Chapter 2

Traditionally the Rebbe is the head of a Hasidic community, with a large household, many followers (Hasidim), and gatherings around his Sabbath table.

The Rebbe’s court¹ was in the old palace of the porets [the local nobleman and landowner]. The Hasidim and the Jews of the shtetl had bought the palace from the porets for the Rebbe. He sold it because there was a monastery next door whose bells rang regularly twice a day, and even more often on Sundays. Whenever there was a Christian funeral, they rang even more. Well, it was all too noisy for the old porets. Besides, his children had scattered across the wide world, and he didn’t want to live all alone in that big palace.

The court consisted of a large house, a smaller house, a little building for the kitchen, and big barns and stables for the horses and cattle. All these buildings stood in the middle of a large orchard of various fruit trees. In the middle of the courtyard grew all kinds of flowers. The whole orchard was surrounded by a fence. In the courtyard there was also a wine cellar stocked with all sorts of wines.

The Rebbe lived in the large house with his unmarried children, and so did his son Borekhl, who was already married and occupied three rooms. The Rebbe himself occupied two large rooms, where he received his Hasidim. The rebbetzin had five rooms, and the unmarried children had two rooms each. In the middle of the large house was a great hall where a thousand people could pray. There the Rebbe held his tish [ceremonial communal meal] every Shabbos and holiday, because even on an ordinary Shabbos a great many Hasidim would come.

The second house, which had ten rooms, was occupied by Reb Hershele and his children. A couple of rooms were occupied by the servants. The kitchen building had two sections, one for meat and one for dairy, and a couple of rooms for the attendants. When you came to the Rebbe’s, it seemed as if you had walked into a royal palace.

In the shul people prayed three times a day: shakhres, minkhe and mayrev [the morning, afternoon and evening services]. On Friday night you came into the great hall of the shul, where the beautiful hanging lamps were lit and candles burned all along the walls, and the Hasidim, all dressed up, were praying aloud, and you were overcome with awe. The Rebbe would come out of his room, and all the Hasidim would go up to him and wish him “Gut Shabbos.” The local Jews went home, and the guests who had come to see the Rebbe would eat at his table. On Shabbos, at shalosh-seudos [the third Sabbath meal, late Saturday afternoon], a great crowd would come to the Rebbe. They sang many zemirot [Sabbath songs], and the Rebbe gave a Torah discourse. This would stretch on until melave-malke [the meal after the Sabbath ends].

On Friday nights my father didn’t stay at the Rebbe’s table but went home with us. He would not speak from candle-lighting on Friday until after havdalah on Saturday night. [Many strictly observant Jews do not talk on Shabbos.]

When we came into the house after prayers, every corner smelled of the holiday. Everyone would stand around the table and Father would recite kiddush. Mother stood behind Father’s shoulder holding his chair, ready to slide it under him so he could sit down as soon as he finished. Father took a sip from the wine cup and then passed it to my mother and to the children. On Shabbos the table had challah instead of black bread, and fish, chicken, soup and tsimmes. Father and we children would sing zemirot. A lot of people used to gather under our windows to hear my father and his bonim singing.

Gemara: study of the Talmud

Once, early on a Monday morning, I heard Father telling Mother that it was a public embarrassment for a son of Ben-Zion’s to be carrying on with a seamstress. Mother told him that Avrom kept his cheder in her house. Father called me over and told me to go study with another melamed, Reb Borekh-Moyshe. Only Gemara² boys studied with Borekh-Moyshe. Although it was already time for me to be studying Gemara, I would rather have stayed with my brother, but I couldn’t go against my father’s wishes.

When my brother saw that I hadn’t come to his cheder, he sent a boy to find out what had happened to me. (By then my brother had moved in with his fiancée’s family altogether.) Toward evening he came to see Mother and Father. Father asked him whether he had made up his mind to marry Sarah. My brother’s answer was “Certainly.” Father said nothing more about it.

After my brother left, Mother asked him, “Well, Reb Ben-Zion, why didn’t you give him a piece of your mind?” Father answered, “But she’s an orphan!”

When I was nine years old, I went with a group of boys one summer to bathe in the river. Our shtetl, Loyev, lay on the great river Dnieper. I wanted to show my friends that I could swim better than they could, so I swam far out. In the middle of the river the waves grew strong and dragged me toward a water mill where a big wheel was turning, and the current pulled me toward the wheel. I could have been crushed by that mighty wheel, but I didn’t lose my head. I grabbed hold of a board at the edge of the mill and began yelling for someone to save me. Two fishermen heard my shouts, came over in their boat and brought me back to shore. I was saved.

