Only Yesterday (63 page)
When Isaac returned to his room, he lit the lamp and took off his hat, he examined his bed, and started pacing back and forth, and as he walked he dipped his fingers in water and moistened his temples, he poured himself a glass of water, put on his hat, and recited a blessing. All the beds in the room, except for his bed, were made up. Clearly there were no guests here aside from him. That would have been good if he had wanted to sleep, but was not good since he was wide awake. He opened his bag and put it on his lap, took out a night—
shirt and once again rummaged around in the bag. He came upon a garment with ritual fringes. He put down the bag and examined the fringes. The garment was whole, the moths hadn’t gotten to it. Un-like the other garments he had brought from his father’s home, which were mostly ruined by now. At that moment, an image of Fa-ther came into his mind’s eye, sitting and tying the fringes in the garment, counting the threads and holding one thread in his mouth. At that moment, Isaac understood why Father took special pains over that small prayer shawl, while he let his sons tie the other prayer shawls, but Father surely wanted that garment his son wore on his heart in the Land of Israel to be made by his own hands, and perhaps Father prayed a special prayer for him. Tears flowed from Isaac’s eyes. He brought the fringes over his eyes and kissed them. He hung his prayer shawl on the chair and went into the dining room.
He heard the voice of a man reciting the blessing after his meal, sitting on a stool, with a chair in front of him. The landlady came in and waited until he concluded the blessing on the food, and said, The bed is made up, and she took the dishes off the chair. That man stood up from the stool and went out, dragging his slippers on his feet. The landlady watched him and said to Isaac, That man is a guest who was hit by mourning for his father, and now he sits Shiva, God have mercy.
Isaac remained in the dining room and was sad, like a man whose business has made him stay in a hotel at night and he doesn’t know what to do. He saw pen and ink lying on the windowsill. He said to himself, I’ll sit down and write a letter to Father. He picked up paper and turned up the wick of the lamp and started writing. When the pen was in his hand, he looked behind him. When he saw that no one was there, he went back to writing. I shall not hide from my father, Long-May-He-Live, something that will rejoice a father’s heart, even though for the time being, the matter is still emerging. But, Is any thing too hard for the Lord? For I have been silent for a long time and haven’t informed my father so far. But how will I tell it. And Isaac thrust the pen in the ink again and went on in plain language a bit about his affairs with Shifra. And once again, he thrust the pen in the ink and went on in florid language, May it please
heaven that I shall herald the end from the beginning, to give joy to the heart of my father, and may my father will not withhold good from me and will impart a blessing on me, for this time my father will be content with me, as the desire of his loving son Isaac.
After he signed his name on the letter, he put commas and periods in it, changed a few letters, some “y’ s” for “i’ s” and some “j’ s” for “g’ s,” and other letters that sounded the same, as he imagined they were spelled at that moment. And he was amazed at the rhetorical flourishes he had written, for Isaac, like most of our comrades in the Land of Israel, who speak Hebrew as a living language, wasn’t used to rhetoric. But as he wrote he saw his father showing the letter to the educated men of his city and he wove some rhetoric into it.
For the Time Being
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In the morning, Isaac had a slight headache because at night his sleep was troubled by a dog barking at his window. He got up and went into the dining room to eat breakfast. He found the room full of worshippers and that guest who was in mourning was standing be-fore the Ark. Isaac returned to his room until the worshippers finished their prayer and thought about all he had to do. He started arranging his things. He picked up his valise and rummaged around in his belongings, he picked up an item and put it down, picked up an item and put it down, like things he had no desire for.
Once again, the sound of mourning reached him, the sound of a subdued melody. What am I looking for, what am I looking for, Isaac asked himself. It’s my Tefillin I’m looking for, my Tefillin I’m looking for, and I don’t have them, I don’t have them, because be-fore I went to Jaffa I left them with the belongings I don’t need. And with every single biblical verse heard from the house of mourning, it seemed to Isaac that something was taking place there. He left his belongings and went back to the dining room, where the mourner was forming a Minyan. Isaac stood among the worshippers and scowled, ready to defend himself against anyone who challenged him. No one did challenge him, but on the contrary, they offered him Tefillin. He took them grudgingly and put them on, and once again he scowled at them to see if they were watching him. But he soon shifted his eyes from the others and started praying.
