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In those days when Isaac lived in an enviable good fortune, he got up early for prayer and so forth and observed his Judaism as a Jew, in those days a bitter drop fell into the goblet of his happiness. It seemd that evil angels who received their vitality from his early transgressions envied him and wanted to annoy him. And since they had no control during the day, for in the day a person governs his mind, they came to him at night. For at night a person’s mind is not in his own hands. And since they could not approach him, for their force was sapped by his good deeds, they sent the Lord of Dreams as an agent, for he is halfway between good and bad. The Lord of Dreams came to Isaac and pulled him to the sea. There he forgot his shoes. He went back to his shoes and the wind flew his hat off. A man encountered him and said to him, Come and I’ll show you where your hat is. When he went with him, the man disappeared. Isaac stood in the street barefoot without shoes, his head bare. He heard the sound of prayer and followed the sound. He came to a two-story house, the bottom story in ruins and you climbed a ladder to the top story where they were praying. And the ladder stood straight. He leaned the lad-der and ascended. When he put his head in, the door closed on him from inside and his body was outside. That’s how it was one night and two nights and three nights. And he thought he would never get rid of his bad dream. Finally, the dream went and didn’t come back. His soul came back to him and he forgot the dream, as he had forgotten many things he saw while awake, like Jaffa and all its pleasures. And the good people who had been good to him, and the bad peo-ple who had been bad to him, he removed them all from his heart. Not out of ingratitude for the good ones and not because of pardon
and forgiveness for the bad ones, but because that soul that wanted rest wanted to forget the whole chapter of the past.
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Isaac began frequenting the elders of his hometown who were in Jerusalem and when he conversed with them in that tongue he was used to in his hometown, that whole world seemed to rise up before him, and he would think to himself, If HASHEM grants me, I’ll in-vite them to my wedding. And he was amazed at himself, I who am not learned in the Torah or in wisdom am sitting with the pious. He recalled his comrades in the fields and cities, recalled them only in pity, like one who is sorry about his dear ones who haven’t been blessed with what he has.
When we look at all the events of the past, we are simply amazed. We saw Isaac in Jaffa and didn’t find him different from our other comrades, aside from the handful of hairs in his beard. And even in that he wasn’t any different from some of our comrades who leave themselves a beard. And if we examine his early deeds, we are even more amazed. Perhaps Jerusalem caused that, but there are sev-eral fellows in Jerusalem and we didn’t find any who did what Isaac did. But Isaac was a simple fellow who didn’t engage in profound in-quiry. And like the simple Children of Israel, who, if they sometimes stray from the path, in the end they return.
On the face of it, Isaac looked like a tree with few roots, and every wind that comes along uproots it and overturns it. But if we observe his deeds very closely, we shall see that that’s not how it is. As long as Isaac observed the Commandments as a learned habit, the Commandments weren’t important in his eyes, therefore wherever he went he behaved like the people of the place. But when his rational soul awoke in him, he changed his opinions and along with them his deeds.
Not in one day and not in one month and not in one year did he change his opinions and his deeds, but little by little, he changed his opinions. And not because of the pious did he change them, but even back when he was living among his comrades in Jaffa and in the settlements, he saw that the soul was searching for something that was withheld from her. In those days, he didn’t yet know what the soul was seeking. And when did he discover it? Here too we have to say, not all at once did he discover it, but little by little. In the end, he became a tree with many roots, and even if all the winds in the world came upon it, they couldn’t move it from its place.
In those days, when he saw himself as if he had reached the desired purpose, he would recall some of the events that had occurred to him ever since the day he entered the Land. Things he didn’t consider worthy, he dismissed; things that were worthy he lin-gered over. And the same with humans. Anyone he considered wor-thy he dwelled on, anyone he didn’t consider worthy he removed from his heart. But it was precisely those he found nice who were dis-satisfied with him, and sometimes it seemed to Isaac that someone was complaining about him. Isaac replied, Many ascended to the Land of Israel to work the soil, and when they didn’t succeed they turned to whatever they turned to, everyone according to his merit. But this is true, if I had stood the test and hadn’t run away immediately, I would now own an estate in Eyn Ganim or in the Galilee, and Shifra and I would have worked the soil, and maybe I would have brought my brothers and my sisters and my father. But when Isaac observed his chain of events, he said, Blessed art Thou for what is done.
