The Spinoza of Market Street - Isaac Bashevis Singer [54]
I didn't see him dead. But those who did swore that he looked like an old corpse that had been dug up from the grave. Pieces were dropping from his body. The face could not be recognized, it was a shapeless pulp. It was said that when he was being cleansed for burial, an arm came off, and then a foot; I wasn't there, but why should people lie? Men who are called back rot while they are alive. He was buried in a sack outside the graveyard fence, at midnight. After his death, an epidemic struck our town, and many innocent children died. Shifra Leah, that deluded woman, put up a stone for him and went to visit his grave. What I mean to say is--it is not proper to recall the dying. If she had let him go at his appointed hour, he would have left behind a good name. And who knows how many men who were called back are out in the world today? All our misfortunes come from them.
--- Translated by Mirra Ginsburg
A Piece of Advice
Talk about a holy man! Our powers are not theirs; their ideas are not for us to understand! But let me tell you what happened to my own father-in-law.
At the time, I was still a young man, a mere boy, and a follower of the rabbi of Kuzmir--who was there more worthy? My father-in-law lived in Rachev, where I boarded with him. He was a wealthy man and ran his house in a grand manner. For instance, look at what happened at meal times. Only after I had washed my hands and said the blessing, did my mother-in-law take the rolls from the oven. So that they were still hot and fresh! She timed it to the very second. In my soup, she put hardboiled eggs. I wasn't accustomed to such luxuries. In my own home the loaves of bread were baked two weeks in advance. I used to rub garlic on a slice, and wash it down with cold well water.
But at my father-in-law's everything was fancy--brass door latches, copper pans. You had to wipe your boots on a straw mat before crossing the threshold. And the fuss that was made about brewing coffee with chicory! My mother-in-law was descended from a family of Misnagids--the enemies of the Hasids--and to Misnagids the pleasures of this world mean something.
My father-in-law was an honest Jew, a Talmudic scholar; also a dealer in timber, and a mathematician of sorts. He used to have his own hut in the forest; and took a gun and two dogs when he went there, because of robbers. He knew logarithms; and by tapping the bark of a tree with his hammer, could tell if the tree were as sound inside as out. He knew how to play a game of chess with a Gentile squire. Whenever he had a free moment, he read one of the Holy Books. He carried the "Duty of the Heart" about with him in his pocket. He smoked a long pipe with an amber mouthpiece and a silver cover. He kept his prayer shawl in a hide bag, and for his phylacteries he owned silver cases.
He had two faults. First of all, he was a fervent Misnagid. What a Misnagid--he burned like fire! He called the Hasids "the heretics" and he was not ashamed to speak evil of the saintly Baal Shem himself. The first time I heard him talk like that I shuddered. I wanted to pack up and run away. But the rabbi of Kuzmir was against divorce. You married your wife, not your father-in-law. And he told me Jethro, Moses' father-in-law, hadn't been a Hasid either. I was amazed. Jethro later became a holy man. But that's putting the cart before the horse. . . .
My father-in-law's second fault was his uncontrollable anger. He had been able to conquer all his other moral weaknesses, but not that one. If a merchant did not repay a debt on time and to the penny, he called him a swindler