Only Yesterday (40 page)
And so Balak lay as if the whole night were his. He began shaking his voice in a song as if he were alone in the world and no creature heard him.
The Song of Balak
I look at the land
No candle will quake
With the stars of God Almighty I stay awake
On the face of the earth There isn’t a sound
In the cleft of the rock
On the clods of the mound
And over my paths No one will hobnob And why, oh my soul, In vain do you sob
The night is still deep Far away is the dawn Your eyelids are closed
And your eyes are shut down
All over the land No one passing now All flesh is silent Bow wow wow
And thus Balak sang and didn’t see that Reb Fayesh was here. And what brought Reb Fayesh out in the dead of night and darkness? Reb Fayesh went to hang up posters of excommunications, which he was afraid to hang up in daytime lest those who were excommunicated tear down the posters, and so he did his work at night, and by the time they woke up early in the morning, the whole city knew who was excommunicated and outlawed. Balak wasn’t involved in politics and didn’t stick his head into any quarrel. He didn’t distinguish between one society and another or between one ethnic community
and another. In this respect, Balak was truly unique in his time. Therefore, it is no wonder that he didn’t pay heed to any of those excommunications, which were hung up every morning. And if he did pay heed to them, he did so for his enjoyment, for example, if he was hungry he pulled off the dough they use to paste the excommunications and ate it. And just as he didn’t care to know what the docu-ments were, so he didn’t care to recognize who wrote them. When that man appeared to him, that is Reb Fayesh, the dog thought in his innocence that he was also enjoying that sweet darkness that enveloped all Jerusalem. Balak was filled with love and affection for that human creature who was awake like him, and all that was in Balak’s heart at that moment rose up to his tongue. And when Reb Fayesh approached him, he gave him a welcoming bark to tell him, Even though I don’t presume to be your equal, I’m informing you that I’m here too. Reb Fayesh was startled and his lantern slipped out of his hand and the candle went out and the pot fell and the dough spilled out of it and the excommunication posters were scattered and began flying away. And Reb Fayesh’s soul also flew away. That Commandment began clinging to him and said to him, What’s wrong with you, don’t be afraid. And it tempted him until his soul returned. He started running and gathering up the posters. Those scraps of paper made their own inference. If Reb Fayesh, an emissary of the Commandment, is running, we who are the Commandment itself should run even faster. They immediately began rolling away and striking him in the face. And every single note cackles with those words Reb Fayesh wrote on it. In his innocence, Reb Fayesh thought that the forefathers of the excommunicated rose up from their graves and came to take vengeance on him, for the notes were white as shrouds of the dead. He screamed a great scream and ran. And the notes ran after him. Reb Fayesh came upon the dog and kicked him. The dog screamed and Reb Fayesh was startled and fell down. All you emissaries of the Commandments, may you not be startled as Reb Fayesh was startled. Balak saw the downfall of that man and was stunned, What is the matter? Just a little while ago, he was walking around on two legs and now he’s down on four. I’ll go and smell him, maybe the creature isn’t a human, or maybe he needs help and I’ll be kind
to him. As he was smelling him, Reb Fayesh was jolted awake and fled for his life. Balak stood ashamed and embarrassed. All you who are kind, may you not have such shame.
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The night was pleasant and a cool wind blew. That coolness strengthened Balak’s bones and his spirit too. On most occasions, Balak liked the heat, but on those days of great heat, he was drawn to coolness. He consoled himself for his grief and said, What did that Jew do to me, because he ran away from me am I defective? As folks tell when they throw a dog into the river he comes out and shakes himself and goes back to being a dog as he was. And even though he mentioned the issue of water only as an example, his mouth filled with saliva, for all through those days most of his thoughts involved water, and when he said water, his mouth filled up immediately.
Never in his life had Balak seen seas or rivers or brooks or canals or ponds or springs. He had heard of them only by rumor. And like folks whose foolishness is greater than their wisdom and who haven’t any idea of the ways of the world and think that everything they haven’t seen with their own eyes is a fiction, so Balak thought the seas and the rivers and the brooks and the ponds and the springs were made-up fictions. And like those folks whose foolishness is greater than their wisdom, when they long for something, they immediately believe it, so Balak began believing in the reality of all the waters in the world, but he thought they were made by human hands. How? They dig a cistern like that ritual bath in the Rand Houses and in the Oren Stein Houses, and they put slivers of ice in it, like the ones the soda vendors bring from Jaffa and the sun shines on them and they melt and become rivers and brooks and seas. You drink from them, you quench your thirst, you bathe in them, you remove the weariness from your body.
