Only Yesterday (71 page)
- c h a p t e r t w e l v e
About Diseases
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The festivities passed and all the joy turned to gloom. Malaria which is wont to strike most days of the year went on striking. There wasn’t a house where someone wasn’t sick. Add to that an epidemic of in-fluenza. And to those two evil diseases Jerusalem is used to, add meningitis, called stiff neck. Sick paupers, especially among the Ashkenazim, decayed in their diseases.
There are some doctors who say disease comes from the bad water, for at that time, the water in the cisterns ran out and only foul water remained. And there are other doctors who say that the dung and the filth in the city bring the disease. And there are some doctors who say that the prayer shawl and the Shtrayml bring the disease with them. In the home of the sick person, they are placed on the sickbed, and on the Sabbath a person goes to the synagogue, and spreads the evil germs from the private sphere to the public sphere. In addition, there is the ritual bath. There are ritual baths filled with turgid water changed only once in two moths, and the water in the women’s rit-ual bath that must be filled with rainwater is changed only three times a year. In addition to all these reasons is the poverty, for they live in crowded apartments and they eat tuna that is one or two years old, and they drink the bad water, and latrines overflow and stink up the air.
Fear increases. One doctor says the situation is dangerous. And his colleague adds, It is dreadful. And things are terrifying even to the healthy. And everyone who can is ready to take his family and get out of the city, but there’s no place to flee, for bad rumors come from other places, until they see all kinds of hallucinations. The doc-
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589tors run from patient to patient, write prescriptions and take fees, and if they are sent for at night, the fee is double and quadruple.
The officials and leaders of the city do all they can, they discuss renting a house for the sick, and they call on people to fast every Monday and Thursday, pray and prostrate themselves on the graves and to examine their sins. Every day, announcements are posted by the Rabbis and the rabbinical court, Nation of the Lord be of good courage, Daughter of my people, do not be silent, sons of Israel, do not rest. And new pamphlets with old bans on secular schools are printed, and individuals stick amulets and remedies on their doors, and they’ve already held a wedding for two orphans on the Mount of Olives to stop the plague.
Shepherds of the holy flock follow their custom and those with a license to sell lamb follow their custom. Announcements are posted in the streets, Have mercy on your sucklings and children, don’t eat beef and don’t drink cow’s milk, for all diseases come from them. And everyone who is used to beef and cow’s milk eats mutton and drinks sheep’s milk, and the price of mutton and sheep’s milk go up from one day to the next. Prices rise. The lack of income com-bined with helplessness make folks despondent. And yet the sun is at its zenith and toys with the world on earth.
The Young Laborer
, which doesn’t refrain from criticizing any event in the Yishuv, wrote about that matter. There are brazen people in Jerusalem who say that there is no epidemic here at all, but merely that the diseases of the Land usually come every year and kill a few souls, and thus last year, two hundred people got sick and thirty of them died, but a few Rabbis and officials made all that noise to evoke pity in the heart of the Jewish philanthropists Outside the Land so they would send them money. But that is not the truth, for even the schools of the freethinkers were closed. But when we challenge the words of
The Young Laborer
, the paper presents evidence that not all the schools were closed, it was just that the principals of the schools are wont to go Outside the Land every year, and some were delayed and didn’t leave and they want to leave now—their doctors ordered them to send the students home for fear of disease, while the principals who came back from Outside the Land and who don’t in-About Diseases
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591tend to leave again this year—their doctors allowed them to study in their schools.
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The month of Kislev is over and the rain hadn’t fallen. The down-pour doesn’t come and the Land is parched. Landlords plaster their roofs and once again they crack. Sometimes clouds appear in the morning and look like they are loaded with rain, but in fact there isn’t any moisture in them at all. As they come so they vanish. And once again the skies are pure and the sun stands in its glory and every bush and every tree are like corpses. The same is true for all two-legged creatures, and the same is true for all four-legged creatures. The empty cisterns have no water, but they do have maggots and earth-worms and snails, all of them twisted, greenish, reddish, terrifying. Every drop of water costs a Matlik and every goatskin of water the Arabs brought from Eyn Rogel is fought over by ten women. Every day a black chicken appears and shrieks in a voice dry as a shard. At the sound of that voice, the lambs shudder and hide their heads in their wool. At the sight of them folks prophesy that a hard year will come may it be on the enemies of the Jews and not on the Jews. One way or another, prices go through the roof, merchandise becomes expensive, and storekeepers conceal foodstuffs to sell them for more money later.
