Bransk 1899: with Chapter 10 Complete

 

What is the Old New Land? Where is the Old New Land? We have no idea what it is, where to look, where or when we'll find it; but the material who, the how and whither, the warp and weft, the length, width, depth, and time; the dwelling, foundations, splendor, and even eternity, are all mere surface on the face of the deep. The Old New Land is the space within the space, the dimensions between where exist possibility, plane, history, law, condition, and infinity; glory, law, lovingkindness, the sources of wisdom, and the crown of creation itself. If it exists at all, and of that existence there shall always be doubt, then it abides in that apogee of maximal cosmic tension to which we all arrive in the instant before the great celestial snap: a place of the world of no end that by wrestling within its unbounded bounds, we bring, so it seems, a very few of its tiny emanations down to our own, if only for a specific indeed finite time, if only in a small indeed definite place. It is that land within which all actions seem motivated by greatness, and much even by goodness, for from that unboundedness of spheres above, we carry those best selves which comprise our share of the divine creation. Once we glimpse its possibilities, we work, and we work, and we work, and we wait, and we wait, and we wait, but we're always thrown out of the Old New Land.

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Bransk: 1899

Chapter 1:

We begin in Bransk as the clock soon strikes 8: an 'every-shtetl' in Northeast Poland - 'shtetl' is a Yiddish word meaning "here we buy wholesale." Six-thousand inhabitants, half Jews, half Christians, mostly farmers, a town which never produced a single person of any note or distinction - here in America, we would call the inhabitants of a town like Bransk hicks. According to Geni, descendents of Bransk include Bob Saget, Amy Winehouse and Mandy Patankin. But nobody of distinction ever came from Bransk except one, the author's grandfather, Morris Tucker, formerly Maishl Tecoczki, and formerly before that Moshe Kharlap.

The name Kharlap is an acronym for 'Khiya, Rosh-l'Galut L'Polin', in Hebrew letters Khet-Reysh-Lamed-Pey, and translates to Khiya, head of the exiles in Poland; which means one of three things:

1. That this family might be direct descendents of a Rabbi so important that he gets his own acronym, and all the best Rabbis get acronyms. 

2. One of its ancestors was really smart for a Pollock - though slurs like Pollock are considered offensive now, but since this slur is about white people I think it's ok. 

3. One of the ancestors was a brilliant medieval Jewish merchant who realized that he could mark up his prices if he lied about his ancestry and exaggerated his Yikhes. 

According to wikipedia, the key event in Bransk history seems to be in 1264, the same year as the Statute of Kalisz, which guaranteed Polish Jews protection against forced baptisms blood libels (we'll explain what that is later, many times). 1264 seems to be the year of the "famous" Battle of Bransk, which pitted the Yotvingians, a poorly armed tribe from whom the Lithuanians descend - more on them later too - against the mighty Krakovians, for whom the great city of Krakow was christened - a city later that was later the center of the Polish Renaissance, which is a bit like saying that Lakewood, New Jersey is where all the Jewish football players come from. But Krakow would find a lot of fame around the time your Tateh was born because it's the city that produced the first Polish Pope, about whom the writer's still deciding whether or not he plays a part in the family history. 

It's tough to know what to say about this family before our patriarch was born. It's not like there are family stories handed down about some ancestor Yechiel who smoked opium in front of the Golden Calf, it's only right before this patriarch was born that there's any historical documentation of this family at all. 

 But the reason we're starting here is because everybody in the family remembers it as a legendary day just before Rosh Hashana 1899 when everything was finally supposed to go right for the Kharlap family. Reb Yaakov made a huge speech to the kids that morning before arbet about how hard it's been for all the Jews before them for so many centuries. According uncle Z'vulun it was about the history of the Kharlaps, though elteh-Zaydie Benyamin always told his children Z'vulun was full of drek and they didn't speak to each other for almost twenty years about a misplaced car keys. But according to Z'vulun the speech was about the whole history of the Kharlaps: Expulsion from Spain to Venice, where they were made to live in a ghetto, eventually making it up to Poland just in time for the Khmielnitsky massacres in 1648 that wiped out half the Jews in Eastern Europe, two-and-a-half centuries of mistreatment, discrimination and pogroms in Poland... but finally, 'it's different now', and no Kharlaps were ever born with the advantages you have. After this coming Shabbos, the shatkhan is coming with matches for all of you. Very soon you'll all be married and have kinder of your own, and it'll be a year of Simkheh. So the kinder went out to work. Apparently it was quite a day... 

As it happens, Z'vulun couldn't have known about the expulsion from Spain couldn't happen until about twenty-five years ago when a cousin of a newer generation recently emailed his relatives and told them, with lots of exclamation points, that Charlap means 'Khiya, Rosh l'Galut l'Portugal,' not 'Polin', so apparently the family is Portuguese and Sephardic Jews after all who came to Poland only after about two-hundred years in Salonica, which is a city in Greece, and Greece is just about the only major country where part of this family won't live in a few years (just be patient...). But it would seem that most Jews arrived in Poland a little after 1500, just after they were expelled from Spain and Portugal. I don't think anybody knows how the Kharlaps ended up in Bransk, but some Jews left Salonica in the 1680s after a bunch of Jewish followers of a false messiah named Shabbetai Tzvi converted to Islam and moved to Salonica to establish their new community there--there goes the neighborhood....  

The name Kharlap shall be that of the fictionalized family to which we subject the ordeal of this book. In this book, it is a family incarnated in somewhat mythical circumstances, akin to a story by Isaac Bashevis Singer (for those of you not familiar with Singer, think of a Jewish Gabriel Garcia Marquez if he accepted editors' suggestions, something which this writer shall do only with great reluctance).

It's just before Christmas, just before the 19th century's final week. We begin here because while there are as 40 centuries of Jews before, it is only in the 19th that truly began reliable historical documentation of each individual human's pluralities, "This person lived, here is where and when, and each life acquiring meaning, not only for when they lived and what they lived among, but meaning something in itself for its own sake. Occasionally there's even record of what they looked like, or even record of what they did. All things before this era are legend, and while legends are upon what we shall build this work, we aspire after this relatively short beginning to ground this work in something seeming like fact.

So while Reb Yaakov Kharlap did not truly exist, there were thousands of men like him recorded by census, which even in the backward environs of 19th century Czardom, were compiled by thousands of statisticians, public servants, and scientists of skill, each of whom gathered their findings in good faith into some of the most reliable composites we yet had of whom and what humans are.

Reb Yaakov Kharlap is a small town Rabbi, not even the Rebbe for his town but a mere Kheder instructor - Kheder being the elementary school through which shtetl boys are taught their Hebrew letters, how to pray, how to read, how to memorize pages at a time of Torah and Talmudic tractate. He is an alte mensch of the alte shul, very free with the ruler upon the knuckles and elsewhere, and gets extreme nakhes from the brood of his twelve adolescent children: Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehuda, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Yissachar, Z'vulun, and Yoseph; no doubt proud well past the point of opleykenung.

You may recognize those names as the exact names of Jacob's children in the Old Testament or Tanakh. The reason for these names was because after twenty five years without conceiving a child, an angel appeared to the already 50-year-old Reb Yaakov in a dream, and in response to Reb Yaakov's insistent demand for a blessing, announced to Reb Yaakov that his no longer young wife would bear him twelve sons, which Reb Yaakov must in turn name after Israel's twelve tribes.

In absurdly quick succession, the children come in six sets of twins over the years between 1880-1885. Never mind in what order, it doesn't matter, but all of whom, like the miracle Reb Yaakov knew would happen that everyone else doubted, survived to adulthood, albeit with many illnesses along the way, meant to test that Reb Yaakov's faith was truly unbreakable. All of his sons are now Bar Mitzvahed, and the now septuagenerian Reb Yaakov awaits eagerly the birth which his unnamed sexagenarian wife will give any day now to what he knows with the certitude of Hashem will be his last son, whom at his bris he shall name Binyamin.

Of course, Reb Yaakov has a twin brother himself, Ezra. Unlike Reb Yaakov who can't make more money on his own than a shtetl kheder teacher can ever make, Ezra is a wealthy man in Bialystok, the nearest Polish city. And while most shabboses Ezra goes to deh greicer shul in Bialystok (burned by the Germans, 1941), he has by and large abandoned Judaism as Reb Yaakov would understands it for palant, kielbasa, and the occasional shiksa factory girl whom his shaygets foreman brings and takes away under most nights, and while Reb Yaakov has no idea of Ezra's disreputably goyisher habits, he is well aware of the contempt of Reb Ezra's much more 'enlightened' wife Ada for Reb Yaakov's unchanged ways, and through her perhaps correct pressure, Ezra consistently compelled to cut the sums sent to Reb Yaakov to feed his children, who are now are well past old enough to work on their own.

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As I said, we begin in the Kheder class of Reb Yaakov, who is very free with the ruler and constantly berating his luftmenschen for their lack of attention and refusal to sit still. And incidentally to the story, in case you haven't noticed yet, much of this novel will exist in a kind of Yid-lish patois which gives the character of the language while, so we hope, being intelligible to the average reader of English, who can fill in the gaps, except for gentiles, who will speak in a similar patois that mixes English with their origin's native languages. But the narration, rather, will be in English, except for those many, many moments of subjective voice when the author cannot help but forget to hold up the segregative wall between narration and character speech, during which the narrator even shall slip carelessly into the Yid-lish or Germ-lish or Pol-lish or Americ-lish of his many characters..

But in any event, Reb Yaakov sits with his students at the head of the unsturdy rectangular table, property of the Bransker kheder since 1772 (repaired in 1793). Year after year, whenever a vildeh khayeh is bored, this wild animal they call a talmid rocks the table without ever realizing what he does, and every year, the batayt that the students find Reb Yaakov boring drives him a little more meshuggeh.

And as Reb Yaakov chants today's lesson. We'll show you the first half in Aramaic, then the second half in Yiddish transliteration, and then for the purposes of this novel, we'll show it in English. Please as you read it in English try to hear in your ears whatever you might imagine as the song-songy way the Orthodox have chanted Talmud from time immemorial.

מיתיבי כל עשרים וארבעה חדש דש מבפנים וזורה מבחוץ דברי ר' אליעזר א"ל הללו אינו אלא כמעשה ער ואונן כמעשה ער ואונן ולא כמעשה ער ואונן כמעשה ער ואונן דכתיב והיה אם בא

vi der nuhg fun er aun aunn, aun dakh nisht [dvka] vi der firung fun er aun aunn: 'khdrkh er aun aunn', varim es shteyt geshribn in khsubim, aun es iz geven, ven er iz areyn. tsu zayn bruders vayb, az er hot es aoysgegosn aoyf der erd; "du zalst nisht lakhn bite." aun 'la [bdiuk] khdrkh er aun aunn', veyl dart iz es geven an aumnatirlekher meshh, da vert es getun aoyf dem tbei.

