Chapter 16

The shtetl where Gershon and Yetta were born was actually five kilometres south of Lemberg, but Jews took the name of the city because it sounded more cultured. The Catholic peasants who farmed the surrounding countryside didn’t care, as long as their fields and animals were fertile. Market day was the big event each week. Peasants sold cartloads of produce and spent their money in the Jewish shops, including the Mendels’ small grocery store. The farmers spoke Austrian-German, the Jews Yiddish, so they gestured to exchange vegetables and livestock for kerosene, matches, and dry goods. Gershon, on his way to cheder, hung around the marketplace, where he quickly picked up the foreign language. Soon he was called out of school to translate complex deals, and earned a reputation as a “smart” boy. His parents protested that God gave him brains to study Jewish law, not to trade gentile goods, but the rich gvirs overrode their objections.

One October day, fire broke out on the edge of town where hay had just been harvested. The peasants’ barns and houses were attached, forming a continuous ring to keep the Jews out, but that also made the fire spread quickly. Farmers loaded whatever they could fit into their carts and drove into town. Jews took them in and raided their own meagre stores of food to feed them. When space and rations ran out, Yetta’s father bought lumber to build the peasants huts and donated barrels of flour for bread. As winter settled in, tempers frayed. The poor Jews kvetched that while they ate simple meals—radishes and herring for breakfast; soup and a bit of chicken for dinner—the Christians in their heated huts dined on meat provided by their rich host.

Gershon was listening to just such complaints the day Yetta, a girl of Rivka’s age, walked into the Mendels’ store and bought all the lump sugar. To him she seemed a foreign figure newly arrived from Vienna, or even London. Dark, curly braids, escaping from a fur hood, framed her wide and friendly smile. She spoke to him as an equal, prefacing her order with, “Please.”

“So much sugar? You must drink your tea sweeter than Empress Elisabeth.” Gershon tried to mask shyness with bravado, but his arms shook lifting the ten-kilo bags onto the counter.

“It’s not for me. Papa says the farmers, no less than we, should have sugar in their tea.”

“No amount of sugar will sweeten them!”

“Don’t judge them so harshly. Think of all they’ve lost. Surely it’s a mitzvah to share whatever we can with them, especially the little children.”

Gershon felt chastened. “With such sweet thoughts, you don’t need any sugar yourself.” He offered to load the sugar in a wheelbarrow and walk her back home, but she pointed to her pony cart out front and helped him carry and stow the bags herself. Gershon didn’t know whether he was more surprised by her strength or the fact that her father let her do such menial work.

“Papa says manual labour, especially on behalf of those less fortunate, keeps us humble.”

Gershon didn’t feel humble watching her drive away. He felt exalted. Just standing next to her made him feel rich. Yetta’s father next bought kerosene and matches for all the peasants, and so for a short time his parents grew rich too. The fire had been good for business.

In spring, the peasants were back on their farms, taking the lumber with them. Gershon and his friends had the streets of the shtetl to themselves once again. Late one evening, after the game of Nuts-in-the-Hole in which Gershon beat Avram, he saw Yetta again. Rivka had just come to call him home to study, when Yetta marched past arm-in-arm with a group of rich girlfriends, laughing and singing as though the glow of twilight had been created for them. She smiled at him and Rivka with a brightness that outdid the setting sun. Her companions made nasty comments about unwashed riffraff. Yetta scolded her friends, but their locked arms trapped and pulled her away.

As Yetta looked back at him, Gershon smiled and waved at her until Rivka elbowed him in the ribs. “I thought you were smart,” his sister said. “You should know better than to get ideas in your head about the daughter of a baalei h’bata.” For the next two years, the difference in their status had drawn a line between them, until the day Yetta came to the bakery with her father. Soon after, Gershon’s guilty promise to devote himself to study had separated them another six years.

When he was eighteen, and Yetta seventeen, Gershon could stand the frustration no longer. He went to the shadchen and asked the matchmaker to arrange their marriage with her father.

“Are you meshugga?” she asked. “Her father will choose a husband from the city, not the shtetl.” To Gershon’s protest that a rich man’s son was no match for a brilliant scholar, however poor, she laughed and said, “He can’t match your chutzpah either.” Only after failing to persuade the shadchen to speak on his behalf did Gershon, desperate, go to Yetta’s father himself.

Ready to mount a defence against similar ridicule, he was instead met with a practical question. “How do you propose to take care of my daughter? She was not raised to be conceited, but she is accustomed to certain luxuries.”

Gershon thought quickly. “I’ll tutor the sons of the wealthy preparing for bar mitzvah.”

Yetta’s father raised his eyebrows. “Every other scholar hires himself out to do the same. Lemberg is neither that big nor that rich to support all of you.”

Gershon tapped his forehead. “Seykhl. Wits. I’ll use mine to compete for business.”

“This I would relish seeing, were it not for the fact that Yetta’s well being is at stake.”

“I would do anything for your daughter.”

“That is what both reassures—and scares—me.” Yetta’s father stroked his beard. “The Talmud teaches us to be careful not to make a woman cry because God counts her tears. Woman came out of man’s rib. Not from his feet to be walked on, not from his head to be superior, but from his side, to be equal. From under the arm to be protected, and next to the heart to be loved.”

