STUDY QUESTIONS

"Impressions of a Journey through the Tomaszow Region" in Ruth Wisse, ed., The I.L. Peretz Reader (New York, 1990): 20-34
 

It was toward the end of the good times and the beginning of the bad times. The sky was blackening with clouds. The wind; or spirit -- the Zeitgeist  -- did not, as might be expected, dispel the clouds with ease, to pour out their hearts over some distant wilderness. In Europe's carefully tended vineyard the gardeners paid no heed while a poisonous growth took root, cracked the earth, and sent forth its thorns. The nineteenth century in its old age appeared to have caught cold and to be running a slight fever. Nobody could imagine that this marked the onset of a grave illness, a madness.

For us, then, how far away America was! Hardly a Jew even bothered to wonder how a bowl of porridge could stand right side up there, or whether the people there wore their skullcaps on their feet. European Jews were all but unaware of the two barons who dreamt of establishing Jewish colonies, de Rothschild in Palestine and de Hirsch in the New World.

Psychology predicts less exactly than astronomy. Nobody foresaw that the world's soul would grow dark and its body convulsed. Even afterward few could believe what had happened. None could understand it. In fact, people had long been uneasy, as sinister rumors multiplied on every side.

None of this detracted from the need to get to know ordinary, everyday Jewish life — to see what was going on in the shtetls. What did people hope for? How did they make a living? What did they do, how did they behave? What were the folk saying?

FAITH AND TRUST

In Tishevitz, the first stop in my travels, I boarded with my acquaintance Reb Baruch. He invited the synagogue beadle and a few of the more solid citizens to come and meet me. Waiting, I stood at the window and contemplated the marketplace.

It was a large square, hemmed in by grimy, rickety houses, some roofed with thatch but most with shingles, none more than one story high, and each with a wide porch over rotting, discolored piles. Jewish market women stood next to each other, their backs to the porches, and hovered over trays of bagels, bread, peas, beans, and fruit.

"Bad luck to you!" one cries out.

"Don't point your finger at him," another says. "He's looking."

"Shut up!" she is told.

They do not lower their voices as they tell each other that I have come to record things. I can hear them quite well.

A woman says, "That's the one!"

Another says, "Isn't it nice that we poor sheep have shepherds to care about us! But if the Shepherd above doesn't want to help, nothing will help."

A third woman is puzzled: "Can the Shepherd above really need helpers like him?" She is hinting at my trimmed beard and untraditional dress.

More broad-minded, a fourth cites doctors. "Doctors aren't proper Jews," she says, "but still and all . . ."

"That's a different case entirely. A doctor is a private individual. For something communal like this, couldn't they have found a Good Jew?"

Still another opinion is voiced: "Who needs records about us? They should have sent us a couple of hundred rubles instead. Just don't register my son, and see if I care when he doesn't become a commander in chief."

At the table where I sit I can see through the window without being seen. My host has finished his morning prayers, removed his prayer shawl and phylacteries, and drunk my health in a bit of liquor.

"Peace and good health," I answer him.

"May God send better times, so people can make a living."

How I envy him! His only need is to make a living.

He adds, very sure of himself: "It will have to come, people will have to be able to make a living! There's a God in the world. If necessary, those of our devout who excel in prayer will know how to remind Him."

I interrupt. With Reb Baruch's faith and trust, he knows that He who gives life also sustains life. Why then, I ask, is he in his own affairs so sleeplessly busy and anxious, always worrying about tomorrow, next month, next year? No sooner is a Jew finished with his wedding than he starts worrying about the clothes his grandchildren will wear at their weddings. Yet when it comes to the concerns of the People of Israel as a whole, the average Jew has such faith and trust that he thinks he need not bestir himself personally in the slightest.

"It's simple," Reb Baruch explains. "The People of Israel as a whole — that's the Sovereign of the Universe's concern; He bears His own in mind. If such a thing were imaginable, if forgetfulness were possible at the Throne of Glory, there are those who know how to remind Him. Besides, how long can Jewish suffering last? The Messiah must come, when we are all either guilty or innocent. But that's not how it is with the affairs of individuals. Making a living is a different proposition."

