A Book that Was Lost

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During the last decade of his life, Agnon was busy compiling a volume of stories about his hometown Buczacz which was published after his death under the title The City and the Fullness Thereof (Ir Umeloah). Agnon combined stories of various genres that he had published previously with new stories written for the volume. He then took these heterogeneous narratives and arranged them like brilliant pieces of mosaic tiles to create a whole that was greater than its parts: nothing less than an epic portrait of one Jewish town in eastern Europe.

The creation of this volume tells us something very important about Agnon’s relationship to modern Jewish history. Because Agnon is the great Hebrew writer of European Jewry, one is surprised by how little his work directly engages the destruction of European Jewry in the Holocaust. To be sure, there are a limited number of stories that deal with the Holocaust (three are included in this collection: “The Lady and the Peddler,” “The Sign,” and “At the Outset of the Day”). Agnon’s great novel A Guest for the Night, which anatomizes the devastating effects of World War i on Galician Jewry, and was published on the eve of World War ii, might be thought of as the writer’s statement on the destruction of Jewish life. Yet his reticence on the Holocaust itself remains perplexing.

Buczacz: The Epic Life of One Town

The fashioning of The City and the Fullness Thereof provides something of an answer. Instead of undertaking to represent the atrocity of the Holocaust, with all the ethical and aesthetic dangers inherent in the depiction of evil, Agnon chose another path. He spent the last years of his life mounting a coherent imaginative evocation of the lost world of East European Jewry as represented by Buczacz. He chose, in a sense, the representation of life over death. He reasoned, one supposes, that it was a greater calling — and perhaps a better use of his own gifts as a writer — to summon up the fullness of the culture that was lost than to document the throes of its heartbreaking annihilation.

Despite their memorializing function, the stories in this volume are not fixed in a uniform gloss of nostalgia. They are as various in style and technique as the whole range of Agnon’s work, and, despite Agnon’s evident love for his hometown, the literary simulacrum of Buczacz is not spared. The three stories in this section represent this diversity.

The story “Buczacz,” which opens the collection, plays a special role in laying down the foundational myth of the town. Stories recounting the origins of great cities are no less common in Jewish literature than they are in world culture. Just as the wandering Aeneas founded Rome after the Trojan War, so too, according to legend, the great Diaspora of Spanish Jewry was begun by four shipwrecked talmudic sages from Babylonia. In the case of Galician communities such as Buczacz, the facts behind the myth are these: in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, Jews who had long lived in the Rhine Valley began to move east and south into Poland and the Ukraine in search of better living conditions and at the invitation of Polish landowners who valued their commercial and managerial acumen.

In the mythic mode in which “Buczacz” is told, this narrative of immigration is given a different emphasis. The motives of the Jews’ journey eastward are ennobled and presented as an expression of the millennial longing for the Land of Israel. Because this longing is unsupported by any practical preparation for the trip, the party of Jews becomes stranded in the deep snows and virgin woods of distant lands. Salvation, it turns out, comes not from above but from the protection extended by Polish landowners, who delight in the Jews’ success in developing the lands that they are colonizing. For many practical reasons, the journey to the Land of Israel is abandoned, and, with the approval of the gentile gentry, the Jews set about establishing the institutions of a permanent community, which in time becomes the center of piety and learning called Buczacz.

Harmony between the Jews of Buczacz and their rulers is the starting point of the second story, “The Tale of the Menorah.” The Chmielnicki massacres in the seventeenth century nearly destroyed the town; Buczacz was gradually rebuilt under the rule of the kingdom of Poland until Poland was partitioned at the end of the eighteenth century. The new rulers were the Austro-Hungarians, who held sway until World War i. The changing relations between the Jewish community of Buczacz and its temporal rulers are traced in this story through the fortunes of a candelabrum, a menorah, given to the community as a token of gratitude by an early monarch.

The menorah is altered, lost, found, smashed, rebuilt, and lost and found again in a way that mirrors the vicissitudes of the Jewish-gentile political connection. The intertwined nature of this relationship is represented by the changes the Jews of Buczacz make in the menorah, which stands in the synagogue recalling the Jerusalem Temple of antiquity. When the town is ruled by Poland, the national insignia, a white eagle, is patriotically placed in the center of the menorah. When Austria takes over, the Polish eagle is publicly smashed and the two-headed Austrian eagle ceremoniously established in its stead.

The story concludes with the pious observation: “One kingdom comes and another kingdom passes away. But Israel remains forever.” The people Israel, like the menorah, endures, however battered and decimated. Yet, the story implies through its believing chronicler, the source of this endurance is not the politics of accommodation but trust in God, “whom alone we desired.”

“Pisces” illuminates a different aspect of the Buczacz myth. Written late in Agnon’s life (1956), “Pisces” is ambitious both in its proportions — somewhere between a short story and a novella — and in its thematic horizon. It is less an account of Buczacz than a statement about the human enterprise as a whole. The story is also a wonderful repository of many of the features that make Agnon’s writing distinctive: the stance of the detached storyteller-chronicler, the serious playfulness with learned sources, the frequent digressions, and the antic intermixing of the sacred and the profane.

Buczacz: The Epic Life of One Town

The grotesque quality of the story, as analyzed in illuminating studies by Gershon Shaked, results from the mixed feelings of amusement and anxiety that are aroused when the distinctions between animals and human beings are blurred. “Pisces” narrates the parallel lives of Fishl Karp, a famous Buczacz glutton, and an enormous fish, which Fishl buys from a gentile fisherman and proposes to make into a feast. The two occupy positions of dominance in their respective domains. Fishl is a coarse moneylender of enormous appetites who flouts communal edicts (the Jews are boycotting fish to combat price gouging) and who uses Jewish law to justify his gluttony. For its part, the fish is a lordly denizen of the oceans whose hubris leads it to explore the lesser rivers, including Buczacz’s modest Strypa, where it is snared. The nobility of the fish’s mien and the vast freedom of its movements contrast sharply with Fishl’s venality and his self-satisfied rationalizations. Yet because of the supposed superiority of man over beast, it is the netted fish, quivering in its death throes, that is taken possession of by the hungry Fishl.

The desired repast never takes place. Fishl is separated from the object of his desire and, like the fish, soon ends up in the grave. The story wastes no opportunity to underscore the fishlike qualities of human beings and the human qualities of the fish. The latter are evident in the very personification of the fish and the pathos of its ordeal. The former are evident in the fish-derived names of the characters and the vast number of intertextual references to fish taken from the Bible and the Talmud. The most grotesque linkage concerns Fishl’s tefillin. Tefillin (singular: tefillah) are small black boxes containing scriptural passages held in place on the forearm and head by leather straps which are worn by adult males in prayer. In his haste to despatch both his morning prayers and the fish, the head tefillah becomes separated from the arm tefillah; one ends up on Fishl’s arm and the other, in an act of hilarious sacrilege, on the head of the fish. Thus man’s capacity for spiritual consciousness, which marks him off from the animals and which is ritually symbolized by the tefillin, is decisively effaced.

The message of “Pisces” is inescapably pessimistic. Literally, with every pun intended, big fish eat little fish, and man’s sensual appetites do not exempt him from this grim journey toward death. There is one exception in the story, however; this is the figure of the poor orphan Bezalel Moshe, whom Fishl orders to carry the fish home to his wife to be prepared for cooking. Bezalel Moshe, whose name recalls the master biblical craftsman of the desert tabernacle in Exodus, is a true hunger artist who subsists by drawing plaques (mizrahim) for the eastern wall of the synagogue and other small jobs of folk illustration. His stock-in-trade includes the astrological signs for the months, including the wreathed fishes of Pisces, the sign for the carnival month of Adar. His figures, however, are stylized and unconvincing because he has only had faded old books to copy from. Contemplating the glorious specimen Fishl has put in his hands, Bezalel Moshe is transformed as he experiences the vital original that stands behind the pallid model. Long after Fishl and the fish have passed from this world, the vitality of Bezalel Moshe’s experience continues to energize and enrich his art.

Buczacz

When was our city founded, and who was its founder? Long have all the chroniclers labored to find this out in vain. But some few facts have been revealed to us, and I am herewith setting down a faithful record of all I know.

There once was a band of Jews who were moved by their own pure hearts to go up to the Land of Israel, together with their wives and their sons and their daughters. They sold their fields, their vineyards, their male and female servants, their houses, and all of their movable chattels that could not be transported. They obtained the governor’s permission to leave their city. They purchased provisions and set forth on the road.

They did not know the road to the Land of Israel, nor did anyone they met along the way know where the Land of Israel was. They only knew that it was in the east; so they turned their faces eastward, and that was the way they went. Whoever had a mount to ride rode his mount; whoever had no mount went by foot, leaning on his staff.

They passed by many towns and villages and castles and Jewish settlements and long stretches of forest and places inhabited by packs of wild animals and bandits. But since the Lord loves to see His children in His home, He made the Gentiles look upon them favorably, so that they let them pass unharmed. Even the brigands who lie in wait for wayfarers and ambush passersby and seize their lives and goods did them no harm; they were content with tribute in the form of money or a silver goblet or a ring or such jewelry as the pilgrims gave them.

They set out toward the end of April, when the highways are merry and the fields and vineyards full of people, but as they proceeded, people became scarce, vineyards and fields vanished, and all the roads led through forests that never seemed to end, with birds and beasts and kine. If they came upon a person, he would not know their language or they his. Even had they had understood his tongue, the Gentiles in those lands could not show them the way, for they were ignorant; they had no idea of any town or province other than their birthplace, certainly not of the Land of Israel. If anybody there had heard of it, he thought it must be in the skies.

In this way they passed the summer and reached the end of August. They made a halt and set up camp for the month of holidays: New Year, Atonement, and Sukkot.

They made their camp in a place of forests and rivers, with no sign of habitation for several days’ march in any direction, and they fashioned booths from the forest’s trees. They celebrated the Days of Awe in prayer and supplication, and the Days of Joy in feasting and delight, trusting in the faithful mercy of God that in the year to come they would observe these days before Him in the holy city of Jerusalem. For the rites of Sukkot, they used the old palm branches, citrons, and myrtles that they had brought with them upon setting out; the fourth species, willows, they gathered new each day of the festival. These willows were the best that they had ever seen, for the place where they had made their camp was thoroughly damp, with many rivers, ponds, and streams.

In those regions, as in most of the lands of the Slavs, winter comes on early. They were already suffering from the cold when they arrived, but particularly so during Sukkot, when they could hardly observe the ritual of dwelling in booths. At the holiday’s end, when they ought to have set forth, the snow began to fall, fitfully at first, and then nonstop, until the roads were blotted out and they could not distinguish land from water or tell where it was solid and where it was river or pond. Like it or not, the pilgrims had to linger in their camp.

They brought wood from the forest and fixed up their booths into something more like cabins, and in them they set up various kinds of ovens for cooking their meals and for keeping themselves warm during the cold season. Out of the bark of trees they made themselves shoes, for their leather shoes were all tattered from their march. They also made new staves and waited for the time when the Lord would restore the sun’s strength and the roads would be clear of snow and they could set forth again. Huddled they sat in their booths in the snow, snug and secure from storm winds and bears and other wild beasts that would come alone or in packs right up to their doors and let out their awesome roar.

One day, when they were sitting as usual in their booths, some reading the Psalms, others doing their work, one of them cocked his head, perked up his ears, and said, “I think I hear a trumpet’s call.” Another said, “No, it is the sound of horses.” A third said, “No, it is the sound of people.”

So they sat arguing about the sounds so suddenly heard in the forest. At length they all yielded: the one who had called it the sound of a trumpet agreed that it was the sound of a dog, and the one who had called it the sound of a dog agreed that it was the sound of people. At last they realized that there were actually three different sounds: the sound of a trumpet, the sound of a dog, and the sound of people. Then they found themselves surrounded by strange people who seemed to them like animals, with huge and fearsome dogs at their heels and great trumpets at their lips. But these people had not come to them with evil intent but only to hunt animals. They were great and distinguished noblemen, and it is the way of noblemen to go to the forests to hunt game.

One of the noblemen asked them in Latin, “Who are you and what are you doing here?” They told him their whole story, how they had purposed to go up to the Holy Land and had been overtaken by winter and had made camp there until the winter should be over and the cold should pass. The noblemen began to ask them what they had seen along the way and what was the news of the day and who were the rulers that governed those lands, and the pilgrims answered all their questions in such detail that the noblemen were struck by their cleverness and eloquence. So enchanted were they that they forgot the game and gave up the hunt and began to urge them to come with them and to live with them, arguing that winter is very hard in that land, that many people fall sick from the great cold, that not everyone is built to bear it, and that these Rhinelanders would certainly never survive a winter in the forest. The pilgrims saw that the noblemen’s counsel was right. They agreed to go and live with them until the end of the winter season; then, with winter gone and the snow cleared, they would reassemble and set out on the road again. Each nobleman took with him an individual or a family and brought them home, treating them with every courtesy. The pilgrims stayed with the noblemen throughout the winter.

The noblemen who had taken the Jews into their homes enjoyed prosperity in whatever they did. They realized that their success was due to the Jews. Each one began to worry and fret: “What shall I do when the Jews leave us? They will certainly take their blessing with them, or the blessing will go away of its own accord.” They began to urge them to stay, saying, “The whole land is yours; make your home wherever you like. If you want to engage in commerce in the land, better yet, for no one here knows anything about commerce.” Some of the pilgrims paid no attention to them and wanted to be on their way; but others let themselves be won over by the noblemen, for they were weary, and many were sick and fearful of the rigors of the road. And because they were not of one mind, even those who wanted to go did not, for they were but few, and the roads were presumed too dangerous to be traversed by any but a large band.

In the meanwhile, the Days of Awe returned. The entire band gathered in a certain place for communal prayer, and there they remained until after Sukkot. They did the same the following year and for several years thereafter: throughout the year each one would live in his own place by his nobleman, and on the Days of Awe and the three festivals they would assemble to observe the holidays by holding prayers, reading Scripture, and performing all the other statutory observances.

One year, at Simhat Torah, when they were all in good spirits because of the joy of the Torah and the great feast that they had made to celebrate its completion, one of them said with a sigh: “Now we are content, for we are together, worshiping as a community and reading the Torah; but what about tomorrow and the next day and the next? Winter is here, and again we shall go without the reading of the Torah and without communal prayer.” They thought about it and began to discuss what to do. To leave where they were and go to the Land of Israel was out of the question; for by now they had acquired property in the land and built houses and were in favor with the nobility. As for the women, some were pregnant, some were nursing, some were worn out and weak. And the elders were even older than before, so that traveling would have been hard on them. But to stay where they were, without Torah or communal prayer, was certainly not acceptable as a permanent arrangement. It would have been better if they had not given in to the noblemen and had gone their way right after the snow had cleared and were now settled before the Lord in Jerusalem; but having yielded and not made the pilgrimage, they now had to take active steps to enable themselves to perform all the rites of God that we are commanded to perform. After much discussion, they agreed unanimously to establish a permanent house of prayer and to hold services on every weekday when the Torah is read, and of course on the Sabbath and New Moon and Hanukkah and Purim. Whoever was able to attend the services would attend, and whoever was not able on account of illness or some other impediment would try to have someone attend in his stead. The building in which they had been holding services on the festivals they designated as the synagogue.

