4 From cheder to cheder
Published in the Forverts on September 25th, 1946
Tate’s death shook our entire family so much that things could never be as they were. No matter how hard mame worked so that we would not be in need or have to ask for help, she could not make it happen. It never happened. And then the name “Feige the Possessorka” began to sound like a joke, because a possessor is a generally a professional who has means to live well.
When mame lost all interest in running the property as tate had, she left the village and settled in the town of Rybinka, where my sister Bas-Sheyva lived with her husband. And there, in Rybinka, we opened what is called a “sustenance-house,”1 where they sell everything that you can think of - even a little drink too. Mame worked very hard in the “general store,” and she was really a great eyshes-chayil2 and knew how to get along with people. Not only with the Jewish customers, who bought various small things from us, but also with the goyishe customers. She understood who could be given a loan, and who could not. And she behaved such that people in the town had a great respect for her, and they still called her “Feige the Possessorka.”
A possessorka without a possessiye3.
Mame couldn’t figure out what to do with me. She was of course sure that a woman - a widow - could still raise her daughters and, as it were, stay on the right path, such that when people see them, they will see beautiful and well-behaved children. But with a son, it was more difficult. Especially with such a little son, who was a bit over-confident and didn’t show any great desire to learn… Just like tate, mame also wanted me to grow up to be a mentsh and to study, if not a lot, at least a little. And because of that, she took me to Belaya Tserkov, and there she put me in the cheder of the melamed Chaim Machalies because she heard that he was a very good melamed and that the children of the finest and most honorable families learn from him.
– Look, Shmuel’ik - she announced to me - put your head down to study, you will be a scholar. A Jewish boy must be able to learn.
When we lived in Belaya Tserkov, I lived with Shmuel Pekelis, the father-in-law of my brother Itzhik Gedolia, who was given the nickname Kotik because he was as quiet as a kitten. Shmuel Pekelis himself promised that they would keep me at home like their own child and that nothing would go wrong. And so it was. They kept me at home like their own child and they took good care of me. But the trouble was, because I was an orphan4, I was watched over a little too closely. I just had to do one little thing, and I was immediately reprimanded for it:
– This is not acceptable, Shmuel’ik. Not acceptable. Your mother is doing everything so you can be in this cheder, and this is how you repay her!
The truth was that I was not an ordinary boy. On the contrary, I was actually a quiet boy and I didn’t catch anyone’s eye too much. In addition, I always kept myself very clean and neat, and when someone gave me a new outfit, my eyes really lit up. I preserved it in such a way that it always looked brand new, as if it had come straight off the needle. What’s more - I had a tendency to sing every song that I heard in the street. As soon I heard it and immediately I was singing it. And if the song could be danced to, I danced to it.
And all the people who were so watchful over me did not want me behaving this way, and they scolded me: “What is the big deal with you? And what are you doing, dancing out of nowhere like that?” And sometimes they also brought up that I am an orphan… An orphan must not sing. An orphan should not be happy.
Also, my brother Itzhik Gedolia, the silent Kotik, used to come from time to time to Belaya Tserkov from the village of Solovinke, where he sold grain. He also reprimanded me and told me how to behave - so that everyone in the home, including his father-in-law and mother-in-law, would be able to say that I was just as quiet as him. And this, in the end, was too much for me, and I couldn’t take it anymore. I also longed for my mother very much, and so I begged him, my silent brother:
– Do me a toive5 and take me back home. I’ve been here enough. I don’t want to be here anymore. I’d rather go to the cheder in Rybinka.
I also asked my mame to let me come home. And when they finally gave in to me and they brought me back to Rybinka and I was once again home with my mame, they sent me to cheder with the melamed Shmuel Yossel, and this alone meant I could not have any joy; nothing good could come of this.
He was an angry Jew, Shmuel Yossel. A Jew with a red beard, a broad physique, and with two large, glaring eyes. He did not know how to speak to a student with kindness. He was always angry, and the anger always simmered in him just like in a cauldron. And when his two big eyes, the glaring ones, focused on a student, it felt like “the value of congealed/hardened mother’s milk”6 and the student was overwhelmed with fear.
