די קרעניצע Di krenitse (The Well). A poem by Itzik Fefer, music by Samuel Polonski (1931). Performed by Chava Alberstein and the Klezmatics (1998)
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Dort vu grozn zaynen naser,
Unter zun vi vayse bern
Fun di stepes vintlekh blozn
Vert levone blass un blasser, |
דאָרט וווּ גראָזן זײַנען נאַסער
אונטער זון ווי ווײַסע בערן
פֿון די סטעפּעס ווינטלעך בלאָזן
ווערט לבֿנה בלאַס און בלאַסער, |
Where the grass grows green
a well stands there, lost in thought.
Girls come to draw water
with buckets throughout the night.
In the sunlight, like white bears,
the days ripen in the orchard,
and in the distant starlight
boys dance in a circle
Wind blows from the steppe
and a distant fire flickers,
girls walk across the fields
with buckets in their hands,
the moon grows ever paler,
somewhere drums beat in the night,
and where the grass grows green,
a well stands there, lost in thought.
In writing about the Great Synagogue of Vilna, I mentioned what a complex institutional system, an intricate labyrinth, a world unto itself the shulhoyf surrounding the synagogue was — in this case, the term meant considerably more than a simple “synagogue courtyard.”
In her excellent book Erinnerungen an die jüdische Vilna (2014), Sandra Studer attempts to reconstruct this world from descriptions dating from before its destruction:
“The shulhoyf, however, was much more than a place of prayer. For more than 500 years, it served as the center of all the religious, administrative, legal, intellectual, and social activities of the community. Both local residents and people from the surrounding countryside experienced the shulhoyf as something quite extraordinary. The young Zionist Ben-Zion Dinur, a visitor to Vilna from elsewhere, experienced the shulhoyf as a place where the human senses were almost overwhelmed by the impressions. He describes it as “a world unto itself, filled with contradictory sounds and sights.” Dinur describes the shouting of the porters, mingling with the voices of those praying, which poured out from the synagogue and the numerous klaus (prayer houses/study rooms). The ubiquity of learning leads another visitor to Vilna to compare the shulhoyf and its klaus, built for eternity, to the colleges of Oxford — what Oxford is to the English, the Vilna shulhoyf was to the Jews of the Diaspora.”
But we have an even more authentic source for this world. Chaim Grade (1910–1982), one of the most important Yiddish-language writers of the twentieth century, grew up in the schools of the shulhoyf. It was only toward the end of his adolescence that he turned away from this strictly Orthodox world and became one of the founders of Yung-Vilne, the modern Yiddish writers’ group. In 1941, he was the only member of his family to escape. He spent the rest of his life in the Bronx summoning before his mind a world that existed only within him, and preserving it in Yiddish books printed on poor paper, full of typographical errors, and apparently never seen by an editor, such as the Yiddish mayse-bukh mentioned by him in the text below — cheap little booklets of miracle stories.
I found one such book in a library in Berlin, bearing the revealing title Der shulhoyf, and from it I now translate and annotate here the first chapter of the opening story, Der brunem, “The Well.” The story tells how Mende, a Jewish porter, embarks on a Don Quixote-like struggle to repair the well in the shulhoyf, a struggle he must wage above all against the hierarchy of his own Jewish community.
What is beautiful about the text is that, unlike the detached anecdotal style or objectivity of other Yiddish writers such as Sholem Aleichem or the Singer brothers, Grade writes about this world through the religious worldview of his childhood — a worldview in which behind everyday events there are always much more important biblical, Talmudic, and folkloric stories: the stories of the true world, der emeser velt. The characters actually live within these stories; they use them to make sense of their everyday lives and to find consolation in their hardships.
The Well
Rise up, O well! Sing to it! (Numbers 21:17)
CHAPTER ONE
The well standing in the synagogue courtyard lies in ruins, its narrow troughs have dried up, and yellow lichen-like moss has covered them. Around it stand women in headscarves, holding clay pitchers, wooden vessels, and tin buckets, talking among themselves. One neighbor is just telling them how much trouble she had at the fire brigade’s pump on Castle Street, like the wicked in hell, before she managed to fill a bucket. But then a large stone fell into the bucket, tipping it over. She was so frightened that she was neither alive nor dead. She looked behind her and saw a Gentile lad standing there and laughing. She will have to say the Gomel-bentshn blessing, * for the stone had missed her head by a hair’s breadth.
