Waiting for the Messiah was not a distant dream in our house but a daily concern. Earning money became increasingly difficult. Father was anguished that his children were straying from the right path. Warsaw was full of Zionists, strikers, and just plain Jews who cooked on the Sabbath and didn’t observe the dietary laws. In Berlin Father had experienced for the first time a city where pious Jews were relegated to a tiny corner, surrounded by a goyish world. Where would all this lead? There was only one way out: the Messiah would have to come and put an end to poverty, the Exile, and heresy. Father would often speak to me about the Messiah. He reminded me of the saying that if all Jews would observe even two Sabbaths the Messiah would come. Father would repeat at every opportunity the conviction that everything depended on us Jews and that we were responsible for the anguish we suffered.
Father often returned after prayers from the Radziminer shtibl with all kinds of news and plans. Whenever we heard Father running up the steps of our apartment, we knew he was bringing
some item of interest from the shtibl. Where my mother was skeptical by nature, Father was excitable and felt the need to share his enthusiasm with his family and even with strangers.
It was a summer evening. We heard Father running up the stairs, panting. He pushed open the door, his blue eyes and fiery red beard glowing with high spirits. The possibility that the Messiah had come ran through my mind.
“Good evening!”
“A good year!”
“I heard some news in the shtibl!” Father said. “Something extraordinary!”
“What is it? Has the Radziminer saint performed another miracle?” Mother asked mockingly.
“A new society has been founded, whose members call themselves anarchists,” Father said. “They want to do away with money. Why do we need money? Money cannot be eaten. All troubles stem from money. The anarchists’ plan is that every person should work four hours a day and in return should be given all his necessities. Every person will have to work. And I’m going to become a shoemaker!” Father said boldly. “I’m going to make boots four hours a day, and then I’m going to sit and study. Just as it is written: ‘Love work and hate the rabbinate.’”
The idea that Father would become a shoemaker prompted laughter in the house. Father smiled, too, but he seemed thoroughly taken by this new idea. Why he called it “anarchism” and not “socialism” I do not know. Evidently that is how they sold it to him.
“Many great people have come around to this idea,” Father continued, “including generals and counts. They lack nothing, but they want justice. Everything stems from work. A house is
built by one person, a garment is sewn by another. To make bread someone must plow, sow, and reap. Nothing comes from money. So if that’s the case, why do we need money? All week long people will work, and on Friday they’ll get a receipt showing that they’ve worked, and on the basis of this receipt people will be able to get everything they need from the store.”
I liked this idea. But my mother began to ask questions. “And what about an apartment?”
“Everybody will get an apartment.”
“Who would choose an attic or a cellar? Since everyone would work four hours, everyone would want a beautiful apartment.”
“People will cast lots.”
“And what would happen if someone came into a store and asked for ten garments instead of one?”
“Why should he want more? Everybody would take what he needs.”
“Some people live on fancy Marshalkovska Street,” Mother said, “while others live somewhere in the back of the city, on the outskirts of town, in Peltzovizna, or even in Siberia. If everyone is equal, everyone would want to live on Marshalkovska Street.”
“What does it matter where you live?”
“Everyone would want the best and the most beautiful for himself.”
“That’s only because of money. Once the evil impulse for money disappears, people will be satisfied with a little bit,” Father said.
“If everybody works, whom will a person go to for religious questions?” I asked.
“I will decide religious questions,” Father replied, “but without charge. One is forbidden to take money for deciding religious questions or judging a lawsuit. One is not allowed to use one’s Torah learning as a source of income.”
“And what will they do with money?”
“Paper money is just paper, it has no value. From the gold they’ll make jewelry, or who knows what.”
Father spoke of all this as if it would happen soon, tomorrow, but Mother gave the wise smile of a knowing adult who is listening to childish fantasies.
“Go wash. Supper’s getting cold!”
At the meal Father didn’t stop speaking about anarchism.
“Of course Jews long for the Messiah, but while we’re in Exile it would be quite a good thing. We wouldn’t have to pay rent. There would be no thieves. Why would a thief steal if he could work four hours a day? We wouldn’t need policemen or janitors to lock the gates, and there wouldn’t be any soldiers or wars. Because why do kings wage wars? For money.”
“Father, would the Czar have to work also?”
“Why not? Every king would have to learn a trade,” Father said. “Our Czar would learn shoemaking. A king would have to learn a trade. Otherwise what would he do when he’s no longer the king? He’d have to go begging from door to door. But with a trade his livelihood would be secure.”
“And who would remove the garbage?” Mother asked. “And who would want to be a tanner? And who would want to be a chimney sweep and risk his life crawling on roofs?”
Father’s explanations were in vain. Mother’s questions grew sharper and sharper. Suddenly Mother declared, “And why should the rich agree to this? They have palaces, maids, servants,
coaches. Why should Rothschild give away all that he has and learn how to become a shoemaker?”
“So that justice would prevail. Generals and counts have joined this movement.”
“Perhaps one crazy general did. The rich don’t need justice. The peasants starve while the rich send their darling sons to Paris to carouse. Why would they want to become equal with peasants?”
