Authors: Chaim Potok
“Please get well soon, Ilana.” He went quietly from the room.
I lay in my bed and watched dust motes dancing and whirling in the beams of light from the diminished sun that daily witnessed the blood of Europe. I fell asleep and dreamed of sand castles on the beach.
We returned to the apartment at the end of August. Two
months later, a few days after Simchas Torah, the festival in which men dance joyously with scrolls of the Torah to mark the end of the annual Torah reading cycle, we received word that Jakob Daw was dead.
The news reached us in a strange way. From the hospital in Marseilles where he died of pneumonia it made the brief trip to a local newspaper, then the longer journey to Paris by an underground courier, and then to London by illegal radio. In London it was picked up by the wire services. Aunt Sarah heard it on an early morning news broadcast as she was preparing herself for her daily trek from Newton Centre to Boston. She called my mother. She was so sorry, she said. So deeply sorry.
Sorry about what? my mother asked.
Hadn’t my mother heard the news?
What news?
And she told her.
We were all in the kitchen having breakfast. The phone stood on a polished dark-wood stand in the hallway between the kitchen and my parents’ bedroom. We heard clearly my mother’s gasp. My father rose quickly from his chair and went from the kitchen.
I heard them talking in the hallway about Jakob Daw and heard myself say to David, “Uncle Jakob is dead.” A tremor went through me. I looked at my hands. They were shaking.
My mother came back into the kitchen, her arm supported by my father, and sat down. Her face was waxen.
“Shall I get you a cup of coffee, Channah?”
“Please.” Her voice trembled.
“Is it Uncle Jakob?” I asked. “Is Uncle Jakob dead?” “Yes,” my father said. “Your Aunt Sarah heard it on the radio.”
“Blessed is the righteous Judge,” David said in Hebrew. “Shall I turn it on?” I asked.
“Please,” my mother said. Her voice still trembled and she was taking small deep breaths.
I switched on the radio. My father brought over a cup of coffee and put it on the table in front of my mother.
We sat there listening to the news of the war in Europe and heard nothing about Jakob Daw.
My father turned off the radio.
“Maybe it was a mistake,” I said.
“I think you and David should start your day,” my mother said. “You have school and I don’t want you to be late.”
On the way out of my room I whispered to the two little birds in my harp, “Uncle Jakob may be dead. Don’t close your eyes. We have to keep our eyes open.”
It was not a mistake. His obituary, as well as articles about him, appeared in all the afternoon newspapers. We heard about it again on the evening news. My mother wept. My father comforted her. They were together in their room a long time.
Two days later my mother began to go to the very early morning service in our synagogue to say Kaddish for Jakob Daw.
There had been a brief discussion over the supper table about my mother reciting Kaddish for Jakob Daw. We were done eating and were sitting at the table, listening to the news: German aircraft bombing England; 16 million American men registered for the draft; Jews beginning to be deported from Alsace-Lorraine and the Rhineland; Hitler and Franco meeting at the French town of Hendaye on the Spanish border. After the news my mother turned off the radio and announced that for the next eleven months she intended to get up very early in the morning to go to synagogue to say Kaddish for Jakob Daw, and did we think we could make our own breakfasts?
We all looked at her in a long moment of silence.
“Why?” my father asked quietly.
“No one else will say it.”
“Ask one of the men to do it.” “I want to say it.”
“You’re not part of his family, Channah. You were not related to him.”
“I want to say it anyway.”
“But you don’t have to. You shouldn’t. It falls into the category of a Commandment that doesn’t need to be performed. It has no meaning in the eyes of God.”
“It has meaning in my eyes, Ezra.”
David and I sat quietly, glancing at one another.
“A woman is not supposed to say Kaddish,” my father said very quietly to my mother. “You’ll upset the shul. Especially if you go to the daily minyan.”
“Should I go to a Conservative or Reform synagogue?”
He gave that no consideration at all and shook his head.
“Then I’ll go to our shul.”
He shrugged. “All right. It will be awkward. There will be a fuss about it, that I can promise you. But if that’s what you want, go ahead. We’ll manage with breakfast. This family will manage, Channah. If that’s what you really want.”
