Dear Boychik,
Nu? I guess I'm supposed to be writing this for you but I know it's really for your tateh who's just making me to write all this down even though he knows every bisl of it and like he always does he's forcing me to do his work for him, but still, it's for you more than anybody else because it's important that you know our meicehs and your tateh always gets the details wrong so I guess he's right that it's better that I tell you myself. Nobody gets the details right but me. Still, he should have paid better attention.
He should have paid better attention when I spoke to him in Yiddish too, but like every other responsibility your farshtunkeneh tateh and his briders dodged, they refused to speak back to me in Yiddish so now they don't know bupkes and Yiddish is gonna die out with me. So I guess I can't write this in Yiddish because I'm gonna die soon and if I don't live long enough to teach you deh mameloshen, you wouldn't be able to read this at all. But gott in himmel you're gonna learn some Yiddish even if those goyisheh kinder of mine take you out every Sunday for a ham!
Right now, your Mameh is in the hospital geboring you, and for your tateh it's probably a very geboring process just like it was for me. I told him to bring a camera with him to the hospital so he can film your birth just like I filmed his. We didn't need the footage, but it gave me something to do while your Bubbie got all the attention and accolades, and if your Bubbie ever buys too much crap, I can always threaten to accidentally email the birth video to her friends.
So what your tateh wants is for me to tell you the story of your mishpocheh. I don't think that's the real reason. I think the real reason is to give me something to do while he's raising the baby so that I don't tell him all the things they're doing wrong with you. You haven't even been geboren yet and I already know every mistake they're going to make. They're gonna hold you wrong, they're gonna hit you too lightly to burp you, they're gonna set the temperature in your room too warm, they're gonna mix the formula wrong and feed you at the wrong times, they're gonna buy the brand soap and oil, they're gonna buy you baby food rather than just put their food in a blender, they're gonna want to buy new cribs and carseats when we've got perfectly good ones in the garage from when your tateh and uncles were young, they're gonna buy new outfits and try to get out of dressing you with old baby clothes every day, and just so you know, all that money they spend is coming out of your inheritance, but I've promised your Bubbie that I would keep myself busy so that you stay the person they want to murder rather than me.
I don't know when you would read this, maybe your tateh wants to give this to you as a Bar Mitzvah present, or maybe when you go off to college, or maybe when you get married, but I don't know how he would even keep track of it until then. I know your tateh, he's kind of lazy. He doesn't misplace things nearly as often as I do, but I'm eber buttel, I have a lokhen kop that's only getting larger. That's why I have a system to keep track of everything. The most important thing you can have as you get older is a system to remember where everything is. He doesn't have a system, so he's probably going to lose this a couple days after I give it to him. But if I go completely eber buttel before you're old enough to remember me, the most important advice I can give to you is "Have a place where you put everything important." When you're old enough, always remind your tateh to remind you to have a place where you put everything. Always have a backup: make a duplicate key for your house and leave it with your parents, make a duplicate for the car and put it in a magnet on the back bumper, have a basket at home where you always put your wallet and keys, always write reminders before you go to bed of everything you have to do tomorrow, always write down every password on a piece of paper and put it in the basket, and always, all the time, alle mol, take care of everything right away and never put anything off until the last minute: putting toys away, doing homework, filling applications, making a shopping list, cleaning the house and the yard and the car, getting the oil changed, and especially paying bills. Your uncle is particularly shreklekh at that.
The system is everything: it's how you survive, it's how we survive, it's how your mishpoche, your nation, survived a million tzuris. The whole emuneh of the people you were born into is based on this system, and if the velt is about to be something we have to survive again, it's because people stopped following the system. Nothing else matters: faith, love, kindness, intelligence, those are all nice, but sometimes they go away and sometimes they come back. If you want to survive, if you want your kinder to survive, having the system in place to follow is the only thing that matters.
