With friendly permission of Friedrich Pustet publishing house
The heavy doors of the synagogue, the Schul, forged and
studded with iron stars of David, stood wide open. Cool air flowed from
the depths, settling over the paved
entrance, where pigeons strolled around, swaying back and forth on their thin,
red feet and cooing.
Old Schames,
synagogue servant, to his son.
His dull face was wrinkled, sunken, marked by age.
His white beard, knotted and matted, grew down to
his sideburns and eyebrows, as if someone had
placed a wreath of garlic around his face.
He looked at the red carpet spread between the lectern and
the Torah shrine, gazed at the decorated
hanging and wall chandeliers, the polished seats, the
freshly painted walls decorated with deers, musical instruments,
and inscriptions from the Book of Psalms.
Old
and mantle had been aired and that there was not a speck of dust to be found in the
synagogue’s prayer room. He pursed his lips and wrinkled his nose
as if he were about to sneeze, and said in a young voice
to his son:
"Praise His name, when will there be another
wedding like this—only once in a lifetime! They
say that
man, has already made arrangements to become related by marriage to
another very rich man, namely
Listen to what I have to say,
“I’m listening, Father,” the son adjusted his hat, which
looked like a bell with a tassel, and trimmed the wicks of the
burnt-down tallow candles.
"How does the saying go,
another," the
long woolen socks, "for you should know that our
leading ones in
tradition, which in recent years have not been on good terms with each other.
Now,
becoming related to
great fanfare. It is said that Prague jugglers will come to the
wedding, and our good
gensburg
He is preparing something ‘to sing and say’. It’s a wonder
that there is no sign of the beggars yet.
It is precisely those who live godlessly who are the first to set off
and the first to arrive at the festival."
and his blond, sparse beard bristled with pride like the
trimmed tail feathers of a rooster about to crow.
"Is it true, Father, that
even before the wedding?"
“He could have paid twenty thousand!” His father’s fingers, bent like pincers,
came within a hair’s breadth of catching Berl’s pointed beard.
Father and son stood there for a while with their heads raised,
a twinkle in their eyes and a smile on their beards.
Old
Torah shrine. Sunbeams flared and refracted,
becoming one with the cheerful chirping of sparrows that
echoed into the empty corners of the synagogue. As a boy,
above the Holy of Holies, the cantor’s prayers rose
straight up to heaven. And could anyone deny
that this was so?
The old man walked slowly to the exit.
In the vestibule, which was dark and cool like a cellar,
stood a copper washbasin, bulbous and dented. Around
the spouts and taps, where Jews had been dipping their fingers for
centuries, the copper was worn
and rubbed away.
Out of habit, the old
over the damp copper, and his lips began to murmur.
For
There, by the worn spouts, he saw them all: people,
families, houses. The house “Zur Krone”, “Zum Weißen Hirschen”,
“Zur Sonne” , the house where the sign
with the black bear still hangs, the green door, the red
door, the fountain - the whole of
forecourt, the Judengasse, the cemetery on the hill -
all of this suddenly came to life in the
where the sun was shining, all of this assured him that the
seventy years – Jekil’s seventy years – had not been in vain.
His years lived on in the synagogue, in the washbasin
here in the vestibule, in the house “Zum Goldenen Löwen” where
his feet.
The
could barely make out the melody coming from the yeshiva, the
talmud school located near the synagogue. He sat down
on the bench where his six-year-old grandson, a
barefoot boy, was basking in the sun.
“What are you doing here,
stand-up collar of his short, gathered frock coat, which reached down to his
navel. “Aren’t you going back to class?”
“The teacher sent us home,” the grandson
slid closer to his grandfather, "there’s no learning today,
we’re having a wedding today."
“You’re right, you’re right,” the grandfather hugged the six-
year-old boy close.
The day was blue and golden.
The glistening sun stood high in the sky, devouring every
little cloud. The synagogue with its vaulted roof,
with its rough stone walls crumbling with age,
was streaked with silver and gold veins.
Everything pushed toward the sky, warming itself, every
hiding place, every crevice opened, and above the synagogue dome,
in the clear air, the spires of