Authors: Yoram Kaniuk
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Ebenezer was born five months after Rebecca Schneerson came to the
Land of Israel. He didn't know who his father was. Rebecca Schneerson
married Nehemiah Schneerson a year and a month prior to that. Before
that her name was Rebecca Sorka.
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When Rebecca Sorka, who came to the Land of Israel as Rebecca
Schneerson, was born, the sun refused to shine. A Hasid who fled from a
city of which nothing remains but a few traces, and who was padded with
a blanket of feathers flying in the wind, then sat in a cellar and shouted.
Rebecca Sorka was born but she refused to open her eyes. They shook her
hard and she started breathing and when she opened her eyes she saw her
mother. Her mother looked at her and was scared: on her daughter's lips
was such strong contempt she was afraid to raise her to her breast to suckle
her. The baby started flowing toward her mother's breast and caught it in
her hands, she was strong enough to grab the breast and seek the nipple.
Her face was full and more pale than red and a lovely down covered her
head. As she suckled her, Rebecca's mother felt, maybe because of the
darkness in the room, that the baby refused to suck, that all she wanted
was to hold the breast. She was even more frightened, and waited for the
sun, but the sun didn't shine that day. The baby fell asleep with her mouth
stuck to her mother's breast. She didn't bite it and the midwife touched
her forehead and her sweat was cold. Outside, Jews gathered who had stayed in the synagogue and were waiting to return to their destroyed city,
and shouted, What a city with no sun! And in the yards when deaf Yossel's
rooster crowed, Yossel went to the woods to search for the sun and bring
its light, at that time the Hasid who shouted in the cellar died and Rebecca
Sorka chirped and a drop of blood appeared on her upper lip. Furious peasants lighted a big fire at the synagogue to appease the cross, and when the
fire started spreading, the baby smiled as her eyes stared at the flames
capering on the windowpane. That night deaf Yossel slaughtered his rooster
and when the fire was finally extinguished the rooster was found safe and
sound under the embers of the bonfire the furious peasants had set. An old
woman who claimed she remembered the children of Israel wandering from
the Promised Land and saw the Temple in its splendor dreamed that
from the belly of Leah Sorka came a witch. But Rebecca was too fragile
and delicate, according to her father, for them to bring three rabbis to
take the demon out of her. A Hasid stood outside at the gate and shouted:
Damned reincarnation, damned reincarnation, but at that time everybody
was concerned with the rooster that emerged whole from the fire and they
forgot Rebecca. Rebecca's father, who had already dreamed of expanding
his business outside the district, said: Over my dead body will they bring
rabbis to talk about the newborn baby. And Rebecca's mother, who nodded
to her husband in compassionate silence, prayed with restrained devotion
disturbed only by the sound of the crickets. The crickets that shouldn't
have been in the house that day chirped incessantly, and in the morning,
when the sun Yossel had sought in the forest decided to return to the city,
two scholars brought up the body of the Hasid from the cellar, his face was
wrenched in a contortion and under his eyes three holes were seen clearly.
The midwife claimed he was crucified. Many thought the holes were such
strong pleas that they broke through and erupted and brought upon him
the tormented death that bears a hint. After the Hasid was taken out of the
cellar, the midwife got up and fled the house.
That night, the tombstone of Rebecca the daughter and wife of Secret
Charity cracked, the Rebecca who was the mother of the grandmother of
Rebecca Sorka who would come to the Land of Israel on the first day of the
twentieth century and be called Rebecca Schneerson. Deaf Yossel, who went
to the cemetery with his hands stained with the blood of the rooster he had slaughtered right after they found him safe and sound from the fire, saw the
tombstone of Rebecca Secret Charity bending over and straightening up
again.
When a crow swooped down on him, he tried to flee but couldn't budge
from his place. Yossel, who contemplated Rebecca's birth, understood that
the devil came back to lodge in the city and Rebecca Secret Charity accepted the birth of Rebecca Sorka with a blessing. That was the anniversary
of a bold struggle remembered by only three men, the struggle between the
rabbi of Lody and Rabbi Israel of Koznitz.