Everybody hates it when I get ongeblozen about this drek, especially your uncle, but soon I'll be dead, and they can do whatever they want. Everybody also says that I'm exaggerating when I say I'm gonna die soon, and I always have the suspicion it can't come soon enough for them, sometimes I wonder if it can't come soon enough for me either. That's why I've left instructions with my lawyer that on the night after you become a Bar Mitzvah, your first responsibility as a man is to put a pillow over my face as I'm sleeping - that is, if your Bubbie hasn't done that to me already, since I'm pretty sure that's been her plan since our first date fifty years ago.
So the place to start is to tell you about the town you come from. Not Baltimore, where you're going to live, or Pikesville, where you should be living if your Tateh understood how much easier he would have it if he lived closer to us, but Bransk, the shtetl you come from, the place your great-grandparents were born, the town where two hundred fifty years of Charlaps lived before you.
Your last name, Charlap, is an acronym standing for 'Khiya, Rosh l'Galut Polin.' Which means one of three things.
1. That we 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 your descendents was really smart for a Pollock - though your uncle tells me that slurs like Pollock are considered offensive now, but since this slur is about white people I think it's ok.
3. One of your 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.
As it happens, my cousin Yonatan recently emailed me and told me, with lots of exclamation points, that Charlap means 'Khiya, Rosh l'Galut l'Portugal,' not 'Polin', so apparently we're 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 your family didn't live during my lifetime. 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 we 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....
Bransk was a shtetl in Northeast Poland - 'shtetl' is a Yiddish word meaning "here we buy wholesale." There were about 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.
Jews aren't supposed to be hicks, though your cousin who hasn't had a job since he mooned his boss sure acts like one, but the truth is your whole family is Jewish hillbillies on every side, you, me, your tateh, your Bubbie, probably your mameh and her family too, though your Bubbie doesn't want me to ask your Sabba and Savta about their background because she thinks it'll start a fight about Clinton.
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 blood libels (we'll explain what that is later but for the moment, just think President Clinton crossed with Hannibal Lecter), and forced baptisms (think Ernie in a bathtub with Roald Dahl). 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, who believe it or not, is involved with your family's history.
It's tough to know what to say about our family before your alter Zaydie's parents were born. It's not like there are family stories handed down about your ancestor Yechiel who smoked opium in front of the Golden Calf, it's only right before my father was born that there's any historical documentation of our family at all. When your uncle Joel was born, your alter-zaydie wanted us to name him after his alter-zaydie, Velvl Daniil. I didn't even know he had a great-grandfather named Velvl Daniil.
So by the time Joel was three and your father was seven, a West Highland Terrier started yelping outside our house for days. Day after day, the tiny bitch screaming outside my window every five seconds. I told your Bubbie not to give him any water and he would leave, but of course she gave him water when I wasn't watching. I told her not to feed him, but of course she gave him leftover dinner when I was in the bedroom. I absolutely, positively, would not let the dog in the house, but when I had almost ready to give him away, your uncle Abe started crying and screaming every day. I hate dogs so much, and I hated that hoont more than I hate Arafat, so eventually I had to keep him. By then, your alter-Zaydie couldn't even remember his own name, so instead of Joel, we named the dog Velvl.
But the family lore does not begin with Velvl Daniil, it begins with a dream from my own Zaydie, who I never met. He might have been a hundred-fifteen years old by the time I was born.
Rebbe Yaakov Kharlap: he was a small town rabbi who wasn't even the Rabbi for his town. Just a kheder instructor, where he taught Jewish boys only a few years older than you how to write Hebrew letters, how to daven, how to read, how to memorize pages of Torah and Talmud - and if he was to his students anything like he was to my tateh, he probably used a ruler on them for every mistake they made.
The story goes that when he was fifty years old and his wife Miriam was forty-five, an angel appeared to him in a dream. They'd been married for thirty years, but in all that time, they'd never conceived a single child. The angel in the dream told Rebbe Yaakov that his wife would bear him twelve sons, all of whom would survive into adulthood, and Reb Yaakov must name the twelve after the twelve sons of Israel.
