XVIII THE FIRST APOSTASY

WE who lived in the town were the envied of our race who lived in the scattered villages among the mountains. We had the synagogue, the centre of spiritual and social life, and we had the school. In spite of the fact that many of our Jews hated one another because of business competition, there was a community interest which held all of them together—making them, in a measure, share the common joys and certainly the common griefs.

We had no aristocracy except that of piety and learning and in this the poor excelled the rich; so that life, such as it was, with its dangers and drudgeries, was shared life—and thus became bearable.

The village Jew had cause to envy us. He lived isolated among an alien and often hostile population, whose social pleasures he could not share, even had he cared to. If he lived near enough, he came to the synagogue each Sabbath, taking steep climbs over many rough miles; but more often he could come only on the holy days, for distances were great and the means of communication difficult. The term “Village Jew” was synonymous with crudity and ignorance; in fact, the life of such an one did not differ much from his peasant neighbour, except in a few important particulars. The peasant drank palenka. The Jew sold it to him; the peasant consequently grew poorer and poorer while the wealth of the sober Jew increased correspondingly. The peasant had no ambitions beyond his meat and drink, while those of the Jew were boundless, and although he could not achieve much more than the accumulation of moderate wealth, the future of his children was assured to such a degree that he did not fear their being condemned to the life of a “Village Jew.”

The children came to school in town, which was no little burden upon our community, but a burden which was gladly borne. In spite of the fact that the “Village Jews” were better off than the peasants, many of them could not afford to pay their children’s tuition and board, which the town Jews provided by free scholarships and by a very unique scheme of “boarding ‘round.”

At the beginning of the school year, parents went to the homes of the well-to-do and secured in each a certain day in the week on which the child would be a guest at table. This provided a variety of boarding places; a fact which had obvious advantages and disadvantages.

Our home was open to this invasion Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and it was the “Sabbath boy” as we called him, whose pathetic career had a lasting influence upon my life.

He came from the village of “Deephole,” a Slavic community, so hidden in the hills that not even its church steeple was visible from the main road. His father was a whiskey distiller and usurer, and the home smelt of vile liquor, which the peasants consumed in great quantities on the premises. On Sundays it was the scene of drunken brawls, which followed the weekly dance. The boy’s bed was underneath the table around which his father’s guests drank and made merry, and when the room was vacated, which was usually late at night, he went to sleep, breathing until morning the filthy, alcohol-laden air.

Nor were his waking hours much happier. His father, who was quick tempered, believed and practiced King Solomon’s advice to parents; while the mother did not have sufficient strength of character to shield her children from his brutal assaults.

When the boy came to town, he came into a new world and when he came to our home it was indeed to him a Sabbath of delight; for he was a growing boy who never had got enough to eat and our table was bountifully supplied. He was an ill-favoured, freckled, hook-nosed lad, extremely sensitive and shy. He never answered any questions beyond yes, or no, as if loath to lose any time from the process of filling up.

The Jew scarcely ever expects to be thanked for favours extended, so we were not at all astonished when, after feeding the Sabbath boy for four years, he dropped out with no word of acknowledgment, and another half-starved village child took his place.

Rabbinic law proscribed that walking on the Sabbath be restricted to 2,000 yards from the synagogue. These were marked out by wires, stretched across rather frail looking poles.

How many generations of children had been hemmed in by these rusty wires I do not know; but the beckoning fields in the spring, the butterflies, the corn-flowers and the poppies were mightier than the rabbinic law, and many a time I drew my mother past the boundaries, out into God’s open world. I delighted to watch the peasants at work in the field, and it took the firm hand of my mother to keep me from going to aid them at haying time, or when they lifted the heavy sheaves of rye upon their huge wagons, drawn by white, long-horned oxen. I do not know how many sins I was guilty of each Sabbath afternoon, for I loved to pluck the wild flowers and that was a sin repeatedly committed. I whistled secular tunes which no doubt was another; I ran many godless miles beyond the boundary, chasing rabbits and often stopping to read inscriptions upon the Christian shrines.

Ah, me! if only all my sins had left such unstained and pleasant memories. On these Sabbath walks I drew my mother into the villages which lay around us, and from which came our “day-eaters” as the charity boarders were called. We often stopped to inquire for them; but I fear my interest was wholly selfish, for invariably we were offered some refreshments, and in spite of my æsthetic delights in these Sabbath afternoon walks, they made me hungry.

Once we went to the village of Deephole. The wretched isbas crowded about the village church. Pigs, babies and geese bathed indiscriminately in the muddy pond; wrinkled, toothless old women were breaking flax, while drunken peasants reeled out of the inn towards which we did not need to inquire our way.

Two rickety steps led up to the door, on which was a faded sign, stating that the government gave license for the sale of tobacco. A shrill bell announced our coming when we opened the door. The air was heavy from ill-smelling tobacco smoke, which helped to make the other stenches at least bearable. A wooden enclosure, reaching from the beaten earth floor almost to the ceiling, fenced in the bar, where a Gentile girl measured out palenka, for on the Sabbath a Jew may not engage in business; hence the proxy. Watching her, as an eagle watches her prey, was the Jewess, her smooth false front and clean dress being signs of the holy day.

When she recognized my mother she fell weeping upon her neck; mother wept too, although not knowing why and I began to whimper and cry in sympathy. The Gentile bar maid took an ancient looking stick of candy out of an open jar and, giving it to me, assuaged my grief. The Jewess locked the bar, temporarily suspending business, and drew my mother into the adjoining living-room, a third of which was occupied by a bake-oven, which served as bed for a fair share of the large family. On top of the oven lay the husband—paralyzed. His black eyes seemed to be the only members of his body that he could move and they were pathetic in their mute helplessness and appeal for sympathy. I caught but snatches of the story as it was told my mother. It was all about our “Sabbath boy.” “He ran away from home—the father, God forgive him, was too hard on him.” Not a line came from him—not a sign of life. When the peasants came home from their annual pilgrimage to the Shrine at Maria’s Bosom, they told how they had seen a freckled, hook-nosed acolyte there, who looked just like the little “schid” that ran away. The same evening his father started for the town, walking, without stopping and without eating. Day after day the mother waited but no word came from her husband. She closed her home and started after him, taking the children with her. When they came to the town and inquired for him, she was led to a hospital in which Sisters of Charity walked about noiselessly. “So kind they were to think of it,” and they took her gently to a cot on which lay the motionless body of her husband. All he said, and that in a laboured, painful whisper, was: “Hashel has been baptized.” There the story ended, and as various things needed to be done for the sick man, mother did them.

Then she took my hand and led me back. Not once did she permit me to pluck a flower, or chase a rabbit, and for a good many Sabbaths after that I did not go beyond the rabbinic limit.