenly mill were pouring flour on the city. On the third morning a gray light seeped through the thinning cover of clouds. Around midday a pale blue patch could be seen in the sky out of which stared a brassy, wall-eyed sun. In the evening a frost struck the land and covered the pure white snow with a frozen gleam. The next day the people in the street had to walk in small, careful steps so as not to slip on the ice. Days like these were the very busiest part of the winter season in the Koenigsberg brothers’ shoe store. The two proprietors, with their exquisite silken beards and delicate white hands, waited on customers along with their salesmen. They hadn’t even time to go home for lunch. Just at that time an unexpected guest appeared: their mother. She strolled in, bedecked like an in-law at a lavish old-fashioned wedding, wearing a worn, fitted sealskin coat with a stiff, upturned collar and broad, flat lapels, over a long, flowing dress with many pleats. Her hands were concealed in a muff, also of black sealskin. She went directly behind the cashier’s counter and stood next to the safe, contemplating her sons’ business.

The salesmen bounded demonlike up to the high shelves, seized the white cardboard shoe boxes, leaped to the floor, and then knelt down to fit the shoes on the customers sitting before them on chairs and benches. There were fat old women in thick fur coats buying overshoes; young women, looking like stretched and twisted springs, were trying on tall, narrow, fashionable boots. The owners, the Koenigsberg brothers, didn’t rest for a moment; both were attending male customers. The older men were purchasing high rubber galoshes, while the young men were fitting low-cut half-rubbers with a red lining that came all the way from Riga. The elder brother, Yankel-Dovid, was bustling about two small boys who were holding up their feet stiffly in knitted socks of heavy red wool. Nearby sat their mother, a thin, freckled woman with a sour face that bespoke a morning spent arguing with her husband. No matter which shoes Yankel-Dovid put on their feet, she would reject them in disgust.

“So it’s for this that Yankel-Dovid spent years studying in the yeshivah?” Perele said to herself. Then she turned to watch her younger son.

Gedaliah had earlier attended to a wizened old man, beardless and without a tooth in his mouth. He had wanted a pair of heavy, warm slippers in which he could step outside for a moment. A little later Gedaliah had tried to satisfy a tall, burly young man who sat in a waist-length coat, his hands as big as shovels resting on his knees, and his head, sporting a thick shock of hair, hatless even now in the dead of winter. The fellow wanted some sport shoes with double soles. The shopkeeper knelt before the customer’s huge feet, but whatever he was shown he tossed aside. He rejected one pair because they were tied with leather laces; he wanted sport shoes with claps and straps. Another pair was waved away because he didn’t care for the pattern of the soles, and besides, the edges were too smooth and the soles didn’t have grooves for ice-skates. “And it is this village boor with a horse’s mane who must be waited on by my Gedaliah, son of the Graipewo Rav and grandson of the Staropol Rav?”

Finally, both brothers managed to free themselves from their customers for a while and came over to their mother, exhausted but with faces beaming over their brisk business. They spoke quietly and respectfully, as always. Did Mother have anything particular on her mind, or was she just paying them a visit? Perele replied that she had come to take pride in her sons. “Some pride! Both of you crawling on all fours before such riffraff, who yet have the nerve to complain.” The brothers moved closer to their mother and spoke more quietly so no one else could hear: “And would it be better, Mother, for the shoe leather to dry up on the shelf?” They were happy that customers came in and let themselves be waited on.

Perele did not want to turn against her daughters-in-law, but she just couldn’t let a flaw go unmentioned. “And why don’t your wives come down to help you in the business? Seems to me they think it beneath them. They must feel they come from finer families than the two of you.”

The brothers answered in barely restrained anger that their wives had more than enough work in the house and in taking care of the children—and there was nothing shameful about selling shoes. “A Rav is at the mercy of his congregants, but we tremble before no customer, even if we do kneel at his feet to try on his shoes.” Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah went back to their customers and did not return to their mother. She stood there like a surly old woman who had come in so often to haggle over a pair of slippers that the salesmen had learned to ignore her. Not until she went toward the door did the brothers suddenly appear at her side to see her out respectfully. But she said nothing. She walked out in a huff, her head tilted back.

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The rebbetzin returned home with her face drawn and determined, and found her husband at his desk, swaying over an open Talmud. Rabbi Koenigsberg was sitting in his old, long green knitted robe, his flat velvet yarmulke atop disheveled tufts of white hair, looking just as he always had in Graipewo. He didn’t ask Perele where she’d been, nor did he get up from his chair to help her take off her coat. This was how he had always been, Perele thought, and when children had seen this since their youth, was it any wonder they had no respect for their mother? She looked about the room and suddenly noticed that not one piece of furniture was in the right place.

“Help me move the sofa between those two windows and the chest to where the sofa is now,” she ordered her husband.

“Why, all of a sudden?” a bewildered Reb Uri-Zvi asked.

His wife shouted back at him. “Regards from your daughter. Her house is also the town dump and she doesn’t even know it.”

Perele was seething, but she still insisted on doing things in the proper order. She went to the bedroom, took off her fancy clothes, and put on a housedress. Reb Uri-Zvi crouched down to grab hold of the sofa while Perele pushed it from behind. He had taken off his robe and stood panting in his tallith kattan. Then he tried to pry the chest, its drawers filled with clothes, away from the wall. “This is a job for movers, not for old people like us,” he said as he wiped the sweat from his forehead.

“If we just use our heads it won’t be difficult,” Perele snapped back. “‘Where there’s Torah, there’s widsom,’” as though she didn’t deem her husband to be a Torah scholar either. With teeth-clenched stubbornness, she single-handedly pushed the chest from against the wall until it stood in the middle of the room and she was out of breath.

“In Graipewo the furniture stood for twenty-five years in the same place and looked fine, as if it had grown there. Here everything looks like wooden counters thrown about a marketplace after a fair; the furniture sticks out like logs,” Perele said, casting disgusted looks about the room. “And how do things look in the Horadna Rebbetzin’s home? What kind of furniture does she have?”

“I don’t know, I really didn’t notice,” Reb Uri-Zvi panted, sitting down exhausted. “We’re going to have to get someone to finish arranging the furniture the way you want.”

Perele, beside herself, yelled at her husband. He’d been to meetings at the Horadna Rav’s home countless times and come back with a beard full of barbs and insults from the other judges. He’d drunk tea and eaten cake there until he was overcome by the rebbetzin’s hospitality. Had he really not noticed what kind of furniture she had? “What are you? Are you blind, are you deaf . . . or both?”

“I’m just no expert on such things,” Reb Uri-Zvi stammered.

His lame answer only enraged Perele more. Standing among the displaced furniture, she pointed an accusing finger at her husband, blaming him for their children’s lack of respect for her. It was his fault that they cared as much for her wishes as for last week’s leftovers. And if he ever did warn Serel that she must mind her mother, he did it so halfheartedly that the daughter understood her father secretly sided with her. He had never encouraged his sons to aspire to a position in life befitting a Rav’s children. He cared not a whit that Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah had become shoe salesmen, any more than he had been troubled about wasting his life as the Rav in a town no bigger than a fig . . . or any more than he was bothered now that he was nothing more than a maggid. The more his wife berated him, the lower Reb Uri-Zvi’s head fell and the deeper was his silence. He had long known that no one is more brazen to a rabbi than his own rebbetzin. But as he listened, he wondered about something else: Perele had always been wise and always so very logical. Then what on earth, he asked himself, did moving the furniture have to do with their children or his position?

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12.

In the major Jewish dailies in Warsaw it was reported that a delegation of Orthodox professors, rabieners, and community leaders from Hamburg, Frankfurt-am-Main, Amsterdam, and Brussels had come to Poland. Some time later these same Warsaw papers reported that, having visited several Hasidic enclaves and Lithuanian yeshivahs, this delegation from distant Orthodox communities planned to visit the great Rav of Horadna, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt. The newspaper that published a Sabbath supplement sent reporters to Horadna on the nine o’clock train Friday morning, and it was no more than a few hours before the entire town was abuzz with the news. People talked of nothing else Friday night in their homes or Saturday in the synagogues. “So Rabbi Eisenstadt is the ‘Jewish Pope’ after all, just as they say.” The people felt proud and important because the leader of world Jewry, to whom such learned dignitaries came for an audience, was also their Rav. Word had gotten out that when the guests were to meet Rabbi Eisenstadt, only his closest associates and the Rabbinical Court would be invited to attend.

They talked about this in the Stone Synagogue as well, but Rabbi Uri-Zvi Koenigsberg, the preacher of the synagogue, was not the least bit enthralled by this event. Though he was still officially a member of the Rabbinical Court, he in fact no longer met with the other rabbis and so knew full well that he would not be invited to the reception for the visiting dignitaries. On that particular Sabbath morning—the Sabbath of the Blessing of the New Moon for the month of Shevat—Perele had come to services. The women around her in the balcony could not stop chattering about the pious foreign professors coming to visit the Horadna Rav, and Perele listened with a stiff smile on her face. “It is an honor to the Torah. I’d like to see the Warsaw papers that are going to write this up,” she said loudly, and several women promised her they would bring her a copy when they were finished with it. Later, at dinner, while the distracted and despondent Reb Uri-Zvi forced down his bowl of cholent, an enraged Perele, her food getting cold on the plate, turned the pages of the newspaper so violently that she seemed to have forgotten it was the Sabbath, and nearly tore it all up. She finally took a bit of food in her mouth and almost choked on it, coughing and rasping.

“The evil one must have talked me into moving to Horadna to be with the children. I have as much joy from my children as I have respect and honor from my husband.” On the first two days of the following week a hard snow fell, thick as hail. On Tuesday the grainy snow settled on the ground, squeaking underfoot and sparkling like crystal. By Thursday a blinding sun emerged, igniting the icicles dangling from the eaves of roofs, and the frost-covered windows sparkled with tears and diamonds. The townspeople stopped to gape at the evergreens in front of the church; they seemed even greener under a mantle of snow than they did in the middle of summer. Somewhere, someone laughed and the laughter drifted out over this frozen world of snow like the ring of silver chimes. Perele went to the butcher to buy meat for the Sabbath. The butcher’s wife was telling a group of women that even the weather was trying to improve in honor of the pious scholars who were coming to Horadna for the Sabbath. It was as if the Almighty wanted to do something to console the Rav and Sarah-Rivkah for the loss of their daughter, so he sent them these exalted guests.

The women encircled Perele and spoke to her as if she were the mother of the bride at a grand wedding. “Rebbetzin, is it true that the Horadna Rebbetzin Sarah-Rivkah hired a caterer to serve the meals to the pious professors and rabieners?” “It’s true,” Perele answered, though this was the first she had heard of it. “Rebbetzin, is it true that the younger men of the foreign delegation kiss our Rav’s hand because that is their custom back home?” “True,” answered Perele in a voice as dry as pepper. The butcher’s wife had a question, too: Was it true that on the Sabbath after the afternoon prayer one of the Rabieners was going to speak in the Grand Synagogue? The Graipewo Rebbetzin ought to know; her husband was, after all, the maggid in the Stone Synagogue.

“I couldn’t say, my husband said nothing to me about it. And how would the people of Horadna be able to understand the Rabiener anyway? He speaks only German,” Perele wondered aloud and then asked the butcher’s wife to weigh her order of meat. The odor of the butcher shop was making her sick; she was beginning to feel nausea. “And my husband is not just the maggid in the Stone Synagogue; my husband is the Rav of that synagogue. A butcher who sells kosher meat that is supervised by rabbis ought to know the difference between a maggid and a Rav.”

The butcher’s wife, holding her meat cleaver over the side of beef before her, said she knew only that the rebbetzin’s husband had been the Rav in Graipewo, but in Horadna the Rav was Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt. On the way home, her basket in hand, Perele let her anger break out in a sharp, quiet, bitter laugh that sputtered out like pebbles cast aside by footfalls. What a fine turn of events! In Graipewo they had sent the best cuts of meat right to her home, but here she had to wait in line in the butcher shop with all those yentes.

When Perele arrived at the house, she immediately reported the news to her husband: “Did you hear? The Horadna Rebbetzin, Sarah-Rivkah, has hired a caterer to serve her guests marzipan. Why, it’s barely a year since their daughter passed away and she’s already throwing parties.” Perele tugged at her clothes and placed her hands on her hips, as if she were even uncertain whether her underwear was in place. “Seems like the Horadna Rav really does think he’s the Jewish Pope—he even lets those German professors kiss his hand.” She then turned suddenly toward her husband and yelled at him. “But you . . . they didn’t invite you to the reception, did they?”

“How could Reb Moshe-Mordecai have invited me after you turned over heaven and earth so that I wouldn’t go to the court sessions or to his home anymore?” Reb Uri-Zvi yelled back at her, and Perele could hear in the yelling his anguish at his being an outcast to the rabbis of Horadna. “There’ll be no sermon this Sabbath. Everyone’s going to the Grand Synagogue to hear the Rabiener, and I’m going too.”

The little rebbetzin didn’t yell anymore; she drew herself up to her full height, stood motionless, her hands clenched in fists at her sides, and spoke through gnashing teeth in a voice that was barely audible: “Don’t you dare go! Now, if you don’t go, people will think that you were not invited because you are too important a member of the opposition. If you do go and crowd yourself into the Grand Synagogue to hear the sermon, you’ll be making a nothing of yourself.” Rabbi Koenigsberg heaved a heavy sigh and did not reply. He still believed his wife was shrewder than he and knew better how to protect his dignity. On that Saturday night he realized that by not going he would avoid shame and humiliation.

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He had not yet had a chance to say the Sabbath closing prayer when his door flew open and in burst his synagogue’s three trustees, in an uproar. “A good week to you, Rabbi! Rabbi, it’s an outrage! We must not keep silent!” They turned on the lights and sat down around the table as Meir-Michael Jaffe, his gold teeth flashing, began to relate what they had just seen in the mobbed Grand Synagogue. “Up front sat the Horadna Rav, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt, his colleagues, and the delegation, while their Rabiener stood in front of the Ark and spoke. He stood as stiff as a statue, and he didn’t speak in German, but in a thick, garbled Yiddish—he’s probably from Galicia, or he may even be a fanatic from Hungary. Fire and brimstone spewed out of his mouth—against believing Jews who throw in their lot with the settlers, the halutzim, who are rebuilding the Land of Israel. ‘The Jews of my congregation, Adath Yeshurun,’ he said, ‘will have nothing to do with the reformers in the temples. Even though the reformers claim to believe in God, they’ve shortened the prayer book, and men and women sit together. But imagine, even in Horadna, where the Rav is also the leader of the religious Jews of the world’—those were his exact words—‘in Horadna, where the Rav is also the leader of the religious Jews of the world, in the very town of the Gaon, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Ha-Levi Eisenstadt, there are Jews who want to rebuild the Land of Israel together with those Zionist atheists. But we know from the Torah that the Holy Land spits out sinners.’ And then this preacher started talking about this week’s reading from the Prophets—how much Jeremiah was tormented by the people, by the king and the princes, because he told the Jews of Jerusalem not to resist Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian king, and because he wrote to the Jews of Babylon that they should build houses, plant vineyards, and wait until the God of their fathers would lead them back to their land. For that they beat Jeremiah, imprisoned him, spat on him, and called him a traitor. ‘And who was right?’ he said, and he raised his voice and drew himself up. ‘And who was right, Jeremiah or the false prophets?’

