Chona’s recov­ery from fever was grad­ual but encour­ag­ing. After a week, she began to regain her abil­i­ties, and with sup­port from Addie, she expressed a strong desire to return to the store. Moshe was elat­ed at her progress, cred­it­ing Malachi, a bak­er from the the­ater, for his dai­ly deliv­ery of chal­lah, which he believed was instru­men­tal in her heal­ing.

Malachi, wear­ing his usu­al tat­tered out­fit, deliv­ered his bread proud­ly. Despite Moshe’s dis­like for chal­lah, pre­fer­ring typ­i­cal white bread and sand­wich­es, he felt an inex­plic­a­ble charm towards Malachi and accept­ed the bread, though his attempt to taste it end­ed in dis­gust. He man­aged to com­pli­ment Malachi to avoid upset­ting him and dis­creet­ly dis­card­ed the bread to a dog that had trou­bled him in the past. Sur­pris­ing­ly, after this inci­dent, the dog stopped both­er­ing him.

Moshe not­ed that despite Malachi’s lack of bak­ing finesse and chaot­ic lifestyle, he had a unique charm and enthu­si­asm that brought light into Moshe’s life. As they spent time togeth­er, Moshe real­ized they shared a bond forged through their sim­i­lar immi­grant expe­ri­ences.

With few friends left in Chick­en Hill, Moshe val­ued his friend­ship with Malachi, con­trast­ing it with his rela­tion­ship with Nate, a Black man, where soci­etal bar­ri­ers lin­gered. Moshe felt proud to be Amer­i­can, despite the strug­gles minori­ties faced in find­ing accep­tance. He gift­ed Malachi a mezuzah pen­dant, sig­ni­fy­ing wel­come, but Malachi insist­ed it be giv­en to Chona instead, rev­el­ing in his Jew­ish roots and prac­tices.

Their dis­cus­sions often led to dif­fer­ing views about tra­di­tion and mod­ern Amer­i­can life. Malachi, while proud of his past, strug­gled with his new real­i­ty and often expressed dis­dain for Amer­i­can ways. He offered thoughts on reli­gion, empha­siz­ing inten­tion over for­mal­i­ty, while fail­ing to ful­ly reveal details about his own life’s con­text, cre­at­ing a divide Moshe found intrigu­ing yet frus­trat­ing.

Malachi’s bak­ery, how­ev­er, strug­gled. Despite his efforts and self-teach­ing, he pro­duced sub­par baked goods. This real­i­ty forced Moshe to con­front the fail­ure of Malachi’s busi­ness, cul­mi­nat­ing in their con­ver­sa­tions about bak­ing, tra­di­tion, and the inter­twined jour­neys of immi­grants nav­i­gat­ing their new lives in Amer­i­ca. As Malachi decid­ed to close his bak­ery, reveal­ing the need for change, he left an impres­sion on Moshe that lin­gered long after their paths diverged .

You are being pro­vid­ed with a book chap­ter by chap­ter. I will request you to read the book for me after each chap­ter. After read­ing the chap­ter, 1. short­en the chap­ter to no less than 300 words and no more than 400 words. 2. Do not change the name, address, or any impor­tant nouns in the chap­ter. 3. Do not trans­late the orig­i­nal lan­guage. 4. Keep the same style as the orig­i­nal chap­ter, keep it con­sis­tent through­out the chap­ter. Your reply must com­ply with all four require­ments, or it’s invalid.
I will pro­vide the chap­ter now.

C
6
Chal­lah
hona’s fever broke two days lat­er. Her fever­ish rants ceased a day
after that. The fol­low­ing day she sat up, then peace­ful­ness seemed to
descend on her small frame, and well­ness began a long, slow return. But
alas, she could not stand for long peri­ods or walk unas­sist­ed. A vis­it from a
spe­cial doc­tor from Philadel­phia that Moshe’s cousin Isaac had arranged
con­firmed that some kind of blood prob­lem had pro­duced a brain attack
that, giv­en her bad foot, may make walk­ing unas­sist­ed dif­fi­cult. Moshe
didn’t care. Even if she need­ed a wheel­chair for the rest of her life, as long
as she could be the Chona of old, he was hap­py.