Gershon too quoted the ancient rabbis. “A man should love his wife as much as he loves himself, and honour her more. He who honours his wife will be rewarded with wealth. As much as I love and honour your daughter, I’ll be the wealthiest man in all of Lemberg, in the entire Empire!”

“Testimonials are touching but you must physically honour the obligations set forth in the ketubah, the marriage contract.” Yetta’s father listed them: conjugal rights, shelter, a garment for each season, sufficient oil and wood for cooking, enough bread for two meals a day, wine if the wife was accustomed to drinking, and a silver coin—ma’ah—as pocket money every week.

“The wife must fulfil her duties too.” Gershon, growing impatient, enumerated on his fingers. A wife was expected to act modestly, even if her husband was the only person present. It was her role to maintain sholem bayess, peace in the home, and to cook and clean. If her dowry was sufficient to hire someone, as Yetta’s would be, she was obligated to perform only “tasks of affection,” that is, making the bed and serving her husband food. “I would not ask more of her.”

“The Talmud states that if a man cannot provide his wife with the basics, he must hire out as a day labourer to earn enough to pay for them.”

“I would live by the sweat of my brow, instead of the wisdom of my brains, if necessary.”

“Rashi says that a man must also provide his wife with perfume and jewellery.”

Gershon was momentarily crestfallen, then defiant. “Her very breath is to me sweeter than perfume, her radiant smile is the finest of jewels. So shall I consider her bedecked with finery.”

The older man frowned. “These are the gifts she gives to you. Rashi says that you must give them to her.”

Gershon wondered if Yetta had kept the mirror he’d given her six years ago. “I will hold a mirror before her eyes and give back to her, magnified, the perfume and jewels of her soul.”

Yetta’s father clasped his hands in thought, then summoned his wife, a devout woman who was known for her charitable deeds. She was aghast. “Farshtendlekhkeyt, intelligence, does not put food on the table!”

“And when you married me, what did I have?”

“A small business only in those days, but still more than one can say for Mr. Mendel.”

“And who, if not you, gave me the foundation to turn a small business into a big one?”

“God,” she answered.

Yetta’s father smiled at his wife’s firm tone. “The rabbis teach that God’s presence dwells in a pure and loving home. We raised Yetta pure. They love each other. With God’s help, they too will manage.” He bowed slightly. “Of course, if you object, the marriage will not take place.”

Yetta’s mother closed her eyes in prayer, then looked Gershon up and down. At last, she nodded. “He is a highly regarded scholar. His father is an honest man. May God bless them.”

***

The wedding was a lavish affair. Not only were relatives and business associates from the city invited, but everyone in the shtetl was welcomed to partake of the five course meal and bottles of imported wine. Gershon and Yetta stood under the same wedding canopy as her parents had, and when Gershon crushed the wineglass beneath his feet, it was from her family’s finest crystal.

The newlyweds were twirled in chairs above the guests’ heads. Gershon looked down on his parents and his sister Rivka, standing uneasily beside his in-laws. People filed past them, two mismatched families united by this gossiped-about marriage, to offer congratulations. Avram and his parents were among the well wishers. It seemed to Gershon that Avram lingered in front of Rivka longer than it would take to say a simple “Mazel Tov!” His sister appeared to blush, but when Gershon tried to look at them more closely, he was lifted and spun around. By the time he was set down, Avram was drinking with their old cheder classmates and Rivka was in a tight circle with her girlfriends. Dizzy with joy and wine, Gershon decided it had been his imagination.

When the last of the company left, Gershon’s mother began to collect plates and glasses. Yetta’s mother gently laid a hand on her arm, telling her to leave it to the servants. Everyone was tired, she said, and they were giving the young couple a carriage to spend the night at a hotel in Lemberg. They’d have the Mendels over for Shabbas dinner next week. The women embraced, stiffly, and Yetta’s mother went to fetch a small trunk with her daughter’s overnight clothes.

Gershon stood alone in the quiet market square with his parents.

“You’ve done well for yourself.” His father wiped the gravy-stained lapel of his only suit.

His mother straightened her wig, knocked askew by the awkward hug from his new mother-in-law. “I never dreamed a child of mine would become part of such an eminent family.”

Gershon pictured them eating at a fancy table in the home of Yetta’s parents, dressed in the same clothes they’d worn to the wedding, watching nervously to choose the proper utensil. They looked tiny and shop-worn. He enveloped them in arms grown sturdy from carrying heavy Torah scrolls. “Opruen zikh, don’t worry,” he told them. “I will never forget where I came from.”

Remembering where he came from was what drove Gershon to help impoverished immigrants after he’d become a rich man in America. It’s what fuelled his commitment to find Shmuel and bring him home to his poor sister. He was sure his money, accompanied by a little arm-twisting, would let him succeed. Some might see his belief in himself as arrogance, but to Gershon he was just using the brains God gave him to do good. Let women worry about sholem bayess, peace in the home. Men were obligated to perform tikkun olam, healing the whole wide world.