The fate of Napoleon Bonaparte at the siege of Moscow then hung in
the balance. The rabbi of Lody, nine hundred kilometers from Moscow,
feared the secularization of the Jews that would come with the destruction
of Moscow, while the rabbi of Koznitz thought the fate of the Jews would
be better if Napoleon won. After a bitter struggle between the opponents,
the two decided that if neither side overcame, the war would intensify and
a bitter fate was in store for the Jews. Hence, the question was not only to
bring the war to a quick conclusion, but also which side should lose. On
Sunday, the eve of Rosh Hashanah, Rabbi Israel immersed in the ritual
bath, prepared himself for prayer, and wanted to get to the blowing of the
shofar before the rabbi from Lody started praying. When he put the shofar to his mouth his heart grew faint and he felt that the rabbi of Lody took
the blasts from him without taking the shofar from him. And so he shouted:
He came before me, snatched the blasts and won! The device of snatching the blasts, brought Napoleon his immediate downfall. The rabbi grew
excited in private and at night they said they saw tears wandering around
his room seeking to return to his face. Meanwhile, deaf Yossel returned to
the city. He told how the tombstone of Rebecca daughter and wife of Secret Charity had gone for a walk; the refugees in the synagogue interrupted
and called yearningly to their city and the smell of burning stood in the air
and Rebecca Sorka sucked slowly and important things that should have
been done were forgotten. Leah Sorka, Rebecca's mother, didn't forget and
said, They should have taken the demon out of Rebecca and now it's too
late.
Avrum ben ha-Rav Kriv begat the Vulgar of Vilna. The Vulgar begat the
Prayer of Israel who begat Isaac Unworthy in His Faith May He Live Long,
who saw the fire and his eyes grew dim. Unworthy in His Faith May He Live Long begat Secret Charity. Secret Charity met the messiah Frank
riding on a horse with a naked woman rabbi. The messiah carried a torch
and coined phrases good for all times. Secret Charity stood at a window
on a winter night and saw the messiah get into his daughter's virginal
bed. That was after he carried the Torah in a splendid ceremony whose
cursed origin is remembered by the old people. In those turbulent years
visions were seen as sunsets or rain are seen today. Secret Charity saw
the Shekhinah in Exile and his heart broke at the injustice and he wanted
to repair. He knew the world had to be purified to fit the letters of the
Torah that were created before it was created. Because the messiah Frank
converted, Secret Charity understood that messianism was a secret to be
hidden and not to be revealed, and that there was an urgent need to be
ravished, to confound the world to restore it to its origin. After the death
of the convert messiah he stopped the moon for two whole days and the
moon didn't set. Profoundly contemptuous of his ability to change the
creation without knowing if that was the right way, he married a woman,
went into the cellar, and lived buried there his whole life. He performed
rituals, made calculations with the letters of the Torah, and discovered
that in a certain order the words of the Torah sound like a melody that
subdues all grief. From the rabbi of Lody, he learned to snatch shofar blasts
and even groans of Jews who didn't know their groans were snatched by
him. He decided to tell his fabrications only to himself; that way he could
not believe them. Upstairs in his house, his wife sold bread, challahs, and
bagels, and refused to admit the existence of her husband. She raised the
sixteen children he'd beget in brief but very joyous sorties to her room,
and there he also told her about his ravishment in the cellar, about the repairs he made in his solitude, and his children now and then were exiled
to the cellar to take part in rituals where they saw their father connecting
phrases. Then Secret Charity died full of yearnings for the messiah, and the
most beautiful of his daughters was Rebecca Secret Charity whose grave
shifted the day Rebecca Sorka was born a hundred years later. And Boaz
Schneerson, the grandson and son of Rebecca, eighty years later, when
he'll return safe from the war, will shout at his grandmother: Why didn't
I die? I could have died, I had no reason to live when my friends died,
why did you say Psalms for me all the days of the war and save me? and he
hit her.
When Rebecca, the most beautiful of Secret Charity's daughters, was
twelve years old and sister to eleven brothers and sisters whose number
was to be great, the baker whose wife sang in the room next to the bakery
died and the house collapsed on them. Rebecca went to the study house
and asked some well-known saints who were steeped in prayer to tie themselves to the incense bowl and rise to heaven with it. They had to do that
to challenge the Holy One Blessed Be He, she said, they tried to bribe
heaven with anger, not supplication, their tears flow in vain and aren't seen
there. Anger had always nested in her and the old men in the study house
weren't embarrassed and tried to go back to their prayers. When she stood
there her womanly fear was a soft and cunning loveliness and even the
saints in their time couldn't resist the temptation and they thought forbidden thoughts about her body rustling with gloomy joy shrouded in dark
ancient mold and steeped in passion. Rebecca's mother, who was busy
selling challahs and bread and bagels, wanted to rid her daughter of the
anger with a quick marriage. After refusing thirty-one fellows, some of
whom even fled from her because of her venomous tongue, she saw her
mother weeping. Her father had recently died and was buried standing up
as he requested in his will, in a Christian-style coffin, and around her sat
her fifteen brothers and sisters waiting to be married and she said: There's
no point crying. Times were hard and because of concerns for livelihood
and fears nobody went out then to pull out messiahs and Rebecca remained alone with signed and unsigned excommunications and declarations, many written by her thirty-one defeated suitors.
