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Beggar in the Basement

By Leah Gebber | March 21, 2018

The name Berel elicited a sigh — apparently, it wasn’t easy to help Berel. He was too rich, too poor, too independent, too much of a nebach

As told to Leah Gebber

erel is crazy.

Berel is a tzaddik.

Berel is probably unsafe.

Berel is definitely weird.

I don’t know who Berel is. Only that he has been living in my aunt and uncle’s basement for the last seven years.

It’s not a finished basement. No beautiful guest room, no wide playroom. It’s just a space. Stacked against one wall are cartons of teaching materials: lesson plans on Chumash and Navi, endless quizzes. There’s a treadmill (broken), two mountain bikes (forgotten), and an antique rocking horse that’s in perfect condition but is too expensive to let kids ride.

And then there’s Berel.

Berel used to sell tchotchkes from the trunk of his car. My uncle would stop, hover over the display of cheap merchandise. He knew he’d be overcharged for subquality goods, but he bought anyway. As his two children were grown, he’d buy gifts for us: a doll for my little sister, a pen that would work for maybe half an hour, a compass that never pointed north.

One day, as he picked up an alarm clock, noticing as he did that the clock hands spun crazily, he also noticed a thick quilt stuffed into the car’s passenger seat. And sticking out of the dashboard was a toothbrush and toothpaste.

My uncle invited Berel for Shabbos.

I never knew for sure, but I think Berel’s usual previous Shabbos accommodation was a pile of forgotten coats thrown onto the floor of the ezras nashim, a roll of paper towel, under his head to serve as a pillow. Certainly, he knew the security code for the shul’s front door. And I guess there’s enough food lying around: eierkuchen and schmaltz herring, cold potato kugel and olive dip, all washed down with last week’s cola.

That Shabbos, my aunt put Berel in the guest room. But the thick carpets and orthopedic mattress weren’t enough to make Berel feel at home. Motzaei Shabbos, he returned to his car and my uncle hit the phone.

He called up the local askanim. The name Berel elicited a sigh — apparently, it wasn’t easy to help Berel. He was too rich, too poor, too independent, too much of a nebach. He had lived with his grandmother for years, taking care of her in her old age. No one knew what had happened to his parents. No one knew what had happened to the house — there was talk of some machlokes, Berel had given away his half of his inheritance. Or maybe he never had a claim on it to begin with.

He’d been sick. He still was sick. No, he was fine; get him into new clothing, and he’d look hale and hearty.

No one was sure of anything, just that he wasn’t easy to help. For six months longer, Berel skirted my family’s radar. And then there was a snow storm, and my uncle went out into the frigid night, looking for the beat-up car. I don’t know how, but he came home with Berel. When he tried to settle him into the guest bedroom, though, Berel thumped down the stairs into the basement. “I’ll sleep here,” he said.

There was no heating down there, no bathroom, but Berel insisted. All that week, as the snow drifted down, he stayed. He left for shul in the morning, stayed out all day, until at 10 p.m. precisely, there was a bang at the door. He’d refuse all offers of dinner, but in the morning, the chicken and rice my aunt left out on the counter were always gone.

In return, Berel made a contribution. Every night at midnight, he’d head down to the bakery and come back with bags stuffed with the day’s leftovers. My aunt’s on a gluten-free diet, and my uncle takes a single sandwich to work each day: two thin slices of rye. The bread began to pile up in the kitchen.

When the snow cleared, he tried to leave. “Wait a while longer,” my uncle urged. “The weather is still bitter. Wait until spring.”

He didn’t agree, but he didn’t refuse. And the next week, he began settling in to his new home in the basement. He found a ratty piece of carpet with brown and gray swirls. He laid it down on the floor. Slowly, he acquired furniture: we watched as he lugged worm-eaten items he’d found dumped on the street into the house.

“You’re letting him do this?” I asked.

“What can I do?” my aunt said, arms spread out in a question.

I shook my head. “Tell him to get out.”

“He has nowhere to go.”

Spring would come, we reassured each other. Spring would come and we’d find him a rental unit and this whole strange parshah would be over.

But when spring arrived, Berel seemed only more entrenched in the basement. My husband and I found him a small apartment and secured someone who would cover the first two months’ rent. When I handed Berel the keys, he threw them on the floor and stalked out the door. He spent the next two weeks in his car, until my uncle coaxed him back again.

I was furious. The guy was a nebach. How could he act like he had a right to live at my relatives’ home? And how dare he be so quick with his opinions? He was quick to give advice and opinions, quicker to point out inconsistencies or hypocrisies.

“You send your children to the best places, but you don’t even speak to the hanhalah to make sure they’re doing okay there,” he told me once. Or, to my aunt: “Look at the size of the Shabbos sheva brachos you’re making — and have you even thought about what you’ll do with the leftovers, huh? Or made sure that the waitresses come early enough to have time to eat a Shabbos meal before they begin their duties?”

Somehow, he found out what my uncle’s business was up to, and he was the first to offer an opinion about which of the two underlings he should promote to partnership: choose loyalty over everything, Berel counseled.

With hindsight, much of the advice he offered was shrewd; his delivery, though, was inflammatory and often downright rude. Beggars are, for the most part, invisible. Which meant that Berel was privy to information — the inner workings of institutions. “I’ve seen a few things, I can tell you,” he would say, with a faint European accent — real or feigned I could never tell. And when we followed his advice, we were unwilling to admit that we were steered right.

“You’re a tzadeikes,” I told my aunt. She made a face and laughed. “Not quite.” And it was true; she often told him rather brusquely to keep his opinions to himself.

“Why don’t you just tell him to leave? Let him figure out his own life?”

They did, a few times. Once, when my aunt was renovating the kitchen, and Berel kept accusing the workmen of using second-rate materials and shoddy workmanship. In return, the workers disappeared for a week, leaving my aunt frantic. When they finally returned, Berel was waiting to harangue them — he had an uncanny way of appearing and disappearing at will.

“You say one word to them, and you’re out of here,” she told him.

He said considerably more than one word to them, and my aunt opened the front door and waited until he packed a bag and walked out the door.

A week later, my uncle circled the city until he found Berel’s car. He knocked on the window, told Berel to come back; the kitchen was done, it was time to return to the basement.

If it wasn’t my aunt who was a tzadeikes, maybe it was Berel. Maybe he was a hidden tzaddik, one of those people cut off from the material world, one of those people who move through the world without leaving a footprint. What did he have, after all, beyond a trunk of unwanted toys and a worn-out carpet someone else had discarded?

But he wasn’t a saint. He was impertinent and rude and sometimes made cutting comments at others’ expenses.

The months turned into years and Berel is still there and I still try to make sense of it all. I don’t think anyone living in that regular brownstone is a hidden tzaddik.

They’re all just human beings, trying to do the right thing despite their faults and foibles. Taking the hidden places in their hearts and laying down a carpet and furnishing it with a bed and a chair, with tolerance and caring and yes, a spirit of generosity.

Just making space in the basement.

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 585)

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