Had Bezalel Moshe known that it was a kosher tefillah, he would have kissed it and run to the synagogue and given it to Reb Fishl, and Reb Fishl would have placed it on his head and prayed and finished his prayer and returned home to eat breakfast and examine his accounts and lend to borrowers in their hour of need and eat the day’s dinner and lay himself upon his bed and sleep until the fourth meal and eat and attend afternoon and evening prayers and return and eat the evening meal and gratify the Holy One, blessed be He, with blessings for pleasures and with the grace after meals. But now, since Bezalel Moshe did not know that the tefillah was kosher, he did not run to the synagogue and did not return the tefillah to Reb Fishl, and Reb Fishl was prevented from praying and from eating his fill, and so on.
And why was the head tefillah left in the bag? Because of Reb Fishl’s craving for a fish dish. When he sent the fish to his wife and cleared out his tallit and tefillin bag, he did not take care about what he removed, and the head tefillah had been left there. And what caused Bezalel Moshe to suppose that it was flawed? Because the straps were dirty, like the cords used to tie up chicken legs, and they were tattered, and the paint on them had crackled, for it is a commandment revealed to Moses on Mount Sinai that the straps of tefillin must be black. The tefillah itself was wrinkled and colored like a goose’s bill. The rim was broken and it was coated with a finger’s thickness of grease.
Bezalel Moshe said to the fish, “Since a cat, which is not a kosher animal, had the merit of wearing tefillin, you, who are kosher, and who are a Sabbath dish, and who are perhaps even the reincarnated soul of a saint — so much the more so are you worthy of the commandment of wearing tefillin. But what can I do? Your Creator did not create you with a head for wearing tefillin, for your head is narrow and long, like that of a goose. In any event, I’ll tie the tefillah on you with its straps, and if you don’t take your mind off the tefillah, you shall be garbed in splendor.”
What was that story about the cat and the tefillin which Bezalel Moshe mentioned to the fish? If you do not know, I shall tell you.
At that time all of Galicia was in an uproar about a certain Enlightener of the age who wanted to get rid of his wife, but she refused to accept a bill of divorce. He went and took a cat and placed his head tefillah on it. The woman’s father saw what sort of a man he was and forced his daughter to accept her bill of divorce.
Thus a head that was not required to wear tefillin merited tefillin, and Reb Fishl, who was required to wear tefillin, was kept from the commandment of tefillin. Why? Because he had not been careful to make certain that his tefillin were tidy and that their straps were black. For had he made sure that they were tidy and that the straps were black, the orphan would not have been sure that he had found a flawed tefillah, and he would have run to return it to Reb Fishl, and Reb Fishl would have prayed and returned home and eaten breakfast and sat and examined the accounts of his loans and he would have made loans to merchants in their hour of need, and he who needed to be repaid would have been repaid, and thus a religious duty would have been done, for it is said that the payment of a debt is a religious duty.
10
The Form of a Man
While the fish was being ornamented with the head tefillah, Fishl was looking for his head tefillah and not finding it. That is the essence of the story, and the entire story is as follows. After sending the fish to his wife and preparing himself to pray, he filled his pipe with tobacco and saw to his bodily needs. He stayed there as long as he stayed and washed his hands to recite the blessing one recites after using the toilet, and then he went to wrap himself in his tallit and tefillin and pray. His thoughts began to race about within him. One said: Good-for-nothing, again you’ve forfeited the Kedushah and Barekhu. And one said: Since you’re praying by yourself, you’re the master of your own prayers, and you’re not dependent on the prayer leader, who waits for the old men who take a long time to recite the Shema and the Eighteen Benedictions. Since Fishl did not like the thoughts that were racing about, he removed his mind from them to make room for the prayer itself. He said: Well, while I pray, Hentshi Rekhil will be preparing the fish, and if she has not managed to prepare it for the morning meal, I shall be content with those things that open up the gut, and I shall eat the fish at noon. All of those foods came and settled in his mouth. He hurriedly shook out his tallit and placed it on his shoulder and examined the fringes and wrapped himself in it and recited the blessing and recited all the appropriate verses in the prayer book. Then he reached out his arm and took the hand tefillah and placed it correctly on his upper arm, on the distended flesh over the bone, which was swollen because of all the fat, until a good part of the tefillah sank into it. I do not know whether he was accustomed to bind the strap around his arm seven times or nine times, and what I do not know, I do not say. Then he reached out his hand for the head tefillah and did not find it. And why did he not find it? Because it was bound around the fish’s head. He sought and searched and groped, and there was nothing he did not look under. But he did not find it. He stooped to look under his belly. Perhaps it had fallen on the floor. And even though had it fallen on the floor he would have to fast all that day — and what a day, a fish day like this he still bent over to the floor and did not find it.
Reb Fishl stood alone in the synagogue, wrapped in his tallit and adorned with his arm tefillah, and he shouted, “Nu, nu!” That is, “Give me a head tefillah.” But there was no one there to hear him shouting. Had the orphan been in the synagogue, he would have heard and brought him a head tefillah, and Fishl would have recited the blessing for tefillin and prayed, and so on. Since he had sent the fish with the orphan, Reb Fishl was alone in the synagogue, and even if he shouted all day, his shouts would not be heard. When would they be heard? In any event not before afternoon prayers. Since it was a hasidic synagogue, they recited afternoon prayers late, just before the stars came out.
An expedient occurred to him, and he opened the box under the reading stand, for men who come to pray every day customarily leave their tallitot and tefillin in the synagogue. He found a torn prayer book and flawed tsitsit and the case of an arm tefillah and an old calendar and a broken shofar and the alef made of tin that is hung up for a firstborn who is not yet redeemed, and a scribe’s pen. But tefillin were not to be found. And why didn’t he find any? Because people had stopped leaving their tallitot and tefillin in the synagogue. Why? Because of a drunken beadle in the town who had been discharged. He had looked for a teaching job and found none. He used to take tallitot and tefillin, and sell them cheaply to people from the villages, and he would drink up the profits in brandy. Now, picture this: a man has recited the blessing for the arm tefillah but has no head tefillah. Talking is forbidden between putting on the arm tefillah and the head one, and he could not find a head tefillah. Even had he stood there all day, the day would not have stood still, and there was reason to fear the time for prayer might pass.
He rummaged through the box under the table and found what he found: ritual articles that were no longer fit for use. But what he wanted, he did not find. Now you see how expert a person must be in the necessary religious rules. For had Fishl known, he would have followed the rule for someone who only has a single tefillah: he puts it on and blesses it, since each tefillah is a separate commandment in itself. This is the law when a person is under duress: if he can only put on one, he puts on the one he can.
At that moment, while Reb Fishl’s world was falling in on him, Bezalel Moshe was sitting in the shade of a tree and playing with the fish and with the tefillah on the fish’s head. To avoid dishonoring the dead, I shall not repeat all the words that Bezalel Moshe said to the fish, such as, “Brow that never wore tefillin,” and the like. Finally he changed his mind and said to the fish, “Now we shall remove the tefillah from your head, so that Satan won’t come and accuse those Jews who sin with their bodies. For you are not commanded to put on tefillin but do so, and they, who are commanded, do not put on tefillin.”