{"id":10519,"date":"2025-12-01T17:23:53","date_gmt":"2025-12-01T17:23:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vidgop.co.il\/?page_id=10519"},"modified":"2025-12-25T10:53:52","modified_gmt":"2025-12-25T10:53:52","slug":"the-teacher","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/vidgop.co.il\/en\/books-2\/the-teacher\/","title":{"rendered":"The Teacher"},"content":{"rendered":"\t\t
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The Teacher<\/h3>\n

Translated by Leo Shtutin; Published in\u00a0Of\u00a0The\u00a0Book<\/strong><\/p>\n

When I am brought before the court of Heaven, no one will ask me, \u201cZusya, why were you not Abraham, Jacob or Moses?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

They\u2019ll look at me and say, \u201cZusya, why were you not Zusya?\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

Rabbi Zusya of Hanipol<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\nReb Motale checked himself, set the Book aside and fixed his pupils with a stern look.\n\n\u201cWho\u2019s that disturbing us?\u201d he asked in a hoarse voice.\n\n\u201cAmalek!\u201d specky Mordche yelled out lustily.*\n\nReb Motale blew his nose.\n\n\u201cWiseguy, eh? Thanks for enlightening us! No, but who\u2019s that screaming outside the window like he\u2019s being butchered by Khmelnytsky? Out with it, you little hellions!\u201d\n\n\u201cIt\u2019s my brother!\u201d This, laced with glee, from lank, handsome Hirsch.\n\n\u201cGet him in here, I\u2019ll have his guts for garters!\u201d said Reb Motale, and wiped a watering eye. Cloddish Shoyl jumped to his feet, one-upping Hirsch, and wasted no time dragging wet-cheeked, teary-eyed Savka in by the collar.\n\n\u201cOut with it, Savka,\u201d said Reb Motale, making himself more comfortable in his seat as he began the grilling. \u201cWhat\u2019re you bawling like a goy for?\u201d**\n\nSavka stopped bawling. Spooked now, he backed away to the door.\n\n\u201cI\u2019m not a goy,\u201d he said, getting ready to leg it just in case.\n\n\u201cLet anyone who says you\u2019re a goy spit in my beard,\u201d said Reb Motale. \u201cNo one could possibly call you a goy, not least because no self-respecting goy\u2014yes, such creatures do exist\u2014would ever wallow in the mud like that. Savka, you\u2019re the spit of a chazir.***<\/strong> Whose mould are you in, Savka?\u201d\n\n\u201cIn Hirsch\u2019s, Rebbe,\u201d Savka said, his teary eyes glistening.\n\n\u201cIn Hirsch\u2019s? In your beanstalk brother\u2019s? You\u2019ve as much in common with him as I do with a Chinaman. Look at him, he\u2019s spotless as a constable\u2019s boots\u2026 Well, am I any<\/em>thing like a Chinaman?\u201d he asked, surveying with severe eye the entire unruly mob.\n\n\u201cNo,\u201d Savka said, frowning. \u201cBut I<\/em> am something like Hirsch.\u201d\n\n\u201cYou\u2019re stubborner\u2019n a mule. Your brother has a clean nose, a pretty-pretty phiz and nothing in his bonce. He doesn\u2019t even know the name of the Vilna Gaon. What d\u2019you need him for, dolt that he is? \u201d\n\n\u201cI want to be like Hirsch!\u201d shrieked Savka, melted to fresh, ever-loud tears by the rebbe\u2019s carping.\n\n\u201cAll right, all right, no objections on my part! What about that clever brother of yours, though\u2014who does he<\/em> want to be like?\u201d\n\nHirsch leapt from his bench, breathing heavily.\n\n\u201cRebbe,\u201d he said, \u201cI want to be like Mordche,\u201d then, blushing, plopped back down again. Specky Mordche gave a little jump of startlement.\n\n\u201cSo young, yet so wise!\u201d said Reb Motale. \u201cMordche\u2019s a tad brighter\u2019n you, granted\u2014by the time old age comes around he may\u2019ve even graduated from cheder.****<\/strong> But tell me, my learned friend, why would you want to be like our venerable Mordche? Yes, he has a half-decent memory, but he also has specs on his nose, consumption in his lungs, a pauper of a father, and all the usual tsores besides.***** <\/strong>You, on the other hand, are fighting fit, and some day you\u2019ll inherit your folks\u2019 waggoning business! Wenches\u2019re already giving you the eye, while Mordche here can only smack his lips. How would being like him do you any good?\u201d\n\n\u201cRebbe,\u201d said Hirsch, blushing painfully once again, \u201che\u2019s very smart.