Small Worlds - Hardcover

Allen Hoffman, an award-winning author of short stories and screenplays, was born in St. Louis and received his B.A. in American History from Harvard University. He studied the Talmud in yeshivas in New York and Jerusalem, and has taught in New York City schools. He and his wife and four children live in Jerusalem, where he teaches English literature and creative writing at Bar Ilan University.

Excerpt from: Small Worlds

Chapter One

The Krimsker Rebbe had retired to his study. For five years he had not emerged. His devoted hasidim believed that their rebbe immersed himself in Miriam's well, which miraculously materialized in the small book-lined room. They thought they heard splashing behind the double doors on the eve of every Sabbath. This was one of the wells few appearances in Europe, although the wondrous spring had a distinguished supernatural tradition, having accompanied the Jews during forty years of wandering in the desert. The non-hasidic Jews of the town didn't go so far as to believe in Miriam's well appearing in Krimsk, but they did believe in the purity and force of the rebbes lonely mission although they couldn't imagine exactly what that mission might be. In Krimsk only his rebbetzin, his wife Shayna Basya, doubted the merit of his endeavor. She was confident that she understood his saintly withdrawal. Shayna Basya believed that he was slightly cracked.

And she believed that she knew why. Inheritance. At their marriage feast she had asked her mother-in-law to pass the water, and the old lady, who looked even more like a frog than her husband—she had smooth, flat eyebrows, not her husbands prickly brushes—handed her the horseradish. Shayna Basya had incorrectly assumed that her mother-in-law was merely delineating the traditional course of their relationship. Shayna Basya, herself the daughter of a great rabbinic family and possessing awesome respect for the age-old familial arts of her people, received the call to combat and seized every opportunity to discomfit, shame, and insult the older woman as penance for the twin sins of bearing Yaakov Moshe and permitting him to welcome Shayna Basya under the wedding canopy. The old lady received the abuse with the tolerance and appreciation of a woman who loved the rewards of family. Or so Shayna Basya had thought until the old lady lay dying from a burning fever and repeatedly begged for another glass of horseradish. Shayna Basya went into the next room where Yaakov Moshe was reciting from Psalms and told him that his mother had asked for a glass of horseradish. He had wearily arched his eyebrows in query. So? She means water, Shayna Basya explained. Whats the difference? her husband remarked and went back to his Psalms.

The awareness that Shayna Basya had married into a family of dubious sanity chilled her; it floated around her like a cold, clammy fog from which there was no escape. If only some way could be found to protect her child; but even there she felt unequal to the task. Half the girls inheritance was from the Finebaum side, where they believed that Moses hit the rock and horseradish flowed forth. There were distressing inclinations in Rachel Leah, who worshiped her father. The more absurd his actions, the more she worshiped him. Rachel Leah resembled Shayna Basya's own sainted grandmother, the rebbetzin of Bezin, and even that created problems. How could saints be around madmen and recognize them for what they were, plain meshugoyim? They needed either other saints or benign cynics. It was the latter role Shayna Basya hoped to play. She knew it wouldn't be easy. After all, she was genetically only one-fourth her sainted grandmother and never felt terribly benign. The cynicism, she had in abundance.

The last week her husband had been acting strangely in his self-imposed exile, and Shayna Basya, as a good wife, was disturbed. He had been eating everything that Rachel Leah brought in to him and on several occasions had even requested seconds. This, from an ascetic of five years who used to fast every Monday and Thursday and eat no hot food except on the Sabbath. He had eaten more last Monday than he usually ate in a week, and he had wanted to know why the coffee was cold. Something was happening, and now was not the time for it. What disturbed Shayna Basya most was his talking at length to Rachel Leah. The girl emerged from his study with her eyes shining and a flush on her face. When Shayna Basya asked her daughter what they talked about, Rachel Leah's eyes sparkled like the most fervent hasid, and she declared, "How father loves God!" The girl seemed positively feverish. What were the two of them doing in there, drinking horseradish? They certainly weren't bathing in Miriam's well.

Shayna Basya brought her husband fresh linen every day. She had no illusions about his bathing. She had very few illusions. With a husband who withdrew from the world, leaving her with a household and a young daughter, she couldn't afford many. Men like her husband, his virtues notwithstanding, simply shouldn't marry and have families. Who would have arranged for Rachel Leah's match if not Shayna Basya? Through the discreet offers of Reb Yechezkal, of course, Yaakov Moshe had had the good sense or the good luck to choose a fine, reliable man as his sexton. Almost as fortunate as he was in choosing Shayna Basya herself for a wife. It was remarkable how such an unworldly man consistently could make such excellent choices. Occasionally it made Shayna Basya suspect—and she wasnt admitting anything—that there might be more to the world of the Krimsker Rebbe than met her jaundiced eye. But even if there were, a family isn't a book that you can put on a shelf and reclaim five years later, unchanged and unused.

Rachel Leah was now privately engaged to Yitzhak Weinbach, an important match manufacturer, and they were to be married following the Succo's holiday. The rebbe knew nothing of this; Shayna Basya didn't want him to know until after the ceremony. Rachel Leah herself didn't know about it for sure. In spite of her childish spiritual notions, Rachel Leah would have the financial security and stability that Shayna Basya had never had. Enough of precarious Torah and the privation of loving God; let someone else lead the hasidim for a few generations. Their family, father and grandfathers, uncles and even her brothers, had done enough. Let someone else lead the Jews into a closet if they wished. Frankly, Shayna Basya was at a loss to understand how the Krimsker hasidim could remain followers, much less devoted admirers, of her husband. Thank God for superstitions. Shayna Basya had her share of them, but a chandelier couldn't be expected to fall on his enemies every day. In their old age it might be a very healthy thing to have a wealthy manufacturer for a son-in-law. If the rebbe stayed in his study all day, what difference should it make to the rebbe whom Rachel Leah married? But it would, of course. He was the Krimsker Rebbe, and she was an only child. And the Krimsker Rebbe, disturbed or not, was not one to compromise principles. Shayna Basya found herself wishing alternately that she had had a dozen children or that she had not even been married; either way the monstrous fate of an only child would have been avoided. Shayna Basya didn't want to send Rachel Leah in to her father with the meal of ashes that he would eat before the start of the fast. She would prefer to keep them apart. On the other hand, she had no desire—no, that wasn't quite right, she had a fear of going into his study herself. If he realized what Shayna Basya was doing at night, that would be a disaster for Rachel Leah and for everyone.