Tales of Modern Collaboration: Dear Boychik - More of the heavily edited version

 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 I'll start a fight about Trump. 

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 (if you don't know what a blood libel is, you'll learn soon enough), and forced baptisms (if you don't know what a baptism is, ask your cousin Shayt who married a shikseh). 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, may have been involved with your family's history. 

It's tough to know what to say about our family before your elter 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 Gideon was born, your elter-zaydie wanted us to name him after his own elter-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 elter-Zaydie couldn't even remember his own name, so instead of Gideon, 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 elter-Zaydie's birth was a pretty terrible one: Rosh Hashana 1899. It was the day, literally, the day, the entire Kharlap family left Bransk for good. Apparently they had to, but it was exactly the day everything was supposed to finally be great for them.  

So I want to recreate this day for you and set the scene. Anything for my first eynikle. Let's just imagine your elter-elter Zaydie, Yaakov Kharlap, chanting the lesson of the day. We'll show you the first half in Aramaic, then the second half in Yiddish transliteration, and then for the purposes of this letter, I'll show it in English. As you read it in English try to hear in your ear whatever you might imagine as the sing-songy way the Orthodox have chanted Talmud since its composition.

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.

.......And so for today's dawf yeymi we get to Parashas Vayeshev... You must know the story by now... it's the story of Onan, Tamar, Yehudah, and Er. Tamar, the beautiful bride, that a series of husbands won't make her pregnant so she can keep her nice figure, so Onan and Er always spilled their seed on the ground during schtupzeit.

(one kid laughs)

Don't laugh...

So God punished Onan and Er by killing them. (slightly annoyed) And make no mistake Gimpeleh, that's evil and Hashem might decide to punish you for it if you spill your seed anywhere but your wives.

(more kids laugh)

Please don't laugh, this is important! The Torah teaches a valuable lesson here.... like it always does....

(kids calm down)

You don't have very long till your married, you all know what spilling your seed is, you just need not to do it until you're married and can make geschlect in your wives.

(a bunch of kids laugh)

(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!....

Worthless numbskulls!....

No better than wild animals are any of you!... Is Dreyfus going through all this so you mamzerim can dishonor his sacrifice?!

(Kid says distant from microphone): 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!...

How did I, how did my family, end up teaching generations of zhlubs like you?! We all needed you like a hole in the head! Fifty years teaching this stinking Kheyder, just like my Tateh un Zaydie un Elter Zaydie before me. It was the death of all of them. I'm the only one who lived past fifty and now I'm almost seventy and still stuck with you khamers!...

Teaching all your Tatehs and Zaydies who had cowsheads just like you! Waiting for Rebbe Schkop to retire so I might get a few years as town Rabbi and a decent pension pay for my eleven kinder instead of the bupkes your parents give me, and we said to him 'may you live to a hundred twenty' so many times, he lived to a hundred and would issue rulings from his bed! ...Ach...

Alright. May Rebbe Schkop's memory be a blessing... But then your parents, more naarishkeit! They get a new Rabbi! God forbid a Kharlap be a Rabbi for them for a few years before he plotzes into the ground too! Another generation of Kharlap rebbes passed over for a pischer straight from the Yeshiva barely older than you who doesn't know life from the lamed vav. Schmeggeges, all of you!

(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. It's true, I know you don't believe it but it's true. And he blessed me just like he blessed Yaakov. He told me, Reb Yaakov, I know you and your beautiful wife,... and by the way, I know everybody thinks she's a mekhasheyfeh now, but she was beautiful before you all were born,...

(starts tearing up)

Anyway, he said to me RebYaakov, 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) Never tempt the evil eye! Fifty years ago I watched Reb Kalman Pozanski dance in the street and some shkots on horseback cut his throat! After the birth you can sing me Mazel Tov and heint at seven you'll all come over with your parents and we'll do a l'Chaim and DON'T BE LATE! This is the greatest shep nakhes the Kharlap family's ever had, and maybe the greatest shep nakhes you all have ever seen. Have you ever seen a family with twelve kids who make it to... w... keynmol... ochen vey never mind... oy this is such a great day, it's gonna be the greatest day any of us have ever had!