JUST GO!!

I forgot to tell you that the local rabbi wished neither to visit nor to be visited. He sent a message that my business was none of his, pitiable weakling that he was; that for some time he had been fully occupied with a knotty problem of meat suspected of contact with milk, and, most important, that he was feuding with the official community over its refusal to raise his salary by two gulden a week.

My visitors, therefore, consisted of three householders and two beadles. I start with my host. He has no wife, he tells me, adding, without being asked and as if to apologize, "I wouldn't want you to think that it's been very long since she passed away." In short: widower; two married sons, one married daughter, two boys and a girl at home. Without a pause he asks me to record that except for his youngest, barely four years old — the Messiah will probably make his appearance before the boy is old enough to be conscripted — all his sons are in one way or another unfit for military service.

Apart from the married sons, I have been able to meet the whole family. The married daughter has a little shop in her own house where she sells tobacco, tea, and sugar — food too — as well as grease and fuel oil, I think. Early that morning I had bought some sugar from her. She's about twenty-five, with a face like this: a long, hooked nose that seems to be counting the decayed, black teeth in her half-open mouth; a pair of bluish-grayish, cracked lips — the very image of her father. Her little sister would look like her if not for the greater attractiveness of youth: fresher, rosier face; whiter teeth— altogether, less drawn and worn. I see the two boys too, good-looking boys; they must have taken after their mother: red cheeks, appealing, bashful eyes, curly black locks. But their bearing is unattractive, with their constant shrugging and grimacing.

Obviously, their mother has been dead just long enough for their little coats to get dirty but not torn. Now that she is gone, who has time for the boys? Their older sister has four children of her own and a husband who passes his time in sacred study, besides her little shop. Her younger sister is in charge of their father's tavern, and he has no time to spare.

"What business are you in?" I ask him.

"Percentage."

"'Percentage'? You mean moneylending."

"If that's what you want to call it."

"You know what the Gentiles call it — Jewish usury."

"You want to know something?" he says. "Here! You can have all my trash — notes, deeds, the lot. You can have it all for 25 percent of face value. Just pay cash! I'll throw in the tavern too! I would much rather go off to the Land of Israel, if only I had the money. If you want one, I'll even let you have an assurance that you will be absolved from excommunication. You think we live on moneylending? It lives on us. Debtors don't pay, so their debt grows. The more it grows, the less it's worth, and the more of a pauper I become. It's the truth!"

Before leaving to do some more writing, I witnessed a little scene. While I was gathering my things together — paper, pencil, cigarettes — Reb Baruch was buttering two slices of bread for the boys to take to school, with a scallion in the bargain.

"Now go!" says he, not wanting them in the tavern. The smaller orphan, dissatisfied, hunches his shoulders and screws up his face, preparing to cry. A bit ashamed in my presence, he tries, unsuccessfully, to hold back his tears. "Another scallion!" he sobs. "Mother used to give me two." His sister hurries to the bin, seizes another scallion, and gives it to him. "Now go!" she says too, only much more softly. The voice uttering the words was her mother's.

WHAT DOES A JEWISH WOMAN NEED?

We proceed from house to house, starting from Number 1. I do not need to be told where Jews and where non-Jews live. All I have to do is to look at the windows. Unwashed windows are a sign of the Chosen People, especially where gaps left by missing panes have been filled by pillows or sacking. On the other hand, flowerpots and curtains suggest strongly that the inhabitants don't have the same inherited right to poverty.

There are exceptions. Here lives not a Jew but a drunk. There, contrariwise, flowers and little curtains, but people who read the Hebrew journal of the Enlighteners, Hatsefira.

The worst impression is made by a peculiar wooden house. It is not only larger than the others but also darker and dirtier. The front of it, strongly tilted forward, looks down on a correspondingly darkened old ruin—namely, a wizened, stooped, unsteady old Jewish woman busy haggling with a customer. Her customer is a sallow, unkempt maidservant, and the subject of their dispute is whether she is entitled to a little extra on her purchased pound of salt.

