Yiddish Folktales

by Beatrice Weinreich

  My grandmother, who told me this story, used to say, “And if the rooster had crowed a little bit earlier, the demons would have dropped him in the middle of the stream.”

  173

  Neither Eat nor Drink What a Demon Offers

  It once happened that a number of Hasidim, driving in a carriage, came to a town and asked the local moyel, the ritual circumciser, to accompany them to a village for a few hours. The unsuspecting moyel went with them. They drove on and on, on and on. The trip seemed endless. At last they drove into a dense and very dark forest. In its midst stood a fine house into which they led the moyel As he was examining the child to be circumcised, the newly delivered mother said, in a whisper: “Whatever you do, don’t eat or drink anything here or you’ll be lost. These people are demons, and everything you see here is meant to deceive you. Long ago I was traveling when they handed me a drink of water, and from that time on they had such power over me that I could not escape.”

  Well, he circumcised the child, after which he was led into a grand hall royally furnished and decorated, with a table full of good things to eat. But when the moyel refused to eat or drink anything, the house suddenly disappeared. It was weeks until, footsore and weary, he found his way back to his home town.

  174

  A Balshem Drives Out a Dibbuk

  This is a true story about a balshem, a wonder-worker. The eighty-year-old taleteller from whom I got it gave me the balshem’s family name—it was Zhuravitser.

  There was a young man in our village who was very clever, but an idler. One day he disappeared, and no one knew what had become of him.

  Five or six years later, my father had to travel to a shtetl in Volhynia on business. There he wanted to go to an inn, but the place was packed and the street outside was jammed with people trying to push their way in.

  “What’s going on?” my father asked.

  “There’s a balshem inside,” was the reply. “He’s giving out talismans against all sorts of sickness, and amulets to help women get pregnant.”

  Just then the door of the inn opened and someone ran out right in front of my father. He was wearing a white satin coat, a waistband, and a fur-trimmed hat. My father looked closely at him and cried, “Moyshele, is that you? Are you the balshem?”

  “Hush,” said the balshem. “Come with me. I’ll let you in on something.”

  He seated my father on his wagon and they rode off to the home of a rich villager. The balshem had been summoned to drive a dibbuk out of this villager’s daughter, who was unable to sleep at night and kept shrieking that there was a demon in her featherbed.

  When they arrived, the balshem asked to be taken to the young woman’s room. Then he sent everyone out so that, as he said, he could practice the discipline of seclusion. Those who eavesdropped at the door could hear him chanting phrases from the Cabala.

  Suddenly all was silent. The door opened and there stood the balshem. He asked the rich villager to bring him a yellow cat and a small container of pitch. After much searching, a yellow cat and some pitch were found and given to him. Then he shut himself into the room once more, but this time he had my father with him.

  He took the cat and smeared it with the pitch. Then he cut open one end of the featherbed and inserted the cat. That done, he opened the door and ordered that the young woman’s bed be carried to the edge of a nearby wood.

  When his instructions had been followed, he said, “Wait. Very soon I’ll drive the demon out of your daughter.” Taking a glass of water into which he had poured effervescent powders, he began to mutter incantations, all the while making faces, spitting and whispering. The water in the glass fizzed and bubbled. The Volhynia by-standers, who had never seen such powders, trembled at the dreadful signs.

  It was then that the balshem took his stick and began to beat on the feather bed. There was a terrible screeching and out sprang the cat. At the sight of the strange black creature, feathered all over, that leaped yowling out of the featherbed, the awed bystanders cried, “Hear, O Israel.”

  The young woman, seeing that the demon had fled, grew calm and from then on was able to sleep at night. Soon she recovered her health. Of course, the balshem was well rewarded and stood generous treat to my father, who confessed that no real balshem could have invented a more effective way of driving out a demon than Moyshele.

  At which both he and Moyshele doubled over with laughter.

  175

  Lantekh, the Bridge Hobgoblin

  When the old rebbe, Shneyer Zalmen, was a young man, he lived with his parents-in-law in Vitebsk. Displeased with what they saw as his strange religious behavior, they urged their daughter to divorce him. But despite the problems he created in her life, she was not willing to part from him. She said that her husband was a great man.