(then in English)

An objection was raised: During all the twenty-four months {after a birth, when a mother is nursing} one may thresh within and winnow without; these are the words of Rov Eliezer. The others said to him: Such actions are only like the practice of Er and Onan! -Like the practice of Er and Onan, and yet not [exactly] like the practice of Er and Onan: ‘Like the practice of Er and Onan’, for it is written in Scripture, And it came to pass, when he went in unto his brother's wife, that he spilt it on the ground; (kids start laughing) "Don't laugh please." and ‘not [exactly] like the practice of Er and Onan’, for whereas there it was an unnatural act, here it is done in the natural way.

Today's drasha is a particularly poignant one for Reb Yaakov. The gerekhteh Reb always tied his lessons to the Torah Parsha of the week: and this week's parsha, Vayeshev, is the infamous Biblical story of Onan, Tamar, Yehuda, and Er. Tamar, the beautiful bride whom a series of husbands refused to blemish by making her pregnant, and always spilled their seed upon the ground during schtupzeit. Every Judaica teacher has their favorite stories, and every time Reb Yaakov's taught this story, he had to fight back tears as he thought of his wife forty-five years ago (never mind her name), the unimaginable beauty she was when he first encountered her under the khuppah of their wedding, and how a lifetime of childless marriage wore her beauty to withers, and just when he thought she couldn't become more ugly, how a second lifetime of raising twelve children wore her further from meeskeit into mekhasheyfeh. This eshes khayil, who always was everything to him, to whom he gemakhted lebe to every Friday night for forty-five years, and many regular nights too, and when no longer sheyn, he blew the candle out and gemakhted lebe in the dark to her neshawmeh, to the memory of the sheynkeit she once possessed, and to the eybik lebe he had for this woman for whom he always knew he'd been too mazeldik in their shatkhan, while she'd been all to shlemazeldik; this eshes khayil who conceded to any unreasonable demand, whom he always heard crying from other rooms during their years without kinder, who never had time to cry again in the years since all those geburts - so frequent and fecund. That woman he so lebed but never knew if she lebed him back, and for whom he always suspected his uncontrollable ba'ager for her the destruction of her beauty and glik.

Und yet again, when he teaches Vayeshev, the students can't repress their gelekhter, all those mentions of sheynkeit and geshlekht, and one at a time, each of those so called talmids breaks down into a fit of giggling. Yedes yahr it's the same with these vildeh khayas, and finally, Reb Yaakov can't take it anymore:

(Rebbe Yaakov hits one of the kids with a switch)

"NIBZEH L'AZAZEL KHALERIYA! LIGN IN DRERD UND BAKN BEYGL! HINDERT HAYSN ZOL ZU HABEN, IN YEDER HEYS A HUNDERD TSIMERN, IN YEDER TSIMER TZVANZIK BETN UN KADOKHES ZOL IM VARFN FIN EYN BET IN DER TSVEYTER!

(keeps hitting the kid)

Farshtunkener Jewish hillbillies!...."

If ever there was a moment when held back his rage before (and there weren't many), he didn't hold it back this time and lets loose at them the worst curse a Jew can utter to another Jew in 1900:

"Is Dreyfus going through all this just so you mamzerim can dishonor his sacrifice?!

(One of the kids says): Rebbe Yaakov, Gimpeleh's finger looks crooked...

Zay shtil you naarisher pischer!... Alright! Put your hands on the table! Everybody put your hands on the table!

(Hits kids hands with switch between most sentences)

Laughing at the Torah! Laughing at women! Generation to generation of light-mindedness and ingratitude to your mothers! While you're busy not learning Torah they're making sure you don't starve and freeze! One day all of your wives'll be sick of your disrespect to women and demand all the things men have, and then where'll the world be?....

Feh! You're all just meat with eyes!...

And if this were meant to be a theater work, then what would follow as the clock strikes eight is a nervous breakdown of exposition:

(one of the kids is crying from the beatings)

Oy, I'm so sorry Gimpeleh, I didn't mean all that. Kum tzu mir mein kint

(takes crying kid in his arms)

Ikh hob dich lieb

(kisses him).

You know I have love for all kinderlach, you know I have love for your parents who I taught when they was smaller than you. Tevyeleh I even taught your grandfathers, both of them! Du veyst, you kinder are my life, I just need you to learn so you can be a light to the goyim just like your parents have always been. I promise.

Let's all sing a song: let's sing Tumbalalaika.

(everybody sings a verse of Tumbalalaika)

You all sound beautiful tatelehs.

Listen kindz, I know this stuff is hard and boring, but you need to pay attention to it.

(pause)

He's up there, He's watching. He knows which of you are leyning good and which are leyning bad, but when you have trouble, you talk to Him, right during the Shomeh Esrei when we're all going Maaaanehmanehmanehmanehmanehmanehmanehoyriboimnosheloylamesistsoschverunsoshvachunoymein

tzurismeintatehisaschnorrermeinmamehisabalebusunmeinbriderisabeheymeunmeinbubbehisamekhasheyfehunikhveysvos

(the kids laugh hard),

just between you and me... and Him,... you don't have to do it.

What good is it to do the Shmoneh Esrai twice? Hashem didn't hear you the first time? Use that time to say to Hashem, geb a kook, I know I'm a bad leyner, but I'll try to be good. Just try harder to be good and he'll give you as many chances as you need till you become good because you are good. You're kinder and you're good, because all kinder are good, and you don't have time yet to become the rashas. You know he'll listen, and I know he'll listen....

I know I've told you this story but I know he'll listen. Hashem came to me in a dream. It's true! Your eltern probably say Oy, Reb Yaakov, he's so meshuggeh. That's what they say isn't it?

But today, I'm gonna tell it again, because I know you'll understand it, and today's the best day to tell it. An angel came to me in a dream just like he came to Awv Yaakov in ancient Israel, and he blessed me just like he blessed Yaakov. He told me, Reb Yaakov, I know you and your beautiful wife, and I know everybody thinks she's a mekhasheyfeh now, but she was beautiful before you all were born,...

(starts tearing up)

Reb Yaakov, I know you and your wife have tzuris having babies for 25 years, but you're going to have twelve babies, all of them sons, and they're all gonna grow up. You need to name them after the twelve sons of Jacob: Reuven, Shimun, Levi, Yehuda, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Yissachar, Z'vulin, Yosef and Binyamin.

And then, in four years, five sets of sons: Reuven and Shimun, then Levi and Yehuda, then Dan and Naphtali, then Gad and Asher, then three! Yissachar and Z'vulun and Yosif. And then, nothing, fourteen years, no more kinder. (chortles between a laugh and an oy) Eleven's enough. But then today, today, five minutes just before I got here, Reuven tells me mein weib's in labor, and I know we're gonna have twelfth son.

(class claps)

DON'T CLAP! (spits) Don't tempt the evil eye. After the birth you can sing me Mazel Tov and tonight you'll all come over with your parents and we'll do a l'Chaim and in a week we'll do the bris.

But here's the reason I'm telling you the story. My sons, Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehuda, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Yissachar, Z'vulin, Yosef, and soon, one more... I raised them to be Yiddisher Kops. You know them! Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehuda, Dan, Naphtali, Gad, Asher, Yissachar, Z'vulin, Yosef... every one of them is a Tzaddik. You know them! They all love God, and God loves them. They do the mitzvahs, they go to shul, they work so hard, they help their Mameh, they help your Mamehs, they help everybody in the Shtetl, and that's what Hashem gives you if you believe He will.

(Hard cut to Scene 2)

(4 of Reb Yaakov's sons smoking cigarettes in the Jewish cemetary)

Dan: (imitating his father) They do the mitzvahs, they go to shul, they work so hard, they help their Mameh, they help your Mamehs...

Naphtali: Oh we help their Mamehs... (they all laugh)

In case you haven't noticed, there will be an enormous amount of dialogue in this novel. It's almost as though the writer meant for this novel to be a play, and realized he could never afford to get eighteen or so actors good enough to seem convincingly Yiddish.

Chapter 2

We immediately cut to four of the brothers smoking cigarettes in the Jewish cemetery: which? Perhaps Shimon, Asher, Yisachar, and Z'vulun, because... why not.... the last mentioned of whom is pisching on the headstone of Rabbi Chaim Schkop, the deceased last year Bransker Rebbe who seemed to live forever, and by actuarial standards before modern medicine, did live forever. Rebbe Schkop was born, in one of those all too heavy-handed literary coincidences, on an unspecified date in June 1815. Historically minded readers would put his birthday right around the end of the Congress of Vienna, which created the long peacetime of the European 19th century dominated by Austria and England. Were anyone to read this book, perhaps a literary academic with a passion for symbolism would read the Congress of Vienna's stability into the auspicion of Rebbe Schkop's birthdate and biography. But Jewish-minded symbolists would note that June is the month of Shavuos, when Hashem gave His Torah and His (or it's) laws.

And within Rebbe Schkop's infinitely long beard was the Bransk's lawgiver, its judge, the man whom, for sixty-five years, sat all too patiently in his house study, which we descendants of the shtetl refer to as the Bet-Din, the 'House of Judgement', within which a Rabbi functioned as Philosopher King in virtually every Pale of Settlement shtetl: in every shtetl, the Rebbe was judge and jury, legislator and executive, professorial lecturer and school headmaster, giving his ear to every legal dispute from trivial to grand between any and all Jews, serving both as prosecutor and defense, so that legal issues are solved within the community, and Jews may be spared Czarist law and all its authoritarian might.

And it was just in year one of Chaim Schkop's long tenure that the great Rebbe found his star pupil, the ten year old Yaakov Kharlap - then just little 'Yankele.' Kleyninker Yankele was one of those Illuim, a potential Shas Polack whom by his Bar Mitzvah seemed able to recite all twelve books of Talmud Bavel from memory, or at least he would soon.

On the weekend of his Bar Mitzvah came the infamous Pin Test. A pin placed at random in the Talmud Bavel. The pin landed in the book of Tehorot, on daf fifty four. Reb Yaakov was asked the seventh word of line 18 and of course, he got it right (this writer won't take the time to look the word up himself...). Yankele was then asked the seventh word on line 18 of page one hundred twenty six. Richtig again.

He did the same feat when asked to name the words in specific locations of Zera'im and Kodashim. Three books down out of twelve. But when he got to Nashim, Reb Yaakov failed the Pin Test (some more heavy handed symbolism for those who know a little Hebrew). Not even four out of twelve, and never would he be a Shas Polack in his Bar Mitzvah year, and dreams an illui so precocious to be celebrated throughout the pale would never come to pass. What good is another seventeen or eighteen year old Shas Polack? Good for a wedding party trick, and however good their memories, those Shas Polacks never seem to have any khokhmah that students can actually use.