After all the worshippers left, the landlady came and brought Isaac breakfast. After he ate and drank, he recited the blessing after food with a tune like Reb Fayesh, whom he had heard reciting the
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blessing on the day he went to visit Reb Moyshe Amram, and in that tune was blended his own tune from the days when he was observant.
I
The mourner entered and sat on the stool, the landlady came and brought him his meal. He saw Isaac and said to him, It seems to me that I saw you at prayers. Aren’t you from Galicia? From what town? Isaac told him the name of his town, and said, How does the gentleman know I’m from Galicia? He said to him, We sons of the Land of Israel are perceptive. Said Isaac, Then the gentleman is a native of the Land of Israel. The man said to him, I am a native of the Land of Israel. But woe is me, that my deeds have turned bad and I am forced to live Outside the Land. By the by, he started telling a bit about his affairs. If we add one thing to another, this is the story.
That man was the son of a farmer of Mahanayim, that village of Mahanayim that was established by people from Galicia, and before they saw it exist on its own, it was destroyed, and it still stands ruined and desolate. Forty thousand Francs Galicia had invested in that settlement, a lot of money for the Jews of Galicia, most of whom are extremely poor, and even those who are well-off barely get along. A few families gathered together who had a bit of money, close to five hundred Gulden per family, and ascended to settle in the Land. But to maintain a family on the ground requires eight or nine thousand Gulden.
They came to the Land and settled in Mahanayim. They made tents for themselves of reed mats and went out to plow and sow, out of poverty and out of all the other sorrows and suffering that be-fall every new person in the Land, but they accepted the sorrows well and waited for salvation. Until the last cent they brought with them from Outside the Land was gone, they led a difficult existence, and when the last cent was gone, they had nothing to exist on. But they still didn’t despair and hoped for the best. And if a traveler came and proved to them that they were committing suicide, they would silence him. And if the newspapers told things about them as they were, they would deny them and write, On the contrary, thus and so is what the Land does and thus and so is the goodness in store
for those who work it. Some of them did that because they were ashamed of their poverty, and some did that because of honor for the Land of Israel. And the officers of Mahanayim in Galicia reinforced their words and exaggerated them perhaps too much, so their foes wouldn’t say they uprooted naïve Jews from their home and sent them to the deserts of the Land of Israel to starve to death.
And so, as long as they had a cent in their hand, they held out. When their last cent was gone, the colonization official began borrowing money from moneylenders in Safed on pledges and charity that would come from Outside the Land, and every family was given forty Francs a month to keep them from starving to death. And they found some help from the Gehilfsverein in Berlin, and other Lovers of Zion societies promised them their help, too. But the charity came little by little and the interest kept growing bigger and big-ger, and the farmers were mostly forty-year-olds and their strength was sapped by the climate and hunger and they weren’t fit for work.
If not for a new calamity that came, we might have been able to hold out on the land. But you cannot derive If from If Not. And indeed a new blow came, the locust, which covered the eye of the Land and devoured every tree and every blade of grass. We stood there, young and old, sons and daughters, day and night, and we banged all kinds of pots and pans, to make a noise to frighten the lo-cust. After the locust devoured every blade of grass in the Land and every fruit of the trees, and didn’t leave even the straw in bed, he went on his way.
All the time we were busy with the locust, we forgot all the other calamities, but when we got rid of that blow, all the other calamities returned and made us remember them. Harder than anything else is the sorrow of subsistence, that’s the greatest sorrow, for it brings hunger. And all those who were eager to lend us money at first, have closed their hand to us, and clenched an evil fist. And so the creditors demand and the usurers deduct their deductions and the interest multiplies and there’s no way to pay up, and hunger increases and there’s nowhere to borrow. And the mats they made into tents, some were eaten by the locust and some fell apart all by themselves. We dwelt in the field with no shade and no food. The
colonization official got impatient and ran away. And the farmers also left their tents that were torn and their fields that weren’t sown, and they ran away. One went here and one went there and Father went to Safed. There he lived in penury and poverty. In the end, he buried his wife, in the end, he buried his sons, in the end, all that was left of our whole household was him and me, who by the mercy of God had escaped death.
