The Last Of Them
: ISAAC DOB BERKOWITZThey had been Rabbonim for generations in the Misnagdic community of
Mouravanke, old, poverty-stricken Mouravanke, crowned with hoary honor,
hidden away in the thick woods. Generation on generation of them had
been renowned far and near, wherever a Jewish word was spoken, wherever
the voice of the Torah rang out in the warm old houses-of-study.
People talked of them everywhere, as they talk of miracles when miracles
are no more, and of consolation when all hope is long since dead--talked
of them as great-grandchildren talk of the riches of their
great-grandfather, the like of which are now unknown, and of the great
seven-branched, old-fashioned lamp, which he left them as an inheritance
of times gone by.
For as the lustre of an old, seven-branched lamp shining in the
darkness, such was the lustre of the family of the Rabbonim of
Mouravanke.
That was long ago, ever so long ago, when Mouravanke lay buried in the
dark Lithuanian forests. The old, low, moss-grown houses were still set
in wide, green gardens, wherein grew beet-root and onions, while the hop
twined itself and clustered thickly along the wooden fencing. Well-to-do
Jews still went about in linen pelisses, and smoked pipes filled with
dry herbs. People got a living out of the woods, where they burnt pitch
the whole week through, and Jewish families ate rye-bread and
groats-pottage.
A new baby brought no anxiety along with it. People praised God, carried
the pitcher to the well, filled it, and poured a quart of water into the
pottage. The newcomer was one of God's creatures, and was assured of his
portion along with the others.
And if a Jew had a marriageable daughter, and could not afford a dowry,
he took a stick in his hand, donned a white shirt with a broad mangled
collar, repeated the "Prayer of the Highway," and set off on foot to
Volhynia, that thrice-blessed wonderland, where people talk with a
"Chirik," and eat Challeh with saffron even in the middle of the
week--with saffron, if not with honey.
There, in Volhynia, on Friday evenings, the rich Jewish householder of
the district walks to and fro leisurely in his brightly lit room. In all
likelihood, he is a short, plump, hairy man, with a broad, fair beard, a
gathered silk sash round his substantial figure, a cheery singsong
"Sholom-Alechem" on his mincing, "chiriky" tongue, and a merry crack of
the thumb. The Lithuanian guest, teacher or preacher, the shrunk and
shrivelled stranger with the piercing black eyes, sits in a corner,
merely moving his lips and gazing at the floor--perhaps because he feels
ill at ease in the bright, nicely-furnished room; perhaps because he is
thinking of his distant home, of his wife and children and his
marriageable daughter; and perhaps because it has suddenly all become
oddly dear to him, his poor, forsaken native place, with its moiling,
poverty-struck Jews, whose week is spent pitch-burning in the forest;
with its old, warm houses-of-study; with its celebrated giants of the
Torah, bending with a candle in their hand over the great hoary
Gemorehs.
And here, at table, between the tasty stuffed fish and the soup, with
the rich Volhynian "stuffed monkeys," the brusque, tongue-tied guest is
suddenly unable to contain himself, and overflows with talk about his
corner in Lithuania.
"Whether we have our Rabbis at home?! N-nu!!"
And thereupon he holds forth grandiloquently, with an ardor and
incisiveness born of the love and the longing at his heart. The piercing
black eyes shoot sparks, as the guest tells of the great men of
Mouravanke, with their fiery intellects, their iron perseverance, who
sit over their books by day and by night. From time to time they take an
hour and a half's doze, falling with their head onto their fists, their
beards sweeping the Gemoreh, the big candle keeping watch overhead and
waking them once more to the study of the Torah.
At dawn, when the people begin to come in for the Morning Prayer, they
walk round them on tiptoe, giving them their four-ells' distance, and
avoid meeting their look, which is apt to be sharp and burning.
"That is the way we study in Lithuania!"
The stout, hairy householder, good-natured and credulous, listens
attentively to the wonderful tales, loosens the sash over his pelisse in
leisurely fashion, unbuttons his waistcoat across his generous waist,
blows out his cheeks, and sways his head from side to side, because--one
may believe anything of the Lithuanians!