So 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! You see them! When has anybody ever seen them do something bad? They all love Hashem, and Hashem 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)

Yeah that hard cut to another scene just poured out of me like ruach, but we can't let ruach get too much the better of us, not just yet at least there's a lot to get through. First you have to know who Dreyfus is. You probably don't, but 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, probably bludgeoned his kinder's oyers with every new detail of Dreyfus and his legal dybbuks. Every Shabbos, Reb Yaakov would probably bring new news of Dreyfus to the denizens of the Bransker 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 a guy named Reb Feivl would be on the doorstep of the kheder every morning to be the first to get new news, and by the afternoon Reb Leybl 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.

 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 Asher, who was clearly a hot tempered type even then, got roughed up by a gang of Polish hoodlums. 

What was the fight about? I don't know, but don't automatically assume it was the Pollock's fault. Don't let anybody tell you Jews are smart, some Jews if they were twice as smart they'd be idiots. 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. 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 chanted '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. It very nearly did, but read to the end of this letter and you'll see how it turned. 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... 

So let's just imagine four of the brothers smoking cigarettes in the Jewish cemetery, kibbitzing next to the headstone of Rabbi Chaim Schkop, the deceased last year Bransker Rebbe who seemed to live forever. Which brothers are smoking? Maybe Dan, Naftali and Z'vulun. Meanwhile, Asher is

Dan: Don't fucking pish on the Rebbe!

Naftali: Don't curse in the cemetery! 

Z'vulun: Who's gonna hear us?

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

Z'vulun: What evil eye? You ever see it?

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

Asher: What drek? 

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

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

Dan: 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! 

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

Asher: (proud) Ha! There's my tzaddik. You still haven't rolled me a papiros. 

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

Dan: You can read it for yourself!

Naftali: Z'vulun doesn't read. 

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

Naftali: He says the words look backwards. 

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

Z'vulun: And you're gonna get it in your evil eye if Dan doesn't tell us what that newspaper says. 

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

Z'vulun: What's happening to him?

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

Z'vulun: (interrupting) Are we sending him money?

Dan: What money?! 

Asher: We have money!

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

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

Naftali: And Uncle Ezra always hated her!

Asher: He did?

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

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

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

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

Z'vulun: Did you really think Ezra was a Yiddisher kop?

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

Asher: Well we did ok for a while there. 

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

Naftali: Doesn't Tateh have anything saved away?

Z'vulun: He had twelve children! 

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

Naftali: Some work we're doin' here.

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

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

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

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

Dan: That? That's Dreyfus! 

Z'vulun: That meeskait is Dreyfus? 

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

Z'vulun: Look at the shmattehs on him! 

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

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

Asher: Look at the stripes on his fucking hoot!

Naftali: And what the shtup is that mustache?

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

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

Z'vulun: 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. 

Z'vulun: 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!'  

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

(interrupts from 20 meters away) 

Jan Kowalski: And who's the faygaleh here

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

Chapter 3:

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

Jan Kowalski: And who's the faygaleh here

Filip Kowalski: Tak, ve 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 pisch...

Jan: Don't pisch? Like 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. 

Dan: Asher, don't. 

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

Naftali: Asher! Zey shtil! 

Filip: Are you calling our Holy Fathers liars?

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

Naftali: Mir ale hobn tzu lozn! 

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

Asher: Dan, helf mikh! 

Jan: Tak Dan, 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: Dan, helf mikh! 

Jan: Well Dan, 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. 

 According to Dan, the Pollocks left Asher for dead five minutes later.

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 now we 

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, but 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. 

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, but 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 for 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, only my dreams happened when I was awake. 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'm completely sure that 75% of this diary 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 these bubbemeicehs up. So here's what 'Levi' had to say about next about what happened that day. 