When word reached the local nobleman, it so pleased him that he gave them the building and everything in it as an outright and perpetual gift. Before he died, he ordered his sons to treat the Jews with benevolence, for God had granted him prosperity on account of the Jews, and from the Jews had come whatever he was leaving them.

They turned the building into a synagogue, and there they would come to pray on all the days when the Torah is read, including especially the Sabbaths and festivals and other days of distinction. Occasionally they would hold communal prayer even on days when the Torah is not read; for if someone happened to be in the vicinity, he would say, “I think I’ll go and see if enough Jews happen to be there to hold services, so that I can hear Barekhu and Kedushah. Thus, with one coming from one way and one coming from another, they would come together and hold a service. The place came to be a favorite, for whoever was hungry for the word of the Lord or whoever yearned to see his fellow Jews would turn to it. And whoever could afford to do so built himself a house nearby, so that, living near the place of prayer, he would be able to participate in communal prayer.

Little by little the entire place came to be settled by Jews. They built themselves a ritual bath and whatever else a community needs. Whenever they needed a rabbi to answer a ritual question, or a teacher for their children, or tsitsit, or to have their tefillin examined, they would turn to that place. Even the noblemen and their retainers would come there for advice or business, knowing that they would find Jews there. The place acquired a reputation; people began to come from far and wide on the days of their festivals, both to see and to be seen. Noblemen and noblewomen came, too, riding on their horses. Then the local nobleman built himself a stone house; eventually he built a castle up on the mountain facing the Strypa, a great castle befitting one of the great princes of the land. This castle was for many years the defense and refuge of the lord of the town and his retainers, until the Tartars attacked it, and, on defeating him, compelled him to destroy it. The ruins are there to this day.

That is how Buczacz began. Formerly it was not called Buczacz but Biczacz, and at the very first it was called something very like.

As to the name and its meaning, there are many opinions and conjectures, some of which, though plausible, remain conjectures nonetheless. I am setting aside the ifs and maybes and writing only the truth as it actually is.

Eventually the holy community of Buczacz was joined by a number of Jews from other places, especially from Germany. Disaster had overtaken the people of God, the holy community of Worms, Mayence, Speyer, and other distinguished communities in Germany, because of the filthy infidels whose arrogance moved them to go up to the Holy Land to fight the king of Ishmael and to conquer the land. Wherever they encountered Jews along the way they murdered them, killing them in cruel and unusual ways. Many of the people of God valiantly sanctified His Name; they were killed and slaughtered as martyrs to the unity of God’s terrible, unique Name. Most of the communities in the land of Germany were destroyed; the few survivors wandered from one nation to another until they reached the lands of the Slavs, and of them, some reached our town. In our town they dwelt in safety and in peace. On minor ritual matters they consulted their own sages, and on major ritual matters they consulted our sages in Germany until from among the townspeople emerged some great and authoritative masters of the Torah who illuminated the world with their learning. Now they were completely supplied with religious wisdom and knowledge of God. They were secure in their wealth and dignity, their piety and righteousness, until, struck by divine justice, they nearly all perished in God’s rage through the persecution of Chmielnicki’s thugs.

When some quiet was restored after the riots and rebellions and killing and breakdown, some of those who survived the sword returned to their towns and their settlements. So did those who had been dispersed from Biczacz. They built themselves houses and shops, but first they built houses for study and prayer. There they dwelt for many generations in security and tranquility, except in years of war and revolution. Their first protector was the kingdom of Poland, later Austria; then Poland reestablished its kingdom and engaged in conquest and destruction, until the Enemy came and eradicated them all.

May God return the remnants of His people from wherever they are; may He assemble our Diaspora from among the nations; may He bring them to Zion, His city, in song, and to Jerusalem, His temple, in lasting joy; may no enemy or foe enter the gates of Jerusalem from this day forth. Amen. Selah.

The Tale of the Menorah

1

Rabbi Nahman, the keeper of the royal seal, was a man of great importance in the eyes of the king. Whenever he came to the royal court, the palace attendants gave him an audience with the king, for they knew how beloved Nahman the Jew was to the king.

It happened one day that Rabbi Nahman came to the royal court, for he had a matter about which he had to speak to the king. The king, too, had a certain matter that he had concealed from his closest counselors, his company of advisors. The moment he saw Rabbi Nahman, the king said, “This is the man I shall consult.” So the king related to Rabbi Nahman the matter that he had not wished to tell a single one of his counselors. But he did tell it to Rabbi Nahman, the keeper of the royal seal.

The Almighty bestowed wisdom upon Rabbi Nahman, and he responded with intelligent advice. The king listened and did as Rabbi Nahman had advised. And it turned out to be a blessing for the king. Then he knew how excellent was the advice Nahman had given him.

After this Rabbi Nahman was summoned to the palace court. When the king heard that Nahman was in the royal courtyard, he commanded, “Bring him to me.”

Rabbi Nahman entered the king’s chamber. The king said to him, “The advice you gave me was excellent. Ask of me now whatever you desire, and I will grant it to you.”

Rabbi Nahman replied, “Blessed be the Lord who has shared His wonderful counsel with the king.” But for himself Rabbi Nahman did not ask for a single thing. He said to the king, “I am unworthy of the least of all your kindnesses.” These were the very words that Jacob our forefather spoke to Esau, and Rabbi Nahman said them to the king.

The king replied, “Because you have not asked for a single thing for yourself, I will make a holy donation to your God.” Rabbi Nahman did not ask the king what it was he promised to give. And the king did not tell him.

2

It came to pass in those days that Buczacz built itself a Great Synagogue. Its community of Jews had grown to nearly two hundred and fifty householders, in addition to the women and the children and all the servants of the wealthy who had come from other towns and now lived in the city. So the people of Buczacz built themselves a large synagogue in which to worship. That is the same building that the Gentiles living in the city made into a church for their gods after the city fell into the hands of Chmielnicki and he had slain every Jew who had not fled in haste from the sword of his wrath.

The king commanded his metalworkers to make him a great brass menorah to place in the synagogue in Buczacz in honor of Nahman, the keeper of the royal seal and the leader of the community of Israel in Buczacz.

The king’s metalworkers made a great menorah out of brass. There were seven branches in the candelabrum, the same number of branches that we had in ancient days in the holy candelabrum in the Temple, the house of our glory. The artisans did not know that it is forbidden to make a vessel identical to one that had been in the Temple.

When they brought the menorah, which was a gift from the king, to the synagogue, the Jews saw it and they beheld its seven branches. They said, “We cannot place this menorah in the synagogue.” If we do, they said to themselves, we will sin against God; on the other hand, if we do not set it in the synagogue, we will insult the king and his gift.” They did not know what counsel to take for themselves. Even Nahman, the counselor to the king, had no solution. He said, “This has all befallen us because I frequented the court of the king.”

But God saw their distress, and He set the idea in their heads to remove one branch from the menorah and thus make it into an ordinary candelabrum. Then, if they placed the menorah in the synagogue, there would be no sin for them in doing so. And if someone mentioned it to the king, they could say, “From the day that our Temple was destroyed, we make nothing without marking upon it a sign in remembrance of the destruction.”

So they removed the middle branch. Then they brought the menorah into the house of God and placed it on the ark and lit its candles.

The menorah stood in the synagogue. The six candles in the six branches of the menorah lit up the building on the eve of every Sabbath and holiday. And on Yom Kippur and on those holidays when the memorial prayer for the departed is recited in synagogue to remember the souls of the departed, they shone during the day as well. A Gentile watched the candles lest one fall out.

So the menorah stood there, and so it shone for the entire time this house of God was indeed a house for God, until the day Israel was driven out by Chmielnicki and the town’s Gentiles made the house of God into a church for their gods. Then the Gentile who watched the candles, who was a millworker, took the menorah and hid it in the River Strypa, which was near the mill. The menorah lay at the bottom of the Strypa’s waters, and no one knew where it was. As for the millworker, he died after his body got caught in the millstone’s wheel; he was ground up and cast away, and his flesh became food for the fish in the River Strypa.

3

After some years, those who had survived Chmielnicki’s sword returned to their homeland and towns. The few survivors from Buczacz also returned to the town, and there they built themselves a small sanctuary in place of the Great Synagogue, which the Gentiles had plundered and made into a house for their gods.

That year, on a Saturday night at the close of the Sabbath, on the night that was also the first night for reciting the Selihot, the penitential hymns, the young children were shining candles over the surface of the Strypa. They were doing this in order to make light for the slain martyrs who had drowned in rivers, streams, and lakes. On the first night of Selihot all the dead whom our enemies have drowned come to pray to the eternal God in the same synagogue in which they prayed during their lifetimes. The other nights of Selihot are dedicated respectively to those martyrs who died by fire, to those who were stabbed to death, to the ones who were strangled, and to those who were murdered. For on account of their numbers, the building could not contain all the slain at once. As a result, they divided up the nights between them, one congregation of martyrs for each night of prayer.

Now while the children were on the banks of the Strypa shining their candles, a great menorah such as they had never seen before suddenly shone forth from beneath the water. They said, “That must be the menorah of the dead; for the dead bring with them their own menorot when they come to pray.” Their hearts quaked in fear, and the children fled.

Some grownups heard the story about the menorah that the children had told, and they said, “Let’s go and see for ourselves!” They went and came to the Strypa. And indeed, there was a menorah in the Strypa. “The story is true,” they said. “It is a menorah.” But not a person knew that it was the menorah that the king of Poland had given to the old Great Synagogue before the Gentiles of the city took it over and made it into a church for their gods.

The Jews retrieved the menorah from the waters of the Strypa and brought it to the synagogue. There they placed it upon the reading table, for another menorah already stood on the stand before the ark, and they had promised the donor of that menorah that no one would ever replace it. Besides, the stand before the ark was too small to hold the large menorah. And so they placed the menorah they had drawn from the waters on the reading table.

The menorah illuminated the house of God with the six candles that stood in its six branches. And for a long time the menorah lit up the house of God on the evenings of the Sabbath and the holidays. The candles of the menorah shone on the holidays during the daytime as well, and on the Twentieth of Sivan when the souls of the departed are remembered in the service. And when the sun came out in all its strength and reached into the house of God, then the menorah shone with the luster of burnished brass in sunlight.

4

Many days later, after that entire generation had died, a new generation arose that did not know all that had happened to their forefathers. After looking at the menorah day after day, one of them said, “We should repair the menorah; it shouldn’t look like a vessel that is missing something.” And they did not realize that their forefathers had already repaired the menorah when they cut off one of its branches to avoid sinning against either God or the king.

They made an eagle of glittering brass, and they placed a large amount of lead in the brass so that it would appear to be a white eagle. For a white eagle is the national insignia of Poland. They placed the eagle beneath the spot where their forefathers had removed the branch. Originally, it had been a menorah with seven branches, but our forefathers had repaired the menorah when they removed one of its branches. But the members of the next generation, those who brought the national insignia of Poland into our synagogue, said to each other, “Now we will let Poland know how truly attached we are to our country and homeland, the land of Poland. Out of our love for the homeland, we have even placed the national insignia of Poland in our house of worship!”

So the menorah stood on the holy reading table on which they used to read from the Torah of God. And the eagle — the Polish eagle — lay between the branches of the menorah. So stood the menorah: three branches on one side, three branches on the other, with the candles in the menorah shining on one side toward the reader’s stand and on the other side toward the holy Torah ark. And in the center, the white eagle, the national insignia of the Polish kingdom, stood between the candles. So stood the eagle in the menorah in the synagogue for all the time Poland was a sovereign state ruling over the entire land of Poland.

5

Sometime later, Poland was conquered. The country was divided up among its neighbors, each neighbor taking for itself all that it could, and Buczacz fell to the lot of Austria. The Austrian forces camped across the city — the soldiers, their officers, the entire army that had conquered the territory of Buczacz.

After summoning the town’s rulers, the army generals ordered them to make a holiday now that the city had come under the rule of the Austrian emperor. They commanded the Jews to gather in their Great Synagogue to praise and glorify their Lord, the God of Israel, who had bestowed upon them the emperor of Austria to be their ruler. The heads of the city and of the Jewish community listened and did just as the generals said. For no one disobeys the orders of an army general; whoever does, disobeys at the risk of his life.

And so everyone in the city came to make a holiday that God had given them the Austrian emperor to protect them beneath the wings of his kindness. Many of the Jews offered their gratitude innocently and sincerely, for God had indeed liberated them from the oppressiveness of Poland and from the priests who handed Israel over to despoilment through the libels and plots they had devised against them, so as to persecute the Jews and take their money and lead them astray from God’s statutes. Not a year had passed that righteous and innocent men were not murdered because of blood libels and every other type of false accusation.

And so all the Jews of Buczacz came and filled the synagogue, even its women’s section. Many of the city’s leaders who were not Jews also attended, and at their head came the generals of the Austrian army.

The synagogue’s cantor and his choir chanted from the psalms of David, from those psalms that David, king of Israel, had sung to the God of Israel when the people of Israel lived in their land and when David, our king, reigned in the city of God, in Israel’s holy Zion. The generals and the city’s rulers sat there and gazed at the synagogue building and its walls and the ceiling and the candelabra that hung from the ceiling. All of them were of burnished brass, the handiwork of artisans. They gazed at the holy curtain covering the holy ark of the Torah, and at the covering over the holy curtain, and at the lectern, and at the cantor and his choir standing in front of the lectern. They gazed at the raised platform made of hewn stone which stood at the center of the synagogue, and at the steps leading up to the platform, and at the table on the platform. Then they saw the great menorah that stood on the table with its branches and flower-shaped cups. And they saw how beautiful it was.

And as they were looking, the officers suddenly saw the Polish eagle on the menorah. They immediately became incensed at the Jews.

The synagogue president rushed off, grabbed the gavel that the synagogue’s sexton used to rouse the congregants for morning services, and smashed the white eagle with the gavel. He hit the eagle with the gavel and knocked it off the synagogue menorah. And thus he removed the national insignia of Poland from the house of worship. The officers said to him, “You acted well. If you hadn’t done this, we would have imprisoned you and the elders of the community, and we would have fined the Jewish community as punishment.” Then the army officers ordered that a two-headed eagle be set on the menorah in place of the eagle they had removed. For the two-headed eagle is the Austrian eagle.