The beadle points the old woman out to me and says, "The house belongs to her." That surprises me, I tell him, because she seems too poor to own such a house.

"In actual fact," the beadle explains, "the house isn't really hers. She owns only a sixth of it. She's a widow. Her children are the heirs, but they don't live here, so they think of her as the owner."

"How much income does the house produce?"

"No income."

"How much is it worth?"

"About fifteen hundred rubles."

"And it produces no income?"

"It's unoccupied."

I let him know I suspect the house is used for monkey business.

"No, not that house," the beadle says, smiling. "There are two other houses of that sort and they'll have to close them down eventually, but this is something different. You see, a doctor once lived in this house. Then he died, so it's unoccupied."

"Why? Did he die of a contagious disease?"

"God forbid!"

"So why doesn't anyone live there?"

"It's simply that no one would want to live there."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean that hereabouts practically everybody has his own property. Anybody who does need to rent a place to live in doesn't want the expense of having to heat an entire house. The way we do things here is that a tenant pays a few rubles a year for heat in his corner of the house. Who needs such large houses?"

"Then why did they build one like this?"

"Ah! That was in the old days. Nowadays it isn't needed."

"Poor woman!"

"Why 'poor woman'? She has her salt stand. She makes a few rubles a week, her real-estate tax is twenty-eight rubles a year, and she lives on what's left. What does a Jewish woman need? What does this one lack? Her shroud? She has hers ready."

I looked again at the little old woman, and to me too it had begun to seem that in fact there was nothing she lacked. Her wrinkled skin even smiled at me: what does a Jewish woman need?

NUMBER 42

Notebook in hand, I proceed from house to house in the order of their numbers. From Number 41, though, the beadle leads me to 43.

"How about 42?" I ask.

"There!" he says, pointing to something ruinous in a narrow lane between 41 and 43.

"Did it fall down?"

"It was pulled down," answers the beadle.

"Why?"

"On account of a fire wall."

Walking had tired us, so we sat down on a nearby bench. The beadle resumed, his Yiddish teeming as ever with Hebraisms: "According to the Gentiles' law, you see, if a house hasn't been built far enough away from the one next to it, the two roofs have to be separated by fire walls. How great the distance must be, I don't know — as the psalm says, 'Of such ordinances they know nothing' — but I think it has to be more than the Talmud's proverbial four cubits. For Gentiles a fire wall is a sovereign remedy for incendiary peril. But that hovel was built by Jeroham Ivankhovker, a mere children's teacher and a man eminent for poverty, and of course he couldn't put up a fire wall.

"To tell the truth, there was no basis in the first place for his decision to build. You'll hear how afterward the whole thing developed into a suit according to Jewish law. During the trial his wife, Malke, may she rest in peace, recounted everything that had happened — starting, as is the way of the world, with the Six Days of Creation. And this is what it was all about:

"For about fifteen years Malke hadn't talked to her husband. She was a woman with a stubborn, cunning nature, though I shouldn't say so; tall, skinny, dark, with a nose as pointy as a pickax. She hardly ever talked about anything but Making a Living—there was a market woman for you! Not that she needed to talk! Her look was enough to chill your heart and to make the other market women shiver with mortal fear—that was the kind of eye she had. It isn't hard to understand why her silence gave so much pleasure to Jeroham. And neither did he ever speak a word to her. Still, their not speaking to each other didn't keep them from being blessed with two male sons and three girls.

"But the lustful passion to become householders made both of them talkative. The conversation went like this:

"'Malke!' She doesn't answer.

"'Malke?' She remains silent. He 'Malkes,' and she doesn't budge.

"Then Jeroham stands up and lets out a yell: 'Malke! I want to build a house!'

"Malke couldn't stand it anymore. She raised an eye and opened her mouth. 'I thought,' she said afterward, 'that he had gone mad!'

