The Blasphemer

profaning all that was holy had long been a way of life for him, so what did he have to lose in taking up with a Warsaw whore?

Faithlessness can also lead to insanity. In Malopol, our village, this is what happened to Chazkele. I knew him well; I even went to heder with him one winter. His father, Bendit, was a coachman. He lived on the hill among the poor. He had a dilapidated hut, a broken-down stable and a nag called Shyva, who was as emaciated as a skeleton and terribly old. This horse lived more than 40 years. Some believed that it was over 50. Why this animal existed so long, no one could understand, because Bendit drove it six days a week, made it carry heavy loads and fed it a mixture of straw and a little oats. It was said that Shyva was the reincarnation of a man who went bankrupt and came back as a horse to pay his debt with hard work.

Bendit was small, broad-shouldered, with yellow hair, a yellow beard and a face full of freckles. He addressed the horse as if it were human. He had six children and a wife, Tsloveh, who was famed for her curses. She cursed not only people but her cat, her chickens, even her washtub. Besides her living children, Tsloveh had a whole brood in the cemetery. She began to curse her infants when they still lay in her belly. When the baby kicked her, Tsloveh would scream, "May you not live to see the light."

Her children, five girls and only one boy--Chazkele, who was the third-born--always squabbled among themselves. When my father had to go to Lublin, I was sent to fetch Bendit and so I was familiar with their house. The woman walked around half naked and barefoot. Since Chazkele was good in heder, he was provided with a gabardine and boots. I was told that he had learned the alphabet and to read, and had even read the book of Genesis, all in one year. Chazkele had hair that was so yellow that it almost blinded you. His face was like his father's--white and densely freckled. I think his eyes were green. Even though Tsloveh was a faithful wife and never even looked at another man, Bendit called his son Chazkele Bastard. The girls also had nicknames: Tsipa the Snake, Zelda the Sloven, Alteh Dripnose, Keila Garbage, Rickel the Scratcher. Tsloveh herself was called Tsloveh Bigmouth in town. Once, when Bendit fell ill and Tsloveh went to the synagogue to pray at the holy ark, she addressed the Almighty, "Couldn't You find anyone to strike but Bendit? He must feed a wife and six worms. Father in heaven, it's better You plague the rich."

She began to name all the community leaders of Malopol. She advised God whom to give a boil on his side, a swelling on his rear, a burning of his insides. Fulcha the beadle had to drag her away from the scrolls.

His father and mother both loved Chazkele. No small thing, an only son and a scholar in addition. But the name Bastard remained. At the slightest provocation, Bendit removed the belt from his pants and whipped him. Tsloveh used to pinch him. There was a type of pinching in Malopol that was called "the little fiddle." It was a drawn-out thin pinch that made you see stars. Chazkele's sisters were proud of him and boasted about him to others, but at home they needled him and called him bench warmer, bookworm and other such nicknames. When his oldest sister, Tsipa the Snake, gave him his meal, she would say, "Eat until you choke" or "Drink until you burst." Two or three girls slept together on a pallet, but Chazkele had a bench bed for himself. Whoever made his bed would say to him, "Go to sleep and don't wake up."

Even in heder, Chazkele began to ask questions about God. If God is merciful, why do small children die? If He loves the Jews, why do the gentiles beat them? If He is the Father of all creatures, why does He allow the cat to kill the mouse? Our teacher, Fishele, was the first one to predict that Chazkele would grow up a nonbeliever. Later, when Chazkele began to study in the study house, he plagued the principal of our Yeshivah, Reb Ephraim Gabriel, with his queries. He found all kinds of contradictions in the Bible and in the Talmud. For example, in one place, it's written that God cannot be seen and, in another, that the elders saw Him and ate and drank with Him. Here it said that the Lord doesn't punish the children for the sins of their fathers and elsewhere that He takes revenge on the third and fourth generations. Reb Ephraim Gabriel tried to explain these things as well as he could, but Chazkele would not be put off so easily. The enlightened ones in Malopol were pleased with Chazkele's heresies, but even they advised him not to overdo it if he didn't want to be persecuted by the fanatics. But Chazkele would answer, "I don't give a damn. I want the truth."