They immediately sent for Yisrael the Metalworker, summoning him to come. This was the same Yisrael the Metalworker whose wife received seven copper pennies every Friday, so that she could buy herself sustenance for the Sabbath during the period that the Austrian emperor imprisoned her husband and she had literally nothing with which to celebrate the Sabbath, as I related in my tale “My Sabbath.”

Yisrael the Metalworker made a brass eagle with two heads, and they set that two-headed eagle on the menorah in place of the one-headed eagle. The young boys took the eagle that Yisrael the Metalworker had discarded, and they brought it to him to make dreidels for them to play with during Hanukkah. And those are the very same dreidels that our grandfathers told us about — the dreidels of burnished brass that Yisrael the Metalworker made for the children of Buczacz.

The menorah stood in the Great Synagogue for many days. With its six candles in its six branches the menorah lit up the synagogue. On Sabbath nights and the nights of the holidays, the menorah’s candles were lit, as they also were on the Austrian emperor’s birthday, which the country celebrated as a holiday, because he was a beneficent ruler. And so the two-headed eagle vanquished the menorah and its branches.

But the Polish people never reconciled themselves to the Austrian rulers who had stolen their land. They prepared war against them. They came out of every town and village to wage a war on behalf of their nation and homeland.

6

Buczacz, like the other towns and villages, supported the uprising. Many Jews were also among those fighting on behalf of Poland. They held a heavy hand over their own brethren; indeed, they were particularly hard upon all those who sought peace and quiet, and upon all who remained loyal to Austria.

Certain Jews passed through the land of Galicia to rouse up their brethren in every town and make them come to the rescue of Poland. They spoke of all the wonderful things Poland had done for the Jews, but they did not recall the wicked things. One of these men came to Buczacz. He was wearing a hammer on his belt just like those firemen wear when they go out to fight a fire. On the Sabbath morning he came to the Great Synagogue. The Jews there paid him much honor; they seated him next to the eastern wall of the synagogue and they called him up to the Torah.

And so it happened, as he was standing before the Torah, that the man saw the two-headed eagle. He began to scream: “This is an abomination! An abomination!” Then he grabbed the hammer from around his waist and struck at the two-headed eagle. He paid no attention to the other worshippers, not even when they pleaded with him to stop and not desecrate the Sabbath. He did not listen to them until he had broken the Austrian eagle from off the menorah and cast it to the ground.

The young boys took the eagle that had been removed from the menorah and brought it to one of the metalworkers to make into dreidels for Hanukkah, for they had heard that their forefathers had made dreidels for themselves from brass. But the metalworker did not make dreidels for them, because it is very difficult to make dreidels from brass. But he did make them dice, which children also play with on Hanukkah.

And all the days of the uprising, the menorah stood there with the eagle cut off.

7

Eventually the uprising was put down and Austria returned to ruling over the country. Now, though, its rulers cast a wary eye upon every matter, large and small, in enforcing the law of the land and its ordinances.

It was then that the synagogue treasurers hastened to make for themselves an eagle with two heads, which they set on the menorah in place of the eagle that had been cut off and discarded.

The eagle stood there between the six branches of the menorah, its one head turned to the three branches to the right, and its second head toward the three branches to the left. All the years until the Great War broke out, until Austria and Russia became enemies, the eagle stood there on the menorah, and the menorah stood on the holy reading table, the table on which the Torah was read.

8

As conditions in the war grew more difficult, it became harder for the soldiers to find weapons to shoot. So they took metal utensils, large and fine utensils, and they melted them down in order to make out of them weapons with which to destroy the country. These soldiers came as well to the Great Synagogue in Buczacz. They took the brass basin in which every man who entered the sanctuary washed his hands. They took the brass pitcher that the Levites used to pour water over the hands of the priests before they went up before the congregation on holidays to bless them with the priestly blessing. They took every utensil made of brass and lead. They took the charity box that was made of gold, the box in which people made secret contributions to charity. And the officers also fixed their eyes upon the great menorah. A certain metalworker was with them. For they had brought a metalworker in order to take the utensils from the synagogue and melt them down into weapons.

But just as they were about to seize the menorah, the sound of Russian tanks was heard. The Austrian forces immediately fled for their lives, and left behind all they had taken.

But the metalworker, the one who had come with the army officers when they came to take the brass utensils — he did not flee.

He took the menorah and hid it in a place that only he knew. No one else knew its place. And no one gave a thought to the menorah, for all anyone cared about was saving his own life from the Great War and from the heavy shellfire that fell continuously through the war until its conclusion.

Then the war ended, and the land of Poland that had been fought over came under Polish rule. And the town of Buczacz was also given over to Poland.

9

A number of the former inhabitants of Buczacz returned to the town. Many villagers from around Buczacz also settled in the town, for their houses had been stolen by their neighbors with whom they had fought on behalf of their homeland. They all came to worship in the Great Synagogue for, of all the prayer houses, the Great Synagogue alone survived the war.

And so it happened, when they could not find a single lamp to light up the house of worship at night, that they took some stones from the place, they bored holes in them, and then they set the stones on the lectern in order to place candles in them to make light for themselves when they stood in prayer before the Lord. Later, they made for themselves menorot out of tin and wood, because they were very poor. For they had been unable to recover anything of all they had owned. Whatever the war had spared the enemy had taken; and whatever the enemy had spared, the Poles took. So it was not within their means to make for themselves menorot from brass or from lead as they once had.

10

One man, who had been born in Buczacz, came home after being a captive in Russia. And it happened that, when he came to the Great Synagogue on Friday night and saw the menorot of tin and wood that were without any beauty, he remembered how he happened to be in the trenches with a metalworker, and how that metalworker had told him that, when the Russians advanced upon Buczacz, he had hidden the town’s great menorah to keep it from falling into the Russians’ hands. But before the metalworker was able to tell him where he had hidden the menorah, a cannon hit the trench and the two never saw each other again. And now, when the man saw the synagogue, he remembered the metalworker and the trench that the cannon had blown up. For if the cannon had not blown up the trench, he would now have known the place where the metalworker had hidden the menorah.

The next morning, on the Sabbath day, the man was called to the Torah, for it was the first Sabbath since he had returned to his hometown. The Torah reading for that Sabbath was the portion called Terumah, which begins with Exodus 25. As the Torah reader read aloud the section in Scripture describing the making of the menorah that was used in the tabernacle, he came to the verse “Note well, and follow the patterns for them that are being shown you on the mountain” (Exodus 25:31). At that instant the man knew that the menorah was hidden on a mountain!

The town of Buczacz is surrounded by mountains; it sits on a mountaintop itself. And the man had no idea which mountain it was that held the menorah.

The man began to wander the mountains. There was not a mountain of all the mountains around Buczacz that he did not search. The man did not reveal to anyone that he was searching after the menorah, for he feared the riffraff that had joined the town and that, if they heard about the menorah, they would take it away. Every day the man went in search of the menorah, through cold and heat, until summer and winter had both passed. But he still had not found the menorah.

Now the days of cold, the winter season, returned, and the man did not return from his daily labors in the mountains. At the end of several days, after wandering in the mountains, he said to himself: Let me return home and no longer search after the menorah. For I am not able to find it.

11

And it came to pass that, as the man was returning home, another man was standing on the road, a man crippled in his legs and missing an arm. The two of them stood there. They looked at each other in astonishment and exclaimed, “Blessed be He who resurrects the dead!”

Then the man who had been searching after the menorah said, “I told myself that you were blown up in the trench, and now I see you are alive!”

The metalworker said to him, “I too thought you were among the dead. Blessed be the Lord who has saved us from the Russian cannons and who has left us alive after the horrible Great War.”

The man who had been searching for the menorah asked him, “Didn’t you tell me that when the Russians first came to Buczacz you hid the great menorah? Well, where did you hide it?”

The metalworker replied, “That is why I have come.”

“Where is it?” the other asked.

“It is hidden in the ground beneath my house,” he answered.

“Where is your house?”

“It is destroyed,” the metalworker said. “It no longer exists. But the place is still there. It is beneath a pile of snow. If I only had a shovel in my hand, I could already have cleared away the snow and the earth beneath it and dug the menorah out.”

The two of them went off. They brought a shovel and worked there all day and all night and all the next day, for a huge amount of snow covered the mountains, until, finally, they had cleared the snow and the earth, and they found the menorah.

They removed the menorah and brought it to the Great Synagogue, where they stood it on the reading table where the menorah had once stood. And so the menorah stood on the reading table as it had in earlier days, in the days when there was peace in the land. The metalworker said, “Now I will cut off that bird with two heads, for Austria has ceased to rule over Buczacz. And if there are young boys in town, I will make dreidels from the brass eagle for them to play with during Hanukkah, just as our grandfathers did for our fathers.” He added, “Let us also not make a one-headed eagle, like the eagle that is the national insignia of Poland. I have heard that the Ruthenians have revolted against Poland. If they see the eagle of Poland in our synagogue, they will say that we have prepared to go to war against the Ruthenian nation.”

The two men said to each other, “One kingdom comes and another kingdom passes away. But Israel remains forever.” And they said, “O Lord! Have pity on Your people. Let not Your possession become a mockery, to be taunted by nations! How long shall they direct us however they wish? You, our God, are our rock and refuge forever. You alone we have desired; let us never be ashamed.”

Pisces

Prologue

Seeing that most people do not know the story of Fishl Karp, or they may know part of it but not all of it, or they may know the story in a general way — and indeed there is no greater enemy to wisdom than superficial knowledge — I have taken it upon myself to recount things exactly as they happened.

I know that I myself have not managed to verify all the details or to reconcile everything, and, needless to say, others would have told it better than I. But I say that full detail is not the main thing, nor is beauty nor the reconciling of inessential matters. The main thing is truth. In that wise every word spoken here is true.

1

A Solid Citizen

Fishl Karp was a householder. Householders like him are not found in every generation nor in every place. Tall was he, and as his height, so was his breadth. That is, his height equaled his circumference. Of similar amplitude were his limbs. His neck was fat and, as they say among us in Buczacz, it measured up to the forearm of Eglon, the king of Moab. This, apart from his belly, which was a creature by itself. Such a belly is not to be found in our generation, but even in Fishl’s generation it was numbered among the city’s novelties.

Two merchants once came from Lemberg to Buczacz to buy groats, and Fishl Karp happened upon them. They looked at him and said, “Even among the gizzard eaters and mead drinkers in Lemberg, a belly like that would command respect.” It was ample, like a cauldron for cooking prune jam. Not for nothing was it said that his double chins compared to his belly like a bird’s gullet to its body, and his double chins were fat like a goose before Hanukkah. Hence he honored his belly and cared for it and saw that it lacked for nothing. Be it meat and fish, let there be meat and fish; be it gravy and groats, let there be gravy and groats; and if you want a prune compote, let there be a prune compote, aside from carrot wrapped in tripe stuffed with flour and toasted with fat and raisins, not to mention the dishes that come before the meal.

Ordinarily people eat sauce before meat and meat before prunes and carrots. Fishl Karp would eat the meat before the sauce and the carrots and prunes before the sauce, so that if the Messiah should come he could give him what he was eating and not deprive his belly. Otherwise, while all the Jews were taking joy in the Messiah, his belly would be miserable and sad. If things were thus during the six days of the week, on Sabbaths and festivals it was even more so. What Reb Fishl ate at the optional fourth meal of Rabbi Hidka would be enough for ten Jews for an entire Sabbath, and what he used to eat on the eve of Yom Kippur would be enough for anyone for all the three festivals. Even those holidays that are not mentioned in the Torah but which were ordained by Ezra and his court he honored with food and drink, as well as all the other special days when it is one’s religious duty to eat a copious meal.

To make them noteworthy, he would prolong his meals until midnight, and in the same manner he would prolong the banquet to bid farewell to the Sabbath Queen. For a person has a bone called luz which enjoys no food except at the banquet for the departure of the Sabbath, and from that bone the Holy One, blessed be He, will make the entire body sprout in the world-to-come. Fishl intended to provide it with much pleasure so it would remember him in the afterlife when there will be Leviathan and Wild Ox.

The child is father to the man. Even as a lad it was evident that he would be a man of substance. It once happened that a man held a yahrzeit. After prayers he gave out cakes and brandy, for in those days some people had already taken up the hasidic custom of bringing cakes and brandy to the house of prayer on the occasion of a yahrzeit to drink to the living and to bless the dead for the ascent of his soul. Fishl saw an old man slice a piece and abandon the rest. He was astonished. The old man said to him, “What are you looking at me for?” He said to him, “I’m observing the little slice that’s wobbling between your gums and not getting any smaller.” He said to him, “And you would swallow a slice like that in the wink of an eye?” He said to him, “Even if they gave me all the cakes, I wouldn’t leave a single crumb.” The old man’s son heard this. He grabbed Fishl by the ear and said to him, “Here, the cakes are yours if you eat them in front of us, but if you leave even one of them, you must stretch yourself out upon the table and receive forty lashes plus one.” He listened and agreed.

Twenty-four cakes there were, each as thick as the nose of the official who collects excise taxes on taverns. They were in three layers and kneaded with eggs, and Fishl ate them all. Finally, for fear of even numbers, he ate yet another. The next day he bet a man who held a yahrzeit that he could drink a jug of brandy without a morsel of food. He downed it all and quaffed another cupful for good measure, and no change was noticeable in his face.

On Sabbaths and festivals Fishl used to pray with the first minyan, but on ordinary days he would pray with the second or third, and sometimes he prayed by himself. For on Sabbaths and festivals a man’s table is set and a feast is ready for him when he returns home. His plate and cup greet him, one with food and one with drink. But on ordinary days many things delay a man before he stands up to pray. For the market swarms with a multitude of fowl, and the butcher shop is full of meat. Sometimes on his way to synagogue a gentile man or woman would meet him bearing good things to eat. Such was Fishl Karp’s custom: he would take his stick in his right hand and his tallit and tefillin in his left, and he would cross the market and peer into the butcher shop, sending his eyes in front of him. He might see a fat hen, a fine piece of meat, a fruit worthy of a blessing, or a vegetable that would be good to add to his meal, and he would purchase them, before anyone else preempted him. If his tallit and tefillin bag was large enough, he would secrete them there and bring them home after his prayer, and if there were too many things for his tallit and tefillin bag to hold, he would send them off with someone else, such as a little orphan boy who had come to say kiddush or anyone else who was at hand to run his errand.

