Part 1, Chapter 2
Bluma Rivtcha and Zindel were already on the bridge, pausing at the railing to peer into the Narev. Along the length of the shore, little whitewashed houses, trees, and bushes were reflected in the water. Three long-nosed sailboats, painted yellow, red, and blue, and a wide rowboat tied to the shore rocked and splashed. Somewhere on the shoreline were washerwomen. Because the shore was curved and twisted, they couldn’t be seen, but you could hear the noise they made as they wrung out their laundry. The water in the center of the river had a bluish cast, and the opposite shore, sandy and bare, stretched alongside the river like a golden wave. A sweet freshness wafted up from the Narev, but also a deep, cold melancholy, as if the waves were weary from their ceaseless swelling.
Bluma Rivtcha was telling Zindel about her father feeling demoralized and bitter because none of her brothers had wanted to remain in their town.
“There’s no future for the youth in this town,” Zindel said. “That’s why your brothers didn’t want to stay here. And why I don’t want to be the rabbi.”
“So why are you studying in Warsaw’s Tachkemoni and learning Talmud with my father?” Bluma Rivtcha bent over the railing, watching the water as it frothed and bubbled. “Do you not want to be a rabbi at all, or do you want to be a rabbi in another town, but not Morehdalye?”
“I want to be a rabbi in America, or even in Australia. Anywhere, as long as it isn’t in Poland.” Zindel turned away from the water to the sandy path along the shore, which snaked up a hill and climbed higher and farther, until the sky descended upon it and swallowed it up.
“I’m guessing you’re not serious.” Bluma Rivtcha turned to face him. “I’m sure you don’t mean to fool your grandfather, my parents, and the entire town. They all see you as the future rabbi here.”
“I don’t plan to fool anyone. Everyone will know it when the time comes. But so far, you’re the only one I’ve told. I’m sure you’d also be happier living abroad in a big city than here in a small town.”
“If I’m going to be a rabbi’s wife, I’d rather be in a small town than in a foreign city.” Bluma Rivtcha looked around. “Let’s walk along the higher shore on the other side.”
Although they’d known each other since childhood, Bluma Rivtcha had never told Zindel she liked him, and he, too, had behaved primly toward her. They couldn’t forget that in the minds of her father, his grandfather, and all of Morehdalye, hoping to reap some nachas and joy from their rabbinic children, they were considered an almost-certain match. That’s why Zindel immediately regretted confiding his dream to Bluma Rivtcha. Beneath the high, clear sky, in the surrounding vastness, it seemed to him that the echo of his words had already reached the town. When they returned from their stroll, he worried, everyone would already know about this conversation. And it was all for naught: The only reason he’d confided in her was that he’d been so certain Bluma Rivtcha would be pleased.
“Why do you say you’d rather be a rabbi’s wife in a small town than in some city abroad?” he asked as they went up to the other side of the river.
“I don’t know.” Bluma Rivtcha walked more rapidly, as if she were racing against the setting sun. “Actually, I do know why. To be a rabbi’s wife in Morehdalye is to live as one with the townswomen. It’s hard, but at least you’re among your own. But in foreign surroundings I wouldn’t be able to do it. For the women there and for their husbands, I’d be the rabbi’s wife and nothing else. What would connect me to them?”
They passed a field of greenish-white cabbage wrapped in large leaves. Bluma Rivtcha was so irritated by what Zindel had confided that her hands flitted about restlessly. She tore a flower off a stem at the side of the road, then a little leaf, which she rubbed between her fingers. “Your grandfather would be heartbroken, too, if you became a rabbi in a country where the rabbis and the people are of a different sort than us. Do you have any idea how my father looks at a beardless American rabbi?”
“Your father would agree to this sooner than to another option,” Zindel replied, his dark eyes smiling as sweetly as when he’d spot his bride-to-be passing the window of the beis medrash during his study sessions with the rabbi. At that moment, Bluma Rivtcha felt repulsed by him. She understood what he was trying to say: Her father was so afraid she might abandon religion altogether that he’d rather she become the wife of a rabbi overseas whose congregants were beardless Jews.
The setting sun grew larger, then sank into distant plains. Clouds with charred purple edges floated by. In the water a pale gold ribbon of light sparkled, drawing one’s heart toward distant lands. Bluma Rivtcha kept walking along the high shore, and she fancied that her forward motion was delighting the large yellow sunflowers, the fields of barley on bearded stalks, the meadow of clover. In the space where the fields ended and the dark forest began, thin birch trees with silver barks glistened. On their branches, countless dainty leaves glittered in the waning light, trembling and winking at her from the distance. “You’ve got worries? Go on!” The town on the other side of the Narev, with its white church steeple on the hill, winked at her, too. But with each step she took, it seemed to Bluma Rivtcha that the farther away she walked, the sadder the town she was leaving behind became. The svelte poplars on the church hill grew darker, resembling tall nuns dressed in black, mutely frozen at their evening prayers.
