Zellig Bach A Child's Longing for Home
1 The Epilogue Beforehand
 Self-Image: Portrait of Gimpel the Beggar
 

Like any other European small Jewish town or townlet my shtetl, Ponyevezh, in Lithuania, had its full share of beggars. They went from house to house, asking for a gro'shn (a penny) or some food, relying upon the tradition of tsdo'ke, the great and abiding precept of charity in Jewish life.

Every family responded according to its means, and even poor families did not refuse to give something to a beggar, even if only a slice of stale bread.

Many of the beggars divided the town into seven sections and made their daily rounds once a week in each section, including Sha'bes (Sabbath). Since it was forbidden to handle money on the Lord's Day, a beggar's collection on Sha'bes consisted exclusively of food.

Some beggars were extremely demanding, and if they thought a handout to be unsatisfactory, they unleashed a stream of dreadful curses in a loud voice so that all neighbors could hear.

Quite frequently, such an approach was successful. Nobody in our small town wanted to be so mercilessly cursed, certainly not by one whose lot and station in life were so bitter.

Gimpel—that was his real name—was one of our town's beggars, but he was different in his mild manners and quiet ways.

He had several peculiarities, and one was his strange outfit. His tattered gabardine coat had lost any recognizable trace of its original color or fabric. It did not have a single button, and he held it together with a plain, heavy cord tied around his waist. His frazzled visored cap, worn down to his ears and at times slightly askew, also contained no memory of its shape.

With his unkempt, overflowing beard, his sad eyes and his walking stick—a gnarled branch that reached to his shoulders—Gimpel looked at times like a wanderer from a strange land and, from some distance, like a shepherd or patriarch in old pictures.

Hanging from each side of his cord belt were two long open cans, his receptacles for the food he received on his rounds. While some beggars refused food on weekdays and insisted on money, Gimpel always accepted food gratefully.

In one of his cans he collected bread, chunks of cold potato pudding, scraps of meat (on rare occasions) or portions of tsi'mes, the Sha'bes dish made of carrots and plums, meat bones and fat. An onion or a clove of garlic also went into the same can.

The other can was for all kinds of soups, mixed together in an odd "beggar's cocktail."

There was talk in town that beneath his ritual fringes—even beneath his shirt (if he wore one)—Gimpel carried on his back, directly on his body, a plate of tin. Some adults in town said that this was his own "device" to keep clean.

However, the children in Khey'der had a "truer" explanation. They saw him standing inside the synagogue near the door, praying silently for the full length of the services. Unlike others there, he stood motionless all the time.

With his phylacteries on his brow and arm, and his yellowed and ragged prayer shawl framing his head and body, Gimpel impressed the children with the stillness of a portrait. They saw in him the image of a "Just Man," one of the unacknowledged 36 saintly people in whose merit the world is sustained from generation to generation.

The children believed that Gimpel wore the plate of tin next to his body to suffer, here on earth, for his sins. They did not know the name or even the nature of his sins, but somehow concluded that he had taken upon himself the vow of exile and homelessness to repent for them.

This conflicted with the opinion of most adults in town, who thought he was of unsound mind.

It is difficult to say whether Gimpel was really deranged. His speech was coherent, and he prayed three times a day, as befits an Orthodox Jew. He humbly gave thanks for the smallest alms, even if it was a child who had brought it to him, and always invoked God's name for the blessing of his benefactors.

Plain folks often asked Gimpel to come into their home "to eat something hot." He would then kiss the mezu'ze, wash his hands and say the appropriate benedictions, and again, after eating, slowly say the benedictory portions of thanks to the Almighty, pronouncing clearly every word.

Occasionally, he would suddenly start kissing little girls, attempting in a fatherly fashion to kiss their heads, never their faces, and the girls, shrieking, would run away, warning him from a safe distance that they would tell their mothers.

Although a beggar himself, Gimpel carried with him small talismanic bags, which he would hand to parents of little children. He sewed these bags himself and filled them with goods from his preciously collected dole. Each bag contained a small onion, some salt, and a clove of garlic.

He implored the parents to sew the bags inside the pockets of the children's jackets and overcoats so that no harm would befall them and no evil spirits have power over them.

Sometimes, when surrounded by children, Gimpel would imitate a chicken. He would point a bent index finger into the palm of his hand, or sometimes close to the face of a child, making pecking motions and saying "Pick-pick."

If the children pleaded with him for his specialty, he would imitate the flapping wing movements and crowing of a rooster. First, he would put down his big forest staff; then, after carefully untying both cans from his cord belt and placing them alongside his staff, he would start swinging his arms up and down like wings, emitting a creaky "koo-koo-ree-koo ."

Children loved Gimpel's chanticleer performance and always asked for more. He then looked at them with smiling eyes, and the smile seemed to flood the thick and intricate pattern of the wrinkles in his face.

He seemed deeply pleased to bring joy to little children, and maybe he was a child himself, masquerading in a surrealistic stage outfit of a grownup beggar.

Gimpel's disheveled looks and dress, as well as the contrast between his devotional mode of praying and his childish ways, excited the fantasy of the children. Notwithstanding his outlandish garb, his cans and cord and his strange ways, they thought of him as a mystery man. In twilight hours, they would be engrossed in discussions about him, particularly on Sha'bes nights before it was time to light a candle or the kerosene lamp, and elongated shadows assembled on the walls in voiceless meetings.

In these talks, they wove Gimpel into the fabric of folk legends and heatedly argued several probabilities.

Some children were certain that he was eyliyo'hu hano'vi (Elijah the Prophet), who usually appeared in various disguises but especially as a poor man deprived of home and family. Others persisted in the belief that he was one of the Lamed-Vov, the Thirty-Six Just Men who go through life as the poorest of the poor and whose saintliness remains concealed from all, even from themselves, until their very last moment on earth.

Was there a mysterious connection between Bashevis Singer's "Gimpel the Fool" and Gimpel our town beggar? Was there an other-worldly relation between them?

As "Gimpel the Fool" left Frampol to go "into the world," so did Gimpel, our town beggar, vanish one day in the middle of the winter.

Both his appearance in our town, without anyone knowing where he came from, and his mysterious disappearance fitted into the children's fantasies. Now they were certain that Gimpel, indeed, was one of the Thirty-Six Just and Saintly Men.

And many a child regretted in his fearful heart that, on some occasions, he had fallen victim to the ignorance of the grown-ups about the old beggar, teased him rudely in utter disrespect, tried to snatch away his walking stick and even called after him at the top of his lungs: "Gim-pel! Gim-pel the loo-oo-ny!"

Townspeople said that Gimpel started to walk to another place on that fateful winter day. The evening was mild, but later that night a blizzard broke loose and heavy snow and bitter frost settled over the plains of Lithuania.

Fatigue and sleep overtook him. As he lived, so did Gimpel die—alone, without kin and friend.

Snowflakes blanketed his body and tucked him in forever in a sweet sleep. Their whiteness was his burial shroud, the darkness of the night his grave. And the howling winds pronounced his death to all corners of the world.