Body Language For Dummies

AFTERGROWTH
AND OTHER
STORIES
by
HAYYIM NAHMAN BIALIK
Translated from the original Hebrew by

I. M. Lask
.1/tergrowth and Other Stories offers

examples of the literary genius of the man
who led the renaissance of Hebrew cul
ture during the past generation. Bialik
was the Poet Laureate of the Jewish peo
ple for more than a quarter of a century.
Not since Judah Halevi, who died eight
hundred years ago, has there been any
such master of the Hebrew word or any
such interpreter of the Jewish spirit.
Of the five short stories which Bialik

wrote in prose, this volume presents three,
exquisitely translated by I. M. Lask. The
first story, "Aftergrowth," proves Bialik's
profound insight into the mental and emo
tional experiences of a child. From the
drabness and petty cruelties of life, this
child, probably Bialik himself in his
parental home, escapes into the happier
(Continued on back flap)
world of its imagination undn rlw -rrmu
lus of the tales and legends l'lllllll"• ,,.,f
with the Bible heroes.
In "The Shamed Trumpet" is relatt·d

the story of a family whose life was rlJined
by the stupidity and corruption of the
Czarist government. \\' ith rharmin�
humor and quiet pathos the author intro
duces the reader to the joys and pains of
Jewish life in a Russian village some fifty
years ago.
"The Short Friday" rs a highly enter

taining story about a pious and naive
rabbi who, on the shortest Friday of the
year, unwittingly wandered away from
the straight path.
Indispensable for a thorough under

standing of these stories, and of Bialik and
his work in general, is the appreciation
written by the translator as a preface to
this volume. Mr. Lask offers a novel and
exceptionally interesting discussion of the
basic factors which gave direction to
Bialik's life and molded his poetic spirit.
AFTERGROWTH
AND OTHER STORIES
AFTER GROWTH
AND OTHER STORIES
Tra,slatedjrom the Hebrew
by I. M. LASK
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA
1939-5700
Copyright, 1939, by
THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMEillc.&
All righu rtun>ed. No part of this 6ook may oe

,.tproducttl in any form fiiithouJ pn-mission. in
writing from the pu6/isher: except oy "rtflitflln"
roho may quoit 6riif pD�sages in IJ rer:iero to ot
prinud in tJ magazine ar 11tf1Jspapn-.
PII.INTED I If THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
PRESS OF THE J EWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY
PHILADELPHIA, PENNA.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
I. HAYYIM NAHMAN BIALIK-AN INTERPRETATION. . 3

II. AFTERGROWTH • . • . • • . • . . • • • • . . • . • • . ..... 39
III. THE SHAMED TRUMPET. . . . . • . . . • . . • . • • • . . . 141
IV. THE SHORT FRIDAY • • . . . . • • • . • • . • • . • • . • • • 191
.,.
AN INTERPRETATION
by I. M. LASK
Hayyim Nahman Bialik
HAYYIM NAHMAN BIALIK, the foremost Hebrew poet of

his generation, was born 1873 in a tiny village called Radi
or Radin in Volhynia, which is part of the Ukraine. He died
after an operation in 1934 at Vienna. The sixty-one years
of his life were symbolic of the life-course of the generation
to which he belonged - the generation of our fathers and
mothers. Five or six years were spent in his native village ;
ten or twelve in Zhitomir, the local. ,country town, where
he was brought up by his paternal grandfather after his
father's death; a few months at the famous Yeshiba (Tal
mudical College) in Volozhin, not far from Vilna; a period
at Odessa, where he published his first poem at the age of
eighteen ; back to Zhitomir upon hearing of his grandfather's
death ; his marriage soon thereafter, and eight years of
struggle as timber-merchant and Hebrew teacher; back to
Odessa at the turn of the century, first as a Hebrew teacher
again but later as a Hebrew publisher. In Odessa he lived
HAYYIM NAHMAN BIALIIt
twenty years, until after the Communist Revolution. His

next three or four years were spent on the Continent of
Europe; and the last ten years of his life he passed as a
permanent resident of Tel Aviv in Palestine.
All in all, Bialik's life conformed to the pattern of his
generation ; it contained the break with Jewish tradition
represented by his departure from the Yeshiba, and his
virtual emigration. For it must be remembered that, as
far as the observant small-town Jews were concerned,
Odessa (itself a more recent Jewish community than that
of New York) was spiritually as distant as London ; every
body knew that the fires of Hell were burning for nine miles
around it. And besides the stream of emigration overseas,
there was a constant influx of young Jews into the towns
of West Russia.
This fact of living according to the general pattern of
his generation helped greatly to ensure the very early recog
nition gained by Bialik as one of the chief poets of his day.
Tens of thousands of young men in Poland, Lithuania and
the Ukraine had undergone precisely the same spiritual
conflicts and economic struggles as Bialik had. There was
no room for them in the small towns, the importance of
which was then rapidly declining due to the railway. The
settlement and continued residence of Jews in the villages
and hamlets had been prohibited by the Russian Govern
ment in 1882; and this prohibition probably had as much
to do with the first Jewish waves of emigration to the United
HAYYJM NAHMAN BIALIK
States as the pogroms which had taken place earlier that

year. Last but by no means least, those young men belonged,
like Bialik, to what might be called the Timber Class.
Nobody, as far as I know, has yet made a study of the
economic and cultural influence of the timber industry and
trade in Eastern Europe on Jewish life, during the past
century at least. Yet that influence must have been very
considerable, and in some respects decisive. Timber became
an important economic factor in Eastern Europe with the
coming of the steamship, which provided cheap and rapid
transportation overseas; and this process was later acceler
ated by the railway. For two to three generations (until
the Communist Revolution of 1917) this industry and its
allied trades were almost entirely in Jewish hands, with the
exception of the wood-felling proper which was done by
the peasantry. Opotashu's novel In Polish Woods (Eng
lish version published by the Jewish Publication Society
in 1938) gives some idea how Jews lived in the forests in
isolated groups of two or three families. Persons making
their living directly or indirectly from timber must have
run into hundreds of thousands; and for some reason they
were, if not extremely orthodox, at least possessed of a
fondness for Hebrew and Jewish culture.
Actually the reason for this cultural preference in an
economic group is not far to seek. Both the Russian peas
antry who acted as woodsmen, and the Russian gentry from
whom forests had to be leased, preferred to have dealings
5
with Jews who were Jews. They knew just where they stood
with them. Besides, Jewish assimilationists and socialists,
as far as any existed, were found in rather different spheres;
the former in the large towns of Central Russia, the latter
wherever factories were beginning to spring up.
One of the two most important contemporary Hebrew
novelists, Hayyim Hazaz, has described the coming of a
Jewish revolutionary among forest villagers in his novel
Beyishub she/ Ya'ar (In Forest Homes). The outstanding
thing about this revolutionary was the fact that he com
pletely failed to exert the slightest influence on those woods
men, even though the 1905 Revolution was just behind
them. The woodsmen preferred the normal, simple, pious
Jewish "factor" or supervisor to the young intellectual who
was staying with him and who spoke big words which they
did not understand.
Hazaz is mentioned here because he, like Bialik, also was
born and brought up amid forests, though a generation
later; and he portrays Jews and the conditions uHder which
they live as truly as any historian. What was true of his
childhood was even more true of Bialik's childhood twenty
or thirty years earlier. By the beginning of this century
the outer world had already forced its way through the
aisles and glades of the vast forests of Eastern Europe;
children knew all about the wicked Japanese and their War
with the Tzar, just as in Tel Aviv today the four-and-five
year-olds are informed about the cruel deeds of Hitler.
In Bialik's childhood, the village was a complete universe
6
in all truth; and it is his genius which, in the story "After

growth" and many of his poems, makes us realise how
complete a universe it was.
II
Timber may have provided an occupation for hundreds

of thousands of Jews, but that does not imply that they
were all successful business-men. Bialik's father, Reb Isaac
Joseph, was not a success. When Hayyim Nahman was
about five years old the family had to leave the village and
return to Zhitomir, where Reb Isaac Joseph kept an inn
another of the Jewish occupations in Eastern Europe, with
traditions going back three hundred years and more.
There he would sit in the smoky, low-ceilinged room, amid
the reeking peasants and carters, studying the Talmud and
rising from it when called on to provide his customers with
their vodka. In Bialik's last poem there is a graphic picture
of his father, in physical and spiritual exile amid the gentiles.
Behind the barrels on tap, over a yellow-leaved book
Appeared my father's head, the head of a tortured saint.
Through clouds of smoke it floated as though broken
off at the neck,
That face, pallid with pain, the eyes dripping blood.
Silent I stood 'twixt his knees, my eyes on his face.
Drunkards roared all around, and swillers retched and
spued.
7
Faces were monstrous, horrid; tongues ran torrents

of filth;
The very walls writhed to hear them, the windows hid
their faces.
Only to me, with the ears of an unpolluted child
Quietly oozed and flowed the whispers of holy lips,
Whispering Torah, prayer, and the Word of the Living
God . . .
So Bialik described the scene more than fifty years later,
in the last poem he wrote.
His father did not live long, in that inn. He died shortly
thereafter.
And a brief epitaph at his head, carved by an unskilled
hand,
Bears faithful witness to him, "Here lies a man upright
and simple.
The widow was left to fend for herself and her children.
She took a stall in the market-place, and began to wage
that bitterest of all wars, the war for the barest minimum
of existence. It was his mother's misery and bewilderment,
in this savage battle for bread and water, which scarred
Bailik's heart and soul. The helpless, hopeless fury of his
child-soul was to find a partial outlet many years later in
his "prophetic" poems and "Songs of Fury," at the time
of the Kishinev pogrom and the First Russian Revolution,
when he cried out against the God of Israel and the Universe
because of the world He had made. It was only in his old
age, shortly before his death, that his life-long scepticism
8
as to the basic goodness of the Universe was with under

standing traced back to its source.
. . . See, my temples are grey, my forehead is lined
and seamed,
Much was I shamed since my youth, much have I
learned to forgive;
Yet the wretchedness of your poverty still scorches
within my bones.
I cannot forgive it. Nor unto Thee, 0 God, shall I
forgive it,
And its flames burst forth to Thee from all my songs
and innards.
What shall atone for a mother's affiiction ? Can any
thing repay
The glory of manhood defiled ? How did I see
And my eyes not grow dark, how did God see and
forbear
When His image lay overturned on the ground and
destroyed,
When the hind of the home became a ravening desert
jackal ? .. .
But with the best will in the world i t is not easy for "a
hind" to transform herself into " a jackal" scave'nging in
the market-places, while her children hungered. Finally,
she had to take her oldest son, Hayyim Nahman, and entrust
him to be brought up by his grandfather, an austerely pious
Hasid who lived at the other end of Zhitomir. That grand
father was the prototype of the father in "Aftergrowth."
In all these experiences of Bialik, there was nothing
unique; such things have been happening ever since human
9
beings have existed. The cry of the widow and orphan have
resounded throughout the world in all ages. But, in this
case, the orphan was Bialik; and an orphan in spirit Bialik
remained all his life.
Most of his poems and much of his prose are attempts
to pass behind and beyond this spirit of orphanhood back
to his enchanted childhood. Yet, like the angel with the
fiery sword that guards the approaches to the Garden of
Eden, his orphanhood stood in his life's path. And, such is
the mysterious power of the poet, his poems, those records
of his attempts to evade the angel, speak for his entire
generation and people, if not for all mankind. What he
describes, happens to us all in one way or another; but
some of us subdue and subj ugate it; others are subjugated
by it, and turn down some detour into one or another form
of madness; while one in myriads, a Bialik or a Freud,
transmutes his experience into something that can benefit
all men. What gives them this mysterious power cannot
be explained ; nor can it be explained away.
III
Almost all Bialik's poems are attempts to escape back to

his babyhood or else to the dreams of his childhood. They
were written for the most part over a period of twenty-five
years, between 1890 and 1915. At about the time when he
was over forty, he seems to have gone through a second
10
crisis. He found that he was forgetting his childhood ; it

was dropping out of his consciousness ; and he did not wish
i t to go.
One by one and all unseen, like the stars before
the dawn,
My hid longings are extinguished, ending dumbly
in a grief.
Yet I keep the last within me; the note of all
my life,
Unsilenced by day's tumult, unconcealed by
any demon.
I would have God be gracious; and ere my days
do end,
Whether waking or in dream, once more at the least,
Once more, 0 once again, though it be for but
a twinkling,
Let the vision of my infancy return with all
i ts wealth,
And my life's morning pass anew with all its vernal
sweetness. . •
What would he have to face if he left his childhood behind?

He did not know; but it was something he clearly feared
i n the very depths of his soul. It was at this time that he
wrote the poem called "He Gazed and Died." There were
four, says the talmudic legend, who entered Paradise; Ben
'Azzai gazed and died; Ben Zoma gazed and was stricken
(went insane) ; Ben Abuya hacked away at the plants, that
is, became a heretic; but Rabbi Akiba alone entered in peace
and departed in peace. Of these four Bialik characteristically
preferred Ben 'Azzai :
11
He entered the innermost Paradise, torch i n hand.

Fifty gates hath Paradise,
And terrors and dreads on its paths, deeps beyond
deeps,
Heights overtopping the skies,
He hastened to enter within, before him his torch.

Astounded, silent as Fate,
The Guardians withdrew. Would he have strength
to dare and break through
To the fiftieth gate ?
He breaks through ! . . . So he came to the hiddenmost

place
Where never had trod a strange foot.
And he crept to the bounds of the boundless, where
contraries all
Are one at the root.
His hand quivers, stricken his eyes by the light.

Should he knock?
He delays ; a moment more,
Then strengthened and started erect to his knees, to
his feet from the crawling
And knocked at the door.
The torch went out ; the ports of the gate swung open.
He peered to see that which he sought
And his body slid down, the smouldering brand at
his side to lie stretched
On the threshold of Naught.
12
It was about this time that he wrote his "Psalm for

Dancers," with its evasion of any resolution of the real
issues which were consuming him deep within. The mood
was that of chess-players who try to settle a difficult prob
lem by burning their chessboard and pieces. This mood
was so strong in him at the time that he wrote a Yiddish
version, a translation of which can be found in Joseph
Leftwich's recently published anthology of Yiddish poetry
entitled The Golden Peacock. Yet, in all honesty, his Hebrew
version is far more powerful; as is the case with various
other poems which he wrote in both languages. This par
ticular poem was prophetic, as all will confess who remember
the crazed wave of dancing which swept like wildfire across
the world after the Great War. Yet for Bialik all the tumult
and noise were vitally necessary so that he might not need
to face himself and overcome the dark angel of his child
hood:
Cadger and bum! Drub at the drum!

Palterers! Fakers! Pipe to the call!
Scrape away fiddlers, rotten strings strum!
Conscience cries dance! .dnd the devil take all!
No loaves and no fishes, no flesh and no bread,

So arms around shoulders; why bother your head ?
God in His heaven can do what He will,
So up in His name and dance till you reel;
And all our soul's fury, our heart and its burning
Empty for once in our whirling and churning
13
Till the dance goes ascending in lightning and thunder

To make the Earth tremble, split Heavens asunder !
No honey, no milk, no wine any more,

Yet the goblet of poison is full and runs o'er.
Then quiver no arm ; good health go roar,
Drain to the dregs - and your legs shake the floor !
And on with the dance; have it wing and swing out
While you flush in the face and your voices ring out,
And let no man know, be he friend, be he foe,
All that is wringing your heart to and fro.
No shirt and no shoes, no clothing to wear -

What odds ! It can't harm when there's nothing to tear !
Barefoot and naked, swift eagles in flight,
We raise ourselves high above all other height.
As a tempest we toss; and storm on in our dances
Above whole seas of distress and mischances.
With shoes, without shoes, for all things are one;
This way or that way we croak when we're done.
No brother, redeemer, kinsman or friend

On whom do you lean, or upon whom depend ?
Come close up the circle and join one another'
And give three good cheers for ourselves; and another!
And fashion a medley of legs and of shoes
And greybeard and blackhead, round and confuse,
While round without end or beginning will twirl
The wheel wheeling onward - and on with the whirl !
No leasehold, no tenancy, roof or wall here

Why do you shiver? What have you to fear?
14
The Earth is full broad, yea she hath four winds

And blest who gives rest to us, peace to our minds.
Bless Him who created the roof of the sky
And for link hung his sun on a hook to see by,
And blest be the rest of His bounteous advances !
Halleluyah with trumpets ! Halleluyah with dances !
No Splendor, Foundation, Glory nor Praise-

Are all channels sealed ? Nay, sooth there be ways !
Our Guardian sleeps not, forgets not the humble,
And like dogs or ravens throws us bones to mumble,
While we in our tumult and dancing and song
Do right the Discord of the Spheres and our wrong
Till the Deathdance and Song of the Smitten shall be
Sin's utter atonement, a quittance and fee.
No vengeance, no mercy, no judgment, no pay

Why are you silent ? Let the dumb have their say !
Give mouth to your feet, flames of wrath let them
spatter,
Tell the stone floors your wrong in their chatter
and clatter.
Turn your dance to a tempest of might and of ire
That sets all your spaces aflame like a pyre
Till in whirlwinds of singing and dancing and calls
You batter your brains out against the stone walls !
Cadger and bum! Drub at the drum!

Palterers! Fakers! Pipe to the call!
Scrape away fiddlers, strings snap and strum!
Conscience cries dance, and to hell with you all!
15
One recalls Shakespeare's Prospera in The Tempest,

breaking his magic staff, burying i t fathoms in the earth,
and drowning his book of spells deeper far than ever plum
met sounded. But Prospera's work was at an end, brought
to successful fruition. Bialik wished to dance himself to
oblivion in order to evade this duty of looking his dark
angel in the face. And he remained silent for seventeen
years, with a few unimportant exceptions. Yet he could
not escape his fate; he had to face the whole of himself;
he had to exorcise his own devil ; and before he died he
published his last poem, "Orphanhood," quotations from
which have been given above. Only by facing this bitter
memory and overcoming it, one might suppose, could he
make his way back to the enchanted vision of his childhood.
Bialik, as poet, through his most important poems,
described his flight from himself. He was the poet laureate
of his people and his generation !
IV
The poems are few in number in which Bialik's duality of

spirit is not to be found in one or another form. True, this
personal character can, in many cases, be recognised only
after reading "Aftergrowth." Thus his first published poem,
"To the Bird," ostensibly sending greetings to the Land of
Israel, actually describes the Land of Israel as closely
identified with his childhood home. Two long and beau-
16
tiful poems, "Radiance" and "The Well," are really verse

sections of "Aftergrowth." In his "City of Slaughter" God
drags Himself and Man through the aftermath of a pogrom ;
yet this savagely helpless God, caught and held by Cause
and Effect, is the same powerless God who could not save
Bialik's mother from the fearful, bestializing degradation
of pauperized widowhood. "Tailor Jonah" gives the child
hood memories of one of those unfortunate children who
were "snatched" from their homes for a lifetime of service
in the Russian army under Tsar Nicholas the First; a clear
substitute for Bialik himself, suddenly thrust under the
iron discipline of his grandfather's piety and personal
austerity.
"The Dead of the Desert" were just out of the line of
sight of the daydreaming child who in imagination wandered
for ages with the Midianite and lshmaelite caravans, as
recorded in "Aftergrowth." I see him, bearded, and girded
of loin, in his mind's eye, nameless and unmarked like the
Asaph and Heman to whom he devoted a poem decrying
his own fame, yet ubiquitous as the Emissary in Ansky's
play "The Dibbuk" ; he watches the young rider dashing
back to the caravan on his fleet courser, God's own dread
on his face. He stands beside the aged hajji who explains
to the young rider what his eyes had beheld :
• By the beard of the prophet, thine eyes beheld the
. .
Dead of the Desert !

The Host of God were they in times gone by, a mighty
nation of ancient days,
17
Yet daring were they and hard as are Araby's rocks;

They embittered their prophet's soul, yea with their
God they wrangled,
So he closed them within the mountains and flung sleep
eternal upon them,
And ordained that the desert hide their memory for
age upon age . . .
And he chooses to remain behind, watching the caravan
as it passes:
. . . So ends the hajji his rede.
Silent hearken the Arabs, Allah's own awe on their
faces,
As they gravely pace at the flanks of their camels laden
to falling.
Long the white kefias upon their heads gleam from afar
And the humps of the camels slowly sway through the
brilliant distance
As though they bore on their backs another legend of
old time.
- And stillness returns and the desert stands lone
as before.
It was Bialik's fate to write Hebrew at the time when the

Hebrew language was the chief instrument in the Jewish
national revival ; and when tens of thousands of his potential
readers had trodden the same conscious road as he himself
had. These two facts, combined with his own mastery of
18
the Hebrew word, turned him at a very early age into the
leading Hebrew poet; that is, they caused general recog
nition, as it were, to be given to Bialik's pre-eminence some
fifteen years or more earlier than would otherwise have been
the case. Bialik became the Jewish poet laureate, with the
responsibilities of a poet laureate, before he was thirty.
It is possible that this early recognition may have influ
enced his poetry adversely. He resented such unsought
responsibility; and he found an outlet for his resentment
in his famous "prophetic" poems. In these he systematically
berates his people for not being what they should be and for
not doing what they should do. Naturally the Hebrew
reader was convinced (and perhaps Bialik himself was as
well) that the rebuked were those who did not follow the
right path of the Jewish national and Zionist revival. Yet
rereading these poems, I have the feeling that the poet
Bialik was really reviling those, and that part of himself,
who and which would not let him continue his own private
conflict. Several poems written during the decade 19()(}-
1910 are ostensibly epitaphs for himself; yet on careful
reading they are clearly intended for his father, "a plain
simple man, weary and weak."
It was his great fear at the time, and to it he devotes a
poem, that he would die leaving one song unsung; it is true
that he practically ceased writing poetry for seventeen years,
yet ere he died he sang that song; and a bitter one i t was.
In 1911 he compared himself to a twig from which the ripe
fruit has fallen, and which lies sleeping against the fence;
19
only asking to he left alone during the dread winter nights.

In 1923, on receiving congratulations on the occasion of his
fiftieth birthday, he protested that he was neither poet nor
prophet hut a hewer of wood.
Woodsman with axe,
I have hewn, I have toiled.·�
Day is spent, my hand wearied,
My axe dull and spoiled . . •
It was characteristic of Bialik's childhood and deepest

associations that he should regard himself as a woodsman
as a hewer of wood rather than as a drawer of water.
In 1926, when he was in New York, the sight of a tree
burgeoning in the spring was sufficient to revive his forest
memories, and he wrote a poem on the impermanence of
great cities compared to the perennial quickening of the
woods at the close of winter. By 1931 the spirit of the Muse
was moving again within him. He shouted defiance at his
readers in 1931, in a poem, "prophetic" on the surface, that
begins as follows:
Tho' he strip himself before you, yea to his deeps,
Do not bellow like bulls.
He but mocks at you, mocks without mercy
And makes sport with you till the head shakes.
You are not worth the baring of even a thousandth part
Of his heart's thoughts concerning you,
Therefore he uncovers himself, to be concealed from
your eyes indeed
And to mislead you.
20
In vain do you seek him in the hiding-places of his

rhymes;
They too are but a cloak for his secrets . . .
In the same year, after a Zionist Congress, he wrote his
last "prophetic" poem, in which he bade farewell to all his
national attitudes and activities, after having suddenly seen
the helplessness and hopelessness of the delegates there
assembled. He wrote a long editorial article in hexameters
(like many of his other "prophetic" poems) ; though the
theme with which he dealt was handled far more effectively
and succinctly by the Prophet Ezekiel, when he spoke con
cerning the Shepherds of Israel (Ezekiel, XXXIV).
When published, the poem became an issue in Zionist
party polemics; quite unnecessarily. All that it really meant
was that the poet Bialik had suddenly made up his mind
not to be led about on strings any more, like a dancing bear,
in order to raise money for the various Zionist funds.
Whether the Poet Laureate Bialik abided by that decision
is a different matter.
Bialik never achieved his full stature because of too early
success. He was a poet who was haunted all his life by the
memories of his childhood joys and miseries ; and saw all
nature subjectively, in terms of his own mind and moods:
0 come seize me, grip me, fierce
Frost and kindle, scorch and pierce.
Freeze my steaming breath and chill,
While my blood springs into steel.
21
File my bluntness all along

To a sword-edge keen and strong
And of iron forge my breast
Lest it burst of power oppresst.
-0 come riot, eldritch, fierce;
Freeze and sear me, scorch and pierce.
Bend and stretch my arm's each sinew;
Jail my panting throat within you.
Raise your banner in the bright
Sun-motes - rule the world in might !
He was a poet whose folksongs might well be compared

to those of Burns. Thus his poem, "A New Fashion,"-
Fashion's changing down our way
Skirts of silk in any weather.
'Twixt the trees come Sabbath day
Pears and kisses bloom together.

Satin shoes and buckles too.
Round the neck of every lass
Twine themselves a lad or two.

Today it's Ann, tomorrow Joan.
But my darling Jonathan
Is all my own, is all my own.
His Sabbath hymn has already found its place among
Sabbath eve zemirot:
22
• 0 pure one, be with us and light with thy ray

• .
The night and the day ; then pass on thy way.

And we do thee honor in garments so fine,
By song and by psalm and by three feasts with wine
And sweetness of peace
And fulness of peace.
Bless us with peace, angels of peace.
In his semi-prose "Scroll of Fire," Bialik strove to sym
bolize for all time the Jews' abject degradation due to Exile,
in reality, his own childhood exile. In his search for any
way back to his childhood that would not bring him face
to face with his dark angel, his private exile, he wrote a
volume of children's verses which are interesting to col
lectors of Bialikana; but which are much too difficult for
children.
He was a poet who was also one of the outstanding prose
writers of his day.
VI
Bialik published no more than five stories all told, three

of which are given in this volume. All five are in a sense
part of his poetry, as can most clearly be seen in "After
growth," which is a key to all his verses.
The tales are all based on memories of his childhood,
and belong to the identical cycle. "The Shamed Trumpet"
23
is a good example. In a posthumous fragment, published

only last year, reference is made to a Jewish "factor" whom,
along with his family, the Russian authorities expelled, bag
and baggage, from his home in a village, on the eve of
Passover. Since the law under which such evictions took
place was enacted in 1882, incidents of this kind could have
happened only during the following decade. The passage
in question must have been written when Bialik was still
in his early twenties; it shows the influence of the euphu
istic melitza style which had not yet gone out of fashion,
and which preferred biblical to mishnaic vocabulary, syntax
and structure. "The Shamed Trumpet" was written at least
twenty years later, apparently at about the time the poet
was preparing to take refuge in silence.
Bialik never departed from his own personal range of
experience. His dryeh Ba'al-Guj (Aryeh the Brawny or the
Gross) and "Behind the Fence" derived from the same
period as the tales published in this volume. Aryeh is an
extensive study of the type of individual briefly indicated
in the innkeeper of "The Short Friday;" and "Behind the
Fence" deals with Christian-Jewish relations in a small
Russian town - Bialik's early home. He also wrote a num
ber of sketches in a sardonic vein. In these he did not
spare himself. One of them describes how one day he could
not settle down to write. His lines refused to come in any
regular rhythm. A band passed along the street. He looked
out of the window and observed how people marched along
24
keeping time with the band. "A flock of sheep!" he thought

to himself scornfully, and when the band passed out of
hearing he sat down again. This time his muse did not fail
him and his fount of inspiration ran freely. When he came
to read what he had written, he found that it moved to the
rhythm of the tune played in the street. He too had been
marching with the band.
After taking up residence in Palestine, Bialik rewrote a
number of old legends in an effort to construct Jewish
heroic cycles. Two groups of legends, later issued together,
dealt with David and Solomon, and were written in biblical
style. He took particular pride, as I personally know, in
two of them. These were the longer version of "The Legend
of Three and of Four," which he considered to be very satis
factorily constructed from the artistic viewpoint; and "A
Stalled Ox and a Dish of Herbs." The latter was undoubt
edly entirely his own, and was based on the verse in Prov
erbs, "Better a dish of herbs in contentment than a stalled
ox and contention therewith." The theme was that when
King Solomon was wandering as a beggar, his throne having
being usurped by Ashmodai, King of the Demons, a butcher
took him in as guest and served him at a banquet. Bialik
wrote a highly Rabelaisian description of the meal and host,
and was particularly proud of having created or refashioned
some fine Hebrew invective. His butcher was, in truth, his
old Aryeh Ba'al-Guf in a different avatar.
25
VII
This series of legends includes a particular tour de force

entitled "Duke Onion and Duke Garlic," written in rhymed
prose, a literary form which was very popular among the
Arabs a thousand years ago and which was adopted by
mediaeval Hebrew writers. The story runs that a prince
came to an unknown isle and introduced onions to the
inhabitants. In gratitude they loaded him with gifts
and named him "Duke Onion." On his return to his native
land, another prince resolved to try his own luck. And he
in turn sailed away to the isle and introduced garlic. So
overwhelmed were the inhabitants when they tasted this
unknown condiment in their cooked food that they gave the
prince, besides the title "Duke Garlic," a gift of their most
precious treasure - some onions.
The following passage may help to give some idea of
Bialik's strong prose, fit for people of healthy appetites, as
well as an example of this kind of writing, and the humorous
effects to which i t lends itself:
A certain prince went on a tour far and wide for
wisdom to keep in the bag at his side, as is meet and
proper for the son of a king who is well-endowed and
blessed with everything. He traversed the continents,
all of the five, and stopped wherever he might arrive,
and viewed every country, newfound or old, and sailed
through the seven seas lively and bold, and looked at
26
each river and every lake, and the distant isles in his
journey did take. He passed over the Mountains ot
Gloom, took the Deserts of Doom in his stride, setting
wisdom and knowledge like eggs aside, leaving nothing
behind be it large be it small, and grew wiser than
Solomon, Agur and all ; and when he came out and
when he came in, he spoke wisdom of earth and of all
things therein. He was clever by day and clever by
night, knew what is above and below out of sight,
what is before and what is behind ; he could tell white
from black without guessing blind, long-eared asses
from men in masses, Jordan water from porter or port;
in brief a fine lad who knew just what he ought.
• * * • • • • • • •
He reached the palace. The king of the isle appeared

and closed the hand of his guest in finest style round
a glass of the best. He tasted, no more, the blood of
the grape and his eyes opened wide beyond their proper
shape, and he saw the king's table, agroan with the
feast prepared as befits the Kings of the East. Flesh
and fish so dainty and rare, fish of river and sea and to
spare, of Tigris and Tiber and Ocean the wide, tunny,
anchovy and perch beside, codfish and haddock and
soles and eels, each fish being a span and two ells;
and soup that glistened like gems of topaz and car
buncles; meat to long for of all kinds as quail and dove
and pheasant, roast, grilled or boiled in birdmilk pleas
ant, and veal and mutton and fat tail of sheep, there
was nothing the king's kitchen did not keep, stomach
of goat and tongue of red cow, besides rich bread and
27
cakes of fine dough, plaited loaves with currants and

saffron, honeycake and cakes with sugar laid on, not
forgetting hart, deer, roebuck and antelope; and wine
stored since Adam, what more is there to hope, from the
vats of Lot and the press of Noe. They sat straight
away to eat and drink, and therewith to rejoice in no
uncertain voice.
VIII
That, one might say, is Bialik at ease; Bialik in his

slippers who has enriched Jewish folklore and humor with
hundreds of jokes, epigrams and pithy sayings. But there
were other Bialiks, all at work to conceal the overwhelmed
six-or-seven-year-old child from the world.
There was Bialik the business-man ; and how he enjoyed
the part! Maybe it was compensation for his own father's
failure, as though his grandfather or some uncle or cousin had
had a habit of saying, "Your father, may he rest in peace,
wasn't much of a business-man, and you'll be much the
same, I'm afraid." Maybe it was compensation for his own
unsuccessful efforts after his marriage. Maybe it was another
veil behind which to conceal that suffering seven-year-old.
Maybe it was an attempt to equate himself with the every
day middleclass Jew.
Maybe it was just a calculated attempt to capitalize on
his position as Jewish national poet. His too great insistence
28
on this betrays him; as though, despite his pride, he did not

