Only Yesterday (35 page)
Isaac has another trade, too, making signs and painting memorial stones. From all over the globe and from distant islands, generous philanthropists establish houses and courtyards, memorials to the holiness of the Lord and His Land, to His Torah and those who study it, so that every person with love of Jerusalem in his heart and with means erects a memorial to himself in Jerusalem, builds a house and dedicates it, buys a courtyard and dedicates it. And when the Holy-
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One-Blessed-Be-He remembers His children, He looks first at Jerusalem, sees those houses and courtyards the Children of Israel built in Jerusalem, nods His head affectionately, as it were, and says, This people have I formed for myself, etc., is there a nation in the world I exiled from its land and its eyes and its heart are still on it. And everyone who dedicates a house in Jerusalem puts up a memorial stone, to give him a good place and a name in its walls, and writes his name, and his extravagant generosity is an eternal memory unto the last generation. He who is righteous, his Charity stands and his name is forgotten. He who is not righteous, his name remains and his Charity is enjoyed by those who are unworthy. Our comrade Isaac, who made his name for his paints that can endure rain and wind and snow, was called on to paint in color the writing on the tablets. How long do his colors last? Once upon a time, Isaac wrote on the skin of a dog and the dog wandered around a few months, wallowed in all kinds of dung, and the writing wasn’t wiped off. And what did he see fit to write on the skin of a dog? That will come in due time. Where are those handsome tablets painted in handsome colors by Isaac’s hands? Did they overpraise Isaac’s colors? But before you ask about the tablets, ask about the houses. Some of them were destroyed and some of them passed into the hands of foreigners. And even some of the neighborhoods have gone out of our hands. How much money was sunk in those houses, how many souls sank in those neighborhoods. Now a Jew doesn’t set foot there, neither benedic-tion nor blessing is heard there. At any rate, the righteousness of the volunteers was not in vain, for when the Children of Israel lived in those houses, they begot sons and daughters who were to build Jerusalem finer and more beautiful than it was, and may they never be interrupted.
And so, aside from houses and furnishings, Isaac paints signs and tablets. You don’t find one single neighborhood in Jerusalem where you don’t see Isaac’s colors. And even our brothers, the Sephardim, who are fussier about crafts than the Ashkenazim, admit that this Ashkenazi, this Isaac Kumer, is an outstanding craftsman, and when one of them wants to put up an eternal name for himself, he calls on Isaac to paint the tablet, and needless to say, so do our
brothers, the Ashkenazim. To make a long story short, you don’t have one single neighborhood of the neighborhoods of Jerusalem where you don’t find the colors of our comrade Isaac. In Even Israel and Beit Israel and Knesset Israel and Mahane Israel and Mishkanot Is-rael and Ezrat Israel, and in Ohel Moshe and Zikhron Moshe and Mazkeret Moshe and Yamin Moshe and Sha’arei Moshe, in Beit David and Beit Joseph and Beit Jacob, in the Ornstein Houses and the Bukharan Houses and in the Horodna Houses and the Werner Houses and the Warsaw Houses and the housing of the Volyn Society and the housing of the ChaBaD Society and in the housing of the Byelorussian Society and in the houses of Mendel Rand and in the houses of Simon the Saint, and in the houses of Samuel Strauss, in the houses established by the officials and administrators of the Holland and Deutschland Society and in the houses of the Sephardi community and in the houses of the Mughrabite community, in the courtyard of the Ostreich Galicia Society near Meah Shearim and in the houses of the Ostreich Galicia Society in other places, in Ma-hane Yehuda and in Mazkeret Tsvi and in Mishkanot Sha’ananim, in Nahalat Yakov and Nahalat Tsvi and Nahalat Shiv’ah, in Sha’arei Hesed and Sha’arei Pina and Sha’arei Tsedek, on the gates of Torah houses and prayer houses and on the gates of hospitals and on the gates of ritual baths and in all other places.