“You, Rabbi—it was you the Rabiener meant by ‘false prophets,’” Meir-Michael said, sternly pointing a finger at Rabbi Koenigsberg. “He must have heard from the Rav’s lackeys, or maybe even from the Rav himself, that you’re always citing the Prophets to praise the Land of Israel. So he cited the Prophets to speak against you and against rebuilding the Land of Israel.”

“Not only their Rabiener but that whole crowd of Germans are clean-shaven. They say there is a kind of paste that takes out the hair, and a Jew is permitted to use it,” blurted out David Ganz with the long white beard, his eyes dark and bulging.

The third trustee, Moshe Moskowitz, a merchant of religious articles and seasoned matchmaker to rabbinical families, impatiently demanded silence with a quick wave of his hand. “All right, let’s talk business! Rabbi, we’ve deliberated and we have decided: next week, on Sabbath afternoon, you are not going to speak in our synagogue; you’re going to speak in the Grand Synagogue. And we want your words to cut like a knife. Tell them that rebuilding the Land of Israel is the greatest precept in the entire Torah and that those halutzim who are rebuilding Israel are our own flesh and blood, even if they are not observant Jews. That’s what you should tell them! If the rabbis or those young freeloaders who run the Agudah are going to talk against the halutzim, there’s going to be fire.”

“I’ve always said that Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt is the Rav only of the local Agudahniks and not the Rav of all the Jews of Horadna,” David Ganz stammered slowly, as if his mouth had suddenly been paralyzed.

“I said it even before you,” declared little Moshe Moskowitz, cutting him off. “Those are my words exactly: Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt should come right out with it and admit that he supports the Agudah completely. So he can be the Horadna Rav of the Agudah and Rabbi Uri-Zvi Koenigsberg, the former Rav of Graipewo, can be the Rav of the Mizrachi of Horadna.”

“We’ll wage a holy war, Rabbi, to make you the Horadna Rav of the Mizrachi, just as Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt is the Rav of the Agudah,” Meir-Michael Jaffe added loudly. “My God, how does anyone have the hutzpah to stand before the Ark of the Grand Synagogue and insult an entire city of Jews for not wanting to while away the exile rotting in Horadna, waiting for the Messiah? And his German bunch, these yekkes, nodding their heads like sheep. . . .”

“I don’t understand why this comes as such a big surprise,” Perele interposed liltingly, her face bright and cheerful. “The way I hear it, the Rabiener is from Brussels and the Jews there are all diamond merchants and aren’t plagued with Jew-haters as we are here. They can very easily wait for the Messiah. . . . You must be hungry, gentlemen—come wash and have something to eat.”

The men replied boisterously: of course they were hungry. They had, after all, been in the synagogue since early that afternoon. Perele brought some cold fish to the table, along with jellied calf’s feet, noodle pudding, prune compote, and then went back to the kitchen to make some tea. Their mouths full and vigorously chewing, the trustees said that the Germans, those yekkes, would be leaving tomorrow morning. And during the coming week the Graipewo Rav’s sermon in the Grand Synagogue next Sabbath—the Sabbath when the Song of the Sea is read from the Torah—would be the talk of Horadna. The synagogue would undoubtedly be packed, the trustees said triumphantly, and that would make the Agudahniks jump out of their skins. The trustees ground their teeth over this battle as one sharpens a knife on a fork, and mumbled again that by “false prophet” the Rabiener meant Rabbi Uri-Zvi Koenigsberg. From time to time they complimented the rebbetzin for her hospitality and praised her wisdom as they gulped down the food and sipped the hot tea. Then they rose in unison and stormed out as abruptly as they had arrived.

Not until then did Reb Uri-Zvi cast a pair of anxious eyes at his wife and sigh. How could he stand before the Ark and say that settling the Land of Israel was the great commandment of the Torah?

“You can say it and you must say it,” Perele replied, standing challengingly in front of her husband with her hands on her hips. “Wait just a second! Which is mentioned more often in the Torah, phylacteries or the Land of Israel? As great a precept as phylacteries is, it’s mentioned only a few times, but Israel is mentioned on every page of the Bible! Why do you look at me with your mouth open? I’m not saying anything out of my own head. I remember hearing a maggid tell my father this when I was a little girl. And if my father had no answer to this, then the Horadna Rav’s lackeys will surely have nothing to say.”

With that she went back into the kitchen to wash the dishes, muttering to herself. It would have never occurred to her simpleton of a husband to dare to preach a sermon in the Grand Synagogue and get supporters so that Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Ha-Levi Eisenstadt should not be the only Rav in Horadna.

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13.

Next Sabbath, following the afternoon service, in the middle of Rabbi Koenigsberg’s sermon before a packed audience in the Grand Synagogue, a voice rang out from the back: “The Graipewo Rav should be ashamed of himself even to suggest that Dr. Herzl and his gang of Zionists are sanctioned by the Torah!” The rabbi stopped speaking and stood stunned as the crowd turned to see who had interrupted the sermon. Then another voice called out: “The Talmud talks about a High Priest who in his old age became a Sadducee.” And then a third voice: “It’s an outrage that a Torah scholar should speak out against the Supreme Rabbinical Council.” These outcries all came from a group of young men who had come to the synagogue for the sole purpose of heckling Rabbi Koenigsberg. The Mizrachi’s insistence that Rabbi Koenigsberg speak in the Grand Synagogue the very next Sabbath after the German Rabiener had spoken against the Zionists had been taken by the Agudah people as a declaration of war.

The Mizrachi people were not about to take this quietly. “Cutthroats! Rabble-rousers!” stormed Meir-Michael Jaffe. “They should be thrown out like rotten herring!” roared David Ganz in such boisterous tones that only his shaking head betrayed his age. “The leaders of the Agudah instigated these rabble-rousers—they and the town’s Rav, who thinks he is the Jewish Pope!” shouted Moshe Moskowitz. Upon hearing such insults thrown at their Rav, the great Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Ha-Levi Eisenstadt, his supporters shook their fists at Moshe Moskowitz, shrieking, “Heretic! You Jeroboam, you! Do you realize you are talking about the Rav of the whole Diaspora? Trample him! Squash him like a worm! I don’t care if it is the Sabbath!” The two sides screamed at each other from opposite ends of the synagogue, with the throng separating them like the rapids of a wide, deep river.

For a time the crowd, perplexed and curious, looked on passively, not siding with either faction. But then, gradually, they began to lose patience with the hecklers. Their hearts went out to the Graipewo Rav as he stood dumbfounded before the Ark curtain, his disheveled white beard and yellowed face aglow with a deathly pallor. Compassion for him now fueled the crowd’s anger against the zealots, these gluttonous, impudent, freeloading sons-in-law with their fat, bloated cheeks. Men on both sides of the Ark, old men with silken beards and stiff-brimmed hats sitting with their backs against the eastern wall, cried out in great indignation that they would not permit strangers to take over the synagogue. Peddlers and poor merchants who sat in the center pews in their tall fur hats and warm half-coats, their faces notched like stone from the winter frosts, seethed even more—they had enough arguing the rest of the week; on the Sabbath all they wanted was a little peace and a good sermon. From the back rows the voices of a hundred burly laborers shouting and waving their crooked, work-hewn fingers rose above the tumult: “Is this what they taught you in the yeshivah? That’s what you call respect for an old rabbi? And you’re supposed to be religious people! You should live so long!”

Raging most fiercely among the Agudahniks was one young man wearing a dandy’s hat like a dandy, cocked to the side. With his brown fur-trimmed gloves and a white scarf beneath a black fur collar, he looked like a bridegroom on his honeymoon. His thick, parted lips revealed a full set of pointed teeth that flashed as he became more and more boisterous, and from his eyes, pointed as his teeth, darted a mischievous laugh. The people despised him instantly and yelled at him from all sides, “Just look at that fanatic, with his fur gloves! Throw him out, head first! Drag him out by his ears!” The people closest to the dandy started jostling him, pushing him toward the door, while his friends elbowed a path for themselves through the crowd. When the Agudahniks reached the door and were about to force their way out, they turned to the congregation and shouted in chorus: “Horadna is a condemned city!”

Some of the people hadn’t heard and others hadn’t understood, but those who had both heard and understood squared their shoulders and smacked their lips in outrage: “What a disgrace! A disgrace! To proclaim a Jewish city like Horadna condemned.” The crowd turned to the dazed rabbi standing in front of the Ark and jarred him back to his senses: “Continue, Rabbi. Speak. Go on, we hear you. You are our maggid.”

It was all Reb Uri-Zvi could do to keep from weeping before the entire crowd. He had no intention of uttering a single critical word against the Torah or the Sages. Why did he deserve to be publicly shamed like this, to be denounced as a Sadducee? He wanted desperately to end the sermon then and there; but abruptly he remembered Perele and realized that she would never forgive him if he didn’t forge ahead—and this time she’d be right. Who could tell, perhaps the rabbinical judges had sent that wild mob of fanatics to heckle him, perhaps even with the knowledge of the Rav, Rabbi Eisenstadt himself. If that was the case, then he must stand his ground and prove that he, too, was a worthy rabbi. He pulled himself together and dived back into his sermon. But his speech was garbled and the people weren’t listening anyway, they were talking heatedly among themselves and reviling the other rabbis: “Last week the town Rav and his whole Rabbinical Court came to hear the Rabiener from abroad, but they couldn’t come to hear the Graipewo Rav because he’s a thorn in their side.”

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The controversy spilled over into the deliberations of the kehillah and became the central issue at a meeting originally called for a totally different purpose.

For a long time the kehillah had grappled with the matter of setting up orphanages. Some kehillah members preferred to house both boys and girls in one building. The Orthodox members, however, wouldn’t hear of it, insisting on separate buildings for males and females; and the Rav, Rabbi Eisenstadt, and his Rabbinical Court threatened to issue a ban on housing the children together under one roof.

At the meeting of the kehillah, the first to speak was the leader of the Horadna Zionists, a young halutz with a thick black shock of hair, his face sunburned as if already baked by the sun of the Promised Land. His deep voice carried a faint hint of song, the melody perhaps of a halutz folk dance: “On a kibbutz in the Land of Israel, boys and girls live together. Only Horadna is still medieval. The ministry of darkness still rules here. We should be getting the young people used to living together in a friendly atmosphere so they’ll be ready to settle in the Land. . . . By all means,” he concluded, “let the orphans all live in one house.”

Although the curly-haired halutz leader cooed melodiously as he spoke, his bearded colleagues glared at him as if he were Satan incarnate spitting forth venom with every word. These venerable elders could not even speak the Yiddish of the day, let alone converse with those impudent young political people who prattled on about left wings and right wings, coalitions, fronts, and tactical maneuvers. The elders would sit and listen with half-embarrassed, half-mocking smiles as they thought back to a time when they had built orphanages with their own hands. They had actually brought the straw for the mattresses themselves, and gone round to all the housewives begging for Sabbath fish and hallah for the orphans, hired teachers to teach boys Hebrew and later sent them to artisans to learn a trade. Now here came these thugs, these politicians, demanding that the orphanages be combined and boys and girls be housed together. What was this world coming to?

Meir-Michael Jaffe, the trustee of the Stone Synagogue and a member of the kehillah, rose and asked for the floor. He spoke with assurance, buoyed by an awareness of the members of his synagogue and his party who had come to hear and support him. “Is it any wonder,” he said emphatically, “that there isn’t enough money to support separate orphanages when the Horadna Rav is unaware of the needs of the community? He’s always busy with rabbis from all over Poland and with foreign Rabieners. He’s simply too busy to find out what is going on in Horadna and get involved. Therefore, gentlemen, on behalf of the membership of Mizrachi and on behalf of all the unaffiliated Jews of Horadna who believe in the importance of harmony, I move that the former Graipewo Rav, Rabbi Uri-Zvi Ha-Kohen Koenigsberg, be made the Rav of Mizrachi and that Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Ha-Levi Eisenstadt remain as Rav of the Agudah of Horadna.”

“Stick to the issue!” came angry shouts from every corner of the room. “We’re talking about the orphanages. Should we combine them or not?”

“Mizrachi is opposed to combining the orphanages, but Mizrachi is in favor of dividing up the Horadna rabbinate,” replied Meir-Michael Jaffe resolutely.

“And what if we do have a combined orphanage? Will you, Mr. Jaffe, not be able to spend your nights playing cards?” A member of the socialist Bund rose in protest. He had gray ringlets of hair on his head, stooped shoulders, and deep-set, dark eyes that flashed angrily. His hoarse voice reverberated like the growl of a lion. “The reactionaries,” he proclaimed, “have taken over the Jewish community.” And he described how the citizens of Horadna had supposedly cared for the orphans over the years. Each Thursday two orphans would accompany the sexton to the butcher shops, where they would have to beg for some discarded lungs or calves’ feet for their Sabbath meals. At every funeral of some blood-sucking tycoon, orphans had to precede the coffin, crying out: “Righteousness shall precede the righteous!” All the orphans had to wear a uniform—a dark-brown coat and a hat with a little green band—so as to set them apart from other children. And if, God forbid, any orphan made a mistake or missed a service, he was beaten within an inch of his life. The craftsmen who took them on as apprentices made them do all the dirty housework and kept them toiling eighteen hours at a stretch.

The Bundist thundered long against those fine Jews of Horadna who required two rabbis and two orphanages. Finally, he made a motion:

The Bund is the only party in the community that cares enough to provide the poor with firewood for the winter. In the name of the socialists of Horadna, I offer the following resolution, consisting of two points: First, fire all the rabbis of Horadna and abolish their paid positions. Let those lazy freeloaders go to work! Second, the orphanages should be combined, and let’s give the children a proper secular-Yiddish education and a Bundist, socialist upbringing.

The religious councilmen had heard quite enough. They leaped to their feet and bellowed, “Blood will mix in the streets if the orphans are mixed together!” One enraged elderly member, in a small Polish Hasidic hat and a black frock coat with a silver chain across his vest, waved his walking stick threateningly at the Bundist and cried out: “You brazen boor! Just to spite you, the orphans will wear fringes and not your red ties!”

The Bundist laughed in his face. He was a man who had no fear of Cossack whips or Siberian hard labor under the czar. So was he going to tremble before a Hasid? The Orthodox kehillah members argued among themselves even more bitterly and heatedly. The Agudah people accused the Mizrachi of responsibility for this sacrilege: if one could speak against the Horadna Rav, the head of the council of great Talmudic scholars, they argued, then why not worship idols! The Mizrachi people shouted back that however great a scholar the Horadna Rav was, he didn’t have a monopoly on the Torah. The Torah belongs to all Jews!