really believe in himself. I believe he derived a lot of
amusement from this pose and from his occasional rough
handling of Hebrew booksellers.
Then there was Bialik the publisher, who established the
"Moriah" firm in Odessa together with his lifelong collabo
rator, Ravnitzky. That Bialik was inextricably mixed up
with Bialik the educator and editor. Together with Rav
nitzky he edited a series of simplified Hebrew Bible texts
for children. Together they produced the already classic
Sefer ha-.Agada (Book of the .Agada). This contains all or
most of the agadic, or non-legalistic, material to be found
in talmudic literature. Whereas, in the original, the material
was largely written in Aramaic and lay concealed in the
jungles and thickets of talmudic argument, it has here been
set in logical sequence, pruned of excrescences and put into
a fine mishnaic Hebrew clarified with notes. For better or
worse, this has become a standard reference-book, replacing
the older 'En Ja'acob, which merely extracted the agadic
material and printed i t as it was. It must be mentioned
that there had been previous attempts of this kind, notably
that of Levner; but Bialik's work has displaced them all.
During his residence in Tel Aviv, Bialik produced a com
mentary on the first six sections of the Mishna, that dealing
with Agriculture. This was particularly fitting, in view of
the preoccupation with agricultural pursuits which is
one of the attitudes Russian Zionism inherited from the
old Russian Narodniki, and in view of their idealization of
29
the peasant. The Russian Zionists have handed this atti

tude on to those who have tried to make Zionist aims a
reality in Palestine.
He edited six volumes entitled Reshumot (Notes) con
taining material for students of Jewish folklore and eth
nography. He issued a critical edition of the poems of
Solomon ibn Gabirol, one of the greatest of mediaeval
Hebrew poets. He consciously aspired towards the literary
ideal of Kinnus or "Assembly." He desired to collect all
the finest and best in Hebrew, gathering and converting it
into a sort of Canon, as others had done in the case of the
Bible and, to a lesser degree, in the Talmud. He was not
thinking so much of anthologies, as of collections of the
greatest and best writings in each particular field; and a
number of his essays were devoted to the elucidation of
this suggestion.
This codification has been repeatedly resorted to in
Jewish life, on account of the peculiar position of Jewish
knowledge in the Diaspora. Apart from the Bible and the
Mishna, there is Maimonides' monumental codification of
Jewish Law, the Mishneh Torah. Yet it is well-known that
many of the greatest authorities of Maimonides' day vehe
mently opposed this work; for they feared the crystallization
of Jewish life that would result from the establishment of
any such book as an authority. And it was undoubtedly
in deference to this instinct that this work of Maimonides
has always been printed with the critical notes of his chief
opponent, R. Abraham ben David of Posqui eres.
30
HAYYIM NAHMAN BIALIK.
But in the field of literature, other than "legal" li terature,

such a canon could hardly be applied. The Jewish public
would have been left dependent on the taste of the editors;
and impeccable as that taste might be, it would hardly have
been satisfactory to everybody. Not only would the actions
of the Jews be limited in accordance with the various codes
of Jewish law, their imaginations might have been restricted.
It would be a sad day when a Hebrew reader could
point to his book-case with pride and say, "Here I have
collected all that is of value in Hebrew." This danger was
felt by the outstanding but little-known Hebrew writer
Micah Joseph Berditchevsky, who published a Treasury
of all that corpus of Jewish legend which Bialik and Rav
nitsky had ignored as unsuited to their particular standards.
IX
The fact that Bialik felt himself called upon to suggest

such a collection is itself proof that he represented the
closing of a epoch. His poetry and stories are already dated.
He marked the end of the Russian chapter in Jewish history,
with all that that chapter contained. Maybe there will be
other chapters of Jewish history in Russia, but if so they
are still in process of gestation. Bialik summed up the
spiritual and cultural life of four hundred years, and, truth
to tell, in a measure he faced backwards. It is symbolic
not only of his personal struggles of the spirit but also of
31
Jewry in Eastern Europe that he ceased writing poetry, to

all intents and purposes, just before the Russian Revolution;
and that he was never really acclimatized in that New
Palestine of which he was one of the founders. Like his
"Dead of the Desert," he may have belonged to the last
generation of servitude; but he was hardly among the first
of the redemption. That honor, perhaps, belongs far more
to his contemporary, Saul Tschernichowsky, who began
writing poetry almost at the same time as Bialik, but who
continues to the present and who has, if anything, renewed
his youth while retaining his maturity since settling in
Palestine nearly ten years ago.
Bialik was always marked by his intense love of the
Hebrew word. Several essays are devoted to language and
what it conceals and reveals; a subject which interested him
profoundly, as it must interest every craftsman in words,
whether poet or propagandist. Much of what he has to
say applies to other languages besides Hebrew. He also
investigated Hebrew roots and their primary meanings and
developments. Other essays deal with modern Hebrew
writers, particularly Mendele Mocher Seforim. He regarded
Ahad Ha'am as his master; yet, though he devoted a poem
to him and delivered a number of addresses about the man
himself following Ahad Ha'am's death, he never wrote a
critical essay about his work.
Stylistically speaking Bialik's prose, once it was developed,
was one of the most finished instruments in modern Hebrew.
It is colorful, exact and rhythmical. Some claim that it was
32
influenced by Ahad Ha'am, but if so, it was only to a limited

degree. The influence of Mendele is far stronger. In many
respects there was a considerable similarity between Bialik
and Mendele, save that the latter belonged to an earlier
and possibly tougher generation. However, the poet Bialik
not unnaturally preferred to admire the philosophical Ahad
Ha'am, who could set out his thoughts in connected syl
logisms and sorites instead of painting word pictures.
In truth, Ahad Ha'am's syntax was often singularly
formless and diffuse. Fluid i t may have been and clear,
yet it often has the character of water running gently down·
hill. His full stops tended to denote paragraphs rather than
sentences; his clauses tended in the best Russian fashion
to be insubordinate rather than subordinate. My own
introduction to Ahad Ha'am came through Leon Simon's
wholly admirable translations for the Jewish Publication
Society, and it was quite a shock for me later to read him
in the Hebrew. But Bialik's innate sense of literary form
prevented him in that regard from imitating his alleged
master.
Since Bialik's death, two volumes of his speeches (actually
spoken essays) have been published, and five volumes of
his letters. Even when he spoke on commonplace themes
he was never hackneyed, and his letters show another side
of him, as the good fairy of Hebrew literature and Hebrew
writers, quick to encourage and often assist or find assist
ance for any talent. In this respect he treated his position
as major Hebrew writer with all the seriousness it deserved.
33
I have of set purpose avoided any reference to Bialik's

poem Ha-Mathmid; otherwise it would have been neces
sary for me to deal in perhaps excessive detail with it as a
document illustrating the years 189Q-1895 in Jewish life,
the only years in which that uneven, dated, and as I think
overrated, work could have been produced. What is said
in the early part of this essay regarding the experience which
Bialik shared with myriads of his contemporaries applies
to this poem in particular. It is a chastening thought that
this work, by which Bialik's name was established, was one
of the weakest he ever wrote.
Such was Bialik. He tended to minimize the poet in
him. But he was one of the richest personalities in modern
Jewish life; a personality with a great poet at his heart's
core, a poet everlastingly trying to turn his eyes away from
a child of six or seven, stricken, orphaned, hungry and
unhappy; striving to escape back to an earlier Eden. In one
of his most revealing poems, he summed up himself far
better than anybody else.
I did not find my light drifting free.

My father bequeathed it me not.
I have hewn it of my own rock;
Of my heart's hidmost spot.
One spark's in the rock of my heart,

Tiny, but wholly my own,
Borrowed from none nor yet stolen,
But of me and in me alone.
34
'Neath the hammer of all I have suffered

When my heart bursts, the rock of my prime,
This spark dashes into my eyes
And from thence - to my rhyme.
From my rhyme it slips into your heart

And into your fire that I raise,
While with my own flesh and blood
I pay for the blaze.
AF TERGROWTH
IJ'�Q
Aftergrowth
WY NATIVE VILLAGE AND MY DREAM
I do not remember how often summer and winter went

by from the time I became aware of myself in my native
village till we all left it for the suburb of the neighboring
town. I was still nothing more than a child playing in the
dirt, not yet five full years old, it would seem; and what
sense of time or sequence can an infant have ? In my native
village, presumably, the course of Nature around me was
not other than normal ; season came and season went at
the appointed time, and the world made its customary
round. Yet that primal, archetypal Universe which I
brought out of the village with me, and which still lies hid
in some especial nook of my heart's secret places - that
strange, wondrous, singular world can never, it would seem,
have known autumn or winter.
The village of those days, as far as my eye might com
pass it, was one single, uniform fabric all made of summer
39
A FTERGROWTH
pure. The skies were summer skies, the earth summer earth.
Plant and beast were all of summer; even my coaeval
Feigele, the only playmate I had in the entire village, was
likewise summer through and through.
I can find in it no more than one single winter's day, all
hammered of frost and ice, standing to one side cruel and
menacing as an armed robber. Close by lies a solitary day
of storm, flung in the mire like carrion, rank with malice
and running with sadness. Yet these are no more than
excrescences, refuse. The world in its purity, which spread
from the grass growing on the walls of our tiny house as
far as the greenwood where the eye came to a stop at the
end of our village - that world was full of summer.
On this tapestry, all of it blue of firmament and green
of grass, are now woven the sights of my world in those
early days, sights placid and tenuous as wisps of clear
curling mist, half riddle-me-ree and half dream ; yet there
is naught so bright and vivid as they, nothing so real as
their reality. Those were sights for my soul to drink,
elemental forms vouchsafed me from Heaven, alms and
charity of God granted by reason of my tender years and
helplessness, my lips that were dumb and my brimming
heart. Gentle I was, tiny and lonely. I did not yet know
how to ask questions or call things by their name, and there
was nobody at hand to open my mouth or rouse me. None
took me by the hand, none bore me in mind. I wandered
solitary around my nest as might an orphan fledgling. My
father and mother let me be; no eye yearned over me.
40
A FT E RG ROWTH
But God in His manifold mercy gathered me to Him and

hid me under His wing. He let me sit quiet beside His foot
stool, playing in secret with the fringes of its cover and the
train of His robe. He ordered His unseen angels to divert
me with dream by day, and bring smiles to my lips when no
men saw; by night He sent His tiny elves to sing to me in
the moonlight and drive away my fears, when no man
heard. Seeing but unseen, He set them all around me in
each gloomy corner, in every darkling crevice, filling my
soul with sweet tremors and a wonder that was divine.
His invisible hand bestrewed my path with wonders, and
planted riddles wherever my eyes might rest. Each flake
of stone or chip of wood was an insoluble problem ; the signs
and symbols of eternity were legible in bush and reed. How
could the sparkle lodge in the stilly stone ? Who made the
silent shadows on the walls of the house ? Who piled up
fiery mountains on the slopes of the heavens; who tangled
the pale moon in the forest thickets ? Whither passed the
wayward cloud; whom did the wind in the fields pursue ?
What was this joy of my flesh at morn, or the pounding of
my heart at evenfall ? Why did the waters of the fountain
sorrow softly and weep; and why must my heart go out to
their gurgling ?
Wonder caught me, circled me about, closed over my
little head and left me without refuge. It widened my eyes
and deepened my heart; I could see hidden things in the
manifest, and the inexpressible in the clearly stated. Scarce
would I raise my two open eyes, those tiny windows of my
41
A FTERG ROWTH
soul, to the heavens, than God's sights came flowing and

flocking about me from every direction without having
been summoned. At times they would float aloft from
fathomless deeps of silence, like visions in a dream or the
semblances half glimpsed in the pellucid waters of a pool.
There would be neither utterance nor speech; nothing but
a seeing. What speech there was in all these had neither
voice nor sound. A magical speech it was, that came as
required. Though sound as such had been sublimated
therefrom, yet i t was fully existent as speech. Myself, I
never heard it with my ears; it entered my soul through
some other, hidden portal. In some such way the throb
bing heart of a mother and her loving gaze reach the soul
of the baby asleep in its cradle when she stands tremulous
at his head.
And sometimes these visions were woven of a mingling
of fugitive sounds. The sounds of the Universe are many
and various, and include countless tones and notes. Who
can interpret them or come to a full understanding of them ?
Day-sounds there were and night-sounds, sounds shameless
and sounds bashful, sounds strong and weak, sounds that
went on without ceasing and sounds that were snapped,
as it were, in the middle; the cry of one drowning at the
far ends of the earth, and the choking gasp of a man cut
down and writhing to death in a forest. Bodiless spirits
they seemed to me, God's own couriers and messengers
wandering hither and thither on the wings of the wind,
darting like arrows from one hiding-place to another, peep-
42
A FTERG ROWTH
ing out a moment and as suddenly vanishing, with none to

know their comings and their goings, and never an eye to
view them.
Then sometimes I would hear the silences and see the
voices. My senses would no longer know their bounds or
limitations, but one would impinge on the other. Sound
brought sight with it, sight sound, and scent the other two.
Nor was I then aware of measure and proportion. The
tiny hillock in the field seemed to me huge as Mount Hor,
where mountain was piled on mountain. The pool of water
was an ocean, and the village bounds the uttermost ends
of earth.
It has been said very truly that man sees and grasps only
once in his life, during his childhood. Those first sights,
virgin as when first they left the Creator's hands, are the
embodiment of things, their very quintessence. What comes
later is no more than a defective second edition. It is done
after the fashion of the original, to be sure, and is faintly
reminiscent of it, but it is not the same thing. I have found
this to be true of myself. Whatever I have seen and deemed
worthy of blessing in the skies above or on earth in the
course of my life has been enjoyed only by virtue of that
original, that primal seeing.
The time was to come when I gazed at the sweet azure
of the skies of Italy and stood on the very top of the Swiss
Alps. Seeing this, I ached to know when some sweeter blue
had been revealed to me, and where I had been acquainted
with mountains even loftier than these and more awesome.
43
AITERGROWTH
No sooner do I see a sun rising or setting than I stand

wondering. Did I not see a sunrise or a sunset once upon a
time that was even grander than this and more wonderful ?
Whenever I pass through green fields I find that for some
unexplained reason there flickers about me the semblance
of that grass which first I saw in my village, while yet I
toddled along behind my old nurse of blessed memory.
Sappy that grass was, lush and green, luxuriant and fresh;
i t grew to half its height in clear water. And it was all
bestrewn with tiny flowers sweet to view, that raised their
moist, yellow heads in the grass, and a pearly tear glistened
in the eye of each.
I was about five at the time we left the village to go wher
ever we had to go; and then the light of the world was
bedimmed, and its brightness grew tarnished. In our new
home on the outskirts of the town I found plain, secular,
noisy weekdays, the day by day of the Jewish hamlet with
all its toil, trouble and general ill-being. The greater the
rush and tear and bruit of the people round me, the deeper
I burrowed into my own self, and the fewer became the
festive occasions and jubilations of my heart. The lowering
faces and straps of the mediocre infant-teachers, into whose
hands I fell, drove from me all my childhood visions. Those
first, God-given visions no longer manifested themselvee
save when they found me alone, far from the day's tumult
and the quarters of the infant-teachers. Behind some veil
those visions remained, gleaming and twinkling at me from
time to time so as to revive my power and strength to see
44
A FT E RG ROWTH
them. They would peep out a moment and vanish, peep

and vanish again. Drop by drop, like some precious balm,
the radiance of those earlier days would drip into my heart,
and the world of my infancy would appear to me, a span
or a hand's breadth at a time. The air would suddenly
blossom with fragments of sights seen, with long-departed
odds and ends. An edge of distant sky in all its archetypal
beauty, a ribbon of earth in early spring, black, rich and
fragrant, veritable soil of Creation, sprung this very moment
from the chill snowsheet, and still shivering all through.
A lone, forsaken lodge in a cucumber field. A sunset flash
ing and flaring at the far ends of the firmament. A howling
in the forest. The weird screech of a bird by night. The
white moon pendent over a chimney-stack. A congregation
gathered at our house for prayer; a clamor of frightened
little tots scurrying into the house screaming, "Wolves in
the village !" and immediately thereupon, Jews in their
prayer-shawls standing on the roof looking towards the
forest and the wolves, waving their arms in the air and
growling like threatening bears, "Ahoo-oo ! Ahoo-oo !" And
all of a sudden Feigele her own self is there as well, hiding
behind the ancient oak, poking her head out at me for a
second and calling, "Cuckoo !"
At moments of some holy inspiration, when the heart is
full as a ripe, juice-swollen grape, and the ducts whereby
Mercy descends open of themselves of a sudden, it is enough
if I close my eyes for a moment. For then I see, revealed
to me as though by a sudden darting lightning-flash, all
45
A FTERG ROWTH
the course of my life from its very commencement. There

is a clear white brightness shining over it and illuming it
simultaneously from beginning to end. At such moments
my childhood village suddenly comes to life as though in
a vision, standing firm and solid as reality, imbued with the
whole of its charm, its neighborliness and its primal radi
ance. It is as though the fiery palm of a hidden, speeding
hand suddenly appeared offering me the quintessence of
my childhood, days and years rolled up tight together and
packed in the tiny sheath of the twinkling of an eye. Eye
to eye I gaze again upon the places of my abiding in the
morn of my life, upon the pleasant spots of my early child
hood, with all their fullness and the entirety of the Universe
that subsisted round about them. All of this I sense in a
single instant, nothing lacking, and through them all I
once again enjoy the sense of Original Sight. The village
of my birth comes to me from its own forsaken corner of
Volhynia, where it nestles between its reedy swamps and
endless forest. It appears endowed with its days and nights,
its festivals, its Sabbaths and all the appointed times of its
year in one organic whole; and it appears tiny, quiet and
retiring as when God first fashioned it.
There it still stands as it has stood ever since its creation,
half in the plain and half on a slope, overshadowed by foliage
and trees, encircled by gardens and cucumber fields, sedately
and glumly bearing the yoke of its decent existence as best
it can, and preserving its silence. Nothing has changed
there; nothing has fallen away. The same daub huts and
46
A FT E RG ROWTH
bowed wooden shacks scatter up hill and down dale, like

a flock of startled sheep; the forest is still silent, still schem
ing against me in its chilly half-light yonder in the distance
behind the village. The same green hill lies directly opposite
my father's house, facing me like some ravening, monstrous
terror, a sort of behemoth on the path, which day after day
consumes its full round loaf of gold in the twilight ; swallow
ing up the setting sun, a round loaf every single night. This
is the identical pool, gleaming alongside the hill like a
mirror, where the ducks preen themselves and roll over
every few minutes, bills in the water and tails mounting
skyward. And these and none other are the paths that
used to coil like serpents between fields large and small,
vanishing with their everlasting yearnings into the hidmost
distances.
Dumb as in a dream they all stand before me, the seasons
and set times of the year; summer and winter, pleasant
times and stormy occasions; joys of day and horrors of
night, they, their sections and their tiny little broken slivers,
all manner of things cheek by jowl with their contraries,
as though they were being shaken up together without
cancelling each other out. Each season possessed its own
peculiar illumination, each day its own aspect. Yet they
all do unite, once more as in a dream, into one solid whole
which is the village in which I was born.
White buds of spring days, decked in soft tender green
blossom in tremulous joy, hard by blazing, heat-weary
summer days that bear their weight of gold; in their midst
47
A FTERG ROWTH
the sorrowing twilights of the vintage, with the lowering

winter skyline, silently flicker their grief over the whispering
coals. Through them for a moment the first snows shine
white at me, dropping pure and sweet through the air at
ease, as though in the midst of a light slumber, luring my
watchful eye and instilling their fresh white chill into my
heart. In the storerooms of my memory this is no more than
a fugitive heritage, a tiny vestige of an entire winter that
has been stolen from me without my knowing whither or
how it has vanished.
That winter is lost and is not, just as my heart has dis
carded the beginning and end of a great storm which caught
me suddenly, one blazing dry day, among tall grasses on
the slopes of the knoll as I made my way down and home
wards. From the ends of the earth that storm thrust and
butted at the village; and the village at once became a realm
of mighty terrors. The skies were draped in black. There
was a half-light. The forest roared afar. Trees toppled
uprooted. The grasses on the knoll clung trembling to
earth. Dust c;:olumns rolled ahead. Straw roofs went spin
ning through the air. Before I could find my hands and
feet, there I was flying! Flying, upon my soul ! A huge
gust of wind suddenly gave me wings. It blew me aloft
like a feather. And it sent me flying to the lower slopes of
the hill, right across the hedge round our garden. How I
came or was brought home afterwards is beyond my mem
ory; yet who can be so simple-minded as to try to tell others
48
A FT E RG ROWTH
of my sensations during that fligh t? Only in dreams at

night can a man enjoy even a sixtieth part thereof.
Sometimes, when I revert to normal, I tell myself that
nothing of all this can ever have existed. The village, that
village as I perceive it in my mind's eye, could never have
been in existence anywhere; no, nor the forest, the dwarfs,
nor even Feigele. They are all dream beings, growing wild
like weeds round a few actual events or facts in order to
make babies enjoy them more. In any case, I continue to
act the wiseacre; times must be confused and passages con
founded. Early and late assume one another's place. The
power of imagination is assuredly a fantast, not to be
depended on.
Be it so ! My full faith in the unequivocal subsistence
of these fairy-tales is not affected thereby, not even a hair's
breadth. What difference does it make to me whether they
existed or not ? They functioned within my soul, and their
subsistence is part of my flesh and blood. The finger of
God graved them on the tablets of my life; who shall erase
them ? If this be dream, then there is no truth so true, no
reality so real. As wine is guarded within the grape, so
these rest in a man's heart while yet he breathes. Their
scent does not fail ; their savor is not lost. The contrary;
as time passes they increase in radiance and pungency; the
older they grow, the stronger and sweeter they become.
No wine in the world is as strong and sweet as the tale and
legend of our childhood. At times just a single drop is
49
A FTERG ROWTH
enough to make the heart inebriated even to the point of

possession, where the very soul seems to swoon. So blessed
be our good angel, offering us, as he goes, not the brimming
goblet of the legend's sweetness, but single drops, each
proffered at long intervals. One drop too much, one drop
too large, and the very heart of a man would pass away,
expiring in a kiss.
And it is clear to me that when the lot of all men befalls
me and the portals of the world open wide for my departure,
in that final hour all the sights and the visions of my child
hood will troop out once more from behind their veil and
will muster around me. All of them will come, down to the
very last one, bringing their charm, their love and their
pristine brightness, as they were shown to me in the very
dawn of my day. Then suddenly the light of all seven days
will gather about them, and be extinguished forever with
the light of my soul . . .
Dreams may be false, but not all of them. Before I begin
relating a very little of the inner mutations of my life, and
of the reliable dreams of one shoot among the Jewish after
growth, let me be permitted to relate here (without any
obvious connection with what has gone before or will come
after, but merely to keep the two separate) one of my own
dreams, a dream engraved on my heart so that it remains
as vivid and detailed as ever. I do not know whether I can
succeed in passing on to others the vivid reality of that
dream or, in particular, whether I can reproduce the flavor
of its singular light and atmosphere. How difficult such
50
A FT E RG ROWTH
a thing is with a dream ! All the same, and come what may,
I shall relate it. The dream was a thing real and true,
almost something that actually happened. So it has about
it nothing weird or confusing, nothing out of the ordinary.
And to me the proper place for it seems to be here.
In my dream a long, sandy track stretches ahead of me,
crowded with long files of persons returning from a fair.
I am among them. How I come to be among them I do not
know, but I am in the midst of a noisy company and go their
way almost without noticing it. There is a confused hub
bub and yelling all around. Carts, wagons, empty or laden
with wares or with passengers, drivers, horse-leaders and
grooms, horsemen and men afoot, man and beast in a con
fused multitude, weary and heavy, drag themselves through
clouds of dust and rising sand. Walking is as hard as split
ting the sea. Legs and wheels sink halfway in the slipping
sand. There is dust, there is heat; there is no strength.
Weary, wayworn, sticky with sweat, everybody angry and
feeling distasteful to himself, all of them shout and yell
and lash their beasts in rage. The fair, it would seem, can
not have been much of a success. Not one has achieved
the moiety of all he had hoped for. So they vent their
spleen on their unhappy beasts of burden.
The worse the track, the more impatient the people grow
and the greater becomes the noise and confusion. Nobody
pays any more attention to his neighbor. Each one urges
the other forward; all of them together delay one another.
"Hi ! Hi !" they yell. "You there ! Out of the way and let
51
A FT E RG ROWTH
me pass !" "Keep to your place, you son of a dog !" And
never a one of them would shift or budge or change his
mind. Each man goes on because the rest are going on ;
and stops because they all stop. They are indeed no more
than a herd, a driven flock; and I also belong to this herd,
this flock. I straggle along amid them, without any idea
what I am doing there. I am weary. Oh, my head, my head !
If this goes on I shall faint; all the same I keep on going
forward. I keep on walking in spite of myself, as though
I have no idea what I am doing.
So I walk; I drag myself along. Suddenly I see the green
banks of a stream ahead of me. I open my eyes wide. Upon
your souls, those really are the banks of a stream that runs
fresh and cheerful. Lofty trees, set close together, run to
the right of the entire track, like a green wall alongside,
and separate those on the track from some wondrous other
world beyond. My spirit is restored by the very sight.
I wonder how it can have come about that I never noticed
it before. Here are the trees; here they have been from the
beginning. Yet even now it seems that nobody except me
has noticed them. My very soul goes out with yearning
for the trees beside the stream; yet without withdrawing
my attention from them, I continue to follow in the track
of the walking files of men, walking, ever walking.
Yonder, on the other side of the trees, lies some other,
some bright and restful world. I know of it. Nobody apart
from me knows of it. And I continue straggling along behind
52
A FT E RG ROWTH
the files; onward, forward, ever onward. And my eyes

never leave the trees.
And now behold the miracle ! At some places the trees
and undergrowth are thin and poorly spaced. Elsewhere
there are gaps. Wherever I pass such parts of the avenue of
trees I seem to see some strange person sitting alone on the
farther side, on the grass next to the clear flowing stream.
His back is to the trees. His face is bent to the bright, clear,
gently-flowing water. The noise of the files that press
onward beyond the avenue does not seem to reach him ;
h e might b e in another world. He stays where h e i s as
though he were fixed there, his face to the mirroring waters.
He does not move. He does not twitch. And no matter
how far I go, he keeps level with me, motionless as he is.
His black back undulates before me from time to time in
the distance between the trees, through every fresh gap I
may pass. It is as though he himself, the clear pellucid
stream and all that go with them, are silently accompanying
me without my knowledge, advancing on their own by
invisible gradations like the reflection of the moon in a river.
Who is this strange person ? Do I know him ? Is he not
exceedingly close to me, to my own soul ? Is it not incum
bent upon me at all costs to steal hence and flee, though
but for a moment, to that pure, restful universe beyond
the barrier of green ? Is that not my own proper place,
the bank of that pure, clear stream where I have remained
seated since bygone days ?
53
A IT E RGROWTH
Nevertheless I continue to shamble along in the wake of

the files. I drag onward, ever onward along the track.
Clouds of dust cover me. There is a great tumult all around.
And I go onward, ever onward. Where are the banks of
the stream ? They were there, but are there no longer.
I have left them far, far behind me, with their pure world,
their clear waters, and the mysterious one seated on the
bank. Suddenly I remember. The very soul departs from
me. The lone mysterious one whom I have left sitting on
the bank is my own self. My own self, and none other.
Such is the dream ; interpretations rest with God. For
the present let us leave the mysterious one sitting where
he sits. Do not disturb his rest. Who knows ? Some day
his image may again undulate a moment from the chinks,
the clefts and the crannies. Henceforward I straggle along,
dragging myself across the drifting slopes of the sand
together with the jostling, toiling multi tude.
II
MY THUMB AND THE RIDDLES OF THE UNIVERSE
Father and I were never on really good terms with one

another. It seems that I must have been a problem for him
from the time I was born, just like somebody who has made
a bad purchase and does not know what is to be done with
it; it is not fit for use, and there are no customers to buy it.
It was my luck to come to my parents by an oversight, as
54
A FT E RG RO WTH
it were, after they had married off most of their children

and had no reason to expect any more. I was the eighth
child, and the son of their old age; and when the midwife
hailed my father with a congratulatory, "good luck !" on my
account, he turned up his nose a trifle. So, at least, my
mother told the neighbors. And she also told them how
Exile was decreed upon me thirty days after my birth ;
I was entrusted to the breasts of a gentile wet-nurse in the
neighboring village. The wet-nurse's breasts were begin
ning to dry up, if you'll excuse my mentioning such a thing,
and when I used to yell for milk she would stuff my thumb
in�o my mouth for me to suck. When I was taken away
from there I had crooked legs, a swollen belly and eyes that
bulged like two glass balls. Besides which it was my habit
to pick lime from the wall and eat it, to chew charcoal and
to suck my thumb.
This thumb-sucking habit became second nature and I
did not give it up for a long time. Whenever I was day
dreaming I would suck my thumb. Father, a testy man by
nature, would slap me for this and would call me "sucker"
or "piper", for the thumb between my teeth seemed to
him to resemble a pipe in the mputh of a ruminating old
man. But I paid no attention to him and his blows, his
names or nicknames. He insisted on his way and I on mine.
And as soon as he left the house I would betake myself to a
corner, sit all alone, daydream and suck away.
What I was daydreaming about I have no idea. Bent
and bowed like a lizard in its hollow, I would see visions i n
55
AFTERGROWTH
waking. Everything that I saw and heard round about

seemed like a dream to me, and my heart would swell with
dumb astonishment, with fancies lacking name or form.
I was surprised by everything. The ticking of the grand
father clock, the shadow and stains on the wall, the silence
of an empty room, the darkness under the bed, the slippers
lying there, the fine motes in the sunbeams that slanted
through the window, dust in the air - all these were mys
teries, elemental secrets which called for examination. I
strayed lost in their midst like any ant between blades of
grass. These things also lived quietly like me, and my heart
alone had some traffic with them. If anybody spoke to me,
I heard him unhearing; asked anything, I would roll my
eyes and keep quiet. My heart was always set elsewhere,
whether on a stain on the wall or on a fly buzzing through
the air. My soul entered like some possessing spirit into
the deeps of each thing, and dwelt amid trees and speechless
stones, absorbing all they contained and giving nothing
in return.
None of the household folk kept watch over me. Father
was short-tempered, frail and always occupied. I do not
know what kept him so busy. My mother would bear me
in mind, but always as an afterthought. "Oh dear, dear,
the baby hasn't eaten yet . . . The baby hasn't been washed
yet . . . Where's the baby?" And the baby, meaning yours
truly, Shmulik, would be sitting just then in some hidden
spot, under the bed or in the space under the oven, or in
56
A FT E RGROWTH
the courtyard behind one of the fences; there I would be

playing by myself. When I came the way of the neighbor
women, they :-vould glance sidewise at me with a kind of
suspicion, pointing their fingers to their temples as a sign
that my head was not quite in order, the Merciful One
deliver us; they would whisper and spit, and when my
mother appeared in their midst they would suddenly fall
silent.
Among the articles of furniture I was most attracted by
the old mirror which hung over the couch. To me it was the
greatest riddle in the universe. Every time I stood up
straight on the couch to look at it, I could see within it
another room with furniture, with myself and with the
cupboard opposite on which were the copper utensils, in
their very likeness and in their own image. Yet within the
mirror they all stood on a slant as though about to fall at
any moment. And this was something hard for me to under
stand. First of all, how did all those things get into the
mirror ? And secondly, how was it that the cupboard with
all the copper utensils on top of it did not fall?
I made up my mind to investigate this matter thoroughly
when a suitable opportunity might arise; and the suitable
opportunity arrived quickly enough. The family went away
somewhere and I was left alone. It was the noon hour.
Across the floor the form of the window lay spread like a
chequered pool of light in which the flies came to bathe.
A speckled hen strolled slowly about, step by little three-
57
A FTERG ROWTH
toed step, softly and gently clucking as though about to

fall asleep. While she stood in the light her feathers shone
golden, and she was transmuted into a translucent radiance.
I jumped up on the couch and stretched myself toward
the mirror. Everything was there sure enough ! Another
Shmulik stood directly facing me so that our very noses
touched. I drew back a little; so did he. I drew near, and
he did the same. In that case, I had to make a face and
poke my tongue out; he did the same. "Hee hee hee,"
I laughed. He laughed as well but without the hee hee hee;
there was no sound to be heard. The whole business was
queer, and I felt a little afraid; but still I stared . . .
The floor within the mirror sloped and the pool of light
in its midst was just about to spill. And everything else
was either on a slope or hung by a miracle. Oho, and if the
mortar, for example, were to fall from the top of the cup
board - crash ! - it would break your head. My heart
melted at some sudden fear, but I encouraged myself at
once and peeped again. I had to understand this business
whatever might befall ! Behind the mirror some imp or
sprite must be sitting concealed and doing all this magic
with his spells. Should I peep behind there or not ? Who
could say, maybe some hidden hand would treat me to a
sudden box on the ear. Was anything too much for an imp ?
So I ran the risk and took hold of the frame of the mirror
to peep at what lay behind, and started back at once.
I peeped again, only to start back once more. Suddenly
the whole mirror quivered and with i t the floor, the room,
58
A FT E RG ROWTH
the utensils, I myself- crash ! My heart missed a beat, my

