Authors: Kenneth Wishnia
Under his direction, this project took on a life of its own, and from the way people reacted, you’d think we were trying to undermine the thousand-year-old tradition of publicly funded education.
Finally, the day came. I stood before the chief rabbis of Kraków and defended my outrageous proposal for providing smaller classes, with bread and milk for the children of laborers, and putting an end to the preferential system that placed mediocre students from well-to-do families in the best positions while superior scholars from poor families got stuck teaching seven-year-old girls how to read the Torah in Yiddish in overcrowded classrooms. I had done everything they asked. I found support in the
responsa
. I documented what every other yeshiva in the city was doing. I cited Abbaye, who says that “only he who lacks knowledge is poor” (Nedarim 14a), and the
Mishlei
of Solomon, wherein it is written that wisdom is more valuable than silver and gold (Proverbs 3:13–14).
The result? They told me to write down my entire argument, along with all the supporting documents, and make enough copies to be circulated among the heads of the rabbinical court and the community council for their consideration.
So I spent six months researching and writing a book that eight people read and promptly dismissed.
But that’s not why I came to
Prague
.
The Talmud says that many things in life depend not on merit, but on
mazl
. Luck. Sheer chance.
And believe me, it’s true. Because soon after we started working together, Rabbi Ari
der royter
died, and once again I was left without a rabbi to support my cause. He also left an office full of books that he had instructed me to distribute to the neediest students. So after sitting
shiva
for a week, I carted the books over to the yeshiva, carried them up the stairs, and left them on a table for the students to go through and take what they wanted. But Rabbi Ben-Roymish, the acting head of the yeshiva, complained that the dusty old books were cluttering up the hallway, and told me to remove them immediately. I asked him to let the books remain for a few days to give the poor students time to go through them. But he said that he didn’t want students “picking at the carcass” of old book collections, and that in the past such “remains” had been left for months. I gave him my word that I would remove them after a couple of days and sweep up the hall besides, but it meant nothing to him. He made me pack the books up that very day and sell them for practically nothing to a traveling book peddler.
I guess that was just the last straw. How could I stay there after that? How could I stay in a place where my solemn word of honor had no value?
The Talmud asks, “Why are scholars compared to a nut?” The answer given is that even though the outside may be dirty and scuffed, the inside is still valuable. But I could think of other reasons for the comparison.
But that’s not why I came to
Prague
.
I stayed away from Kraków for many years, but when I returned, I discovered what had been missing from my life. Rabbi Simeon ben Eleazar says that the Holy One, blessed is He, endowed women with more understanding than men. And my Reyzl was living proof of this. She was strong and beautiful and endowed with a natural talent for running a trade.
And I couldn’t get enough of her. I loved her very essence, and how it lingered on my lips for hours as a sign of our love, and how I would cling to her, trying to get closer to her than is physically possible in this world, as if I were trying to annihilate the distance between us. Maybe she tasted of the womb, and fed some deep, forgotten desire to return to it, floating in warmth, protected on all sides, cared for, loved. I’d make her want me, need me, and desire me completely before she took me in. All I ever wanted was to be as essential to her as she was to me, in that moment when the rest of the world disappears and one woman becomes all women for you.
But all the years of study with sharp minds in dusty rooms hadn’t taught me what to
say
to her. All the Torah, the prophets, and the endless pursuit of Talmudic logic couldn’t guide me to the words I needed to set things right between us. Only the mystical
Zohar
had offered a hint: “The ideal man has the strength of a man and the compassion of a woman.” A tricky proposition, but I was working on it. Just not fast enough for some people, apparently.
Perhaps I should mention that it’s perfectly normal among Jews for a woman like Reyzl, whose family had some standing, to marry a poor scholar and live on her parents’ charity for a few years. But then the husband is supposed to get a prestigious position as a respected rabbi, and start building a house of his own with cooks and servants and lines of students going out the door, and well-connected people seeking his advice about money and other important matters. He’s not supposed to turn and head the other way, beyond the borders of the empire to a snow-covered wasteland near the Pripet Marshes just to study with
one
obscure rabbi.
It didn’t occur to me to talk it over with her first.
Not that I would have listened.
And that’s why I came to
Prague
.
It was time for me to listen.
THE RAMPARTS OF THE CITY were eerily silent, as the town criers held their tongues while the dreadful edict was formalized, written out, and copied by municipal scribes. And so my beloved people made their last-minute preparations to welcome Pesach in blissful ignorance of the cauldron of trouble simmering outside the walls. Tablecloths and
kittels
blossomed in doorways and windows along the Breitgasse as house wives shook out the special white garments, and checked the dull gray clouds for signs of rain.
Servants hired by the Jewish Town Council prowled the streets collecting for the matzoh fund, hawking the World-to-Come with their steady refrain and promising us that “Charity saves from death, charity saves from death.”