The meeting broke up with the business at hand unresolved, and the dispute spilled out into the streets. It was dark, the snow whipped at inflamed faces, a sharp wind blew into open mouths. People continued arguing till the overlapping clusters of shadows thinned out, but gradually they disappeared into their respective alleys, ducking to enter their low houses. Only the whirling snowstorm continued to howl in the darkness outside.

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14.

The controversy that passed from the Grand Synagogue to the kehillah snowballed through the other synagogues of Horadna. It became a subject of sharp wrangling even in homes and shops.

The owner of a hardware store, finding himself without customers, felt his very body rusting away as he contemplated his piles of unsold merchandise—rolls of sheet metal, boxes of nails, keys and locks, and door bolts. He ducked his head into the collar of his lambskin coat as he struggled through the snowstorm to Ezra Edelman’s yard-goods store across the street. Here, too, there were no customers—no one came out in such weather to buy fabric. The only people present were all neighborhood shopkeepers, who had gathered together to discuss the Horadna rabbinate. Ezra himself, despite his being the Graipewo Rav’s son-in-law, did not care—or pretended not to care—about what they were saying. The men argued good-naturedly, expressing themselves in half-parables.

“Our Rav is like a beacon to the entire world,” observed one, “they come to him from everywhere; but what does Horadna get out of it? Nothing.”

“To compare anyone to the Horadna Rav,” retorted another man, “is like comparing an old bag of sticks to the moon.”

To which the first speaker rejoined: “Our Rav is like a daughter-in-law with the face of a doll. It’s a joy to look at her and to be seen with her in public, but at home she can’t tie a ribbon on a cat’s tail.”

Just then the hardware merchant walked in, and promptly interjected: “And what would you do if God sent you a daughter-in-law who was good for nothing and looked like a monkey?” At this, Ezra Edelman burst out laughing, to show he had no concern about his father-in-law’s problems and that he knew they didn’t mean his wife.

When, however, he returned home for the midday meal, Serel was standing in the middle of the room with the twins clutching her apron and the baby at her breast, and she greeted her husband with a screech:

I don’t want my mother to become the Horadna Rebbetzin. Do you hear? I don’t want it!

Ezra had always been pleased by the pattern: the more Serel argued with her mother, the more she listened to him. It was just that this time she hadn’t prepared his dinner, and to him all this rabbinical talk was about as appetizing as a bitter onion; he was really fed up with it. Furrowing his narrow forehead in frustration, he stuck his stubby hands into his pockets and grumbled, as he struggled to keep himself from raising a hand to a woman with a child at her breast:

Listen to me, Serel, how many times have I told you that the more you fight with your mother, the more you show that the two of you are out of the same mold? And I hate a shrew. Why should you worry if your mother becomes the Horadna Rebbetzin?

Just like her mother, Serel could keep quiet when she had to. With her baby in her arms, she turned abruptly and rushed into the kitchen to fix some dinner for her husband, leaving the twins to crawl on the floor at their father’s feet. Ezra eased himself into an armchair, leafed through a newspaper, and let out a deep sigh. “My neighbor, the hardware man, hit the nail on the head with his example of the good-for-nothing wife.”

Serel could hardly wait for her husband to finish eating and return to the shop. Leaving the dishes on the table, she called her neighbor’s thin, pale daughter to keep an eye on the children. Then she threw on her long overcoat, set a beret over her disheveled hair, burst out of the house, her overshoes unfastened, and ran to her brothers’ store.

As usual, the storm had driven many customers into the store for rubbers, half-boots, warm overshoes, and sport shoes. The salesmen could barely handle all the business. Yet the Koenigsberg brothers refused to come out from behind the counter. Every time the door opened, they would tremble and then heave a sigh of relief, thanking God if the man who walked in was not one of the Horadna Rav’s followers. Their Agudah friends were berating them at every turn—at services in the morning, all day in the store, and even at night in their homes, always with the same complaint: how could they allow their father to be dragged into this attack on the Gaon, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt? For heaven’s sake! Had they not also been educated in the yeshivah? They should know what ordinary people didn’t know: that these rabble-rousers didn’t care a bit about the glory of the Torah, and that when they insulted one rabbi, they were insulting all rabbis. So why didn’t they sit down and talk to their father? But Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah both knew that it was their mother that they would have to talk to. So they stayed in the store, ruefully anticipating the inevitable confrontation. Then the door burst open and the snowstorm blew in their sister, her mouth open and ready to shout at them, but the din of the crowded store startled her. In a moment she was standing next to her brothers, half hidden from the customers by the counter.

“Our father married very badly. . . . Why do you look at me like that? Don’t you know why Mother is pushing Father to become the Rav of Horadna? She wants revenge on the Horadna Rav for breaking their engagement before Father married her.”

Serel had always complained to her husband that her brothers were such sheep, such dishrags, such big lummoxes—their mother ruled them completely, and they let her. So she was not prepared for the two furious faces that confronted her now. Both men were beside themselves with anger, and before they spoke, they turned to make sure no one could hear them.

“Shut up! Your big mouth will be the end of all of us. Don’t we have enough trouble as it is? All we need is for everyone to know what the Graipewo Rav’s daughter is saying about her mother!”

Serel was petrified by her brothers’ outburst even more than she had been by her husband’s. In a low voice she answered, “But I haven’t told a soul, not even Ezra.” Yet Yankel-Dovid breathed heavily and Gedaliah anxiously wiped the sweat under his beard with a handkerchief. “Don’t even let it come to your lips!” they warned, and did not mention to her that they were going to see their mother that very night.

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Perele could hardly recognize her sons. They said nothing about her grandchildren and they even refused to have a glass of tea. They had come while their father was conducting a class in the synagogue so that they could tell her the harsh truth, recalling all her sins ever since she had brought their father to Horadna and made him become a member of the Rabbinical Court. Now she was pushing him again, into something he had never dreamed of—becoming the Rav of the Mizrachi of Horadna.

Meanwhile, their father was being held up to ridicule and hatred by his adversaries, while his erstwhile supporters were using him as an excuse to abuse a great Gaon and a grieving father who had just lost his only daughter. And this after the Horadna Rav had supported their father for a seat on the Rabbinical Court, against the opposition of all the other rabbis. So what did Mother want of her family, what was she after?

Perele sat near a small table, her right hand leaning on a huge prayer book, a harried smile on her lips. The longer her sons berated her, the more nervously her fingers tapped on the cover of the prayer book. But she let her sons vent their anger on her before she answered. It was not she, she said quietly, who had started this war between the Agudah and the Mizrachi; it was not she who had instigated the riot last Sabbath in the Grand Synagogue; and it was not she who had aroused the people to challenge the Horadna Rav and his followers. Besides, Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah should remember how, when she had visited their shoe store and watched them crawl about on their knees attending to customers and asked them why their wives didn’t come down and help, her own two sons had told her, as gruffly as one speaks to a stepmother, not to interfere in their lives. But now they were meddling in her life and even had the nerve to come and scold her.

Grimacing as if she had a sharp pain in her back, Perele got up from her chair and hobbled to the sofa. The sons wanted to help their mother but she warded them off with her elbows, and her entire body shrank away from them as if they were two evil spirits who had come for her soul. Perele stretched herself out on the sofa, with her sons standing by as if already accused, tried, and convicted. Lying on her back, her face became even more drawn and her wide-open eyes shone with a tearful gleam. When she spoke, her voice was hoarse, saturated with grief and bitterness. She looked intently at the ceiling, as if her sons weren’t there and she was talking to herself.

Every sage prays that his sons will grow up to be just like him or even greater. Every rabbi wants his son-in-law to be a Talmudic scholar. That was exactly what the Graipewo Rav’s sons and the Staropol Rav’s grandsons should have become—prominent rabbis in big cities. Yet they preferred to sell shoes and to think less of themselves than the whole world thought of them. As for her son-in-law, why even talk about him? Serel’s husband was a vulgar ignoramus. So, instead of wanting some dignity for their old father, his children would like him to be a nobody like them, respected by no one. Still, Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah were upstanding members of the community, their support of their father would mean something. They could inspire their friends to stand behind the Graipewo Rav. But why should strangers get involved when their own sons seemed to have more respect for other rabbis than for their own father? It didn’t even bother them when their father was not permitted to finish a sermon in the Grand Synagogue. And now they came to their mother with complaints against her for holding their father’s honor dear.

The rebbetzin was still gazing straight up at the ceiling as tears ran from her eyes. The sons knew it was not like their mother to cry—she hated tears and sentimentality. Yet they also knew that, when brought to tears, she got very angry and it was best not to console her. So both sons stood silent near the sofa till their mother finally turned her face to them and told them to go home to their wives and children. She didn’t want their father to find them here when he returned from synagogue and see how ill they had made her. He’d never forgive them, she said, and they could rest assured that she would never tell him of the great respect they had come to show their mother.

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15.

The overcast sky of Purim eve seemed to be wrapped in a smoky fog. The frost had settled and the snow had turned gray on the ground. A tree was rustling its crown of last year’s shriveled leaves. The wind plucked the leaves as if mocking the tree for still wearing last season’s ashen crown even though an entire winter had passed and it was nearly spring again. The quarrels surrounding the Graipewo Rav had not abated over the winter, but had indeed grown more heated. On Purim eve the rabbinical judges, the Agudahniks, and all the Horadna Rav’s followers came to the Rav’s home and spoke to him openly, accusingly:

“With all due respect to the Rav, may the Rav forgive us—he alone is to blame! If the Rav had not allowed the Graipewo Rav to join the Horadna Court in the first place, his followers wouldn’t have had the nerve to mount this scandalous campaign to make him the Town Maggid and Rav of the Mizrachi. If we give in to them on this, they’ll have more to say later on religious matters. . . .

“But if,” they urged the Rav, “we hold our ground, the dispute will eventually fade away. The anger has already boiled itself out. Even the man in the street isn’t sympathetic to the Graipewo’s claim anymore.”

“You have a responsibility to us, Rabbi, as your supporters,” said the Wolkowysk Street Rabbi, plainly irritated. Even if you place Rabbi Koenigsberg under you, he’ll still lord it over us.”

Since it was a fast day, the Fast of Esther, the old rabbis all had darkened, tired faces. Yet the young Agudahniks were all lively and sprightly, with rosy cheeks and bright eyes—for they, it seemed, had not fasted. No doubt they had availed themselves of the dispensation seized on by students of the Lithuanian yeshivahs who looked upon fasting as a penance meant only for the ignorant masses. The redemption of scholars, they claimed, lay in vigorous study. So the smooth faces of the well-fed young men were ablaze with passionate zeal, their eyes sparkling with anger.

Reb Moshe-Mordecai understood that these pleas were really directed toward his rebbetzin. The whole town was saying that it was she who urged him to give in on everything. His followers believed that the rebbetzin had been overcome with grief at the loss of her child. She was not thinking clearly, and the Rav ought not to be listening to her. Rabbi Eisenstadt listened patiently to all of these complaints and then, once again, went to the bedroom to speak to his wife.

Sarah-Rivkah was sitting at the edge of her bed, as she did for hours at a time, clutching the small photograph of her daughter. This time she did not hide the photograph under her pillow when she heard her husband’s footsteps. She was well aware of who was in the court chamber and the purpose of their visit. As soon as her husband entered the bedroom, she began to speak in a tone of stern determination. He should have never permitted the rabbinical judges of Horadna to harass the Graipewo Rav until he couldn’t stand it and stopped coming to the court, to avoid his enemies. And those thugs who hadn’t let the Graipewo Rav speak should be thrown out of the house. “Moshe-Mordecai,” she said resolutely,” you ought to beg his forgiveness and help him become the Town Maggid, the Rav of Horadna—whatever he wants!”

Rabbi Eisenstadt had heard similar things from his wife many times before, and each time anger had made his mustache bristle, his nostrils quiver, his hands shake. But this time, when she added that he ought to apologize to the Graipewo Rav, he burst out laughing: he should ask forgiveness of someone who had invaded the town and stirred up strife and discord?

Sarah-Rivkah still held her daughter’s picture with her fingertips. Her Blumele, she marveled, didn’t look at all sickly. Look at her fresh head of hair, the sweet smile on her round lips, her long, slender neck. The Horadna Rebbetzin raised her gaunt face, and her dark eyes flashed with hatred at her husband for thinking of anything other than their lost child. She turned to the photograph again and gazed at it until her eyes became wan and glassy. Then she spoke with the drone of a leaky faucet that measures drop after heavy drop: her ancestor, the saintly Rabbi Alexander Ziskind, left a will in which he commanded his children and all his descendants not to become leaders of the Jewish community because that leads to pride and to striving for honors. And if his heirs did not obey his wishes, he wrote in his will, he would not plead for them before the Heavenly Court in the next world. He swore he would surely avenge their disobedience. So he had avenged himself on his great-great-granddaughter.

With his hands clasped behind him, the Rav looked at his wife from under his knit, pointed brows and answered her with impatience. He must conduct himself according to the traditions of his family. Her great-grandfather had also instructed that he be humiliated after his death by having the four kinds of capital punishment administered to his body. But the tradition of the Eisenstadts was that a scholar is never permitted to allow himself to be humiliated—not in life and not in death. Well, now he was going to teach Horadna a lesson! Sarah-Rivkah knew how often the ultra-Orthodox community of Jerusalem had written to ask him to become their Rav and head of the Rabbinical Court. He had always turned them down, but now he was going to write them to accept their invitation.

“Then you’ll have to go there alone, Moshe-Mordecai,” Sarah-Rivkah said with a smile, the smile of one who knows that despite all the tears that have already been shed, there will be no end to the tears one must live with. “I will not leave Blumele’s grave. All the sacred tombs of Jerusalem cannot take the place of her patch of earth here in Horadna.”

The Rav gazed at his wife for a moment, and then abruptly turned and walked out of the bedroom toward the court chamber. Some of those gathered there were talking among themselves; others sat quietly, suffering from the dryness in their mouths and the pangs in their stomachs from fasting. The younger men were openly furious. Why did the Rav tremble so before his wife? True, she was a great rabbi’s daughter and a great rabbi’s wife, and besides, a mother who had lost her only daughter; but in religious matters, who asks a wife for her opinion? When the Rav entered, they all rose. Rabbi Eisenstadt leaned on the table with both hands.

“Gentlemen, I inherited the position of Rav of Horadna from my father-in-law, may he rest in peace, and I will not permit my wife and me to be torn apart over it. And another thing: if the Jews of Horadna want another Rav, I will not stand in their way. And if you persist in making an issue over it, then I will resign from the Horadna rabbinate altogether. Peace in my home is more important to me. So go, gentlemen, let them not have to wait for you in your synagogues to read the Megillah.”

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His face was drawn from anguish and strain as he spoke, and the group could see that this would be his final word on the matter. The rabbis knew that except for this one time in the matter of the Graipewo Rav, their Chief Judge had never imposed his will on them. His followers thought of him also as by nature a kind and gentle person, and a trusted friend to all who came within range of his concern. So none of them wanted to argue with him and cause him more grief. They all left quietly. But once outside, they did talk. The Rav had not the courage Mordecai had shown Queen Esther. When Esther claimed to have no power against the king’s edict, Mordecai had rebuked her: “Think not with thyself that thou shalt escape in the king’s house.”