"And indeed it was madness. From a great-grandfather he had inherited that narrow little plot of ground you saw, and in money not even a cent. Later, when his wife's so-called jewelry—junk, really—had to be sold, it didn't realize any more than three times eighteen gulden. Anyway, it used to be with the pawnbroker all year long, except that for Sabbaths and holy days Jeroham would retrieve it by signing a note making him liable to excommunication for failure to return the pawn.

"But as the psalm says, 'O Lord, who could stand' when lust enlists the aid of fantasy? He was convinced that all he had to do was put up the house and he would have everything he needed. His credit would be good, so he would be able to borrow enough to buy a goat and have food in the house. He would rent out one room for a store or, God willing, his wife would be the storekeeper. Above all, the children would be provided for! The boys would in any event be sent to a yeshiva, he would give each of the girls half of a male's share in the estate, and that would be the end of it!

"And the wherewithal for building the house? He had that figured out:

"'I,' says he to her, 'am a teacher and you are a peddler, so we have two incomes. We'll live on one income and build with the other.'

"'What are you saying, you crazy man?' Malke says to him. 'Even with two incomes we don't have enough to live on.'

"'God helps those who help themselves,' he tells her. 'Just look at our neighbor Noah the Teacher. His wife is sick, so she doesn't earn anything; and they have six little children, may they live and be well. Yet the whole family is able to live on the income from his tuition fees alone.'

"'What are you talking about? He's a very good teacher, so his pupils are rich as rich can be.'

"'And why do you suppose that is?' says he. 'Do you think he's a better scholar than I am? Of course not. But when God sees that Noah has only the one income, He gives him that in abundance. Do you want another proof? Look at Black Berakhah—a widow, with five children, like us, and she is only a peddler.'

"'What are you talking about? Are you insane? If only my business were as good as hers! It must be worth thirty rubles.'

"'That isn't what's important,' he explains to her. 'What's important is that Berakhah means "blessing" and for her the blessing can come only by way of her apples. The Sovereign of the Universe governs the world by the laws of nature!'

"He also persuades her that they will be able to save money. There are lots of things they can do without.

"And that's how it was decided. Jeroham went without his snuff and the whole family without such luxuries as sour milk in particular and the evening meal in general. They began to build!

"It took them years. Only by the time they came to the fire wall, Malke had no merchandise left, Jeroham was exhausted, the oldest son had gone off to beg, the youngest child had died, and there was a fortune still to pay out—forty rubles for a fire wall!

"What to do? What they did was to put something into the palm of the town clerk and move in without putting up the fire wall.

"Since he was a member of the Burial Society, the society sprang for a Dedication of the House. I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that they put away a whole barrel of beer, not to mention the liquor and raisin wine. I tell you, it was one joyous celebration!

"But the joy didn't last. A certain householder got into a fight with Jeroham's neighbor Noah the Teacher. Now this Noah had himself once been one of our more prosperous householders, a very rich man, in fact. Besides what he had inherited, he owned a nice few hundreds of his own, and he bought and sold honey. Then came that dissension in our community about the Lithuanian rabbi. Somebody turned informer against Noah's son—he's still in the army, with a bad lung—and Noah was put on trial for arson against the rabbi.

"It was murder! Talebearing we're used to, but spreading twigs around a house and then setting fire to them—that's truly murderous. Whether or not he did it, together his son and the costs of the trial made Noah as poor as poor can be, so he set up as a teacher. He was too new at the game to have learnt deference to his employers. One of them got insulted, took his scion away from Noah, and entrusted him to Jeroham.

"Noah resented it. He knew sneaky tricks, was at home in the seat of government, and was skilled with tongue and pen. So he made sure that the story about the wall got around, and down came a senior inspector.

"By the time this happened, though, Noah had come to regret what he had done. He bestirred himself, and the weight of a coin or two sank the legal proceedings into oblivion.

"Everything would have stayed fine if not for the controversy about the thread of blue that we are commanded to put in the fringe of the four corners of our garments. I don't need to remind you that the rabbis of the Talmud were themselves no longer sure of the proper dye for that blue and ruled in favor of all the threads being white. Neither do you need me to tell you that the followers of the Rodzin rebbe believe that their master rediscovered the secret of the genuine blue, and make their fringes accordingly.

