This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.
Text copyright © 2014 Smadar Herzfeld
Translation copyright © 2017 Aloma Halter
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.
Previously published as I, Gittel by 62 Publishing House in Israel in 2014. Translated from Hebrew by Aloma Halter. First published in English by AmazonCrossing in 2017.
Published by AmazonCrossing, Seattle
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ISBN-13: 9781503943001
ISBN-10: 1503943003
Cover design by Shasti O’Leary Soudant
CONTENTS
My great-grandmother was . . .
Master of the . . .
Years before this . . .
Two days later . . .
Yet on that . . .
In my childhood . . .
So I found . . .
My saintly father . . .
On the morning . . .
Health looms large . . .
Istanbul was a . . .
Now, throughout the . . .
And yet, a . . .
I think back . . .
EPILOGUE
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ABOUT THE TRANSLATOR
My great-grandmother was a tiny, pious woman from a rural village. Behind her house was a chicken coop full of hens and roosters with names like Shaynele, Maydele, and Sheygetz. And the women, it was always women, who slipped into the house or clustered around the chicken coop.
I would look at my great-grandmother, whose name was Gittel, and tell myself that one day I would write a story about her.
Later, she died and later yet, the village in which she had lived also died.
And I forgot.
Years later, in Jerusalem, in the realm of the ultra-Orthodox, I found myself outside a large, ugly building belonging to the Ruzhin Hasidim. And they told me about their sainted Rebbe Yisroel of Ruzhin—how he loved the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He and how he traveled to Him in a golden chariot, accompanied by servants. And drank his coffee from a cup of the finest porcelain, and walked in shoes stitched from the supplest deerskin. And wore clothes of delicate silk like a sultan. And how, amid all this splendor, he sat and wrote.
He loved to tell stories about his grandmother, whom he’d never met. She was called Gittel, and she was the daughter of a renowned Torah scholar, then later, the wife of a famous Hasid.
Her Hasidic husband was called Avraham “the Angel” because he was so ethereal, and there were many stories about him living as if he were not made of flesh and blood, and had no earthly needs. He was the only son of a rabbi and mystic, the great Maggid of Mezeritch. The Maggid himself was known among his disciples as “the talker” in honor of the spirit who talked to him in his mystical revelations.
At twelve years old, Gittel became the daughter-in-law of the Maggid of Mezeritch.
And after just a few years, she was widowed. Though still young, Gittel refused to marry again. She entrusted her two sons to the care of another and set out for Jerusalem, never to return.
All this took place at the close of the eighteenth century.
It was the time of Napoleon, a time of revolutions and conquests, yet in the heart of Europe, there were people who sat on a bench in the shade of trees, pondering the secret life of peas that they grew in their kitchen gardens or dreaming of Jerusalem, the Holy City. At that time, Jerusalem was under Turkish domination.
And it was as remote and forsaken as my great-grandmother herself.
A woman traveling all by herself was rare at that time. Yet tiny Gittel, as stubborn as an ant, made her way all alone toward the east.
Now I sit in Jerusalem, at the very navel of the world, an insignificant novelist of whom only a few have heard.
In my imagination I follow in the footsteps of my great-grandmother who was also called Gittel and now I’m telling her story.
And Gittel is the grandmother of Rabbi Yisroel, and perhaps my own great-grandmother. And perhaps she’s the queen of sorrow and it’s simply an old tale.
From my window, I can see a field of peas, and a field of red roses, and the field of time.
Gittel prays and the fish sail on the roof.
And the light is blue.
And the pool is wide and deep.
Master of the Universe, help me to be good and wholehearted as I stand before You. Banish the devils from me and drive away my nightmares. I have nothing, nothing apart from the heavy sack of my memories. Like the prophet Jonah, I fled from the land in which I grew up and here I sit at a table, here in the Holy City of Jerusalem, and I write of the things that took place in my life.