So Reb Yaakov was thirteen, Rebbe Schkop was twenty-three and thin enough to walk through a torah scroll - barely even able to stand straight in his early 20s. The spine of Rebbe Chaim Schkop's ectomorphic frame curved another centimeter or two every decade until he could barely face his claimants without lying down face up on a bed which Avraham the carpenter built specifically for that congested room of halacha, upon which Rebbe Schkop issued his judgements for almost all of the eighteen hours a day he heard cases from his all too contentious nakhgeyers.

From the moment in 1848 (more heavy-handed symbolism) when Rebbe Schkop could no longer walk, even for a step, everyone expected Rebbe Schkop to breathe his last on any day, joyfully ride his neshawmeh to Hashem like Moishe on the chariot, and take with him all the freylikhkeit of the town for whose presence he brought so much nakhes, even if he could never dance with that freyikhkeit himself; and be replaced by that unhuman encyclopedia who'd taught every Jewish man in the town from his (give or take a few) 1.8 million word Talmudic suppository.

Reb Yaakov waited for Rebbe Chaim to die for ten years, twenty, thirty, forty... and in 1897, year 49 of Rebbe Schkop's krankeit, when two milkhikers were arguing for the fifth time that year about which of them had the right to distribute which dairy to which residents on which streets, the Rebbe fell ashlof in his bed, an old man and full of years, never to wake. Yet he did not give up the ruakh until the end of 1898, year fifty, existing in a twilight state in which Reb Yaakov, now seventy-three himself and the perfect health of a mensch who fathered twelve children after the age of sixty, had to function as both Rebbe and School Melamed, Din Torah, and vater tzu tzwelf kinder, Rebbe Yaakov fainted in his kheder on the very day Rebbe Schkop went to schlaf with his fathers, and for a few hours Reb Yaakov too was presumed gathered to his people.

The town makhers wrote immediately of this miraculous emergency in which both their beloved Rebbe and his Yursh dropped dead in the same hour (not that anyone knew the time exactly...) to the Mirrer Yeshiva. The Mirrer Rosh Yeshiva wrote back immediately that this was a sign. Bransk would need a truly greys neue Rebbe, and they would send their most promising young khokham.

For fear of making him faint again, no one told Reb Yaakov that the Mirrers gave Bransk their greyster yunge khokham to become the neu Bransker Rebbe until the morning of the neuer Rebbe's arrival, and Rebbe Yaakov only learned when he saw a boy people called Rebbe Weberman move into Rebbe Schkop's old house.

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Anyway, we not so immediately cut to four of the brothers smoking cigarettes in the Jewish cemetery: which brothers? Perhaps Shimon, Asher, Naftali, and Z'vulun, because... well, who cares.... And the last mentioned of whom is pisching on the headstone of Rabbi Chaim Schkop.... Perhaps if he were asked, he would say he is trying to avenge his father's ignominy, but this narrator frankly doubts Z'vulun put much thought into it. And, please brace yourselves, this is the moment the work becomes dialogue heavy. Once again, why is that? Well you try putting on a series of plays where 10% of the words are Yiddish and see how you do. The author thought of trying to produce it as a series of podcast plays, he got two scenes into recording it before he realized it would be easier to make this project into a novel nobody reads. Nevertheless, he's fond of a lot of his writing for the play version and thinks a lot of the scenes won't work as well without the dialogue, so dialogue you shall have, even if you can't make kef oder eykn of it.

So we immediately cut to four of the brothers smoking cigarettes in the Jewish cemetary: which brothers? Perhaps Shimon, Asher, Naftali, and Z'vulun, because... well, who cares.... And the last mentioned of whom is

Dan: Don't fucking pish on the Rebbe! Gad: Don't curse in the cemetery! 

Naphtali: Who's gonna hear us?

Gad: You don't wanna tempt the evil eye. 

Asher: What evil eye? You ever see it?

Gad: Mameh's in labor! Just don't do it today, wait to do drek like this tomorrow! 

Asher: What drek? 

Gad: Why do you always do things like a mamzer?

Asher: I've got the same Mameh as you Gad. 

Gad: If Mameh saw your drek on the headstone of the Bransker Rebbe she'd give you a cherem.

Asher: I'm not shitting I'm pishing! 

Gad: (sighs) Alright take a shit in the fucking ocean. 

Asher: (proud) Ha! There's my tzaddik. 

Dan: You still haven't rolled me a papiros. 

Asher: You still haven't told us what this schlock is with that kadokhes Dreyfus. 

Dan: You can read it for yourself!

Naphtali: Asher doesn't read. 

Asher: Shtup ir, of course I read, I just don't like to. 

Naphtali: He says the words look backwards. 

Dan: Wow, we're worried about tempting the evil eye but Asher is the evil eye. 

Asher: And you're gonna get it in your evil eye if you don't tell us what that newspaper says. 

Dan: It's just more drek about that nochschlepper Dreyfus. 

Asher: What's happening to him?

Dan: Bupkes! Like always happens! He's sitting in jail, his rich brother's giving money for him...

Asher: (interrupting) Are we sending him money?

Dan: What money?! 

Asher: We have money!

Naphtali: We had money. Uncle Ezra sends less every year. You know this! 

Gad: It's that apikeyres wife of his. She always hated Tateh. 

Dan: And Uncle Ezra always hated her!

Naphtali: He did?

Dan: You heard what Shimon said. Apparently he goes to bed with a different shiksa from the factory every night. 

Naphtali: Well so what, wouldn't any of us do that if we could? 

Gad: Yehuda told me that when he went to help Uncle Ezra he saw kielbasa in the kitchen. 

Naphtali: (sigh/chortle, stunned) Well now that's shocking... Mein Gott, what the shtup....

Dan: Did you really think Ezra was a Yiddisher kop?

Naphtali: I thought he was like any of us, only rich. 

Dan: Well we did pretty well for a while there. 

Gad: Yeh, cuz we have a reicher for an uncle! 

Naphtali: Doesn't Tateh have anything saved away?

Dan: He had twelve children! 

Naphtali: Well, I guess we mazel'd out. Uncle Ezra cut the funds just as we got Bar Mitzvah'd and could go work. 

Gad: Some work we're doin' here.

Dan: This is arbeit! We're here trimming the grass in the cemetery. 

Gad: This is bupkes! We should have been home two hours ago! 

Dan: What does it matter? Who's hiring right now? When you have eleven brothers there are only jobs for sev...

Asher: (interrupting) Stop, who's this picture of? (holds up newspaper to Dan)

Dan: That? That's Dreyfus! 

Asher: That meeskait is Dreyfus? 

Of course, Dreyfus is not any schtik drek. It's not that these na'ars have no idea who Dreyfus is. How would any Jew not know in 1899? And for five years, Reb Yaakov, the only mobile Jew in Bransk with enough money and literacy for a newspaper subscription, bludgeoned his kinder's oyers with every new detail of Dreyfus and his legal dybbuks. Every Shabbos, Reb Yaakov brought new news of Dreyfus to the denizens of the Bransk shul, his former talmids every one, who never much considered why they so cared for the tzuris of a wealthy Jewish gentleman of the French military; whom even after five years of wrongful imprisonment would probably shpay on them in the street. They suddenly cared much more about Reb Yaakov's vissen and khokhma than they ever did when they were his students. So much so did they care that Reb Velvl would be on the doorstep of the kheder every morning to be the first to get new news, and by the afternoon Reb Daniil would be waiting at the Kheder door, thinking he rather would be the first with new news. But the very first to get new news was inevitably Reb Yaakov's kinder, every day with the breakfast their mother would quietly awaken at four-thirty every the morning to prepare so the kinder could eat at five thirty so they could milkh deh kauz und plau de felds before they go to shul for the Shacharis minyan, and then to cheder, and when they reached that certain age Jews tend to refer to as adulthood, tsu arbet.

By this time, l'affair Dreyfus had been ongoing for five years well over, but only a bit over two years ago did Reb Yaakov's obsession truly begin

By 1895, Reb Yaakov might have read about Dreyfus in some Yiddish paper, but to Reb Yaakov Dreyfus would just have been another brownnoser climbing the goyisheh ladder and having the kind of shlekhter mazel every Yid should expect when they think they can be greyceh goy.

By 1896, Reb Dreyfus had probably come onto a man like Reb Yaakov's mental radar, as it began to become known that Dreyfus's imprisonment through exile was a framing to cover for a mer vikhtiker officer with much greater Yichus, and a becoming name for treachery: Marie Charles Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. Why put a Dreyfus away and not an Esterhazy? Because for five-hundred years, the Esterhazys were the second-most important dynasty of the Austrian Empire - almost literally, they were the 'Hungary' in 'Austria-Hungary.' While however wealthy individual Dreyfuses ever became, Dreyfus is a spelling of the name 'Trevus', a German surname meaning 'man from Trier', a German town from which all Jews were expelled in 1555. Add up the figures...

But it had to only have been in 1897, when the Dreyfus Affair was reopened with Major Esterhazy indicted for court martial that the world's Reb Yaakovs went meshuggeh. Their sense of injustice truly farbrented for when Esterhazy was court martialed and acquitted within forty-eight hours. This Yid that who barely knew he was a Yid and doubtless wished more than ever that he wasn't was the greyster Yid of us all. Their shtures only increased when Esterhazy fled to England, redoubled when Dreyfus was re-tried and found guilty yet again under extenuating circumstances, and reached its hits grad as the mob outside the courthouse chanted not 'Death to Dreyfus,' but 'Death to the Jews.'

Among the Bransker, the Dreyfus-khopteh is now in year three. The new Rebbitzin, Batsheva Weberman, loudly wept in synagogue whenever she heard the name of Dreyfus. Dreyfus gets a special M'shebeirach every Shabbos for from Khazzen Nudler, to which there invariably comes the week's most ostentious choir of Amens.

Dan: Yeh, that's who Tateh's been talking about... every day since we were in Kheyder. 

Asher: Look at the shmattehs on him! 

Dan: Yeah,... he looks like a shaygetz. 

Gad: That guy's as Jewish as the shtupping Pope! 

Naphtali: Look at the stripes on his fucking hoot!

Gad: And what the shtup is that mustache?

Naphtali: How can a Yid who dresses like that not be guilty?

Dan: And what's with the fucking knepls on his shirt? 

Asher: Dan, is there any way of telling from the picture what colors his uniform are?

Dan: Well, you're not gonna believe this but I once saw the French uniform on a stamp. It was red, white and blue. 