Then, if once in a long, long while the rich Volhynian householder
stumbled, by some miracle or other, into Lithuania, sheer curiosity
would drive him to take a look at the Lithuanian celebrity. But he would
stand before him in trembling and astonishment, as one stands before a
high granite rock, the summit of which can barely be discerned. Is he
terrified by the dark and bushy brows, the keen, penetrating looks, the
deep, stern wrinkles in the forehead that might have been carved in
stone, they are so stiffly fixed? Who can say? Or is he put out of
countenance by the cold, hard assertiveness of their speech, which bores
into the conscience like a gimlet, and knows of no mercy?--for from
between those wrinkles, from beneath those dark brows, shines out the
everlasting glory of the Shechinah.
Such were the celebrated Rabbonim of Mouravanke.
They were an old family, a long chain of great men, generation on
generation of tall, well-built, large-boned Jews, all far on in years,
with thick, curly beards. It was very seldom one of these beards showed
a silver hair. They were stern, silent men, who heard and saw
everything, but who expressed themselves mostly by means of their
wrinkles and their eyebrows rather than in words, so that when a
Mouravanke Rav went so far as to say "N-nu," that was enough.
The dignity of Rav was hereditary among them, descending from father to
son, and, together with the Rabbinical position and the eighteen gulden
a week salary, the son inherited from his father a tall, old
reading-desk, smoked and scorched by the candles, in the old
house-of-study in the corner by the ark, and a thick, heavy-knotted
stick, and an old holiday pelisse of lustrine, the which, if worn on a
bright Sabbath-day in summer-time, shines in the sun, and fairly shouts
to be looked at.
They arrived in Mouravanke generations ago, when the town was still in
the power of wild highwaymen, called there "Hydemakyes," with huge,
terrifying whiskers and large, savage dogs. One day, on Hoshanah Rabbah,
early in the morning, there entered the house-of-study a tall youth,
evidently village-born and from a long way off, barefoot, with turned-up
trousers, his boots slung on a big, knotted stick across his shoulders,
and a great bundle of big Hoshanos. The youth stood in the centre of the
house-of-study with his mouth open, bewildered, and the boys quickly
snatched his willow branches from him. He was surrounded, stared at,
questioned as to who he was, whence he came, what he wanted. Had he
parents? Was he married? For some time the youth stood silent, with
downcast eyes, then he bethought himself, and answered in three words:
"I want to study!"
And from that moment he remained in the old building, and people began
to tell wonderful tales of his power of perseverance--of how a tall,
barefoot youth, who came walking from a far distance, had by dint of
determination come to be reckoned among the great men in Israel; of how,
on a winter midnight, he would open the stove doors, and study by the
light of the glowing coals; of how he once forgot food and drink for
three days and three nights running, while he stood over a difficult
legal problem with wrinkled brows, his eyes piercing the page, his
fingers stiffening round the handle of his stick, and he motionless; and
when suddenly he found the solution, he gave a shout "Nu!" and came down
so hard on the desk with his stick that the whole house-of-study shook.
It happened just when the people were standing quite quiet, repeating
the Eighteen Benedictions.
Then it was told how this same lad became Rav in Mouravanke, how his
genius descended to his children and children's children, till late in
the generations, gathering in might with each generation in turn. They
rose, these giants, one after the other, persistent investigators of the
Law, with high, wrinkled foreheads, dark, bushy brows, a hard, cutting
glance, sharp as steel.
In those days Mouravanke was illuminated as with seven suns. The
houses-of-study were filled with students; voices, young and old, rang
out over the Gemorehs, sang, wept, and implored. Worried and
tired-looking fathers and uncles would come into the Shools with
blackened faces after the day's pitch-burning, between Afternoon and
Evening Prayer, range themselves in leisurely mood by the doors and the
stove, cock their ears, and listen, Jewish drivers, who convey people
from one town to another, snatched a minute the first thing in the
morning, and dropped in with their whips under their arms, to hear a
passage in the Gemoreh expounded. And the women, who washed the linen at
the pump in summer-time, beat the wet clothes to the melody of the Torah
that came floating into the street through the open windows, sweet as a
long-expected piece of good news.
Thus Mouravanke came to be of great renown, because the wondrous power
of the Mouravanke Rabbonim, the power of concentration of thought, grew
from generation to generation. And in those days the old people went
about with a secret whispering, that if there should arise a tenth
generation of the mighty ones, a new thing, please God, would come to
pass among Jews.
