Alter

But what kind of name is this Alter?

Subcarpathian village. Photo by Margaret Bourke-White, 1938

Although Ivan Olbracht (1882-1952) was born in Northern Bohemia, he was the most significant writer of Subcarpathia between the two world wars. Between 1931 and 1936 he lived in these mountains, in the partly Rusyn, partly Jewish village of Volové Polje, from where he regularly informed his journal Literární noviny about this little-known and romantically imagined easternmost corner of the newly created Czechoslovakia. He wrote with great love about the Rusyn, Jewish, Hungarian, German people of this poor, multinational region, and he criticized the Czech state for treating this province almost as a colony. He wrote both of his main works about this region: Nikola Šuhaj loupežník (Nikola Shuhai, Highwayman, 1933) about the Rusyns and their Robin Hood-like legendary highwaymen, and Golet v údoli (“Galuth” [“this-worldly exile”] in the valley, 1937) about the local Hassidic Jewish peasant villages. The following short text is from the latter book.


Técsői (Tečiv) Band: Rusyn dance from Volové Polje. From the CD I was beaten… (2004).
One of the last traditional Gypsy bands in the Subcarpathian Hutsul Rusyn region, who still play the Rusyn, Hungarian, Romanian and Jewish repertoire of the surrounding villages. Dumneazu often plays with them.

Subcarpathian Jewish school. Photos by Margaret Bourke-White, 1938

“My landlord is called Alter Abraham Hershkovitsh, but anyone looking for him inquires after Alter, because everyone knows him by this name. And Alter is a very nice name.

In the life of religious Hassidic Jews there occur… not so rarely… yes, there occur some tragic moments when they consider permissible to cheat the Eternal One. For example, the wife of Hershkovitsh in Kelecsény loses some newborn children in a row. Then the Lord consoles her with a boy, and the parents give the boy the name Samuel. But the little Sami soon falls ill, and no herb tea helps, no prayers help, and the heart of the mother gets filled with desperate fear that Sami would follow his little brothers. The mother thus goes to visit the rabbi, and puts her hands together, taking care not to knit her fingers because then they would give out the sign of the cross.

– Rabbi, do a miracle!

Subcarpathian Jewish boys studiyng. Czech postcard, pre-1938

The rabbi begins to stroke his beard from bottom upwards. He is thinking.

– You have already lost three children? And this is now a boy?… Yes, then it is permitted.

And the rabbi does a miracle. He performs a ceremony on the child in the synagogue. He takes away his name, which is the same as if he took away his soul. And he gives him a different name, and this is as if he gave him a new soul. The boy is not called Samuel any more, but Abraham. Soon afterwards time is filled, and the Lord calls the angel of death:

– The time of the child Samuel, the son of Chaim Hershkovitsh has filled. Go and bring him to me!

“Future rabbis”. Subcarpathian Czech postcard, pre-1938

The angel of death thus flies on his light wings to Kelecsény, directly to the Hershkovitsh’s… Samuel Hershkovitsh?… Where is a Samuel Hershkovitsh?… There is no Samuel Hershkovitsh here at all!… He flies all over the village. He does not find any Samuel Hershkovitsh. He returns to the Lord:

– My Lord, in Kelecsény there is no child called Samuel Hershkovitsh. Maybe an error fell in your books.

Adonai smiles affably. He is cheered up by the wisdom of the mother’s heart and of His people. And down there the mother is sitting with the little Abraham and singing a lullaby to him:

– Sleep, my child, sleep, my little son, dulinka… dulu-lu.

And she is shaking with a silent laughter, or maybe weeping. And the child who was saved in this miraculous way is then called throughout all his life Alter. “Alt sol er verdn… Let him live long!” Such an Alter is also my landlord, Abraham Hershkovitsh, earlier Samuel.”

Jewish boys. Czech postcard from Munkács/Munkačevo, pre-1938

Once we are talking about Olbracht, let us quote another text from his book. The passage where he writes about the village micve, the ritual bath on Friday evening, with the same irony and love as the other great authors of the larger region, Singer, Roth or Sholem Alechem would have written about it, but also in that wry and absurd tone which is a characteristic feature of Czech humor.

Subcarpathian Jewish greengrocer and knife-grinder on the same market (the signboard is the same in the background). Czech postcards, pre-1938

“The holy lawmakers who ordered washing to the children of Israel, well knew the Jews. And well knew them also Baal Shem Tov (let him rest in peace), the famous woodcutter of these mountains, the defender of the ignorant against the learned, the great prophet of the Lord, who made physical purity a condition of the Lord’s grace. These lawmakers knew that if they told, for example: “Subcarpathian peasants, woodcutters, shoemakers, tailors, merchants, carters, beggars, commit it to your memory that cleanliness is half health”, then the Jews would have thought a lot about the wisdom of the order, they would have professed it in the prayer houses, would have explained it in the kheders and yeshivas and rabbi schools, they would have seen in the seven above mentioned professions the symbols of the seven angelic orders, they would have held bloody debates on whether “health” in this context means eternity or divine wisdom, they certainly would have found in that phrase a group of three or five letters which is not just a group of letters, but some infinitely deep secret, which can never be figured out, but one has to devote all his life to attempting to figure it out – but, however, they would have not have a wash.

Subcarpathian Jewish tinker. Czech postcard, pre-1938

These old wise men – and above all Baal Shem Tov, father of all the Hassids (let him rest in peace) – also knew that if they briefly and clearly ordered it: Wash yourself on every Friday! then their Jews would have made a touching ceremony out of the order, they would have wailed or rejoiced with their tallit on their heads by accompanying their prayer with beautiful and majestic gestures, they would have remembered about the waters above which the soul of God hovered in the beginning, about the water springing from the rock at the beat of Moses’ rod, about the water of the Red Sea that the Lord divided with the eastern wind so it would stand as two walls to the left and right of the sons of Israel, they would have remembered about the water of the rivers of Babylon and about the zithers hung on the branches of the willow trees – but from the washing there would have not been left more than a ceremonial dipping of the tip of their three fingers in the water.

No! To the people of Polana you have to speak in a different way. In a much more resolute and severe tone.

But to know how you have to speak to the people of Polana, read it yourself in the Valley of the Galuth.

Jewish sewing-machine shop in Ungvár/Užhorod with Czech and Hungarian signboards. As
Giacomo Ponzetto has pointed it out, the advertised company, MINERVA, Erste
Österr.-Ungar. Nähmaschinen-Fabrik AG is still operating today in the
Czech Republic. Photo by Margaret Bourke-White, 1938