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. "Nuuuuuuuuu? Shalkheni ki alah hashakhar!" Literally what the Angel says to Yaakov when they wrestle. Eyner chicken said it, then a sekunde, then a drit, and finally a giant khor of chickens speaking Hebrew. It literally sounded like millions! And they were speaking everything: quoting Torah, arguing Mishnah, singing the Psalms in Haftorah trope, making fun of the butcher, talking about the Kaiser and the Czar, debating whether Reuven and I should go to Amerikeh! I tried to talk to them but they wouldn't listen. It was just like dealing with all my briders! 

So I just zetsed there for minutes, listening to the chickens, wondering if I should call Reuven over. Wondering if Froi Blitzer would come in at any minute and blame me for a million talking chickens. Wondering if the hindls might kill me for a change! And then I heard it: the prize lamb screamed out: SHAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! 

And the lamb spoke directly unto me. "Levi! I am the she-e-ep of our fa-athers! The sheep of A-a-avel which he offered to Hashem before Kayin killed his bri-ider, the sheep of Avraha-a-a-a-am he offered in place of Yitzha-a-aa-ak! The yikhus of my bloo-ood was used on the sla-a-a-ave doors of Mitzra-aim before the Malakh haMa-a-a-aves took the ersht gebeym sons of the Egy-y-y-y-y-y-yptians. My ancestors were present at the death of Shmuyel and were given to the Melech Yisroel by Mischa the Mo-o-o-o-o-oabite. Hear me Levi! I must die imme-e-e-e-e-ediately. There is so little time to explain, but a fault in how we say the khawkham harazim brakha means that as many as 600,000 Jews will soon die if you do not ki-i-i-i-i-i-iill me right now. Terrible things will soon happen to the wo-o-o-o-o-orld, and if you do not act, a calamity will befa-a-a-a-a-a-all the Yiddisheh people!"

"But..."

"Hurry! It may already be too late!"

I faniked. What was I supposed to do? Let 600,000 Jews die? So I immediately slit the throat of the lamb. And I sat there for a moment as the blood covered my shirt and dripped to my shikhlekh, betrakhting what I'd just done. 

Now I don't want to insult the meshuggeh, but isn't that the biggest load of drek you've ever heard? 

So supposedly, on the same day, Levi writes about something significant that happened to 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 the same time, bad things were happening arum und aroys. This story's at least believable: 

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. 

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 to you as a gift!"

Freu Blitzer 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. Reuven didn't tell me more about what happened except that he didn't realize what was happening until it happened, but he was pretty afgerudert about the whole thing, 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 Dina 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 this isn't true,  but I think the main substance of it is emes. I knew Dina 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 Dina 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 Dina's life if nicht mer. Nu? Maybe she imagined it, but she'd have no reason to lie about it. 

So now let's talk a bissle about Shimon: they was a loanshark, money lender, malvehs. He was the guy deh goyim came to on their last dollar (toller, thaler, zloty, whatever...), and deh goyim promised them everything: loans they couldn't possibly keep, and the Jews would clean them out of everything they owned. 3/4s of the samovars in Jewish households first belonged to some shiksa housewife. It's not a great business, but it's our business, the Jewish business, and Jews kept it up for at least a thousand years if not three thousand. It's just the way things used to be done: arguably it's the way things are still done, and even if the Jews weren't responsible for it, they'd get blamed for it. 

So, just humor me, let's imagine Shimon going on a call to collect: let's imagine Yehuda with him, and let's imagine that Yehuda won't be thrilled by what he sees: 

Yehuda: It's ten. 

Shimon: (sarcastically) b'emes? 

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

Shimon: It's not late. Yehuda: 

But the balebos said be back by 1. 

Shimon: The balebos will wait. 

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

Shimon: The balebos will understand. 

Yehuda: But it's already noon! 

Shimon: It's not that late. 

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

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

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

Yehuda: Well for the goyim it's noon. 

Shimon: You obviously don't know goyim. 

Yehuda: I've known enough. 

