After three long years, their father managed to save enough to send for his wife and children. In the early spring of , Esther Antin and her children left Polotsk bound for Boston. While America never did deliver on its dream of prosperity to Israel Antin—his various business ventures generally failed—it did deliver on its promise of equal opportunity. Education kept the American dream alive for Maryashe—now Mary—and her younger siblings. Like other immigrant children, in the days when grade levels were determined by competence in English rather than by age, thirteen-year-old Antin squeezed herself into a desk meant for a kindergarten child.
Her intelligence and evident literary gifts quickly impressed her teachers. Seeing her name in print for the first time, Antin determined to become a writer. Guided by her teachers, she vaulted through grammar school in four years. At the same time, she began to fulfill her literary ambition. Publication of her poems in Boston newspapers made her a local celebrity.
Translated from the Yiddish and owing to a misprint of the name of her town, these letters became From Plotzk to Boston But school, writing, and household chores did not occupy all her time. On a field trip sponsored by Hale House, a South End settlement home, she met the geologist Amadeus William Grabau — , the son and grandson of German-born Lutheran ministers. The two fell in love and were married in Boston on October 5, Amadeus Grabau went from Harvard University, where he had completed his doctorate, to the faculty of Columbia University.
And before too long the birth of their only child, Josephine Esther, completed the domestic portrait. Espousing the myth of the American dream, she showed how the idea of America ran counter to the economic, political, and cultural oppression of Europe. She pointed to her own adolescent success as proof of the abundant opportunities held out to immigrants who abandoned the old to embrace wholeheartedly the new.
The Promised Land brought her nationwide fame, selling nearly 85, copies before her death. Antin continued writing short stories for the Atlantic Monthly and opinion pieces for Outlook. And Roosevelt revealed his own debt to their friendship when he wrote that he became a zealous supporter of woman suffrage precisely because of his association with women like Mary Antin.
From to , Antin traveled throughout the United States, lecturing, often to Jewish organizations, on the themes set forth in The Promised Land. In the book, she not only celebrated the American dream, but also, perhaps surprisingly, championed Zionism. Although earlier she had found that her Jewish heritage paled before the American past that now belonged to her, she never repudiated her Jewish identity. Perhaps her return visit to Polotsk after her marriage—a visit about which little is known—fueled these sentiments. In , she followed the success of The Promised Land with her last full-length work, They Who Knock at Our Gates, a polemic against the movement to restrict immigration.
Although well received, this work was less popular than her autobiographical musings. While she threw herself into lectures for the Allied cause, her husband expressed his pro-German sympathies forcibly, causing a severe rift in their household. In , worried over their estrangement, Antin suffered an attack of what was then diagnosed as neurasthenia, from which she never fully recovered. The illness caused her to retire from public life.
The following year, he left for China. Although the couple later corresponded, illness and war kept Antin from visiting Peking, where her husband died in After the separation, Antin left New York for Massachusetts. She was hospitalized briefly and also worked as a hospital social worker. There were ten times as many stores as there should have been, ten times as many tailors, cobblers, barbers, tinsmiths.
A Gentile, if he failed in Polotzk, could go elsewhere, where there was less competition. A Jew could make the circle of the Pale, only to find the same conditions as at home. Outside the Pale he could only go to certain designated localities, on payment of prohibitive fees, augmented by a constant stream of bribes; and even then he lived at the mercy of the local chief of police. Artisans had the right to reside outside the Pale, on fulfilment of certain conditions. This sounded easy to me, when I was a little girl, till I realized how it worked.
There was a capmaker who had duly qualified, by passing an examination and paying for his trade papers, to live in a certain city. The chief of police suddenly took it into his head to impeach the genuineness of his papers. The capmaker was obliged to travel to St. Petersburg, where he had qualified in the first place, to repeat the examination. He spent the savings of years in petty bribes, trying to hasten the process, but was detained ten months by bureaucratic red tape. When at length he returned to his home town, he found a new chief of police, installed during his absence, who discovered a new flaw in the papers he had just obtained, and expelled him from the city.
If he came to Polotzk, there were then eleven capmakers where only one could make a living. Merchants fared like the artisans. They, too, could buy the right of residence outside the Pale, permanent or temporary, on conditions that gave them no real security. I was proud to have an uncle who was a merchant of the First Guild, but it was very expensive for my uncle. He had to pay so much a year for the title, and a certain percentage on the profits from his business.
This gave him the right to travel on business outside the Pale, twice a year, for not more than six months in all. If he were found outside the Pale after his permit expired, he had to pay a fine that exceeded all he had gained by his journey, perhaps. I used to picture my uncle on his Russian travels, hurrying, hurrying to finish his business in the limited time; while a policeman marched behind him, ticking off the days and counting up the hours. That was a foolish fancy, but some of the things that were done in Russia really were very funny.
There were things in Polotzk that made you laugh with one eye and weep with the other, like a clown. During an epidemic of cholera, the city officials, suddenly becoming energetic, opened stations for the distribution of disinfectants to the people. A quarter of the population was dead when they began, and most of the dead were buried, while some lay decaying in deserted houses.
The survivors, some of them crazy from horror, stole through the empty streets, avoiding one another, till they came to the appointed stations, where they pushed and crowded to get their little bottles of carbolic acid. Many died from fear in those horrible days, but some must have died from laughter.
For only the Gentiles were allowed to receive the disinfectant. Poor Jews who had nothing but their new-made graves were driven away from the stations. Perhaps it was wrong of us to think of our Gentile neighbors as a different species of beings from ourselves, but such madness as that did not help to make them more human in our eyes.
It was easier to be friends with the beasts in the barn than with some of the Gentiles. The cow and the goat and the cat responded to kindness, and remembered which of the housemaids was generous and which was cross. The Gentiles made no distinctions. A Jew was a Jew, to be hated and spat upon and used spitefully.