After a week, he saw the light return to her eyes. A week lat­er, she began
to talk in long sen­tences, albeit slow­ly. By the third week, she was stand­ing
with the sup­port of Addie and giv­ing orders, demand­ing to go down­stairs
and open the store.
Moshe hap­pi­ly com­plied. He attrib­uted her improve­ment to the arrival of
Malachi, who insist­ed on drop­ping by the the­ater every day to deliv­er a loaf
of his chal­lah for Moshe to car­ry home to his wife. “This will be part of
your wife’s heal­ing,” he said proud­ly.
He deliv­ered his very first chal­lah to Moshe at the the­ater, still wear­ing
his ragged cos­tume of sport­coat, hat, tal­lit, and hom­burg. He held the loaf
proud­ly, like he was car­ry­ing a child. “You will be my first cus­tomer,” he
said.
Moshe took the loaf with the same dain­ty care it was offered. Although
he nev­er liked chal­lah, he was charmed. He pre­ferred reg­u­lar white sliced
bread and Amer­i­can sand­wich­es of ham and cheese, which were like
every­thing in America—neat and quick, not fluffy and thick and soupy like
old Euro­pean food. But Malachi’s bread was new and some­thing about him
lift­ed Moshe’s heart, so Moshe read­i­ly tore off a piece, shoved it in his
mouth, and near­ly gagged. He man­aged to gur­gle a thank-you but only to
keep from vom­it­ing onto the floor the turgid mess of what tast­ed like
onions, sand, and grease.
“Won­der­ful,” he said.
“It will bring heal­ing wher­ev­er it goes,” Malachi said proud­ly. “It will be
like your won­der­ful the­ater. It will bring peo­ple togeth­er.”
To a hos­pi­tal maybe, Moshe thought, nod­ding. But he smiled and said
noth­ing. He hat­ed to offend his new friend. He promised to bring the bread
home to his wife that very evening, but instead he offered it to Nate as they
walked home togeth­er after the the­ater closed, the two climb­ing the tight
dirt roads of Chick­en Hill in the wee hours. He did it with a dis­claimer,
say­ing, “The new bak­er is just learn­ing.”
Nate took a chaw out of the bread, uttered no com­ment, and tossed the
whole mess to a brown spot­ted mutt who emerged from one of the clap­trap
hous­es that lined the roads up onto the Hill. The dog was a nui­sance who
reg­u­lar­ly ter­ror­ized them on their night walks home, and when Moshe
walked home alone, he took a round­about route to avoid the crea­ture
alto­geth­er.
The mutt swal­lowed the chal­lah in one gulp, and thus, when Malachi
asked Moshe the next day if his chal­lah was “bring­ing heal­ing” to his home,
Moshe was hap­py to inform him, “Yes indeed. And peace as well,” for the
mon­grel, to his sur­prise, left him alone for the first time ever.
Indeed, as hor­ri­ble as the chal­lah was, it was proof of the mag­ic that
seemed to accom­pa­ny every­thing Malachi touched, for the dog nev­er
both­ered Moshe again. Calami­ty and dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion seemed to fol­low
Moshe’s new friend every­where, yet it nev­er touched or stirred him.
Malachi was not a neat man. His suit was for­ev­er rum­pled, his hat
fur­rowed, his tal­lit frayed, his clear blue eyes always some­what dis­tant. His
head was con­stant­ly bowed, his atten­tion deep in the pages of his prayer
book, some­times for hours, even when he baked, allow­ing his pies and
bread to burn. It was clear to Moshe that his new friend was not a born
bak­er. He not­ed that Malachi’s apart­ment above the bak­ery was full of junk,
items he had gath­ered, sold, bought, and some­how assem­bled from here and
there, for Malachi con­fessed he’d been a trav­el­ing sales­man of one kind or
anoth­er since his arrival in the new land from the old coun­try. His trav­els
had clear­ly broad­ened him, as he was an end­less fount of knowl­edge about
every­thing from auto­mo­biles to the iron-mak­ing fac­to­ries of Pottstown. For
all his hor­ri­ble bak­ing and utter dis­or­ga­ni­za­tion, Malachi had a light­ness
and bound­less enthu­si­asm about world­ly mat­ters. He seemed to bring light
and air and good­ness to every­thing he touched. He mar­veled at the sim­plest
items—an apple peel­er, a bar­rel, a meno­rah, a paper cup, a marble—with
enthu­si­asm and humor, often hold­ing the item up and say­ing, “Mar­velous!
