So that they should not be deprived of congregational prayer on the Day of Atonement, I postponed my departure until after the Day. Since I was idle and free to my own devices, I walked about during the intervening days from house to house and from man to man. Their houses were small, and as low as the stature of an ordinary man; each consisted of a small room with a courtyard surrounded by a stone wall. Attached to the room was a wooden hut, which they called the summer house all the year around and sanctified to serve as a festival booth at Sukkot, but they had to rebuild it every year, for the winds sent the boards flying a Sabbath day’s journey and more. The doors of their houses were all made in the same measure and of the same width, for their fathers, when they built the houses, used to make the doorways the width of a bier, so that when they brought them out on the way to their last resting place, they should be able to take them out without trouble. Every householder had a milk goat, and four or five fowls, and plant pots in which they grew onions to flavor their bread and sweeten the Sabbath stew. Because of scanty resources and the pangs of poverty, the sons went out to the big cities and drew their sisters after them, and sent for the parents to come to their weddings. Some of the parents agreed and went, but immediately after the wedding they would leave quietly and go back home on foot. Old Mrs. Zukmantel told me, “At my son’s wedding banquet, which was held with great splendor, I went outside for a breath of air. I saw my husband sitting on the steps with his head resting on his knees. ‘Is that the way to sit at your son’s wedding?’ I said to him. ‘I can’t stand all that noise,’ he replied. ‘In that case,’ I said, ‘let us go back home.’ ‘Let us go,’ he said, sitting up. So we got up straightaway and set off. We walked all night, and in the morning our feet were standing on the ground of our house.” A similar tale I heard from Mistress Yettlein, the wife of Mr. Koschmann, son-in-law of Mr. Anschel Duesterberg, nephew of old Rabbi Anschel, who was cantor and ritual slaughterer, as well as rabbi.
To fulfill the precept of hospitality, which they had not been privileged to carry out for many years because they got no visitors, they took much trouble with me, and everyone devoted himself to me in love and affection and honor. Since they do little work on the Ten Days of Penitence, which they treat, as far as work is concerned, exactly like the intermediate festival days, they were all free to their own devices and free for me. They went out with me to some of their holy places, where they have a tradition that the bones of the martyrs who were slaughtered and killed and burned are interred. Most of the graves have no stones upon them, but only signs to warn the descendants of the priestly family to keep away. On the other hand, there are tombstones and fragments of stones without any inscription on them strewn all over the hills and valleys. On one of them I found the inscription: My BELOVED IS GONE DOWN INTO HIS GARDEN; on another: GLORIOUS IS THE KING’S DAUGHTER, and on another I found the inscription:
They slandered the Jew,
And vilely slew
Numbers untold,
Both young and [old].
On every hill
Our blood they [spill].
Among the fragments I saw the fragments of one gravestone bearing a verse from the Song of Songs: THOU THAT DWELLEST IN THE GARDENS, THE COMPANIONS HEARKEN TO THY VOICE. They told me that there was a certain distinguished woman, Mistress Buna, who composed hymns for women, and they have a tradition that this was the tombstone of Mistress Buna. She died a year before the massacre, and after her death she would come in a dream to the leaders of the community and sing, “Flee, my beloved…” and the rest of the verse. They did not know what she meant, until the unbelievers came and slaughtered most of the communities, and those who were not slaughtered by the unbelievers slaughtered themselves so that they should not fall into their hands. And those who did not succeed in taking their own lives went to the stake with gladness and song, and sanctified the heavenly Name in the sight of the Gentiles, so that the uncircumcised were astonished when they saw it, and some of them cried, “These are not sons of man, but angels of God.”
