I craved learning how to read these newspapers and especially the books whose writers had all the knowledge about the human soul. Joshua said that novels didn’t have to be completely true. Some of these stories were invented, but in such a clever way that they were more interesting than real facts. Sometimes Joshua spoke about philosophers who attempted to reveal all the secrets of Heaven and Earth. A lot was written in the newspapers about an inventor from America by the name of Edison. He had invented a machine that could talk, sing, make jokes, laugh, cry. He had devised the electric light bulb. He slept only four hours a day and the rest of the time he spent thinking profound thoughts about science. Joshua had mentioned the philosopher Baruch Spinoza who believed that God in nature and nature is God. All men, all animals, even snakes and worms were part of the Godhead. The laws of nature are also God’s laws. God does not reward the just and punish the evildoers. Many saints died young and in bitter poverty. Some of the wicked became rich and lived a hundred years. According to this philosopher there was no Paradise, no Gehenna. The Messiah would never come, the dead would never rise from their graves. No cloud would ever carry away all the virtuous Jews to the Land of Israel.
“So what will happen to us Jews?” my mother asked. “Will we always remain in exile?”
“Doctor Herzl wanted to create a Jewish state,” my brother said. “He believed that we should become a nation like all the other nations and have our own country.”
“Doctor Herzl is not alive anymore,” my mother said, “and his whole plan was nothing but an idle dream.”
“There are already Jewish colonists in Palestine,” my brother argued. “They have just opened a Gymnasium where the children speak Hebrew.”
I absorbed all this information and strange words with a decision to always retain them. I fantasized about becoming a second Edison or a writer of books or like the Count who resisted the “Bloody Lady” and made her expire from yearning for him. In our house there lived a woman by the name of Bashele and her daughter Shosha who was about my age. I told Shosha all the astounding things my brother told us from the newspapers and books. I also contrived facts of my own. I had saved up two kopeks from my daily allowances (one groschen every morning) and bought two colored pencils; one blue and one red in order to draw for Shosha the fire I had seen in the court of the Radzymin rabbi.
3
For a time I attended a number of cheders but didn’t stay in any one for long. My father taught me the Gemara and my mother was my Bible teacher. There was little left for my teachers to instruct me, and my fellow students were envious. They called me nicknames and teased me. I had become an expert on human character. I looked at a boy and knew if he was honest or a cheat, clever or foolish. Faces generally, and eyes especially, revealed a lot to me. Voices and words did the same. I spoke to a boy for a few minutes and was sure I knew who he was and what I could expect from him. I had once heard my father quote Maimonides: “Just as the faces of humans are different, so are their thoughts and opinions.” Noses, ears, and lips revealed secrets to me. I read somewhere that the soul looks out from the eyes, and I was baffled to realize how much truth there was in these words. There were silly eyes, clever eyes, sly eyes, eyes full of goodness, eyes full of wickedness, eyes that expressed sheer joy, and eyes full of sadness. They all told stories that I could not put into words. I had heard from my brother that the fingerprints of each human being were different. Also I knew that every person had a different handwriting so that bank officers and policemen could identify forged signatures. How could God have created so many eyes with so many different expressions.
My brother had said to my mother that literature deals mostly with the characters of people—their feelings, their way of talking, and behavior in various circumstances, and I decided to become a writer. I began to look inside myself and my own soul. There was constant turmoil there. I suffered, but what my suffering consisted of was not clear to me. There was a time when I used to catch flies, tear off their wings and put them into boxes of matches with a drop of water and a grain of sugar for nourishment. Suddenly it occurred to me that I was committing terrible crimes against those creatures just because I was bigger than they, stronger, and defter. While I was always angry with the wicked, I was wicked myself toward those who were weaker than I. This thought tormented me to such a degree that for a long time I could think about nothing else. I began to repent and to pray to God to forgive my vicious deeds. I took a holy oath never again to catch flies. But what about the flies I had already caught? True, I still could be punished as I deserved to be. But can those creatures still get retribution for their pain? Has a fly a soul? Can its soul go up to Paradise and be compensated for its suffering?
