Their jackets smelled of the fruits of the orchards - Elul days in Zhabne

“Elul Days in a Rebbe’s Court in Galitsiye” by Menashe Unger

Originally published in "Der Tog-Morgn Zhurnal" (New York City) September 1, 1957 

translation by Rokhl Kafrissen

Writing in 1957, Menashe Unger looks back on his childhood days in the shtetl of Zhabne/Zabno, in what was then Austro-Hungary. He was probably around 10 years old at the time of the events he recounts, so that would make it somewhere around 1910. Writing about hasidim and the hasidic world was Unger’s bread and butter as a working writer, and this essay is an excellent example.

 

I've used this piece to teach about Elul for the last two years. I love sharing it with students because it brings us right into Unger’s world: the tastes, smells, and sounds of Elul seem to waft off the page. I also love it for the delicious juxtaposition of the seriousness of the season next to the hijinks of Unger and his pals. There is the indoor, spiritual world of Unger’s father, the Rebbe, and the outdoor world of the boys and their misadventures around the campfire.  

 

For the people Unger writes about, apples weren't just a symbolic part of the season, they were spiritual currency.  And we are reminded that Jewish life in Eastern Europe was not just a religion of the mind or book, but a complete way of life, quite literally rooted in the soil.

I’ve split up Unger’s text into two parts. Part 2 focuses more on the spiritual work of Elul and the sonic landscape of the Rebbe’s court.

 

Part 1

 

When Rosh Khoydesh -the first of the month- of Elul arrived, one felt a spiritual awakening -hisoyreres- in our courtyard in Zhabne. Hasidim began arriving to celebrate [at the court of] my father, z”l, whom they seldom saw the rest of the year.

 

These were Hasidim – village-Jews, orchard-tenders – who spent the whole summer in the orchards and cared for the fruits on the trees; Jews who held a farm lease from the local noble landowners in the villages; and village-Jews, tavern owners and dairy men who sold milk, butter, cheese and eggs in the city.

 

Each village-Jew brought gifts of their trade to the hoyf – the courtyard. The Jewish dairymen brought enormous cheeses, earthenware filled with sour milk, handmade butter wrapped in large green leaves, and baskets with fresh eggs. Some of the village-Jews brought small, hard cheeses as gifts.

 

The orchard-tenders brought wagons full of fruit, like apples which were still green. Those were laid up in the attic of our house, atop a bed of straw, and they would start to ripen in the middle of winter. They also brought other varieties of apples, as well as pears, and Hungarian plums called vengerkes.  

I loved the village-Jews who came to celebrate with my father, z”l, during the Elul days. Their jackets smelled of the fruits of the orchards. 

 

The village-Jews poured out their sacks of fruits into our attic. Me and my friends - the kheyder boys- sorted the apples and pears according to their size and greenness.

 

The gabayim even warned me that I shouldn’t eat any of the apples because they weren’t ripe yet, and if you bite into a green apple, your teeth will be on edge.

 

Wolf the Gabay kept a sharp watch over me, ensuring I shouldn’t taste even one apple. But the evil inclination was great, not to mention that at that time, in my younger years, I was a big shot among the local street urchins. I merely took several apples and some potatoes to roast in the field at dusk. These particular roasted potatoes tasted like heaven.

 

We roasted them far from our hoyf, on the meadow. Zalmen Yontshes gathered dried out cow patties, Khiel Shmetsik gathered dry pieces of wood and thin branches for kindling. And I brought potatoes from our hoyf’s cellar. But Zavl Nekhes said that the potatoes I brought had grown too much of a “beard” from lying too long in our cellar. Not to mention that they were big and old. Better, Zavl Nekhes dug up potatoes from the nearby fields, and we roasted those on a fire we made. We also brought the apples taken from the attic to roast in the fire. However, the apples didn’t even survive long enough to get roasted.

 

Zalmen Yontshes, the oldest among us, said that we had to at least taste one of the apples to get a sense of its flavor. Zavl Nekhes agreed with him and we merely sampled them…

 

But something happened to the apples, - not me! not you!- and all of a sudden-- disappeared. The apples were no longer.

 

And then we grasped that it was time to roast the apples in the fire, but not an apple remained…

 

Zalmen Yontshes had the idea: I should go back to the attic and bug Wolf the Gabay to give me more apples. But it was already late, time to daven minkhe-mayrev -- afternoon-evening prayers in the study house - the bes-medresh- so we agreed, imyirtseshem, God willing, the next day at dusk we would roast apples…

 

But at dusk the next day, no one of us were to be found in the field. … 

 

The second day I wasn’t even in school. Somehow, I was struck with a horrible stomach ache. A stabbing pain in my stomach, and no one in the hoyf knew what happened to me… (You understand that I told no one the story with yesterday’s apples.)

 

So, they sent to call for Freydl-Khaye the opshprekherin – the lifter of curses. She arrived, gave me a tap on the head, and soon established that this was a case of the ayin-hore - evil eye ... She then performed an exorcism that lifted the evil eye, and poured wax through a branch, as well. I was pleased that no one knew the story with yesterday’s apples.

 

The stomach ache from the evil eye went on like that for a few days. But I also got a loyfenish – the runs - from the evil eye and Freydl-Khaye, the opshprekherin herself, could not understand how an evil eye had caused diarrhea. The end of the story was that they gave me some rimenik-tey -  Mayweed chamomile tea -  and for the first time in several days, I felt good enough to return to kheyder. ...