Said I to the rabbi, “Perhaps you have confused the divorcee’s hotel with mine.” “The rabbi’s jealousy is gone, but not his hatred,” I heard Gabriel mutter. The rabbi stroked his beard and said, “So that you should not say that your rabbi is negligent, I hereby set you a date: if Hanoch does not return between now and the eve of the New Moon, I am prepared to declare a public fast.” So he gave them until the eve of the New Moon. They took their leave and went, and I too went on my way.
As I was leaving, he said to me, “Now that you know where I live, sir, come and visit me again.” I wanted to go back to him at once, like the man who came to visit a certain famous rabbi, stayed with him a few hours, and as soon as he had left went back. People said to him, “What reason do you have to go back, after you have sat with our famous rabbi several hours?” Said he to them, “It is said that if you have been in a place once, it is well known that you will go back to it a second time, and so that I should not need to return later, I am returning immediately.”
Chapter one and thirty. Hanoch
The appointed day was approaching, but no trace of Hanoch had been found. Snow covered the land and closed the mouth of the earth. Hanoch’s wife and children wandered about the town and the sound of their weeping rose to the heart of the heavens, but the heavens had forgotten mercy for men.
Again people went out to look for Hanoch; there was not a single village where they did not look. A number of Gentiles who liked Hanoch helped them, but the snow kept its secrets.
The rabbi still hesitated to declare a fast in a generation when people ate and drank on the Day of Atonement, but he agreed to ask some individuals to fast for one day, and, needless to say, he would fast with them. In the end, the men of action won their way, and the rabbi agreed against his will to declare a fast in the town. Those who were present on the occasion said that when the rabbi agreed to the fast his face was white as plaster.
On the Sabbath before the New Moon the beadle went round to all the houses of prayer in the town and declared on the rabbi’s orders that if Hanoch did not return before the eve of the New Moon the entire congregation must fast on that day from morning to evening, and anyone who could not fast should redeem himself with money. This, too, the beadle announced: that all the congregation should assemble that day in the Great Synagogue an hour before the Afternoon Service, when the rabbi would preach to them.
The town scoffed, saying, “What news is this fellow telling us? Do we eat and drink on other days? And what will the youth club do? Will they arrange a special feast as on the Day of Atonement, or just because this fast is not prescribed in the Torah will they fast too?”
When the eve of the New Moon came, the jesting ceased, and the people refrained from eating and drinking. Even visitors who happened to be in the town did not touch a mouthful.
After midday half the town assembled in the Great Synagogue. I heard that since the beginning of the war the walls of the synagogue had not seen such a large congregation; even people who do not come on the Day of Atonement came. The rabbi mounted the steps that led to the Ark, wrapped himself in his prayer shawl, and preached in trenchant terms to arouse the people and subdue their hearts to repentance, that they might be worthy to have the Almighty accept their prayers. And at the Afternoon Service the cantor took his place before the lectern and started with the prescribed prayer from Psalms and went through the entire service of the Minor Day of Atonement. Then they took out the Scroll and read from it the prescribed portion, and after the repetition by the cantor the rabbi ordered them to say “Our Father, our King” verse by verse.
Among the congregation I found a number of people I had not seen since the day I arrived in Szibucz. Those who were close to me asked how I was, and those who stood far off nodded their heads. And you need not be surprised at this, for all those who are bitter of heart have left the town. I do not know where that man is who spoke to me with such insolence and effrontery on the Day of Atonement in the old Beit Midrash, and said that I was like one of those who would like every day to be the Day of Atonement. According to the letters his mother showed me, he has strayed to places where every day is a day of fasting and mourning, and even there they do not let him stay.
As soon as I entered the synagogue, Zechariah Rosen came up to me and began talking to me without resentment. In the course of his talk he told me how the earlier generations used to behave in every trouble and tribulation, and what psalm they used to recite. In the case of schiiler gelauf they would say such-and-such psalms, and in other troubles they would say such-and-such psalms. There were some troubles that he had heard about from his parents, who had heard from their parents, who had heard from their parents who had lived at the time of those troubles, and there were troubles he had heard about from old men who had read of them in the old register our town used to have. That register had been burned, unfortunately — though not, as many believed, by a certain elder because he found things in it derogatory to his family; it was his son, a scholar and a distracted man, who had burned it, not on purpose but by mistake. It happened once on the eve of Passover that while clearing away the leaven he cleared away, too, all the tattered papers that had no more worth or interest, and by mistake he burned the old register together with them. It is a pity about that old register which had been burned, for it chronicled events of three hundred years and more, but you cannot condemn the inadvertent as you would the willful transgressor.
And now that Zechariah Rosen’s memory had been stimulated by bygone days, he did not stop until he had told me a number of things that happened in our town. For instance, at first our old Beit Midrash was at the top of the hill and its entrance faced the bathhouse, and the tailors’ synagogue was down below in the courtyard of the Great Synagogue. The less serious among our young men used to watch the women going to the baths and be led into bad thoughts; so the elders of those days had exchanged the position of the two.
And Zechariah Rosen also told me, “I am surprised that it has not occurred to you to ask why you find a tailors’ synagogue and not one of cobblers or of other trades. The reason is that once the Polish authorities oppressed the Jews; so the Jews proclaimed a ban among themselves: that no Jewish craftsman should do any work for the Poles until they had mended their ways — at that time the Poles had no craftsmen of their own. The tailors violated the ban, and the Jews refused to pray together with the transgressors, so the tailors had to make houses of prayer for themselves.” And Zechariah Rosen also told me, “If you come to my house I will tell you some things worth hearing. As for Rav Hai, let me tell you that you and all your colleagues were not perfectly correct; I have piles and piles of proofs that I am a descendant of Rav Hai.”