THE RABBI WHO TRICKED STALIN
novel by
Mordechai Landsberg
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CHAPTER 1
Esther Hittin started to write a diary.
‘The writing task has- on one hand- an impact of expressing my thoughts precisely; on the other hand, if my poor son grows up and reads it one day, he will know what a heavy yoke had been imposed on us, his parents. He will appreciate our heroism, but why suffer so much? Will his understanding my mood - be my condolence? The big question is how would this baby grow to make a living?
“Development Diary about invalid baby of Esther and Aaron Hittin:
”14 March 1923.(Also a Hebrew datum was there)
“Perhaps I am not a learned person - as much as my husband. He finds sentences of condolence and cheer-up, by sinking in his sacred books. But I will try to write for myself, and maybe to the coming generation, about my voyage with my maimed baby. He is lacking only hands. Not an immediate acute desease problem, you’d say…
(I hope that my dear Aaron will not see these terrifying pages).
God has chained me to my poor baby. Due to his invalidity it is difficult for me to move from my house. I was used to be very active and energetic, run around and help people; and now my hands are permanently busy with the boy. I must help a maimed angel, who lacks wings. He fills my hollow day, and he hollows my soul. God, rescue me from trouble!…A year has already passed since the boy was born, and I see him growing; but his cut off hands are growing too. The despair bites my flesh, and the sorrow slaughters my hopes. The pain sends its boiling asphalt to my heart day and night. When I am alone or when I am with him, while sitting at home or while going out to the market. My reflections about his future don’t let me rest, even for a minute. I continually think about all the vital, necessary activities for keeping a human being alive- but my son’s hands had been avoided: Eat, drink, wipe his ass, (forgive me) or write or turn a book’s page or open a door or grab a hammer or build or plant or hold a horse reins or load a wagon or swim or oar a boat or pull or put or drag or even lean against a stick when he grows old. . . Hundreds of tasks and works were given to the hands. Thousands of jobs spread out from them to the fingers or palms or elbows or arms, and he is lacking any ability to feed himself or defend himself. He won’t be able to feel the sense of touch and caress, nor shape nor make nor create. My son Raphael has only one endless ability- to wave his lacking hand to the sky, to let God know to what outnumbered inabilities he is doomed. So natural and self-understandable – hands.
13 April 1923
Today my son has begun to sit, almost by his own. At first it seemed to me that he would fail to imitate the manner which I had showed him how to do that. But after six attempts- he succeeded: It happened in the small wooden ‘baby’s crib’…. His eagerness to study and repeat these moves had impressed me. His father showed a sign of joy too, while gazing at him in the new position. Aaron said that he had known: Raf’l would have a brilliant mind. It would somehow compensate him for his limp and help him to overcome obstacles.”
Aaron Hittin did not write any diary. He was feeling that something wrong was happening to Esther. She refused to lie with him. A talk about a new kid was impossible. She said that she was loving him very much, but that her physical and psychological forces had been weakened. She only wanted rest… He had not noticed that she would hardly clean the house, and seldom buy the necessary food. As a reaction to her self-enclosure, he had done the same: He tightly shut himself behind a rampart of sacred books, Talmud with its endless interpreters, and with Rabbinical writings from east and west. But Esther had an instinctive feeling, that nothing would help. One he suggested to her that she will see a doctor of mental problems. He based that on the writing of the Jewish Physician and philosopher Mimonides. Sometime a man should seek a cure for his mind by experts... She refused.Aaron said: “I’ll write about our problem to the greatest Rabbi Hofetz Haim in Radin in Poland…”
In the evenings Esther would longly wait for a sleep, that would redeem her from the long daily hard scenes and sights of her poor deformed child. But she would not be able to sleep quietly for long.
From time to time she would wake up, finding herself to have the same nightmare: The bad skeletoned-carcassed-tailed Bad devil is walking, scythe in hand, cutting limbs of people on his endless voyage. ‘All the events that have happened to me since my marriage,’ she would tell herself ,‘were a permanent hint that I’m no good, and I don’t deserve living. I wish the boy to be dead, as well as I wish that to myself. .. no, I should not meditate like that. Away, Vicious Angel!’
Then she would recollect how all her love to Aaron had begun, rising to a huge worship happiness. On the first days of their marriage he repeated to tell her about his intimate feelings to her,and often joyfully described their first steps to win each other’s love. Oh, those were the days of her hope and happiness. But they were past, far past. Before they had married, they had used to walk by giving hands to each other(no kisses in those times of betrothal) For her it had been the realizing of a young girl‘s dream, walking with her sweetheart outside the town toward the woods. There they would stroll and speak to each other, and sorry to see that time had passed so soon to break their discussions and return each to his home. These were the best days in their whole lives , surely…
CHAPTER 2