Well personally, I think the story is completely meshuggeh. If Reb Yaakov and Miriam were that old, and there's no way to really know, then there's certainly no way the kids were entirely theirs. I think all his children were probably just cheder orphans he adopted and Miriam took care of, and Reb Yaakov was meshuggeh, so he changed all their names to be named after the twelve tribes of Israel.
But anyway, that's the story. And there were definitely eleven boys and a girl: Reuven, Shimon, Levi, Yehuda, Dan, Naftali, Gad, Asher, Yissachar, Z'vulun, Dinah, and Yosef. And if there's still family resemblance between them all now? Well, it's the shtetl, we're all inbreds.
Apparently Reb Yaakov had a rich twin brother, Ezra, who had a factory in Bialystok, the nearest city. Ezra sent Reb Yaakov money every week for his enormous family, but Ada was an 'enlightened' woman of the 'Haskalah' - never mind what the Haskalah means but depending on who you ask it's either the best or the worst thing that ever happened to us. Ada apparently couldn't stand Reb Yaakov, thinking he was just a nar from khandrikeville, and my father always referred to her 'die mechashayfeh' so I'm guessing the feeling was always mutual.
Whatever the fights were about, they clearly centered on money. Ezra sent his brother enough money that for shtetl dwellers living on a cheder stipend, they could live pretty well. Your greicer-onkle Jake still has the silver menorah Tateh buried before the war and dug up to take with him on the boat over here - and of course who should get that menorah after he died could have been a huge fight, so I let him take it. We showed him though, we found the same design menorah on ebay for a hundred twenty-five!
But whether or not Reb Yaakov was ever worried about money, he was terribly worried about his career. He was apparently thirteen years old when Rebbe Chaim Schkop came to Bransk, and Rabbi Schkop was always dying, but he never died. Apparently he could never even stand up and just issued rulings from a bed installed in his Bet-Din (think People's Court for frummies).
But on the very day Rebbe Schkop gave up the neshawmeh, in his eighties, just a year before my Tateh was born, Rebbe Yaakov fainted in his kheder. He'd been functioning for years as basically the town Rebbe, school melamed, din-torah and tateh tsu tsvelf kinder and was already in his seventies.
The town makhers wrote immediately to the Mirrer Yeshiva about a miraculous emergency in which the Rebbe and his Yursh dropped dead in the same hour (give or take a few...). Reb Yaakov had come to within an hour and was back to work the next day. But just a few days before his initial installation, the Mirer Rosh Yeshiva wrote back that after much discussion, the Rabbis at Mir had ruled that this was a sign that Bransk would require a Rabbi destined for great things, and one of their grayster yunge khkhams was already on his way to become the new Bransker Rebbe.
Nobody told Rebbe Yaakov until the day of his installment. They didn't want to make him faint again. But just as his kinder were packing the house to move into the Rebbe's heus and he came over a little early to figure out with the carpenter how to move Rebbe Schkop's bed out of the Bet Din, he saw a young boy he'd never seen before next to a young girl holding a baby. The carpenter called this young boy Rebbe Zilbershteyn.
But if Rebbe Yaakov's career went nowhere, his family life was clearly overpopulated. Still, he needed one more son to complete the set: a Charlap who'd complete the vision of his dream that he would name Binyamin. That Binyamin was your Tateh's Zaydie, Benjamin Charlap.
The day of your alteh-Zaydie's birth was a pretty terrible one: Rosh Hashana 1899. Apparently a couple of deh briders used to hang out in the cemetery, they were apparently the 'cool' shtetlers known as 'Deh Kharlap Khaleriyas'; they'd smoke cigarettes, they'd probably pish on the tombstone of the Rebbe, and I'm sure they'd brag about all deh sheyneh Branskeh maydlach they felt up in the barns. But apparently one day your uncle Shimon, who was clearly a hot tempered type, got roughed up by a gang of Polish hoodlums who left him for dead after he told them that their priests and boyars were murderers. I mean.... he was probably right, but don't let anybody tell you Jews are smart, some Jews if they were twice as smart they'd be idiots. But apparently later that same day, your uncle Asher killed one of the Polish kids who roughed up Shimon so he already had to leave Bransk before the big news.