  In Vitebsk a small river sets off a district called Zadunove from the rest of the town. To get there, one had to cross a footbridge, and for a while, the way across the bridge was barred by a hobgoblin, a lantekh. Now, the rebbe’s mother-in-law deliberately sent the rebbe to get her something from Zadunove. As the rebbe started across the bridge, it began to tremble and he felt that someone was trying to tear his fur hat from his head. Understanding at once that this was the hobgoblin’s work, he cursed it and drove it away to the most distant of deserts, saying, “You belong in uninhabited places.”

  And from that time on, the lantekh was never heard from again.

  176

  The Demon and the Willow Twigs

  One Hoshana Rabba night, a member of the Great Minyen of Hrubeshoyv was returning home from a village carrying a heshayne, a sheaf of hallowed willow twigs.* He was on his way to the synagogue to recite the Psalms. As he went along, he met a demon disguised as a woman who had an infant in her arms. The woman stopped him and said, “What is it you’re carrying?”

  “A sheaf of hallowed willow twigs.”

  “No,” she said, “that’s a broom.”

  “A sheaf of hallowed willow twigs,” said he.

  “A broom,” said she. And round and round this way they went several times. She wanted him to say that the sheaf of hallowed willow twigs was a broom so that they would lose their sanctity and she would have power over him. Finally he struck her across the face with his sheaf of twigs, and she disappeared. The child she had been holding fell to the ground. He took it into town to the home of a woman who had just given birth. He said to her, “Here is your child.” The people looked in her bed, and there they found a bundle of straw tied up to look like a child.

  * During Succos it is customary to beat a bunch of willow twigs against the reading desk of the synagogue as an accompaniment to prayer.

  177

  The Sleepy Tailor and the Zmore

  Once there was a tailor who was sewing for the peasants at Christmastime. Since he still had a great deal to do, and it was Christmas eve, he planned to work all night. At midnight he grew terribly sleepy. He knew at once that a zmore was trying to put him to sleep so that she could suck milk from his breast. He decided to stay awake at all costs.

  When the zmore saw that he refused to fall asleep, she got into his thread and knotted it so that he couldn’t work. This made the tailor very angry, and he grabbed his scissors and cut the thread in two. In the morning the severed body of an old hag was found outside the tailor’s window.

  From that time on, the zmore never bothered the tailor again.

  178

  The Last Dibbuk

  The town of Lashkovits had never, absolutely never, had a day like that Yom Kippur.

  In the synagogue the congregation was finishing the musef prayers, though in fact most of the assembly had already dispersed, leaving only the pious old men.

  The Rebbe of Lashkovits, the last descendant of Reb Meyerl of Premishlan, stood before the Holy Ark. Wearing his prayer shawl and his white linen overgarment, he prayed passionately, imploring the Lord to come to his aid for the sake of his holy grandfather, Reb Meyerl.

  For some while
now a murmur like the lapping of waves had been audible from the town square behind the synagogue. Hundreds of people, adults and children, from Tshortkev, Butshatsh, Otenyi, Proshove, and even from Tarnopol, had come to witness the duel between the holy Rebbe of Lashkovits and Mekhele Volakh of Tshortkev, the heretic follower of Rabbi Shapira.

  Today the whole world would discover whose was the greater power: that of the holy faith or that of the heretics (may the Lord have mercy on them). This, anyhow, is what the pious followers of Reb Aryele-Leyb of Lashkovits were thinking and saying.

  Opposing them were the Shapiraniks, the disciples of the Enlightenment and the admirers of Mekhele Volakh, who had dared to challenge the Rebbe of Lashkovits to a duel. They maintained that the duel would reveal whether the forces of darkness and superstition or the forces of light and reason had the greater power.

  But the members of those two parties were but as drops of water in the ocean compared with the mob of the simply curious. In the interval after the musef service and the beginning of nile, the crowd that had gathered in the square would see the great Rebbe attempt to drive a dibbuk out of a woman and into the mouth of the heretic, Mekhele Volakh.