Asher: Ret, veis, un bleu?! How the fuck do these zelners go into the field without other soldiers knowing where to shoot them a hectare away? 

Naphtali: A feinschmeker like this guy must go into a barber and say "Hey. Make my mustache look like the hair over my putz!'  

Gad: Seriously, why the fuck do all these alter trombeyniks give a dreck about some French faygaleh?

(interrupts from 20 meters away) 

Jan Kowalski: And who's the faygaleh here

Filip Kowalski: Tak, we know what that word means!

Chapter 3:

Three meters away, directly next to the Jewish cemetery's wooden fence; six Polish boys, three of them the Kowalski brothers, whose father Yakub Kowalski was known through Bransk, Bielsk, Wiesocki, and Ciecanowiech as 'der Yid merderer', facing them along with Franczisek Nowak, Filip Wiśniewski, and Aleksander Wojcik. The shortest of these chuligans fifteen centimeters hecher than the tallest Kharlap.

Ochen vey, these four Kharlap boys; known to every Bransker but Reb Yaakov as "Deh Kharlap Khaleryehs," who'd vitsed and kibbitzed their way through every heylik taboo Reb Yaakov gelernt them was pas nit, tsurikkummen six times a week as they had for more than five years to lean on centuries of headstones for Bransker Rebbes; never, so they thought, caught arrears yet by any macher of consequence, Jew or shaygets. Whom during precious time for arbet would go past a place for the dead, and even if they weren't working, what Yiddisheh kop would show himself to declare that he had gornisht besser tzu do during a weekday?

So while every Yiddisher mensch was supposed tzu sein in arbet, the Kharlap Khaleryehs came to the cemetary to smoke papiros, trink vodka und zubrowka; literally tsu pisch und dreck away the tahgs, makhting gelt in ways upon which we shall elaborate later, shpringen und shreyen heedless of who might hearn oder seehn, and to their knowledge, unobserved until this very moment when zex giant Foylish schmucks dare trample themselves upon our most holy erd.

Jan Kowalski: And who's the faygaleh here

Filip Kowalski: Tak, we know what that word means!

(Franczisek grabs the paper)

Jan: Look at these dupeks! Laughing sie na cemetery!

Franczisek Kowalski: Smoking papieros too!

Jan: They probably think ze sa special cuz they can read!

Aleksander: Well even if they're smieching sie na cemetery they still look as stupid as every other Zhid.

(Jan Kowalski unzips his fly and starts to pisch on Rebbe Chaim Schkop's headstone) 

Dan: Oh don't...

Jan: Don't?...

(pause, only sound of pissing) 

Dan: Don't siki...

Jan: Don't siki? You hear that bracia? I started siking seventeen seconds ago he wants me to stop! Give me that newspaper. 

(sound of pissing on a paper)

Jan: So what were you Zhids reading about?

Filip: They were probably learning more magic spells. 

Asher: Nie don't know any magic spells. 

Gad: Asher, don't. 

Jan: Asher! Don't. Bracia, hold that one, make sure Asher's watching so we can teach him a lesson. (they grab hold of Gad and he crumbles up the newspaper) Here, take a look at these letters up close. (shoves the newspaper into Gad's mouth) 

Asher: Take that newspaper out of my brother's mouth. 

Jan: Oh! You're brother! Well we hear all about your family Asher Kharlap. A rdzina where all eleven live to be adults? That's fucking black magia!

Aleksander: Tak! They're probably here so nobody can hear their plans to poison our blyading wells!

Asher: Well maybe if your kind cleaned their shtupping wells once in a while your kid siostra wouldn't get sick and die!

(seven seconds of silence)

Jan: What are you saying? That you fucking mordecas of Christ had the secret to not getting chory this whole time and you've been keeping it from us?

Asher: Go back to your shtupping Boyars and Priests! They knew it this whole time and kept it from you to keep you stupid!

Dan: Asher, sey shtil. 

Filip: Are you calling our Holy Fathers liars?

Asher: They're fucking thieves and rapists and murderers!

Dan: Mir ale hobn tzu lozn! 

(Dan and Naphtali run away, the Kowalski kids immediately lunge for Asher, Gad's paper falls out of his mouth and falls down to catch his breath while Asher is beaten up.)

Asher: Gad, helf mikh! 

Jan: Tak Gad, help him! It's just you and him against six of us. Tell you what,... why don't you just leave this idiota for us and you can run away like a nice Jewish boy. 

Asher: Gad, helf mikh! 

Jan: Well Gad, are you going to help your bro....

(Gad runs away) 

Jan: All your zhid brothers have run away. 

Filip: Tak, that's what Jewish boys always do. They always run away. 

Five minutes later, the Polacks leave Asher for dead.

--------------------

And it was at roughly the same time: Neyn in the morning, when Reuven and Levi are working for a butcher and shoveling drek and hey for the shokhet's prize lamb which he was saving for the Bransker Rebbe to eat in the Sukkah. The farm is low on salt and if it isn't fresh nobody can eat it. Their father, Reb Yaakov, with his money for Uncle Ezra, was paying for the lamb which he meant as a peace offering to Rebbe Vaybermann.

The Levi is telling Reuven about his dreams again, because like his Tateh, he knew he was visited by angels. Reuven is a praktisher mensch.

Reuven: You're so fertummelt Levi. 

Levi: But you don't understand how vivid they are. They have to be real! They're as real as you right here! 

Reuven: OK. So are they emesdikker real or are they falshen real? 

Levi: (slightly annoyed) Well they're obviously not real the way you and I are!  

Reuven: So your mind is falling for your own schvindle? 

Levi: (more annoyed) It's not a schvindle. (trying to explain) It's like you can see them completely, but you can also see through them. 

Reuven: You should always see through a schvindle.... 

Levi: (quickly) It's not a schvindle! I know what these malakhim tell me are true! 

Reuven: And what do they tell? 

Levi: You obviously wouldn't believe them.  

Reuven: No I wouldn't, but I want to hear them anyway.  

Levi: That this will be the Great Age of our people. That we will be destroyed, we will lose everything, but then we'll all be saved. 

Reuven: You mean like the coming of Moshiach? 

Levi: Ikh veyst nit, they haven't said. I just know that we're about to live through the most important time in thousands of years. (two or three seconds) Reuven: Feh! Levi: That's what they said! Reuven: Levi I'm getting worried. Has anyone pointed out to you you might have a Lokhen Kop? Levi: You asked so I'm telling you! Reuven: Just don't you dare tell Tateh this. You used to be such a mensch but you're getting really weird. If he finds out you're as meshuggeh as him it'll break his hartz. 

The shokhet's wife comes out of the house to schrek at them to stop shtupping kibbitzing and get back tzu arbet. She's obviously a balleboosteh. In a future draft I might write more about her, but you may have noticed that the preceding dialogue was done as a single paragraph. The author figures that whenever we only have two speakers, the dialogue will be relatively easy to follow and it will save paper to smush it into one paragraph, if anybody ever reads this on paper...

Both of them: We're working!

Butcher's wife: You're schrecking so much I can hear it from the bodroom! Why's the door to the lool open! Why did the coos not get milkhed yet! You've only sheared three of the sheep! My husband must be paying you to kibbitz! 

Reuven: Froi Wolf your husband is paying us to do our job right. 

Butcher's wife: What's right about not milkhing der coos by eleven o'clock?!

Reuven: Look at how clean the chickens are. A shaygetz could pick them up and bite the head off right now. 

Butcher's wife: Well then stop kibbitzing and get to the coos! Isn't work supposed to set you free! 

Reuven: (joking around) Froi Sarah, when has work ever set anybody free? Especially around here!

Butcher's wife: I dunno, it's a shprikhvort around here. You musta heard it. 

Reuven: Oh we've heard it from our Tateh. 

Levi: Yeh. Five or six millions of times we've heard it. 

Reuven: That saying's gotten more Jews in trouble than Khmielnitsky. 

Levi: Sha! Don't mention his name!

Reuven: Who? The biggest merderer in Jewish history? He's been dead for two and a half centuries, he won't bother us again. 

Levi: Don't ever mention his name! 

Reuven: What, the evil eye again? 

Levi: Do you really wanna tempt it?

Reuven: Didn't you tell me the biggest merderer in Yid history was Emperor Hadrian. 

Levi: Reuven! (spits three times) Do you have any idea how bad it is to mention their names on the day Maneh's giving birth?

Reuven: Seriously, was it Hadrian or Khmielnitsky?

Butcher's wife: Oy, Reuven, how did you become such a gelernte? It's not fair to be gelernte and sheyn.

Reuven: Levi over here would tell you you're tempting the evil eye by giving me that much of a compliment, but Levi's the illui about history, I just work with him. 

Butcher's wife: Levi, your Tateh's getting old, why don't you take his place in the Kheyder. 

Levi: He wants to keep teaching. 

Butcher's wife: You'll be zo gut at it, and you're zo terrible at barn work. 

Levi: You're a real tzadeykes Froi Wolf...

Butcher's wife: Don't talk back to me meeskait! We pay you so much and the job you always do is ongepotchet! My husband's too nice and won't say what a schlechter job you're doing, but I know! We can't keep you in this barn for tzedokkeh. I'm gonna make him let you go soon and you're gonna need to find something before you turn into nishts but a kadoykhes. 

Levi: Yes Froi Wolf...

Butcher's wife: Reuven on the other hand. Your brider's gonna be such a macher. You're zo smart un zo sheyn un such a mensch un...

Reuven: Froi Wolf like you said, we really ought to get back to work. 

Butcher's wife: What's wrong with compliments!

Reuven: We just have to finish our job as early as possible because our Mameh's in labor heynt.

Butcher's wife: Today's the day your Mameh's giving birth! Mazel Tov Reuven! I'll bake you all a cake und four chickens and you can eat it all tonight during the l'Chaim. 

Reuven: Oh... a... sheynem dank Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: Please though, remember to feed the lamb all that bread. Today's Rosh Hodesh Kislev isn't it Reuven?

Levi: That's tomorrow. 

Butcher's wife: (to Levi) No it's today!... Well we're not slaughtering it for another three and a half weeks, for Rebbe Zilbershtayn to eat it on the eighth night of Hanukkah. He's gonna love it! 

Reuven: I'm sure he is Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: You wouldn't believe what that Rebbitzin's done with the Rebbe's heuse. Oy, she's such a balleboos who's always so angry at the Rebbe. 

Reuven: That's what we've heard. 

Levi: (under his breath) Imagine that...

Butcher's wife: I'll tell you more gossip when you come in later. 

Reuven: I'll be sure to Froi Wolf. 

Butcher's wife: Zay gezunt till then?