2

A Fish He Found

One day Fishl arose early, as was his wont on the six days of the week. He boiled a kettle and drank hot tea with honey. He filled his pipe with tobacco and saw to his bodily needs. Afterward he peeked into the cupboard where all sorts of victuals lay ready, and in his thoughts he tasted their flavors and in his mind he exchanged one food for another and one drink for another, since not all times and not all tastes are equal. You hunger for one thing and something else comes and appeals to your palate. The manna that fell from heaven for the Israelites had all the tastes in the world. If they wished, it tasted like bread or like honey or like oil. Our foods, alas, have merely the memory of taste.

Once he had made up his mind about what he would eat after prayers — what first, what last, and what in the middle — he took his tallit and tefillin bag and went to pray. His tallit and tefillin bag was not made of satin nor of the leather of an unborn animal. Rather, it was made from the skin of a calf, from which he had not removed even enough to make a little strap for lashes on the eve of Yom Kippur. This was the calf that Fishl consumed at a single meal before he was required to report to the army officials who had come to take able-bodied men to military service. For by then the custom had been abolished, by which one could redeem oneself from the king’s service by hiring one soul for another. Instead, anyone found worthy was taken to serve the king. Some Jewish lads would starve themselves so as not to be fit to serve the king. Fishl was a fleshy man and said, “Even if I sit and fast for a whole year, I’ll still be fitter than five men together, so why should I deprive my soul? I’d do better to eat a lot and drink a lot and treat myself well and put on a lot of weight, for they account ample flesh a flaw.” And because a miracle happened for him on account of the calf that he ate, in that he fell sick and they excused him from the king’s army, he made a bag out of its skin for his tallit and tefillin.

Fishl gathered himself up to go to the house of prayer. As he left, he said, “I won’t linger there long,” to announce that he didn’t have it in mind to prolong his prayers, so they would hurry and prepare his morning meal, so that upon his return he would find his table laid and he would start his meal without delay. Finally he kissed the mezuzah, thinking: Something new has just become clear to me. If you eat some fruit preserves before going to sleep and kiss the mezuzah in the morning, you can find a bit of sweetness on it.

He said, “I won’t linger long,” and Hentshi Rekhil his wife knew that he was just talking nonsense, because even if he intended to return immediately, he would not, since it was his practice on the way to the house of prayer to stroll through the market and look into the butcher shop and to go out to the crossroads and meet the Gentile men and women who brought poultry and vegetables to town. So it was on that day. He set out for the house of prayer, but his feet brought him to the center of town to see the foodstuffs with which the villagers supplied the town.

He met a fisherman with his net coming from the Strypa. He was stooped under the weight of the net, and the net was shaking itself and its bearer. Fishl looked and saw a fish quivering there in the net. In all his days Fishl had never seen such a large fish. When his eyes settled down after seeing the new sight, his soul began to quiver with desire to enjoy a meal made from the fish. So great was his appetite that he didn’t ask how such a stupendous fish had found its way into waters that do not produce large fish. What did Fishl say when he saw the fish? He said, “The Leviathan knows that Fishl Karp loves large fish and sent him what he loves.” Though he had still not made up his mind how he would eat it, whether stewed or grilled or fried or pickled, in his thoughts he gathered together all the tastes that the white flesh of that water wolf was likely to give him.

Fishl’s lips quivered with hunger, like a mullet with its many scales and fins. His eyes dimmed, and he did not see the fish. As the saying goes in Buczacz: One sees the Purim goodies, but not their sender.

The fisherman saw a Jew staring at the fish without saying a thing. He took his mind off him and went on his way.

Fishl was alarmed and raised his voice in a shout, “Hey, fellow, where to?” The fisherman replied, “To sell the fish.” He said to him, “And I, am I nothing?” He said to him, “If you want to buy, buy.”

He said to him, “How much?” He answered, “This much.” He said to him, “And if I give you so much, will you write your will and die?” Fishl knew that the fish was worth twice what the fisherman asked, but if you can lower the price, you lower it. In short, the one swore he would not reduce the price by even a farthing, and the other swore that he would not pay half a farthing more. One swore by his God and all his saints, and the other swore on his own head. One raised, the other lowered; one added, and the other subtracted. Finally they came to terms. Fishl opened his purse and got his bargain.

The fisherman went on his way and Fishl stood there, devouring the fish alive. Not that he ate it alive, but he was like a man who sees a fat goose and says, “On your life, I’d swallow you just as you are.” Though Fishl was used to fish, such an enormous one had never come into his hands. Even though they bring fish from all the great rivers, from the Dniester and from the Danube, a fish this big had never appeared in our city, or if it had, someone else had beaten him to it.

He looked at the fish again, and then at his own belly, at his belly and at the fish, and he said to them, “You see, you gluttons, what’s waiting for you. Right after we finish morning prayers we’ll sit down together and eat.” He raised his eyes upward, thinking to himself: The Holy One, blessed be He, knows that in the whole city there is no one who makes as many blessings over food as Fishl. When they make their blessings, they bless on the measure of an olive or an egg, but when I make a blessing, it’s over a satisfying meal. So may it be Thy will that there’s a bridegroom or the father of a child about to be circumcised in the synagogue, so we won’t be delayed by saying the prayers for divine mercy.

One good idea brings another. From thoughts of the prayers for mercy he turned his mind to the entire service, when it is long and when it is short, when one recites many verses and when one recites fewer. He began to be amazed at the wisdom of Moses, our teacher, who arranged everything in timely fashion. You find that on Yom Kippur, when it is forbidden to eat and drink, you spend all day in prayer. So it is with the other fasts: since there is no eating and drinking, one recites many penitential prayers. But on the eve of Yom Kippur, when you are commanded to eat and drink, you don’t say the prayers for mercy, you don’t add “He shall answer you on this day of affliction” to the Eighteen Benedictions, and you skip the Psalm of Thanks. The same holds true for the day before Passover, when you give a banquet to honor the completion of a tractate, and you eat a lot of cakes and biscuits left over from Purim. True, a slight difficulty is presented by the Fast of Esther on the day before Purim, a day of baking and cooking, a day when savory odors waft from oven and range. Yet if you only delve deeply into the matter, you find that even the Fast of Esther has something good about it, for by starving yourself during the fast, you double your pleasure in the food and drink taken after the fast, just as meat eaten on Sabbath during the nine days of mourning preceding the Ninth of Av gives double pleasure. So why does the eve of Yom Kippur come before the day? So that a man will prepare himself for it with food and drink.

What good thoughts would Fishl Karp have savored in his heart were it not for that fish. Consider the matter: the very same fish that taught him the ways of the world put an end to his thoughts. Why? Because not all views are the same. The man thought: I’ll bring him to make a fish meal for me. And the fish wondered: How long will I be stuck in this man’s hands? The man stroked its fins and savored the taste of fish, and the fish grew angry like a bird in a hunter’s hands. The man was at peace, the fish at war. At last the fish tightened all its scales like a suit of mail and lifted one of its fins, nearly slipping out of Fishl Karp’s hands.

Fishl noticed and said, “If that’s how you are, I’ll show you that I’m no worse than you are.” He pressed his two hands together, clamping the fish between them. Its scales stood still as its fins opened, and its eyes were about to pop out when they saw the extent of human wickedness. Fishl looked at the fish and said, “You evil scaly thing, now you know that Fishl is not one of those self-righteous folk who pretend to be merciful while they’re waving about a rooster that’s going to be slaughtered for Yom Kippur.”

Though he had reason to be angry at the fish, he dismissed all resentment toward it. On the contrary, he looked at it benevolently and spoke nicely to it. He said to it, “Now that you’ve left off your wild ways, I’ll treat you well in return and conceal you from people’s view, so they won’t give you the evil eye. For there’s nothing harder to eat than the evil eye. As my grandmother used to say, ‘A stranger’s eye on food is like bones on a full stomach.’ You might say that a man is valued according to the foods and beverages that come to his table. But you should know that just as people honor the rich for their money, although they lock it away from others, so it is with food and drink. If you have them, you’d better not show yourself at mealtime or display what you’re preparing for dinner.” Another reason why Fishl promised to hide the fish from people’s view was because in those days Buczacz had forsworn the eating of fish. Since the fishermen had raised the price of fish, the entire city was refusing to buy fish, even for the Sabbath, except for one family that didn’t share in the public grief, as I’ve told you elsewhere. Therefore he comforted the fish, saying he would hide it from public resentment. Just as he was about to keep his promise, he found it hard to do so. Why? Because he couldn’t find any place to hide the fish. He thought to hide it between his belly and his clothing, like a smuggler, but they who are skinny because of all the pains they take to make a living can do so, whereas his belly was so ample that it would not tolerate any external addition. He thought to stuff the fish against his chest, but his double chin wouldn’t permit it. He looked at the fish like a man asking advice of a friend. The fish, which was mute by nature, was all the more mute at that time because of its sorrows, and it did not answer him. Were it not for his tallit and tefillin bag, Fishl could not have kept his promise, and people would have given the fish the evil eye.

As I have said, his tallit and tefillin bag was made of the skin of an entire calf, and to my eye it resembled those musical instruments that the musician inflates out to make a sound. But while the instrument makes a sound and does not absorb anything, the bag is silent and accepts whatever you put into it. Were that not so, how could he put in it meat and fish and fruit and vegetables and sometimes even a pair of pigeons or a hen or a goose that he purchased on his way to synagogue? At any rate, that sack had never in all its days seen a creature as rebellious as that scaly, finny one. When the fish was only a year old, its length was already close to that of Fishl’s arm, and since then it had further increased itself by a third and half a third.

The tallit and tefillin huddled together and acted hospitably, as did the prayer book. Fishl shoved the fish in among them and the bag stretched itself to receive the fish. The fish, which was weak because of the change in place, the rigors of travel, and Fishl’s manhandling, accepted its torments in silence and did not say: The place is narrow for me. But unwittingly it took revenge against Fishl, since it was very heavy and hard for Fishl to carry.

3

A Man’s Emissary

Fishl got himself to the synagogue and found that even the latest service was over. He said to himself: It would be worth knowing what breakfast was waiting for them, putting them in such a hurry to pray. Now I’ll pray without a minyan and I won’t hear Kedushah and Barekhu. In any event he did not pin the blame on the fish or say to it: You are the one that made me late for public prayer and deprived my soul of Kedushah and Barekhu and the privilege of responding Amen. On the contrary, he thought well of the fish. He would make such a breakfast meal out of it that even the books that heap condemnation on eating and drinking would sing its praises. Since he always took great care to eat breakfast, a meal that the sages praise extravagantly, humility gripped him. He said, “It makes no difference to the fish who hands it over to be cooked, whether it’s me or someone else.”

He found Bezalel Moshe, the son of Israel Noah the House Painter, who, as was his habit, was sitting in the synagogue. The house painter had been killed when he fell from the church roof while he was repairing one of their statues, and broke his neck, and his only son, Bezalel Moshe, was left an orphan. The beadle of the synagogue took him to the synagogue and found a few householders who took it upon themselves to give him food, each on a different day of the week. He used to live in the synagogue and eat day by day with different householders. Whatever he lacked in food, the beadle supplied, and what the beadle lacked, he supplied with his own hands. For he would make mizrahim, plaques for the eastern wall of the home, indicating the direction in which one prays, and rotating plaques for counting the omer, and he would draw letters and drawings for the cloths that girls embroider to cover challot and matzot. He also made playing cards for Hanukkah and, by contrast, for Christmas Eve, when it is forbidden to study Torah, and in payment he would take a penny or a farthing or something to eat. Even the tombstone engraver would use him occasionally to draw the hands of Aaron the Priest on the stone, or a pitcher for a Levite, twins for someone born under the sign of Gemini, or fish for someone born under Pisces. Bezalel Moshe would draw on the stone in ink, and the engraver would engrave it on the monument.

At that moment Bezalel Moshe was sitting in the corner behind the pulpit, next to the holy ark, a spot hidden from all eyes. He was busy making a mizrah and was in the midst of the sign of Pisces. Said Fishl, “He’s sitting there like someone who got a saucer of jam and hides so he won’t have to share with others.” Fishl inspected the beasts and animals and fowl and fish that the orphan had drawn. Fishl was astonished that this poor son of poor folk had it in him to draw offhandedly what the Holy One, blessed be He, had taken six days to create. And I — Fishl went on to reflect — and I, if I’ve got to sign my name, I distrust my fingers all day. Fishl chirped with his lips, “Pish, pish, pish,” as though to say: Miracle of miracles I see here. The orphan heard and was startled. He covered the mizrah with his hands.

Said Fishl to Bezalel Moshe, “What are you sitting around for, you idler? On a sheet of paper that size we could write the names of all the portions of the Torah with compound interest on each and every portion. Show me what you’ve heaped together here. What’s that, the fruits of the tree in the Garden? Don’t be afraid that I’ll take one to eat. They’re not even worth sending to the judge and the cantor as Purim gifts. And what’s this? The sign of Pisces? Fish you call those miserable things?” He extended his finger toward the two fish that were drawn on the mizrah, the head of one against the tail of the other, and the fins of one against the fins of the other. Great sadness bubbled up from the eyes, as if they didn’t know that Pisces was the constellation of Adar, the month in which we are meant to rejoice. Fishl laughed and said, “You call those fish? If you want to see what a fish is, I’ll show you.”

He took his tallit and tefillin bag and removed the fish, saying, “I reckon that in your prayer book you won’t find a blessing for a fish like this! From now on, picture to yourself how lovely it will be, stewed or roasted or fried or pickled. Now take it to Hentshi Rekhil my wife and tell her, ‘Reb Fishl desires a fish meal.’ You can count on her to catch the hint, and I promise you that before I finish my prayers, the meal will be ready.”

Bezalel Moshe looked at the fish, which was quivering in Fishl’s hands the way his father Israel Noah had quivered after falling from the church roof. At that moment the fish mustered its last strength and tried to escape from the hands of that human being, who was torturing him with words as harsh as wormwood. Fishl grasped him powerfully and said, “You’re shivering, you’re cold, a chill has gripped you. I’ll send you to my house right away, and Hentshi Rekhil my wife will make a fire and warm up a hot drink for you, and she’ll feed you onions and peppers to warm you up and abate the chill.”

The fish closed its eyes in grief, and at that moment they showed it the death that was awaiting it. Then it sang a dirge for itself. If we translate its words to our language, this is approximately what they said:

Not in mighty waters did I end my allotted days;

Nor in ancient rivers shall I wend my destined ways;

In a wicked man’s hand I perish indeed;

Though I offer much prayer, he will not heed.

