Small Worlds

by Allen Hoffman

  “You really believe in the revolution, don’t you?” Yechiel asked.

  “Yechiel, it is a historical necessity. That is what the dialectic is all about. The Russian pharaoh must fall.”

  “The Krimsker Rebbe is always talking wistfully about the pharaoh,” Yechiel mused.

  “Well, there are parallels. Marx explains that each epoch contains the seeds of its own economic destruction. The system destroys itself through its very success. Pharaoh’s slave system demanded more and more production from the workers, and finally they revolted. Of course that is a simplification, but it is not so different from capitalism today. The success of the capitalist factory system will create a workers’ revolution. Comrade Lenin in his brilliance explains that even agrarian workers can be of use in the revolution. Yechiel, we need good minds like yours; there’s a lot to be done, and we can do it. There may be suffering in the process, and that is unfortunate, but we must not lose sight of our goals.”

  “Grisha, have you ever killed a man?”

  Grisha hesitated. “No, I haven’t.” He sounded disappointed that he had not. “But it is difficult to imagine a revolution without blood. When I said that you cannot make an omelette without breaking eggs, I meant it. I will do whatever is necessary as a member of the party to create the conditions for a revolution and to create a classless society afterward. We must do more than say psalms, we must remove the suffering that motivates people to say psalms.”

  Yechiel’s silence suggested that he was not convinced.

  “Yechiel, what do you believe?”

  “It is easier to criticize than create; I admit that. I suppose I believe in God, but not the God who tells Jews how to tie knots on the fringes of their garments. I think Spinoza was right. There is some force that controls the way the stars move in the heavens and the way the waves flow in the sea. Those things are not random. Whatever that force is, that determination, I call God. As for specific remedies to our problems—personal, national—I’m not so sure,” Yechiel answered.

  “Read Lenin and Marx,” Grisha urged.

  “Maybe,” Yechiel said noncommittally.

  “They will answer all your questions. Why don’t you want to read them?”

  “You may be right, Grisha. Don’t be offended, but if you cannot explain them—or you are unwilling to—then I cannot have too much confidence in them. Admittedly, without having read them, I cannot be sure, but I suspect that they will not answer my questions. I feel like a man who has a suit that no longer fits. Once it was very beautiful, but now either it is worn out or I have outgrown it. That is literally the suit I am wearing now, the Krimsker Rebbe’s suit. And you are promising me a new, beautiful suit that will fit perfectly, but that suit, unfortunately, has not yet been made. Someday you might manufacture it, but it does not exist now. The cloth does not exist, nor do the tailors. So what am I to do? If I take off the ill-fitting suit and you do not produce the new one, I am left naked. It is not an easy decision.”

  Grisha laughed.

  “Is that so funny?” Yechiel asked, offended at Grisha’s lighthearted reaction to his dilemma.

  “No, Yechiel, it is not funny. Forgive my laughing. You are a serious, gifted person. I wish that I had your abilities. I was laughing at myself. I think of myself as the midwife of history, ushering in the new era for all mankind, and you turn me into the ghetto tailor that my grandfather was, forever taking orders that he could not fill.”

  Grisha’s voice trailed off into chuckling. Yechiel smiled, too, but given the night’s events, he could not laugh. “Yes, it is funny. The sages say that there is nothing new under the sun.”

  “For the sages maybe there wasn’t, but for us . . .”

  “You are already taking measurements?” Yechiel interrupted.

  “Of course, the trick is in the means of production,” Grisha said in utmost seriousness.

  Yechiel was still smiling in the dark. Revolutionaries and rebbes have very little sense of humor when they are talking shop, he reflected. He felt very tired, and although he did not want to go home, he knew that they were waiting for him while he talked of revolution. Forever talking.

  “Grisha, I must be going. My parents must be wondering what happened to me. Will you be all right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you need any food?”

  “On a fast day?” Grisha asked in mock horror.

  They both laughed.

  “I forgot,” Yechiel said.

  “No, you forget nothing. You remember too much,” Grisha said seriously, but not unkindly. “Thank you, Yechiel, I have enough. I played on Barasch’s guilt over driving me away. But you were like Abraham, who welcomed strangers and gave them hospitality.”