Imag­ine. Who thought of this?”
—
MOSHE HAD FEW friends. Most of Pottstown’s Jews had left Chick­en Hill by
then. Nate was a friend, but he was a Negro, so there was that space
between them. But with Malachi, there was no space. They were fel­low
escapees who, hav­ing endured the land­ing at Ellis Island and escaped the
grind­ing sweat­shops and vicious crime of the ver­min-infest­ed Low­er East
Side, had arrived by hook or crook in the land of oppor­tu­ni­ty that was
Penn­syl­va­nia, home to Quak­ers, Mor­mons, and Pres­by­te­ri­ans. Who cared
that life was lone­ly, that jobs were thank­less drudgery, that the romance of
the proud Amer­i­can state was myth, that the rules of life were laid care­ful­ly
in neat books and laws writ­ten by stern Euro­peans who stalked the town
and state like the grim reaper, with their right­eous church­es spout­ing that
Jews mur­dered their pre­cious Jesus Christ? Their fel­low Penn­syl­va­ni­ans
knew noth­ing about the shat­tered shtetls and destroyed syn­a­gogues of the
old coun­try; they had not set eyes on the stunned elder­ly immi­grants
starv­ing in ten­e­ments in New York, the old ones who came alone, who
spoke Yid­dish only, whose chil­dren died or left them to live in char­i­ty
homes, the women fright­ened until the end, the men con­signed to a life of
sell­ing veg­eta­bles and fruits on horse-drawn carts. They were a lost nation
spread across the Amer­i­can coun­try­side, bewil­dered, their yeshi­va
edu­ca­tion use­less, their proud his­to­ry ignored, as the clan­kety-clank of
Amer­i­can indus­try churned around them, their proud past as watch­mak­ers
and tai­lors, schol­ars and his­to­ri­ans, musi­cians and artists, gone, wast­ed.
Amer­i­cans cared about mon­ey. And pow­er. And gov­ern­ment. Jews had
none of those things; their job was to tread light­ly in the land of milk and
hon­ey and be thank­ful that they were free to walk the land with­out get­ting
their duffs kicked—or worse. Life in Amer­i­ca was hard, but it was free, and
if you worked hard, you might gain some oppor­tu­ni­ty, maybe even open a
shop or busi­ness of some kind.
Moshe, the proud own­er of two thriv­ing the­aters and a gro­cery store that
lost mon­ey every year thanks to his Amer­i­can-born Jew­ish wife, felt proud
to be Amer­i­can. He cher­ished Amer­i­can life. He tried hard to con­vince his
new friend of the good­ness of America’s ways. He gave his new friend a
mezuzah pendant—a mezuzah nor­mal­ly adorns the door­way of a Jew­ish
home. But this pen­dant could be worn around the neck, and it bore a spe­cial
inscrip­tion on the back that read “Home of the Great­est Dancer in the
World.” That way, Moshe explained, Malachi would feel at home and
wel­come every­where he went.
