“Why don’t they strike?” my brother asked. “The owners would have to submit.”
Mother, too, had begun using weird words ever since she’d returned from Berlin, where my sister’s wedding had taken place.
“In Germany people are free,” Mother said. “The policemen speak politely with people and say ‘please’ and ‘excuse me’ … At the border they didn’t rummage through our suitcases and they called Father ‘Herr Rabbiner’ …”
All this talk spun in my head and formed a knot. I wandered the streets, and something seethed and boiled in me. My brother’s words awakened a feeling in me which mingled with my own thoughts. No, this was no way to live. Life here was one big disgrace, absolutely disgusting!
For the first time I began to look at the Jews of Warsaw with a new set of eyes. I saw tiny shops, tattered people, dirty, bedraggled children, disheveled women. From the study houses and shtibls the voice of the Torah was heard, but surrounding all this were Poles, peasants, and countless goyim who hated Jews and considered them freeloaders, beggars, parasites. The Jews had only one protector: God in heaven. But what if, God forbid, the heretics were right?
A FORGED IOU
This story must be told. It is a testament to human innocence and human wickedness.
One day a Russian document was delivered to our house. It wasn’t carried by the mailman but by a court clerk. Since my father could not read Russian, we called in a neighbor who had been in the army. The man read, shrugged his shoulders, and told my father that he was being ordered to pay six hundred rubles for an IOU he had endorsed. My father stood there astounded. In his entire life he had never signed an IOU nor had he ever endorsed one.
“It must be a mistake!” he said.
But apparently it was not a mistake. The promissory note had my father’s exact name: Pinchos Menachem Mendl, and also his family name and exact address. The document demanded that my father pay his debt at once and warned him that if he did not pay, his furniture would be inventoried and auctioned off publicly.
In short, it turned out that someone had forged my father’s signature. My father was terror-stricken. He had a typically Jewish, scholarly repugnance for anything having to do with police, gentiles, courts of law, and their entire legal system. Merely looking at a sword, epaulets, and the gilt buttons of a uniform frightened my father. From his reading he knew that the masters of this world were all evil, knew nothing of justice, and always sided with the strong and the false. Woe unto those who had any dealings with the police authorities! No one escaped from their hands in one piece.
Mother and we children tried to console Father. After all, this was not a criminal proceeding. Second, the matter could easily be proved in court. Experts could be called in. But these words alone—criminal proceedings, court, experts!—cast an extraordinary pall of fear over Father. All he wanted to do was pray, study, and immerse himself in Yiddishkeit—and now he would have to find a lawyer. Who knows, perhaps they would even ask him to swear in court? Who knows whether he might have to stand among these uncircumcised ones bareheaded? Furthermore, the lawyer would have to be paid and there wasn’t a penny in the house.
Father finally found a small-time lawyer who discovered that the IOU had been presented and forged by a merchant named Lula. My father went to see him. Lula had a cotton-and-accessories shop and wore Western-style garb.
Father confronted him: “What do you want from me? I’m a poor man. Where am I supposed to get six hundred rubles from?”
Lula looked frightened at first, because the punishment for forging an IOU was three years in jail. But when he saw that my father was pleading with him, he understood that a naïve, innocent man was standing before him and he said, “Rabbi, you better pay up! If not, I’ll let them put you into jail.”
“Wait a minute! I didn’t sign this IOU. I don’t even know you. This entire thing is a false accusation.”
“You did sign it!”
“When? How?”
“I don’t have time to argue with you. Pay up! You’re a man with a beard and sidecurls, but you don’t want to pay. You’re a thief!”
And that is how Lula, that brazen lout, spoke to my father. The signature was written in Latin characters, in Polish, and my father knew how to sign his name only in Russian, which used the Cyrillic alphabet. But Lula did not know this. He had already exchanged the promissory note for merchandise or for other expenses, and either could not or did not want to redeem the note. He had decided to let the matter take its course. Meanwhile, he was free of the obligation to pay.