Stray Dog
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Once, Isaac was working in the neighborhood of Rehovoth, called the Bukharan quarter. A rich landlord of Bukhara ascended from his hometown to Jerusalem to pray to God in the holy places and to prostrate himself on the graves of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs beloved of God, cherished by the Almighty. When the time came for him to return to his place, he was brokenhearted to leave Jerusalem the Holy City, for all who leave seem to fall into Hell. But his business in his hometown was extensive and his wife and his sons and his daughters urged him to return. He said to himself, I just came here and I already have to leave. I’m like a bird flying off into the air, when he flies his shadow flies with him. He delayed his journey from ship to ship and lingered a little bit more and a little bit more, and at night sleep wouldn’t come because of his grief at having to leave here. Heaven took pity on him and planted in his heart the idea of making himself a memorial to the Lord. And since the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He loves the poor, he considered building a house for the poor. He built a stone house and put up a marble tablet in it, that the house was for the poor and must not be sold or redeemed until the coming of the Redeemer. And as Isaac Kumer became famous as an expert artisan and his colors are never wiped out, he commis-sioned him to paint the tablet with exquisite and handsome colors. And he didn’t haggle with him, so he would do good work and not stint on the paint. Isaac took his brush and embellished the tablet with his colors. The name of the donor he painted in gold and the words of the ban in red and the poor in black, and each of the other words had its own color, until the tablet rejoiced in its hues.
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Isaac looked and was glad, as an artisan who chances to work for a generous person and didn’t have to cheat in his work. As he was about to wipe his brushes, he chanced on a stray dog, with short ears, a sharp nose, a stub of a tail, and hair that looked maybe white or maybe brown or maybe yellow, one of those dogs who roamed around in Jerusalem until the English entered the Land. Isaac picked up one of his brushes and didn’t know if he wanted to threaten the dog with it or if he wanted to wipe it off on the dog’s skin. The dog stuck out his tongue and gazed at him. You can’t say he wanted to lick the brush, for paints are salty and a dog doesn’t like salt, but he didn’t want the owner of the brush to put his brush away with no result. Isaac’s arm stretched out and his hand started trembling. He reached out his brush to the dog, and the dog reached himself out to Isaac. Isaac just stroked the dog’s skin, like a clerk stroking the paper before writing. Once again he dipped his brush and leaned toward the dog and wrote a few letters on his back. We don’t know if, from the start, he meant to write what he wrote, or if in the end it seemed to him that he wrote with malice aforethought. But why should we get into that doubt, we had better look at his acts. And so, by the time Isaac stood up, he had written in calligraphy on the dog the letters d-o-g. He patted his back and told him, From now on, folks won’t mistake you, but will know that you’re a dog. And you won’t forget you’re a dog either.
The dog liked his contact with a human creature who has a kind of dripping vessel when the sun is at its height, when the Land is scraped and the air is dry and there isn’t a drop of moisture in Jerusalem. Therefore, it is no wonder that he didn’t take off, but was still waiting for his moisture to drip on him. Isaac saw the dog standing and looking at him. He said to him, What else do you want? Isn’t it enough for you, dog, that I wasted a whole brushful of paint on you? But the dog wagged his tail and barked entreatingly. Isaac smiled and said to him, Are you crazy? You want me to make spots on your skin, or do you want me to paint your name in gold? The dog lifted his wet nose and barked a weak, obsequious bark. Isaac’s hand began to tingle, like an artist whose hand approaches his work. He rubbed it on his clothes to get rid of the tingling, but it kept on
tingling. So he dipped the brush and stretched out his hand. The dog stretched himself toward him and looked at his brush as if with curiosity. In truth, there was no curiosity here, but there was a flirtation, he raised himself a bit and raised himself a bit again until between him and the brush there was just a margin of nothing. The brush started dripping. The brush didn’t dry out until the words Crazy Dog were written on the dog’s skin.