And in those days as in these times, Safed is idle. There is neither trade nor handicrafts there. But it does have the graves of the Tanna’im and the Amora’im and the graves of other Saints, and it does have study houses and prayer houses, and there isn’t a single Saint Outside the Land who doesn’t have a prayer house in Safed. The Hasids sit in the study houses and in the prayer houses and every day they have themselves a banquet and a celebration in honor of their Saint or in honor of his father or in honor of his grandfather or they go to the graves. And on their way there and on their way back they have a little drink to strengthen their heart.
Banquets and festivities and celebrations need wine. Every householder makes himself a little wine, not to mention the big pub owners whose whole business is wine. Once I went to Eyn Zeytim and an Arab came to me and said, Take some of my grapes. I said, I’m willing to take, but if I don’t give you money, you won’t give me grapes. He said, Take, and when you have money, you’ll pay me. I looked at his grapes and I saw that they were fine and beautiful and superior to all grapes. It occurred to me to take some of them and make a little wine for Father, for Father’s soul was bitter, and he didn’t leave his house, but sat and hurled abuse at everyone, even the Saints. He would say, Wouldn’t it be better to strengthen those who work the holy soil with the same money they use to fill the throats of those idlers. And so I took some of the grapes and I selected them very very carefully and I made me a little wine. But why should I praise it? Its quality made itself known. To make a long story short, I made myself a little bit of wine. And when you do something in Safed, word spreads. So with that wine. Once the Zunz Hasids sat at a banquet they made to celebrate their Saint, may-his-virtue-protect- us-and-all-Israel. They sat all night and drank and ate and drank until
they didn’t leave a drop of wine in the glass to recite the blessing over the meal. They sent to the pub keepers and didn’t find any, or they found a kind of drink that isn’t worthy of a blessing. Some say that the hand of the Sadigura Hasids was in it, because of the Quarrel between Zunz and Sadigura Hasids which hadn’t yet subsided, and the Sadigura Hasids made trouble to upset the Zunz Hasids who were celebrating their Saint.
There was one old man there from the remnants of the el-ders of the Hasids who had been graced by the Rebbe of Zunz who had put his Tefillin on him the day of his Bar Mitzvah, and that man guarded his Tefillin and didn’t let anyone touch them. That old man said to me, I heard you make wine. If you bring me a glass for the blessing, I’ll let you put on my Tefillin tomorrow. When I heard that, I jumped up and brought a pitcher of wine. The old man recited the blessing, For You are good and do good, and drank and said, This is worthy of the blessing. And he liked it so much he called it a wine that resurrects the dead, for every single drop of it is like dew of resurrection. And the other Hasids also lavished praise on my wine. And I didn’t lose either materially or spiritually. Spiritually, for the old man let me put on his Tefillin. And when I stood and put on his Tefillin, I saw that he was dozing, for he was very old and was tired from the wine. I picked up the Tefillin and put them on, Tefillin the Zunzer Rebbe had held. So far, that’s spiritually.
And materially, how? From that night on, my wines became famous and a lot of people started coming to get wine from me. And here I did what Baron Rothschild once did. How? When the Baron Rothschild got involved in improving the Land of Israel, they told him there are so-and-so many Jews in the world and so-and-so many Sabbaths and holidays in the year, and there isn’t a single Jew who doesn’t bless with wine and doesn’t distinguish between Sabbath and weekday with wine, let alone the four glasses on Passover. The Baron planted vineyards and excavated two big wine-cellars, one in Rishon LeTsion and one in Zikhron Ya’akov, and made wine. So did I. So and so many relatives I have,
etc.
And praise the Lord, I did a good business in wines, maybe better than Rothschild, for Rothschild spent and didn’t earn, and every one of my relatives lent me a hand.I amassed some money and started thinking about myself. Why should I live in Safed? I had a relative in Galicia, a wine merchant. I went to him. My relative didn’t rejoice overmuch to see me, but he did give me room and board. I stayed with my relative and observed his business. My relative saw that this man from Safed was no idler and was even expert in wines. He took me into his business and consulted me. In the end, he didn’t do anything I didn’t agree to. In the end, he gave me his daughter for a wife. In the end, he made me a partner in his business. And neither of us regretted it. The merit of the Land of Israel also stood me in good stead, for many of the Rab-bis started buying wine from him. And they, Long-May-They-Live, when it comes to wine, they know what they’re talking about. They say that every Jew understands wine, for the two drinks every son of Israel drinks, one at the time of his circumcision and one at his wedding, he isn’t likely to forget. But the Rebbes really are experts in wine. If you want, you can interpret it mysteriously, as they said in the Zohar, Because of wine there is joy of the Torah, according to the biblical verse, also they saw God, and did eat and drink. And if you want a straightforward interpretation, since every single Hasid puts on his Rebbe’s table a bottle of wine, the Rebbes attain perfection in wine. And so, I lived Outside the Land and I did good business.
