A Hasidic rebbe, whom I portrayed in my book In My Father’s Court, lived on our street. But one day a new rebbe moved in. While the first was a grandson of the Kozhenitzer Rebbe, this one, from the provinces, was connected to the Kotzk court and related to the Rebbe of Kotzk’s family.
The new rebbe had come to pay my father a visit. Short, young, with a little blond beard, he wore a tattered silk gaberdine and a shabby high fur hat.
The fact that this new rebbe had moved to a street where a rebbe already lived was considered an improper act of competition. But where should a rebbe live? There was no need for them in the gentile quarter, and a Hasidic rebbe had already established his residence on the Jewish street.
The other Hasidic rebbe was already old, eighty or more. What did an old man need? But the new rebbe had a young wife and a houseful of children: girls with braids and boys with sidecurls down to their shoulders. Unlike the old rebbe, the new one was a scholar. He could have been a rebbe with a court of
followers, but where could one find Hasidim for so many rebbes? So he just remained what people called a “grandson” or a “descendant” of a noted rebbe.
To succeed in a trade one must have luck, but it was immediately apparent that the young rebbe had no mazel. He looked too refined, too wise, too aristocratic for the simple women on the street. No one came to him. No one believed that he could intervene with God on their behalf. The old rebbe, then, had nothing to fear: the new one took no one away from him.
The new rebbe wanted me to befriend his little boys, and I went to play with them. The rooms in the apartment were half empty. A young woman, her head covered with a silk kerchief, was puttering around in the kitchen. The little girls were teaching each other the aleph-beys and copying lines of Hebrew script from a penmanship manual. The boys were swaying over Talmuds. Everything was fine and orderly in the apartment, but no one visited. No one knocked on the door. When someone did knock, it was a beggar going from door to door. The rebbetzin gave him a groschen or a piece of sugar.
The rebbe, who had a pale face, blue eyes, and a high forehead, wandered about the apartment in a silk robe. He had all the attributes of a Hasidic rebbe: fine familial lineage, scholarly ability, a talent for preaching and sharing the bread at his table, and perhaps even for producing a miraculous feat. But no one needed him. All the bankruptcy of the Hasidic courts radiated out of him.
One day the rebbe came to talk to Father. Sitting at the table, he said, “The Jews in your street have no regard for me.”
“They don’t come to you?”
“They don’t even stick their nose in the door.”
“They don’t need us,” Father said in sympathy, using the plural.
“The waters have risen up to here,” the rebbe said, quoting the psalms, pointing to his thin throat, long and white as a girl’s.
“Can I help you in any way?” Father asked.
“No, no.”
Mother brought in the usual glass of tea and Sabbath biscuits. The rebbe held the glass with long, thin fingers. He looked at Mother with his kindly Jewish eyes, which seemed to say, Look what’s become of us …
Suddenly the rebbe declared, “Rabbi, I’m going to America.”
Father looked confused. “To America?”
“Yes. America.”
“What will you do in America?”
“I’m going to rid myself of humiliation. I’m going to become a tailor.”
Father seemed embarrassed by these words. “Some fine tailor!”
The rebbe took hold of his beard. “What do you think? Will I be a good tailor? In America one doesn’t have to sew an entire garment. It’s enough if you sew on a button or a loop.”
“It’s not for you. Not for you.”
“And is starving with my family any better? ‘Rather skin a carcass in the market,’ says the Talmud, ‘than depend on charity.’”
“Still … what about your children?”
“One can also be a Jew in America.”
“Yes, but …”
“In America, people walk around upside down,” I called out.
Father cast a rather angry glance at me. “You’re talking nonsense.”
“But I read it in The Book of the Covenant.”
“You read, but you didn’t understand,” the rebbe said. He explained that people everywhere walk with their heads up and their feet on the ground. But pertaining to heavenly bodies, one cannot say precisely what is up and what is down. It was clear from the rebbe’s words that he had dipped into secular books.
Then Father asked, “Well … do you know any foreign languages?”
“I know Russian, Polish, and German, too.”
“How?”
“I looked into books.”
“Hmmm … it’s not a good situation.”
The rebbe kept his word. I don’t know how, but he obtained passage for his entire family. A little sign that had hung on the gate stating that the rebbe lived there had been removed. I witnessed a quiet revolution at his house. The rebbetzin removed her silk kerchief and donned a wig. The boys’ sidecurls were shortened. The rebbe had discarded his silk gaberdine and now wore a ribbed cotton cloak. It was clear that he was not going to America to be a rebbe but would indeed learn tailoring.
Once, when I went to his house, I saw him reading a newspaper. He even peeked into a novel. It seemed as if he were saying silently: Since God doesn’t need me, I don’t need Him. The boys ran about, yelling and fooling around, and their father let them. It was strange, but the rebbe’s appearance had changed—he looked stronger and more manly. Now he discussed mundane matters with his wife. Then someone knocked on the door and I watched a bizarre scene unfold.
A woman came in and asked, “Does the rebbe live here?”
The rebbetzin asked her what she wanted.
“Alas, my child is very ill!” the woman began crying and wringing her hands.
