by Talia Carner
Reb Moskowitz relaxed back in his seat. His lemon-and-cinnamon fragrance filled the cabin. “What are your names?”
“I’m Zelda, and these are my daughters, may the evil eye keep away from them, Batyale and Surale.”
“Batya,” Batya mumbled. Her sister might not mind the diminutive of her name, Sarah, but Batya hated it.
Reb Moskowitz tossed her a sympathetic glance, and Batya shrank into the seat. Even occupying the same space as this man was above her place in society. Here was a man who drank fruit nectar every day. Who was she, who wore filthy clothes and whose uncombed hair was lice-infested, to have his attention bestowed upon her?
“And what does a gentleman of your high standing do in that place where you say you live?” Her mother’s voice was tinged with respect even though her brazen questions made Batya wince.
“Buenos Aires. It’s in America. But I have business interests all over the world.” Reb Moskowitz’s hand brushed one of his lacquered, pointed shoes to remove a speck of dust that didn’t seem to be there.
Business interests. Both words so foreign, they silenced even Batya’s mother.
During the many hours of the ride, Batya mulled over the words “business interests.” She knew what a butcher, a tailor, a blacksmith, a shopkeeper, a peddler, a water carrier, a cantor, a money changer, an undertaker, a scribe, a winemaker, and a dairyman did. She even knew what a tax collector and a ganef, a thief, did. But what did a man with “business interests” do?
Chapter Three
Before sunset, they reached the Pale of Settlement. With luck, the first village would give them a place to stay at least until tomorrow, when the three stars announcing Shabbat’s departure would appear in the sky.
The carriage entered a shtetl that at first looked as dilapidated as Komarinoe, although larger. The smell of woodsmoke, excrement, and mold welcomed Batya with the sense of the familiar, but Reb Moskowitz pulled out a white handkerchief, doused it with rosewater from a vial he retrieved from his leather case, and brought the handkerchief to his nose. As any nobleman would do, Batya thought.
Soon, the muddy thoroughfare became a cobblestoned street, and low wooden huts were replaced by two-story buildings. The right side of the street even had a paved sidewalk. People were rushing about for Shabbat—to home or, as the rolled towels under their arms attested, to the mikveh, the communal ritual bath. Batya’s eyes took in the many small stores with goods displayed in their windows or still outside their doors. Merchants lugged in barrels of merchandise; some were already boarding up their doors. Everyone, except her family, had a home to go to.
The carriage stopped in front of the synagogue, a square wooden structure with a pitched roof, under which a Jewish star had been nailed. Men wearing black felt hats and yarmulkes came out to greet Reb Moskowitz, who opened the window, leaned out, and waved to them like a king to his subjects below. Then he retrieved an umbrella from under his seat, climbed down from the carriage, and accepted the well-wishers’ extended arms.
He had such a dignified air with that umbrella hooked on to his arm! The congregants surrounded him, clapping and bowing their heads. One man, probably a tailor, fingered the edge of Reb Moskowitz’s suit and nodded in awed approval. Another bent down and wiped the fresh mud off Reb Moskowitz’s lacquered shoes, while another rolled out a rug so the distinguished guest wouldn’t dirty those shoes in the two steps to the door. The congregants babbled profuse words of welcome as they swept him through the narrow doorway.
“They’ve been waiting for him,” Surale said. “Why?”
“This is his home village, where he’ll be introduced to his future bride.” Batya scanned the street to glimpse the line of beautiful girls, but only two mature women were in sight, hurrying along, surely to prepare exquisite tables at their homes for Shabbat. Batya imagined that after the prayers, when the men returned to their families, Reb Moskowitz would be led to the home of the wealthiest man in the village, whose house would have two rooms, maybe even three. The dining table would be covered in white lace, fine china, and polished silver, and a sparkling crystal chandelier would shine down from overhead on the loveliest lucky daughter of the rich man.
Reb Moskowitz’s horses were led away to be brushed and fed. Batya helped her father unhitch the cart from the carriage and tow it onto a dry mound on the windowless side of the synagogue. She hugged Aggie’s neck and wondered where to turn.
