From the Wedding Chapter 4
My father does not wish to be a settler - farm worker - and
becomes a business man. I start attending cheder.
Not everyone wished to be a farmer, many dispersed throughout the big and small cities, became businessmen and their children became workers. Some were tradesmen and some were salesmen in shops. My father, may he rest in peace, arrived with the rest and did not wish to be a farmer, so he became a businessman and remained in Zlotopolia, a small Jewish city. He married, and settled into a business of buying and selling wheat. The cost of living was low--prices were low on everything. One always had enough with as much as he earned. As much as one earned in a week stretched to support a family and also pay for children’s schooling. The
breadwinner also managed to go to shul every day. This I remember, as though it happened only yesterday.
When the month of Elul arrived, my father said, now that I am turning four years old I am to start learning in the Yeshiva. He wrapped me in his large Tallis and took me over to Reb Yisroel the 'Malamud' teacher. The Rebbe took out the large Aleph Beth chart and I repeated after him, Aleph, Beth, Gimmel and so on. I repeated a few times and the Malamud threw a coin up. This is how we went alone to Reb Yisroel the Malamud daily. He was a tall, strong man with a long grayish beard, with alert, good eyes, and one would rather learn with Reb Yisroel rather than with his assistant. We all learned in the small shul. There were approximately 25 boys gathered to learn, over two tables.
The Rebbe learned with older boys who could already daven (pray). He also started teaching them Chumash (Bible) with a very nice lecture.The assistant learned with the small children. The assistant had to pick up and take home the children. He usually carried them over his shoulders but only those who lived far from the Yeshiva. Those who lived nearby came on their own and even went home for lunch. For those children who came from remote areas the assistant would get the food that their mothers prepared for them. The mothers would send them in small pans and the assistant would bring all these pans at one time and each child ate the food supplied by his mother. He never mixed them up. In the afternoon each child returned home with his own pan. The assistant would carry each child home with the pans. This is how it was both in the summer and winter, because there was often rain and it was always muddy and puddly. The assistant earned three coins a month for this.
Being that I lived two houses from the Rebbe I went to and from cheder on my own. I also went home for lunch on my own. But the assistant earned his three coins regardless. This is how I learned at the Rebbe's the entire winter and could read quite well. As Pesach neared - when the portion Vayikra (Leviticus) was being read – the Rebbe started to teach me Chumash (Bible). It was a custom at that time that when one began to learn Chumash one would invite the Rebbe and close neighbors in to one's house for Kiddush after shul and say a speech.
I remember my parents had just moved from another street to Shmuel Yosef's street. They bought an old bent house which they had demolished and in its place they built a nice large house with a large roof. With a gate and a stable for a cow or horse for whenever they would rent either. When we moved into this new house and my parents were making a house warming, that same Shabbos is when I began learning Chumash and said my very nice speech.
This Shabbos was the holiest and most glorious for my parents because at that time I was an only son. They had, at that time, two girls - older than myself. I continued learning in the same fashion with the Rebbe until I was six years old and could already learn Chumash well.
When my parents were having their own home built my mother promised - if, with G-d's help, she would have her own home-- a place to find peace, so that it would no longer be necessary to move every year to strange apartments, she would keep her home open to guests and fulfill the mitzvah of "having guests". If a poor man would need a place to stay for a night or even a week she would let him stay free of charge. So it was, there was a special guest room in the house. A room with a vinyl couch and another couch with a small table and two chairs. Whoever came was welcomed. A peddler who sells prayer books, tzitzis, and Jewish books would come and stay a few weeks. Sometimes we would have a poor man, a lecturer, this type of guest would also stay for a few weeks. This is how things were for a long time.
Just once did a man stay longer than a few weeks. My mother asked him what he does, so he told her he is a Lutvak, that for approximately five or six Passover holidays he has been away from his home. He carries around a box with silver, a watch with a chain, a cigar box, a spoon, silver goblets, and on each item they sell lotteries (raffles). He goes around from house to house and shop to shop and gathers the money from the lotteries and then goes to the shul where all the townspeople gather and he raffles off each silver piece and whoever wins gets the silver. This usually takes a few months, so he remained in our house the entire time. He was becoming some-what obnoxious, but my mother would never tell him to leave. He was just a poor man!
The "Pleter" (raffle seller) was a lazy man, not very tall; he was heavy and was intelligent. My father enjoyed his company. He was a smart man and therefore my father enjoyed talking to him. He was quite knowledgeable. My father spent many nights talking to him. My mother used to call him 'Knotty", because he had a big beard which he never combed and was all knotty. But in town he was still called the Pleter. He was a very poor man but a great believer. He was always confident that his raffles would sell quickly and this would enable him to send his wife a few rubles (coins).