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

Yehuda: What time will they tell us it is? 

Shimon: Ask them. 

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

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

Yehuda: Because... 

Shimon: Becaaaaause.... 

Yehuda: Because... 

Shimon: Koom on... 

Yehuda: Because goyim lie to us? 

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

Yehuda: What are they gonna lie about? 

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

Yehuda: Why wouldn't they have the money? 

Shimon: They never have the money. 

Yehuda: They don't? 

Shimon: That's what they always tell us. 

Yehuda: But they're lying? 

Shimon: They're always lying. 

Yehuda: Why would they lie to us? 

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

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

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

Yehuda: But they have the money? 

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

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

Shimon: We get it from them by waiting. 

Yehuda: What do you mean? 

Shimon: We get it from them by not leaving. 

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

Shimon: Exactly.

 Yehuda: But won't they beat us up? 

Shimon: Not every goy is a Kowalski. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yehuda: The point's there are rich Jews. 

Shimon: How many rich Jews are there in Bransk? 

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

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

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

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

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

Shimon: How's that working out for us? 

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

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

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

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

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

Yehuda: Is that the heus up ahead? 

Shimon: Yeah. It's yenem. 

Yehuda: What am I supposed to do? 

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

Yehuda: Ancient? 

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

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

Shimon: Of course it's in the Toyrah! 

Yehuda: It is? 

Shimon: What do you think Moshe was doing? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yehuda (whispers to Shimon): Charming... 

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

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

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

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

Henrik Nowak: This is what we prayed for. 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shimon: Oh dear, we should... 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ewa: They won't even eat our cheese! 

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

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

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

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

Henrik:This is the only baby we have left. 

(long pause, Yehuda finally says) 

Yehuda: The only baby? 

Shimon: (immediately) Yehuda! 

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

Yehuda: I'm so sorry Mr. Nowak. 

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

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

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

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

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

Yehuda: Shimon, please... 

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

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

Shimon: I'll explain later. 

Yehuda: You need to explain now! 

Shimon: Don't make friends with the goyim! 

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

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

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

Shimon: Yehuda! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yehuda: Vos?! 

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

Yehuda: Are you meshuggeh or evil? 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shimon: Yudaleh, nu? Come on... 

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

Yehuda: You saw two parents insane with troyer. 

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

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

Shimon: Nu? What are we supposed tsu ton? 

Yehuda: We're supposed to act like Tzaddikim. 

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

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

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

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

Shimon: We are helping them! 

Yehuda: You're chazers! 

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

Yehuda: Other Yids are surviving without picking goyims pockets. 

Shimon: You call that survival? 

Yehuda: I call that being what a mensch. 

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

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

Shimon: Yehuda what kind of goyisher naarishkeit is that? 

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

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

Yehuda: Feh! 

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

(long pause and Yehuda sighs) 

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

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

Shimon: We're not the gonifs Yudaleh. 

Yehuda: Who's the gonif then? 

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

Yehuda: What's your point. 

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

Yehuda: Are goyim really that fertummelt? 

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

Yehuda: Is Reb Goldberg scared of getting killed? 

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

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

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

Yehuda: Emes can he get killed? Can we? 

Shimon: Sure. It happens all the time. 

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

Shimon: You got any other jobs lined up? 

Yehuda: Neyn... 

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

Yehuda: Neyn... 

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

Goldberg: Nu? We're doin' a L'Chaim! 

Shimon: Alright... L'chaim... 

Goldberg: Here, dawh, take these glessen schnopps. 

Shimon: What's the simcheh? 

Goldberg: Hashem's justice. 

Shimon: Hashem's justice? 

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

Yehuda: Shouldn't we make a brocheh? 

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

Shimon: Is this a happy getrunken or a sad? 

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

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

Goldberg: Your future! 

Shimon: Our future? 

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

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

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

Yehuda: Em... Mazel tov. 

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

Shimon: Reb Goldberg!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Yehuda: Oooohhhh! 

Goldberg: Something I ge-said? 

