The Frozen Rabbi

Part 1.
1999.
Sometime during his restless fifteenth year…

Part 2.
1889-1890.
When the holy man Rabbi Eliezer ben Zephyr, the Boibiczer Prodigy…

Part 3.
In no particular hurry, Yosl trudged over to find out what his son was squawking about this time.

Part 4.
The Boibicz icehouse was a windowless granite grotto dug into the northern slope…

Part 5.
So it was that, on the morning of the pogrom, Salo was seated on a cabbage crate…

Part 1.
He emerged from the cottage just as Casimir, a sooty-eyed Polish porter with hair like thatch…

Part 2.
1999.
Finding an old Jew in the deep freeze did not at first alter Bernie Karp’s routine…

Part 3.
Even had he been able, Bernie would not have known how to respond.

Part 4.
Meanwhile he starved, though occasionally some sympathetic old baba yaga would scuttle forth…

Part 5.
The peasant screwed up his doughy features thoughtfully; here was a language he understood.

Part 1.
They were wed on the roadside beneath the tattered canopy of Salo’s prayer shawl…

Part 2.
For her part Basha Puah fulminated against their lot with every breath she took…

Part 3.
But the truth was that, while the marital mattress sagged between its creaking slats to the earthen floor…

Part 4.
Between working and dreaming, Salo was unaware of his sons’ political activities.

Part 5.
“Elected to what?” the girl had replied, brushing crumbs from her father’s beard…

Part 1.
These were the dog days of the month of Tammuz…

Part 2.
The Feuchtwanger clan, about to depart for America, would soon be vacating…

Part 3.
But although Jocheved humored her mother, she dismissed her warnings…

Part 4.
1999. The evening after their return from Las Vegas, Mrs. Karp served a dish of meatloaf…

Part 5.
Mrs. Karp raised a tweezered brow, let it drop, and resettled herself on her chaise…

Part 1.
Bernie, too, was greatly relieved, feeling that he now had a license to continue his sub rosa relationship…

Part 2.
Nothing in his listless history (or anyone else’s he knew of) had prepared him for such an event…

Part 3.
Such questions and a score of others Bernie was hard put to answer; the permissiveness of his culture…

Part 1.
But having admitted that televised fare fell short of the spiritual reaches of his once glorious meditative flights…

Part 2.
Never more than a mediocre student, unmotivated and lazy, Bernie was becoming daily more driven…

Part 3.
“Miss Ribalow here says you want to check out the Zohar?”

Part 1.
He bade the boy to sit on the carpet between him and the TV…

Part 2.
He was told of the true significance of Torah, which had spawned the seraphim.

Part 3.
Came the evening meal when Mr. Karp asked his son if he knew anything about certain books…

Part 4.
Oscillating between horror and disbelief, Mr. Karp turned again to his son….

Part 5.
The pain spread until it was general throughout her body…

Part 1.
But that was sometime after Jocheved had woken from the nightmare…

Part 2.
Though her mama’s own manifest determination to do the same made her reasoning seem somehow redundant…

Part 3.
Her first outing after having risen from her convalescent cot was to attend her mother’s funeral.

Part 4.
Without a word—had they ever exchanged a word?—the hag took in the situation.

Part 5.
But these questions, rather than overwhelm her, seemed to pose a merely abstract problem…

Part 1.
Agitated, the girl nevertheless managed to keep Max’s sober façade from cracking apart.

Part 2.
“Wait a minute!” Pisgat shouted. “What’s a matter, you never heard from negotiation?

Part 3.
1999.
Bernie was beside himself with relief at the rabbi’s homecoming…

Part 4.
“Oh,” replied Mr. Karp. “I thought you might have something really ambitious in mind.”

Part 5.
“Julius,” began the rabbi. “May I call you Julius?” His ingratiating air fooled no one.

Part 1.
You couldn’t have called it eavesdropping, since Bernie was standing by the open French doors…

Part 2.
Bernie felt himself begin to shudder and grow dizzy at the sight…

Part 3.
There were framed testimonials from satisfied customers on the paneled walls…

Part 4.
The low-ceilinged room on the other side, most likely a former dance studio, was surrounded by mirrors.

Part 5.
The rabbi rewarded their grateful indulgence with intimate touches…

Steve Stern, winner of the National Jewish Book award, is the author of several previous novels and novellas. He teaches at Skidmore College in upstate New York.

Paul Rogers studied at Art Center College in Pasadena, where he now teaches. He has illustrated two books for children and their parents, Jazz ABZ by Wynton Marsalis and Forever Young by Bob Dylan.

Steve Stern, winner of the National Jewish Book award, teaches at Skidmore College in upstate New York.