Having a Shabbos guest was not just a 'mitzvah' in our house it became customary. How could we possibly sit down to a Shabbos meal without a Shabbos guest? The lack of a guest would cause my father to have a disturbed Shabbos. So G-d sent us a permanent guest for shabbos, the Pleter! There was yet another whose name was Nathanson.
I want to introduce you to this Nathanson. He was a singer, not as a chazan (cantor) but a poet. He published a book in Hebrew about cholera, in a very nice fashion he described how G-d got angry with this rotten world and caused this disease cholera, naturally in the guise of a female--an ugly one at that, a frightful one--a 'Choleria'** with a big knife in her hand and she would cut (kill) left and right. The book was written in nice military language, when cholera doesn't really deserve such nice language... But it matched the type story.
Now let me introduce you to the author himself. He was tall and thin, with a long face and a thin growth. The hair on his head was also thin but quite long and it hung down straggly. He dressed like a German, with a tall high hat (top hat). Everything he ever wore was clean and neat, everything was old but spotless. How he came to us no one knew. My mother suspected the Pleter had something to do with his arrival. One 'shlamazel' attracts another.... The Pleter brought him over one nice day with a gray suitcase just when my mother wasn't home. When she returned home later she found this man with the gray suitcase reading to my father some book. She immediately labeled him a 'shlamazel'. One of the shlamazalim that it's best to "do your business and get him moving". But, it was already too late. You don't chase people out of your house, especially a soul who claims he needs nothing and wants nothing and produces nothing. He slept on the old torn vinyl couch and when the samavar (large tea kettle) boiled he would transfer hot water into his own little tea kettle and poured in from a paper a 'brust' tea (herb tea that is supposed to be good for the heart. He would take his piece of sugar from his pocket and would drink his tea.
With eating he was the same way, also with his own food stuffs. He had his own bread in his suitcase. Bread, the older it gets seems to last longer, so for a few months, he remained in our house . He would buy himself herring daily, for a coin. He would go along slowly with the herring on the tip of his finger into the kitchen, would apologize a few times to my mother and ask if she would permit him to broil his herring. Of course, the herring when it was being broiled would cause a stink, to the extent that one could choke. My mother would threaten that the next time she would throw him out along with his herring, but, of course she never did. She would have to have a 'Tartars' heart, how could she do it to someone who exists all week from a lousy piece of broiled herring? However, on Shabbos he was a guest like any other guest sitting at the table, though a head taller. A refined Jew, fairly well versed in the Torah, a clever man, a writer, whatever, but he was poor, what should he do? If he had had a choice he would rather have been a rich man, but there is no mazel...., and he sighs and my father sighs along with him. My father pours him a glass of shnapps, a glass for the Pleter and a glass for himself, and they all say l'chayim, not for themselves, but for all of Israel. They get lively and their tongues get loose and they all start talking at once, not just ordinary talk but talk of Torah from Torah books, general books, wisdom, general knowledge.... This is how things were for quite a while until the Pleter left to be with his family in Lithuania, almost seven years since he had seen them last. How very quickly after that the Doctor Nathanson
vanished. We later heard that he was in Kiev and even later went on to America, became a reverend and was doing all right.
This is how things were in my parents’ house, until the family grew and we needed the extra rooms for the children, and we could no longer accommodate guests.
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** In Yiddish, choleria, literally a person with cholera, is used as a pejorative description
of a female.
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In the sixteenth chapter , he tells a very touching story about leaving his mother to go to Berlin, Germany. He mentions several cities which are all well-known for their Jewish history.
Jews first arrived in Berlin at some point in the 13th century. Prior to this period, German Jews had lived primarily in southern Germany, in communities along the Rhine. But in the 13th century, the Jews began to migrate to the cities of the north, to escape the persecution and expulsions that had become a constant since the Crusades began in 1096. The Jews would not find matters much better in Berlin. In fact, the first time they are mentioned in any city documents is in an ordinance enacted in 1295, forbidding wool merchants to sell yarn to Jews. In the following centuries, they continued to be the target of oppression. In 1349, the Jews were accused of starting the Black Plague that was sweeping through Europe, and were expelled– but not before many were killed, and had their houses burned down. The Jews were allowed back in 1354, but were expelled once again in 1446. In 1510 and 1571, the Jews were again expelled en masse, after having been allowed to return in between. The motivations behind these expulsions varied: in 1510, the exile followed an unfounded accusation of host desecration; in 1446 and 1571, the Jews were simply told to leave so the government could confiscate their property. Between expulsions, the Jews of Berlin were primarily engaged in money-lending and petty trade. They lived in the Grosser Juedenhof (“Jew's Court”) area, and on Juedenstrasse (“Jew Street”).