“It’s a complete disaster. Heaven forbid a fire should break out, may such an hour never come — then we’d have to run all the way to the other end of the city for water,” says a second. “And it has to happen in the month of Tammuz.” “Now the shames will have to go and flood the shulhoyf with water from the bathhouse,” sighs a third. “And since there’s no water in the well, they won’t even be able to heat the bathhouse,” another adds. “What a pleasure it is to live in the shulhoyf! We’d be better off in the cemetery. There you have grass, trees, and water comes from the tap at the tahara house, * as much as you want. I’m telling you, it’s practically a holiday resort.”
Thus the women talk among themselves, sighing and fretting in their great bitterness. They are all haunted by the fear that they will have to go to German Street or to Cloister Courtyard, where the priests live, and where they have to pay for water. But it is still better to give away the last penny than to go to the city pump on Castle Street, where goyish youths throw stones. The Jewish women take up their vessels, sigh like a dried-out well wheel, and disperse. Only Mende, the porter, remains beside the well. He is not sad for his own sake; he can fetch water from Tenth Street. He is sad for the Sabbaths, * and for the stone tablet walled in above the well. Carved into the stone tablet are the words that Reb Meirke, the magid * had had the communal well repaired so that it would serve as his merit * in the world to come, and as an everlasting memorial among the living. The letters had once been picked out in silver. By now the silver has worn away, and the letters look like empty eye sockets.
Mende lifts his two empty buckets, which feel as heavy as if they were filled with stones. He sets off toward Cloister Courtyard, through German Street. The Jewish women from the shulhoyf are already standing there, huddled together as though they were waiting in the corridor of the city courthouse to be called before the judge to hear the verdict.
In the middle of the courtyard a little garden is green with carefully clipped bushes and a green-painted bench where people sit. The little garden is enclosed by an iron railing, with an iron gate. Proud elderly ladies stroll back and forth, occasionally casting a glance at the women; their contempt for the Jews sits on the tips of their upturned noses. An elegant woman in a long dress comes down three steps from a porch. A maid follows her, carrying an empty basket. The maid looks angrily at the Jews, but, like her mistress, she says nothing. A young lady enters the courtyard, wearing a broad summer hat and long white gloves pulled up to her elbows, a bouquet of flowers in her hands. She notices that the Jewish women are staring at her; she turns her back on them, and her black shoes click loudly on the paving stones until she enters a house with curtained windows. At the short, crooked water pipe stands the well attendant, taking the women's red tickets, which they have bought from the courtyard caretaker. The narrow, silvery stream of water pours into the vessels placed beneath it, and when the buckets are three-quarters full, he turns off the tap so that the Jewish women will not flood the courtyard with water. The women leave one by one, feeling the well attendant's piercing gaze on their backs as he watches to make sure they do not soil the smoothly worn cobblestones or leave behind even a scrap of paper or a single straw.
Mende patiently waits his turn, meanwhile thinking that the Holy Torah tells of something even worse than this waiting in line at the tap. When the Jews were wandering in the desert, they wanted to cross the land of Edom and wished to buy water. But Edom would not let them pass through its land and refused to sell them water. Mende is so absorbed in his thoughts that he does not even notice the women standing behind him overtaking him and moving ahead of him, because he stands there like a stump. He only comes out of his reverie when the well attendant calls out to him: “Faster!” Confused, he looks around as both his buckets fill, and he picks them up with such ease that they seem as light as feathers. Much harder for him to carry on his broad shoulders is the now-weighted-down head, brimming with thoughts.
Mende returns to the shulhoyf and encounters the elderly and respected Reb Bunem, who stands by the well like a bird crouching beside its demolished nest. Reb Bunem, a solitary soul since childhood, stands there with a handkerchief in his hand, lost in sorrowful thoughts. Mende sets down his full bucket and fills Reb Bunem's vessel to the brim — ful vi a ojg, “full as an eye” *. Meanwhile he takes another glance at the stone tablet, on which it is engraved that Reb Meirke, the magid, sanctified the communal well so that it would serve as his merit in the world to come and as an everlasting memorial among the living.