The only Gentiles, besides the few of the intelligent kind, who did not habitually look upon us with hate and contempt, were the stupid peasants from the country, who were hardly human themselves. They lived in filthy huts together with their swine, and all they cared for was how to get something to eat. It was not their fault. The land laws made them so poor that they had to sell themselves to fill their bellies.
What help was there for us in the good will of such wretched slaves? For a cask of vodka you could buy up a whole village of them. They trembled before the meanest townsman, and at a sign from a long-haired priest they would sharpen their axes against us. The Gentiles had their excuse for their malice.
They said our merchants and money-lenders preyed upon them, and our shopkeepers gave false measure. People who want to defend the Jews ought never to deny this.
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Yes, I say, we cheated the Gentiles whenever we dared, because it was the only thing to do. Remember how the Czar was always sending us commands, — you shall not do this and you shall not do that, until there was little left that we might honestly do, except pay tribute and die. There he had us cooped up, thousands of us where only hundreds could live, and every means of living taxed to the utmost.
When there are too many wolves in the prairie, they begin to prey upon each other. We starving captives of the Pale — we did as do the hungry brutes. But our humanity showed in our discrimination between our victims. Whenever we could, we spared our own kind, directing against our racial foes the cunning wiles which our bitter need invented. Is not that the code of war? Encamped in the midst of the enemy, we could practice no other. A Jew could hardly exist in business unless he developed a dual conscience, which allowed him to do to the Gentile what he would call a sin against a fellow Jew.
Such spiritual deformities are self-explained in the step-children of the Czar. A glance over the statutes of the Pale leaves you wondering that the Russian Jews have not lost all semblance to humanity. A favorite complaint against us was that we were greedy for gold. Why could not the Gentiles see the whole truth where they saw half? Greedy for profits we were, eager for bargains, for savings, intent on squeezing the utmost out of every business transaction. Did not the Gentiles know the reason? Did they not know what price we had to pay for the air we breathed?
If a Jew and a Gentile kept store side by side, the Gentile could content himself with smaller profits. He did not have to buy permission to travel in the interests of his business. He did not have to pay three hundred rubles fine if his son evaded military service. He was saved the expense of hushing inciters of pogroms. Police favor was retailed at a lower price to him than to the Jew. His nature did not compel him to support schools and charities. It cost nothing to be a Christian; on the contrary, it brought rewards and immunities.
To be a Jew was a costly luxury, the price of which was either money or blood. Is it any wonder that we hoarded our pennies? What his shield is to the soldier in battle, that was the ruble to the Jew in the Pale. The knowledge of such things as I am telling leaves marks upon the flesh and spirit. I remember little children in Polotzk with old, old faces and eyes glazed with secrets.
I knew how to dodge and cringe and dissemble before I knew the names of the seasons. And I had plenty of time to ponder on these things, because I was so idle. If they had let me go to school, now — But of course they did n't. There was no free school for girls, and even if your parents were rich enough to send you to a private school, you could not go very far. At the high school, which was under government control, Jewish children were admitted in limited numbers, — only ten to every hundred, — and even if you were among the lucky ones, you had your troubles.
The tutor who prepared you talked all the time about the examinations you would have to pass, till you were scared. You heard on all sides that the brightest Jewish children were turned down if the examining officers did not like the turn of their noses. You went up to be examined with the other Jewish children, your heart heavy about that matter of your nose There was a special examination for the Jewish candidates, of course; a nine-year-old Jewish child had to answer questions that a thirteen-year-old Gentile was hardly expected to understand.
But that did not matter so much. You had been prepared for the thirteen-year-old test; you found the questions quite easy. You wrote your answers triumphantly — and you received a low rating, and there was no appeal. I used to stand in the doorway of my father's store, munching an apple that did not taste good any more, and watch the pupils going home from school in twos and threes: They had ever so many books in the satchels on their backs.
They would take them out at home, and read and write, and learn all sorts of interesting things.
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They looked to me like beings from another world than mine. But those whom I envied had their own troubles, as I often heard. Their school life was one struggle against injustice from instructors, spiteful treatment from fellow students, and insults from everybody. Those who, by heroic efforts and transcendent good luck, successfully finished the course, found themselves against a new wall, if they wished to go on. They were turned down at the universities, which admitted them in the ratio of three Jews to a hundred Gentiles, under the same debarring entrance conditions as at the high school, especially rigorous examinations, dishonest marking, or arbitrary rulings without disguise.
No, the Czar did not want us in the schools. I heard from my mother of a different state of affairs, at the time when her brothers were little boys. The Czar of those days had a bright idea. He said to his ministers: Let us win over those Jews through the public schools, instead of allowing them to persist in their narrow Hebrew learning, which teaches them no love for their monarch.
Force has failed with them; the unwilling converts return to their old ways whenever they dare. Let us try education. Perhaps he just wanted to be good, and really hoped to benefit the country. But to the Jews the public schools appeared as a trap door to the abyss of apostasy. The instructors were always Christians, the teaching was Christian, and the regulations of the schoolroom, as to hours, costume, and manners, were often in opposition to Jewish practices. The public school interrupted the boy's sacred studies in the Hebrew school.
Where would you look for pious Jews, after a few generations of boys brought up by Christian teachers? Plainly the Czar was after the souls of the Jewish children. The church door gaped for them at the end of the school course. And all good Jews rose up against the schools, and by every means, fair or foul, kept their boys away. The official appointed to keep the register of boys for school purposes waxed rich on the bribes paid him by anxious parents who kept their sons in hiding. After a while the wise Czar changed his mind, or he died, — probably he did both, — and the schools were closed, and the Jewish boys perused their Hebrew books in peace, wearing the sacred fringes 1 in plain sight, and never polluting their mouths with a word of Russian.