One day her mother took her to a distant city and gave her to some
childless relatives. The old couple were dying in their room and Rebecca
nursed them in their illness, started sewing in their workshop, and when
they died, on that day and at that hour, she inherited the house with the
little workshop next to it. Sitting in the workshop, Rebecca met one of the
descendants of the converted messiah, nobody dared to get close to him
even though he had returned to his faith long ago and grew cherries in a
distant orchard. Rebecca betrothed herself to him and the city made a fuss.
He was a quiet and strong fellow and was called Son of the Prostitute. Two
days after the betrothal he vomited blood in the middle of the street and
collapsed amid incomprehensible shouts. In death, his face was green
and his eyes turned around. Rebecca carried him home on her back, took the washing implements and the shrouds from under the old folks' bed,
washed his body, purified it, and wrapped it in a tallith. And then she
wanted to marry her fiance. Nobody had heard of marrying a dead man and
so they called for Rabbi Kriegel, Rebecca's uncle who went from the Land
of Israel to a place called America and stopped on the way to visit his family
and was an expert in Jewish customs in Yemen, North Africa and Persia,
and Rabbi Kriegel, who would later come to Providence, Rhode Island,
brought evidence and proofs and when the marriage canopy was set up in
the cemetery the men trembled and the women hid behind the trees and
the rabbi stood there, his face grave, and married the son of the prostitute
to Rebecca. She broke the glass herself and then said to the rabbi: In exile we married the Shekhinah, said my father, my father your uncle, married,
in the cellar, a dead nation to restore her to life, and the people said: Behold, here lives a seamstress whose wedding speech is bewitchingly beautiful and she's a virgin and a widow and a divorcee.
Then Rebecca sold her property and disappeared. Once again these were
times of riots, and aside from the singed smell of Jews, thirty-four witches
were also burned in the city square. Rebecca stood and looked at the fire.
The women's eyes were laughing and when they burned they cursed and
shouted, but they weren't afraid. A vindictive cold overflowed from them and
singed the fire. What Rebecca saw, as she put it, was divine disobedience,
she loved that sight, and felt as if she were looking in the mirror. Rebecca
Sorka who came to the Land of Israel as Rebecca Schneerson would know
that look inside her and would live with it all her life. Rebecca Secret
Charity had curved, rounded cheeks, lips and some mysterious expression
stamped in her gold-green eyes. She has a mute and ancient look, said one
of the fellows who tried not to think of her body, she inherited that from
the place where time was before it was created. In the cemetery she would
eat her daily meal with her dead husband and feel close to her father, Secret Charity, with whom she could talk. He'd stand in the coffin and she'd
sit on the edge of the grave and converse with him in a whisper.
She didn't stay very long in our city either but took off and opened a
sewing shop in a nearby town. She learned to weave and embroider in a
form that would match her father's phrases. She captured the melody for
which the embroidery could have been a mantle, as if she was wrapping
webs of dream on tree trunks. One day a Jew came to the city who was neither young nor old. Around his neck hung a sign that said: "Jew son of
Jew, tortured and saved, please help this mute man who saw horror and
returned from it," and it was signed by five well-known rabbis. Rebecca
saw him walking in the street from the door of her workshop and the Jews
read the sign, looked into his eyes where dread was frozen, tried to approach, and he repelled. Rebecca put on one of the wedding gowns she had
just finished sewing and went outside with her assistant. Her dress dazzled
the man's eyes. He came to her as if some force were drawing him to her.
Tears flowed from his eyes and melted immediately. She saw Secret Charity and took pity on her father. The gown she wore was the gown of the
daughter of Rabbi Yakub the Mountain. The stranger entered her workshop and the assistant brought him a glass of water. He looked at Rebecca
and she felt he saw through her. The rhythm of his movements was like
the melody that would bubble up in her when she sewed. Thus she understood that the man knew the melody of the holy books and the combinations of letters he may have inherited from her father. Since he wanted to
speak he opened his mouth wide but no sound came out and then he again
drank the water he'd been given. Rebecca, who had put on the wedding
gown that wasn't hers, said: I'll call you Secret Charity after my father, his
memory for a blessing, and the stranger nodded as if to say: that was, is,
and will be my name. As a sign of gratitude, he fixed on her a tranquil look
whose dread was dimmed for a moment; the look had a boldness that shook
the folds of her gown and for the first time in her life she felt her body
cling to the gown she was wearing, his look was demanding, soft and without pressure, and she saw his bitter despair, quiet and sure of himself. After
they married they moved to our city to be close to her father's grave. She left
as Secret Charity and returned as Secret Charity.