the Freethinkers weren’t welcome at the other yeshivas.
So I had to prove myself all over again by toiling among the bookshelves, and never venturing beyond the Jewish Quarter, past the Corpus Christi Church, or across the Vistula to the main market square.
But I was never mystical enough to suit the mystics, or rational enough to suit the rationalists, or compliant enough to become a follower of any of the established schools of thought. So they made me deliver firewood to the study rooms and haul buckets of heavy tiles up to the roof in the middle of winter to help chop off the ice and patch up the holes.
They assigned me to classrooms with no heat and more than forty children, in direct violation of the Talmud, which states that a teacher shall have no more than twenty-five pupils at one time (Bava Basra, 21a). When I pointed this out to my new masters, they told me to comb through three centuries of rabbinical responsa to find supporting citations, and to present my case to the board of rabbis for review if I wanted them to take my petition seriously. I took up the challenge, and I labored with such determination that I attracted the support of Rabbi Ariyeh Lindermeyer, called Ari der royter because of his flaming red beard, and the way his face flushed when he was making a particularly impassioned argument.
Under his direction, this project took on a life of its own, and from the way people reacted, you’d think we were trying to undermine the thousand-year-old tradition of publicly funded education.
Finally, the day came. I stood before the chief rabbis of Kraków and defended my outrageous proposal for providing smaller classes, with bread and milk for the children of laborers, and putting an end to the preferential system that placed mediocre students from well-to-do families in the best positions while superior scholars from poor families got stuck teaching seven-year-old girls how to read the Torah in Yiddish in overcrowded classrooms. I had done everything they asked. I found support in the responsa. I documented what every other yeshiva in the city was doing. I cited Abbaye, who says that “only he who lacks knowledge is poor” (Nedarim 14a), and the Mishlei of Solomon, wherein it is written that wisdom is more valuable than silver and gold (Proverbs 3:13–14).
The result? They told me to write down my entire argument, along with all the supporting documents, and make enough copies to be circulated among the heads of the rabbinical court and the community council for their consideration.
So I spent six months researching and writing a book that eight people read and promptly dismissed.
But that’s not why I came to Prague.
The Talmud says that many things in life depend not on merit, but on mazl. Luck. Sheer chance.
And believe me, it’s true. Because soon after we started working together, Rabbi Ari der royter died, and once again I was left without a rabbi to support my cause. He also left an office full of books that he had instructed me to distribute to the neediest students. So after sitting shiva for a week, I carted the books over to the yeshiva, carried them up the stairs, and left them on a table for the students to go through and take what they wanted. But Rabbi Ben-Roymish, the acting head of the yeshiva, complained that the dusty old books were cluttering up the hallway, and told me to remove them immediately. I asked him to let the books remain for a few days to give the poor students time to go through them. But he said that he didn’t want students “picking at the carcass” of old book collections, and that in the past such “remains” had been left for months. I gave him my word that I would remove them after a couple of days and sweep up the hall besides, but it meant nothing to him. He made me pack the books up that very day and sell them for practically nothing to a traveling book peddler.
I guess that was just the last straw. How could I stay there after that? How could I stay in a place where my solemn word of honor had no value?
The Talmud asks, “Why are scholars compared to a nut?” The answer given is that even though the outside may be dirty and scuffed, the inside is still valuable. But I could think of other reasons for the comparison.
But that’s not why