by Ezra Glinter
“I’m crying because my grandsons don’t need a grandfather.”
And he falls into a fit of coughing and coughs so hard he can’t catch his breath.
Besides words of wisdom and piety, the students also wanted to hear nice stories and of these the teachers had an endless trove, like an orchard strewn with apples and pears. But all these nice tales ended the same way: that one must study Torah. There was one story about a man from long ago who climbed up to the glass roof of a study house in order to hear and see the men studying down below. He was so engrossed in trying to follow and understand the scholars’ remarks that he didn’t realize he had been covered with snow. 131 Then there was a tale about a very saintly man who studied with his feet in a bucket of cold water to stay awake. 132 And another one about a good, devout but thickheaded boy who wept so bitterly about his inability to learn anything that Elijah the Prophet came to him and studied with the lad every night until he grew up to become a great scholar.
Itsikl’s teacher, the one who had given him Hanukkah money, promised his pupil that during Sukes 133 he would let him carry his lulav 134 and esrog. 135 And on Simchas Torah, 136 when the men dance around the bimah with the Torah scrolls, Itsikl would get a glass of wine and a piece of honey cake just like a grownup. Seeing that the boy wrinkled his brow, displeased that he would have to wait so many months until Sukes, the teacher rushed to make him happy.
“Soon Purim 137 is coming and I’m going to give you a Purim treat—a homentash 138 filled with poppy seeds and a packet of raisins too.”
Another man, who was teaching Meirke, bragged to his student that the Old Shul was the oldest in Vilna, even older than the Great Synagogue.
“Here we have a community register; it’s a sort of book in which all kinds of wonderful stories have been recorded. So it’s easy to see what a great honor and privilege it is to sit and study in the Old Shul.”
But when Meirke wanted to look at this book called the “community register,” his teacher didn’t know where it was. Instead, he showed Meirke a silver Torah pointer shaped like a little hand with an outstretched index finger. Meirke ran his rosy little fingers over the heavy pointer and exclaimed:
“Leibke Ox has a pair of brass knuckles. When he puts those brass knuckles on his hand and gives someone a good smack in the face, his face becomes mush. That’s what Leibke says, that show-off.”
Hearing this, the teacher shuddered.
“At least say, ‘forgive the comparison,’ for yoking together this Torah pointer and the brass knuckles. This silver hand I’m showing you is not made to hurt anyone. With this silver hand the gabbai 139 points out the words on the parchment to show the Torah reader where to read.”
The carved animals and birds above the Holy Ark, the Stars of David hand-cut into the windowpanes, even the hammered flowers in the big Hanukkah menorah, were no longer a novelty for the little students. So the teachers came up with the clever idea of showing them the treasures in the drawer under the reading table on the bimah and in the little cabinet beneath the Holy Ark. There lay a shofar, yellow and transparent as honey; a silver esrog box with four thin legs, and a spice holder shaped like a little tower used on Saturday night for the Havdalah prayer; 140 this little tower had tiny doors, a roof and a flag on top.
Nevertheless, all these beautiful things could not compare to the crowns and the silver pomegranates—also used as crowns—that were placed on the two wooden rollers of the Torahs. Moreover, the Pure Ones, as the Torahs were called, were adorned with belts and silken shawls, and covered with either dark red or deep blue velvet mantles. And placed over all these coverings were engraved silver breastplates.
“You see, little boys, what a beautiful Torah we have,” the elders said triumphantly.
The lads gaped with amazement into the open dark Holy Ark, their heads pressed together like lambs around a well.
IV
THE BLIZZARDS ABATED. The snow piled up on the roofs was higher than the low-slung little houses. The women peddlers with their baskets sat on low stools, their limbs stiff as they dozed. When one woke up and stirred, a mound of snow fell from her head scarf right into her baskets. Seeing that she had woken up from her sleep in vain—there were no customers in sight—the woman started praising her frozen apples in a loud voice.
