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.
Bransk: 1899
Chapter 1:
We begin in 'every-shtetl' Northeast Poland of six-thousand inhabitants who are mostly farmers, half-Jewish, half-Christian, a place of Jewish hicks from where nobody of particular distinction ever hailed, except the author's grandfather, Morris Tucker, formerly Meishel Tecoczki, and 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 that the patrilineal line of the author's family is either descended from the first chief Rabbi of Poland, or some medieval Polish-Jewish grifter who realized he could mark up his merchandise if he lied about the eminence of his family lineage (his 'Yichus' as we Yiddishers say).
The name Kharlap shall be that of the fictionalized family to which we subject the ordeal of 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 there 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.
Rebbe 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, Dinah (a daughter), 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 eleven of his sons are now Bar Mitzvahed, and while to his disappointment he has a daughter in addition to the eleven sons, 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 twelfth 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, most of the characters will speak in a kind of Yid-lish patois which gives the character of the language while, so we hope, being nevertheless intelligible to the average reader of English, except for the 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 could 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 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)
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 that much thought into it. And, I suppose you've noticed already, this novel is very dialogue heavy, even if the dialogue isn't entirely Englsih. Why is that? Because the author thought this was going to be a series of plays but... well, you try putting on a series of plays where 10% of the words are Yiddish and see how you do. Nevertheless, he's fond of a lot of his writing for it 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 his lawyer...
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?
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... 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 vikhtik 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:
Less than twenty 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 thirty 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
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