A Lesson Learned

A Lesson Learned 1,450 Words

The young man stood nervously before the Synagogue doors.

Hesitation shed, he entered. Within, spread a hallway of alternating black and white tiles; the walls painted with symbols of Judaism, the Torah, the Menorah, the Mogen David or Star of David. The boy directed his steps to the far end of the hall where a plain wooden door sat open, if not inviting. The boy entered. His shoes tapped upon the highly varnished floor. Two wooden chairs and a sofa that matched the white draperies and a very handsome desk completed the inventory of furniture. A design meant to inspire calm and assurance, but to young Cooper Eissfeltd, the effect was chilling.

A voice sounded behind him. “Well, will you stand there all day, boy? Sit!”

Cooper Eissfeltd took the couch as a matter of habit. He watched surreptitiously as the tall, grim figure of his father, Rabbi Jacob Eissfeltd, clothed in a black as suited his disposition, moved purposely to his desk.

“You called me for Abba?” the boy asked timidly, head sunk between his shoulders in fear of the wrath that waited.

“Your school has called,” Jacob began, his voice sharp and onerous, without sense of the consternation his belittling attitude caused in the boy.

“But my grades are ex . . .”

A heavy fist found hardwood. Pens jumped, as did the youth. “Do not interrupt! This is not about grades but your moral conduct. They say you have been fighting. For one whom your Mother calls so sensitive, you seem determined to earn yourself the belt, the gartl.”

“But . . . but the other boys pick on me. They call me Jew.  I report them to the teachers but nothing happens. The bullies only get madder and then they want to fight with me.”

Jacob rose and came to sit beside the boy, his manner neither warm nor paternal. There was anger in his eyes and Cooper trembled.

“It is not the fighting that offends me. Let me tell you of the Judenrat.”

A confused Cooper Eissfeltd raised his head with a questioning look. His Abba had used a word for which he had no translation.

“I begin in 1933, with the German army sweeping through Poland and the Soviet Union. S.S. leader Reinhard Heydrich, who would eventually be responsible of the final solution, ordered local Jewish populaces to form Councils as a liaison between the Jews and the Nazis. These councils of Jewish elders, the Judenräte, he charged with the orderly deportation of their own people to the Nazi death camps. To these men fell the task of distributing food and medical supplies in the ghettos, and for communicating the orders of the Nazi beasts. Orders which as you might expect the German animals enforced through cruelty and terror, beatings and executions.”

Jacob paused, eyes distant and moved. The boy, always moved by the oft-heard stories of the Holocaust, sensed a greater force at work in his father. A passion beyond the continued message of hatred and revenge, a lesson he had best learn, for failure to learn always ignited the temper of the older man; a temper furious as any storm.

“What make you of that, boy?”

“They were good men without choice, trying to make the best of the trials God had placed upon them,” the boy answered. The father shook his head.

“Yours is one opinion often held of the Judenröte. But, the Jewish leaders of the day were of two minds about what they called participating Jews. Some saw it an unavoidable evil that permitted Jews a forum to negotiate better treatment from their oppressors. Others viewed the Judenröte as collaborating with the enemy. Many refused to volunteer, as the Nazis termed it, and these brave men were shot for their defiance or sent to the death camps themselves. After which, those behind them in line agreed to serve. Am I making my point with you, Cooper?”

The young Eissfeltd shifted uneasily on the sofa, peering into the black eyes of this father. He knew two things. If he answered his father, as his father desired he should answer, hours of hard prayer would follow. If he failed, there would be a beating under the gartl and the lesson would begin again. He remembered what he read of the rabbis of the Talmud, in the book of Pirke Avot, The Sayings of our Fathers, when they said: ‘Wise men, be careful with your words, lest your students misinterpret your words!’ ”

“They, the other boys, hate me not because of who I am, but because of what they have been told about me. The lies of the elders.”

“What lies, Cooper Eissfeltd, separate the chaff from the wheat!”

The boy stumbled. The father grew angry and his stern voice rose. “Say it Cooper.”

And the boy bowed his back and shouted, “Sinat chinem; senseless hatred.”

“Hatred is learned, Cooper. It is a choice, not a preordained condition. The Torah teaches that habit precedes reason, people can learn what is right from doing what is good. You have embarked upon an endless circle of animosity, and do you know why?”

Suddenly, the light shone through the shadows for the young Cooper Eissfeltd.

“It is not that I am Jew that they continually fight with me, it is that I go to the teachers.”

“Yes, my son, yes!” Jacob thundered. “As the Judenröte, you have collaborated with the enemy. Is that not how the other boys see their teachers?”

Cooper trembled, and said, “Yes, of course. I must settle my own battles!”

Jacob nodded. “Moses spoke unto the people saying: Arm from among your own men those that will go against thine enemy and execute the vengeance of the Lord”

“I understand Abba! If attacked, defend yourself, but be an army unto yourself.”

“Be a Samson, not a Judas if you would earn respect, among others. I say to you, running to your teachers is cowardly in the sight of the Lord. We are Jews, Cooper; we do not run. We stand and we fight; with honor.”

Rabbi Eissfeltd rose and approached the boy. He touched him affectionately upon the top his head, towering above him while unbuckling the thick leather belt from about his waist.

“The lesson is learned, but I must assure myself it is remembered!” 

Footsteps drew the eyes of the boy from the room; only there was no room. There was no boy there was only the man that boy had become. A driftwood of society, a derelict in tattered rags muttering through cracked and bitten lips, a black beard streaked with white and matted with dirt, thick as a nest of worms. Rocking on oddly buckled legs, he watched the world through watery eyes that stabbed outward with red-rimmed vile dredged from a bottle and poured into a soul sunk lower than the setting sun. 

And he saw a girl, a poem composed of flesh and blood.

Idle as the day’s end, she leaned contentedly against an ancient willow, plucking leaves, dropping them into the Boston Public Garden’s slow flowing pond. A gust of summer breeze billowed her chiffon dress. She soothed it flat and seductively fingered her blonde hair back into place. She sighed. A delicate breath that floated across the water where it touched the joyless figure crouched in the shadow of Lagoon Bridge.

The day retired in a scent of folding flowers. Objects dimmed. The moon rose in a steady climb, a silver ball drawn straightaway up an invisible ladder as from inside his worn and dirty winter’s coat, as out of season and out of place as the man himself, the stalking vagrant drew a sharp and tarnished blade.

Pulling absently at the bowed branches of the sagging willow, the girl advanced, passing from under its emerald embrace and moving towards the gray granite bridge sheltering a black menace madman who sang, “Sweet naïveté, closer to the shadows and nearer my God to thee.”  

The quiet wind slackened and drew still. The crickets ceased clicking, and a croaking bullfrog fell silent. The girl entered the underpass. Gloved hands drove from the darkness stifling her screams and dragging her beneath the concealing footbridge. By a single, savage thrust, she died.

The offended moon slouched behind a cloud; darkness reigned, and the boy gazed upwards with unseeing eyes and asked,

“See, Abba, I have learned. Do not ask for help, fight your battles as a man. As the whole of the world turned against me, have I turned against them. Thank you Father, you taught me well.”