“Bottles of wine! Bottles of wine! Who’s buying Malaga grapes?”
Hearing no response the woman dozed off again and sat there benumbed, like the pointer on the scale that hung over her head, an iron witness for the World to Come that she had given honest weights and measures.
During the day the snow dazzled one’s eyes on the broad streets, and at night it reflected, mirror-like, the twinkling green stars. But in the narrow little lanes around the Old Shul, during the day the snow lay yellow like a corpse. Even before dusk it had already turned gray-black, trodden by the feet of passersby. When night fell and the smoky kerosene lamps were kindled in the little shops, the narrow lanes were webbed in a mysterious play of light and shadow.
The toil-worn faces of the shopkeepers gleamed a hot deep red, as if the little stores with the wooden herring barrels had been magically transformed into wine casks made of glass. The women peddlers by their baskets took the half-extinguished firepots from under their aprons and kept blowing into the embers until the coals began to glow anew like great copper sunsets opposite their soot-covered faces and their kerchiefs capped with snow. Porters wearing cotton-wadded furs and beggars in long raggedy coats warmed themselves around a little tin stove in the middle of the lane. They looked like a secret band of exiled sons of prophets around a burnt-out bonfire in a dark dense forest. All were silent, their faces hidden in the blackness of the night; only their heavy hands with outspread crooked fingers were lit up by the little stove that crackled and sprayed sparks.
As soon as daylight reached the narrow little lanes, it already looked like twilight. On one such day a short man wearing a high winter hat and big felt boots stopped in front of a windowless little shop with only a door opening to the street. Inside sat the woman shopkeeper, wearing a long dress and a half-coat covered with a short fur. Her head was wrapped in a shawl and her feet swathed in layers of cloth over her felt boots. But since she was still cold, she sat with her back pressed to the wall so the wind wouldn’t blow at her from front or back. The old man stuck his head into the shop and asked the saleswoman:
“Do you have a teapot? In the Old Shul we have a tin pail to bring hot water from the tearoom. We also have plenty of glasses and saucers for the entire minyan. But what we do need is a porcelain teapot to brew tea.”
“I don’t have any porcelain or glass dishes. I just have tin teapots,” the woman answered, and then added: “If you pray in the Old Shul, then you surely know my Itsikl, who studies there with a teacher every evening.”
“Indeed, it’s me who is your Itsikl’s teacher,” the old man cried out, delighted with the supposed coincidence. “Ay, ay, ay, what a boy your Itsikl is!” he enthused, smacking his soft lips over his toothless gums. “Itsikl has some smart head on his shoulders. Good heavens! He’s amazing! May no evil eye befall him! He’s got a voice like a boy who sings with the chief cantor’s choir of the Great Synagogue, and he’s got a zest for learning like the Gaon of Vilna when he was a little boy and gave a sermon in a big synagogue packed with Jews. A Jew once met the Vilna Gaon but didn’t know he was the Vilna Gaon. He asked him, ‘Where does the Gaon of Vilna live?’ And the Vilna Gaon replied, ‘If you want to, you too can be a gaon.’ 141 And that’s exactly how it also is with your Itsikl. With a little son like that, with an heir like Itsikl to say Kaddish for you, you will earn a place in the World to Come.”
“I don’t know about the World to Come. With my husband having to sell old clothes in the courtyard and me having to freeze here by my clay pots, we don’t concern ourselves with the World to Come,” the woman answered with surprising rancor. “But me and my husband are pleased,” she continued, “that our little boy has
somewhere to go and get warm in this freezing weather and learn at the same time . . . knowledge never hurts.”
The short man in the high winter hat become confused and stammered something through his toothless gums that couldn’t be heard or understood. Then he found his tongue again and said softly:
“Since you are Itsikl’s mother and I’m his teacher, I’m going to buy a tin teapot from you. It will come in handy. Your Itsikl is some boy! An absolute gem!”
