Stories and Pictures

by Isaac Loeb Peretz

I

Of course you have heard of the Brisk Rabbi and the Byàle Rebbe, but it is not everyone who knows that the holy man of Byàle, Reb Nòach'ke, was at one time the Brisk Rabbi's pupil, that he studied a good couple of years with him, then disappeared for another two, and finally emerged from his voluntary exile as a distinguished man in Byàle.

And he left for this reason:

They studied Torah, with the Brisk Rabbi, only the Rebbe felt that it was dry Torah. For instance, one learns about questions regarding women, or about "meat in milk," or else about a money matter—very well. Reuben and Simon come with a dispute, or there comes a maid-servant or a woman with a question of ritual, and that very moment the study becomes a delight, it is all alive and is there for a purpose.

But like this, without them, the Rebbe felt the Torah, that is, the body of the Torah, the explanation, what lies on the surface, is dry. That, he felt, is not the Law of life. Torah must live! The study of Kabbalah books was not allowed in Brisk. The Brisk Rabbi was a Misnagid, and by nature "revengeful and relentless as a serpent;" if anyone ventured to open a Zohar, a Pardes, he would scold and put him under a ban. Somebody was caught reading a Kabbalah-book, and the Rabbi had his beard shaven by Gentiles! What do you think? The man became distraught, fell into a melancholy, and, what is more wonderful, no "good Jew" was able to help him. The Brisk Rabbi was no trifle, I can tell you! And how was anyone just to get up and go away from his academy?

Reb Nòach'ke couldn't make up his mind what to do for a long time.

Then he was shown a dream. He dreamed that the Brisk Rabbi came in to him and said: "Come, Nòach, I will take you into the terrestrial Garden of Eden." And he took his hand and led him away thither. They came into a great palace. There were no doors and no windows in this palace, except for the door by which they came in. And yet it was light, for the walls, as it seemed to the Rebbe, were of crystal and gave out a glittering shine.

And so they went on, further and further, and one saw no end to it.

"Hold on to my skirt," said the Brisk Rabbi, "there are halls without doors and without number, and if you let go of me, you will be lost forever."

The Rebbe obeyed, and they went further and further, and the whole way he saw no bench, no chair, no kind of furniture, nothing at all!

"There is no resting here," explained the Brisk Rabbi, "one goes on and on!" And he followed, and every hall was longer and brighter than the last, and the walls shone now with this color and now with that, here with several, and there with all colors—but they did not meet with a single human being on their way.

The Rebbe grew weary walking. He was covered with perspiration, a cold perspiration. He grew cold in every limb, beside which his eyes began to hurt him, from the continual brilliancy.

And there came over him a great longing, a longing after Jews, after companions, after All-Israel. It was no trifle, not meeting a single soul.

"Long after no one," said the Brisk Rabbi, "this is a palace for me and for you—you will also, some day, be Rabbi of Brisk."

And the other was more terrified than ever, and laid his hand against the wall to help himself from falling. And the wall burnt him. Only not as fire burns, but as ice burns.

"Rabbi!" he gave a cry, "the walls are ice, simply ice!"

The Brisk Rabbi was silent. And the other cried again:

"Rabbi, take me away hence! I do not wish to stay alone with you! I wish to be with All-Israel!"

And hardly had he said it when the Brisk Rabbi disappeared, and he was left alone in the palace.

He knew of no way, no in and no out; a cold terror struck him from the walls; and the longing for a Jew, to see a Jew, if only a cobbler or a tailor, waxed stronger and stronger. He began to weep.

"Lord of the world," he begged, "take me away from here. Better in Gehenna with All-Israel than here one by himself!"

And immediately there appeared before him a common Jew with the red sash of a driver round him, and a long whip in his hand. The Jew took him silently by the sleeve, led him out of the palace—and vanished. Such was the dream that was sent him.

