Chapter 5

A new chapter of my life had begun.

Klachkin was the leader of the group. He gave talks on various social problems. He also kept on with my lessons. Often, during these lessons he would help me understand the talks he gave at the skhodkas. He was like a father to me. I grew to love him and was deeply grateful for everything he did for me. What interested me most at the skhodkas was the discussion of the workers’ condition. Once, at one of these meetings, it was proposed that I distribute proclamations in the match factory, and I gladly agreed. A couple of hundred workers were employed there, and they were mercilessly exploited. They worked long hours for very low pay, in terrible sanitary conditions. Where the matches were dipped, it was so hot, with no ventilation at all, that the workers were suffocating and had to go out into the fresh air every three hours.

Suddenly my father turned up in Mozyr. He had been hired to lead the High Holy Day services at the amud. So he came to see me at the Radikoviches’ pharmacy (he knew them from Loyev). From his manner I could easily tell that he didn’t like my working in the pharmacy at all. He asked whether I would help him as a meshoyrer [choir singer assisting the cantor]. I said I would come to his inn that evening and we would talk it over there. I also told him that my voice had already changed. When my father had gone, I asked Klachkin and the Radikoviches what I should do. I didn’t want to be a hypocrite and go to shul to pray, but I also didn’t want to hurt my father by refusing him. They advised me to go ahead and pray in shul with my father on the High Holy Days. That evening, when I came to my father at the inn and told him I would help him sing, I could see that it pleased him greatly. He didn’t need to rehearse much with me, because I remembered the prayers and his melodies well. Ever since I was five years old, my older brother and I had regularly helped him at the amud.

When Rosh Hashanah came, I put on my yeshiva-student clothes and went to shul to help Father sing. After the service I told my father I had to go, because the Radikoviches were waiting for me. Father told me to stay for kiddush. After kiddush the shames [sexton] of the shul came up to my father and asked him who I was. My father answered, “This is my son Moyshe.” The shames exclaimed, “Everyone took him for a gentile, because he works in the pharmacy on Shabbos and holidays.” Right away there was an uproar: “Can you imagine! Reb Ben-Zion’s son works on Shabbos and holidays!” I ran straight out of the shul, hurried to the Radikoviches and told them what had happened. I never went back to that shul.

After Rosh Hashanah my father came to the pharmacy and demanded that they let me go. The Radikoviches and the provisor received him

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very courteously and reasoned with him in a friendly way, but they couldn’t persuade him to let me stay on at the pharmacy. Under pressure from my father, I left. He also demanded that I go back to the yeshiva, but I refused, and I didn’t go to say goodbye to him. As soon as he had left town, I went back to the Radikoviches. But they were afraid to let me work in the pharmacy, because my father had threatened that a ban [kheyrem] would be placed on their pharmacy if I came back to work there.

I went to work in the match factory, in the packing department, putting the boxes of matches into wooden crates and nailing them shut. In the factory I got to know many workers and began organizing a soyuz [union] of the factory workers. I organized a group of eight workers and brought Comrade Klachkin to speak to them. I also distributed socialist proclamations in the factory. I soon found out that there was an organized group in the factory belonging to the Bund. The Bund did not compete with the Russian Social Democrats. On the contrary, they worked together on strikes and May Day celebrations. I was invited to a skhodka of the Bund comrades, held at Khane-Khaye’s house on Ostrog Street. There I found several workers from the match factory. The skhodka had been called to discuss demands for improving the match workers’ conditions, and to call a strike if the demands were not met. A committee was elected, and I was put on it too. As chairman of the committee they elected Yankl Kimborovski,

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who was in love with Khane-Khaye’s sister. The committee also included the comrades without whom the factory couldn’t run: specialists in cooking and mixing the chemicals for the matches. It took several months to organize all the workers for a strike. Then a strike committee was secretly elected, and it drew up the demands:

a ten-hour workday; an eight-hour day for those working at the hot sulfur; a raise of two rubles a week; pay for overtime; no searching the workers’ pockets when they went home; and the election of a five-man committee to represent the workers.

I worked energetically on the strike committee. The committee chose me to talk with the factory owners, because I spoke good Russian. When the owner rejected the demands, we called a strike. We succeeded in shutting down all work in the factory. No one could get near it, because police and gendarmes had surrounded all the buildings. The committee met the owners again, and after a long debate over the demands they refused again. On our way back from the negotiations, the police arrested me and five other committee members. But to get from the factory into town you had to pass through a small wood. When we reached the wood, all of us who had been arrested started running. And that’s how I managed to escape arrest.

I ran straight to see my good comrade and teacher, Klachkin. He advised me to leave town immediately and go to Yekaterinoslav. But I didn’t want to leave Mozyr, because by then I was

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in love with a girl who was also active in the Social Democratic group, and she was not indifferent to me either. She was a kursistka, very beautiful, tall and slender, and a couple of years older than me. She was deeply devoted to the movement. I loved to hear her speak, and I often helped her with party work. Her name was Frida Karasik. From Klachkin’s I went to Frida, and she too advised me to leave town. She promised to write to me and gave me 25 rubles.

But when I got to my room to pick up my things, a policeman was there waiting to arrest me. I took off running and once again managed to get away. While running I lost the 25 rubles. But I had another five rubles on me, so I hired a cart and went to Khoiniki, where my sister-in-law Sarah’s sister lived. I went straight to her, and she received me very kindly. But she lived with her father-in-law in a single room, and they were very poor. I realized I wouldn’t be able to borrow any money from them. So I asked her where the town shochet lived, because my comrade Frida had told me that the shochet’s daughter, Mirem, a Bundist, had once been visiting in Mozyr, and the two of them had become close friends. When I got to the shochet’s, I told him right away that I was Reb Ben-Zion’s son and that I was a cantor. Since the coming Shabbos was Rosh Chodesh [the new month], I said, I would like to lead the services for them at the amud. The shochet received me very warmly and said we should go over to the rabbi and talk it over with him. We went to the rabbi, and the shochet introduced me and explained what I wanted. The rabbi gave me an angry look and said: “Reb Ben-Zion’s son without sidelocks?” He said nothing about a

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beard, since I was only fifteen. I answered that I had studied at the Kiev Conservatory and couldn’t wear sidelocks there. The rabbi accepted the excuse and agreed to let me lead the services. I asked 20 rubles for leading the prayers; they bargained me down to 10. I asked for the 10 rubles on Friday, because I had to leave on Saturday night right after havdalah. On Friday night I led the prayers at the amud, and the congregation was pleased with me. The town’s leading men each invited me to their homes for Shabbos, but I thanked them and declined, because I had promised Mirem, the shochet’s daughter, that I would go with her to a Bund skhodka. So I went to the shochet’s for supper. There I acted pious: I made kiddush and kept my hat on my head the whole time. After the meal I said I had to go see my sister-in-law’s sister, but in fact I had arranged to meet Mirem at a certain spot. The skhodka never took place, because there was nowhere to hold it. So Mirem and I went for a walk, holding hands. Suddenly the shames of the shul came along, walked up to us, and began lecturing me: a cantor walking arm in arm with a girl! We walked away without answering. Right then I decided to leave at dawn on Shabbos. I had to walk about two miles to reach a village and hire a cart to take me to the railway for Kiev. At dawn I dressed quietly, took my bundle and set out. On the way I came across a cart going straight to the station. I paid the peasant 25 kopecks, and he took me to the train.