Reb Yankel’s Education
Irv Pliskin
"Kinder, Kinder, you boyas," the old man used to shout. "Pay attention..."
"Life is neva easy. Neva easy." He was an old man, at least the kids all thought he was.
Visualize him, a little portly man, with a full graying beard, long payas and always, always the large flat black hat and the chassidic coat. They were like a uniform hanging down to his knees. When he took off the coat, his shirt was buttoned up to the neck, no collar and there was always a gray ring around the shirt where it touched the flesh.
No washing, that is if the shirt was ever washed, and the kids never knew if it was, would seem to get the gray out of that collarless shirt.
From below his belt dangled the tistkas, the knotted strands attached to the prayer shawl, so you knew he wore his tallis like a shield: a shield between him and God, this was a part of his covenant.
Reb Yankel was a teacher in his own chedar. In the early nineteen hundreds in Russia, a man who taught school established his own chedar, a one room school usually. And this is what Reb Yankel had done. To his students, his bocherim, he was, a very formidable man was Reb Yankel.
Learning, much like life, was not easy with Reb Yankel. His knowledge of talmud was no doubt very deep, but his skill at imparting was very shallow. As a result, his patience was also very short. If the chedar bocherem, didn't catch on fast enough, Yankel’s solution was the potch or the slap against the head. If that was not strong enough, he would smash the book spine against the neck of the slow learner. He might also poke with a finger as stiff as a rod into the belly or the
ribs. The infraction didn’t matter at all. Forgetting one’s aleph-baes, or misreading the Hebrew: the results was the same. Punishment.
Reb Yankel practised in the classroom what he believed. "Lehben is schvere," Life is not easy. Life is schver and schver is what he made it for the students.
Now, some of Reb Yankel’s students, in the school he ran in his apartment on Gedemsky Plaza in Riga, were older and almost ready to go tn the behma as men, be Bar mitzvah and take their place in life’s congregation.
These youngsters were "got ze dank," healthy growing boys. They were strong from having worked hard at physical things. some of these boys delivered cut wood logs for the cooking stoves to the apartments in the neighborhood. Carrying fifty, sixty pounds of logs up three flights of stairs make a person strong. And these boys, these boys could go up the stairs with the load on their shoulders or on their back without even breathing hard. Work like that, even if you are
only thirteen, and you become a shtarker yid.
Hyman Pincus was that sort of boy. Tall for a boy approaching his early teens he was muscular and strong He had been known to show off carry two loads of firewood up the stairs at one time, without breathing hard. .
His hands were tough, his mind nimble. Hymie spent his time at his work, schlepping wood, for a few kopecks a day, and the rest of the time in the chedar trying hard to learn from Reb Yankel.
Sometimes, of course, even a boy who carries two loads of firewood up three flights of stairs without stopping gets tired, and so being tired maybe not too attentive to his studies in the overheated school room.
One day, the answers he gave Reb Yankel were not satisfactory. The Reb stood up, from his desk and walked to where Hymie sat. Hymie stood up, too. He was taller and leaner than Reb Yankel.
Looking up at the boy who was probably struggling to stay awake, Reb Yankel, without warning, punched him hard in the face shouting, "Klutz, dumkof, ignorant like a goy."
This was too much much for Hymie. It had been a bad week. Usually truculent Hymie, looked at him and said: "Reb Yankel don’t do that. I don’t like you to do that".
Spittle spattering from his mouth, enraged the Reb screamed, "You don’t like it. You don’t like it, you don't t tell me what you like." Once again he hit him with his fist.
Almost reflexively, Hymie snapped back. One blow and the reb was down on his educated tush on the floor. He was bleeding profusely from his nose right on to the white shirt.
Embarrassed and ashamed at his personal lack of control Hymie left the house and the room and the chedar vowing never to return. The other bochurim were aghast, but silently cheering. They had long suffered from the Reb’s explosive temper. It was good to see someone, one of them, stop him, if only for a while
That night, after the evening prayers and the minyon, the Reb went to Hyman’s house to see his father., intent on demanding proper punishment be administered for this boy’s terrible and despicable act.
Senior Pincus already had most of the details. Half a dozen of the boys in the class had let them be known to the other Pincus siblings so he was prepared for the Reb’s visit. He opened the door when the knock came and not inviting him in for a glass of tea, (oy what a terrible breech of manners that was) stood in the doorway while he listened carefully and then he said, "It seem to me, that for a man with all your education, you have no sechel. A man with sechel wouldn't pick on a boy who is almost twice his size and does hard labor all the time."
‘You hit my Hymie, you hit him several times. Hitting don’t make kids learn, Yankel. He asked you nice not to and you hit him again. . I think you got what you deserve. Learn form this, Yankel, never pick a fight with a person who can bloody your nose and knock you on your ass. So today, I think, you learned something. And we don't even charge you for the lesson. ".
With that, he closed the door.
Irv Pliskin is a retired advertising agency owner. He is a combat veteran of World War II and an Ex Prisoner of War of the Germans. Married, with three kids, and four grandchildren he devotes his time to writing flash fiction. He hopes, that someday, he may become the Grandma Moses of flash fiction. He lives with his wife of 57 years in Cherry Hill,NJ. Contact Irv.