And then it was the Jews who changed their minds — some of them. They wanted to send their children to school, to learn histories and sciences, because they had discovered that there was good in such things as well as in the Sacred Law. These people were called progressive, but they had no chance to progress. AS I look back to-day I see, within the wall raised around my birthplace by the vigilance of the police, another wall, higher, thicker, more impenetrable.
This is the wall which the Czar with all his minions could not shake, the priests with their instruments of torture could not pierce, the mob with their firebrands could not destroy. This wall within the wall is the religious integrity of the Jews, a fortress erected by the prisoners of the Pale, in defiance of their jailers; a stronghold built of the ruins of their pillaged homes, cemented with the blood of their murdered children.
Harassed on every side, thwarted in every normal effort, pent up within narrow limits, all but dehumanized, the Russian Jew fell back upon the only thing that never failed him, — his hereditary faith in God. In the study of the Torah he found the balm for all his wounds; the minute observance of traditional rites became the expression of his spiritual cravings; and in the dream of a restoration to Palestine he forgot the world. What did it matter to us, on a Sabbath or festival, when our life was centred in the synagogue, what czar sat on the throne, what evil counsellors whispered in his ear?
They were concerned with revenues and policies and ephemeral trifles of all sorts, while we were intent on renewing our ancient covenant with God, to the end that His promise to the world should be fulfilled, and His justice overwhelm the nations. On a Friday afternoon the stores and markets closed early. The clatter of business ceased, the dust of worry was laid, and the Sabbath peace flooded the quiet streets.
No hovel so mean but what its casement sent out its consecrated ray, so that a wayfarer passing in the twilight saw the spirit of God brooding over the lowly roof. Care and fear and shrewishness dropped like a mask from every face. Eyes dimmed with weeping kindled with inmost joy. Wherever a head bent over a sacred page, there rested the halo of God's presence. Not on festivals alone, but also on the common days of the week, we lived by the Law that had been given us through our teacher Moses.
How to eat, how to bathe, how to work — everything had been written down for us, and we strove to fulfil the Law. The study of the Torah was the most honored of all occupations, and they who engaged in it the most revered of all men. My memory does not go back to a time when I was too young to know that God had made the world, and had appointed teachers to tell the people how to live in it. First came Moses, and after him the great rabbis, and finally the Rav of Polotzk, who read all day in the sacred books, so that he could tell me and my parents and my friends what to do whenever we were in doubt.
If my mother cut up a chicken and found something wrong in it, — some hurt or mark that should not be, — she sent the housemaid with it to the rav, and I ran along, and saw the rav look in his big books; and whatever he decided was right. If he called the chicken "trefah" I must not eat of it; no, not if I had to starve. And the rav knew about everything: Another great teacher was the dayyan, who heard people's quarrels and settled them according to the Law, so that they should not have to go to the Gentile courts.
The Gentiles were false, judges and witnesses and all. They favored the rich man against the poor, the Christian against the Jew. The dayyan always gave true judgments. Nohem Rabinovitch, the richest man in Polotzk, could not win a case against a servant maid, unless he were in the right. Besides the rav and the dayyan there were other men whose callings were holy, — the shohat, who knew how cattle and fowls should be killed; the hazzan and the other officers of the synagogue; the teachers of Hebrew, and their pupils.
It did not matter how poor a man was, he was to be respected and set above other men, if he were learned in the Law. In the synagogue scores of men sat all day long over the Hebrew books, studying and disputing from early dawn till candles were brought in at night, and then as long as the candles lasted.
They could not take time for anything else, if they meant to become great scholars. Most of them were strangers in Polotzk, and had no home except the synagogue. They slept on benches, on tables, on the floor; they picked up their meals wherever they could. They had come from distant cities, so as to be under good teachers in Polotzk; and the townspeople were proud to support them by giving them food and clothing and sometimes money to visit their homes on holidays. But the poor students came in such numbers that there were not enough rich families to provide for all, so that some of them suffered privation.
You could pick out a poor student in a crowd, by his pale face and shrunken form. There was almost always a poor student taking meals at our house. He was assigned a certain day, and on that day my grandmother took care to have something especially good for dinner.
It was a very shabby guest who sat down with us at table, but we children watched him with respectful eyes. Grandmother had told us that he was a lamden scholar , and we saw something holy in the way he ate his cabbage. Not every man could hope to be a rav, but no Jewish boy was allowed to grow up without at least a rudimentary knowledge of Hebrew.
The scantiest income had to be divided so as to provide for the boys' tuition. To leave a boy without a teacher was a disgrace upon the whole family, to the remotest relative. For the children of the destitute there was a free school, supported by the charity of the pious. And so every boy was sent to heder Hebrew school almost as soon as he could speak; and usually he continued to study until his confirmation, at thirteen years of age, or as much longer as his talent and ambition carried him.
My brother was five years old when he entered on his studies. He was carried to the heder, on the first day, covered over with a praying-shawl, so that nothing unholy should look on him; and he was presented with a bun, on which were traced, in honey, these words: He was served before the other children at table, and nothing was too good for him. If the family were very poor, all the girls might go barefoot, but the heder boy must have shoes; he must have a plate of hot soup, though the others ate dry bread.
When the rebbe teacher came on Sabbath afternoon, to examine the boy in the hearing of the family, everybody sat around the table and nodded with satisfaction, if he read his portion well; and he was given a great saucerful of preserves, and was praised, and blessed, and made much of. No wonder he said, in his morning prayer, "I thank Thee, Lord, for not having created me a female. Girls could not be scholars and rabbonim. I went to my brother's heder, sometimes, to bring him his dinner, and saw how the boys studied. They sat on benches around the table, with their hats on, of course, and the sacred fringes hanging beneath their jackets.