Everything that I do now is undertaken in the spirit of prayer. Even scrubbing the laundry and beating it on the washboard is a way of speaking to You. I lower my head before You as I rub the soap up and down. Foam covers my hands, and a slight soughing sound bursts from my throat to the rhythm of my movements. From the day that my husband Avraham the Angel died, I have craved only one thing: to see You, O God.
Although I share not a single trait with the great righteous men, this passionate longing has entered me. Like a grain borne on the wings of the wind, it got into my mouth and spoke from my throat: Give me just one spark of the burning bush, a single moment that will illuminate Your face for me, but may it be for me alone.
I, Gittel, the daughter of the rabbinical genius Meshulum Feivish Horowitz, the daughter-in-law of the great Maggid of Mezeritch, the wife of Avraham the Angel, I remove my outer trappings and stand naked before You.
Gittel, just plain Gittel, is she worthy of seeing Your face?
No one knows me in this place. I have a small room here and a large sink in the yard, where I wash the clothes. I am only a woman, a widow of no standing. Yet, in the darkness of night, Your hand strokes my head and banishes the malevolent spirits that gnaw at my soul.
Since I left my home, my life lurches between noise and silence. Back and forth I move between a large echoing hall to a complete silence that descends inside as into a pool.
Blessed are You, O God, Who enabled me to descend into the pool of the soul and fish inside it for marvels.
Every day in the morning, after I have laid out the wet clothes on the roof, I sit down and enjoy the blue sky. Sometimes the sparrows or seagulls join me, hopping about me, cheeping and pecking at my dress. And I speak to them and laugh with them as if they were my friends.
The air in Jerusalem makes you wise. For days on end I sit doing nothing but inhaling the pure air. This ethereal food makes me feel satiated with sweetness, till I forget to eat real food. From the day I arrived here my body has weakened and fallen prey to disease.
Plagues and diseases are our daily fare in the Land of Israel. Everyone around me is sick, many suffer to the point of death, and entire families are buried in the ground. Sometimes, when I go out, a terrible stench enters my nostrils. Then my stomach turns, my face swells up, and I flee and close myself in my room. When I’m alone, tears burst from my eyes and I cry for hours.
I never cried this way before, with this kind of passion, not even on the day I heard of the death of my son.
Look upon us, O God, cast Your eyes upon the world outspread beneath Your feet and illuminate our path. Love us and redeem our flesh, which decays with hunger and suffering. It is I, Gittel, aski
ng for compassion for Your people, the Children of Israel. May it be Your will to open the Gates of Mercy to us and to give us life in this country. Amen.
The thought of a great Hour of Mercy causes my entire body to shudder. All my life now is longing; my soul burns with a fire that cannot be extinguished and its tongues leap up, licking skyward. The abundance of visions, voices, and dreams overwhelms me and surrounds me with unseen walls. I feel good in the tower in which my soul dwells. The world is reflected to me from the windows, sharp and clear, and I feel compassion for everything: people, animals, plants, and even the stones. All of them so love to live and all of them suffer and die, each in their own way. Why can’t it be that all of us live easily and lightly, not suffering, and not dying?
Why can’t we live forever?
I read these questions, which have no answers, in the faces of human beings, in the movements of animals, in the beauty of the flowers, and in the endless silence typical of stones. And beyond outward appearances, beautiful or ugly, I see the inner faces and they are filled with pain.
Like a body wrapped in a sheer robe, so is sorrow within happiness, love within hatred, hunger within satiety. And nothing seems simple to me any longer, but one layer over another, a face inside a face.
Once I saw the smile of paradise on the face of a dead butcher. He had always been silent as he cut the meat, and his wife told me that he often heard the voices of cows and hens in his sleep. “Not every person can sleep with blood on his hands,” he once explained to his wife. “But with me, the meat comes to me in my dreams and asks me to send it up to heaven.”
“He did not know how to say no,” his wife lamented. “So when the voices told him that his own hour had come, he lay down in his bed and died quietly.”
