5. A Rooster for Kapparah

5. A Rooster for Kapparah

In the old country, I was a shochet, a ritual slaughterer. That was before anybody ever heard of Hitler, long before. I learned the profession from Reb Sender of Holoscheitz, an excellent shochet, an excellent man, and a fine scholar. I can still slaughter a chicken in a twinkling of an eye, though over here I became a cutter of women's dresses. I guess my training with a knife prepared me to cut patterns for dresses. Anyway, that's what I became.

I'm still religious, not maybe old-country religious, but religious. There are lots of customs I grew up with over there that I don't follow over here, but the basic laws and customs I do follow. I don't perform the ceremony of kapparah with a live white chicken anymore. I used to slaughter it myself, though I don't think I ever did believe in it. Maybe it's because of a story that Reb Sender told me in the last years I knew him. I think it's an interesting story. I don't know how Reb Sender found out all the details, especially about what Rabbi Yehoshua, of blessed memory, and, l'havdil, Casimir the goy thought and felt, but I'm not going to worry about it. I'm going to tell it as if I know everything.

With a sigh, Rabbi Yehoshua turned away from the books scattered on his desk.

"Two days before Yom Kippur and I have a confession to make," he muttered to himself. "I'll never understand animal sacrifice, I don't like it, and I don't know how to teach it in the beis medrash!"

He brushed down his everyday suit with his hands and walked to the window. The sun was shining but he already felt the nip of autumn through the window. He stared out at the wide path that was the main street of his shtetl, thinking about the animals, their numbers, kinds, condition, the ceremonies that are so carefully detailed by the rabbis describing their sacrifice. He shook his head.

Rabbi Yehoshua was tall, straight, his face outlined by a carefully trimmed beard and mustache just beginning to turn gray, and a rather long nose. But it was his eyes which were the centers of attention. They had a mixture of the looks of wisdom, humor, kindness, and patience with fools. His people called him "Yehoshua the Wise," which he accepted not because he felt it was true, but because his Jews were inexperienced. They never had any dealings with the truly great, as he did in his younger days in the yeshiva. So if that was what they wanted him to be, he had no objection.

But he knew that their belief in him carried a terrible responsibility. Every act he performed, every word he said to an individual or to his congregation was absorbed and interpreted, and, terrible to consider, acted upon. He knew it. So when he had a doubt about something, he was deeply bothered. What effect would his doubt have upon the simple Jews for whom he was their Rabbi?

He walked across the room to the hat stand and clapped his everyday hat on his head. On the way to the front door he called our, "Gita, I'm going to the marketplace."

The Rebbitzin came to the door of the kitchen. "Are you going to get the kapparah-chicken?"

"Yes."

"Tell Mendel, please, to bring me another bunch of parsley on his way home."

Rabbi Yehoshua nodded. Purposefully, he strode out the door and down the path.

Two days before Yom Kippur that year was a Thursday. As always the marketplace on a Thursday was crowded. The women were bustling here and there, squeezing a vegetable here, a fruit there. Blood flowed at the fish stall as fish after fish was killed and cleaned. You could tell that it was two days before Yom Kippur because Reb Faivel Beilish, from Trompetz stood with his lulavim and etrogim ready for sales already. Everybody knew that what he showed in Holoscheitz was not the best he had to offer. He saved the best for the larger towns and cities he would visit after Yom Kippur, closer to Succos. But as long as the etrog was kosher, the Holoscheitz Jews didn't care. They couldn't afford a better etrog anyway.

As usual, all the sellers at the stalls were crying out the virtues of their wares. But, yet there was a pall of worry over the marketplace. Though the voices of buyers and sellers filled the air, it was nevertheless more quiet than usual. Shadows haunted the edges of the eyes; the lips were slightly pinched. The joy of bargaining was absent, and though bargaining was going on, the impression was that it was being done out of habit. Sellers were more careful about not taking too much profit; buyers worried about robbing the seller of a grusch that he was really entitled to.

After all, the day after tomorrow was Yom Kippur, the day of awful final judgment! Even Shlome and Shmuel, the rival chicken sellers were quiet. Usually you could hear them shouting like this:

Shlome: "Dear ladies, if you want a poor, thin unfortunate excuse for a chicken, don't come to me – go across the street to the other place. I have only full and fat chickens."

And Shmuel would call back: "Over there you can find chickens whose feathers weigh more than the shabby meat on their shabby bones. Come to me, dear ladies, if you want a good chicken!"

Shlome would reply: "The chickens over there have a nice color – green! But who wants to eat a green chicken?"

To which Shmuel would answer: "Be careful, dear ladies. Across the street are pigeons with long feathers. It is a crime to call them chickens!"

The truth is that Shlome and Shmuel were the best of friends – after business hours. They sat next to each other in shul and visited each other on Shabbos. Once, when Shlome was sick, Shmuel sold his chickens as well as his own and divided the profits with his competitor. The whole town knew about that. We simply enjoyed the way they advertised their merchandise. It was entertainment.

Two days before Yom Kippur, however, they didn't play their game. It is forbidden for one Jew to speak unfavorably about another Jew during the Ten Days of Repentance. One does not open his mouth to the Satan on those days; That One knows too much already! On this day, the chicken sellers had ordered dozens of white chickens for kapparos and stacked them in wooden cages, and were briskly selling them – briskly but quietly. Reb Sender, the shochet, was diligently performing his professional function. At ten o'clock in the morning Rabbi Yehoshua entered the marketplace as he did every year on this day. He alternated between the two chicken sellers – one year he would buy the white chicken from Shmuel, the next year from Shlome. And he would mark down in his notebook whose turn it was the next year to sell him the chicken.

Rabbi Yehoshua consulted his notebook once more to be sure that he did not misread "Shlome" for "Shmuel" or "Shmuel" for "Shlome." Many in the market place wished him a "Gmar chasima tovah" – a sealed blessing for the new year. His rather thin lips smiled through his graying beard and his eyes danced. He loved these Jews and he loved smiling at them. Reb Feivel the etrog peddler approached the Rabbi, as he always did, wished him well and told him he would stop by his house on the way out of town so that the worthy Rabbi could select his etrog and lulav privately, taking as much time as he pleased, without the townspeople watching his every move. The Rabbi thanked him and wished him a good year, too. Then he finally moved to Shmuel's stand.

"Good morning, honored Rabbi," said Shmuel. "May I serve you?" Of course, Shmuel knew for twelve months that on this day he would sell the chicken to the Rabbi, but this is the way one addresses one's Rabbi: with respect.

"Good morning to you, Reb Shmuel. I have come to buy a rooster for kapparah."

Shmuel winked at him and a big grin lifted his rosy cheeks above his beard. Even his cap was at a jaunty angle, as if he waited all morning for this happy moment. Shmuel was short and round, and his shirt was always trying to escape from his pants. His belly was actually quivering with excitement. "Rabbi, I have an extra special, unique, wonderful rooster for you this year. Please come into my shed for a minute." Never before had such a thing happened. Every other time, Reb Shmuel would ask the Rabbi to look over the fowls in the cages and select the one he wanted. Surprised and curious, the Rabbi wiggled behind the stand and followed Shmuel. All the ladies resignedly stood aside to let the Rabbi go through without the accident of brushing up against them.

Shmuel, who was a half-meter shorter than the Rabbi, stood on tiptoe and peered through the wired window.

"Good, he's on the other side of the shed. Quick, worthy Rabbi, through the door before he escapes! He's a sly one, this bird!"

In a twinkling, they had passed through into the shed and Shmuel locked the door behind them.

"There, Rabbi. Nu, what do you think?"

Rabbi Yehoshua looked at the white rooster. As chickens go, it was truly a magnificent animal. As white as the first flakes of snow. Tall, with long, clean, smooth feathers, a proud head, a rich, long red comb, a strong beak. But the eyes – what eyes! They were almost intelligent. First one looked at the Rabbi and seemed to have an expression of knowing what was going to happen to him. There was a kind of sadness in this eye, as if the rooster felt more sympathy for the Rabbi than the other way 'round. Then the rooster turned its head and looked at him with the other eye, and this one seemed to gaze upon the Rabbi with self-confidence if not with rebellion. "I understand you fully," the eye seemed to say.

"A noble beast," murmured the Rabbi.

"Isn't he?" said Shmuel. "He's worth every bit of five zlotys, but to you Rabbi, I'll sell him for two!"

"No, no," protested the Rabbi, horrified. "I cannot allow you take a loss because you are selling it to me."

"Rabbi," said Shmuel, "you know the halacha better than I, but why should you rob me of the pleasure of giving you a special price for this wonderful kapparah?"

To this the Rabbi had no reply. He took his purse out of his pocket and put two zlotys into Shmuel's hand, and kissed him on both cheeks.

Pleased beyond words, Shmuel said, "Now to catch the beast so you can take him home. And that, worthy Rabbi, will not be easy."

And it wasn't. The rooster seemed to know exactly what the chicken seller was going to do. If went to the right, the rooster was already on the left side of the shed. If Shmuel went to the left, he was already spreading his wings and leaping to the right, squawking and complaining, not with fear but with serious protest (the Rabbi thought): "How dare you try to do this to me, a king among roosters?" Round and round they went. The noise attracted vendors and buyers who peered through the window, amazed to see their Rabbi watching stumpy Shmuel the Chicken Seller chasing a chicken.

But finally it was done. The chicken seller took a long slide on the sawdust on the floor to grasp and truss its legs. The Rabbi succeeded in thrusting a bag over its head and then the squawking ceased. Shmuel's pants were torn, his cap askew, and his red cheeks redder than ever. But the Rabbi had his magnificent white rooster.

He lifted the rooster by its tied-up legs to carry him round the cages crowded with other white chickens who set a howling, squawking, cockle-doodle-doing never heard before in Holoscheitz. They seemed to know that their champion had been defeated and were wailing its inevitable fate.

"Shmuel," asked the Rabbi, "is it safe to leave this chicken with you for a few moments? I want to talk to Reb Sender."

"Of course, Rabbi," Shmuel replied. "He's nicely tied, and his head is in a bag. He'll be waiting for you."

Rabbi Yehoshua walked through the crowd. When Reb Sender saw the Rabbi approach, he laid out his three knives for inspection. He knew, of course, that it was the Rabbi's privilege and responsibility to examine the sharpness and smoothness of the knives. It was a halachic duty.

"Good day, Reb Sender," the Rabbi greeted him.

"Good day to you, Rabbi," Sender said. His quick eyes noted that the Rabbi picked up each knife in turn and sighted it, and ran his thumbnail over the edge, but still the Rabbi's mind wasn't on the examination. Sender waited.

In a low voice, the Rabbi said to Sender, "No doubt you take time off for a bite to eat, do you not?"

Surprised at the question, Sender murmured, "Yes, I do."

"Would you mind coming to my house to do so?" the Rabbi inquired.

Now truly astonished, Sender replied, "It will be an honor. I can come now, if you wish," and made to take off his apron. "No, no!" Rabbi Yehoshua said. "If you come now, people will think I found something wrong and I have invited you to my house to correct you, God forbid. In half an hour, perhaps?"

"I shall be there, Rabbi."

The Rabbi nodded his thanks and returned to Shmuel's stand to collect his rooster.

The Rabbi walked home, the chicken in his hand. In the darkness of the hood that the Rabbi had thrown over his head, the rooster remained quiet and resigned to its fate, it seemed, for it made no sound. It only panted. The Rabbi was much troubled, and he wondered why he should be. As he approached his house and prepared to tell his Rebbitzin that he had got a beautiful white rooster for the kapparah, he realized why he was unhappy. He didn't want to kill this wise and magnificent rooster. What was he to do, then, after all?

Rabbi Yehoshua's house was far from a luxurious home. Actually it comprised four rooms: a kitchen, a parlor/dining room, the bedroom, and another room for guests that had been divided into a study for the Rabbi as well. Behind the house was a fenced-in garden, where the Rebbitzin tried to grow some carrots and string beans so she could save a bit of money on the tsimmes, the vegetables-and-honey dish she made for Shabbos.

When the Rabbi entered the kitchen, he heard the Rebbitzin cleaning in the parlor. "We have a very fine chicken for the kapparah, Gita," he called to her.

"Wonderful," Rebbitzin Gita called back in a voice that said that she didn't like housework at all and if Rebbitzin Karp of Medzschitikovke could have a maidservant, why couldn't she? "Did you ask Mendel to bring that bunch of parsley?"

"I forgot," the Rabbi admitted. He heard the sigh all the way from the parlor.

"Never mind. I'll go over to the market myself soon."

Now, this may make the Rebbitzin sound a bit crabby, but really she wasn't. Like any Jewish housewife two days before Yom Kippur, especially the wife of the Rabbi, burdened by kitchen preparations, housecleaning, and soul-cleaning, she felt the pressure. She hadn't had a chance to talk to the Rabbi yet that morning, or she would have noticed that something was bothering him. At such times, she wouldn't add any kind of chore to his mind and she would wait patiently until he was ready to speak to her about it.

Rabbi Yehoshua knew from experience that this was no time to talk to his beloved Rebbitzin, so he passed through the kitchen to the backyard. He unbound the legs of the rooster and drew off the hood. He had taken a handful of groats from the kitchen and these he now tossed down in front of the rooster. The rooster looked up at the Rabbi, down to the groats, studied the one, then the other, and calmly and regally walked away.

"Listen," said the rabbi to the chicken, "I know why you are here, and apparently you have guessed why, too. I don't know why of all the roosters I have had slaughtered over the years for kapparos, the good Lord has given you intelligence to realize it. As it says: 'Asher natan l'sechvi vina.' That's His business. Neither you nor I can change the situation. It is the day before kapparos, and for kapparos, in this town, one has to kill a chicken, and you're it. So you may as well eat while you can. After tomorrow, you won't have a chance."

Having listened carefully to the Rabbi's little sermon, the rooster shook his comb and with great dignity and condescension stalked to the groats and bent his beautiful head and pecked.

The Rabbi returned to the house, troubled. He had talked one way to the rooster, but his deepest thoughts were along a different track entirely. Even as a young man in the yeshiva, supporting himself by being a shochet, he was not comfortable. But to slaughter for kapparos – this disturbed him deeply. He had searched through the Four Pillars of the Shulchan Aruch, through commentaries and responsa and opinions. For every Rabbi Joseph Karo, the great editor of the Shulchan Aruch, who said the custom was foolishness, there was a Rabbi Moses Issereles, no neophyte himself, who said that the custom had the power of time and should be practiced.

Anyway, it made no difference. Holoscheitz expected its Rabbi to sacrifice a rooster for his kapparah, and he could not do otherwise. This white rooster had to go! He would end up in a kettle of thin soup in the House for the Jewish Poor of the town, and sliced up into fifty portions, but first he would have to serve as the kapparah-chicken. Custom is custom and fate is fate. Meanwhile, the rooster had finished the groats and had found the rain barrel. He quenched his thirst by perching on the rim of the barrel and drinking. He looked around the yard and over the fence. He was standing there, gazing at the field beyond the fence when the Rebbitzin observed him from the kitchen window.

"Well, that really is a fine bird," she said to herself. "It will be a pity to slaughter him, but fate is fate."

She was wrong. And the Rabbi was wrong, as we shall soon see. Meanwhile, the Rabbi worked on his Kol Nidre sermon, but his mind wandered a bit. The Rebbitzin worked in the kitchen, but rested a bit. The rooster perched on the rain barrel and trembled a bit.

The Rebbitzin heard a knock on the door. She opened it and saw Reb Sender the Shochet standing there, a quizzical look on his face.

"The Rabbi asked me to come," he explained.

"Come in," the Rebbitzin said. "Something about your knives?"

"No, not that I know of," replied Sender. "He examined them in the marketplace and didn't say anything."

The Rebbitzin said, "Please wait a moment, Reb Sender. I'll tell the Rabbi you're here." She found her husband at the window, hands behind his back, head bowed. "Reb Sender is here, Yehoshua," she told him.

"Have you seen the chicken?" he asked her.

"Yes," she said. "It's very nice. You're not pleased?"

"Too pleased, Gita. It's a shame to kill it."

"Ah," breathed the Rebbitzin. Now she understood. Now she remembered what he had told her about being a shochet in his youth, how he felt. "So don't kill it. Get another chicken."

Yehoshua shook his head. "Shmuel saved it for me. It will be like a personal insult to him." After a pause, he said, "Please ask Reb Sender to come in. Would you mind bringing two cups of tea and some small cakes?"

When Sender was seated and the tea and cakes set before him, the Rabbi sat in his chair. "Reb Sender, I know you to be honest, learned … and discreet," the Rabbi began.

"You do me a great honor to use such words about me," murmured Reb Sender.

"Do not allow modesty to becloud truth," the Rabbi remarked. "I have a problem, and I need you to help me."

Sender waited. Never before had the Rabbi approached him like this. They learned together, worshipped together, respected and liked each other. But Sender never expected this degree of confidence.

"I have been studying the Torah on sacrifices and all the commentaries and the Talmud. I do not understand the need for it and what is worse, I cannot accept it."

Sender said, "You have taught us that our understanding is not necessary to perform certain laws of the Torah. Because they have been decreed, we must do them for they are the Law of God."

A cloud passed over the Rabbi's face. "I know, Reb Sender. And that troubles me more. By placing my understanding as a criterion for belief in a set of laws, I am no doubt committing a sin. All right, let it be on my head. But, as Rabbi of this town, I am afraid of leading others to sin. And that frightens me most of all."

Sender sipped tea and considered. "Maybe, Rabbi, animal sacrifice is in a different category. After all, what you have taught us is what the Rambam says: do not obey because of logic; obey because it is commanded. Yet he says that animal sacrifice may no longer be commanded. That stage of the people's development is over. Does that help you?"

"Maybe," the Rabbi considered. Then he smiled. "How clever of you, Reb Sender, to point out that the same authority has varying opinions. It is very philosophical, very difficult, very abstract. And yet not so abstract. Tomorrow I am to ask you to slaughter a rooster for me for kapporos. And I do not feel that I can. Go to the kitchen, look out the window into the yard, and look at the rooster that Shmuel sold me. Then come back."

Several minutes later Sender returned and resumed his seat. "It would be an honor and a pity to slaughter that bird," he said.

"Exactly," said the Rabbi. "Sender, do you believe in gilgul neshomos?"

This disconcerted Sender entirely. From a philosophical discussion of animal sacrifice comes a leap to transmigration of souls? Reincarnation? Was Rabbi Yehoshua the Wise losing touch with reality? Is he going over to Cabbalah!?

"I never thought about it," was all he could reply.

"Sender, I am chilled when I look at that rooster. Its eyes are actually intelligent and knowledgeable."

Is that all? thought Sender. He smiled. "When I was learning shechita from Reb Nechemia, he said that sometimes the eyes of the chicken will accuse you as you hold its head up from the neck. But," he said, "that is you, not the chicken. It shows the good heart of the shochet. And if ever the chickens stop accusing me, so to speak, it is time to stop slaughtering. I will have come to like it."

"Thank you," the rabbi smiled. "But what do I do about this bird?"

"Get another chicken," suggested Sender.

"That's what the Rebbitzin suggested. I told her it would be an insult to Shmuel. Besides, it will be a double crime. What right do I have to take another chicken as a kapparah for this one? Who am I to decide which living thing shall live and which shall die?"

"But you chose the first one to die, Rabbi Yehoshua."

"That, of course, is true. And yet I do not want to condemn this rooster."

After a moment, Reb Sender said, "The only way I can help you, Rabbi Yehoshua, is to promise you that I shall do whatever you wish and I shall never breathe a word about it."

The Rabbi rose. And so, of course, did Sender. "Thank you, Reb Sender, but at the moment I do not know what I want to do."

Sender grinned. "May I quote you? 'The Lord has a way of showing you what to do. Be ready to see it.'"

Rabbi Yehoshua laughed. "You should have been a Rabbi, Reb Sender, not a shochet." He shook hands, led him to the door, and his step was lighter.

Presently, the sun began to go down. The Rabbi made ready to go to shul for Mincha and Maariv. He went first to look out at the rooster from the kitchen. He was just in time to see the rooster jump off the rain barrel, find a dark corner, and tuck its head under its wing. The day for the rooster had ended. Sadly shaking his head, Rabbi Yehoshua wended his way to his shul. He still had the rooster on his mind when he said, "Ashrei yoshvei ve'techa – happy are they who sit in Your house…."

Casimir Stefan Klukievski was quite a good carpenter, when he was sober, who lived in a small house he had built by himself in the gentile section of Holoscheitz. When sober he didn't hate the Jews – he even did some work for them once in a while. He didn't exactly love them either. He just didn't think about them. But when he was drunk on that awful stuff Pyotr the innkeeper served, all his depressions and hates came up from his mind on the clouds of vodka. Among this cast of characters at such times were his father, his wife, and the Jews of Holoscheitz.

He had closed up his shop for the day and considered going home to his wife, whom he warmly hated since her father paid his father to force him to marry her. He decided he would delay the pleasure of her company for a while.

Pyotr the innkeeper reserved a corner for Casimir and always had a bottle of his special brand of vodka ready. He wasn't disappointed. With a wave of his hand, Casimir stomped into the barroom of the inn and sat down heavily in his corner. Like magic, the bottle of vodka appeared, alongside it a mug. One gulp produced shivers from his head to his feet, but also a kind of cloud behind his eyes.

"I will not look up," he said to himself, but of course he did, like always. There was that painting of the Count Whatsizname? standing in his cavalry uniform (faded now), one noble leg in front, arrogant face looking straight out of the portrait, left hand on his sword, right arm extended, the hand elegantly holding a silver cup. Good vodka in it, no doubt, not the horrible stuff Pyotr serves!

"'Everybody is better off than I am," he grumbled into his mug. "Look at that miserable count. Never did a day's work in his life and he holds a silver cup. Just like the Jews. Their poorest slob lives better than I do." And he drank some more. Laboriously, his clouded mind came to make a far-fetched connection between the count's cup and the cup he had seen in the Rabbi's house once. The Rabbi had hired him to make an additional bookcase in his study. The Rabbi really was very pleased. While working in the room, Casimir had noticed the two beautiful silver candlesticks, and the little silver box whose purpose Casimir had not the faintest idea, and the gorgeous silver cup. Since then, in his depressed moments, while imbibing Pyotr's vodka, snake-like jealousy would slink into his brain.

He finished what was in his mug and sloshed in another mugful. With two hands holding it, the mug reached his lips and he drank. Another shudder went down his body, like a breaker against a rock.

An idea entered his mind. You could tell because his eyes narrowed with muddy thought, and his eyeballs slithered this way and that to see if anybody noticed. It was such a simple idea, so simple and obvious that even Casimir himself wondered why he had not thought of it before.

He would steal the candlesticks and the silver box and the cup!

He would do it this night!

All he needed was a bag and a screwdriver (which he always carried in his pocket) … and patience. Tonight, about midnight, that was the time. Pleased with himself, he took a long swig of vodka.

"Hey, Casimir!" called Pyotr. "Casimir Stefan! Time to go to sleep in your own house. I'm closing up. It's almost midnight."

The last word was what Casimir wanted to hear. He got to his feet. A crude smile formed on his lips. "Heh! Heh! I'm not going home yet, Pyotr, my good, my loyal, my everlasting friend. I've got a job to do first." He winked at the innkeeper.

He didn't hear Pyotr's last words as he lurched out of the inn: "Well, stay out of trouble!"

Starlight gave off a faint silver sheen by which Casimir crept through the town. The little street where the Rabbi lived was deathly quiet. Not a light flickered anywhere, in any of the houses. Casimir slunk along, staying in the shadows. A dog in back of one of the houses barked a couple of times lazily, but then went back to sleep.

Suddenly, the corner of his eye caught a tiny light go on. He stopped and peered around. Then he smiled to himself. No danger. Between two houses he saw the larger building of the shul in the street behind the Rabbi's house. Someone had lit a candle in it. That was what had caught his attention. Crazy Jew, praying this time of night. Wait! All last week he noticed that Jews were going to the prayer-house at late hours to pray. Like Christmas mass. Better be careful the Rabbi doesn't get up and see me. I'll wait until he leaves his house.

He found a corner deep in shadow from where he could watch the Rabbi's house. There goes the candle! chuckled Casimir to himself. Candles were being lit in other houses, too. Casimir heard faint stirrings through the thin walls of the houses near him. He huddled deeper into the shadows. Thank heaven it isn't cold tonight, he thought.

And he watched.

The Jewish men slowly were getting up to go to the shul to say slichos for erev Yom Kippur. The hours were getting fewer, the decisions in heaven were being made, the whole history of the new year was being written at this moment up there. Each man met his fellow with a low muttered greeting and good wishes. Two or three waited at the Rabbi's door to escort him. Presently, he came out. Together, shoulders bowed, whispering, they walked down the dark silent street by the light of the stars.

By now, in most of the houses, only women and children remained, deep in sleep.

Casimir moved.

He slinked across the road to the corner of the Rabbi's house. Stealthily, he crawled along the front of the house, rising up whenever he came to a window to peek in. Quiet. Dark. Through the study window, he saw the glint of starlight off the silver candlesticks, the silver box, the silver cup. They seemed to beckon to him, hissing, "Come, Casimir Stefan, come and take us!" So real did this seem to Casimir that he uttered aloud, "I'm – " before he realized that he should keep his voice quiet. "I'm coming," he hissed back. Carefully, oh so slowly and carefully, he placed his hands on the window frame and pushed up.

The window would not budge.

Casimir clenched his teeth in annoyance. Well, he would have to use the screwdriver. He inserted the tip of the screwdriver under the bottom sash and pushed down on the handle. The window would not budge.

Deep in his throat Casimir growled. To do more on the window, to try and crack the pane or the wood required noise, and here he was in full view if anyone heard the noise and looked over. He'll try the back of the house. He could break in if necessary from the back.

Around the corner of the house he stole. Here it was darker. Finally, his hands, feeling along the side, encountered the wooden fence. He hands felt upwards. "Not too high," he told himself. Slowly he lifted himself up until he straddled the fence.

Up there, he peered around once more. No lights, no candles, no sound over here. In the prayer-building lights were swaying back and forth and shadows passed between the candles and the windows. His eyes examined the backyard. One half, the half toward the house itself, was dimly lighted by the starglow. The other half was as dark as the inside of the pockets of his black suit which he wore on Sundays, and just as empty. Casimir giggled at the comparison.

He dropped down into the yard.

And that started an eruption of noise that hadn't been heard in Holoscheitz since the Hungarian Circus's howling animals got loose and the attendants tried to scare them back into their cages by beating the band's drums and blowing on the trumpets.

The rooster gave forth a series of tremendous squawks that should have awakened the Archangel Gabriel to declare the last day of the world. It was said afterwards that his cockle-doodle-do was heard so far away that it awakened the mayor of Cracow!

Nearly startled out of his shoes, Casimir ran after the rooster. "Shoosh, shoosh, you miserable chicken!" The rooster scurried away, this way and that, screeching all the time. "I'll wring your head right off your neck! You'll wake everybody up!"

Everybody already was up! Every dog in town heard the message and joined in with unstoppable barking in every key ever known, and invented more. Windows slammed up. Up and down the street, women stuck their heads out the windows, yelling the first fearful thing that came to mind:

"Gevalt! A pogrom!"

"Lord help us! Murderers!"

"Thieves!"

"Cossacks!"

One woman cried out at the top of her lungs, "Burglars and robbers running up and down the street and where is my husband when I need him? In shul, of course! … Me-eleech! Come home! Save us!"

It is not recorded whether Melech heard his wife's desperate summons, but it is true that all the men burst out of the shul in wonderment. But they didn't know what was going on or where to go. Until, above the din, the voice of the rooster was heard. "That's the Rabbi's rooster," cried Shmuel the Chicken Seller. "I know that squawk! Come Jews! To the Rabbi's house!" And to the Rabbi's house they ran.

The first thing they saw was a bewildered Rebbitzin at the doorway in her robe, her hair stringing down under the scarf she hastily thrust on her head. "It must be in the back," she said to the men. "That's where the rooster is."

At the back they were stopped by the wooden fence, so they called for ladders, chairs, pails, anything to help them climb over the fence. When they reached the top of the fence, this is what they saw:

Crumbled against the house, slumped to the ground in the gray starlight was the figure of a man – soon recognized as the goy carpenter, Casimir Stefan Klukievski, and standing on that unfortunate's head, stretching his considerable neck to its greatest length, opening his beak and singing out screech after squawk at the highest and loudest pitch he could, was the Rabbi's great white rooster.

The silence of wonder descended upon the men strung along the top of the fence.

Then a whisper circulated around the fence: "The Rabbi is coming." Rabbi Yehoshua appeared at the kitchen door to the backyard. He gazed at Casimir and the rooster, still standing on the unconscious man's head, now preening his feathers as if nothing at all had happened.

"Shall we run to the Prefect of Police, Rabbi?" asked one.

The Rabbi hesitated before he answered. "Not yet, Shaya. Let me talk with Casimir for a bit first. Would a few of you please take him inside my house?"

So they doused cold water on Casimir's head, and when he began to shake the water off like a dog, they dragged him into the kitchen. Two stalwart Jews sat him down and watched over him, as the Rabbi brought over another chair and seated himself in front of the gentile.

"Tsk, tsk, Casimir Stefan," the Rabbi moaned, "to think that you would be involved in such a business."

Casimir rubbed the top of his head. "Ow! It hurts! I banged my head on the iron pole of your clothes line chasing that damn chicken!"

One of the guards walloped him. "Speak cleanly before the Rabbi!"

Casimir murmured, "Sorry – ". He was about to say "holy father" as he would to the priest, but he knew that wasn't right. "Sorry, holy sir," he grumbled.

"Tell me, Casimir. You and I are friends," the Rabbi said. "You even made a bookcase for me, and a fine job it is, too. Because of me the Jews go to you when our own carpenter is too busy. Tell me, what were you doing in my backyard?"

Now that he was sober Casimir himself didn't rightly know. But some glimmerings lit up in his mind. He looked about him. He was closely guarded by two big Jews, he had never seen such strong Jews like these. He glanced at the Rabbi, sitting so self-confident in front of him. He resented being a prisoner of Jews. He also knew that the priest wouldn't help him because he never went to church, and the Prefect of Police was sore at him because the door of his house, which he has fixed, was hanging off one hinge again. How life, too, can hang on one hinge, Casimir reflected.

He came to a decision. The hell with it! So I'll go to jail. At least I won't have to go home to that slut of mine, and I could always bribe the guard to let me have a bottle of vodka. He said:

"Well, it's a bit strange, but I'll tell you what I remember. I drank a cup or two of vodka last night, you see." The others didn't have to be told; they smelled it. "There I was sitting in the inn and the picture of the count bothered me, you see..." His listeners didn't see at all, but they let him go on. "He's holding a silver cup, that lousy aristocrat, and I was drinking from a dirty mug, and in my home I have only dirty mugs. So I said to myself, why shouldn't I have a silver cup, too? And then I remembered you had a silver cup. I saw it when I worked for you. And then I said to myself, if I'm going to take the silver cup, then I may as well take the candlesticks and the box, they've been together so many years already."

"Aha," said one of the guards. "A full confession, Rabbi. Shall I send for the Prefect of Police now?"

The Rabbi stroked his beard. "Not yet, Shaya. Remember, that according to our law, thoughts and intentions have no legal power, only deeds. What has Casimir done? He fell into my yard, frightened the rooster, hit himself on the head, aroused the whole town, but really committed no crime. What he wanted to do is beside the point. Shaya, would you and Aaron continue to keep watch over Casimir? I wish to retire to my study for a few minutes to think about this."

In the kitchen doorway, making room for the Rabbi to pass, stood Sender. "Is this the Lord's sign?" he whispered.

The Rabbi merely lifted his eyebrows, and winked. "Come," he whispered.

In his study, the Rabbi lit a candle and sat down, gesturing to Reb Sender to sit in the chair he had sat in hours before. In his heart the Rabbi felt that this strange affair on the night before kapporos was not an accident, but a message. But how was one to deduce the message from the events? Simple. One who is trained in the way the Gemara argues should apply his training to this situation as well.

And thus the Rabbi did. "Reb Sender, hear me out. Interrupt if you wish as you would in the beit medrash."

In the age-old sing-song of learning Gemara, the Rabbi began: "If these events are ordained as a message, to whom is it addressed? Only to me, for everything happened in my backyard. Who are the agents of bringing the message? Obviously, Casimir and the rooster. Is it conceivable that the Lord will use a gentile and an animal to fulfill his mission?"

Reb Sender presumed to interrupt: "We have a precedent: look at Bilaam and his ass. Bilaam, like Casimir, was of a gentile nation, and just as that ass spoke, so did the rooster, after his fashion!"

The Rabbi beamed delightedly. "Very good, Reb Sender. That ass was rewarded for speaking out. Shall the rooster who became for this night a watch-rooster continue along the path to being slaughtered as if nothing happened? He who prevented a burglar from entering my house and stealing the few possessions of beauty over which, each one, the name of God is blessed? Dare I allow a knife to be raised against a beast who had the wisdom to cry out when something was happening that had nothing to do with its well-being? Did not God – the yodeah machshovos – the One who knows my innermost thoughts, know that I did not want to slaughter this chicken, and did He not therefore arrange this unheard-of adventure to prevent his death?"

Said Reb Sender: "But the beast was already designated for a holy sacrifice. May we cancel the designation?"

Answered the Rabbi: "I think yes. For two reasons: today, with no Temple nor altars of sacrifice, it is extremely doubtful that such a designation has valid halachic power. Secondly, there are authorities who cast doubt upon this particular ceremony."

Rabbi Yehoshua continued: "Let us suppose that the rooster is not to die. How is he to be saved? Certainly, I cannot keep him. My people will never understand why I did not use him for the kapporas ceremony. And if they see that I have not performed the ceremony with a chicken, they will begin to doubt the entire idea of a kappara ceremony. They may, God forbid, begin to doubt the customs of their fathers. And that, may the thought destroy itself, lead them into other negligences. No, there must be another way."

He thought, and an idea formed, and he considered, and a decision was made. "Reb Sender, earlier you promised that you would help me confidentially in this matter. I shall ask you now to redeem that promise. When I talk with Casimir, please follow where my words will lead." He rose with a light heart and a springy step to return to the kitchen and to the prisoner.

Rabbi Yehoshua said to Shaya and Aaron, "I wish to speak with this poor man privately. Do not be afraid for me. He is harmless. Please tell the shamash to inform the men that I will join them in the shul soon to say slichos. It is a very short slichos on erev Yom Kippur, so there is no concern that we will be late for shachris."

Reb Sender, who was waiting in the shadows of the parlor, now stood silently in the kitchen doorway. The Rabbi nodded to him. Then the Rabbi sat and faced Casimir.

"You know that if I send for the Prefect of Police, you will end up in jail for many years." He waited until the other man nodded sullenly. "I have a plan, that if you agree to it, will free you from that fear."

Casimir stared at the Rabbi suspiciously. He trusted this Rabbi, but a Jew is a Jew.

"I remember that you have a few chickens in the yard of your house."

"Only a few. I have them for eggs."

"Good. I want you to take my rooster and to keep him in your yard with your chickens. I shall pay you five gruschen a month for the feed and the care. Any chicks that come along belong to you. But you listen to me: That rooster must be fed and kept clean and must go unharmed! Do you see that man standing there in the doorway? He is an expert on chickens. He will come by once a week on a day and at an hour that you will not know beforehand and inspect my rooster. If that rooster is harmed in any way or mistreated, I shall go immediately to the Prefect of Police, to the District Chief, to the High Judge, to the Prime Minister himself, and take all the Jews of Holoscheitz with me as witnesses, and accuse you of attempted burglary. Ask me no questions. Simply answer that you will do it or that you will not! Either way, you must never talk about this arrangement. Understood?"

Casimir scratched his head. He always thought Jews were crazy; now he was sure of it. Why not do as the Rabbi asks? That rooster can build a nice little flock of chickens for me. And five gruschen a month! My wife will probably ask a lot of questions, but one smack on the nose will stop that.

"All right, Holy Sir, agreed. And I swear by all the saints of the church that I'll never tell a soul what this is all about." The Rabbi had little faith in Casimir, none at all in his oath to the saints of the church, but depended entirely upon his threat to put him in jail. They actually shook hands.

"Casimir, catch the rooster and put him into the big bag that you'll find in the yard. Come back through the house, sneak around the back and wait for me."

"I won't go near that bird," growled Casimir.

"I put a spell upon him," said the Rabbi, knowing well to whom he spoke. "He will be very quiet. Go now!"

Reb Sender followed.

The Rebbitzin appeared in the doorway. "Yehoshua, I heard the whole thing. Don't you think that this is too elaborate and expensive a plan for such a simple matter?"

"Perhaps, Gita. But I feel so much better about it."

As he walked through the dark and silent town Rabbi Yehoshua had two thoughts: My Jews will never know that I never slaughtered a chicken for kapporos this year. Only Sender and Gita know and their lips are sealed. The second thought was: I shall place two zlotys in the charity box at the Home for the Poor – no! five zlotys, exactly what Shmuel said the rooster should have cost!

The Rabbi entered the shul and the slichos began. They all prayed with joy. Halfway through the prayers, the Rabbi saw Reb Sender come in. A look of understanding passed between them across the synagogue. They were not surprised to hear the rooster's call from across the rooftops of Holoscheitz that a new morning was about to dawn.

Copyright © Dan Vogel