By the time Balak rummaged around in his mind, the sec-ond watch of the night ended and the hour came when all heavenly creatures and all earthly creatures recite poetry. But where is the water that we say,
When he uttereth his voice there is a multitude of waters
? Where are the rivers of
let the floods clap their hands
? Where
are the springs that will recite poetry? Jerusalem is wiped dry as a desert. If not for two or three Minyans of trees and stalks and desert plants, no poetry would be heard in Jerusalem. At that hour, the voice of the beadle was heard saying, At the light of thine arrows they went, and at the shining of thy glittering spear. Jerusalem shook itself out of its sleep and from every house and every hut and every shed and every courtyard all kinds of slops began to be poured into the street. Before Balak had time to quench his thirst, the sun shone and nothing was left of them but mounds of filth.
Leaves the Dog and Concerns Only Reb Fayesh
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More dead than alive, Reb Fayesh was brought home. His blood was chilled and his limbs were paralyzed. His tongue was stuck to his palate and his thoughts were scrambled. Out of an unclear con-sciousness, he pondered, Our Rabbis said that envoys of the Commandments come to no harm. So why was I harmed? Can we suspect the Lord of passing judgment without justice?
The Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He does not pass judgment without justice. Whatever He does, He does well in its time and its sea-son, for He had warned the Children of Israel not to attack one another, but because of the voices of quarrel, His voice was not heard, the voice of the Almighty. Many of them were afflicted, in their fortune or their body, and they haven’t yet learned the moral. For, they said, A habit that found favor in the eyes of our forefathers could it be unclean for us. And they didn’t know that there are things that were beautiful in ancient times and ugly in modern times.
Reb Fayesh’s thoughts gradually ceased. His limbs fell still and his thoughts left him. Sleep descended upon him and he dozed off. Torah and Commandments, good and evil deeds, Hell and Paradise, This World and the World-to-Come went off, and nothing was left but this body sunk in pillows and blankets and sweating. His lips rounded and were covered with saliva. At times they looked blue, at times purple. At first Rebecca diligently wiped them. When she saw that it was endless, her hands slackened and she left him alone. But Shifra didn’t leave him alone. As a butterfly spreads her wings on a gray day and shakes them, thus Shifra hovered over him with a colorful rag in her hand and wiped his lips. If he stirred—he looked
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straight ahead, like someone glancing into the clouds, and went back to sleep.
Reb Fayesh’s bed is surrounded by neighbors and the neighbors of neighbors, friends and half friends. Some nod their head in grief and others offer consolation and say the Lord will take pity. Both the former and the latter discuss that unknown illness and tell stories in praise of the sick man. Reb Fayesh wasn’t aware of them or their words, or he was aware of them and didn’t pay any mind to them.
Meanwhile they sent for the doctor. The doctor examined the sick man and prescribed some drugs for drinking and oil for lu-brication. He took his fee and went on his way. And as he left, he said he’d come back, and if necessary, he would prescribe other drugs for him. Another doctor summoned after him did the same. Except that one was a German who spoke German and ordered them to get his drugs from the German pharmacist and the other was a Greek who ordered them to get his drugs from the Greek pharmacist. Neither of them did any good for the sick man, neither with their examinations nor with their medications. Gentiles who raise dogs in their own houses, how should it occur to them that the disease came from a dog. Reb Fayesh lies without a tongue and without speech and they don’t know what happened to him. Too bad for Reb Fayesh. People like Reb Fayesh aren’t born every day. Now that he is sleeping, we’ll talk about him a bit and tell a bit of his story.
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Reb Fayesh was born in a small community in the state of Slovakia to a pious father and mother who observed the Commandments. They rented fields and vineyards from the nobleman and brought forth bread from the earth with toil and tedium. Even in childhood, signs of purity were visible in him, for he didn’t behave like those mischievous boys who turn their heart away from the Torah and run away from school to seek in the orchards and pick fruit, but he would hide at home and study Torah. Because of their poverty, his parents couldn’t hire a teacher for him and they made do with any vagabonds seeking work in small villages, who showed him the shape of the letters and their combinations. When he could com—
bine letters, he clung to the Yeshiva students who went around on the Sabbath eve for their food, and he would give them his own bread if they taught him a chapter of the Pentateuch. His father and mother saw that Fayesh’s soul longed for Torah and deprived themselves for their son and didn’t notice that their livelihood wasn’t enough for them, and every Sabbath they invited a student to their house to teach their son. When Fayesh was about ten years old and studied Talmud on his own, they sent him to a Yeshiva. He acquired perfection in the ways of the Lord and didn’t enjoy the pleasures of this world, not even those that are obligatory. Because he was born under the sign of Mars, his Rabbi advised him to study the laws of kosher slaughter. He carried out the imperative to love your craft and he hated the Rabbis and honed his butchers’ knives. When he was still a fledgling, the people of a small town called on him affectionately to be their slaughterer. He responded to their call and be-came a slaughterer. And he too was affectionate to them. For in that community, the diseases of the time had spread, schools had been established to teach the children Christian languages and foreign wisdom, and Reb Fayesh stood in the breach to erect a fence, and rescued his community from total extinction. With the dowry he received from his father-in-law, Reb Moyshe Amram, he hired teachers to teach the children what a Jewish soul needs, and he himself supervised the teaching, and examined the students, and checked the teachers’ interpretations, for in those days, in some places peo-ple popped up who looked pious and who inserted into their teaching foreign interpretations that were taught in modern schools which call themselves seminaries for Rabbis. Just he was involved in the needs of the children, so he was also involved in the needs of the grownups, things like ritual baths and Eruvs and burial practices. And just as he was involved in the needs of grownups and children, so he was also involved in the needs of the smallest children. He would cajole poor pregnant women and give them money for a Brit and would circumcise their sons. When the sons excelled, he saw them as a return on his money. If he found a trace of heresy in any one of them, he would tell him, Boy, push back the sidelock, for I want to smack your jaw.