Her father raised his head toward heaven. “Master of the Universe, can You explain to me, why does one Jew get to eat a buttered roll and another gets to eat dirt?” Still looking up, he shook his head. “If You want my advice, You can give me a buttered roll once in a while. Metaphorically speaking, of course.”
“He got your meaning,” Batya’s mother said. “He doesn’t need your advice. If He’d meant things to be different, they would be different.”
“I should write again to my brother in America to get us the tickets,” Batya’s father said.
“What brother?” his wife countered. “He hasn’t replied in years!”
“That’s a good sign that he’s doing well.”
All her uncle needed to do, Batya thought, was scoop up the gold in the street and exchange it for passages for them.
A tall man with a talis, a fringed prayer shawl, draped around his shoulders came out of the synagogue and approached. “Might you give us the honor of joining us for a minyan?” he asked Batya’s father, referring to the Talmudic requirement of a ten-man quorum for public prayer.
“As the Good Book says, ‘Completing a minyan is the greatest mitzvah a Jew can perform,’” Batya’s father replied, and went in.
The man turned to Batya’s mother. “Someone from the Benevolent Society will come to see to your needs.”
“It’s almost Shabbat,” Batya’s mother replied, her tone demanding. “She’d better hurry.”
Batya sat down on the cart to wait with her mother, while Surale milked Aggie into the bucket, then transferred the fresh milk into their large tin canister. Batya rose to pour a cup of milk for each of them in turn before buckling the canister’s lid.
Dusk was descending, and the air became colder. Batya pulled on her only warm garment, a long wool cardigan with holes she had patched with whatever color yarn she could find. She had hoped for a new coat, but now there would be no money for one, and she had outgrown the one Surale was now buttoning up. Soon, when Batya ventured outside, she would have to borrow her mother’s shawl.
“Do you know the story about Rabbi Chanina and his wife?” Batya’s mother began. The daylong carriage ride had tired her, but it had not exhausted her the way walking and pushing the cart had done. “They were so poor that often they had nothing to cook for Shabbat. Every Friday, before Shabbat, Rabbi Chanina’s wife would throw a burning coal into the oven, so that smoke would drift out of her chimney and the neighbors would assume that she cooked.
“A nasty neighbor said, ‘I know that they don’t have anything. Let me go and see what all that smoke is about.’
“When Rabbi Chanina’s wife heard the knock on the door, she was mortified and went to hide in the inner room. The nosy neighbor entered anyway and opened the oven. But a miracle occurred, and she found it full of loaves of challah.
“She called, ‘Come! Come! Bring the spatula. Your challah is starting to burn, and you need to get it out quick!’
“Rabbi Chanina’s wife returned, saying, ‘That’s what I went in to get.’” Batya’s mother smiled broadly. “You see, she was telling the truth. Trusting God, she was so accustomed to miracles that she wasn’t surprised that the coals had turned into challahs.” She paused. “We, too, should trust God and welcome Shabbat right here. Batya, find the Shabbat candles and candlesticks.”
Batya’s stomach rumbled. They might not have a miracle challah, but they did have a wheel of yellow cheese wrapped in hay, an unopened jar of pickles, and the remainder of the loaf of bread the innkeeper had handed them that morning. Nevertheless, givin
g the miracle one more chance, she scanned the street for their expected salvation.
“Why are you standing there like a tree? Let’s light the candles,” her mother said.
Batya dug her arms deep into the pile of belongings, but couldn’t find the candlesticks. Her search turned frantic. She couldn’t unpack the cart and drop their belongings on the dirt, then repack it all when it was already Shabbat. Yet it was inconceivable not to light Shabbat candles. She felt like crying; God would know that her family had transgressed. “What shall we do without them?”
Her mother tightened her shawl around her head and shoulders. “Let’s go inside and do another mitzvah.” Her tone was brave, yet Batya knew she was hiding her sorrow. No Friday evening had ever gone without her performing the decreed lighting of the candles. Her mother added, “God cares more about us remembering His Shabbat than about the poverty of our attire.”