Meanwhile, my father-in-law passed away and I took over his business. I made some innovations and I introduced some regulations. And once every three years, I would go up to the Land of Israel to maintain the Commandment to honor my father, and I would stay in the Land a few months, and make wine from the grapes of our brothers the farmers in the settlements. And for the Belzer Rebbe, Long-May-He-Live, I would make wine from the Arab grapes, because he was afraid of profaning the sabbatical year. I also imported fruit from the Land of Israel. Once I brought a gift of fruit to a Rebbe on Arbor Day, the fifteenth day of the month of Shevat, the Rebbe kissed every single piece of fruit, and gave me endless honor in honor of the Land of Israel.
Later on, I began to slack off in my business. There are many reasons for that. And the reason of all reasons was that I longed to set-tle down in the Land of Israel, for every time I was in the Land of Israel, it was hard for me to leave. And when I left, I wanted to go right back. But what would a person do in the Land of Israel when he has to make a living. And here that trade in wine is weak. It has no mar-ket either in the Land or Outside the Land. There are ports Outside the Land where you find barrels of wine from the Land of Israel standing for years and no one wants to buy them. And once in Tri-este I got two hundred barrels of one hundred twenty liters and of one hundred seventy liters at twenty Hellers a liter, for the wine had stood there for two years and didn’t even bring in enough to pay customs duties. And even in the cities of the Austrian state, no one pays attention to it. Once I went to Krakow, and there I saw barrels lying around in the customs house, some of them empty and some of them broken and some with wine pouring out, that’s how much they de-spised the wine of the Land of Israel.
To make a long story short, I slacked off in wine because I wanted to go back to the Land of Israel. And my business, my friend, was a big business. I had one cellar of six hundred square meters, that is, more than half a Dunam. And I had one cellar in the customs house, Transit Lager, so as not to pay customs duties twice. But for the Land of Israel, I left my wines and started looking for a business where I could make a living in the Land of Israel. I saw that in the Land of Israel, beer is expensive. A three-quarter-liter bottle costs from ten to fifteen Grush, and even a simple beer costs six Grush, because there is no beer factory here. I said to myself, I’ll make myself a beer factory in the Land of Israel. Well, there are no hops here, so I can import them from abroad and even grow them here. The Land of Israel is destined to grow all kinds of plants that exist in the world.
I left my business and I went to Okocin to learn how to make beer, for Okocin is the place for beer. And three kinds of beer they make there, simple, medium, and superior. That superior beer is called Bock, for Bock means billy-goat, because they make it close to their new year, a time when the billy-goats mate. And it lives up to its name, for it gives potency to those who drink it, like a billy-goat who is extraordinarily potent. And two hundred thousand liters they make there every year. Along with malt and concentrates of malt and various kinds of sweets.
And cars go into the cellar and come out of the cellar. And they have special factories for barrels and bottles. I spent two years there and went to Pilsen. There I spent three months and went to Prague. There I spent four weeks and went to Nancy. To make a long story short, I didn’t miss a place where they make good beer. And in every single place they treated me nicely, for the Gentiles are fond of the Land of Israel. In addition, the nobles I had sold wine to rec-ommended me as an honest man, and even the big merchants among my coreligionists were nice to me. I endeared myself to factory owners and they showed me things they show only to their sons. They knew I didn’t intend to compete with them, but that I wanted to make a little beer in Palestine, and what did they care if I made good beer. I became an expert in that craft and returned to the Land of Israel. When I returned I saw that nothing could be done here. In fact, it was obvious to me before I left that the Land was desolate and there was little activity here, but out of my desire, I said, perhaps and maybe. I tried what I tried and didn’t succeed in anything. I was com-pelled to go back Outside the Land. I went up to Jerusalem to pray at the Western Wall. Came the news that my father, may I be an ex-piation for his rest, departed from this life, and here I am sitting Shiva.