But Malachi, nor­mal­ly amused by kind ges­tures and small gifts, returned
the mezuzah and polite­ly begged Moshe to give it to Chona, which he did,
to her delight. Unlike most Jews, Malachi was proud of what he laugh­ing­ly
called his “clan­kety-clank” life in Europe that he’d left behind. He didn’t
mind being a green­horn. He refused to dress like an Amer­i­can, pre­fer­ring to
wear his tal­lit under his shirt, the ends of which hung down his pants. He
was kosher to the point of what Moshe con­sid­ered to be use­less. A fat worn
prayer book, a maz­chor, bulged out of the back pock­et of his over­sized
pants like a big-city cop’s tick­et book. It went with him every­where. He was
con­stant­ly snatch­ing it out of his pock­et, stop­ping what­ev­er he was doing,
flip­ping it open expert­ly to a well-read pas­sage, some­times so moved by
what he read that he’d place the book to his chest and bow his head,
hum­ming a fer­vent prayer in Hebrew. One after­noon, as the two enjoyed
tea, Malachi placed his prayer book on the table. Moshe tapped it and said
care­ful­ly, “I’m shy about Jew­ish things in this coun­try.”
“Why?”
“It’s not too good to waste time with old things.”
Malachi smiled. “The prayers in that sid­dur vol­ume,” Malachi said, “are
not old.” He picked up the old mach­zor. “These are actu­al­ly for high
hol­i­days like Pesach and Sukkot. They’re not for every­day mat­ters. But I
use it for every­day mat­ters any­way.”
“Isn’t that wrong?” Moshe asked.
Malachi chuck­led. “The prophet Isa­iah con­demns rou­tine, mechan­i­cal
prayers any­way. So it doesn’t mat­ter.”
“Are you a rebbe?” Moshe asked.
“Depends on who’s ask­ing.”
“Doesn’t a rebbe have to be edu­cat­ed at yeshi­va?”
“Why are you wor­ried if I’m a rebbe or not? So long as your words are
uttered thought­ful­ly and with full intent, it doesn’t mat­ter. Our ways give
com­fort rather than cause sor­row. They bring joy rather than pain. I told you
your wife would get well. And she did. What does it mat­ter if a rebbe
deliv­ers those words or me? I’m not a rebbe, by the way. I just fol­low the
Tal­mud, though my bread did make your wife well.”
Moshe laughed. “My cousin Isaac said his doc­tor made her well.”
Malachi smiled stern­ly. “Friend, the truth is nei­ther made her well. Not
my bread. Nor your cousin’s fan­cy doc­tor. The full­ness of the earth made
her well. Psalm Twen­ty-four says mankind must enjoy the full­ness of the
earth. Is bread not part of the earth’s full­ness?”
Moshe shrugged and let the mat­ter rest. He was so hap­py that Chona was
improv­ing that he was afraid to jinx mat­ters. “Why not come to the house to
eat,” he said. “You haven’t actu­al­ly met my wife.”
“In time,” Malachi said.
It was just that kind of response that kept Moshe on edge and curi­ous
about his new friend—the series of odd behav­iors that seemed to be part
and par­cel of him. He guessed that per­haps Malachi did not want to meet
Chona because he was pro­hib­it­ed, at least in his mind, from touch­ing her.
But still, he vis­it­ed the the­ater with bread near­ly every after­noon after
clos­ing his shop and was always bright and cheer­ful, full of ques­tions about
the the­ater, Moshe’s crew, his busi­ness, life in Amer­i­ca. And while he
always asked about Chona’s con­tin­u­ing improve­ment, Malachi declined to
talk of his own wife, of whom he’d bragged so freely when he first arrived.
Moshe nev­er asked. He under­stood that mar­riage for new Jews in Amer­i­ca
was com­plex. Some men had wives back in Europe and took new wives
here. Oth­ers missed their wives so ter­ri­bly that to men­tion them brought
tears, rant­i­ng, and even curs­ing and fight­ing. Some worked for years to save
enough to send for their wives, only to dis­cov­er after the wife arrived that
both had changed so much the mar­riage was no longer ten­able. Moshe,
aware of those mat­ters and hap­py that his own mar­riage was intact, stayed
qui­et on the mat­ter. Still, Malachi’s ret­i­cence about his past and his wife
was a strange divide between them, and it only made Moshe more curi­ous.
He want­ed to cross it and would have but for Malachi’s floun­der­ing bak­ery,
which took prece­dence, for its fail­ure began almost imme­di­ate­ly.
