Moishe-Rabeinu

“Mommy! Mommy! Moishe-Rabeinu is here!” I exclaimed, standing in the living room by the window, gazing down the path leading to our house. In the kitchen, I could hear Mom filling a large kettle with water. I also heard the clinking of glasses in the cabinet from which Mom retrieved the special one reserved for Moishe-Rabeinu. Mom was the one who had given him that nickname, with the Yiddish pronunciation she remembered from her school years studying about the biblical Moses. I, who adored her expressions, happily adopted the nickname.

From the window, I now saw the image of this strange vagrant approaching our door. He wore a white robe that fell all the way down to just below his knees. His naked feet were clad in a pair of time-worn slippers which he had unearthed from a trash container. His bald pate, pockmarked with age, was mostly covered with an oversized white yarmulke. His white, tangled beard fluttered in the wind, and as he drew closer, I could more clearly see his deep, brown eyes, slanting down at their edges. Combined with his thick, white eyebrows, his eyes gave off a somewhat melancholy expression. In his bare, sunburnt hand, Moishe-Rabeinu held a large, gnarled stick. His gait was assured and steady, regularly tapping the sidewalk with his stick, heralding his own arrival.

As he stood by our door and pounded it with his stick, I left my place by the window and rushed to the entrance. “Shalom aleichem, Moishe-Rabeinu!” my mom opened the door with a slight smile. “Hmm… hmm…” Moishe-Rabeinu replied. Everyone knew he was mute and could produce only muffled utterances from his throat. His lips were swallowed deep between the tufts of his beard, but his smile was clear and evident in his gaze and face.

Mom gestured towards a chair she had placed by the door in advance. Despite the kindness she wanted to shower him with, she still felt uncomfortable allowing him more than a few steps into our home. The same applied to the glass she used to serve him warm, well-sweetened tea, used by none of our household members. Always, after Moishe-Rabeinu had finished drinking, she would carefully wash it and place it back in its designated place in the cupboard. I also knew that once Moishe-Rabeinu left our home, my mom would make sure, as always, to vigorously wipe the chair with disinfectants before any of us used it ourselves.

Moishe-Rabeinu silently drank his tea. His throat did not utter a sound, yet his lips, scrunched over the edges of the glass, expressed his satisfaction with a series of loud, unequivocal slurps. Mom was already in the kitchen again. Both because it was impossible to exchange a single word with Moishe-Rabeinu and because these “slurpies”—as she was in the habit of calling those soup-sucking noises—were unbearable for her to hear. She would always take care to scold my father because of them, as he, too, was numbered among the “slurpers” who were in the habit of sipping their piping hot tea.

Moishe-Rabeinu finished drinking his tea and rose to leave. He would show up in our neighborhood two or three times a year but would always come only to our home. In fact, ours was the only home in the neighborhood where he would always be offered both a glass of tea and some alms. Once given to him, Moishe-Rabeinu would look at the coins that Mom had carefully placed in the palm of his hand, counting them with his eyes. Then, keeping his palm open, he would give Mom a questioning look. She understood his mute question well. “That will do for now, Moishe. That will do. Come again soon.”

Then he would scoop a crinkled piece of cloth from his pocket, wrap the coins in it, and stuff it back in its place.

“Hey, where are you going?” Mother’s question was actually addressed to me.

“Oh, I’m just walking Moishe-Rabeinu to the gate,” I tried to put her at ease.

He and I went out into the street. Moishe-Rabeinu trod the path, steadily tapping his stick, and I followed. Upon reaching the gate and opening it, he abruptly turned, fixing his gaze on me. His face beamed in a way I had never seen before. A great luminous glow erupted even from the strands of his beard. His lips parted and his smile was wide and evident. He raised his stick, pointed further down the street with it, and with his other hand beckoned me to continue and follow. I did as he commanded, mesmerized.

About two houses further, lived Yossi. He was playing in the yard and saw us passing by.

“Hey, where to?” Yossi called out to me. Before I could answer, Moishe-Rabeinu turned his head towards Yossi and gave him a piercing look. I saw how Yossi was enraptured by the beams of Moishe-Rabeinu’s smile. Leaving whatever he was doing, he joined us.

