S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

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.

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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.

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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.