Later the buyer of the teapot told the men of the Old Shul, “I’ve paid my tuition,” and his listeners shook their heads sadly. When they were little schoolboys, their impoverished parents worked their fingers to the bone to pay for their education. And nowadays the teachers have to pay for their pupils. Nevertheless, it’s worth it, as long as they are not left without young successors. After this the other old men went out into the little lanes to look for the mothers of their students.
Meirke’s mother sat in Ramayles Courtyard in a dug out cellar filled with black coal that she sold by the bucketful. She also sold bundles of split wood bound up with twisted straw. The teacher didn’t know what to do. The freezing cold had doubled the weight of the wood bundles and the hard straw knot was covered with ice. How could an old man like him summon the strength to carry such a load up to the study house? But since the saleswoman, out of deep respect for the teacher who was studying with her young orphan, had crept out of the little cellar pit, her coal dust streaked face beaming with joy, Meirke’s teacher bought two bundles of cut wood.
“My only request is,” he told her, “that the bundles remain here with you until I can find someone to carry them up to the Old Shul.”
“I’ll bring it over for you. It’s not beneath my dignity,” the woman replied, then added: “and by going there I can also see the synagogue where my little boy sits and studies . . . But how can I leave my business unattended?”
“I’ll watch your shop. So go, but don’t dilly-dally,” the old man urged the woman as she mulled over the propriety of leaving the teacher as a watchman. Only after Meirke’s mother had obeyed and gone off carrying the bundles of wood to the study house did the elder begin to examine the wall facing him.
Half-buried in the ground and the snow, two little windows from a cellar apartment stared out at him. And high up on the roof was a crowded jumble of crooked attic windows and long, narrow, soot-blackened chimneys. For its entire height and width the wall itself did not have a single window and appeared deaf, mute and blind. Bare bricks, black as night. Why is this wall here fencing off Ramayles Courtyard from the rest of the world? the old man wondered, standing there with his wrinkled little beard, hunched over like a big sparrow freezing on a telegraph wire.
Some of the graybeards also stood by the women fruit peddlers on the street, holding little paper bags of frozen apples they had just bought.
“True no one envies you now,” the men consoled the women, “but because of the Torah your sons are studying, you will be warm in the World to Come.”
The short and squat fur-covered fruit peddlers stood with their legs spread over the firepots and listened with a pious look on their faces, just as they did on Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur to the woman who read out the prayers in the women’s gallery.
From an unearthly hiding place in the frozen distance the snow kept on falling without letup and the residents of the narrow twisted little lanes sank even deeper into the snow, like tree stumps in a rotting forest.
V
ON PURIM, WHEN the Megillah 142 was read, the Old Shul was inundated with smoke and powder, the smell of sulphur, shooting and wild drumming. Every time the Megillah reader chanted the names of the evil Haman and his wife, Zeresh, one group of youngsters banged their sticks on the railing of the bimah, while an even larger group fired off their homemade “guns”—big hollowed-out iron keys filled with gunpowder. 143 These “guns” were hurled at the wall or at one of the stone pillars around the bimah. A reddish green flame flashed, followed by a deafening explosion. These bursts in all corners, simultaneously and then successively, resounded loudly in the study house. The Megillah reader, one of the old men, waited patiently until the firing had ended, and then continued calmly.
A big crowd of people had come to the Old Shul to hear the Megillah. Some were men who came to pray regularly on Sabbaths and holidays. Others were people who happened to chance by. Seeing the inferno that the boys had let loose, these newcomers were ready to throw them out by the scruffs of their necks. But the old men lashed out at the regulars and the strangers with a wild rage:
“Enough! You come once in a blue moon and these boys come here every day.”
These men, who came to pray only on Sabbaths and holidays, knew very well that in the middle of the week a tenth man was occasionally lacking for a minyan.
“But these Haman-beaters are not yet bar mitzvah,” they countered. “And a boy under bar mitzvah cannot be included in a minyan.”