Some individuals begin fasting and doing acts of charity, and preachers and reproachers pop up to stir the people to repentance. Jerusalem stands like an uninhabited wasteland, and the sun kindles the dust and the filth in its streets like fire. But the synagogues and study houses are full. Every day they recite Slikhot and the Thirteen Rules for expounding the Law, Our Father Our King, and Save Us, and they blow the Shofar, and the Cantor intones the prayer for rain, and after the prayer they recite Psalms, and after the afternoon prayers the preacher stands up and moralizes to stir the heart. And he counts and enumerates the transgressions of the Children of Is-rael that block up the skies and won’t let the rain come down. Every day Rabbi Grunam May-Salvation-Arise comes to Meah Shearim and preaches, sometimes in the courtyard of the Yeshuot Jacob Synagogue and sometimes on the stairs of the tabernacle of the Yeshiva. And when he comes, most of the people follow him, for he can preach and he can stir the heart and humble the soul, for he was an expert in the transgressions of the generation as were the destructive angels, and all the transgressions and sins and crimes they committed and sinned and transgressed he knows by heart, as if Satan had deposited his notebook with him.
Right from the start, Isaac’s heart was drawn to the preachers, because he loved to hear the words of the Torah or a fine parable. Unlike most of our comrades who go to hear for some other rea-son. A generation that emptied itself of the deeds of their fathers and was not blessed with deeds of their own seeks a smell of those deeds, even if their smell is dissipated. Some are eager for stories of Hasids, for a melody of the Days of Awe, for preachers’ sermons. That generation, which has not created a new life and has gone away from the old, when they see themselves naked, they pick up a garment left over from their fathers and cover themselves with it. And they don’t know that all the time the garment was in the hands of their fathers, their fathers preserved it from moths and from dust and every day it was like new and would provide warmth from the cold and shade from the heat. But the sons didn’t preserve it from the moths and didn’t shake the dust out of it. Not only doesn’t it warm, but it also raises dust. In fact, Rabbi Grunam was also dressed in tatters, but you can’t see the tatters because of the dust.
That day was the last day of the seven days of wedding feast. Isaac came out of his father-in-law’s house dressed in his wedding clothes and his heart rejoiced and he came and stood before Rabbi Grunam. At that moment, Rabbi Grunam was standing on the steps of the tabernacle of the Yeshiva and his voice was bursting. But let us leave Rabbi Grunam in his crowd and Isaac in his wedding clothes, and let us return to Balak.
Returns to Balak
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How Balak’s soul longed for a place of rest, but wherever he went, his luck went with him. Here they showed him the stick, and here they threw stones at him, and here they showered contempt on him, that would shame even a pig. Three or four times, he came across that painter and Balak expected him to say why they hounded him so much. But before he heard from him, the painter kicked him and chased him away, because Balak came to him at the top of his voice, because his heart urged him in grief. When Balak saw that, he said, I’ll go to him calmly, then I’ll grab him by his trousers, then I’ll grab him by his flesh, and then he’ll tell me why they hound me. When Balak came to this resolution, he went back to running after the painter. Either the footsteps of the painter were revealed to him in one place, or in another place, or sometimes the whole Land smelled of him. When he followed the smell, the smell ran and rolled before him like the shadow of a creature running. Balak saw that the Land was laughing at him, and that there was no hope or expectation of reaching what his soul desired and coveted and sought and he returned to his main issue, that is, subsistence, which is the main issue of every single creature.