After the fish vomited out the last remnant of its strength, Fishl laid it on the reading table and removed his prayer things from the bag. He picked up the fish and stuffed it back into the bag. The fish, whose strength was gone and who was already half dead, submitted to suffering in silence and offered no protest against Fishl, Fishl opened his tallit and tefillin bag again, to show his face to the fish before sending it away. He laughed to himself contentedly and said, “I shall recite some of your praises to your face. You are fit for me and worthy to be eaten by me. Karpl Shleyen and Fishl Fisher and, need it be said, Fishl Hecht, the half-brother of Fishl Fishman can all envy us.”

After giving praise to the fish, he said to the orphan, “How many feet do you have, all in all?” “Two.” “If so, pick up both of them at once and run swiftly to tell Hentshi Rekhil my wife what I told you, that is, ‘Reb Fishl, long may he live, desires a meal of fish. Hurry and cook the fish and make him tasty victuals such as he loves.’”

Bezalel Moshe gazed at him and asked permission to conceal the mizrah first. Fishl laughed and said, “Fool, what are you scared of? Not even a mouse would nibble at it, but if you wish, hide it then and hurry, for Reb Fishl craves the taste of this fish.”

Bezalel Moshe put away the mizrah and the tools of his trade, and took the fish, which was ensconced in Fishl’s tallit and tefillin bag, for Fishl had emptied the bag and stuffed in the fish.

The fish lay in the bag and its soul yearned to die, for it had come to loathe this world to which no creature comes but to die. Even if it has brought forth great things, its end is death. And how did the fish cogitate, since it was already dead? It was dead, let us say, but its torments were still alive.

Were it not for the fish’s ignominious end, it would be worth recounting all its deeds and celebrating each and every detail. Now that it has plunged to the deepest abyss, it is enough for me to recall some of its deeds and to include the deeds of its fathers and also what befell it before reaching Fishl Karp. And don’t be surprised that I do not call it by name. It had no name, since no fish is called by a given name, due to the great honor they accord to the Leviathan, their king. Moreover, until the time the Talmud was written, no species of fish even had a general name. This should be evident, for when the Bible speaks of fish, it never mentions the species.

4

Lords of the Water

His fathers and his fathers’ fathers were among those venerable fish whose lineage extended back to the fish who were with Jonah in the belly of the Great Fish, and since their souls clung to Jonah’s prayer in the belly of the Great Fish, they followed him until the Great Fish vomited him forth, as ordered by the Holy One, blessed be He. Hence there is no doubt that Jonah prayed inside the belly of the Great Fish, contrary to those commentators whose forced interpretation maintains that Jonah did not pray until after he went forth on dry land, since it is written, “And he prayed, et cetera, from the belly of the fish,” and not “in the belly of the fish.”

How did the fish come to our rivers, which are far from the place where Jonah was? But where was Jonah’s prayer offered? Was it not in the place where the sea joins the river, as he said, “And Thou didst cast me into the deep, in the heart of the seas, and the river surrounded me.”

These fish left the sea and came to the river and tossed in the fresh water from river to river, sometimes willingly and sometimes unwillingly. There are no bounds to the rivers they crossed and no end to the waters they swam in, nor is there any measure to the roiling water they passed through at peril of their lives, nor is there a limit to the snares and nets that caught them. Finally they came to the least of our waters, the River Dniester, which traverses the lands of His Majesty the Kaiser, as did the members of the Kiknish family, who came from the seed of Jonah the Prophet, as their name indicates. For Kiknish comes from kikayon the Hebrew word for “gourd,” which is the gourd that the Lord appointed for Jonah to shade him from the sun. I do not know if there are still any members of the Kiknish family alive, but some of them are buried in the Lemberg cemetery.

Nonetheless, it is fitting that you know that what was once accepted as undeniable truth has now come to be challenged. And some people already say that these are legends and that the lineage of this fish is made up. Not that the fish is not the son of its ancestors, but that they are not the sons of their ancestors — meaning those ancestors from whom they claim descent, that is, the fish who were with Jonah in the belly of the Great Fish. And by now every schoolboy is scornful. Using ichthyological terminology, they claim that the descendants of all the fish that were with Jonah in the belly of the Great Fish have become extinct, and that not one of them remains. So that anyone who says that he comes from the belly of Jonah’s fish is an imposter. But I say, if we do not have ancestral honor here, we have honor itself. And if you wish to know what that is, I shall tell you in a manner comprehensible to human understanding, just as the early sages put human words in the mouths of beasts and animals and birds. True, they were great sages, and all their deeds were done for the sake of wisdom and morality, and to endow the simple with insight, on the strength of the verse “Who teaches us by the beasts of the earth.” But for me, who have not even come so far as the pupil of their pupils, things as they were are enough.

In its youth, when it was still a light greenish color, the fish had already made a name for itself among the lords of the waters. Fish both great and small were in awe of it. Before it reached them, they glided toward it and entered its mouth alive. Fish that float on their bellies and those fish that swim on their ribs, left-handed ones and right-handed ones — they all came on their own to be his food. Not to mention snouty fish and those with eyes in their heads. Our fish, whose heart was close to its cheeks, let no rings be put through its gills and opened its mouth to dine upon them. Indeed, never in our lives have we heard that a fish like this one was to be found in our rivers, but because of its power and might, the others exaggerated, saying that even the fish in the sea were its subjects.

Cruising mighty waters, dreaded by fin and scale,

Here minnows gulping and there large fish devouring,

When it holidayed, ah, then did its foes all quail.

When it sallied forth with legions noble, scouring

The enemy’s scales. Then did they savage and blast

The vanquished adversaries’ heads. One day it called

For banquet and gluttony, then declared a fast.

Sometimes it did fierce battle, other times it brawled.

Now it crammed its huge mouth with seaweed’s denizens,

Now it bloodied streams but swam not all the long day.

Now it tripped and capered with the Leviathan’s

Daughters, now like a groom, having with them its way.

Here passed it hours in banqueting and pleasure,

Dining with counselors, the shellfish sagacious,

Now crowning players and singers at leisure,

Discharging advisors when feeling pugnacious.

Every white-fleshed fish to its pointed teeth fell prey,

Until done eating, never calling for a pause,

Ruthless, killing whatever swam into its way,

In secret and in public view, by its own laws.

Its dread voice withered the Dniester’s watery flora,

Earning it a blessing from everybody’s mouth.

For it saved the carp from Sodom and Gomorrah.

You know that carp are lazy fish and quite uncouth.

Hounding and hunting them without surcease, it saved

Them from death by indolence. Hardly lovable,

We might well say — as of those whose life’s path is paved

With splendid fortune — that all it lacked was trouble.

After traversing the Dniester and surveying its length and breadth, the fish wanted to see the rest of the waters and to know its relatives, for there is no river in Europe without members of this fish’s tribe. This is not a matter of merit or of blame but simply the way things work out, sometimes one way, sometimes another.

Thus, after surveying the Dniester, the fish betook itself to the place where the Strypa falls into the Dniester. It did not stop and return to the waters of the Dniester, but rather it said, “I shall go and see what there is in the Strypa.”

We cannot know whether this took place in the Strypa at the village of Khutzin or in the Strypa at the village of Kishilivitz. In any event, the fish did not remain there. For it coasted with its fins all the way to the Strypa of Buczacz, that is, Buczacz that sits upon the River Strypa.

It arrived at Buczacz and said, “Here I shall dwell, for this is my desire.” The other fish of the Strypa saw it and were alarmed. Never in their lives had they seen such a large fish. They erred in thinking that it came from the seed of Leviathan, from those who were born before the Holy One, blessed be He, castrated it and killed the female and salted it away for the righteous in the future. Some paid tribute to the fish and brought it presents. There were so many presents that the waters of the Strypa began to empty of fish. Though we are not dealing with history, this most likely transpired in 5423 or 5424, for in those years the fishermen raised the price of fish exorbitantly, and the whole city came to the head of the rabbinical court and asked him to ostracize anyone who bought fish until the fishermen lowered the price.

Thus the fish swam in the waters of the Strypa, and all the fish of the Strypa in Buczacz accepted its dominion over them and paid it ransom for their lives, one delivering its brother, another handing over its friend, and yet another, its relative.

With high hand did it rule in the Strypa’s waters,

Eating every fish, the parents, sons, and daughters,

Serene, consuming water folk, it put on flesh,

A delight to the eye, comely, speedy, and fresh.

Everyone scurried like slaves to do its bidding;

Before it knew, its will was done. So, from eating

And drinking in excess its will was lost.

The fish

Believed that everything they told it was his wish.

As its willpower faded, so increased its fame:

All the Strypa’s wisdom was spoken in its name.

The fish lived in the lap of luxury and lacked for nothing.

One day it rained. Although fish grow in water, they greet a drop that falls from above as thirstily as though they had never tasted water in their life. Our fish, too, floated up to snatch a drop.

After slaking its thirst from the upper water, which is the best water, for it irrigates and quenches and enriches the body and gives it purity, the fish lay contentedly with its fins relaxed, like a fish with a mind in repose.

At that moment those who sought its favor stood and pointed to it with their fins, swishing their scales. If I may transpose their gestures to human language, this is approximately what they said: “It sees what is between the upper and the lower waters, and apprehends the higher wisdom from which all other wisdom derives.”

5

A Day of Grief

People have a saying that it is good to fish in muddied waters. That day the water of all the rivers and streams and lakes was turbulent because of the rainwater, which drew with it tangled weeds, dirt, and mud puddles. All the fishermen went out and set traps in the great and small rivers, in the brooks, the ponds, and lakes, in the Weichsel and the Dniester rivers and in the Prut, the Bug, the San, and in the Donets and the Podhortsa and in the Strypa River, and in all the rivers of their countries and towns. In the Strypa at Buczacz, too, the fishermen let down their nets, even though at that time none of the Jews would leap to buy fish, except for one man. Since we have already mentioned him elsewhere, we shall not mention him again.

Thus a fisherman cast his net in the waters of the Strypa. Our fish had never seen a net of that kind, for in its home waters, that is, the Dniester, the fishermen’s nets are different from those in the Strypa. Every river follows its own custom.

The fish glided up toward the net and wondered: If this is a mountain, since when has a mountain grown up here? The fish had happened by there many times and had never seen a mountain. And if it is a reef, when was it brought here, and who made it full of holes? Or perhaps it is a kind of animal, and these holes are its eyes. If so, what is it, so full of eyes? Perish the thought that it might be the Angel of Death, whom everyone dreads. The fish, too, began to feel dread, and it raised one of its fins to flee. Once it saw that no one was in pursuit, it said, “Not even the Angel of Death wants to kill me.” Once its terror departed, the fish returned to find out who that creature was and what it was doing here.

It backwatered with one of its fins and began paddling toward the thing that seemed to it like a mountain, a reef, or a living creature. Not even in its imagination did the fish envision what it really was.

The other fish saw it running toward the net. Fear fell upon them, and they panicked, since of those who enter that net, none returns. They wanted to shout, “Stay away! Keep your distance from the snare!” Terror froze their tongues in their mouths. They did not lose their panic until it gave way to wonder: did the fish not know that was the evil snare in which fish are seized? But in their innocence some of them believed that the fish was such a great hero that even a snare was child’s play for it. They began to glory in its heroism and to scorn the snare, since they had a hero who was not frightened of the snare. They still called the net a snare, that is, a fishhook that is nothing more than a needle, an expression used by King Solomon, may he rest in peace, when he sought to portray human weakness, as he said: “For a man cannot know his time, as fish are enmeshed in an evil snare,” et cetera. While some fish were praising the fish’s heroism, others sought to warn it: “Pick up your fins and flee for your life, for if you draw close sudden disaster will befall you.” They held a council and agreed unanimously to get rid of it completely. They played dumb and told it nothing. Those who did not shut their mouth in great joy on seeing a murderer’s impending disaster embraced a language of flattery and lies, and told it things that in our tongue go approximately as follows: “Our lord, you are worthy to make yourself a greater palace than that, but this is a time of distress, for the people of Buczacz have forsworn all pleasure from fish, and they won’t even buy a fish for the Sabbath.” The fish was seduced into thinking that they had prepared a palace in its honor. It flashed its scales to them and opened its eyes as though to say, “Let us go and see.” Some of them began to be remorseful and reflective: “Alas, what have we done? It will see immediately that we wanted evil to befall it, and it will take its revenge upon us.” But the fish had already been fated to die. Its foolishness trapped it, and it entered the palace, that is, the net.

The fisherman’s hand began to be pulled downward. The fisherman was used to the small fish of the Strypa at Buczacz, and he thought it was not a fish tugging at him and his net but a corpse, a bastard’s corpse. He cursed all the wanton women who endanger his nets with the infants they throw into the river. He wanted to leave the net in the river, so that if the baby were still living, it would die a long death and exact its torments from its mother. His hand began to tire and was pulled downward. He gathered that the corpse was conspiring to pull him into the river. He quickly drew in his net.

Our fish felt itself being pulled up. It began to wonder: Is this not the ascent of the soul? Since nothing like this had ever happened to it in its life, and all its life it was used to having everything its way, our fish came to the conclusion that this was the ascent of the soul that all the righteous gloried in. It began to see itself as righteous, in addition to all the praises that had been offered it from the day it had begun to rule over the tides of the Strypa, and it was angry at its ministers and servants for not calling it righteous.

Even if we had no books of moral teachings, we could learn the nature of temporary success from that fish. It was a great creature whose dread oppressed all the creatures in the Strypa, who were all prepared to render up the souls of their brothers and relatives to it, and there was no end to the words of flattery they would utter. Suddenly disaster befell it, and after that, no one could be found to stand by it in its troubles, not even to console it, not even insincerely. At that time all the swamp fish raised their voices and began to mock it, saying, “They are raising you up in order to crown you king on high, just as you ruled as a king below.” Come see these tiny ones, as our sages of blessed memory said, “The smallest of the small,” who had never opened their mouths in their lives, and who saw themselves only as food for the big ones, and whom the big ones took note of only for a snack. Suddenly they became heroes and mocked the fish to its face. Of this type of thing I say, with a slight change in the wording to satisfy the demands of the present subject, what they said in the Gemara: “Everything on dry land is also in the water.”

6

Ascent that is Descent

The fisherman drew in his net and found a big fish. He had not seen its like in the waters of the Strypa in his entire life. It was huge in flesh and fat, and its fins were crimson with blood, and its scales glistened like fine silver. The fisherman began to think well of himself and see himself as a wise man and hero. But what can wisdom and heroism offer if they are not accompanied by wealth?

At that time in Buczacz people refrained from buying fish, even for the Sabbath, which one is commanded to make pleasant with fish. And why did Buczacz refrain from buying fish even for the Sabbath? Because the fishermen had raised the prices higher than their due. Even though the eminent rabbi, the head of the court, had not declared a ban upon fish, everyone refrained from buying fish, except for one man, as I have recounted elsewhere.

