I Am Nothing - Beginning

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 eithteen 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.