Isaac looked at the dog and was happy. When our Rabbis in the Land of Israel excommunicated a person they would tie notes to the tails of black dogs saying, So-and-So, son of So-and-So is excommunicated, and they would send the dogs throughout the city to warn the people to stay away from him. But never before had anyone written on the skin of a dog. But there is no new thing under the sun, everything man does and will do has already been done before him and before that. And Jerusalem still recalls that once they excommunicated a sage who wanted to correct the Yishuv against the will of the Keepers of the Walls, and they brought a pack of dogs and wrote on their skin, Heretic Banned and Excommunicated. Isaac looked here and there like an artist whose artistry has succeeded and looks to see if people have noticed it. That happened in the afternoon, when everyone is eating dinner, and there wasn’t a person outside, for even those who don’t have anything to eat sit in their room out of shame. Isaac was sorry people didn’t see. But he consoled himself with the thought that they would see later on. He kicked the dog to make him wander around the city and advertise his deed. The dog opened his mouth wide and peered at him in amazement. He treated him with affection and in the end he kicks him. He lowered his eyes. That one’s eyes smile and his feet are angry. Don’t his feet know that he’s just having fun? In the meantime, the dog’s spirits drooped and the tip of his nose turned cold. He dropped his tail and stood with his tail drooping and his spirits low. By now, Isaac was no longer thinking about the dog and packed up his tools and meant to go to his boss and collect his pay. The dog jumped and started getting under his feet. If he turned this way the dog was walking behind him, if he turned that way the dog was plodding behind him, and between here and there he raised dust. Isaac scolded him angrily and chased
him away. But the dog wound around Isaac’s steps and raised his face toward his brush. He hit the paint bucket and almost turned it over. Isaac hit his leg and it bled. He barked a vague bark and then a whin-ing bark, picked up his feet and started running.
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He ran and didn’t know where he was running. And wherever he ran he came on something that hurt him. Here he was pricked by a thorn and there he was hit by a bracket in front of a wall, here by a ram’s horn and there by road markers. From the hair on his head to his toe-nails there wasn’t a limb that wasn’t hurt. He stood still and looked at those who wished him evil and was angry and bitter that he left the place where he was living and went to a place of calamity. He barked a bark of, Oh, woe, in me that human parable is fulfilled. The dog deserved the stick and got a beating. He looked at himself sternly and said, Why are you lying prostrate like a stinking carcass, pick up your feet and go. So he raised his tail and lifted his feet from the ground and started running nimbly and lightly, like dogs who run on their toes and not on the soles of their feet like men and bears, who roll the soles of their feet from the heel to the toes. And so he ran lightly and nimbly, until he came to his place in Meah Shearim.
And when the dog came to Meah Shearim and jumped to his hole and wanted to sit quietly and rest from his suffering, all of Meah Shearim was shocked, and all those who walk on two legs, men, women, and children, started running in panic. The dog thought they were running to hear a sermon from the preacher. And since everyone ran, the dog thought that Rabbi Grunam May-Salvation- Arise was preaching, for his sermons were all the rage in Jerusalem, for he knew what sins they committed and what they had to do to re-pent. And as the dog’s mood was heavy at that moment and he did-n’t say, How goodly are the feet of the children of Israel when they ran to hear moral reprimands, but he twisted his tail and said, How blind are the eyes of the Children of Israel who see and don’t know what they see. This screamer, even his knees don’t move when he groans. Only human creatures can be led astray like that, for man looketh on the outward appearance. But he too, that is, the dog,
began running, like dogs who, if they see human beings running, they immediately run after them. As soon as he ran he knew he was mistaken. There is no Reb Grunam here and no sermon, but there is something here that never had been before. He sniffed a little here and a little there and nothing came into his nose. He raised his voice and asked, Where are the feet going? And everyone who heard his voice and saw him and the writing on his back picked up his feet and fled, wailing, Crazy dog, crazy dog. When there are many voices screaming at once, they can’t be heard, but a wail added to them is heard. That wail went from one end of Meah Shearim to the other, and the farther it went, the less it was understood. He decided to wait until folks calmed down and then he would ask once again. Meanwhile, he opened his mouth wide, up to his eyes, as if to make it a companion to his sight. But the shopkeepers began shooing him away with ounces of iron and liters of stones, so he inferred that the court had sent to examine the weights. He started shouting, Arf Arf, I can’t swallow all the defective weights and conceal them from the eyes of those agents of the court. If the weights weighed as much as they should, they would have killed him, but the Holy-One-Blessed-Be-He had compassion on the dog and made them light. The dog shouted, Where is Heaven? Your sons have sinned and I am beaten. When he shouted, all the men, women, and children hid in their houses and locked their doors. Meah Shearim emptied and there wasn’t a creature left outside, aside from that dog.
