I’ve recently posted two examples of nineteenth century maskilic literature in which reform-minded authors included some of the women’s customs and roles documented on this site in their critiques of traditional Ashkenazi Jewish orthodoxy. In this essay on traditional charity collection, the literary critique Bal-Makshoves (Isidor Eliashev) describes how these religious women – zogerkes, opshprekherkes, tukerins and others – were particularly criticized by enlightened thinkers who wanted to modernize Jewish society. As in Ayzik Meyer Dik’s “Reb Shmaye Eliter” and the anonymously-published “Etlekhe yor tsurik,” Bal-Makhshoves describes these women as part of a class of religious zealots, the counterparts of reclusive male scholars and kabbalists.  

_{A tsedoke (charity) collection box from Charleston, 1820, bearing the words צדקה תציל ממות – charity will save from death. National Museum of American Jewish History, Wikimedia Commons.}

The Red Kerchief

On Thursdays and Fridays, on fast days, on the days just before festivals and during kholemoyed, the red kerchief would make its appearance in Jewish neighborhoods. Who of you doesn’t remember the red kerchief from your childhood?  In every Jewish shtetl there was a reclusive scholar like Yosl the poresh, Avrom Pak, Yerukhem the seamster, or some other very religious Jew, who used to go around from street to street with the red kerchief, collecting donations with an earnest expression on his face. Coming up to a market stall or a shop, the charity collector – sometimes servile, sometimes friendly and cheerful – would open their red kerchief and spread it out on the table.

Reb Yosl the scholar did not care much for cleanliness. Tangled up in his beard were always a few crumbs from his measly lunch, and tobacco snuff often dripped from his nostrils. His collar had long needed a wash, and his waistcoat was often missing several buttons. But the red kerchief – that was nice and clean, its color already faded, probably from frequent washes. While these religious Jews may have felt great contempt for the outside world, they respected the red kerchief, washing it tens of times each year. There were even a few pious souls who washed the red kerchief with mikvewater, and it was never used for any purpose except for the holy collection of charity. 

The red kerchief was an essential part of any Jewish quarter. It was as essential as the thin rusty wire of an eruv, as the women selling hot beans and peas near the shul courtyard, as the dreydls and candy sellers at Purim, as the madman with the disheveled hair who hung around the marketplace. The red kerchief was a kind of Jewish flag, a constant reminder of the old posek: “Charity saves from death.” It was just like, l’havdil, the flag of today’s People’s Democracy, which has its own posek: “Workers of all countries, unite!” But the red kerchief had not yet adopted the techniques of today’s democratic movements. It didn’t require a flagpole, but was carried like a bladder, its four corners held together with just enough space between them for someone to stealthily throw in a few groshn, or even a whole copper Nikolai-era pyatak. Charity must be donated discretely!

We live in a cruel world, and there have always been tongues ready to wag in denunciation of others. Meddlers made fun of the reclusive scholar Yosl the poresh, or of Yeruham the seamster, who always had a copy of the Zohar in his hand. Rumour had it that these zealots made a nice little profit from the red kerchief. Such suspicions were enhanced by the fact that scholars like Reb Yosl and Avrom Pak were not the only people going around with red kerchiefs. There was also the shameste, the woman who looked after the women’s section of the old beys-midresh; the zogerke who led women’s prayers in the Tukum synagogue, the opshprekherke or evil eye healer from Rassein (Raseiniai), and the likhtsierke ­or soul-candle maker from Plungyan (Plungė) who made soul candles. 

Be glad that you, dear reader, are not so often on the tips of the wagging tongues of the modern and enlightened men of Zhagor (Žagarė) as were these pious women. Claiming that humans are thieves by nature, they – the now deceased maskilim – argued that the collection of charity should be overseen by accredited persons. For copper coins can sometimes stick like superglue. To put it shortly but sweetly, the newfangled ideas about control, collective funds, correct distribution and so on, were a balm to these enlightened maskilim. Yet the same ideas were a poison to the landlords and landladies, and, by calling into question the legitimacy of the red kerchief, greatly diminished collective trust in Yeruham the seamster and the Tukum zogerke. 

This is not the place to recount the whole history of the red kerchief. To be brief, I will simply say that with time the red kerchief disappeared from the big Jewish highstreets. If you still want to find it, you must go down the narrow streets near the cemeteries, into the small houses of the Jewish poor. There, the red kerchief is alive and well, along with copper coins from a bygone epoch of Polish kings. 

