Part 1

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YIDDISH TALES

TRANSLATED BY HELENA FRANK

PHILADELPHIA THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA 1912

COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA

PREFACE

This little volume is intended to be both companion and complement to "Stories and Pictures," by I. L. Perez, published by the Jewish Publication Society of America, in 1906.

Its object was twofold: to introduce the non-Yiddish reading public to some of the many other Yiddish writers active in Russian Jewry, and--to leave it with a more cheerful impression of Yiddish literature than it receives from Perez alone. Yes, and we have collected, largely from magazines and papers and unbound booklets, forty-eight tales by twenty different authors. This, thanks to such kind helpers as Mr. F. Hieger, of London, without whose aid we should never have been able to collect the originals of these stories, Mr. Morris Meyer, of London, who most kindly gave me the magazines, etc., in which some of them were contained, and Mr. Israel J. Zevin, of New York, that able editor and delightful _feuilletonist_, to whose critical knowledge of Yiddish letters we owe so much.

Some of these writers, Perez, for example, and Sholom-Alechem, are familiar by name to many of us already, while the reputation of others rests, in circles enthusiastic but tragically small, on what they have written in Hebrew.[1] Such are Berdyczewski, Jehalel, Frischmann, Berschadski, and the silver-penned Judah Steinberg. On these last two be peace in the Olom ho-Emess. The Olom ha-Sheker had nothing for them but struggle and suffering and an early grave.

[1] Berschadski's "Forlorn and Forsaken," Frischmann's "Three Who Ate," and Steinberg's "A Livelihood" and "At the Matzes," though here translated from the Yiddish versions, were probably written in Hebrew originally. In the case of the former two, it would seem that the Yiddish version was made by the authors themselves, and the same may be true of Steinberg's tales, too.

The tales given here are by no means all equal in literary merit, but they have each its special note, its special echo from that strangely fascinating world so often quoted, so little understood (we say it against ourselves), the Russian Ghetto--a world in the passing, but whose more precious elements, shining, for all who care to see them, through every page of these unpretending tales, and mixed with less and less of what has made their misfortune, will surely live on, free, on the one hand, to blend with all and everything akin to them, and free, on the other, to develop along their own lines--and this year here, next year in Jerusalem.

The American sketches by Zevin and S. Libin differ from the others only in their scene of action. Lerner's were drawn from the life in a little town in Bessarabia, the others are mostly Polish. And the folk tale, which is taken from Joshua Meisach's collection, published in Wilna in 1905, with the title Ma'asiyos vun der Baben, oder Nissim ve-Niflo'os, might have sprung from almost any Ghetto of the Old World.

We sincerely regret that nothing from the pen of the beloved "Grandfather" of Yiddish story-tellers in print, Abramowitsch (Mendele Mocher Seforim), was found quite suitable for insertion here, his writings being chiefly much longer than the type selected for this book. Neither have we come across anything appropriate to our purpose by another old favorite, J. Dienesohn. We were, however, able to insert three tales by the veteran author Mordecai Spektor, whose simple style and familiar figures go straight to the people's heart.

With regard to the second half of our object, greater cheerfulness, this collection is an utter failure. It has variety, on account of the many different authors, and the originals have wit and humor in plenty, for wit and humor and an almost passionate playfulness are in the very soul of the language, but it is not cheerful, and we wonder now how we ever thought it could be so, if the collective picture given of Jewish life were, despite its fictitious material, to be anything like a true one. The drollest of the tales, "Gymnasiye" (we refer to the originals), is perhaps the saddest, anyhow in point of actuality, seeing that the Russian Government is planning to make education impossible of attainment by more and more of the Jewish youth--children given into its keeping as surely as any others, and for the crushing of whose lives it will have to answer.

Well, we have done our best. Among these tales are favorites of ours which we have not so much as mentioned by name, thus leaving the gentle reader at liberty to make his own.