“Have you given yet?” said one of them, thrusting a tin box at my chest. The box was shaped like a house with a peaked roof, with a coin slot where the chimney should be. Hebrew letters on the front panel spelled out,
tseduke
, charity, though the hawkers pronounced it
tsedoke
.
I tried to step around the little man, but he had the legs of a spider, and quickly blocked the way again with the
tseduke
box.
“Listen, friend, anyone who isn’t
getting
from the fund has to
give
to it. That’s how it works. Now, you look like a fellow who could spare a few kreuzers so the poor and destitute can have matzoh on Pesach. Maybe even a couple dalers.”
I reached into my pockets. A merchant of furs and pelts had leaned out of his shop to watch, and it wouldn’t look good for the new shammes to brush off the matzoh fund on
Erev Pesach
. I held out a pair of copper coins that seemed to get lost in my suddenly huge hands.
“I only have a couple of
groshn
.”
“A couple of what?” said the little man, staring at the strange Polish coins.
“I don’t have any Bohemian money yet.”
“Not even a few pfennigs? What kind of cheapskate are you, anyway?”
“It’s all I have. You want it or not?”
“Listen,
Reb Ployne
, Mr. Whoever-You-Are, you’re in
Prague
now, and we use pfennigs, kreuzers, and dalers—”
A voice from the street called out, “Hey, Meyer, take it easy. He’s with us. He’s new to the job.”
My rescuer came toward us and greeted the little man with a slap on the shoulder. He had wavy reddish-brown hair, an easy smile, and a nose that had been flattened in a couple of close encounters with the flying fist of fate.
“He’s with you, huh?” said Meyer, appraising me from head to foot. “Where you from?”
“Slonim.”
“Where the hell is that?”
“
East Poland
.”
“Never heard of it.”
“Well, it’s pretty far from here. It used to be part of
Lithuania
.”
“So you’re a Litvak! No wonder.”
“No wonder what?”
“A Litvak is so clever he repents
before
he sins,” said Meyer, repeating a bit of folk wisdom. “Fine, keep your groschen, smart boy.”
Before I could reply, Meyer skittered away on his spidery legs, drawn to prey with heavier pockets, rattling the
tseduke
box and chanting, “Charity saves from death, charity saves from death.”
I said, “Thanks for rescuing me from the
valley
of
She’ol
.”
“Who, Meyer? More like a bump in the road. Besides, we’ve got to stick together, right, brother?”
The red-haired man said his name was Markas Kral, shammes at the Pinkas Shul.
“I should know where that is,” I said.
“Kleine Pinkasgasse, on the other side of the cemetery from the Klaus Shul.”
I nodded. I had seen the Pinkas Shul’s peaked roof looming like the prow of a ship over a sea of crooked headstones.
“How’s the rabbi on your watch?”
“Rabbi Epstein? He’s all right. Maybe a little too by-the-book sometimes, but what do you want? That’s the job.”
“I know what you mean. Who are the three other shammeses besides us?”
“Well, there’s Avrom Khayim, who handles the Klaus Shul and splits the shift at the Old-New Shul with Abraham Ben-Zakhariah, and there’s Saul Ungar, who covers the High Shul.”
“How reliable are they in a crisis?”
“
Vi a toytn bankes
. Avrom Khayim’s too old to do any of the heavy work, Ben-Zakhariah acts like he’s too much of a scholar to get down on his knees and scrub the floor, and the Hungarian’s all mouth and no action. He’ll talk your ear off for a week before getting off his butt to help out. Looks like I’m your only hope, brother.”
“I’d say you’re right. It would really help me out if you could show me around. You know these streets better than I do, and if I have to learn it all from scratch we’re going to be completely
farkakt
—”
“Wait a minute, there’s my master,” said Kral, stepping away and greeting Rabbi Epstein with all due reverence.
Rabbi Epstein told Kral to stop gabbing and get busy responding to a woman’s complaint that her husband was being cruel to her.
“Oh, crap. I hate domestic quarrels,” Kral confided to me.
“Hang on a minute—”
“Sorry, I’ve got to go now. Don’t forget to tell everyone to burn their
khumets
. See you later,” said Kral, falling in line behind the rabbi as he turned toward the Pinkasgasse.
I watched them go, balling my fists for no reason except that I had finally met someone who could help me navigate the twisted streets of the ghetto, only to have him weave his way right back into the masses of men that made up the vast tapestry of the neighborhood.
The hell with my regular duties. I had to alert Rabbi Loew that the Jews were facing exile, annihilation, or both.
At the sign of the stone lion, I waited for one of the maids to sweep a pile of crumbs into the street, so that I wouldn’t track any forbidden
khumets
into the newly swept hallway. The Christian girls in the front hall swirled around me in a perfumy maelstrom, and for a moment it felt like my heavy boots were the only things anchoring me to the surface of the globe as I marched between them. If they only knew what was hanging over their heads, I thought—except it wasn’t their heads that would roll, was it? They were all
shiksehs
.