He was slapped and thrown out of the study house. When Bendit heard of these goings on, he gave Chazkele a sound lashing. Tsloveh wailed that instead of having joy from her son, he only brought shame upon her. She went to cry on her mother's grave and to pray that Chazkele might see the right way. But Chazkele remained obstinate. He made friends with the town musicians, with Lippa the leech, with Lemmel the watchmaker, all people with little faith. On the Sabbath, he no longer prayed in the synagogue with the community but stood in the antechamber with the rough youths. For a short time, he even tried to learn Russian from the druggist's daughter, Stefania. When he reached the age of his bar mitzvah, his father brought him a pair of phylacteries from Lublin, but Chazkele refused to put them on. He said to his father, "What are they, nothing but the hide of a cow."

He got a heavy beating, but blows no longer bothered him. His build was small, like his father's, but he was strong and agile as an ape. On the 33rd day of Omer, when it is the custom for boys to go to the forests, he climbed up the highest tree. When he was in the mood, he helped his father carry heavy sacks of grain or barrels of kerosene. He got into brawls with gentile boys. Once he fought a whole gang of them alone and got a good thrashing. When any of the townspeople scolded him, he answered with insolence. He would say to an elder, "You are God's Cossack, aren't you? Why don't you stop giving false weights and false measures in your store?"

When Bendit convinced himself that this boy would not grow up to be a rabbi, he apprenticed him to Zalman the blacksmith; but Chazkele had no patience to fan the bellows all day. I don't know why he did it, but he stole books from the study house and went to read them in the women's section of the synagogue, which was empty all week long. When something in a book didn't please him, he erased the words with a pencil or he tore out the page. Once he was caught tearing out pages from a book and from then on, he wasn't permitted to enter the study house. My father didn't allow me to talk to him. Neither did the fathers of other young men. Chazkele was as good as excommunicated. He threw off the yoke of Jewishness completely. It was rumored that he smoked on the Sabbath. He went with Sander the barber to the tavern and drank vodka with him and ate pork. He took off his gabardine and managed to get a short jacket and a gentile cap somewhere. Even before he had grown a beard, he asked Sander to shave him. He searched only for sins. Bendit grew tired of beating him and no longer treated him as a son, but his mother and sisters still sided with him. Once on the Feast of Booths, Chazkele peeked into the booth of Reb Shimon the warden and made some nasty remark. Reb Shimon and his sons came out and beat him up, even though it was a holiday. He went home dripping blood. Late at night, three of Chazkele's sisters, Keila, Rickel and Alteh, stealthily entered Reb Shimon's booth and defecated there. In the morning, when Reb Shimon's wife, Baila Itta, went into the booth and saw the mess, she fainted. The rabbi sent for Bendit and warned him that if his son did not stop this scandalous behavior, he would forbid the townspeople to travel in his wagon and to send merchandise with him.

That feast day, even though it was forbidden, Bendit beat Chazkele with a heavy stick for such a long time that Chazkele lost consciousness. For months after, Chazkele became almost timid. I was told that he even began to study again, although I never met him in the study house. Then, a few days after Passover, Bendit's nag died. It lay with its protruding ribs in front of the stable, wet with sweat, salivating, urinating, heaving its sides. Crows hovered on the straw roof, ready to pick at the eyes of the carcass. Tsloveh and her daughters stood over the dying horse, wringing their hands and lamenting. Bendit cried as if it were Yom Kippur. I was there myself. Everybody went to look. The next day, early in the morning, when one of those who prayed in the study house opened the ark to take out the holy scroll, he found horse dung and a dead mouse there. A pauper who slept in the study house bore witness that Chazkele had gone there late at night and poked around in the ark. There was an uproar in Malopol. Butchers and barrel-makers went to Bendit's hut, intent on seizing Chazkele and punishing him for the sacrilege. Tsloveh met them at the door with a pail of slops. His sisters tried to scratch their eyes out. Chazkele hid under the bed. The crowd pulled him out and gave him what he deserved. He tried to defend himself, but they dragged him to the rabbi and there he confessed to everything. The rabbi asked, "What was the sense of it?" (continued overleaf)

And Chazkele said, "A God who can so torture an innocent nag is a murderer, not a God." He spat and cried. He spoke such words that the rabbi's wife had to stop her ears.