The rebbe sat at an end of the table, rehearsing two or three of the boys who were studying the same part, pointing out the words with his wooden pointer, so as not to lose the place. Everybody read aloud, the smallest boys repeating the alphabet in a sing-song, while the advanced boys read their portions in a different sing-song; and everybody raised his voice to its loudest so as to drown the other voices. The good boys never took their eyes off their page, except to ask the rebbe a question; but the naughty boys stared around the room, and kicked each other under the table, till the rebbe caught them at it.
He had a ruler for striking the bad boys on the knuckles, and in a corner of the room leaned a long birch wand for pupils who would not learn their lessons. The boys came to heder before nine in the morning, and remained until eight or nine in the evening. Stupid pupils, who could not remember the lesson, sometimes had to stay till ten. There was an hour for dinner and play at noon. Good little boys played quietly in their places, but most of the boys ran out of the house and jumped and yelled and quarrelled.
There was nothing in what the boys did in heder that I could not have done — if I had not been a girl. For a girl it was enough if she could read her prayers in Hebrew, and follow the meaning by the Yiddish translation at the bottom of the page. It did not take long to learn this much, — a couple of terms with a rebbetzin female teacher , — and after that she was done with books.
A girl's real schoolroom was her mother's kitchen. There she learned to bake and cook and manage, to knit, sew, and embroider; also to spin and weave, in country places. And while her hands were busy, her mother instructed her in the laws regulating a pious Jewish household and in the conduct proper for a Jewish wife; for, of course, every girl hoped to be a wife. A girl was born for no other purpose. How soon it came, the pious burden of wifehood! One day the girl is playing forfeits with her laughing friends, the next day she is missed from the circle.
She has been summoned to a conference with the shadchan marriage broker , who has been for months past advertising her housewifely talents, her piety, her good looks, and her marriage portion, among families with marriageable sons. Her parents are pleased with the son-in-law proposed by the shadchan, and now, at the last, the girl is brought in, to be examined and appraised by the prospective parents-in-law. If the negotiations go off smoothly, the marriage contract is written, presents are exchanged between the engaged couple, through their respective parents, and all that is left the girl of her maidenhood is a period of busy preparation for the wedding.
If the girl is well-to-do, it is a happy interval, spent in visits to the drapers and tailors, in collecting linens and featherbeds and vessels of copper and brass. The former playmates come to inspect the trousseau, enviously fingering the silks and velvets of the bride-elect. The happy heroine tries on frocks and mantles before her glass, blushing at references to the wedding day; and to the question, "How do you like the bridegroom?
To rear a family of children was to serve God. Every Jewish man and woman had a part in the fulfilment of the ancient promise given to Jacob that his seed should be abundantly scattered over the earth. Parenthood, therefore, was the great career. But while men, in addition to begetting, might busy themselves with the study of the Law, woman's only work was motherhood. To be left an old maid became, accordingly, the greatest misfortune that could threaten a girl; and to ward off that calamity the girl and her family, to the most distant relatives, would strain every nerve, whether by contributing to her dowry, or hiding her defects from the marriage broker, or praying and fasting that God might send her a husband.
Not only must all the children of a family be mated, but they must marry in the order of their ages. A younger daughter must on no account marry before an elder. A houseful of daughters might be held up because the eldest failed to find favor in the eyes of prospective mothers-in-law; not one of the others could marry till the eldest was disposed of. A cousin of mine was guilty of the disloyalty of wishing to marry before her elder sister, who was unfortunate enough to be rejected by one mother-in-law after another. My uncle feared that the younger daughter, who was of a firm and masterful nature, might carry out her plans, thereby disgracing her unhappy sister.
Accordingly he hastened to conclude an alliance with a family far beneath him, and the girl was hastily married to a boy of whom little was known beyond the fact that he was inclined to consumption. The consumptive tendency was no such horror, in an age when superstition was more in vogue than science.
For one patient that went to a physician in Polotzk, there were ten who called in unlicensed practitioners and miracle workers. If my mother had an obstinate toothache that honored household remedies failed to relieve, she went to Dvoshe, the pious woman, who cured by means of a flint and steel, and a secret prayer pronounced as the sparks flew up. During an epidemic of scarlet fever, we protected ourselves by wearing a piece of red woolen tape around the neck.
Pepper and salt tied in a corner of the pocket was effective in warding off the evil eye. There were lucky signs, lucky dreams, spirits, and hobgoblins, a grisly collection, gathered by our wandering ancestors from the demonologies of Asia and Europe. Antiquated as our popular follies was the organization of our small society.
It was a caste system with social levels sharply marked off, and families united by clannish ties. The rich looked down on the poor, the merchants looked down on the artisans, and within the ranks of the artisans higher and lower grades were distinguished. A shoemaker's daughter could not hope to marry the son of a shopkeeper, unless she brought an extra large dowry; and she had to make up her mind to be snubbed by the sisters-in-law and cousins-in-law all her life.
One qualification only could raise a man above his social level, and that was scholarship. A boy born in the gutter need not despair of entering the houses of the rich, if he had a good mind and a great appetite for sacred learning. A poor scholar would be preferred in the marriage market to a rich ignoramus. In the phrase of our grandmothers, a boy stuffed with learning was worth more than a girl stuffed with bank notes. Simple piety unsupported by learning had a parallel value in the eyes of good families. This was especially true among the Hasidim, the sect of enthusiasts who set religious exaltation above rabbinical lore.
Ecstasy in prayer and fantastic merriment on days of religious rejoicing, raised a Hasid to a hero among his kind. My father's grandfather, who knew of Hebrew only enough to teach beginners, was famous through a good part of the Pale for his holy life. Israel Kimanyer he was called, from the village of Kimanye where he lived; and people were proud to establish even the most distant relationship with him.
Israel was poor to the verge of beggary, but he prayed more than other people, never failed in the slightest observance enjoined on Jews, shared his last crust with every chance beggar, and sat up nights to commune with God. His family connections included country peddlers, starving artisans, and ne'er-do-wells; but Israel was a zaddik — a man of piety — and the fame of his good life redeemed the whole wretched clan.
