Lower East Side, Manhattan
New York City
May 1883
The spring morning sunlight pierced the darkness of the musty room of the Manhattan tenement on Ludlow Street in the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Twelve-year-old Lev Kambotchnik shifted uncomfortably in his chair. Once again, he braced for another conflict with his father, Rabbi Zvi Kambotchnik. Over the past year, these conflicts were occurring more frequently. They centered mainly around the rabbi’s frustration over the young boy’s behavior. “Be a scholar,” he always exhorted his son. A boy destined to become a rabbi shouldn’t behave the way he did. Young Lev gave his father the impression that he merely tolerated his studies. His mind always seemed to be elsewhere.
Rabbi Kambotchnik also had other concerns. His son would frequently wander all over lower Manhattan. Lev seemed fascinated with the waterfront, fascinated with that new bridge being built. The boy could sit at the water’s edge for hours, transfixed by the bridge construction. He seemed mesmerized by the passing boats and ships. He missed many lessons and was late for many others because of his fascination with the waterfront. What concerned the rabbi most was his son’s inevitable interactions with the goyim, the non-Jews, with whom he often fought. “This is not the proper behavior for a yeshiva student,” the rabbi frequently scolded Lev.
The police had brought the boy home an hour before. Lev had been in a fight on the way home from the waterfront. As he sat in the musty study, his face throbbed from several punches he had taken. He could feel the stinging of the scraped and bleeding knuckles on his right hand. But he took smug satisfaction in knowing that he had also dealt his enemies a few good blows. The door flew open, and the rabbi briskly entered the room, saying in a frustrated and angry voice, “So we’ve been fighting again!” The rabbi spoke in Russian.
Lev responded in unaccented English, but the rabbi cut him off. “Please don’t talk that language!” he shouted. His own English skills were minimal, so he felt his son mocked him by speaking in what to him was a foreign language. “I don’t understand you! We’ve had this discussion many times. It is very improper behavior for a yeshiva student. Oh, the goyim! Why the fighting? Why do you go near them?”
“Father, I did nothing to provoke the goyim. They were teasing me, taunting me, and that was all right. That didn’t bother me. But then one of them punched me. What else could I do? I had to defend myself.” He looked down at the floor and continued in a low voice. “There were simply too many of them.”
“Lev, when I was a boy in the Pale of Settlement, the goyim, the Cossacks, they all taunted us, they all beat us.” The rabbi began to relate the same story he always told about how badly the Jews were treated back in Perm, his home city in Russia. He and his family were forced to move to the Pale of Settlement, the only area in Russia where the Jews were legally allowed to live; otherwise, they would continue to face terror attacks by the goyim. His brother, Chaim, chose to stay in Perm, and Zvi was certain that he and his family had perished. To young Lev, the anecdotes seemed pointless. His father suggested that always turning the other cheek and letting people persecute and beat you was a reasonable course of action. Lev couldn’t stomach another such lecture. “Father, this isn’t Russia. This is the United States. The main reason we moved here was to avoid persecution, wasn’t it?”
That question just fueled his father’s tirade. After the rabbi was finished with the subject of Lev’s fighting, he shifted to the boy’s seeming lack of interest in his studies. It certainly wasn’t for lack of intellect. The boy not only spoke Hebrew and Yiddish, but also spoke flawless, unaccented English. He seemed to learn the language effortlessly in the first several months that they lived in the United States. The obviously bright boy seemed to be bored by his studies. The rabbi came to the point. “Lev, you are expected to take my place as the community’s rabbi. Your people need you. Your grandfather was a rabbi, as is your father. It is your destiny. Your dearly departed mother, God rest her soul, would be so disappointed in you. Yet you seem to take this responsibility very lightly. You are too easily distracted. I don’t understand. What is going on in your head? You always say nothing after we have these talks. You just glare at me with those angry eyes. What is going on in your mind, in your heart? In many ways, you seem a stranger to me!”
Lev just stared ahead for a minute. Then he looked his father in the eyes and began talking very calmly. “Father, I don’t know if it is my destiny to become a rabbi. I don’t feel it in my soul. You may not want to hear me say this, but I am not you. I am not growing up in Russia. This is America, and my thoughts are different from yours. My dreams are different. I don’t wish to live your life.”