My father went about worried and pale. He could no longer study in peace or pray with devotion. The small-time lawyer wasn’t suitable for such a complicated lawsuit and my father went to see Noah Prilutsky, the famous philologist, the son of Zvi Prilutsky, the editor of the Yiddish newspaper The Moment. No sooner had my father uttered two words than Prilutsky exclaimed, “You’re from the Lublin district.”
“Yes, how did you know?”
“From the way you speak. Didn’t you once live in Tomashov?”
“Yes, I am from Tomashov.”
Father told Prilutsky his story, and Prilutsky laughed. “Don’t worry, Rabbi, you won’t pay an IOU that you didn’t sign. Let the other fellow, the forger, that swindler, worry.”
Prilutsky promised Father he’d call Lula and talk severely with him. But in the meantime Prilutsky had to travel somewhere and could not undertake the case.
That promissory note was in the hands of a gentile firm, and since Lula had signed over his store and all his valuables to his wife’s name, the firm hired a lawyer who demanded payment from Father. The lawyer knew quite well that Father was innocent. But the difference between a criminal and a lawyer is often a tiny one. The other lawyer abused my father and said that it was a shame that a rabbi, a man of the spirit, should refuse to pay a sum of money which he had guaranteed.
For the first time in his life Father was face-to-face with a world where people thought one thing and said another. They knew the truth—but they concocted false accusations. Father was beside himself.
“Ah, woe, how can this be?” he said. “We are in Sodom! This is exactly like the Beilis trial!”
Father predicted a bitter turn of events: they would take everything from him, God forbid, and put him in jail. He would not be able to pray, study, or write commentaries. He would be forced to eat nonkosher food and be sent in chains to Siberia. If they could dream up such lies and tell him to his face that he had signed an IOU that he did not sign, then it was the end of the world! Then we were back in the generation of the Flood, and such liars and destroyers would not stop at any transgression. Hadn’t the informer Avigdor been responsible for the imprisonment of the holy Rabbi Shneur Zalman of Lyady? And hadn’t the revered Rabbi Meir of Rothenberg also been put in jail?
Father turned to holy texts that discussed martyrdom. He began repenting and fasting. If such a calamity was destined for him, it was a sign that he deserved it. It was summer and Lula had gone off on vacation. The new lawyer whom Father had engaged traveled to a spa. A trial date had been set, but it was postponed. The judge and the experts were hunting beasts somewhere in the forest; that the rabbi from Krochmalna Street couldn’t sleep at night was no concern of theirs.
In the Radziminer shtibl, men who had some experience rebuked Father for being afraid. One Hasid even regretted that this hadn’t happened to him. He would have gotten lots of money out of Lula; if not, he would have Lula put in jail. Some of the wealthy Jews in the shtibl laughed into their fists.
“What will they be able to take from you?” they asked. “Your Yoreh De’ah or your Talmud? Lula is probably waiting until after the holidays, when people start buying cotton. Then he’ll pay up.”
Everyone had a different opinion, but Father went about deep in thought. He knew that there were demons, imps, ghosts, spirits, unclean people who did evil deeds. But this was the first time that Satan had latched on to him and tried to destroy him.
What bothered Father most of all was Lula’s impudence. How could someone lie so brazenly to another person’s face? He’s a Jew, after all. He speaks Yiddish. From whom did such a sinner of Israel stem? Where did he get such cruelty? How could he sit there on vacation among the trees, breathing fresh air and eating, when he had sucked the blood out of a fellow Jew? And if a Jew could perpetrate such an injustice, how could we complain about goyish behavior?
“Ah woe, it’s not good. It’s as bitter as gall.” Father could not stop sighing. “No doubt, these are Messianic times.”
My brother, who had begun to stray from the Jewish path, offered arguments that supported his own point of view. “Since Jews are the chosen people, the ones who say in prayers ‘You have chosen us,’ how can a person like Lula be among them?”
“When a Jew abandons the Torah, he’s worse than a goy,” Father replied.
