Small Worlds

by Allen Hoffman

  “So according to Rabbi Eliezer, all the wine is lost because the terumah and profane impure wine become a forbidden impure admixture,” Yechiel mourned.

  “Yes,” answered Matti, “but not through any act of ours.”

  “Through our inaction,” Yechiel suggested.

  “Yes, but for that we are not responsible,” Matti responded.

  “According to Rabbi Eliezer,” Yechiel rejoined.

  “Yes, according to Rabbi Eliezer,” Matti repeated, and then he continued with the Mishnah as he knew Reb Yechiel was inviting. But Reb Yechiel interrupted him by crying out, “And is there a different view?”

  The nine-year-olds looked at him in astonishment. Reb Yechiel was not given to strange cries of passion. Yechiel, one of the best young talmudists in Krimsk, was always so kind, direct, and warm with them. Others in the study hall gave strange outbursts of humming, singing, shouting, pacing, as though they were fleeing the devil himself—but not Yechiel. Matti fingered the sticky candies in his pocket for security.

  “Yes,” Matti answered, “Rabbi Yehoshua disagrees.”

  “Yes,” Yechiel exulted. “What would he have us do?”

  “If we cannot maintain the purity of at least a liter of the priestly terumah wine by collecting it in a pure vessel, Rabbi Yehoshua permits us to collect it in an impure vessel. Through our direct action, the pure priestly wine becomes impure priestly terumah wine, but we save the ordinary wine in the lower chamber from becoming the forbidden impure admixture.”

  “Yes,” said Yechiel aloud to himself. “Rabbi Yehoshua considers the final result. Rather than let the profane, impure wine be lost, he permits us to cause impurity to the priestly wine by catching it in impure vessels. Why would he do such a thing?”

  Matti was confused. “As you said, to save the profane, impure wine below.”

  “But, Matti, that alone wouldn’t be enough. You see, in any event, the priestly terumah wine’s purity will be lost either by falling into the lower chamber or by our catching it in impure vessels.”

  Yechiel felt himself being drawn into the process of conceptual analysis. The joy of examining problems and developing concepts exercised a narcotic effect upon him. He was becoming absorbed in that self-contained world where the sun never shone and darkness never reached because it was lit with the light of Torah. But he hadn’t slipped into that realm completely, and it was Rabbi Yehoshua’s fault.

  “Even Rabbi Yehoshua recognizes a case where we should not cause impurity,” Yechiel declared.

  Matti responded, “The Mishnah teaches that if a Jew is walking along with several loaves of pure terumah bread for the priests and encounters a goy who says to him, ‘Give me one loaf and I shall make it impure by eating it, because if you do not give me one, I will most assuredly touch them all and thereby make them all impure,’ Rabbi Eliezer says that even though the goy will make them all impure, you must not give him any. Rabbi Yehoshua, however, says that you may put one loaf down onto a rock, but you may not hand it directly to him.”

  Yechiel stood up and began pacing back and forth behind his chair. Rabbi Yehoshua, he thought, doesn’t quite have the courage to give it directly to the goy. Put it on a rock for the goy to pick up, and if that doesn’t satisfy the goy then the Jew and all his terumah are in danger. Still, Rabbi Yehoshua permits you to give it to him indirectly. Yes, but what about the final Mishnah in the chapter?

  “Nu, Sternweiss, what about the final Mishnah; it’s late.”

  Matti found himself unnerved by Yechiel’s strange, agitated behavior. He swallowed thickly even though no candies dwelled in his sheltering mouth.

  “The final Mishnah in the chapter teaches that the same applies to Jewish women; if the goyim say, ‘Give us one of yourselves and we make her impure, otherwise we will most assuredly make all of you impure,’ the goyim must make all impure, for you must not surrender to them one soul of Israel.”

  Yechiel spun around.

  “What does Rabbi Yehoshua say?” he asked.

  “They both agree in this case,” Matti answered softly.

  “Why?” Yechiel demanded.

  “You must not surrender one soul of Israel.” Matti cowered, fearful of Yechiel’s passion.