What was the fight about? Well, this all was during the Dreyfus years, a story which nobody really cares about now except Jews and the truth is, maybe we shouldn't have cared about it even then. Being one of us is trouble enough, but we have this way of making trouble for ourselves whenever some shtik drek oysshteller thinks he can climb the goyisheh ladder and then has the kind of shlekhteh mazel every Yid has to expect when they think they can be a greyceh goy.
Of course, boychik, Dreyfus wasn't any schtik drek. These na'ars had to know who Dreyfus was. There was no Jew who didn't know in 1899. And for five years, Reb Yaakov probably was the only Jew in Bransk with enough money and literacy for a newspaper subscription - he probably bludgeoned his kinder's oyers with every new detail of Dreyfus and his legal dybbuks. He probably brought new news of Dreyfus to the denizens of the Bransk shul, all of them his former talmids, who never much considered why they cared so much for the tzuris of a wealthy Jew in the French military who after after five years in prison would probably shpay on them in the street. They probably cared much more about Reb Yaakov's vissen and khokhma than they ever did when they were his students. Reb Yaakov probably told his kinder every day over breakfast after their mother would awaken them at four-thirty every morning to milkh deh kauz and plau de felds before they go to shul for Schacharis, and then tzu arbet.
It probably wasn't until 1896 that Reb Dreyfus would come onto the mental radar of a shlemazel like Reb Yaakov, when it became known that Dreyfus's exile to a prison island was a framing to cover for a mer vikhtik officer with much greater Yuchus: Ferdinand Walsin Esterhazy. Why did they put a Dreyfus away and not an Esterhazy? Because the Esterhazy's were the Hungary in the Austro-Hungarian Empire (I'm not gonna explain the Austro-Hungarian Empire to you, because even though your farshtunkiner teachers probably never told you about Dreyfus, I'm sure they never told you about Austria-Hungary, and there are some gaps in education for which there's no hope that your generation will ever fill), and however rich the Dreyfus family might have been, Dreyfus is just the name of another German town Jews were expelled from in the Middle Ages. You do the math boychik.
But it wasn't until 1897, when the Dreyfus Affair was reopened and Esterhazy was acquitted after a two day trial that all the Reb Yaakov's went meshuggeh. This Yid who barely knew he was a Yid was suddenly the grayseter Yid of us all. Their shtures got even worse when Esterhazy fled to England, and doubled even again when Dreyfus was re-tried and found guilty, and reached its hits grad as the mob outside the courthouse changed 'Death to the Jews!'
You can even imagine the scenes the Dreyfus-khopteh caused in Bransk. You can imagine Rebbitzin Zilbershteyn's mother weeping loudly in the synagogue whenever she heard the name Dreyfus. Imagine how he probably got a special M'shebeirach every Shabbos from Khazzen Nudler, from which everybody in shul competes for who can shout 'AMEN' the loudest!
But the reason we're starting here is because everybody in the family remembers it as the 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 to my uncle Z'vulun it was about the history of the Kharlaps, though your elteh-Zaydie Benyamin always told me Z'vulun was full of drek and they didn't speak to each other for almost twenty years about it. 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... Here's what Asher wrote about what happened in the cemetary:
I think it was me, Asher, Naftali, and Z'vulun, maybe it was Reuven not Z'vulun but who gives a drek..., We were 'Deh Kharlap Khaleryehs' and we came to the cemetary to smoke papiros, trink vodka und zubrowka; literally tsu pisch und dreck away the tags, to shpring und shrey. We'd tzurikommt six times a week for more than five years to lean on the headstones of all the Bransker Rebbes. No macher ever saw us, Jew or shaygets. Who had time during arbet? Even if they did, no Yiddisher kop would ever go outside their own house to show they had gornisht besser tzu do during a weekday.