My heart was suffocating from such intense love, and a great desire stirred within me to peel away the layers, to remove one face after another until I saw the last face. Would it be the smile of paradise or the grimace of hell?
The final moment is the moment of truth, and for anyone who has neither of these expressions on their face, then their life is gone and nothing remains of it. As for them, the faceless dead, I lament them most of all. I see many who are still alive, and they already have, beneath all their faces, a gaping nothingness.
Places too have all kinds of faces. But my life was always a journey to one distant place, enveloped in the glory of legends. Jerusalem. It was the city to which I said my prayers, a king’s daughter turned handmaiden, the City of David that became the City of the Sultan, the secret navel of the world and the place where the gates to paradise are to be found. And when I reached it after much suffering, my heart broke within me and I fell prey to the diseases of humanity. Disappointment seeped into my soul. Why did I insist on coming here? What was I going to do here, in this Vale of Tears, amid scrawny and decaying people, bent and lamenting? I had created a Jerusalem in my mind, but what surrounded me was something else entirely. I could not move and I did not want to move, for there was nowhere for me to go. My body burned with fever and my teeth chattered. My imagination tricked me into thinking I was traveling in a chariot. Sometimes it seemed to me that I was being pursued, and I screamed at the top of my lungs until my voice became hoarse.
Chaya-Rivke, whose husband had died in an epidemic, sat with me in a cold, dark room resembling a cave and instructed her younger children to bring me some water to drink and to recite psalms. From time to time I saw their shadows leaning over me and I heard the faint sound of humming, like angels. Tears fell from my eyes and a feeling of happiness and repose enveloped my limbs. I was sure I was dead and was in paradise.
According to the widow, they truly thought that my soul would soon depart, but suddenly, I grew calmer, and sank into a quiet, deep sleep. I slept for two days deep and strong, and when my senses returned, I did not know where I was and went on lying there with closed eyes. And behind my closed eyelids I saw an angel standing before me, as someone might see at dawn. Slowly, the vision faded, as if the strong sunlight had engulfed it, and only a trace of his presence remained. I breathed in the light-filled air and felt great joy.
A fish cast into the water, a bird released from a cage into the depths of the sky—they know the elation that took me by storm, jolting my each and every limb.
The following morning I got out of bed, reciting the blessing as I washed my hands, and then the Eighteen Benedictions of the Morning Prayer. I was very weak, and when I came to the words Heal us, O God, and we will be healed, my legs could hold me no longer and I sank to my knees. When I reached He who makes peace upon high, I shuffled backward on my knees and bowed to the left, then to the right, to the center, and, with a huge effort—as if dragging boulders—I continued a few more moments before collapsing on the floor. Chaya-Rivke’s daughter heard the slight noise from my room and hurried in. She kneeled beside me, and I mumbled as loud as I could: May it be Thy will, O God and God of our fathers, that the Temple be rebuilt speedily and in our time . . . She waited for me to finish, her dark eyes looking at me with surprise.
“Ah, you’ve woken up?” She caught me by her cold hands and helped me back to bed. Then she added in a low voice, “So, you’re praying? A woman praying . . .” Astonished, she shook her head from side to side.
She was a strange and scrawny creature, pale, and her nose was shiny with oil and red blemishes covered her cheeks. “Don’t you have children?” she asked me. Her voice was childlike, but she smelled like an adolescent girl who did not often wash. Apart from this smell, a mustiness hung in the air, and the heavy aroma of spices wafted from the kitchen.
Where I had come from, it was considered unusual for a woman to pray. But here, in Jerusalem? Here women should be throwing open their doors, letting the fresh air inside and praying all day. If that was not so, then why had they come?
The young girl left the room and returned carrying a steaming bowl of buckwheat porridge and sat down to feed me. Her slender fingers held the tin spoon and waited for me to open my mouth, but the effort of praying had affected my mind and I felt that a spider was inching along the spoon and would crawl into my mouth. I clamped my lips shut and moaned like an animal.