"Well, Jeroham was a Rodzin Hasid. Noah wasn't. He was a fervent Belz Hasid, and therefore abominated Jeroham's Rodzin blue. One word led to another, the fire wall surfaced again, and the proceedings were reinstituted. In a judgment by default Jeroham was given a month to build the wall, failing which the house would be torn down.

"They didn't have a cent. The quarrel had become so bitter that this time Noah didn't feel remorseful and wouldn't listen to anybody or anything. Jeroham summoned him before the rabbi, but Noah kicked out the beadle bearing the summons.

"When Malke saw that all was lost, she grabbed Noah right in the middle of the street and dragged her prey to the rabbi's. The marketplace was full of Belz Hasidim, but who would want to start up with such a woman? As the Talmud says, 'There is no justice for a man killed by women.' Noah's wife went along with them, hurling deadly curses at Malke. She too was afraid to come near.

"In the rabbi's house Malke told the whole story from beginning to end and insisted that Noah should either have the wall built himself or have the court proceedings sink from sight again.

"Our fine little rabbi knew that no matter how he ruled, one or the other group of Hasidim would have it in for him. Like the learned Jew he was, he knew how to squirm out of his fix by matching 'on the one hand' with 'on the other hand'—proximate cause of damage versus remote cause, and so on, blah-blah-blah. Neither side would agree to compromise, so he commended them to their respective rebbes.

"'The defendant's court has jurisdiction'—that is the legal principle. Noah stood firm, Jeroham had no choice, and off they went to Belz.

"Before leaving, Jeroham gave his power of attorney to his brotherin-law, together with the few rubles he had been able to borrow from compassionate lenders, and asked him to use the money to appeal the court's ruling.

"Everything afterward was a disaster. Maybe the brother-in-law used the money for himself or maybe, as he claimed, he lost it. Malke was first heartsick and then fatally sick. Noah's own rebbe in Belz found for his opponent, Jeroham, and awarded him the cost of constructing the fire wall plus the expense of litigation, but even that didn't help. On the way back from the Austrian kaiser's Belz to the Russian tsar's Tishevitz the two of them, Noah and Jeroham— both without passports, of course—were nabbed at the border and brought home in the prisoners' van. By the time Jeroham returned, Malke had passed on to the World of Truth and the house had been torn down."

THE MASKIL

You mustn't think that Tishevitz is at the end of the world. It too has a maskil—the genuine, old-fashioned article, a middle-aged man, unschooled, unread, bookless, without even a subscription to a newspaper: in short, a not very enlightened enlightener.

Not that he shaves; to be a maskil in Tishevitz it's enough that he trims his beard. So the townsfolk say that he's the sort to curl his locks even during the Ten Days of Repentance. Nor does he dress European-style. For that matter, the local barber-surgeon doesn't dress European-style either. He wears a long coat and honors the injunction in Leviticus against cutting the hair at the side of the head.

Our maskil discharged his obligation by polishing his boots and wearing some black ribbon around his neck. He retains a trace of his side hair, for which he compensates by wearing a cap. It's simple, people say. That's what Moses meant by "Jeshurun waxed fat, and he kicked." He's got it made, they say—a thriving shop, a grand total of three children. What more does he need? So he's a maskil:

What exactly his being a maskil consisted of was unclear, but it sufficed that people knew that he was a maskil. Everybody said he was a maskil, and he himself admitted as much. And what served to clinch the whole thing was the authority he arrogated to himself of passing judgment—"against the Lord and against His Messiah," as the psalm says.

I was to discover that the maskil, taking me for a fellow maskil, had expected that if I did not actually stay with him I would at any rate begin my work as a scrivener with him.

"For something like this," he said to his neighbors, "brains are needed. What could donkeys like you do for him?"