The fisherman began to grumble about the fish that had come his way when people were not jumping to buy fish. If it had come in normal times, he would have made a good name for himself and made money and drawn girls’ hearts after him. Now it was doubtful whether he would find a customer aside from the priest, who paid with words and not with coin.

The fisherman reflected about what to do, but he came to no thought leading to action. The fish’s lodging in the net was hard for it. It began to flop around and to tug the net. The fisherman was afraid the fish would escape. He ran and fetched a basin and filled it with water and took the fish out of the net and placed it in the basin.

The fish was consigned to the basin. Never in its life had it been relegated to such a narrow place, and never in its life had its thoughts been so expansive. Needless to say, not when it was a king and exempt from thinking, for it is the way with kings that their ministers think for them, but even before being crowned it had not been used to thinking. Now, confined in the basin, it was thinking, and the world grew ever smaller: In the days of my forefathers, fish swam in the sea, then in the big rivers which spread out over every land, and then in the Strypa, which is called a river only in honor of Buczacz, and finally the world has been reduced to a basin of water.

Come and see how great the power of thought is. Not only does one thought lead to another, but it also passes from creature to creature. You see, while the fish was in the basin of water, gathering up its entire world in its thoughts, the fisherman laid himself down on his sack and his straw, wanting only to sleep, but thoughts came and visited him. As I have said, the fish was thinking about seas and rivers, about its forefathers and itself, and the fisherman was thinking about the Jews and the fish and himself. God may have graced him and sent him a fish worth a lot of money, but what did the Jews do? They stopped eating fish even on their Sabbath, when they are commanded to do so. And were it not for the pact the Jews had made among themselves not to buy fish, he would have sold the fish to a Jew and drunk wine and offered others a drink and hired a musician to play. The girls would have heard and come out to dance with him. He would have chosen one of the pretty ones and done with her what his heart desired. When he thought about what the Jews had done to him, rage blazed within him. He rolled on his bed and could not fall asleep. He rose and poured a full bottle into his mouth. When the bottle was empty, he threw it against the wall. The bottle broke and its fragments rang like church bells. The priest heard and said, “Thus they ring the bells for a priest who has died. Therefore I am dead, and I have to prepare a death banquet.” And because it was Lent, when it is forbidden to eat meat, he sent to the fisherman to have him bring him the fish. The fisherman was sad. Every single one of the fish’s scales is worth a penny — why must he part with it for nothing? He pounded his head against the table and wept. The innkeeper saw and asked him, “Why are you weeping?” The fisherman kicked his belly and scolded, saying to him, “Jew, don’t stick your tongue into things between me and the church. If you don’t shut up, I’ll say that your wine is mixed with Christian women’s blood, that you pierce the nipples of their breasts and kill their children and throw them into the river, and they get into my nets and ruin them.” The innkeeper was alarmed and frightened. He began to console him with a bottle as big as the wall. The wine entered and softened his heart. He revealed his trouble. The innkeeper said to him, “It’s a difficult problem. If the priest has asked you for the fish, you can’t put him off with a scale or two. I have an idea.” But he did not need the Jew’s advice, for meanwhile another Jew had come along and bought the fish.

7

Damp Thoughts

In the morning the fisherman removed the fish from the basin and put it back in his net, for if people see a fish in a net, they believe there was no delay from the moment it came from the river, and they are fonder of nothing more than a fish that comes right from the place where it lives to the market.

When the fish saw itself lying in the net, it mistakenly thought that the fisherman intended to return it to the river. This is the mistake that most people make, for the greater the trouble is, the more they think erroneously that salvation will arise from it.

The fisherman’s thoughts were unlike those of the fish. The fish thought it would be returned to the place where it lived, while the fisherman desired its price. One looked forward to salvation, and the other despaired of salvation. One looked forward to salvation because it had been removed from the basin, and the other despaired of salvation because of the Jews who had conspired not to buy fish. But what was in store for them was unlike the thoughts of both fish and fisherman. You see, as they reached town, there came toward them a certain fleshy man with his bag and put out his hand to the net and took the fish and stuffed it into his bag. Not only was the bag smaller than the basin, but it was also wiped dry of all the moisture.

The one responsible for a miracle does not recognize it. If instead of Fishl Karp there had come someone who puts on two pair of tefillin or someone whose bag was full of those writings by which one seeks to approach our Father in heaven, such as Hok Leyisrael or Hovot Halevavot or Reshit Hokhmah, it would have been more crowded.

The fish extended one of its fins and bumped into a tefillah. I do not know whether it was for the head or for the arm, and what I do not know, I do not say. It also banged its mouth on the prayer book. If the fisherman had been in the place of the fish, he would have hollered, “What do you want from me? Am I a Jew? Am I required to pray and wear tefillin?” But the fish shut its mouth and kept silent.

It shut its mouth but not its thoughts. What were its thoughts at that moment? That fleshy man bought me with scales of silver. If I make a reckoning, my silver scales are more numerous than the scales of silver he gave to the one who delivered me into his hands, and, needless to say, mine are finer. Thus, what made the one deliver me to the other? Perhaps because I am heavy to carry. If so, if I had deprived my soul of good, would that have improved anything? One way or another, it makes no difference in whose hands I am. Neither one intends to return me to the place where I live, but one gives me water for my thirst and the other does not even give me a drop of water.

Having touched upon Reb Fishl with the tip of its thoughts, the fish’s mind now wandered from him to Reb Fishl’s nation. Damp were its thoughts, and most of them nonsensical. If I were to reproduce them, they would be approximately thus:

The Jews are like fish and they are unlike fish. They are like fish in that they eat fish as fish do, and they are unlike fish since fish eat fish at every meal, and Jews — if they wish, they eat fish, and if they wish, they do not eat fish. It is difficult for the Jews to eat fish, for they have to take great pains before they bring the fish to their mouths. They rise early to go to market, and each grabs the fish out of the other’s hands. One shouts out, “In honor of the Sabbath.” The other taunts him, saying, “Don’t say it’s in honor of the Sabbath. Say it’s in honor of your belly.” In the end they take it and cut it and salt it like those who prepare salt fish, and they light a fire under it. Finally they eat it, some with their fingers and some with a pronged stick. And their pleasure is not complete, for they are afraid lest a bone catch in their throat. Whereas fish need nothing but their mouth. The Holy One, blessed be He, loves fish more than Jews, for the Jews weary themselves with every single fish, but while the fish swims in the water, the Holy One, blessed be He, sends it a fish that enters its mouth on its own. You know that this is true, for when you find a fish inside a fish, how else could it come to lie in a fish’s stomach with the head of one toward the other’s tail? Why is that? Because it enters the other’s mouth headfirst, and if it had been fleeing, you would find its tail facing the other fish’s tail.

The fish recalled times when it was in the water, and many good fish used to swim up and enter its mouth, and it would eat and drink all the delicacies of the rivers and streams and lakes, and the other fish all flattered it and were anxious to do its will. So our fish never imagined that the world was likely to change until it entered the net, which it had been seduced into believing was good for it. Those who had said that they themselves had been created only for our fish were the first to lead it to ugly death, beginning with imprisonment and ending with fire and salt and pepper and onions, and after all of those troubles it would not have the privilege of a watery grave. What would be done to it? It was to be buried in the bellies of human creatures. Wealthy men drink wine after the burial and poor men drink brandy after the burial, avoiding mention of water, in which the fish had lived. They drink to each other’s life and are not fearful of dishonoring the dead.

The fish set its death before its eyes, no longer knowing whether or not it desired life. The image of its ministers and workers came to the fish’s mind in its grief. Then it despised its world and began to spit in disgust. Were it not for the life force, which did not abandon the fish, it would have spit out the remnant of its life.

Little by little its salivation ceased, as did all its thoughts. Its thoughts ceased, but its torments did not cease. Finally its thoughts returned and traded places with its torments, and its torments with its thoughts. This is something the mind cannot grasp. The fish lay there as though inanimate, and it is in the nature of an inanimate object not to have thoughts, yet here its thoughts raced about and created torments. It girded up the remnant of its strength and drew its eyes into its head, gathering up scraps of thoughts and reflecting: Perhaps this is the gathering up spoken of in connection with fish: “And even the fish of the sea will be gathered up.” Because the fish was kosher, the heavens had mercy upon it, and its spirit was gathered up with a verse from the Prophets.

8

Between One Fish and Another

At the moment when the fish began to depart from the world, Bezalel Moshe was dragging his feet with difficulty because of the weight of his burden and the weight of his thoughts. While he was sitting in the synagogue his heart had been one, bent upon the work of making a lovely mizrah. Once he went outside, his heart become two. Thinking about the mizrah, he remembered his hunger. Thinking about food, he remembered the mizrah.

He nodded his head to himself and said: What is the use of thinking about a mizrah if the mizrah is in the synagogue and I am outside, and what is the use of thinking about eating if I don’t have a slice of bread to sate my hunger? The fish is heavy. Who knows how much it weighs? Certainly the soul of a great Tzaddik has been reincarnated in it.

He went and sat by the side of the road to rest from the effort of carrying the fish. He put down the tallit and tefillin bag, which had become the temporary home of the fish, and he sat, weary of his burden, weary of hunger, and weary of being a poor orphan. If people wished, they gave him food; if they did not wish, they did not. And if he had something to eat, rather than satisfying him, the food only made him hungry, for he feared lest the next day his soul should languish from hunger and ask to depart, and no one would think of inviting him to a meal or of giving him a penny to buy bread. Maybe that is the meaning of the verse “For the earth was full of knowledge”—in the future everyone would be of the same mind, so that if one person asks for bread, the other gives it to him. Bezalel Moshe knew there was no knowledge but the knowledge that there was no bread but the bread of Torah. However, a hungry man removes Scripture from its literal meaning and interprets “bread” as meaning actual bread. The greatness of bread is that even saints who fast constantly cannot live without eating. Some break their fasts on the Sabbath, on festivals, and on days when one is not supposed to fast, and from fast to fast they break their fast with a banquet for the fulfillment of a commandment, such as serving as the godfather at a circumcision. Whereas he fasted without fasting, for even when he fasted all day long, the fast did not count, since he did not fast of his own free will, but rather because he had nothing to eat. Were it not for the drawings that he drew, he would have seemed to himself like a beast whose only thoughts were about eating and drinking.

He began to be ashamed of his thoughts and tried to repress them. When he saw that they were stronger than he, he began to lose himself in them. Since he could not draw food to satisfy himself, though he knew some people can do that, his mind took leave of him and journeyed off to those who eat their fill and do not refrain from eating fish, not even on a weekday, not even when people seek to boycott them. In normal times everyone is used to eating fish, everyone but him, for in his life he had never seen a living fish nor even a cooked fish, except for those in old holiday prayer books next to the prayers for dew and rain. These had provided him with a model to draw fish on the mizrah and had given Fishl Karp reason to open his mouth and laugh at them.

He began comparing one form to another, that is, the fish he had drawn to the fish he was bringing to Fishl’s wife. He admitted without shame that Fishl’s was handsomer than those he himself had drawn. In what way? This is impossible to portray in words, something that needs a visual demonstration. He looked all about. He saw no one. He put his hand into the fish’s dwelling and removed the fish. He picked it up and looked at it. I would be surprised if any fish eater in the world ever looked at a fish the way that orphan did at this time. His eyes began to grow ever larger to encompass the fish, its fins, its scales, and even its head — it and its eyes, which its Creator had made to see the world with.

The fish began to shed one form and don another, until it left behind the image of the fish that Fishl had bought for a tidy sum and began to resemble the fish that had been in the will of the Holy One, blessed be He, to create when He created the fish. But He had not created it. He had left it to artists to draw. And since this is one of those wonders that we are not permitted to interpret, I shall be brief.

9

Torments of the Will

When an artist wants to draw a form, he detaches his eyes from everything else in the world aside from what he wishes to draw. Immediately everything departs except that very form. And since it regards itself as unique in the world, it stretches and expands until it fills the entire world. So was it with that fish. When Bezalel Moshe set his mind to drawing it, it began to enlarge and expand to fill the entire world. Bezalel Moshe saw this, and a chill seized him. His heart began to flutter and his fingers trembled, as it is with artists who quiver with torments of the will and desire to recount the deeds of the Holy One, blessed be He, each in his own way — the writer with his pen and the painter with his brush. Paper he had none. Now picture to yourselves a world whose essence had been blotted out because a single form was floating in space and occupying all of existence, and there was not a piece of paper to draw on. At that moment Bezalel Moshe felt similar to that mute cantor whose heart was stirred to sing a melody. He opened his mouth and moved his lips until his cheeks crumpled and shattered from his torments. The mute cantor was given the inner sensation of a melody and denied its expression with his voice, whereas Bezalel Moshe was capable of drawing, but he was denied paper. His eyes expanded like nets fish are caught in and like ornamental mirrors into which one gazes. The form of the fish came and settled there, taking on an extra portion of life — more than was in the fish while it was living. Bezalel Moshe fumbled in his pockets again. He found no paper, but he did find a piece of black chalk. Feeling the chalk, he looked at the fish. The fish too looked at him. That is, its form rose up and gripped him.

He grasped the chalk and kneaded it with his fingers, like someone who kneads wax with his fingers, which is useful for memory. He looked at the fish and he looked at the chalk. A model for drawing was there. There was chalk for drawing. What was lacking? Paper to draw on. The torments of his will intensified. He looked at the fish again and said to it, “If I want to draw you, I can only shed my skin and draw on my skin.” He could have drawn on the fish’s skin, just as Yitzhak Kummer drew on Balak’s skin, but Balak was a dog, whose skin absorbs color, which is not true of a damp creature full of moisture, where the color spreads in the moisture and will not register a form.

Bezalel Moshe yielded and returned the fish to the bag. He was about to walk to Fishl’s wife, for the time had already come to prepare the fish for the meal.

Without doubt Bezalel Moshe would have brought the fish to make a meal of it, were it not that the fish was destined for greater things. What greater things? Why use words if you can see with your own eyes?

Now when Bezalel Moshe put the fish into the tallit and tefillin bag, his hand happened upon a tefillah for the head. He saw the tefillah and was surprised. What was that tefillah doing here? One cannot say that it had remained in the bag with Fishl’s knowledge, for what would Fishl do without a tefillah for the head? One cannot say that it had remained in the bag without Fishl’s knowledge, for does a man who has a head remove his tefillin in order to pray and take the one for the arm but not the one for the head? You must conclude that Fishl had another. But if so, what was this one doing here? He had found a flaw in it and ceased using it, and perhaps the parchment with the verses had even been taken out, and there was only an empty case here.