It was already nightfall when Bluma Rivtcha and Zindel returned from their stroll, the sky seeded with green stars. Zindel went to his grandfather, and Bluma Rivtcha remained standing in front of her father’s house, beneath the drooping willow branches. She had listened to their murmuring since childhood. They’d whisper secrets from the hidden plant world and advise her on how to behave among people. Now, too, they rumbled with suggestions. Her leafy friends were even squabbling among themselves. From one tree she heard, “For heaven’s sake, her father mustn’t find out that Zindel wants to become a rabbi in a foreign land and wants her to join him. Should her father find out, he’d again start searching for a match for her from among the overly pious yeshiva boys.” Another tree, rumbling even louder, insisted on the precise opposite: “She must definitely tell her father! This way, he’d no longer be able to keep her here; he’d have to let her travel out of town to learn a skill.”
Truth be told, Bluma Rivtcha had never been crazy about Zindel’s saccharine smile. But she kept telling herself that nothing had been promised, that they weren’t getting married yet, and in the meantime, she was curious to discover what kind of person Zindel had turned out to be after studying in Warsaw’s Tachkemoni.
Truth be told, Bluma Rivtcha had never been crazy about Zindel’s saccharine smile. But she kept telling herself that nothing had been promised, that they weren’t getting married yet, and in the meantime, she was curious to discover what kind of person Zindel had turned out to be after studying in Warsaw’s Tachkemoni. Today, she’d learned he was nowhere near as pious as she’d believed. He didn’t seem to mind that he was fooling an entire town. Even to her, he wasn’t being entirely truthful. Because he wanted to become a rabbi, he considered a rabbi’s daughter a suitable match for him. But he evidently liked her even less than she liked him. Her two older brothers had abandoned the town and Judaism entirely. But Zindel never skipped prayers — not for a single day. During the three weeks preceding Tisha B’Av, he didn’t cut his beard or bathe in the Narev, just as Jewish law dictated. Even today, while they strolled in the fields, he hadn’t forgotten to say the Mincha prayers. His fantasies reached no further than becoming a rabbi in some small synagogue abroad.
“If you are choosing a yeshiva boy, it might as well be a serious Torah scholar. Much better choice,” a willow swaying above her head seemed to say.
“Yes, if you come right down to it, he’s just a dull fellow.” Bluma Rivtcha chuckled to herself, and then went inside her home.
Last summer, Zindel Kadish had come to the rabbi’s house and told him that because of his secular studies at Warsaw’s Tachkemoni, he’d fallen behind in his study of Talmud and Jewish law. So Sholem Shachne offered to study with him every day. His intention was merely to draw a young man closer to Torah. That Zindel was trying to attract his younger daughter, the rabbi hadn’t noticed.
This knowledge did not, however, escape the rebbetzin, Henna’le. And when Zindel went back to Warsaw after the High Holidays, she told her husband that though the young man was studying for the sake of knowledge, he was also trying to charm them because he liked their daughter. Sholem Shachne didn’t want to hear it. True, Zindel was a refined, educated young man, but he was not a scholar, and who knew if he was even truly devout, considering that he was a student at Tachkemoni. Bluma Rivtcha would surely be able to get a bridegroom who was a distinguished scholar and feared the Lord, just as her sister, Tilza, had.
Throughout the winter, the rabbi searched for a potential husband for his daughter. The best boys in the yeshivas of Mir, Radin, and Kletsk were interested in the match. First, they were enticed by the bride’s pedigree: Sholem Shachne had a reputation as a discerning, albeit strict, Torah scholar. The bride’s grandfather was the old Zembin rabbi, and her brother-in-law was the Lecheve rosh yeshiva. The dowry would be the rabbinic seat in Morehdalye, a prestigious community, and the bride herself was very gifted — although it was said that she was unsure about whether or not she wanted to marry a Torah scholar. But precisely because the bride was ambivalent, the yeshiva boys were even more attracted to her. Each young Torah scholar desired to impress her. Bluma Rivtcha, however, found fault with them all.
One boy, an absentminded genius, came for a Shabbos. But Bluma Rivtcha decided he looked encumbered by his brand-new clothes; he was the sort of genius who was meant to look disheveled. At first, Bluma Rivtcha was dazzled by his clever responses. He provoked and confused her with his mockery of worldly progressives. But even before Shabbos had ended, her interest in him faded. Her father took her aside. “Well?” he asked.
She told him that the boy with the brand-new clothes had an old, soiled head. “He claims that people shouldn’t study foreign languages, shouldn’t read books, not even newspapers. All the wisdom of the world, he claims, can be found in the Talmud.”
