Only Yesterday (34 page)
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In the meantime, Isaac got used to Jerusalem and Jerusalem got used to him. And if the sun beats during the day, the chill of the Jerusalem nights is refreshing. How good is a wind! When it blows, folks’ limbs become light and comfortable on them.
Isaac is settled in Jerusalem and knows the city and its neighborhoods. There is not one single neighborhood in Jerusalem where Isaac hasn’t worked. Here he painted walls and there he painted doors, here he painted houses and there he made signs for shops as he had learned from Samson Bloykof. All work brings those who practice it among folks. The tailor with his clothing and the cobbler with his shoes and the barber with the hair on your head and all the other craftsmen, every single one according to his craft. But most of all is the painter whose craft brings him among a lot of people all at the same time, for when the walls of a house are being painted, the neighbors and the neighbors of the neighbors come to watch the painter at work. And so Isaac got acquainted with most of the communities, Ashkenazim and Sephardim, Babylonians and Aleppans, Mughrabites and Yemenites, Georgians and Bukharans and Persians, Hasidim and Mitnagdim, educated people and average people. Sometimes Isaac works for those who mourn Jerusalem and sometimes he works for those who are helping to destroy her. Sometimes he does his work alone and sometimes he hires a comrade to help him, or his comrades hire him to help them. For one reason or another, Isaac came upon that old painter he had worked with when he first ascended to Jerusalem. The old man had gotten much older and still practiced his craft, for his grandson followed his father’s example and followed him to America to seek his fortune, but fortune can’t be sought, and here are his mother and his brothers and his sisters and his wife and his son, and they don’t have anything to eat, and they gaze at his hands. The people of Jerusalem are strange people. From everyplace, people ascend to Jerusalem and the people of Jerusalem leave Jerusalem. But the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He punishes those who leave His city and doesn’t give them rest in any other city, but while He punishes them He also punishes those who love her. For an old man like this one deserves to sit in the study house and study a chapter of Mishnah, while this old man has to weary himself twice over.
Let’s come back to Isaac. Sometimes Isaac does his work alone and sometimes he does it in company. Sometimes he hires himself out to someone else and sometimes he hires himself a laborer. And sometimes that laborer was himself a craftsman and Isaac had worked for him. What goes around comes around. Yesterday a man is the boss of others and tomorrow a slave to his slaves. Sometimes Isaac worked in this neighborhood, and sometimes he worked in that neighborhood. To make a long story short, you don’t have one single neighborhood of the neighborhoods of Jerusalem our comrade Isaac didn’t frequent.
Two Friends Will Meet But Mountains Never
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In those days, Isaac worked in the Hungarian houses in the western part of Jerusalem, near Meah Shearim and Beit Israel, where there are about fifteen big houses with three hundred apartments for the members of the Hungarian Society who live there three years for free, and sometimes more, according to the wish of the donor and the officials who run the Society. All the houses are alike, and each apartment has two rooms and a small corner where the women cook their dishes. And a big yard paved with stones goes between one row of houses and another, and there is the cistern. Just as the houses are all alike so are their tenants. All of them are dignified people who keep the Torah and the Commandments, who serve their Creator with a full belly. And they don’t yield to anyone either in earthly matters or in heavenly matters, and they punish any person who is not like them, by persecution and contempt and ostracism and refusing Charity and expulsion.
That day was hot. Isaac was working outside. The sun tossed sparks of fire and the cobblestones of the yard burned like fire. The air turned white like the ashes of a stove when a fire is lit in it, and the gutters and the eaves and the iron bolts of the cisterns and the iron at the stairs of the houses and the brackets and the balconies and everything that sees the sun was ablaze. A smell of cooking and bak-ing and frying wafted from the houses, and the smell went from house to house and from yard to yard and wound up outside, as if everything that was cooked and baked and fried on an ordinary fire came to be cooked and baked and fried on a fire from above. And from the three Yeshivas, from the Yeshiva of Hatam Sofer and the
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Yeshiva of the Katav Sofer and the Yeshiva of Beit Ha-Meir, rose a sound of Torah, worn out and sated, sated and worn out. In compe-tition, a teacher’s voice was heard reading to his little pupils.