The ponderings about the suffering of flies expanded and soon included all people, all animals, all lands, all times. I had passed Yanash’s bazaar a number of times and had seen the slaughterers killing chickens, ducks, geese. The butchers began to pluck their feathers even while those creatures were still alive and wallowing in their own blood. I once saw my own mother kill a trembling fish for the Sabbath. My mother told me that when a fish is eaten for the honor of the Sabbath and a pious Jew makes a blessing over it, its spirit is elevated. Sometimes sinful souls of humans enter fish and the fish’s death is an atonement for sins of those souls. But how about the fish that are not killed for the Sabbath? How about the fish that are eaten by Gentiles or by sinners? And how about the pigs that are killed, scorched in hot water while still alive? What spirit was atoned in them? Where is their compensation for the tortures they went through? Neither my father nor my mother nor the morality books that I began to read in Yiddish translation or even in Hebrew, could give me a satisfying answer. I had studied in the Book of Leviticus about the sacrifices the priests used to burn on the altar: the sheep, the rams, the goats, and the doves whose heads they wrung off and whose blood they sprung as a sweet savor unto the Lord. And again and again I asked myself why should God, the Creator of all men and all creatures, enjoy these horrors?
My brother Joshua, who had become a non-believer, had one answer to all these questions: “There is no God. He never spoke to Moses and bade him to offer these sacrifices. All existence is nature, and nature knows of no pity. According to nature, might makes right. All living species are a result of a fight wherein the weak perished and the strong survived.” However, this explanation did not satisfy me. If nature is so clever that it watches over each star in the sky, each animal in the forest, each mouse, each worm, how can it be without compassion? How can great wisdom care so little about the torments of innocent creatures? This question, which began to agonize me when I was six or seven years old, still haunts me today. I still cannot accept the ruthlessness of nature, God, the Absolute, or whatever name these high powers are given.
I heard that there were vegetarians who ate no meat and no fish, but even they seemed to care little about such despised creatures as mice, rats, spiders, bedbugs. With each step a person takes, he crushes some living being. I heard from my brother that in some faraway country rabbits had multiplied in such numbers that people had to erect fences to keep them out. And thousands upon thousands of hunters did nothing but shoot them or kill them with axes and knives. I heard of locusts that were poisoned, burned by the myriads. Wolves attacked sheep; lions and tigers ravaged whole villages. Nature had given to its creatures horns, nails, claws, venom to assail other creatures. In the oceans big fish swallowed little fish. People waged wars or made bloody revolutions. I was reading the Bible and the whole history of the Israelites was full of wars and assassinations. One day the Philistines killed twenty thousand Israelites. Another day these Israelites slaughtered thirty thousand Philistines. Every second or third king was assassinated, and the assassin took over his throne, put on his crown, and became a king. They all served idols. They were constantly invaded by Egypt, Aram, Babylonia, and other enemies. One year there was a pestilence and the next a famine. One misfortune followed another until the Babylonia
ns, the Greeks, and the Romans destroyed the Temple and drove the Jews into Exile, where for almost two thousand years they paid for the sins they themselves did not commit. How can a merciful God allow all this to happen and keep silent?
I began early to realize that there is no answer to these questions either in the holy books or in the explanations of my parents. They kept contradicting themselves. They spoke of a hereafter from which no one ever returned. Only my brother Joshua seemed to tell the whole truth, but there was no comfort in his words, no solution to the great riddle called life.