She would leave the apartment before David and I woke and return after David and I had left for school. Weeks went by that way. I saw my mother only at night. The weather turned cold. Leaves fell. Roosevelt was elected president for a third term. Winter came and with it snow and sleet. Still my mother continued to leave the apartment every weekday early in the morning for the morning service and before sunset for the afternoon and evening service. She said Kaddish on Shabbos as well, and all around her women responded.
On our way back from the synagogue one Shabbos I asked her why she was saying Kaddish for Jakob Daw.
“I was really a child when I met him,” she said. “He opened my eyes to the world. I owe him a great deal. And I loved him. Are those enough reasons, Ilana?”
It became part of our lives, my mother reciting Kaddish for the memory of Jakob Daw.
My father would prepare breakfast; David and I would help. “Stubborn woman, your mother,” he would say often in his courteous and respectful way. “She was stubborn when I knew her twenty years ago and she’s just as stubborn today.” David and I would leave for school, sometimes together, sometimes separately. Then my father would leave for his office, most often by subway, at times taking the car.
In a corridor in the school one day I overheard some talk, and on a cold gray morning soon afterward I left the house early and followed my mother to the synagogue. An icy wind blew along the parkway. The building seemed to be empty; it was more than an hour before the start of school. The front double door yielded to my push. My footsteps echoed in the empty hallway. I opened the door to the large room that was the synagogue and stopped. The room was empty.
I stood in the doorway and stared into the room. The ninon curtain was gone. Rows of neatly arranged empty chairs filled the room. The ark with its Torah scrolls stood unseen behind a high plywood wall, which enabled the room to be used for secular purposes, such as school assemblies, a rehearsal hall, and graduation ceremonies. I had forgotten for the moment that the room was not used as a synagogue on school days.
Where was my mother?
I came back out into the central hallway and listened. The building was silent. I walked up and down the floors and corridors of the school, listening. I heard nothing. Then I went quickly downstairs to the basement, pushed open a heavy metal door, and heard immediately the murmur of chanted prayers.
Adjacent to the furnace room was a small room, its door open. About a dozen men sat in wooden folding chairs, praying. This was the weekday minyan, which met early so as to enable the men to get to their jobs on time. At the lectern stood a roundish man whom I immediately recognized as Mr. Helfman. A small ark stood against the wall that faced the lectern. The room was painted a pale green and lit by a small dusty ceiling fixture. The air smelled of furnace heat and damp earth. In a dark corner rested
what looked like a slanting bamboo wall. I glanced quickly around and did not see my mother.
I went back along the corridor to the metal door. Then I stopped and stood still a moment and turned and went back to the room, a queer pounding in my chest. Inside the room I went silently behind the last row of chairs and peered behind the bamboo wall. There, on a single chair, her back to the wall, sat my mother, a prayerbook in her hands. She wore a dark blue beret and a dark blue woolen dress. Her coat was draped over the back of the chair. There was little light and she was bent over the prayer-book.
I stood very still, staring at her.
Then she sensed my presence and glanced up. A look of astonishment filled her eyes. “Ilana?” she whispered.
“What’s wrong?”
“Mama? Why are—?”
I heard people rising from their chairs. My mother rose and stood quietly as one of the closing prayers of the service was said. Mr. Helfman repeated the last words of the prayer. A number of the men began to recite the Kaddish. My mother stood behind the bamboo wall and said the Kaddish in a clear, steady voice that was audible throughout the small room. She said it once more in that same clear, steady voice before the service came to an end.
My mother put the prayerbook on the chair and picked up her coat. I followed her through the room. A few of the men nodded at her; most remained impassive; one looked visibly annoyed.
Mr. Helfman said, “Good morning, Ilana. Aren’t you up early? Is everything all right?”
I nodded, feeling my face hot and my heart pounding.
In the corridor I said, “Mama, why are you sitting like that?”
“It’s all right, darling. They didn’t want to build a wall just for me. Someone found that piece of bamboo.”
“It’s like being in a prison.”