Though they received the Rav’s words in silence, all the synagogues were aflame with the news that the Horadna Rav had given in to the Graipewo Rav in the interests of peace. But Horadna should bury its head in shame that it exchanged their great sage for a maggid. Among the crowds, there would be raised every now and then a lonely voice asking: why can’t Horadna have two Ravs? But the voice would be lost amid the great numbers of Jews who reacted with shock—it had never entered their minds that another Rav might join their leader in the Horadna rabbinate.

Even the members and trustees of the Stone Synagogue did not revel in their victory. “Shh!” they hissed at the children who banged their sticks and turned their noisemakers each time the Megillah reader mentioned Haman’s name. In the banging they seemed to hear an accusation for their having humiliated a great Torah scholar. They had not expected Rabbi Eisenstadt to yield so easily, even to the point of warning his followers that if they didn’t let his decision stand and stop the bickering, he would step down. So they congratulated the Graipewo Rav with dejected faces, as if he had made them transgress a great precept of the Torah to defend his honor. The Koenigsberg brothers didn’t congratulate their father at all. All through the Megillah reading they stood next to him, silent like mourners. The new Rav of the Mizrachi came home with a reddened face, his eyes burning with tears, a choking sensation in his throat. He pointed a long, threatening finger at Perele.

“This is all your fault. You! Reb Moshe-Mordecai gave in on everything, and now I am more miserable than when his fanatics interrupted my sermon in the Grand Synagogue with their hoots. Now everyone knows that he didn’t send those hecklers as you convinced me and everyone else he had.”

Heartbroken, Reb Uri-Zvi cried out that now all the other rabbis would shun him. Even the trustees of the Stone Synagogue were sorry they had ever started this. And his own sons had stood next to him during services, silent and downcast at the thought of the Horadna Rav’s having suffered such an insult.

Perele had anticipated the victory. Word had reached her that it was the Horadna Rebbetzin who had prevailed on the Rav to back down. When Perele went shopping that week, the women, their mouths piously pursed, talked of nothing but the saintliness of the Horadna Rebbetzin, Sarah-Rivkah, and how she had never sought honors, especially since the death of her only daughter. Perele understood what they really meant. Eyen though the Graipewo Rebbetzin had lived to enjoy her children and grandchildren, she was still not satisfied unless people were bowing down to her. The Graipewo Rebbetzin listened with a sweet smile and returned home from the store with delicately measured Sabbath-like steps.

On the Sabbath that followed, she had come to synagogue in the long dress with the narrow waist and the bustle. Her head kerchief was intricately embroidered with pearls and she had prayed from her small, gilt-edged siddur with such solemnity and self-assurance that she seemed to be giving an object lesson in how a rebbetzin ought to bear herself. It was with that same self-assurance that she now deigned to reply to her husband. Why, she asked him, had he come home screeching like a hysterical woman instead of greeting her with “Happy holiday” and “Happy Purim”?

“Accept the title Horadna bestows on you as your due. Get involved in community matters and invite the important townsmen to the house. Finish your book and make sure that all the scholars get it. Gradually your conflict with Reb Moshe-Mordecai will be forgotten. Say what you may, he was always very clever. He saw only too well that he had no choice, so he gave in.”

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16.

All Horadna shuddered. Word had spread that at the Purim feast Rabbi Eisenstadt had felt a pressure in his chest and sharp pain in his left arm and shoulder. He broke into a cold sweat and nearly fainted as he gasped for breath. The Rebbetzin Sarah-Rivkah cried for help, which brought the neighbors running with a doctor. He examined the Rav—listened with his stethoscope, took his pulse and blood pressure—and finally announced that Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt had had a mild heart attack. He needed rest, the doctor declared, and must avoid excitement.

The townspeople, when they heard the news, shook their heads. “Is is any wonder, after all that our Rav has had to endure from the Graipewo and his bunch? Even his own rebbetzin urged him to give in. Well, now he has given in, and it has done him in.”

Rabbi Uri-Zvi Koenigsberg was terrified by the news. When he told Perele, she stood pale and motionless. Her eyes shone with the secret glow of a youthful memory, like a window at dusk that reflects the last rosy hue left in the sky.

Finally, the Graipewo Rebbetzin shook herself awake and coughed in an angry rasp. “He was sickly and nervous even as a child. He’s too ambitious for a man with such a weak heart. He wants to run everything.”

On the eve of Passover the fresh buds sparkled from the trees, wrapped in a transparent pink mist. Half the sky was covered with clouds while the other half revealed a deep, crystal blue. In the alleyways where the sun didn’t shine, there were still patches of yellow, speckled snow. A gentle, moist spring wind caressed people’s faces. The wine merchants were busy selling wine for the four cups of the Seder and the ovens were afire baking matzoh. Everywhere the people talked of the Rav’s feeling better and of his launching a project he had dreamed of for a long time. He was about to establish a kollel, an academy of advanced Talmudic studies for married scholars. They would attend his lectures and be supported from the funds entrusted to him. Reb Moshe-Mordecai had always yearned for his own yeshivah, but he had been too busy with communal matters. Now that he had miraculously recovered, he wanted to dedicate himself to teaching Torah. Since he didn’t have any children, he might as well have students.

The first members of the kollel were the Rav’s own students, the Horadna-born young men supported by their well-to-do fathers-in-law. During the intermediary days of Passover, news of the kollel spread to the surrounding towns, and right after the holiday more students arrived: young scholars who had not yet found a pulpit and those who did not desire to be pulpit rabbis but did not want to embark on business careers either. They all came, eager to partake of the great scholar’s genius and to bask in the warm atmosphere of yeshivah camaraderie. Though they had not yet even found suitable living quarters, they sat in the Rav’s beth midrash and studied with great devotion. Rabbi Eisenstadt issued an invitation to Jews all over the world to support his new academy, and no one doubted that the response from everywhere would be most generous.

The Jews of Horadna were very pleased that a kollel was being established in their city. They talked among themselves of how “out of the strong came forth sweetness.” Out of controversy and strife came something good for Judaism. When the Rav saw that he received nothing but disrespect from the mob, they said, he surrounded himself with scholars. Well, let the Graipewo Rav try to establish an academy. Who would come to study? And who would send him money to support his students?

“Now do you see whom you’re dealing with? He’s already healthy again and he’s thought of a new way of showing his greatness by starting a kollel,” Perele said to her husband, as she bit her lower lip. “Why, even your own sons say they plan to listen to Reb Moshe-Mordecai’s lectures. You must tell them that they dare not go! That’s all we need, for people to say that Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah have nothing to learn from their father!”

“I thank God that Reb Moshe-Mordecai has recovered. A great stone has been lifted from my heart,” Reb Uri-Zvi answered. “And thank God Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah are willing to tear themselves away from the business for a few hours to sit in the kollel and study.”

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Rabbi Koenigsberg soon realized what a great yoke had been placed on his shoulders when he became the maggid of Horadna. Perele had expected such a dismal turn of events even less than her husband. For it was not the finer townspeople who were, by virtue of his new post, drawn to the Graipewo Rav’s home to visit or to confer; on the contrary, those who continually crossed his threshold were brazen beggars and contentious boors.

One man with a split lip came in as if it were his own home and happily rubbed his hands. “God bless you, Rabbi. Where does one wash one’s hands for eating? I haven’t had a bite today.” Perele recognized him immediately as an impudent beggar who tramped from home to home, but she served him some food anyway. Her husband sat at the table and asked his guest if there was anything he needed. The man, his beard sprinkled with crumbs and bits of his meal, moaned that he was in need of everything: better luck, better health, an income, and a dowry with which to marry off his eldest daughter. Perele gave him a little money, saw him to the door, and then scolded her husband for sitting and talking with such a freeloader as if he were an equal.

That same day the widow of a pious recluse, a short woman with a huge wig, came to see Rabbi Koenigsberg. Everyone in Horadna knew that she visited Rabbi Eisenstadt every few days to bewail her fate and ask him for a voucher for one or another charitable organization. And with her bundle of vouchers she would make her way to all the treasuries and plead for help. But lately, whenever she went to the Rav’s home, Sarah-Rivkah would intercept her and ask her not to bother the Rav because he had not yet fully recovered. So the widow called on the new maggid for one note she could give the charity trustees for food and another note for clothing. She was really starving, she insisted, and hadn’t a thing to wear. Even during the heat of summer she had to go about with her heavy winter shawl on her head.

“I’ll gladly give you all the letters you want, but I am not personally acquainted with the trustees of the local charities and I can’t say if my request will carry much weight,” Reb Uri-Zvi replied.

“We do not send people elsewhere for charity. That’s not our way; we give from our own pocket,” Perele interrupted and stuck a coin into the woman’s hand as she hustled her out the door. Later Perele scolded her husband again, her lips snapping like shears at his naiveté’ for telling the old woman that the trustees wouldn’t honor his vouchers because he didn’t know them personally. “When you aren’t able to help, then you should rather appear heartless and refuse help, or else tell them you haven’t any time for this. But you must never let the word get out that you have no authority to get things done.”

The next day brought a tall, broad man, stooped like a great bent oak. His head was huge with long white frazzled hair and a thick, unkempt gray beard. One eye was clear with a darting dark iris, while the other was narrow and beclouded by a deep blood-red film. He was dressed in tattered clothes, yet he had the appearance of an exiled prophet. As he entered, he looked about anxiously as if he were carrying a great secret and feared lest he fall into the hands of enemies. Then he nearly swooned as if he had trudged across the great deserts without eating or drinking. Yet he didn’t, collapse into the chair, but sat down slowly, gazing at the Rav with his one clear searching eye. At the same time Reb Uri-Zvi half rose, his hands and knees quivering as if he expected the stranger at any moment to point an accusing finger at him and shout: “Thou art the man! Guilty!” But this hoary man only whispered a few words, which instilled an even greater fear in the Rav.

“Rabbi, I’ve come to you to obtain a rabbinical ruling,” he said.

The Rav was speechless. Perele stood aside and looked suspiciously at this stranger. Suddenly she screamed at him, “You drunkard! You impostor! Get out of this house this minute or I’ll call the police!” The stranger did not become flustered or angry, nor did he seem the least bit afraid. He did not answer the rebbetzin, but only looked at her with the calm, cynical, slightly perplexed smile of a thief who, though cornered, knows he will be released. He shuffled out of the room with tottering footsteps.

“To Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt come scholars to study at his feet, and who comes to you? Tramps and comedians! He has ‘rascal’ written all over his face, and you get up for him as if he were Sir Moses Montefiore. Couldn’t you tell right away that he was a drunkard who wanted to fool you with smooth talk into giving him money for a bottle of whiskey?” his wife yelled at him. He gaped at her with awe and reverence—she seemed to him to be the embodiment of wisdom, the very Queen of Sheba. The stranger looked for all the world like a holy wayfarer of the deserts of Scripture and yet his dear wife had seen through his façade and recognized him for the charlatan he really was.

On yet another occasion there appeared two emissaries who claimed to be collecting money for the Etz Hayyim Yeshivah in the holy city of Jerusalem. “Are you really from the Holy Land?” Perele asked them. “No, we’re from Baranbwicze,”² answered one of them, a tall, thin man in a long rabbinic coat. “But we have a letter from the rabbis of Jerusalem authorizing us to raise money for their yeshivah.” He bore himself with great self-importance and had a strong, sincere face with the neat, squared gray beard of the sexton of a great synagogue.

His companion presented a sharp contrast: a short, fat man wearing a creased shirt, a worn tie, and a coat with a velvet collar. He had long hands that looked as if they had been created for grabbing and tearing, a short gray beard trimmed to a point, thick lips, and eyes in which played the smile of a man unfazed by rebuff. Perele hated him from the start for his flowery language and his smooth talk. “Don’t you recognize me, Rebbetzin? I had already the honor of visting you in Graipewo, Rebbetzin. But now you are the Horadna Rebbetzin, so it is only fitting that you should generously support so great a yeshivah as Etz Hayyim of Jerusalem. The other Horadna Rebbetzin and her husband, Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt, have always given us a nice contribution. Just ask him,” he said, showing Perele the past year’s receipt book and wearing a sexton’s scupulously honest face.

Perele, however, made only a small contribution and spoke in a deliberately acidulous tone:

The Town Maggid doesn’t receive dollars from America to dole out to charity as Rabbi Eisenstadt does. We give to charity out of our own money. You may go, gentlemen. Go, a good day to you.

When the men had left, Perele grimaced as if she had a cramp in her stomach, and told her husband to congratulate her: at last someone had called her “the Horadna Rebbetzin,” even if it was a notorious bootlicker, a swindler, a shameless mountebank. She hadn’t even the honor of welcoming to their home plain, decent people, not even impoverished townspeople with a good name. “And they don’t come to you for advice or litigation any more than they come to visit,” she cried out to him in a loud, dry voice that rattled and rasped like an iron kettle whose water has boiled out on the fire. Reb Uri-Zvi gathered his thoughts: what did she want of him, after all! People took their litigation to the Rabbinical Court and she had absolutely forbidden him to sit on the court.

“But now you’re not just another judge, now you’re the Town Maggid, as much the Rav of Horadna as Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt. It’s time you returned to the court and made your presence felt,” Perele screamed, beside herself, and Reb Uri-Zvi marveled once more. So small a woman and no longer a youngster, so frail that the slightest thing made her sick so she could only lie on the sofa groaning with headache, yet she had more energy, thank God, than he and all their children put together, no evil eye! And what an expert on strategy—nothing less than a general! First she had pushed him onto the court, then she had ordered him not to go, and now she was sending him there again.

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17.

Rabbi Koenigsberg returned home from the Rabbinical Court overflowing with tales of wonder: they had treated him with the greatest respect, they had given him the most prominent seat up front, and Rabbi Eisenstadt had requested his opinion at every turn in the deliberations. Perele’s heart leaped with joy as she thought, “Your former betrothed is doing this for your sake.” And she believed this, even though her common sense told her that the Rav was merely being clever in not wanting to antagonize the new Town Maggid and create more trouble for himself.

Another time Reb Uri-Zvi came home to tell excitedly how, in the midst of a case involving two big businessmen, Reb Moshe-Mordecai had turned to him and asked, “What does the head of the Rabbinical Court say?” Perele again heard her heart leap and shout joyously: “Your former betrothed is doing this all for you.” But then, she looked at it all from a different angle: her husband would never amount to anything unless he was pushed, and now even his former adversary had to push him. So it was in cold silence and with downcast eyes that Perele listened as her husband interpreted Rabbi Eisenstadt’s intent.

“Do you understand? He is the Chief Rabbinic Judge, and he makes me the head of the Rabbinical Court.”