It was still early morning but we all were shikkured and either Reuven or Z'vulun was pisching on the headstone of the old Bransker Rebbe, Rabbi Khayim Schkop..... Asher was offended, "Don't fucking pisch on the Rebbe!" We knew we shouldn't have been surprised but we were stunned that Z'vulun broke off from crowding around the latest Yiddish paper which Tateh hasn't even seen yet, looking at this kadkokhes in France. We were all couldn't believe what we were seeing. I remember some of what we all said: "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 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?"
We didn't realize we were watched, it never seemed that way before: "And who's the faygaleh here?" "Tak, we know what that word means!" Less than twenty meters away, right next to the cemetery's wooden fence; it was six Polish boys, I remember all their names because we spent our lives trying to avoid them: three of the Kowalski brothers, whose father Yakub Kowalski was known through all the shtetls nearby as 'der Yid merderer', along with Franczisek Nowak, Filip Wiśniewski, and Aleksander Wojcik. The shortest of these schloggers was a foot hecher than any of us. "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 unzipped his fly and started to pisch on Rebbe Chaim Schkop's headstone. Asher got offended again and started "Oh don't siki..." but stopped himself. Every Yid knew fluent Polish in the old country.... "Don't siki on what?" asked Szimon Kowalski.... So Asher said "Never mind..."
Jan shrekked "GIVE ME THE NEWSPAPER!" Jan dropped the newspaper and pished on the picture of Reb Dreyfus. "So what were you zhids reading about?" "They were probably learning more magic spells!"
Shimon always had a schlekhter temper and shrayed "Nie don't know any magic spells." I warned him right away not to say any more. Kowalski said to him "Look at these letters!" and shoved the pisch-filled newspaper into Shimon's face. Szimon Kowalski piped 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 to 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 couldn't hold it any longer. "Well maybe if your kind cleaned their shtupping wells once in a while your kid siostra wouldn't get sick and die!"
Everything went as silent as deh Rebbe. "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?" I shouted to him "Shimon zey shtil!" but he couldn't help himself: "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 bolted away. Nowak and Wiśniewski grabbed ahold of Shimon from either side and Shimon shouted "Asher, helf mikh!" But I hesitated for a few seconds. One of the Kowalskis said "Well Asher, are you going to help yo...?" I was over the fence and already run so far away I didn't even hear the end of the sentence, I.
Five minutes later, the Polacks left him for dead, or that was what Shimon told me. He definitely had scars and cigarette burns on his face after that for the rest of his life.
I spent the next couple of hours weeping, thinking I was responsible for Shimon's merder. Ikh hat tzu do something about it. Shimon dying might have been the start of other Yids getting killed, even andere Kharlaps, and I could have stopped it or at least shown them they have a reason to be scared. I was an idyot, I honestly getrakhed that if I avenged Shimon, it would stop the violence not make it worse. So I went to our yard, got a meser, went to the Kowalski house and hid in the bushes. I waited all day. Nobody kummed aheym. I knew Mameh was in labor and we'd have a L'Chaim that night, but if Shimon was dead, it's not like it would be much of a Simcheh anyway.
I was no match for Jan Kowalski and eventually it occurred to me that the Kowalski boys would probably come home together. Eventually, by fimf a-zeyger, Mameh Kowalski, Anna, came home. She was the only person in the house and soon other people would be home. She must have been drei-hunderd pounds and six feet hekh, she might have been pregnant for all I remember. I came up behind her, grabbed her mouth from behind and stabbed her in the stomach at least seven times. She screamed but she never saw me or turned around, I heard tschooking noises and I swear she was shreking 'ZHID! ZHID! as she choked on her blut. I ran out of the house, ran into the woods and cried some more. Alz mein clothes hat blut everywhere, my hents, my arms and legs, even my pawnim. I didn't even try to wash it off. I just went back to my mishpoche's house to tell them everything, but when I got there, half my briders had blood on them, the other half had bruises and scars.