H. F.

LONDON, MARCH, 1911

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The Jewish Publication Society of America desires to acknowledge the valuable aid which Mr. A. S. Freidus, of the Department of Jewish Literature, in the New York Public Library, extended to it in compiling the biographical data relating to the authors whose stories appear in English garb in the present volume. Some of the authors that are living in America courteously furnished the Society with the data referring to their own biographies.

The following sources have been consulted for the biographies: The Jewish Encyclopaedia; Wiener, History of Yiddish Literature in the Nineteenth Century; Pinnes, Histoire de la Litterature Judeo-Allemande, and the Yiddish version of the same, Die Geschichte vun der juedischer Literatur; Baal-Mahashabot, Geklibene Schriften; Sefer Zikkaron le-Sofere Yisrael ha-hayyim ittanu ka-Yom; Eisenstadt, Hakme Yisrael be-Amerika; the memoirs preceding the collected works of some of the authors; and scattered articles in European and American Yiddish periodicals.

CONTENTS

PREFACE 5

ACKNOWLEDGMENT 8

REUBEN ASHER BRAUBES The Misfortune 13

JEHALEL (JUDAH LOeB LEWIN) Earth of Palestine 29

ISAAC LOeB PEREZ A Woman's Wrath 55 The Treasure 62 It Is Well 67 Whence a Proverb 73

MORDECAI SPEKTOR An Original Strike 83 A Gloomy Wedding 91 Poverty 107

SHOLOM-ALECHEM (SHALOM RABINOVITZ) The Clock 115 Fishel the Teacher 125 An Easy Fast 143 The Passover Guest 153 Gymnasiye 162

ELIEZER DAVID ROSENTHAL Sabbath 183 Yom Kippur 189

ISAIAH LERNER Bertzi Wasserfuehrer 211 Ezrielk the Scribe 219 Yitzchok-Yossel Broitgeber 236

JUDAH STEINBERG A Livelihood 251 At the Matzes 259

DAVID FRISCHMANN Three Who Ate 269

MICHA JOSEPH BERDYCZEWSKI Military Service 281

ISAIAH BERSCHADSKI Forlorn and Forsaken 295

TASHRAK (ISRAEL JOSEPH ZEVIN) The Hole in a Beigel 309 As the Years Roll On 312

DAVID PINSKI Reb Shloimeh 319

S. LIBIN (ISRAEL HUBEWITZ) A Picnic 357 Manasseh 366 Yohrzeit for Mother 371 Slack Times They Sleep 377

ABRAHAM RAISIN Shut In 385 The Charitable Loan 389 The Two Brothers 397 Lost His Voice 405 Late 415 The Kaddish 421 Avrohom the Orchard-Keeper 427

HIRSH DAVID NAUMBERG The Rav and the Rav's Son 435

MEYER BLINKIN Women 449

LOeB SCHAPIRO If It Was a Dream 481

SHALOM ASCH A Simple Story 493 A Jewish Child 506 A Scholar's Mother 514 The Sinner 529

ISAAC DOB BERKOWITZ Country Folk 543 The Last of Them 566

A FOLK TALE The Clever Rabbi 581

GLOSSARY AND NOTES 589

REUBEN ASHER BRAUDES

Born, 1851, in Wilna (Lithuania), White Russia; went to Roumania after the anti-Jewish riots of 1882, and published a Yiddish weekly, Yehudit, in the interest of Zionism; expelled from Roumania; published a Hebrew weekly, Ha-Zeman, in Cracow, in 1891; then co-editor of the Yiddish edition of Die Welt, the official organ of Zionism; Hebrew critic, publicist, and novelist; contributor to Ha-Lebanon (at eighteen), Ha-Shahar, Ha-Boker Or, and other periodicals; chief work, the novel "Religion and Life."

