What Is The Soul?

________________________________________________
Title:     What Is The Soul?
Author: Isaac Loeb Peretz [More Titles by Peretz]

I remember, as in a dream, that there used to be about the house a little, thin Jew, with a pointed beard, who often put his arms round me and kissed me.

Then I remember how the same man lay ill in bed; he groaned a great deal, and my mother stood and beat her head with her hands.

One night I woke up and saw the room full of people. Outside there was a grievous noise; I was very frightened, and I began to scream.

One of the people came up to me, dressed me, and led me away to sleep at a neighbor's.

When I saw our room next morning, I did not know it again. Straw lay scattered on the floor, the glass on the wall was covered over, the hanging-lamp wrapped in a table cover, and my mother sat on a low stool in her socks.

She began to weep loudly at sight of me and cried: "The orphan! the orphan!"

An oil-lamp burned in the window; beside it were a glass of water and a piece of linen.

They told me that my father had died, that his soul washed itself in the glass and dried itself with the linen; that when once I began to say the Kaddish it would fly straight up into heaven.

And I fancied the soul was a bird.

One evening the "helper" was leading me home from Cheder. A few birds flew past me, quite low.

"Neshome'lech fliehen, neshome'lech fliehen!"[30] I sang to myself. The "helper" turned round upon me:

[Footnote 30: Little souls fly, little souls fly!]

"You silly!" he said, "those are birds, ordinary birds."

Afterwards I asked my mother how one could tell the difference between an ordinary bird and a soul.

At fourteen years old, I was studying Gemoreh with the commentaries, and, as luck would have it, under Zerach Kneip.

To this day I don't know if that was his real name, or whether the boys gave it him because he used to pinch (kneipen) without mercy.

And he did not wait till one had deserved a pinch; he gave it in advance. "Remind me," he would say, "and by and by we shall settle up our accounts."

He was a Mohel, and had one pointed, uncut finger nail, and every pinch went to the heart.

And he used to say: "Don't cry; don't cry about nothing! I only pinch your body! What is it to you if the worms have less to eat when you are in your grave?"

"The body," said Zerach Kneip, "is dust. Rub one palm against the other, and you will see."

And we tried, and saw for ourselves that the body is dust and ashes.

"And what is the soul?" I asked.

"A spirit," answered the rabbi.

Zerach Kneip hated his wife like poison; but his daughter Shprintze was the apple of his eye.

We hated Shprintze, because she told on us, and--we loved the rebbitzin, who sold us beans and peas on credit, and saved us more than once from the rabbi's hands. I was her special favorite. I was given the largest portions, and when the rabbi had hold of me, she would cry: "Murderer! what are you after, treating an orphan like that? His father's soul will be revenged on you!"

The rabbi would let go of me, and the rebbitzin got what was left.

I remember that one winter's evening I came home from Cheder so pinched by the rabbi and so penetrated by the frost that my skin was quite parched.

And I lifted my eyes to heaven and cried piteously and prayed: "Tatishe, do be revenged on Zerach Kneip! Lord of the world, what does he want of my soul?"

I forgot that he only pinched the body. But a man is to be excused for what he says in his distress.

On a school holiday, when Zerach Kneip shut the Gemoreh and began to tell stories, he was a different person.

He took off his cap and sat in his bushy locks (the skull-cap was hidden by them); he unbuttoned his kaftan, smoothed out his forehead. His lips smiled, and even his voice was different.

He taught us in the hard, gruff, angry voice in which he spoke to the rebbitzin; he told us stories in the gentle, small, kind voice in which he addressed Shprintze, his dear soul.

And we used to implore him as though he were a brigand to tell us a story. We were unaware of the fact that Zerach Kneip knew only one chapter of the Talmud, with which his course for little boys began and ended, and that he had to fill up the time with stories, specially in winter when there are no religious holidays. We little fools used to buy stories of him with peas and beans, and once even we saved up to buy Shprintze a red flannel spencer.

For the said spencer, Reb Zerach told us how the Almighty takes a soul out of his treasure-house and blows it into a body.

And I pictured to myself the souls laid out in the Almighty's store-room like the goods in my mother's shop, in boxes, red, green, white, yellow, and blue, and tied with string.

"When God," said the rabbi, "has chosen a soul and decided that it is to go down into the sinful world, it trembles and cries.

"In the nine months before birth an angel teaches it the whole Torah; then he gives it a fillip under the nose, and the soul forgets everything it has learned.

"That," added the rabbi, "is why all Jewish children have cloven upper lips."

That same evening I was skating on the ice outside the town, and I observed that the Gentile boys, Yantek, Voitek, and Yashek, had cloven upper lips just like ours.