Yehuda: Well... Not really. 

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

Shimon and Yehuda: L'Chaim! 

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Shimon: Yudaleh! 

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

Shimon: You never told me any of that. 

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

Shimon: You never asked me to. 

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

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

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

Shimon: About that... 

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

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

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

Yehuda: That guy couldn't possibly be violent.

 Goldberg: The address is 240 Mieczkewiczka? 

Shimon: Yeh. 

Goldberg: Henrik Nowak? 

Shimon: Zikher. 

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

Shimon: Did anything bad happen with your zuns? 

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

Yehuda: Amerikeh? 

Goldberg: Neyn. 

Yehuda: Palestine? 

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

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

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

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

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

All: L'Chaim! 

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

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

Yehuda: What's our funt? 

Goldberg: Your funt is to make money! 

Yehuda: I should have seen that coming... 

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

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

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

Yehuda: Oy... I'm so sorry. 

Goldberg: I told you not to apologize! 

Yehuda: Oy. I'm sor... oy... 

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

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

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

Shimon: About that...

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

Shimon: We did but...

Goldberg: But gornisht! Where's the money!

(pause)

Goldberg: Where's the money?

(five second pause)

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

Yehuda: He ki...

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

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

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

Shimon: I...

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

Shimon: Reb Goldberg ple...

Goldberg: You're fired. 

Shimon: Reb Goldberg.

Goldberg: Get out of my heuse!

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

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

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

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

(Shimon rushes over)

Shimon: Help me get him up!

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

Yehuda: Is he tedt?

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

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

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

So yeah, that's what moneylending is like. Don't do it boychik....

So the next source of tsuris is your great-great aunt Dinah. 

I knew Aunt Dina very well, and I can say, pretty definitively, she was a klafte. She had a hard life, but gevalt she was difficult. Even then apparently she had it hard: Rebbe Yaakov cared hard about his sons, he did not care about a daughter. 

And she was pregnant. Who was the father? We never learned. Her children never learned! Even if people knew how it happened, people only cared if the maidl wasn't married. Women were just chairen aun tablen. 

Anyway, what we do know is that she was hiding in the woods, and very pregnant. She fled home the moment she got pregnant. I'm sure her Mameh cared that she disappeared, her Tateh probably cared till he forgot, some of her brider probably looked hard for her, but eventually, they all just gave up and lebn just went on. It was probably pretty common for Jews to just disappear from the shtetl. 

She probably worked on some farm until her shvangershaft was undisguisable, at which point she was turned out and lived in the vald on the bank of the Nurzec River. She told me she was found by a hermit who lives in a ramshackle sukkah on the Nurzec's banks, and a lot of her brothers told me the same thing. 

I'm sure there were plenty of crazy hermits living in the Poylisher valds. She never talked about it, but all the brothers told me exactly the same thing: the hermit was not quite mensch, not quite froy. They were a mystic, a mekhasheyfeh. Within a day, Dinah had slipped a river mudbank, mercifully fell on her back and tzubrokh her arm. The hermit put their hands above her, chanted a brokheh, and there was no break. 

They brought her berriz, they brought her milkh aun fleysh. As far as feral living goes, it was fein lebedik. Healthcare was obviously frei, there was probably a well far vasser, and the witch could probably deliver a pregnancy with kayn problem. Who knows? There may have even been days when she found this meeskeit with beard and breasts oddly shayn. She may have wondered, was a lebn possible here? Even if it was, wouldn't she always be deshrokn of discovery? What would yaknas and yentes like her Tateh or Gad say? But may be over time perhaps zi hob zich lieb gehot. 

And here is where Levi Charlap takes over again, that other meshuggener schmendrik. He apparently had a vision of what happened. Boychik, I could make my own commentary here but your Tateh says that I have to start trusting other people more to come to their own conclusions: 

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

Gevaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaalt!

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

(At top speed) 

Ototoi OyOyOy! Adoshem Elokim!

The people of Israel I hear myself scream! 

The Nurzec it rises! The Vistula boils!

