"The Rebbetzin’s Sense of Justice" - A Short Story by Lilly Barger -1955? - translated from the Yiddish by Ronnee Jaeger - 2020

"The Rebbetzin’s Sense of Justice" - A Short Story by Lilly Barger -1955? - translated from the Yiddish by Ronnee Jaeger - 2020 - included with 18 Jewish Stories translated from 18 Languages-edited and introduced by Nora Gold with a forward by Josh Lambert

Lily Berger 

Born December 30, 1916 in Bialistok, Poland 

Died November 30, 1996 - Paris

The story is set in a small shetl, we do not really learn precisely where or when it is set.  Like many a Yiddish story, it centers on a married couple:

"He was small, skinny, timid, eyes always downcast. She the opposite, big , fullbodied, a Jewish Cossack who tolerated no injustice. A big talker! These were my teachers, Reb Fishel and his wife Khaye.....Behind his back they called him “Fisheleh hunchback,” although he was not a hunchback, merely bent over. And her they called Big Khaye. We, the seven-year-old pupils, called Big Khaye “Rebbetzin.” How two such opposites were brought together, only God in heaven knows. In our shtetl there was a story told that when Fisheleh saw his be- trothed for the first time, under the bridal canopy, he almost fainted from fear. Opinion had it that this first scare pursued him all his life, not because Big Khaye was a miserable or wretched wife, quite the opposite. She had a good heart and could bear no injustice. She protected her husband like a mother hen protects her chicks, as if , without her , Fisheleh Hunchback would, God forbid, have drowned in the waves of life like a leaky ship in the ocean." 

The narrator is a seven year old girl enrolled in Reb Fishel's supposedly boys only class.  The pupils range from children from rich families to kids who are only given a piece of stale bread for lunch.  His wife sees to it that everyone has a decent lunch.  She adjusts tuition based on family wealth. She also maintains class room discipline.

The story gave me a good feel for not just the class room but with the mothers as well.

Lili Berger (1916– 1996), born in Malken, Poland, was a prolific literary critic and essayist, novelist, and playwright. She settled in Paris at the end of 1936, teaching Yid- dish and contributing to important periodicals. During the Nazi occupation of France, she was active in the Resistance and was involved in the rescue of Jewish children from deportation. She returned to Warsaw after the war but left in 1968 during the great exodus, returning to Paris and resuming her literary activity until her death in 1995. Her many articles and essays were often about writers and artists, many of whom she had known personally.