THE MISFORTUNE

OR HOW THE RAV OF PUMPIAN TRIED TO SOLVE A SOCIAL PROBLEM

Pumpian is a little town in Lithuania, a Jewish town. It lies far away from the highway, among villages reached by the Polish Road. The inhabitants of Pumpian are poor people, who get a scanty living from the peasants that come into the town to make purchases, or else the Jews go out to them with great bundles on their shoulders and sell them every sort of small ware, in return for a little corn, or potatoes, etc. Strangers, passing through, are seldom seen there, and if by any chance a strange person arrives, it is a great wonder and rarity. People peep at him through all the little windows, elderly men venture out to bid him welcome, while boys and youths hang about in the street and stare at him. The women and girls blush and glance at him sideways, and he is the one subject of conversation: "Who can that be? People don't just set off and come like that--there must be something behind it." And in the house-of-study, between Afternoon and Evening Prayer, they gather closely round the elder men, who have been to greet the stranger, to find out who and what the latter may be.

Fifty or sixty years ago, when what I am about to tell you happened, communication between Pumpian and the rest of the world was very restricted indeed: there were as yet no railways, there was no telegraph, the postal service was slow and intermittent. People came and went less often, a journey was a great undertaking, and there were not many outsiders to be found even in the larger towns. Every town was a town to itself, apart, and Pumpian constituted a little world of its own, which had nothing to do with the world at large, and lived its own life.

Neither were there so many newspapers then, anywhere, to muddle people's heads every day of the week, stirring up questions, so that people should have something to talk about, and the Jews had no papers of their own at all, and only heard "news" and "what was going on in the world" in the house-of-study or (lehavdil!) in the bath-house. And what sort of news was it _then_? What sort could it be? World-stirring questions hardly existed (certainly Pumpian was ignorant of them): politics, economics, statistics, capital, social problems, all these words, now on the lips of every boy and girl, were then all but unknown even in the great world, let alone among us Jews, and let alone to Reb Nochumtzi, the Pumpian Rav!

And yet Reb Nochumtzi had a certain amount of worldly wisdom of his own.

Reb Nochumtzi was a native of Pumpian, and had inherited his position there from his father. He had been an only son, made much of by his parents (hence the pet name Nochumtzi clinging to him even in his old age), and never let out of their sight. When he had grown up, they connected him by marriage with the tenant of an estate not far from the town, but his father would not hear of his going there "auf Koest," as the custom is. "I cannot be parted from my Nochumtzi even for a minute," explained the old Rav, "I cannot bear him out of my sight. Besides, we study together." And, in point of fact, they did study together day and night. It was evident that the Rav was determined his Nochumtzi should become Rav in Pumpian after his death--and so he became.

He had been Rav some years in the little town, receiving the same five Polish gulden a week salary as his father (on whom be peace!), and he sat and studied and thought. He had nothing much to do in the way of exercising authority: the town was very quiet, the people orderly, there were no quarrels, and it was seldom that parties went "to law" with one another before the Rav; still less often was there a ritual question to settle: the folk were poor, there was no meat cooked in a Jewish house from one Friday to another, when one must have a bit of meat in honor of Sabbath. Fish was a rarity, and in summer time people often had a "milky Sabbath," as well as a milky week. How should there be "questions"? So he sat and studied and thought, and he was very fond indeed of thinking about the world!

It is true that he sat all day in his room, that he had never in all his life been so much as "four ells" outside the town, that it had never so much as occurred to him to drive about a little in any direction, for, after all, whither should he drive? And why drive anywhither? And yet he knew the world, like any other learned man, a disciple of the wise. Everything is in the Torah, and out of the Torah, out of the Gemoreh, and out of all the other sacred books, Reb Nochumtzi had learned to know the world also. He knew that "Reuben's ox gores Simeon's cow," that "a spark from a smith's hammer can burn a wagon-load of hay," that "Reb Eliezer ben Charsum had a thousand towns on land and a thousand ships on the sea." Ha, that was a fortune! He must have been nearly as rich as Rothschild (they knew about Rothschild even in Pumpian!). "Yes, he was a rich Tano and no mistake!" he reflected, and was straightway sunk in the consideration of the subject of rich and poor.

