The Collected Stories

Only anger remained. “If He does not need the Jews, the Jews don’t need Him.” The rabbi spoke no longer directly to the Almighty but to some other deity—perhaps to one of those mentioned in the Eighty-second Psalm: “God standeth in the Congregation of the mighty, He judgeth among the Gods.” Now the rabbi agreed with every kind of heresy—with those who deny Him entirely and with those who believe in two dominions; with the idolators who serve the stars and the constellations and those who uphold the Trinity; with the Karaaites, who renounced the Talmud; with the Samaritans, who forsook Mount Sinai for Mount Gerizim. Yes, I have known the Lord and I intend to spite Him, the rabbi said. Many matters suddenly became clear: the primeval snake, Cain, the Generation of the Flood, the Sodomites, Ishmael, Esau, Korach, and Jeroboam, the son of Nebat. To a silent torturer one does not speak, and to a persecutor one does not pray.
    The rabbi hoped that somehow at the last moment a miracle would occur—God would reveal Himself or some power would restrain him. But nothing happened. He opened the drawer and took out his pipe, an object forbidden to the touch on the Sabbath. He filled it with tobacco. Before striking the match, the rabbi hesitated. He admonished himself, “Nechemia, son of Eliezer Tzvi, this is one of the thirty-nine tasks prohibited on the Sabbath! For this, one is stoned.” He looked around. No wings fluttered; no voice called. He withdrew a match and lit the pipe. His brain rattled in his skull like a kernel in the nutshell. He was plummeting into the abyss.
    Usually the rabbi enjoyed smoking, but now the smoke tasted acrid. It scratched his throat. Someone might knock at the door! He poured a few drops of ablution water into the pipe—another major violation, to extinguish a fire. He had a desire for further transgression, but what? He wanted to spit on the mezuzah but refrained. For a while, the rabbi listened to the turmoil within him. Then he went out into the corridor and passed along to Hinde Shevach’s room. He pulled at the latch and tried to open the door.
    “Who is there?” Hinde Shevach called out.
    “It is I.”
    The rabbi heard her rustling, murmuring. Then she opened the door. She must just have awakened. She wore a house robe with arabesques, slippers, and on her shaven head a silk kerchief. Nechemia was tall, but Hinde Shevach was small. Though she was barely twenty-five years old, she looked older, with dark circles under her eyes and the grieved expression of an abandoned wife. The rabbi rarely came to her room, never so early and on the Sabbath.
    She asked, “Has something happened?”
    The rabbi’s eyes filled with laughter. “The Messiah has come. The moon fell down.”
    “What kind of talk is that?”
    “Hinde Shevach, everything is finished,” the rabbi said, astounded by his own words.
    “What do you mean?”
    “I’m not a rabbi any more. There is no more court unless you want to take over and become the second Virgin of Ludmir.”
    Hinde Shevach’s yellowish eyes measured him crookedly. “What happened?”
    “I’ve had my fill.”
    “What will become of the court, of me?”
    “Sell everything, divorce your schlemiel, or leave for America.”
    Hinde Shevach stood still. “Sit down, you frighten me.”
    “I’m tired of all these lies,” the rabbi said. “The whole nonsense. I’m not a rabbi and they’re not Hasidim. I’m leaving for Warsaw.”
    “What will you do in Warsaw? Do you want to follow in Simcha David’s path?”
    “Yes, his path.”
    Hinde Shevach’s pale lips trembled. She looked for a handkerchief among her clothes on a chair. She held it to her mouth. “What about me?” she asked.
    “You are still young. You’re not a cripple,” the rabbi said, baffled by his own words. “The whole world is open to you.”
    “Open? Chaim Mattos is not allowed to divorce me.”
    “He’s allowed, allowed.”
    The rabbi wanted to say, “You can do without divorce,” but he was afraid that Hinde Shevach might faint. He felt a surge of defiance, the courage and the relief of one who had rid himself of all yokes. For the first time he grasped what it meant to be a nonbeliever. He said, “The Hasidic institution is sheer mendicancy. Nobody needs us. The whole business is a swindle and a falsehood.”
    III

    It all passed smoothly. Hinde Shevach locked herself in her room, apparently crying. Sander the beadle got drunk after Havdalah, the