eyes became dark, and I slipped and fell under the ruins.
When I came to I saw that the room, thank Heavens,
had not tumbled, but the mirror had slipped from its two
bottom nails and now hung only from the hook on top.
Between the couch and the wall father's account book
stuck out somewhat. It must have fallen from behind the
mirror, and had been caught as it slipped down. The damage
was slight. In its fright the hen had jumped on to the table
and had thrown over a glass. One sliver of broken glass
had jumped as far as the pool of light, where it glittered
as though a miracle had suddenly happened.
The end of this affair, like the end of all my doings at
home, was a box on the ears.
On the same day it was decided that I must go to heder.
It was just about that time that father left the village
and made his home in the suburb of the neighboring town ;
and I fell into the hands of an infant-teacher who lived in
that suburb.
III
ALEPH-B ETH AND WHAT I S BETWEEN TH E LINES
My luck did not improve in the heder. I was isolated from

my companions and they were isolated from me. I was all
shrunk up into myself, building up my own world without
anybody sensing or realizing it. Even the teacher and his
59
AFTERGROWTH
assistant did not know about i t. In any case they knew

only how to thrash, each one in his own way. The teacher
thrashed with strap and fist and elbow and cane and any
thing else that served to give pain, while his assistant had
a different nasty trick. If I did not answer properly, he
would spread out and crook his five fingers towards me and
begin clutching at my throat. At such times he seemed to
me like a pard or any other strange and savage beast, and
the fear of death fell on me. I was afraid that he would
scratch my eyes out with his dirty finger-nails. And because
I was afraid, I would lose my wits and forget all I had
learnt the day before. He would point to a letter with his
finger and ask, "What is this ?" And I would squint, tremble
all over, and say nothing. The power of speech would
entirely desert me at such moments.
To tell the truth all they had to teach reached me only
behind the ear, so to say, through the left earlock, as folk
say in Yiddish. My right ear was busy listening to quite
a different subject which rose from the prayer book between
the lines, and united with what was already within my
heart. The lines themselves, and the actual letters which
made up those lines, were only faint intimations of this
other wisdom. From the first day on which the assistant
showed me the letters of the aleph-beth set out in rows, I
saw leaping forth the measured ranks of soldiers like those
who at times passed in front of our house, with their drum
mer, rattling tum tararum tum, at their head. Those that
60
A FT E RG ROWTH
most resembled this were the alephs, all arms swinging and
legs striding, and the gimels with their boot moving off to the
left, particularly when they had the kubbutz vowel beneath
them, its three dots like a ladder. These were real soldiers,
armed head to foot. The alephs had their knapsacks on
their backs and strode along somewhat bowed under their
burden, proceeding to manoeuvres, while the gimels stood
foot out, all ready for the march. My eyes began to search
the sides and flanks of the hornbook.
"Whom are you looking for ?" asked the assistant.
"For the drummer," said I, my eyes searching.
The assistant dropped the pointer, took me by my chin,
raised my head slightly and stared at me with animal-like
eyes. Suddenly he roused and said, "Get down !"
Two syllables, no more. And at once another child took
my place and I went down vexed and went off into a corner
so as not to know what the assistant wanted. All day long
I daydreamed about armies and soldiers. Next day, when
I went up again, the assistant showed me the form of an
aleph and asked me:
"Can you see the yoke and pair of pails ?"
"That's true, upon my soul ; a yoke and pair of pails !"
"Well, that's an aleph," testified the assistant.
"Well, that's an aleph," I repeated after him.
"What's this?" the assistant asked again.
"A yoke and pair of pails," I replied, highly delighted
that the Holy and Blest One had sent me such fine utensils.
61
A FTERG ROWTH
"No. Say aleph !" repeated the assistant, and went on,
"Remember: aleph, aleph."
"Aleph, aleph . • . "
And the minute I went down the aleph flew away and
was replaced by Marusya, the gentile girl who drew water.
She never budged all day long. I saw her just as she was,
with her bare shanks, her thick plaits, and the yoke and
pails on her shoulders. And there was the well with the
trough at its side, and the ducks in the pool nearby, and the
garden of Reb Alter Kuku.
"What's this ?" the assistant asked me next day, showing
me the aleph.
"Oh, Marusya," quoth I, happy to find her.
The assistant threw down the point and spread out his
fingers; but immediately changed his mind, took me by the
chin and repeated :
"Gentile! Aleph, aleph . . . "
"Aleph, aleph, aleph . . . "
The other letters also had their various aspects for me;
they looked like beasts of burden and wild animals and
birds and fish and utensils, or simply like weird creatures,
the like of which I had not yet seen in this world. The shin
was a sort of horned snake with three heads. The lamed
was clearly nothing but a stork stretching out its neck and
standing on one leg, similar to the one that dwelt in the
tree-top behind our house. The gimel was a jack-boot, like
the one shown on the tins of shoe-polish, where a little devil
62
A FT E RG RO WTH
with a tail polishes diligently. The daled was a sort of

pickaxe, and similarly with them all . . . Sometimes a letter
would appear to me in one form today and in another tomor
row. This happened of itself, without any intention or toil
on my part. When some form grew old as far as I was con
cerned, it would depart and its place would be taken by
another.
When I reached the point of combining the letters, I
found a vast medley of weird creatures. They came
approaching in bands, one beside the other and one behind
the other, back to face and face to back, the simple long
nun and the squash-nosed long pe always jumping ahead
on one leg. The lamed strode erect with outstretched neck
and upright head, as much as to say, "Just have a look;
I stand head and shoulders taller than you all." Mean
while the little yud would come scurrying up, a tiny creature
which seemed to have no shape and nothing on which to
rest, yet of which I nevertheless felt more fond than of all
the rest. It always seemed to be floating in the air, or look
ing as though it were being dragged somewhere by the scruff
of its neck. And how my heart went out to it ! I was always
afraid that it was so small it might be lost amid its com
panions; and I feared lest it be trodden underfoot and out
of shape by all the others, God forbid.
That confusion prevented my paying attention to what
the assistant said, and so my throat found its way between
his fingers. My mouth seemed to be following him sound
63
A FT E RGROWTH
by sound, but meanwhile my heart was about its own busi

ness; it absorbed one form and dismissed another, building
up strange combinations of forms, and dreaming while I
was awake. Sometimes the sounds were also woven into
the fabric of my dreams and gave them a fresh hue or fresh
aspect, connected with them or not. \Yhen in the course of
reading I met with a particularly ridiculous combination
of forms, I would suddenly burst out laughing. And that
laughter would set the bowels of the assistant seething, and
bring down all his fury upon-me. I could not understand it;
what difference did it make to him if I laughed ?
My companions at the heder paid no attention to me, and
I in turn did not bother about them. When they played
within the building I would sit to one side watching, or
would take myself to a corner, suck my thumb and meditate.
I would be wandering in pursuit of those forms in the prayer
book, they and all their variations and combinations and
permutations, as far as the power of imagination might
reach. My heart would take all it could from them, would
consume their inner parts and throw away their husks.
And when the children went out to play in the court,
I would seek a hiding-place, sit alone and play all by myself.
Whenever my turn arrived to read it would be necessary
to search a long time before I would be found, sitting and
sucking my thumb behind some fence, or lying in the gloom
in some corner of the corridor.
64
A FT E R G R O WTH
IV
I AM WEANED
Two years passed at the heder without my profiting any

too greatly from the Hebrew reading. Then the teacher
introduced me to the Humash, the Pentateuch ; and may he
be blessed for so doing. The prayerbook had grown stale
for me, and its letters I now looked upon as long dead. You
could compare the state of affairs to somebody chewing and
munching away at husks and shells and peel. This was not
the case with the Humash. Here fresh lattices and loopholes
into the world of fantasy were opened for me. To begin
with there was the little aleph. I found the little fellow at
once, sitting at the very beginning of the book of Leviticus,
awaiting my arrival. As for his comrades, little fellows like
himself, we were old acquaintances from the sections in
smaller type in the prayerbook, and I could give them greet
ings in the name of the others. Then again, there were the
flocks and the herds and the fowl; ox, sheep, goat, dove and
pigeon. All these were things with which I was well
acquainted and in which, it might almost be said, I had a
share. The goat and the calf grazed in the pasture behind
our house at the end of the suburb, and I spent my time
with them when I could. As for the doves, they came from
the dove-cote of our neighbor Truchim, and had the right
of entry into our courtyard. When I went off to heder in
65
AFTERG ROWTH
the morning, they would come strutting towards me, puffing

out their chests and cooing, toor toor toor. I had already
fixed my eye on a pair of them, and at the coming Hanukkah,
when I would be rich, God willing, I would, if only it were
possible, purchase that pair for good money.
And when I reached those passages which talk of head
and fat, innards and shanks washed in water, "and he shall
set them on the wood which is on the fire," twisting the
head and breaking the wings of the bird, "crop and con
tents," squeezing out the blood, an offering in a pot, a
frying pan and so on and so forth, it immediately brought
to my mind my mother's kitchen on the eve of a festival.
My mother and the girl would have aprons tied round and
sleeves rolled up to the elbow, standing armed with rolling
pins, and rolling dough on the board, breaking and ;mixing
eggs in a dish, pouring gleaming oil into hollows sunk in
mounds of meal. The cat was here as well ; it lay in wait
round the salting board, its eyes on the "caul above the
liver," on the loin-fat and the kidneys and the crops and
shanks lying in salt with a red fluid oozing from them.
From time to time the girl would throw him a piece of
intestine or a white bladder from the inside of a fish, or the
"contents of the crop" and the like, giving him something
to do for the moment in order to divert his attention from
the meat. The mortar and pestle gave voice, saying, "Pound
well and fine, fine and well pound," just as described in
the Mishna. The pleasant, revivifying smell of things
66
A FT E RG ROWTH
baking in an oven and of an offering of meal mixed with oil

and white of egg mounted in my nose; my ears caught the
burble and bubble of pancakes floating in fat in their frying
pan, and the frying of "dipped" offerings and other kinds
of pastry, the cutting up of dough into fine strips like
noodles for making puddings and hard cake with raisins
and saffron and cinnamon. The word "dipped" is the one
that most appetized me, so that my temples ached and my
cheeks drew in. I was overcome by a sudden rush of hunger,
my mouth began to water and my thumb made its way with
out my knowledge between my teeth.
"Where's the place ?" the teacher suddenly asked me,
his strap in hand.
All the pupils became silent and watched me. My little
finger wandered amid the lines, wandering blind and fearful.
My eyes turned tearfully now to the Humash and now to
the teacher's strap. The letters danced in a blur before me.
The teacher's hand rose. My right shoulder also rose and
twisted in fear. In my fright I forgot to take my thumb
out of my mouth.
"Berele !" the teacher suddenly said to one nimble child,
"jump up and run along to Nahum the cobbler and fetch
me a little pitch from there. At once. Say the teacher asks
for it."
Berele jumped up and went out. The children round the
table began to whisper to one another, stealing glances at
me and laughing, stealing glances afresh and laughing all
67
AFTERGROWTH
over again. What was it they saw in me? And why were
they laughing ?
Berele brought back a bit of pitch on a splinter, and put
it down on the table in front of the teacher.
"Come down !" ordered the teacher.
Down I came.
"Come here to me • . • "
I took one tiny step towards him.
"Closer . . .
"
Another even tinier step forward.

"Still closer . . . "
And I stood caught between the teacher's knees. Lord
of the Universe, what did he propose to do to me?
And the teacher jerked his thumb back so that at the
joint with the other fingers there appeared a small fold.
This he filled with snuff, raised it to his nostrils, breathed
deep, rose and suddenly sneezed straight in my face,
"A tishoo !"
After which deed his mind cleared and he came to the
matter in hand. He pulled my thumb out of my mouth and
held it up for all the children to see, waving it in the air and
asking, like a teacher using the sensory method:
"Children, what is this ?"
"A thumb, a thumb . . . "
"And what's this ?" he now asked about the pitch.
"Pitch, pitch . . . "
"And then what is this?"

"Snuff, snuff . • • "
68
A FT E RGROWTH
"And what has to be done to a child who sucks his

thumb ?"
This was a hard one for the children. They remained
silent. The teacher's eyes demanded a response. Suddenly
one child, a stutterer, jumped up. His eyes were as bright
as though the Holy Spirit shone through them, while he
stuttered in his excitement:
"1-1-1-1 Kn-n-now . . . "
"Tell me, tell me," the teacher urged him.
"C-C-C-C-C-CU• •" •
"Cut off the thumb !" his comrade got it out ahead of him.
The cleverer children burst out laughing, and the teacher
also grinned. The stutterer felt ashamed. There was silence
once agam.
"Well ?" asked the teacher, lowering his eyelids.
"Tie a rag round it," carefully ventured one child.
"Give him a beating," decided another.
"Nay !" the teacher shook his head. "You don't know.
When a child sucks his thumb, this is what you do to him."
And he began showing the children, slowly and without
haste, adding deed to word, exactly how this matter is
attended to :
"First take pitch . . . "
And he took pitch.
"And spread it on the thumb " . . •
And he spread it.

"Then take snuff ". . •
And that as well the teacher took.
69
AFTE RG ROWTH
"And sprinkle it on the pitch . . • ''

And he sprinkled.
"And now," he finished at the top of his voice, "let him
go and suck . . . "
From that day forth I was weaned as far as thumb

sucking was concerned. When my evil desires attacked me,
I would bite my fingernails instead.
A HAPPY THOUGHT AND ITS REWARD
"By your life, Pessi, he's talking to the wall !"

So said father one winter night when he suddenly raised
his eyes from his account book and saw me standing in
front of the wall making all kinds of queer movements and
grimaces with my head, my tongue, my hands and my ten
fingers. And his words were accompanied by a blow, as
usual.
Truth to tell, I was not talking to the wall but was playing
and conversing with my shadow, which was on the wall.
After all, what was a child to do on those long winter nights
when he sat alone, unable to leave the house ? But father
was bad-tempered and could not bear me or my playing.
Whatever I might do met with his dissatisfaction, bringing
him to a state of fury, to blows, kicks and yells at the top
of his voice. "Pessi," he would yell as he kicked, "take
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A FT E RG ROWTH
him out of my sight or I'll kill him !" And at the moment
it would really seem as though I, Shmulik, had done father
some grievous wrong at one time or another, something that
could not be atoned for, as though, God forbid, I had made
his life a burden, or had tried to ensnare his soul, the Merciful
One deliver us. Lord of the Universe, when did I do him
any harm ? And what was the harm that I did him ?
So I began to avoid father, and tried to evade his presence.
When he was in the dining room I would be in the parlor;
when he was in the parlor I would be in the kitchen. There
I would find a place in one of the corners, sit all alone and
do what I most desired . . .
At that time I was very anxious to succeed in a certain
trifle. I wanted to milk the wall. I had heard from my
companions at the heder that there were wonder-workers
in the world who could do just that thing, and do it success
fully. I at once fixed my eyes on one of the walls in our
house. The lower half of this wall was damp and mildewed
and exuded a sort of green sweat. It had long attracted m y
attention. O n rainy days I would sit facing it for hours
on end, gazing at the queer shapes which the moisture
scrawled upon i t. In the green stains I saw whatever the
eye might desire: mountains and valleys, fields and forests,
castles and palaces. Such a wall, I told myself, must have
been expressly created for milking; and I no longer spent
my spare time anywhere else.
I used to examine i t from every quarter, seeking the spot
most suitable for milking. I sought and at length found.
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A FT E RG ROWTH
In the lower part of the wall, near the corner, I saw a swollen
place that looked like a nipple. That was obviously the
right spot. The only thing necessary was to make a little
hole and stick in a tube, and milk would promptly gush
forth like an overflowing fountain. In order to hold all this
plenty without a single drop running to waste, I prepared
in advance, prior to the actual milking, all kinds of recept
acles: a neckless flask, the lower half of a broken bottle,
a cracked pot used for melting pitch, part of a Rabbi Meir
Ba'al ha-Ness collecting-box, in which money had once
been collected for the Jews of the four Holy Cities of the
Holy Land, a tin can leaking and rusty, a seamed funnel
with the bottom end stopped up, a dirty skull-cap, a hard
ened, solitary shoe that had no fellow; and such similar
odds and ends and broken articles found lying on the
rubbish-heap, in the attic or under the bed. I even remem
bered a cork. And why a cork ? In order to cork up the
nipple, that is, the hole in the wall, between one milking and
the next. Surrounded by my containers and armed with
a nail and the pestle of the mortar, I sat me down on the
ground and began boring. Bang went the pestle, and the
nail sank in. My heart leapt; just another moment, just
another second, and out of the hole would gush a white,
warmish stream, hisss . . And just at this point, when I
.
was expecting results the next moment, a box on the ears

leapt at me from behind :
"Here you are, madman, and don't knock holes in the
wall !"
72
A FT E RG ROWTH
It was father, slapping. I could recognise it even in the

darkness and with my eyes shut. His was a sharp, first
class slap which suddenly flashed like lightning and then,
almost casually, turned out to be round, sharp and smooth,
burning and ringing. You caught the sound of it afterwards,
when it was all over. Father was a real master at this craft,
a slapping genius. He knew the secret of artistic economy;
you might almost say that he was a slapper by Divine
Grace. And why not ? For forty years on end, ever since
he first became a father, a man keeps slapping !
Anyway, because of the multitude of my sins, the business
was spoilt, and the wall has never been milked down to the
present day. What a pity ! I had meant it for the best, as
God is my witness. I saw father's poverty and wished to
aid him with whatever was in my power. By my faith, I
could not bear to watch his trouble when he came at night
and sat darkening his eyebrows over the account-book,
chewing his beard and reckoning, reckoning, reckoning.
'What, on the surface, is the connection between account
book and anger ? All the same, beware of father when he is
alone with his account-book ! 'Tis an hour of peril, when
your life hangs by a hair. Yes, my idea was certainly a
well-meant one. Incidentally, I had thought that maybe
it would make father fond of me so that he would show a
friendly face and stop slapping me. But what could I do ?
Satan opposed, and father destroyed his chances with his
own hands.
73
AFTE RGROWTH
VI
THE STOVE-MOUTH A N D I
Under the circumstances, I stopped milking the wall and

began to engage myself with the stove-mouth.
During winter days father's house was forlorn and
gloomy. When I returned from the heder at twilight its
forlornness and gloom seemed to have increased sevenfold.
It was damp and dirty, and had a mouldy smell. A damp
chill mounted and spread from floor and walls, and made
the very bones rusty. The air was greasy with the smell of
tar, machorka smoke and unpleasant smells left behind by
the peasants during the day. (Father had business with
peasants, and they were in and out of the house.) The
plain furniture and household articles, always scanty,
orphaned and lost in the large room, now merged into the
twilight gloom until they vanished completely, so that the
room became even more empty and glum as a result. My
mother moaned to herself in some corner or other. The
pussy-cat came to meet me from some dim place, looked
up at me and miaowed piteously; feeling sorry for another
living creature, I suppose.
But in one recess of the house, in the wall not far above
the floor, was a sort of small open window, the mouth of a
square, sooty stove no more than two hand-breadths by
two. All day long this was closed, but when dark came,
between the afternoon and evening prayers, at the time
74
A FT E RG ROWTH
the windows turn blind and the house is filled with dread,
the humped wall opposite would turn reddish yellow and
begin to seethe and dance. It was a sign that the mouth of
the stove was burning, alive. At once I would be within
the recess, at the stove-mouth. I would sit with crossed
legs on whatever was left of the pile of wood lying there; I
would grip my kneecaps between my palms, bend my head
and gaze. The logs within were hard, wet and cold. Most
of them were thorny and spiny, covered with hard snow and
shaggy with bark that trembled like wispy ends of a beard.
The little flame from the dry chips under the logs and
blocks would still be weak and faint, and my heart would
tremble as long as the fire wavered and flickered, fearing
that it might go out, God forbid, before it took hold of the
logs. My eyes would watch every lick and dart of the
golden tongue, and in my heart I would urge it on and on.
"Up, up, over that chunk," I would address the flame in
my heart. "From the side, take it from the side, climb up,
up, up with you and over the back. That's it, that's what
you should do, take him by the beard, by the beard . . ."
And the little flame would listen to me, spread, twist,

double over and over, wrap itself round the logs, groping
for a comfortable spot at which to take on. In the chimney
overhead the wind howled and rattled enough to terrify
body and soul. I trembled with the chill that struck up
wards into me from my seat on what was left of the wood.
A gust of wind, trapped in the chimney and fallen down,
blew a fistful of yesterday's soot into my face; yet I never
75
A FT E RG ROWTH
budged. My eyes and heart were fixed on the flame. I sat

watching until the fire took hold. And the moment the
fire took hold I thrust the whole of me, all my soul into
the fire.
Within i t I could see, and about it I could hear, more
than mouth can tell. It was a sort of tune I heard, a secret
hidden tune, very faint and fine, humming up from the
depths, from the very midst of the burning coals as they
collapsed, like thousands of fine hidden strings all pulled
tense. And I could see a sort of dance, crazy and intricate,
of little, lively, leaping, golden tongues, a huge medley of
ruddy, bluish, purplish, golden flames. A mingling of
lights and lesser lights, rising and interweaving in count
less threads and strips and straps, wrestling and writhing,
licking and bubbling, grappling and embracing.
Whispers from heaps of burning coals and the lively
winking of rubies and carbuncles. Tss, tsss . . would
.
hiss one brand as some bothersome liquid would gleam

and boil upon it. Pak! would respond a coal that suddenly
burst into fragments. And at once there would come again
the quiet tense growl upon a single note, sharp and fine,
hmmmm . . Then suddenly - prrr. The mouth of the
•
stove would fill up with countless little heaps of burning

coals. The blast from it was white-hot iron. It seemed as
though at any moment the salamander would appear, that
creature which, according to the tradition of some of my
heder comrades, derives from fire and is as horrible and red
as a roasted crab. And it also seemed certain that when
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A FT E RG ROWTH
it would appear in the fire, it would rise up on its two hind

legs and leap with all eight of its legs straight into your
eyes . • .
I quivered with terror. I closed my eyes, feeling the

blazing fire on my face and knees and trembling as I listened
to the rattling chimney, drrrr . I was afraid to turn my
. .
head. There was some demon just behind me, bending

right over my very head. "Mother, mother !" the heart
wailed within me, but never a sound came out; my voice
was choked back in my throat. The fear of death pos
sessed me. My teeth chattered, my knees knocked tO
gether and the heart within me perished in dread of the
unknown. The howl of the chimney reached me as from
a very great distance . . .
And then, at the very moment of peril, there would
suddenly flash across my mind the charm entrusted me by
my teacher as a protection against the demon which always
chased me on my way home from heder. I would hurriedly
thrust my thumbs into my belt and with full and intense
devotion recite the "Hear 0 Israel."
The charm works. My dread disappears. I sit down
once again staring at the stove-mouth. The firebrands fall
apart, the coals die down. The ashes begin to pile up. One
brand, all gleaming satin and chequered with clefts and
cracks, lies to one side, smoldering, smoke rising directly
aloft and little bluish puffs rising from the clefts like tiny
smoke pillars. The howling in the chimney increases, dull
and broken, but coming back and whirling round and round
77
A FT E RG ROWTH
over and over again, weak yet restless. Yevdocha, our

old servant, comes to rake the fire. My lids begin to close
of their own accord . . Ho-eee, hei-ei, drrr, half asleep, I
.
still hear a distant howl and a rattling nearby.

And all night I would see many kinds of black creatures
in my sleep, with sooty faces, a kind of chimney-sweep
standing night by night in the darkling world scattered
about over a desolate, gloomy plain, each one bowed over
his own heap of burning coal, and each one scraping and
raking away with his poker. The heaps of coal illumine
only the place where they are and the faces of the rakers,
while the world around, above, below, before and behind,
remains as dark and gloomy as ever. And over their heads
dance all kinds of many-legged salamanders, raising their
snouts and filthy faces aloft, and shaking wet, ugly, dis
gusting legs in the air.
VII
LOKSH
In the heder I had meanwhile risen to the next class.

Henceforward I, together with the other children of the
class, had to pipe up together in common chant and at the
top of our voices, all kinds of words which the teacher
ordered us to repeat at the end of each verse written in
78
A FT E RG ROWTH
the Pentateuch. Where the teacher discovered those words,

who gave them to him and what they had to do with what
ever may have been written in the Pentateuch text, was
something I did not know. Nor did I trouble to find out.
For truth to tell, I did not see any particular difficulty in
it. After all, whatever we did was done under orders, and
you don't argue about an order. And so I accepted the
order, shook myself backwards and forwards with all my
might, joined my voice to that of the others, and yelled.
The essential thing was that I should not be alone. For,
as long as I chanted and yelled in company, things were
none too bad. But if the rest stopped for a moment and
my voice could be heard for even a second, my whole
standing would vanish. And I suspect that my comrades
were in the same position in this regard. What were my
comrades and I like at that time ? We were like a company
of the blind marching together and supporting one another,
as they falter across the melting, swaying ice of a river.
Each of us depended on his comrades without trusting
them, and all of us together were marching and being
marched towards the abyss.
Still, i t seems that on Thursdays, which were the Days
of Judgment at the heder, there were nevertheless some
among us who recited their "composition" correctly on
their own, miracle though i t was. I, Shmulik, hardly
understood anything at all of all that was recited. My
brain seized on those queer words that had no meanmg,
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A FT E RGROWTH
those teacher-words the like of which I had never heard in

my life, which I did not understand and which the teacher
never bothered to explain to me.
Those words were the essence of the whole business, I
told myself. The secret of their power lay in their lack of
intelligibility; nothing else was very important. Those
meaningless words remained concealed within my heart,
and in my spare time, when I sat by myself in the corridor
behind the water-barrel, fine, handsome creatures of my
imagination would burst forth from them like butterflies
from the chrysalis, and divert my lonely soul. I used to
chat with them, laugh at them, and comfort myself by
means of them.
Some lasted only a twinkling. They came, flashed, .and
vanished before I examined them, flying off and disappear�
ing. Then there were others who were regular guests or
permanent companions. I needed only to close my eyes
and there they would be. With some of them I had con
tinual traffic; all sorts of remarkable things came about
between us, things that I could not reveal to anybody in
the world ; to nobody, not even to my companions at heder.
I could not have done so even if I had wanted to ; first,
because they, namely the children, were not worthy of i t.
They laughed at me and mocked me and called me "sucker"
and other such names and nicknames. And secondly, who
could say whether they would believe me? In fact, they
would undoubtedly not believe me. What was more, they
would just add a fresh nickname to the list.
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A FT E RG ROWTH
And as for names and nicknames, I had enough and to

spare of them, the Lord be thanked. Each name was based
on some incident, and every nickname had its own reason.
Apart from "sucker" and "piper" mentioned above, I had
meanwhile earned for myself a long, similar list, such as :
go/em (dolt), dreamer, shlimazzal (unlucky), 'tisn't human,
savage, and so on and so forth. And last but not least
came the name loksh ! Another variant was lekshele, this
being an affectionate diminutive.
Why loksh ? Because of something that happened. I was
sitting in heder one Friday noon, reciting the portion of the
week by myself in the presence of my teacher, reading out
of an old, tattered, dog's-eared Pentateuch. And the teacher
was sitting, according to his custom on Sabbath Eves, with
a large, chipped earthenware dish in front of him, from
which he ladled himself some warm food in the nature of
a mush of boiled lokshen (noodles). (This was a dish which
my teacher loved with a love passing the love of women,
and he was prepared to slay or be slain for it.) He gulped
and swallowed and I recited; I recited and he gulped and
swallowed.
Suddenly - brrrr ! Some word, vayismahmeah, stood
like a foe barring my passage. What could this long queer
word be ? Not only had I suddenly forgotten how it was
translated, but the entire word, shape and all, looked like
a strange new creature. It had just blossomed forth within
the pages of the Pentateuch, and I had no idea what i t
could b e doing there. This was partly due to the rare
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A FTERG ROWTH
punctuation and chanting sign called shalshelet (chain)

which hung suspended over it. I had never noticed it before.
As I'm a Jew, that shalshelet sign was nothing other than
a paper serpent like the one Mitka, son of our neighbor
Trochim, had sent flying yesterday from the roof of his
house. And meanwhile I noticed something thin and white
hanging pendent on the teacher's thin beard, appearing
and disappearing. My eyes were supposed to be fixed on
the book before me, but were wandering to and fro, and
my attention was divided. Suddenly, and unconsciously,
I raised a thin little finger towards the teacher's beard and
proclaimed my find with strange delight: "Look, there's
a loksh !"
Upon my honor, the words came out on their own and
without any evil intention whatever, God forbid. While
the teacher was gulping and swallowing, a loksh had actually
fallen from the wooden ladle and been caught in his beard,
a white loksh that curled and twisted just like the shalshelet
sign. That was the white, thin thing that had caught my
attention during the reading without my knowing why;
and when I, simpleton that I was, saw it caught in the
thicket, my eyes grew bright and my joy knew no bounds.
But my teacher and his pupils did not see things that
way. The pupils suddenly burst out laughing at me with
all their might, and shouting, "Ha ha ha! loksh !" While as
for the teacher, he jumped up as though he had been stung
by a scorpion, and began beating me with the ladle in his
hand. He beat me murderously, thrashing and saying,
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A FT E RG ROWTH
"Here you are, loksh ; take that, loksh !" Luckily for me the
teacher's wife came dashing out of the kitchen, kitchen-fork
in hand, to help me; otherwise I would have had to be
carried out on a stretcher.
After this I lay sick for about a fortnight, during which
time I kept on murmuring, "Loksh, tobacco, vayismahmeah,
salamander . . . " When I rose again, I regarded myself as
something of an aristocrat. Under no circumstances would
I agree to return to the heder of Reb Gershon (that being
the name of my teacher for the term in question) .
Where then did I wish to go ? To the heder of Reb Meir
down in the little valley, beyond the suburb. And why
just there ? I did not know. Once I passed through that
valley and it remained in my mind. I had seen sand there,
a gleaming pool of water, and any amount of green stuff,
a whole sea of plants. Amid the plants rose an old ruin
covered with creepers and grasses. My companions talked
about this valley a great deal, and told all sorts of wonder
ful things about it and the ruin.
At night, so they said, it was exceedingly dangerous to
go down into that valley because of the dead and the
demons. Why, the tale went that Yehiel, the ragman,
had once gone down to the ruin with his sack in search of
rags and the like. and there had found the old Reb Kehath
who had murdered his wife and died a year before, sitting
on an overturned barrel in a corner, ridding his underwear
of vermin. The tale and the peril attracted me greatly,
and now that a suitable opportunity had come my way,
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A FTERG ROWTH
I made up my mind not to let it pass unused. Whatever

might happen, I would go only to the heder of Reb Meir.
My mother assented, and for once my father did not
object. In my presence, to be sure, he justified the behavior
and thrashing of Reb Gershon. "He deserved it," said he;
meaning that I, Shmulik, deserved to be killed. But when
I was not there, he was prepared to admit up to a point
that Reb Gershon had possibly gone a little too far, "and
the devil take his father's father!" So I heard in clear words
from the other side of the door. In brief, the merits of my
forefathers stood me in good stead, and I became one of
Reb Meir's pupils.
Father's graciousness on this point seemed to me a
favorable sign that my luck henceforward would improve.
In the suburb where we lived, the pitch-makers' quarter,
Reb Meir's heder, be it known unto you, represented the
peak and apex of the Torah. There was nothing higher !
Reb Meir himself was not like the other teachers. As for
all the other teachers, may the devil take their fathers'
fathers, as my father had said; but Reb Meir - Reb Meir
was different ! He was a handsome, well-dressed man, with
a fine beard and brow. He spoke quietly and walked as
though he respected himself. Even the black kapote he
wore, spoke in his honor and favor. The women used his
name as a blessing, and children loved to run to his heder.
He had few pupils, but they regarded themselves as aris
tocrats and out of the common run. They included a class
of "big boys" who, in addition to Pentateuch and Rashi,
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A FT E RG ROWTH
studied Bible and a little Talmud. Therefore, I would also

be a big boy . . .
And at twilight on that happy day, when I could no
longer refrain from showing my joy, I dashed out into the
street to inform all and sundry of my happiness. I found
a gang of kiddies, former playmates, sitting in the sand,
playing with pebbles and throwing dust aloft into the air.
They were bringing down "rain." I stood behind them at
a little distance, my hands folded behind my back as befits
a "big boy." I poked my tongue out at them and said,
"See ! I'm learning with Reb Meir; that's where I'm going."
"Loksh !" the whole gang shouted, and a cloud of dust
rose between us. "Loksh, lekshele !"
VIII
I N THE VALLEY
On the first day mother patted my earlocks, wiped my