"Yashek," I risked my life and asked, "ti tàkshé màyesh dùshé?"[31]

[Footnote 31: "You also have a soul?" Polish.]

 

"What does it matter to you, soul of a dog?" was the distinct reply.

Beside going to the rabbi, I had a teacher for writing. This teacher was supposed by the town to be a great heretic, and the neighbors wouldn't borrow his dishes.[32]

[Footnote 32: Because he was suspected of not keeping the dietary laws.]

 

He was a widower, and people never believed that Gütele, his daughter, a girl about my age, knew how to make meat kosher.

But he was exceedingly accomplished, and my mother was determined that her only son should learn to write.

"I beg of you, Reb teacher," she said to him, "not to teach him anything heretical, nothing out of the Bible, but teach him how to write a Jewish letter, just a 'greeting to any friend' letter."

But I don't know if he kept his word. When I gave him the poser about the cleft lips, he went into a fury; he jumped up from his chair, overturned it with his foot, and began to caper about the room, crying out:

"Blockheads! murderers! bats!" By degrees he grew calm, sat down again, wiped his spectacles, and drew me to him:

"My child," he said, "never believe such rubbish. You took a good look at the Gentile boys who were skating? What are their names?"

I told him.

"Well," he continued, "had any one of them a different kind of eye from yours; different hands or feet or limbs? Don't they laugh just as you do? And if they cry, do they shed another sort of tears? Why should they not have a real soul as well as we? All men are alike, children of one family, one God is their Father, one earth their home. It is true that at present the nations hate each other, and each one persuades itself that it is the crown of creation, and occupies all God's thoughts; but we hope for a better day, better and brighter, when humanity will acknowledge one God and one law, when the words of our holy prophets will come true, when there shall be an end to all wars and jealousy and hatred; when all will serve one Creator, and it will be as the verse says: 'For out of Zion shall go forth the Law and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem.'"

I knew that verse from the paragraph, "And it came to pass, when the Ark set forward," in the prayer-book.[33]

[Footnote 33: Our little Talmud student would not be familiar with much of the Prophets' writings beyond what is contained in the prayer-book. The study of the Prophets savored rather of free-thinking.]

 

The teacher went on talking for some time, but I understood little of what he said; I could not believe that "a Gentile has brains, too," that all men were equal. I knew that the teacher held heretical opinions; he did not even believe in the transmigration of souls, as I saw for myself after the death of Fradel Mifkeres (the heretic), when a black dog appeared on the roof of the house where she had lived.

Then he pared his nails in order, and never cut a "witness"[34] to throw out of the window.

[Footnote 34: A tiny bit of wood tied up and thrown away with the nails. The superstitions behind this practice are not confined to the Jews.]

 

I should very soon have run away from him; I should have told my mother of the way he talked, only--

I am sure you guess what and whom I mean.

This alone remained fixed in my head, that there would be a time when the other nations would come to us to learn Torah, and that it might be to-morrow.

Times with us just then were quite Messianic; strong hints of it were discovered in the Book of Daniel, and the word that stood for the current year indicated it; besides, there was a passage in the Zohar, and in the Midrash ha-Néelom, and it was whispered from ear to ear that the Rebbe of Kozenitz had stopped reciting the Supplications; and there was reliable news from Palestine that no fox had been seen near the "western wall" all that year.

And people looked every day for Messiah the son of Joseph; Kohol gave bribes to escape paying taxes; when Messiah came, who would trouble about little things like that?

The women came off worst. A few years previously the steps of their bath had fallen in. Goodness knows, it took asking enough before the money was granted for new ones. And now the wood was there, ready and waiting, only it seemed a pity, all the same, to hire a workman and spend those few rubles. And I firmly believed that in a short time Yashek, who pushed me when I was skating, just as I was doing a "cobbler," so that, thanks to him, I all but broke my neck; that Voitek, who always made a pig's ear at me, and Yantek, who counted us--raz, dva, tshi--that all three, I say, would come and humbly ask me to explain a ritual question, for instance, concerning things improper for the touch, as a stone on Sabbath.

And I, "merciful and a son of the Merciful," would not remember against them what they had done to me, but would tell them. I would be a friend to them and explain to them the mystery of the iron and the paper bridge; tell them not to venture on to the iron bridge--indeed, that it would be best to keep away altogether, if they wished to save their souls.

On the eve of New Year I completed the course with Zerach Kneip, and felt as it were the relief of the exodus out of Egypt.