Hunger came and began oppressing him, for all that day he hadn’t tasted a thing. For when he left his hole in the morning to hunt for his food a lot of things happened to him that made him for-get eating. Now that he was idle, his guts rattled inside him and shouted Arf Arf Arf, carve us some food, Arf, Arf, something to eat. He tricked his guts and looked here and there, as if he didn’t know who was shouting. He saw an open butchershop, its smell rose and its meat was left behind. And not only the butchershop, but all the shops in Meah Shearim were open. And all kinds of food was left be-hind. And if he wanted he could fill his belly and eat, and no one would stop him. But in amazement, he didn’t touch the meat or anything else. And when his guts were amazed that he refrained from
the meat, he was amazed at the crowd who were so agitated and so paralyzed. He peered in all four directions. The world was empty and emptied. Sometimes a human face peeped out of a window. When he looked at it, it immediately disappeared. Suddenly the sound of an instrument was heard, one of those instruments that sound on the hour. The dog pricked up both his ears to hear, for by nature he loved all kinds of sounds, and meanwhile he wanted to know what time it was. He started counting, one two three and stopped, for what do we gain if we know what time it is and we don’t know who the lord of the hours is, a European or an Arab? He gazed at the sky and looked at the stars and the constellations arrayed in their order as on every night at the hour when the Children of Israel enter to recite the evening prayer, and here no one was going to pray, not to the synagogues and not to the study houses or the prayer rooms and not to the simple Minyans. His heart filled with pity for those souls wandering around in the world without Kaddish. How many legacies did they leave so they would be remembered with the recital of the Kaddish and a chapter of the Mishnah, and here no one opens his mouth to say a word of holiness. The dog raised his muzzle to the locked houses and to the closed shutters and started shouting. We mustn’t attribute unusual thoughts to a dog, such as that he intended to rouse the dead to rise up out of their graves and come to argue with the liv-ing, but we can imagine that he wanted to rouse the living to be char-itable toward the dead. When he saw that there was no response, he stopped. And even though he stopped, he didn’t spare his voice and shouted again. When he saw that all his shouts were in vain, he wagged his tail in despair, stood up, and went on his way.
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He followed his tail to the right and it led him to Sha’arei Pina. He sniffed a bit here and a bit there and jumped up to the Vittenberg Houses. He sniffed a bit here and a bit there and went around a few houses and a few courtyards and entered the Warsaw Houses. He sniffed a bit here and a bit there and went to the Ornstein Houses. He sniffed a bit here and a bit there and took himself off among the rocks next to the Bukharan Houses. At that time, young couples were
sitting there, lads and lasses, as they are wont to sit there on summer nights, telling each other things that even the First Adam didn’t say to Eve in the Garden of Eden. When the dog sniffed the smell of human beings, he jumped for joy and came and stood among them. And in his joy, he raised his voice until it was heard from rock to rock. Those who were lovely and pleasant heard, and their vow that even death wouldn’t divide them was forgotten. A fellow’s fingers twined in a girl’s hand dropped away, and the fellow and the girl dropped away too and fled, for a rumor was already circulating that a mad dog was straying in the city. This one fled here and that one fled there and the rocks once again stood like rocks of the wilderness with no person and no love. And the dog too stood like a stone with no love and no person. But amazement spread over his face and a question twitched in his mouth and hung on his tongue, What is this, wherever human beings look at him, there is either stoning or fleeing. His solitude struck him and he was sad. He raised his nose and his ears. No sound of the steps of human beings was heard, and no smell of humans arose.
Suddenly he heard a sound. But that sound was nothing but the sound of his heart pounding. Weakness overcame him. That weakness became like a creature in its own right and the whole body was obliterated by it. Finally he felt every limb separately, as if this was the pain. And once again his guts went back to rattling and hunger returned to pester him. He left the rocks and returned to Meah Shearim.
All the houses in Meah Shearim were closed and not a per-son was outside. Yet all the shops were open and all kinds of food was left behind. He took whatever came to his mouth and ate his fill. And after he filled his belly with all kinds of food he went to his hole. He walked around it and walked around again and went in. Sleep descended on him and he dozed off.
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