nose, thrust the tail of my shirt down at the seat of my
knickers, gave me some provender, and off I went to Reb
Meir's heder.
My heart had not misled me. That new heder was a new
world. Day by day, after my morning nose-wipe, I would
take supplies and march off to Reb Meir's where my heart
would not know satiety. Reb Meir's small and lonely
dwelling was located outside the suburb, just where the
descent into the valley begins, right near its edge. It stood
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AFTERG ROWTH
slightly askew, at its shoulder a booth, beside it a tree, and

in front of it a vegetable garden. Most of the building was
hidden in the valley under the dome of the branching tree;
but the top of its roof, with the chimney shining white
between the greenery, informed passers-by where it was.
It seemed as though to begin with the chimney had climbed
up on top of the roof in order to see through the network
of branches what was happening on that side, at the cross
roads above.
From the outside the dwelling itself was bright and
cheerful. It was white as snow and, under the attic win
dows, was surrounded as with a girdle by a thread of orange
red. The attic windows, moreover, were set in a frame of
painted buds, blue flowers, and something that resembled
swallows in flight. The arch below, on which the house
was built, was as green as though new. Against the right
shoulder of the house there rested a ladder by which one
climbed to the attic through a black and somewhat terrify
ing hole. And above the hole, right on the very roof, whirled
without stopping a little wheel, a sort of windmill, whirling
and humming and slightly reducing the terror of the hole.
Reb Meir had made and adjusted that wheel all by him
self. He was, in fact, quite a mechanic, and constructed a
great many things with his own hands, using bits of bone,
tiny tubes, tooth-picks and the like little odds and ends.
He had two snuff-boxes, one made of oak bark for weekdays,
and the other of ram's horn for the Sabbath; he had made
both of them himself. The Mizrah (memorial symbolic
86
A FT E RG ROWTH
picture of the Western Wall in Jerusalem) and the picture

of Mordecai and Haman, which he had hanging on the
wall in his house, had also been done by him. When he
began teaching us about the way the Tabernacle was built,
he showed his pupils small scale models of the Tabernacle
and its utensils, the clothes of the priests, the lamp and
the table, the bowls and the j ars and all the other things.
Reb Meir took a great deal of trouble about these and cut
away with a knife for several terms; and then kept all these
things from year to year in a special three-sided cupboard
fixed in a corner. He was also said to be an "engraver"
though I did not know what that was. That is, I knew that
a mehokek corresponds to an engraver, but I did not know
what the job of an engraver was. Nor did the rest of my
classmates know, and I was ashamed to ask Reb Meir him
self because he was the person concerned.
Reb Meir's booth for Tabernacles, at the corner of the
house, was better and more lovely than all the booths in
the world. It remained just as it was from year to year,
and Reb Meir derived satisfaction from it in a number of
ways. It served him alternately, according to the season,
as a store-room for wood, a stall for his goat, a pen for
fattening his geese, a store for potatoes and cucumbers,
and, in the hot days, even as a classroom for his pupils.
A slight chilliness and shadow of darkness were always to
be found there. The light dripped onto the Pentateuchs in
little drops of gold through the greenstuff that served as
roof.
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AFTERG ROWTH
When Reb Meir was in a good mood and wished to make

us happy, he would take out his table, his chair and the
two long benches in front of the booth as day began to
turn to evening, and we would sit down and engage in the
study of Torah under the tree between the house and the
garden. And upon your souls, it was the most enjoyable
time of all. The tree, with its green canopy that was rich
in the chirrupping of birds and fluttering of hidden wings,
shaded us overhead. To the right, the valley, with i ts · sea
of plants, sloped downward. In the bed of the valley below,
twined and shone the silvery strip of the pool. It rustled
and gurgled and ran on and on until i t vanished amid the
grass. Facing us was a lofty, yellow sand-hill, covered with
a green wood. A huge red sun, caught between the trees,
had started a fire in their midst. "A burning bush," the
thought passed through my mind. Threads of fire and rods
of gold spread from the network of boughs, set the fire
burning in our eyes and made Reb Meir's pale brow and
black beard suddenly radiant. Every hair shone on its
own. At such times he seemed to me like one of the ancient
Tannaim of the Mishna days, such a one as Rabbi Simeon
ben Yohai, for instance, sitting together with his disciples
somewhere in the wilderness under the carob tree where,
divorced from the entire Universe, they study the Secret
Law, the "hid things of the Torah."
It was an hour of divine benevolence, longing and holy
plenitude. The sun was moving towards its setting. The
air was fragrant. And we would be reading and chanting
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A IT E RG ROWTH
before our teacher the verses of the Psalms : "Happy the man
that hath not walked in the counsel of the wicked . . . but
his delight is in the Torah of the Lord and in his Torah
doth he meditate day and night. And he shall be like a
tree planted by streams of water . . . ;" or else it might be :
"The Lord is my shepherd ; I shall not want. He maketh
me to lie down in green pastures; He leadeth me beside the
sti� waters. He restoreth my soul . . . Yea, though I walk
through the valley of the shadow of death, I shall fear no
evil . . . " It became unnecessary to translate the words;
translation was almost a defect. The words poured out
and out from the heart, their meaning being part of them.
The gate of understanding opened of its own accord : "As
a tree planted" obviously could only mean the tree in
whose shadow we were sitting; "by streams of water"
could only mean the pool of water down in the valley.
"The valley of the shadow" must be the ruin where the
evil spirits were to be found, and which our teacher would
never let us approach. "Thou preparest a table before me"
could be none other than the table at which we were sitting
and engaging in the Lord's own Torah. "In the presence
of all mine enemies ;" who could those enemies be if not the
young urchins, the young shepherds, may their names be
blotted out, whom we saw at times with crooks and wallets
on top of the hill, showing us "pigs' ears" from the distance
and mocking us with their "Geer, geer, geer . " Why,
. .
those were the identical evil persons referred to in the first
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A FT E RG ROWTH
Psalm, who in the future would, God willing, become "as

chaff before the wind." Just puff and they would vanish . . .
And sometimes, there would come to rest, upon the little
height above, a flock of light clouds, pure white angels.
The caravan would tarry a while, then suddenly fly off and
depart as i t had come. But one of them, the whitest and
most beautiful of all, would sometimes cling to the top of
the hill opposite, and tarry there alone. From his height
he would watch us, all our small band, sitting here in the
valley and studying Torah. "Who shall ascend the mount
of the Lord, and who shall stand in his holy place . . ."
And when the sun would set, as I came up out of the

valley, I would stand there a while on its brink, my heart
full and my eyes gazing towards the ends of the earth.
Mountain, wood, the skirts of the heavens, torches, the
River of Fire, and Gehenna . . •
IX
'
REB M E I R S H ED E R
Reb Meir's heder really made the eyes bright. Through

it, it seemed to me, I could gaze from world's end to world's
end, without ever seeing my fill. I, little Shmulik, a day-aid
chick so to say, nothing and of no account, was sitting bent
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A FT E RG ROWTH
and crouched together on a hard bench in a small low

ceilinged room in a little earthen house, gloomy and tumble
down, sunk in the valley at the lost end of the world ; yet
my spirit wandered far and wide, watching across thousands
of years and myriads of leagues what was happening in
other and distant universes. Out of the blurred little letters
in these old books, Pentateuch, Rashi, Bible - all those
books bits of which I learned in turn, with great jumps and
without any apparent order - out of all these there came
towards me confused and incomplete fragments of genera
tions and jubilees, nations and lands, tales and stories
which had long been blotted out from the Book of Life and
of which there was no memory left in the world. Here I
was, conversing with all these ancients, and participating
in their life and deeds.
And to this end, I did not even need complete sections.
I built up for myself their destroyed world, even out of
fragments of verses and odds and ends of hinted words.
A strange name, words spelt in an unusual fashion, a small
letter, another one hanging over the line, a third upside
down, punctuation signs called respectively Cow-Horns
and Chain, jots and tittles; all these were magnificent
material for the edifice I was erecting. In a pinch, Rashi
would come and make a remark, and everything would
clear up beautifully and happily. I understood what was
difficult on the basis of what was clear, and, through the
power of my imagination, completed far more than was
ever written.
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AFTERGROWTH
The things that were revealed to me in Reb Meir's heder

were really great and magnificent. Just think for your
selves : from India unto Ethiopia alone there are one hundred
and twenty-seven kingdoms, the same number as the
years of the life of Sarah, neither more nor less. Nineveh
was a mighty city before God, through which it was possible
to walk for precisely three whole days. And the Gibeonites
"prinked themselves," and "provended themselves," with
two such queer words which, by their very shape, gave me
the impression of not really being Hebrew, and went to the
trouble of seeming to come from a very distant land in faded
garments and patched shoes, with loaves of spoiled bread
in their wallets and cracked water skins on their shoulders.
Now as for the spies, they came to mighty cities that were
fortified up to the heavens, and there saw in the streets
the sons of the giants, a great and lofty people, the three
brothers who were notorious men of violence, namely
Ahiman, Sheshai and Talmai. (Those three brothers,
stout as cedars, their hair long and wild, and their hats on
one side, the middle one among them playing a mouth
organ, were, it seemed, always strolling about together
and terrifying everybody round about.) As soon as the
spies saw this, they became in their own sight like grass
hoppers - like those very grasshoppers which chirped and
jumped about in the meadows round the suburb - and
they fled each one for his life to his own hiding-place.
Nahbi ben Vafsi fled behind the gate; Gadi ben Sussi to a
lodge in a cucumber field; Gamaliel ben Pedahzur to the
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AITERG ROWTH
vineyards or among the heads of the cabbages. There

they all lay hidden, peering out fearfully.
And in Ham, that is in the far-famed city of Ham, dwelt
the Zuzim, as is known. What, don't you know who they
were ? Why, those are the folk whom the Ammonites
called Zamzumim. But the Emim were different. They,
be i t known unto you, dwelt in Shave Kiryatayim. Now,
in the land of 'Elam dwelt a man most dreaded ; great and
fearsome was his name, Chedarla'omer ! Now there was a
savage for you ! He had to go searching everywhere and
couldn't find for himself any better name than Chedarla
'omer ! But quite different were the Kaphtorites who come
from Kaphtor, together with the men of Pathros and
Naphtah and Kasluh beside them. To tell the truth, I
could not quite make out what these were about, but my
heart told me that they could only have been little nations,
nationlets you might almost say, whose people were tiny,
round creatures, something like dwarfs, who always dwelt
bunched together like ants in their hills, all of whose deeds
were done jointly. Now how did I know that ? Maybe
because their names always came in the plural.
Apart from all that, I had quite a few acquaintances
among the Dukes of Edam - those petty kings who were
something like our squires : the Duke of Kenaz, the Duke
of Gatam, the Duke of Shobal, the Duke of Je'ush. In their
kindred there was one fine fellow, a really successful man !
His name was 'Anah. He is 'Anah who discovered the
Yemim in the desert. Lucky fellow ! Sometimes I go wan-
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AFTERG ROWTH
dering round the outskirts of the suburb for hours and hours
on end, studying every plant and cranny and refuse heap
with my eyes and hands, yet finding nothing more than · a
broken piece of crockery o r a horn that has rolled away
from a dead cow; yet he, lucky chap, went out to graze the
asses of his father Zibe'on, and what does he do right away
but discover the Yemim !
What sort of things were these Yemim ? I swear I don't
know ! My teacher explained to me that they were mules,
a queer sort of creature which is neither horse nor ass, but
a mixture of them both. From this I assumed that the
Yem must be constructed in two parts. Horse from head
to navel, and ass from navel to tail-tip. Then there was
another possibility: the whole length of the right side was
horse, while the left side was ass. The possibilities were
equal and I could not make up my mind. And the Yem
could not have been other than close kindred to the family
of the Ahashtaranites, sons of the Ramachites, who were,
as is known, the proud possessors of eight legs, four of
which they used for running and four for resting . . . Any
way, 'Anah's was a worthy find, seeing that Holy Writ
reports it, which is more than happens to everybody.
With regard to 'Og, King of the Bashan, he was one of
the children of the Rephaim, one of the last left •over.
During the Flood, Noah the Righteous had pity on him
and gave him a place on top of the Ark, and handed
out his food to him every day through the little window.
So 'Og sat on the deck, his forehead always catching the
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A FT E RG ROWTH
clouds and his feet dangling several miles down in the

water; he sat stuffing whole loaves into his throat and
drinking, out of a great dirty trough, all the leavings of
Noah and his sons.
And how did that wicked fellow pay it back to Israel ?
In the end, when Israel departed from Egypt, he tore up a
mountain by its roots and wished to fling it at them. They
were all but done for. But Moses sprang into the breach and
leaped with his pick-axe more than ten ells into the air, and
smote him on his ankle and slew him. So may all such perish.
Now the only thing of his that was left was his iron bed,
nine ells long and four ells wide, by the normal human ell.
Such remarkable precision cannot leave the slightest doubt
behind it. It is true that for a fellow who stood as high as
the sun and whose ankle was more than thirty ells in the air,
so small a bed seems to be a little crowded, and tends, in
my eyes at least, to reduce the dread person of the giant
by a considerable degree. However, Rashi the Holy, may
his memory be blessed, was not caught napping but added
a little remark to save the honor and glory of 'Og. "By the
ell of a man" means obviously by the ell of the man 'Og
himself, and the ell of 'Og, obviously was something several
miles long. In which case, 'Og's bed was large enough for
him and there was no longer anything to regret. There
stood the bed with its pillows and cushions at "Rabbah of
the sons of 'Ammon unto this day;" and whoever is not lazy
can go there and see i t for himself. He'll find a sleeping
place roomy enough for a whole regiment . . .
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AFTERG ROWTH
X
TH E WAY HOME AND MY J O U RN EYS BY LAND AND SEA
Filled to the brim with such exact and precise knowledge,

I would depart day by day before sunset to go home. My
classmates would happily and noisily scatter to their houses
or their games and I would be left alone. Father's house
stood at some distance from the suburb, near a wood;
before I could get there, I would have to walk through a
heavy sandy track that led between two rows of trees,
across a desolate stretch of land. Half-way there I would
have to cross a dangerous spot, namely, a little bridge
across a stream, underneath which it was reported that a
little sprite, of the kind that bothers humankind, had taken
up residence. To be sure, the tradition ran that this sprite
was friendly towards children and did them no harm ; but
all the same, when I saw the golden crown of the sunset
vanishing amid the treetops, my heart melted away. From
the wood beyond the stream I could hear a mysterious
cuckoo which frightened me a little, and I walked as slowly
as possible, forsaken and alone, between the rows of trees
at the wayside. Reddish gleams of light flickered round
me, my feet sank in the sand and my melancholy spirit
bore me afar.
I was not walking home. I was a traveller, a wanderer
crossing land and sea with staff and knapsack. Long, long
ago - I had already forgotten when - I had set forth to
wander to and fro in the world; yet until now, woe is me, I
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A FT E RGROWTH
had found no rest. I had climbed mountains and descended

into valleys, I had wandered from city to city and from
village to village, yet no man knew who I was, whence I
came, or whither I was going.
On my way I had joined the caravans of the Ishmaelites
or of the men of Dodan and I had not departed from them.
Where they had gone, I would go ; and where they lodged,
there did I stay.
By day we crossed the desert, a land of drouth and thirst,
the dwelling place of serpent, basilisk and scorpion. The
young men paced at the flanks of their camels which were
laden with rolls upon rolls of silk, satin, fabrics, purple and
scarlet, and bundles upon bundles of powders, lotus, balsam
and all the many spices. And the elders, white of beard
and wearing their turbans, rode ahead resplendently garbed
and honorable, upon white she-asses, their feet in hose and
sandals all but touching the ground and scooping fine faint
tracks in the sand.
At night we would stop to rest in the woods. There we
would light the campfires and sleep around them on the
ground, completely surrounded by a barricade of stones
fashioned with an outward-curving edge, a tried barrier
against wild beasts, as was done, says Rashi, by our father
Jacob.
At one spot we are joined by the Gibeonites, those cun
ning peasants, with their faded garments, their patched
shoes and their cracked water skins. They march along
to one side all the way, like a separate company, their faces
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AFTE RG ROWTH
sorrowful and their eyes terrified. None of the caravan

knows who they are, or what they desire, except me, Shmulik,
since I know all their secrets and subterfuges in advance
out of the Book of Joshua.
Had God set it along my path, I would have turned
aside to spend the night at the House of Study of Shem and
'Eber, where our father Jacob stayed concealed for fourteen
years on end when he fled before his brother Esau. Rest
assured that I would have found the lectern at which Jacob
studied and the bench upon which he slept, standing behind
the oven until this day.
And in this fashion days pass, and weeks and months . . .
We have cleft through the desert of Zin, we have passed
through the wilderness of Paran; yet we see no end. Our
feet are swollen, our garments and our shoes are worn out,
our bread has dried and has become spotted, our water
skins have cracked and split one and all for that they have
no drop of moisture within them. Things are almost at
their worst, when suddenly - rejoice ! Our eyes behold
Hazezon Tamar ! The men of the caravan revive ! The
asses and the camels make their legs like to those of the
Ahashtaranites; and ere the setting of the sun, ere the
Sabbath, we all reach the resting place. There in Hazezon
Tamar the caravan has found twelve springs of cool, sweet
water and seventy date palms. So they spend the Sabbath
there at the water.
Beyond Hazezon Tamar the track is easy, an enjoyable
ramble; from Rimon-Perez to Mithka, from Mithka to
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A FT E RG ROWTH
Hor-Hagidgad, from Hor-Hagidgad to Yotbetha. Towns

and villages pass us in procession. All the journeys of the
forty years in the wilderness are completed in a little while.
Then suddenly I am in a boat. It is Ophir-bound. We
are sailing through the Sea of Tarshish. We view the
heavens and the seas. In the side of the ship an old man
sleeps, head upon his bundle. Who is this but Jonah the
Prophet ! If we reach the haven of our desire and safety,
we shall not lack for wealth ! Gold is valued as the stones !
We shall fill every cranny in the ship with gold. If we are
sprightly we shall also visit the land of Havila, which is
surrounded by the River Pishon. The gold of that land is
the best, of the highest quality, ninety-six percent pure.
And there we can also find the crystal and the onyx stone.
And, as I imagine, the River Sambation can clearly not be
any too distant from those parts.
By the time I awoke from my daydreams the sun had
already declined behind the wood on the far side of the
stream. Scattered gold threads of sunset were still trying
to escape between the branches of the trees, slipping and
falling from one leaf to another. Yet a moment and the
sun would disappear within its sheath. Out of the trees
in the distant wood there dimly rose, as yesterday and the
day before at this hour, something lofty and upright,
standing taller than all the trees by head and shoulders,
and gazing grimly across the whole plain. Who was this ?
A tree ? A giant? An armed robber ? "The evil man waits
for the righteous and wishes to slay him . . ."
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AITERGROWTH
And here was a little bridge and the stream under it.
The water was dull and bubbled and silently wept in the
grief and mysterious longings of the twilight. Blind Ochrim,
who sits here on a stone all day long with his knapsack,
begging for alms in his hoarse, cracked voice, has also
disappeared. Desolation and grief. The sprite . . .
I close my eyes tight in a sudden spate of fear, and with
choking throat I run, run home.
XI
'
THE TAR-MAKERS QUARTER AND ROUNDABOUT
In Ham, Ham the mighty city, dwelt the Zuzim. Nineveh

was a mighty city before God, containing a multitude of
men and beasts. Be�har, which was destroyed by our foes,
had four hundred market places, and each market place
contained four hundred stands; and in one quarter there
was slaughter and destruction, while in another, they
rejoiced and celebrated weddings, neither knowing what
was happening elsewhere. Beyond�the River Sambation are
the gigantic Red Jews, and when one of our people finds
his way there, they put him into a coat pocket like a nut
or a handkerchief because he is so small; and they forget
all about him.
None of these wonders was to be found in the Tar
Makers' Suburb. Neither they nor any part of them. The
Tar-Makers' Suburb was just a tiny, poverty-stricken and
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A FT E RG ROWTH
very quiet corner. If anybody sneezes at one end, somebody

will be sure to wish him good health from the other end.
If a cock crows at noon in the middle of the suburb, it can
be heard all the way:across the river. I needed only to mount
on top of our booth or the hollow tree in front of our house,
and I could see the whole quarter and all its surroundings
lying unfolded before me like a garment. I could see about
thirty earthen houses and low wooden shacks, most of them,
if not all, with crooked walls, tiny windows and shaggy
thatched roofs. The lower ones were crowded into the valley,
raising themselves humbly out of the ground together with
the grass, sheltering in the shadow of lonely chestnut and
hazelnut trees planted at their sides. The upper stood amid
plenty of elbow room on both sides of the track and looked
as though they had fled up there from the valley on pur
pose in order to get rid of a little of their crookedness and
stretch their outspread limbs. Two or three of these houses,
including that of my teacher, had been slow in climbing
and remained hesitant and somewhat confused half-way up
the slope; they did not want to go back, and were afraid
to climb farther up. On sunny days the valley became full
of all sorts of tall weeds, thorns and thistles. During the
winter there would be deep drifts of snow, and as a result
the height of the houses would be reduced by half. There
were times when nothing of them could be seen except the
chimneys.
All the year round the suburb seemed to be more than
half asleep. The spirit of slumber rose and took possession
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A FTERGROWTH
of it from every side; from the broad track, with all its
sand, which reached out to it from the forest and cleft i t
in twain ; from the solitary ox-cart which a t times crawled
along that track every now and then, its wheels half buried
in the sand; from the peasant with his broad linen breeches,
rubber boots and fur cap, who followed the cart with
his pipe between his teeth ; and from the lazy "giddap,
giddap" which seemed to come out of his mouth without
his interference, for the benefit of the horned oxen as they
slowly trod ahead; from the silent woods and fields; from
the lofty golden corn which waved in the fields nearby to
the quiet breeze of the day; and from the chirping and
humming which continued without pause among the grasses
until it dulled all the senses and set the eyelids drooping on
their own ; from the low, withered wooden crosses which
stood on the graves in the gentiles' cemetery, peeping in
silent grief across and beyond the fence; from the sandy
plain which spread like the endless desert from behind that
cemetery.
The people of the suburb likewise had no kinship with
either Zuzim or Zamzumim. They were the lesser ones of
earth. Poorish, quiet folk of humble spirit and hands. They
sought nothing great and did not follow things too wonder
ful for them. They trafficked in the smaller coins, and their
wares were odds and ends and remnants. In the summer,
they had an important source of income - the making of
tar and pitch, that dumb, fluid substance which drips
silently from one vessel to another without making any
1 02
A FTERG ROWTH
noise or complaining. In front of his house or the entrance

to his little shop, a man might place a tub and a pot from
which he would sell measures of pitch and tar to peasants
driving carts along the road. Between one customer and
the next, the sun would stand idle in the heavens, and the
pitch would lie quiet for whole hours on end without the
slightest movement in its tubs and pots, its fat blackness
gleaming in perfect calm, idly serving as a free mirror, a
round black mirror, for the sun, the sky, the light clouds,
any passing girl or bird that fluttered by.
And the name of the river that surrounded the Tar
Makers' Suburb was Titiruv and not Pishon. And it could
hardly be described as surrounding anything, since during
the greater part of the year it simply went its own way
straight ahead without any excessive twists or sudden turns.
It quietly and, as it were, casually received all sorts of
known and secret gifts, additional sources of income, so to
say: waste water and rain water and water of the deep
which were repeatedly brought to it by rills, rivulets, brooks,
fountains and drains. Yet it always turned an innocent
face upwards, as one who might say, "Do with me as you
wish, Father in Heaven ; I am in Thy hands." During the
dry weather, it would sometimes humbly and modestly
shrink and shrink and shrink until it all but dried up. And
then there would be revealed within it rocks and reefs, like
small islands covered with reeds and bulrushes. During the
heat of the day, children of Israel from the suburb would
come, family by family, and make camp there, almost as
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AFTERGROWTH
naked as the day they were born, lying outstretched on the

sand, hidden by the reeds and plants, and eating peas or
cracking hazelnuts in company. Sometimes a fire would be
lit there, and a kettle of water boiled. At such times, they
seemed to me to be like the members of Rabba bar bar
Hanna's caravan, who light-heartedly landed on the back
of a huge fish and did their cooking and baking on its back
and were all but drowned in the vast depths.
Then there were also brave, stout-hearted and daring
boys who endangered themselves and crossed to the bank
of the river opposite. There they rolled in the sand, and
danced naked like wild little biily-goats without shame or
fear, between the trees and bushes of the forest which they
filled with tumult and noise. I wondered whether they
would return thence in peace. What was to save them from
a bereft bear or even a wolf which might suddenly pounce
upon them and carry one of them off to its lair.
Yet once a year, when the snows began to melt, even the
River Titiruv would depart from its usual habits and begin
to behave in wanton fashion. Then it would bring down
from a distance, upon the shoulders of its waves and broken
ice, bits of board, an overturned skiff, barrels, logs of wood,
a door, a watchman's booth, and, at times, even live geese
and chickens floating in their coops on the melting floating
ice and cackling bitterly, a pile of fodder and a bemused
dog barking on top of it. Yet even in its waywardness, the
river kept its good mood and good nature. Its waves would
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A FTERG ROWTH
clap hands, laugh and wink, as though they were summon

ing and calling to everybody; reach out and take i t ! First
come, first served ! And the children of Israel would sudden! y
garb themselves in valor and risk their lives and hasten
with their pitchforks to the river to despoil, to pillage, to
loot. Fathers and sons would roll up their coats and their
trousers and dash into the water up to the thighs, each one
snatching what he could with his pitchfork. The tale ran
that the pitchfork of Mordecai Aaron had once brought up
a year-old calf tied to a crib. He put it in a pen and i t
turned into a cow, which now keeps him and his family
comfortably and respectably.
XII
THE W O O D THAT L A Y B EYOND THE R I V E R TITI RUV
Now the wood on both sides of the river contained none

of the lofty cedars of Lebanon, nor of the so exalted oaks
of Bashan. What then did it have ? Undergrowth, low-lying
thickets of reeds and willow-boughs and twigs for the
Hosanna celebrations at Succoth, thickets of fir with which
to roof over the booths for Succoth, and thin wizened
birch-twigs to be tied up in branches and used for massage
at the bath house. The elders of the suburb pointed to
stumps of astonishing diameter that were now rotting, but
which still rose from the ground and tonguelessly witnessed
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AFTERGROWTH
to a generation of mighty giants who had been removed

from the world and had made way for a worthless and
wayward generation. Among the hewn trunks there were
some which remained fresh and moist for a very long time;
year by year, when the spring came, their cut veins would
seep a reddish juice, like tears mixed with blood. They seep
away their inmost essence, not to be comforted, for the
glory of their strength had been cut off from the world
when at its best, before its time. The voice of their blood
cried out aloud from the earth : why were hands laid upon
us ! Experts stated that no use might be made of this juice,
since it was like tears of the dead. Of that patriarchal
generation nothing was left but solitary trees, poor cripples
or defectives, smitten of God and acquainted with afflic
tion, bent and bowed of back, humped, squat-bellied, cleft
pated, triple-trunked and dry-limbed; the very outcasts of
treedom, half-shaped and formless, looking less like trees
than like queer outlandish animals such as ape, monkey,
camel, pard, or siren, or demons and night-monsters and
centaurs of the elementals, who had been condemned to be
inarborated, so to say, fixed like nails to their places for
ever, so as to make men wonder, and terrify all those who
passed through the wood by night.
Those unfortunates, whom the axe had spared to a life
of contempt and horror when their time was done, were
particularly favored by my comrades and myself. We had
names for many of them on account of their queer shapes,
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A FTERGROWTH
and on holidays they served us as a meeting place for games

and general foolery.
I knew one, a bent old willow with a squat trunk con
taining a hole on either side on top, cavities where there
had once been boughs which had dropped from the tree,
with advancing age and dryness, like fallen teeth. It looked
like a great dried fish with rent back and eyes put out,
standing on its tail, with belly like an open grave and mouth
gaping ready to swallow whomever might approach. Another,
an obstinate, twisted pine, was like a flying serpent, with a
rider on its back, raising a whip over it. Yet another was
exactly like a five branched candlestick, and so we called it
the candlestick.
One hump-backed elm did not refrain from bringing
shame on its own old age; it had turned a somersault like
a playful imp and stood on its head with its legs shamefully
stretched out towards the sky. Another, an ancient burly
birch, bowed its height to the ground like a bow, and out
of its back, white as pure silver, upright and curling green,
a tender young birch grew aloft like a baby, treading upon
i ts father's back and aspiring aloft.
One might suppose that many of these queer trees were
really nothing but idolatrous relics of the biblical groves
and images, the abominations of the ancient gentiles, their
forms now changed by the Holy and Blest One who had
left them as a memorial for a later generation to view.
Among the plants bare dry trunks would sometimes thrust
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AITERGROWTH
themselves aloft, their bough-arms rising in the air. These

were the skeletons of dead, mummified trees which had
never been buried and stood joined to their piles of roots,
fixed in the "World of Chaos," their bodies shrunken and
hardened, their bones dried and blackened by drought and
rain, full of holes from the outside and hollow within.
The louts of the suburb would feed the pigs or calves of
their father Ivan in the wood. The children of the faithful
would come here to shoot with their bows and arrows. Even
if they were to search with candles they would not find, I
am willing to swear, either the Yemim, or the badger, or
the buffalo and the roebuck. But what would they find?
They would find fungi, toadstools, the cheekbone of a
dead horse, a pig's trotters, and, by way of a miracle, a
"cloud-fall" which looks like the white of an egg out of the
Book of Job, or a sort of fish-jelly for the third meal, the
one celebrating the departure of the Sabbath, congealed
and quivering. The women folk called this sort of stuff
"Mother Rachel's Tears." According to them it was very
good for a woman who had difficulty in bearing children.
If a boy had the luck to find this rarity once in seven years,
he would joyfully dash home with it to his mother who
would treat pregnant women to drops of it, and would
hang some in little bags round their necks as a charm.
I also heard say that in the wood there were hazelnuts
growing and Kol-Nidre pears. Some people testified that
they had also found Palestine apples there. Let him who
wishes to believe go on believing. So far I have not had
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A FT E RG ROWTH
the merit of seeing them with my own eyes. When the

right time comes it may be worthwhile to venture forth
into the forest and penetrate its recesses. It ought to be
examined. Who knows what may be waiting for me there ?
Many were the thoughts in my heart regarding this
forest.
XIII
'
THE TAR-MA KERS S U B U RB A N D THE
TALES O F OLDEN TIMES
The Tar-Makers' Suburb may have been small, quiet and

poor, but in my eyes it constituted the greater part of the
world. The essential part of the tales of Creation were told
about it. Here above the roofs hung the luminaries in the
heavens, hanging thus ever since the Six Days of Creation.
Here in the gardens, the back-yards and the wood, the
earth brought forth herbage and grass and trees of every
kind, both fruit-bearing and non-fruit-bearing. And here,
in the River Titiruv and the streams of the suburb, the
waters swarmed with every kind of living creature, fish and
whales and frogs and crabs and leeches and the various
kinds of fowl.
The Holy and Blest One undoubtedly had the fullness of
the Universe as His glory; but His permanent residence
was assuredly in the sky, at a place that was directly above
the suburb, and His mighty Divine Presence was concen-
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A FTERG ROWTH
trated in the Holy Ark of our synagogue, between the wings

of Cherubim which hovered above the curtain.
As for all the great events described in the Pentateuch,
and in Rashi and the other holy books, which I studied at
the heder of Reb Meir, some support and basis for them
could be found in the suburb and its surroundings. I could
point out the very place in the field where the sale of Joseph
took place. The pit into which Joseph was cast still existed
exactly as it had been in ancient times, down to this day.
It was the identical pit of the Pentateuch with all its reliable
signs, not one missing. Just as the pit in the Pentateuch
had been empty and without water, so it was with my pit.
And what was more it also contained, in my opinion, ser
pents and scorpions, just like the pit of Joseph.
Had I wished to run the risk of setting forth alone across
that field, I am convinced that I would immediately have
been met by a caravan of Ishmaelites. The cows which
Pharaoh had seen in his dream were still, either they or the
offspring of their offspring, grazing in the meadow on the
banks of the River Titiruv; and that humble stream went
crawling slowly and silently past our suburb, as was its
way, without even imagining that those cows strolling
quietly along its banks, chewing the cud, could be of ariy
such fine stock.
Nor did I miss the track along which Bathia daughter of
Pharaoh had descended, her girls with her, to bathe in the
river. On all summer days this path went on running down
from the suburb to the river like an outstretched tongue
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A FT E RG ROWTH
reaching down to the water. The day was hot as an oven,