The teacher stands before his pupils and reads, When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and called my son out of Egypt. That is, when the children of Israel were in Egypt they were like a child who has not tasted the taste of sin, therefore I loved him, as the Scripture says here, When Israel was a child, then I loved him, and it also says I loved you, But the Lord hath taken you, and brought you forth out of the iron furnace, even out of Egypt to follow me and I showed them miracles and wonders, I broke the sea before them and I brought manna down to them and gave them the Torah and many other good things I did to them, as we learned in the Humash. And now, children, listen to me, what does the Prophet then say, As they called them, so they went from them. As I called them and I brought them to the Delightsome Land, that in all other lands there is no bet-ter one, and I gave them good Prophets to teach them the good way, so they went and fled from them. They fled not to me, but they fled to idols and graven images. Where are you looking, wicked ones, may the Angel of Death snatch your eyes, ye wicked ones, I’m teaching them the word of the Living God and they turn to idols and graven images. Isaac felt that the schoolchildren were looking at him through the window. So he turned back to his work. He found his brushes dry and the water jar empty. What Isaac left the sun drank, and what the sun left Isaac drank, and there wasn’t enough left in the jar to wet your lips. He picked up the jar and went into a house to ask for water. The lady of the house recognized him and said, Aren’t you the one who traveled with us on the same ship?
Isaac looked at her and recognized her. He held out his hand to greet her. Yet the old woman hid both her hands behind her and called her husband and said, Moyshe Amram, Moyshe Amram, come and say hello to a guest. Moyshe Amram came out and looked at Isaac, then frowned, then took off his glasses, then looked at him again. Finally he asked, Who is this guest? Said the old woman, Don’t you recognize him, and me, as soon as he came in, right away I recognized him. Said the old man, That means your eyes are better than mine, or let’s say as they said, a woman recognizes guests bet-ter than the man. Wait a bit and don’t tell me who he is. Isn’t he. . . Before he could finish, the old woman interrupted him and asked, So, who is he? Said the old man, Isn’t your name Jacob? He told him, Isaac’s my name. Said the old man, Blessed Be He Who reminds what is forgotten. I remembered, I remembered. He greeted him and asked him, What brought you here? Said Isaac, I was at my work and I was thirsty and I came in to ask for water. Said the old woman, I’ll pour you some right away, right away I’ll pour you some. Said the old man, What’s this, Disha, will he stand here and drink? Come Isaac, come into the parlor. The old man went in with Isaac and sat him down on a chair. The old woman brought him a pitcher of cold water. Isaac drank his fill. The old man asked him, How did you get here? Didn’t you want to go to the settlements? All that time, the old woman stood and looked favorably on Isaac. Everyone who knows about Isaac will feel Isaac’s joy. Ever since the day Samson Bloykof died, he hadn’t been so happy with anyone.
Isaac sat with the old man, who asked him how he had fared. What did he do after he came off the ship in Jaffa, and where did he go first, and how did he become a painter, and hadn’t he ascended to work the land? And he also asked him how many villages of the children of Israel there were in the Land of Israel, and how much a farmer earns from the produce of his fields. What do they sow and what do they plant? And how do they transfer their businesses to the Sabbath Goy, do they take him as a partner for one hundredth part, and so on and so forth. And he even told Isaac how he behaved Outside the Land, that he had never allowed himself to act with cunning, not in matters of the Sabbath and not in matters of Passover, when others behaved loosely. And Thank God, he didn’t lose anything. On the contrary, by virtue of keeping the Torah Outside the Land, he was blessed to ascend to the Land of Israel. And may he succeed in up-holding the Torah in Jerusalem as he had upheld it in his hometown. So they sat and talked for an hour and another hour. Before Isaac could answer one question, the old man had asked another question and for every single question he asked, he told many things. Like old people, everything reminds them of something else.
The old woman sat across from them and looked affectionately at Isaac and at her husband, whose soul was refreshed by the guest. And when her husband fell silent for a while, she came and reminded Isaac of their trip on the sea. How much had passed by now, but she still imagines that she is rocking on the ship, and at night when she can’t sleep because of the heat and the mosquitoes, she lies in her bed and raises in her mind’s eye the open sea and the blue water, how one wave butts the other and they finally make peace. And she does that even now when the sun is burning and no wind refreshes the person.
