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.
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:
NIBZEH L'AZAZEL KHALERIYA!
He just can't stand their naarishkeit anymore, their skhok v'kalos rosh, and 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?!"
"Is Dreyfus going through all this just so you mamzerim can dishonor his sacrifice?!"
And if this were a theater work, then what follows would become a nervous breakdown of exposition in which he relates precisely the story of his life as related both above and below. He tells these pischers everything of his long life's past of which they couldn't care less, and then tells the story of being passed over as the new town Rebbe after decades of faithful service and sacrifice to a town whom he'd taught everything they ever knew. He compares these naarisher pischers to his model Yiddisher Kops (whom he raised correctly to be menschen and tzaddikim). And how Hashem has finally rewarded him for his greyceh tzuris, with a final child, whom he knows will be a son he shall name Benyamin, a boy whose tzadeykkes will put them all to shame.
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 its terroristic might.
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 its terroristic 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 anothe 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.
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 anothe 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 at 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.
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 at 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.
"Don't fucking pisch on the Rebbe!"
Asher knows he shouldn't be surprised but even so he's stunned that Z'vulun broke off from their stance around the latest Yiddish paper which Tateh hasn't even seen yet, reading the latest schlock about the shandehs perpetrated on some schtik drek in France named Dreyfus.
Asher knows he shouldn't be surprised but even so he's stunned that Z'vulun broke off from their stance around the latest Yiddish paper which Tateh hasn't even seen yet, reading the latest schlock about the shandehs perpetrated on some schtik drek in France named 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 oysshteller 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.
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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 oysshteller 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.
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.....So we immediately cut to four of the brothers smoking cigarettes in the Jewish cemetery: Shimon, Asher, Naftali, and Z'vulun, because who gives a drek..., and the last mentioned of whom is pisching on the headstone of the old Bransker Rebbe, Rabbi Chaim Schkop.....
"Don't fucking pisch on the Rebbe!" Asher knows he shouldn't be surprised but he's stunned even so that Z'vulun broke off from their stance around the latest Yiddish paper which Tateh hasn't even seen yet, looking at this ridiculous bild of this kadkokhes in France.
"Look at the schmattes on this amoretz! This guy's as Jewish as the shtupping Pope!"
"Look at the stripes on his fucking hoot!
"And what the shtup is that mustache?
"How can a Yid who dresses like that ever not be guilty?"
"And what's with all the fucking knepls on his shirt? What color is that even?"
"It's, you won't believe this... Yosef told me.... The French uniform is red, white, and blue!"
"Reyt, weiss, und bleu? How the fuck do the zelners go to the feld without the other soldiers knowing where to shoot them a hectare away?!"
"Even a feinschmeker like this guy wouldn't walk into a barber and say 'MAKE THE MUSTACHE LOOK LIKE THE HAIR OVER MY PUTZ!"
"Seriously, why the fuck do all these alte trombeniks give a dreck about some French faygaleh?"
Chapter 3:
"And who's the faygaleh here?"
"Tak, we know what that word means!"
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.
"Look at these dupeks! Laughing sie na cemetery!"
"Smoking papieros too!"
"They probably think że sa special cuz they can read!"
"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.
"Oh don't siki..." Shimon, like all Kharlaps, knows fluent Polish but stops himself....
"Don't siki on what?" says Szimon Kowalski....
"Never mind..."
"Give me the newspaper"
Naftali obbliges. Jan drops the newspaper and the last third of his stream lands on the picture of Reb Dreyfus.
"So what were you zhids reading about?"
"They were probably learning more magic spells!"
"Nie don't know any magic spells."
"Naftali don't!"
Jan Kowalski picks up the Yiddish paper and grabs Shimon's head, "Look at these letters!" and shoves the pisch-filled newspaper into Shimon's face.
Szimon Kowalski pipes up "This is probably the newspaper where you learn the magicznych spells that killed our baby sister."
"Tak." Jan resumes. "We hear all about your family. A rodzina where all the kids live by być adults? That's fucking black magia!"
The other Kowalski chimes in next "You're probably here so nobody can hear your plans to poison our blyading wells!"
Shimon's meshuggeneh temper can't hold it in any longer. "Well maybe if your kind cleaned their shtupping wells once in a while your kid siostra wouldn't get sick and die!"