Had Bezalel Moshe known that it was a kosher tefillah, he would have kissed it and run to the synagogue and given it to Reb Fishl, and Reb Fishl would have placed it on his head and prayed and finished his prayer and returned home to eat breakfast and examine his accounts and lend to borrowers in their hour of need and eat the day’s dinner and lay himself upon his bed and sleep until the fourth meal and eat and attend afternoon and evening prayers and return and eat the evening meal and gratify the Holy One, blessed be He, with blessings for pleasures and with the grace after meals. But now, since Bezalel Moshe did not know that the tefillah was kosher, he did not run to the synagogue and did not return the tefillah to Reb Fishl, and Reb Fishl was prevented from praying and from eating his fill, and so on.

And why was the head tefillah left in the bag? Because of Reb Fishl’s craving for a fish dish. When he sent the fish to his wife and cleared out his tallit and tefillin bag, he did not take care about what he removed, and the head tefillah had been left there. And what caused Bezalel Moshe to suppose that it was flawed? Because the straps were dirty, like the cords used to tie up chicken legs, and they were tattered, and the paint on them had crackled, for it is a commandment revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai that the straps of tefillin must be black. The tefillah itself was wrinkled and colored like a goose’s bill. The rim was broken and it was coated with a finger’s thickness of grease.

Bezalel Moshe said to the fish, “Since a cat, which is not a kosher animal, had the merit of wearing tefillin, you, who are kosher, and who are a Sabbath dish, and who are perhaps even the reincarnated soul of a saint — so much the more so are you worthy of the commandment of wearing tefillin. But what can I do? Your Creator did not create you with a head for wearing tefillin, for your head is narrow and long, like that of a goose. In any event, I’ll tie the tefillah on you with its straps, and if you don’t take your mind off the tefillah, you shall be garbed in splendor.”

What was that story about the cat and the tefillin which Bezalel Moshe mentioned to the fish? If you do not know, I shall tell you.

At that time all of Galicia was in an uproar about a certain Enlightener of the age who wanted to get rid of his wife, but she refused to accept a bill of divorce. He went and took a cat and placed his head tefillah on it. The woman’s father saw what sort of a man he was and forced his daughter to accept her bill of divorce.

Thus a head that was not required to wear tefillin merited tefillin, and Reb Fishl, who was required to wear tefillin, was kept from the commandment of tefillin. Why? Because he had not been careful to make certain that his tefillin were tidy and that their straps were black. For had he made sure that they were tidy and that the straps were black, the orphan would not have been sure that he had found a flawed tefillah, and he would have run to return it to Reb Fishl, and Reb Fishl would have prayed and returned home and eaten breakfast and sat and examined the accounts of his loans and he would have made loans to merchants in their hour of need, and he who needed to be repaid would have been repaid, and thus a religious duty would have been done, for it is said that the payment of a debt is a religious duty.

10

The Form of a Man

While the fish was being ornamented with the head tefillah, Fishl was looking for his head tefillah and not finding it. That is the essence of the story, and the entire story is as follows. After sending the fish to his wife and preparing himself to pray, he filled his pipe with tobacco and saw to his bodily needs. He stayed there as long as he stayed and washed his hands to recite the blessing one recites after using the toilet, and then he went to wrap himself in his tallit and tefillin and pray. His thoughts began to race about within him. One said: Good-for-nothing, again you’ve forfeited the Kedushah and Barekhu. And one said: Since you’re praying by yourself, you’re the master of your own prayers, and you’re not dependent on the prayer leader, who waits for the old men who take a long time to recite the Shema and the Eighteen Benedictions. Since Fishl did not like the thoughts that were racing about, he removed his mind from them to make room for the prayer itself. He said: Well, while I pray, Hentshi Rekhil will be preparing the fish, and if she has not managed to prepare it for the morning meal, I shall be content with those things that open up the gut, and I shall eat the fish at noon. All of those foods came and settled in his mouth. He hurriedly shook out his tallit and placed it on his shoulder and examined the fringes and wrapped himself in it and recited the blessing and recited all the appropriate verses in the prayer book. Then he reached out his arm and took the hand tefillah and placed it correctly on his upper arm, on the distended flesh over the bone, which was swollen because of all the fat, until a good part of the tefillah sank into it. I do not know whether he was accustomed to bind the strap around his arm seven times or nine times, and what I do not know, I do not say. Then he reached out his hand for the head tefillah and did not find it. And why did he not find it? Because it was bound around the fish’s head. He sought and searched and groped, and there was nothing he did not look under. But he did not find it. He stooped to look under his belly. Perhaps it had fallen on the floor. And even though had it fallen on the floor he would have to fast all that day — and what a day, a fish day like this he still bent over to the floor and did not find it.

Reb Fishl stood alone in the synagogue, wrapped in his tallit and adorned with his arm tefillah, and he shouted, “Nu, nu!” That is, “Give me a head tefillah.” But there was no one there to hear him shouting. Had the orphan been in the synagogue, he would have heard and brought him a head tefillah, and Fishl would have recited the blessing for tefillin and prayed, and so on. Since he had sent the fish with the orphan, Reb Fishl was alone in the synagogue, and even if he shouted all day, his shouts would not be heard. When would they be heard? In any event not before afternoon prayers. Since it was a hasidic synagogue, they recited afternoon prayers late, just before the stars came out.

An expedient occurred to him, and he opened the box under the reading stand, for men who come to pray every day customarily leave their tallitot and tefillin in the synagogue. He found a torn prayer book and flawed tsitsit and the case of an arm tefillah and an old calendar and a broken shofar and the alef made of tin that is hung up for a firstborn who is not yet redeemed, and a scribe’s pen. But tefillin were not to be found. And why didn’t he find any? Because people had stopped leaving their tallitot and tefillin in the synagogue. Why? Because of a drunken beadle in the town who had been discharged. He had looked for a teaching job and found none. He used to take tallitot and tefillin, and sell them cheaply to people from the villages, and he would drink up the profits in brandy. Now, picture this: a man has recited the blessing for the arm tefillah but has no head tefillah. Talking is forbidden between putting on the arm tefillah and the head one, and he could not find a head tefillah. Even had he stood there all day, the day would not have stood still, and there was reason to fear the time for prayer might pass.

He rummaged through the box under the table and found what he found: ritual articles that were no longer fit for use. But what he wanted, he did not find. Now you see how expert a person must be in the necessary religious rules. For had Fishl known, he would have followed the rule for someone who only has a single tefillah: he puts it on and blesses it, since each tefillah is a separate commandment in itself. This is the law when a person is under duress: if he can only put on one, he puts on the one he can.

At that moment, while Reb Fishl’s world was falling in on him, Bezalel Moshe was sitting in the shade of a tree and playing with the fish and with the tefillah on the fish’s head. To avoid dishonoring the dead, I shall not repeat all the words that Bezalel Moshe said to the fish, such as, “Brow that never wore tefillin,” and the like. Finally he changed his mind and said to the fish, “Now we shall remove the tefillah from your head, so that Satan won’t come and accuse those Jews who sin with their bodies. For you are not commanded to put on tefillin but do so, and they, who are commanded, do not put on tefillin.”

As he touched the fish to remove the tefillah from its head, his fingers began to tremble again with desire to draw, like all artists whose hands are eager to work. For if they have succeeded in making one form, they wish to make another lovelier still. And if they have not succeeded, they are even more avid to do so, as many as seven times, a hundred times, a thousand times. As you know, Bezalel Moshe had drawn the sign of Pisces that day, and it had not come out well, because he had never seen a fish in his life. Now that a fish had been shown to him, his soul truly yearned to draw a fish. Out of desire for action his fingers trembled, nor did he take note of the nature of the fish, for it is not the way of fish to absorb color.

He passed the piece of chalk across the fish’s skin the way artists do before they draw. They mark a kind of guideline, and that line shows them what to do. Thus Bezalel Moshe drew a line and went back and drew another line, and between one line and another the form of Reb Fishl Karp emerged, until the image of the fish was effaced beneath that of Reb Fishl Karp. And this is something quite unusual, for Reb Fishl’s head was thick and round, and the head of that fish was long and narrow like the head of a goose.

And how did Bezalel Moshe come to draw the form of a man, when he had intended to draw the form of a fish? When he reached out his hand to draw, the form of the fish was transmuted into the form of Reb Fishl, and the form of Reb Fishl was transmuted into the form of the fish, and he drew the form of Reb Fishl on the fish’s skin. Strange are the ways of artists, for when the spirit throbs within them, their being is negated and they are acted upon. They are directed by the spirit, which obeys the commandment of the God of all spirit and flesh. And why was Reb Fishl transformed into a fish? Because he was a lover of fish.

11

Between an Arm Tefillah

and a Head Tefillah

I return to Fishl Karp — not to the Fishl Karp whom the artist drew, but to the Fishl Karp whom his Maker created.

Even before the time came to eat, his mind was driven to distraction by hunger. This is a virtue of man over fish. A fish can subsist without eating for up to a thousand days. A man can remain without eating no longer than twelve days. And Reb Fishl Karp not even a single day.

Bezalel Moshe heard the sound of passersby. He was frightened lest they ask him, “What is that in your hand?” And that they would see what he had done and tell Reb Fishl, and Reb Fishl would scold him, and everyone would say that Reb Fishl was saintly, for it is the way of the world that if a householder scolds a poor orphan, everyone joins in scolding him. He quickly concealed the fish and directed his feet toward Reb Fishl’s house.

If the passersby had not interrupted him, he would have removed the head tefillah from the fish and erased the picture of Reb Fishl he had drawn on the fish’s skin. Since the passersby did interrupt him, he did not manage to do even one of the things he ought to have done. He neither removed the tefillah nor erased the picture of Reb Fishl from the fish’s skin, and he trusted that the tefillah would fall off the fish’s head by itself. As for the picture, he expected that moisture would ooze out of the fish’s damp skin and erase it.

Bezalel Moshe arrived at Hentshi Rekhil’s and handed her Reb Fishl’s tallit and tefillin bag. And in the bag lay the fish, glory bound to its head and the face of the fish like that of Reb Fishl. Hentshi Rekhil was of her husband’s mind. She comprehended that if Fishl had sent her his tallit and tefillin bag, certainly something important to eat was concealed within it. The smell of the fish came and told her, You are not mistaken. She quickly took it and hid it so that her neighbors would not notice what had been brought her, and she sent the bearer off without any food, letting him go off far hungrier than when he set out on Reb Fishl’s errand.

The orphan left Reb Fishl’s house hungry, and his hunger walked with him. It would have been good had Reb Fishl’s wife given him some food, which he would have eaten, and then he would have returned to the synagogue and saved Reb Fishl from hunger. But she dismissed the errand boy without food. And since hunger plagued him, he wanted to eat, for he had long since learned that if you put off hunger, it grows ever more importunate.

He had a penny which he had received in payment for drawing a memorial dedication for the abandoned woman’s orphan daughter. He had written her relatives’ dates of death in her prayer book. He had kept the penny in his pocket to buy paper or paints or red ink. Now that hunger seized him, he put his victuals before his art.

He went to buy bread. A peddler appeared with baskets of his fruit. The orphan thought to himself: Half the summer has already passed, and I still haven’t tasted a fruit. I’ll buy myself a few cherries. He bought a penny’s worth of cherries and went out of the city, sat under a tree, and ate the cherries and threw the stones at the birds, watching to see how they flew. He forgot Reb Fishl and the fish and delighted his eyes with the birds’ flight. He began to perfume their flying with the verse “As the birds fly,” to the melody of Rabbi Netanel the Cantor. His heart filled with the force of the melody, and he began to think of the power granted to human beings. Some are given a melodious voice, like Rabbi Netanel, who stirred people’s heart with love of the Lord when he opened his mouth in song, and some are given power in their fingers to make skilled handiwork, like Israel Noah, his father. Rabbi Netanel had the merit of emigrating to the Land of Israel, and Israel Noah his father had enjoyed no such merit but had fallen from the church roof and died. Some people say that the non-kosher wine that he had been given made him fall down and die, and others say he went out to work without eating first, because they had finished all the bread in his home, and hunger had seized him, and he had collapsed and died.

His father’s death oppressed his heart, and he was sad. The birds came, and with their flight they carried his mind away from its gloom. He looked at the way the birds fly and sing and how they trace shapes in the sky with their flight. Although the shapes were not visible, nevertheless they were engraved before his eyes and upon his heart. The birds are beloved, since the power to fly is given to them. If the power to fly were given to man, his father would not have died. Now that he was dead, other artisans had come and painted the walls of the Great Synagogue.

The orphan set aside his grief over his father for grief over the Great Synagogue. Ugly drawings had been imposed upon its walls. Far worse were those that had been imposed upon the Tailors’ Synagogue, where they had heaped up pictures of birds that did not even look like a likeness. If the painters had raised their eyes upward, they would have seen what a bird was. If so, why did the people of Buczacz praise the artists and their paintings? Because the people of Buczacz walk stooped over all their lives and never raise their eyes above their heads, and they do not see the creatures of the Holy One, blessed be He, except for the fleas in their felt boots. Therefore those drawings look pretty to them. But I shall show them how the creatures of the Holy One, blessed be He, look and how it is fitting to draw them.

From the birds in the sky he returned to the fish he had drawn. At that moment he was grateful to Fishl Karp, without whom he would not have seen the form of a fish. From now on, said the orphan to himself, if I come to draw the sign of Pisces, I won’t look in old festival prayer books, but I’ll draw as my eyes instruct me.

At that moment there was no one happier in Buczacz than Bezalel Moshe, the orphan, and no one in Buczacz was sadder than Reb Fishl, the moneylender. This is indeed a wonder: here is a poor person without enough food for a single meal, and here is a rich man who could have held banquets and celebrations all his life with the interest on his interest. The one was happy because of the birds in the sky, and the other was grieved because of his fish, which he was kept from eating.

Fishl saw there was no point in standing in the synagogue and shouting “Nu, nu” when there was no one to hear his “nu, nus.” The thought came to him that perhaps he had left the head tefillah in his tallit and tefillin bag when he had sent off the fish. Without further delay he removed his tallit and covered the arm tefillah with the sleeve of his garment and rushed home. He already visualized himself with the head tefillah adorning his head, praying swiftly and washing his hands for a meal. He swallowed his saliva and planned to double each of his steps and not to delay for anything in the world.

I too shall do as Fishl did and I shall not tarry until I reach the end of the story. For everything that has a beginning has an end. Happy is he whose end is finer than his beginning. Here, with the story of Fishl, though its beginning is apparently fine, its end is certainly not fine. If you wish to know, here it is before you.