Once in his dream, Isaac found himself standing in a hot place without any shade. His thirst assailed him and he was afraid he was swooning. He saw a channel of water flowing by but he couldn’t get to it, worse than the thirst is the fact that he doesn’t know the place and doesn’t know how or why he wound up here, and why his shoulders are heavy. He saw Pnina standing and plowing, Isaac asked Pnina, Where are we? Pnina replied, Don’t you see that we’re in Um G’uni? And now he wasn’t amazed that he was here, but he was amazed that the voice was Shifra’s voice. He took the hoe off his shoulder and started hoeing. Makherovitch came with a photogra-pher, while he was among those who were plowing. Isaac woke up with a start from the sound of a dog barking in front of the window. Isaac groaned and said, When I get out of bed in the morning, my head will be heavy as on the day I met that man from Safed, the native of Mahanayim. Meanwhile, he was sitting in his father’s house reading wonderful things about the farmers of Mahanayim in an old issue of
Ha-Magid
. Isaac scolded himself for wasting his days in Diaspora when the Land of Israel was so beautiful. Said Shifra, Don’t get upset, Isaac. If you were living in Mahanayim, you wouldn’t have met me. Isaac replied, You are right, Shifra, if I had settled in Mahanayim, I wouldn’t have met you. And now I shall tell you something logical, you, Shifra, wouldn’t have met me either. Who’s shouting here? How many times have I shooed him away and he doesn’t move.
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The summer passed but Reb Fayesh’s illness didn’t. The lines on his face grew fatter and his eyes seemed to congeal. Sometimes his lips stirred. Speech they did not attain. His neighbors had already stopped asking about him, and even his friends and students didn’t come to visit him, for they were already used to the fact that he was incurably ill. If one of them recalled that one should visit the sick, he didn’t go visit him because he didn’t want to sit with women. If Isaac didn’t come and go, there wouldn’t have been a sign of life in the house. Rebecca and Shifra understood one another by a hint, and even their winks were only about the sick man, whether he ate, whether he drank, whether his clothes were clean.
Rebecca didn’t complain or protest. Whatever folks did, she regarded as something obvious. And Sonitskhe, the wife of the Rabbi of Brisk, who was dreaded by all Jerusalem and all the geniuses and Rebbes of the city were terrified of her, when her husband, the Rabbi of Brisk, passed away, no one paid any attention to her. So much more was it true of Rebecca, a simple and humble woman, and even when her husband was healthy, she didn’t raise her voice, and now that her husband lay like a dead man, why should she complain and why should she protest? It’s a miracle from Heaven that they still exist. How? In the days when Isaac was in Jaffa, they were hard-pressed, and Rebecca went to the tomb of Simon the Saint to ask for herself. There she found women crushing glass shards and pot-tery shards and selling them to builders to put in the cement they
used for roofs and cisterns. She sat down to work with them, but she wasn’t strong enough, for she was a delicate woman and her hands weren’t used to rough jobs. After an hour or two her hands swelled up and her fingers started bleeding. A woman said to her, Go back home and take a reed, a tube of coffee beans, and roast some coffee and grind it and sell it to your neighbors. That is what she did. She roasted coffee and ground it and went round to her neighbors and made a little money for herself and her daughter.
