oldest of which dated to the Christian year 1234. In the Jewish cemetery in Mainz, thirty kilometres away, Guttle had heard from her father, there were stones from the year 1000.
The procession wended its way along the narrow dirt paths amid clusters of stones, to the place among the deceased Beckers where Hersch and Hiram Liebmann had dug the grave not long before. The pallbearers lowered the coffin onto two leather straps. Holding the ends of these, they lowered the coffin further, into the grave.
The concluding prayers, led by the Chief Rabbi, did not take long. When he was through, he took a handful of earth from the pile beside the grave and tossed it onto the coffin. To those watching, the dull thud as the earth struck the wooden lid resounded with a forbidding finality.
As the mourners filed back to the lane in the quick-falling dark, the brothers Liebmann hefted their spades and began to fill in the grave. Hersch worked slowly. His arms felt heavy, as if his prayer shawl were made of lead. Perhaps his muscles had tightened from the effort of digging the grave. Or perhaps he was in no hurry to learn the identity of the new Schul-Klopper. Pausing, looking up at the darkening sky, he took a deep breath. The air was brisk and clean. He realized, for the first time, an oddity: the center of the cemetery was the one place in the Judengasse to escape from human stench.
In contrast, his brother worked quickly, dumping one heavy spade load after another into the grave. His prayer shawl didn’t hamper him at all. Was he hurrying because darkness, and thus the Sabbath, was approaching rapidly? Or was he in a rush to get back to the temple, expecting to see if not hear himself offered the sacred hammer — as if some teasing messenger had whispered into his useless ear that it would be so? Hersch dared not ask.
When the grave was full they patted it level with the back of the spades, then left the tools inside the cemetery gate. As they walked up the lane, Hersch was conscious of a dread to which he was not accustomed, while his brother, who usually lumbered through the lane slowly, with no destination outside his own imagining, kept moving two or three steps ahead, turning and waiting for Hersch to catch up, then moving ahead again. When they reached the synagogue, Hersch would have kept on going, would have walked straight home. But Hiram quickly crossed the trench toward the temple doors. Hersch knew he had no choice but to follow.
The last to leave the cemetery was Meyer Amschel Rothschild. When the burial service was done he walked alone in the stone-pocked darkness to the plot where his father and then his mother had been buried when he was barely twelve years old. Every funeral he had attended since had drawn him there with a pull on his leaden soul. He had not cried for his father. He had not cried for his mother. He had not known why, then. He did not know why now.
They had sent him away to school in Furth that year, in Bavaria, instead of to the yeshiva. It was almost as if they had foreseen what was coming. He was in mathematics class, he remembered, hunched over his desk working on a problem, when the Rabbi who headed the school summoned him from class. Seated in his office, the Rabbi said, “Sit down, Meyer Amschel. I have received today a letter from your mother. It is bad news, I’m afraid.” The Rabbi had hesitated, then continued. “Smallpox has appeared in the Frankfurt Judengasse. Your father was one of those stricken. It appears that he has passed away.”
Meyer felt stunned for a moment, then stood up. “I have to go back.”
“Sit, son, sit. It takes at least three days for the post to reach here from Frankfurt. Your father passed away on Thursday evening. The funeral would have been Friday. There’s nothing you can do now.”
“I have to be with my mother. And visit his grave. How can this be, Rabbi? My father went to schul every day. When I was little he would take my hand, and I would
The procession wended its way along the narrow dirt paths amid clusters of stones, to the place among the deceased Beckers where Hersch and Hiram Liebmann had dug the grave not long before. The pallbearers lowered the coffin onto two leather straps. Holding the ends of these, they lowered the coffin further, into the grave.
The concluding prayers, led by the Chief Rabbi, did not take long. When he was through, he took a handful of earth from the pile beside the grave and tossed it onto the coffin. To those watching, the dull thud as the earth struck the wooden lid resounded with a forbidding finality.
As the mourners filed back to the lane in the quick-falling dark, the brothers Liebmann hefted their spades and began to fill in the grave. Hersch worked slowly. His arms felt heavy, as if his prayer shawl were made of lead. Perhaps his muscles had tightened from the effort of digging the grave. Or perhaps he was in no hurry to learn the identity of the new Schul-Klopper. Pausing, looking up at the darkening sky, he took a deep breath. The air was brisk and clean. He realized, for the first time, an oddity: the center of the cemetery was the one place in the Judengasse to escape from human stench.
In contrast, his brother worked quickly, dumping one heavy spade load after another into the grave. His prayer shawl didn’t hamper him at all. Was he hurrying because darkness, and thus the Sabbath, was approaching rapidly? Or was he in a rush to get back to the temple, expecting to see if not hear himself offered the sacred hammer — as if some teasing messenger had whispered into his useless ear that it would be so? Hersch dared not ask.
When the grave was full they patted it level with the back of the spades, then left the tools inside the cemetery gate. As they walked up the lane, Hersch was conscious of a dread to which he was not accustomed, while his brother, who usually lumbered through the lane slowly, with no destination outside his own imagining, kept moving two or three steps ahead, turning and waiting for Hersch to catch up, then moving ahead again. When they reached the synagogue, Hersch would have kept on going, would have walked straight home. But Hiram quickly crossed the trench toward the temple doors. Hersch knew he had no choice but to follow.
The last to leave the cemetery was Meyer Amschel Rothschild. When the burial service was done he walked alone in the stone-pocked darkness to the plot where his father and then his mother had been buried when he was barely twelve years old. Every funeral he had attended since had drawn him there with a pull on his leaden soul. He had not cried for his father. He had not cried for his mother. He had not known why, then. He did not know why now.
They had sent him away to school in Furth that year, in Bavaria, instead of to the yeshiva. It was almost as if they had foreseen what was coming. He was in mathematics class, he remembered, hunched over his desk working on a problem, when the Rabbi who headed the school summoned him from class. Seated in his office, the Rabbi said, “Sit down, Meyer Amschel. I have received today a letter from your mother. It is bad news, I’m afraid.” The Rabbi had hesitated, then continued. “Smallpox has appeared in the Frankfurt Judengasse. Your father was one of those stricken. It appears that he has passed away.”
Meyer felt stunned for a moment, then stood up. “I have to go back.”
“Sit, son, sit. It takes at least three days for the post to reach here from Frankfurt. Your father passed away on Thursday evening. The funeral would have been Friday. There’s nothing you can do now.”
“I have to be with my mother. And visit his grave. How can this be, Rabbi? My father went to schul every day. When I was little he would take my hand, and I would
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