the track would wind and show itself white with here and
there little grassy ups and downs, and would vanish now
and then and be swallowed up by the plants and the stand
ing corn. The princess walked mincing in advance, her
maidens behind. On her head she wore a kerchief of blue
silk with silver fringes; a thin, dazzling-white robe covered
her, and on her feet shoes of fine badger leather ornamented
with gold. The girls followed barefoot, the soles of their
feet pleasantly scorched by the glowing sand of the track.
As they walked they stretched out their hands to the corn
and the plants, plucking ripe wheat-ears and oats ; their
dresses would catch on the blossoms and ears and rustle
faintly, pleasantly. Butterflies dart about in the air ahead
of them, golden bees and blue flies buzz in their ears. And
among the reeds and the bulrushes on the bank of the River
Titiruv, in the criss-cross of fine sweet shadows, the infant
Moses lies bound in his little ark, wailing, "boo hoo." But
he does not know, the little fellow, that his sister Miriam,
namely Zlata daughter of the widow Deborah, is only a
little distance away, hiding behind a Kol-Nidre pear tree,
wearing her kerchief, her hands shading her eyes, gazing in
tremulous concern towards the river, her heart throbbing.
Our forefathers, Terah, father of Abraham and father of
Nahor, always dwelt beyond the river, on the other side
of the Titiruv. There within the wood they dwelt and like
wise hewed wood whereof they made idols; and on market
days, when the aged Terah had to offer his handiwork for
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A FTERGROWTH
sale, he would put the idols in sacks and baskets, carry

them across the river in a boat, bring them up to the
market; and amid all the other merchants he would set up
a stand near the gentile cemetery, close to Baal Peor,
namely the great idol on a lofty wooden cross in the middle
of the square, at a spot which serves as a market for the
peasants and wagons from the surrounding villages. I pre
sumed that the Children of Israel who left Egypt sojourned
in their tribes on the great sandy plain which spread beyond
that cemetery, far far away from the suburb. There, in that
great and dread wilderness, their tents were "spread out like
the brooks," and each man stayed encamped within his own
camp beside his own flag, according to their hosts and their
signs, exactly as in the camps of our army who set up their
tents in this plain every summer.
And the whole affair of Balaam likewise, I was sure,
came about on the broad track which passes before our
house and runs on between the corn and furrows until it is
at last swallowed by the forest. Here Balaam passed riding
his she-ass, his two lads with him, on his way to curse
Israel; and here in the middle of the way, just where
Trochin's barley field is, the angel of the Lord stood before
him as an adversary with his sword, gleaming in the sun,
held drawn and ready in his hand. It happened all of a
sudden, as though the angel had grown out of the ground
or leapt out of one of the pits between the barley. Naturally,
Balaam did not notice him, and would have gone on riding
as usual; but the ass suddenly turned aside and continued
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A FT E RG RO WTH
across the field between the barley. Then she turned aside
again and came to the narrow place in the tiny alley
between Yanka's orchard and deaf Matthew's cucumber
field. There was a fence of canes and boards on one side
and a fence of woven osiers on the other. There is no
choice, Reb Balaam ; you are caught in a trap. Descend,
if your honor please, from the ass, take hold of her tail
and drag her backward. You cannot turn either right or
left . . .
Everybody knows the end of the affair. After the wicked
fellow had gone to so much trouble and his evil stratagem
had not been successful, he went and proclaimed a fair !
a great fair like the one there was last year during one of
the gentile festivals in their cemetery square round the
image. All the Midianites and the Katsaps (Great Russians)
of the villages and settlements near and far met and came
to this fair, bringing with them on their wagons the daugh
ters of Midian, plump red-cheeked wenches, veiled and
adorned with all kinds of fringes and kerchiefs, wearing
colored garbs and fabrics and heavy necklaces of coral and
glass beads, necklets round their throats with copper bangles
and glass nose-rings, and ear-rings to adorn their ears.
Decked in all this finery, the daughters of Midian wandered
round the fair to the booths and stands of the Jewish
peddlers and merchants of those desert days drinking kvass
and cracking sun-flower seeds between their teeth, and in
general behaving with excessive shamelessness.
To begin with, the Children of Israel paid no attention.
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What difference did it make to them ? Let the daughters

of the uncircumcised rejoice ! They are polluted, but their
money is in order. Yet when evening came, when the
Katsap lads of the neighboring quarter caught hold each
one of his own girl and the dances began, all round the
image, to the sound of pipe and hurdy-gurdy and the noise
of drum and cymbal - in that very hour, alas, the wiles of
Satan proved successful; and the Children of lsrad, woe to
that shame, turned aside after the daughters of Midian and
were joined to Ba'al Pe'or . . . There the image of abomina
tion was set up in the middle of the square unto this
day; and every passerby spits and whispers a well-known
verse.
There are many lofty mountains in the world: Mount
Ararat, Mount Sinai, Mount Hor, Mount Nebo; yet the
loftiest of them all was none other than this mountain rising
beyond the valley, with its cleft summit reaching the skies.
That, in very fact, is "the top of Pisgah which looketh out
upon the desert." Light clouds meet it as they pass, and
leave patches of themselves amid i ts stones and hillocks.
If a man could mount it and live, he would find the tatters
lying forsaken right across the whole mountain, free for
anyone to come and gather; yet nobody does so. From its
bare flank some old section had long fallen off, and the
bare scar seemed in its ruddiness like the living flesh of the
mountain. There were crevices and caves in which the
Moabites undoubtedly lay concealed when they wished to
ambush Israel in the desert at the waterfall of Arnon. The
1 14
A FTERG ROWTH
Moabites, it obviously stood to reason, certainly received

their share ! While they were still in their hiding-place wait
ing for the Israelites to pass through the valley, in order to
attack from behind, the two mountains on either side of
the valley suddenly joined together, and the projections on
one side suddenly fitted into the hollows on the other, and
all the Moabi tes were squashed like bugs ! And the Holy
and Blest One was not satisfied until He brought up the
well of Miriam - that wondrous well ! - which rolls mur
muring here at the bottom of the valley below; and it
overflowed out of the hollows and washed away skulls and
torn-off arms; floating them away before the eyes of
all Israel to the River Titiruv, namely, to the Brook of
Arnon.
In truth the suburb was a rare place, multum in parvo,
a sort of everlasting treasure. All the stories of the Creation
and happenings since the earliest generations could be found
therein, like that legendary garment folded in the nutshell.
There was never a thing in the Torah a clear example or
obvious sign of which could not be found in the suburb.
Which borrowed from which ? That question must be left
to stand. Maybe the Holy and Blest One glanced at the
Pentateuch and Rashi and created this suburb according to
them. Or possibly it was the reverse; he looked at the
suburb and its surroundings, and in accordance with them
wrote the Pentateuch and Rashi. And maybe they have
been mingled together thus from the very beginning, so that
neither one of them precedes the other.
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AITERG ROWTH
XIV
NATURAL HISTORY AND ART
Apart from all this, Reb Meir's valley also offered us

suitable material for the study of Natural History, the
various kinds of flora and fauna, and every variety of art.
In the July days, during Reb Meir's noon-tide slumbers,
my playmates and I went out to sit behind the house on
the slope of the valley, which always awaited our games
and chatter. Here we were at liberty to do whatever we
desired, each one according to the wish that God put into
him.
The liveliest of all, Micah and Gedi, dashed ahead among
the thickets and bushes on the upper slopes of the hill,
climbed religiously from one bush to the next and sought
for wild grapes. According to the legend which pupils handed
on to one another, those bushes ought to be producing wild
grapes every year, yet no climber so far had brought any
back. It seems that there must have been other climbers,
even quicker than they were, who got ahead of them. They
said that it was all the fault of the goats.
Wild Velvele immediately climbed up to the top of the
tree, sat hidden and aimed stones from his hiding place at
every peasant who passed with his cart along the track
above the valley. This was in memory of David and Goliath.
Nahum and Todi, two expert little huntsmen, who were
familiar with every kind of fly, grasshopper, cricket, hornet,
gnat and butterfly, would produce their tools, needles of
1 16
A FTERG ROWTH
various types, and tubes and stings and awls and pincers
and all other kinds of very very fine thin weapons of destruc
tion ; and they would set to work at once, conducting their
"experiments" on the tiny unfortunate creatures which fell
into their hands. Within a few moments a little coach of
great beauty, made of folded paper, would start out har
nessed to a pair of crickets, with a whole band of flies and
wasps and butterflies sitting in respectable pairs inside or
dancing all round it in little groups outside. The insects
had every kind of color and appearance; they were gold,
blue, red, and spotted. Some were fixed to their seats or to
one another by fine sharp thorns thrust through their insides
and backs, all of them with quivering bodies and thinnest
of legs, praying in awe as they fluttered between life and
death, their buzzing cleaving the very heavens. But Nahum
and Todi, our two natural historians, were not at all per
turbed; with philosophic calm they went on devoting them
selves to what they were doing.
Hershele, a pot-bellied boy who was as round as a barrel,
sat amid the tall grasses and secretly set a certain butterfly,
known as "Dead Man's Skull," on a tiny copper coin. He
hoped and fully believed that if he came early next day he
would find two coins under it. Netka the thief had whis
pered this secret to him at a price of two buttons and a
slice of apple, and immediately he received his pay, Netka
had cleared off behind the ruin to catch Spanish flies.
One group of pupils was busy picking and stringing
"pearls" among the grass. Those were fine rounded flattish
1 17
A FTERG ROWTH
grains, like tiniest dried figs. Yet another group was busy
planting and weeding or building bridges and sailing ships
across "Miriam's Well," which was a stream down below
in the valley.
At first I also took part in the business of one or another
of these groups, but in a little while, and without knowing
how it happened, I would be outside. Without any atten
tion being paid to me, like a weak link in a chain, I would
fall out from among the players and nobody would notice
my absence. I would lie like some lost, forgotten utensil in
the grass, the blossoms and leaves hiding me, nobody seeing
or knowing where I was. And that was just what I wanted.
I needed neither them nor their noise. Seeing but unseen,
I would lie there alone, concealed in the bosom of the
world, left entirely to myself and my dreams, gazing, listen
ing and remaining silent.
Here comes a crawling ant climbing up a grass stem,
falling and climbing all over again. This tiny creature was
wandering through a shady thicket that had no way out.
And here was the Horse of Moses our Master (the lady
bird: the Palestine children call them Cows of Moses our
Master). It stuck to the back of my hand like a half-pea,
round, red with black spots, hard, smooth and gleaming,
as though i t were wearing a furbished cuirass. By its
appearance it ought to be fixed as part of a signet ring.
Suddenly the cuirass splits in the middle, thin flanks gleam,
and the mite is gone ! The red fellow has flown off! His
God be with him and let him fly away in peace. I shall
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A FT E RG ROWTH
do him nought. He is a fellow creature, fashioned by the

Holy and Bl est One, just as I am. And maybe, who can
say, he is now going wherever he has to go, about the
business of the All-Presen t God. The Holy and Blest One
does His business through everything, even by means of
the frogs and gnats ; except the spider, which is ostracized
by Heaven and the creatures of earth, because it brought
fire into the Temple.
As for the grass and plants, each of them also has one
angel appointed over it in heaven, who smites it and orders
it to grow. And that is why they sometimes awaken from
their sleep in tremendous haste, and fear and trembling
possess them as they urge one another in whispers, saying :
"Grow, grow ; the angel beats us and says 'grow.' " I wish
I knew how he beats them. Does he do it with his middle
finger or with a tiny strap ?
Hush ! in my very ear, and maybe within it, sounds a
secret note - the sound of a still small voice, stiller than
still, no more than a thread. A gnat is singing ! The happy
voices of my classmates nearby suddenly come to me as
from a vast distance, as though they came through a thick
wall or through pillows and cushions, swallowed and reduced
to nought in the sound of the sun that creacks through the
heavens and rules over the world in its might. But the tiny
note still sounds, sounds in my ear, within my soul. Why
do you vibrate over me, note, and what do you wish to
tell me? Stretch your strings, gnat, stretch them well ;
strike a note deeper, deeper. That suits me; that is pleasant
1 19
AFTERGROWTH
and sweet . .Now I float and melt into the tiny pure
•
cloud in the radiant sky. Peace be with you, playmates !

Peace be with you, mother and sisters ! Peace yea to far
and near ! I depart from you now by a long, long road . . .
I go to Feigele . • •
XV
IN THE VILLAGE WH E R E I WAS B O R N
The humming and buzzing go on; my eyes close, close

by themselves, and I am in the village where I was born .
. . . A bright clear morning. Sun and a shining heaven.
Earthen huts with thatched roofs gleam among the green
grass and the dewy trees. Each house has its garden, its
court-yard and its back-garden. Pots and earthen-ware
jars, bent like hats, hang on pegs and fence palings and
tree branches. Cherry trees and sun-flowers peep out beyond
the fences and palings. Each fence, each paling has its cool
shadow beside it. The levers of the wells creak up and
down, and the buckets drip lively pure drops of silver and
crystal. The housewife can be heard and the servant girl.
Horses neigh, pigs grunt, cattle low and flocks bleat; a
pleasant medley. The smell of manure and of milk, both
rise aloft. The roofs send up incense to the skies from their
chimneys, in the form of pillars of smoke. In the distance,
on the height, is a windmill with outstretched wings. And
there beyond the windmill, at the far end of the world, are
1 20
A FTERGROWTH
long stretches of field rising and falling, paths, tracks, forest,

pure white, curling mists.
At the end of the village rises a small green hill. On top
of it is a house and courtyard and at the bottom is a house
and courtyard ; gate facing gate. A yellow trail splits the
green stuff of the hill into two and stretches from one gate
to the other. Hens and their tender chicks go out to their
morning pecking in families. Swallows dart through the air
like arrows. Twitter, chirrup, gurgle and tweet-tweet ; the
happy noise of early morning. At the open window of the
lower house there suddenly appears a thin, pale little boy
who looks about five years old, wearing a white shirt. It is
I. With only my shirt on, I stand on the windowsill, my
eyes half closed against the flood of light, and the happiness
of early morning in my face and bones. My head is raised
aloft to the top of the hill, my eyes rest thirstily on the
open window over there. It is for her that my eyes search,
for my only companion and "bride," for Feigele.
In a moment she, Feigele, appears at the window above.
Warm, sweet and radiant, she stands there in her white
shift and gold curls, laughing and bright, all of her fresh
as the morning, all of her radiance and charm.
"Feigele !" I call up to her, stretching out my hands as
though I am prepared to fly, and a wave of something too
sweet to bear fills my heart.
"Shmulik !" she twitters from above and holds out her
tiny hands towards me . • •
1 21
AFTERGROWTH
The scene vanishes. The humming and buzzing continue.

And again I see :
• .The village after rain. The clouds are scattered, the
.
sun shines. Some great blessing has come down on the

world; a new, polished light shines thereon. The world is
pure. Everything has received a fresh face, from the blue
of the sky to the green of the garden and the field. The
mighty tree, with its broad top and heavy boughs, stands
in the middle of the village, fresh and more magnificent
than ever. The soil has drunk its fill and left some water
over; it tells its overflowing joy to all and sundry, to near
and far, in the happy song of trickling, running water and
the quivering of gleaming rills.
Roofs and trees drip with gold; buds and blossoms wear
necklaces of pearls and weep with joy. On the trail of the
hill, in the damp sand, lies a strip of glass, glittering and
glittering away as though it had suddenly become great
and mighty. Lord God ! How many suns ! How many
heavens ! Each dribble of water has its sun within it; every
pool and puddle its own heaven for backing. Fragments of
worlds upside down and sections of new skies under the
water. They are infinite in number, veritably three hundred
and ten worlds, as the number which is kept for every
righteous man ! Birds amid the branches and little
chicks in the grass go crazy with joy, open their throats,
spread out their wings, open their beaks and sing at the
top of their voices . . . Song and praise on high, melody
1 22
A FT E RG ROWTH
and harmony below. Suddenly two children, Feigele and I,

barefoot, our shirts puffed up by the breeze, start out arm
in arm from behind the house. They walk together, upright,
keeping time, throat outstretched, heads back, mouths open,
also singing at the top of their voices - yet without word
or tune - just yelling at the top of their voices in company
with all the creatures in the tree-tops of the forest; just
singing away, Ia Ia, Ia !ala, and again Ia Ia Ia !ala ! One
great joy, divine joy, possessed them all, rivulets of water
and birds and trees and grasses and splinters of glass and
the two children, and swept them away in the multi tude of
its waves. One single gladness, the gladness of the whole
world, was overhead, and they all cried out for the same
reason, song and praise to Him who lives for ever . . .
And the humming still goes on and once again I see:
. . . Late afternoon. She and I are alone in the village
common. The sun is going down behind one of the hills,
and the whole common with its buds and blossoms is sud
denly bathed in the reddish light and gold of the sunset.
Leaves and grass are transparent and translucent ; the white
geese feeding have a faint gold tinge, gilded silver ! The
flanks of the solitary trees drip blood; their shadows blur
and come ever closer. There is a great silence all around,
a sweet awe and mystic grief. The wings of the butterflies
have grown weak; they slowly flutter over the plants. You
can hear the grinding teeth of cows and colts scattered over
the common, silently, thoughtfully chewing. Feigele in her
1 23
AFTE RGROWTH
white dress darts like a bird from plant to plant, picking

flowers; I follow her. How many she has picked to-day;
she has a whole sheaf in her arms ! Suddenly she starts
back. She has just seen a dead snake in the grass. "Don't
be afraid !" I calmed her out of my experience. "He is
dead, just look !" And I lift the snake in my hands. I have
no fear of snakes. They are to be found in our garden and
they do not impress me. "Drop it, drop i t!" she cries out
startled, and steps back. "Throw it away !" A spirit of
lighthearted bravado possesses me. I shake the snake at
her as though it were a whip. She runs away yelling in
fright and I, cruel fellow that I am, pursue her. While
running the flowers drop from her hands one by one and
scatter - blue, yellow and white. The great radiance of the
sunset filters through her thin dress and earlobes; I chase
her, snake in hand.
Suddenly - I do not know how it happens - Feigele
vanishes from my side. She has hidden herself. But my
spirit of bravado has not ceased ; I continue running full
tilt, not after Feigele, but towards the setting sun. Look
how close it is. Just beyond that hill. I shall pursue and
I shall overtake it. Let me get over there and see. A hand
seems to take hold of me and bear me onward; there I am
on top of the hill. I raise my eyes and am turned to stone.
Fire ! fire ! all the corners of earth and heaven are being
consumed by fire. Streams of fire and mountains of fire,
palaces of fire and forests of fire. Fire catches fire in the
1 24
A FTE RG ROWTH
fire; and fire consumes fire. Red fire, white fire and green
fire. Horsemen of fire and horses of fire are flying about,
and burning lions chase in pursuit of them. And behold
the dread and glorious God descending in fire . . .
My heart perished in dread of God. I hide my face and
flee . . .
The humming continues louder than ever; once again I
see:
. . . Noon in the dry heat of summer. The light is too
strong to bear. Day cannot contain its brightness. Alone
I sit in the middle of the trail that is covered with burning
sand; my eyes turn to the forest. I can see one shoulder,
the sharp edge of one angle pointing towards the village;
but I cannot see all of it. I sit facing it and wait. Even
as yesterday and the day before it whispers to me its dark
riddle from afar, but I am small and ignorant and cannot
understand. There is nobody round about. There is dry
heat and silence, the smell of dry dust. The stones of the
field scorch in the sun ; the fences bake like an oven. Trees
and bushes are too weary to weave the threads of their
shadows beneath them.
There is no help, nothing can be done. Fields and drouth
smitten plots pant with the last of their moisture and seem
to smoke and quiver. Stray dogs with questioning eyes, and
tails between their legs, drag past like shadows, their bellies
swollen, their tongues hanging out. Shade, Shade ! Where
is there a little shade ! They come to one of the paths,
1 25
A FTERG ROWTH
stop a moment, raise a bloodshot eye to the hills and the

forest, and return hopeless. Dry heat and silence.
Suddenly the forest facing me trembles a little and jumps.
Out of its thick gloom suddenly leap three fine young head
of cattle; a lovely heifer, all red, and two young bulls
raven black. One of them has a star on his forehead. As the
heifer comes out of the forest she stops.
The bulls never cease their running for a moment but
begin to dash round and round her in a circle. They run
lightly and beautifully. To begin with, nothing of them can
be seen but a stretch of black, glistening, throbbing skin,
rushing legs rushing in time, hardly touching the ground,
the graceful curve of a powerful neck held as though about
to bow; and light spurts of dust shooting up under their
hoofs, shining yellow for a moment then falling in the path.
The heifer stands quiet all the time, as though she were
choosing which was the better. But from second to second
the competitors grow more impatient and their ardor ever
stronger. Their muscles swell. Their nostrils broaden and
quiver and they breathe more and more quickly and snort
ingly. A sudden hunger possesses them. Their eyes fill with
blood; madness gleams from them. The dust under their
hoofs increases ; the necks are lowered deep towards the
ground. Something dreadful will happen, warns my heart.
At that very moment the one with the star suddenly
turns round, stands brow and horns outstretched towards
the other which is still dashing round, charges it with
1 26
A FT E RG ROWTH
murderous fury and strikes home ! A savage bellow, a fear

ful �itter mooing comes from the cloud of dust and the
ground round about becomes a very terror of God. My
heart jumps and my eyes turn black at the sight.
When the cloud clears, one of the bulls is dashing far
away across the plain, his blood dripping out on the ground
and gleaming, his bellowing splitting the heavens. The
second one with the star, together with the heifer, vanish
again with their light beautiful gallop into the forest. The
play is at an end. Nothing is left but the crazy tracks of
the hoofs on the sand of the arena at the end of the forest,
and a great wonder in the heart of a little child who sits
alone in the sand opposite, and wonders . . .
And the humming goes on without end, humming ever
more quietly. And I dream and again I see:
. . . A summer night full of the moon, a perfect blue, and
the stars. The whole village sleeps in a mysterious shim
mering light, and there is nobody awake except me. Alone
I stand outside the courtyard by the gate and find nothing
astonishing in the fact that I, the small child, should be
standing here alone at this hour. My eyes are on Feigele's
green hill which sleeps aloft in front of me. The moon is
fixed over the roof of Feigele's house, and the slope of the
hill is covered with a bright silver light and drops of dew.
Feigele's house, the only one on the hilltop, now looks in
its whiteness as though i t were made of molten silver. The
other houses of the village dream below, each in its own
1 27
AFTERG ROWTH
place, in the shadow of the trees, now and then glancing

from thence as the moon catches the glass of an attic
window or the blade of a sickle hanging in the open on a
wall or on a fence. Down in the village on my right rises,
gloomy in all its height and breadth, the lofty wall of the
forest flank, black without yet laced in silver within. There
is neither sound nor murmur. No cock crows, no dog barks,
no frog croaks; the world is silent and dreams while I am
in its midst, a dream within a dream.
Suddenly I see - I do not know whether with eyes of
flesh or spirit - how two short files, like two black neck
laces, of tiny dwarfs, no more than my little finger in
height, pass hand in hand before me across the hill, all
wearing black, with black hats; all pacing slowly and sol
emnly as though to a festival; shaking glistening dewdrops
from the grass as they walk, and singing very quietly.
They sing not with their mouths but as from within them
selves and their very souls, without a sound, as the stars
sing; nor was it with my ears that I heard their song, but
with my heart, my flesh and all my bones. And nevertheless
their song enters me in all its purity, clear and definite, not
the semiquaver of a note failing to reach me. My heart
melts with sweetness and my spirit hammers with secret
fear. "Mother !" I want to cry out aloud, but my throat
is blocked and my voice chokes.
I do not remember the end of the vision, but for many
days afterwards I was perfectly silent, and walked about
1 28
A FT E RG ROWTH
desolate for very wonder. This magical tune, fashioned of

moonlight, and sweet enough to make the soul pass away,
echoed deep within me; and nobody knew.
The humming grows more distant, dies away, and its
echo grows ever fainter; I can no longer hear i t. And sweet
it is as death in a kiss . . . Finished ! The humming has
ceased, the string has snapped. My flesh and blood eyes
return to me and I still lie alone in the grass behind Reb
Meir's house, lying yet with open eyes. From the lower
part of the valley the voices of my playing classmates reach
me once agam . • .
This way and that I turn, fearfully like a thief, and

when I see that there is no boy anywhere near, I secretively
take out of my pocket all the charms I possess : my colored
glass balls, four in number, green, yellow, blue and red; and
I hold them one by one in front of my eyes and gaze out
at the world. These bits of glass have the marvelous power
of spreading their light and color over all that my eyes
may see, and of leading me at my will into four wondrous
worlds that no man has imagined nor eye has viewed save
mine. Each of these worlds has its special light, light
wonderful, strange, emanating from some hid source and
passing through everything. How many are the good things,
0 God, which Thou has hidden away for those who fear
Thee . . . But do not let the charm be known to anybody.
Nay, far be it from Thee ! These worlds are for me alone,
for me alone.
1 29
A FTERGROWTH
AN ADDITIONAL CHAPTER1
When father is angry he calls me "the lad," stressing the

word "the" ; and whenever he talks to me a whole sea of
animosity seethes and ferments within his bowels. I clearly
see that he hates me to death. Why ? I do not know. I
suppose there must be something in my face, in my walk
and in all my being which makes him boil. I am a defective
instrument in his eyes, defective to the very foundation,
from the little lock sticking out under my hat to the slit
behind in my surtout, and from the faint pockmarks in my
face to the thin cigarette between my teeth. Even my
hidden thoughts, which he has never seen, are assumed by
him to be impure. They are as questionable in his eyes as
a brothel with its window shutters closed to the world.
Whenever father passes behind me, my back tingles . . .
I can feel his gaze upon me even from behind. A sort of
faint quiver then runs through my spinal cord and scatters
all over the skin of my body like thin chill pins and needles.
My blood curdles, my body becomes paralyzed and I can
not turn my head or move from my place.
And when father and I meet face to face we immediately
draw our weapons from their scabbards; those being the
eyes. And this meeting of the eyes is very dangerous !
1 This chapter, which was found among Bialik's posthumous papers, belongs to
Afurgrowth, but was written many years before the section actually published.
Since Bialik finally decided to begin this autobiographical story with the earliest
days of childhood, he put this and other chapters aside till he might come to them
in the course of the story.
1 30
A FT E RG ROWTH
For the present father is silent, and that is a bad sign.

Father's silence is cruelty and the bitter venom of serpents.
It is an eighth section of hell which he has established
specially for me. Rather a hundred deaths than father's
silence. He began to treat me to this fine quality of silence
when I became the lad. Before that, when I was just an
ordinary lad, he used to practise the quality of speech on
me; and when he met me in the house he would stop me
with a half shoulder, turn his face towards my mother and
say something like this in a queer whine:
"Pessy ! (which was my mother's name) Maybe you would
ask, let us say, for instance, how long will a lad go idling ?"
And here I, too, would turn half a shoulder towards
mother, and go on in precisely the same tone :
"Maybe father, as he might say, would give some advice,
as you might say, what, for instance, should be done, by a
lad ?"
"Hee, hee, hee," father would laugh on a queer cracked
note and turn smoldering eyes on me. "He could go and
become a teacher . . . "
But he specially added a diminutive and called i t "teacher
ling." Into this word he emptied all the venom of his lips
and all the contempt and gladness at another's sorrow
which was in his eyes, thrusting them like a needle into my
very heart.
Sometimes father would add to his words a sharp seasoning
in the form of a box on the ear, and that again was a
different type of penalty, a relic of the one he had used
131
AFTERG ROWTH
when I still used to be a heder boy. Now father sentenced

and executed me by silence; and that, as said, was a very
bad sign.
I was already about seventeen years old, and the first
signs of beard and moustache were beginning to show; and
yet, let me whisper to you, there were times when I was
as full of transgressions as a pomegranate is of seeds, and
remorse would eat my flesh like worms. Then I would
yearn for a box on the ears, preferably, if possible, a sting
ing, magnificent one, suddenly appearing like lightning, and
descending round, sharp, smooth, searing and ringing. Such
a box on the ear given at the proper time was as good as a
hot bath to a dirty body. Father was a great artist in this
field, a mighty slapper ! He knew the secret of economy,
which is the foundation of all art. One might say that he
was a slapper endowed by the Holy Spirit, a slapper by the
grace of God. And such had been his custom in my child
hood; when he felt that I required a slap and was longing
for i t (in the life of a child there are such moments) he
began to grow silent at once. I would try to deliver myself
into his hands when he was angry, so that I might know
whether I had done wrong; and all my face would say:
"Slap me !" But he would remain silent. "Since you are
an evil rat and wish for it, therefore I shall not give it to
you. When shall I give it to you ? Offhand and at a time
when you will be a perfect saint in your own eyes." And
when he did slap he did not close the account or state
what it was for, he slapped and left a balance, slapped just
1 32
A FTERG ROWTH
on account, finding any excuse that would serve his pur

pose; and you were again left in doubt, neither debtor nor
creditor, so that your mind would never be at rest.
Now his regular custom towards me had changed and he
labored against me with other weapons : with his eyes.
When our eyes met one another now and again, it seemed
to me as though talons were thrust into one another's
hearts and we were both biting and bitten at the same
time. The biting was silent but undoubted, prolonged, ven
omous, ravenous with sharp animosity and hissing hatred,
like that of a vampire which hangs biting and sucking until
it has sucked the last drop of blood. I can feel his gaze
on me even from behind. A sort of fine shiver then passes
through the whole of my spine and scatters all over my
back like cold sharp needles. My blood curdles. I am
afraid to turn my head and move from my place. And so
I remain curdled in my inmost self until father goes away.
I forgot the essential thing; the match-makers gave me
no rest. Father, it seems, has already given me up in
despair or tries to look as if he has. For some days I have,
you might say, not noticed him at all. He looks at me as
though I were not there; that is all.
One morning, when he finished his prayers, mother began
to talk to him about me for some reason. He dismissed me
with a belittling motion of his hand and said : "The lad !
oh !" meaning, let him feed until he rots, as it says in the
Mishna; he spat quickly and decisively to the final prayer,
hurriedly rolled up his Tefillin, pulled down his sleeve, fled
133
A FTE RGROWTH
out of the door and vanished. Mother began wiping her

nose on her apron, which was a sign that she was about
to weep, and I sat, as was my habit at such times, on the
narrow couch, gazing at the ceiling with great attention, as
though I saw an angel there or was watching the Upper
Waters. Afterwards I fixed my eyes on the tip of my shoe
and while I was shaking my ankle, a sort of prolonged ssssss
made its own way out between my teeth. While that hap
pened I was thinking something like this : "And what did
they suppose ? That I was going to become a Rabbi ? Well,
well, well ! Or maybe they supposed that I would go and
help them in the shop and spend my time in front of the
empty boxes there. I wouldn't be a bit surprised !"
And once again there floated in the air before me, in
broken letters, the word "purpose." For the last two years
I had been dodging this cruel word and running away from
it; yet I came back to it again and again every day. I t
stood in front of m e and would give me n o rest, chilling
my blood and taking away the light of my life. It had been
flung from father's lips during one of his furies, and out of
it had been created an evil angel to afflict me. Once father
and I were seated at a hasty noon meal. We both sat as
usual eating in angry silence. I sat chewing, meanwhile
glancing at a book; father also sat chewing, silently sharp
ening his eyes on me and cutting out my innards without
a knife. Suddenly a hand was stretched out and the book
flew into the oven opposite.
134
A FT E RG ROWTH
"Father," I roared as though a snake had bitten me,