In those days, Balak found himself a place of rest in Richard Wagner’s brewery at the railroad station. There he found his food, and perhaps more than in other places, for aside from bones he also found real meat. How? Because sometimes a Jew came to dine there, not only on the nine days, and suddenly another Jew appeared and he was ashamed to be eating unkosher food in front of him, so he would throw the meat under the table and Balak would come and snatch the food.
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593Balak did not find satisfaction from his food. We may assume that he abhorred forbidden food and longed for kosher meat. Even though the Torah allowed him to eat animals that were not ritually slaughtered and non-kosher meat, he wanted to sanctify himself with what is allowed him. It is with reluctance that we come to this as-sumption, for if not, why did Balak need to leave his place, where he lacked for nothing. Not because his mind was not rational, for everything Isaac wrote on his skin he wrote only as a joke. Hence, it was with clear awareness and a lucid mind that he got disgusted with the inn and was fed up with Germans, because he desired to eat kosher food. This desire made him want to return to the neighborhoods of the Children of Israel so much that he forgot all the insults he had experienced, and didn’t sense the insults in store for him there. And if his heart told him, Be careful and don’t go, he barked at it and replied, I’ll go, I’ll go, because I want to go. On the face of it, a prim-itive answer did Balak reply, but in fact you find a philosophical reasoning here, that is, that the will is an autonomous force and cannot be denied with reasons of causality.
To make a long story short, Balak prepared to go to Meah Shearim, for he was already disgusted with Richard Wagner and the other Germans, and all the other places were disgusted with Balak. And if his heart told him, Don’t go to Meah Shearim, so that you won’t die, he answered, No matter what, my death is in store for me, better I die in the place where I was born and not in some makeshift hole. And when he reached this state, new life started flowing in him. He saw himself already as if he were in Meah Shearim, and his neighbors put out good food for him, whose like you don’t find even in the
Yoreh De’ah.
And after he filled his belly with food and drink, he got up and went off to hear a sermon by Rabbi Grunam May-Salvation- Arise. And Balak’s share of that was nicer than the other listeners, for all the other listeners were pressed and pressing, while Balak wasn’t pressed and wasn’t pressing, but was lying between the feet of Rabbi Grunam, if he wanted to he wallowed in Rabbi Grunam’s cloak, which dragged down below his feet, if he wanted to he slept, and Rabbi Grunam’s cloak served as his blanket.Balak knew that he had to come to Meah Shearim by stealth, for if they saw him, they wouldn’t leave a bone on his flesh. In Balak’s place, you would have tied an amulet of invisibility around you. Balak was skeptical of amulets just as he was skeptical of other charms and remedies, for he had already learned from experience that they don’t help. Balak relied on himself. How? Said Balak, here I come clandestinely. First I don’t show anything but my tail, then I show my body, then I show my head. If they don’t pester me, it’s good; and if not, I’ll show them my teeth.
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Balak left Richard Wagner and the brewery, urinated, and looked at all four corners of the sky for which way he would choose. Finally, he stuck his legs to his body and started running until he came to the neighborhood of Abu Tor, the Father of the Bull. He sniffed a little here and a little there and took himself to the neighborhood of Beit Yosef, the smallest neighborhood in Jerusalem, where in those days it was settled by Jews, with fourteen houses and a synagogue. And for our great transgressions, they sold them to foreigners. And since he intended to go to Meah Shearim, why didn’t he go to Meah Shearim? Yet he wanted to hear the opinion of folks about whether there was going to be war or peace.
And so Balak entered the neighborhood of Beit Yosef. Rest and peace were spread on the neighborhood and its houses. And next to every house stood a barrel full of dried figs or a heap of straw. And poultry roamed around them. And next to them, a blind donkey, who had been working in the oil press, walked in circles as if he were still turning a wheel in the oil press. Next to him, tied to a cliff stood an old horse. Next to him played five or six dogs. One of them noticed Balak and withdrew from the group. His comrade noticed that and went off. Then all of them noticed him and took off. Finally, of all the dogs, the only one left was Balak. Balak was wroth that the dogs were disgusted with him. He swallowed his anger and pretended to be dumb, like those of whom the Bible says, They are all dumb dogs, they cannot bark. And he did well to be silent, for if he had opened