When he woke, before daylight, when it had scarcely begun to dawn, he understood that this had been no ordinary dream. He dressed quickly, and hastened toward the house-of-study to get his dream interpreted by the learned ones who pass the night there. On his way through the market, however, he saw a covered wagon standing, and beside it—the driver with a red sash round the waist, a long whip in his hand, and altogether just such a Jew as the one who had led him out of the palace in his dream.

Nòach (it struck him there was something behind the coincidence) went up to him and asked:

"Whither drives a Jew?"

"Not your way," answered the driver, very roughly.

"Well, tell me anyway," he continued. "Perhaps I will go with you!"

The driver considered a little, and then answered:

"And can't a young fellow like you go on foot?" he asked. "Go along with you, your way!"

"And whither shall I go?"

"Follow your nose!" answered the driver, "it's not my business."

The Rebbe understood, and now began his "exile."

A few years later, as before said, he emerged into publicity in Byàle. How it all happened I won't tell you now, although it's enough to make anyone open his mouth and ears. And about a year after this happened, a Byàle householder, Reb Yechiel his name was, sent for me as a teacher.

At first I would not accept the post of teacher in his house.

You must know that Reb Yechiel was a rich man of the old-fashioned type, he gave his daughters a thousand gold pieces dowry, and contracted alliances with the greatest rabbis, and his latest daughter-in-law was a daughter of the Rabbi of Brisk.

You can see for yourselves that if the Brisk Rabbi and the other connections were Misnagdîm, Reb Yechiel had to be a Misnagid, too—and I am a Byàle Chossid, well—how could I go into a house of that kind?

And yet I felt drawn to Byàle. You can fancy! The idea of living in the same town as the Rebbe! After a good deal of see-sawing, I went.

And Reb Yechiel himself turned out to be a very honest, pious Jew, and I tell you, his heart was drawn to the Rebbe as if with pincers. He was no learned man, himself, and he stared at the Rabbi of Brisk as a cock looks at a prayer-book.[141] He made no objections to my holding to the Byàle Rebbe, only he would have nothing to do with him himself. When I told anything about the Rebbe, he would pretend to yawn, and yet I could see that he pricked up his ears, but his son, the son-in-law of the Brisk Rabbi, would frown and look at me with mingled anger and contempt, only he never argued; he was silent by nature.

And it came to pass on a day that Reb Yechiel's daughter-in-law, the Brisk Rabbi's daughter, was expecting the birth of her first child—well, there is nothing new in that, you say? But "thereby hangs a tale." It was well known that the Brisk Rabbi, because he had shaved a Chossid, that is, caused him to be deprived of beard and ear-locks, was made to suffer by the prominent Rebbes. Both his sons (not of you be it said!) died within five or six years, and not one of his three daughters had a boy, beside which every child they bore nearly cost them their life.

Everyone saw and knew that it was a visitation of the great Rebbes on the Brisk Rabbi, only he himself, for all his clear-sightedness, did not see it. He went on his way as before, carrying on his opposition by means of force and bans.

I was really sorry for Gütele (that was the name of the Rabbi's daughter), really sorry. First, a Jewess; secondly, a good Jewess, such a good, kind soul as never was known.

Not a poor girl was married without her assistance—a "silken creature!" And she was to be punished for her father's outburst of anger! And therefore, as soon as I heard the midwife busy in the room, I wanted to move heaven and earth for them to send to the Byàle Rebbe—if only a note without a money-offering—after all, it wasn't as if he needed money.

The Byàle Rebbe never thought much of money.

But whom was I to speak with?

I try it on with the Brisk Rabbi's son-in-law—and I know very well that his soul is bound up with her soul, that he has never hid from himself that domestic happiness shone out of every corner, out of every word and deed—but he is the Brisk Rabbi's son-in-law, he spits, goes away, and leaves me standing with my mouth open.

I go to Reb Yechiel himself, and he answers: "It is the Brisk Rabbi's daughter. I could not treat him like that, not even if there were peril of death, heaven forbid!" I try his wife—a worthy soul, but a simple one—and she answers:

"If my husband told me to do so, I would send the Rebbe my holiday head-kerchief and the ear-rings at once; they cost a mint of money; but without his consent, not a copper farthing—not a tassel!"