"what do you want?"
"I want you to be choked with that piece of bread you
have stolen from my table, you bastard of a convert. That
you should be a Jew is what I want, a human being like
everybody else. Go and look for something to do; look for
some aim in life !"
The last three words he pronounced with his whole body
shaking and his teeth gnashing; he seemed to me like an
armed robber with a sharp knife in his hand, its point
directed straight at my heart. To be sure I understood that
he was right, but in no way could I understand how to set
about this business of an aim in life, or where to begin
with it. Every day I took an oath : "To-morrow, God willing,
when the sun rises, I shall, God willing, set about it . . .
Of course I will begin . . . A man has to make himself as
strong as a lion . . . and a man must be hard as a cedar."
And next day when I wake up from my sleep and open
my eyes the clock facing me points with its fingers to a
quarter to ten, and my vow has already been broken. I
wrap myself up well in the sheet and submit my body will
ingly to the power of my morning day-dreams. Calmly,
calmly they come to me, one after the other, light and easy,
bright and gentle, and my soul floats rocking upon them
like a boat borne along on its own, without any sailors, on
tiny warm waves . . . The cat lies in a ball at my feet warm
ing itself, and the sun flicks my face with its fringes. The
1 35
A FT E RG ROWTH
noise of the morning comes up from the street, and from

the second room comes the song of the young servant girl
as she beats the pillows. The body becomes soft and easy,
the mind clear and the heart longing . . I light a thin
.
cigarette and through the smoke my eyes run over some

novel . . . Upon my soul I know no more pleasant time than
that. Everything is swallowed up in the bright sun and
catches in the rings of fine blue smoke; everything becomes
part of a world smaller and lighter than a feather, a world
which is all forgetfulness and rest, shining and fleeting
dream . . . and transfers me to a world where there is no "aim
in life". . . But all God's creatures grow like the plants
in a field and pass away like the morning clouds without
any beginning or ultimate "purpose" . . .
Yet it is enough for father to come in at such a moment
and the whole of my beautiful world is destroyed. Once I
lay on the couch in the morning, completely covered during
my half-sleep by the sheet, listening with closed eyes to
the song of our young servant girl. Her song seemed to me
to be sad and exceedingly sweet, sweet to the verge of
longing. Suddenly she stopped. "He" had entered the
house. I peeped through a tiny hole in the sheet and saw
him walking directly towards me, his hand pointing to the
mirror hanging above my bed. My heart died. I lay like
a stone under his outstretched hand, which covered me in
a bar, and on my own back, across my loins, I could feel
the strap of his shadow . . . The neck must feel the sharp
ness of the sword in just that way as the latter still hangs
1 36
A FT E RG ROWTH
in the air for a moment before falling . . . I had only one

wish - to melt into thin air. I wished to hide myself within
myself, like a chameleon in its sheath as long as he did not
notice me.
He took the account book of the shop from behind the
mirror, slammed the door to and fled . . . Blessed be He
who has released us. Our young servant returned to her
singing and I to my thoughts.
Why am I so afraid of my father ? I do not know. It is
a sort of weakness left since my childhood. Nevertheless
this is not bodily fear but something else the name of which
I do not know. I might say that it is shame or care for
fear of his eyes injuring me. It seems to me that in my
soul I have some tiny concealed spot, and when father just
glances at me, that spot burns and vanishes.
In any case it is hard for father and me to breathe the
air of the same house, hard almost to choking. And when
ever he flies out of the house I sense far more room around
me and within me, like a person who suddenly comes out
of an alley into a broad street . . .
137
T H E S H AMED T R UM PET
The Shamed Trumpet
This is a tale which I heard from a guest at a Passover

Seder celebration. He was a Jewish Reservist, aged about
forty, who had been summoned back to the army on account
of the War. We happened to meet on the .first night of Passover,
and I reproduce his words here without any literary decora
tions.
This, began the soldier, is the second time in my life
that I celebrate the Seder as a guest at a stranger's table.
The first time this happened to me, I was a little boy of
about nine, that is, it must have been about thirty-two
years ago. But that time my entire family kept the Passover
together with me in a stranger's house. My father and
mother were there, my brothers and sisters, and even our
servant Styopi.
You ask how it came abou t? Well, this was the way
of it.
My father came with his entire family to settle in a tiny
141
TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
village near a small Russian country-town a day, just one

day all told, after the residence of Jews in villages had
been prohibited. If he had only arrived just a day earlier,
then what did happen would never have happened. But
he was a day late, and so his fate was decided. Not, mind
you, that he infringed the laws for his own satisfaction or
just to annoy; he had to do it on account of a post he had
received in one of the neighbouring forests; and when you
have to make a living you don't pay attention to regulations
which may be infringed in passing nor to the trouble that
may follow. At first, to be sure, the police of the district
looked as though they were going to make a fuss; but the
truth was that they were highly satisfied. After all, one
Jew who lives in a place in spite of a prohibition is prefer
able to a dozen who live there in a respectable legal fashion,
seeing that the former is a fruitful tree while the latter
are barren. And sure enough, it was not long before the
two parties, namely father the lawbreaker and the police
men responsible for law and order, established what you
might call normal relations. He remained living in the
village with his household, and each of them received, in
accordance with his standing, his regular monthly due,
quite apart, of course, from occasional gifts like festival
presents and small loans which were not meant to be
returned, and quite independent of all kinds of offerings
and signs of esteem both for their festivals and on the
occasion of the birthdays of the stanouoy (chief of police)
or his wife or any of their children.
142
TH E SHAMED T R U M P ET
Such folk, you probably know, don't look down on any

gift. A brace of fattened swans, a flask of wine, a bottle of
vodka, five score eggs, a nice pointed cone of loaf sugar in
its blue wrapping, a pound of tea, a roll of tobacco-leaves,
a wallet of cream cheese, "Haman's Ears" (poppy-seed
cakes) - they had nothing against accepting anything

you liked or they liked. And how sweet and honest they
were ! The stanouoy, for instance, would never voice a
demand; he would only gently request. "Yosi," he would
say to father, putting his heavy hand on father's shoulder,
"please order some fire-wood to be sent along from your
forest; winter's on the way." Or else it might be, "Don't
forget, my dear, to send along a thousand tiles; my roof
needs repairing, you know."
Now the cross-eyed uriadnik (county sheriff) had a dif
ferent technique. If anything caught his cross eye, he
would praise it. "ltta," he would say to mother, his cross
eyes watching a fat chicken pecking away at the · muck
heap in our courtyard, "wherever did you find such a fine
hen ?" And rest assured that after praise of that kind the
fine hen would turn up trussed on the sack of fodder
in the blue cart of the uriadnik. What was more, he used
to choose Sabbaths and festivals for dropping in and paying
us a visit, particularly at mealtime. Scarcely would we be
seated at table when beyond the window suddenly appeared
as though from nowhere the bay horse and blue cart of the
uriadnik, with the uriadnik himself inside the cart. What
was to be done ? Well, the guest had to be treated politely
1 43
TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
and invited to join in. The Sabbath table-songs would be

deferred, the book father used to run his eye over between
one course and the next would be closed and set aside, and
the drunkard's breath would be polluting the table, with
his unpleasant and at times nasty talk which had to be
treated like fine wit and laughed at heartily, even though
the man was giving you gooseflesh and your fingers were
itching to take him by the scruff of his neck and sling him
out of the house.
Still, in course of time the family became used to him
and had no more fear of him. Now and then, when he had
finished off a full bottle of vodka and was thoroughly soused,
he would join in the tunes of the zemirot, the Sabbath table
songs, after his own fashion, of course, with twisted mouth
and loose tongue, winking meanwhile with his tipsy, greasy,
leering eyes at the mistress of the house and casually trying
to pinch our servant-girl Parasha, who was a bit fat and
had a pock-marked face. Our Hebrew teacher, who had
been brought from the town nearby, was the only one who
could not get used to him, just as he could not get used to
the dog that was chained in our courtyard. Both of them
remained equally foreign to him and thoroughly frightened
him, although father used to pay a special, extra poll-tax
in order to be able to keep him there.
Five years passed in the village in this way. During this
time father built himself a small house with the wood from
his forest, and for the house-warming invited all the peasants
of the village and prepared a special table for them. Behind
1 44
TH E SHAM E D T R U M P ET
the house there now sloped downwards a large kitchen

garden which mother had planted. In the byre were three
milch-cows, and two horses in the stables. In the court
yard chickens pecked, and geese and goslings quacked.
Ducks swam in the pond in front of the courtyard, while
a calf and a foal grazed in the neighbouring pound, all in
the best village style. There was no wealth ; it was a poorish
life; but it was calm and quiet.
Father spent the entire week in the forest, returning home
in his cart on Sabbath and festival eves to spend a day or
two with his wife and children. We children would be
standing waiting for him at the side of the forest road, our
hearts quivering with anticipation. No sooner would the
bells of his two horses be heard in the distance, coming from
the forest which ended not far from the village, than we
would dart like birds towards the cart, calling "Daddy !
Daddy !" And within a few moments we would be swarming
all over the wagon and embracing father. One would sit
on his knees, another hug him round the neck, a third start
rummaging in his pockets to see what gifts he might be
smuggling there for us. Even the driver, Styopi, an over
grown, broadshouldered lad who was also the forest watch
man, shared in the general pleasure. He would show his
strong white teeth in a highly satisfied grin, and to make
the children happy would touch up the horses with his
whip, so that they came dashing up to the house with a
fine flourish.
I forgot to mention that there was another Jew, Zelig by
145
TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
name, who had been living in the village for several years,
and had permission to do so. His house stood on a hill at
one end of the village. Ours was below. And these two
Jewish houses, standing slightly apart from the rest of the
village, different in height as were the shapes of their roofs
and their windows, looked like a tiny independent quarter.
It did not take long for a narrow strip to he trodden out
all the way up the hillside, a little path running through the
grass like the parting on a head of hair, and there the two
courtyards were, linked together by a permanent bond.
There was one Hebrew teacher for the children of both
families, and both lived the same way. Each housewife
knew what was cooking in the other's pots. They were
always sending one another samples of their skill in cooking
and in baking. They were always borrowing pots and
pans, baker's shovels or sieves from one another. They
would ask one another's advice about bundles of vegetables,
clutches of eggs, or a pair of chickens. During the winter
nights or the long summer days either might drop in to
the other's house or veranda for a chat, to shell peas, to
make preserves, or else to pluck poultry or knit stockings
in company.
They had not been neighbors long before the bond
between the two families was strengthened. The neighbors
became in-laws. Father had lots of male and female children.
His oldest son Samuel had already turned twenty, and was
"privileged" as far as army service was concerned; that is
he was exempt. Zelig on the other hand had lots of female
146
and male children, and his oldest daughter, Zelda, was

already ripe for marriage. So they went and wrote the
Engagement Contract and arranged a day for the wedding.
But the bridegroom's exemption did not help him ; he had
to go off and join the army. And to the great grief of both
households the wedding had to be deferred for time untold,
that is, until the groom would complete his term of military
service.
One thing grieved father greatly. There was no perm
anent minyan of ten in the village for praying. And Sab
bath or festivals without communal prayer, father used
to say, had only half the flavor. The adults available for
minyan in our village did not muster more than seven all
told. Four carne from our house : father, my two big brothers
and the Hebrew teacher. Zelig's family provided three.
But from the time my brother was conscripted there were
only six left. So father was particularly happy when the
Holy and Blest One provided him with Sabbath guests.
These might be timber merchants visiting the forest, or
fellow-officials of the forest, or maybe Jews who plied their
trades from village to village, such as hawkers, glaziers or
the like. On such occasions father would send a message
early Friday evening to Pessah ltzi the dairyman, a simple
childless Jew who lived alone with his childless wife and
milking cows on his lonely farm in one of the neighboring
valleys, just a Sabbath day's journey from the village.
Pessah Itzi would turn up early on Sabbath morning at
our house, having walked through gardens and enclosures,
147
THE SHAMED TRUMPET
with a white prayer-shawl under his Sabbath mantle, in

order to make up one of the requisite ten. Not that he was
so particular about carrying the prayer-shawl ; after all,
most village Jews aren't too particular about the niceties
of the positive injunctions; but since he was fulfilling the
obligation of praying among the congregation of a Sab
bath, it was only fitting to do it properly.
When there was no alternative, one of the younger
boys, holding a printed Pentateuch in his hands, would be
included to m ake up the required number. But when
the full quorums grew more frequent, father brought
home from the neighboring town a modest little Scroll
of :the Torah concealed, as was proper, behind a curtain
in a small Ark; and he set aside a special corner for i t
i n our schoolroom. \Ye were small a t the time, and its
gentle sanctity had a mysteriously awe-inspiring effect
on us. Our teacher would chant the Torah according to
the rules in our little congregation of villagers, all of them
swathed in their prayer-shawls and armed for the fray with
Pentateuchs and spectacles. And the Sabbath morn within
the house would be endowed with a peculiar, holy overtone,
which was felt, it seems to me, even by the copper vessels
gleaming at us from above the chest of drawers, whose very
brightness was like a gentle smile of Sabbath delight.
In the next room, on the other side of the wall, my mother
would be standing at the same time in her clean Sabbath
dress and her silk kerchief, holding her paunchy prayer
book. Her lips would be moving silently and her eyes filled
1 48
TH E SHAMED TRUM P ET
with tears of joy, which meant more or less : "Yes, we may

be isolated in a village among the gentiles, but God is filled
with lovingkindness, He is a gracious and merciful God ;
He will neither abandon nor depart from His people. And
in His mercy He has given us the Sabbath and has brought
His holy and pure Torah to my home."
For such a Sabbath, when a full minyan permitted the
reading of the Torah from the Scroll, mother would prepare
an extra pie in advance. When the prayers were over she
would honor all the members of the minyan with vodka
together with honeycake, for the Hallowing Prayer, and
all the other Sabbath dainties. The good folk would sit
drinking in little sips after their fashion, and would wish
father and mother well, saying: "Long life to you, Yosi,
may it be His will that Israel may experience salvations
and comforts; and long life to you, Etta; may it be His will
that your son will soon return to you." And mother would
sigh and reply, "Amen, so may His will be, Lord of the
Universe."
And sometimes there would be a little party for a few
friends at the house. On wintry Saturday nights when there
might be a calf to slaughter, or a couple of geese, for that
matter, whose fat would afterwards be rendered, the slaught
erer of the neighboring small town would visit us. He was
a shrewd fellow always cleanly and neatly dressed, who
wore a broad girdle and had a pleasant turn of speech. He
would arrive with his overcoat and his slaughterer's knives
in their sheath, and would bring us a whiff of the J ewishness
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TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
of a small town, and a little exaltation of spirit. For such

an occasion all the members of the minyan would turn up
promptly after the Habdalah Service, as soon as they had
set the proper dividing line between the Holy Sabbath and
the secular weekdays; Zelig the in-law with his wife and
children, Pessah ltzi the dairyman with his childless wife,
and two or three forest officials who had been invited by
father on the Sabbath Eve. Round the boiling samovar
they would sit, drink hot tea, and perspire. Father and
Zelig would play at "Goats and Wolf," that famous game
of the Beth Hamidrash, and the teacher would stand watch
ing them, swaying as though he were studying the Talmud,
and giving advice to both sides at once. The forest clerks,
who were mostly cheerful jokers, kept the womenfolk
amused. Pessah I tzi the dairyman never once took his pipe
with the machorka (strong Russian tobacco) from his lips,
and filled the house with smoke and stink; while my older
brother, who knew how to fiddle, would stand up and play
a Hassidic or W allachian dance tune on his violin.
No sooner had the slaughterer arrived than it would be,
''Blest be the newcomer !" and "A good week !" Room would
be made for him at the head of the table. After quickly
drinking off two or three glasses of hot tea in order to warm
himself up, he would tuck up the ends of his long coat, roll
up his sleeves and go off with gleaming knife "like a mur
derer" to the "slaughter house," meaning the byre, to do
his duty towards the calf or couple of trussed geese he
would find there. The dogs of the courtyard would hear
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TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
the protest of the trussed geese or the mooing of the tied

calf, and would throng to the byre, yelping and barking
impatiently as they waited for their share, the offal, to be
flung out to them. The slaughtering and the examination
over, the slaughterer would return to the house and take his
place at the head of the table, looking just as he did before,
the Complete Slaughterer and Examiner, with broad girdle
and pleasant turn of speech. "Goats and Wolf" would be
thrust aside and all would turn their faces to him. Reb
Gedi, the slaughterer, would sit in his clean silk skullcap,
with the broad white brow gleaming underneath, and would
tell his tales. There might be a tale of Elijah the Prophet,
may he be remembered for good; a tale of the Ba'al Shem
Tov of blessed memory; or again a tale of the "Grandsire"
of Shpola, may his merits shield us; and yet another tale
of one of the Thirty-six Secret Saints . . .
Everybody would be dead still, their ears opened wide
as millhoppers, as they say in Hebrew. The teacher would
sit with closed eyes, his straggling beard in his hand, moaning
every moment and sighing in heartfelt fear of Heaven.
Pessah I tzi would be swathed in the cloud of smoke from
his-pipe, the peak of his hat tilted aloft. The clerks of the
forest, froth and bubles that they were, would suddenly
become tensely serious, while one of the meek and modest
women would hurriedly thrust a straggling and rebellious
lock of hair back under her kerchief. The very samovar
would lower its voice and hum in a whisper. Hushshsh!
For the words of the slaughterer were pleasant, unhurried
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TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
and properly stressed, flowing gently, dripping sweet drops

which entered the heart like an unguent of precious balsam.
The world, it would therefore seem, was not so uncontrolled
as one might suppose; the Guardian of Israel, it follows,
neither slumbers nor sleeps . . .
Afterwards would come the final Sabbath feast "to speed
the Queen." It would begin with liquor, good vodka, and
fruit juice accompanying lumps of fat, chicken crops and
the chopped livers of the slaughtered geese. The middle
section would be liquor again with boiling, steaming, sour
cabbage soup and stuffed pancakes. And the endpiece
would be liquor once more with vocal zemirot, accompanied
by my brother's violin, and fervent dances until the rise
of the morning star. Pessah Itzi the dairyman, so silent
all the year round, would suddenly come out of his shell
on such a night and reach a most high degree of fervor.
He would go dancing and singing till he was all but crazy,
till the very soul left him. While he danced he would fling
off his kapote, his face would flame like a torch, his eyes
closed, his hands held. out in merciful love, and he would
dance roaring, "0 Israel, Israel holy nation, I am an atone
ment, atonement even for your smallest, smallest finger
nail !" Or else it might be, "0 Israel, sons of men of mercy,
let me but be burnt, be burnt, and hallow so the Name.
Have pity on me, bind me, and set me on the pyre. 0, 0 my
heart is consumed for love of Israel !" . . . And he would
dance and roar and weep like that until at last he would
drop down on the couch like a man dead. And next day
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T H E SHAMED T R U M P ET
early in the morning, when he sobered up, he would steal

away to his house, return to his cows and his milking and
his pipe, and again be silent for a long, long time.
Usually the festivals passed with calm and gentle hap
piness joined with an undercurrent of melancholy. The
separation from the corporate Jewish body, a separation
against our will, is very strongly felt by village Jews at such
times, and the heart is full of yearning. Half of the festival
is ours and half the Lord's. Well, our half was properly
fulfilled, what with eating, drinking, sleeping, suspension
of work ; but the Lord's half was incomplete and unsatis
factory. There was no House of Study, there was no Jewish
community, there was nothing. Sometimes there would not
even be a minyan, because the teacher would return home
at such times, and there would be no guest either; for will
even the poorest of the poor leave his home at the festival
season ? And even if with difficulty a minyan was scraped
together, what, for our many sins, was the pleasure in
making the circuits of the synagogue-room on the Rejoicing
of the Torah with just a single Scroll of the Torah instead
of a dozen or so ? And who can enjoy it when just one
solitary lulab is shaken at the Tabernacles Feast instead of
twenty all over the synagogue ? Nor were there many visits
to be made on festivals; and precious little satisfaction could
be derived from them. The households of Zelig the in-law
and of Pessah ltzi the milkman would call on us; the house
holds of Pessah ltzi and father would visit Zelig the in-law;
the households of father and Zelig the in-law would pay
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THE SHAMED TRUMPET
their respects to Pessah I tzi ; and the business was at an

end. During the visits each would sit in his neighbor's
house, cracking hazelnuts and sunflower seeds, telling stale
news, drumming the table with his fingers and yawning
until his temples ached.
When my oldest brother went off to serve in the army
there was added to my mother's secret cup of grief a fresh
drop, the flavor of which could be most clearly felt on Sab
baths and festivals. The group at home grew smaller. My
brother's violin hung on the wall dumb and lonely all day
and all night long. And the vacant place of my oldest
brother, who was missing among the children round the
table, always seemed to my mother like a gap where a
middle tooth ought to be, or the place of an amputated
finger. Whenever she shared out the portions of food among
those at table, her sad eyes would turn to that vacant place
and she would restrain her sighs in order not to profane
Sabbath or festival.
With the peasants of the village father lived on peaceful
and straightforward terms. From the time he had come
to cut timber in the forest the village had an additional
source of livelihood. Some of the peasants worked in the
forest, others carted firewood and building timber for sale
in the small town nearby, while others carted timber as far
as the nearest railway station. Building timber was pro
vided for the village peasants at cheap rates to be paid off
by instalments. Little by little decent, upright buildings
began to take the place of the former crooked, tumbledown
1 54
mud hovels. New houses, granaries, byres, and sheepfolds

appeared. Two or three thatched roofs were replaced by
tiles, and many a gap in a fence was repaired. To be sure,
there were cases where the wood reached one of the peasants
by way of a little private hauling. However, the peasants
cannot be otherwise in a village that lies next door to a
forest. But as a rule father did not have the law of any
such hauler, and mostly he even pretended not to notice.
You were living among them, all said and done, and with
out permission, and peace and quiet are good things for
Jews. And so the peasants of the village held him in very
high esteem, and sometimes used to bring their little dis
putes or quarrels for settlement. Father knew how to talk
to them in their own tongue and after their own style. He
would calm one down, scold another and rebuke a third,
and all parties would go away satisfied. At Purim our house
hold would even exchange gifts with the better families
among them. We would send them Haman's Ears or rolls,
and they would send back a live chicken, eggs, or a bag of
poppy-seed. One of them, Vassili by name, a shrewd, intel
ligent peasant and one of father's old friends, went so far
as to send his little boy to our teacher's school in order to
learn how to write Russian with the rest of us. There was
no school among the forty houses of the peasants, just as
there was neither church nor priest to be found there. And
so it came about that Petka, our little Judaizer, knew by
heart a good many sections of the prayers, half the Kiddush
and most of the tales of the Pentateuch, all gathered from
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THE SHAMED TRUMPET
his Jewish companions or from what he picked up uncon

sciously. What was more, he used to write Russian in a
lopsided way, in Hebrew characters which he chose to
write against all the rules from left to right.
On New Year's Eve the lads of the village would come
and sing their songs outside our windows, and our old nurse
Yevdocha would hand them out white Sabbath loaves,
pancakes stuffed with peas, and small coins. In the spring
my oldest brother Samuel would go out to the little coppice
nearby and fix up a swing from one tree to the next. There
all the children of the village would swing together, Jew
and gentile alike. And in winter he would prepare sleds
for them, and down the children would slide from the top
of Zelig's hill to the bottom. In the summer evenings the
youngsters of the village, boys and girls alike, would gather
round our house. Brother Samuel would stand at the
window with his violin and play inside the house, and they
would go off dancing outside.
Incidentally, that old Yevdocha of ours brought up three
of the children in the house and loved them and all father's
household with her whole heart. She looked after the
children properly, giving them their food and drink, putting
them to sleep and waking them up, urging them like any
J ewess to wear their tallith katan (ritual fringes), to wear
their hats and to repeat the Waking Prayer, to learn Torah
and the fear of Heaven. She kept them far away from any
danger of mixing meat and milk utensils. And when one
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TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
of them became sick, she would bring a glass of Holy Water

in secret, and sprinkle it over him as medicine.
Everything, you might suppose, was in order. A little
Jewish family dwelt in a little village, and what harm was
there in i t ? But along came Satan and interfered, and
within a moment everything was topsy-turvy.
II
The Satan in question turned up during our sixth year

in the village. In the District Governmental city there were
a number of changes. One noble went down, another came
up in his place; and throughout the District administrative
practice suddenly became far more severe. There were
repeated and summary evil decrees, and expulsions were
frequent. The unhappy rumors which reached us every day
from the surrounding villages brought fear and anxiety to
the houses of the isolated Jews settled outside the towns.
Living hung by a thread; envy and jealousy appeared.
Everybody trembled for his own crust of bread, and sus
pected everybody else. Father would suddenly turn up
from the forest, for reasons beyond his control, with anger
on his face, would whisper for a long time with mother or
his in-law, and would then hurriedly depart for the chief
district town or the city where the Governor resided, in
order to ameliorate "the laws."
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THE SHAMED TRUMPET
The mere thought of leaving the village was enough to

curdle one's blood. Our household had already taken root,
and, a short while before the application of the laws became
more rigorous, father had begun to build a tar-furnace in
which was invested most of his limited capital. But father's
intercessions in the proper quarters did not help very much,
it would seem, for he would return from these visits even
angrier and more hopeless than he had left. The officials
in the right quarters had once again become exceedingly
strict. The "tax" had naturally increased sevenfold, but
all the same there was no security. The uriadnik, indeed,
began to visit us even more frequently, as though he were
on the watch. But now he was careful to steal in, as it were,
by night, and his right eye, which seemed even more crossed
than formerly, had suddenly become distant and cold, one
might say almost maleficent. Its white part had grown
broader and did not seem to recognize us at all.
The peasants of the village also seemed to have changed
all of a sudden. They had a sort of impudence about them,
an impudence which they had formerly entirely lacked.
What was worse, never a night now passed without wood
being stolen from the forest. There were peasants to be
found who never even troubled to conceal the theft, know
ing that at present father would do well to keep quiet and
see and say nothing.
Matters went so far that one peasant, Sashka the Wolf,
a known "collector," was caught with his two sons one
night by the forest watchman, our servant Styopi, while they
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T H E SHAMED TRUMPET
were actually loading stolen timber on their cart. Well,

the thieves stood up to Styopi, gave him a murderous
beating, and carted the timber home. Father could hardly
pass over that affair in silence, naturally, and he took the
thieves to court. From that time father had a whole crop
of enemies in the village, all the families and relations of
the thieves.
One of the thief's relatives, who was the village notary
and a famous drunkard, began to write letters of informa
tion against father once a week to a definite formula: "Be it
known that the Jew so-and-so, son of so-and-so, who resides
with his family in our village in clear contravention of the
requirements of the law, corrupts the spirit of the com
munity by his actions and is injurious to the interests of
the State." And the thieving peasant would bear the letter
to the right quarters. The right quarters would urgently
summon father to appear before them ; and when he returned
home from such an interview he wore the face of death.
Once he returned from wherever he had had to be, and
of the pair of horses pulling his cart there was only one left.
The other one, which was the handsomer of the two, had
been left with the person in charge of the right quarters as
a ransom, and the remaining horse, which father had not
been able to match at such short notice, had returned home
alone with hanging head as though after a scolding. The
single shaft running from the middle of the front of the cart
stuck out sideways in a queer, lopsided fashion. Father's
face was flushed with shame, as if they had shaved off half
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TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
his beard and cut away half his kapote, while the driver
Styopi was all but weeping with grief, and when he unhar
nessed the solitary horse and led it into the stable began
cursing it, gnashed his teeth at it, hit it over the mouth
with his fist and let his rage run riot over it. What was
missing, to be sure, was made good again ; father exchanged
his solitary horse, which was an excellent one, for two poor
ones, which hurt and shamed Styopi. But quiet and security
did not return as a result.
As father did not know what was going to happen to him,
he withdrew entirely from the tar-making business, and
the building stopped halfway. Father used to say that the
courses of bricks, now they stood forsaken in the copse
among the trees for swine to root among and calves to
shelter in, used to come to him in dreams night by night
and weep.
Meanwhile things became even worse for the Jews in the
villages round about. At first, notice was given before they
were expelled; afterwards they were expelled without any
notice being given. No presents or bribery helped. House
holds which had been established by the toil of years were
uprooted within a few hours by a sudden order. Along the
sandy tracks leading from the villages to the small towns
you would see peasant carts crawling along any day carry
ing the goods and chattels of the expelled Jews. And next
day when they returned home the same peasants would
laugh and mock at the woe of the remaining Jews, who had
not yet been touched by the arm of the Law. Some black
1 60
dread fell on our household; our hearts foreboded the worst.

Once on a gentile festival when father was at home,
Styopi came to the house in great excitement and told how
the village peasants were sitting in the inn, most of them
drunk, and were preparing some paper to injure father.
The leaders in this were the thieving peasant, Sashka the
Wolf, and his kinsman the notary. What the pro-father
side had to say went for nothing against the bottles of
vodka which the other two were distributing among the
crowd. Rumor had it that the paper was an appeal of the
Community to the proper quarters to remove the "sheeny
Yosi" from the village; firstly because he dwelt there without
permission, secondly because he was injurious. There was
reason to suppose that some Jew was also behind the busi
ness. About that time a certain Jew had bought a stretch
of forest bordering on father's, and between the two there
was competition which at times led to disputes, as is only
normal.
Father went straight down to the inn without any delay.
In his presence, he reckoned, they would not dare to do
anything. And so i t was. Father's sudden appearance in
the inn confused the ringleaders. Two or three of them
slipped out of the house, while the rest could not meet
father's eye. One of them, startled, reached for the forsaken
paper as if to conceal it. But another, a Godfearing old
man who respected father, snatched it first, and after making
the sign of the cross over his heart, tore it to tiny pieces,
saying to father, "Thank God, Yosi, you have been saved
161
THE SHAMED TRUMPET
from trouble and we from a sin. Order vodka all around."