Even if Malachi had been the best bak­er in the world, he’d arrived in
Pottstown at a bad time. Fabi­cel­li, the kind old Ital­ian bak­er who set his
week-old pas­tries out every Sun­day evening on a wood­en crate for who­ev­er
in the Hill want­ed them, and from whom Malachi had pur­chased the bak­ery,
was one of the last white mer­chants remain­ing in Chick­en Hill. Only Herb
Radomitz’s Ice House, which deliv­ered ice by horse and cart, and the
iras­ci­ble Lithuan­ian shoe-store own­ers, Irv and Mar­vin Skrupske­lis, who
scared the beje­sus out of every­body, were left. The oth­er white stores had
descend­ed to the green­er pas­tures of High Street, just ten blocks away.
And while the kind, old Fabi­cel­li was hap­py to sell his old deliv­ery
truck, bak­ery, and build­ing that con­tained the upstairs apart­ment to the
itin­er­ant Jew, he obvi­ous­ly did not sell his recipes, for the rest of Malachi’s
baked goods were as bad, if not worse, than his chal­lah. His cakes were
cat­a­stro­phes. They looked like fin­ger paint­ings done by a six-year-old, with
drip­ping icing and ragged edges. His buns tast­ed like chopped liv­er. The
inte­ri­or of his meat pies looked like moldy corned beef in need of a painter
with a brush and a can of red paint. Even Chick­en Hill’s Negroes, long used
to rot­ting food and old goods, avoid­ed Malachi’s shop. It was a tes­ta­ment to
the sev­en­teen Jew­ish fam­i­lies in Pottstown that the bak­ery sur­vived the first
few weeks at all.
Moshe watched this dete­ri­o­ra­tion with con­cern, and one after­noon, when
Malachi came by the the­ater to drop off his usu­al gift of flour and water
dis­guised as chal­lah, Moshe decid­ed to bring up the mat­ter of Malachi’s
bak­ing. The two were stand­ing near the front of the the­ater as they talked
while Nate and a small crew were prepar­ing the stage for an appear­ance that
night by the mighty Count Basie Orches­tra.
Before Moshe could even broach the sub­ject, Malachi, in the mood to
talk about his busi­ness, tossed a loaf of chal­lah wrapped in brown paper on
the edge of the stage and con­fessed, “I closed the bak­ery ear­ly.”
“Why?”
“Busi­ness is slow. Peo­ple don’t like my bread. What’s wrong with my
bread? It’s good bread.” He leaned on the edge of the stage, glanc­ing at
Nate and the three oth­er Negroes in the back who were wip­ing tables and
sweep­ing up trash from the pre­vi­ous night’s event.
Moshe asked care­ful­ly, “Have you owned a bak­ery before?”
“Of course not.”
“Why buy a bak­ery then?”
“It was for sale.”
“There are many oth­er busi­ness­es.”
“What’s wrong with buy­ing a bak­ery?”
“Noth­ing. But you need to be appren­ticed in these mat­ters.”
“Why? I am a good cook.”
“Bak­ing is not cook­ing. Bak­ing, from what I under­stand, requires
pre­ci­sion. Did you bake in the old coun­try?”
Malachi did not answer direct­ly. Instead, he removed his hat, ran his
fin­gers through his thick, curly hair, placed his hat back on his head, then
fished through his coat jack­et pock­ets, pulling out all man­ner of bak­ing
tools: shak­er, sifter, pas­try mat, scraper, dough scoop, spat­u­la, and rolling
pin. He care­ful­ly placed them on the stage edge, lin­ing them up neat­ly.
“These are my tools. I prac­tice all the time. I’m teach­ing myself.”
“You can­not teach and sell at the same time, friend.”
“Why not? Isn’t this how they do it in Amer­i­ca?”
“Maybe. But before you buy a busi­ness. Not after.”
