Yussel was an amiable chap. Like a red-blooded baleboss, he heaved the yad of Gan Eden wherever he did go. In youth, he had been the rosiest of swains, hunched over a tattered Mishneh, humming approvingly, framed by the stems of his mother's gardenias, the blares from 13th Avenue doing nothing to dwindle the holiness coursing through his cranium. But all this would change when a raffish, shegetz shnorrer stole into Yussel's life. Teivel showed the boy a world he had never known. From numchuks to girlie mags, Teivel had seen it all. When Teivel bid the boy adieu and headed back to the glittering metropolis, Yussel stood gaping and glossy-eyed out of his kitchen window, refusing to meet his captor's farewell Cadillac in the square. His mother tried to coax him quietly; his father endeavored to pull him by his tallis away from the unhappy window. But Yussel would not be moved. His glowing, milk-fed youth was over. A wicked manhood now appeared; for, oft had Yussel been cautioned of the sacrilege of chilul hashem: desecration of the Lord our God's name by defying the spirit of Judaism while in full cognizance of one's sinfulness. He knew that Teivel's intransigence would send him straightaway hellward. But what richness had he witnessed! What sensuous, secular smidgeons of an alien world outside! How Yussel longed to cast his Torah skyward and plunge himself with unnecessary haste into the riotous workings of the Earth! And so, with impudence, Yussel's peccancy was done. By evening next, young Yussel was gone. He'd hitched a ride on the back of a Pontiac careening wildly on the cobblestone street. Caked in mud and palpitating with fear, Yussel jumped outside at the corner of W 27th and 8th. With a frenzied fire in his bloodshot eyes and a sheet of clanging metal in his heart, Yussel set out to hobnob with his goyische comrades--a gravedigger, a drudge, a bevy of Bayside clerks--whomever was moved by the pain in his breast was fit to hear poor Yussel roar. He set up a podium alongside Madison Square Park, and with theretofore uncharacteristic chutzpah, shouted invective extemporaneously while gobbling sufganiot intemperately. Yussel had never felt freer. What venom he did spew! What idols he did vilify! But what menacing whirl of blue and white shadows hovered in the distance? Yussel shivered and defiantly continued his speech. He was just on the cusp of portending some catastrophic doom when a crystal-clear tocsin sounded in the distance. He started, and saw to his horror: the shadows had transmogrified into a swelling apparition of hoary Hasids, growling and grunting bewitchingly before him. Yussel stopped in mid-sentence and drew in his breath. His laic audience cackled; young boys yelped contumely but Yussel noted nothing but the mirage of the oncoming march of Hasids. And then, out of the procession, a lone figure appeared. By now, his onlookers, sputtering with laughter, had taken leave for better places. But Yussel stood stolid as a stone, astounded. His body tried to run but his lungs held him back. With a long whinnying cry, he blanched, choked and fell to his knees in desperate prayer as the spectre of the man approached him. For Yussel may have fled the shtetl, but he couldn't escape the fate which apostasy had secured for him. He wailed to the heavens as his impious person was enveloped by the retributive powers of the Colonel of Chilul Hashem.
© Rebecca Katherine Hirsch All Rights Reserved