Formal praying in the synagogue was meant for men; women prayed there only in times of great distress. In their daily lives, they uttered the many prayers and blessings at home. Batya said nothing as she and Surale filed into the synagogue behind their mother and headed to the back. The women’s section was tucked behind a lattice partition, protecting the men from the temptation to turn their heads, glimpse the women, and become inflicted with impure thoughts.
Only half a dozen women sat there, peasants like Batya’s family, but clean, their hair freshly wrapped in kerchiefs, their shoes brushed. Two women buried their faces in their hands, mumbling prayers and weeping.
Batya’s mother drew her book of tkhines from her skirt pocket. Batya noticed that none of the women had this special book of women’s prayers, written in Yiddish instead of the holy Hebrew, which, although using the same alphabet from right to left, most women didn’t understand. She felt a flicker of pride. In spite of her mother’s sorry state—not even washed from the dust of travel—she alone among these women knew how to read.
With Surale on her other side, Batya’s eyes followed the text of the book while her mother murmured the words so as not to disturb the others or, God forbid, allow her voice to reach the men and distract them.
“He who blessed Sarah, Rebekah, Rachel, and Leah, may He bless every daughter of Israel,” her mother whispered, then went on to embellish a prayer. “We wish to celebrate Your holy day, but we are unable to. We wish to adorn ourselves for You, but we cannot. May You accept our memories of our past celebrations of Your holy Shabbat instead of our failure to light the candles tonight. Please forgive me and my daughters at my side and my husband out there, and cast upon us Your protection and lead us to a safe haven. Amen.”
When the men’s service concluded, Batya grasped her mother’s elbow to usher her out first, before the more respectable women could look down upon them.
Batya’s father emerged from the synagogue a few moments later, his face beaming. “God is with us. We are honored to have been invited to the Shabbat table of a generous cobbler.” He nodded his head toward the synagogue. “We can sleep in there tonight.”
“Since when is it an honor to dine at a cobbler’s table?” Batya’s mother waved her hand in dismissal, and Batya understood that her mother was hanging on to her last thread of dignity. They were the poorest among the poor, yet the status of a dairyman like her father, who filled people’s stomachs with healthful delicacies, was higher than that of a cobbler who dealt with people’s dirty feet and repaired foul-smelling shoes.
“Who are we to complain?” Batya’s father told his wife. “On the other hand, Zelda, He’s God, so He can take a lot more than your complaints.”
“You hear this, Batya? A philosopher I married.”
Batya sensed the tenderness in their bickering. But she couldn’t help feeling shame. In just a few days, her family had turned into beggars who now waited in vain for the charity of the Benevolent Society and who must be grateful for any crumb of kindness they were shown.
From the corner of her eye, she saw Reb Moskowitz being guided toward the street by a man wearing a good hat. Before she had dared address him directly and thank him for his generosity, he was gone. “May God give you ten times your fortune and a hundred times your happiness,” she mumbled a blessing for him, hoping her gratefulness somehow reached its destination.
Chapter Four
The wife of the cobbler clapped her hands at Batya’s family’s arrival. “Oy vey iz mir,” woe is me, she chanted her ambivalent welcome. Her face sour, she moved from the narrow door to allow her husband to enter. “What do we have here?”
Batya wished her parents would turn and leave.
The cobbler pulled a whole orange out of his coat pocket. “To decorate the table,” he said, his tone appeasing.
His wife’s eyes rounded in delight. “Who lent it to you?”
“The treasurer of the synagogue.” The cobbler held the orange to the light, and his children, crowding around him, jumped up to try to touch it. “Be careful,” he told them, depositing the precious fruit in his wife’s palm. “We must return it in the morning.”
In spite of her grumbling, the cobbler’s wife seemed pleased to be the recipient of this loan and basked in her newly elevated status, one notch above the unexpected guests. “It’s a mitzvah to share Shabbat with poor people,” she said, her tone haughty, and pointed to the bench at one end of the table. A moment later, by the nearby stove, she whispered to her husband, “So you’ve got yourself a bit of honor in the synagogue by volunteering to take food out of your children’s mouths?”
The words echoed in the tiny hovel, suffused with smells of leather, glue, and dye from the cobbler’s work area in the corner. Batya’s mother’s sunken cheeks blushed in humiliation.