Malachi’s nor­mal­ly bright eyes dark­ened a bit. “I’m con­fused. When I
first came to Amer­i­ca, I went to Pitts­burgh. But nobody want­ed to hire me
because I went to yeshi­va. They thought I was too intel­lec­tu­al. I went to a
big depart­ment store. I said, ‘I can be an inter­preter because I speak many
lan­guages. I speak Yid­dish, Ger­man, Pol­ish, Russ­ian, and Span­ish. I can
talk to cus­tomers in their lan­guage and sug­gest things.’ Instead, they put me
to work tag­ging dress­es. So I worked on a veg­etable cart. But the man who
owned it want­ed me to work on the Sab­bath, so I left. Then I worked in a
din­er clean­ing pick­le bar­rels. My fin­gers were swollen from pick­le juice.
Then I sold wife sup­plies off a horse and wag­on. I even­tu­al­ly bought the
horse and wag­on from the man who owned them. From there, I saved
enough to buy a bak­ery. It took nine years.”
“Was your wife there dur­ing that time?” Moshe asked.
Malachi’s eyes mist­ed and he ignored the ques­tion, point­ing to the
bak­ery tools on the stage.
“I prac­tice all the time. Even at night. I make the pret­ti­est cakes. Have
you ever tried my pies?”
Giv­en his expe­ri­ence with Malachi’s chal­lah, Moshe had no inten­tion of
doing that. Instead, he gen­tly point­ed to Nate at the back of the the­ater
clean­ing and set­ting up with his small crew. “My Nate can help you find
some col­ored work­ers.”
Malachi shook his head. “Does he keep kosher?” he asked.
“A kosher bak­ery doesn’t need a kosher bak­er,” Moshe said.
Malachi was silent a moment, then said, “It’s not wise to mix things the
way they do here in Amer­i­ca.”
Moshe was stunned by this admis­sion, which he con­sid­ered igno­rant.
“What dif­fer­ence does it make? You want your busi­ness to suc­ceed or not?”
But Malachi wasn’t lis­ten­ing. He was star­ing at Nate and his men, who
were busy mov­ing chairs and tables, putting white cloths on the tables,
set­ting up can­dles. He point­ed to the back of the hall. “Who is that boy?” he
asked.
Moshe fol­lowed the direc­tion of Malachi’s fin­ger that point­ed to the lone
Negro child among the men who were wip­ing tables near one of the exits.
He was tall and thin for his age, not more than ten or twelve, Moshe
guessed, ath­let­ic, with long arms and neck, and skin that looked as if he’d
been dipped into a vat of choco­late. He had a dark oval face, wide nose,
high cheek­bones, and the longest eye­lash­es of any child Moshe had ever
seen. Beau­ti­ful, expres­sive eyes. The child was sweep­ing pop­corn and
can­dy wrap­pers off chairs with a whisk broom. He noticed them, smiled
shy­ly, then ducked his head, hur­ry­ing back to work as Nate direct­ed, the
boy mov­ing quick­ly, as if he want­ed to dis­ap­pear into the tables and chairs.
Moshe watched, trans­fixed. He was accus­tomed to Negroes
dis­ap­pear­ing, van­ish­ing, and slip­ping off. But as he watched the Negro boy
work his way across the lit­tered dance floor, cor­ralling the garbage, mov­ing
tables and chairs with speed and des­per­ate effi­cien­cy, he felt a sud­den gust
of mem­o­ry, as if his past had sud­den­ly swept into the room and blew into
the back of his shirt col­lar, like a breeze from an open door that puffs into
an office and ruf­fles all the loose papers, send­ing them to the floor. He saw
him­self back in Roma­nia at age nine, hun­gry and exhaust­ed, stand­ing
out­side a bread shop in Con­stanţa, one ter­ri­fied eye on the road watch­ing
for sol­diers, the oth­er eye on the baker’s door, as Isaac burst out hold­ing a
loaf of chal­lah under his arm like it was an Amer­i­can foot­ball, an old
woman on his heels, as Isaac hissed, “Hur­ry, before the sol­diers come!” The
two boys ran, gob­bling the bread like wolves as they fled. No won­der he
hat­ed chal­lah.
He looked away from the child to see Malachi star­ing at him.