He knew from the holy books that to be rich is a pure misfortune. King Solomon, who was certainly a great sage, prayed to God: Resh wo-Osher al-titten li!--"Give me neither poverty nor _riches_!" He said that "riches are stored to the hurt of their owner," and in the holy Gemoreh there is a passage which says, "Poverty becomes a Jew as scarlet reins become a white horse," and once a sage had been in Heaven for a short time and had come back again, and he said that he had seen poor people there occupying the principal seats in the Garden of Eden, and the rich pushed right away, back into a corner by the door. And as for the books of exhortation, there are things written that make you shudder in every limb. The punishments meted out to the rich by God in that world, the world of truth, are no joke. For what bit of merit they have, God rewards them in _this_ poor world, the world of vanity, while yonder, in the world of truth, they arrive stript and naked, without so much as a taste of Kingdom-come!

"Consequently, the question is," thought Reb Nochumtzi, "why should they, the rich, want to keep this misfortune? Of what use is this misfortune to them? Who so mad as to take such a piece of misfortune into his house and keep it there? How can anyone take the world-to-come in both hands and lose it for the sake of such vanities?"

He thought and thought, and thought it over again:

"What is a poor creature to do when God sends him the misfortune of riches? He would certainly wish to get rid of them, only who would take his misfortune to please him? Who would free another from a curse and take it upon himself?

"But, after all ... ha?" the Evil Spirit muttered inside him.

"What a fool you are!" thought Reb Nochumtzi again. "If" (and he described a half-circle downward in the air with his thumb), "if troubles come to us, such as an illness (may the Merciful protect us!), or some other misfortune of the kind, it is expressly stated in the Sacred Writings that it is an expiation for sin, a torment sent into the world, so that we may be purified by it, and made fit to go straight to Paradise. And because it is God who afflicts men with these things, we cannot give them away to anyone else, but have to bear with them. Now, such a misfortune as being rich, which is also a visitation of God, must certainly be borne with like the rest.

"And, besides," he reflected further, "the fool who would take the misfortune to himself, doesn't exist! What healthy man in his senses would get into a sick-bed?"

He began to feel very sorry for Reb Eliezer ben Charsum with his thousand towns and his thousand ships. "To think that such a saint, such a Tano, one of the authors of the holy Mishnah, should incur such a severe punishment!

"But he stood the trial! Despite this great misfortune, he remained a saint and a Tano to the end, and the holy Gemoreh says particularly that he thereby put to shame all the rich people, who go straight to Gehenna."

Thus Reb Nochumtzi, the Pumpian Rav, sat over the Talmud and reflected continually on the problem of great riches. He knew the world through the Holy Scriptures, and was persuaded that riches were a terrible misfortune, which had to be borne, because no one would consent to taking it from another, and bearing it for him.

* * * * *

Again many years passed, and Reb Nochumtzi gradually came to see that poverty also is a misfortune, and out of his own experience.

His Sabbath cloak began to look threadbare (the weekday one was already patched on every side), he had six little children living, one or two of the girls were grown up, and it was time to think of settling them, and they hadn't a frock fit to put on. The five Polish gulden a week salary was not enough to keep them in bread, and the wife, poor thing, wept the whole day through: "Well, there, ich wie ich, it isn't for myself--but the poor children are naked and barefoot."

At last they were even short of bread.

"Nochumtzi! Why don't you speak?" exclaimed his wife with tears in her eyes. "Nochumtzi, can't you hear me? I tell you, we're starving! The children are skin and bone, they haven't a shirt to their back, they can hardly keep body and soul together. Think of a way out of it, invent something to help us!"

And Reb Nochumtzi sat and considered.

He was considering the other misfortune--poverty.

"It is equally a misfortune to be really very poor."

And this also he found stated in the Holy Scriptures.

It was King Solomon, the famous sage, who prayed as well: Resh wo-Osher al-titten li, that is, "Give me neither _poverty_ nor riches." Aha! poverty is no advantage, either, and what does the holy Gemoreh say but "Poverty diverts a man from the way of God"? In fact, there is a second misfortune in the world, and one he knows very well, one with which he has a practical, working acquaintance, he and his wife and his children.

