S. Agnon - A Book that Was Lost

When we entered, we found three men who had come before us. Among them was an old man, standing bowed, with his head resting on the old black festival prayer book that lay on the lectern. He was clad like the other people of the place, but they wore gray trousers, while his were white. He had the small fringed garment over his clothes, with a mantle over it and his tallit drawn up over his cap. Because of the sanctity of the day and the sanctity of the place, they did not speak, either in the profane or in the holy tongue.

The old man raised his head from the lectern and looked into the house of prayer. He rapped on the prayer book and said, “People, we now have a quorum. Let us pray.” They replied, “Samuel Levi has not yet come.” “Why does he not come,” said the old man, “and why is he holding up the prayer?” One of them pricked up his ears and said, “I hear the sound of footsteps, here he comes.” But no, those were not his footsteps. An old gentile woman came in and asked, “Who is the gravedigger here?” One of them removed the tallit from his face and asked her, “What do you want?” “The Jew Levi is about to die,” she said, “and perhaps he is already dead. He sent me to tell you to come and see to his burial.” The whole congregation sighed deeply and looked at each other, as people look at a little orphan who has suddenly lost his parents. And each and everyone of them looked as if he had been bereaved and he was the orphan.

“People, what does the Gentile woman want in the holy place?” the old man asked. They told him. “He was a good Jew,” he said with a sigh. “Alas that he is dead, alas that he is dead.” Then the old man looked at me and said, “Blessed be the Almighty who has brought you here. Surely He has brought you to complete the quorum.” He rapped on the prayer book and said, “The dead praise not the Lord, neither any that go down into silence. People, we have a quorum, praise the Lord. Let us rise and pray.” He let down his tallit over his face and began to recite the blessings. Immediately they all raised their tallitot and covered their heads. They recited the blessings, the hallelujahs, the “Bless ye,” and the hymns. They recited the “Hear, O Israel” and then the Prayer of Benedictions. They took out the scrolls from the sanctuary and read the Torah. And I, Samuel Joseph, son of Rabbi Shalom Mordecai the Levite, went up to the lectern for the reading of the Torah in place of Samuel Levi, who had passed away. After the blowing of the ram’s horn and the Additional Service, we went down to accompany our friend to his last resting place.

So that they should not be deprived of congregational prayer on the Day of Atonement, I postponed my departure until after the Day. Since I was idle and free to my own devices, I walked about during the intervening days from house to house and from man to man. Their houses were small, and as low as the stature of an ordinary man; each consisted of a small room with a courtyard surrounded by a stone wall. Attached to the room was a wooden hut, which they called the summer house all the year around and sanctified to serve as a festival booth at Sukkot, but they had to rebuild it every year, for the winds sent the boards flying a Sabbath day’s journey and more. The doors of their houses were all made in the same measure and of the same width, for their fathers, when they built the houses, used to make the doorways the width of a bier, so that when they brought them out on the way to their last resting place, they should be able to take them out without trouble. Every householder had a milk goat, and four or five fowls, and plant pots in which they grew onions to flavor their bread and sweeten the Sabbath stew. Because of scanty resources and the pangs of poverty, the sons went out to the big cities and drew their sisters after them, and sent for the parents to come to their weddings. Some of the parents agreed and went, but immediately after the wedding they would leave quietly and go back home on foot. Old Mrs. Zukmantel told me, “At my son’s wedding banquet, which was held with great splendor, I went outside for a breath of air. I saw my husband sitting on the steps with his head resting on his knees. ‘Is that the way to sit at your son’s wedding?’ I said to him. ‘I can’t stand all that noise,’ he replied. ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘let us go back home.’ ‘Let us go,’ he said, sitting up. So we got up straightaway and set off. We walked all night, and in the morning our feet were standing on the ground of our house.” A similar tale I heard from Mistress Yettlein, the wife of Mr. Koschmann, son-in-law of Mr. Anschel Duesterberg, nephew of old Rabbi Anschel, who was cantor and ritual slaughterer, as well as rabbi.