  The cantor finished reciting the musef service. Not a soul was left in the synagogue except Reb Aryele and several old men in their customary places by the East Wall, who did not want to abandon him. From the alcove in which Reb Uryele stood came the fearful sounds of his prayers, which were then echoed by the groans of the old women who were still in the women’s section.

  Out in the open square, the impatient thousand-headed mob waited, growing larger minute by minute. Not an infant lay in its cradle. Everyone was in the square: Jews, non-Jews, peasants of every age and sex from all the nearby towns.

  Standing at the center of the square was Mekhele Volakh, a smallish man with a graying yellow beard. As usual, an ironic smile played on his lips, though now it had taken on determination as well. In his gray eyes glowed the heroic light that one sees in the eyes of someone who, certain of victory, is prepared to fling himself into bitter conflict.

  Mekhele Volakh was a simple sort of man. An innkeeper. Not many years ago he had been a Hasid who made fun of Rabbi Shapira and the Shapiraniks. Then suddenly—and no one knew why—he visited Rabbi Shapira. He read his pamphlets and the journal Hamagid, and in time he became one of the rabbi’s most devoted followers, ready to walk through fire and water for the sake of the Enlightenment.

  In the pages of Hamagid Mekhele had read how the Lashkovits “saint” was sending out letters to all parts of the world in which he claimed to heal all sorts of illnesses. The Lashkovits Rebbe asserted, furthermore, that he had a particular talent for driving out dibbuks from the bodies of their victims. Because of his skill, hundreds and hundreds of afflicted women and maidens had recovered their health. Mekhele found what he read intensely interesting and undertook to investigate what was going on in Lashkovits.

  It happened that he had relatives there, who told him that in the matter of dibbuks, the Rebbe had his hands full. Lashkovits seemed to be full of dibbuks just then. There was a regular epidemic of possessed women and maidens who came to Lashkovits from towns and villages throughout the region. The word “dibbuk” and the reports of the wonders performed by the Rebbe filled the air.

  And it was then that Mekhele decided to take a hand in the matter. He went first to Rabbi Shapira and described his plan: he would challenge the Lashkovits “saint” to a duel. He would “sanctify the Name” of the Enlightenment by exposing the Lashkovits Rebbe’s deceit and chicanery.

  Rabbi Shapira tried to dissuade him, saying that truth did not require uproar and frenzy to prevail. It went silently and moderately about its work. In any case, deceit would not endure for much longer, because darkness must fly from the oncoming victory of light. But Mekhele refused to be guided.

  Mekhele asked his relatives in Lashkovits to convey the following message to the Rebbe: “I, Mekhele, the Shapiranik, the maskl, have contempt for your dibbuks. I say that it is all a tissue of lies designed to mislead people and separate them from their money. And if the Rebbe holds that the tales of dibbuks are true, then let him demonstrate that truth to the world. If he can drive a dibbuk out of someone, he ought to be able to drive one into someone else. And I, Mekhele, am prepared to receive such a dibbuk. If the Rebbe believes he has the powers he claims, then let him name a day and let him show the world what he can do.”

  Mekhele’s relatives delivered his challenge. Meanwhile, the story of what Mekhele had done spread throughout Tshortkev and Lashkovits and to all the towns and villages in the region. It was said that the court of the Tshortkev Rebbe tacitly encouraged Mekhele, perhaps because it was envious of the pomp with which the Lashkovits court was conducted, or perhaps because the Tshortkev Rebbe’s followers were too aristocratic for such crude miracles as driving out dibbuks.

  In either case, the truth is that the Tshortkev court warned the Lashkovits Rebbe not to embroil himself in a battle with the heretics. But it was already too late for the Rebbe to back out. He had to pick up the gauntlet that had been flung down. Meanwhile he treated the matter with the utmost seriousness, hoping thereby to frighten his foe. Indeed, the Rebbe actually consulted a lawyer to ask whether he could be sued if the dibbuk should kill Mekhele Volakh. The lawyer replied that the law books were silent on the subject of murders committed by word of mouth.

