In this new column, we dive into the rich history of Jewish Life, the precursor to Jewish Action. Published by the OU from the 1940s through the 1970s, Jewish Life offers a unique window into the vibrant evolution of American Jewish life during the 20th century.
The charming story below, based on true events, appeared in the March-April 1963 issue of Jewish Life.
You would have done the same. If you were in my place that year of 1932, you also would not have been able to read my father’s letter from Eretz Yisroel and not do something about it.
It had to do with the Pesach Seder. Not one Seder, mind you, but the Seder in each and every home in each and every city and town in Palestine, as it was known then. I saw a chance to do something to help the people in the Holy Land observe the Seder properly, according to Jewish Law. Now if such an opportunity came to you, wouldn’t you get down to business right away?
How could I help every Jew in Eretz Yisroel at Pesach time, you ask? Well, it’s all a matter of agriculture. Palestine before the state was established was, as everyone knows, almost one big desert. The land was in terrible shape and poorly cared for. As a result, farm products, especially vegetables, were hard to get.
Now, right after Pesach in 1932, I received a letter from my father. He was in Eretz Yisroel getting everything ready for the rest of the family to join him. The part of that letter that interested me was mentioned ever so casually. The Seder was fine, he wrote, pleasant and inspiring. One thing, though, marred the ceremony: a shortage of chrein, horseradish, for the Moror!
That’s when the idea came to me, as I’m sure you must be thinking of it now. Palestine may be short of vegetables, but Smilsk in Poland most certainly was not. I could easily purchase enough chrein in our area and ship the whole works to Palestine before next Pesach. The Jews of Eretz Yisroel would have enough Moror, I would certainly be deserving of a Mitzvah, and I might even make a slight profit.
My plan was simplicity itself: the horseradish harvest was in the Fall. Come that season I would buy as much as I could and send it off to Palestine in more than enough time for Pesach. In the meantime, I arranged all the necessary forms and papers. This was rather easy: export licenses, import permits, shipping forms; all were completed in less than a month. Now I only had to wait for October and November and I was in business.
And a good business it was. My reluctant brother (I pressed him into service though he didn’t care for the whole idea) and I bought up every sandy piece on the farmers’ stalls each market day. Each time we pushed our way through shoving, swearing crowds to each stall and bought all they had. The farmers looked at us with a curious eye, but they were happy to sell to us, and, in the process, raise their prices. We didn’t complain too much, the s’char mitzvah would more than amply take care of that. Our supply grew until it filled the entire shed behind our house. When every square inch of the shed was jammed we moved into the cellar. We had built up a hoard that looked as if it could supply all of Poland as well as Palestine. But when we went to ship it, we found that it would only fill one-fifth of a railroad boxcar, and the shipping company would ship no less than a FULL boxcar. You’ll never know how big those boxcars are until you try filling one with horseradish.
So we returned to the markets and set out to buy still more chrein. The farmers now didn’t bother to spread their goods on the stands and wait for us to come by. On their way to the marketplace, they stopped at our house and unloaded their horseradish at our door. Every farmer in the country must have come by, and it was not an unusual sight to see ten or twelve rickety wagons, pulled by lifeless horses, lined up at one time in front of our house, waiting impatiently to unload their store of horseradish and move on.
This was fine for us—look at the time and energy it saved us—and we had little to worry about until the wagons slackened to a miserly trickle and then stopped altogether. One look at the cellar and it was obvious that we still didn’t have a full carload. Quickly we made the rounds of the farmers at the marketplace. What we heard we hadn’t expected: there was no more horseradish in the entire county—we had bought them out clean!
My brother had that I-told-you-so look on, and who could blame him? I must admit my usual stream of ideas looked like it was running dry. But then the obvious came to me. Why not make it a two-year proposition? I had half a carload. I’d get the other half next year! I could store what I had in the cold ground just as well as the farmers (this was their practice in storing many vegetables). It would require work, to be sure, but it would be worth it. Thus decided, thus done, though I never realized just how much backbreaking work it did require to bury that much horseradish. I now sat tight.
The government of Poland, however, did not. I was a reserve officer in the Engineers and they deliberately called me into the service at this time to frustrate my plans. Right in the middle of that winter for a period of no less than two years! It looked like the end of my project: who would want horseradish kept in the ground for three years? Even my morale hit a new low.
One night, though, another new thought bubbled to the surface just in time to save the chrein from some rash act on my part. Couldn’t I save up all my leave time until next fall, and then with one great burst of energy, buy up what I still needed and ship it? Since everything was in readiness but for the extra chrein, I could wind up the whole project in a week or two. My project could still be saved. With this in mind, I left for the service with the confidence of a man who had a goal in life and would pursue that goal to the bitter (how appropriate) end.
Several months later—it was shortly after Purim—I received an urgent letter from my brother. This was unusual. As an engineer, my brother drew, rarely wrote. But the picture was clear enough for me. It seems that some sort of hasty revolt was brewing in normally peaceful Smilsk, and who was the cause of it but me! My brother drew the diagram clearer:
When we bought the chrein back in November we had tried, as I said, to fill a boxcar, without success. However, we bought so much, in fact, that we had bought up the entire harvest of Smilsk and vicinity. Every last eye-smarting piece of it. It was now just before Pesach, and our Jewish community was busily preparing all that was needed for the holiday. They found to their surprise that there was nary a piece of chrein to be had. The horrible prospect of a chrein-less Seder loomed up before their unbelieving eyes.
Their worry soon turned into a mild rage when they discovered that one person had brought upon them this eleventh plague. I knew that person quite well. They suspected me of some sort of plot (it seems I had some such reputation from way back). They were quite prepared for physical violence if I failed to come up with a satisfactory explanation of all this.
Now, this is a spot I wouldn’t wish on anyone. The best idea of your life half-way to success, and in a twinkling the whole works on the verge of collapse. There appeared no way out as long as I valued life and limb (they would wait for me to return, and I had no plans of making the Army a career).
I jotted off a note to my brother like a Rothschild: “Sell!” and included a crude map to show him where it was all buried. With that I sat back, the shattered pieces of my collapsed project all about me.
Sell my brother did, in less than two days’ time. Noisy, milling crowds gathered in front of our house from early morning to late at night. By sunset the second day we were sold out. Our fellow Jews had their chrein, my family was without their worries, and I was without my project. One consolation, though, we did manage to come up with a profit.
I came home on leave for the two S’dorim. Everything was all prepared and in order. The house was scrubbed and the table was set. Only one sign remained to indicate anything of the activities of Smilsk’s chief chrein merchant: in his haste to sell all the horseradish, my brother had sold every piece. We were left with none ourselves.
At the time of this writing, Rabbi Israel Polèyeff was spiritual leader of Congregation Tifereth Israel in New Castle, Pennsylvania. A graduate and musmach of Yeshiva University, he served as a U.S. Army Chaplain in Japan for two years. His story in this issue is based upon an actual incident experienced by one of his congregants.