Unaware of Mohammed's existence, the mountain did not come to him, so Mohammed went to the mountain. The maskil tracked me down at the house of a certain widow and challenged me with his version of the Wicked Son's question in the Passover Haggadah. The Wicked son asks, "What is the point of this fuss that you're making?" The maskil asked, "Moj panic"—and continuing in Yiddish—"and what may you be doing here?"

"What do you mean, 'here'?" I ask.

"You must think I'm some kind of ignorant yokel, without a clue as to what's going on in the world, just because I live in Tishevitz. Our patriarch Jacob said, 'I have sojourned with Laban'—only sojourned, not settled. "I may live here, but I have a nose for what's going on."

"All right, you have a nose and know what's happening in the world. What are you asking me about?"

The beadle pricked up his ears, and so did the handful of idlers who had been dogging my footsteps. A look of intense pleasure spread over their faces, and on their brows I could almost read the verse in which Abner says to Joab, "Let the young warriors duel for our entertainment"—in this case, "Let's watch two maskilim gore each other!"

Now the maskil is really annoyed. "I don't need any more of this poking fun at me," he says. "You're not the only one who can use his tongue, you know. I can too. Do you think I like the companionship I can find here, with these Tishevitz jackasses? Just look at those nobodies!"

I am in a bit of a quandary. After all, I can hardly come to Tishevitz's defense when its own householders, at the windows and in the doorway, are smiling complacently at his insults. He continues: "Just tell me, what exactly is going on here, what notes are you taking?"

"Statistics."

"Statistics shmatistics! We've heard such stories before! What's the use of it?"

I explained it to him—or not so much to him as to the others. I wanted them to have some idea of statistics.

He laughed loud and long. "You may get these Tishevitz jackasses to believe you, but not me! Why do you record whether people are living in a house with or without a wooden floor? What difference does that make to you, ha?"

The object, I tell him, is to show that Jews are poor, and thereby . . .

"Thereby, nothing," he interrupts. "All right, let it go. But why do you have to know precisely how many boys and how many girls in a family? And how old each one is? And so on and so on, with all that other stuff in the notes you're taking?"

"They suspect us Jews of evading military service. You must know that the birth registers aren't accurate, so what we want to do is show . . ."

"All right, I suppose that's logical. I'll grant you that. But how about business licenses? What's your reason for recording who has one, and for what amount of business?"

"To prove that Jews . . .

The maskil doesn't let me finish. "Don't tell me those fairy tales. What will happen is that the authorities will find out that this one or that one hasn't paid a big enough license fee for the amount of business he does, and they'll make things hot for him!"

Instantly, as soon as his words had left his lips, all my hangers-on at the windows disappeared. The beadle took his leave of me, and the maskil, who actually had meant no great harm, was left as though turned to stone.

Everyone who had heard this was frightened, and in the space of two hours all. Tishevitz resounded with my name. I was suspected of being a tax agent. It made sense. Who could be a more useful agent for the tax office than a Jew? Who would be better placed to sniff out Jewish secrets?

This time I was alone as I made the circuit of the marketplace, the shtetl holding itself aloof. The lone maskil tagged along at my heels, wishing to talk with me. I, however, didn't wish to talk with him. I was heartily sick of him and couldn't bring myself even to look at him.

The faces of the people in the street have grown grave and ominous, and I begin to think of escape. I don't like the way they are looking at me out of the sides of their eyes and whispering.

I decide to take a last stab. I remember that the current rabbi of Tishevitz used to be a member of the rabbinical tribunal in my hometown. He will know me and at least testify that I am not what people think I am.

"Where does the rabbi live?" I ask the maskil.

Gratified, he answers, "Come. I'll take you."

THE RABBI OF TISHEVITZ

Only if you have seen the rabbi of Tishevitz's dressing gown will you know the reason why Mrs. Rabbi, his third wife and barely middle-aged, has to wear such large eyeglasses on her nose. The dressing gown is a wondrous thing of threads and shreds, and she has ruined her eyes patching and repatching it.