On account of the massacres they have special customs. They do not recite the hymn “It is for us to praise” after the prayers, whether individual or congregational. And if a man longs to recite it, he covers his face and says it in a whisper, because with this song of praise their martyred forefathers went to the stake, singing the praises of the Holy One, blessed be He, out of the fire. It is their custom to recite the prayer in memory of the slaughtered communities every Sabbath, even when there is a wedding. And they recite the Supplication in the month of Nisan, from the day after Passover. They fast on the New Moon of Sivan until after the afternoon service, and recite penitential prayers and the Song of Praise, and visit the tombs of the martyrs. At the Afternoon Prayer they recite the Supplication of Moses, because on that day the entire community was killed, and before the open scroll they pray for the souls of the martyrs who were killed and slaughtered and burned alive in those evil days. Another custom they once had: on the first day of Shavuot, before the reading of the Torah, one of the young men would lay himself on the floor of the synagogue and pretend to be dead, in memory of the giving of the law, of which it is said, “My soul failed when He spake.” They would say to him, “What aileth thee? Fear not. The statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart.” Immediately the young man opened his eyes, like a man who has come back to life, and there was great rejoicing; they surrounded him, dancing and singing and crying, “He liveth forever, awesome, exalted and holy!” This custom has been abolished, for once a certain illustrious scholar, Rabbi Israel Isserlin, who wrote a famous book, happened to visit them; he rebuked them angrily and said, “Pfui, ye shall not walk in their ordinances, neither shall ye do after the doings of the Gentiles.” For the Gentiles used to behave in this way for several years after the disappearance of the sickness called the Black Death: they used to gather together and eat and drink until they were intoxicated; then they would choose one of their young men and lay him on the ground, and little girls and old women would dance around him, and they would sniff at each other, and say, “Death is dead, death is dead!” Then they would take a girl and lay her down, and old men and boys would surround her, knock their heads together, and dance around her, screeching, “Death is dead, death is dead!” so as to notify the Black Death that it was dead, for in those days there was a spirit of madness abroad, and people did strange things.
Blessed be He that distinguishes Israel from the Gentiles. Let us return to the Jewish customs. They do not perform the ceremony of casting away sins either at rivers or at wells, because the Gentiles used to say that the Jews dropped poison into the water and polluted it; but anyone who has a well in his yard recites the prayer beside the well. And although the suspicion has disappeared, the custom has not been changed. And it was an ancient custom among them to recite the blessing “Who hast not made me a Gentile” twice. They have evening hymns and morning hymns and hymns of redemption and penitential hymns that are not in our festival prayer book. The melodies of their prayers resemble ours, but ours are according to the taste of this generation, while theirs are as they have inherited them from their fathers, may they rest in peace. Sometimes their voices are terrifying, and sometimes a cry, as of a man whose soul struggles to escape, is wrenched from them. But when they stand up to pray, they recite in a sweet voice: “O my dove, that art in the clefts of the rock…” and so forth; “My dove, my undefiled is but one…” and so forth; “She is the choice one of her that bore her.” Never in my life have I heard a melody so sweet. And I saw an excellent custom that they observed on the Day of Atonement: they do not leave the house of prayer, or speak, from the approach of night until the end of the Day of Atonement, either in the secular or in the sacred tongue, and even the women are very careful in this. And they do not interrupt the reading of the Torah to pronounce a blessing on those who are called up for the reading, but after it is over the reader blesses them all together. On festivals when they read the passage “Every firstborn,” the leader of the congregation rises after the last reader has finished the final blessing, goes up to each one, carrying a scroll of the Torah, and blesses him, saying, “He that blessed our forefathers, etc., may He bless thee for giving a donation in honor of the Almighty, etc.,” and the people contribute voluntarily to the cost of wine for the sanctification and lamps for the lighting and other needs of the congregation. Their scrolls of the law are tall; when they elevate the scroll they spread it out as far as their arms can reach. You have never seen a finer sight than a broad scroll held by tall Jews, for all of them are stalwart and powerful men. The one who elevates the scroll holds it firmly, while everyone looks at the Torah and puts together, from it, the letters of his name. Their ram’s horns are kept in their cases. On some of the cases, beautiful shapes are engraved, and on others verses of the services connected with the sounding of the horn are written. They have no particular melody for reading the Scroll of Esther, but the reader reads it like an ordinary story. And when Master Moses Molin, the son-in-law of Reb Jacob Slitzstat, was good enough to read me a few verses, I felt as if I were hearing the story of Esther for the first time.