Joy mixed with grief came in the letter of Reb Moyshe Amram. Joy that he blessed them for the match and grief that neither he nor Disha could come to the wedding. And this is what he wrote in his letter from Safed: We would be so very happy to see with our own eyes the wedding of our blessed granddaughter Long-May-SheLive, the only daughter of our only daughter, with the fellow Mr. Isaac Long-May-He-Live, whom we saw on the sea and met in Jerusalem the Holy City, for he is a paragon of virtue. But because of the hand that was dispatched against us, we cannot ascend to Zion, for our legs have become heavy with old age and our strength has departed. But the Lord will give good fortune and will send you the holy blessing that the match will succeed and we shall be blessed to see a generation of upright people from them walking on the paths of God. And you, Isaac, now you are like a son to us, and like a father who will love his son so will we love you, and with our love, we beseech you to walk in the paths of God, for all who walk in His paths will never be ashamed. And now, I send you ten Reinish to buy yourself a prayer shawl and a Torah and prayer books, and I give ten Reinish as a blessing for your intended, my granddaughter Shifra, Long-May- SheLive, and may she have them to buy bridal embellishments, for the jewels her grandmother, Long-May-SheLive, brought with her from outside the Land, which we were supposed to bequeath to our granddaugher, Long-May-SheLive, are no longer in our possession, for the illness has eaten the fruit of our toil and with the rest we bought a plot of ground for ourselves for the End of Days. For that we are sick at heart and our eyes are dim, for we are unable to send a Napoleon or even half to you, Rebecca our daughter, Long-May- You-Live, for the wedding expenses to make a fitting and proper feast
and party for all who come to rejoice with you on the day of the celebration of the nuptials of Shifra, Long-May-SheLive. But after my return I was consoled for I heard that all the great founders of the Yishuv, May-God-Protect-and-Preserve-Them, agreed to forbid the bridegroom to invite more than ten men aside from friends and fam-ily to the celebration, so as not to increase expenses, for that we shall rejoice seven times over with great joy, when Our God will bestow on us the joy of Zion and Jerusalem by gathering her sons there in joy, soon in our own time, amen.
When Rebecca read her father’s letter, she took heart and started preparing for her daughter’s marriage. She fixed the time of the wedding and set aside a place for the couple to live with her in her house because Shifra couldn’t live anywhere else for Fayesh needed a lot of care and he couldn’t be left only to Rebecca, who had to go to the market and return with the coffee she roasted for her neighbors.
Isaac Invites His Guests
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Three days before his wedding, Isaac went to Reb Alter to invite Hinda Puah to his wedding. That day, Reb Alter was sick in bed. Since he wasn’t used to lying idle, and since he couldn’t study a book because of his illness, he lay and read in his notebook the names of the children he had circumcised. Quite often he wanted to know how many there were, but refrained from counting them. Finally he put his hands on his notebook and whispered, Master of all the Universes, Creator of all Souls, You know the number of them all, may it be Your will that by virtue of the seed of Abraham Your beloved, that I brought into Your Covenant, You will bring me safely out of my bed and give me strength to serve You in truth. Finally, he put his notebook down at the head of his bed and started evoking the children he had brought into the Covenant, and was glad that all of them were God-fearing, and even Isaac the son of Simon, who was rumored to have strayed from the path, even he changed his mind and returned to Him.
Isaac entered. Reb Alter raised his head and said, Welcome, Itzikl, a guest who comes in time. I was just thinking about you and here you come. You see, Itzikl, there is power in the thought of a Jew, that it draws to us those who are dear to our heart, like a magnet draw-ing iron to it. And if we purified our thoughts we would do wonders. And on that, Itzikl, I have a tremendous argument, as the Bible says, I thought on my ways and turned my feet unto thy testimonies, that is, if a person thinks cunningly on his ways, in the end he returns his feet to Torah. This is why Torah is called the art of the Tabernacle and its vessels cunning work. For by the power of the good thoughts
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they were blessed to make the Tabernacle and its vessels. And that is the secret of what is written, For them that feared the Lord, and that thought upon his name, for since they thought upon His Name, they became God-fearing. In other words, because they feared the Lord all their thought was blessed anyway. For when a son of Israel is blessed to forge his thought in the service of the Lord, and thinks on all his ways, he returns his feet to the service of Him, the Blessed One. And there is no need to go on talking about it for anyone who observes the world a little bit sees that this is the absolute truth. And you, Itzikl, you came just as I was thinking good things about you. In general, a person should think good things about his fellow man, for a good thought raises the sparks captive in the dark. And even a man in the depths of the Underworld, God Forbid, when good things are mentioned about him, that mention gleams for him in the dark. And even he, that is, the one who thinks a good thought about his fellow man, benefits in his light from the force of his good thought, as the Bible says, the Lord lighteneth both their eyes. Now let’s leave the arguments aside and hear something from your mouth. Why don’t you sit down. Take a chair and sit down.