Yidishe Mitsves (Jewish Good Deeds)

The synagogues where older and more modest congregants pray are spared to some extent. It is a good thing that they are closed all day and all night and are opened only for early morning prayers and reciting of Psalms, then closed and reopened for the late afternoon and evening prayers. Even so, there is no lack of disorder. People quarrel over who should be the gaboim [sextons] of the synagogue, over who should be called to read from the Torah portion. People talk and carry on whole conversations. On Purim you could be driven to distraction by the gragers [rattles] and on Simches Toyre by the noise and the disputes over the procession with the Torah scrolls. In many places brandy is drunk and honey-cake eaten after the Simches toyre service. But that is nothing compared to the besmedresh, which is holier than a synagogue, for it is where “prayer and study exist in one place.” It’s true that older, pious Jews go there before prayer, sit and study and after that recite the chapter from the Mishnah and Gemara and then go home. That’s all very well. But middle-aged and young men, unmarried or recluses separated from their wives, carry on in ways that would be inappropriate in a decent private home. After prayer, still in their tefillin, they sit down to study, which might seem proper, but in the meantime they feel like having a nap, so they put their elbows on the open Talmud and sleep contentedly, truly a “significant sleep” [requiring prayer on awakening]. In Hasidic prayer houses, they even have a drink. As they chant the traditional melody while reading the Gemara, they pluck hairs from their beards and sidelocks and leave them in the pages of the Gemara or Shakh,¹ and what was hanging in those hairs finds its grave therein. Afterwards they start talking, gossiping, and discussing what’s going on in heaven, as if they were standing right there. They deliberate about what the tsar eats—diamonds or gold coins under his sauce; how much he spends a year. They deride the dead and the living, tell stories about evil spirits, ghosts, demons, imps, and phantoms; recount how the dead climb to heaven every night on a fiery ladder; how they immerse themselves ritually in the well of the cemetery; how they gather at midnight in the synagogue and if a living person happens to wander in they call him to read from the Torah, after which he dies; how the dead come and choke and pinch, leaving black-and-blue marks; how the Angel of Death tugs at the soul and smites the dead body with red-hot iron combs, how the demons lie in wait for the woman in childbirth and only the knife that lies by the bedside with [ . . . ] written on a slip of paper with Psalms written on it, can save the baby; they tell of the River Sambatyen which throws stones all week long but on the Sabbath it rests and then you can cross over to the land of the Red Jews; of the clay golem who acted as a servant on the Sabbath, of dreams and magicians; some tell of miracle workers, Hasidic rebbes who raise the dead, grant wealth, provide children and perform other miracles; of an invisible man and other such exaggerations—the same gossip that the Hasidim exchanged in the mikve in the morning. The difference is only that in the besmedresh they drink a little liquor accompanied with something to eat, just like in a tavern. After that they lie down to have a nap on the bare bench across from or next to the ark of the Torah. No one is responsible for what he does in his sleep. Not to mention the studious recluses and the yeshiva bokherim [students] who are even more privileged. They are allowed to undress down to their shirts and using the candles by which they had studied, they hunt down the little beasts that dwell in the folds of the shirt. You often hear sounds from the sleepers that leave a smell afterwards. For that reason the enlightened say: “It stinks like in a besmedresh.” And if they hear a story they can’t believe, they say “that’s besmedresh gossip—those buffoons, what do they know?” During the whole year no shovel is used on the floor, not to mention water to wash the boards. May heaven protect us from what gets smeared on the tables, benches, and windows. That’s why in the besmedresh you walk on clods of earth (but that doesn’t hinder the ecstatic running back and forth during prayer). The tables and benches are covered with dried-out mud so thick it’s black and wrinkled. The surfaces are scratched up, in part by fingernails, in part by carving simple notches, or a rose, or a Star of David, or a few letters. The window panes are green. On the pulpit, all year long, there is written in chalk: “When Adar [the month of Purim] approaches, joy increases.” The walls are smoky-black, just like in the New Synagogue in Prague, where tradition maintains they should not be whitewashed. The lectern is covered with candle wax, but nobody cares. The slop pail near the door is overflowing so there’s a flood up to your ankles. The towel is wet and dirty. The door-handle has broken off.

Often a dispute, a fight, breaks out between two yeshiva bokherim over some trifle they are arguing about—not God forbid having to do with their studies, but over some worldly matter. They evaluate someone’s lavish way of life and wealth. One says more, the other says less and suddenly they start to slap each other, to tear at each other’s sidelocks. They rush around the whole besmedresh and then down the steps. The whole street comes running to see. And that is the daily corruption of a holy place, before the ark where the Torah scrolls and religious books are stored.