Chapter 1

11

12

Part 1: Childhood Years

13

Chapter 1

When I was still a child, I longed terribly for a grandfather and a grandmother. I could not understand why all the other children had grandfathers and grandmothers, but I did not. So I asked my father to tell me why this was so.

He told me that his father and mother—that is, my grandfather and grandmother—had lived in a small town called Kholmech¹, in the Rechitsa district of Minsk province. My grandfather’s name was Moyshe Goldowsky, and my grandmother’s name was Malka. My grandfather was a melamed², he prepared older boys for the yeshiva.

Once when my father Ben-Zion was studying at the yeshiva in Petrikov, he received news one day in the month of Shevat that his father had died of a severe chill. My father immediately traveled home, and my grandmother told him the following story. There had been a very severe frost. On Friday afternoon, my grandfather went to the bathhouse so that he could immerse himself in the mikveh [ritual bath] in preparation for the Sabbath. He found the bathhouse cold and the water partly frozen. But this did not stop him from immersing himself in the frozen mikveh in honor of the Sabbath.

The result was that he caught a severe chill, and about two weeks later he died. My grandmother took his death very much to heart, and about a week later she, too, died.

Two sons were left behind: my father, Ben-Zion, and an older son, Yankev. My uncle Yankl was a shochet [a ritual slaughterer], and he had obtained a position as the town shochet in Chernobyl.

14

My uncle then took his younger brother, Ben-Zion, to live with him in Chernobyl³. My father studied at the yeshiva there and soon received rabbinical ordination. The Rebbe, Reb Motele, then took him into his household to teach his two sons, Hershele and Borekhl, both of whom were already grown young men. Hershele was about the same age as my father, while Borekhl was three years younger.

Living in the rabbi’s house was his niece, an orphan named Khane-Leye. She was very beautiful and well educated. My father married her, and my parents settled in Chernobyl.

By the time they had three children—two sons and a daughter—and my mother was expecting a fourth, Reb Motele moved to the town of Loyev,⁴ in Minsk province, taking my father and the entire family with him.

When they arrived in Loyev, the rabbi proposed that my father become his meshulakh [traveling emissary]. The rabbi’s two sons were already married and living on their own, and the older one had received rabbinical ordination.

My father needed to support a wife and four children, so he accepted the position. His work was to travel around all the towns and villages where the rabbi had followers, give them words of Torah, and collect pidyoynes [offerings] for the Rebbe. Sixty percent went to the Rebbe, and my father received forty percent.

My father was also a fine singer, and he would take jobs leading the prayers before the congregation during the High Holy Days. His sons would help him with this. Our entire family loved singing.

All this happened before I was born. I was born in April 1884 in Loyev, the fifth child in the family. (Our family kept growing: my parents had ten children, six sons and four daughters.)

15

I remember that when I was four years old, I asked my mother why the shkotzim [gentile boys] didn’t wear shoes, while I wore shoes and socks. My mother answered that the shkotzim ate pork, so they were healthy and could walk around barefoot without catching cold. Jewish children, she said, were delicate and must not walk around barefoot.

“And why do some children go around in torn clothes, while I wear whole ones?” I asked next. My mother answered that those mothers were too lazy to mend their children’s clothes, and that was why the children went around in rags.

When I turned five, I was sent to cheder.

The first time, my mother took me there herself. My teacher was named Tankhem. He had no beard and wore a wig with two long payes [sidelocks]. He looked very strange to me. When I looked at him, I became frightened and ran out of the schoolroom. A couple of older boys caught me and brought me back inside. My mother had told me that when I went to cheder, an angel would drop kopecks [pennies] down for me. And that is exactly what happened: as soon as the teacher began teaching me the alef-beys, several kopecks fell down.

I was a great mischief-maker, and all the boys wanted to play with me and treated me well. I was always the leader [literally "eldest"] in my groups of friends. I was also strong, and I would stand up for others who were being wronged. My brothers and sisters—even the older ones, not just the younger ones—would tell me whenever someone had treated them badly, and I would stand up for them.