I had been told that my new teacher, Reb Yozel, never pinched; never even hit you for nothing. I had been used to see Reb Yozel at prayers. He was a tall Jew, with huge eyebrows, so that his eyes were quite hidden. He wore his kaftan open, and the "little prayer-scarf" appeared on each side of his long, pointed beard. He walked softly and talked softly, as though of secrets. And while he talked, he nodded his head slowly, lifted his brows, drew his forehead together, thrust out his lips and whiskers, and slid both hands into his girdle; it seemed as though every word he spoke were of the greatest importance.

Reb Yozel had been "messenger" for a time to one of the great wonder-workers, and he had even now a certain amount of oils, coins, amulets, salves, etc.,[35] to sell on commission; he was reckoned the first exorcist in the town, and if the rabbi were poorly, he would preach instead of him on the Great Sabbath and the New Year, and deliver memorial addresses. The rabbi was a weak old man, and Reb Yozel looked to filling his place when he had accomplished his one hundred and twenty years.

[Footnote 35: Which had been invested with wonder-working powers.]

 

Beside this, Reb Yozel was a celebrated blower of the Shofar, and when he repeated the blessing before blowing--how goes the saying?--fish trembled in the water.

And I was filled with pride at the thought of being his pupil.

We had not reached the Day of Atonement before I had an opportunity of questioning Reb Yozel about the soul.

The soul, with me, had become a sort of idée fixe; it was never out of my thoughts. The first thing Reb Yozel did was to empty my head of the notion of other people being our equals, and to fill it up again with "Thou hast chosen us."

"Not in vain," said he, "do we suffer exile, scorn, and other plagues not mentioned in the denunciations of the Pentateuch. Were we like to other nations, we should have this world the same as they have it; 'the child whom the father loveth, he correcteth,' so that it may study and enter the gates of knowledge.

"But even with us Jews," went on Reb Yozel, "souls are not all alike; there are coarse, ordinary souls, like Zerach Kneip's, for instance; your teacher, the heretic, has a soul like Korah; there are also very great souls, some of which come from out the space under the Throne of Glory; these belong to the category of kémach sòlet."[36]

[Footnote 36: "Fine meal," as in Gen. xviii. 3; used also figuratively.]

 

I understood little, especially about the space under the Throne of Glory; I only knew the meaning of kémach sòlet, and supposed the difference between soul and soul was like that between rye-flour, corn-flour, wheat-flour, and the flour which was used for the Sabbath loaf. The greatest of all the souls must be mixed with saffron and raisins.

"The great thing," said Reb Yozel, "is to suffer.

"No soul will be lost; they must all return to the state in which they were previous to their stay on earth. And the souls can be cleansed only by suffering. The Creator, in His great mercy, sends us suffering so that we may remember we are but flesh and blood, a broken potsherd, mere nothings, who fall into dust and ashes at His look; but in the other world also the souls undergo purification."

And he told me all that was done to the poor souls in the seven torture-chambers of Gehenna.

About the holiday times I had more leisure for looking round at home. Just before Tabernacles, we had a great wash.

One night I dreamt that I was in the next world. I saw how the angels stretched out their hands from heaven and caught hold of the souls who were returning thither. The angels sifted them; those that were clean and white as snow, flew up like doves out of their hands as though into Paradise. The dirty ones were thrown into a heap, and the heap was thrown into the sea of ice, beside which stood black angels with their sleeves rolled up, who washed them. After that they were boiled in a black pot over hell-fire.

And when the dirt was squeezed out of them and they were ironed, the weeping of the souls was heard from one end of the world to the other.

There, in the soiled heap, I recognized the soul of my teacher; it had his long nose, his hollow cheeks, his pointed beard, and it wore his large, blue spectacles. They washed it, and it only looked the blacker.

And an angel called out: "That is the soul of the heretical teacher!" Then the same angel said angrily to me:

"If you walk in his ways, your soul will be as black as his, and it will be washed like this every evening, till it is thrown into Gehenna."

"I will not walk in his ways!" I cried out in my sleep.

My mother woke me and took my hand down from my breast.

"What is it, my treasure?" she asked in alarm. "You are bathed in perspiration;" and she blew upon me--fu, fu, fu!

"Mother, I have been in the other world!"

Early next morning my mother asked me in all seriousness if I had seen my father there. I said, "No."

"What a pity! What a pity!" she lamented. "He would certainly have given you a message for me."

What was to be done, if the teacher even made game of dreams?

For his own sake, still more for Gütele's, I wished to save him, and I described to him the whole of my dream. But he said dreams were foolish; he paid no attention to such things.

He wanted to prove to me out of the Bible and the Talmud that dreams were rubbish, but I stopped my ears with my little fingers and would not listen.