  Yechiel did not know whether he was joking or not. “And you are like one of the angels who visited Abraham on his way to destroy Sodom.”

  “Yes, and you cannot look back. Yechiel, come with me. And if you cannot come now, contact us through our newspaper, Iskra.”

  Grisha felt Yechiel’s hand on his shoulder. He stood up and turned around to shake it.

  “Good-bye,” Yechiel said.

  “Good-bye.”

  Grisha walked to the window and held the scholar’s long coat while Yechiel climbed out; then he handed it to him.

  “You had better close the window before you go to sleep. Do you want me to help you close it now?” Yechiel offered.

  “No, I won’t forget. Those things I remember. Thank you.”

  “Good night,” Yechiel whispered and slipped into the dark night.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

  NO SOONER HAD YECHIEL ENTERED THAN HIS PARENTS called his name and came into the workroom where he was arranging several large cushions into a straight line.

  “Yechiel, what are you doing?” his mother asked.

  “The rebbe sleeps like this on Tisha B’Av, so I thought I would, too.”

  “Sleeping on the floor on Tisha B’Av?” his mother said quizzically.

  Nachman Leib placed his hand on his wife’s arm to still her. “Yechiel, you went to the rebbe?”

  Yechiel busied himself aligning the cushions.

  “They’re dirty,” his mother said.

  “It’s Tisha B’Av, Mother.”

  “I never heard about sleeping on the floor, and your grandfather, may he rest in peace, was a very religious man,” she huffed.

  “Nu, Hinda, if the rebbe does it, Yechiel can do it.”

  “Yechiel isn’t the rebbe,” Hinda said.

  Yechiel felt his neck flushing in response to his mother’s words. He turned around and sat facing them on one of the cushions.

  “Yes, father, I went to the rebbe.”

  “You were there this late?” his father asked.

  “No, the rebbe spoke to me almost immediately. We talked for fifteen or twenty minutes, then I wandered around the rest of the night. I sat and I thought and I walked.”

  “What did the rebbe want?” his mother asked.

  “He told me that he had heard good things about my studies.”

  “Do you hear, Nachman Leib. Good things about his studies!” she exclaimed.

  “Shh! Hinda, let the boy talk.”

  “Then he asked me how old I was, and when I told him that I was eighteen, he said that an eighteen-year-old should stand under the marriage canopy.”

  “He talked to you about a match?” his mother asked in astonishment.

  Yechiel nodded.

  “So who was she? A mother has a right to know!”

  Yechiel looked at his excited mother and his concerned father. Then he looked down at the floor and said, “His own daughter, Rachel Leah.”

  His mother gasped audibly, then recovered to exclaim, “Rachel Leah?”

  “Yes, Mother.”

  “God in heaven!” she murmured. “Do you hear, Nachman Leib! The rebbe’s only child and our own Yechiel!” Overcome, she began to cry. “Mazel tov, Yechiel, our groom!” She turned to share her ecstasy with he
r husband, but he looked very grave, almost morose.

  “When?” she asked her son.

  “Shh! Hinda. What did you answer the rebbe, Yechiel?” Nachman Leib asked.

  Looking at his father, Yechiel said calmly, “I told him that I could not marry her.”

  His response did not surprise Nachman Leib, but Hinda’s eyes fluttered and her mouth opened into a small circle. She panted in short breaths. “No, no,” she said quietly to herself as if what she had heard could not possibly be true. “No, she’s a lovely girl. A little quiet, but a good girl. A fine girl, a very religious girl. No!”

  “I told him I was unworthy,” Yechiel added.

  “What did the rebbe say?” his father asked.

  “At first, he wouldn’t accept it. He said he felt that way, too, when the Beziner Rebbe offered him his holy Shayna Basya.”

  Suddenly Hinda returned to the conversation, exploding forcefully, “It may not be too late!” And then she continued in frantic optimism, “Yechiel can run back to him right now and beg his pardon. Come, Yechiel! The rebbe will understand. Nachman Leib, tell him to go at once. The holy rebbe will understand!”

  “Mother, it’s too late! Other things happened!” Yechiel stated definitively.