The Rhine it flows onward free loaded with spoils!

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

Your touch is a pleasure yet feels like a slice!

Your rocks they grow great with Your ladders and dreams!

The world ever bows to your projects and schemes!

You are who you are! Your people are going!

My life hangs in doubt for the ovens are glowing!

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

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

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

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

Golden calves, Jeptha vows as the grasshopper cowers!

My offense so shameful I must hit the showers!

The Rhintfleisch Pogroms will be walks in the park!

While industry thrives and the smoke it grows dark!

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

And ghetto me while Moda turns me to leather!  

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

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

You plan many lives! Some no future or hope!

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

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

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

The owl among ruins, revolutions betrayed!

The Lord will provide executions arrayed!

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

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

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

Enslaving me! Killing me! Then I eat gruel!

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

While leaders and hordes chant my name really loud!

I wait for the shut door that opens for me!

The gentiles diplomats leaders ignore me! 

These mustaches kill me with awful solutions!

I know it's convenient to name me protrusions!

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

Only for Yonah to rise seven minutes later.

Oh Dinah the valorous woman of Israel!

You heroine martyr absorber of vitriol!

Your destiny's terrible yet you shall be!

The mother of greatness just know you must flee!

One son and two daughters their names make you great!

Your sacrifice for them they'll recognize late!

You must leave to make tchochkes for Jewish mothers!

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

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

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

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

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

What the fuck are we supposed to do with relatives like this? Who thinks proto transgender hermaphrodites are dancing poems in turn of the century Bransk that have references to 50s quiz shows and scientific theories that won't be invented for another five years? How could this be put together by anybody but Levi's schnorrer son, Professor Shyster? As meshuggeh as your family still is, you should thank your lucky stars you didn't have to deal with these people. 

And here's the thing, boychik, apparently Levi had a SECOND vision of Dinah's pregnancy. In some ways, this one's even crazier!

So my bashert Aynshel got me pregnant. We'd known each other forevik, been freints 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 milkh, he always helped any nebekh he saw 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 bazorgt there might be a Kowalski on the road, or some farbrekher even worse, or even a group of bad Yids. But di gantze tzeit were a few Catholic kohanim on a wagon who politely said hello, and some Poylish kinder who ignored me. 

When I arrived it was nacht 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 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 was 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 the ports on di Hudson 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 clay came into the living room to get the samovar. He never said a word and never looked me or the mekhashayfeh 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 wouldn't understand." "Nu? So you should explain it to me." "You 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 too? We'll be here 'till 1920!" "I need to understand. If I don't get rid of the baby I'll never marry." "Your baby will be like a star to millions and milyans of menschen." "What does that mean?" "You have no way of understanding yet." "I need to understand or else I can't marry!" "Zicher you'll marry but better you shouldn't." "Oy. Why shouldn't I marry? 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. Better they should die now." "I should warn them." "Zey vell nit believe you." "Couldn't I hilf them?" "Better they should not get up alive. Nobody can help them, it's azay vi Gott hodt gehaysen." "Oy gevalt." "Gevalt is rikhtig." "Will my daughter die too? What's going to happen to my tokhter?" "Everything which doesn't happen to them." "But won't my mishpocha find out about her?" "Nobody in your mishpocha's going to find out." "Why? What will happen when I come back to them?" "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 the whole pot Dinahleh, put a bisl of everything in the teay, then go back to your mishpocha. You'll feel much besser and so will your tokhter."

 "A dank?"

"Thank me... don't thank me... it doesn't matter. I gotta go far a walk. Denk of your daughter. Name her Chava."   

Is this whole thing a schvindle? Did Levi make this up out of the luft? Did he ever question Dinah about all this? Did he interpolate it from small things Dinah said? 

But the truth is, yes, your (my) Aunt Dinah had a daughter, Chava Kharlap, and she became a movie star: Eve St. Berg. Teen boys still think about her at night, even though she's been dead for thirty years. But what the fuck did Levi know?