Father ordered vodka, and the mood of the folk changed
at once. Their sense of fair play was aroused, and father's
protagonists won. Some of the penitents underwent such
a change of heart after two or three glasses that they gave
evidence on oath about themselves to the effect that they
were curs, the sons of tykes and the sons' sons of hounds
for ten generations back. One of them, coming to beg
father's pardon, wept like a beaver, threw himself onto the
ground and cried out, "Tread on me, Yosi, tread on me."
Someone else beat himself over the heart and yelled that
he would protect Yosi to the last drop of his blood, and
would kill the Wolf, yes, absolutely kill him . . .
When father returned home he heard an uproar at the
inn. In their penitence, as it seems, the inciters and their
opponents had come to blows, and each peasant had another
by his hair, as usual.
Well, that time the paper was torn up, but the danger
had by no means vanished. The village folk had split into
two camps always against one another. There was no end
to quarrels and disputes, and letters of denunciation reached
the proper quarters from both sides. The stanouoy would
summon now this side and now that, stamp his foot at them
both and roar like a lion : "Siberia for you ! In iron chains !"
And one day during Hanukkah the stanouoy summoned
father. In the wintersled father placed two fine fat geese
as a Hanukkah gift for the stanouoy 's wife, and hastened off
at the summons. The lady of the house received the gift
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T H E S H A M E D T R U M P ET
very nicely, and the slanovoy at once led father to an inner

room and said:
"Beg for mercy, Yosi. I can't keep you dark any more.
You have enemies undermining you. And up at the District
Government they have become strict now according to the
letter of the law. Reprimands and warnings all the time.
Jews in the villages - God fvrbid, those must be uprooted.
They're strict now, to a hair."
"Is it possible ?" father asks. "All for a single day ?"
"All because of a single day . . ."
"But what am I to do?" father asks. "Maybe there's

still some way out."
The stanovoy spread out his hands and pursed his lips
as much as to say, "Do whatever you can. I can do nothing
more."
Father did not return home. He dashed off in his cart to
the district town and from there to the Government city.
He went dashing about from place to place, and when he
returned home a few days later he was broken down and
depressed and had next to nothing left. He had found
people to give him advice, to be sure, but all the advice had
been contradictory, and cancelled i tself out. There had
also been go-betweens who had made promises, but those
had been pretty vague too. One of these folk, who claimed
to have contacts in the proper places, did actually under
take, naturally for a good rate of pay, to speak to those
contacts of his in order to arrange that father should be
legalised, that is, to arrange that the date of his arrival in
1 63
THE SHAMED TRUMPET
the village should be put ahead till the day before the pro
hibition came into force. But many claimed that his
promises had no value and that he was a known swindler.
Nevertheless father paid him something in advance. Who
could say ? Maybe . . .
On the strength of that "maybe" the go-between milked
father for about three months, yet the business never got
beyond the "maybe" stage. Every week it turned out that
there were fresh contacts which needed satisfying, and
father's hands grew tired of counting out the necessary
satisfaction. The go-between at last announced that it was
impossible to cancel the order; it had already been drawn
up and signed, and was now lying in such and such a file.
What could be done, then ? Only one thing. It could be
delayed, which would cost so much and so much. Father
handed over so much and so much, and the delay was
brought about. But before very long he was again informed
that after all the delays the order had nonetheless shifted
again, and delay was once more called for. Father again
laid out as much as was required, and once more delayed
things. And so it happened again. The go-between remained
on the watch and delayed with both hands; but the paper
shifted. It crawled very slowly, wriggle by wriggle when
nobody was looking, like a thief, but it moved; and every
setback or retreat it might be forced to undergo cost father
much money and, even more, led to a loss of self-respect
and spiritual suffering that was unparallelled, wasting his
time in registries, delays in the form of telling him to come
1 64
again, bribery, imploring mercy, deceit, grovelling before

cruel, hard-hearted, drunken old officials and before dis
solute, impudent young upstarts of officials, secret meetings
in filthy inns, sickening negotiations. From such visits
father would return home every time with at least a quarter
of his life's blood drained out of him, and would have to
stay in bed for several days. When he rose from his bed
he would remain all alone in his room, walking backward
and forward for hours on end. And once in the twilight
hours I found him standing in the corner in front of the
little Holy Ark, silently weeping.
During those days he gained many white hairs on his
head, and fresh wrinkles and lines on his forehead and face.
Well, father saw that no salvation could be expected in
the natural course of events, so he awaited the mercies of
Heaven. Not that he ceased to try the virtues of interces
sion. After all, it is written in the Bible, "And I shall bless
thee in all thou shalt do." But he no longer believed in any
full salvation. He used to pray secretly that at least the
trouble might not come so speedily. And meanwhile, who
could know, maybe . . . Maybe some miracle would happen
in the meantime, say some sort of Proclamation, or a war,
or some similar blow to the State which would make them
forget all about the Jew Yosi who lives at Kozyovka.
Meanwhile the month of Nisan arrived. Passover began
to draw near, and suddenly we received a letter from my
oldest brother Samuel, who had become a trumpeter in the
army band, giving us a double i tem of news : first of all,
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TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
that on account of his exceptional proficiency he was being

given a stripe; and secondly that he had received a fort
night's leave from the authorities and would be home, with
his trumpet, on Passover Eve. Father read the letter aloud
to all the family, and great was our rejoicing. "Samuel's
coming, he's bringing his trumpet !" the children began
singing as they danced around.
Mother's face lighted up for a moment, and there were
tears in her eyes.
"What are you crying for, woman ?" said father, secretly
wiping away a couple of tears of his own. "It's a good sign.
Now you'll see that God will aid us . . . "
"May it be so, Lord of the Universe, if only for the sake
of the children," said mother, restraining her tears with all
her strength in order not to grieve father.
But alas, the prayers of father and mother were not
heard. Trouble came quickly enough, and when we least
expected i t, on Passover Eve.
III
The guest rested a while and then went on.
Now that was the Eve of a Passover which fell out on a
Sabbath, and all the details are still engraved on my memory.
From the early morning the sun never stopped shining.
The houses of the two in-laws, the one at the bottom of the
hill and the one on top, were gleaming and laughing at one
1 66
another in their dazzling fresh whiteness, and showing off

to one another, with purple girdles of fresh paint running
round their loins right underneath their windows in honor
of the festival. From behind the house came the songs of
the girls who had gone out very early to hoe the garden,
and who added an extra black, moist row every hour. Over
night after the rain Zelig's hill had become covered with a
fine thin green hair of soft silky shoots. The strip of path
running between the two houses was a sudden fresh gold
between the silks; the whole of the path from top to bottom
was strewn with soft golden sand. Nobody had seen who
had scattered the sand there, but we all knew that it was
the bride-to-be who had done it when no one was about,
very early in the morning, in honor of her bridegroom who
was to return that day. I felt that it would be quite a pity
to spoil it by treading on it before the person in whose
honor it had been prepared. Plentiful preparations were
going forward in both courtyards. Pots and pans were
being scoured, scraped, rubbed and rinsed; the sound could
be heard at a great distance. Benches and tables had
boiling water, heated with white-hot stones, poured over
them; and suffered under the lean and bony hands of the
shrivelled old Yevdocha, our Judaized servant, who was
more particular about kashrut than any Jewess; to say
nothing of the strong, coarse hands of the pock-marked
wench Parasha. The two mothers-in-law-tO-be toiled them
selves and made others toil with all their might, almost
with devotion, as though they were competing. For it was
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THE SHAMED TRUMPET
no trifle, after all. Samuel the bridegroom was to arnve

that day after two years of military service.
You must understand that from the moment Samuel's
letter arrived the two women were at odds. Mother claimed
Samuel for her guest. The parents, she argued, take preced
ence over parents-in-law-to-be. Whereas the mother of the
bride-to-be cried out aloud that it was impossible. "Samuel
is a bridegroom, and has there ever been a bridegroom who
didn't spend one Passover at the home of his in-laws ?"
Well, the menfolk took a hand and they compromised.
Samuel was to be present for the first of the Seder nights
at our home, and would celebrate the second Seder with his
bride's parents.
During the day a similar quarrel broke out between the
children of the two houses. All of them wanted to accom
pany Styopi in his cart to the nearest station and welcome
the guest who was due to arrive on the afternoon train.
Finally the honor was allotted to me, and I stood waiting
impatiently for the starting of the cart which for quite a
while stood ready at the gateway of the courtyard, but
which never even budged. The delay was caused by Styopi
who was still working at the carpenter's bench in the court
yard, hacking away with his axe at white sticks, making
new Passover handles for shovels and tongs. With all my
might I wanted to help Styopi and bring the business to a
quick end. But mother dragged me off to wash my head
and put on clean linen. She was afraid I might be held up
168
along the road, and as a result begin the festival with an

unwashed body.
In order to save time I submitted my head this once to
the tub of boiling water and the broken-toothed comb, and
my body to the starched, ironed shirt whose white chill
made me shiver slightly. I used the opportunity to entreat
mother to dress me at once in all the rest of my new clothes,
cap, coat, breeches, and most of all my bright new polished
shoes, not for my own sake, of course, but in honor of our
guest. I was anxious to have Samuel see me in all my glory.
But mother dismissed my pleas with the decisive argument
that the clothes would become dirty on the way, and it
would be better for them and for me to put them on after
wards, on my return. I had to rest satisfied perforce with
what I could get, so I proudly marched out of the house half
renovated and half festive, the starched shirt rubbing and
bumping against me, and feeling half the delight of the
festival already penetrating my flesh down to my very
bones.
In the hall I found my sister, sitting on a stool, pounding
matza in a mortar with a wooden pestle double her own size,
while my other sister, who was hardly more than a baby,
was shaking the pounded matza into a white sheet through
a fine sieve which had all the charm of Passover about it.
On a round wickerwork mat which served as the salting
board, lay the drawn chickens with their blue crops and
clusters of tiny, immature eggs, and the cleft swan from
169
THE SHAMED TRUMPET
which oozed reddish juice. My second brother was scraping

horse-radish on a scraper, making funny faces and sneezing.
At the entrance to the kitchen stood Parasha, dressed
clean and neat, in apron and white kerchief like a bride in
her attire, all of her kosher for the Passover you might say,
her pockmarked face shining. With a chipped knife she
was scraping the scales from a fat and quivering fish which
was being dressed for the copper cauldron nearby. From
within the kitchen came the pleasant sound of spices being
ground and of the fire burning up in the freshly stoked
oven ; while the new pots and pans shone white and fresh.
Father was preparing haroset. Outside at a pit in the court
yard mother was dipping a long succession of polished spoons
and forks. Wooden utensils, benches and shelves, barrel
and white pail, already stood scoured and scrubbed, each
in i ts place and all at their duties. From a second pit in
the courtyard still flickered the tiny flame of the burnt
leaven, the faint smoke of which rose trembling in the air.
Passover Eve already could be heard and smelt everywhere.
But Passover itself was still locked up in the special room
set aside for it within; and mother would not let us enter.
There he reclined concealed, the king at the feast, behind
a curtain, in a wealth of white cushions and gleaming, flash
ing glassware; and there he conversed in whisper with
Elij ah the Prophet. Only when mother opened the door
for a moment for one purpose or another, would he wink at
us children with a friendly eye, as much as to say, "It's all
right children, I'm here."
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THE SHAMED T R U M P ET
About half an hour after the leaven had been burnt the
cart moved at last, with me in it. Now I knew that I was
on the move, and in another couple of hours I would, God
willing, see my brother as well as his trumpet.
As the cart turned into the track that led to the station,
the girls working in the kitchen garden seemed to chase us
and catch up with us. I turned my head back towards our
little corner. The two white houses, upper and lower, stood
with their blue sashes about them and gazed after me, as
much as to warn us that we were not to hang about or
dawdle on the way. It was Passover Eve !
Though the track from the village to the station had been
somewhat obliterated by the night's rain and had muddy
and miry stretches, it was not so dreadful, and the horses
trotted along steadily as usual. From the village to the
station was a two-hour ride by cart, and the same back.
Unless something delayed us, we could therefore expect to
be back about two and a half or three hours before evening;
at the time, that is, when the whole house would be ready
for the Passover. I pictured to myself how very happy
they would all be when the cart came back with Samuel.
Everybody in both houses would come out to greet him,
the bride among them.
The hor�es trotted along with jingling bells between the
ploughed fields. A gentle breeze caressed my face, and I
was very pleased with myself indeed. The charm of Pass
over Eve seemed to rest upon the whole world. Between
the little clouds in the sky there opened wide spaces, new
171
TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
tracks and paths all of a new, a Passover blue. In the clear

air little waves of sweet heat contended with puffs of refresh
ing coolness, and each of them in turn gently patted my
head and my back. Pools of water were set amid the
meadows like glass mirrors. Some were smooth with the
blue of the heavens gazing thence, and some shivering
slightly with cold, and gleaming with gold and silver scales
like the Passover dishes and glasses. Even the dirty vestiges
of snow heaps gleaming here and there from the ditches
did not spoil the scene. They seemed to me like bits of
hardened leaven that had retreated cowering for very shame
into holes in the ground.
The cart ran along and we passed from meadow to wood
and from wood to meadow. Meanwhile I was going over
the days of the forthcoming Passover in my head. Yes, we
would be really happy at home during that Passover. On
the first-day the in-laws would come and visit us. There
would be wine, sponge cake, hard cake, nuts, and games
with nuts. On the second day we would visit them, and
again there would be wine, sponge cake, hard cake, nuts,
and games with nuts. At the close of the first two days of
the festival they would all come to our house once again.
The in-laws would come, the bride-ta-be and Pessah ltzi
and his wife. All of them, all of them together. Samuel
would play on the trumfet and the children would dance.
Then there would be wine and sponge cake and hard cake
and nuts all over again.
I confess without any shame that I was even happier at
1 72
TH E SHAMED T R U M PET
the trumpet my brother was bringing than at the brother

who was coming. That was the real reason I had gone off
to the station. I had never yet seen a trumpet face to face.
I knew it only from the photograph which Samuel had sent
us after he had joined the band, and which now hung on
the wall at home near the violin. There he was to be seen
in uniform holding the trumpet. There could be no doubt
that such a trumpet was a fine, handsome object; and in a
little while I would have the pleasure of seeing it and maybe
using it. That "maybe," itself, was enough to fill my heart
with boundless joy, and I could not refrain from reporting
i t to Styopi, who was sitting in front with his back to
wards me.
"Tell me, Styopi," said I to him, "have you ever seen a
trumpet in your life ?"
"Why are you asking ?" says he, turning his face round
towards me in astonishment.
"Don't you know ? Samuel's bringing a trumpet with
him ! A real trumpet m ade of brass !"
The tidings, it would appear, did not astonish him in the
least. Without answering a word he turned his head back
to the horses and went on driving just as he had done
before, without the least excitement.
"What does he know ?" I thought to myself, dismissing
him. "A people like to an ass !" And right away I stuck
one fist in front of the other like a sort of funnel, and began
to blow and bray and trumpet forth into the world, dancing
about on the seat in time to my trumpeting. To meet us
1 73
TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
there came a number of wagons belonging to villagers

returning from the station; and we were met by a light trap
whose horse was also jingling its bells. Inside sat officials
wearing different uniforms. I went on trumpeting away
without the least concern ; but Styopi turned his head
round several times and gazed balefully after the officials
until they disappeared from sight, just as though his heart
warned him that those two angels brought no good tidings.
When we reached the station we found Samuel standing on
the platform waiting for our cart, all dressed up in his unform.
How much fuller his face was ! And where were those first
faint signs of a beard ? I jumped off the cart and rushed
to him helter-skelter. \Ve asked each other how we were
and kissed. Styopi watered the horses and put my brother's
belongings in the cart. Among the belongings my eye
sought for the trumpet, but I could see only one big heavy
box and next to it a smaller, nicely-shaped one, which
looked like a sort of case. I realised at once that the case
in question was the goods I was looking for, but all the
same, in order to make sure, I asked my brother what
was in it.
"That's the case of the instrument," said he.
My hand, which was already cautiously groping round
the case, almost started back of its own accord at hearing
the grand name. The instrument ! I wanted to ask my
brother to show me the instrument itself at once, but I did
not dare. All I could do was to raise my eyes to him entreat-
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TH E S H A M E D T R U M P ET
ingly. My brother seems to have understood what I had

in mind, for he said :
"It's time for us to hurry home. It's Passover Eve."
He was right. We had to hurry home. It was the Eve
of the Passover. So all three of us hastened to mount the
cart. The horses trotted rapidly and j auntily back the
way we had come, trotting and announcing with their
j ingling bells that Samuel's coming, Samuel's coming !
Samuel immediately commenced an endless conversation
with Styopi about village affairs, one asking and the other
answering; while as for me, my heart was set on the case
and its contents.
I had practically despaired of seeing the trumpet itself
en route. It was enclosed within i ts case like the Passover
in the inner room at home. But i t would seem that the
Holy and Blest One did not wish to deprive me of the reward
of my journey, and while we were still some distance from
the village, He gave my brother the fine idea of announcing
his arrival from afar by a flourish on the trumpet. No
sooner thought than done. The case opened promptly and
in my brother's hand, as though by magic, shone the
trumpet. It was made all of gleaming brass and was a
business of a lot of holes and pipes; its radiance all but
blinded me. Within a moment clear, ringing notes began
to rise and fall smoothly and effortlessly under the guiding
fingers of my brother. The instrument gambolled like a
baby. Then suddenly the brazen throat thundered with
1 75
TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
all its might, and a fine stirring march burst out across
the fields.
Styopi swished his whip, and the horses lifted their limbs
and made away with the distance. The bells round their
two necks seemed to be startled for a moment at the sound
of the march, and their song became confused; but they
promptly recovered and went back to their regular, cheerful
ringing, announcing with fresh vigor: Samuel's come,
Samuel's coming. The trees along the roadsides danced
ahead and broadened the road for us as we came. The
pools gleamed up cheerfully at us. Everything was announc
ing that Samuel's come, Samuel's coming !
While the cart was dashing full speed ahead, the trap
suddenly appeared with the two officials within it, coming
the opposite way, the same trap we had passed earlier on
our way to the station. This double meeting struck me as
a bad sign, as something suspicious. The trumpet trembled
in Samuel's hand and its radiance suddenly seemed to have
dimmed, and Samuel hurriedly lowered it and covered it
over with his coat. The cart and trap passed one another
at top speed, and in both of them the passengers, as though
governed by a common impulse, turned their heads round
and looked back at one another for several minutes most
suspiciously.
Meanwhile our cart rumbled briefly and dully across a
little bridge that spanned a brook, and entered the village
boundaries, where it had been arranged that folk should
1 76
T H E SHAMED T R U M PET
be waiting to meet us. But to our astonishment nobody

was there. We began to feel worried. My brother blew
one last weak wavering uncertain blast on his trumpet and
put it back into its case. Styopi suddenly rose to his feet,
whipped up the horses with all his force and set them gal
loping. Before us rapidly passed, one after the other, the
isolated houses of the peasants at the entry of the village,
they and their tired fences and their barefoot dirty urchins
wading through the shallow ponds, who woke up at the
sound of bells and whip and the sight of a soldier riding in
the cart.
Then there suddenly appeared the two houses at the top
and bottom of the hill. A group of men and women were
standing in front of our house. Clearly they had gathered
there in honor of the guest. But why did none of them
begin moving towards us ? The whole affair was beginning
to look very queer.
Styopi was still standing erect, his legs apart, using his
whip generously. Every few seconds his whip cracked
through the air like a bursting balloon, and the cart dashed
forward in a noisy rush. I could already recognize each one
of the group. There were the members of the in-law's
family, large and small, Pessah ltzi, his wife, and others.
The clothes were a queer medley of weekday and festival.
New hats, kerchiefs and shoes gleamed bright. And the
bride-to-be was also there, all in white. And there was the
Village Elder with his straggling garlic-like beard and his
177
TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
red belt, standing to one side, his stick in his hand and his
brass badge on his chest. What was he doing there at such
a time? And why was none of our family to be seen ?
Within a moment, as soon as the cart stopped at the gate
of the courtyard and we saw the faces of the people close
at hand, we understod everything. We understood every
thing, without a single word being said.
IV
The guest lowered his voice slightly and added:
The reason was very cruel, too cruel to have been imag
ined by a boy so small as I was. It had all come so suddenly.
Who would have imagined that by the time my brother
and I returned home from the station, we would not find
anything or anyone there?
Who could have believed that during the four or five
hours we spent on the journey, people would come to father's
house and load up the furniture and the folk on the wagons
and tell them to get out and away, anywhere they liked.
And when, of all times ? In the middle of that particular
day !
How many months the order had crawled and crept along
slowly like a silent snake; and now, in the one single moment
when it was not even thought of, out it suddenly darted
from its hiding-place, and bit. And how sharply and
venomously!
178
The expression on the faces of the people in their new

hats and kerchiefs, as they awaited us in silence, immedi
ately told us what had happened to father and the family.
Their hopeless, gloomy faces and their eyes and cheeks all
reddened with tears made them look more like a company
of mourners than a group of friends come to welcome a
friend.
When brother Samuel got off the cart and I followed
him, a powerful shriek from the midst of the group suddenly
rent the air and flew aloft like an arrow; one forlorn wail
of loss, cut off as though by a sharp knife and leaving behind
it a scratch deep in the atmosphere and the heart. It was
the mother-in-law-ta-be who shrieked like that; and the
abrupt shriek had in it something of the departure of the
soul from the body. The children burst out crying and the
men turned their heads aside, twitching their eyelids and
their chins.
Everything became confused around me, and I remember
what follows not clearly but as if I saw it all through a
dark, dim glass in fragments and in halves, thirds and
quarters.
Samuel and I stand in the courtyard, yet I do not know
how we got there. New hats and shoes without bodies
between them follow us silently as though floating through
the air. Somebody near me speaks. I hear each word
separately, but cannot see who is speaking and why, or
what he is saying. From the locked byre, of which I can
see only the lock, comes the bitter unhappy mooing of a
1 79
THE SHAMED TRUMPET
calf, piercing the brain and marrow. But why should it

be mooing ?
From the wall of the house another new hat detaches
i tself and approaches us. Under i t is a beard, and two
extended sleeves with hands at their ends spread out be
neath that. The hands weep like a baby and say, "Look,
Samuel, see what they have done to me!"
It's father ! He's still here !
And there is Yevdocha, examining Samuel's face from
afar, nodding her tiny wizened old head which looks about
as big as a dried fig, and quietly sobbing, "The sweetheart,
the darling . . .
"
We enter the house; ruin and destruction.

The Passover table, the walls, the windows - everything
has been stripped. The beds are empty. Two or three
chairs lie overturned. Destruction and ruin.
Only the little Holy Ark stands modestly concealed in
its corner as i t has always stood. Its face is covered by its
clean new curtain so as not to look at the house as i t is.
And through the upset and ruin Yevdocha wanders too
and fro, beating her lean hands together and quietly sobbing:
"They came, the scoundrels, they came and loaded every
thing onto the wagons and sent them away . . . Mother
and children together . . . "
Do I have to tell you the details of the expulsion ? They
were very short and simple :
Two officials, especially sent from the capital of the
province - the same two whom we had met twice along
1 80
TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
the road - had suddenly arrived at noon. They brought

three wagons from the village and without any argument
ordered the household goods and the folk to be loaded up
and bundled off to one of the small towns nearby. No
entreaties or tears or lamentations were of any use. Mother
and the children were placed in the wagons against their
will, together with the pillows and the cushions and the
packages of matzot and all the other paraphernalia of Exile.
Even the saucepans of fish and meat were taken off the
stove in the middle of cooking, and sent out of the village
with their owners. The best of the three cows was also sent
into exile. She was the dam of the calf which had been left
behind, and she was sent along because the children needed
her milk. Father with difficulty extracted permission to
stay behind until his two remaining sons, namely Samuel
and I, returned with the cart from the station, provided
that immediately afterwards he and the two of us were to
leave the village, on the same day and in the identical cart.
The elder of the village was given strict instructions not
to budge from the place until the requirements of the law
had been carried out to their ultimate detail.
Father handed over the Scroll of the Torah in i ts little
Ark to his in-law-to-be Zelig, and left the keys in the hands
of old Yevdocha who remained to look after the house.
Then he hurried up and urged Samuel and me to get back
to the cart with him, to start out and overtake mother and
the children.
The time had come to part for good. My old nurse
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TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
pressed my head against her breast and burst out weeping,

while the women round us began howling and wailing afresh.
Samuel's mother-in-law-to-be fainted, while the bride cov
ered her face with her hands and her shoulders shook.
The cart moved off. The two grown-ups, Zelig anci
Pessah Itzi, silently accompanied us to the village bound
aries, where the forest started, and then turned back. Not
one of the villagers came to see us off, and those who caught
sight of us from a distance hurriedly concealed themselves
in their houses. Another moment and the cart was swal
lowed up by the forest, and everything was left behind us :
the two white houses, the hill, the two men accompanying
us, the village Elder with his stick and his brass badge of
office, and Yevdocha. The village was finished with, once
and for all !
To the right of the track, between the meagre trees and
their thin branches, could be seen a round bald patch in
the middle of which rose an unfinished building that had
been forsaken. The layers of bricks peered desolately at
us between the branches of the trees. It seemed to me as
though they had awakened from deep slumber, the slumber
that follows despair, and as though they silently complained
"Yosi, Yosi, why hast thou forsaken us?"
Father turned his head away, to avoid looking at them.
Suddenly there was a quivering, gasping sobbing . . .
Father was crying.
Styopi furiously whipped up the horses. Maybe he
1 82
T H E SHAMED T R U M P ET
wanted to cover the sound of father's weeping and sobbing

with the sound of galloping hoofs. But the horses were
tired, the track to the nearby town was in bad condition
and the cart dragged heavily.
Then once again the cart passed between woods and
fields. The bells rang their thin, cheap jingling; yet how
sad they sounded now !
Evening was falling when at last we saw the three wagons
in the distance, dragging their way through the mire, with
the goods and the souls they were carrying. Behind the
last of the wagons lagged a cow, tethered with a strap,
which kept on turning its head back and mooing to the
heavens. Once again I could hear the bitter mooing of the
calf locked in the byre.
Yet a moment and our cart caught up with the three
wagons.
Can I even try to tell you what the meeting between
mother and son was like at the wayside ? It is beyond my
power, so I had better pass i t by. After that meeting
mother lay for a long time as though she were dead, among
the bundles of pillows and cushions. Curled up next to her
was my baby sister who had fallen asleep while weeping,
with her tears still fresh on her cheeks. My other sister
and my second brother sat in the other two wagons, and
their faces were also red and swollen with weeping.
As the sun set we reached a little wood about half an
hour's walk from the town. Mother suddenly roused her-
1 83
TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
self, straightened the kerchief on her head, took a little

package out of one of the bundles, called on us to stop the
wagons and climbed down.
"Where are you going ?" asked father when he saw her
making for a hillock in the wood; and he also stopped his
cart.
"To light candles," she replied.
None of us was surprised. After all, i t was both Sabbath
and Passover, and she had never missed a single occasion
for lighting the candles and saying the blessing over them,
not in all her life. But none of us had imagined that in all
the excitement and confusion of the expulsion she would
not forget to prepare candles in case it should grow dark
while we were on the road.
Brother Samuel hurried after her to help. The wagons
and their peasant drivers remained where they were, stand
ing awed and respectful. A moment later two tiny yellow
flames shone golden from the hillock. The blind wood sud
denly seemed to open eyes, as though two living eyes had
just been given to it; and the dumb trees wondered at the
Jewess in the kerchief, who now stood spreading out her
'nands over the candles and silently weeping.
It was strange. Gloomy and weird as the whole circum
stance was, yet it seemed to me that the moment the two
little flames began glimmering between the trees some sort
of holiness established its sway over the forest; and in one
of its dark, hidden corners, in some deeply concealed palace
there, a tiny gate of mercy had been opened and a good
1 84
T H E SHAM E D TRUM P ET
angel had thrust out his head. In my eyes the two flames
were two gold points marking a colon, the end of a period,
in the lower reaches of the firmament. Thus far i t was
weekday; from this point forward it was Sabbath and
festival. The gloom and grief which had affected us all sud
denly became softened, as it were, and somehow sanctified.
I t seemed as though the peasants also sensed this, and when
they and their beasts began trudging along again, their
tramping through the twilit, gloomy woodland seemed more
careful and quiet than previously, while their "haya, haya"
to their weary animals was softer and gentler, as though
the sorrow of the moment shed its mood over them and
suddenly subdued their hearts and voices.
Once she had lit the candles mother did not wish to
mount the wagon again, but walked afoot at the wayside.
Father and Samuel walked silently along on either side of
her. On father's advice the children in the wagons came
over to our cart, and Styopi was ordered to hurry us to the
neighboring town ahead of the wagons. The wagons were
soon left behind, with the tiny figures beside them, and
the wood.
I turned my eyes once again towards the hillock in the
wood. For a brief moment the two flames continued to
twinkle towards me, then vanished at once. "They have
gone out !" I said starting, and I felt grieved for the poor
wood which had been blinded once again and had returned
to its darkness. The Mercy Gate that had been opened for
a brief while was closed once more. The good angel had
1 85
THE SHAMED TRUMPET
withdrawn his head and everything was still and silent

round about.
Meanwhile the cart left the wood, and the moon's disc,
which suddenly budded up towards us from the ground,
gazed at us in the greatest astonishment with its full broad
face, as though i t were asking, who are these folk on the
road now ?
All four of us crowded together within the cart and sat
silent. Our very souls were desolate. We suffered cold,
gloom, pain at heart and shame. How could we enter the
town at that hour ?
And the town was rapidly approaching us. Through the
evening gloom it was winking at us with many glimmering
lights, festival gleams, hinting of fine houses and newly
cleaned, shining rooms, tables covered with white cloths
and laden with all manner of fine things, gleaming white
pillows for reclining on, red wine in precious glass vessels,
glittering spoons and forks, fine clothes and jewels, happy
holiday mood and shining faces.
Maybe we were the only Jews in the world to be on the
road at that hour.
I raised my eyes to the heavens. They had also donned
all their blue that night, and had decked themselves in all
their trappings, their great stars, their little stars, their
tiny stars. Here and there tiny flat silver chains of fine,
vague, gauzy clouds spread out. With their lightness and
clarity they looked like a fine setting for the magnificent
festival blue. And then some unseen hand raised the "silver
1 86
THE SHAMED T R U M P ET
dish," the moon, carefully removed its white cloth, the

fine gauzy veil of cloud, and she floated there, revealed in
her full splendor.
Some hidden sorrow dribbled through the moonlight and
filled our hearts with gently lapping grief. Our throats felt
as if they were choking, our eyes filled with tears. Suddenly
we realized what had happened to us, and our tears gushed
forth. At first we wept silently, each of us to himself; then
we wept aloud and in company, all four of us together.
We wept, and the cart dashed on and on.
By the time we reached town, the moon was high in the
heavens. At the request of my brother Mosheh the cart
went ahead, while we descended and followed on foot,
hugging the walls and keeping to gloomy side-streets. We
wished to conceal ourselves, and stole along in the shadow
of fences and houses, so as not to be seen too much. Our
care was undoubtedly superfluous, for just at that time
the streets were empty and never a person passed. People
had not yet left the synagogue; and the whole way to the
solitary inn of the town, where we were going on father's
instructions, never a man met us.
Within another quarter of an hour the wagons also reached
the inn, together with the walkers. It was just then that
the folk came out of the synagogues, and Jews in holiday
clothes passing the spot, saw to their astonishment three
wagons loaded with all kinds of goods and chattels which
stood at the gate of the inn of Moshe Aaron. And from one
of them fragments of matza fell to the earth in the moonlight.
187
TH E SHAMED TRUMPET
That night, he ended his tale, I celebrated my first Seder

together with the rest of my family at a stranger's table,
at the table of Mosheh Aaron the innkeeper, may he be
remembered for good. The kind fellow provided for us all
and would not permit us to be scattered. What was more,
in order to make mother and father feel happy, he got me,
their little son, to ask the Four Questions.
"And what about the trumpet.?" suddenly asked a little boy
who had been seated unnoticed among the guests.
All the guests turned their heads towards him, and he.flushed.
The reservist smiled and answered:
The trumpet? A fortnight later, when his leave was at
an end, my brother returned to army service with it, and
on that occasion I did not have the luck of hearing it again.
It had been left in its case all the while under one of the
beds in the inn, where i t had been flung together with all
sorts of other things. It never dared come out and let itself
be heard. The trumpet felt ashamed.
188
THE SHO RT FRID AY
,�rev '�v c,,