(she goes back inside) 

Levi thinks Froi Wolf has a... zakh for Reuben. Doesn't she? Reuven just figures that if she does, maybe they'll get paid more. Reuven assures Levi not to mind what she says about the job he's doing because Reb Lazar knows he's doing fine. They keep working, but they keep schmoozing too. Kibbitzing about how Froi Wolf is a fat mekhasheyfeh.  

Froi Wolf: Reuven just come in and I'll be downstairs in a minute. Levi, feed the lamb! I don't want him fed too much and I don't want him fed too little and I don't want him fed too fast and I don't want him fed too slow. I'll know exactly how much you fed it so do it exactly right!

Reuven: Don't take her too personally... And if the voices talk to you again, try to think of her....

Levi: I don't think the angels of God need to hear about the teivel.... Gey already... 

Reuven goes inside, and Levi just goes about his next job of plaking one or two chickens from the hindl coop for the shokhet to kill for his letste minit orders before Rosh Hashana. 

 Levi: Alright Levi... just milkh der fucking coos... if the milk gets on things, you just wipe it up. She can't tell. Of course she can't tell, and even if she says she found milk on the floor, she hasn't found drek. .....And she's quite a shtik drek isn't she...

(annoyed) Oh what is this farshtunkener chicken doing here? I put them all away!

(puts it back in the coop/lool, another chicken starts clucking)

Ach gott, another one... and how do these two look exactly alike..

(puts it back in the coop, then a third)

Was der shtup... a third?

(the third chicken is a bit noisier and starts clucking)

Hoooooon-hoon-hoon-hoon-hoon-hoon-hoon-hoon, come on, kum tzu Levi...

(The chickens get louder and faster)

Oh don't make me chase you....

(chicken starts sounding articulate and speaking Torah: "shalkheni ki alah hashakar"\)

(silence for five seconds)

Levi: Did this chicken just say what the Angel just said to Jacob? 

(chicken starts clucking again)

Levi: That's meshuggeh even for the voices.... Here, let's just get you back to the lool and pretend that never happened. 

(a fourth chicken appears in the spot where the last one did and also says "shalkheni ki alah hashakar")

Levi: Four chickens appearing out of nowhere, two of them quoting the Toyrah... 'shalkheni ki alah hashakar'... (figuring out if he remembers the translation correctly) let me go for the dawn is breaking... it's a miracle!... Such a stupid miracle.... Well, there it is, Levi Kharlap, prophet of Hashem, was present for God's dumbest miracle.... What am I supposed to do with chickens that quote the Toyrah? Maybe they become really good matzoh ball soup... 

(Chicken starts clucking again) 

Levi: Oh farcockt....

(then a second chicken starts clucking, then two more, then four more, then eight, then sixteen, then a thousand...)

Levi: This is getting weird....

(the cacophony of clucking chickens goes for 18 seconds)

The Lamb: SHA-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A-A!!!!!!!!

Levi: Great... now the lamb's talking too. 

Lamb: L-e-e-e-e-e-e-vi. I am a desce-e-e-e-endent of the she-e-e-e-ep slaughtered by A-a-a-a-a-a-abel and A-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-a-vraham. The yichus of my bloodline was used on the sla-a-a-a-a-a-a-ave doors of E-e-e-e-e-e-egypt. My ancestors were present at the death of Sa-a-a-a-a-amuel and were given to the Me-e-e-e-elech of Eretz Yisroel by Me-e-e-esha the Mo-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-oabite. And I must die immee-e-e-e-e-e-e-ediately. There is so little time to expla-a-a-a-a-a-a-ain, but a fault in how we say the khakham harazim brakha means that as many as six-hundred thousand Je-e-e-e-e-e-ews will soon die if you do not kill me right now, te-e-e-e-e-e-errible things are happening, and if you do not act, a ca-la-a-a-a-a-a-amity will befall the entire people of I-I-I-I-I-I-Israel. 

Levi: But...

Lamb: Hurry! It may already be too late!

(Levi fanicks and slaughters the lamb, we hear the knife slitting, we hear the lamb choking on its blood, we hear the blood splattering on Levi) 

(all you hear is the soft slow clucking of one chicken. Both stop in ten seconds. Two seconds of silence)

Levi: Fuck how am I going to explain to Reuven

-----------------------------------------------

Chapter 5:

  Reuven: Well, here we are, in Reb Wolf's house again... a butcher's a very good living.... don't count up what he's got again...  I can't help it.... Zol gotter pitten we should want to be a little rich.... Duvet... check... Tow ottomans... check... Two armoires with six panels... doh und doh... 4 gas lamps... here and there und here and there.... A Zaydie clock... check...  Tzvai bronze samovars... check... Three silver menorehs... check...  Golden shabbos candlesticks... doh...  More shabbos candlesticks... there... ayntz tzvay drei... five sets of shabbos candlesticks in the armoire!... check... They might all be gold!... giant silver b'sawmim spicebox... check... I can't stand this...  Yed'n tag seeing how they live then how I'm gonna live... Uncle Ezra is cutting off the money and we've got nothing left over... like the rich are rubbing their gold in our pawnim...Well keyn enin vos... I might as well take a few knives again... It's not much but every one of them's a bit of silver I can bury for when we really need to pay somebody off... Und got veyst we're gonna need it... You see how meshuggeh the Bransker are... the Kowalski family vill macht mit a pogrom any day now und we're gonna hobn tsu pay the police again...(opens drawer, starts stuffing cutlery in his pockets...) Don't get ambityes Reuven, just a half dozen... is zex too much?... don't be a real gonif just take four... nu, they've never noticed before... nu... you've taken more than six before... come on... you might as well take eight this time.... look at this, there must be hundreds of silver cutlery here, who's gonna notice when acht go missing?... Ach gott you gotta be quieter about this...

Freu Wolf: Vos tutsu Reuven?

Reuven: Ach... mein gott Freu Wolf... I'm so sorry... (begins to panic) You're gonna fire me I completely understand... just please I'm begging you don't get the politsay involved.... there's no sense in lying about what's going on here... I got so ambitious... (begins to cry) my family is azey rizig and so poor... you know as well as I do a pogrom is coming soon...

Freu Wolf: (calming and reassuring) Reuven! Ziskeit! Don't worry teyereh! Don't you remember? I gave you all this cutlery as a gift? 

Reuven: Oh....

Freu Wolf: Mein mann sees how hard you work, I see how good you are to us, to me... Mir haben dir lieb and we want everything good for you...

Reuven: Well, thank you so much Freu Wolf.

Freu Wolf: And remember? We made presents to you of all that other silverware too.  

Reuven: (thinks for a moment, then dreads) Oh. 

Freu Wolf: It was all geshanks. We're so grateful for everything you do around here, and we're sure you're going to be around for a langeh tzeit to help us so you can become the mensch we all know you're going to be. 

Freu Wolf is zextsik yar alt, she walks with a stoop, has a shnoz like a witch, and sometimes her skirt doesn't bahalt that she has what modern meditsin calls varicose veins. Her husband Lazar never liked her, her zohns moved out of the house fifteen years ago for their own freuen. One shvester lived in Wiesocki, the other lived in the Bransk cemetary. She probably loved Reuven, but she also wanted a son to kvell and zorgn over. 

Lazar walks in from work to retrieve a knife. 

 and shlogged both Reuven and Freu Wolf unconscious with a menoyreh. 

--------------------------------

Chapter 6: 

The menoyreh shlog on Reuven happens at the exact same moment as the church bell intones ten. We hear the church bell nine times, and then the lights come on to the next scene, involving Shimon and Yehuda. The author is proud enough of the next four chapters that he will let them stand alone as dialogue: 

Yehuda: It's noon. 

Shimon: (sarcastically) b'emes? 

Yehuda: I'm just saying it's later than it should be. Isn't it? 

Shimon: It's not late. Yehuda: 

But the balebos said be back by 1. 

Shimon: The balebos will wait. 

Yehuda: The balebos was very specific about what time we need to be back. 

Shimon: The balebos will understand. 

Yehuda: But it's already noon! 

Shimon: It's not that late. 

Yehuda: What do you mean it's not that late? We haven't even gotten daw yet! 

Shimon: We'll get there when we get there. For the goyim it's noon for us it's whatever time they say. 

Yehuda: For us it's noon too. Shimon: For us it's whatever time the goyim tell us it is. 

Yehuda: Well for the goyim it's noon. 

Shimon: You obviously don't know goyim. 

Yehuda: I've known enough. 

Shimon: If you've known enough you'll know that it's whatever time they tell us it is. 

Yehuda: What time will they tell us it is? 

Shimon: Ask them. 

Yehuda: Shimi, if the goyim think it's noon, why wouldn't it be noon? 

Shimon: You're a greycer mensch Yehuda, figure it out. 

Yehuda: Because... 

Shimon: Becaaaaause.... 

Yehuda: Because... 

Shimon: Koom on... 

Yehuda: Because goyim lie to us? 

Shimon: Emes! You got it! If we were still in kheyder Tateh would give you a stupid frize. 

Yehuda: What are they gonna lie about? 

Shimon: That they don't have the money, putz. 

Yehuda: Why wouldn't they have the money? 

Shimon: They never have the money. 

Yehuda: They don't? 

Shimon: That's what they always tell us. 

Yehuda: But they're lying? 

Shimon: They're always lying. 

Yehuda: Why would they lie to us? 

Shimon: You can't possibly be as much of an amoretz as you look.

 Yehuda: Seriously, why would they tell us that unless they...? 

Shimon: Because they don't want to pay us the money! 

Yehuda: But they have the money? 

Shimon: Of course they have the money! They usually have it because we gave it to them! 

Yehuda: OK... Ot azay.... Nu, so how we gonna get it from them? 

Shimon: We get it from them by waiting. 

Yehuda: What do you mean? 

Shimon: We get it from them by not leaving. 

Yehuda: You mean, we just stay there? In the goyim's house? 

Shimon: Exactly.

 Yehuda: But won't they beat us up? 

Shimon: Not every goy is a Kowalski. 

Yehuda: Every goy is a Kowalski, they just don't know it yet. 

Shimon: Every goy? Not every goy is a merderer... 

Yehuda: Tell any goy in Bransk that we're secretly carrying bags of gold around everywhere, see how quickly those nice farmers cut through us with that sickle you got in your bag. 

Shimon: But why would they believe we've got bags of gold? They see how poor we are. 

Yehuda: Not all of us are poor. You been to the Wolf house lately? 

Shimon: And how many Bransker live like Wolfs except Mrs. Wolf? 

Yehuda: The point's there are rich Jews. 

Shimon: How many rich Jews are there in Bransk? 

Yehuda: Well there's the Wolfs, there's Reb Goldberg, and then... 

Shimon: According to the Bransker we're rich Jews, you see us eating with silver forks lately? 

Yehuda: You've been to the Rabbi's house, somehow he's living pretty grays. 