"If the town gave me two gulden more a week," he bemoans himself, "I could get by. As it is, things are bitter. But I'll win out! It's true that they can do without me for judging their disputes, because they have their wonder workers—or they can actually resort to the Gentiles' tribunals. Likewise, when it comes to deciding whether a pot or pan has become unkosher, any infants' teacher claims he's an authority. Feminine matters, now—it would be foolish to think that they could be postponed. But I'm going to win. All I have to do is wait for the communal elections. No rabbi, no valid elections! Can you imagine a city—'a mother city in Israel'—without, Keyn eyn hore, elected communal officers? And if even that doesn't work, I won't certify the slaughterers' knives as fit for kosher slaughter. Oh, I've got them!"

It was hard to distract the rabbi from his own troubles, but the maskil succeeded by promising to do his best to influence the community council to grant a rise in salary. Thereupon, the rabbi invited us to be seated, and listened to our account.

"What foolishness!" he said. "I know you! Tell those idiots I know you."

"But they avoid me."

"Avoid you? What do you mean, 'they avoid you'? Who avoids you, and why? Well, since you say so -- 'avoid you!'—I'll go down with you myself."

"And what will you wear?" It was a woman's voice, from behind the stove.

"Give me my coat," answers the rabbi.

"How can I give it to you when I've taken it apart?"

"No great tragedy," says the rabbi. "We'll go tomorrow."

I let him know that it's only noon and that I wouldn't want to waste the rest of the day.

"Well, what else can I do?" asks the rabbi as he clasps his hands. "My wife had to pick just this time to work on my caftan."

"Tell them to come up here."

"Telling them is easy enough, but will it do any good? They won't listen to me. Maybe it would be better to go down in my dressing gown?"

"That wouldn't look right, Rabbi," interjects the maskil. "The policeman is making his rounds."

"If it were up to me," says the rabbi, "I would go; but since you say no, I won't."

The decision is that the three of us will call through the window to invite the people in the street to come in, but opening the window is more easily said than done. The last time it was opened was about fifteen years ago. The putty is dried out and the panes, cracked by the sun, rattle at every footfall. Woodworms have bored holes in the shutters, kept fastened to the wall only by rust. Whether the shutters still have hinges is doubtful.

We finally managed to do the deed without inflicting damage, tugging first at one side and then at the other. The rabbi stations himself between the maskil and me, and we call to the throng in the marketplace. In a few minutes the house is full.

"Gentlemen," the rabbi tells them, "I know this man. . . ."

"No notes. We don't want any report," a few voices cry out together.

The rabbi loses his courage. "If you say no," he says softly, "then it's no."

Meanwhile, the maskil has mounted the table. He calls out:

"Jackasses! Notes have to be taken! Pro bono publico!"

Pro bono publico, he is prepared to lie. He tells them that he and I have analyzed my work in all its particulars, that what he said earlier about me was said in jest, and that I have even shown him missives from rabbis.

The question is shouted from every side: "What rabbis?"

He continues to trumpet his fabrications: "From the rabbi of Paris . . . the rabbi of London." Nothing less would be good enough for him.

"Jews, let's go home," someone breaks in. "Those aren't our kind of people."

The crowd scattered as quickly as it had assembled. Only we three were left—and the beadle, who sidled up to me and said, "Give me something for the day."

I gave him a few ten-gulden notes. He stuck them uncounted in his pocket and left without saying good-bye.

"Well, what do you think, Rabbi?" I ask.

"I hardly know what to think. I'm very, very much afraid that it's going to hurt me."

"Hurt you?"

"Who else? You? If you don't do your statistics, people will manage without them. As the psalm has it, 'Behold, the Guardian of Israel neither slumbers not sleeps." I'm thinking of those two gulden a week."

In the meantime, the rabbi's wife, she of the large eyeglasses, has emerged from behind the stove. "I keep telling you," says she, "not to meddle in communal affairs, but do you listen to me? Is the community a rabbi's business? How can that concern you?"

"All right, wife," he answers her quietly, "that's enough for now. You know what kind of man I am. I'm softhearted, I feel for others. But it's a pity about those two gulden a week!"