When my grandfather, Nachum Shapiro, came to Manhattan in 1901, he left the rumors and echoes of Vilna far behind.
I can imagine him standing on the deck of that ship, the Kroonland, steaming towards Ellis Island and slowly morphing into what he would become in his new life in America.
Here he changed his name to Nathan, switched socialism for Judaism, and only spoke Yiddish when he was aggravated. Whether or not he still believed in angels or God or even mazel for that matter, I could not say. But what he did believe in, I would imagine, is horseshoes.
I say that because he was a blacksmith; he worked in a shop on 14th Street. It is hard to imagine a blacksmith pounding in downtown New York, but photos of that time show the street filled with carriages and horses and I can see how hard he must have worked just to keep pace. Like everyone in my family it seems, he was a romantic with a stubborn streak.
Horseshoes, of course, are symbols of good luck and I have heard that you have to hang them with the opening at the top or risk bringing the evil eye. Maybe he had one hanging rightly in the shop and in that way carried on the tradition of paying attention to signs. For a long time I thought that this horseshoe was perhaps the secret gift my family treasured but there was none in the album nor even a photo of one.
Still, I always liked the idea that there was a blacksmith in the family because it connected us, in my adolescent mind, to the old West rather than to some dusty town on the border of Poland. Yet it was a fairly mundane job at the time, nothing very special or out of the ordinary.
That is, until the day that the horse spoke.
He was shoeing a horse for one of his rich patrons – maybe a chestnut with a long lovely mane – when suddenly the horse opened its mouth and spoke. She did not neigh or whinny or blibble her lips the way horses do…but actually came out with a precise sound. A word that Nachum heard clear as a bell.
It sounded exactly like “sheynah.”
Nachum ignored it at first but after a while the horse said it again.
Sheynah.
This was very odd. The word meant nothing to him but only because he was more interested in the worker’s manifesto than the Torah. But still, it was a word and not just a noise and so he called in Jacob who ran the shoe repair shop across the street.
At first he assumed the horse would not do it again. Talking animals who refuse to speak to anyone else have a long tradition in Jewish humor. But to his surprise, and to Jacob’s as well, the horse repeated it.
Jacob, who still said prayers and went to temple, knew the word immediately and spelled it out for him.
“The word is shekhinah,” he enunciated. “But usually pronounced as sheynah. It’s Hebrew for the presence of God.”
“The what?”
“It refers to the manifestation of God as it descends to dwell among humanity.”
Nachum was taken aback. This was a rich man’s horse and Nachum was inclined to regard it with the same disdain he held for anyone from the controlling classes. But it was speaking a name of God.
What did it mean?
He looked at the horse, which looked back in that sideways way that horses do, which tell you nothing. And then the horse said it again.
Nachum visited a local rabbi even though he had no respect for what he knew. But what else could he do? He had a miracle on his hands here. Or something.
He explained the situation to the rabbi who agreed to come to the stable. On the way the rabbi told him that there are many names of God used for all different purposes…some for rites, some in temple, some on the street. This one – this shekhinah – was not actually in the Bible. It was used to talk about God in the Tabernacle, the portable dwelling place for the divine presence from the time of the Exodus from Egypt. In other words, God living among the people.
Nachum, not so much believing as struggling, asked him what it meant? Was the horse a divine presence right there on 14th Street? Or was it signaling a presence yet to arrive? What was he supposed to do about this?
When they got to the stable, Nachum again thought that the horse would stonewall just to embarrass him. But no, the horse shook its head and spoke. Nachum looked at the rabbi, who looked back in that sideways way that rabbis do, which tell you nothing.
“Ah...this one’s caught something,” the rabbi said, nodding.
“You mean a divine blessing. Or an evil spirit maybe.”
“Sheynah!,” the horse said again.
“Gesundheit,” the rabbi said.
No horses spoke after that, at least not anything worth telling. And very quickly Nachum dropped any concerns about signs from God and went back to work at the stable. But I think that he went home thereafter and held Rose, my grandmother, very close in bed at night under the waning moon, just in case.
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