“What else can I do? They didn’t want me there at all. With the bamboo wall they can have their service, as long as I stay out of sight.”
I said to my father that night, “Is that the law, Papa?”
“Yes, llana. That’s the law.” “I think the law isn’t decent.”
He gave me a patient smile. “Let me explain something to you, Ilana. We pray separately as a group. If there were no separation between men and women, the men would not be able to hold a service. And then no one would be able to say Kaddish. Women don’t have to pray because they’re involved in family responsibilities. It’s your mother’s choice, Ilana. The men were very decent to put up the bamboo. That solved the problem and enables your mother to say Kaddish.”
I raised the issue in my Hebrew class. The teacher, Mr. Margolis, was tall, middle-aged, clean-shaven, with fleshy cheeks and a paunch. He wore a dark suit and tie. Across his vest, in two roller coaster loops from pocket to button to pocket, rode the gleaming chain of his pocket watch, which he regularly pulled out, snapped open, consulted, and put back. On his thick dark hair was a tall dark skullcap. He listened to me patiently and said, “What do you want them to do, Ilana? Let your mother sit in the same room with the men?”
I nodded.
A murmur rose from my classmates. Shocked eyes stared at me. Ruthie, three seats to my right, threw me a startled look.
“That’s the way all the Reformers and the Conservatives sit,” Mr. Margolis said sternly. “Such a synagogue is not a holy place, and we may not pray in it. It is a Christianized synagogue. Do you want us to become like the Conservatives and the Reformed?”
It was not a question that required an answer. I sat very still at my desk and said nothing. How they all stared at me! My heart pounded and my throat was dry.
At the end of the class he asked me to stay behind for a moment. I came up to his desk as the others were filing out for the afternoon recess in the yard, some of them glancing at me pityingly. When we were alone, he said, “I tell you this directly, Ilana. You are probably my best student. Don’t cause trouble in class. You will set a bad example for the others.”
I stood in front of his desk, frightened.
“Tell me, who is your mother saying Kaddish for?”
“Jakob Daw.”
“How were they related?”
“They were good friends.”
“They were not related?”
“No.”
He looked at me out of narrow eyes. “Where did your mother know him?”
“In Europe. In Vienna. They went to school together. And he was in America awhile.”
“Ah, yes. Now I remember. Jakob Daw. The writer who was deported.”
“Yes.”
“You knew him too?”
“He was like an uncle to me. I loved him.”
Mr. Margolis was silent a long moment, looking at me intently. Then he lightly cleared his throat and said, “Listen to me, Ilana. Everywhere in the world, wherever you go, there are rules and laws. If we did not have rules and laws there would be anarchy. Do you know what anarchy is? This school has rules and laws. No one here forces you to come to this school. But once you do come, you must obey the rules and the laws. You are a very good student, but your head will not help you if you do not understand the rules and the laws. In a year and a half you will graduate. There are awards and prizes. Keep up your good work and we will all be proud of you. Do I make myself clear? Good. Very good. Now you can go and join your friends.”
I had learned a strange lesson: walls are laws to some people, and laws are walls to others.
I went out of the room and did not again talk to anyone in that school about the cage in which my mother daily sat to say Kaddish for Jakob Daw.
We were studying the Book of Genesis, the stories of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs. That was the winter of early 1941, when
German planes were daily bombing England, and Franklin D. Roosevelt was inaugurated for his third term as President of the United States.
I loved the stories in Genesis. Mr. Margolis taught slowly and with some impatience. We were studying the Hebrew text along with the commentary of Rashi, a great French rabbi who lived in the period of the First Crusade. Always I got myself ready for class by studying the text in advance, even when Mr. Margolis did not assign it. I had learned that method of study from David, who always prepared in advance whatever page of Talmud would be studied next by his class.
We were in the twelfth chapter of Genesis. God tells Abraham—Abram was his name at the time—to leave his country and the place of his birth and his father’s house for a distant land. Abraham journeys with his household to the land of Canaan. There he travels as far as a site called Shechem. And the text says, “The Canaanites were then in the land.”