The red kerchief has greatly faded. In her place, we now find white papers with draft-lists. Yerukhem the seamster has already produced a whole generation of tax collectors, cashiers and other such persons, who receive a tidy ten percent for their efforts. The custodians and distributors of money now have new methods – and new rewards – for their work. And just like the Greek Gods of a past epoch, the pious women and religious gents have been thrown into the dustbins of history. But the red kerchief has only faded from the gaze of ordinary human eyes. As the more perceptive can see, it has in fact begun a new life. 

What is the meaning of the red kerchief? What is the basis for it? To whom does it turn its bladder-like face? The red kerchief understands that in every society – and especially among Jews, the characteristic family-folk – there is a surplus of both copper coins and sympathy. Its existence depends on the will of ordinary people who have a drop or two to give away and don’t know where to give it. Its bladdery countenance is thus turned to those simple folk whose inability to read the holy texts leaves them feeling somewhat sinful, and who try, with heavy souls, to beg forgiveness. 

The red kerchief appeals to the masses’ will to give – and by masses I do not necessarily mean the workers and petty shop keepers. The same mass-psychology is often much stronger in an overnight millionaire or a lucky merchant who operates in several factories. In such a person, the feeling of excess manifests like some unknown sin and the sense of ignorance in societal matters affects them even more strongly. They are thus even more likely to feel that they need to make amends for something with someone. 

…

It is therefore clear that the red kerchief is not in need of controls or any of the other trifles that might be required of a serious societal endeavor overseen by several bookkeepers and a supervisory board. For in the very moment when a copper coin falls in the red kerchief, the donor already obtains everything they need. They have gotten rid of their excess and calmed their unknown sinfulness. They have made their amends. The copper coin wasn’t taken out of their purse for a specific use, but because of an unidentified heartfelt wish that the coin might be used for some unspecified pious purpose, which the donor themself is not able to understand. If the copper coin doesn’t end up in the right place – well, that isn’t their responsibility. That will be somebody else’s transgression to worry about. The donor has given their tsedoke, and “tsedoke saves you from death!”

And so now it is clear, my dear reader, why the red kerchief will never really die, but will live on eternally among the Jewish people, just like everything else that lives on in the human soul. The red kerchief of the past has faded, but the desire to give lives on in the heavy hearts of those who feel that they have sinned and that they must make amends. So too lives on their indifference to the kerchief’s purpose and to where its accumulated coins will end up. 

Also alive and well is the suspicion that not all of the money that falls into the kerchief will be given to the poor and desperate, but that some of it will get stuck to the kerchief itself, and that from each dollar donated 90 cents will go towards other costs. But alongside this doubt, which swiftly passes through the donor’s mind like a light shadow, hovers another shadow-like idea – that to a poor man ten cents is itself a treasure, that this is simply how the world works, that for every spoonful of grits, the first nine scoops will contain nothing but water. And at the end of the day, there are also kerchiefs – like that of Reb Yosl, the devoted scholar – from which not one single penny disappears.      

In the following chapter, we will examine the evidence that the red kerchief of Yosl the poresh and Khane the mikveattendant, has only changed in appearance, but not in substance. For now, since it is hard for me to keep a secret, I can tell you that the difference between today’s practice and that of the past lies simply in the addition of a new word – “organization.” This doesn’t refer – God forbid! – to the distribution of the donations collected in the kerchief. Rather, it is the collectors and collectresses of who are now “organized” in accordance with the wisdom of politics and political science.  

The red kerchief can be compared to a medal painted on a piece of paper, which has only one side. What appears on the other side is a mystery – it is up to your own imaginations to complete the picture. You will simply see the same familiar face – the face of Khane the mikve attendant or Yosl the scholar, standing by your door on the eve of a fast day or a a yontef, before the festival lights are lit. 

Cite this: Isidor Eliashev (Bal-Makshoves), “Di royte fatshayle [The Red Kerchief]” (1922), in Untern Rod (New York, 1927).  Trans. Annabel Gottfried Cohen. 

Note: this is only a partial translation. The full essay, in Yiddish, can be found here on p. 352. 

I recently studied this text with one of my Yiddish classes and, as always, I learned a huge amount. Thanks to Ruta Anulyte for helping improve my translation of פֿון מלך סאַבעצקעס צײַטן and to Michael Schuster for telling us about Maskilic criticisms of the halukkah – money collected to support religious Jews living in the Land of Israel.