The Assignment

This is the first of several short stories from Yossel Birstein's Book, A Drop Of Silence, that we are planning to post. It's posted here with the kind approval and assistance of Yossel's wife Marganit and The Institute for the Translation of Hebrew Literature
The Assignment
When I asked a tall policeman for directions to Rechov Yellin in Makor Baruch, a religious neighborhood in Jerusalem, he accompanied me all the way there. A new Tora Scroll was to be consecrated. I'd come to watch the celebrating crowd, and him, to break it up. Dead-beat after a long stint on duty, he complained that he’d already been on his way home, when he'd suddenly been assigned to investigate what this noisy and unauthorized gathering was all about. He couldn't understand what there was to celebrate in the midst of winter out in the cold, in the biting wind and, above all, in the dark of the night. He assured the taxi driver, held up at the beginning of Rechov Yellin, that this time he wasn't going to shilly-shally nor would he put up with any more nonsense from this lot, and that before long the road would be clear for him to proceed.
But a voice rang through the loudspeakers ordering the crowd not to disperse and promising sweets and cookies to the youngsters. Hearing that, a little girl of about seven broke into a sprint to call her little brother but got entangled between the policeman's legs.
"Hirsh-Chaim'!" she shouted, "Hirsh Chaim'!"
After disentangling himself, the policeman pulled out a notebook from his breast pocket to make an incident report. He elbowed his way toward the loudspeaker on the rooftop of a closed black van on whose sides, in white lettering, was a quotation from the Psalms and the address of a Chevra Kadisha (a burial society). Above the loudspeaker a projector lamp was swaying in the wind, its strong light bobbing up and down.
Men were dancing on the road as well as along both sides of the sidewalk, circles within circles of shtrimels, kapotas, and beards, almost all black. Drawn into the whirling circles, the policeman pressed ahead in his bid to reach the leader. Catching hold of a ginger-bearded hassid dancing with a Sefer Tora in his arms, he demanded his name and particulars. But, instead of giving his own name, the dancing hassid asked the policeman for his and his father's name; and shoving the Sefer Tora into his arms, the hasssid announced through the loudspeaker in the solemn sing-song chant used to call someone to the pulpit in the synagogue
"Ya'amod Avraham-Moshe ben Noach-Naftali!"
The policeman hugged the Sefer Tora while the ginger bearded hassid thrust the notebook back into his breast pocket and straightened his hat, that had lurched sideways. A path was formed for the policeman who, singing and dancing himself now, led the joyful throng toward the synagogue called The Yeshiva for Penitent Sons. Only then were the promised sweets and cookies handed out to the children, scrambling among the legs of the adults like random chickens.
Even before the road was completely clear the taxi driver started his engine with a vengeance, swerved, wheels screeching, and sped around the corner of the next street when the little girl who had earlier bumped into the policeman came racing back along the sidewalk with her little brother in tow cutting the comer almost as fast as the taxi.
"Hurry up! Hirsch Chaim'l! Hurry up!" she shouted breathlessly, coming to an abrupt halt beside the van of the Hevra Kadisha.In the distance, at the other end of the street, I could still make out the shadowy outlines of the dancers before they faded into the surrounding night. Here, over the rooftop of the black van, the projector lamp kept bobbing in the wind, up and down, up and down, continuing, in the now empty street, the silent dance of light and shade.