Bendit came running and the rabbi said to him, "Your Chazkele is what the Bible calls 'stubborn and rebellious.' In ancient times, such a one was taken to the gate of the town and stoned. Today, the four death punishments of the court--stoning, strangling, burning and beheading--have been abolished. But Malopol will not stand for this rascal anymore." On the spot, the elders decided to buy Bendit another horse, on the condition that Chazkele leave town. And so it happened. The next morning, Chazkele was seen walking on the road to Lublin, carrying a wooden box like a recruit. Tsloveh ran after him, bemoaning him like a corpse.

There was a community he-goat in Malopol, a first-born, which, according to the law, was not to be slaughtered. He chewed the straw from the thatch huts, peeled the bark from logs and, when there was nothing better to eat, he nibbled at an old prayer book in the synagogue yard. He had two crooked horns and a white beard. After Chazkele had gone, the people discovered that the he-goat was wearing phylacteries. Before he had left, Chazkele had fastened the head phylactery between the goat's horns, and the arm phylactery he bound to one of its legs. He even formed the letter sheen--the initial of the holy name Shodai--with the phylactery straps.

You can just imagine the outcry in Malopol. At that time, I myself had already begun to veer, so to speak, from the straight path. Against my father's wishes, I started to learn bookbinding. Several of my friends and I planned to go to America or to Palestine. Firstly, I didn't want to serve the czar nor to maim myself in order to avoid the service. Secondly, we had become enlightened and we no longer believed in boarding at the house of the fathers-in-law and letting our wives provide for us. I never went to America nor to Palestine, but at least I moved to Warsaw. After Chazkele left Malopol, he became our idol for a while.

• • •

The salesmen who went to Lublin for merchandise brought back news of Chazkele. The thieves of Piask tried to make him a partner to their foul business, but Chazkele declined. He would not steal other people's property, he said. One should live honestly. In Lublin, there were strikers who wanted to depose the czar. One of them even threw a bomb into a barracks. The bomb didn't explode, but the one who threw it was torn to shreds by the Cossacks' sabers. When these rebels heard about Chazkele, they wanted to make him one of them. But Chazkele said, "Is it the czar's fault that he was born a czar? Are the rich to blame for being lucky? Would you throw money away if you had it?" This was Chazkele. He had an answer for everything. One might think that he was ready to go to work and earn his bread, but he had no desire to work, either. He apprenticed himself to a carpenter; but when his master's wife asked him to rock the baby, Chazkele answered, "I'm not your nanny." He was thrown out immediately. There were missionaries in Lublin who attempted to convert him, and Chazkele asked them: "If Jesus is the Messiah, then why is the world full of evil? And if God can have a son, why can't He have a daughter?" The soul catchers realized that he was a hard nut to crack and let him go. He refused to accept alms. He slept on the street and almost died from hunger. After a while, he left for Warsaw.

I had already moved to Warsaw. I got married and became a bookbinder on my own. I met Chazkele and proposed to teach him the trade, but he said, "I'm not going to bind Bibles and sacred books."

"Why not?" I asked him.

"Because they are full of lies," he said. He wandered around on the Jewish streets--Krochmalna, Gnoyna, Smocha--dressed in tatters. He would stop in the square on Krochmalna Street and engage in discussions with anyone. He blasphemed God and the Anointed. I never knew that he was so well versed in the Scriptures and in the Talmud. He poured out quotations. He would stop a few bums who didn't know the alphabet and inform them that the earth is round and that the sun is a star or some such thing. They thought he was crazy. They punched him in the nose and he fought back. No matter how strong he was, they were stronger. A few times, he was arrested. So he sat in jail and enlightened the prisoners. He had nine measures of talk and was always ready to argue. According to him, nobody knew the truth--everybody deceived himself. I once asked him what, then, should be done, and he replied, "There's nothing to do. Wise are those who make an end to everything."

"If that's so," I asked, "why do you wander around in this chaotic world?"

And he said, "What's the hurry? The grave won't run away."