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Reb Fayesh could have enjoyed his life and filled his belly with meat, but he was fonder of a tiny bit of Wild Ox in the World-to-Come than of all the living animals and birds in This World, and was rigorous about disqualifying meat as unfit even in cases when most legal rab-binical opinions would have permitted it. The butchers started screaming that he declared their animals unfit just to upset them, and people from the community wrote letters of appeal to all the sages of the generation about butchers who don’t believe their kosher slaughterer and claim he declares unfit and forbids meat and makes unkosher all that is kosher. The sages of the generation were divided. Some relied on Reb Fayesh who was known for his outstanding reverence for God and all his deeds were for the sake of Heaven, and they wrote to the people of the community to remove the enmity from their heart and obey him; while others wrote explicitly that he banned where there wasn’t even a shadow of a doubt, and warned him not to deprive the people of his city of meat, and if not, the peo-ple of his city were authorized to remove him from his position as rit-ual slaughterer and to accept another ritual slaughterer. But Reb Fayesh behaved as usual, until the butchers threw him out of the slaughter house and brought in another ritual slaughterer. Reb Fayesh put up his knife and took up his pen, and started writing against the new ritual slaughterer whose ritual slaughter was impure, and he warned the people of his community to save their soul and not to defile themselves with broth of abominable things, for there is no transgression worse than eating forbidden foods that stupefy the Jewish heart. And for our many sins, many communities in the land got a bad name because of lax ritual slaughterers, and the people ate and stuffed themselves on unfit meats, and harmful ideas overcame them until they became licentious and were lost from the Community of Israel. Thus Reb Fayesh would warn the people of his city until the butchers began to fear his words and tried to appease him and bring him back to the slaughterhouse, but he wouldn’t come back, for he had already taken a vow to ascend to the Land of Israel, for he hoped to build a new life in the Holy Land, for Outside the Land he did not have any sons. It wasn’t long before he fulfilled his vow.
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When he ascended to Jerusalem, they gave him an apartment in the Hungarian Houses and a Hungarian Distribution, which is better than most of the Societies, aside from the money his father-in-law gave him, and the money given him by the butchers who feared lest he would pray against them in the holy places. Reb Fayesh was released from care about this world and gave his whole mind to the World-to-Come. He began inquiring about the desires of heaven and seeking sins, in order to purify the antechamber before the great hall of the World-to-Come. Bans and excommunications that had already been forgotten, he restored to their former glory, and he even added on to them. He issued stern warnings against transgressions that peo-ple stomp underfoot, and he made a crown for his head of Commandments people neglected. Proclamations and announcements were published by him every Monday and Thursday, until the walls turned black with them. And if need be, he wrote new excommunications. And in that matter, Reb Fayesh was superior to all writers of excommunications, for most writers of excommunications in Jerusalem used high-flown rhetoric and a person can’t grasp their meaning, while Reb Fayesh, who had never in his life looked at books of rhetoric, wrote in a language everyone could understand. Moreover, he wasn’t afraid for himself, for there are those who are wary of ostracism and bans because sometimes the same measure of justice strikes the excommunicators themselves; and he wasn’t afraid of any man, not even of a pious scholar. Reb Fayesh would say, If he is ac-quitted in the Court of Heaven, I shall go and stand at the entrance of Paradise and not let him enter. Until Reb Fayesh ascended to Jerusalem, he was concerned with Torah, when he ascended to Jerusalem, he was completely taken up with current needs. Reb Fayesh would say, When the Angel asks me, Did you set regular times for the study of the Torah, I will tell him, Sometimes abrogation of the Torah is what keeps it alive, and I trust that he will nod at me and tell me, Congratulations.
Some of Reb Fayesh’s comrades are mentioned among the builders of the Yishuv, but Reb Fayesh isn’t mentioned except for one regulation he issued that guards be placed at the entrances to
synagogues on Simhat Torah to prevent women and men from mixing. In truth, there is no difference between Reb Fayesh and them, except that they issued a lot of sons who saw the generation change and all boast of building the Land, and they declared that their fathers were the real builders of the Yishuv; while Reb Fayesh had only one daughter and there was no one to declare anything about him.
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