  “No, Yechiel, he’s a rebbe, a holy man. He’ll forgive you. You’re a young, poor boy. You were overwhelmed. Surely he can understand that. Nachman Leib, go in to the rebbe with him. Beg his forgiveness! It’s not fair,” she continued, “a young boy makes a tragic mistake because of his modesty. He’s from a poor home. In the house of Israel that is no sin. So was the rebbe himself.—Go, go, it’s getting late. Avoid the rebbetzin. With her Minsker nose in the air, she won’t have any pity, but the rebbe is different. Look what he did this evening with Itzik Dribble, and it wasn’t just because he’s a rich man’s son. All right, it didn’t hurt that his father has the match factory, but the Krimsker Rebbe isn’t like the other rebbes. The Krimsker Rebbe chose our Yechiel to be his son-in-law!” Her hysterical prattling gave way to a great burst of bawling as she said, “Our Yechiel,” and heaved with sobs.

  Nachman Leib put his arm around her, and when that didn’t comfort her, he took her in both his arms and embraced her, rocking her gently. He told her that it wasn’t always so easy to know what was for the best. Sometimes, he said, you can’t even tell a blessing from a curse. Hinda was so distressed that she could not understand her husband’s words. She looked up from Nachman Leib’s chest and sobbed, “Why, Yechiel? Why can’t anything good happen to us?”

  “Hinda, Hinda, don’t talk that way. So much good happens. Everything is good,” he said.

  Yechiel, who was sitting quietly and feeling miserable, suddenly realized how much he was his mother’s son. He refused to accept things the way they were, nor could he see the good in situations. He was his mother’s son, and Shraga, with his deep faith and loving nature, was his father’s son. Yechiel was her son, but he couldn’t comfort her. He began crying, too, but even that was based on his understanding of her pain.

  “Hinda, Hindale, it’s all right. Come, lie down in your room. Let me talk to the boy.”

  Nachman Leib led Hinda out of the room. Yechiel heard her weeping and his father’s soft voice trying to comfort her. And it had to be Tisha B’Av, when she would not sip a drop of water. In tomorrow’s heat, she would suffer terribly if she continued crying like that.

  His father returned and sat down next to him. “Are you all right?”

  “Yes, Father, why?”

  “You’re crying, too, you know.”

  “Yes, but not like Mother. I’m sorry,” Yechiel said.

  Nachman Leib put a comforting hand on his son’s knee. “Yechiel?”

  “Yes.”

  “What were the ‘other things’ that happened at the rebbe’s?”

  In his retelling Yechiel omitted that the rebbe had called him a “vermin” because he thought that would be too painful, and he neglected to tell his father that he was planning to leave Krimsk because he thought that could be left for later. He had enough unpleasant news without his impending departure.

  “It just cannot be. I hope Mother understands.”

  “No, it cannot be. With what you feel, you did the right thing. You could not marry the girl; that would be unfair.”

  Yechiel was moved by his father’s sense of decency. He wanted to tell him that Shraga was worth ten of himself, but Shraga would never be offered the rebbe’s only daughter. Undoubtedly, his father was worried about him not only because he had turned down such a spectacular match but also because he was a heretic and a sinner. Yechiel wished that his father would cry like his mother, but he simply turned to Yechiel with the question, “Why?”

  Yechiel answered, “Father, why does any man believe what he does? He looks into his heart and it’s there.”

  “Maybe you didn’t look long enough. Sometimes the heart is a very confusing place. We think we believe something, but when we search more carefully with the help of our Torah and teachers, we find something altogether different.”

  “I don’t know, Father. It’s something that has been bothering me for a long time. I wouldn’t say something like that to the rebbe unless I had thought about it very carefully.”

  “Yechiel, I know that. You are a very good and honest son. Your ability made us proud and brought us happiness, but that wasn’t what we treasured most about you,” his father said.

  “Earlier, I wanted to go see the rebbe,” Yechiel said, “but then I had no idea that he was seeing hasidim. I was very moved by his kindness to Itzik Dribble. I was even jealous of Itzik because I wanted to talk to the rebbe and tell him the things that were bothering me. I wanted him to help me, to guide me, to show me something I had overlooked. Instead, he got angry and called me a heretic and a sinner.”

