The Gift

[Author's note: This story is purely historical and in no way relates to the current situation in the Levant. The author is not Jewish. It is merely a study in the spirituality of Jewish Communities in the Ukraine during the Pogroms of the early 20th Century]

Sh'ma ran into the izba, her family's dark hovel, laughing and wet. Pesach — also her birthday — was only hours away, and the gamlet buzzed with last‑minute work before Shabbas.

“Ah! Sh'ma!” cried Ilja her mother, “Your feet! And as if I have less than your arriving Dadushka to prepare for? Out! Wash! Go!”

Outside by the drain, Sh'ma scrubbed the dung and mud from her feet, then her hands and face. Though her shawl was tattered and her skirts stained from the road, Grandfather Yakob would be home for the services — and he would sing for her birthday.

#

Rabbi Yakob, gaunt and bent, removed his wicker case from the cart he was pushing and re‑tucked his tallit shawl into his coat. It had been a long walk from his home and not without risk. Cossacks were rumoured to be abroad again; a Ukrainian cowherd had cruelly taunted him, saying “Push faster, old man — they will still run you down.”

But he had not been molested and he still had his gift for Sh'ma. He smiled and patted his pocket where the bulge sat.

Each year he travelled here to his daughter‑in‑law to sing for his little “Vnushka”. Once he had been a celebrated cantor at the Great Synagogue of Ulma.

But when his son Hama had been murdered on the very eve of Pesach he resigned in his grief and now spent the holiday embracing his family.

He gazed across the fields and murmured the prayer — Sh’ma Yisrael. “Next year. In Israel,” the words flooding him with memory.

#

“May G*d grant a son, that He may continue to hear us sing!” Hama beamed, embracing his Father by the gate.

“May it be that He lets us all see the child arrive!” warned Yakob, “And that we celebrate the arrival, boy or girl, with thanks. Now, HURRY! The animals are still out, the sun low and HERE you stand? Work while you can and tonight we'll talk.”

“Yes Papa. Shalom Shabbat, Papa.”

“Shabbat Shalom.”

Yet darkness fell while they waited for Hama. Ilja wanted to bless the candles but Yakob forbade it and so they sat. Later, in the small hours, Ilja began to weep and rock.

“Where is Hama!”

Yakob was grim.

“Perhaps he is unable to join us for the Seder, Ilja. Very well, bless the candles.”

“It’s not that — the child!”

In the early dawn a daughter was born to absent Hama, on the very day Pharaoh's first born son was taken by the archangel Gabriel. But there was to be no Seder feast for his family. At noon neighbours brought Hama in — found by the roadside, decapitated, his cows slaughtered around him.

Rabbi Yakob had chanted the Kaddish prayer stone‑faced for his dead son, and sat Shiva in mourning with Ilja while the townsfolk tended to their needs.

“Sh'ma Ilja, Sh'ma Yakob.”

“Sh'ma Ysrael,” murmured Ilja to her newborn daughter; and from that day on that is what they called her.

Years passed; the Ukrainian wheat rose and fell like tides, and grief marked them all.

#

Yakob kept walking.

“Dadushka!!”

Sh'ma cannoned into Grandfather Yakob from behind and they sprawled in the foetid mud laughing.

“Sh'ma! Sh'ma! Are you trying to KILL poor Yakob?”

“Will you sing, Dadushka! Will you sing!”

Yakob gazed into the frost‑reddened face and felt tears welling.

“I will try, beloved, but I am getting old. And I have brought you something special! Something... even older than I!!”

He waved away the wide‑eyed requests and walked with her past the gate and into the murky izba where pots and smoke were clamouring.

“Rabbi!!” Ilja shrilled in delight, throwing her arms and a pile of embroidered napkins wide.

“Yakob, Yakob!! HERE of all places you should call ME Rabbi,” he scoffed, hugging her to him, “You are doing so well! And the girl is strong!”

Ilja stared in horror at Yakob, mud‑stained and shaking with laughter. Her mouth open to scold.

