In the great multilingual city, hundreds of languages and dozens of nations and races grind each other to dust, fertilizing the frozen French soil with a new, fecund manure. Poured into the solution of the city, the Polish and Russian Jews, with their particular talent for non-assimilation, always float to the surface, like a uniform oil slick.
In Paris, the masses seethe, governments rise and fall, events collide and vault over one another in a breakneck race. Here we find silence, shiny black asphalt, shimmering like Berdychev mud, a yeshiva and a shul, a Friday-to-Friday week, and on every Friday dwarf trees are set on tables by the windows, blossoming with the orange flames of candles.
Here they have their own events. Hershel the baker is to welcome his son from America in a red automobile, but it can’t wriggle through the tight crack of Rue Prévost. A new party of Jews turns up from Iaşi, fleeing a pogrom. The daughter of Mendel the junk dealer runs off to the city with a black jazz musician from the Rivoli Street Café and returns to her father a month later, giving birth to a child, a little black boy. Utterly humiliated before the neighbors, old Mendel hangs himself in his entrance hall. In the narrow, husked alleyways a thick and gelatinous air descends, becomes motionless and transparent, and in the evening the shadows of lanterns swing somnolently like gigantic algae.
Rabbi Eliezer ben Zvi has two eyes set close together, and these eyes are always trained upward. Passionless, tiny, identical, they are turned toward the heavens, in which they seem to see things only they can perceive. When an organ is unused, the organ disappears. Rabbi Eliezer ben Zvi sees many things invisible to human eyes, but he does not see the simple things; he has only one side – the one turned toward heaven. And the one turned toward Earth is not there at all.
For many years, for as long as the residents of Hôtel de Ville can recall, Rabbi Eliezer ben Zvi has been a permanent resident of the house by the synagogue, never leaving it. There is a direct passage from his home to the shul, and Rabbi Eliezer ben Zvi doesn’t need to go out into the street to recite maariv,the evening prayers. The street does not know Rabbi Eliezer. The only ones who see him are those who come to him for advice, which means all of Hôtel de Ville knows him, because who wouldn’t go to Rabbi Eliezer ben Zvi, to a man wiser than all the wonder rabbis, to whom even merchants from the far shore of Paris drive to settle disputes.
Rabbi Eliezer ben Zvi has never seen Paris. He came here fifty years ago from his small town and at once took up residence in the house by the synagogue. And his wisdom in solving complicated quarrels could not be praised enough by the Parisian merchants.
Rabbi Eliezer ben Zvi has his own old shammes, the only one who could speak of the holy life of the rabbi. But the shammes is reluctant to speak, and spends days and nights on end at the rabbi’s side. The shammes says the rabbi is very ill, and he won’t let anyone in unless he is first convinced that the matter is important and requires private consultation. One thing is for certain: those to whom Rabbi Eliezer gives his kerchief-wrapped ksyba, a handwritten benediction, though they may be afflicted with the deepest sorrows, return home carefree and happy as a lark. Thus the rabbi’s door seldom stops swinging, and the old shammes’s tattered velvet wallet is never short of money when he goes out shopping on Fridays.
Rabbi Eliezer ben Zvi has two tiny eyes planted close together, both on the side that looks toward heaven. Once in private, the shammes told old Hershel that the rabbi often speaks with God. God and the rabbi tell each other tales for hours at a time. And the Jews know: the rabbi can speak with the Lord whenever he pleases. It’s as though he has a hotline. Ordinary Jews can try calling God their whole lives and never get through, so many people want to talk to Him at the same time. Sometimes a Jew manages to contact Him once in his life, for just a brief moment, and then he has to make his request very quickly before someone else cuts in.
You might say that Rabbi Eliezer has a private line at his disposal, and he can speak with God at any time of day, without being worried that someone will interrupt him. Rabbi Eliezer knows that the Lord doesn’t like to be bothered when He’s busy, just like any Jew, and he knows by now at what times of day he can speak with Him most freely. For this reason the Lord has a soft spot for Rebbe Eliezer, and He hasn’t yet had cause to refuse him anything.
And so passed many, many years. How many? Even the old shammes lost count.
By that year Rabbi Eliezer ben Zvi was already feeling quite weak. He often spoke of death with the shammes, and received people only in very exceptional cases.
One evening the shammes returned from the city later than usual, almost delaying the rabbi’s dinner. The shammes was quite terrified. There was word in the city of a terrible disease haunting Paris. The children of Levi the tailor had gone to a dance on the French holiday – as the young will do – and had died in terrible agonies a few hours after their return. That same night the wife of Symche the shoemaker also died in fits, as did three other Jewish women. Twelve Jews dead since morning. A great lament filled the town. The shammes, who recalled the cholera epidemic in Zhmerynka, recognized all the symptoms, though the papers were calling the new plague something different. The Jews were extremely alarmed and gathered to seek the rabbi’s counsel.
Rabbi Eliezer ben Zvi listened to the shammes’s report in silence, clearly disquieted by what he had heard, judging by the fact that he did not even finish his dinner. Scrubbing his hands, he asked for his tallith and went down to the synagogue.
The synagogue was already filled with sobs and laments. Another thirty Jews had died over the course of the evening. Names were passed from lips to lips.
Rabbi Eliezer, bent over his pulpit, prayed long and hard. When he closed the sefer and turned toward the faithful, his face was mild and luminous. He ordered a wedding to be held at the cemetery the following day, as was the custom in times of plague. A young bride and groom were sought on the spot. Shiya the mercer and Sender the hatter agreed to provide the young couple.
The wedding took place the following day at Bagneux Cemetery in the presence of Jews from all over Hôtel de Ville. After the wedding, the young couple was taken home.
The young woman died with plague symptoms that very night. The shammes, to whom the terrified Jews came running with the news, was too frightened to tell the rabbi for a long time. Finally, fearing the rabbi would find out in shul, he confided what had happened with the greatest trepidation. Rabbi Eliezer said nothing, but his face, which was the color of his milk-white beard, grew even paler, and the shammes perceived that this bad omen had made a deep impression upon him.
The lament in the synagogue rang even louder than the day before. Another sixty Jews had died during the day, including all those who had washed the previous day’s corpses. Moreover, twelve Jews had died from performing the burial rituals, going to visit the families sitting in mourning. Word had it that Parisians were falling in the street by the thousands.
Prayer services in the synagogue lasted all night, only interrupted by reports on the spread of the pestilence. Every other moment someone in prayer would hear of the plague in their own home and run out of the synagogue wailing.
Rabbi Eliezer prayed fervently till morning, hunched over his prayer book. By morning he was struggling to keep on his feet, and the gabbai and the shammes had to carry him upstairs by the arms.