“But there are also bankrupts among the Hasidim,” my brother argued. “You, Father, don’t know what’s happening in the Nalevke district or in Lodz. Every other merchant declares bankruptcy. They sign IOUs and then they put off payment until they declare bankruptcy. Then they settle for thirty kopecks on the ruble and can once again continue doing business. And these very same Jews come to see the Rebbe of Gur! The rebbe himself is a partner in a lottery, and he himself has declared bankruptcy.”
“Scoundrel!” Father yelled.
“I’m telling the truth.”
“A swindler is not a Hasid, and a Hasid is not a swindler—he just calls himself a Hasid. So what can one do? If you want, you can call yourself ‘governor.’ We have only this Torah. We have nothing else but this Torah. It gives us life. Whoever does not believe in it is a sinner of Israel.”
“Oh, Father, you don’t know the world at all.”
“Who makes up this world? Jews who serve the Almighty.”
“It’s a world full of fighting and grabbing, murder and exploitation, swindle and lies.”
“That’s not the world. Those are the evil ones.”
“Then according to you, Father, it looks like three-quarters of the world will fry in hell.”
“Hell is big enough!”
Gradually, Father recovered. If it was the will of heaven that he, Pinchos Menachem Mendl, the son of Samuel the Kohen, rot in jail, then it was probably a just decree. He surely deserved everything. The Master of the Universe was a merciful and gracious God. Nothing evil stems from Him. It is all our fault.
Rosh Hashanah came, followed by Yom Kippur and Sukkos. Father observed all the commandments connected with the Days of Awe with passionate devotion. One mitzvah followed another. Once again some pews were knocked together and Asher from the dairy store led the Kol Nidrei service and the Musaf service the following day.
Right after Yom Kippur Father took me to the market on Gzhibov Street to buy an esrog. I had a yearning for a beautiful esrog, but the nice ones with tiny bumps cost ten, fifteen, and twenty-five rubles. Father looked and chose one. It was a mitzvah to buy a beautiful esrog, but mitzvahs like that cost money. He bought a pockmarked esrog, scattered with tiny spots, but in compensation the lulav was a beauty, with myrtle and willow twigs held together with little straw rings, all placed in a nice little straw basket.
I see Father now as he walks along Gnoyna Street, the paper box containing the esrog wrapped in flax in one hand, and the lulav in the other. In the light of the sun his beard turns fiery gold. The street bustles. Women hawk their wares: grapes, plums, apples, pears, all kinds of cakes and greens. I stop.
“Father, I’d like to ask you something.”
“Well, ask.”
“Are all Jews’ sins forgiven on Yom Kippur?”
“If one repents, the Almighty forgives.”
“Was Lula also forgiven for his sin?”
Father gets confused. He looks at me askance. “It’s the Eve of Sukkos. Let’s not talk about this.”
People are building sukkos in our courtyard. Those who can’t hold a hammer are busy with boards, doors, nails. Father approaches and wants to help, too. He also wants the mitzvah of helping build a sukka.
The trial took place during winter, and the experts concluded that the signature was forged. Father was absolved.
The lawyer then had to draw up a complaint against Lula, the forger, who could have been given a three-year prison sentence.
Lula came running to Father. “Rabbi, do you want to kill me?” .
“Why did you do such a thing to me?”
“Rabbi, I was in trouble.”
“And when one is in trouble, does one forge another person’s signature?”
“When one is drowning, one wants to save oneself.”
He stood there in our apartment with his fat neck, pointy belly, and fashionable clothes. He even had a ring on his finger. He looked tanned and stuffed. He raged against Father, moralizing, “Rabbi, your lawyer doesn’t have a Jewish heart … If you do such a thing, Rabbi, they’ll write you up in all the newspapers … You won’t be able to set foot outdoors … It’s going to be a desecration of God’s name!”
But Father told him forthrightly that he hadn’t intended to bring a complaint against him. He would not, God forbid, send a Jew to jail.