“Let it be, Ilja. An old man indeed I would become but for the joy of my family. Dirt can be washed away, but love of this kind? Ahh, but it makes me happy to see you again. Have you both fasted?”

They nodded.

“Good! I shall wash and change. Then we shall see.”

In the dim hovel the lamps were lit, candles blessed and surrounded by the heady aroma of molten tallow, Rabbi Yakob sang the ancient prayers handed down from the age of Moses.

#

In the glow of the stove and the thick wine, Yakob leaned back in his chair with a full belly and with twinkling eyes motioned for Sh'ma to approach.

“Now. Shall we see what old man Yakob has for Sh'ma?”

She squealed with delight and ran to his feet to sit on the dirt floor entranced, cross‑legged.

Yakob fumbled, patting each pocket in turn and absently muttering to himself; of course he left the true pocket for last. A broad smile avalanched through the forest of his beard.

“Ahh!! Here!”

He plunged his fist down to his forearm, slowly withdrew it and just as the package appeared... whisked it behind his back before Sh'ma could see. Ilja covered her mouth and giggled: Sh'ma's eyes were on stalks!

“Here... is something old. Special.” He dropped his voice to a rumbling whisper, “Magik...”

“Yakob! You're teasing her to death!”

“Hush! Your Father, bless and honour him, I once gave this to. And when I was young, my own Dadushka — your Great, Great Dadushka 'Mendel' — he gave it to me. From there... the memories are silent — who knows how old. But here it is in my hand, and,” he swung his hand from behind his back, “now let it pass to you.”

His palm opened to reveal a pocket‑stained wooden box with yellow metal hinges. Sh'ma's face gaped in wonder.

“What is it?”

“This? It's a box! Surely you know a box as any other? Oof!” Yakob winced as Ilja deftly kicked him in the shins.

“Alright! Alright! Here! Take it before I become any older. Or lamer.”

Laughing, he dropped it into Sh'ma's hands. She gasped; it was heavy! And there seemed to be some loose object clunking about inside. She shook it lightly by her ear.

“Oh!” laughed Yakob, “it was well I chose this and not the crystal. Will you shake me, when at last I come in a box?”

“Rabbi! NOT tonight!!”

“Forgive me, Ilja. But come, climb up to the table and I shall show you what I have brought.”

They sat beside him and in the glimmer of the candle he opened the box and laid the gift on the bench. Shaped like a cube — one end tapered to a point, the other rising in a thin upright cylinder, Hebrew letters engraved along its four edges. It was made of solid, polished brass and lay on the rough wood sparkling and shining like a phoenix. In every dim edge and corner a candle was reflected and the light filled the room with gold.

“Oh Yakob,” Ilja turned, hugging him, “its beautiful! Hama never showed me this.”

Sh'ma could only sit and drink it with her eyes.

“Well? It cannot dance if you merely stare!”

“What... IS it, Dadushka?!”

“It is a dreidl. You spin it. Here.”

Yakob grasped it by its stem and gave it a twist with his fingers.

The golden candles leapt from their shadowy corners and twirled madly about the izba. Suddenly their hovel was a cauldron of light, warm and dizzying. Stars and constellations spiralled around them. The top sang from the table, colours tasting of fresh rain and honey splashing across the room, the air turning faintly toward a crisp spring dawn.

Sh'ma sprang to her feet, laughing, and danced amongst the cosmos while Ilja sat and looked at Yakob in awe.

“What have you brought us, Rabbi!”

Eternity swirled inside the hovel. As Sh'ma spun with the stars, her bare arms aglow in their warmth, reveling in the shining metal's brilliance, Yakob's cheeks moistened. Old memories gazed back at him from the candlelit glimmer like feral eyes in the dark, whispering of love and loss. His smile outshone the room, yet a hollow sadness closed around him.

#

...“Magik,” Mendel smiled from out of the darkness.

Yakob the child stood motionless in wonder as the universe whirled all around.