I saw clearly that he was lost; that his sentence would be a terrible one; that I ought to avoid him like the plague; that he was like to ruin my soul, my young soul.

But, again, what was to be done? I made a hundred resolves to tell my mother, and never kept one of them.

I had my mouth open to speak many a time, but it seemed to me that Gütele stood behind her shoulders, held out her small hands to me in supplication, and spoke with her eyes: "No," she begged, "no, don't tell!"

And the prayer in her eyes overcame my piety; I felt that for her I would go, not through fire and water only, but into hell itself.

And yet it seemed to me a great pity, for my mother and all my teachers were sure that I had in me the making of something remarkable.

I was quit of Zerach Kneip and his long finger-nail, but I was not so much the better off.

I was sixteen years old. The match-mongers were already catching at my mother's skirts, and I preserved the childish habit of collecting wax off the Shool table on the Day of Atonement and secretly moulding it in Cheder under the table.

The beadle hated me for this with a deadly hatred, and I was well served out for it besides.

"What have you got there?" asks Reb Yozel.

I am wool-gathering at the moment and lay my whole hand on the Gemoreh, wax on all the five fingers.

Reb Yozel has grown pale with anger. He opens the drawer, takes out a piece of thin string, and binds together my two thumbs, but so tight, a pang goes through me.

That was only the beginning. He went to the broom and deliberately chose and pulled out a thin, flexible twig. With this twig he whipped me over my tied hands--for how long? It seemed to me forever. And strange to say, I took the pain in good part; I felt sure God had sent it me that I might repent of my sin and give up going to the teacher.

When my hands were pretty well swollen and the skin had turned all colors, Reb Yozel put away the twig and said: "Enough! Now you'll let the wax alone!"

I went on moulding wax all the same.

It gave me the greatest satisfaction to make whatever I pleased out of it. I felt I had something to be busy about.

I would mould the head of a man, and then turn it into a cat or a mouse; then I drew the sides out into wings, divided the head into two, and it became an Imperial eagle. After that, out of the two heads and two wings, I made a bun in four pieces.

I myself was just such another piece of wax. Reb Yozel, the teacher, my mother, and anybody who pleased moulded me into shape. Gütele melted me.

They moulded me into shapes, but it hurt.

I remember very well that it hurt, but why? Why must I torment myself about the soul?

My comrades laughed at me; they nicknamed me the "soul-boy," and I suffered as much from the name as it was foolish in itself.

I am lost in thought; I wonder what my end will be; when I shall have the strength to tear myself out of Satan's grasp. I call my own soul to account; I reproach it; I scold it. Suddenly I receive a fillip on the nose, "Soul-boy." I wish to forget my troubles and plunge into a deep problem of Rabbinical dialectics; I yoke together a difficult explanation of the Tossafot with a hard passage in the Rambam, mix in a piece from the P'ne Yehoshuah, and top it off with an argument from Eibeschütz. I am in another world, forgotten are the teacher, Gütele, the soul. Things are fitting one into the other in my brain; I nearly "have it," the solution is at the tip of my tongue--a whistle in my ear--"Soul-boy!" It rings through my head, something bursts in my brain. Forgotten Tossafot, forgotten Rambam--I am back on the earth!

I stand repeating the Eighteen Benedictions, my heart and my eyes are alike full of tears, "Heal us, O Eternal, and we shall be healed!" I say with devotion, and I mean not the body, heaven forbid, I mean the soul: "Heal me, Almighty; heal my poor soul!"

"That's the soul-boy," says one to another, pointing at me. And it is all over with my devotion.

Thus I suffered day and night.

Gütele was held to be very clever; her father never called her anything but "my little wisdom," and the neighbors said she was as bright as the day, and that if she were as pious as she was clever, she would rejoice the heart of her mother in Paradise. My mother, too, used to praise her cleverness, and, if only Gütele had known more about koshering meat, she would not have wished for a better daughter-in-law.

And one day, when I found the teacher out, and Gütele alone, it occurred to me to ask her opinion about the soul.

My knees shook, my hands twitched, my heart fluttered; my eyes were fixed on the floor, and yet I asked: "They all say, Gütele, that you are so wise. Tell me, please, what is the soul?"

She smiled and answered:

"I'm sure, I don't know."

Then she grew suddenly sad and tears came into her eyes:

"I just remember," she said to me, "that when my mother was alive (on whom be peace), my father always said, she was his soul--they loved one another so dearly."

I don't know what came over me, but that same instant I took her hand and said, trembling:

"Gütele, will you be my soul?" And she answered me quite softly: "Yes!"

[The end]
Isaac Loeb Peretz's short story: What Is The Soul?

________________________________________________



GO TO TOP OF SCREEN