Not much further, Ruthy, Tzila, and Yaffa were skipping rope. We saw how all their gazes were captured, as if by enchantment, by the vagrant’s broad smile. The rope slipped from the girls’ hands, and they, too, joined our procession. By the time we reached the edge of the town, about a dozen children were following Moishe-Rabeinu. Some rode bicycles or scooters, others rolled on their roller skates.

We walked along the tree-lined boulevard on the main road. At the end of the road, there stretched before us a wide, spacious cornfield, “The Land of Snakes” as we called it. Just as we reached the field’s outskirts, we heard cries from behind us: “Hey! Children! Where are you going?”

It was Hedva’s father calling us. Gangling and heavily mustached, he rapidly covered the distance along the boulevard to us, pressing his hat to his head so it wouldn’t fly off in the wind. At some distance behind him wobbled his short-statured wife, her hips draped with an apron, wooden ladle in hand, and a hen’s clucking squeal on her lips:

“Hedva’le, don’t go to the corn! Do you hear? It’s infested with snakes! Hed-va!”

Moishe-Rabeinu turned back momentarily. His smile broadened and he waved his heavy stick up in the air, making it circle in wide orbits over his head. Perhaps it was a sudden gust of air, but the large corn tassels seemed to suddenly obey the waving stick of our leader and swayed sideways to reveal a spacious passage like a parting sea. Moishe-Rabeinu’s steps quickened, his soles seeming to slightly hover over the ground. When we arrived in the depth of the field, the distance between us and our pursuer had shortened. But the moment Hedva’s father reached the first row of corn, the large plants suddenly sprang, straightening back to their place, closing on him from both sides. He was forced to use both hands to fight the corn plants, his hat falling from his head in the process. Once or twice he tried to pick it up, but then he gave up and continued to chase us without it, resolutely wading his way.

Hedva’s mom, though, had apparently run out of strength. She faltered in the middle of the cornfield and remained on her own, sitting on the ground, weeping.

“Hey, take a look, everyone!” Yossi was the first to disrupt our silence. The hems of Moishe-Rabeinu’s robe suddenly fluttered and rose, filling with air like sails. The stick in his hand was raised over his head, hoisted heavenward like the stern of a ship. Then we saw him rising up into the air and starting to hover. We increased the pace of our running. Our feet carried us straight ahead but our faces were turned up into the sky, at the flying vagrant wheeling over our heads in large circles, his robe fluttering, his eyes cheerfully darting in their sockets and the luminous glow on his face shining sevenfold brighter. Hedva’s father also raised his gaze, his mouth torn in amazement, but immediately he bumped into a stone, tumbled onto the ground where he remained lying, staring high up in bewilderment.

The cornfield ended at the bank of the stream. Moishe-Rabeinu tilted his stick towards the earth and slowly alighted. Once his feet touched the ground, he continued his forward motion with a few running steps that slowed until he came to a halt. He raised both arms, all of him emanating unassailable leadership. We were all struck mute, dumbfounded by the force of this experience. The silence was eventually disrupted by the rattling of a gray car, crawling closer from the direction of the packing house. Moishe-Rabeinu sat on the ground cross-legged, his eyes turned up to the sky, ignoring the two green-clad men who emerged from the car, went over to him, and grabbed him by his elbows. “Oh, Wasserman, what’ll become of you, eh? Out for a walk again without permission?”

Moishe-Rabeinu heavily rose from where he sat, supported by the two men. When he rose to his full length, the spark in his eyes had extinguished and his gaze filled with humiliated fatigue. They marched towards the car, and we all followed them with our eyes.

I turned to Yossi, who was standing beside me. “Tell me something, why doesn’t he simply fly out of their hands and get away?”

“Fly?” Yossi stared at me, bewildered. “What are you talking about?”

I kept silent and kept looking. Moishe-Rabeinu and his two companions had meanwhile arrived at the car. Moishe-Rabeinu lowered his head to get in, then stretched tall again, turned back in our direction, raised his stick, and hurled it towards us. The stick landed on the ground by our feet. Yossi wanted to pick it up.

“Don’t touch it!” I shouted.

Yossi froze, surprised.

The stick suddenly started slightly moving in place, stretching upward for a moment. Then, with a series of rapid convoluted twists and turns, it vanished into the cornfield.