cloak just in time to keep it from being ruined. My boots weren’t as lucky.
I was accompanying my partner-in-exile down the ulica Zydowska , the Jewish Street—or in common speech, Jew Street—to her rooms near the tannery on Kleine Gerberstrasse, a fetid alley nearby that was all she could afford at the moment. We had just come from the services for Shvues, and she was bombarding me with her usual array of questions about our beliefs and customs, especially the untranslated portions of the mystical Zohar, and why it compares the seven weeks from Pesach to Shvues to the seven days that a menstruating woman must wait before she can purify herself in a ritual bath. Not an easy subject to talk about with a foreign woman in the divided Polish-German city of Poznan. So I told her that the Shvues services she had just witnessed form the annual celebration of the Giving of the Torah, when the shul is filled with early spring flowers and, like a young wife preparing herself for her husband’s embrace, we celebrate our immersion in the cleansing “waters of Torah.”
“So why do you read from the Book of Ruth on this day?”
“For the same reason.”
My master and teacher, Rabbi Judah Loew, would probably say that the seven-week period marked the beginning of our exodus from slavery just as Ruth made a spiritual exodus from idolatry to monotheism as she crossed the wilderness from her native land of Moab to her future home—and her future husband—in Judea.
But before I could answer more fully, my boots got soaked with what I sincerely hoped was merely the refuse from someone’s piss pot.
The maid disappeared from the window. But we could hear a company of servants running from room to room, slamming doors, gathering crockery, and clomping up and down the stairs. This time I stepped back as the front door flew open and the housemaid flung a bucket of filthy water into the gutter running down the middle of the street.
I stopped the door with my arm before she could slam it in my face.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked. A life of hard labor had carved deep lines in her face, which was flushed red with exertion.
“Inquiring into a possible death, I expect.”
Some of the color drained from her face, as if I had accused her of violating a sacred law of some kind.
“Who are you?” she asked, squinting up at me.
Kassy answered for me: “You may not know his face but you certainly know his name, for this man is none other than Rabbi Benyamin Ben-Akiva, special assistant to the new head Rabbi of Poznan, the great Rabbi Loew himself, who saved the Jews of Prague from an army of enraged Christians intent on burning down the ghetto.”
“Ah! Then it is surely a blessing on this holy day that you happened to be passing by at just this moment,” she said, waving us inside. “Come in, Rabbi Benyamin, come in, Miss Whoever-you-are.”
“My name is Castava in my native Czech, but the Germans call me Kassandra.”
“Ach! Who gives a damn what the Germans think?” said the maid with a toughness that’s typical of these big city women.
“I was all alone when I found him—may God protect you from such things!” said the maid, appraising me from head to toe as if I were a sprightly young stallion at the horse market. “A fine, eligible bachelor like yourself, Rabbi Benyamin.”
I caught a twinkle in Kassy’s eyes as she stepped in ahead of me, her skirts twirling around her ankles as her curiosity propelled her forward. I planted my boot on the threshold, kissed the tips of my fingers and raised them to touch the mezuzah on the doorpost.
Then my fingers froze. The mezuzah was out of kilter, pointing toward the street. Thinking it might have slipped out of place, I tried to pivot it back toward the house, but it didn’t budge. I looked closer. It was nailed into place facing the wrong direction.
“What kind of fool nailed this up?” I said, louder than I should have.
“Oh, the master had the
I was accompanying my partner-in-exile down the ulica Zydowska , the Jewish Street—or in common speech, Jew Street—to her rooms near the tannery on Kleine Gerberstrasse, a fetid alley nearby that was all she could afford at the moment. We had just come from the services for Shvues, and she was bombarding me with her usual array of questions about our beliefs and customs, especially the untranslated portions of the mystical Zohar, and why it compares the seven weeks from Pesach to Shvues to the seven days that a menstruating woman must wait before she can purify herself in a ritual bath. Not an easy subject to talk about with a foreign woman in the divided Polish-German city of Poznan. So I told her that the Shvues services she had just witnessed form the annual celebration of the Giving of the Torah, when the shul is filled with early spring flowers and, like a young wife preparing herself for her husband’s embrace, we celebrate our immersion in the cleansing “waters of Torah.”
“So why do you read from the Book of Ruth on this day?”
“For the same reason.”
My master and teacher, Rabbi Judah Loew, would probably say that the seven-week period marked the beginning of our exodus from slavery just as Ruth made a spiritual exodus from idolatry to monotheism as she crossed the wilderness from her native land of Moab to her future home—and her future husband—in Judea.
But before I could answer more fully, my boots got soaked with what I sincerely hoped was merely the refuse from someone’s piss pot.
The maid disappeared from the window. But we could hear a company of servants running from room to room, slamming doors, gathering crockery, and clomping up and down the stairs. This time I stepped back as the front door flew open and the housemaid flung a bucket of filthy water into the gutter running down the middle of the street.
I stopped the door with my arm before she could slam it in my face.
“What do you think you’re doing?” she asked. A life of hard labor had carved deep lines in her face, which was flushed red with exertion.
“Inquiring into a possible death, I expect.”
Some of the color drained from her face, as if I had accused her of violating a sacred law of some kind.
“Who are you?” she asked, squinting up at me.
Kassy answered for me: “You may not know his face but you certainly know his name, for this man is none other than Rabbi Benyamin Ben-Akiva, special assistant to the new head Rabbi of Poznan, the great Rabbi Loew himself, who saved the Jews of Prague from an army of enraged Christians intent on burning down the ghetto.”
“Ah! Then it is surely a blessing on this holy day that you happened to be passing by at just this moment,” she said, waving us inside. “Come in, Rabbi Benyamin, come in, Miss Whoever-you-are.”
“My name is Castava in my native Czech, but the Germans call me Kassandra.”
“Ach! Who gives a damn what the Germans think?” said the maid with a toughness that’s typical of these big city women.
“I was all alone when I found him—may God protect you from such things!” said the maid, appraising me from head to toe as if I were a sprightly young stallion at the horse market. “A fine, eligible bachelor like yourself, Rabbi Benyamin.”
I caught a twinkle in Kassy’s eyes as she stepped in ahead of me, her skirts twirling around her ankles as her curiosity propelled her forward. I planted my boot on the threshold, kissed the tips of my fingers and raised them to touch the mezuzah on the doorpost.
Then my fingers froze. The mezuzah was out of kilter, pointing toward the street. Thinking it might have slipped out of place, I tried to pivot it back toward the house, but it didn’t budge. I looked closer. It was nailed into place facing the wrong direction.
“What kind of fool nailed this up?” I said, louder than I should have.
“Oh, the master had the
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