It seemed that there was no place in the world for Chazkele, but he finally did find something. Across the square, there was a brothel. The whores used to stand at the gate of the building each evening and sometimes even in daylight. The other tenants did everything they could to get rid of them, but the pimps bribed the authorities. It was just across from the window of my apartment and I saw it all. The moment evening fell, men began to appear there in shabby clothes; also soldiers and even schoolboys. The fee was, if I'm not mistaken, ten kopeks. Once I saw an old man wearing a long gabardine capote and with a white beard enter there. I knew him quite well, a widower. He most probably thought that no one saw him. What can an old man do if he has no wife?

I met Chazkele on the street. For the first time, he was decently dressed and he carried a bundle. I asked what he carried there and he said stockings. "Have you become a peddler?" I asked, and he said, "Women do need stockings." After a while, I saw him enter the brothel. He even stopped to talk to one of the prostitutes. To make it short, Chazkele sold stockings--but only in the brothels. This had become his livelihood. I was told that the loose females loved his talk and this is why they bought from him. He went to them during the day, when they had no guests. I often saw him walk by and each time, the bundle grew larger. Who could be better company for Chazkele? The streetwalkers were delighted with his banter. They fed him and accepted him as their own. How strange; the thieves in Warsaw had their leader, Berelle Spiegelglas, and now these dames had their Chazkele. Berelle Spiegelglas behaved sedately. Thieves have wives and children. They don't spit on everything. Loose women besmirch everybody. Chazkele stood with these creatures and told them about the sins of King David, King Solomon, Bathsheba, Abigail. They became high and mighty. If such saints could sin, why can't they? Everyone needs some justification.

Once a tart appeared who was different from the rest. Most of these girls came from poor little villages, many of them were sick. All they wanted was to make a few kopeks. This one was brazen, healthy, with red cheeks and the eyes of a vulture. I still remember her name, Basha. In the middle of the summer, she wore boots. As a rule, the pimp stood a few steps away or across the street and kept an eye on his property, so they wouldn't hide some money in their stockings or waste time with the urchins who came just to babble. Once in a while, these flesh dealers used to beat up one of their ladies and one could hear their screaming along the whole street. The policeman had been bought off and he played dead. But this Basha did what she wanted. She uttered such filth and carried on so that the neighbors had to close their windows in order not to hear her obscenities. She mimicked everyone, she teased the (continued on page 201)The Blasphemer(continued from page 148) passers-by. There was always a circle of ruffians around her and she held forth for them. You know their way of thinking: All women are rotten; everyone can be bought; the whole world is one big whorehouse. My Miriam came home one day and said, "Chaim, it's an ordeal to go out in the street. It's a danger to bring up children here." The moment I saved up a few rubles, I moved out to Panska Street.

Still, I visited Krochmalna Street from time to time. I got work there from the heders and study houses. Everybody knew that Chazkele was from my town and they told me about him. He became the teacher of the wanton females. He wrote letters for them. He dealt not only in stockings but also in kerchiefs and underwear. He had met Basha, and they had fallen in love. Somebody told me that she came from a decent home and that she took to this profession not because of poverty but because she liked to wallow in dirt. When the pimps learned that she loved Chazkele, they became jealous and wanted to break his neck. The girls took his part. To make it short, Basha left the brothel and went to live with Chazkele. One might think that one like Basha wouldn't care about being respectable, but she wanted to take Chazkele to the rabbi and get married according to the Law of Moses and of Israel. These females all dream about marriage. However, Chazkele refused. "What is a rabbi? An idler in a fur hat. And what is a canopy? A few yards of velvet. And what is a ketubah? A piece of paper." Basha insisted. For their kind to get married is a real achievement. Chazkele remained stubborn. The hoodlums sided with Basha now and wanted to knife him. The couple had to move to Praga, on the other side of the Vistula. There, no one knew them. But Chazkele could no longer sell stockings in the brothels, because the underworld accused him of shaming one of their own. He came out with a pushcart at the Praga bazaar, but he was not the only one. Besides, he spoiled his own business. A matron would come over to him to buy a pair of garters or a spool of thread and he would say to her, "Why do you wear a wig? It's not written anywhere in the Torah that one has to cut off one's own hair and wear someone else's. It was all invented by the rabbis." On the Sabbath, the market was deserted--but Chazkele brought out his wares. The strong men of the Sabbath Observers Society learned about him and they went out and threw all his merchandise into the gutters. Chazkele got a beating. Even as they were pounding him mercilessly, he argued: "To sell a handkerchief is a sin and to break a man's nose is a holy deed?" He quoted the Bible to these ignoramuses. He was suspected of being a missionary and he was banished from the market.