\u201d\n\n\u201cI don\u2019t know if the heavens can hear me right now, but this Jew wants smarts! Not money, not love, but smarts! All right,\u201d he said, blowing his nose a second time and glancing askance at Mordche, \u201cand what does our groyser chochem want?\u201d******<\/strong>\n\nLittle Mordche grew terribly flustered, so much so that he almost legged it out the room. But he was accustomed to telling the truth.\n\n\u201cRebbe,\u201d he stammered, clearing his throat, \u201cI want to be strong\u2014like Shoyl is.\u201d\n\nIt was an answer none of those present expected to hear. After a flabbergasted instant, cloddish Shoyl seized his oaken bench, brandished it over his lop-eared head, and stomped his feet in joy.\n\n\u201cThat can\u2019t be,\u201d Reb Motale managed to say. In his agitation he had clean forgotten about his cold. \u201cShoyl\u2014can you hear me, Shoyl? What piece of the jigsaw are you<\/em> missing, then, you lunatic? Can it be that even you aren\u2019t happy in your infinite joy?!\u201d\n\nShoyl, as ever, smiled blissfully by way of response. All at once, though, his face darkened\u2014a symptom of heroic mental effort\u2014and, frowning, he said in a loud voice, \u201cRebbe, I want to be like you!\u201d\n\nThat declaration must have caused the cup of the rebbe\u2019s patience to run over, for he ran out of the room with a wave of the hand. After trotting about the yard for some time and composing himself after a fashion, he returned to his pupils.\n\n\u201cJews!\u201d he said with a hand-flourish. \u201cJews,\u201d he repeated, with the same gravitas, \u201cwhat is happening to my people? What have we done to incur the wrath of our Lord, if the littlest amongst us wants to become a strapping pretty-boy schmuck, the strapping pretty-boy wants to become a sickly clever clogs, the clever clogs wants to be a madman, and that lunatic hulk wants to become me!? Me<\/em>, who understands nothing about this world and prays to God for wisdom! Shoyl, meshuggener, you want my aches and pains, my gout, my sleepless nights?******* <\/strong>You want to survive two pogroms, the death of your wife and child? You want my loneliness? What d\u2019you know about me, you mad fool?\u201d\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong>\n\nShoyl raised his eyes, face once again illumined by the most blissful of smiles, and said, \u201cI do. I want to.\u201d\n\n\u201cWell, well!\u201d Reb Motale exclaimed. \u201cWell, well!\u201d\n\nMordche removed his specs, wiped them on his shirttail, cast a sidelong glance at the others, then said, quietly, \u201cWhat about yourself, Reb Motale? Who would you want to be?\u201d\n\nThough posed sotto voce, the question rang out with such ear-splitting force it appeared to strike the rebbe deaf. All at once he wilted into himself, his very stature seemingly diminished. Shoyl half-stood so as to keep his idol in sight, concerned he might decide to vanish altogether. No, he was never going to answer, was he. But then, at long last, he spoke. So quietly, though, that everyone struggled to make out what he was saying. \u201cI wish I was like my son\u2026\u201d he began.\n\nIt was my grandfather, that selfsame Mordche whose fate the rebbe predicted so unsuccessfully, who told me this story. The rebbe would soon leave the mestechko behind.******* <\/strong>In defiance of his prognosis, my grandfather promptly graduated from cheder, failed to die from consumption, made it to Central Asia (which, by the standards of the age, was tantamount to journeying into the wilds of Africa), made a fortune there, and did not return home until the Russians had triumphed over one another in the civil war.\n\nHe found the mestechko in ruins. Half the houses had been burnt to the ground. A blind old woman emerged from a surviving building and told him about the pogrom of 1918. All his ex-classmates had perished. Lank Hirsch was shot by the Petlyurovites. His brother Savka was butchered during the pogrom. When the pogromists entered the mestechko, madman Shoyl\u00a0 climbed the belltower and drove off the bellringer and the priest and set the belltower on fire. Engulfed in flames, he wrapped his arms round the bell and leapt down with it into the very thick of the Uman thugs. His final words were, \u201cRebbe, rebbe, I\u2019ve become like you!