Shimon: You would too if your followers insisted on giving you everything they have. 

Yehuda: And why shouldn't we. A town who wants to have machers always has a rabbi who's a macher. 

Shimon: How's that working out for us? 

Yehuda: It would be worse if we didn't have a famous Rabbi. 

Shimon: He's not famous Yehuda: Rabbi Schkop was. 

Shimon: He's not Rabbi Schkop. He's not even related to Rabbi Schkop. 

Yehuda: He will be... What's it take to become a famous Rabbi? 

Shimon: Well first you need to get a Bar Mitzvah... 

Yehuda: Is that the heus up ahead? 

Shimon: Yeah. It's yenem. 

Yehuda: What am I supposed to do? 

Shimon: Zey shtil like a good Yiddisher kop, let me do the talking, and learn the ancient Jewish art of debt collecting. 

Yehuda: Ancient? 

Shimon: You ever hear about a shtetl without debt collectors? 

Yehuda: Ancient makes it sound like it's in the Toyrah. 

Shimon: Of course it's in the Toyrah! 

Yehuda: It is? 

Shimon: What do you think Moshe was doing? 

Yehuda: Wasn't he taking the Yids out of Egypt? 

Shimon: Richtig. He was taking the Yids out of Egypt by sending Pharaoh a bill of how many wages he owed. 

Yehuda: I don't remember that passage... 

Shimon: Neither did Pharaoh. (a hulking old peasant coming up to them) 

Yehuda: Are we about to talk to Pharaoh? (they get stopped by a large man) 

Polish Peasant: Tutaj sa! Here they are! Every time a family has a tragedy the Zhids are here to swoop in like vultures to drink the blood! 

Yehuda (whispers to Shimon): Charming... 

Polish Peasant: The Jews are here! I'll open the door, the Nowaks are inside. You'll find there is no blood left for you wampirs. 

(we hear the sounds of a priest intoning last rites) 

Polish Peasant: (suddenly trying not to break down crying) Maria, they're here. 

Ewa Nowak: Oy wychwalac Boga. You come from God in heaven. 

Henrik Nowak: This is what we prayed for. 

Yehuda: (whispers to Shimon) This is not what you told me would happen. 

Ewa: We have the money but we have to ask you... 

Shimon: Let's take care of the money first. 

Henrik: Please just listen to what we have to ask. 

Shimon: We really ought to take care of the money. 

Henrik: But if you just listen to what we have to... 

Shimon: It's really important that we take care of... 

Henrik: If you just listen to what.... 

Shimon: We'll be happy to listen after but first... 

Ewa: PLEASE! If you Jews have an ounce of współczucie, you will listen! 

Shimon: (sighs) Alright Pani Nowak, what would you like to tell us? 

Ewa: You have such eyes for business, and we have such things to sell you. 

Shimon: Oh dear, we should... 

Ewa: Wook (goes over to furniture and opens drawer)... This broach, it belonged to Henrik's mother and her mother before her. It came from a Boyar who loved Henrik's. 

Shimon: That's very lovely but we really don't have... 

Ewa: Or these pisnaki, look at these eggs that were painted by my son... 

Yehuda: Wow Mrs. Nowak, those are truly beautiful. 

Shimon: Yehuda! Sha!... They are truly beautiful, but unfortunately we don't have the mo.... 

Ewa: Or my mother's shawl. She made it when she was pregnant with me, her first daughter, and wore it every day until she died when I was six. 

Shimon: That's truly beautiful but surely you'd want to keep something that means so much to you... 

Ewa: Or maybe you'd like what's under the shawl more... (we hear Ewa rubbing Shimon's kapoteh) 

Shimon: Mrs. Nowak, please, my brother and I are respectable people and we know you are too. 

Henrik: Your brother?! Perhaps you would like some smoked cheese to take home to your matka? 

Yehuda: That's a lovely offer but unfortunately we can't eat it. 

Ewa: They won't even eat our cheese! 

Henrik: Please Pan Kharlap, we are so desperate. We know we're not good enough for you, but please... we have lived together so long.... surely you see how we are suffering... 

Shimon: Mr. Nowak I assure you that we have nothing but regret that we have to do this job but... (baby starts crying and Maria panics) 

Henrik: (shouts) Ewa opiekuj sie dieckiem! (Ewa leaves to take care of the baby) 

Henrik: She goes to our baby, Agnieszka. She is afraid. (long pause) 

Henrik:This is the only baby we have left. 

(long pause, Yehuda finally says) 

Yehuda: The only baby? 

Shimon: (immediately) Yehuda! 

Henrik: Typhus has killed all of our anolki. Ewa believes she is cursed, that she has given typhus from one of her children to the next. One, then another, then another, whom we moved to our room. They freeze, they cried, they suffocated, and then they're gone.... This stol had five children around it last Christmas. They would say the Ave Maria, we would serve them Broscht and herring and noodles, Ewa would bake her Kolaczkis, and we would sing the carols: Bog sie rodzi, wsrod nocnej ciszy, Lulajze Jezuniu (breaks down crying) they would make such a noise.... They will never make noise again... 

Yehuda: I'm so sorry Mr. Nowak. 

Henrik: We took our children to every healer, we bought every ikon and charm, we had our house blessed by spirits and washed by holy water and oil. That is why we borrowed money from Pan Goldberg. 

Yehuda: Did you ever take your children to a doctor? 

Henrik: We were too ashamed. What would our friends think? But we should have. No traditional medicine has worked. 

Yehuda: You really ought to have your daughter seen by a doctor. 

Henrik: That is why we sell you these wears. They are the best things we can give. 

Yehuda: Shimon, please... 

Shimon: (yells) Yehuda what did I tell you?! 

Yehuda: (yells back) You didn't tell me this! 

Shimon: I'll explain later. 

Yehuda: You need to explain now! 

Shimon: Don't make friends with the goyim! 

Henrik: Don't make friends with the goyim... I'm the one who's supposed to be too good for you but you don't make friends with me.... (long pause) 

Henrik: Alright, I'm not good enough for you... I'm just a poor man who lost everyone he loves... Look at me!... Spit on me, call me Zhid, kill me, but please, do not take away the only money we have left... 

Yehuda: We're not gonna take your money... 

Shimon: Yehuda! 

Henrik: O bozhe moi! Bless you. (cries and kisses their hands and feet) You are the apostles of Christ. EWA! 

Yehuda: We have to leave. You go be with your daughter, and please, take her to a doctor right away! 

Henrik: You be remembered by St. Peter at the gates of heaven... EWA! Pozwalaja nam zatrzymac pieniadze! (Ewa starts crying and Henrik both start crying hysterically, Yehuda and Shimon leave the house, close the door, and you can hear their crying from the other side of the door.) Shimon: Fuck. You're gonna be the one to explain this to Reb Goldberg. (Ewa and Henrik both start crying hysterically, Yehuda and Shimon leave the house, close the door, and you can hear their crying from the other side of the door.) 

Shimon: Fuck. You're gonna be the one to explain this to Reb Goldberg. 

Yehuda: You're the one who didn't tell me we were about to take the last zlotys from parents who just buried all their kids. 

Shimon: You never tell the new collectors what they're in for. If you knew what you were in for you'd run away screaming but you get used to it... 

Yehuda: Vos?! 

Shimon: This isn't the worst housecall I've had to make, and later today I'm gonna go back to get that money. 

Yehuda: Are you meshuggeh or evil? 

Shimon: Once you do three or four of these every week it's just another client late on their payments. 

Yehuda: And you want that I should join you on this goniveh! 

Shimon: You see any other jobs around these days? Yehuda: How can you do this? 

Shimon: It's a good living! Look at the Schneiders! A tailor has no new business. Eventually everybody has their clothes.... 

Yehuda: Shimi how can you do this as a Yiddisher kop? 

Shimon: A butcher's a nice living but if nobody's got gelt nobody gets meat... 

Yehuda: Shimon, how can you do this as a Jew? 

Shimon: Yudaleh, nu? Come on... 

Yehuda: Did you see what was going on in there? Shimon: I saw two irresponsible parents who think that prayers are gonna cure their kids. 

Yehuda: You saw two parents insane with troyer. 

Shimon: I saw two parents who borrowed money from Reb Goldberg to get charms that everybody knows won't work. 

Yehuda: Shimi, how can you, as a Yid, try to make money off people's suffering like that? 

Shimon: Nu? What are we supposed tsu ton? 

Yehuda: We're supposed to act like Tzaddikim. 

Shimon: Yehuda, all you have tsu ton is think about it for two seconds. Rich goyim don't want poor goyim to get money or understand how money works. 

Yehuda: Nu? So that means we get to steal their last zlotys? 

Shimon: Neyn, it just means that poor goyim are never gonna learn cuz rich goyim won't let'em. So all they ever gonna do is use their money to buy stupid drek they think might work, and it makes them feel better for a little bit. 

Yehuda: But we don't have to help them. 

Shimon: We are helping them! 

Yehuda: You're chazers! 

Shimon: We're chazers who're surviving, the only way we can! 

Yehuda: Other Yids are surviving without picking goyims pockets. 

Shimon: You call that survival? 

Yehuda: I call that being what a mensch. 

Shimon: How many Yids in Bransk do you think had three meals a day every day last year? Do you think it was half? How many kinder went hungry a week at a time? 

Yehuda: Nu? Well if that's the choice, then maybe if Hashem wants us to go hungry we should go hungry. 

Shimon: Yehuda what kind of goyisher naarishkeit is that? 

Yehuda: It's what any gute neshawmeh would think when faced with what we just saw. 

Shimon: What we saw was what we want to avoid. 

Yehuda: Feh! 

Shimon: You sound like such a goy right now. They're the ones who say blessed are the poor. You're a man now, so let me ask, have you seen any evidence at all that the poor have any blessings? 

(long pause and Yehuda sighs) 

Shimon: Nu... look, rich goyim tell the poor goyim that money's evil, so they can't handle it. Then they tell Jews they can't own land... 

Yehuda: Ikh farshtey nisht, why does that mean we should help gonifs? 

Shimon: We're not the gonifs Yudaleh. 

Yehuda: Who's the gonif then? 

Shimon: Who's always the gonif? The rich goyim! The rich goyim make the poor goyim handle the land but tell them they can't have any money, the rich goyim tell us we can have the money but we can't have any land. The goyim make us handle their money because they don't trust each other with their money. So then they kill us for stealing the money they already gave us, but we didn't steal it, we just already have the money they want. We have the money but we can't defend ourselves, so there's no problem killing us or embarrassing us. But if they kill each other over money, the goyim can defend themselves, so if they handle the money themselves, they always go to war over it. 

Yehuda: What's your point. 