  Yechiel stood leaning on the chair. Yes, that’s fine, he thought sarcastically. You can save the plain, impure wine according to Rabbi Yehoshua, but not the Jews. In all the other cases, there was a solution. Rabbi Yehoshua seemed to look ahead to the final results: in any event the priestly wine becomes impure; therefore make it impure in a way that saves the ordinary wine. In any event the loaf of priestly bread will become impure, so put it on the rock for the goy, to save the other loaves. In any event, the woman will be raped by the goyim, so . . . but no, here Rabbi Yehoshua lets all be lost. What happened to his concept? He seemed to have been developing some idea of preventive destruction. Yes, call it that, you are permitted to destroy a little to prevent the destruction of a larger amount. But the Jews—no concept.

  As he mused, Yechiel heard some of the students coughing —self-induced coughs to attract his attention. He sat down and looked at the students. They were hoping to be dismissed, since all Torah studies had to cease at noon. Sunset inaugurated Tisha B’Av, the day of calamity, the day all the priests had ceased to receive terumah and the goyim began to make the Jews impure with a vengeance. Yechiel looked at the students; they seemed frightened and sat very still. The only motion was Sternweiss’s train of candy consumption. It galled Yechiel. Sternweiss thought he had all the answers. Just let him meet Spinoza, Darwin, and Graetz.

  “Sternweiss, you were brilliant today,” Yechiel said.

  Sternweiss nodded in modest agreement.

  “You have selflessly shared your sweet Torah with your fellows.”

  Sternweiss looked a little uneasy at hearing this strange compliment.

  “I have no doubt that you will be equally quick to share your lesser gifts with them.”

  Sternweiss didn’t answer. His fat little eyes shifted about. He looked like an animal about to be slaughtered. His gaze was hopeless, for he knew that he was too weak, too slow, and too afraid.

  “Empty your pockets!” Yechiel commanded harshly.

  Slowly, Matti Sternweiss emptied his pockets, until they were no longer fat and no longer bulged. A considerable pyramid of hard, sticky candies graced the table in front of him.

  “Students, that is very generous of Reb Matti to share his gifts so willingly. On your way out please help yourself. Don’t forget to make a blessing ... and don’t forget to thank your benefactor. You are excused.”

  A dozen eager hands shot toward the candy and dismantled the pyramid. “Thank you, Reb Matti,” they mocked. “Blessed art Thou our God, King of the Universe.” And they raced, howling, into the sunshine.

  A mutiny of the Ship of the Dead, thought Yechiel with satisfaction; but his sense of triumph died abruptly as he watched Matti Sternweiss waddle outside with tears streaming down his face. Yechiel felt ashamed. After all, it wasn’t socialism that interested him, but people. He couldn’t make himself get up and apologize, and the mutiny of the Ship of the Dead seemed a very small triumph. Yechiel the captain was still sitting in the darkness. And the pharaoh; the pharaoh really was entombed. The Krimsker Rebbe hadn’t just planned his burial like the pharaohs of old, he really had entombed himself alive.

  Sitting in the darkness, Yechiel turned toward the sunlight, and it blinded him. In his dazzling blindness, he heard his students gleefully shouting, “Itzik Dribble!”

  CHAPTER FIVE

  BY THE TIME THESUNWAS SETTING, THE KRIMSKER Rebbe’s hasidim had gathered in his beis midrash, the room that served both for prayers and for study. Although the large, low-ceilinged room was much larger than the house to which it was attached, the beis midrash’s ramshackle architecture made it clear which structure provided the essential support. Indeed, the room the beis midrash leaned upon was the Krimsker Rebbe’s study. The door remained closed, as it had
for five years. The hundred and fifty hasidim had ceased long ago to look at it in expectation. Awaiting maariv, the evening prayer, most of them stared out the numerous windows, which were so close to one another they seemed to run around the walls, giving additional proof of just how little structural support the walls provided.

  The hasidim watched the white light fading into the dark slate-blue fingers of dusk. The heat remained; it would not let up for several more hours, but with the superior ventilation, it was tolerable. A few latecomers walked swiftly to their places. Boruch Levi had led Thunder to his stall, curried and fed him. Only then did he go inside his house to eat. In silent despair, he had come to the beis midrash and taken his seat. In observance of the Tisha B’Av mourning rites, he had removed his leather shoes, and he aimlessly explored the surface of the rough floorboards with his stocking feet.