“How can you say these things?” replied his father. “You see how the goyim treat us Jews! Do you think it will get better as you get older? You will always be fighting and always be an outsider, even in America! They will never let you belong.” The rabbi took a minute to regain his composure. His son just stared at him with those angry eyes. “What have you been thinking about? What kind of a future have you been envisioning for yourself, if not the rabbinate? What do you think you will do with your life in a world that doesn’t really want us? We are different, you know.”
The boy’s eyes softened, and he stared off distantly as he slowly and methodically answered. “The sea. I would like to sail around the world and really experience the world. The water, well, you have no idea how it calls to me. Papa, did you know that our very street, Ludlow Street, was named after a United States naval officer, Augustus C. Ludlow? I think I was born to travel, to sail to places, to — ”
“Listen to me, sailor boy!” thundered his father. “I can’t believe what I’m hearing. Get these ideas out of your head! You will never fit in their world; you can only belong in our world! We are different, Lev. Don’t you understand that?”
The boy looked up and said, “Maybe we’re different because you make us different.” He looked back down at the floor. Neither spoke for a few minutes. Finally, in a quiet voice, the rabbi spoke to his son while slowly shaking his head side to side. “Lev, you will always be my biggest disappointment.”
* * *
Lev knew that his father was an honored man in their community. He had been greatly respected back in Odessa. Shortly after the first wave of immigrants from the Pale of Settlement had arrived in New York, the community elders felt the need to have a strong rabbinical presence to serve as the pillar of their religious life. Rabbi Kambotchnik was chosen and invited to emigrate from Russia to assume the post of Chief Rabbi. Although the title was largely a symbolic one, Kambotchnik accepted and immigrated to the Lower East Side with his only remaining family member, his son, Lev.
The rabbi was fifty years old at the time. He was also an increasingly morose man. His beloved wife had died giving birth to Lev. The boy always sensed a feeling of distance from his father, even as a youngster. As he grew, he began to believe his father blamed him for his mother’s death. Shortly after their arrival in New York, Rabbi Kambotchnik sent for his spinster older sister, Sara, who moved in with them and ran their household. She, too, was entirely indifferent to her nephew. Her indifference evolved into growing resentment as she observed the constant feuding between father and son. She could see that the tension was taking a toll on her brother’s health. He appeared more ashen and weaker. He napped more frequently. His behavior began to alarm her, although she would not discuss these concerns aloud.
In fact, the rabbi was not a well man. For the past several years, he had noticed a tightening sensation in his chest when he walked ever-shorter distances or exerted himself. In their New York apartment, climbing the stairs would sometimes cause this sensation. The rabbi was getting increasingly winded with less effort over the past year. At the end of the day, his legs were swollen, and he needed to rest in bed all night for them to return back to normal size. The rabbi didn’t believe in doctors and felt they had little to offer him. He suffered in solitude. He noticed that his fights with his son also provoked his worsening symptoms. "Dear God," he prayed, "give my son the wisdom. Show him the light."
* * *
The rabbi had his hopes pinned on his son’s upcoming bar mitzvah. Lev would be thirteen years old in a month. The rabbi hoped his son would embrace the Hebrew ritual that signified the transition into adulthood. Perhaps he would finally see himself as a man, a man who would dedicate his life to Judaism. Perhaps he would see the error of his undisciplined youth. In his heart, the rabbi was counting on the bar mitzvah, even though the he felt that young Lev hadn’t applied himself adequately to his lessons.
Others in the neighborhood also noticed. Lev seemed so different from the other young Jewish boys who took their studies very seriously. They never strayed out of the neighborhood, and certainly, none of them would ever be involved in episodes of fighting with the goyim. It pained the members of his synagogue to know that the rabbi was having such heartache with his only son. So smart, yet so undisciplined, was what the neighbors said of the young boy. Everyone hoped he would grow out of this phase. After all, he had a legacy to continue.
Yes, thought the rabbi, the bar mitzvah will produce the change. All of his hopes for his son depended on the upcoming bar mitzvah. The responsibilities of becoming a man would make the difference in Lev.