Raizel finishes the grapes and she hands her two shades of brown, for the challah. She herself would choose the darker shade for the bottom of the loaf, with a few more golden threads over the braids. But Raizel must be used to light challah, for she rejects the darker shade. Hannah makes a mental note to ask Gertrude to take the challahs out of the oven a few minutes earlier.

She places a hand on Raizel’s back. The girl flinches, but Hannah persists and the girl slowly relaxes. Hannah slowly rubs, small circles so that her fingers feel rough against the woolen shawl the girl insists on wearing even inside in the warmth.

Ernst wants her to go, but Hannah is not ready yet. Somehow, in protecting Raizel, she is also protecting herself from the terror that could have been her lot. When she sees Raizel, she is brought back to the time when she was young, just 16, and a music student appeared at their door, on the run from the student riots in Prague University.

What if Ernst was not, had not been a mensch? Mensch. Felix calls it an old-fashioned word, but it means everything good, and everything G-d seeks in man and a woman seeks in a husband. If he had not been a mensch, would her father have detected it?

What could have happened to her? What could have happened to Becca?

What did indeed happen to Perla?

Should she be angry at the world? Outraged? Wanting more, wanting less. Where was goodness, if there was indeed such a thing? If not, then why did she care so much about it?

It is an impossible choice — either to live with sorrow and grief and rage at the way the world contradicts everything you hold as dear and pure and good. Or do you accept the vile crookedness, the sour taste of evil, and mold yourself to the humpback of the world —the twisted shape of humanity — and thereby live?

The Eibeshter has it all planned out, Tatte used to say. But now, confusion fills her. Just what was planned out for them? It is easy to nod and fall graciously into G-d’s arms when all you have to do is to stay in one place, tend the dry-goods store, go to daven at the shtibel, and lift the goblet with Shabbos wine once a week.

What about when you are taken from place to place, when you find the world was given over to godless people who see the world as a marketplace, from which you can grab, gorge, spit or swallow? And that is food and that is people.

It is late in the year for snow, but since when did the weather follow the calendar? Felix is glad of his warm coat and leather gloves, and as he walks through the icy streets, he drops coins in the cups of each beggar.

Inside the printing shop, Wolf is checking the final galleys of the newspaper. Before he even sheds his coat, Felix walks over and places his hand on Wolf’s shoulder. Wolf does not lift his eye from the paper before him.

“I have a proposal.”

“Mmm?”

“I have stumbled upon a story. Shtetl girls, young girls — 13, 14, 15. Desperate families. Sold into slavery. Half unwittingly; some half-knowingly. You could call it semiconscious knowledge on the part of the parents, either that or ignorance or innocence or desperation.”

Wolf’s finger moves steadily down the page, each article needs a byline, the editorial a pull quote, advertisements cannot appear twice by mistake. Still, he speaks. “And?”

“I want to tell their stories.”

“How so?”

“A feature, with some contrasting voices. An interview with the arm of the law, explaining the difficulty of bringing any of the perpetrators to justice. Some parents’ tales. A few survivors, escapees, or near-misses, that kind of thing.”

No response.

“There was a lot of human interest, a lot of talk after my last story.”

Wolf’s voice is dry. “I remember.”

He looks back down at the papers spread over his desk.

“Well? What do you think?”

“I think it is unacceptable for a paper printed in February 1882 to be printed with the date February 1881. As if we’ve caught on to the new year a month late.”

Felix sighs. “Does it matter?”

“It matters to me. Even if everyone else already knows the year and does not need a newspaper to remind them.”

“But Wolf, what I mean is, does it matter in the context of the story I bring you today?”

Wolf sighs. He scratches his chin and sniffs. “Take off your coat, boy.”

When Felix is sitting, his hands cupped around a mug of hot coffee, Wolf pulls his chair away from his desk and begins to talk.

“Does it ever occur to you that people pay good money to have the sorrows of the world delivered to their door, to be consumed along with a piece of toast and a mackerel?”

“Every day. That is what keeps the paper in business.”

Wolf thinks for a minute, scrunching his forehead into a strange set of bumps and lines. “But it is interesting that you say that, for they want it but they do not want it. There are some things which they do not want to hear.”

“And you discriminate?”

“Of course.”

He points to the cupboard on the wall where he keeps the whisky, which he serves to his best advertisers when they come in to sign a deal. “Pour me a shot.”

Felix wordlessly pours him a small glass of the amber liquid. Wolf knocks it back and then squeezes his eyes tight shut. He talks into the darkness that he has fashioned.

“Tragedy they have a taste for. It makes them feel compassionate, which proves that they are good people. And it makes them feel safe: the angel of death has swooped down on the community and taken someone — and it wasn’t me or my family.

“Stories about the goyim make them feel superior. Politics is excellent. They sit back and ruminate about how they know better and could do a far better job than the buffoons who sit in parliament, ignoring the fact that they voted them there in the first place. Safe and superior. This is what keeps people afloat in the world.”

He opens his eyes and stares at Felix.

“So what then?” Felix asks.

“Many of the people who prey on these girls are Jews, is that correct?”

Felix nods, miserable. “Partnerships, as Inspector Dusseff led me to understand. Goyim and Yidden together.”

“Well, our readers do not want to hear about things within the community. That they might have a responsibility to stop, or that lay them open to an accusation of complicity. Certain things are sacred.”

“Like what?”

“Like their homes. Their wives and children. Their daughters.”

“And so you would not publish a story that highlights a wrongdoing within the community?” He tries to control his voice, but it lifts in suppressed outrage. “Even though it needs exposure? Even though if people know, it could be stopped?”

“I would think very carefully. There is also the delicate fact of our founder and owner.”

“Joachim and his father.”

Wolf nods.

“They set up this paper to show the world how Jews are respectable and cultured and worthy of a voice in society. To show civilized Prague that the Jew-haters are wrong.”

Felix looks down. He knows what is coming.

“So if we publish a piece that shows the Jew-haters that they are right — that Jewish fathers are not caring for their daughters, that the community allows those who have no voice to be sold for profit, enslaved, whatever it is your accusations are, and it is not the first time I have heard them, Felix — then it will not just be you who is out of a job. It will be both of us.”

“So they want to shore up the Jews’ reputation, at the expense of morality? Truth?”

Wolf sighs. “Listen, I shall be honest with you. If it was goyim preying on Jewish girls, then we could play up the victim card, maybe borrow that new term anti-Semitism, and give it a good spin. But here — what are we going to say? It will only reflect badly on all of us. And that is exactly the opposite of our founders’ wishes. And do not be so quick to dismiss them, Felix. This, too, is a type of truth.”

“It is not the full truth, though.”

Wolf rubs his forehead.

Schneur’s words run through Felix’s mind: Speak truth to those who hear it. “But truth needs to come out. The only way to protect those girls is to stop protecting these men.”

Wolf pulls his chair back toward the galley of the newspaper. “I’m not protecting the men. I’m protecting our nation. And our reputation.”

to be continued…

(Originally featured in Family First, Issue 721)