Because kindling fire on the Sabbath is forbidden, the stew is left in a preheated oven for as long as twenty-four hours before being served as the hot meal on the Sabbath.

*Phylacteries, known in Hebrew as tefilin, comprise two boxes containing biblical verses and the leather straps attached to them. An essential part of the Orthodox morning prayer service, they are donned every day, except Sabbaths and festivals, by observant Jewish men above the age of thirteen.

*The Kuzari, by the medieval Jewish philosopher and poet of Spain, Judah ha-Levi (c. 1075–1141), is a defense of revealed religion in the form of a dialogue between the pagan king of the Khazars and a Jew who has been invited to instruct him in the tenets of Judaism. Isaac ben Judah Abravanel (1437–1508), a medieval statesman, financier, philosopher, and exegete, took the social and political issues of his time into consideration in his commentaries on the Bible.

*The choice of blue as a color for the newly painted shutters of this house is another of Bergelson’s satiric comments on the attempts of Avrom-Moyshe Burnes to acculturate himself and his family, of a piece with the university student he hires to tutor his children in secular subjects. It was customary in Ukraine for Gentiles to paint their shutters and window frames blue; the normative color for Jews was brown.

*In the tsarist empire, fully qualified pharmacists were among those categories of Jews permitted to live outside the Pale of Settlement, together with merchants of the first guild, exceptionally talented craftsmen, and university students.

*Yiddish affectionate diminutive of the word bobe, “grandmother.”

*Kulturgeschichte der Menschheit in ihrem organischen Aufbau [The Evolution of Culture] was published in 1886–87 by the Czech historian Julius Lippert (1839–1909). Its Hebrew translation was published in three volumes in Warsaw between 1894 and 1908.

*Observant Orthodox Jewish men do not touch women in public, least of all women who are strangers to them.

*A member of the szlachta, or Polish nobility.

*The heder was the traditional religious elementary school where boys between the ages of three and fourteen were taught Torah and Talmud. The heder differed from the Talmud Torah in being a private institution run by the local rabbi or another religious functionary in his own home. The parents of boys attending the heder were expected to pay for their sons’ tuition.

*In the early 1900s, skunk fur was among the most popular and costly of pelts from which coats were made.

*Russian for “young lady.”

*In tsarist Russia—and still in Eastern Europe today—a gymnasium is a secondary school that stresses academic over vocational education.

*Polish: “Oh, he’s a sly one, that Mr. Tarabay … sly as a fox …”

*Simchas Torah (Hebrew, meaning “rejoicing of the Torah”) is one of the happiest days in the Jewish liturgical year, when the annual cycle of public Torah readings is completed with the last section of Deuteronomy and begun again with the first section of Genesis. During both morning and evening services all the scrolls in each synagogue’s possession are removed and carried around the synagogue in a series of seven circuits with much singing and dancing. This honor of carrying a Torah scroll is often auctioned to raise funds.

*A feldsher was a rudimentary health-care professional who provided many medical services in tsarist Russia, mainly in rural areas. The word feldsher derives from the German term Feldscher, meaning “field doctor,” which described medieval barber-surgeons attached to the Russian army as far back as the seventeenth century.

*In the belief that this would ward off the evil eye and protect them from contracting the same disease.

*This book’s full title is Dicta septem sapientium Graeciae (Sayings of the Seven Sages of Greece), a collection of moral aphorisms from the classical world compiled in Latin by Desiderius Erasmus of Rotterdam (1466–1536). For centuries it was immensely popular as a source book for easily digested moral precepts. An English translation with commentary by Thomas Berthelet was published as early as 1525, during Erasmus’s lifetime.

†Latin: “All happiness is false.”

*The Fast of Esther is observed on the thirteenth day of the Hebrew month of Adar (generally corresponding to the secular month of March), a day before the festival of Purim, which is celebrated annually on the fourteenth day of Adar.

*The Fast of Esther is observed from daybreak until the appearance of the stars at night. While according to Jewish law the fast must continue until nightfall, people who feel unable to fast the whole day try to fast at least until after the afternoon service.

*According to Jewish lore, this is the place to which erring souls are exiled.

*Before prayer, every Hasid ties around his waist a black sash or girdle made of silk or wool, known in Yiddish as a gartl, symbolically to separate the heart and mind from the lower part of the body.

†Esther 2:21.

*Before World War I the profession of dentist—for which Bergelson himself tried to study in his youth—was highly popular among Jews in the tsarist empire. It occupied an intermediate position between that of a fully qualified physician and the lower rank of feldsher or medical aide. Here Bergelson is satirizing the attempts of upwardly mobile Jews to assimilate into Russian society by adopting the Russian language.

*Here a Hebrew scholar with a love of secular learning and culture.

†Ahad Ha’am, pen name of Asher Ginsburg (1856–1927), was born in Skvira, near Kiev in the Ukraine, and became a central figure in the movement for cultural Zionism. Initially enthusiastic about Ahad Ha’am’s ideals, in time Bergelson and his circle came to reject what they regarded as the narrowness of his “cultural nationalism.”

†A surtout is a long, single-breasted lightweight coat. The fact that this one is shortened denotes its wearer’s gradual move away from Jewish tradition toward a more modern, Westernized style of dress.

*Musaf is the “additional service” in the Jewish liturgy, recited on Sabbath and on festivals in commemoration of the additional sacrifices formerly offered in the Temple of Jerusalem (Numbers 28, 29).

†Like Reb Gedalye, all those who attend services here originate from, or have ties with, the Hasidim of Galicia. Husiatyn, today a town in western Ukraine, is located on the west bank of the Zbruch River, which formed the boundary between the Austro-Hungarian and Russian Empires before World War I. The Hasidic population of the town grew sharply after Rabbi Mordkhe Shrage-Feyvish Friedman (1835–1894), the youngest son of Rabbi Yisroel Friedman of Ruzhin, established his court there in 1865. Rabbi Mordkhe was succeeded by his son Rabbi Yisroel Friedman (1858–1949), who led the Hasidim in Husiatyn until 1912.

*This is because, according to Jewish law, eating a full meal is not permitted before the recitation of the morning service.

*The Sabbath of Consolation is the first Sabbath after Tisha B’Av, the fast of the ninth of the month of Av (July), which commemorates the Destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. It derives its name from the reading from the Prophets for that day, Isaiah 40:1–26.

*Kiddush (Hebrew, “sanctification”) is a blessing recited over wine to sanctify the Sabbath or a Jewish festival. By extension, the term Kiddush may also refer to a reception of wine, cake, soft drinks, and buffet items following the Sabbath morning services at the synagogue. Often a Kiddush is hosted by a family celebrating a barmitzvah, a wedding, or—as in this case—an engagement.

*A desyatin is an old imperial Russian unit of land measurement equivalent to 2. acres. The area under discussion here is therefore about 800 acres.

*Three festive meals are eaten every Sabbath: on Friday night, Saturday midday, and early Saturday evening. After the ceremony of Havdalah, which ritually marks the separation of the Sabbath from the working week, a fourth meal or snack commemorates what is called melava-malkah (Hebrew, “escorting the queen”).

*The Talmud Torah was a tuition-free elementary school maintained by the Jewish community for the poorest children. It was generally better organized and employed more-efficient, better-qualified teachers than the traditional heder because it was supervised by the leaders of the community.

*The Torah (Exodus 12:15–20) prohibits the eating or possessing of any bread, leaven, leavening agent, or any food containing such, from the day before Passover until the end of the eighth day of the festival. All leaven, down to the smallest particle, must be removed from every observant Jewish household.