This story is so over the top boychik that I can't imagine it's even partially true. Your greycer-oncle Asher was barely a hundred pounds and meshuggeh as meshuggeh gets (and in case you haven't realized by now, so is your entire mishpocha except obviously your Zaydie, though your Bubbie and uncles would dispute that), so if the freu was six feet tall and three hundred pounds she could have tzubrokhen him in half. But whatever happened it was definitely a bad day for the Kharlaps for all kinds of reasons.
This is where we have to talk about the real meshuggener, my Uncle Levi. I never met my uncle Levi, we have no idea if he died in Treblinka, or if the Nazis shot him in Bransk or Wysockie or Bialystok, I somehow doubt he killed himself, but they should have stuck him in the meshugoyim hoys on that day, butd instead of getting any kind of care, he became meshuggeh frum, had something like eleven kinder of his own, and instead of leyning Torah he wrote and wrote and wrote. Nobody's been able to get through all of the bukhs and bukhs of bopkes he wrote, but somehow a good half oder mer got saved and was brought over here from the Old Country and other cousins you won't ever meet have taken a look at them and sent me some of the parts they find interesting.
So just read what he has to say here about that day before Erev Rosh Hashana:
...Reuven and I were working for a Shokhet and were shovelling hey or the shokhet's prize lamb which he was saving for the Bransker Rebbe to eat in the Sukkah. We were low on salt and if it wasn't fresh nobody could eat it. My father, Reb Yaakov, with his money from Uncle Ezra, was paying for the lamb which he meant as a peace offering to Rebbe Zilbershteyn.
I was telling Reuven about my dreams again, because like Tateh, I knew I was being visited by angels. Reuven was a praktisher mensch. He told me I was fertummelt and that I was falling for my own schvindle. "But you don't farshtey how real they are! They have to be real they're as real as you right here!" How else would he believe me? "Are they emesdikker real or are they falshen real?" So finally I had to concede "It's not faktish the way you and I are, it's like you can see them completely but you can also see through them." "So your mind is falling for its own schvindle?" "Feh! It's not a schvindle!" "What do you know from schvindles?" "I know what these malakhim tell me!" "And what do they tell?" "You obviously wouldn't believe them." "No I wouldn't, but I want to hear them anyway." "That this will be the Great Age of our people. That we will all be destroyed, and then we will all be saved." "You mean like Moshiach coming?" "I don't know... they haven't said. I just know that we're about to live through the most important time in thousands of years." "FEH!" "That's what they said!" I told him so again and again. "Levi I'm getting worried, has anyone ever told you you have a Lokhen Kop?" "You asked so I'm telling you!" "Just don't you dare tell Tateh this! You used to be such a mensch but you're getting really tschunde. If he knew this it would break his heart."
Now here's di zakh boychik. I completely think that 75% of this is a total forgery. Maybe it was your cousin Solomon who was a schlemazl academic in New York who some amoretz machers now take seriously because of these journals, and maybe his oyshteller son Levi keeps making new ones because now he's making serious gelt off this schvindl. You're gonna find out about this diary eventually, and it's a big part of your mishpokheh's history even if it's all drek. So I have to make you understand any of this diary, you need to understand that Levi apparently predicted a lot of the events of the 20th century that he had no way of knowing, and the only explanation that makes sense is that Solomon Charlap made a lot of this bubbemeicehs up. So here's what 'Levi' had to say about next about what happened that day. This part is at least believable.
The shokhet's wife came out of the house to schrek at us to stop kibbitzing and get back tzu arbet. "You're schreking so much I can hear it from the bodroom, i you worked more you'd get angry less, it'll set you free!" (that last part I think was a farshtunkiner foreshadowing Doctor Solomon put in to sell more copies.)
Reuven went inside, and I innocently went about my 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. The chickens began to talk to me, and the klaks sounded like Toyreh. "Shalkheni ki alah hashakhar!" Literally what the Angel says to Yaakov when they wrestle. Eyn chicken said it, then a sekunde, then a drit, and finally a giant khor of chickens speaking Hebrew.
