[This address was delivered at Temple Emmanuel, Providence R.I. August 19, 1995]
For more than forty years I have had occasion to study the Midrash Rabba. It is one of the monuments of post-biblical Jewish literature, a treasure chest of Jewish thoughts on ten books of the Bible, more than a little useful for a preacher. In studying it, I have received immeasurable help from a commentary called in Hebrew Mattenot Kehuna, which means "The Priestly Gifts", and suggests that the author was himself a Cohen, a descendant of Aaron the priest. The thing that always intrigued me about this commentary was that it had all the marks of having been composed in Eastern Europe a couple of centuries ago, but possessed a real linguistic sense and interest, which the author could not possibly have indulged as he must have wished. If any residents of Milwaukee or Providence take it into their heads to begin the study of ancient Greek, all they have to do is to fulfil the modest admission requirements of a special student at a local university and they will be welcomed with open arms into Greek 101, provided, of course, two men wearing white coats do not carry them off first. I think the author of that commentary would have loved to know more Greek to help him explain the many Greek words with which the Midrash is flooded, but there was just no way he could do it. As a Jew he could not have been accepted into a Polish university, or any university in Europe for that matter. But he did incredibly well with the meager resources at his disposal. And let us reflect on the fact that we do not value our access to information because we take it so much for granted. Read that wonderful novel by Thomas Hardy Jude the Obscure to see how applicants for college were treated in England less than a century ago, if they came from the wrong side of the tracks.
A while ago I asked myself: "I wonder who wrote that commentary on the Midrash that I have been using all these years. Maybe it is time that I got to know who he was." I took down from my bookshelf the copy of the Midrash that I bought when I was eighteen years old, and for the first time looked at the title page. It informed me that the commentary was written by a man by the name of Issachar Katz. He was indeed a cohen like most people with that surname. I tried looking him up, but drew a blank. Apparently he is not considered famous. There was one additional piece of information on the title page. Issachar Katz came from Szchebrzheszin. As it happens, my office at the university was right opposite that of Professor Michael Mikos, who teaches the Polish language at the University of Wisconsin- Milwaukee. Professor Mikos is a fine linguistic scholar, with a deep knowledge of Polish language and culture, and is a very nice person to boot. So one day I said to him: "Michael, do you know anything about Szchebrzheszin?" He laughed. I found this an odd response. If I said to you: "Do you know anything about Foxboro, Mass?" I would not really expect you to laugh. What could possibly be funny about Foxboro, Mass? Professor Mikos then explained himself. He said: "You ask me if I know anything about Szchebrzheszin. I want to tell you that every child in Poland knows something about Szchebrzheszin." "How so?" I asked, my curiosity piqued. He went on: "In Polish there is a tongue-twister involving Szchebrzheszin, and every child in Poland knows it." Now to my ear Polish sounds like a difficult language to pronounce to start with, and the idea of a tongue-twister in it sounded unbelievable. "Can you say it for me?" I asked. He complied, and I asked him to repeat it a couple of times so I could learn it. "What does it mean?" I asked. He replied: "In Szchebrzheszin the may-bug (also known as the cockchafer) twitters in the reeds, and on account of this, Szchebrzheszin is famous." Apparently there is a kind of beetle which swarms in the month of May, and disturbs the sleep of the good citizens of Szchebrzheszin. And this gives rise to the tongue-twister.
Professor Mikos then went to his bookshelf, picked out a book in Polish, and told me that this town had a population of about 5,000 people, and before 1939 one third of the inhabitants were Jewish. This was about as far as my research took me.
That fall Professor Mikos said to me: "I visited Szchebrzheszin." He told me that in the summer he was in Poland with his wife. He normally conducts courses there. They happened to be driving near Szchebrzheszin, and he said to his wife: "Alan Corré asked me about Szchebrzheszin. Let's go and take a look at it." They went to this little place, and she took a photograph for me of the synagogue. This eighteenth century building was set on fire by the Nazis in 1939, but it was not destroyed. Not a single Jew now lives there. As I looked at this photo, a shiver ran through me. I had asked about Szchebrzheszin, and here I was looking at the place where my teacher Issachar Katz prayed three times a day. And I call him my teacher, even though he is long dead, because he still teaches me. The midrash explains that the obscure phrase in the Song of Songs dovev siftey yeshenim applies to one who quotes some insight by a person long departed and, so to speak, causes his lips to move as he reposes, and this is what, I suppose, I have done today.
But let me get back for a moment to that tongue-twister. I know no Polish, other than it, but I have been an enthusiastic student of the Russian language for several years now, and I wondered what the Russian reflex of that strange Polish word for may-bug was. On the basis of correspondences that were apparent to me, it had to be something like khrushch, so I looked this up in a Russian dictionary, and it was indeed the corresponding Russian word, also known as mayskij krug, the may-beetle. And what do you know, I knew this word already, and so do you. The former leader of the Soviet Union, Khrushchev, had a name derived from the cockchafer. This was the man who got so angry at a meeting of the United Nations in New York that he pulled off his shoe, to the astonishment of everyone who watched this performance, and banged the shoe on the table in front of him. "We shall bury you!" he screamed. But of course they didn't. That empty threat was just like the sound of the may-bugs twittering in the trees, which disturbed Issachar Katz as he thought about difficult words in the Midrash in his little town. And Khrushchev's name predicted his final disposition. And capitalism is alive and kicking, and, dare I say it, maybe kicking a little too successfully.
And this brings me back to Rabbi Issachar. He explains in the Midrash that the name of an oppressor of the Jewish people, the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar, is derived from the name of an insect very similar to the may-bug, a kind of cricket which twitters in the trees or in the long grass at certain times of the year. And Nebuchadnezzar's boastful threats, like Khrushchev's, were just a twitter and nothing more. Such is the ultimate fate of tyrants, who are remembered with a curse.
So for many people, Szchebrzheszin is famous for its may-bugs. For me it is famous, because a Jewish scholar, about whose personal life I know nothing, still teaches me the meaning of obscure Greek words in the Midrash, and he was living in that little Polish town of five thousand people. And his comments are not the monotonous chant of an insect. Even today, they help nourish the soul of the Jewish people, and that is his achievement and his memorial.