On a third occasion Reb Uri-Zvi related how Reb Moshe-Mordecai had reminded him that, as Town Maggid, he must speak more often about keeping a kosher home and observing the Sabbath, and especially against the wanton ways of the young Jewish women. Soon it would be summer, and the boys and girls would be rowing down the river on the Sabbath. This time there was no joy at all in Perele’s heart. She surmised that the wily Rabbi Eisenstadt was heaping honors on her husband in order to alienate him from his supporters and make him one of his own. Her victory no longer gave Perele any satisfaction. But before the townspeople she jealously guarded her station as the Town Maggid’s wife. At times she would go out of her house in the middle of the week in a long, old-fashioned skirt and a small, flat hat with three faded violets. She did not carry a basket with her anymore to the shops, but had everything delivered to her home.

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It was past Lag B’Omer, well into spring. The evening sky shone a deep, dark blue and during the day the sky was ablaze with a cool, blinding brilliance. The leafy trees sparkled with fresh and moist greenery, not yet dusty and faint from the summer heat. Perele’s neighbors sat in their doorways, basking in the sun, and watched her walk by with her dainty Sabbath-like steps and so lighthearted a smile that she seemed to have stepped out of an old portrait. She had already overheard the women refer to her as “the Horadna Rebbetzin” as they talked among themselves, and the more she heard it, the more she wanted to meet Sarah-Rivkah Eisenstadt. But Sarah-Rivkah was never seen in public. Perele was convinced that Reb Moshe-Mordecai had never invited her husband for dinner because he didn’t want to confront her, his former fiancée. She laughed to herself, “Why shouldn’t he want to see me? I’m a grandmother already.”

A short while later, however, an opportunity unexpectedly presented itself: Reb Uri-Zvi informed her that the Schloss Street Rabbi had invited him to the Bar Mitzvah of his youngest son and reminded him to bring the rebbetzin. Later his wife Bashka came to invite her personally.

“The Rebbetzin Sarah-Rivkah will also be there and she tells me that she wants to meet you,” she said to Perele, who donned a sweet smile to mask a bitter grimace. She thought that no less than her own curiosity about the bride her former fiancé had taken was Sarah-Rivkah’s desire to see the woman her husband had rejected.

The Schloss Street Rabbi’s celebration took place the Saturday night before Shavuoth. The men were seated in two large rooms, and the women in a third. The pug-nosed Bar Mitzvah boy was a young scholar with a stubborn, narrow forehead, full, flushed cheeks, and his mother’s laughing eyes.

He delivered his Bar Mitzvah discourse with fervor, his brow furrowed, and gesticulated with outstretched thumbs after the manner of an old Talmudic sage: “On the eve of the fourteenth of Nisan, the night before Passover, one must search the house for leaven by the light of a candle, says the Mishnah. By the same token, as one enters his fourteenth year, as one becomes an adult responsible for his actions, he, too, must search his heart for impurities by the light of the commandments. ‘For the commandment is a lamp; and the law is light.’ Now the question arises, on whom lies the obligation of phylacteries—on the father to place them on his son, or on the son himself? One rabbinic authority, the Sage, Ha-Ittur, rules that there is absolutely no obligation on the son to put on phylacteries before the age of thirteen, according to either the Torah or the Oral Law. Yet the Talmud, Tractate Sukkah, says. . . .” The people listened with rapt attention. One man cupped his hand at his ear to catch every word, another chewed on a strand of his beard, a third clamped his lips in wonder at the boy’s genius. As soon as the address Was over, there was a tumult and the pealing of glasses. Everyone drank a toast with the rabbi in honor of his son. Bashka, the rabbi’s wife, then appeared, tall and exuberant, her cheeks rosy and her eyes shining with joyful pride. She was dressed simply, in a skirt and white blouse, with just a light net over her neatly combed chestnut hair instead of a wig or a headkerchief. With several helpers, she brought platters of cold sweet-and-sour fish, stewed meat, and roasted chicken, flasks of lemonade, baskets filled with rolls and hard white pretzels, bowls of sauerkraut sprinkled with sugar, and plates filled with freshly pickled cucumbers as cold as ice. “Good people, please wash to eat,” said the beautiful Bashka, and the guests rose, straightened their backs, and pushed their way toward the kitchen to wash their hands for the meal.

Up front at the head of the table sat the Town Maggid, Rabbi Uri-Zvi Koenigsberg, in his flat velvet yarmulke, a satin coat with wide lapels revealing a woolen tallith kattan over a fresh white shirt. He sat there all alone since Rabbi Eisenstadt, though he had promised to come, had suddenly felt great fatigue and sent word that he could not be there. He would, however, send his rebbetzin, Sarah-Rivkah. On either side of Reb Uri-Zvi sat two older rabbinical judges of the Horadna Court, dourly chewing, choking on their fury at how this small-town rabbi, the Graipewo Rav, had become the star of the Grand Synagogue, the head of the court, and now the guest of honor at their colleague’s feast. Still further down the table sat the students of Rabbi Eisenstadt’s kollel, in soft felt hats and black frock coats. Their beards, some wispy, some pointed, some black and others blond, still bore the fragrance of youthful and manly energy, as freshly built and unvarnished log cabins still exude the odor of the forest. Yet, while their bearded cheeks chewed and drank with the vigor of new-fledged manhood, within their creased foreheads lay engraved the great pages of the Vilna edition of the Talmud, the fine-print commentaries framing the text, and volume upon volume of the oldest and latest codes and studies. The young men discussed rabbinic law with the Town Maggid, coyly needling him.

They were afraid to criticize him sharply or ridicule him openly lest their mentor, the Horadna Rav, later stamp his feet angrily at them as he had done after they interrupted Rabbi Koenigsberg’s sermon in the Grand Synagogue. The students knew that Rabbi Eisenstadt wanted to devote more of his time to the kollel and less to the town—that was why he was bestowing honors on the Town Maggid: let him bother with the Horadna townspeople. And yet they couldn’t forgive the Graipewo Rav, that fool, for accepting promotion to a place of honor at someone else’s hands. So they barraged him with involved questions on Maimonides’ Code, and no matter what he answered, they made derisive faces and dismissed his reasoning as pedestrian. Rabbi Koenigsberg’s clear visage and white beard sweated heavily. His large, light-blue eyes became filled with astonishment. “But this is exactly what Maharam says! And those are the exact words of Kreisi U’Fleisi!” But the young men wrinkled their noses, shrugged, and one after another answered, “That’s just it, everyone knows how conventional Maharam can be. True, Kreisi U’Fleisi is renowned as a great scholar, and yet he’s not really a scholar. That is, he has a wealth of knowledge, but he treads the false path of casuistry! He gets lost in his convoluted reasoning!” Reb Uri-Zvi tried to save face by citing Pnei Yehoshuah. But the scholars looked at one another and then at Rabbi Koenigsberg in utter amazement, as if he had delivered an insight worthy of the Bar Mitzvah boy himself.

In the women’s room, Perele also sat up front, dressed in her Sabbath best: a dark-red gown with padded hips. On one side of her sat the wife of the Wolkowysk Street Rabbi, with her huge bust and deep masculine voice. But now the burly rebbetzin wasn’t opening her mouth, though her heart beat within her like a large fly caught in the web of a tiny spider. And on Perele’s other side sat the wizened, ancient wife of the Old Marketplace Rabbi, wrapped in her faded green shawls and kerchiefs, nodding her hennish head, as always. Around the table were other women wearing the latest-style hats with many feathers, their expressions as pious as if they were reading the weekly Torah portion in the Tzenah U’renah. And at the other end of the table, in a black dress and wearing a black hat, sat the Rebbetzin Sarah-Rivkah Eisenstadt. In the light of the brilliantly lit room her pale, gaunt face was much more prominent, as were her long thin hands and tall bony neck.

Perele nonchalantly ate a chicken wing and sipped soda water from a tall goblet of thick greenish glass. She drank from the glass by straining her neck forward and just barely pursing her lips at the rim, like a serene dove drinking from a spring, and with the same noble air she spoke one word to this woman and another to that one, all the while thinking of how Sarah-Rivkah Eisenstadt must have looked as a young girl. Could it be that she was a withered leaf even then, and that Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt took her for the sake of her dowry, the Horadna rabbinate? In her smile and in her silence Perele saw a cleverness, a wisdom, but none of the goodness everyone spoke of. She surely had cold, dry, white limbs; a melancholy frost wafted from her face. Her husband hadn’t come—was he really tired and not well, as she claimed, or did he want to avoid Perele? One of the women at the table said something about present-day fashions, and Perele seized the opportunity to pontificate loudly in a manner befitting a maggid’s wife.

“When I look at the men and women of today, it seems to me that I am looking into a pool reflecting an upside-down world. The girls wear their hair short and the boys have long, curly locks. Opposite us lives a young woman, well off and pretty, but empty-headed. In one day she may wear three outfits. In the morning she walks about, slovenly and disheveled; it’s nauseating to look at her. Then during the day she appears in a dress with a tall collar up to her chin and sleeves down over her wrist—one would think her the paragon of modesty. But all her modesty ends above her knees, because from there down she shamelessly parades her legs for the whole world to see. On the evening of the same day she’ll go out with a dress down to her feet and flowing like an open umbrella. But her top is practically naked, with a flimsy shawl over her shoulders. When have you ever heard of a young woman of a good home making herself so crazy? And she has plenty of time for all this, but talk to her about separating meat from dairy dishes, or even about having special dishes for Passover, and she’ll tell you it’s too much work.

“And what do you say, Horadna Rebbetzin?” Perele called across the length of the table. Sarah-Rivkah replied with a wan smile, perhaps agreeing—but she said nothing, and the luster of interest in her dark eyes slowly went out.

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Since her husband’s heart attack, Sarah-Rivkah walked about gingerly, holding her breath for fear something else might happen to him. He now concerned himself less with communal matters, but spent long, arduous hours in heated Talmudic discourse with his students and devoted himself to the supervision of their living arrangements. He had called upon townspeople and urged them to help his students find proper quarters. People eager to rent rooms to these scholars had to appear before Rabbi Eisenstadt and satisfy him that there would be enough room, that the household was not noisy; he even inquired what his students would be served for breakfast and dinner. A few times the Rav sent for a tailor and ordered clothes for the poorer scholars. He leafed through many volumes in preparing his lectures and would often stay up working half the night.

It was serving as a Rosh Yeshivah, Sarah-Rivkah saw, that gave the Rav his greatest joy. He had been happy to receive the Bar Mitzvah invitation from the Schloss Street Rabbi, because he loved children even more than the older students. He would affectionately pat and hug them as if they were his own. But on the Sabbath of the Bar Mitzvah he had again felt a painful pressure in his chest. His face became pale and he sighed sadly, “No good, it’s no good!” But when his wife wanted to run for a doctor, he said that he was in no real danger and he didn’t want the doctor to violate the Sabbath on his account. After nightfall that Saturday, he told Sarah-Rivkah that he was feeling better and urged her to attend the Bar Mitzvah. When she refused, he rose angrily from the bed and announced that he would go there himself. Before his heart attack Reb Moshe-Mordecai had never insisted so harshly that his wife obey him. Sarah-Rivkah went, terrified lest the patient get out of bed again. But before leaving she instructed their elderly maid to keep a watchful eye on the Rav.

Her curiosity about the Graipewo Rebbetzin had disappeared, for her mind was now totally occupied with her ailing husband. Still, she strained to smile and hear what Rebbetzin Koenigsberg was saying. When Perele had finished ridiculing the latest fashions, she turned her sardonic wit onto modern furniture. Bashka liked to dress in the latest styles—in straight-shouldered jackets with sharp lapels, in clothes without too many pleats, in coats with broad pockets and no false buttons. She had much the same taste in furniture: the tables, dressers, and sofas in the house had straight lines and sharp corners, uncluttered by pillows, covers, or ornaments. The legs were tall and sleek and the drawers not oversized, all of which made for less wood and lighter, more open furniture. There were chairs to sit on, not sink into, and even the curtains were of light, sheer material that could not hide the goings-on in the house from the world. Perele noted all this and wanted to ask of the Schloss Street Rebbetzin, “If she believes so much in revealing everything, then why does she wear a net over her hair, and her husband such a huge, old-fashioned hat?” But she thought it unseemly to ask this about her hostess, so instead she praised the old style of furniture: “Then a dresser was a dresser, built to be passed on to children and grandchildren. A table had wide, curved legs and could stand till the end of time. A credenza used to shine with polished glass and had ornate carvings—turrets and gates like a real castle. A chest was plated with wrought iron and rolled on casters, and you could put three brides’ wardrobes in it. A house used to have high ceilings and huge rooms, the front door was big and heavy, and sometimes had an iron gate in front of it. Even before you entered such a house, you knew that a well-established family, respectable people, lived there. . . .

“Today?” Perele at last concluded her harangue. “Today both the people and their furniture are like a hastily recited prayer. One slurs a few lines from the beginning, mutters a whole chunk in the middle, and swallows the end. The important thing is to take it easy, to make life easy. Is that not so, Horadna Rebbetzin?”

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Again Sarah-Rivkah nodded silently and thought, “It seems the Graipewo Rebbetzin likes to boss; likes to be heard and to be seen. There’s no question that the fight between Moshe-Mordecai and the Graipewo Rav was Perele’s doing.” If Moshe-Mordecai had married Perele, Sarah-Rivkah reflected, he would have been happier than with her. Perele would never have demanded that he ignore the honors due him—and Sarah-Rivkah wiped her forehead as if trying to chase away these thoughts. She found it odd and even a bit annoying that the women at the table listened awestruck to the Graipewo Rebbetzin and did not dare to contradict her.

From fashions to furniture Perele turned to berating the unlettered rabble of past and present. As a young girl she had always been puzzled because she noticed that her father, the Staropol Rav, may he rest in peace, always stood up when any scholar would enter the room. In her youthful mind she had wondered why her father, older and more learned than his guest, would rise for the rabbi just as any ordinary Jew would. But when she got older, she had realized that only a scholar can truly appreciate another scholar. “And if he doesn’t show respect to a sage, who will, a wagon driver?” Perele sang out to the other end of the table, to the Horadna Rebbetzin, expecting her confirmation.

This time, however, Sarah-Rivkah turned her head aside and answered coldly: “I wouldn’t say that: rabbis fight among themselves more often than ordinary people. And when a Rav holds a simple Jew dear, the man will love the Rav even more and will rise from his seat ten times a day for him.”

Perele was startled, and for a while she sat quietly, totally taken aback by so blunt a reply. Her expression became strained as she searched for the perfect retort to the Horadna Rebbetzin. But Sarah-Rivkah resumed her sad, placid smile. Rabbinical lineage, honor, and contention were the last things on her mind, especially now.

Suddenly, at the men’s table, there fell an anxious silence. Everyone turned toward the door and Sarah-Rivkah saw the host standing stock still, his face pale; his wife Bashka standing beside him, even more frightened; and behind them a crowd pushing in through the front door. Bad news hung in the air and no one wanted to utter it. But Sarah-Rivkah felt that something terrible had happened.