When his grandson, my father, came to marry, he boasted his direct descent from Israel Kimanyer, and picked his bride from the best families. The little house may still be standing which the pious Jews of Kimanye and the neighboring villages built for my great-grandfather, close on a century ago. He was too poor to build his own house, so the good people who loved him, and who were almost as poor as he, collected a few rubles among themselves, and bought a site, and built the house.
Built, let it be known, with their own hands; for they were too poor to hire workmen. They carried the beams and boards on their shoulders, singing and dancing on the way, as they sang and danced at the presentation of a scroll to the synagogue. They hauled and sawed and hammered, till the last nail was driven home; and when they conducted the holy man to his new abode, the rejoicing was greater than at the crowning of a czar. That little cabin was fit to be preserved as the monument to a species of idealism that has rarely been known outside the Pale.
What was the ultimate source of the pious enthusiasm that built my great-grandfather's house? What was the substance behind the show of the Judaism of the Pale? Beneath the mountainous volumes of the Talmudists and commentators, the Mosaic tablets remained intact.
Out of the mazes of the Cabala the pure doctrine of ancient Judaism found its way to the hearts of the faithful. Sects and schools might rise and fall, deafening the ears of the simple with the clamor of their disputes, still the Jew, retiring within his own soul, heard the voice of the God of Abraham. Prophets, messiahs, miracle workers might have their day, still the Jew was conscious that between himself and God no go-between was needed; that he, as well as every one of his million brothers, had his portion of God's work to do.
And this close relation to God was the source of the strength that sustained the Jew through all the trials of his life in the Pale. Consciously or unconsciously, the Jew identified himself with the cause of righteousness on earth; and hence the heroism with which he met the battalions of tyrants.
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No empty forms could have impressed the unborn children of the Pale so deeply that they were prepared for willing martyrdom almost as soon as they were weaned from their mother's breast. The flame of the burning bush that had dazzled Moses still lighted the gloomy prison of the Pale. Behind the mummeries, ceremonials, and symbolic accessories, the object of the Jew's adoration was the face of God. This has been many times proved by those who escaped from the Pale, and, excited by sudden freedom, thought to rid themselves, by one impatient effort, of every strand of their ancient bonds.
Eager to be merged in the better world in which they found themselves, the escaped prisoners determined on a change of mind, a change of heart, a change of manner. They rejoiced in their transformation, thinking that every mark of their former slavery was obliterated. And then, one day, caught in the vise of some crucial test, the Jew fixed his alarmed gaze on his inmost soul, and found there the image of his father's God.
Merrily played the fiddlers at the wedding of my father, who was the grandson of Israel Kimanyer of sainted memory. The most pious men in Polotzk danced the night through, their earlocks dangling, the tails of their long coats flying in a pious ecstasy. Beggars swarmed among the bidden guests, sure of an easy harvest where so many hearts were melted by piety. The wedding jester excelled himself in apt allusions to the friends and relatives who brought up their wedding presents at his merry invitation. The sixteen-year-old bride, suffocated beneath her heavy veil, blushed unseen at the numerous healths drunk to her future sons and daughters.
The whole town was a-flutter with joy, because the pious scion of a godly race had found a pious wife, and a young branch of the tree of Judah was about to bear fruit. When I came to lie on my mother's breast, she sang me lullabies on lofty themes. I heard the names of Rebecca, Rachel and Leah as early as the names of father, mother, and nurse. My baby soul was enthralled by sad and noble cadences, as my mother sang of my ancient home in Palestine, or mourned over the desolation of Zion.
With the first rattle that was placed in my hand a prayer was pronounced over me, a petition that a pious man might take me to wife, and a messiah be among my sons. I was fed on dreams, instructed by means of prophecies, trained to hear and see mystical things that callous senses could not perceive. I was taught to call myself a princess, in memory of my forefathers who had ruled a nation. Though I went in the disguise of an outcast, I felt a halo resting on my brow. Sat upon by brutal enemies, unjustly hated, annihilated a hundred times, I yet arose and held my head high, sure that I should find my kingdom in the end, although I had lost my way in exile; for He who had brought my ancestors safe through a thousand perils was guiding my feet as well.
God needed me and I needed Him, for we two together had a work to do, according to an ancient covenant between Him and my forefathers. This is the dream to which I was heir, in common with every sad-eyed child of the Pale. This is the living seed which I found among my heirlooms, when I learned how to strip from them the prickly husk in which they were passed down to me.
And what is the fruit of such seed as that, and whither lead such dreams? If it is mine to give the answer, let my words be true and brave. Family names existed only in official documents, such as passports. For the most part people were known by nicknames, prosaic or picturesque, derived from their occupations, their physical peculiarities, or distinctive achievements. Among my neighbors in Polotzk were Yankel the Wig-maker, Mulye the Blind, Moshe the Six-fingered; and members of their respective families were referred to by these nicknames: Let me hunt for my name in the chronicles of the Pale.
In the village of Yuchovitch, about sixty versts above Polotzk, the oldest inhabitant still remembered my father's great-grandfather when my father was a boy. Lebe the Innkeeper he was called, and no reproach was coupled with the name. His son Hayyim succeeded to the business, but later he took up the glazier's trade, and developed a knack for all sorts of tinkering, whereby he was able to increase his too scanty earnings.
Hayyim the Glazier is reputed to have been a man of fine countenance, wise in homely counsel, honest in all his dealings. Rachel Leah, his wife, had a reputation for practical wisdom even greater than his. She was the advice giver of the village in every perplexity of life. My father remembers his grandmother as a tall, trim, handsome old woman, active and independent.