“It’s only buckwheat,” I heard her plead. “We are poor folk and that’s all we have to offer. My mother cooked it especially for you . . .”
Her voice pierced my heart and I was overcome with shame. Even if there were a spider, I should not put poor folks to shame. So I closed my eyes and opened my mouth wide. It was warm and soft and as sweet as if it had been cooked in celestial ovens. Over and over again, she brought the spoon to my mouth, and to make it even more pleasurable, she started to sing in a low, hesitant voice that grew more and more confident as she went along.
By the roadside there is growing
A rose with azure eyes.
And she pleads with each traveler
Please grant me grace
And raise me from the dust . . .
And I hummed along with her as I ate. Longing engulfed my soul and I gulped down the food. After the bowl had been emptied, I sank into a slumber. I stroked my sated body and felt it extending, becoming as light as a cloud. I heard the young girl tiptoeing away, and without opening my eyes, I asked her name.
“Sheindel,” she whispered.
During my life I have met scores of Sheindels, and yet her name moved me because she was very beautiful in my eyes, just as the name implies. Like this city, she was lowly and wretched, and yet in her heart nestled a fledgling enveloped in the halo of dawn. As if in prayer, I mumbled the names, “Sheindel Jerusalem, Sheindel Jerusalem,” and I knew that I had reached the place I had been traveling to all my life.
Those were the days of selichot, the prayers that precede the Days of Awe. Every morning before dawn, a fist would knock loudly on Chaya-Rivke’s windowpane and her three oldest sons would disappear into the darkness outside. Apart from the banging fist that called people to the synagogue, the reverberating voices of the muezzins echoed
from the highest points of the mosques, and on Sundays, the church bells chimed.
Very few Jews lived in the city, and they were hidden like lichen between the ancient stone walls. Most were Sephardim, and the few Ashkenazi Jews who had remained in Jerusalem over the centuries were subject to a double exile, both oppressed by the Ottoman rule and loathed by their proud, superior Sephardic brethren.
O Master of the Universe, how did this land fall so low and become such a place of exile?
On all those days of penitentiary prayers I prostrated myself before God, weeping, and in my heart I cried out, Whence is the dove that nestled in the Holy City, to where has it vanished? Where is there holiness, O Master—in the Torah ark of the synagogue, in the wind, in good deeds?
These were my early days in this country. I was still so weak from my sickness, and yet I felt an immense restlessness every day at twilight. I went forth into the alleyways and roamed about. I waited for the grace of a breeze, for a good, cooling wind to caress my lips and disperse my longings. But the air in Jerusalem seemed not to move—it was as hot and stifling as a tight scarf around my neck.
I passed by a basement that served as a study hall, a beis midrash, for the Ashkenazim, and I saw steps blackened with mildew leading down to it, and I heard some weak voices reading Torah in Ashkenazi tones and muttering querulously and complainingly in the holy tongue, as if they were so caught up in their daily troubles and their struggle to survive that all they desired was to receive better things from on high: a favorable marriage match, a good income . . .
And what of good deeds? If no holiness comes from heaven above, and there is no strength to move mountains in prayer, then perhaps it will be the good deeds that tip the scales.
As soon as I could, I questioned the widow’s daughter, Sheindel, and learned that they sent people abroad to collect money for the poor, but the money was diverted to the more established members of the Sephardic community. Chaya-Rivke, who herself was Ashkenazi, managed to receive very little, the barest minimum of assistance, after she had begged them and prostrated herself at the entrance to the Sephardic yeshiva, shouting, “Gevald! Help me!” Sheindel told me that since that outburst her brothers had been fortunately accepted to the Sephardic yeshiva, and were now studying there. But they were not allowed to feel at home, and were constantly afraid of being sent away. “If only they would find me a Sephardic man, then perhaps I could wed like the wealthy,” she confided to me, her eyes sparkling.
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