The Short Friday
If those who are up and doing betimes on ordinary

Fridays deserve praise, those who are up and doing betimes
on the Short Friday deserve it far more. There is no excuse
for laziness on the Short Friday at the turn of the year !
Any sign of laziness whatsoever, and you may end up by
desecrating the Sabbath, God forbid. Satan is always sure
to be up to his nefarious tricks just when the danger is
greatest.
So i t is in no way remarkable that the rabbi, Reb Lippe,
long life to him, who was a gentle sort of Jew and timorous
by nature, began to take steps against the Short Friday
long before daylight. He treated himself with the greatest
strictness, for he feared and trembled exceedingly lest, God
forbid, he might be even a little bit late; for then the entire
order of his day would be spoilt.
Nor is there anything to scoff at in the order of Reb
Lippe's day. Figure it out for yourself, and scrutinise the
191
THE SHORT FRIDAY
items closely. To begin with, there was the Tikkun Hazot,

or Midnight Prayers for Zion, consisting of both Tikkun
Rahel and Tikkun Leah. [It would take a long time to
explain both of these in full, but very briefly, Rahel here
represents the Shechinah or Divine Presence in Exile,
according to the words of the prophet Jeremiah who wrote,
"A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weep
ing, Rahel weeping for her children, refusing to be com
forted for her children who are not." Leah, on the other
hand, represents the Shechinah or Divine Presence which
unites itself with each son of Israel through the study of the
Torah. Clearly no trifle these; certainly not for Reb Lippe.]
Then came Psalms arranged according to the days of the
week; things to say and hors d'oeuures before and after the
prayers proper; the prayers proper; a few chapters of the
Mishna; a lesson in Gemara ; two or three paragraphs of the
Shu/han 'Aruch, which gives all the laws for the daily life
of the Jew; and last but not least two readings of the actual
text, and one of the Aramaic translation, of the Portion of
the Week. All this was for the sake of the Lord. And now,
how about himself? Food, that is to say. What was he
to do, being, after all, flesh and blood ! You have to eat,
in spite of yourself sometimes . . •
A fresh series of tasks began after the noon hour. First

the bath; then his nails had to be pared; then he prepared
snuff for Sabbath; and the like. To which must be added
his decisions, as called for, on questions of Jewish law and
life, and on occasion a Din Torah or case to be heard and
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TH E S H O RT F R I DAY
decided according to Jewish law. It is a known fact that

quarrels are pecularly frequent on Sabbath Eves . . . And
what with one thing and another, your day has gone !
Before you turn this way and that, the sun's already setting.
So it is in no way surprising, as has been said, that Rabbi
Lippe, rising valiant as a lion on the morning of the Short
Friday, together with the morning star, hastened to wash
his hands and set about his duties at once. Would that he
might enter the day and come forth therefrom in peace !
He trembled for fear lest a moment run to waste. From
time to time his eyes rested on a venerable ancient, laden
with limbs and years - the old grandfather clock which
hung on the wall in front of him. He very much feared and
dreaded, did Reb Lippe, that he might, God forbid, miss
one of his daily duties, in which case he would begin his
Sabbath without an easy mind, God forbid.
Yet the sages have long since said that all things depend
on luck. And neither wisdom nor understanding nor nimble
ness are of avail, be i t known, against luck . . .
Give ear therefore and hearken to this tale of woe.
II
Reb Lippe had finished all preliminaries of the early
morning, as described above, and was just about to con
centrate on the prayers proper, when suddenly his door
creaked, and a pillar of vapor, bearing a gentile in i ts midst,
entered the house.
1 93
THE S H O RT FRIDAY
"Why should this fellow be at my door so early?" the

rabbi wondered somewhat uneasily, shivering slightly and
cowering at the wave of cold which had entered the house.
The gentile stood his whip against the doorpost, took off
his gloves, thrust his hand into his bosom, groped about
and finally withdrew from thence and handed to the rabbi
a folded missive, crumpled and dirty all over. The rabbi
read the missive through and shrugged his shoulders.
One of the devil's tricks ! His heart had warned him !
The wealthy Reb Getzi, the rich farmer of the neighboring
village, was inviting him to be present at a Berit (circum
cision ceremony). Whereas, ran the missive, whereas he,
namely Reb Getzi, was on this day introducing his first
grandson, the firstborn child of his firstborn daughter, into
the Covenant of our Father Abraham, therefore, on account
of the said reason, he honored him, namely the rabbi, long
life to him, with the high office of Sandak or Godfather.
It was therefore incumbent upon him, namely the rabbi,
to give himself the trouble of coming down to the village;
and to do so immediately. The wintersleigh stood
waiting . . .
The worthy farmer Reb Getzi, begging his pardon, was no
great scribe, and no reader could course headlong through
his letters. This time, however, he had taken wise pre
cautions and had added three sufficient interpretations.
The first was a new currency note worth three roubles
all nicely wrapped up; a "living and talking" bill which
1 94
T H E S H O RT F R I DAY
passed there and then from hand to hand ; from the hand
of the peasant to that of the rabbi, pardon the proximity.
The second was a sack of huge potatoes and beside it,
trussed, a protesting goose, well fattened. The servant-girl
had removed this luscious brace from the sleigh, and they
lay in the kitchen.
The third was even plainer and simpler. It was a fine,
warm, broad, fur overcoat with felt overshoes which Reb
Getzi had sent him at the hands of that gentile, and which
came from the winter store of garments of Reb Getzi's own
worthy and honorable self, in order that the rabbi, long life
to him, might wrap himself up well and keep properly warm.
These three plain interpretations promptly cleared the
eyes, as they say, of the rabbi, and his luminous intellect
immediately compassed the entire affair.
"Tut tut, what's to be done," he sighed. "Doubtless
this is the will of the Holy and Blest One ; the Covenant of
Circumcision, an injunction of that magnitude ! . . . But
all the same it's advisable to take counsel with the rebbetzin."
Reb Lippe entered the next room where the rebbetzin was,
did whatever he had to do, stayed as long as he needed to
stay, and came out clad in a white shirt and his Sabbath
zhupitza (long coat), all ready to take the road. In the
first room he now put on, over the zhupitza, the overcoat
that had been sent him, tugged the yellow overshoes on
to his feet above his black boots, covered the skullcap on
his head with his round furskin Sabbath shtreimel, girded
195
TH E S H O RT FRIDAY
his loins with the red belt of Ivan the emissary; and so,
magnificently arrayed in these garments with their com
mingling of sacred and profane, Reb Lippe stopped and
kissed the mezuzah on the doorpost. Then he departed
from the house.
The wintersleigh which stood in front of the house was
roomy and well bedded with hay and straw. Reb Lippe
climbed in and settled himself comfortably, as though he
were quite at home. The gentile covered the rabbi's feet
with straw and chaff and also got in. He whistled once,
and the sleigh slid off across the snow.
III
The road was good and smooth and the mare was
lively. Verily a contraction of the road, as described in
legend . . .
Within an hour, and before day dawned, the rabbi had
reached the village and the house of the celebrants.
The guests had already assembled. After drinking some
thing warm they stood up and prayed with the quorum of
ten according to all requirements of the law. It turned out
that a certain butcher, who had happened to come to the
village to buy calves, had a pleasant voice and acted as the
Emissary of the Congregation. His Hebrew, to be sure,
was a trifle out of sorts. He could not quite make up his
mind whether he wanted the winds to blow and rain to fall
1 96
THE S H O RT FRI DAY
as in winter, or the dew to drop as in summer; but that was

not serious. Finally they spat out as is fitting and seemly
with the last prayer 'Aienu, in sign of dismissal of the
emptiness and vanity worshipped by the peoples of the
lands and the families of the earth. Satisfactorily done with
prayer, the order of the Circumcision commenced at an
auspicious hour.
The baby in his diapers and swaddling clothes was brought
in and passed from hand to hand. The uncle passed him
to the father's uncle; the father's uncle to the brother's son ;
the brother's son to the father's father; the father's father
to the mother's father; and so on and so forth till he finished
up on the lap of the Sandak, where that was done which
had to be done . . . After it was over the passage began in
reverse order. They lifted the tiny pink body, tied hand
and foot, and wailing and shaking and quivering all over,
and sent him back the way he had come: from the lap of
the Sandak to the arms of the father; from the arms of the
father to the arms of the mother's father; from the arms
of the mother's father to the arms of the father's father;
and so on and so forth until the tiny mite was returned to
the source of his being behind the walls, where he became
a little quieter.
And now came the vital issue - namely the feast.
Reb Getzi the farmer is a hospitable Jew, blessed by
nature with a friendly eye and big heart even at ordinary
times; and now that the Holy and Blest One had permitted
him to live to see a little grandson, firstborn son of his first-
1 97
TH E SHORT FRIDAY
born daughter, he was more hospitable than ever. So it

stands to reason that the feast was worthy of a king. There
was fish that brought to mind the Bible verse about the
great whales. For meat they had a whole calf, a dozen
geese and three fattened swans, to say nothing of lwrs
d'oeuwes such as stuffed crop, smooth, velvety stomachs,
and breast and tongues and fried craws and other such
trifles. And now for the pudding, the far-famed pudding
with all its raisins !
Dismissing victuals, let us proceed to liquor. Reb Getzi,
be it known, was an ordinary Jew without any particular
pretensions and fancies; if he says brandy, it means brandy;
that is brandy plain and simple, meaning not less than
ninety-five per cent spirit, and right old stuff at that!
Meaning ? Meaning brandy stored in his cellar for years
and years and put away at the very beginning - at the
very beginning, mark you - for the first grandson when
ever he might see fit to arrive. By all means let the rabbi
drink just one glass more, this tiny glass - and Getzi
stuffed into the rabbi's hand a fair-sized glass. "Please,
just this ! Please drink, Rabbi ! There's nothing to be afraid
of! Why, is this brandy ? �o, It's no brandy at all, it's
purest, smoothest olive oil, running smooth into the glass
without the slightest splash or sound. Real olive oil ! As
sure as his name was Getzi ! Please, Rabbi, long life to you,
long life !"
Getzi the farmer became tipsy. His fleshy, hairy face
began to flush and shone like a polished samovar, while his
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TH E S H O RT F RIDAY
eyes seemed to roll in fat . . . From time to time he thrust

a finger towards his heart, prodded himself and murmured :
"Getzi, do you know what ? You're an old man from now
on . . . You're a grandpa ! D'you hear ? Hee hee hee, you're
a grandpa. And what's happened to your old woman ? Why,
she's a g-g-g-granny ! . . . Where are you, g-g-g-granny ?
Come along ! Grandpa wants to drink to your very g-good
health ! Come here, come here, don't be ashamed, the rabbi
will say amen . . . Won't you, R-r-rabbi !"
And at this point Reb Getzi took the rabbi by the
shoulder, gripped him with all his strength and shook him
like a sack of potatoes; then suddenly fell on his neck and
began kissing him heartily. Joyful and happy, he wept
and laughed at the same time because of the honor, hee
hee hee, the honor which Reb Lippe, the rabbi, long life
to him, had shown to him, namely to Getzi, by his life and
head, the honor. And but for him, the rabbi, long life to
him - hm, hm, hm . . .
"Well, well, that will do ! Long life to you," Reb Lippe
soothed the weeping Getzi, swallowing a sip very carefully
from the glass. "Long life to you ! But why are you crying ?
There's no need to cry, no need at all . . . "
Reb Getzi took heart of comfort and wiped the tears
away with his sleeve. "You've put it well, Rabbi, as sure
as my name's Getzi ! There's no need to cry. No need.
But long life, and again long life ! And long life above all
things ! That means - real life ! A 1-1-life with a decent
living . . . Oh, Oh, Rabbi," and here Reb Getzi began weep-
199
THE SHORT FRIDAY
ing once more with redoubled fervor, "oh, oh, oh, how to
manage to make a li-v-i-ing !"
And Reb Lippe, who was gentle and soft-hearted by
nature, could not bear to watch the sorrow of the master
of the house, and did him the last true kindness of drinking
another little drop with him, and another little drop, and
another little . . .
Meanwhile the day, the Short Friday of all days, began
to decline. Reb Lippe, who had himself grown slightly
fuddled, roused himself once and again, and tried to rise
on his shaky feet in front of the table. "Ah, ah, ah," he
complained, shaking his head, spreading out his hands and
stammering. "It's Sabbath Eve ! The short day . . . " But
Reb Getzi would have none of this and would not listen;
Reb Getzi grabbed both his hands and would not let go.
Meanwhile Ivan the coachman was sitting at ease in the
kitchen, likewise doing his heart good with feasting. He
felt particularly pleased that they had inducted the little
one into the faith, and in his joy he tossed glass after glass
down his throat: one, once and again, twice and again,
thrice and again, and again and again . . .
In the middle of this the clock struck three. Reb Lippe
started up from his seat in great haste, but his legs were not
in any such hurry. After he had risen and put on his two
overcoats and more, namely his bearskin and sheepskin,
had buckled on his red leather belt and had thrust his legs
into those two barrels, namely the heavy overshoes, his
legs refused to pay the slightest attention to him. Instead
200
TH E S H O RT F R I DAY
of moving forward, Reb Lippe suddenly found his bulging

self sitting down on a bench in the middle of the house.
He tried to shift himself. "Eh-eh-eh," he panted. But it
was no use. He did not move.
The "oil" that had entered Reb Lippe's bones apparently
had done its work. But Reb Lippe did not regret this in
the least. On the contrary, he felt very cheerful and good
humored, and while his body, with outspread hands and
working fingers, was trying to shift itself willynilly from its
place, his voice came chirrupping from his throat like a
bird, chirrupping and cackling !
"Hee, hee, hee, Reb Getzi, my legs . . . "
"Hee, hee, hee !" laughed all the guests in turn. "The
rabbi !"
At length, with the aid of Him who giveth the weary
strength, and a little extra aid from the guests, the bulging,
bulky body began to move, and the two fine creatures,
namely the rabbi, Reb Lippe long life to him, and Ivan the
coachman his companion, pardon the proximity, departed
from the house in an auspicious and favorable hour; and
aiding one another and leaning each on the other's shoulder,
they climbed into the winter sleigh in perfect order.
So once again our rabbi sat at ease in the sleigh, his body
wrapped up and his legs covered. And once again Ivan sat
on the driver's seat. One long and cheerful whistle and the
mare lifted up her legs . . .
And here we reach the main part of the story.
20 1
T H E SHORT FRIDAY
IV
No sooner had the sleigh started and our rabbi wriggled

deep into his covers, than he suddenly felt a pleasant
warmth, sweet as honey, spreading throughout his limbs.
The lids of his eyes were taken captive in the toils of slumber
and his head began to nod. "Hee, hee, hee, the oil !" the
rabbi silently laughed to himself, feeling, as it were, grains
of sand in his eyes, "pure olive oil !" And the moment the
sleigh had crossed the little bridge beyond the village, there
fell upon the rabbi a divine slumber - and he slept.
At the same time Ivan the gentile was sitting on his seat
having a little chat with his mare, just a friendly chat out
of the goodness of his heart, promising her, when the time
should be ripe, all sorts of fine things for the future, prO
vided, that is, that she would pick her way and not depart
from the straight path. While yet he held converse with
her thus, behold the whip and reins slipped from his hands,
his head under its round sheepskin hat sank into the bosom
of his overcoat, and within a moment, there he was, snoring
for all the world like any swine.
As for the mare, the moment she sensed herself at liberty,
she straightway forgot all the wise counsel of her owner
and his promises of delights to come; and when she reached
the crossroads she stopped and hesitated for a moment as
though considering whether to take this way or that. Then
she suddenly tugged at the sleigh with all her strength and
202
T H E SHORT F R I DAY
by way of compromise turned neither here nor there but

straight between and out into open country.
Meanwhile clouds gathered, and day began to turn to
darkness while the mare was on her way. Snow fell plenti
fully; it was coarse and moist, mixing up the whole world
and hiding the traces of the roads. Presently the mare,
it would appear, began to doubt whether she had done
wisely, and even began to consider the advisability 0f a
penitent return in her tracks. But since she, with her mere
animal eyes, could see no way of correcting the matter, she
placed herself in the hands of Heaven and continued to
plod ahead through the gloom, downcast in spirit and lop
eared, plodding silently, as though her eyes were closed,
across countless little piles of snow and briar-roots, plodding
on and dragging the sleigh behind her together with all
that was therein . . . And who knows where the mare might
not have finally arrived had she not suddenly met with
some obstacle. But the obstacle once met with, the sleigh
overturned. Our two startled travellers woke up suddenly
in a heap of snow, and found themselves surrounded by
darkness and gloom.
"What's this?" gasped the rabbi in astonishment, strug
gling to get out of the snow. Suddenly he remembered all
that had happened, and felt as though he had been struck
over the head with a heavy hammer.
Was it possible, on the Sabl:-ath !
The rabbi wished to cry a great and exceedingly bitter
203
THE S H O RT FRIDAY
cry; he could not. The whole of his being cowered and con
gealed in the dread thought of that single word, Sabbath !
Yet, when at length the power of speech returned to him,
a roar, like to a lion's, burst from his throat:
"Ivan, Ai Vai !"
Within this roar, which burst from the depths of his
heart and which comprised the only three words of the
language of the gentiles that were known unto our rabbi,
there could be found all this : a bitter outcry and a beseech
ing for mercy, the fear of God and an acceptance of the
evil decree, remorse and complaint, and all sorts of other
feelings that words are too poor to express . . .
Meanwhile Ivan stood cursing and attending to the over
turned sleigh and tangled reins. From time to time he
kicked at the belly of his mare, reproaching her with the
transgressions of her equine forefathers and foremothers
for a thousand generations back. When his repairs were
completed, he invited the "Rabbin" to seat himself again.
Reb Lippe raised his eyes to the night; whence was his aid
to come ? But aid there was none.
For a moment he thought that he would not budge hence.
Here in the field let him stay, and here in the field let him
celebrate the Sabbath. Let him be slain rather than trans
gress ! Were there then so few tales of pious men and men.
of righteous deeds who had hallowed the seventh day in
forests and deserts ? Why, for example, there was the tale
of Ariel the lion-angel ! Hadn't the Holy and Blest One
sent yonder pious one a lion in the desert to guard him until
204
THE SHORT FRIDAY
the Habdalah ceremony, and for riding upon after the

Habdalah ? . Yet when Reb Lippe looked round him at
• •
the darkness once again, his courage died away. Towards

the left his eye could distinguish a real kind of forest, a
forest dark and dire with dread, filled with noise and the
howlings of the tempest; and we know by tradition that
even an ordinary forest must be regarded as potentially
perilous, containing robbers and wild beasts . . . And to
the right - why, there was bare, desolate, open country,
all shrouded in white. Out of the snow rose and thrust
themselves all kinds of half-shapes and lumps in which
black and white were mingled and which looked like tomb
stones in the graveyard. His Blessed Name alone knew
what those queer things might be : devils, wild beasts, dead
men - or just plain briars and brambles . . . From every
side through the darkness there massed to leap upon him
whole legions of ounces and pards and basilisks . . .
"Nay indeed !" Reb Lippe changed his mind. "A matter
of life sets the Sabbath aside ! 'And live according to them,'
it is written; we are not required to die for them ; and miracles
are not to be counted on. Anyway, who knows whether I
am worthy of having a miracle done for my sake . . . "
And now Reb Lippe could clearly recognize a huge ounce

or pard, huge and exceedingly dreadful, which stood facing
him, sending sparks flying toward him out of its phosphor
escent eyes, and gnashing cruel, crooked fangs at him. Reb
Lippe's flesh began to creep, and his eyes all but bulged
from their sockets • • •
205
THE S H O RT FRIDAY
"Nay indeed and nay agai n !" Reb Lippe decided the
question once for all in very fear of death as he clambered
back into the sleigh. "In all full truth, according to the
deepest intention of the law, I am in no way called upon
to sacrifice my life for this thing. Rather the reverse !
Travel on the Sabbath is not prohibited in the Five Books
of the Torah; it is one of "their" later supplements. Refrain
ing from labor - and, as to that . . . "
By this time Reb Lippe found himself sitting right within

the sleigh. But still he tried, sighing and moaning and
groaning, to seat himself there uncomfortably, in an unnat
ural sort of way to prove the urgency of the case. The
sleigh made its smooth way through the darkness, while
Reb Lippe began whispering to himself the service for the
Inauguration of the Sabbath, and his heart felt broken and
degraded.
May it ne'er befall you, all ye who use the roads ! That
winter's night was as long and eventful for Reb Lippe as
any jubilee of years. The poor mare was already weary
and walked on without any more strength within her. The
sleigh bumped on the uneven surface of the ground and set
the shaken body of Reb Lippe dancing. His bones were all
but shaken out of him along the road. The trees of the
forest, grave old ancients, with broad snow-burdened
branches, passed before his eyes in silent reproach and great
wrath. Thickets of dwarf oaks, the little folk of the forest,
stared gaping with their pointed heads under their snow-
206
caps and wondered in astonishment who and what this Reb

Lippe might be, this Rabbi of the Town and Master of the
City, whose heart had led him to travel on the Sabbath
day. Thorns and briars bowed their faces to the ground in
shame, and the wind in the weeping willows sorrowed and
wailed and howled : oh and woe for the profanation of the
Name, and oh and woe for the shaming of the Torah !
At about midnight the sleigh finally reached an inn stand

ing lonely by the wayside, sunk up to its windows in the
snow. The mare was covered with lather and white frost,
weary to death, while the travellers were all but falling to
pieces. The beard, earlocks, moustache and overcoat-top
of the rabbi had become one solid piece of glass. There
could be no questicn of travelling beyond this point. The
hostler of the inn, an old gentile, came out to them. The
rabbi entered the inn and the sleigh disappeared into the
courtyard.
The room which the rabbi entered was inhabited by a
desolate chill and the mournful gleam of a sooty lantern.
From the neighboring room came the snoring of the family.
On the table stood two brass candlesticks in which the
candles had burnt out, and on the thick homewoven linen
tablecloth were scattered crumbs, dishes and bones, the
207
THE S H O RT FRIDAY
relics of a Sabbath meal. Reb Lippe turned his head away

so as not to look at them. Frozen almost into one lump
and burdened with his heavy clothes, he flung himself down,
while yet there was life in him, on a hard, bare bench next
to the wall, and buried his head in the bosom of his overcoat.
Yes, that's how it was. He, the rabbi, had profaned the
Sabbath . . . How great and mighty the profanation of
the Holy Name! How would he look people in the face on
the morrow ? And what would he say on the Day of Judg
ment ? Alas and alack for the shame and reproach !
And he wept. His thawing beard and earlocks and
moustache wept with him. His head and limbs felt as heavy
as lumps of lead. He wanted to move but could not. Has
the hour of death arrived, he thought, and trembled with
the fear of death. Yes indeed, this must be the hour of
death ; it was time to confess.
The rabbi's lips, of themselves, began to repeat the words
of the Confession. "Oh, oh, merciful and gracious God,
long suffering and mighty in lovingkindness and truth . • .
Prithee do it not, have mercy ! Lord of the Universe, for

give and have pity, we being flesh and blood, and very
worms . . . The habitudes of a man ! In sooth I have
sinned, I have gone astray, I have transgressed . . . Yet
these sheep, my wife and my children, wherein have they
sinned ?"
For a long, long time he suffered from sleeplessness. All
his body was washed in cold sweat, yet it seemed as though
208
THE SHORT FRIDAY
fire were flaming in his bones. Through his fever he dimly

whispered all kinds of strange verses. He combined extracts
from the Mishna with verses from the Five Books of Moses,
sayings of our sages of blessed memory with prayers and
entreaties. Heavenly thoughts regarding such matters as
reward and punishment, Hell and Paradise, the beating in
the grave and the Angel of Death whirled in his disordered
mind in confusion together with domestic affairs; his wife
a widow, his children orphans, a daughter ripe for wedding,
the rabbinical dues, the communal impost on yeast . . .
The poor rabbi struggled with all these unhappy thoughts,
and moaned and groaned until dawn. Only then did he
pass into a hard and uneasy sleep, a slumber born of and
bearing with it suffering, bringing with it short, uneven
breathing. And so he slept.
VI
Reb Lippe lay in the inn on the bench, wrapped up in

his overcoat, sweating and dripping from his thawing beard
and earlocks, and sleeping through unhappy dreams. Mean
while the Holy and Blest One up in His Heaven was en
gaged in His work, setting the cocks crowing at the dawn,
and rolling the darkness away before the light. And once
the cock crew, and through the little frost-eovered windows
there broke into the room the stern, pale, chill light of a
209
THE SHORT FRIDAY
winter's dawn, Feivka the innkeeper sneezed, belched,

said "Pah !" and woke up. At a single bound he was off
his bed, put on his heavy kneeboots, set his short coat round
his shoulders and went out into the big room to see who
had arrived at his inn during the night. He entered and
looked, then stood gazing stupefied. In front of him on the
bench, rolled up in his overcoat at length, lay the rabbi,
Reb Lippe !
At first Feivka thought this must be illusion and some
devil's hocus-pocus. He bent down and gazed again, staring
long and thoroughly. He gazed, above, below and from the
side. "By my life, it's the rabbi ! Himself! Here's that
trumpet of a nose and his wizened face."
It seemed to Feivka that he must be crazy. "What's
this ?" says he to himself. "Sabbath - and the rabbi ?
Am I drunk or mad ? . . . " Suddenly he smote himself on
the forehead with his fist. "Oho Feivka, ignoramus and son
of an ignoramus that you are ! There must be a mistake
here, and a nasty mistake at that. Fancy getting mixed
up as to the days of the week, Feivka ! Yes, yes, Feivka,
you've fallen in properly, and all the worse for you and your
life. You've been living around with Esau, and by reason
of your many sins you've confused the proper order of the
days. Oho, a nice affair, a fine business, as I'm a Jew.
Tomorrow the whole village will know about it. Pah !"
The moment Feivka realised what had happened, he
dashed off to remove all the signs of Sabbath from the
210
THE S H O RT FRIDAY
house before the rabbi woke up and caught him. To begin

with, he put away the brass candlesticks, the remains of
the Sabbath meal, and the white table-cloth. Then he
rushed into the bedroom and brought his startled wife and
daughter out of bed.
"Get to work quick, you lazy carcasses, you carrion !
Come on, come on, may the plague take you !" he ordered.
"What's the matter, who's here ?" his wife started, awake.
"To hell with you, may the earth swallow you up, you
big cow; don't raise your voice ! Get up at once and take
the food out of the stove, quick . . . "
For a while she could not understand what her husband
was talking about. But when a heavy blow of his fist had
made the matter quite clear, she jumped up and dressed
and hurried to the stove.
"Out with i t, out with everything, may the plague take
you," said her husband impatiently. "Porridge and pud
ding and all. Into the waste-barrel with it, empty it all
out. Don't keep as much as a sign of i t !"
And straightway the whole appearance of the house was
transformed. Sabbath departed and weekday arrived. Fire
burned, crackling in the wide-mouthed stove. The pot
bellied samovar was stoked up with fuel and began hum
ming. Hammer and axe were heard. Yuchim the hostler
was chopping wood and fixing things and knocking in nails
where they were needed, and also where they were not
needed. Feivka himself had condescended to take up his
211
THE SHORT FRIDAY
stand at the trough, kneading dough for all he was worth.

His daughter, a tall fat-eheeked girl with a dirty face, who
stood confused in the middle of the house unable to under
stand what was going on, received a couple of boxes on the
ear and one pinch from her father's dough-eovered hands,
and promptly began to peel potatoes into a big pot. "Peel,
peel away, the plague take you both !" Feivka urged his
womenfolk, while he himself kneaded the dough with all
his might . . . He was expecting the rabbi to wake up any
moment, was Feivka; but when he finished his kneading
and the rabbi still slept, he hurriedly put on his old, crushed
and shapeless round fur hat from the rents of which hung
bits of thread, bared his arm, and began to wind his tefil/in
strap round his arm as befits a weekday, and to repeat the
morning prayers to their ordinary weekday tune.
Meanwhile the door turned ceaselessly on its hinges and
peasants in their overcoats, holding their whips, began
tramping in and out. The room filled up with steaming
breath and chill of snow and maclwrka smoke, and the smell
of the coats and stamping feet and tongues awagging.
While praying, Feivka took particular care to walk up
and down in front of the spot where the honored rabbi
slept, singing his hal/e/uyas in their weekday tune at the
top of his voice. He kept an observant comer of his eye on
the rabbi while doing so, as if to say, "Sleep, Rabbi, sleep,
and may you enjoy it. Now I 'm not afraid of you any more.
Now you have the right to get up even."
212
THE S H O RT FRIDAY
And sure enough, the rabbi chose just that moment to

shift his weary body somewhat. "Good luck to you,
Feivka," said the innkeeper to himself. "Just look, but
don't spoil things."
And at once Feivka vanished amid the machorka smoke
and the multitudes of overcoats. And from his newfound
spot he continued to keep a watchful eye on the rabbi and
to sing a the top of his voice, and in the weekday tune,
"Halleluyah, halleluyah!"
VII
Now when our rabbi woke up, all his pains and aches
woke up with him. "Oh, oh, oh ! My whole head is sick
and my bones feel as though they had been torn apart !"
He raised half his body with great difficulty and opened
his eyes. What was this? Where was he ? At the bath
house ? No, in an inn. And where was the Sabbath ? There
was no sign or memory of the Sabbath ! Peasants, a week
day crowd. And a samovar was boiling just over there.
"In that case," came a dreadful thought that set all the
rabbi's bones trembling and made his purple face even
more purple, "in that case I went on sleeping all through
the Sabbath and the night of the departure of the Sabbath
as well. Here on the bench, in the presence of Feivka and
in sight of the gentiles, I lay and slept through a full twenty-
213
T H E S H O RT FRIDAY
four hours. And without hallowing the Sabbath, and with

out Sabbath prayers, and without celebrating the end of
the Sabbath and beginning of the week. Lord of the Uni
verse, what have you done to Lippe ?"
Black dread fell on the rabbi and despair took his heart
by storm. He all but fainted. God had made things exceed
ingly bitter for him, too bitter . . . "And why?" the heart
within him cried out. "Lord of the Universe, tell me why ?"
Through the cloud of machorka smoke came the gentile
Ivan, whip in hand:
"Time to start, Rabbi. The sleigh's ready."
The rabbi rose groaning and turned to the door. He
reeled like a drunkard and forced his way between the
peasants with difficulty. At the door the broad horny hand
of Feivka gripped his own.
"Peace be with you, R-r-rabbi !"
"Peace, peace," the rabbi evaded him and hurried out.
"I've no time."
"Peace, peace," responded Feivka after him. "Go in
peace, R-r-rabbi, and the Lord prosper your way."
Both sides preferred things so at the moment and neither
detained the other. Feivka hastened to bang the door to
after the fleeing rabbi, as much as to say, "Bless you !"
while the rabbi set his heart upon climbing into the sleigh.
"Haya, Ivan, Ivan," he began to urge the driver.
But what was the hurry ? To flee ? Whither? The rabbi
himself had no idea what to answer to these questions.
214
But just at the moment Reb Lippe was not asking many
questions or cogitating deeply. Whatever he was doing
seemed to be done automatically, without his knowledge
or attention. There was one sole and solitary thing for
which his soul ceaselessly prayed : "Lord of the Universe,
bring about a miracle and turn the road into a vast length
and distance of thousands upon thousands of leagues. Let
years and decades pass and jubilees be gone, and meanwhile
let me journey and journey and journey . . . If I am not
worthy of a miracle, then I pray Thee take my soul, Lord
of the Universe, I am willing to forego everything
but take my soul . . . "
But the prayer of Reb Lippe went unanswered. The

sleigh bore him as though with the wings of eagles, and the
polished, smooth road seemed to bound below them. The
cloudy night was followed by a wintry sun and the white
countryside was bright and cheerful. The ravens picking
along the road made way for the hasting sleigh, and wel
comed it with their hoarse cries of "Kraa, kraa l"
Reb Lippe was ashamed in the presence of the ravens
and in the presence of the shining sun and the white snow.
He bowed his head and hid i t within the collar of his coat,
and once again reverted to his despairing thoughts. And
from that point he neither saw nor heard nor felt anything
more. He placed his spirit in the hands of the God of Spirits,
and left his weary body in the speeding sleigh :
"Let be whatever must be . • • "
215
TH E SHORT FRIDAY
VIII
And at the noon hour, when the congregation left the

synagogue and, in all the glory of the Sabbath, was return
ing home at the sides of the road and in the midst thereof,
and when everybody was wishing everybody else a good
Sabbath, in that selfsame moment there sped toward them
from the outskirts a speedy sleigh. And in that selfsame
sleigh - woe unto the eyes that did the like behold ! - sat
the rabbi, Reb Lippe !
216

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AFTERGROWTH

Translated from the original Hebrew by

.1/tergrowth and Other Stories offers

Of the five short stories which Bialik

In "The Shamed Trumpet" is relatt·d

"The Short Friday" rs a highly enter­

Indispensable for a thorough under­

Tra,slatedjrom the Hebrew

THE JEWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY OF AMERICA

All righu rtun>ed. No part of this 6ook may oe

PII.INTED I If THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA

PRESS OF THE J EWISH PUBLICATION SOCIETY

I. HAYYIM NAHMAN BIALIK-AN INTERPRETATION. . 3

HAYYIM NAHMAN BIALIK, the foremost Hebrew poet of

twenty years, until after the Communist Revolution. His

States as the pogroms which had taken place earlier that

in all truth; and it is his genius which, in the story "After­

Timber may have provided an occupation for hundreds

Faces were monstrous, horrid; tongues ran torrents

as to the basic goodness of the Universe was with under­

Almost all Bialik's poems are attempts to escape back to

crisis. He found that he was forgetting his childhood ; it

What would he have to face if he left his childhood behind?

He entered the innermost Paradise, torch i n hand.

He hastened to enter within, before him his torch.

He breaks through ! . . . So he came to the hiddenmost

His hand quivers, stricken his eyes by the light.

It was about this time that he wrote his "Psalm for

Cadger and bum! Drub at the drum!

No loaves and no fishes, no flesh and no bread,

Till the dance goes ascending in lightning and thunder

No honey, no milk, no wine any more,

No shirt and no shoes, no clothing to wear -

No brother, redeemer, kinsman or friend ­

No leasehold, no tenancy, roof or wall here­

The Earth is full broad, yea she hath four winds

No Splendor, Foundation, Glory nor Praise-

No vengeance, no mercy, no judgment, no pay­

Cadger and bum! Drub at the drum!

One recalls Shakespeare's Prospera in The Tempest,

The poems are few in number in which Bialik's duality of

tiful poems, "Radiance" and "The Well," are really verse

Dead of the Desert !

Yet daring were they and hard as are Araby's rocks;

It was Bialik's fate to write Hebrew at the time when the

only asking to he left alone during the dread winter nights.

It was characteristic of Bialik's childhood and deepest

In vain do you seek him in the hiding-places of his

File my bluntness all along

He was a poet whose folksongs might well be compared

Fashion's changing down our way­

Fashion's changing down our way­

• 0 pure one, be with us and light with thy ray

The night and the day ; then pass on thy way.

Bialik published no more than five stories all told, three

is a good example. In a posthumous fragment, published

keeping time with the band. "A flock of sheep!" he thought

This series of legends includes a particular tour de force

He reached the palace. The king of the isle appeared

cakes of fine dough, plaited loaves with currants and

That, one might say, is Bialik at ease; Bialik in his

on this betrays him; as though, despite his pride, he did not

the peasant. The Russian Zionists have handed this atti­

"The Short Friday" rs a highly enter

Indispensable for a thorough under

in all truth; and it is his genius which, in the story "After

as to the basic goodness of the Universe was with under

No brother, redeemer, kinsman or friend

No leasehold, no tenancy, roof or wall here

No vengeance, no mercy, no judgment, no pay

Fashion's changing down our way

Fashion's changing down our way

the peasant. The Russian Zionists have handed this atti

by sound, but meanwhile my heart was about its own busi

From that day forth I was weaned as far as thumb