“Don’t be frightened, Rebbetzin, your husband is alive,” the Rebbetzin Bashka at last said as she embraced her. “Your maid has sent for the doctor and asked that you come,” said Bashka’s husband, while trying to calm Sarah-Rivkah by fanning his hands in front of her. But Sarah-Rivkah was speechless. Her face grew still paler, her eyes glazed over with the blinding darkness of overpowering fear. She had to be helped out of the room.

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18.

In the synagogue and in their homes the townspeople talked of little else but Rabbi Eisenstadt’s second heart attack. He was feeling better, they said, but the real problem was that his wife was in a state of total shock. The Rav, afraid his condition would worsen in the hospital, insisted on staying at home, where he lay in bed surrounded by constant commotion. On the one hand, the Rav wanted his kollel students near him because, he said, they cheered him up and their presence gave him the opportunity to merit God’s mercy by teaching Torah. The Rav asked whoever came to see him, however ordinary, for a blessing. But on the other hand, the doctor had ordered that all strangers be sent away. And Sarah-Rivkah, in the middle of all this, stood at times in paralyzed silence; at other times she tore at her hair and ran to the cemetery to pray for her husband’s recovery at her daughter’s grave and at the graves of her grandfather and great-grandfather.

It was with stiffened fingers and a quiver in her knees that Perele went about her cooking and baking in preparation for Shavuoth. She was tempted to lie down on the couch and think of the sick Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt, yet, unlike her daughter, she could not tolerate a mess in her house. Three times a day—in the morning after services, in the afternoon after the court session, and in the evening from the beth midrash—she waited expectantly for her husband to return home with a report on the Rav’s condition.

Rabbi Koenigsberg was no less anguished. All Perele’s anxious inquiries about Rabbi Eisenstadt’s progress suggested to him that she was going through the same torment as he: pangs of guilt and regret for having contended with the Horadna Rav. On the day before Shavuoth, Reb Uri-Zvi came home around noon and reported a new trouble. For years a crazy woman whose husband had left her had been coming to see Rabbi Eisenstadt. She pestered the Rav to force her husband to come back to her from wherever it was he had gone to become the head of a small yeshivah. A year ago she had left for her husband’s town, intent on creating a scandal. Now this nuisance had returned and was again tormenting the sick Rav, and when anyone tried to remove her, she started cursing in the presence of the Rav and Sarah-Rivkah, evil oaths that scared them to death. They begged her to have mercy and stop cursing, and did not let anyone so much as touch her.

Perele stood still for a long time, gaping at her husband in disbelief that anything like this could happen. She Went to the bedroom and remained there a long time. When she emerged, she was all dressed up, wearing one of her long, flowing dresses, a half-length fur jacket with broad sleeves, and the hat with the three violets, and carried a light umbrella, even though outside there was not the slightest hint of rain. Her husband called after her; where was she going all dressed up like that, right before the holiday?

Perele looked into the mirror over the dresser and with her finger smoothed out her eyebrows and the wrinkles on her cheek. “I’m going to the Horadna Rav to put things in order. I see that the rebbetzin cannot be relied on.”

Reb Uri-Zvi, utterly confused, stammered to his wife that it was unseemly for her to barge into the Horadna Rav’s home. But Perele just glared at him with cold eyes that told Reb Uri-Zvi, first, that she wasn’t asking his opinion and, second, that he ought to be ashamed for even thinking at a time like this of her having once been engaged to Reb Moshe-Mordecai. Reb Uri-Zvi understood his wife’s look and drew back quickly like one who had burned his hand. He’d meant nothing by it, he mumbled. He was only worried that she might be detained there and not get back before sundown to light candles. And when he came back from the synagogue, he’d have no one to recite Kiddush for. And who would serve him dinner?

“I certainly hope to be back to light the candles. But if I am delayed there, you’ll have to find your food yourself,” replied the mistress of the house as she left, lifting her dress slightly as she stepped over the threshold, as if she were walking over a puddle of water.

In the front room of the Horadna Rav’s home the kollel students were drinking tea. When Perele entered the house, the young men all looked at her, a bit astonished by her peculiar outfit. No one asked her whom she was looking for—it was as if this were the town inn. She went into the second room, the rabbinical courtroom, and came face to face with the astonished Horadna Rebbetzin. Sarah-Rivkah was sitting at the end of the long bench next to the table that took up most of the room, and was listening, with her hands lying helplessly on her lap, to a woman sitting opposite her.

Perele saw a woman in her fifties with a wrinkled face and bags under her eyes, yet with heavy rouge on her cheeks and deep red on her lips. She wore a wig—a wildly disheveled pile of hair—high-heeled black shoes and black stockings, a tight dress that accentuated her hips, and a knit jacket of brown wool. Perele guessed at once that this was the vicious agunah who cursed in the presence of the Rav and drove the whole household crazy. The gaudily painted agunah looked back at the tiny woman who had just entered, at her long dress and her flowered hat, and could barely keep from laughing. But at that very moment Perele’s voice rang out loud and clear, like a command.

“Horadna Rebbetzin, I’ve come to visit the Rav and help you get ready for the holiday. Would you be good enough to go to your husband and tell him the Horadna Maggid’s Rebbetzin is here to see him?”

Sarah-Rivkah cast an even more forlorn look at Perele and then silently went into the sick man’s room. The other woman started talking hastily to Perele. She was pleased to meet the Horadna Maggid’s wife; she was just thinking of bringing her case to him. Her name was Mantcha Repnik—everyone in Horadna knew her. For years the Horadna Rav had promised to bring her husband back to her, but now it seemed he would not be able to help her. “He’s got one foot in the grave,” she said, winking with a vulgar laugh and motioning with her head toward the Rav’s room. The woman continued to talk, one moment with a hoarse, throaty voice and a minute later with the shriek of a night bird. She told her story as if Perele were already familiar with half of it. In Glebokie she had discovered that her husband, after deserting her, had started a small yeshivah there. So she had gone there and found that cockroach surrounded by a gang of freeloaders, black cockroaches just like him, but much younger and even smaller. Her husband was a runt, no bigger than a fig. Only his beard was huge, and he had a cold, miserable face. But when he saw her, that ugly puss had become white as wax. They put better-looking people to rest in their graves. “That’s where he belongs, and no Messiah will resurrect that scoundrel.”

Sarah-Rivkah returned from the bedroom looking somewhat revived. “The place is really a mess, not at all ready for the holiday,” she said apologetically. Perele made her way to the bedroom, and when she noticed Mantcha Repnik following her, she turned and said imperiously, “You can’t come in, I have something to discuss with the Rav.” Mantcha Repnik stood stunned. It had never happened before that she didn’t get her way in the Horadna Rav’s house.

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The Graipewo Rebbetzin entered the bedroom, her face stiffly calm but her lips quivering and her heart beating rapidly. The Rav was sitting up in bed, propped up by pillows, the blanket drawn up to his beard, which was yet whiter than when Perele had last seen him. His cheeks were puffy, his skin grayish, his nostrils very wide, but even the wrinkles on his face radiated kindliness.

“How is the Horadna Rav?” Perele barely managed to say as she hastily sat down on a chair, feeling her knees suddenly buckle under her.

The Rav said softly, “Thank God, I’m feeling a little better.” He spoke unusually quickly, his eyes cast down, fixed on the blanket. He was, it seemed, just as uncomfortable meeting his former betrothed as she was meeting him.

“The burden of the town—the court and all the communal matters—falls now on your husband, the Town Maggid. I understand that he hasn’t had the time to come here, this being the week before Shavuoth. He has to prepare his sermons, after all. But I hope he’ll come to see me after the holiday. Please tell him I would really like to discuss important communal matters with him.”

Perele did not take her eyes off him. She felt he was sincere in asking her husband to take over. His words and his appearance showed that he was ill, very ill, much more than he admitted to others. She appreciated Reb Moshe-Mordecai’s genius and wisdom more than anyone, and she saw it even more now that he was stepping down. Before, she thought, he had given in just to avoid a fight, yet since he took sick, he had wanted with all his heart to elevate her husband. Though he looked very old and was deathly sick, Perele could not drive out of her mind the thought that she had not been worthy of being married to so great a man. She didn’t want to remember that not so long ago she had argued with her husband for allowing their sons to attend Rabbi Eisenstadt’s lectures. She hadn’t wanted people to think the sons had nothing left to learn from their own father. Now she felt the exact opposite: her children were not close enough to Reb Moshe-Mordecai. Yet as she was about to speak, she checked herself and uttered something very different.

“I want to thank you for being so friendly to my Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah. Our sons attended the yeshivah for many years, but their business has forced them to neglect their Talmudic studies. But now that you’ve opened the kollel, they manage to get away for a few hours to study once more.”

The Rav nodded his head with sad resignation as he wondered when he’d ever again be able to teach in the kollel. Perele turned to Sarah-Rivkah, who had been standing in a corner of the room with a sad smile, looking like a stranger in her own house.

“Horadna Rebbetzin, I’ve heard that your doctor is not one of the best in the city. We should ask a team of doctors to confer. Specialists will be better able to help the Rav to recover. I’ll help you arrange it.”

_____________

Mantcha Repnik suddenly burst into the bedroom and placed herself in front of Perele. “I really thought you had private matters to discuss with the Rav. But I’ve listened at the door and I see you have come here just to babble, you dolled-up mannequin. If that’s the case, I’m as much a princess as you are. I’ve been coming here before you ever dreamed of becoming a Horadna Rebbetzin.” And to prove to Perele how much at home she was, Mantcha Repnik turned to the Rav and continued her story of how she’d gone to her husband’s town and seized him by the ear. All Glebokie was beside itself: how could a teacher of Torah just leave his wife without giving her a divorce? Her husband, the dwarf with the long beard and stone face, claimed that he did want to give her a divorce. So she said that before she’d accept a divorce from him, God would put a pox on his skin, boils in his armpits, gout in his joints, a pain in his heart, and cramps in his bowels. She had tattled on him all over town for months until his name was as black as a burned pot. Finally, his yeshivah had tumbled like a house of cards. At first the Glebokie townspeople had sided with her, but then they’d begun to take his part. Of course, he had bought them all off. “Take the divorce,” they’d told her, “the two of you are just not made for each other.” “Take a divorce?” she answered them. “May the earth take them! They say that I and my husband are not a good match? But they and the angel of death are a perfect match!”

The Rav lay still, with his eyes closed, and occasionally sighing heavily. Sarah-Rivkah’s face was getting paler and paler, and her hands shook. It was plain that they were both well acquainted with the foul language of this harridan, but each time curses poured out of her mouth, they both shuddered.

Perele rose and said loudly, “Close that worm-infested mouth of yours! Get out of here this minute!”

Mantcha Repnik laughed out loud and again stood facing Perele, her hands provocatively on her hips. “Before they throw me out of here, they’ll have to carry somebody out in a wooden box!”

The Rav tossed himself about and pleaded, “No more cursing! Have mercy! Stop that cursing!”

Sarah-Rivkah wrung her hands and said to Perele, just short of sobbing, “Please, leave her alone. We’re used to suffering this and we just keep quiet.”

Perele, however, tapped her foot on the floor and screamed: “Shame on you, Horadna Rebbetzin! This tramp should have her eyes gouged out! You should have called the police to kick her out. And you’re afraid of her curses? She’s not a widow, she’s no orphan, that God should listen to her. She’s a charlatan, a rogue who plays crazy to intimidate you.”

Sarah-Rivkah shrank away, terrified. Perele poked her umbrella at the woman, who retreated until they were both out the door and in the courtroom. In the doorway leading to the foyer stood the students, looking on dumbfounded. Perele then raised her umbrella higher as if to poke out Mantcha Repnik’s eyes and yelled at the students: “Do you call yourselves men? Champions of Torah? A sly, brutish creature torments the Horadna Rav, and you permit this to happen!” The young men looked at one another, and one of them grumbled that the rebbetzin would not let anyone touch the woman. Mantcha Repnik suddenly called out tearfully, “Jewish children, have pity, I’m a forsaken agunah.”

But Perele’s voice rang out louder. “Throw her down the front stairs, I tell you. I’ll answer to God and man for it! And if you won’t do it, I promise you I’ll split her skull right here with this umbrella!”

Mantcha Repnik ran out, a curse on her lips, and slammed the door so no one would follow her. One of the young men laughed. “The woman’s a Cossack,” and it wasn’t altogether clear which of the two women he meant. The battle-fatigued Perele caught her breath and looked angrily at the students. She wondered if any of these so-called men had been among those rabble-rousers who hadn’t let her husband speak in the Grand Synagogue. But there didn’t seem to be any of the rowdy Horadna Agudahniks among them. No doubt these had come to study in Rabbi Eisenstadt’s kollel because they seemed to be truly good for nothing, neither to hold a pulpit nor run a business. The young men were stunned by the harangue of this strangely dressed woman who acted as if she was Rabbi Eisenstadt’s closest relative.

“Go home, all of you, and get ready for the holiday. Or go to the beth midrash and study. This isn’t a tea room. The Horadna Rebbetzin and I will take care of the Rav.”

She stood waiting until the group turned to leave. One of them wanted to go into the bedroom to say goodbye to the Rav. Perele said she’d give the Rav regards from all of his students. Then Perele returned to the bedroom, where she found a new scene. The Rav was consoling his wife, pleading with her to stop crying. But she just stood in a corner sobbing like a child, as if her tears were draining her years and making of her a little girl who was hurt at everyone being against her—her father, her mother, even her doll. Rage welled up within Perele and she bit her lip so as not to start screaming that the Horadna Rebbetzin belonged in a home for the retarded or the senile. She looked at the Rav, too, with anger. The great Gaon and Rav of Horadna trembled before the curses of a scoundrel as if she were a demon. But the grudge that the Staropol Rav’s daughter, his first betrothed, bore against him had never, it seemed, crossed his mind.

“Horadna Rebbetzin, I’ve come to help you prepare for the holiday and I’ve got to get back to my house to light candles and hear my husband’s Kiddush,” Perele declared. Imperiously she ordered Sarah-Rivkah to follow her into the kitchen.

The Rav listened and looked in disbelief as his wife suddenly stopped crying and followed the Graipewo Rebbetzin out of the room with the docile obedience of a simple maid. Perele took off her fur jacket with the broad sleeves and led the way into the disorderly, dimly lit kitchen where the maid was busy washing the heaps of tea dishes that had been left in the front room.

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19.

So completely did the Town Maggid’s wife take charge of the Eisenstadt household that it was she who summoned a team of doctors to examine the patient. Before they entered the Rav’s room, she admonished them that, whatever their finding, they should tell him he would recover. “Many of our people today,” she declared in a sharp, shrill voice, “take after the Gentiles even in telling sick people the truth. But we believing Jews feel strongly that one must not rob the patient of his faith in the Almighty.”