Lula began adjusting the cuffs of his shirt. He soon took an aggressive stance.
“Just remember what you said, Rabbi! I’m not going to have anything to do with your lawyers, those rotten scoundrels … It all depends on you … Without you those lowdown skunks won’t be able to do anything!”
Lula left, slamming the door behind him. It was absolutely beneath the dignity of this Mr. Lula to come to the rabbi of little Krochmalna Street. He ran down the steps. Outside, he jumped into a droshky. Father stood there for a while bemused before returning to his Talmud.
When Mother came into the room, he said, “In shul, I’ll have to recite the blessing thanking God for saving me.”
BOOKS BY ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER
NOVELS
The Manor [I. The Manor II. The Estate]
The Family Moskat • The Magician of Lublin
Satan in Goray • The Slave • Enemies, A Love Story
Shosha • The Penitent • The King of the Fields
Scum • The Certifcate • Meshugah • Shadows on the Hudson
STORIES
Gimpel the Fool • A Friend of Kafka • Short Friday
The Séance • The Spinoza of Market Street • Passions
A Crown of Feathers • Old Love • The Image
The Death of Methuselah
MEMOIRS
In My Father’s Court • Love and Exile
FOR CHILDREN
A Day of Pleasure • The Fools of Chelm
Mazel and Shlimazel or The Milk of a Lioness
When Shlemiel Went to Warsaw
A Tale of Three Wishes • Elijah the Slave
Joseph and Koza or The Sacrifice to the Vistula
Alone in the Wild Forest • The Wicked City
Naftali the Storyteller and His Horse, Sus
Why Noah Chose the Dove • The Power of Light
The Golem • The Topsy-Turvy Emperor of China
COLLECTIONS
The Collected Stories • Stories for Children
An Isaac Bashevis Singer Reader
Nobel Lecture
ISAAC BASHEVIS SINGER
MORE STORIES FROM MY FATHER’S COURT
The author of more than forty books now available in twenty-nine languages, Isaac Bashevis Singer was born in Radzymin, Poland, in 1904. The son and grandson of rabbis (and himself a rabbinical student from 1920 to 1927), Singer eventually followed in the more secular footsteps of his older brother, Israel Joshua, a novelist. In 1935, the same year he published his first novel, Satan in Goray, I. B. Singer left the Yiddish literary community in Warsaw to join his brother on the staff of The Jewish Daily Forward. Until his death in 1991, Singer retained his close association with New York’s oldest Jewish newspaper by contributing columns, reviews, stories, and essay
s in Yiddish to its pages. He was the recipient of the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1978, and twice won the National Book Award.
Curt Leviant has translated the work of Sholom Aleichem and Chaim Grade and is the prizewinning author of five novels: The Yemenite Girl, Passion in the Desert, The Man Who Thought He Was Messiah, Partita in Venice, and Diary of an Adulterous Woman.
Notes
1 Tevuos Shor, a widely used text containing laws pertaining to ritual slaughtering. Yoreh De’ah, the section of the Code of Law that deals with ritual slaughtering. The Be’er Hetev and Pri Megadim, commentaries to the Code of Law generally included in that text. (Author)
2 The opponents of Hasidim.
3 Between the world wars Warsaw had two Jewish cemeteries: the older one in Praga (on the other side of the Vistula River) for the poor and the other at the end of Genshe Street, where the richer people were buried. (Author)
4 A Kohen, a member of the priestly class, from the tribe of Levi, is not permitted to marry a divorcee or a widow.
5 The Book of the Covenant, a traditional book popular at the end of the eighteenth century that dealt with various aspects of science and philosophy.
6 Toomtoom, a Talmudic word signifying a nonvirile man.
7 Yom-tov Algazi (1727-1802), a famous rabbi, was the author of The Laws of Yom-tov, a commentary on Bekhoros. (Author)
Copyright © 1956, 1997 by Israel Zamir
Translation copyright © 2000 by Curt Leviant