Shimon: The point is that this isn't just what we have to do to survive, it's also saving lives. Nu, every time Jews go to a new country, the country always seems to get better. Do you really think it's Hashem who's doing that? It's because we do all the jobs they don't wanna do. We're the money managers, we're the doctors, we're the planners who keep cities clean, we're the businessmen who give people things they need. So we machn gelt. Then we get blamed by the goyim for wanting the money they want more than we do, and they kill us over it, but they're gonna kill us anyway. So if we want any chance to make a decent life, we gotta handle their money. 

Yehuda: Are goyim really that fertummelt? 

Shimon: You don't know the half of it... 

Yehuda: Is Reb Goldberg scared of getting killed? 

Shimon: Every day. He has to! The rich goyim are always spending his money. They need more, so they summon Reb Goldberg who gives them the money on interest, they have too much money, they spend it, then he loans them more money. 

Yehuda: What happens if they don't pay back? 

Shimon: They go to jail like anybody... or they have Reb Goldberg killed... one or the other... 

Yehuda: Emes can he get killed? Can we? 

Shimon: Sure. It happens all the time. 

Yehuda: Why would you want me to take this job?! 

Shimon: You got any other jobs lined up? 

Yehuda: Neyn... 

Shimon: You meet many Jews not worried they're gonna die tomorrow? 

Yehuda: Neyn... 

Shimon: You want a job that brings in money even when nobody else is making any? That might one day make you a rich macher while your brothers are still smoking papyros in the cemetery? (knocks at the door of Reb Goldberg. Reb Goldberg opens it before Shimon even finishes knocking.) 

Goldberg: Nu? We're doin' a L'Chaim! 

Shimon: Alright... L'chaim... 

Goldberg: Here, dawh, take these glessen schnopps. 

Shimon: What's the simcheh? 

Goldberg: Hashem's justice. 

Shimon: Hashem's justice? 

Goldberg: God is just, and God is merciful. Amen. (swallows schnopps) Trink! Trink! (Shimon and Yehuda drink) 

Yehuda: Shouldn't we make a brocheh? 

Goldberg: We'll do it over the next gless. Here, I got Vodka too. We're gonna get good und shikkered. 

Shimon: Is this a happy getrunken or a sad? 

Goldberg: It's the happiest day of my life in nineteen years! 

Shimon: Well mazel tov then, what's the occasion? 

Goldberg: Your future! 

Shimon: Our future? 

Goldberg: Well, your future, but if your brother here becomes as good an assistant as you, it'll be his future too cuz gleyb mir this is too much business for one guy. (long pause) 

Shimon: Reb Goldberg, I don't know what to... 

Goldberg: Nu, Yehuda, you gonna wish Shimi a Mazel Tov yet? 

Yehuda: Em... Mazel tov. 

Goldberg: See those documents on the desk? Later when I'm good and shikkered and don't care that I'm doing this for a sixteen year old pisher, Shimmi and I are gonna sign this document making a partner out of the best assistant I ever had, and I've had a bunch, making him my heir who gets this business and this house. 

Shimon: Reb Goldberg!

Goldberg; Nu? Who else am I gonna give this to? Thirty-five yar these beyner have been riding every day, back and forth, ahin und zuruck: Bransk, Wysokie, Bielsk, Chiechanowiec, Zambrow, Choroczsz, Bialystok... Last time I traveled much farther than Bialystok I was a year or two older than you. And kinder I don't got much time left. I'm gonna be here two more years to show you everything I know. (pours three shotglasses) Then I'm gonna retire and spend the rest of my time walking ahin and zuruck through Yerushalayim. Here, take a trinken Vodka. Boyruch atoh hashem elokeinu melech haoylom, boreh peri hagawfen. (them: Awmeyn) Boyruch atoh hashem elokeinu melech haoylom, shehecheyawnu v'kiyimawnu v'higiyawnu lawzman hawzeh! (them: Awmeyn!) Come on Yehuda! All the mashkeh down the hatch! Can I call you Yudaleh? You've done something important for me now, I feel like I can give you a more casual name. 

Yehuda: If you're eventually giving me what you're giving Shimon you can call me any name you want. (Goldberg laughs) 

Goldberg: Well, let's see if you're as smart as Shimon. (already pouring more shots) 

Yehuda: Well if Shimon is that smart then you should call me the Tsar! 

Goldberg: Alright. Nu Tsar Yudaleh? Let's make a l'chaim. For your future and Shimi's! A

ll of them: L'Chaim! (they all drink) 

Goldberg: (already pouring another for everybody) All these years I've had to take these trinks alone but this is like I've got zuns again. 

Shimon: Well I don't know why I'm surprised, but all this time Reb Goldberg you've never talked about zuns or even that you once were married. 

Goldberg: (pours more) Let's not talk about that until an ander few trinks. 

Shimon: I'm not sure we can handle this much... 

Goldberg: Yingeh yids like you need to build up your stomachs. Trinks like this are how you get things done in this business. 

Yehuda: Oooohhhh! 

Goldberg: Something I ge-said? 

Yehuda: Well... Not really. 

Goldberg: You wondered how anybody with a yetzer tov can do this business. It's is a wicked business. It's naytik, but you don't see the things we see without it getting to you. But when you're a moneylender who collects, vodka and schnopps are your best friends. You gotta get money from people twice your size. You gotta get money from people who've lost everything. You gotta meet in sketchy taverns with ganawvim and merderers and have eyes in the back of your keppe so you don't get stabbed. You're gonna get punched every week. Emes. These teeth are made from dead prisoners and they're my fourth set. You're gonna get called names a lot worse than Zhid every day. You're gonna ask how a decent person does what we do on every walk you take. But you see how poor people are here? If we didn't do the job we do, people in Bransk would be twice as poor. (pours drinks) Yids come to me all the time, but I charge them 70% what I charge der goyim. So here, an ander trink, to the zuns of Bransk who will live on your help. L'chaim! 

Shimon and Yehuda: L'Chaim! 

Goldberg: Now, geb a kook, there are four types of Jews. You see'em every day from kheyder. The wise Jews, the wicked Jews, the simple Jews, and the Jews who don't know how to ask shit. The wise Jews, they become the Rabbanim, they become kheyder teachers, they become soyfers and dayans and khazzins and shammoses. They've got very hard lives, but they're the reason the rest of us live on. All the rest of us do everything we do so they'll leyn for us. So here's one, (pours another three) to the khakhamim! 

Shimon and Yehuda: (a little drunk) L'Chaim! 

Goldberg: Nu? So zikher, there are the simple ones. The naarisher amoretzes who don't understand bupkes in kheyder. We need them too and they got a right to work like everybody else. They all work in schmattes and chayes. If they're lucky they become butchers, usually they're tailors and peddlers... And they always pay back! (pours another three) So here's to the tawmim. 

Shimon and Yehuda: (more drunk) L'Chaim! 

Goldberg: And now, to the ones who don't know how to ask. They were khaleryehs when you knew'em in school, and they stay khaleryes their whole lives. They're Jews who become schnorrers and shlemazels and shikkers. Usually they don't have a heym. They'll be asking you for money every day, and you always keep a few coins in your pockets just for them. They're the ones who tell everybody about you, and the word of mouth from schmendriks like them gives you more business than all the goyisher machers in Bialystok. (pours another three) Mistawmeh, the eyno yodeaw lishoyl. 

Shimon and Yehuda: (still more drunk) L'Chaim! 

Goldberg: And then there are the wicked Jews, you and me zuns. The kids who understood everything they were reading in Kheyder but didn't care and whose fingers have permanent scars from where the keyder teacher broke them. 

Yehuda: Well the real rawsheh in our family is Ashe... 

Shimon: Yudaleh! 

Goldberg: (amused) Well then maybe I should be training him, but Shimon pishes ice. He's rawsheh enough. You'll understand soon Yudaleh. The rawshehs of the world are the reason so many Jews die, and rawshehs like us are the reason Jews live. And that reminds me... you're gonna meet all kinds of interesting shiksas on the roads, get to know them as well as you can and pay'em well for what they give you, not just cuz they're fun, but because they're the ones are gonna tip you off about when you need to sneak out and where to hide. 

Shimon: You never told me any of that. 

Goldberg: That's cuz we never got shikkered together before. 

Shimon: You never asked me to. 

Goldberg: You were always bagrisen to my liquor, but you have better kishkes for this work than I do so I didn't think you needed it. 

Shimon: Well.... (seems a little nauseous) 

Goldberg: (Walks to other side of room) You're gonna brekhn in a few minutes, make sure you throw up in this, (walks back with chamber pot). After today, save the liquor for when you hit the road. I'll bet you darfed it today. 

Shimon: About that... 

Goldberg: I waited this long to give you an assignment like this because there's no way a zextsn yar alt was ready for it, and wouldn't get through it without his brother with him. 

Shimon: You've given me even more hearts-rending assignments dan daws. 

Goldberg: Not assignments as hitsik as that one... 

Yehuda: That guy couldn't possibly be violent.

 Goldberg: The address is 240 Mieczkewiczka? 

Shimon: Yeh. 

Goldberg: Henrik Nowak? 

Shimon: Zikher. 

Goldberg: I haven't seen him violent in a long time, but I gave you that knife in the bag for a reason. You're obviously the closest thing I have to a zun and I don't want anything should happen. 

Shimon: Did anything bad happen with your zuns? 

Goldberg: They're in a much better place now. 

Yehuda: Amerikeh? 

Goldberg: Neyn. 

Yehuda: Palestine? 

Goldberg: They're all with Hashem now: Menashe, Ephraim, and Gittel. It'll be twenty years at Pesach. 

Shimon: Reb Goldberg, I didn't want to assume but es tut mir leid... 

Goldberg: (interrupting) 1881 pogroms, like everybody else. And don't you tell me how sorry you are. We all lost people that year, I lost a few more, but this, here, it's like I got zuns again. 

Shimon: Well thank you so much Reb Goldberg, I hope we can live up your naches. 

Goldberg: You will! (pours another) My generation had to get it from the goyim so that your generation wouldn't have to. Your time is gonna be different for Jews. No one's gonna make us eat drek anymore. Not the Bransker, not the Poles, not even the Russians. To your generation! 

All: L'Chaim! 

Shimon: Reb Goldberg do you do you really think our generation will be different? 

Goldberg: Ikh veyst! Hashem can't let us suffer like that without giving us something better. It took a little while, but after Khmielnitsky and Shabbetai Zevi, Jews thought they were gonna get killed forever, but then everything calmed down. Jews began to learn the Kaballeh and learn that all this, all these tzures, all these tearn, they're have a funt and a purpose. And more importantly, you have a purpose! 

Yehuda: What's our funt? 

Goldberg: Your funt is to make money! 