But there was no tenth generation; the ninth of the Mouravanke Rabbonim
was the last of them.
He had two sons, but there was no luck in the house in his day: the sons
philosophized too much, asked too many questions, took strange paths
that led them far away.
Once a rumor spread in Mouravanke that the Rav's eldest son had become
celebrated in the great world because of a book he had written, and had
acquired the title of "professor." When the old Rav was told of it, he
at first remained silent, with downcast eyes. Then he lifted them and
ejaculated:
"Nu!"
And not a word more. It was only remarked that he grew paler, that his
look was even more piercing, more searching than before. This is all
that was ever said in the town about the Rav's children, for no one
cared to discuss a thing on which the old Rav himself was silent.
Once, however, on the Great Sabbath, something happened in the spacious
old house-of-study. The Rav was standing by the ark, wrapped in his
Tallis, and expounding to a crowded congregation. He had a clear,
resonant, deep voice, and when he sent it thundering over the heads of
his people, the air seemed to catch fire, and they listened dumbfounded
and spellbound.
Suddenly the old man stopped in the midst of his exposition, and was
silent. The congregation thrilled with speechless expectation. For a
minute or two the Rav stood with his piercing gaze fixed on the people,
then he deliberately pulled aside the curtain before the ark, opened the
ark doors, and turned to the congregation:
"Listen, Jews! I know that many of you are thinking of something that
has just occurred to me, too. You wonder how it is that I should set
myself up to expound the Torah to a townful of Jews, when my own
children have cast the Torah behind them. Therefore I now open the ark
and declare to you, Jews, before the holy scrolls of the Law, I have no
children any more. I am the last Rav of our family!"
Hereupon a piteous wail came from out of the women's Shool, but the
Rav's sonorous voice soon reduced them to silence, and once more the
Torah was being expounded in thunder over the heads of the open-mouthed
assembly.
Years, a whole decade of them, passed, and still the old Rav walked
erect, and not one silver hair showed in his curly beard, and the town
was still used to see him before daylight, a tall, solitary figure
carrying a stick and a lantern, on his way to the large old Bes
ha-Midrash, to study there in solitude--until Mouravanke began to ring
with the fame of her Charif, her great new scholar.
He was the son of a poor tailor, a pale, thin youth, with a pointed nose
and two sharp, black eyes, who had gone away at thirteen or so to study
in celebrated, distant academies, whence his name had spread round and
about. People said of him, that he was growing up to be a Light of the
Exile, that with his scholastic achievements he would outwit the acutest
intellects of all past ages; they said that he possessed a brain power
that ground "mountains" of Talmud to powder. News came that a quantity
of prominent Jewish communities had sent messengers, to ask him to come
and be their Rav.
Mouravanke was stirred to its depths. The householders went about
greatly perturbed, because their Rav was an old man, his days were
numbered, and he had no children to take his place.
So they came to the old Rav in his house, to ask his advice, whether it
was possible to invite the Mouravanke Charif, the tailor's son, to come
to them, so that he might take the place of the Rav on his death, in a
hundred and twenty years--seeing that the said young Charif was a
scholar distinguished by the acuteness of his intellect the only man
worthy of sitting in the seat of the Mouravanke Rabbonim.
The old Rav listened to the householders with lowering brows, and never
raised his eyes, and he answered them one word:
"Nu!"
So Mouravanke sent a messenger to the young Charif, offering him the
Rabbinate. The messenger was swift, and soon the news spread through the
town that the Charif was approaching.
When it was time for the householders to go forth out of the town, to
meet the young Charif, the old Rav offered to go with them, and they
took a chair for him to sit in while he waited at the meeting-place.
This was by the wood outside the town, where all through the week the
Jewish townsfolk earned their bread by burning pitch. Begrimed and
toil-worn Jews were continually dropping their work and peeping out
shamefacedly between the tree-stems.
It was Friday, a clear day in the autumn. She appeared out of a great
cloud of dust--she, the travelling-wagon in which sat the celebrated
young Charif. Sholom-Alechems flew to meet him from every side, and his
old father, the tailor, leant back against a tree, and wept aloud for
joy.
