He used to complain that he often felt a kind of pain in his throat and chest, but they did not consult a doctor.
"What, a doctor?" fumed Reb Yainkel. "Nonsense! It hurts, does it? Where's the wonder? A carpenter, a smith, a tailor, a shoemaker works with his hands, and his hands hurt. Cantors and teachers and match-makers work with their throat and chest, and these hurt, they are bound to do so. It is simply hemorrhoids."
So Ezrielk went on intoning and chanting, and the Kamenivke Jews licked their fingers, and nearly jumped out of their skin for joy when they heard him.
Two years passed in this way, and then came a change.
It was early in the morning of the Fast of the Destruction of the Temple, all the windows of the Great Shool were open, and all the tables, benches, and desks had been carried out from the men's hall and the women's hall the evening before. Men and women sat on the floor, so closely packed a pin could not have fallen to the floor between them. The whole street in which was the Great Shool was chuck full with a terrible crowd of men, women, and children, although it just happened to be cold, wet weather. The fact is, Ezrielk's Lamentations had long been famous throughout the Jewish world in those parts, and whoever had ears, a Jewish heart, and sound feet, came that day to hear him. The sad epidemic disease that (not of our days be it spoken!) swallows men up, was devastating Kamenivke and its surroundings that year, and everyone sought a place and hour wherein to weep out his opprest and bitter heart.
Ezrielk also sat on the floor reciting Lamentations, but the man who sat there was not the same Ezrielk, and the voice heard was not his. Ezrielk, with his sugar-sweet, honeyed voice, had suddenly been transformed into a strange being, with a voice that struck terror into his hearers; the whole people saw, heard, and felt, how a strange creature was flying about among them with a fiery sword in his hand. He slashes, hews, and hacks at their hearts, and with a terrible voice he cries out and asks: "Sinners! Where is your holy land that flowed with milk and honey? Slaves! Where is your Temple? Accursed slaves! You sold your freedom for money and calumny, for honors and worldly greatness!"
The people trembled and shook and were all but entirely dissolved in tears. "Upon Zion and her cities!" sang out once more Ezrielk's melancholy voice, and suddenly something snapped in his throat, just as when the strings of a good fiddle snap when the music is at its best. Ezrielk coughed, and was silent. A stream of blood poured from his throat, and he grew white as the wall.
The doctor declared that Ezrielk had lost his voice forever, and would remain hoarse for the rest of his life.
"Nonsense!" persisted Reb Yainkel. "His voice is breaking—it's nothing more!"
"God will help!" was the comment of the Hostre saint. A whole year went by, and Ezrielk's voice neither broke nor returned to him. The Hostre Chassidim assembled in the house of Elkoneh the butcher to consider and take counsel as to what Ezrielk should take to in order to earn a livelihood for wife and children. They thought it over a long, long time, talked and gave their several opinions, till they hit upon this: Ezrielk had still one hundred and fifty rubles in store—let him spend one hundred rubles on a house in Kabtzonivke, and begin to traffic with the remainder.