And Reb Nochum pursued his train of thought:

"So there are two contrary misfortunes in the world: this way it's bad, and that way it's bitter! Is there really no remedy? Can no one suggest any help?"

And Reb Nochumtzi began to pace the room up and down, lost in thought, bending his whole mind to the subject. A whole flight of Bible texts went through his head, a quantity of quotations from the Gemoreh, hundreds of stories and anecdotes from the "Fountain of Jacob," the Midrash, and other books, telling of rich and poor, fortunate and unfortunate people, till his head went round with them all as he thought. Suddenly he stood still in the middle of the room, and began talking to himself:

"Aha! Perhaps I've discovered a plan after all! And a good plan, too, upon my word it is! Once more: it is quite certain that there will always be more poor than rich--lots more! Well, and it's quite certain that every rich man would like to be rid of his misfortune, only that there is no one willing to take it from him--no _one_, not any _one_, of course not. Nobody would be so mad. But we have to find out a way by which _lots and lots_ of people should rid him of his misfortune little by little. What do you say to that? Once more: that means that we must take his unfortunate riches and divide them among a quantity of poor! That will be a good thing for both parties: he will be easily rid of his great misfortune, and they would be helped, too, and the petition of King Solomon would be established, when he said, 'Give me neither poverty nor riches.' It would come true of them all, there would be no riches and no poverty. Ha? What do you think of it? Isn't it really and truly an excellent idea?"

Reb Nochumtzi was quite astonished himself at the plan he had invented, cold perspiration ran down his face, his eyes shone brighter, a happy smile played on his lips. "That's the thing to do!" he explained aloud, sat down by the table, blew his nose, wiped his face, and felt very glad.

"There is only one difficulty about it," occurred to him, when he had quieted down a little from his excitement, "one thing that doesn't fit in. It says particularly in the Torah that there will always be poor people among the Jews, 'the poor shall not cease out of the land.' There must always be poor, and this would make an end of them altogether! Besides, the precept concerning charity would, Heaven forbid, be annulled, the precept which God, blessed is He, wrote in the Torah, and which the holy Gemoreh and all the other holy books make so much of. What is to become of the whole treatise on charity in the Shulchan Aruch? How can we continue to fulfil it?"

But a good head is never at a loss! Reb Nochumtzi soon found a way out of the difficulty.

"Never mind!" and he wrinkled his forehead, and pondered on. "There is no fear! Who said that even the whole of the money in the possession of a few unfortunate rich men will be enough to go round? That there will be just enough to help all the Jewish poor? No fear, there will be enough poor left for the exercise of charity. Ai wos? There is another thing: to whom shall be given and to whom not? Ha, that's a detail, too. Of course, one would begin with the learned and the poor scholars and sages, who have to live on the Torah and on Divine Service. The people can just be left to go on as it is. No fear, but it will be all right!"

At last the plan was ready. Reb Nochumtzi thought it over once more, very carefully, found it complete from every point of view, and gave himself up to a feeling of satisfaction and delight.

"Dvoireh!" he called to his wife, "Dvoireh, don't cry! Please God, it will be all right, quite all right. I've thought out a plan.... A little patience, and it will all come right!"

"Whatever? What sort of plan?"

"There, there, wait and see and hold your tongue! No woman's brain could take it in. You leave it to me, it will be all right!"

And Reb Nochumtzi reflected further:

"Yes, the plan is a good one. Only, how is it to be carried out? With whom am I to begin?"

And he thought of all the householders in Pumpian, but--there was not one single unfortunate man among them! That is, not one of them had money, a real lot of money; there was nobody with whom to discuss his invention to any purpose.

"If so, I shall have to drive to one of the large towns!"

And one Sabbath the beadle gave out in the house-of-study that the Rav begged them all to be present that evening at a convocation.