Our rabbi knew very well that whichever party he declared to be right, the Chassidîm on the other side would be at him forthwith, and he wormed himself out of the difficulty like the learned Jew that he was. He couldn't decide—it was a question of the impulse to do harm—bê-mê. There was no decision possible—the case must be laid before the Rebbes.[67]
Noah naturally preferred the Belzer Rebbe, Yeruchem had no choice, and to Belz they went.
Yeruchem, before he left, made his brother-in-law his representative, and trusted him with a few rubles which he had borrowed (people lent them out of pity).
But it all turned out badly.
The brother-in-law spent the money on himself, or (as he averred) lost it—Malkah fell ill of worry.
Yeruchem, it is true, gained his fire-wall with "costs," before the Rebbe, but he and Noah were both caught on the frontier,[68] and brought home with the étape.[69]
When Yeruchem arrived, Malkah was dead, and the little house pulled down.
——
THE MASKIL
And don't imagine Tishewitz to be the world's end. It has a Maskil, too, and a real Maskil, one of the old style, of middle age, uneducated and unread, without books, without even a newspaper, in a word a mere pretense at a Maskil.