M’darf nit zindign
, a person must not sin, Isaac, said the old woman and tapped her mouth, but sometimes it seems to me that the trip to the Land of Israel was better than coming into the Land of Israel, not to mention dwelling in the Land of Israel. A person must not sin, but if only our settling in the Land of Israel were like our journey to the Land of Israel. Let her talk, Isaac, said the old man laughing, his mourning evident on his face. It’s the way of women to grumble and complain. There’s nothing new under the sun, Eve back in the Garden of Eden wasn’t satisfied. But we must learn from experience not to become like the First Adam who was tempted by women and was punished. You married, Isaac? No? How come? From what you say, you make a living, and even if a man
|doesn’t make a living, God Forbid, he may not live without a woman. The old man looked at Isaac with compassion and said to him, May The Blessed Lord help you find a mate. Amen, answered the old woman pleasantly, Amen, may it be His will.
Happy and goodhearted, Isaac left the old man’s house. Two mountains will never meet, but two humans will. Isaac never imagined such a fine reception. All the time they were Outside the Land, they hadn’t come together, in the Land of Israel, they did come together. All sons of Israel are comrades, especially in the Land of Is-rael. That old man asked a lot of questions. Things Isaac had never thought about, but since the old man talked about them, he became fond of them.
M’darf nit zindign
, Isaac; Isaac repeated the old woman’s words and laughed to himself, what were all those transgressions of that modest woman. A person must not sin. Suddenly his sin came and stood before his eyes, and a great sadness embraced his
heart, and like Menashe-Haim in his day, he pondered to himself, How easy it was not to do that. But what was done can’t be taken back. A man who committed an offense does not cleanse himself of it un-less he repents. But here, what good does repentance do, for repentance itself comes as an offense, for if he married Sonya, what good would it do Rabinovitch? Master-of-the-Universe, what should I do and what must I not do?
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A few days later, Isaac returned to the old man’s house. But the sec-ond coming is not like the first coming. Not only did the old man not greet him with a smile, but he greeted him with rage. May that not befall you, good friends, Isaac thought Reb Moyshe Amram would be happy with him, but in the end he showed him an angry face. At first those old people pull you close together, and when you are close, they push you away.
When Isaac saw that he wasn’t wanted, he stood up to go. The old man said to him, Are you in a hurry? Said Isaac, I’m not in a hurry. Said the old man, Then why are you wiggling around to leave? Said Isaac, I see that I’m superfluous here. Said the old man, Why do you see what is superfluous and you don’t see what’s missing? He pointed at his chin and told him, If you neglected your beard Outside the Land, in the Land of Israel, who forces you to do that? Isaac played the wise guy and inundated him with words from the Torah to placate the old man, he told him, I heard that growing a beard is one of the Commandments dependent on the Land. The old man jumped up as if he had been bitten by a snake. But he immediately sat back down, took Isaac’s hand, and said to him, My friend, why are you telling me innovations? Isn’t shaving the beard forbidden by the Torah? To smooth things between them, the old man placed his hand on Isaac’s and said, Sit down and rest, sit. If you’re not rushing to afternoon prayers, you don’t have to run. The old man called into another room and said, Shifra, Shifra, bring some treats for my guest.
A beautiful and pious lass entered and brought water and jam. She poured water for Isaac in a clean glass and said, May the
gentleman please savor it. The old man looked at her fondly and said to Isaac, My granddaughter, my daughter’s daughter. Before Isaac could look at her, she had left. At that moment, Isaac’s eyes grew dim and his heart began pounding. What was Isaac like at that hour? Like the First Adam when the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He took one of his ribs and stood Eve before him. Isaac shifted his eyes from that lass since he regarded himself as Sonya’s mate. But the eyes of his heart came and showed her to him. Isaac was sad. But a pinch of joy sweet-ened the sadness.
Memorial Stones
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Isaac finished his work in the Hungarian neighborhood and everyone was satisfied with what he had done. Blessed hands has Isaac and everything he does he does well. Too bad the artisan himself isn’t as handsome as his work. He wears a short jacket and has neither sidelocks nor beard. It’s amazing that Reb Moyshe Amram, the father-in- law of Reb Fayesh, is nice to him. But Reb Moyshe Amram is new in the Land and in some things he behaves as he would Outside the Land. It would be interesting to know what Reb Fayesh will say when he sees that Polak frequenting his house.
Isaac finished his work in the Hungarian Houses and is already working in other places in the city. New houses are being built and even the old ones want to be restored. This one because it was time for it to be restored and that one because it saw its comrade being restored and wanted to restore himself. Isaac sometimes works in a new house and sometimes in an old house. He paints doors and shutters, walls and ceilings, whatever the landlord wants and whatever the house needs.
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