She and Sarah-Rivkah waited together outside the bedroom. When the doctors finally emerged, they were plainly reluctant to tell even the two women the whole truth; but their long faces showed clearly that they did not have much hope for the Rav. Sarah-Rivkah broke down in tears. Perele shushed her: “Stop crying, Horadna Rebbetzin. If your husband hears you, that alone could finish him, God forbid.” The two of them walked into the bedroom and Sarah-Rivkah watched silently as Perele calmly and firmly spoke to Reb Moshe-Mordecai. “The Horadna Rav will yet, with God’s help, deliver many more lectures to his students. For the time being, though, you must rest and talk very little. That’s what the doctors ordered.” The Rav listened with his head turned aside, as if he knew he was not being told the truth. Then he murmured that he had no desire to lie there like a prisoner, cut off from people. “If a scholar wants to see me,” he commanded quietly, “let him in.”

But ever since Perele had turned the kollel students out the day before Shavuoth, the young men had stayed away. When the townspeople learned of the doctors’ findings, they all recited Psalms before an opened Ark after services, in hopes of a miracle.

Just at that time, a young man, a scholar, who knew nothing of all this, happened to be passing through Horadna, and decided to call on the Rav to engage him in Talmudic discussion. Perele met the young man in the foyer and asked him what his business was. The young man—still with a round, childlike face, curly blond sidelocks, and newly sprouted soft down on his fresh cheeks—replied that he had no special business, he just wanted to discuss Talmud with the Rav.

“The Rav is not well and must not do a lot of talking, so don’t tire him out,” Perele warned as she ushered him into the bedoom.

Sarah-Rivkah, standing beside her husband’s bed, looked at the visitor with her great eyes as if the intended bridegroom of her departed daughter had just walked into the room. Seeing the Rav in bed seemed to disturb the young man somewhat. Reb Moshe-Mordecai asked him what his name was, where he was from, and what tractate he was studying. The young man talked about his studies and insights in a lilting voice, waving his arms and becoming more and more excited. The sick Rav listened with his eyes nearly shut, now and then raising one eyebrow, then the other, and over his yellowish face flashed a shiver like a ray of light across calm, dark waters.

Perele watched as the Rav called the young man closer to him and caressed his cheek with a trembling hand. He drew him still closer, as if the youth were a cherished child of his old age. “Those are good points you are making. But you’re too daring,” the Rav laughed. “Aren’t you afraid to take issue with the old commentators?” He asked the young scholar why he no longer wanted to study at the yeshivah in Radun. The young man, his blond sidelocks dangling, answered that since the old Rosh Yeshivah had passed away, the lectures were being delivered by his sons-in-law, and that was not good enough for him. “I can analyze the Talmud better than they,” the young scholar concluded with a cool shrug. In Mir, he declared, he’d be able to study with older students more at his level. “So Radun is not big enough for you?” the Rav said with a smile that ran through every wrinkle on his worn face while his eyes shone with pride. “And do you have enough to cover your traveling expenses? Perhaps you need some money for some clothes?” No, the scholar answered, he had enough money and a valise full of clothes.

“Then go in good health, and good luck in your studies. In the summertime you must go for a walk every evening. The men of our generation are weak, so we must take good care of our health. And don’t wait too long to get married. Give the Rosh Yeshivah of Mir my regards.” The Rav kissed the young man on each temple and fell back onto his pillow exhausted. “Ask the students in the yeshivah to pray for me, and you pray for me, too. Give me a blessing.”

Tears ran from the Rav’s eyes and fell into his tangled beard. The young scholar looked at the two women fearfully, struck all at once by a realization of how gravely ill the Rav in fact was. Sarah-Rivkah sat frozen, but Perele nodded and blinked at him, telling him to say his farewells and leave. “I will pray for you as I would for my own father,” the young scholar stammered and softly walked out, pale and shaken.

In the room hovered a pathetic silence. The sick man lapsed into a light sleep, and Perele’s eyes welled with tears as she watched him. She had never imagined that this Gaon, this cold intellect, could show such tender affection to another man’s son. Only now did she understand why his followers and students were so devoted to him. As if he had heard these thoughts, the Rav suddenly awoke and groaned restlessly.

“What is to become of the kollel? The students have all left their secure homes to study here. Without leadership the whole thing will fall apart. Almighty God!” He sighed deeply as he once again drifted off into a faint sleep.

Perele quietly left the bedroom and Sarah-Rivkah followed, afraid to be left alone with her sick husband. “When are you coming back?” she asked anxiously. Perele answered dryly that she’d come when she had the time. Her own husband, after all, was also getting on in years and had to be watched, and with that she departed.

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The rebbetzin walked through the streets with a bitter smile on her face as she thought of the role she was now playing in Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt’s life. She stopped to watch a young boy rolling a barrel hoop through the street and then caught herself wondering why that had arrested her attention. The trees were still radiating their bright green glow, but the branches were already bowed under their heavy leafy load. The setting sun in the west seemed in Perele’s eyes like the last yellow flicker of a memorial candle. “The sun will soon have set,” she thought, “and tomorrow it will rise anew, as always. But a man can never become young again and rise anew.” Neither could she turn back the wheel of her fate. She must guard her husband’s health and see to it that he attained in Horadna the greatness that had eluded him all those years in tiny Graipewo. She was also determined not to let her sons spend the rest of their lives as shoe salesmen. The son-in-law, she knew, was a hopeless case. Serel had chosen that boor just to spite her mother, and there was nothing she could do about it.

Since Perele had been going to attend the sick Rav, her actions had bewildered her husband even more than usual. On the one hand, she watched carefully to see that he ate well and got enough sleep, didn’t overwork himself at the Rabbinical Court or make his sermons too long, and didn’t drink anything cold when he was perspiring. She had also taken him to one of Rabbi Eisenstadt’s heart doctors for a checkup, and when he came out of the examination room with the happy look of one who has just received a clean bill of health, thank God, Perele raised her eyes to the ceiling and also thanked heaven. But, on the other hand, she carped at him more than ever for not having finished his book. “Even Reb Moshe-Mordecai,” she said, “sick as he is, the minute he feels a little better, he looks through his papers and talks about having another volume of his responsa published. But my husband, the Horadna Maggid, whenever anyone comes to confer on a public matter, he stammers and asks, ‘And what do you say? What’s your thinking on this?’ Rabbi Eisenstadt never asked anyone’s opinion. He issued his ruling and that was that.”

“So what can I do? I’m not a Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt. Does that mean you’re sorry you married me?” His heavy hands quivered at his sides. And now his dear wife had come home with a new idea.

“Why don’t you go to the kollel and conduct classes? Reb Moshe-Mordecai is concerned that the academy may fall apart.”

“Are you out of your mind?” Reb Uri-Zvi looked at his wife, stunned and fearful of this new burden she was seeking to place on his shoulders. “The scholars wouldn’t attend my lectures and the Rav would never allow it. You are not to breathe a word of this to anyone! People will say I’m looking to inherit Reb Moshe-Mordecai’s position while he’s still alive.”

“Then go visit him yourself,” Perele said, “and start talking about communal matters. You’ll see, he’ll ask you himself to do it. He’ll ask you to look after the students in the kollel, and I’ll be able to help you administer the kollel much better than Sarah-Rivkah helped her husband. And if you’re the administrator, then sooner or later you’ll be giving lectures. After all, why should your life’s work lie buried in print?”

Reb Uri-Zvi never ceased to wonder at his wife’s indefatigable plotting, the fresh schemes she was perpetually concocting. She also advised him that when the time came for him to deliver a lecture to the scholars of the kollel, he should ask his sons to help him. They must stand on either side of him and be ready to rebut the questions the students would throw at him to belittle his teachings and make small change of his discourse. He. must insist that his sons devote themselves more to study, letting their wives and their salesmen worry about the business. In other rabbinical households, parents and children helped one another, but on her family, for some reason, all the curses of the Bible had been visited.

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20.

Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt slowly flickered out like a dying flame, passing away on the eve of Tishah B’Av. Exhausted by hour after hour of reciting Psalms and by day after day of waiting for a miracle, the Rav’s disciples and his closest friends spread the news: “It’s all over,” and fell into silence. That night, as they sat on the overturned benches and recited Lamentations, the gloomy darkness pressed their heads even lower. The shadows of the candles shone ghostlike as the town wept not only for the Exile and for the destruction of the Holy Temple, but also for the departed Rav.

The funeral was delayed until after Tishah B’Av to give rabbis from all over Lithuania enough time to get to Horadna, to pay their respects and to eulogize the Rav. As was the longtime custom in Horadna, on Tishah B’Av people went for walks in the tall grass of the cemetery, among the thorny bushes and the small trees laden with wild apples. This year they stood at the graves of their pious ancestors, contemplating the plot where the great Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Ha-Levi Eisenstadt would soon be interred, as if the crypt of an ancient sage already stood there. People talked about his unique scholarship and widsom, and of his reputation in the world of Talmudic learning, as if he had been dead for centuries and lived only as a memory and in his work. On their way home from the cemetery the people saw black-bordered notices, signed by the Horadna Rabbinical Court, with news of the great loss and announcing that only the Rav’s disciples would be pallbearers. The grief of the town grew with each passing hour. After the long day of Tishah B’Av, people joylessly broke the fast and went to sleep with stones on their hearts.

On the morning of the funeral Horadna was filled with rabbis, scholars, and Rosh Yeshivahs in the company of their sons, sons-in-law, and students. The black umbrellas on which the old men leaned, the broad black rabbinic hats and coats, the long beards and curly sidelocks, and the dark velvet mist of sorrow in everyone’s eyes—all this black vied with the blinding sun, the bright blue of the sky, and the green of the trees. Horadna had seldom seen so great an assemblage of rabbis and scholars in her streets. Their solemn forms and pious faces diffused an aura of godliness, an anxious hush, like the sorrow of the covered mirrors in a house of mourning.

In the office of the kehillah, however, a storm was brewing. The sons of every visiting Rav clamored for their fathers to be given the honor of eulogizing the deceased. The students of every Rosh Yeshivah stood up for their own mentors and the members of the Horadna kehillah argued that their Rav ought to be eulogized by the Jews of Horadna alone. Hearing this, the retinues of the visiting scholars and Rabbi Eisenstadt’s disciples, members of the Agudah, gave vent to their sorrow and their rage:

You dare to talk! All the years the giant of Torah of our generation was in Horadna, what did he get from the people in this city? You tormented him with your stupid, petty wrangling, your foolish arguments! You should be following his coffin barefoot at the end of the procession, begging his forgiveness, not pushing your way to the front!

_____________

As soon as the news of Rabbi Eisenstadt’s passing reached Perele she knew there would be disputes over who should deliver the eulogies—rabbis fight for the honor of delivering a eulogy at a famous rabbinical funeral no less than for the privilege of reciting the blessings at a great wedding. She lost no time in going to her sons and pressing them to insist that the honor of the first eulogy belonged to their father.

This time the sons sided with their mother. Both Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah went to take part in the arguments that were going on in the kehillah. The right of the first eulogy, they insisted, belongs to the Town Maggid and head of the Rabbinical Court. They were supported by the trustees of the Stone Synagogue and the kehillah members. At last, the spokesmen for the rabbis from other towns agreed that since it was only fitting that someone from Horadna deliver a eulogy, it might as well be the Town Maggid.

Rabbi Koenigsberg was the first to eulogize, though he cried more than spoke as he stood beside the coffin in the middle of the courtyard. “The crown is fallen from our head: woe unto us, that we have sinned!” The entire town of mourners wept along with the rabbi. But among the departed Rav’s disciples and the Agudahniks drifted an angry muttering: “The Graipewo Rav has indeed plenty to weep about. He drew his share of blood from our sainted Gaon, the greatest in our generation. No doubt he thinks that now his rebbetzin will place on his head Reb Moshe-Mordecai’s crown of Torah and anoint him the rabbinical authority of Horadna. We’ll see about that!”

After the Town Maggid’s address the coffin was brought inside and placed on the large board of the bimah in the middle of the synagogue. Gray-haired rabbis and Rosh Yeshivahs, one after another, ascended to speak from before the Ark. Their hands and voices trembled, their backs were all bent, their eyes half blind, their foreheads creased, all aged lifelong toilers in the vineyards of Torah. They spoke with much wailing and weeping, yet also with anger and reproach. One rabbi bewailed the lack of respect accorded Torah in this day and age and bemoaned the starving scholars and the desolate houses of study. Another speaker lashed out against the parties and factions that had adopted their own dogmas, having forsaken Maimonides’ Thirteen Principles; they had devised their own code of conduct, fashioned after the ways of the Gentiles, in place of the laws and traditions of their ancestors. A third lamented the fate of the Jews in the Diaspora. But each speaker began and ended with the great light of the Diaspora, the luminous Sage Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Ha-Levi Eisenstadt, the flame of whose life had been extinguished, plunging the world into darkness. “Torah, Torah what will become of you?” the old rabbis and Rosh Yeshivahs sobbed, and the people packed into the synagogue sobbed along with them. The reddish glow of the lamps blinded the tear-swollen eyes of the crowd. The gloomy faces and beards glittered like wet stones in a damp cave until the very walls broke into a steamy sweat and the light of the lamps was shrouded in a yellowish fog. When the eulogies had concluded, the Rav’s disciples lifted the black-draped coffin onto their shoulders. Someone cried out with a voice that pierced the very ceiling: “And it came to pass, when the Ark moved forward, that Moses said, ‘Rise up, O Lord. . . .’” The people broke down in tears again, in wailing that welled up to the high windows above the crowded women’s balcony. Not until the mourners left the confines of the synagogue could they catch their breath or wipe their drenched faces and talk to each other.

“We’ve always known—we knew, and yet we didn’t know—who our Rav was. The great rabbis and dignitaries from afar had to come today to tell it to us, now when it’s too late. Never again will Horadna have a jewel like that!”

_____________

The streets around the synagogue swayed and strained from the onrushing flood of people. When the disciples at the head of the procession with the coffin on their shoulders came to a corner, the storekeepers on either side of the street hurriedly closed their businesses. It was a long way to the cemetery, and more rabbis intended to speak there, before and after the ritual purification of the body. Yet the throng grew with every street like the rush of waters through a broken dam. The venerable old rabbis marched slowly, surrounded by their disciples, students, and children. Behind them walked great waves of townspeople, followed by the empty hearse, a simple wagon pulled by two horses. Poor shopkeepers and humble laborers trudged alongside with a silent fear in their eyes, frightened to be left in this world without their Rav. Along the sidewalks stood young men in summer hats and young women in bright summer kerchiefs. Even the non-religious covered their heads as the funeral procession passed by.

The Horadna Rebbetzin, Sarah-Rivkah, walked directly behind the pallbearers, surrounded by the wives of the judges on the Rabbinical Court. Wrapped in a black shawl, with a deathly pallor on her face, she looked otherworldly. Throughout the eulogies, not so much as a sob was heard from her and not a sound came from her frozen lips. The women around her saw it as a bad sign: she would do her crying later, alone, and God only knew when she would stop. Sarah-Rivkah was indeed waiting for the torment of the funeral with the eulogies to be over, waiting to be left alone, all alone. Then she’d be able to sit in her home and cry, to come to the fresh grave of her husband and cry, to come to cry in the tall, wild grass on the grave of her little girl. She would then fall on the graves of her father and mother, on the graves of her ancestors. Half the cemetery was already hers, she thought. And when she ran out of tears, she’d be silent. When her husband was alive, he had belonged to the world, yet he had belonged to her, too; now he belonged only to the world. All the eulogies praised her Moshe-Mordecai’s greatness and scholarship and lamented for a world orphaned by his death. But no one thought it worth mentioning, or even seemed to remember, that Moshe-Mordecai himself had stood like a little orphan at the funeral of his only child. If her husband had been a carpenter as her father had secretly dreamed of being, he would have belonged only to her and their child in life, and also in death.