“Now that the well has fallen into ruin, * they will forget the Magid too,” Mende says anxiously.
“Why would they forget him? After all, he left children and grandchildren behind,” Reb Bunem mutters, once again sinking into his dark thoughts. Mende knows that the poor old man has lost all his relatives. Three of his sons perished during the war years. And after he had mourned his sons, hunger gnawed at him in the attic room, while his eldest son, a melancholy scholar of the Torah, slowly wasted away in ceaseless study; finally, he too closed his eyes forever in a locked shack.
“A great sage like Reb Yohanan — that venerable man still speaks to me,” says Reb Bunem, lost in his thoughts. * “And was he really beautiful in those days? Do you know, Mende, how magnificently beautiful he once was?” “Who?” “Reb Yohanan. It is written there in the Gemara: Whoever wants to see what Reb Yohanan looked like in his beauty should take a brand-new, gleaming silver cup, fill it with the red seeds of a pomegranate, place red rose petals around the rim of the cup, and set the whole thing at the boundary between sunlight and shadow. There he will see the heavenly radiance that was once the beauty of Reb Yohanan. * Do you understand now, Mende, what a radiant, pure face he had?”
Mende is silent and gazes into the ruined well, which is covered with the cold dust of solitude. Reb Bunem, his voice faltering and his eyes closed, continues to tell how Reb Johanan once went to visit his sick friend. The room was dark, terribly dark. Then Reb Johanan rolled up his sleeve, and his bare arm was so radiant that the chamber immediately filled with light. The sick friend began to weep. Reb Johanan asked him, “Why are you crying?” The sick man replied, “I am crying for that beauty which one day must perish in the earth.” At this Reb Johanan too began to weep, and the two of them wept together. *
Mende is no longer looking at the well, nor at the tablet of Reb Meirke, the magid. With his mouth open and his eyes wide, he listens as the old man's pain pulses through his words: Reb Johanan had ten sons, and every one of them died during his lifetime. He always carried with him a tiny bone from his youngest son, and whenever he went to comfort someone in mourning, he would say to him, “This is the bone of my tenth son, which remained to me.” “Oh, woe, oh, woe,” Mende shakes his head. “Only one little bone remained of all ten of his sons! What an unfortunate father, I tell you, Reb Bunem!”
“That was a very long time ago, a very long time ago,” the old man raises his head and continues, “and they also say that when Reb Johanan himself fell ill, Reb Hanina went to visit him and asked him: ‘Are your sufferings dear to you, Mendele, the sufferings that Satan has inflicted upon you from Heaven to test you?’ Reb Johanan burst into tears and said: ‘I want neither the suffering nor the reward I might receive for it. * If a servant has a master who allows himself to be persuaded by the maidservant not to mistreat his servant, then that servant is truly precious, very precious.’” *
“But surely a man cannot bring a lawsuit against the Master of the Universe!” Mende says in confusion.
“The unbeliever cannot, but a believer is allowed to argue with Him. With whom else should a person argue, if not with the Heavenly Father?” says Reb Bunem. Then he sets off with tiny, shuffling steps, murmuring to himself: Lehai shufra de-vali be-afra ka bakhina (“It is for the beauty that withers in the earth that I weep”). * How much has perished in the world since Antiquity, and how much more has perished since the time of Reb Johanan, and in the same way how much is perishing in our own time.
Mende returns home from the prayer house with the buckets and finds that his wife, Michle, is not there. She has gone to the slaughterhouse to pluck feathers, hoping to earn a little money for supper. After eating the leftover, now-cold food, Mende wipes his forehead, puts on his worn canvas jacket, and slips a large Yiddish storybook into his pocket. * He goes out onto Rudnitser Street, where the porters stand on the pavement waiting for work. *
The street is empty in the autumn sunshine. There are no customers to be seen; the shopkeepers have half-closed their shops and are dozing in the darkness. A young porter, Yellow Arke, long as a bread peel, stands leaning against the wall of the shop beside Reb Avigdor’s large flour warehouse. The rays of the sun no longer give any warmth; they merely reach the cracks in the wall in the shade, even driving the flies away from the dampness. Arke stares at the deserted street and yawns with boredom. There is no one with whom to exchange a word, to crack a joke. Then Mende arrives, known in the “trade” as “Mende the Cow,” because, according to Arke, he has exactly the same stupid, calf-like face.