Sometimes I thought, “Who knows? Maybe I would find some answer. Perhaps I will go on searching until the truth will be revealed to me.” In the process of listening to myself I came to the conclusion that my soul or my heart was always yearning for something new. I was constantly hoping for some new event, some new information, renewed courage. I began to study a new treatise of the Gemara, and I soon got tired of it. I read a storybook, and after some ten or twenty pages it became tedious. I was always waiting for some good tidings, a miracle, a joyful revelation. Repeating the same prayer every day had become a burden to me, and I began to deceive my parents saying that I had already prayed, said grace, recited this or that supplication. Once I saw in the newspaper the expression, “a novel of suspense,” and I asked my brother what it meant. He told me it is a book that keeps you curious as to what would happen later. You can barely wait to turn the page. My brother seemed to disapprove of this kind of novel. He made fun of the serialized novels in the Yiddish newspapers. But I felt that expectation adds zest to life. I went to sleep every night with the hope that next morning I would get two groschen instead of one for allowance, that I would be able to buy a new storybook or a composition book, or that I would hear some new facts about the war between the Turks and the three little countries whose names I could never repeat. There was in the Haynt a column called “News from the Four Corners of the World,” and there was always something astounding there. Once a month one could read about those who won big sums of money in the Warsaw lottery. The Chassidim in the Radzymin study house were all buying lottery tickets. The highest prize was seventy-five thousand rubles. Even my father used to buy these tickets. The owner of the lottery was the rabbi of Gora Calvaria. His adversaries criticized him for presiding over this kind of gambling, but the rabbi assured his Chassidim that the profits all went for religious purposes. There was also a small lottery on the square of Krochmalna Street where you paid a penny to draw a number, and you could win chocolate or halvah worth as much as ten groschen. The gambling went on from early in the morning until late in the evening. There was a lot of card gambling on Krochmalna Street. Women often came to my father and complained that their husbands gambled away their salaries. Once a woman told my father that her husband lost their stove in a card game after gambling away his last penny. Not only did she not get household money for that week, but four men came in and although it was freezing outside they removed the stove. I remember my father saying, “Once a man surrenders to the powers of evil, there is no limit to how deep he can fall.” Across the street lived a man who worked all day making paper bags that were used in grocery stores. At night he sat down with some other men and they often played cards until the morning. My mother used to say, “These people don’t seem to sleep at all. They are ruining their health and their families.” In our house there was often talk about evil passions and what damage they could cause when not curbed. I myself had quite a number of them. I could not get enough of observing the acrobats who performed in the courtyards. There were days when I accompanied them from courtyard to courtyard neglecting my studies. There were always three men and one girl. The men ate fire, swallowed knives, juggled balls. One of them put a heavy log on his teeth and balanced it that way for minutes. They never wore jackets or shirts because one of their tricks was to lie down with their naked backs on a board of nails. The girl had flaxen-white hair cut short like a boy’s, and she wore a velvet blouse with tinsel and short pants over her narrow hips. She rolled a barrel on the soles of her feet and turned a wheel with a glass of water on it that never spilled. While the men performed, she played a little drum with bells and caught the groschens or kopeks which tenants threw from their windows. Once in a while she also walked on her hands. I was always amazed when watching these shows.
In the Book of Kings in the Bible I was fascinated with the story of the Queen of Sheba who had visited King Solomon. She came with a great train of camels bearing spices and gold and precious stones as gifts to the wise king. She spoke to King Solomon all that was in her heart, and Solomon answered all her questions and showed her all his treasures. I don’t remember where I read it, in Rashi or in some other commentary, that when she returned to the Land of Sheba she carried Solomon’s child in her womb. I could not connect acquiring wisdom and showing treasures with giving birth to a child, but I also remembered the stories of Abraham with his two wives, Sarah and Hagar, as well as those about Jacob marrying Leah, Rachel, and the concubines Bilhah and Zilpah. King Solomon had loved many foreign women—Moabites, Ammonites, Edomites, Zidonians, and Hittites and married the daughter of Pharaoh. More than that, he had seven hundred wives and three hundred concubines, who in later years turned his heart away from God and made him serve idols. It seemed that adults in history were as confused and greedy for excitement in their own way as I was in my fashion.
