THE REBBITZIN OF SKUL
Esther the queen was sallow,[94] but a gleam of graciousness lighted up her countenance. Esther, the Skul rebbitzin, was also plain-featured, but it was not a gleam, rather a sun, of kindliness that shone in her face. An old, thin woman, her head covered with a thin, wrinkled, pale pink skin, droops like a fine Esrog over her red kerchief. Only this Esrog has two kind, serious eyes.
She is a native of the place, and lives by herself; she has married all her children in various parts of the country, but nothing would induce her to live with any one of them.
It is never advisable to let oneself be dependent on a son-in-law or daughter-in-law. The husband stands up for the wife—the wife for the husband (not without reason saith the holy Torah: "And therefore a man shall leave his parents, etc."). She will not give them occasion to transgress the command to honor a mother, that is a real case of "thou shalt not cause the blind to stumble."
"God, blessed be His Name, created man so that he should not see the faults of those nearest him, otherwise the world would be as full of divorces as of marriage contracts!"
Secondly—as the rabbi of Skul observed more than once—a widow who depends on her children is a double grass-widow, and "the words of the rabbi of Skul should be framed in gold and worn about the neck as an Öibele." True, she says with a low sigh, Öibeles are not worn nowadays, imitation pearls are considered prettier!
She could not stay on in Skul. Since her husband the rabbi died, the place has become hateful to her. "Really," she says, "'its glory has departed, its splendor, and its beauty.'" She goes there once a year, for the anniversary of his death, but she cannot remain long—"it has grown empty."
She lived with the Skul rabbi forty years. Those that knew him say that she grew to be his second self.
He, may he forgive me! was a Misnagid; so she thinks nothing of "good Jews!" His "service" was the Torah in its plain meaning. She sits all day over the Pentateuch in Yiddish, or learns the Shulchan Aruch;[95] she quotes the Skul rabbi at every second word and it is his voice, his motions, his customs!
After the Skul rabbi's Kiddush and Havdoleh, she will listen to no other; she says her own over cake or currant wine. And her Kiddush is his Kiddush—the same low, dignified chant, the same sweetness. She eats "just kosher" and is very learned.
She can answer ritual questions! Forty years running she has stood by the hearth with her kind face turned to the table at which her husband sat and studied; her dove's eyes took in his every movement, her ears, half hidden under the head-kerchief, his every word, she was his true helpmeet, she hid his every thought in her brain and his goodness in her heart.
A river may have lain a hundred years in another bed, and all its previous twists and bends are wrought into the rocks of its first one. The Skul rabbi's life may have run more peacefully than a river, but the rebbitzin was no rock to him, rather a sponge that absorbed the whole of him.
She is not satisfied with the world as it is to-day. "If it is no longer pious, the Almighty must have a care; if His people behave so, it is doubtless because He wishes it. Only, there is no 'purpose' in it all; the present-day stuffs are spider-webs, and people don't sew as they used to, they cut it all up into seams!
"Don't talk to me of the curtains before the Ark, you can't make so much as a frock for a child out of them! The old-fashioned head-dresses get dearer every day, a head-kerchief ought to last forever, and even out of a bosom-kerchief you can always draw a gold or silver thread, but imitation pearls and glass spangles are good for nothing. And, believe me, it is all much uglier, in my opinion!"
But she bears no one a grudge: "My husband, the Skul rabbi, was a Misnagid, but he never persecuted a Chossid, heaven forbid!"
She remembers how the householders once came crying out that the Chassidîm of the place were late in reciting the Shema,[96] and she heard from his own lips the reply: "There are," he said to them, "different armies, and they have different weapons, different customs, but they all serve the same kingdom. Even boots," he added with his smile, "are not all made by the same pattern."
She remembers all his sayings and lives according to his ideas.
He used to get very angry if a workman rose and stood before him as a sign of respect, for he was greatly in favor of people working with their hands, therefore when she came here with her few hundred rubles, she set up soap-making—sooner than live on others.
She knows that even a woman is under the law bidding every one do something for his own support—it is not one of the laws bound to a certain time, from which women are exempt. When they "kept" her money, she remained dependent on the soap only. "It wouldn't be a bad business," she says, "blessed be His Name! I make three to four rubles a week before a holiday. My soap, may His Name be praised! has a reputation in the whole neighborhood, only—just now it's all on credit. Some day the business will fail."
I look round on all sides, I see no utensils, no instruments for the work.
Nothing extra is wanted for it, she gives me to understand: "You take some ashes from the hearth, potatoes, and other vegetables, work them together in water, let them steam and then simmer over the fire; in that way you get 'unclear' soap, and if you do the same thing over again, you get liter, that is, good soap!" When I leave, she asks a little troubled and ashamed:
"Tell me, I beg of you, when your writings come into the hands of the great people, will they not say I must take out a license?"
——