To fulfill the precept of hospitality, which they had not been privileged to carry out for many years because they got no visitors, they took much trouble with me, and everyone devoted himself to me in love and affection and honor. Since they do little work on the Ten Days of Penitence, which they treat, as far as work is concerned, exactly like the intermediate festival days, they were all free to their own devices and free for me. They went out with me to some of their holy places, where they have a tradition that the bones of the martyrs who were slaughtered and killed and burned are interred. Most of the graves have no stones upon them, but only signs to warn the descendants of the priestly family to keep away. On the other hand, there are tombstones and fragments of stones without any inscription on them strewn all over the hills and valleys. On one of them I found the inscription: My BELOVED IS GONE DOWN INTO HIS GARDEN; on another: GLORIOUS IS THE KING’S DAUGHTER, and on another I found the inscription:

They slandered the Jew,

And vilely slew

Numbers untold,

Both young and [ old ].

On every hill

Our blood they [ spill ].

Among the fragments I saw the fragments of one gravestone bearing a verse from the Song of Songs: THOU THAT DWELLEST IN THE GARDENS, THE COMPANIONS HEARKEN TO THY VOICE. They told me that there was a certain distinguished woman, Mistress Buna, who composed hymns for women, and they have a tradition that this was the tombstone of Mistress Buna. She died a year before the massacre, and after her death she would come in a dream to the leaders of the community and sing, “Flee, my beloved…” and the rest of the verse. They did not know what she meant, until the unbelievers came and slaughtered most of the communities, and those who were not slaughtered by the unbelievers slaughtered themselves so that they should not fall into their hands. And those who did not succeed in taking their own lives went to the stake with gladness and song, and sanctified the heavenly Name in the sight of the Gentiles, so that the uncircumcised were astonished when they saw it, and some of them cried, “These are not sons of man, but angels of God.”

On account of the massacres they have special customs. They do not recite the hymn “It is for us to praise” after the prayers, whether individual or congregational. And if a man longs to recite it, he covers his face and says it in a whisper, because with this song of praise their martyred forefathers went to the stake, singing the praises of the Holy One, blessed be He, out of the fire. It is their custom to recite the prayer in memory of the slaughtered communities every Sabbath, even when there is a wedding. And they recite the Supplication in the month of Nisan, from the day after Passover. They fast on the New Moon of Sivan until after the afternoon service, and recite penitential prayers and the Song of Praise, and visit the tombs of the martyrs. At the Afternoon Prayer they recite the Supplication of Moses, because on that day the entire community was killed, and before the open scroll they pray for the souls of the martyrs who were killed and slaughtered and burned alive in those evil days. Another custom they once had: on the first day of Shavuot, before the reading of the Torah, one of the young men would lay himself on the floor of the synagogue and pretend to be dead, in memory of the giving of the law, of which it is said, “My soul failed when He spake.” They would say to him, “What aileth thee? Fear not. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.” Immediately the young man opened his eyes, like a man who has come back to life, and there was great rejoicing; they surrounded him, dancing and singing and crying, “He liveth forever, awesome, exalted and holy!” This custom has been abolished, for once a certain illustrious scholar, Rabbi Israel Isserlin, who wrote a famous book, happened to visit them; he rebuked them angrily and said, “Pfui, ye shall not walk in their ordinances, neither shall ye do after the doings of the Gentiles.” For the Gentiles used to behave in this way for several years after the disappearance of the sickness called the Black Death: they used to gather together and eat and drink until they were intoxicated; then they would choose one of their young men and lay him on the ground, and little girls and old women would dance around him, and they would sniff at each other, and say, “Death is dead, death is dead!” Then they would take a girl and lay her down, and old men and boys would surround her, knock their heads together, and dance around her, screeching, “Death is dead, death is dead!” so as to notify the Black Death that it was dead, for in those days there was a spirit of madness abroad, and people did strange things.