16

A cousin of my father’s, whose name was Mirke, often used to take me to her home for a few days. She was exceptionally kind to me, and I loved her too. She was a very good and pious woman.

She did not call me Moyshe, but Yisroel. When I was born, she had asked my parents to give me the name Yisroel, after her father. So they named me Moyshe-Yisroel⁵, Moyshe after my grandfather and Yisroel after her father. Everyone at home called me Moyshe, but she called me Yisroel.

I did not do particularly well at cheder. I did not like the teacher. Once, the teacher slapped me, and I jumped up and pulled off his long payes—they were artificial payes—and ran home with them.

My mother was very angry with me and ordered me to take the payes straight back to the teacher. I obeyed her because I loved my mother very much. All of us children loved her because she was so affectionate and beautiful, tall and slender. She never shouted at us children; she asked things of us instead, and we always obeyed her.

When I returned the payes to the teacher, he told me to tell my mother to find me another melamed.

The next morning, my mother went with me to the cheder and asked the teacher to take me back, but he refused. So she took me to another teacher, Reb Leyb Yok Manizil—that was what everyone called him because he had a little goat-like beard.

There I met a couple of my friends, with whom I used to play tsurki-palki [a stick game]. I studied with him for several school terms. The teacher was very strict and had a leather “lokshn”⁶ Whenever a boy misbehaved, he would give him a lash wherever it happened to land.

17

Once he gave me a beating, and at that very moment his wife called to him. I seized the “lokshn” and hid it.

The teacher came back and searched for it, but could not find it. He asked everyone, but each boy said he knew nothing. Then he brought handkerchiefs and ordered everyone to blindfold himself.

After that, he shouted, “May the hat of whoever took the lokshn catch fire!” I instinctively grabbed my own hat. The teacher then came over to me and ordered me to hand over the lokshn. When I answered that I did not know where it was, he pulled my ears very hard. I tore myself free of his hands and ran home.

I told my mother that I did not want to study with a teacher who was a brute [literally "robber"]. My father happened to be home just then too. He did not think much of this teacher either, so he told my mother that the best thing would be for me to go with my older brother Avrom [Abraham], who was a teacher for the children of a yishuvnik [villager] near Dobryanka. When Avrom came home for the Sabbath, they could send me back with him, and he could teach me. I was delighted with this idea, and my brother Avrom readily agreed to take me to the village.

When we arrived, we drove up to an inn. My brother said to me, “This is where I teach the householder’s children: one boy and two girls." The boy was about my age, and the two girls much older.

I greeted them. Their mother, a stout Jewish woman wearing a red dress and a green kerchief on her head, came over and asked me, “What is your name?”

“Yisroel-Moyshe,” I answered.

“We’ll call you Moisey,” [this is a more Russian/Slavic version of the name] she said. “Would you like something to eat?” she asked me. Without waiting for an answer, she took me by the hand and led me into another room.

18

“Sit down and eat,” she said.

Her husband was already seated at the table. He was a big, solidly built Jewish man, tall and stout, with a large blond beard and thick eyebrows. The mistress of the house said to him, “This is the teacher’s brother.” The man of the house shook hands with me, and my hand hurt for a good few minutes from that friendly welcome.

They served food: herring, potatoes, sour cream, butter, black bread, and a large bowl of milk. Everyone sat at the table respectfully. The father made sure that everyone ate. When he turned his eyes on someone, it could frighten you. They gave me a place to sleep in the barn, where there was a great deal of hay. And the hay smelled wonderful.

I studied with my brother in the village for an entire school term. When I returned home, I was so fat and sunburned from the good food and the sun that people hardly recognized me.

I came home because my brother Avrom had refused to continue teaching the yishuvnik’s children: one of the girls had declared her love for him. Since he had long had a fiancée back home, he no longer wanted to stay with the yishuvnik.