In due time, Basha gave birth to a boy. When a male child is born, one has to circumcise him, but Chazkele said, "I won't take part in this ancient ritual. The Jews learned it from the Bedouins. If God hates the foreskin, why are boys born with it?" Basha begged him to give in. Praga is not Moscow. It's full of pious Jews. Who has ever heard of a father who refuses to let his son be circumcised? His windowpanes were smashed. On the eighth day, a quorum of porters and butchers stormed in, together with a mohel, and they circumcised the baby. Two men seized and held Chazkele. A father has to recite the benedictions. Nothing could force Chazkele to say the holy words. Basha lay in bed behind the screen and poured out deadly curses on him. In the beginning, she had liked his foul language; but when a woman goes to live with a man and she becomes a mother, she wants to be like anyone else. From then on, their life became one bitter quarrel. She used to beat him up and drive him out of the house. Her cronies had to make a collection for her. After a while, she took the infant and went back to the brothel. Did she have a choice? The madam took care of the child. I knew that madam and her husband, Joel Bontz, as well. He used to pray in the little synagogue at number 12. In 1905, when the revolutionaries fought with the pimps, a bunch of the Red ones forced their way into the brothel and beat up the girls. It was in the morning. The madam ran into the little synagogue and screamed, "You stay here and pray, and there our merchandise is being ruined."

After Basha left him, Chazkele fell to pieces. He again walked around in rags. He couldn't peddle anything anymore and became a beggar. But even as a panhandler, he was a failure. He would stand in front of the synagogue, stretch out his hand and try to dissuade the worshipers from entering. "To whom are you praying?" he would say. "God is deaf. Besides, He hates the Jews. Did He rescue His people when Chmielnicki buried children alive and did He save them in Kishinev?" Nobody wanted to give a kopek to a heretic like this. Not a day passed without his being slapped. He would pick up a cigarette stub on the Sabbath and go to smoke it on Hasidic Twarda Street. He got a kopek or two somewhere and ate pork sausages on Yom Kippur in front of Aaron Sardiner's synagogue. There was a group of freethinkers in Warsaw and they offered to help him. He antagonized them also. I was told that he used to go to the madam's home to try to see his son and she wouldn't let him in. He went to Basha's brothel and she, too, chased him away. In the summer, he slept in a courtyard. In the winter, he went to the "circus." This is what they called the poorhouse. I met him several times on the street. He looked old and unkempt. He wore one boot and one slipper. He couldn't even afford to shave his beard. I said to him, "Chazkele, what will be the end of you?"

"It's all God's fault," he said.

"If you don't believe in God," I asked, "with whom do you wage war?"

"With those who speak in His name," he answered.

"And who created the world?" I asked.

"And who created God?" Chazkele asked in return.

He became sick and they took him to the hospital on Chysta Avenue. There he indulged in such antics and created such bedlam that they wanted to throw him out. A sick man was chanting the Psalms and Chazkele told him that King David, the author of the Psalms, was a murderer and a lecher. He told such wild jokes that the other patients held their stomachs from laughter. One man had a boil that had to be opened. He laughed so much at Chazkele's jokes that the boil burst open. To this day, I don't know what was wrong with Chazkele. Before his death, he asked that he be cut to pieces and thrown to the dogs.

Who listens to a madman? He was taken to the cleansing room and candles were placed at his head. He was dressed in shrouds and a prayer shawl, and the community gave him a plot in the suburban cemetery. Basha, his former mistress, and her companions rode after the hearse in droshkies. His son was five or six years old by this time and he recited Kaddish at the grave. If there is a God and Chazkele must account to Him for his deeds, it will be quite gay in heaven.