Yehuda: I should have seen that coming... 

Goldberg: Who do you think is gonna make everything in this town go? That Bransker shul doesn't remodel itself. Who do you think Rabbi Schkop always went to keep it going? And which family do you think always gave the Rebbe credit with no money down? 

Yehuda: Well... I'm guessing it was your father considering that the letters over the awron say it's the Ephraim Goldberg Memorial Ark... 

Goldberg: My father's name was Schlomo, Ephraim was my son. 

Yehuda: Oy... I'm so sorry. 

Goldberg: I told you not to apologize! 

Yehuda: Oy. I'm sor... oy... 

Goldberg: Gittel and I had twin sons: Ephraim and Menashe. They were both small like their father, but they looked nothing alike and they had exactly farkert. Menashe was smart, but he didn't give a drek about kheyder or lernen and would always kamf back. Your father would beat the shit out of him and I'd just laugh cuz he did my job for me... But your father always told me that Ephraim was the most brilliant talmid he ever had. He always did what he was told, he always helped his Mameh, he always prayed, he always read. I loved Menashe, even if he was a vilde chayeh, but everybody loved Ephraim. When they were alive I always figured I'd be done by now and home with the eyniklakh while Menashe was doin all this. Meanwhile, Ephraim would be the Bransker rebbe and between the two of them Bransk could become a city as important as Bialystok. But that's not how Hashem works. (pours more drinks) Here, let's toast, to Menashe and Ephraim, the bester boys in the world! 

Simon: L'Chaim Yehuda: And Sh'koyach (they drink).

Goldberg: Zo leyn mir. Where's the money?

Shimon: About that...

Goldberg: No. Neyn... you didn't!

Shimon: We did but...

Goldberg: But gornisht! Where's the money!

(pause)

Goldberg: Where's the money?

(five second pause)

Goldberg: Henrik Nowak geherged my sons! Where's the money!

Yehuda: He ki...

Goldberg: They weren't even bar mitzvah age! Where's the gelt?

Yehuda: Reb Goldberg if I'd....

Goldberg: If you'd known? Ochen gevalt you let him talk Shimi. 

Shimon: I...

Goldberg: I send the only assistant who showed any sekhel on the job I'd waited twenty years for and he picks a no sekhel brother to go with him. 

Shimon: Reb Goldberg ple...

Goldberg: You're fired. 

Shimon: Reb Goldberg.

Goldberg: Get out of my heuse!

(Yehuda throws up on the rug, Reb Goldberg starts frantically pacing to and fro near to his cellar stairs)

Goldberg: Nasheleh, Phraimkeh, I'm sorry. I did everything right, but we'll never get back at him and he'll still have an heir. The teivel is still in Bransk, he's at the Nowak's hosue, and he's right here! Oy, Hashem has sent me two dybbuks!

Shimon: Reb Goldberg, I think you should sit down. I'm gonna get you a glez of water. 

Goldberg: Hashem is punishing me for not avenging you! He sent these dybbuks here! Right here! They're staring at me, they're taking you away from me a second time! Neyn! Don't leave me zuns. Don't leave! Please don't leave me! (He walks right into the cellar stairs and falls down them. Just as he hits the stone floor the church bell strikes eleven.)

(Shimon rushes over)

Shimon: Help me get him up!

(They both lift Reb Goldberg up and try to carry him up the stairs. His skullcap is off and his skull is clearly cracked.)

Yehuda: Is he tedt?

Shimon: (shakes him, slaps him, listens to his heartbeat) Oy, I think he is. We better get outa here. 

Yehuda: Won't people think a goy did it?

Shimon: Only if they don't see us here when they find him. Let's get aroys right away. 

 ---------

Chapter 10: 

In case you're wondering about that twelfth child, the shreyber hopes you didn't notice that they're missing. Not Benyamin, still waiting to come out of the oyvn, but a twelfth living child unmentioned yet: a daughter, neglected, mistreated, forsaken, spurned, unsung, practically discarded. 

Her name? What can it be but Dinah, the neglected daughter, raped in the Torah by Shechem, who is somehow also prince of the City of Shechem, forced to marry her rapist, then avenged by genocide enacted by Shimon and Levi, who never showed any care for her otherwise. 

This Dinah is pregnant. Was she raped? According to 2025 what percentage of geshlekhter congress wasn't questionable then? Did she deliberately do paid zakhns like a korveh? Did she have a boyfriend? Was he Jewish or Polish? Did Dinah have a khosn from whom she was concealing? I'm sure the shreyber will eventually think of answers to these questions, but in this age when froyen had no agentur, not answering the question is all that matters. The men were considered all who mattered, the helden and the villainen, leaders aun followers. Women were chairen aun tablen. 

What matters is Dinah's situation right now: disregarded, unaided, hiding in the woods, and very pregnant. She fled home the moment she got pregnant. Mameh cared, Tateh mostly cared, some of her brider cared, some of her brider looked hard for her even if they didn't care, and the khaleyeryas mostly didn't look at all. Eventually, they all gave up and lebn just went on.  

Does Dinah work for money? Probably. We'll spare Dinah and say she didn't have to commit any particular favors to menschen for her care, though who knows how many froyen did in these situations? Let's just say she was paid for her arbet on some farm until her shvangershaft was undisguisable, at which point she was turned out and lived in the vald on the bank of the Nurzec River. Did she live ferally? Maybe for a week, but then she was found by a hermit who lives in a ramshackle sukkah on the Nurzec's banks. 

The hermit is not quite mensch, not quite froy: a mystic, a magid, a warlock, an enchantress, a mekhasheyfeh, and not to mention, a kind of doktor. Within a day, Dinah had slipped a river mudbank, mercifully fell on her back and tzubrokh her arm. The hermit put their hands above her, chanted an unknown brokheh, and there was no break. 

They brought her berriz, they brought her milkh aun fleysh. Mamaligeh every morning for breakfast. Broyt aun bialys for lunch. Something milkhig six days a week for dinner and something fleyshik every Friday night for Shabbos. Who knows how they got that, but it is not for us to know the ways of mekhasheyfuz. 

This was fein lebedik for Dinah. Altz was provided: she had no idea where the food came from, it was mittlmezik tzu goot, but it was plentiful. The healthcare was frei, there was a well far vasser, und the gut doktor told her they could deliver a pregnancy with kayn problem. There were even days when she found this meeskeits with beard and breasts oddly shayn. She wondered, was a lebn possible here? Even if it was, wouldn't she always be deshrokn of discovery, recognition? What would yaknas and yentes like her Tateh or Gad say? Mistawmeh, zey'd probably zog exactly what the goyim say about us: er'll grind your kinder's bones into matzoh, zay's gonna put som in your wells, zee'll only provide for you by stealing. 

Aun there were tawgs when she couldn't help fearing exactly that, but she swallowed those fears, and over time zi hob zich lieb gehot. And she was going to tell them aun zawgn zay that day: she loved them, zi hawt zay lieb gehawt. 

But when they came home, they were wearing tfilin, tallis, yarmulkeh, tzitzis and gartl. Over the gartl is a hip scarf embellished with coins, and underneath their yarmulke they'd shaved their head into a sheytel. Dinah left the sukkah to walk up to them in alarm. They walked toward each other, met on the bank. The hermit placed their head nine inches from Dinah's face: 

Gevaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalt!

And then they dance around the room in a self-accompanying dance by turns Hasidic and Mizrachi: 

(At top speed) 

Ototoi OyOyOy! Adoshem Elokim!

The people of Israel I hear myself scream! 

The Nurzec it rises! The Vistula boils!

The Rhine it flows onward free loaded with spoils!

Your arms Lord I feel! Hands of fire and ice!

Your touch is a pleasure yet feels like a slice!

Your rocks they grow great with Your ladders and dreams!

The world ever bows to your projects and schemes!

You are who you are! Your people are going!

My life hangs in doubt for their hatred is molting!

Their evil's against me! You mean it for good!

They'll call darkness light and they'll burn me in wood!

Behold! Here I am! Bribes blind eyes of the wise!

Though they claim to love you Your word they despise!

Don't go without blessing! I'll watch what I do! 

El-Elyon! El-Shaddai! I think you hate me too! 

Play dice with us all G-D! Or so some Jews say!

More scary He means it! Would us He betray?

I know that You love me, your prune stewed in sin!

But how long oh lord till you find me my kin? 

Golden calves, Jeptha vows as the grasshopper cowers!

My offense so shameful I must hit the showers!

I date goyish women and put Zeus in temples!

For this I am shamed like TV with Herb Stemple!

The Rhintfleisch Pogroms will be walks in the park!

While industry thrives and the smoke it grows dark!

I'll leave hearts in Spain where I liked the good weather!

And ghetto me while Moda turns me to leather!  

You'll give me the land! All my foes are withstood! 

But gas and there's bombs leaking under the hood!

First time it's with sadness and then it's a farce!

The Lord is the judge and appeals are so sparce!

The valley of death's where banality thrives!

They'll hate us while they're eating bagels and chives!

You plan many lives! Some no future or hope!

It'll be more than some if we're made into soap!

I accuse You! You set spacetime curving against me!

What happens if we cast you off? You've incensed us!

We're not great it's true and we make ourselves gods!

But we're in your image we're peas in your pod!

The owl among ruins, revolutions betrayed!

The Lord will provide executions arrayed!

Gas knocks us unconscious they'll weep by the waters!

But get really mad when the Philistine's on us!

The stars they tell lies and Akiva's a fool!

Enslaving me! Killing me! Then I eat gruel!

The State wants me dead like the soul of the crowd!

While leaders and hordes chant my name really loud!

I wait for the shut door that opens just for me!

The gentiles diplomats leaders ignore me!

They laugh at me like when Messiah wears turban!

While they plot to blame me when going to Durban!

The gas oh it chokes me the oven it burns me!

Your apathy seems odd, so know it concerns me!

These mustaches kill me with awful solutions!

I know it's convenient to name me protrusions!

I'm star in a movie whose plot's really odd!

I'm straw to make brick in the small house of G-D!

Their name is Yonah, and they collapsed. Dinah put a blanket on them.

Only for Yonah to rise seven minutes later.

Oh Dinah the valorous woman of Israel!

You heroine martyr absorber of vitriol!

Your destiny's terrible yet you shall be!

The mother of greatness just know you must flee!

One son and two daughters their names make you great!

Your sacrifice for them they'll recognize late!

You must leave to show ideals for Jewish mothers!

Just know that you'll seem as the parent who smothers!

And at that moment, they heard Polish in the distance.

Go back to Bransk.... Gay aroys Dina... Leyfn... RUUUUUUUUUUN!

Dinah ran away from the bank. She knew not farvos until she heard gunshots.

She ran. The bell struck noon. And she had the baby.