Following the expulsion in 1571, virtually no Jews inhabited Berlin for a century. This changed in 1663, when the elector of Bradenburg allowed Israel Aaron to enter Berlin as a court Jew. Soon afterwards, in 1670, 50 Jewish families were allowed into the city. This community grew, despite the restrictions on residence and family size, and, by the beginning of the 18th century, there were approximately 1,000 Jewish residents. The community paid a great deal of its income in taxes: a protection tax, a residence tax, a head tax and a payment required to work in certain professions were all used at one point or another to extract money from the community. Nonetheless, the Jews excelled as merchants, mainly selling precious metals and stones, and as bankers. Soon, they were among the richest people in Berlin, and by the halfway point of the 18th century, the Jewish population totaled 2,000 people.
As Berlin's Jews continued to infiltrate the social and economic elite, their ranks continued to grow, despite skyrocketing intermarriage and apostasy. By the turn of the century, there were more than 110,000 Jews in Berlin, comprising more than 5% of the total population. Communal institutions thrived as well: between 1880 and 1930, eight elaborate new synagogues were constructed, raising Berlin's total to sixteen. Numerous Jewish newspapers were founded, and organizations such as Bnei Brith, Poalei Zion, and Hibbat Zion attracted many new members. At the same time, however, anti-Semitism was on the rise, and, in the years leading up to the Nazi's ascendance to power in 1933, attacks on Jews increased.
In the years between 1933 and 1939, as Jews in Berlin had their social and economic rights systematically eliminated, Jewish communal life increased dramatically: Jews could only send their children to Jewish schools, and could not interact with any citizens other than their own kind. In June 1938, the collection of Jews began, as thousands were arrested without reason. On the evenings of the 9th and 10th of November, Kristallnacht, Jewish synagogues and shops were burned down throughout Berlin, and in the months that followed, more and more Jews were arrested or put to work at forced labor. Jewish communal life, however, remained vibrant.
For two weeks in August of 1936, the treatment of the Jews and other persecuted minorities in Germany was hidden while the Summer Olympics were held in Berlin. In an attempt to legitimize his rule, Hitler cleansed the city of incriminating evidence, so that the international community saw no sign of wrongdoing. Of course, no German Jews were allowed to participate in the event, and as soon as the Olympics ended, the mistreatment continued, and accelerated. In 1941 things changed even more dramatically. Many more areas of the city were declared off limits for Jews, and laws were enacted requiring Jews to wear the infamous yellow badge. Between 1941 and 1943, all the city's Jews were deported to camps throughout Europe, and, on June 16, 1943, Berlin was declared Judenrein (“clean of Jews”).
In the aftermath of the war, some Jews came out of hiding and others returned to their homes. Berlin was universally considered a “liquidation city” – no one expected the Jews to have a future in Berlin, and thus it was assumed that all the residents would quickly emigrate. This assumption proved to be partially incorrect. While East Germany had few Jews among its inhabitants, West Germany, particularly the American zone, maintained a sizable community, bolstered by an influx of displaced persons after the war's conclusion. The Jewish community's growth stagnated, then declined until 1989. Then, the city received a “shot in the arm” when the Berlin Wall fell, and the Jews of East and West Berlin were unified into one community. They were joined by thousands of immigrants from the former Soviet Union, who, for the first time since the war, reinforced the traditional elements of the community. The Jewish population of Berlin is currently estimated at more than 20,000.
BREST-LITOVSK (in Polish, Brzesc; in Russian documents, Brestye, and later, Berestov; and in Jewish writings, Brisk or Brisk de-Lita = “Brisk of Lithuania”): A fortified town in the government of Grodno, Russia, at the junction of the Mukhovetz river with the western Bug; capital of the district of the same name. The Jewish population of the city in 1897 was 30,252, in a total population of 46,542; that of the district (including the city) was in the same year 45,902, in a total of 218,366, or 21.02 per cent.
Brest was the largest and the most important of the first five Jewish settlements in Lithuania, dating from the second half of the fourteenth century, and continued in that leading position till the rise of Wilna in the seventeenth century. According to Bershadski, the well-known charter of Grand Duke Vitold, dated July 2, 1388, was originally granted to the Jews of Brest only, and was extended subsequently to the other Jewish communities of Lithuania and Volhynia. Brest-Litovsk soon became the center of trade and commerce, as well as of rabbinical learning, and the seat of the administration of the Jewish communities of Lithuania and Volhynia.
The fifteenth and sixteenth centuries must be regarded as the golden age in the history of the Jewish community of Brest. In the charter of Casimir Jagellon, granted Aug. 14, 1447, to all Jews in Lithuania and Poland, Brest is mentioned, among other important provincial towns, as controlling many territories. In 1463 the same king presented a Jew named Levan Shalomich with several estates in the district of Brest, and leased to him certain villages
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