Though I wanted to keep the promise I made to my mame that I would study well in the cheder at Rybinka, I was unable to do so. It was absolutely impossible to learn anything from such a melamed. We all hated him in the cheder. His wife, an overburdened woman, who sold apples in the market, also hated him. And her hatred towards him was not for no reason, because there rarely a day went by that he did not beat her. And always, when he hit her, she screamed with a voice as if possessed, “Save me, Jewish children! He is going to kill me, the murderer…!” Of course, I could not learn much Toire from such a melamed. Every day in the cheder was a punishment for me.
And from that time I remember something, which was strongly imprinted in my memory, and I want to tell it here: This was on a hot summer day, soon after lunch. In the shtetl, there was suddenly a stampede. And when the Reb7 went outside to see what was happening there, he immediately ran back inside and shouted at the top of his voice: “Come, shkotsim8, with me!”
In a hurry, he grabbed his kapote and went out quickly, and we all ran after him, wondering where he was taking us - we were afraid. We followed him and none of us said a word the whole time. And so we went until he led us all into the besmedresh9 and there we saw something I will never forget.
In the middle of a group of inflamed and very upset Jews stood a frightened man, Meïr the synagogue choirboy, who at that time used to go to a nearby town to pray on Shabbes in front of the pulpit. We knew that he was the son of the Rokinter10 Rabbi, and that the Rybinker butcher, Yehiel, was his brother. He was a very young man, Meïr, and he always behaved as if he had no fear of anyone in the world. This time, however, he stood trembling in fear, and the enraged Jews shouted at him, called him the worst names, and one of them, an angry Jew, slapped him across the face.
– You scoundrel! You ocher yisroel11!
But this was not enough for them, so they also forced him down and lashed him. And it didn’t help to wrestle with them; Meïr could not stand alone against so many people and he had to accept the punishment that was given to him.
I did not know why the choirboy received such punishment. The other students in Shmuel Yossel’s cheder did not know either. Only when they released him and handed him over to the hands of his brother Yehiel, the butcher of Rybinka, did we find out that he was accused of some very big crime, a sin against God. That’s what they said in the shtetl. They also said that his friend Leibish was also involved in the crime. The Rybinker rabbi’s son had “modernized” and was out for “bad culture”12. Leibish should have been given the same punishment as befell the choirboy, but he ran away and nobody knew where he went.
And meanwhile, the whole town went “upside-down”13. Everywhere people talked about this. And Reb Shmuel Yossel was in “seventh heaven”14 and he did not miss any opportunity to remind the students in the classroom of what they had seen.
“Nu, shkotsim,” he said, stroking his red beard. “Nu, shkotsim, have you seen what is done to an innocent young man when he commits a sin against God? Ha?… That’s exactly how you will be beaten and cut off, when you commit a sin against God…”
This is why he had led all of us to the besmedresh: He wanted us to see it with our own eyes and to remember it…
After that, Meïr the choirboy was too ashamed to show his face in the street; he left Rybinka, and he never came back there again… But heard of him again? Yes, indeed we heard a lot.
People must have liked him a lot, because he, Meïr the choirboy, the son of the Rybinka Rabbi, later became a famous opera singer on the Russian stage. And he called himself Medvedev15 even then… However, he did not forget when they beat him in the synagogue when he was caught for that offense. And when I met him, many years later, in America, we both laughed a lot when we talked about it. But I will tell you about this when I reach that point16…
I will use the term “general store” for this moving forward.↩︎
“woman of valor”↩︎
“A farmer without a farm.”↩︎
his mother is alive, but this term is still used↩︎
pronounced “toiveh” - literally “a good” - means a favor.↩︎
well this is quite the idiom..! It’s clearly not a good thing.↩︎
Referring to Shmuel Yossel, Reb was used as a general honorific ala “Mister” and does not strictly imply the person is a Rabbi↩︎
pranksters, ”punks”↩︎
“Beit Midrash” meaning “house of study;” a place for dedicated Torah/Talmud study↩︎
adjective, of Rokinta. According to this bio This Rabbi’s name was Haim Bernshtein.↩︎
derogatory term for someone who has greatly sinned.↩︎
In other words, he begun to assimilate and leave the community; he’s gone “off the derekh”, as the kids say. At this point, he was already in the early stages of his secular opera career.↩︎
“topsy-turvy”↩︎
This is in fact a Jewish phrase/concept. In Judaism, there are seven levels of heaven.↩︎
Mikhail Efimovich Medvedev, né Meïr Haimovich/Yefimiovich(?) Bernshtein.↩︎
This point will be reached in Chapter 22↩︎