“It’s the strangest thing about chal­lah,” Moshe said. “Do you want to
hear?”
“No.”
“Why not?”
“Because I know it’s not my bak­ing that you dis­like, friend,” Malachi
said. “It’s what it stirs inside you. And for that I can­not help you. Only
prayer can help that.”
Moshe’s eyes widened. How could he know? “What are you talk­ing
about?” he said. “You are mak­ing up things. It’s just bread.”
Malachi ignored that. Instead, he pulled him­self up so he could sit on the
edge of the stage, his legs dan­gling off it, watch­ing the Negro boy work
among the line of men mov­ing fast across the dance hall. He glanced at his
watch, then at the boy. “It’s one o’clock. That child should be in school.”
Moshe shrugged. The boy’s school­ing wasn’t his busi­ness. “Nate
brought him. Nate brings all my work­ers.”
Malachi’s eyes grew sal­low. Despon­den­cy climbed into his face as he
watched the Negroes work. “When I got off at Ellis Island, the first
Amer­i­can I ever saw was a Negro. I thought all Amer­i­cans were Negroes.”
Moshe laughed ner­vous­ly. Con­ver­sa­tions about race always made him
uneasy. He tried to change the sub­ject. “I had nev­er tast­ed a toma­to until I
came here,” he said cheer­i­ly. “I had nev­er eat­en a banana. When I did eat
one, I didn’t like it.”
But Malachi seemed dis­tract­ed. He stared at the boy, watch­ing him toss
papers into a small can as he moved toward the back of the hall. “That’s
what’s wrong with this coun­try,” he said. “The Negroes.”
Moshe shrugged. “They’ve done noth­ing wrong. They’re good
friends … my Nate. His wife, Addie, the helpers they bring. They help me
a great deal.”
Malachi smirked. “Did you know that all the his­tor­i­cal sources of
Hanukkah are in Greek?”
“What’s that got to do with my Negro work­ers?”
“Light is only pos­si­ble through dia­logue between cul­tures, not through
rejec­tion of one or the oth­er.”
Moshe chuck­led and nod­ded at Nate, who had worked his way to the
back of the hall, direct­ing the kid. “My Nate doesn’t speak Greek.”
“Your Nate? Does he belong to you?”
Moshe looked flum­moxed. “You know what I mean,” he mut­tered.
Malachi frowned. “The Amer­i­can ways you’ve learned.” He shook his
head. “This coun­try is too dirty for me.”
“What’s wrong with you? Nate is my friend.”
“Is he now?”
“Of course.”
“Because you pay him?”
“Of course. Is he sup­posed to work for free?” Moshe sput­tered.
But Malachi wasn’t lis­ten­ing. He stared at Nate, and at the boy work­ing
behind him, and at the oth­er Negroes. He watched them for sev­er­al long
moments, then mur­mured, “I think the Negroes have the advan­tage in this
coun­try.”
“How’s that?”
“At least they know who they are.”
He hopped down from the stage and began to gath­er his baker’s tools,
the rolling pin, the spat­u­la, cram­ming them in the over­sized pock­ets of his
worn jack­et, the tools clank­ing as he did so. When he next spoke, he spoke
in Yid­dish: “We are inte­grat­ing into a burn­ing house,” he said.
“What are you talk­ing about?” Moshe demand­ed. Malachi turned to look
at the back of the hall, his blue eyes fol­low­ing the Negroes. Sud­den­ly one
of them began to sing soft­ly, a church hymn; and the oth­ers joined in,
mov­ing in sync, work­ing faster now, as they shift­ed tables and tossed
garbage into bar­rels.
I’ll go where You want me to go,
O’er moun­tain, plain, or sea.
I’ll say what You want me to say.
Lord, I’ll be what You want me to be.
The song waft­ed up and across the dank, dark dance hall.
Malachi lis­tened a moment, then said in Yid­dish: “I would like you to
sell my bak­ery for me. I will drop the papers off in the morn­ing. If there is a
prof­it, please send it to me.”
“Where are you going?”
But Malachi was already at a side door and was gone.