There are seven seconds of silence.
"What are you saying? That you fucking mordecas of Christ have the secret to not getting chory this whole time and you've been keeping it from us?"
"Shimon zey shtil!"
"Go back to your shtupping Boyars and Priests! They knew it this whole time and kept it from you to keep you stupid!"
"Are you calling our Holy Fathers liars?"
"They're fucking thieves and rapists and merderers!"
At the same moment, Naftali and Zvulun bolt away like rodents who spot a wolf. Nowak and Wiśniewski grab ahold of Shimon from either side.
"Asher, helf mikh!"
Asher hesitates for three seconds.
"Well Asher, are you going to help yo...?"
Asher can't even hear the end of the line before he sprints away at a speed meant to catch up with Naftali and Zvulun.
"Your zhid brothers have left you."
Five minutes later, the Polacks leave Shimon for dead.
"Don't fucking pisch on the Rebbe!" Asher knows he shouldn't be surprised but he's stunned even so that Z'vulun broke off from their stance around the latest Yiddish paper which Tateh hasn't even seen yet, looking at this ridiculous bild of this kadkokhes in France.
"Look at the schmattes on this amoretz! This guy's as Jewish as the shtupping Pope!"
"Look at the stripes on his fucking hoot!
"And what the shtup is that mustache?
"How can a Yid who dresses like that ever not be guilty?"
"And what's with all the fucking knepls on his shirt? What color is that even?"
"It's, you won't believe this... Yosef told me.... The French uniform is red, white, and blue!"
"Reyt, weiss, und bleu? How the fuck do the zelners go to the feld without the other soldiers knowing where to shoot them a hectare away?!"
"Even a feinschmeker like this guy wouldn't walk into a barber and say 'MAKE THE MUSTACHE LOOK LIKE THE HAIR OVER MY PUTZ!"
"Seriously, why the fuck do all these alte trombeniks give a dreck about some French faygaleh?"
Chapter 3:
"And who's the faygaleh here?"
"Tak, we know what that word means!"
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.
"Look at these dupeks! Laughing sie na cemetery!"
"Smoking papieros too!"
"They probably think że sa special cuz they can read!"
"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.
"Oh don't siki..." Shimon, like all Kharlaps, knows fluent Polish but stops himself....
"Don't siki on what?" says Szimon Kowalski....
"Never mind..."
"Give me the newspaper"
Naftali obbliges. Jan drops the newspaper and the last third of his stream lands on the picture of Reb Dreyfus.
"So what were you zhids reading about?"
"They were probably learning more magic spells!"
"Nie don't know any magic spells."
"Naftali don't!"
Jan Kowalski picks up the Yiddish paper and grabs Shimon's head, "Look at these letters!" and shoves the pisch-filled newspaper into Shimon's face.
Szimon Kowalski pipes up "This is probably the newspaper where you learn the magicznych spells that killed our baby sister."
"Tak." Jan resumes. "We hear all about your family. A rodzina where all the kids live by być adults? That's fucking black magia!"
The other Kowalski chimes in next "You're probably here so nobody can hear your plans to poison our blyading wells!"
Shimon's meshuggeneh temper can't hold it in any longer. "Well maybe if your kind cleaned their shtupping wells once in a while your kid siostra wouldn't get sick and die!"
There are seven seconds of silence.
"What are you saying? That you fucking mordecas of Christ have the secret to not getting chory this whole time and you've been keeping it from us?"
"Shimon zey shtil!"
"Go back to your shtupping Boyars and Priests! They knew it this whole time and kept it from you to keep you stupid!"
"Are you calling our Holy Fathers liars?"
"They're fucking thieves and rapists and merderers!"
At the same moment, Naftali and Zvulun bolt away like rodents who spot a wolf. Nowak and Wiśniewski grab ahold of Shimon from either side.
"Asher, helf mikh!"
Asher hesitates for three seconds.
"Well Asher, are you going to help yo...?"
Asher can't even hear the end of the line before he sprints away at a speed meant to catch up with Naftali and Zvulun.
"Your zhid brothers have left you."
Five minutes later, the Polacks leave Shimon for dead.
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