Sholem Shachne brought her another boy, someone who was mature, smart, and well-read. But Bluma Rivtcha was repulsed by his fat neck and sunken cheeks, and because he added three or four teaspoons of sugar to his tea. He pared an apple for a quarter of an hour and scrutinized each segment individually, deciding whether it was worth putting into his mouth. It was obvious he was lazy and shallow, the sort of person who didn’t need a wife, but a maid.
A third boy, with thick lips and cold eyes, created a sensation in Morehdalye when he gave a talk in the beis medrash. Sholem Shachne praised him: besides being a good speaker, he was also a tremendous scholar.
“Maybe,” Bluma Rivtcha responded, “but he’s also a born businessman.” He’d managed to extract from her how much of a salary her father received and whether he had any side sources of income. “Surely, he’s already met a dozen girls. Well, let him look further.”
“But you don’t want a quiet Torah student who’s removed from anything worldly and sits in a little corner studying,” Sholem Shachne chided her.
“No,” she replied. She didn’t want to marry a man to her father’s taste and then be miserable, like her sister, Tilza, was with her husband.
All through the night, the rabbi’s sighs were audible. In response, his wife, Henna’le, went on a tirade. If he had only been a bit more flexible with his two older sons, they would never have left him and gone so far away. But at least his sons didn’t want to hurt him. A son-in-law, on the other hand, wouldn’t care that much about causing grief to his in-laws. Certainly, Bluma Rivtcha had a stronger character than Tilza. Still, she could fall under a husband’s influence, and who knows who that husband would be? Much better if her own father acted as the shadchan between her and the dayan’s grandson.
For Sholem Shachne, the thought that the chair on which he and his father had sat and made judgments on intricate Jewish law would soon be occupied by this poor excuse of a scholar was difficult to swallow. It was with a heavy heart that he made his way to Zindel’s grandfather, the dayan, Tzadok Kadish. On his part, the dayan also had reservations. Four decades ago, Tzadok’s father had been the rabbi of Morehdalye. When he died, the townspeople selected the town’s shopkeeper, Refael Katzenellenbogen, to take his place, instead of Tzadok, the heir apparent. Refael was a great scholar and fervently self-sacrificing. And the former rabbi’s rightful heir, Tzadok Kadish, was forced to agree to be merely the town’s dayan. Refael had been the rabbi for twenty years; then his younger son, Sholem Shachne, inherited the role. And once again, Tzadok had to satisfy himself with being the town’s dayan.
Besides this rivalry, Tzadok also disagreed with the Katzenellenbogens on another matter. Unlike the Katzenellenbogens, Tzadok was in favor of studying both Torah and secular knowledge, which was why he’d sent Zindel to study at Tachkemoni. But ever since Zindel’s parents had gone to Canada and gotten divorced, the dayan had begun to feel his decrepit old age. And so he now allowed himself to be persuaded by the rabbi, his rival of so many years.
“Neither of us was successful, Reb Tzadok,” Sholem Shachne said. “I didn’t succeed in preventing the younger generation from dragging big-city filth into Morehdalye. Even with my own children I was unsuccessful! And you were unsuccessful in making compromises. The youth no longer need your rabbinical dispensations for their enlightenment; they do everything they want without them. So perhaps the affection between your grandson and my daughter is divinely ordained. Common sense dictates that since your grandson is both educated and a Torah scholar, he’ll have a positive influence on my Bluma Rivtcha. I’ll provide him with food and board for life, and his dowry will be my rabbinic dynasty — when the time will come. The townspeople won’t be against it; they want to give pleasure to us both. And they, too, now want a more educated rabbi. Are you against the idea?”
“Against it? I praise and thank God for His kindness.” The dayan smiled sadly, all his wrinkles showing on a face almost entirely covered by his beard and peyes. “But you’ll have to prod Zindel to study more. He’s quite behind in Talmud and Jewish law.” The rabbis regarded each other bleakly, the same thought running through both their heads: May our successor not shame us, not in this world or in the world to come.
The next summer, when Zindel came home for vacation, Sholem Shachne — already regarding him as his daughter’s fiancé — began to teach him how to rule on matters of Jewish law.
Audio excerpted with permission of Penguin Random House Audio from SONS AND DAUGHTERS by Chaim Grade, translated by Rose Waldman, introduction by Adam Kirsch, read by Rob Shapiro. © Chaim Grade ℗ 2025 Penguin Random House, LLC.
Chaim Grade (1910 – 1982) is “one of the 20th century’s pre-eminent writers of Yiddish fiction” (The New York Times). Born in Vilna (now Vilnius), Lithuania, Grade fled to New York in 1948, after losing his first wife and his mother to the Holocaust. With his second wife, Inna, he lived in the Bronx for the remainder of his life. Grade is the author of numerous works of poetry and prose, including the novels The Yeshiva, The Agunah, Rabbis and Wives, and My Mother’s Sabbath Days, and his beloved philosophical dialogue, My Quarrel with Hersh Rasseyner.