Instead of her being escorted to the rebbe’s study, the rebbe came to see her in the kitchen. He asked her what ailed the child. When she replied, the rebbe said, “Why have you come to me? Go to a doctor.”
“Holy rabbi, first God and then you.”
“I can’t help you in any way,” the rebbe said.
“Holy saint!”
“I am not a saint. I’m a plain Jew.”
“Aren’t you the rebbe?” The woman stopped crying for a moment.
“I’m a rebbe no longer!”
The woman wanted to give the rebbe a gulden, but he refused to take it, saying, “Take the gulden, see a doctor, and buy medicine.”
Just then the youngest boy whispered into my ear: “In America I’m going to cut off my sidecurls.”
“Will your father let you?”
“He himself said so. He’s also going to send me to public school.”
“To public school?”
“Yes … public school.”
The rebbe wasn’t merely emigrating to America, he was conducting a strike against God. His face expressed rebelliousness and impatience. The look in the rebbetzin’s eyes seemed to radiate hatred. And strangely, the rebbe never even came to bid farewell to Father.
Sad news concerning the rebbe soon made its way to us. Someone reported that he had seen the family at the Vienna train station. The rebbetzin was wearing a hat. The boys’ sidecurls had been cut off. The rebbe wore Western-style clothes and a fedora in the German fashion.
For a while we heard nothing more and then someone from Brussels wrote a letter to a relative in Warsaw stating that he had met the family there. One of the rebbe’s daughters had had an eye problem which needed treatment. The rebbe had eaten in a restaurant that was not glatt kosher, a place where truly pious Jews would not even set foot.
More time passed with no news of the rebbe. Then one of the Jews on our street got a letter from his brother in New York saying that the rebbe was working alongside him in the same shop. He had shaved off his beard. He worked all day long standing next to gentile girls.
Every fresh bit of news was a blow to Father, but he did not get angry. True, one could not wage war against the Almighty, and this rebbe was not conducting himself properly. Nevertheless, sometimes one has to address God with a sharp word. He
shouldn’t assume that He can do what He wishes to Jews and they will routinely stretch their necks out for slaughter. If He wants Jews, He should provide them with a livelihood. If He wants Torah and Yiddishkeit, He should see to it that they are held in high regard.
In fact, while Father didn’t articulate this, one could see in his eyes something akin to triumph mingled with sorrow. It seemed to me that Father’s thoughts went something like this: If such a fine young man from such a glorious family lineage could abandon the straight and narrow path, it would be noted in heaven that the situation of the Jews was critical and that the Messiah would have to come.
I, too, was pleased with this news. It showed that everything was falling apart. Who knows? Perhaps they would also let me cut off my sidecurls. Perhaps Father, too, would go to America. I had a strong desire to go somewhere—every time I heard a train whistle, the longing was reawakened. In my fantasy I saw the rebbe in a factory, bareheaded, clean-shaven, a gentile girl on either side of him. The rebbe was sewing buttons, singing a song like the ones the journeymen sang in their workshops. The rebbetzin’s hair was not covered. Their sons, my friends, went to public school and wrote on the Sabbath. Who knows, perhaps they even ate unkosher food. I fancied that when the rebbe came home from work, the rebbetzin told him, Today I cooked noodles and ham …
A year or more must have passed. Then out of the blue we got a letter from the rebbe declaring that it had indeed been his ambition to be a worker. For a long time he had slaved away at the factory, but he didn’t have the strength for it. Then someone
suggested that he study slaughtering. The rebbe wrote to Father asking him to send him the slaughterer’s handbook, Tevuos Shor.
The letter pleased Father and he showed it to the men in the Hasidic shtibl. “See, he’s a scion of the pious, after all,” he said.
But I didn’t take kindly to that sort of submissiveness. I wanted the rebbe to convert. I wanted his boys to become Christians. I was overflowing with modern rebelliousness and a mad desire for upheaval, extraordinary news, weird changes. I dreamed that the moon had fallen, the sun was extinguished, an earthquake had rocked Warsaw—even that the hill in Krashinsky Park suddenly started to spew fire and become what The Book of the Covenant called a volcano.
“Papa, how would you look without a beard?” I once asked Father.
Father cast a frightened look at me. “Don’t talk nonsense!”
I imagined Father without a beard, without a mustache, and wearing a straw hat, checkered trousers, and yellow shoes. I began laughing and crying at once. A pair of scissors or a razor could have made Father beardless. Just trimming down Father’s gaberdine would make him look fashionably German. He, too, could have been placed among gentile girls and been told to sew buttons … Suddenly I took hold of Father’s beard and tugged it.
“What are you doing, you rascal!” Father scolded me good-naturedly.
A horrible thought took hold of me: he could have been converted, too, God forbid … Father could have become a gentile. A cold chill ran through me and a lump knotted my throat. Anything could happen to a human being. A man could even be
slaughtered like an animal and his flesh chopped on a butcher block.
“Why are you looking at me like that? What are you thinking? Why aren’t you studying?” Father asked me.
I kissed Father on the forehead. “Stay the way you are!”