  Yechiel Katzman stared at the setting sun with the feeling that he had lost another day. He, too, had run through the accepted rituals, all of them. As befitted a scholar, he had dipped his bread into ashes to symbolize the verse in Lamentations, “He pressed me down into ashes,” but he had felt that he was eating ashes not just for the Ninth of Av but for the entire year.

  Beryl Soffer sat waiting with his son Itzik. He wanted to watch the sunset, but he was afraid to take his eyes off his boy. On the way home from his office, he had been mourning the prohibition against bathing during the nine days of Av—how he could use a visit to the bathhouse!—when he heard the children taunting his son with the name that so painfully stabbed the father’s heart—Itzik Dribble.

  Itzik Dribble didn’t dribble, although his mouth hung open more than it would have had he been more intelligent. Not just his mouth. From his neck up, everything seemed to be slightly slack. His dull blue eyes lacked focus. His pale blond hair lay limp on his head. His ears appeared to droop; the cartilage was a little too soft, as if when the Creator had breathed a divine soul into Itzik’s nostrils, one of them began coughing and turned away too soon. In any event, Itzik was left without a full measure; his divine image, not fully inflated, lay slack and limp at the edges. Hints of the divine emerged in his shy kindness and sweet engaging smile.

  These humane traits were variously interpreted. The adults thought that teasing Itzik—practically the town pastime—was all the more sinful. The youthful teases, not all so youthful, pointed to his charming smile as vindication. See, he likes it; he’s smiling. And of course Itzik Dribble smiled when he proffered a lit cigar to the cat that, supposedly, loved to smoke cigarettes, and the cat scratched him. He even smiled after he licked the fresh cow turd that did not taste anything like the brown clotted cream that they said it would. Perhaps he was not so foolish as those who teased him, but foolish enough to lick turds and smile.

  Twisting his earlocks, Itzik Dribble rocked back and forth, a gentle smile playing over his loose lips. Sensing his son’s impatience, Beryl’s own face twisted with concern. The boy was too quiet, too agitated, and he was winding his earlocks around his finger in such a mad whirl that it was a wonder the hairs didn’t come out at the roots. Reb Beryl fingered the candies in his pocket and debated whether he should give one to Itzik. Once the sugar began to dissolve on Itzik’s tongue, his attention would melt with it; calmed, his energy would collapse into the hollow of his mouth, where he would fight to liberate the sweetness from the rock in hissing swooshes of air. When Reb Beryl heard the air rushing into his son’s intently sucking mouth, he could relax. Today, however, there was a problem; today was Tisha B’Av, a fast day. Itzik was still two years from his bar mitzvah, when he would be obligated to fast. But no other eleven-year-old would be permitted candy on Tisha B’Av. What kind of Tisha B’av was that? Reb Beryl decided not to begin dispensing the candies to Itzik so soon. He placed a comforting hand on his son’s shoulder. He had the sensation of patting a puppy that was about to pounce at a grasshopper. He reached into his pocket for a candy but was distracted by the whispering in the room. Reb Beryl immediately stood up. He reached to pull Itzik to his feet, but discovered that his son was already standing.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE KRIMSKER REBBE ENTERED THE CROWDED BEIS midrash from his study as casually as if he had been doing so several times a day for the past five years.

  The Krimsker Rebbe was of medium height, but there was a squatness to his stance that kept him from drawing himself up to his full measure. This squatness made him appear to be sitting when he was standing. Indeed, the effect was of stability and potential. These characteristics offered differing interpretations. The adult hasidim saw them as representing enthronement: the rebbe seated upon the throne of Torah, of good deeds, and of divine service with the wondrous potential of standing, that is, rising, to—heaven, the state of an angel, might one dare to whisper to oneself the messianic rumor? The children, however, whispered among themselves that the Krimsker Rebbe looked like a frog: the stable seated stance with the potential of performing the most remarkable leaps at the slightest provocation.