Mende knows that Arke is a great joker, so he stops on the opposite pavement beside a large stationery shop and, while waiting for the Creator to send him some job or paying customer, takes the Yiddish storybook from his pocket. His quiet black eyes sink into the densely printed Hebrew letters. He brings his nose almost down between the lines, reading slowly, as though he were chewing his way through a huge pile of clothes in a narrow, cramped alley, with baskets and vessels blocking the passage on both sides.
Mende is reading the wondrous story of Mordechai… no, of Miriam’s Well, which accompanied the Jews through the desert, across mountains and valleys. All kinds of green plants and trees grew around the well, and whenever the Jews made camp, the well would come to rest opposite the Tabernacle. * The leaders of the twelve tribes would then stand around the well with their staffs and sing to it: “Rise up, O well, spring forth!” Then the water would burst forth like a river, and each tribal leader would draw a channel with his staff leading to the tents of his own tribe. This water surrounded the entire camp in the desert, and the Jews crossed from place to place in little boats. But when Miriam the prophetess died, the well ceased to give water, and Moses our teacher had to strike the rock with his staff. And when the Jews entered the Land of Israel, the well sank into the sea. If one stands on Mount Carmel, one can see in the sea a round stone shining like the moon – and that is none other than the well of Miriam the prophetess. *
– Do you hear me, Mende? – Arke the porter shouts right into his ear. – Today I’m working exactly like my father did – may he rest in peace. He froze completely, too.
– How could your father have frozen in the middle of Tammuz? – Mende asks in astonishment, looking up from the book.
– Because that’s what fate wanted – Arke explains with a mournful face. – My father worked for a balebos. * On a hot day like today, he had to bring ice up from the cellar. You know, Mende, it’s cold down there all year round. You’re not supposed to stay there for long. But my father cooled himself with the ice for so long that in the end he froze completely – Arke concludes, then bursts into loud laughter at having managed to fool the pious Mende with such a long story.
– You mustn’t mock people like that, you mustn’t – says Mende in a plaintive voice. – Have some compassion; say a proper Jewish word instead!
– A proper Jewish word ought to come with a shot of schnapps – Arke says, placing his hand on Mende’s shoulder. – You really are a pious balebos, Mende. Don’t work for anyone on credit! And I’ll bring a round loaf of bread with a dozen pickles and a pound of fatty sausage.
Mende shudders and draws away from the young man, who leaves laughing. Arke laughs at the simple-minded Jew whom he has managed to fool for a moment, then crosses to the other side of the street, back to his own empty spot. Mende cannot be angry with him for interrupting the conversation and the story. He feels very sorry for the old man and once again buries his head in the thin pages of the little book of stories.
Miriam the prophetess’s well contains water at the bottom of the sea throughout the week, but on Saturday evenings the well travels through the deep subterranean waters, touching all the wells of the city. That is why it is customary to draw water immediately after the Sabbath ends, because perhaps at that very moment Miriam’s Well is flowing through their own well. And whoever drinks from Miriam’s Well at that moment is healed immediately, even if they had been ill... just as in that old story... *
– Mende, what are you staring at in that book?! – Arke shouts across the deserted street. – Tell me about it too, so we’ll have something to laugh about!
Mende, completely spellbound by the miraculous story, does not even answer him. He is thinking: if Miriam’s Well were to flow into the ruined well of the shulhoyf on Saturday evening, it would help the whole courtyard and cure Reb Bunem of his grief as well. The thought occurs to Mende that the Creator has sent him this wondrous story precisely today so that he might understand how to repair the well in the synagogue courtyard. That way, the famous magid, Reb Meirke, would not be forgotten either, and on the Sabbaths the people in the courtyard would no longer have to suffer for a single bucket of water.
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