Six children with running noses assembled along two sides of the table, which was covered with a cloth that had seen too many washes, but none in recent months. After the kiddush prayer, for which the host passed one small wineglass around to all present, the hostess explained that the few chicken parts she had received from the butcher were too paltry to share with unanticipated company. “Had I known, I would have cooked a whole goose for you,” she added.
Batya cringed and looked at her mother for a reaction to the insult. Her mother’s head was bent; only her palms, pressing hard together, told Batya of her anger. The orange sat in the middle of the table, round and indifferent.
The cobbler’s wife doled out boiled potatoes to her family, then passed the bowl to Batya’s father. There were only two small potatoes left. He halved them, giving each member of his family a portion.
“That was supposed to be my second helping,” the cobbler’s teenage son whined.
“Maybe the guests are not hungry,” the cobbler’s wife said pointedly.
Koppel, taking a hint, raised his half potato to the boy.
“No,” she interrupted as the boy reached for it. “Let his father, who wants to act rich, who thinks that food grows on trees, give his portion to his children.”
The cobbler’s tin plate was already empty. He sat silently, gazing down, as his wife grumbled about his inadequacies.
Batya’s father passed his half potato to the boy. “As the Good Book says, if a poor man has a coat, he should give it to the poorer man who doesn’t.” Then, glancing at his own hungry family, he said, “Since we aren’t partaking in the chicken, the law of kashrut doesn’t apply to us.” Before Batya could protest that the law forbidding mixing meat and dairy still applied to them, he asked the hostess, “May I use your dairy dishes?”
She tossed on the table two chipped enamel plates. As if he didn’t notice her derision, Batya’s father went out to their cart and brought butter and cream to mash into their potatoes, drawing envious stares from the children.
The rest of the meal passed in strained silence. Charity recipients deserved no better, Batya thought. She shouldn’t feel the resentment that was bubbling in her.
Before parting amidst words of thanks, Koppel filled the hostess’s milk jug and gave her a piec
e of cheese for the next day.
“Who fed whom?” Batya’s mother asked once they were outside. “This woman invited the evil eye upon herself.”
“As the Good Book says, ‘Each according to his abilities,’” Batya’s father responded.
Batya smiled, recalling Fishke’s lessons. That was a Marxist saying, not the Good Book’s.
Clouds moved to block the stars and the moon. From behind, Surale clutched the hem of Batya’s dress, while Batya held both her parents’ elbows as they felt their way in the dark to the unlit synagogue.
Because of Shabbat, they couldn’t light a candle. When their eyes adjusted to the darkness in the synagogue, they settled on the straw mat that covered the packed-dirt floor.
Batya’s mother pulled out the leftover bread and broke a piece for each member of her family. “Pretend this is our challah,” she said.
“Baruch ata Adonai Eloheinu Melech Ha’olam hamotzi lechem min ha’aretz,” her father intoned the prayer for the bread.
Batya had been sleeping when she was awakened by her father’s voice conversing outside the synagogue door. The moon had broken through the clouds, and in its faint light entering from the high window she saw her mother sitting with her back against a column, Surale’s head in her lap. At first Batya thought that her father was chatting with God, although even God would be sleeping at this late hour. But then she heard a second man’s voice.
Her heart skipped a beat, and she curled into herself. Was another pogrom following them? In the first pogrom Batya had survived, the constable had shown up in the middle of Shabbat dinner—not to drink with her father, as had been his habit, but to inform him of the order from above. He then stood watching as the town’s thugs dragged Koppel by his beard, beating and kicking. Batya and Miriam ran with their mothers and sisters to the woods, where they all huddled, listening to the attack on the village’s Jews, praying for Batya’s father’s life. When they returned the next day, they found him injured but alive. All they could do was bandage his rib cage and place warm compresses on his open wounds before turning to the mitzvah of preparing the dead for burial. Short-handed in performing the sacred act of purification of the deceased, Batya’s and Miriam’s mothers hadn’t been able to prevent the girls from seeing the pregnant woman whose belly had been slashed, nor the little boy whose head had been smashed against a wall.
