The Collected Stories

take her measurements, and sometimes she may be in her unclean days. Even if she is in her clean days, it is not proper to touch a woman, especially if she is married. Well—but there must be tailors. You cannot make all garments by yourself. This Jonathan happened to be a pious man but uneducated. However, he loved Jewishness. On the Sabbath he read the Yiddish Bible with his wife, Beila Yenta. When a book salesman came to town, Jonathan bought from him all the tomes and storybooks in Yiddish. There was in Krasnystaw a congregation of psalm reciters and a society of Mishnah students. Jonathan belonged to both of these groups. He listened to the lectures, but he was afraid to say anything, because whenever he uttered a word in Hebrew he mangled it and the scholars made fun of him. I see him before my eyes: tall, lean, pockmarked. Gentleness looked out from his eyes. It was said that one couldn’t find a better tailor even in Lublin. When he made a dress or a cape, it fitted like a glove. He had three unmarried daughters. When I was a boy I used to see him often, because a friend of mine, Getzel, an orphan, was his apprentice. Other masters mistreated their apprentices, beat them, and did not give them enough to eat. Instead of teaching them the trade, they sent them on errands, and ordered them to rock the babies or to carry the slops so that they should never learn the skill properly and have to be paid a salary. But Jonathan taught the orphan the trade, and, from the day he learned to make a buttonhole and to sew on a button, Jonathan paid him four rubles a year. Getzel had studied at a yeshiva before he became a tailor’s helper, and Jonathan used to ask him all kinds of impossible questions—like ‘What was the name of the mother of Og the King of Bashan?’ ‘Did Noah take flies into the Ark?’ ‘How many miles between paradise and Gehenna?’ He wanted to know everything.
    “Now, listen to this. Everyone knows that on the day of the Rejoicing over the Law the honored citizens, the learned, the affluent are called to carry the scrolls first—before the laborers, the simple people, those of little income. This is the way it is all over the world. But in our town the head of the synagogue was not a native. He knew very few people, and someone had to give him a paper listing the order of those to be called. There was another Jonathan in town, a scholar and a rich man, and the head of the synagogue confused the two men and he called Jonathan the tailor first. In the study house there was murmuring and giggling. When Jonathan the tailor heard that he had been called first, along with the rabbi and the elders, he couldn’t believe his own ears. He realized that it was a mistake, but when a man is summoned to carry the scroll he dare not refuse. Among the workers and the apprentices praying at the west wall there was laughter. They began to push Jonathan and to pinch him good-naturedly. It was in the time before the government took over the sale of vodka, and vodka was cheaper than borscht. In every half-decent home, one could find a keg of vodka, with straws for drinking, and over it hung a side of dried mutton to munch afterward. On the day of the Rejoicing over the Law, people allowed themselves to take a sip before prayers, and almost everyone was tipsy. Jonathan the tailor came over to the reading table and was given the scroll. Everybody stared, but only one person said anything—Reb Zekele, a usurer. He exclaimed, ‘Who calls up an ignoramus to carry the scroll first?’ And he returned his own scroll to the beadle. It was beneath his dignity to carry the scroll with Jonathan the tailor.
    “In the study house a commotion arose. To give back a scroll was sacrilege. The head of the synagogue was bewildered. To shame a person in the presence of a whole community is a terrible sin. No one sang and danced with the scrolls this time. The same simple people who had laughed at Jonathan and the honor given to him now cursed Reb Zekele and gnashed their teeth. When the ceremony was over, Jonathan the tailor approached Reb Zekele and said in a loud voice that all could hear, ‘It is true that I am ignorant, but I swear to you that in a year from now I will be a greater scholar than you are.’
    “The usurer smiled and said, ‘If this happens, I will build you a house in the marketplace for nothing.’ Reb Zekele the usurer dealt in lumber. He owned mortgages on half the houses in town.
    “Jonathan stood