Now the old Rav declared that he would not allow the Charif to enter the
town till he had heard him, the Charif, expound a portion of the Torah.
The young man accepted the condition. Men, women, and little children
stood expectant, all eyes were fastened on the tailor's son, all hearts
beat rapidly.
The Charif expounded the Torah standing in the wagon. At first he looked
fairly scared, and his sharp black eyes darted fearfully hither and
thither over the heads of the silent crowd. Then came a bright idea, and
lit up his face. He began to speak, but his was not the familiar
teaching, such as everyone learns and understands. His words were like
fiery flashes appearing and disappearing one after the other, lightnings
that traverse and illumine half the sky in one second of time, a play of
swords in which there are no words, only the clink and ring of
finely-tempered steel.
The old Rav sat in his chair leaning on his old, knobbly, knotted stick,
and listened. He heard, but evil thoughts beset him, and deep, hard
wrinkles cut themselves into his forehead. He saw before him the Charif,
the dried-up youth with the sharp eyes and the sharp, pointed nose, and
the evil thought came to him, "Those are needles, a tailor's needles,"
while the long, thin forefinger with which the Charif pointed rapidly in
the air seemed a third needle wielded by a tailor in a hurry.
"You prick more sharply even than your father," is what the old Rav
wanted to say when the Charif ended his sermon, but he did not say it.
The whole assembly was gazing with caught breath at his half-closed
eyelids. The lids never moved, and some thought wonderingly that he had
fallen into a doze from sheer old age.
Suddenly a strange, dry snap broke the stillness, the old Rav started in
his chair, and when they rushed forward to assist him, they found that
his knotted, knobbly stick had broken in two.
Pale and bent for the first time, but a tall figure still, the old Rav
stood up among his startled flock. He made a leisurely motion with his
hand in the direction of the town, and remarked quietly to the young
Charif:
"Nu, now you can go into the town!"
That Friday night the old Rav came into the house-of-study without his
satin cloak, like a mourner. The congregation saw him lead the young Rav
into the corner near the ark, where he sat him down by the high old
desk, saying:
"You will sit here."
He himself went and sat down behind the pulpit among the strangers, the
Sabbath guests.
For the first minute people were lost in astonishment; the next minute
the house-of-study was filled with wailing. Old and young lifted their
voices in lamentation. The young Rav looked like a child sitting behind
the tall desk, and he shivered and shook as though with fever.
Then the old Rav stood up to his full height and commanded:
"People are not to weep!"
All this happened about the Solemn Days. Mouravanke remembers that time
now, and speaks of it at dusk, when the sky is red as though streaming
with fire, and the men stand about pensive and forlorn, and the women
fold their babies closer in their aprons.
At the close of the Day of Atonement there was a report that the old Rav
had breathed his last in robe and prayer-scarf.
The young Charif did not survive him long. He died at his father's the
tailor, and his funeral was on a wet Great Hosannah day. Aged folk said
he had been summoned to face the old Rav in a lawsuit in the Heavenly
Court.
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"Drunk all the year round, sober at Purim," is a Jewish proverb, and people ought to know whence it comes. In the days of the famous scholar, Reb Chayyim Vital, there lived in Safed, in Palestine, a young man who (not of us be it spoken!) had no... Women A Prose Poem
Hedged round with tall, thick woods, as though designedly, so that no one should know what happens there, lies the long-drawn-out old town of Pereyaslav. To the right, connected with Pereyaslav by a wooden bridge, lies another bit of country, n... Yitzchok-yossel Broitgeber
At the time I am speaking of, the above was about forty years old. He was a little, thin Jew with a long face, a long nose, two large, black, kindly eyes, and one who would sooner be silent and think than talk, no matter what was being said to him... Yohrzeit For Mother
The Ginzburgs' first child died of inflammation of the lungs when it was two years and three months old. The young couple were in the depths of grief and despair--they even thought seriously of committing suicide. But people do not do everyth... Yom Kippur
Erev Yom Kippur, Minchah time! The Eve of the Day of Atonement, at Afternoon Prayer time. A solemn and sacred hour for every Jew. Everyone feels as though he were born again. All the week-day worries, the two-penny-half-penny interests, s...