From The Wedding by Joseph Levine Chapter 19

From the Wedding
by Joseph Levine
Chapter 19

I am freed from the draft. I travel to Grodna and apply for a passport in Duma and travel to my mother.


Imagine, I, the lone stranger, the person everyone felt would most certainly end up in the army and, in the end, I am the one to have been exempted from service first! Not only was I first to get off, but with a white card yet! All the locals were assigned numbers and had to appear for possible service, and, in fact, many did serve.

Do you think that after the experience with the draft board my application with the local townsfolk to obtain a passport was easy? I tell you it was a song and a dance until I was able to get anywhere! It took weeks and even months with begging and pleading and lots of money until they gave me a receipt and I then traveled (alone) to city hall and received an ID card for a year's time.

By the time I left the building it was nearly night. I immediately went to the station and traveled to Brest-Litovsk. When I arrived it was late Friday afternoon (nearly Shabbos). I stayed there for Shabbos. On Sunday, I continued my travels and went to Berditchev and from there to Kazatin.

I traveled to Zlotipolia to see my mother - my mother, however, was unaware of my arrival. She was totally unaware of my whereabouts. She knew to write me every Monday and Thursday and prayed to G-d that she live to see me soon.

Now my dear readers we will trouble you to return to the time before I departed from Zlotipolia..... The town is still the same. The puddles, the same. The huts with the straw roofs that the goats pull at the entire winter, the same. The "cold" tall shul, the same- the same pool of water. The water carrying horse and wagon attempting to deliver the water uphill - never quite succeeding in getting the water delivered as it is uphill and ends up mostly spilled before its intended destination-this too is still the same.

The town "Yentas", the women who do not have much else to do but to gossip about one another, they too stayed the same. Alas, now G-d had sent them something to gossip about! In the years that I was not at home in Zlotipolia rumor had it that I was in Petersburg, that I had converted (G-d forbid)
and married a "shiksa" (non-Jew). Others, who heard that I wrote from Germany, had it rumored that I married a German and would never be allowed back in Russia.

Others, less inhibited, brazenly asked my mother if it was true that I was in America, married and owner of a factory with workers and twenty machines. My mother, not knowing what to answer, nullified all their silly dreamt up stories and lectured them. She then prayed to G-d that all her enemies' mouths would shut up and stop the wicked gossiping.

G-d listened to her plea and sent me to her at precisely the right time.

Just as I got off the train I saw a Zlotipolia wagon-driver who seated me in his covered wagon. I dozed and dreamed, nice dreams. I dreamed that I would soon be home and start searching for a bride. The girl turns out to be none other than the girl next door.

I continued to dream until I was nearing my home and my dear mother and sisters... I am a half hour away and then a quarter hour away and now I am passing the familiar cemetery, the windmill and here, finally, I arrive at the main street. I pass another familiar site or two and finally the street of my mother's home. It was evening by that time.

I asked the wagon driver to tap on my mother's window. He called out to my mother "Rachel, your Yossel is home!!" She, of course, could not believe him- just like when the
biblical Joseph's brothers came to their father, Jacob, and told him that Joseph was alive- he too did not find it believable... so too did my mother think she was dreaming.
Only when I came forth and said "Mamma, open the door" did she then start dancing and singing with utter joy! She ran from house to house knocking on all the doors, rejoicing and exclaiming to all "Yosef is alive!" Most of the townsfolk thought she had lost her mind - even my former Rebbe (cheder {school} teacher) Reb Elinke exclaimed to his wife Sarah "Poor Rachel, it seems she has gone off her rocker".

When they actually came to my mother's home and saw me for themselves, they finally all shut their mouths. By the next day the whole town was in an uproar and they all came to see me. Some did not recognize me since I had grown and filled out in the few years that I was gone from home. Others did not recognize me because I had now grown a beard. Yet others did not recognize me because I was wearing a modern suit and a expensive coat that I bought while I was in Germany. It made me look like a regular German.