Satin headbands and lace-trimmed bonnets not having been invented in her day, Rachel Leah wore the stately knupf or turban on her shaven head. On Sabbaths and holidays she went to the synagogue with a long, straight mantle hanging from neck to ankle; and she wore it with an air, on one sleeve only, the other dangling empty from her shoulder. Hayyim begat Joseph, and Joseph begat Pinchus, my father. It behooves me to consider the stuff I sprang from. Joseph inherited the trade, good name, and meagre portion of his father, and maintained the family tradition of honesty and poverty unbroken to the day of his death.
For that matter, Yuchovitch never heard of any connection of the family, not even a doubtful cousin, who was not steeped to the earlocks in poverty. But that was no distinction in Yuchovitch; the whole village was poor almost to beggary. Joseph was an indifferent workman, an indifferent scholar, and an indifferent hasid. At one thing only he was strikingly good, and that was at grumbling. Although not unkind, he had a temper that boiled over at small provocation, and even in his most placid mood he took very little satisfaction in the world.
He reversed the proverb, looking for the sable lining of every silver cloud. In the conditions of his life he found plenty of food for his pessimism, and merry hearts were very rare among his neighbors. Still a certain amount of gloom appears to have been inherent in the man. And as he distrusted the whole world, so Joseph distrusted himself, which made him shy and awkward in company. My mother tells how, at the wedding of his only son, my father, Joseph sat the whole night through in a corner, never as much as cracking a smile, while the wedding guests danced, laughed, and rejoiced.
It may have been through distrust of the marital state that Joseph remained single till the advanced age of twenty-five. Then he took unto himself an orphan girl as poor as he, namely, Rachel, the daughter of Israel Kimanyer of pious memory. My grandmother was such a gentle, cheerful soul, when I knew her, that I imagine she must have been a merry bride. I should think my grandfather would have taken great satisfaction in her society, as her attempts to show him the world through rose-hued spectacles would have given him frequent opportunity to parade his grievances and recite his wrongs.
But from all reports it appears that he was never satisfied, and if he did not make his wife unhappy it was because he was away from home so much. He was absent the greater part of the time; for a glazier, even if he were a better workman than my grandfather, could not make a living in Yuchovitch. He became a country peddler, trading between Polotzk and Yuchovitch, and taking in all the desolate little hamlets scattered along that route.
Fifteen rubles' worth of goods was a big bill to carry out of Polotzk. The stock consisted of cheap pottery, tobacco, matches, boot grease, and axle grease. These he bartered for country produce, including grains in small quantity, bristles, rags, and bones. Money was seldom handled in these transactions. A rough enough life my grandfather led, on the road at all seasons, in all weathers, knocking about at smoky little inns, glad sometimes of the hospitality of some peasant's hut, where the pigs slept with the family.
He was doing well if he got home for the holidays with a little white flour for a cake, and money enough to take his best cost out of pawn. The best coat, and the candlesticks, too, would be repawned promptly on the first workday; for it was not for the like of Joseph of Yuchovitch to live with idle riches around him. For the credit of Yuchovitch it must be recorded that my grandfather never had to stay away from the synagogue for want of his one decent coat to wear.
His neighbor Isaac, the village money lender, never refused to give up the pledged articles on a Sabbath eve, even if the money due was not forthcoming. Many Sabbath coats besides my grandfather's, and many candlesticks besides my grandmother's, passed most of their existence under Isaac's roof, waiting to be redeemed. But on the eve of Sabbath or holiday Isaac delivered them to their respective owners, came they empty-handed or otherwise; and at the expiration of the festival the grateful owners brought them promptly back, for another season of retirement.
While my grandfather was on the road, my grandmother conducted her humble household in a capable, housewifely way. Of her six children, three died young, leaving two daughters and an only son, my father. My grandmother fed and dressed her children the best she could, and taught them to thank God for what they had not as well as for what they had. Piety was about the only positive doctrine she attempted to drill them in, leaving the rest of their education to life and the rebbe.
Promptly when custom prescribed, Pinchus, the petted only son, was sent to heder. My grandfather being on the road at the time, my grandmother herself carried the boy in her arms, as was usual on the first day. My father distinctly remembers that she wept on the way to the heder; partly, I suppose, from joy at starting her son on a holy life, and partly from sadness at being too poor to set forth the wine and honeycake proper to the occasion. For Grandma Rachel, schooled though she was to pious contentment, probably had her moments of human pettiness like the rest of us.
My father distinguished himself for scholarship from the first. Five years old when he entered heder, at eleven he was already a yeshibah bahur — a student in the seminary. The rebbe never had occasion to use the birch on him. On the contrary, he held him up as an example to the dull or lazy pupils, praised him in the village, and carried his fame to Polotzk.
My grandmother's cup of pious joy was overfilled. Everything her boy did was pleasant in her sight, for Pinchus was going to be a scholar, a godly man, a credit to the memory of his renowned grandfather, Israel Kimanyer. She let nothing interfere with his schooling. When times were bad, and her husband came home with his goods unsold, she borrowed and begged, till the rebbe's fee was produced. If bad luck continued, she pleaded with the rebbe for time. She pawned not only the candlesticks, but her shawl and Sabbath cap as well, to secure the scant rations that gave the young scholar strength to study.
More than once in the bitter winter, as my father remembers, she carried him to heder on her back, because he had no shoes; she herself walking almost barefoot in the cruel snow. No sacrifice was too great for her in the pious cause of her boy's education. And when there was no rebbe in Yuchovitch learned enough to guide him in the advanced studies, my father was sent to Polotzk, where he lived with poor relations, who were not too poor to help support a future rebbe or rav. In Polotzk he continued to distinguish himself for scholarship, till people began to prophesy that he would live to be famous; and everybody who remembered Israel Kimanyer regarded the promising grandson with double respect.