  “Yechiel, you know the rebbe expected more from you because of your scholarship. He even expected you to be the next rebbe. And he offered you his daughter and his kingdom. The rebbe is still a father. He must have been hurt that you rejected his only daughter. After all, a father can accept insults to himself, but not to his children. Those are so much more painful. I know.”

  “I suppose so, but I was hoping that he would understand. I didn’t want to hurt him.”

  “But don’t you understand, Yechiel? You are hurting him because you are hurting God—and because you are hurting God, you are hurting yourself, too.”

  “And I’m hurting you, too. Forgive me.”

  “Raising children involves pain. If one can’t accept that, he had better not be a father. Yechiel, maybe you have been spending your time in the wrong places with the wrong people.”

  “You mean Barasch and Yudel?” Yechiel asked.

  “Yes, I do. They might not be so bad themselves, but you might see things differently if you weren’t around them so much.”

  “Father, I went to Barasch’s tonight because I felt uncomfortable in the beis midrash and I felt uncomfortable about coming home.”

  “It’s not just tonight.”

  “I don’t think they corrupted me, even though they tried. I have not been seduced by foreign gods. I don’t see that the foreign gods are any better than the one we have in Krimsk. I wish that I had discovered some truth to guide me, but I haven’t. I feel as if I have lost the truth I had and I don’t have anything in its place.”

  “You shouldn’t be afraid to admit that you made a mistake if you have made one. I know you are a fine scholar and a brilliant young man; with some problems, however, time is more important than intellect. It’s difficult to see the beauty in a poor, persecuted town like Krimsk when you are young and expect the sun to shine on the world as if it were the Garden of Eden. But, Yechiel, there is beauty in Krimsk. A quiet and holy beauty. The rebbe is right that we are a holy nation. I’m not talking about the beis midrash with the rebbe and the Torahs and all the other books. They certainly are very holy, but I cannot appreciate those the way I should. I see the beauty in our holy nation w
hen the poor, tired Jews wish each other a good Sabbath on Friday nights as they enter and leave the beis midrash. We are a holy nation, and we have a holy day. The Shabbos is our bride, and no matter how difficult, dreary, and even desperate our world can be, there is always a corner of the week that is pure and holy and good, when God is very close to us. That is the corner we live for during the week that is our true home.

  “Yechiel, I did not appreciate these things when I was younger. I still see the hunger in Krimsk. I see Shraga slaving away on filthy leather. I know that Alexander Bornstein was almost killed tonight by those bloodthirsty goyim. I don’t know if we shall have enough money to buy everyone shoes. I cannot always sleep at night. I lie awake worrying about you, too, and I don’t know why we have to have these difficulties, but we do or God wouldn’t give them to us the same way he gave us his holy corner, the Sabbath.”

  “Tatta, I love you,” Yechiel said, calling his father the name he had used when he was very small and his father carried him through the muddy streets to his first religious classes.

  “And I love you,” his father replied. “There is a lot in Krimsk, don’t think there isn’t. Yechiel, have you thought about what you are going to do now?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I suppose you cannot stay in the beis midrash,” his father said sadly, knowing that Yechiel could not, but wishing as only a father can that he could.

  Yechiel just shook his head. His father placed his hand on his son’s shoulders and leaned over to embrace him delicately. Yechiel turned to hug him with all his might, the way he had when he was a child and knew that whatever strength he could give his father, he would receive more in return. His father held him gently.

  “Now you must rest, my son. That can help, too.” Nachman Leib stood up. “Just rest.”

  “Good night, Father.”

  “Yes, good night,” he said and left the room.

  Yechiel lay back on his cushions, which were surprisingly comfortable, and thought that he did have something in common with the rebbe. He closed his eyes and opened them again. Somewhere—probably in the kitchen—a candle was burning. Around him he could make out various forms. All kinds of objects, large and small, crowded the workroom. In the faint shadow of light they assumed the most monstrous and fantastic shapes, but their chaotic turbulence was nothing compared to the thoughts and ideas that swam inside his head. When he closed his eyes, things were even more monstrous and fantastic. Krimsk, the rebbe, Grisha, his father, Spinoza, Shraga, his mother, Rabbi Yehoshua, Rabbi Eliezer, Rachel Leah, Lenin, even Matti Sternweiss guzzling candies, danced before him.