On the holiest night of the year, the chorus intones the Kol Nidre when we tell God we won't keep our promises, then the Barchu when we bow to the Lord and bless Him to the world forever, then the Shema when we proclaim the Lord is One, , then the Eighteen blessings and the Vidui which is so holy we say it as we die, then the Selichot where we stretch the confessions of the Vidui to ten minutes, then the Piyyutim when we chant Byzantine poetry in acrostic, then the plead for forgiveness to our Father and King that is the Avinu Malkeinu, and finally the Aleinu and Mourner's Kaddish.
Aleinu is the common prayer which we say multiple times a day. But on the High Holidays the Aleinu is so holy that the clergy don't just bow down, they bow to the floor.
Here at Odessa's Greycer Choral Shul, the prayer is considered so important that the Rabbi exclaims every year before the Holy Ark and God "Forgive me Lord, I am nothing." Then the Cantor declares "Forgive me Lord, I am nothing."
I became shamesh in 1849 of Odessa's Greycer Choral Shul, and in my first year as a shul clergy, I bowed down and exclaimed "Forgive me Lord, I am nothing!" And I heard the Rabbi whisper to the cantor:
"Nu? Look who's nothing."
I have been sexton of the Great Choral Synagogue for forty-eight years and survived three rabbis, four cantors. Every Shamesh of my generation has died off, and all Odessa's wondered when I'd retire for twenty years. Every day I awake at four in the morning, five-thirty in the winter, two-thirty at the beginning of the summer, have a breakfast of tea and a hard-boiled egg, start walk to the shul twenty minutes after I get up. It's half a Russian mile. As a young man it took thirty minutes, now it takes eighty. I never slip. When I get there I sneak a piece of cake from shabbos. Every day I sweep the entire floor: the shul floor, the women's balcony, the offices of the Rabbi, Cantor and Board members, the chapel, the hallway, coat closets and outhouses; then I mop them and change the water in every room. Twice before a wedding. That makes it just in time for the morning service. Some tired schnook slips twice a year, I get yelled at by the board, then everybody goes back to work. In the early days I would cry, and every time they would give me a raise. Around 1870 I stopped crying and since then nobody's changed my salary. Every year I spend less and less money, but all my time is spent at shul, so I have no time to spend it on.
Every weekday I lead the morning prayers, the afternoon and evening. I learn the weekly Torah portions and read the fragments every Monday and Thursday. In the early years members did it for me, but now hardly anybody knows the Hebrew and nobody's willing to put in the work, so I read it for them. In the evenings after gymnasium I teach the students their torah portions. Nu? Some of them are very nice, some of them are very smart, some of them are idyots and horrible. I yell at most of them and klap a few on the head: some fall asleep, some make faces, some try to change the subject, some don't practice; but some are interested, I kvell over them but by the time they're sixteen they don't say hello.
The two breaks I have during the week is the eighteen blessings: the Shmoneh Esrei, and Rabbi's sermon, and nu? Every rabbi's the same. Every cantor's the same. They used to make me plotz with excitement, especially the chorus of yinglach: some of whom I tutored for their bar mitzvahs. Some became cantors themselves, or at least went to chazzan school, I hear some of them became opera singers, but with that chorus, even the schmegegge cantors seem up there like they belong at the Bolshoi. But nu, what do they do now you didn't hear fifty years ago? Both the rabbis and cantors have their one chance a week to be a macher and shaker, and nu they use every minute of it. Shouting and shraying, spitting and shpaying. Every rabbi slouches but they grow a foot on the bimah. Every cantor skips services during the week and on the Bimah becomes Odessa's most righteous tzaddik. On that bimah, the biggest nebbish turns into a golem. I go outside, nu? No shulgoer's there, and I have my two cigarettes a week and I hear the Rabbi here, there and everywhere. I go back in and nobody smells the cigarette because nu they all go out and smoke cigarettes while I'm layning.
Outside there are two groups. The Yiddsher schnorrers who get off work at the factory's night shift. They eat pork and trink, and the goyisher coachmen to the rich machers who go to shul by carriage. They eat pork and trink too, but they never talk to the Yids. You hear their kibbitzing, it's always the same in both groups: what they would do with the money of the Yiddisher machers in shul, whistling at the maydlach who walk by, kvetching about the wives, kvetching about the boss, kvetching about the children, kvetching about the hurs who make them sick. When somebody has money they sit at the table of the deli. They play cards and eat sausage.
But nu? I can't hear them anymore. I can't even hear the Rebbe. This year, one week I start not hearing the Rebbe. Instead I hear a yingele who would make a Rabbi sound like he sounds on Tuesday.
I know this boy. It's Yevno Jabotinsky's boy: Volf. Volodya when I knew him--I even remember when he was called Vovka. Great student, arrogant little pischer. He'd show up, pick fights with me about religion for forty-five minutes, then layn the Torah perfectly the last five. I could have let him go months before his Bar Mitzvah knowing he'd learn the whole thing without my help, but I didn't like him so nu I made him come in every week. These days, half the smart boys in Odessa pick fights about religion with me. Jabotinsky was the smartest. Not the smartest of the last few years, the smartest I ever taught. Some rabbi he'd be but nu he wants to be a golem all week long.
Of course he's from a rich family that pay for his books and nebbisher tutors just like me in every subject. He probably got up as early as me just to study, but nu? What does he study? Just like all these secular Jews it doesn't matter. They go without god and suddenly it's all this thing, that thing; this cause, that cause. All this thing they call 'literature' and math and history. Nu? It doesn't matter, whatever they learn always use it to turn the world upside down and everything plotzes on its head.
This is what that Haskalah thing fights for: that German chazerai that invades the heads of Odessa's kinder and turns them from Jews to dybbuks. Nu? We have it better here than anywhere else in the history of Judaism: in Odessa, in Warsaw, maybe even in New York, and what do we do with it? We use it to stop being Jews. And not just stop being Jews: we provoke the goyim too! Be atheists! Be socialists! Be capitalists! Be communists! Workers of the world unite! Throw away your talises! Eat pork! Make all the money! Maybe I should retire to a shtetl. At least there we mind our own business.
Every week he's out there now during the Shmoneh Esrei, and what does he preach about? All this Zionist drek about how we have to move to Palestine to make a new Jewish state in the middle of a desert. It's the usual drek about how all the Russian nobles are farkakteh thieves, the goyim are farkakteh murderers, God's a liar who doesn't keep his promises and Jews are sheep who don't fight back. So we fight back by fleeing halfway across the world? The message isn't there is no God, the message isn't even make all the gelt. It's move to the desert and parch yourself to death. Nu? There's no people there! Why? Cuz nobody wants to live there! Everybody wants to live in Odessa: nobody can get an apartment because so many people want to live here!
Everybody knows Yevno Jabotinsky the wheat trader: never goes to shul but gives half his money here and half his money for the society for menschlechkeit so the homeless schlemiels don't freeze or starve. Nu? I haven't seen Yevno in thirty years (back then he was Yussl) but anybody who gives money like that is either a greycer mensch or does shreklech things with his wheat.
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