“Yes they can!” the oldsters cried out. “In an emergency a little boy holding a Pentateuch can be counted as a tenth for a minyan, even if he’s years away from his bar mitzvah.”
The next day the old teachers gave their students big poppy-seed-filled homentashen as Purim treats and also told them nice stories from the Targum Sheni, the Aramaic translation and elaboration of the Book of Esther. But when the graybeards returned to their own homes for the Purim feast, they vented their anger at their children and grandchildren for thinking only about stuffing their guts and not the miracle and joy of Purim.
After Purim, however, when the deep freeze abated, the students gradually returned to the noisy little lanes. The brighter the sun shone through the scattered gray clouds, the more restless and dejected the old men became. They sat by the hot glossy white tiles of the heated stove, looked outside, and marveled at how quickly the chunks of ice were melting, even quicker than the wax melting on a Havdalah candle. How it dribbles, drips and trickles on the windowpanes. See the flash and the sparkle. Drops of water are illumined in the rays of the sun, and the rays, in turn, are reflected in the drops of water. Every once in a while a crackling sound was heard up on high and a heap of snow slid down noisily and merrily past the windows, as though the snow could hardly wait to descend. Full of sparks, the light and transparent smoke of the chimneys surged impatiently upwards. But for the old men the first sign of spring was not a happy occasion. They became even more sensitive to the inner pain in their desiccated bones and sad at heart at now having fewer and fewer students.
When Meirke stopped coming, Itsikl still held on, but his remarks didn’t cheer his teacher. Itsikl had declared that in his Yiddish school where he studied daily until three in the afternoon all the children made fun of him for wearing tzitzis. And his father said he wasn’t overly fond of religious Jews. When they haggle with his father over a coat or a jacket, they tell him to rip open the lining to see if wool and linen are intermingled there.
“Why should it bother the religious Jews if wool and linen are sewn together under the lining?” Itsikl asked.
“Because it’s shatnez,” 144 the teacher answered. “And the Torah forbids wearing shatnez.” 145
“Why does the Torah say this?” Itsikl continued.
The teacher groaned out his reply:
“No one really knows for sure why it’s forbidden to wear a garment made of wool and linen.”
“So you see my father is right,” Itsikl cried out, and he too stopped coming to the Old Shul.
Then the grandfathers went out once more to the mothers of their students. They trudged through the snow in high galoshes, even though they no longer wore the heavy winter fur caps and now donned the Jewish-style cloth hats with a stiff brim and a cloth visor. The old men made their way forward carefully, taking little steps over the mud-splattered cobblestones and on the puddle-filled sidewalks, and thought they heard the shouts of their runaway pupils all around them. They stopped and turned their heads slowly but saw nothing in the blinding sun. The gr
ay peeling façades and unplastered walls of plain bricks, suffused with a bright luster, dazzled the old men’s weak eyes. Sounds of lively voices echoed from near and far, like in a fog on the other side of the river. The elders dragged themselves further, looking for the mothers of their students in the shops, in the cellars, and by the baskets of the fruit peddlers on the street.
“Is your Itsikl sick, God forbid?” the teacher said craftily to the woman who sold teapots, as though nothing untoward had happened. One is permitted to play the fool in order not to embarrass a person and help him repent.
“Why sick all of a sudden? Let my enemies get sick!” the woman answered with a burst of anger.
Just as in winter, clay pots and tin pails were all about and hanging on the wall. But Itsikl’s mother no longer wore a heavy woolen shawl. She wasn’t even ashamed to sit with her hair uncovered in the presence of the teacher; moreover, she gave vent to her sour mood by saying:
“My little boy can’t go to both the Yiddish school and the Old Shul. My husband says that both at the same time are not a good match. ‘Either an angel or a priest,’ says my husband. I hope to God my little Itsikl won’t be a priest. But he also won’t be a rabbi. It’s not within a poor family’s means.”
Meirke’s mother, out of respect for her son’s teacher, crept out of her little basement shop full of coal and exculpated herself by saying:
