9. Maker of the Shivisi

9. Maker of the Shivisi

I suppose that I’m the only one saying Kaddish for the soul of Reb Meir Golovsky, of blessed memory. There was a son, but he escaped from Holoscheitz and went to America. For the first few years there were letters and a bit of money, but that soon stopped, and the son was never heard from or seen again. Rabbi Yehoshua even wrote to Leib Wallfisch in America to try to find the son to tell him when his father died. A few months later, he received a letter from Leib that he couldn’t trace him at all.

So rain or shine, sleet or sun, on the 19^th of Tevet, when a January storm was usual, I tramped up to the Holoscheitz cemetery to say the Prayer for the Dead over his grave. My wife didn’t like my going in all kinds of weather. “He’s not even a relative! You’ll get a catarrh on the chest and that will be the end of you,” she wailed, her father having died from it. But I went anyway. Women don't understand these things. How can you abandon a Jew just because he died?

I will admit, though, in later years I said the Kaddish in shul and went up to the grave just before Pesach. Maybe it was better, anyway. In April, the snow is gone and I could read the headstone:

Meir Golovsky

Maker of the ‘Shivisi’

                                                                  19^th Tevet

 It was fading already a little bit. Most Holoscheitz Jews can’t afford granite like the Thalers, so we buy cheap limestone from Palszewski, the mason outside the goyishe cemetery, and give it to our blacksmith to chisel the name and death-date on. But limestone doesn’t last forever.

Usually there was nothing else put on the headstone, except – maybe a pair of hands in the position of blessing the people if the man was a cohen,( a priest descended from a Priest in Temple times); or maybe a pitcher of water if the man was a levi – you know, the tribe that had the honor to pour water over the cohen’s hands before the blessing. Otherwise, only the name and date appeared. But I still remember when Meir arranged for the blacksmith to etch onto his stone, “Maker of the ‘Shivisi’.”

You don't know what a ‘Shivisi’ is? I’ll tell you. In front of the chazzan’s lectern in practically every shul anywhere, it was customary to put up a verse from the Bible that will be a constant reminder to the chazzan that he should be a humble petitioner to the Almighty on behalf of the worshippers who sent him up there. The verse that was most popular for this purpose was, “Shivisi Adonai L’negdi Tamid – I keep the Lord always before me.” It’s from the Psalms. Jewish artists – even gentile ones sometimes – figured out all sorts of designs to make the words and the plaque distinctive. Over the years, the plaque became known everywhere by the first word in the verse.

Reb Meir had been a tall man, with a flowing yellow-white beard, a large nose, and sharp eyes. If you didn’t know better, you would think, from his face, that he was the Chief Rabbi of All Poland, but actually he was only a porter, who lugged on his shoulders and back whatever packages he was hired to lug. He was of the lowest caste in Holoscheitz.

You didn’t know that Holoscheitz had a kind of caste system? Of course it did, like every shtetl. In our town, the Rabbi was not at the top of the ladder – he was far above it. At the top was Reb Mordechai Thaler, the richest man in town, not the most learned by a long way, but money always does talk! Then came the artisans, the shopkeepers (like me, Tuvia Nisselrod) – I keep a wine shop), market stall-keepers, and so on. Down to the one and only porter – Reb Meir Golovsky. According to the custom, he sat in the shul in the corner farthest from the Rabbi.

But he always changed from his old flat gray cap that he wore on workdays to a high black cap, like the yeshiva students wear, for Shabbos. And every Shabbos he wore a cutaway black coat too small for him that had faded in spots to purple. He walked with slow measured steps to shul and back to his shack. His whole bearing seemed to say to us that the dignity of a Jew has nothing to do with his line of work.

He started carrying packages when he was only eight years old, because his father died and he had to leave the cheder, what with a mother trying to bring up three other children. Then his mother died and with the passing years his brother and sisters passed out of his life. That didn’t seem to affect him, though. He married, and after a long time he had a son, but I told you about him already.

I got to know him pretty well over the years because I needed a porter every week to lug my wine barrels and mead containers down to the river to be thoroughly washed out. How can you work with a Jew every week for years and not get to know something about him? I always invited him into my shop for a cup of tea or a glass of mead, and he always accepted. After a long while, he began to talk a little bit about himself – the little bit that I’ve told you.

 

Reb Meir must have been in his sixties when they decided to renovate the shul, but you wouldn’t know it. He still was able to hop onto Yankel’s wagon, go off with him on a job, and toss bundles around that would have bowed the legs of an ordinary man. But the idea of helping to renovate the shul inspired him in quite a different direction. Listen.

 

On the Shabbos of Hol HaMoed Succos, Reb Mordechai, the Chairman of the Community Committee, asked Rabbi Yehoshua for permission to address the congregation. Now, whenever Reb Mordechai has something to say to the congregation he always asks his deputy chairman, Aaron Zvi Levy, to say it, because Reb Mordechai is afraid of only two things in this world: God and speaking in public. And Reb Aaron always refuses, because he, like everybody else in Holoscheitz, doesn’t mind watching the rich man squirm and sweat a little. We don't intend to be disrespectful, God knows. It’s all in fun, which we in Holoscheitz don't have enough of. We even might rag him a little while he’s up on the platform.  Rabbi Yehoshua is aware of it, but, being a wise man, he probably figures that letting off steam this way prevents the graver sin of jealousy.

So, just before the final prayer, the Shammas smacked the reader’s desk a resounding blow, which captured everybody’s attention, and Reb Mordechai slowly ascended the reader’s platform. You could see he’s sweating already, although the autumn cold has reminded us that winter is on its way.

He coughed, and a few wags in the back coughed with him. He started off with a quotation from the Torah. “Fellow Jews: it says in the Torah, God says,”  – here the Chairman looked down at a slip of paper in his hand – “’And in the hearts of all that are wise-hearted I have put wisdom, that they make all that I have commanded thee concerning the tabernacle of the congregation…’

“The plain truth is,” Reb Mordechai continued, “that our shul needs to be fixed up. Look around you. The paint is off the wall, the plaster is cracked, the wind is blowing in around the windows, the benches need a varnishing. Even the ‘Shivisi’ is unreadable. You can’t even read what was painted on it anymore.

“Now, the Committee realizes that we cannot afford to pay for all the work that has to be done. So we decided, like it says in the Torah, everybody who can do something, should do it. Everybody who has a skill, should use it, somehow, for the fixing up of our house of prayer. And if you can’t do anything, help out someone who can.

“In the next few weeks, we invite all of you to tell me or Reb Aaron Zvi Levy, or, because we are so much out of town, Reb Baruch the Shammas what you will do. We hope, with the help of the Almighty, that we shall dedicate our newly beautified shul on Shabbos of Chanukah. That’s it! Gut Shabbos.”

Well, this time he excited the congregation. After we finished the service, knots of men, and women too, discussed his message, and already projects were being offered by the carpenter and the blacksmith. Shop- and stall-keepers were already making arrangements with others to at least contribute something to be used. Others were wondering what they could do.

I could see that something that Reb Mordechai had said inspired Meir Golovsky, the lowly porter. His eyes gleamed under the overflowing eyebrows. Patiently he waited on the side, as he had done all his life, until everyone else was finished. Then he moved forward to lightly tap Reb Mordechai on the arm.

The Chairman turned to him. “Ah, Reb Meir. Why don't you talk to some of the others and arrange to give an hour or two a week to carrying whatever they need for their projects for the shul?”

“With your permission,” Reb Meir said, “I would rather do something else. I would like to make a new ‘Shivisi’. You said that the one there now is all faded. I will make one that will last forever. It will be the most beautiful ‘Shivisi’ in all Poland. I know I am not a carpenter or an artist, and I certainly am not a learned man, being that I had to leave the cheder at eight years of age. But I heard you say from the Torah, God put the ability in the hearts of the men who built the tabernacle. I feel that maybe God has put this into my heart.”

Well, a plea like that can’t be refused. (I found out later that Thaler had told Levy that his contribution will be a cord of lumber and a ‘Shivisi’ designed by an artist in Warsaw. That’s why he had mentioned it.) After a moment of mentally seeing his own plans fly away with the autumn wind, he said, “Sure, Reb Meir. The ‘Shivisi’ is yours.”

I would say that the smile that formed on the bearded lips of the porter was the first anybody had seen there since his son’s bris.

When he had walked away, Rabbi Yehoshua said to Reb Mordechai, “That was a fine thing you did.”

“Thank you, Rabbi. But really I could do nothing else. I just hope he makes not just a plain ‘Shivisi’, but one that people will talk about.”

And he certainly did!

That was Succos-time. Right after, everyone really got to work. Whenever he had some free time, the blacksmith began to fashion the strips of iron that he would bend into a new throne for Rabbi Yehoshua. A few weeks later, the cord of lumber from Thaler’s mill was delivered at the carpenter’s, unloaded of course by Reb Meir. Each night after evening prayer, the carpenter would work on installing new window frames in the shul.

Froike Thaler, Reb Mordechai’s son – he and his wife Mirele owned the needles-and-thread shop – got a few of his friends, including me, to paint the walls ourselves. We even decided to mix the paint ourselves. When the bags of base and lime and coloring arrived, Meir the porter carried them from the wagon into the beis medrash and waited until we opened the bag of coloring compound.

“Light blue or dark blue?” he asked.

“Light blue,” answered Froike, a bit surprised that the porter should be interested.

The Rebbitzin organized a sewing group of women, got Mirele Thaler to donate a beautiful piece of blue velvet from her shop, and set them all to embroidering a new curtain for the Ark of the Torah-scrolls. The crew met in the Rebbitzin’s house so we began to see Rabbi Yehoshua more and more in the beis medrash. I don't know if it was the noise of the cackling that drove him out, or what the cackling was about that he would rather not hear.

A couple of weeks later, Reb Meir knocked on the door of the Rabbi’s house. The Rebbitzin opened the door, greeted him, but told him that the Rabbi was in the beis medrash.

Almost shyly Reb Meir said it was the Rebbitzin he had come to see. “I don't need to come in, Rebbitzin. I want to ask you just one question, if you please.”

“Of course,” she said.

“What color is the curtain you are making for the Ark?”

She looked at him with astonishment. But a question is a question, and deserves an answer. “What they call royal blue. It’s between a light blue and a very dark blue. Why do you ask?”

“I need to know for my ‘Shivisi’,” he said. “Thank you,” and turned away.

Later, the Rebbitzin reported the incident to Rabbi Yehoshua. “I’m afraid that the ‘Shivisi’ is becoming an obsession for Reb Meir.”

“No doubt,” answered Rabbi Yehoshua, “but he has nothing else. I’m more afraid of what will happen to him after he has done with it.”

And Reb Meir Golovsky continued to prepare for his ‘Shivisi’. He asked the men to ask their wives to save broken dishes for him, a strange request but he wouldn’t answer why. They gave him the pieces anyway. Another time, he had a job at the train station in a rain storm loading Yankel’s wagon with bolts of material and boxes of spools of thread for the needles-and-thread shop. By the time they got to the shop to unload it, some of the boxes were wet. The wind had simply lifted up the corner of the cover that Yankel threw over the shipment.

“Oh, my,” said Mirele, “look at what the rain did to this spool of gold thread. It’s all unraveled and twisted.”

When Reb Meir heard that, he said, “I’ll buy it from you.”

Mirele laughed. “But it’s all twisted, Reb Meir. It would take hours and hours to spool it again properly. I can’t sell it. I’ll give it to you.”

“Never, Mrs. Thaler. I must pay for it.”

Mirele looked at him. She saw that he was very intense about not taking it as a gift. “All right, give me seven grusch.”

I think you’ll realize that seven grusch would not buy dirt from the roadway, but to Reb Meir it was a respectable sum, which he paid happily, fervently counting out the seven little coins into her hand, one by one. He carefully wrapped the spool in a piece of rag and put it deep into his pocket.

That was the second thing he collected – the broken dishes being the first. Then one night after the evening prayer, he approached Rabbi Yehoshua. “Is it permissible to remove the old ‘Shivisi’?” He leaned closer. “I’m making a new one for the shul and I could use the old wood. I – I can’t afford a new piece of wood.”

“Certainly,” the Rabbi replied.

Meir examined how the old ‘Shivisi’ was attached to the lectern and then went over to the carpenter who was working on a window frame to borrow a tool. After he separated the plaque from the wood, be brought it over to the Rabbi, shaking his head.

“Iron nails,” he complained. “I will use only wooden pegs, like they did when they built the Temple of Solomon in Jerusalem. They didn’t use iron.”

Rabbi Yehoshua studied him. “This is very important to you, isn’t it?” he said.

“The most important thing in my life, Rabbi,” he answered. “Well, maybe not the most important, but important enough.”

It so happened, however, that the most important thing in Reb Meir’s life, his wife, suddenly died two weeks later. We hardly knew what she looked like, she so seldom came out of the house to do more than shop a bit in the market for Shabbos. It was Reb Meir who always bought the wine he needed in my shop. She lay down to sleep one night and the Angel of Death decided she had enough in this world, so he quietly took her.

Reb Meir sat shivah and started saying the Kaddish for her morning and night, except when he was on a job. One Sunday, about a month after the funeral, very early in the morning, Reb Meir was seen sitting outside the Fenster house, patiently waiting. When Shmuel Fenster (the son who was Rothschild’s representative in Lemberg) and his wife Chanale and their baby came out to go back to Lemberg after their Shabbos visit in Holoscheitz, Meir approached Shmuel and spoke to him in a low voice. Shmuel nodded and accepted what it was that Meir passed to him.

Then one day, I think it was the following week, Yankel’s wagon showed up outside Yitzchak the blacksmith’s shop with Meir alongside the wagon-driver. Meir dropped down and lifted a big piece of limestone off the back and carried it into the shop. And then another! I’m convinced it was the American money his son had sent him years before that Meir had given to Shmuel Fenster to change for him into Polish money, and Meir used it to buy the headstones.

“On this one,” he told Yitzchak, “chisel the name of my wife, may she rest in peace: ‘Zelda Golovsky, 12 Cheshvan.’ On the other one, after I die, chisel:

Meir Golovsky.

Maker of the ‘Shivisi’.

And laid down a number of zlotys. “The date is not important, I don't have anybody to say Kaddish after me anyway. Don't forget, on your honor, Yitzchak. ‘Maker of the ‘Shivisi’.”

“Don't worry, Meir, I won’t forget,” Yitzchak the blacksmith assured him. “But what if I go first?”

But Meir was not to be humored about this. “I’ll get Palszewski the goy to do it. I’ll draw out the letters for him.”

That serious was Meir about the ‘Shivisi’.

 

Chanukah, of course, came closer day by day. It wasn’t a particularly bad winter, but you couldn’t call it a mild one either. There was lots of snow, some nights of sleet that made the whole town into a sliding pond, the river froze over to the delight of the cheder boys, like every year. I liked to look out of the window at night on the dark and silent town with the stove red-hot behind me, and this winter I would see on many a night a twinkle of candle light from behind Meir Golovsky’s window. A lonely light in a lonely hut where lives a lonely man.

“Working on his ‘Shivisi,’” I would murmur to myself, shaking my head. I wondered what it would be like, but no one, not any one, was permitted to see it while it was being created. And he didn’t talk about it either.

Still uneasy about giving up his ‘Shivisi’ to the likes of a porter, Reb Mordechai would ask him, “How is it coming, Reb Meir? Maybe I could get a wink at it?”

And Reb Meir would answer, “Nicely, Mr. Thaler. With God’s help, it will be finished on time.” Not a word about getting a wink at it.

With a short laugh that had no humor behind it, Thaler said, “Ah-ha! Like the proverb: You don't show a fool work that is only half-done.”

“God forbid I should think you a fool,” replied Meir gravely, “but why look at it until it’s finished?”

So we painted, and Yitzchak the blacksmith fashioned his iron rods, legs and seat for the Rabbi’s throne-like chair, and Moshe the carpenter just about finished the window frames and started on varnishing the seats and lecterns and tables. The ladies reported that the curtain was “just beautiful!” In other words, the winter was passing into December and Chanukah was not far away.

Excitement was mounting, but did not reach its peak until the Shabbos before the first day of Chanukah, a week before the Dedication. Rabbi Yehoshua let it be known that famed “Cabbalist” Rabbi Yosef Drobles of Trompetz will honor us with a visit on Dedication Shabbos, together with his wife Chaya-Leya, a Holoscheitz girl, and family. They will stay at Chaya-Leya’s parents’ house, and Rabbi Drobles will daven with us, of course.

Which brings me to Friday, Erev Shabbos Chanukah. I don't think anybody was doing anything extra that Friday, but the tension in the air made it seem like everyone was busier than usual. Reb Meir was seen entering the shul in early afternoon, carrying a rather big flat package covered with a cloth. The ‘Shivisi’ of course.

A little later I was waiting for Reb Baruch the Shammas to pass the door of my shop on his way to the shul from the mikveh, where he underwent the ceremonial immersion cleansing him of the work-week and preparing him for the Shabbos. Reb Baruch is very particular about how his shul looked on Shabbos and checked it every Friday afternoon. When I saw him come, I locked my shop and went with him to the shul. I was donating a beautiful set of wicker decanter holders to the shul and I wanted to put the wine bottle in one of the holders before Shabbos.

I was at the closet doing so when I heard:

“Oy, vey! No! No! No!”

I ran to Reb Baruch’s side. He was dancing from one foot to the other in front of the chazzan’s lectern, pulling his beard, twisting his sidelocks and muttering, “Oy, oy, what shall we do now?”

“What is it?” I cried. “What’s the matter?”

“Look at Reb Meir’s ‘Shivisi’! Just look at it!”

So I looked. It was a beautiful thing. He had sewn a border of gold thread a centimeter wide on a piece of medium blue brocade he must have cut from his dead wife’s yom-tov dress. Oh, how many hours it must have taken those fingers, gnarled and twisted and stumped by sixty years of grabbing and pulling and lifting, to respool the thin unraveled thread he had gotten from Mirele Thaler and then to sew that border. Then he had glued and nailed with pegs the brocade forever to the old ‘Shivisi’ board. Then he cut out the 18 Hebrew letters of “Shivisi Adonai L’Negdi Tomid”. On the wood, in the exposed spaces for the letters, he glued a mosaic of tiny pieces of white and blue crockery. The letters caught the afternoon winter light and like diamonds cast darts of lights here and there. It was a remarkable ‘Shivisi’.

But, to tell you the truth, on first look, I had missed what the Shammas was wailing about:

“God in Heaven! He spelled the word ‘Shivisi’ wrong!”

 

So he had. Instead of the correct Hebrew letter saf for the “s” sound, he had made the other Hebrew letter for the “s” sound, the samach. Inwardly I cried, “Oh, you poor ignorant wonderful old man. Uneducated since the age of eight. All that beautiful work, and you went ahead and made a spelling mistake!”

“We must take it down!” declared the Shammas.

“We must do nothing of the sort!” I retorted. “This is not our responsibility! It’s Mordechai Thaler’s, or the Committee’s, or Rabbi Yehoshua’s. We don't touch it!”

“I must at least tell them!” Reb Baruch cried, and he ran from the empty shul as if the devil were chasing him. I went home, almost crying.

 

Aaron Zvi Levy told me later what happened next. Reb Baruch first informed Mordechai Thaler. White-faced and angry at Meir Golovsky (and more at himself, I would say, for giving Meir the permission to make the ‘Shivisi’ when he had an artist in Warsaw all ready to do it), Reb Mordechai and the Shammas ran over to Levy’s house. A quick conference there and the Committee ran to shul to verify the catastrophe. Three minutes later, they ran to the Rabbi’s house. All of this, of course, was clearly seen by a host of Jews racing against the oncoming Shabbos, but luckily they attributed it to last minute details for Dedication Shabbos, not to a disaster.

The Shammas explained to Rabbi Yehoshua about the grievous spelling error. “It’s not as if he forgot a yod in a word. Lots of words are spelled either with or without a yod,” he wailed. “He put in a samach where a saf should be!”

“We’ll be the laughing stock of the congregation,” complained Reb Mordechai. “The ‘Shivisi’ is the centerpiece of the whole shul. All eyes will be on it! And what they’ll do to poor Reb Meir … They’ll tease the skin off him! We must take it down – now! before anyone else sees it!”

Rabbi Yehoshua didn’t seem to be terribly excited, he never does in the midst of a crisis.

“What do you think, Reb Aaron?” the Rabbi asked the Deputy Chairman.

“Maybe we should take it down and announce that it isn’t ready yet and explain to Meir what it’s all about.” But then doubt entered his eyes. “But that, I admit, may break the old man’s heart. He’s worked so long on it. From the short look I had of it, you can’t correct the mistake without spoiling the whole ‘Shivisi.” I don't know what to do.”

Rabbi Yehoshua pondered the problem. Then he spoke. “Of whom are we afraid? Our own Holoscheitz Jews? They know it’s a ‘Shivisi’ and they know who made it and they know what kind of man he is and what his life has been like. I cannot believe that their hearts will let them laugh at him. They may shake their heads and tsk-tsk a bit, but they will not joke about it.

“So actually we are afraid of what strangers will think of us when they see the ‘Shivisi.” If they say anything, we can explain. To me, the joy of Meir Golovsky is more important to us – to us, I say! – as his friends and neighbors than what others may think about us. Let us see what will be Rabbi Drobles’s reaction tonight. After all, he’s a stranger. Go home, light your Chanukah candles, and we’ll gather in the shul.”

Then the Rabbi smiled. “You know, I can think of three holy books that have been studied day and night in the yeshivos that carried a printer’s mistake on the title page. It made them even more famous. After a hundred and twenty years of life, when Reb Meir goes up to heaven, we’ll take it down and correct it. Meanwhile, it will be the most famous ‘Shivisi’ in all of Poland!”

 

On Friday nights, the Holoscheitz shul is normally crowded. But on that night it was packed as if it was Rosh Hashana. All those who ordinarily looked for an excuse not to come out on a freezing winter’s night, didn’t look for one. There were even women and girls in the Ladies’ Gallery. The Rebbitzin was there, too. Not only were all the candles in the sconces and chandeliers lit, but there were extra ones for Chanukah.

Rabbi Yehoshua waited at the door for his guest, Rabbi Drobles. When he came, wrapped in his beaver-lined coat, everyone subsided into silence. Our Rabbi shook his hand, Reb Baruch took his coat, and he was revealed in his white cutaway suit, white fur-and-velvet shtreimel on his head. He was a “Cabbalist” rabbi and he followed the custom to wear white on Shabbos. Rabbi Yehoshua escorted him through the ante-room into the shul itself.

Rabbi Drobles paused on the threshold and looked around. “The shul looks truly beautiful,” he said. “It looks like it has been rebuilt and beautified since the last time I saw it. I extend my congratulations to all who participated. Blessed is the town and the Rabbi to have a congregation that can so wonderfully perform the mitzvah of beautifying the House of Prayer. I feel like I am participating in the dedication of the Mishkan in the desert!”

His words were whispered throughout the shul, to the satisfaction of everyone. Rabbi Yehoshua said, “May I introduce to you those who actually did the work, Rabbi Drobles.” And he presented everyone who had laid a hand in the renovation, from Reb Mordechai down to Meir Golovsky. “Reb Meir is a porter. He hasn’t been in a classroom since he had to go to work at the age of eight. But he is a pious Jew, observing what he can of our faith. He was inspired to make the new ‘Shivisi’.”

Reb Baruch the Shammas, who lived and breathed this shul, almost fainted. That the Rabbi should actually call his attention to it!

Rabbi Drobles looked over to the plaque which glinted rays of light off its mosaic and reflected the flickering candles in its gold border. It seems to entrance him. He walked over to it and studied it. Only then did the congregation notice what was on the plaque. One could hear the intake of breath. Rabbi Drobles’s long finger touched one or two of the mosaic letters and traced a bit of the gold border.

Then he turned and went over to Meir Golovsky. He took him by the shoulders and pressed his cheek to Meir’s rough beard. “I congratulate you. I wish you strength and long life. It is a wondrous piece of work. I only wish that I had one – similar to it in my shul in Trompetz!”

I swear that Reb Mordechai’s eyes were damp, though, being an unsentimental business man, he would never admit it. Reb Baruch was stunned with gratitude that Rabbi Drobles made no reference to the error. Aaron Zvi Levy crossed looks with Rabbi Yehoshua, but no emotion crossed Rabbi Yehoshua’s face – to him, everything was as expected. I know that my eyes were filled with tears as we began the services that marked Dedication Shabbos.

 

As usual, Rabbi Yehoshua sat with the Committee on Thursday evening after maariv. The topic for discussion was, of course, how the special Shabbos had gone. “It went very well, I think,” he said.

Reb Mordechai said, “I never thought it would, seeing that mistake on the ‘Shivisi.” I have to tell it to your face, Rabbi: You are a wise man.”

“Thank you, Reb Mordechai. But there is one wiser yet – Rabbi Drobles. All he needed was a little hint and he understood the situation perfectly. What he did and what he said could have come only from a wise head and a pure heart.”

 

Well, as I said at the beginning, Meir Golovsky is dead. He died the proudest and happiest man in Holoscheitz. It was all inside. You couldn’t tell from the modest way he continued to haul boxes and bolts and packages. He did so until his dying day almost. In the last week or so before he went, Yankel and I took turns caring for him. I took it upon myself to say the Kaddish for him the first year and intended to do so on the yahrzeit every year for the rest of my life.

And you know? They never fixed Meir’s ‘Shivisi’ yet.

Copyright © Dan Vogel