4
Things happened every day. It was worthwhile to hear and read about them and to tell it all to Shosha with additions of my own imagination. A ship called Titanic, which was almost as large as a town, with stores, restaurants, and a theater, had hit an iceberg and sunk in the ocean with hundreds of millionaires on board. The enemies of the Jews in Russia had falsely accused a Jew by the name of Mendl Bailys of killing a Christian child to use his blood for matzoh—a wild and malicious accusation. In Russia there were new strikes and demonstrations by those who tried to dethrone the Tsar. They had killed a great dignitary and some of the assassins were hung. A peasant from distant Siberia by the name of Rasputin became an important figure in the Tsar’s palace in Petersburg. The newspapers hinted that he had a romance with the Tsarina and some of her court ladies. Many new things happened in our own family. My sister Hindele had become engaged to a young man who lived in the town of Antwerp in Belgium, and the wedding took place in Berlin, Germany. My father and mother went there leaving me alone for a week with Joshua. Who took care of younger brother, Moishe, I don’t remember. A few months after my sister’s wedding a letter came that she was pregnant and my parents sent her a gift. A boy had divulged to me the secret of how children are born. The thought that even such pious people as my parents, who always talked about the Torah, good deeds, should indulge in such abominations shocked me terribly. When I told this to Shosha, she told me that she herself had seen her father and mother in one bed. If the adults committed sins like these, why should I try to be better? I fantasized about lying with Shosha in bed. I actually kissed her forehead. Like King Solomon, I told Shosha all my secrets. I myself did not possess treasures of gold and precious stones, but I told her that my father was a king and he had a palace not far from Warsaw full of gold, silver, diamonds, pearls, and other precious stones, the kind that the High Priest used to wear on his breastplate. I also revealed to her that I was studying the cabalah in the middle of the night and that the Prophet Elijah came to instruct me. I had learned holy names of God that when uttered could allow one to fly like a bird and become invisible. I could with the power of one of those names kill all those who made pogroms against the Jews and take those who remained alive to the Land of Israel. I could, if I chose to, become the King of Jerusalem with golden lions, leopards, eagles, and other animals decorating my throne and with sixty mighty men around my bed guarding me from the dread of the night.
I had not yet become the King of Jerusalem, but my nights too were full of dread and wonders. The moment I closed my eyes I saw lights of many colors: yellow, red,
blue, green, violet. The colors changed turning into flowers, swans, doves, parrots. I saw giants with spears and golden helmets, their points reaching to the sky. Were these the same mighty men who watched over the bed of King Solomon? Or were they demons? I wasn’t asleep, but I dreamed while awake. I flew together with all those colors and monsters over fields, forests, rivers, seas. I landed on the islands I read about in the storybooks. Outlandish people spoke to me in languages similar to Yiddish and Hebrew as well as in the Aramaic translations of the Pentateuch I had learned to recite in the cheder. I flew over the desert where the Jews ate manna for forty years, as well as over Egypt, the store-cities of Pithom and Ramses. I saw the Land of Israel—Rachel’s grave, the Wailing Wall, the cave of Machpelah, and places perhaps not of this world.
There was one dream that repeated itself almost every night. I came to a cemetery with mounds over graves. I knew that children were buried there. Suddenly the children would emerge from under the earth. They wore little white blouses and skirts. They played together and danced in a circle. They also swung on swings. But they never said a word. Were they mute? Was this the resurrection of the dead? I recognized one little girl, Jochebed, who had died not long after we came to Warsaw. Her parents lived in the same building as we did and on the same floor. I had gone out on the balcony and saw Jochebed’s funeral—a black, rectangular hearse with compartments not unlike the philacteries adults put on their heads and arms. The horses were wrapped in black with holes cut out for their huge eyes. The driver came out from our gate carrying a black narrow box and I knew that Jochebed was in it. He took her to a darkness of no return. Even now, so many years later, I still see all these visions in my dreams.
Love and Exile Page 2