Father gave all kinds of answers, but the notion that the rich could simply be forced did not occur to him. “Force” and “might” were words that my father never considered. The core of all his remarks was that once everyone understood the benefits, all would agree.
Father finished supper quicker than usual and asked for the fingerbowl to dip his fingers before saying grace. He rarely spent time on the balcony, but that night he asked me to bring a chair out for him. I took one for myself as well. Outside it was hot, noisy, full of chimney smoke. Father sat and described the anarchists’ plans to me. Everyone would work and everyone would have an income. At age thirteen every boy would learn a trade. No line of work would be disgraceful. Nowadays people are ashamed of a trade because a worker is poor and also because workers are considered common. They have no time to study, but with a four-hour day everyone would be a scholar. In the Talmud we learn about the sages Rabbi Yochanan the shoemaker and Rabbi Joshua the blacksmith. In ancient times it wasn’t shameful to be a laborer. Our forefather Jacob was a shepherd, and so were Moses and King David.
“Father, what will I be?”
“You’re also going to be a shoemaker. We’ll work together. And after work we’ll sit and study.”
“Where will we work?”
“At home.”
“In the living room?”
“Why not?”
“Father, you can’t be a shoemaker.”
“Why not? It’s an easy line of work.”
I always loved my father but that evening I loved him even more. Of all the news that he brought from the shtibl I liked this item best. I kissed him and combed his beard with my fingers. Father sat on the balcony until late at night, depicting the happy times to come, when there would be no need for money and everyone would work and study Torah. Then he began reciting the bedtime prayer “Hear O Israel.” I hoped that this plan would quickly come true. I could already see my father sitting at a cobbler’s bench holding a hammer, an awl, and shoemaker’s thread, and me sitting next to him. People still come to us with lawsuits, but they don’t pay for the service. I go to Esther’s candy store and they give me everything free: chocolate, ice cream, cookies, caramels.
However, days passed and we did not hear anything about anarchism. Every time Father returned from the Radziminer shtibl, I asked him what was happening with the anarchists. Each time he replied, “Things like that don’t happen overnight.”
“How long will it take?”
“A while.”
I realized then that Father’s enthusiasm for the matter had cooled considerably. Apparently someone in the Radziminer shtibl had told him that this entire philosophy was incompatible with Judaism. He no longer wanted to discuss it. When I asked him, he responded, “Be a Jew and the Messiah will come.”
The Messiah had to come, because our poverty at home was worsening. All kinds of troubles beset us. My sister in Antwerp sent us a depressing eight-page letter. The paper was tear-stained. She had already given birth to a boy, Moishele. But there was a crisis among the diamond cutters and polishers. Her husband had been out of work for weeks and months. Other young people took on different jobs, but her husband knew no other line of work. He hadn’t brought home a franc, and she and her child were in dire straits.
As poor as we were, we had to send money to Belgium. There were very few lawsuits, and when somebody did come for one, Father would be in the Hasidic shtibl or at the ritual bath. I would go to call him, but the litigants rarely wanted to wait.
I remember one such incident very well. Just after Father left the house to go to the ritual bath on Gnoyna Street, some people came who were willing to wait for Father. I ran to the ritual bath, but getting there was tricky. One had to go down a staircase and pass all kinds of apartments with half-painted walls and protruding pipes in which either hot water or steam flowed. This wasn’t just a ritual bath but an entire labyrinth.
I stumbled about lost, as if in a dream. I opened one door and saw a naked woman who started screaming. I got scared, worrying that I wouldn’t make it out of all these corridors and passageways alive. Finally, I found the men’s ritual bath. Father was not there. Men walked about naked. How weird they looked with their wet beards, dripping sidecurls, and hairy and sagging limbs. And they were bareheaded to boot. Only one man stood in the water, and all the others looked at him in astonishment, wagging their fingers at him. The water was boiling hot. No one else dared set foot in it. But this one man with a black beard and
bright red skin was soaking in it. Every once in a while he dunked his head; when he surfaced he cried out breathlessly, “Oh, it’s delicious! May no goy ever feel how good it is!”
I returned home and saw that the men were no longer there—they couldn’t wait any longer.
“Did you find him, that insufferable shlimazel?” Mother said. Both she and I knew that one was forbidden to speak that way about Father. But our poverty was oppressive. We were supposed to have paid twenty-four rubles in rent on the eighth of the month. But now the eighth was coming again and we still hadn’t paid. Reb Mendl, the landlord, always sent the janitor to demand payment. He threatened to inventory our belongings and put them up for public auction. We owed money in every shop. We looked bedraggled and couldn’t afford to buy new clothes. Mother said bitterly, “Where did he disappear to? Among normal people the man of the house thinks of livelihood, but he spends days on end in the study houses. What’s going to become of us?”
And then out of the blue she remarked, “Ah, woe, I’ve been asked to divorce him!”
The idea that my parents might get divorced and become strangers was unimaginably horrible. It was almost as wild as the fact that my parents had once been strangers and a matchmaker had brought them together. Our world was full of awful truths. The older I got, the more these truths tore open my eyes, increasing the turmoil that encompassed me.