\u201d What Shoyl meant by these words, what thoughts pulsated through his crazed skull as he uttered them, no one shall ever know.\n\nAs for the fate of Reb Motale, it long remained obscure. The mestechko found itself abuzz with the wildest of rumours. Some contended that he\u2019d gone insane and been committed to a gentile mental asylum in Petersburg. Others, conversely, insisted that he\u2019d remained sound of mind, travelled to Constantinople, and secured a promise from the Sultan to relinquish all of Palestine to the Jews. Still others maintained that he\u2019d turned his back on everything, reached American shores, discovered himself to be a second cousin of Rothschild\u2019s, donned a top hat, forgot Yiddish, and now communicated exclusively in English. Still yet others declared that he\u2019d travelled to Boer country, struck diamonds there, become fabulously rich, and was received by the Emperor, who assured him that the Pale of Settlement would be abolished posthaste. An overjoyed Baron G\u00fcnzburg, meanwhile, was said to have yielded to him his personal seat in the first row of the Great Choral Synagogue.\n\nThe reality was rather different. Many years down the line, my grandfather, who\u2019d been rooting about in the Kishinev archives, happened upon a yellowed sheet from a Jewish newspaper, and encountered Reb Motale\u2019s name in an article on the poet Hayim Nahman Bialik. In 1903, the Odessa Social Committee dispatched to Kishinev a group of Jews, Hayim Bialik amongst them, to collect documentary evidence of the pogromist atrocities perpetrated there. Reb Motale decided of his own accord to accompany the group, but missed the arranged train, and, on finally arriving in Kishinev, failed to join up with them. He walked the city alone,\u00a0 surrounded by Jewish survivors, and wandered into looted flats. In one such flat he crossed paths with a gang of marauders who\u2019d been following in the pogromists\u2019 footsteps. Seeing a Jew in the doorway, they knifed him, ditched their loot and fled. He fell into a puddle of his own blood. He lay in the iron stairwell until nightfall, when he was found by some fear-crazed, grief-deranged Jews. Death by stab wound, confirmed a Russian doctor. The victim died at once, without regaining consciousness, he added, taking pity on the Jews now huddled around the body.\n\n\u201cBlessed be his memory,\u201d they murmured.\n\nPerched on a worn-out chair in some nook of the Kishinev archive, my grandfather read the article\u2014which had been penned in Yiddish, a tongue he\u2019d well-nigh forgotten\u2014and began to weep. He emerged into the alien city and was a long time abroad on its streets. By nightfall he had found a synagogue. He went in, specky little Mordche, who\u2019d long since buried his penurious father, who\u2019d cured himself of consumption, but who was still consumed by tsores. Possessor of a half-decent memory, as the rebbe had once described him, he went in to intone a kaddish in memory of the rebbe.*********<\/strong>\n\nHaving read the prayer\u2014a prayer read by thousands of sons in tribute to their deceased fathers\u2014he walked out of the synagogue, flung back his head, saw the endless black sky, and screamed into it, by way of response to that selfsame question, \u201cI don\u2019t want to be like anyone else anymore, Rebbe! I want to be myself\u2026\u201d\n\n

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*\u0410malek (in the Torah, king of the Amalekites, enemy-nation of the Israelites): synonym for \u201cevil\u201d or \u201cenemy\u201d<\/p>\n

**goy: non-Jew<\/p>\n

***<\/strong>chazir: pig<\/p>\n

****<\/strong>cheder:\u00a0religious primary school<\/p>\n

*****<\/strong>tsores: troubles, adversities<\/p>\n

******<\/strong> groyser chochem: great sage<\/p>\n

********<\/strong>meshuggener: madman<\/p>\n

********<\/strong>mestechko: small Jewish market town; a shtetl<\/p>\n

*********<\/strong>kaddish: memorial prayer<\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t

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\u00a9 Jonathan Vidgop\u00a0 | Artist A. Gorenstein<\/span><\/p>\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t<\/div>\n\t\t\t\t

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