The prize lamb spoke directly to me. "Levi! I am the sheep of our fathers! The sheep of Avel offered to Hashem before Kayin killed his brider, the sheep of Avraham he offered in place of Yitzhak! The yikhus of my bloodline was used on the slave doors of Mitzraim before the Malakh haMaves took the ersht gebeym sons of the Egyptians. My ancestors were present at the death of Shmuyel and were given to the Melech Yisroel by Mischa the Moabite. Hear me Levi! I must die immediately. There is so little time to explain, but a fault in how we say the khawkham harazim brakha means that as many as 600,00 Jews will soon die if you do not kill me right now. Terrible things will soon happen to the world, and if you do not act, a calamity will befall the entire Yiddisheh people!"
"But..."
"Hurry! It may already be too late!"
I faniked and immediately slit the throat of the lamb. I was covered in blood.
So supposedly, on the same day, something significant happened Reuven. It's of course possible it was on any day while they were working there, though I doubt it, but honestly, it doesn't matter when it happened, what matters is that around then, bad things were happening arum und aroys.
They were all tchochkes tsu mir, but Reuven could never stop thinking about all the things in Reb Lazar's heus. All the samovars, the trays, the Shabbos candlesticks, the glessens for veiyn, the menoyrehs, the fantazye china. 'Geb a kuk Levi! Gelt, zilber, brass, portselain, even marble!' He eventually made his way to the badrum, where he found diments, rubies, sapphires, emeralds, jade, amethyst... they were all kleyntshik, and who knows if they were factish or schvindl? But it drove Reuven meshuggeh. I told Reuven to stop going in the heus, he'd just make himself krank und treurik, but he went in day after tag to kuk and putz around, talking to Freu Blitzer about dos nitshik und vos. One day he comes home with one zilber likht, then he comes aheym with the andere. Vos kentsu ton with a person who flyes to danger? One misfortune is too few for a schnorrer like that. Ikh hob geret tzu him, you don't know the trouble gekomming. But vernings meant gornisht to him. Eventually, you just have to let him suffer and remember.
Then the Shabbos lichts weren't enough for him. Then came the trays, then the zilber forks und messers. And eventually, he just had to go for the menoyrah. Okhn vey... And of course, Freu Blitzer knew di gantze tzeit.
"Vos tustu?"
"I was just looking at the Menoyreh."
"Zikher you are! Don't you remember? I promised it as a gift!"
Freu Blitz was zextsik yar alt, she walked with a stoop, had a shnoz like a witch, and sometimes her skirt didn't bahalt that she had what modern meditsin call varicose veins. She unbuttoned Reuven's gartl, got on her knis, got Reuven's putz with her moyl, and within five minutes, Lazar Blitzer got back from shul and shlogged both Reuven and Freu Blitzer unconscious with the menoyreh.
So yeah.... that's a family meiceh, and a believable one. That's the kind of mishpocha you come from, so mistomeh you shouldn't read this until after your Bar Mitzvah. It's far from the only meiceh of schtupping that gets in the way of family members having a gut lebn. We should probably redn about Dinah now, who until then was Reb Yaakov's only tokhter. What a hard life she had, as shver as her daughter was gebenscht, but she once wrote me a meiceh about her visit to Zohar the witch. I think this one is either somehow kind of treu and it was a coincidence that what the mekhashayfeh said came true, or like Levi she might have hallucinated it all, or maybe she was just exaggerating. Obviously a lot of it isn't true, but I think the main substance of it is emes. I knew Dinah pretty well in her last years, she was a different kind of meshuggeh from her briders. Some of this is obviously so ridiculous that there's no way in gehinnom that any of that happened, but I think some version of this is true because Dinah and her tokhter hated each other, even in the 1920s when she wrote this. They never stopped being inkayess and didn't speak for the last dreisig years of Dinah's life if nicht mer. Nu? Maybe she imagined it, but she'd have no reason to lie about it.