He opened a cheder in Loyev, in the house of his fiancée’s mother (her father was no longer living). I continued studying with him there.

His fiancée was named Sarah. She was a dressmaker who sewed clothes for the wealthier householders’ wives. She was small and thin, but pretty-faced and clever.

Every morning, when I came into the cheder, she would ask me how everyone at home was doing and whether I was hungry. In the middle of the day she would bring me a bagel with milk, and I was grateful to her for it.

She would also bring my brother Avrom something to eat a couple of times a day. If he ever refused to take it, she would scold him, so that he was afraid to refuse her a second time.

19

Sarah also had a brother and an older sister. Their mother baked bagels, which she sold from their home. The older daughter helped both her mother and Sarah. Her brother also studied with my brother Avrom.

Sarah was the real mistress of the household. Though she was small, she she used to give orders to everyone, and everyone had to obey her. Otherwise, there would be hell to pay.

My brother Avrom was very handsome. He was good at his studies and could sing well. In the evenings he would spend time with his friends. He would organize plays, such as Bar Kokhba and The Binding of Isaac. He usually took the leading roles. Everyone in the town loved him, and people wondered why he had fallen in love with Sarah. Others would joke that it was destined that an Avrom [Abraham] should have to marry a Sarah.

My father, as the Rebbe's meshulakh, was seldom at home. He traveled from town to town collecting pidyoynes for the Rebbe. When my mother announced the good news that Father was coming home, we children were filled with joy.

Whenever my mother and my older sister, who was named Malke, received letters saying that Father was coming home, they immediately became very busy. They cleaned and prepared the house for the Sabbath as if for a holiday. The boys would wash the floors throughout the house, which consisted of two small bedrooms, a large kitchen, and a dining room. Malka and my mother would wash all the children’s hair and dress us in our Sabbath clothes.

My father always came home for the Sabbath. In summer, we children would sit outside on the prizbe [the earthen bench beside the house] and wait for him. In winter, we would stand at the windows and look out for him.

20

When Father arrived by steamboat, all the children would go to meet him, with my sister Malka at the head of the procession, the younger ones in front and the older ones behind them.

The whole town knew that when people saw Ben-Zion’s children marching down the street, it meant their father was on his way home from his travels. Nothing made us children happier than going to meet him. The younger children would greet him first, followed by the older ones.

My father was very handsome. He was a little taller than my mother and was not stout. He had a handsome, slightly graying beard and short, curled payes.

He wore a long black coat, half-boots, long white stockings, with his black trousers tucked into the stockings. He wore a vest with a watch on a chain in the vest pocket, a black hat, and beneath it a silk yarmulke. A large handkerchief always stuck out from his back pocket.

When my father walked away from the steamboat, surrounded by his children, people would stop and watch him, and then come over to greet him with shalom aleichem. Those standing farther away would say, “The Rebbe's right hand is here! Ah, what a Sabbath it will be in the Rebbe's shul!” That was because when my father returned, he would lead the prayers before the congregation.

As soon as Father entered the house, after greeting everyone he would say to Mother, “My eshet chayil,⁷ have you had to work hard?”

Mother would answer, “No, Reb Ben-Zion”—she called him Rabbi Ben-Zion—“our dear children, may they be healthy, did a big share of keeping the house in order.”

The samovar would already be standing on the table, and if it was still early, something to eat would also be set out.

21

After that, Father, together with the younger sons—bonim⁸, he called us—would go to the bathhouse and the mikveh in honor of the Sabbath.

When he returned, he would distribute to everyone the gifts he had brought back from his travels. He gave the first gift to Mother, then to my older sister, then to my older brother. And so he would give each child their own gift, so that no one would feel slighted. He knew what each child liked and brought each of us something to suit our tastes.

Then he would take Mother and the younger children and go to the rabbi’s shul. Our oldest sister would stay at home to prepare the table.

next page