“Are they alive Dadushka?? Can they be caught?”

“Only by angels, dear child.”

#

The dreidl spun. In one turn the ceiling opened up the heavens and the evening unrolled like a ribbon — nebulae shifted and stars laughed as if time itself were released from their stables. Sh'ma ran and pranced amongst the wild bursts of joy, unfettered and free, her smile a galaxy shining in the skies.

#

Little Hama turned from the shadows to his Father, eyes glittering with the infinity of Creation.

“Will they try tonight, Papa?”

Yakob the Father grinned.

“If you look very hard, Hama.”

#

The dreidl clattered and knocked to a forlorn standstill on its side — the stationary lights winking silently. The air was heavy with the smell of iron and ozone; ash settled unseen where the top had come to rest. A great feeling of expectation hung like crumbling silk, of ages forgotten and promises unkept, settling around them. The lights twitched to some invisible zephyr, beckoning. Waiting.

Sh'ma, flushed with shining youth, turned her open face to Yakob.

“Would they dance with me?”

Old Yakob blinked and shuddered, the years settling on his shoulders like a heavy cloak, his voice raised in alarm.

“NO, Sh'ma! Do not speak of it! ...Oh... Here... Do not be afraid," he murmured, drawing the crying Sh'ma into his arms, "We all of us get to dance with them someday, but tonight... Of ALL nights. Remember now of Egypt—”

“Did the angel take my Papa too?”

“No, my sweet Vdushka. The Czar took your Papa; the angel Gabriel merely collected him.”

Sh'ma wiped her wet face and looked up to the ceiling, black with mold.

“Then I will dance with Papa.”

Ilja's hands lept to her mouth in grief as Yakob's eyes filled with tears.

The dreidl whirred again and the room cart‑wheeled with Sh'ma at its centre, full of all that life brings. Tawny wheatfields of the endless steppe stared back from the brass as if the top were a window, billowing in silence under a spiraling night sky as a younger Hama walked among cattle that were both alive and already gone. Beneath the vision lay a single grain of wheat where none had been before.

Yakob and Ilja clapped together while Sh'ma danced and Yakob sung.

#

Suddenly Ilja gasped.

“—Yakob—!!”

The dreidl, neither slowing nor travelling, was still spinning; reflections uniformly orbiting while a multitude of whispers seemed to claw at the very edges of silence from where it drilled. The whirring noise grew louder until the thundering roared with charging hoofbeats, trampling the golden wheat and smothering the izba with boiling darkness. The air, thick with decay, dripped with the familiar taste of copper and dread. Blood streaked the lintel of the creaking door, frost piercing faces and hands while the gilded fields of brass drained of their colour. A vast, concentrated terror flooded through them like an unstoppable surge of water, snuffing all light and hope. It brushed their hair with an exhalation of irresistible death and finality — collecting them, embracing them, sweeping them in its wake.

Little Sh'ma fled under the table. Ilja's nails bled where she gripped the table in rigid fright. Yakob's eyes shut, unable to flee the engulfing torrent upon them.

A violent, desperate battering at the door set the dreidl tumbling, plunging the hovel back into empty gloom — the candles dead as if never lit. Ilja screamed. Gruff voices cursed outside and Sh'ma hid herself behind a pile of sacking.

White‑faced, Yakob went to answer the door.

A searing blaze of fire‑lit shouting and running feet spilled into the entrance from behind Yitzhak the Tailor.

“Rabbi!! Ilja!! You're alive, thank G*d!”

Yakob squinted like a mole into the night.

“And here you and I stand — what has happened?”

“A raid! Everything's on fire, every home but this, and by what miracle!”

“Is everyone—”

“Rabbi,” Itzak sobbed.

“Go Yakob,” moaned Ilja, “we will be alright.”

Sickened, Yakob lurched from their scorching door into the horror.

Ilja sat and stared as the solitary grain of wheat crumbled to dust. Atop the table, from the lifeless gift, not a single burning field reflected on the silent, waiting walls.