At the age of fifteen my father was qualified to teach beginners in Hebrew, and he was engaged as instructor in two families living six versts apart in the country. The boy tutor had to make himself useful, after lesson hours, by caring for the horse, hauling water from the frozen pond, and lending a hand at everything. When the little sister of one of his pupils died, in the middle of the winter, it fell to my father's lot to take the body to the nearest Jewish cemetery, through miles of desolate country, no living soul accompanying him.
After one term of this, he tried to go on with his own studies, sometimes in Yuchovitch, sometimes in Polotzk, as opportunity dictated. He made the journey to Polotzk beside his father, jogging along in the springless wagon on the rutty roads. He took a boy's pleasure in the gypsy life, the green wood, and the summer storm; while his father sat moody beside him, seeing nothing but the spavins on the horse's hocks, and the mud in the road ahead. There is little else to tell of my father's boyhood, as most of his time was spent in the schoolroom. Outside the schoolroom he was conspicuous for high spirits in play, daring in mischief, and independence in everything.
But a boy's playtime was so short in Yuchovitch, and his resources so limited, that even a lad of spirit came to the edge of his premature manhood without a regret for his nipped youth. So my father, at the age of sixteen and a half, lent a willing ear to the cooing voice of the marriage broker. Indeed, it was high time for him to marry. His parents had kept him so far, but they had two daughters to marry off, and not a groschen laid by for their dowries.
The cost of my father's schooling, as he advanced, had mounted to seventeen rubles a term, and the poor rebbe was seldom paid in full. Of course my father's scholarship was his fortune — in time it would be his support; but in the meanwhile the burden of feeding and clothing him lay heavy on his parents' shoulders.
The time had come to find him a well-to-do father-in-law, who should support him and his wife and children, while he continued to study in the seminary. After the usual conferences between parents and marriage brokers, my father was betrothed to an undertaker's daughter in Polotzk. The girl was too old, — every day of twenty years, — but three hundred rubles in dowry, with board after marriage, not to mention handsome presents to the bridegroom, easily offset the bride's age. My father's family, to the humblest cousin, felt themselves set up by the match he had made; and the boy was happy enough, displaying a watch and chain for the first time in his life, and a good coat on week days.
When it was time for the wedding preparations to begin, news came to Yuchovitch of the death of the bride-elect, and my father's prospects seemed fallen to the ground. But the undertaker had another daughter, a girl of thirteen, and he pressed my father to take her in her sister's place.
At the same time the marriage broker proposed another match; and my father's poor cousins bristled with importance once more. Somehow or other my father succeeded in getting in a word at the family councils that ensued; he even had the temerity to express a strong preference. He did not want any more of the undertaker's daughters; he wanted to consider the rival match. There were no serious objections from the cousins, and my father became engaged to my mother. This second choice was Hannah Hayye, only daughter of Raphael, called the Russian.
She had had a very different bringing-up from Pinchus, the grandson of Israel Kimanyer. She had never known a day of want; had never gone barefoot from necessity. The family had a solid position in Polotzk, her father being the owner of a comfortable home and a good business. Prosperity is prosaic, so I shall skip briefly over the history of my mother's house.
My grandfather Raphael, early left an orphan, was brought up by an elder brother, in a village at no great distance from Polotzk. The brother dutifully sent him to heder, and at an early age betrothed him to Deborah, daughter of one Solomon, a dealer in grain and cattle. Deborah was not yet in her teens at the time of the betrothal, and so foolish was she that she was afraid of her affianced husband. One day, when she was coming from the store with a bottle of liquid yeast, she suddenly came face to face with her betrothed, which gave her such a fright that she dropped the bottle, spilling the yeast on her pretty dress; and she ran home crying all the way.
At thirteen she was married, which had a good effect on her deportment. I hear no more of her running away from her husband. Among the interesting things belonging to my grandmother, besides her dowry, at the time of the marriage, was her family. Her father was so original that he kept a tutor for his daughters — sons he had none — and allowed them to be instructed in the rudiments of three or four languages and the elements of arithmetic.
THE PROMISED LAND
Even more unconventional was her sister Hode. She had married a fiddler, who travelled constantly, playing at hotels and inns, all through "far Russia. Instead of this, she accompanied her husband on his travels, and even had a heart to enjoy the excitement and variety of their restless life. I should be the last to blame my great-aunt, for the irregularity of her conduct afforded my grandfather the opening for his career, the fruits of which made my childhood so pleasant. For several years my grandfather travelled in Hode's train, in the capacity of shohat providing kosher meat for the little troup in the unholy wilds of "far Russia"; and the grateful couple rewarded him so generously that he soon had a fortune of eighty rubles laid by.
My grandfather thought the time had now come to settle down, but he did not know how to invest his wealth. To resolve his perplexity, he made a pilgrimage to the Rebbe of Kopistch, who advised him to open a store in Polotzk, and gave him a blessed groschen to keep in the money drawer for good luck.
The blessing of the "good Jew" proved fruitful. My grandfather's business prospered, and my grandmother bore him children, several sons and one daughter. The sons were sent to heder, like all respectable boys; and they were taught, in addition, writing, and arithmetic, enough for conducting a business. With this my grandfather was content; more than this he considered incompatible with piety. He was one of those who strenuously opposed the influence of the public school, and bribed the government officials to keep their children's names off the register of schoolboys, as we have already seen.
When he sent his sons to a private tutor, where they could study Russian with their hats on, he felt, no doubt, that he was giving them all the education necessary to a successful business career, without violating piety too grossly. If reading and writing were enough for the sons, even less would suffice the daughter. A female teacher was engaged for my mother, at three kopecks a week, to teach her the Hebrew prayers; and my grandmother, herself a better scholar than the teacher, taught her writing in addition.
