Happiness Turns Out to Be Short-Lived
BY DESCRIBING THE STUDY OF THE TALMUD, I have digressed. Let me now come back to my story. I was, as I’ve mentioned, sent to school in Iwenez. My father gave me a letter to bring to the town’s chief rabbi, who was a relative of ours. In it, my father asked him both to make sure that I studied under a capable schoolmaster and to monitor my progress. This rabbi, however, brought me to a common schoolteacher. He also said I should visit him every Sabbath, so that he could test me, something I dutifully did, but our sessions were soon discontinued. During one of these exams, I began to argue against the passage I had read and to raise objections. The chief rabbi, without [67] commenting directly on what I had said, asked whether I had raised such objections with my teacher. Yes! “What did he say in response?” Nothing that had to do with the topic, I replied. He told me to be quiet and said that a child should just take care to learn his passage well, without being impudent or bombarding his teacher with questions. “I see!” said the chief rabbi. “Your teacher has made things much too easy for himself. We will have to change that. I will teach you myself out of friendship. I hope that your father will not object any more than your teacher, who will continue to receive the money your father pays for your schooling.”
This is how the chief rabbi became my teacher. The approach he took with me was uniquely his own. No weekly lessons repeated until the student has learned them by heart. No exercises done as a solo performance, during which the student is frequently interrupted over a single word or phrase that has little to do with the main [68] topic. The chief rabbi’s method was different. He had me explain something from the Talmud extemporaneously. While engaging me in conversation about subject, he clarified just as much as was necessary to get my mind working on its own. Through questions and answers, he steered my attention away from all matters of secondary importance and toward the key issues. The result was that I made it through all three levels of Talmudic study in a very short time.
My father, whom the chief rabbi kept informed of his plans and my progress, was beyond himself with joy. He conveyed his deepest gratitude to this fine man, who had gone to such lengths to help me simply out of friendship and despite his poor health (he was prone to infections and was often feverish). But the joy didn’t last long. Within half a year, the chief rabbi had joined his forbears, and I was like a sheep without a shepherd. [69]
My father was informed of this, too. He came and brought me back home. Not back to H., though, but rather to Mohilna1, where my family had moved while I was away. It was about six miles from H. The reason for the move was as follows.
Mohilna is a hamlet in the territory of Prince R., located four miles from N., his residence. It lies between the Niemen River and a forest containing a large amount of the best wood for shipbuilding. This makes the place well suited for both shipbuilding and trade. Prince R. himself had noticed the excellence of the location, as well as how beautiful and fertile the land was, though the leaseholder had of course tried hard to keep these assets unknown, so that he could quietly have them all to himself. His family had managed this profitable land for several generations, and by taking advantage of the shipbuilding and trade opportunities, as well as of various fine products of the region, he had made himself quite wealthy. [70] But when the prince happened to ride through the hamlet, he was so taken with its beauty that he decided at once to build a town there. He formulated a plan and let it be known that the town he intended to build should be a slabode—that is, a place where anyone can settle and pursue whatever profession he chooses. People wouldn’t even have to pay any kind of tribute for six years. By intriguing against the plan, the leaseholder was able to keep it from being carried out for quite some time. He even managed to bribe royal advisers to deflect the prince’s attention away from his Mohilna project.
Knowing he wouldn’t be able to support his family in miserable H., and having been compelled to stay there simply for lack of a better place to settle, my father was very excited about the prince’s intentions. He hoped to find asylum in Mohilna, especially since the region’s leaseholder was my uncle’s brother-in-law. My father went there with my grandfather, conferred with the leaseholder, and told him that he wanted his [71] approval to settle in Mohilna. The leaseholder had been afraid that prince’s plan would lead people to come Mohilna in droves from all over, and that he would be overrun and dispossessed. So he was pleased that the first person to arrive was no stranger, but instead a relative by marriage. Not only did the leaseholder support my father’s move, he also promised to help him however he could. My father relocated his whole family to Mohilna and had a little house built there. While it was being constructed, they once again had to stay in a barn.
After receiving us in such a hospitable manner, the leaseholder began, alas, to drastically change his attitude. He decided that there was no reason to fear being overrun by strangers. After all, a long time had passed since the prince had made his intentions public, and no one except my father had responded. As a Polish general and Lithuanian voivode, the prince was constantly in Warsaw [72] and too inundated with political business to think about executing his plan. Furthermore, bribes could induce his administrators at court to work against its implementation. These factors led the leaseholder to consider my father not only dispensable, but also an unwelcome burden. Now what had earlier belonged to him, the leaseholder, had to be shared with his relative. And so he did everything he could to make things difficult for my father and prevent him from establishing himself successfully.
The leaseholder had a stately house built, then got the court to decree that no new arrivals would have the rights of a resident until they, too, had built such a house. My father was forced to take his small savings, which he needed to set up his household properly, and spend it all on a house he did not need. [73]
1 Now Mogil’no, Belarus.