So my bashert Aynshel got me pregnant. We'd known each other forevik, been freynts since we were tzvey yar alt and we were gonna get married in three vokhs. Nu? We'd been kushen since we were tzen. It wasn't supposed to be a big khopteh if we schtupped a little early in the barn, but he was merdered on the road from Boćki, I'm sure it was that teivil Kowalski. I denk every day on how he suffered, and how they found him gebernt next to the road. There was never a one like Aynshel. He was so gut, so sheyn, such a mensch. He was a baker who was always arbeting, always helping his Mameh with the brot, always helping our Mameh with the sheps, he always helped the nebekh with whatever gelt he had in his pocket. He was always shtil und shvaygen because he was always too busy hilfing everybody else.
Was there any brich at all? I had to get rid of it. So I'd geheard things about this mekhashayfeh who'd lived in the woods near Radzymin who gave potions for everything, but keynmol I thought I should be the one to visit.
It was two days by fiss. Nobody would ever allow a meydl to travel aleyn, but ver ken Ikh zogn? The whole time I was zorgt there might be a Kowalski on the road, or some other Shtel's Jan Kowalski, or even a group of bad Yids. There were a few Catholic kohanim on a wagon who politely said hello, and some Poylish kinder playing who ignored me.
When I arrived it was nighttime but the witch was awake and knew my name before I even came in. 'Kum arein Dinah!' So I entered and saw Zohar the Witch who every person I ever met hawt geheard about, but keyner hawt geseeyn. I was so desperate. My Aynshel was tedt, and however much I wanted his kint, if anybody found out about it nobody would ever give me a khawssen. I never figured out if the mekhashayfeh a mensch or a froy. Nu? I think 'they' was both. The witch had a frum beard but also breasts, had payes und kapoteh but also wore a skirt, the voice was like a mensch without balls. Nu? Sometimes in shlekhter parts of New York you see meeskeits like this at night, but in Bransk nobody'd ever geseeyn this kind of person.
Without thinking I was so afraid that I freygned 'Bist du a dybbuk?' The witch lakhed hysterically and said 'Neyn, zikher I'm not a dybbuk!' She called out to a servant for a glezzen teay for me, and a giant red man who looked like he was made from clay came into the living room to get the samovar. He never said a word and never looked either me or the mekhashayfe in the eye. The witch asked me how strong I liked my teay and how much sugar.
"You want I should merder the tokhter." "Yes." How she knew my thoughts or that the baby would be a maydl ikh vayst nit, but it seemed umzist to question her. "Taw nisht." "Far vos?" "Your tokhter will have altz in life you want. Everything." "How do you know?" "Freyg nihst." "Why not?" "Just know that your daughter's gebenscht." "Blessed how?" "You wouldnt understand." "Nu? So you should explain it to me." "You'd have no way of farsheying it." "If I'm going to keep this baby I need to know why." "You want I should explain how my clay servant lives? We'll be here until 1920." "I need to understand. If I don't get rid of the baby I'll never marry." "Zicher you'll marry but better you shouldn't." "Oy. What's going to happen to me?" "Better things than most people you know." "What's going to happen to them?" "Freyg nisht." "Shouldn't I know?" "Shreklekh, terrible things." "I should warn them." "Zey vell nit believe you." "Couldn't I hilf them?" "Nobody can help them, it's azay vi Gott hawdt gehaysen." "Oy gevalt." "Gevalt is rikhtig." "What's going to happen to my tokhter." "Everything which doesn't happen to them." "But won't my mishpocha find out?" "Nobody in your mishpocha's going to find out." "Why?" "Freyg nisht. It's time for you to go." "Vos?" "Gey aheym, your mishpocha needs you."
The teay whistled, the giant red mensch brought out the samovar with a glez on a tray, with sugar, ginger, mint, cinnamon, basil, paprika, lemon, berries and vodka.
"Trink all this Dinahleh, and put a bisl of everything in the tea, you'll feel much better and so will your tokhter."
"A dank?"
"Thank me... don't thank me... it doesn't matter. Ikh mus geyn far a walk. Denk of your daughter. Name her Esther."