I went straight to the Rebbe in the shul to say the Gomel blessing [the prayer of thanks after escaping danger]. The Rebbe told me that God had made me a gift of my life, and so all the years I would live belonged to God. If I wanted God not to take those years away from me, he said, I should be a pious Jew, give charity, be good to people, never wrong anyone, share my piece of bread with a poor man, and keep the commandment to honor my father and mother. Perhaps that is why I developed a such a strong desire to help the weak and stand up for the wronged. My older sisters would sometimes take care not to talk in front of me about someone who had mistreated them. They knew that if I found out, I would vigorously take up their cause, and sometimes they did not want that. I even stood up for my father, once when the Rebbe’s son had done him an injustice.

When I was ten, I looked older than my age. I was bold and afraid of nothing. While we lived at the Rebbe’s court, Khanele, the Rebbe’s daughter, was always sending me on errands. She was very beautiful, and I loved running errands for her. When I brought her the things she had sent me for, she would hug me and kiss me on the forehead. This happened several times.

Once, when I came into her room, she asked me to button her blouse at the shoulder. I was glad to do it, and when she kissed me on the forehead, I put my arms around her and gave her several kisses. She said nothing, just pushed me away. For a while afterward I avoided running into her.

Around that time I also liked playing with the Rebbe’s granddaughter, Reb Hershele’s daughter. Her name was Bas-Sheve. She was also very pretty, and she was my age. She was always asking me to lift her up when she was sitting on the grass in the Rebbe’s garden; she wanted to see whether I was strong enough, she would say. I would do as she asked, and once she was on her feet she would wrestle with me. I would knock her down onto the grass and tumble down on top of her. But after the incident with Khanele, I got a bit bolder and more forward when I played with Bas-Sheve. Once I hugged her so tightly that she tore herself out of my arms and threatened to tell my father. So I stopped playing with her, because I was ashamed for my father to hear such a thing about me, that I played with girls.

Our house stood near the Christian streets. Many of the shkotsim used to play with the Jewish boys. Grisha Radikovich, the pharmacist’s only son, always took the side of the shkotsim. I didn’t like that, a Jewish boy siding with the shkotsim. So I went and told his parents. They received me very warmly. Grisha defended himself: the Jewish boys insulted him. They said his parents were goyim because the pharmacy was open on Shabbos, and they didn’t want to play with him. I was a strong boy, and the shkotsim were afraid of me, so I promised to take him into my circle of boys, and he was very pleased. His parents invited me to visit often, and they treated me to lekekh [honey cake] and candy.

I became a regular visitor at the Radikoviches’. Grisha began urging me to enroll in the uchilishche [the Russian school] to learn Russian. I let myself be talked into it and started attending the school in secret, because my father didn’t want his children learning non-Jewish subjects. But since my father was away traveling most of the year, I had the chance to study at a Russian school. And my mother? She didn’t know either.

Grisha and I became close friends, and I used to quarrel with the other boys who picked on him. I would tell them the pharmacist had to stay open on Shabbos because he had to make up medicines for sick people.

In the end my father found out that I had become practically one of the family at the pharmacist’s. He told me that if I kept up my friendship with Grisha, he would take me out of cheder and apprentice me to a carpenter.

Once I overheard my father telling my mother that the Rebbe had demanded that he take the Rebbe’s son, Reb Borekhl, along on his travels and find him a post as rebbe in some shtetl. My father refused, because Reb Borekhl was a poor scholar and making him a rebbe would be a disgrace. A rebbe has to give Torah discourses to his Hasidim, and Borekhl couldn’t.

Borekhl found out about it and looked for a chance to get even with Father. One day, when Father came into the shul and went up to the amud to lead the prayers as usual, Borekhl came over and gave him such a shove that he nearly fell over. I couldn’t stand to see him insulted like that. I leapt up and landed a couple of slaps on Borekhl. There was an uproar, and I ran away. When my father came home he scolded me. “What’s this, you go around slapping a rebbe’s son?” he said angrily. I said to my father, “But he’s a lout. He insulted you, so I stood up for you.” But a few days later I had to go to the Rebbe and apologize, because that’s what my father demanded.