A Tu B’Shevat Treasure
When my father died, I inherited his books as part of the tangible legacy a rabbi leaves his child. Worn volumes of the Talmud with carefully mended spines. Dog-eared siddurim. A Russian chumash. Yiddish novels. Collections of Hebrew poetry and scholarly works on Jewish ritual and law.
But Yentl, I am not.
And so it was in the more accessible English texts that I found what has become one of my favorite books -- Worlds That Passed. In it, the author, A.S. Sachs, describes with gentle fondness the vanished life of the shtetl. The hard work. The simple pleasures. The cycle of holiday celebrations that often was the only bright spot in an otherwise bleak existence.
It might be argued that shtetl Jews -- my father included -- survived from one dreary day to the next because they instinctively blocked out the reality of their cramped, poor villages and could, in Sachs’ words, “soar on wings of fancy” to vast, beautiful worlds that existed only in their minds. Never were these flight more therapeutic than during Tu B’Shevat.
Tu B’Shevat. The New Year of the Trees.
This festival that celebrates spring and the renewal of nature and life itself, always found the shtetl frozen and covered with snow. But no matter. On Tu B’Shevat the people transported themselves to a golden place where cedar fields, olive trees and lemon groves were heavy with buds. The shtetl Jews could feel the spring sun on their backs. For a day, at least, winter was gone, and the villagers were in Eretz Yisroel -- awash in milk and honey and fragrant citron. They ate precious bits of date and almond and fig brought straight from the Holy Land! They thanked God for the fruit of the trees and prayed to someday stand inside the gates of Jerusalem and behold with their own eyes the Cedars of Lebanon.
Actually, I don’t need books to take me to this shtetl world. My father regularly “guided” me through the village where he was born and into the cheder where he studied from sunup to moonrise. The cheder where, on Tu B’Shevat, lessons stopped while the rebbe carefully doled out raisins and nuts and bokser -- that most exotic of fruits.
According to Poppa, one Tu B’Shevat in the cheder was particularly memorable because of the aforementioned bokser. It seems my father’s study partner -- a lad named Shleimkeh -- side-armed several pieces at another student and hit (aftzuloches) the rebbe. Now, a hunk of bokser is a mean weapon, and for Shleimkeh’s infraction the entire class was forced to memorize an additional (and gargantuan) tractate of Talmud. Deep in my bones I’m sure that Shleimkeh, if he truly existed, was innocent and that the real culprit behind that long-ago Tu B’Shevat Bokser Rebellion was my Poppa...
My Poppa. How he adored trees. He told me, often and lovingly, of the trees that grew near his village. Apple! Pear! Peach! And oh, how that fruit tasted! Much sweeter, tochter, than any fruit here in America!
He also spoke of the weeping willow that stood by the side of his house. Its branches hung down into a pond and it was under these branches -- deep in the water -- that his mother once hid some silver spoons wrapped in a cloth. She hid them from the hooligans who periodically ransacked the village and she wound up leaving them there, in the water, when the family fled to America.
As my father grew older, he lost his sight and walked with difficulty and his last years were like a shtetl winter -- dark and frightening and dismally boring. But he blocked out this reality and lived in his memory, fancifully embroidered with imagination.
He soared on wings back to the shtetl. It was now a thriving town!
The few trees that once grew near his village were now large and profitable orchards that his family had owned for generations. (We spoke of this only in private, lest the knowledge that he came from the Lithuanian landed gentry bring shame to his less fortunate contemporaries. . . )
The treasure buried in the pond at the foot of the weeping willow grew as well. The few silver spoons multiplied into many dozens. The cache eventually included brass samovars and sterling kiddush cups and antique spice boxes encrusted with rubies and pearls. Poppa vowed to go back to the village one day -- I was to go with him and be his eyes -- and we would find the weeping willow and the treasure in the pond which, by now, was a vast lake.
According to his doctors, my father was practicing visualization. Removing himself from pain or fear or boredom by going, in his mind, to a place of beauty, serenity and joy. But I know that Poppa was just doing what Jews have always done, when necessary. He simply blocked out the real world for a few moments and replaced it with something better. He turned his winter into spring by returning home to his shtetl and to his youth -- when everything was green and heavy with juicy, ripe fruit.
And so, on Tu B’Shevat, in the middle of my hectic life, I stop and visualize whatever brings me peace.
I find a quiet world and see the olive trees. Smell the cedar and the citron. Taste the fruit.
I soar on wings of fancy to secret hiding places and reclaim the treasures left there for me by my father.
© 2009 Ozzie Nogg
0 comments:
Post a Comment