The wife of the Town Maggid walked in the middle of the townswomen, all of whom praised her for easing the Horadna Rav’s last weeks. But Perele spoke to no one. She felt sand on her lips, a dryness in her throat, and a pain in her chest. Strange thoughts flew through her mind like blackbirds pecking at her brain. As often as she had seen and heard of Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt’s greatness through these many years, she had never seen it so clearly as now amid this great assembly of rabbis and this outpouring of grief by an entire city. Even her father, the sainted Staropol Rav, had never been accorded such reverence, neither during his lifetime nor after his death. And Reb Moshe-Mordecai’s reputation would grow with each passing day, Perele thought, as the legends of his greatness spread and the genius of his works was appreciated by generations to come. But her husband—her dear husband, he should live and be well to a hundred and twenty—would never achieve a third, not a fifth, of this. In spite of herself, Perele thought also of Reb Moshe-Mordecai’s feelings toward her. At first she had thought it was because of her that he had relented and accepted Reb Uri-Zvi as the Maggid of Horadna. But as a constant visitor these past few weeks, it had become clear to her that it was the Rebbetzin Sarah-Rivkah who prevailed on him to give in. And in those moments in which Reb Moshe-Mordecai felt a little better, he had looked at his wife with love and pity. He had thanked Perele very politely, yet with nothing like a warm look, as if he had completely forgotten that she had once been his betrothed.

Perele came home from the funeral with a throbbing headache, so she lay down on the sofa with a damp cloth on her forehead. Beads of sweat dangled on the stiff hairs of her upper lip; under her downcast eyelashes welled tears that stung like needles and refused to be shed. She searched her mind for someone to blame for her bitterness and at last decided that it was all the fault of her father, of blessed memory. As a child growing up in her father’s house she had heard time and time again that the world was divided into two: scholars to one side, and everyone else to the other. And scholars were also of different kinds: the ordinary scholars, the gifted ones, and the great men of genius. Nothing about a person impressed her father more than when he could exclaim about him, “A Gaon! A genius!” Was it any wonder, then, that she had grown up with the conviction that her husband must be a great Talmudist? So even now that she was a grandmother and Reb Moshe-Mordecai was in the next world, she could not forget that he had been supposed to be her husband—and yet it was not to be.

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21.

The summer days burned hot and suffocating. A damp heat lay on the walls and on people’s faces. The skies were filled with gray clouds like billowing smoke, but it did not rain. Perele spent sleepless nights suffering from rheumatism in her knuckles and pains in her knees and back. Before dawn, she heard the feeble birds chirping hoarsely, begging for rain. During those few weeks in which Perele was visiting the ailing Reb Moshe-Mordecai, she had not attended to her own housework, and that was just not like her. She crawled out of bed and tried to do a little straightening up, but her head swam as if she had gotten up too soon after childbirth. Still she steeled herself and got dressed, only to lie down once again on the sofa. Her husband had to bring her a glass of tea. The women in town were saying that the Town Maggid’s wife had so worn herself out in caring for the Rav that she became sick herself. A neighbor from the Stone Synagogue and Bashka, the wife of the Schloss Street Rabbi, came to visit. The two women sat beside the sofa as Bashka talked about her condolence call on the Rebbetzin Sarah-Rivkah. “She sits in mourning on a low stool, without a drop of blood in her face, and says peculiar things.”

“I was planning to visit her today, but when I try to walk, the whole room spins before my eyes,” Perele said, heaving a tired sigh. “What kind of peculiar things?”

“Well, everyone knows,” Bashka related, “how Sarah-Rivkah always hated being called the Horadna Rebbetzin. But in the past she would dismiss it with a smile; now her whole body trembles and she cries out: ‘Don’t call me Horadna Rebbetzin. I have paid too much for that title!’ All she wants to talk about is the many happy years she had with her husband and how he told her time and again, even as he lay sick, that he could never have hoped to find a better, more suitable wife. As she says this, a fresh streak of color crosses her cheeks, yet she sounds as if she were answering the charges of some accuser.”

“Well, aren’t matches made in Heaven?” Perele said. “So what’s the use of talking?” She kept her eyes shut as she talked, as if afraid to see in Bashka’s face that she knew more than she was saying. “I’ll visit her as soon as I’ve gotten some of my strength back.”

“I’m not sure she wants anyone to visit her,” Perele’s neighbor from the Stone Synagogue broke in with a worried look on her face. “When I visited the rebbetzin, she sat there cold and silent while that crazy woman, the agunah Mantcha Repnik, had the run of the house. In fact, Sarah-Rivkah was quite friendly and chummy with her.”

Perele widened her eyes in astonishment and looked at the woman from the synagogue. “That foul-mouthed pest who tormented the sick Rav? The one I threw out of the house?”

The woman nodded. “Yes, that’s the one. You’ve no idea how she was cursing. May all her curses fall into the sea.”

“That agunah with the venomous mouth has certainly maligned me in that house,” Perele thought. She said in utter surprise, “Sarah-Rivkah, tells how happy the Rav was with her. Then why does she think so little of herself as to befriend a vicious woman like that Mantcha Repnik? They say that Repnik, her husband, is a fine man, yet he had to run away from her.”

Perele maintained her aloof calm until her two guests left. Then she loosened her taut nerves with a deep sigh and tapped on the windowsill next to the sofa as if playing her thoughts on the wood:

Sarah-Rivkah must hate me, and she surely doesn’t want to see me anymore, even though she could not have managed without me when her husband was ill. That must be why she clings to that crazy agunah I threw out—to make sure I don’t come to visit. Even before her husband’s death she looked at me with hatred when she saw how quiet and orderly I’d made her house while she didn’t know how to tie a ribbon to a cat’s tail. All that business about her husband having told her how happy their life had been together—she wanted it to get back to me. But she was lying . . . and then again, perhaps she was speaking the truth. Her husband might have told her this to allay any suspicions she might have had that he regretted not having married me, and now that I think about it, I never really saw any sign of regret that he had not married me. Well, then let the former Horadna Rebbetzin stay with that wretched hussy Mantcha Repnik. I’m not going to see her.

_____________

The traffic of townspeople coming to the maggid’s house with personal or communal problems increased. But Reb Uri-Zvi couldn’t analyze a problem at a glance and proffer a quick, pithy bit of advice, as the late Rabbi Eisenstadt had done. On top of that, he trembled before his rebbetzin. Whenever he took upon himself the responsibility for a matter or decision, Perele nagged him for having once again made a fool of himself. It didn’t take long for the townspeople to notice that the maggid never made a move without first consulting his wife—so they started going directly to her.

“What does the rebbetzin think?” asked the three trustees of the Stone Synagogue as they walked briskly into Perele’s room, with the familiarity of close relatives—it was they, after all, Who had made Rabbi Koenigsberg a preacher in their synagogue and put him on the Rabbinical Court of Horadna.

Meir-Michael Jaffe was the first to speak: Horadna indeed still mourned the loss of its Rav. But since this Saturday was the Sabbath of Consolation, the rabbi ought to speak in the synagogue first and foremost about the Land of Israel, as he had at this time last year. Moshe Moskowitz did not attempt to hide his resentment at Rabbi Koenigsberg’s neglect of the Stone Synagogue since his becoming Town Maggid and head of the Rabbinical Court. Now he hoped the rabbi would return. David Ganz—chewing as he spoke, like an old man munching a hard crust of bread—complained that the Agudahniks had used the Horadna Rav’s funeral and eulogies to strengthen their own position. Now the maggid must speak about the Return to Zion: let the town see that Mizrachi was, thank God, still alive and well.

“Of course I will, God willing, talk about the commandment of settling the Land of Israel. Why shouldn’t I?” Rabbi Koenigsberg replied, looking uneasily at his wife, who had displeasure clearly inscribed on her creased forehead.

“The Rav will speak in the Grand Synagogue, where all the Jews of Horadna come—not in the Stone Synagogue, where only people from the neighborhood come. And he’ll talk about all the precepts of the Torah, not only about settling in the Land of Israel. It’s a shame the trustees want to rekindle the old arguments and pull the Rav into the battle between Agudah and Mizrachi.” Perele declared this in a shrill voice which trailed off in a sigh. “But I’m only a tired old woman and I’m not very well now.”

The trustees understood that the rebbetzin was telling them to go. They silently looked at each other, seething with anger. Meir-Michael wanted to shout: “The rebbetzin is too quick to call her husband the Rav. He isn’t the new Horadna Rav yet.” Moshe Moskowitz wanted to say that it was the Stone Synagogue that had made the Graipewo Rav the Town Maggid, and the Stone Synagogue could just as easily make him the former Town Maggid, and also the former head of the Rabbinical Court! David Ganz bit his tongue to keep from saying that now he understood what was meant by the expression “a pig in a parlor.” But the three trustees said nothing, they just stood there stunned and mute. They knew how to contend with a man, even the greatest Talmudist in the world like Rabbi Moshe-Mordecai Eisenstadt. But they hadn’t counted on being outwitted and outmaneuvered by a woman who moaned and groaned day and night.

_____________

That evening Perele’s two sons, her daughter, Serel, and her son-in-law came to see how she felt. They asked her whether they should call a doctor, but Perele dismissed the idea; she had already seen how little the doctors really knew when they attended Reb Moshe-Mordecai. So she simply sighed and asked her husband if he had prepared his lecture for the kollel. When the children were around, Reb Uri-Zvi felt braver, so he said that Perele shouldn’t have spoken so harshly to the trustees that afternoon—they could give him a great deal of trouble. And he didn’t even want to talk about conducting classes in the kollel. Rabbi Eisenstadt’s disciples would never come to hear his lectures.

Serel gave her mother a quick, angry look, ready to take her father’s side. Perele saw this immediately and decided to avoid fighting with her daughter. She spoke to her husband in a kindly tone: “But the Horadna Rav, may he stay away from the living, pleaded with you to look after his kollel.”

“Reb Moshe-Mordecai, may he rest in peace, asked me to see to the kollel’s material needs, but he never meant for me to deliver lectures,” Reb Uri-Zvi said, and then he complained to his children that their mother was placing a burden on him that was too big for his shoulders. He could not be the Town Maggid and the head of the Rabbinical Court and still find time to prepare lectures for so advanced a group as the scholars of Reb Moshe-Mordecai’s kollel. Besides, the young people would raise a storm against him. It had never occurred to them that he would dare to consider becoming their Rosh Yeshivah.

Serel opened her mouth to pounce on her mother, but her husband seized her elbow with his steel-like fingers and drew her back, out of the fray. Perele cast a wounded smile at her sons and said simply: “As your father wishes. If no one will conduct classes in the kollel, it will fall apart and the townspeople will say that the departed Rav left no worthy successor to fill his place. And this belief of your father’s that the students would not accept him as their mentor—he’s mistaken, you know. These scholars dread the prospect of seeing the kollel disbanded. Do you think they want to go back to their far-flung little towns to become burdens on the necks of their fathers-in-law? They’d be thrilled to accept the Horadna Maggid and head of the Horadna Rabbinical Court as their Rosh Yeshivah.”

Perele then turned from her sons to her husband: “And why shouldn’t your sons help you conduct the business of the Horadna rabbinate and the kollel? You’re always telling me that Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah are as learned as any pulpit rabbi. So why should they sell shoes for the rest of their lives?”

Serel glanced at her brothers, and it seemed to her that since they had sat down next to their mother their short shopkeepers’ whiskers had grown into the long, flowing beards worn by the rabbis of Horadna. Suddenly a thunderstorm flashed its lightning outside. Serel clapped her hands and called to her husband. “Ezra, come, let’s go home! The children will be frightened by the storm. The girl who’s looking after them isn’t much more than a child herself and will be frightened, too.”

Ezra immediately surmised that his wife wanted to leave because she couldn’t stand her mother’s talking. He also felt more than usually irritated with his mother-in-law. “If you’re not afraid of getting wet, let’s go,” he answered. The father and her two brothers begged Serel to wait for the storm to pass, but she wouldn’t hear of it. “My little chicks will be frightened. Father, give Ezra your umbrella.” Perele stilled the protests of her husband and sons and said that Serel was right. She should be going home to the children. She wasn’t made of sugar, she wouldn’t melt in the rain.

“How could I be made of sugar when I’m your daughter? I have to thank God I’m not a hard, bitter radish like you!” Serel shouted into her mother’s face and then she quickly left the house.

_____________

Outside, green bolts of lightning etched fiery trees in the sky, their roots in heaven and their branches whipping against the black earth. Clouds were split like blocks of ice, and the claps of thunder sounded like collapsing mountains. A howling wind ripped over the roofs, but it still hadn’t started raining. Serel held her husband’s arm, pulling him along and shouting at him over the wind, “The Horadna Rebbetzin sits in mourning over her husband, and my mother lies sick over not having been his wife.”

Ezra stopped suddenly and looked at his wife as if he thought she might have lost her mind. As often as Serel had talked against her mother, she had never accused her of this.

Serel grabbed him and again pulled him along. “Let’s go. The children are alone. You’ll see—by the time she’s through, Yankel-Dovid and Gedaliah will be judges on the Rabbinical Court. I could see it on their faces that they’re taking a liking to the idea. My father needs this Horadna rabbinate like a hole in the head, but she wants to become the Horadna Rebbetzin! My father didn’t marry well, it’s as simple as that. My God, did he not marry well!”

Ezra laughed and answered that her mother might be able to have her way with her father, but she wouldn’t find the city of Horadna’ so easy to manipulate. “Do you think the rabbis would allow Rabbi Uri-Zvi Koenigsberg to become the Rav and the Rosh Yeshivah—and let his two sons, two shopkeepers, sit on the Rabbinical Court? There would be such a battle, such a blazing fire, that a flood wouldn’t put it out.”

“Then you don’t know my dear little mother. She’ll win out over everyone—every one of them!” Serel shouted, as frenzied as the wind whirling around her.

A bolt split a stretch of cloud, a few cold, heavy drops fell, and then a thick torrent of rain poured down on them. In a moment they were both soaking wet. Ezra held his father-in-law’s umbrella over Serel, but she stretched her head, her hair drenched and disheveled, out from under it and let the rain cool her feverish thoughts. She felt her heart leaping out of her body from the violence of her feelings. Angrily she shouted into the night, into the wind, into the torrent of rain: “My dear little mother will win out over everyone. Everyone!”

¹ See Glossary, page 127, for definition of this and other Hebrew and Yiddish terms.

² “Goatsville.”