"But a note—what harm could a note do you?"

"Without my husband's knowledge, nothing!" she answers, as a good Jewess should answer, and turns away from me, and I see that she only does it to hide her tears—a mother—"the heart knows," her heart has felt the danger.

But when I heard the first cry, I ran to the Rebbe myself.

"Shemaiah," he answered me, "what can I do? I will pray!"

"Give me something for her, Rebbe," I implore, "anything, a coin, a trifle, an amulet!"

"It would only make matters worse, which heaven forbid!" he replied. "Where there is no faith, such things only do harm, and she would have none."

What could I do? It was the first day of Tabernacles, there was nothing I could do for her, I might as well stay with the Rebbe. I was like a son of the house. I thought, I will look imploringly at the Rebbe every minute, perhaps he will have compassion.

One heard things were not going on well—everything had been done—graves measured, hundreds of candles burnt in the synagogue, in the house-of-study, and a fortune given away in charity. What remains to be told? All the wardrobes stood open; a great heap of coins of all sorts lay on the table, and poor people came in and took away—all who wished, what they wished, as much as they wished!

I felt it all deeply.

"Rebbe," I said, "it is written: 'Almsgiving delivers from death.'"

And he answered quite away from the matter:

"Perhaps the Brisk Rabbi will come!"

And in that instant there walks in Reb Yechiel. He never spoke to the Rebbe, any more than if he hadn't seen him, but:

"Shemaiah," he says to me, and catches hold of the flap of my coat, "there is a cart outside, go, get into it and drive to the Brisk Rabbi, tell him to come."

And he was evidently quite aware of what was involved, for he added:

"Let him see for himself what it means. Let him say what is to be done!"

And he looked—what am I to say? A corpse is more beautiful than he was.

Well, I set off. And thinking, I thought to myself, if my Rebbe knows that the Brisk Rabbi expects to come here, something will result. Perhaps they will make peace. That is, not the Brisk Rabbi with the Byàle Rebbe, for they themselves were not at strife, but their followers. Because, really, if he comes, he will see us; he has eyes in his head!

But heaven, it seems, will not suffer such things to come to pass so quickly, and set hindrances in my way. Hardly had I driven out of Byàle when a cloud spread itself out over the sky, and what a cloud! A heavy black cloud like soot, and there came a gust of wind as though spirits were flying abroad, and it blew from all sides at once. A peasant, of course, understands these things, he crossed himself and said that the journey, might heaven defend us, would be hard, and pointed with his whip to the sky. Just then came a stronger gust of wind, tore the cloud as you tear a piece of paper, and began to blow one bit of it to one side, and one to the other, as if it were parting ice-floes on a river; I had two or three piles of cloud over my head. I wasn't at all frightened at first. It was no new thing for me to be wet through, and I am not alarmed at thunder.

In the first place it never thunders at Tabernacles, and secondly, after the Rebbe's Shofar-blowing! We have a tradition that after the Shofar-blowing thunder has no power to harm for a whole year. But when the rain suddenly gave a lash across the face like a whip—once, twice, thrice—my heart sank into my shoes. I saw that heaven was against me, driving me back.

And the peasant, too, begged, "Let us go home!"

But I knew there was peril of death. I sat on the cart and heard through the storm the moans of the woman and the crack of the husband's finger-joints: he wrings his hands; and I see Reb Yechiel's dark face with the sunken, burning eyes: "Drive on," he says, "drive on!" And we drive on.

And it pours and pours, it pours from above and splashes from below, from underneath the wheels and the horse's feet, and the road is swamped, literally covered with water. The water frothed, the cart seemed to swim—what am I to tell you? Besides that we lost our way—but I lived through it!

I brought back the Brisk Rabbi by the Great Hosanna.[142]