  The rebbe’s distinctive face reinforced both interpretations. Above a full black beard, the skin, smooth and dark, drew tightly about a strong, equally smooth—almost streamlined—bone structure featuring high cheekbones and sloping forehead. His brushy eyebrows, somewhat incongruous with the smooth skin and bone structure, did not appear as striking as they might have because his eyes did not sparkle. On the contrary, his wide hazel eyes did not make any immediate statement. At first glance they seemed impassive. Only when coupled with the face and stance did they generate force. And the nature of that hazel statement, neither brown nor green, remained ambiguous. It was difficult for any observer to guess what the rebbe was thinking as he steadily observed his surroundings. For the hasidim, the Krimsker Rebbe seemed to have the slightly weary air of concerned royalty who, while in close touch, remain masterfully above the common world around them. For the children, his impassive wide-eyed perception and smooth appearance suggested the uncompromising phlegmatic nature of an amphibian. They would not have been surprised to see his two large eyes move independently of one another. The two views were not as contradictory as they might have seemed, for more than a few of the hasidim under the age of twenty, who now saw the rebbe as royalty, affectionately remembered him as a frog.

  This evening, of course, was neither a Sabbath nor a holiday—far from it, it was a time of catastrophe and calamity; the rebbe wore a simple black skullcap and his “weekday” long black gabardine coat. In preparation for the Tisha B’Av rites of mourning, forbidding the wearing of shoes made from the hides of living creatures, he crossed the threshold in his stocking feet. Although the hasidim gaped in astonishment and felt their hearts pounding in amazed, fearful delight, he merely noticed that the benches were still standing upright. He calmly motioned to his sexton, Reb Yechezkal, to turn them over in accordance with the mourning custom of sitting on overturned benches or on the floor itself.

  The supercharged silence was shattered by Reb Yechezkal crying, “Jews, the benches!” as if he were sending the hasidim into battle with the solid, worn furniture.

  With greater alacrity than the beis midrash had ever seen, the congregation attacked. Reb Yechezkal himself, as captain of the host, supervised the overturning of the rebbe’s place; the rebbe sat on the eastern wall next to the holy ark, behind a long, heavy table. There was no room to turn over the chairs without moving the table, and since there was no room to move the table with such a crowd, the custom had always been to turn over the table. There (lower than anyone else) the rebbe would sit mourning the destruction of the Temple. The rebbe nodded to Reb Yechezkal that everything was in order. The white-bearded old man accepted the rebbe’s confirmation by looking down at his feet in modest confusion. He was the Krimsker Rebbe’s sexton once again, God be blessed! He frantically motioned to Reb Muni to begin the evening service.

  Reb Muni, who had been witnessing the events in fearful amazement, fought to control his trembling knees as he threaded his way toward the lectern. H
e reached out and grabbed the reading stand to steady himself. He was fortunate that he did so, for at that instant he was almost upended by a small boy bullying and squirming his way toward the rebbe, who stood facing the east with his back to the congregation. Reb Muni’s outrage turned to alarm when he saw the pale blond boy head directly for the rebbe. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Reb Beryl Soffer, the boy’s father, in futile pursuit, but Reb Beryl was too rotund and the beis midrash too crowded. The hasidim stepped back to let him pass, but it was too late; Itzik Dribble was already tugging insistently on the Krimsker Rebbe’s coat sleeve.

  The rebbe turned and looked down at the boy with his usual apparently impassive attitude.

  “Are you really a frog, Rebbe?” Itzik Dribble asked, anxious and insistent.

  Reb Beryl, his florid face filled with shame and horror, took his son’s hand. His other held a large quantity of candy.

  “Itzik,” he pleaded softly, and not without love.

  The rebbe, without taking his eyes from Itzik, flicked his hand in a clear gesture that neither Reb Beryl nor anyone else was to interrupt Itzik.

  “Yes, I am a frog,” the rebbe answered, as matter-of-factly as he might say “good evening.”

  Itzik’s anxiety melted into his sweet, soft smile.

  “You really pray by jumping like a frog?” Itzik asked in infectious delight at having had his expectations fulfilled.

  “How else should a frog pray?” the rebbe responded.

  “Show me! Rebbe, please show me!” Itzik demanded in a joyful squeal.