  Then, through the intercession of various persons, in particular several of Mekhele’s relatives, the Rebbe sought to warn Mekhele of the dire consequences of his challenge. But Mekhele was not to be put off. He was afraid of nothing.

  So the Rebbe of Lashkovits deliberately set Yom Kippur as the day for the duel. And he chose precisely the time just before nile when every Jew stands most in fear of the Day of Judgment, the time when everyone’s fate is about to be sealed. But that did not frighten Mekhele either. And now the duel was about to take place.

  In the middle of the square stood the invisible dibbuk, hidden inside a woman who howled and grimaced and flung her arms and her head about as she cast venomous glances in Mekhele’s direction. From time to time she lunged at him as if she meant to tear him to bits with tooth and claw. Mekhele, however, stood unmoved. He showed her his fist and said, “Keep your hands to yourself, you shrew. You’re nothing but a charlatan.”

  At last the Rebbe, wearing his talis and his kitl, the white linen robe worn on solemn occasions, came out of the synagogue. With his eyes wide he walked slowly, solemnly, casting stern glances in Mekhele’s direction as he made his way to the middle of the square.

  As the crowd parted for the Rebbe, there was a sudden mass movement, as if everyone had shuddered at the same time. The now silent crowd hardly breathed. It was as if the human wave had congealed.

  The Rebbe stopped and turned his penetrating eyes on Mekhele, his mortal enemy. The Rebbe’s thick, dark eyebrows rose like thunderclouds. With an intonation that was at once gentle and threatening he addressed his foe: “You! Listen. Not many minutes ago we invoked God’s name as we prayed, ‘Turn, turn from your wicked ways. May the evildoer turn from his path and the sinner from his vicious thoughts.’ Hear me, heretic, today is a day for repentance. A day for begging pardon. Now I warn you, Mekhele, you evildoer, heretic … repent—repent for one day, for one hour before your death. The Lord is a God of mercy. And I too will forgive you.”

  But Mekhele, his stance assured and impudent, his lips twisted into a contemptuous smile, turned to face the Rebbe. After a brief glance at the crowd, he said, his voice perfectly controlled, “Do your worst. I haven’t come to hear your warnings. I’m here to expose you for the fraud that you are. See, I’ve opened my mouth. Now, drive the dibbuk into me—if you can.”

  A murmur swept through the crowd. The human wave shuddered once more. Cries of “Heretic! Convert! Apostate!” were heard here and there. But a fierce hush from the majority restored silence.

  For one instant the Rebbe could be seen to tremble. He lowered h
is head, and raised it again. Then, with a fierce gesture, he stretched his right arm out toward the possessed woman who was writhing, squealing, and lunging wildly toward him. “Silence, wicked one!” he cried. “Do you hear what I say? My decree is that you shall leave the woman through the little finger of her left hand, and enter into that man who is as wicked as you are.”

  Again came a murmuring, but it stopped almost immediately. The eyes of everyone turned fearfully toward Mekhele.

  For his part, he seemed indifferent to the gaze of those thousands. He smiled more scornfully than ever, stuck out his tongue at the possessed woman, and called, “Well? What are you waiting for?”

  One minute passed; a second; a third. Mekhele, the Rebbe, and the possessed woman maintained their poses as they exchanged looks of hatred. More minutes went by. A quarter of an hour.

  The increasingly restless crowd looked toward the Rebbe, who had by now turned pale. His eyes were glazed, his hands hung at his sides.

  Mekhele was the first to move. He straightened up, then, seizing his coattails, turned so that he stood with his back to the Rebbe. Bending slightly, he cried, “Let him kiss my …”

  And left the square.

  Slowly, wearily, the crowd, as if it had been whipped, crept back into the synagogue for the nile service. The congregation felt as if this were Tisha b’Av, and not Yom Kippur.* As for the Rebbe, he said not another word. He sat in his seat with tears streaming down his face. When the service was over, he shut himself inside his house and did not leave it or even speak to anyone for two years. He lived withdrawn and abandoned, and at the end of the two years, he died. With his death the line of Reb Meyerl of Premishlan came to its end.