12

The Thoughts of a Hungry Man

Indeed Fishl charged his legs according to the saying taught in the midrash: The belly charges the legs. However, our sages of blessed memory meant that by the power of eating the body has the power to charge its legs, whereas I interpret the teaching thus: Because he craved food, he found the power in his legs to bear the charge of his belly.

Thus Fishl hurried and did not tarry. He did not tarry, but the fortune of his meal tarried. He was not delayed; others delayed him. Where did they delay him? Close to his home, right next to the door of his house. So many people were there that he could not find the door. What did all of those people want at his house, and why had they gathered there, and why were they noisy and turbulent, and what caused them to besiege his house? Go and ask them when you are forbidden to speak, because you are in between the head and arm tefillin. As much as his soul clamors to know, no one tells him. Of such a situation it is fitting to say: There is no servant woman who has not got six mouths. Yet when you want to hear something, there is not one mouth to tell you.

He had a little girl whom he loved more than all of his other daughters, and she loved him too. She saw her father. She came and rose up on her tiptoes and wrapped his neck in her two arms and said, “Oy, Papa, oy, Papa.” He could no longer restrain himself and asked her, “Why has the whole town gathered in front of our house?” The girl repeated, “Oy, Papa, don’t you know?” And she said no more. Being small, she believed that her father knew everything and that he had asked in order to test her. If it’s something that everyone knows, does her father not know more than they? She answered him in kind, “Papa, don’t you know?” Fishl saw that the world was conspiring against him, and even the daughter of his old age, whose voice chattered on and on without stopping, would not tell him. Nor were his astonishments finished yet. While he was aching to know what had happened, he heard people saying, “He did well to lie down and die. In any event, he must be buried.” Fishl understood that someone had died, but he was puzzled about why they said he had done well. Is death a fine thing? There is nothing better for a man than to eat and drink, and if one is dead, not only does one neither eat nor drink, but one becomes food for maggots. He stooped in sadness and lowered his eyes to the earth. The earth raised itself up and whispered to him, “Now you are treading upon me with your feet. Tomorrow I shall cover you.” It also whispered, “You may believe that I am sad because of you. I am sad for those who will bear your coffin, who will have to carry such a big-bellied man as you.”

As he looked at the earth, he saw that the earth was dry. He began to converse with himself. He said, If a man dies, the neighbors pour out their water, and here, besides sewage, there is no sign that they have poured out water. Little by little his mind reached the truth — that no person had died here. When his mind reached that truth, it did not know what to do with it. For if no person had died, why must there be a burial? But they had explicitly said that he must be buried. And if there is no dead person, why need there be a burial? One way or another, did they not say that he had laid himself down and died?

Had Fishl been full, he would not have wasted time with such thoughts, but he would have entered his house, washed his hands, and sat down to eat, and after the meal he would have wiped his mouth and said, “What is that rumor that I heard, that someone died there? Who died?” Now that he was weak from hunger he turned his thoughts to death. He thought again: Since they mentioned burial, that means there is a dead person there. If so, if there is a dead person there, why isn’t the beadle calling, Come out and accompany the dead? His thoughts began to devolve from person to person. He was alarmed lest someone who owed him money had died.

The thoughts that did him ill now turned kinder to him, for the idea came to mind that no person had died, for had a person died, they would have poured out water, and the beadle would be summoning people to the funeral. If so, what had died? A firstborn beast had died, which had to be buried, as is the law for a firstborn animal that dies. In any event, Fishl was somewhat puzzled as to why it had died at his house and not elsewhere. In any event, it had done a good deed in dying, for the city was released from its mischief. That it died at his house was a coincidence.

Although Fishl said that it was by chance, his mind was nevertheless disturbed, lest the animal had purposely chosen to die at his house, as in the story of the ewe and the old man.

What is the story of the ewe and the old man? It happened in our city that when the flock went out to graze every day, one ewe would leave the rest and go and stand before a certain house and bleat. One day the owner of the house fell ill. The ewe came and bleated. Every day its voice was thin, but this day its voice was strong. Every day its voice was short, and this day its voice was long. People saw that the patient’s face was changing because of his great suffering, for his heart was tormenting him because of his misdeeds, and his torments were etching themselves in his face. They believed that his face had changed because of his pains, and were he to sleep without disturbance, his torments would abate. They went out to drive away the ewe, but it would not move. They hit it with a stick, and it would not move. That day a soothsayer came to town. He heard and said, “You are struggling to drive it away in vain.” “Why?” He said, “I shall tell you a story. There were two friends in the town. One fell ill and was about to die. At the time of his death he deposited a purse full of coins in his friend’s hands and said to him, ‘My daughter is young and does not know how to keep money. Keep these coins for her until she reaches maturity. And when she finds a good match, give her her coins as a dowry.’ One man took the coins and the other turned his face to the wall and died. The orphan girl was close to maturity, and the holder of the deposit did not deliver the coins to her, but he buried them for himself under the threshold of his house. He said, ‘No one was present when the coins were transferred. If I don’t deliver them to the dead man’s daughter, no one will claim them.’ No one was present when the orphan girl’s coins were transferred. Just a creature of the Holy One, blessed be He, was present to see and to hear. It was a ewe from the flock. And when the orphan girl reached maturity, the ewe pitied her and came to bleat and remind the man that the time had come for him to keep his word to his dead friend and return the money that the orphan girl’s father had deposited with him for a dowry. As long as he doesn’t return the orphan girl’s money, the ewe won’t leave the threshold of his house.” They went and asked the dying man, “The money that your friend deposited with you — where is it?” He did not manage to tell them before he died. And the ewe died too. They sought to remove its body from the house, but they could not. The miracle worker said to them, “Dig beneath it and remove it with the earth.” They dug and found a purse full of coins. They went and handed the coins over to the rabbi for the orphan girl. The ewe relinquished its place and they buried it.

Fishl began to fear that the ram had died in front of his house to remind him of some sin. He scrutinized his deeds and could find nothing in himself except that once he had lent someone money in his hour of need and he had forgotten to remind him that the loan was subject to the permitted form of interest. He began to add up how much interest he had received. His presence of mind returned immediately, and he cleared a way for himself to his house.

13

A Homily on Reincarnation and the Conclusion

Upon entering his house he saw a kind of dirty creature that gave off the smell of a fish lying on the floor, and on it was some object that would not have been recognizable as a tefillah were it not for its straps. Fishl shouted a great shout, “Oy, my fish!” He shouted a second shout, “Oy, my tefillah!”

The fish was squashed and spotted. Fishl’s face, which Bezalel Moshe had drawn with chalk on the fish’s skin, had already been effaced by the damp skin and nothing remained of it but the dirtiest dirt. Stranger than that was the tefillah. Until it landed on the fish’s head, it had been yellow. Once it had sat on the fish’s head, the color of the chalk with which Bezalel Moshe had drawn Fishl’s face had clung to it and blackened it.

Before Fishl was freed of one fear, he saw that his head tefillah had been thrown down on the ground. Grief seized him, and he feared that the fish, in revenge, had thrown his head tefillah on the ground to force him to fast until after evening prayers to delay his enjoyment. He grew furious at that ingrate: had he not bought the fish from the fisherman, it would have descended into the priest’s belly without a benediction. In his great anger a fit of apoplexy gripped him.

After stripping off his clothes and letting his blood, they found the arm tefillah on his upper arm and stood in astonishment. Could it be that a man with a brain in his skull would put on the arm tefillah but not the head tefillah? Before they could resolve the matter of Fishl, they were perplexed by the matter of the fish. For never in their lives had they heard that you could catch tefillin-laying fish in the Strypa, and even the most absolute of fish eaters in Buczacz said, “Never in our lives have we seen a fish crowned with tefillin.”

There was in our city a research society called The Sons of Chance, because they used to say that everything happened by chance. For example, if Reuben ate bread, it was by chance that Reuben had found bread to eat — otherwise why is it that others seek bread but do not find it? Thus it was by chance that the fish found a tefillah. How? For example, a Jew had fallen into the river, and his tefillin tumbled out of his baggage, and the head tefillah caught on the fish’s head. No chance event transcends its simple meaning; it is a happenstance like any other.

However, you would do well to know that opposing them there was an elite circle in our city concerned with the wisdom of truth; some of its members met during the ten fateful days between Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, and others regularly after midnight penitential prayers, both in deepest seclusion. They heard the story of the fish and said what they said, but they, too — that is, the sages of truth — failed to discover the truth. However, from their words we have learned some of the secrets of Creation, including information about the reincarnation of souls. Some of what the mind can grasp, I shall reveal to you.

We have learned in mystical works that there are seventy souls, which are reincarnated in several animals, and they are called the Sign of the Lion, the Sign of the Ox, the Sign of the Eagle, the Sign of the Virgin, the Sign of the Scorpion, the Sign of the Ram. For we have found that the Twelve Tribes are compared to animals: Judah to the Lion—“A lion’s cub is Judah”; Joseph to the firstborn ox; Issachar to a strong ass; “Dan shall be a serpent”; “Benjamin is a ravenous wolf.” Clearly the whole secret of reincarnation is that the evil impulse alters everyone according to his deeds, and some are like a lion, a serpent, a donkey.

If so, why are saintly people reincarnated as fish? Because a fish’s entire life is in water, and water is a place of purification. When they are removed from the water, their life ceases. Similarly, the righteous live all their lives in purity. Furthermore, the eyes of the saintly are open to their deeds just like fish, who have no lids on their eyes, which are always open; and through the merit of the righteous the Eye on high is ever open upon us for good. Also, the righteous are scrupulous not to be gripped by sins, but we are like fish caught in a net. Another thing: the righteous always pour out their hearts in repentance like water before the Lord, which is how the Targum translated the verse “And they drew water and poured it out.”

We have also learned which are the fish in which the souls of the righteous are reincarnated; and what is the fate of those who make a show of righteousness but are not righteous — whether they are also reincarnated as fish; and what is the fate of those whom the world sees as righteous but are neither righteous nor evil.

Know that there are three classes: one consists of utter saints; one of those who pretend to be righteous and are neither righteous nor wicked; and one of the utterly wicked who pretend to be saintly. Absolute saints are reincarnated as kosher fish. The righteous who are neither saintly nor wicked are reincarnated as fish whose kashrut is debatable, for in some places they are permitted and in some places they are absolutely forbidden. And those who pretend to be righteous and are utterly wicked are reincarnated as non-kosher fish, since they are many and multiply and are fruitful like the fish, and they send forth progeny who are similar to them. Therefore the non-kosher fish are more plentiful than the kosher ones. They — that is, those evildoers whose countenance is saintly — are acolytes of Dagon, the Philistine god, who from his waist down was in the form of a fish and from his waist up was in the form of a man. Job prayed concerning them: “Let them curse it who curse the day, who are ready to rouse the Leviathan,” which Rashi of blessed memory interpreted to mean: “To be childless in their joining together, to isolate their company from the society of man and wife, with no children.”

We have other dread and marvelous secrets such as the reason why a fish has the merit of being eaten on the Sabbath and festivals. Moreover, there is a fish that has the merit of being eaten on the eve of Yom Kippur and a fish that is eaten at the Purim banquet, and there is a fish that is placed on the table of absolute saints, and there is a fish that descends into the belly of the utterly wicked. That is why some are cooked in vinegar and, in contrast, some are cooked in sugar. And also why it is that there is a fish we eat on the first day of the festival and one that we eat on the second day. Most profound are these matters, and I shall reveal only the tiniest bit here: a righteous man who possesses the sanctity of the Land of Israel has the merit of being reincarnated as a fish that we eat on the first day of the festival, and the soul of a righteous man who does not possess the sanctity of the Land of Israel is reincarnated in a fish that we eat on the second day. This is the secret of the saying of the rabbis of blessed memory: the second day compared to the first day is like an ordinary day.

Why did they not ask Fishl what the reason was for his wearing the arm tefillah and why his head tefillah was on the fish? In truth, they did ask him, but just as a fish does not answer, so, too, Fishl did not answer, because his tongue, may the Merciful One preserve us, was taken from him and he became mute.

I do not know what the end of the fish was. Fishl’s end was thus: from then on he grew ever weaker until he died. But some say this is not so, that he regained his vigor, and that he even grew stronger, but on the Sabbath of Hanukkah, which was also the New Moon, between one pudding and another, he suffered a stroke once again and gave up the ghost. I do not know whether he died between the Sabbath pudding and the Hanukkah pudding, or whether he died between the Hanukkah pudding and the New Moon pudding. And, as you know, what is not clear to me, I do not say.

After he died his daughters built a great monument on his tomb, to honor the man lying beneath it. Since Fishl’s Hebrew name was Ephraim, who was blessed with the phrase “And they shall abound like fish”—the fish who are fruitful and multiply, and the evil eye has no power over them — and since he was born in Adar, the month of the constellation Pisces, the stonecarver carved a pair of fish on his grave. Such fine-looking fish you will not find on the graves of other Fishls or others born in the month of Adar, because the stonecarver used the orphan Bezalel Moshe to draw the form of the fish on the stone before carving them. Since before they carve letters or forms, stonecarvers customarily draw them on the stone, and since Bezalel Moshe became a specialist in the form of fish, having examined so intently that fish which Fishl had sent with him, he drew the fish well.

Years went by and the monument sank into the earth. Not only do the living finish beneath the earth, so, too, do the dead, and so, too, the things we fashion in their memory. Some people have the merit of having their monuments stand for one generation, and other monuments stand for two. In the end they gradually sink until they are swallowed in the earth. So, too, Fishl Karp’s monument sank and was swallowed in the earth, but its tip did not sink. One can still see a pair of fish there. In another city people would say that a fish is buried there, and they would make up alarming stories, such as that once, while a fish was being prepared for the Sabbath, it raised its head and called out, “Remember the Sabbath day and keep it holy.” So it was known that the soul of a Sabbath observer had been reincarnated in it, and the rabbi ordered it to be buried in the cemetery. In Buczacz people would not tell such a story. Just as Buczacz is full of Torah, so, too, is it full of wisdom, and it does not like wonder tales that are not consistent with nature. Buczacz likes things as they really happen, and just as they happened, so does Buczacz tell them.

And since I was born in Buczacz and raised in Buczacz, mine are the ways of Buczacz, and I tell nothing but the truth. For I say that nothing is finer than truth, since aside from being beautiful in itself, it also teaches men wisdom. What does the story of Fishl Karp teach? That if you are going to pray, do not set your eyes upon meat and fish and other delicacies, but let your path be holy. Lest you say that Fishl is one matter and you are another, He knows that if you are not avid in the pursuit of meat and fish, you are avid for other things. The question of which is better is still open. We recite a blessing on fish and meat, both before and after eating them. Which of your other desires merits a blessing? May all our actions be for a blessing.