My mother was quick to learn, and expressed an ambition to study Russian. She teased and coaxed, and her mother pleaded for her, till my grandfather was persuaded to send her to a tutor. But the fates were opposed to my mother's education. On the first day of school, a sudden inflammation of the eyes blinded my mother temporarily, and although the distemper vanished as suddenly as it had appeared, it was taken as an omen, and my mother was not allowed to return to her lessons. Still she did not give up. She saved up every groschen that was given to her to buy sweets, and bribed her brother Solomon, who was proud of his scholarship, to give her lessons in secret.
The two strove earnestly with book and quill, in their hiding-place under the rafters, till my mother could read and write Russian, and translate a simple passage of Hebrew. My grandmother, although herself a good housewife, took no pains to teach her only daughter the domestic arts. She only petted and coddled her and sent her out to play. But my mother was as ambitious about housework as about books. She coaxed the housemaid to let her mix the bread.
She learned knitting from watching her playmates. She was healthy and active, quick at everything, and restless with unspent energy. Therefore she was quite willing, at the age of ten, to go into her father's business as his chief assistant. As the years went by she developed a decided talent for business, so that her father could safely leave all his affairs in her hands if he had to go out of town.
Her devotion, ability, and tireless energy made her, in time, indispensable. My grandfather was obliged to admit that the little learning she had stolen was turned to good account, when he saw how well she could keep his books, and how smoothly she got along with Russian and Polish customers. Perhaps that was the argument that induced him, after obstinate years, to remove his veto from my mother's petitions and let her take up lessons again. For while piety was my grandfather's chief concern on the godly side, on the worldly side he set success in business above everything.
My mother was fifteen years old when she entered on a career of higher education. For two hours daily she was released from the store, and in that interval she strove with might and main to conquer the world of knowledge. Katrina Petrovna, her teacher, praised and encouraged her; and there was no reason why the promising pupil should not have developed into a young lady of culture, with Madame teaching her Russian, German, crocheting, and singing — yes, out of a book, to the accompaniment of a clavier — all for a fee of seventy-five kopecks a week.
Did I say there was no reason? And what about the marriage broker? Hannah Hayye, the only daughter of Raphael the Russian, going on sixteen, buxom, bright, capable, and well educated, could not escape the eye of the shadchan. A fine thing it would be to let such a likely girl grow old over a book! To the canopy with her, while she could fetch the highest price in the marriage market! My mother was very unwilling to think of marriage at this time.
She had nothing to gain by marriage, for already she had everything that she desired, especially since she was permitted to study. While her father was rather stern, her mother spoiled and petted her; and she was the idol of her aunt Hode, the fiddler's wife. Hode had bought a fine estate in Polotzk, after my grandfather settled there, and made it her home whenever she became tired of travelling. She lived in state, with many servants and dependents, wearing silk dresses on week days, and setting silver plate before the meanest guest.
The women of Polotzk were breathless over her wardrobe, counting up how many pairs of embroidered boots she had, at fifteen rubles a pair. And Hode's manners were as much a subject of gossip as her clothes, for she had picked up strange ways in her travels. Although she was so pious that she was never tempted to eat trefah, no matter if she had to go hungry, her conduct in other respects was not strictly orthodox.
For one thing, she was in the habit of shaking hands with men, looking them straight in the face. She spoke Russian like a Gentile, she kept a poodle, and she had no children. Nobody meant to blame the rich woman for being childless, because it was well known in Polotzk that Hode the Russian, as she was called, would have given all her wealth for one scrawny baby. But she was to blame for voluntarily exiling herself from Jewish society for years at a time, to live among pork-eaters, and copy the bold ways of Gentile women. And so while they pitied her childlessness, the women of Polotzk regarded her misfortune as perhaps no more that a due punishment.
Hode, poor woman, felt a hungry heart beneath her satin robes. She wanted to adopt one of my grandmother's children, but my grandmother would not hear of it. Hode was particularly taken with my mother, and my grandmother, in compassion, loaned her the child for days at a time; and those were happy days for both aunt and niece.
Hode would treat my mother to every delicacy in her sumptuous pantry, tell her wonderful tales of life in distant parts, show her all her beautiful dresses and jewels, and load her with presents. As my mother developed into girlhood, her aunt grew more and more covetous of her. Following a secret plan, she adopted a boy from the poorhouse, and brought him up with every advantage that money could buy.
My mother, on her visits, was thrown a great deal into this boy's society, but she liked him less that the poodle. This grieved her aunt, who cherished in her heart the hope that my mother would marry her adopted son, and so become her daughter after all. And in order to accustom her to think well of the match, Hode dinned the boy's name in my mother's ear day and night, praising him and showing him off. She would open her jewel boxes and take out flashing diamonds, heavy chains, and tinkling bracelets, dress my mother in them in front of the mirror, telling her that they would all be hers — all her own — when she became the bride of Mulke.
My mother still describes the necklace of pearls and diamonds which her aunt used to clasp around her plump throat, with a light in her eyes that is reminiscent of girlish pleasure. But to all her aunt's teasing references to the future, my mother answered with a giggle and a shake of her black curls, and went on enjoying herself, thinking that the day of judgment was very, very far away. But it swooped down on her sooner than she expected — the momentous hour when she must choose between the pearl necklace with Mulke and a penniless stranger from Yuchovitch who was reputed to be a fine scholar.
Mulke she would not have even if all the pearls in the ocean came with him.
BY MARY ANTIN
The boy was stupid and unteachable, and of unspeakable origin. Picked up from the dirty floor of the poorhouse, his father was identified as the lazy porter who sometimes chopped a cord of wood for my grandmother; and his sisters were slovenly housemaids scattered through Polotzk. No, Mulke was not to be considered. But why consider anybody? Why think of a hossen at all, when she was so content? My mother ran away every time the shadchan came, and she begged to be left as she was, and cried, and invoked her mother's support. But her mother, for the first time in her history, refused to take the daughter's part.
She joined the enemy — the family and the shadchan — and my mother saw that she was doomed. Of course she submitted.