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Updated: August 2, 2024
If she could sign her name in Russian, do a little figuring, and write a letter in Yiddish to the parents of her betrothed, she was called wohl gelehrent well educated. Fortunately for me, my parents' ideals soared beyond all this. My mother, although she had not stirred out of Polotzk, readily adopted the notion of a liberal education imported by my father from cities beyond the Pale.
At bedtime she and I chatted as we used to do when we were little girls in Polotzk; only now, instead of closing our eyes to see imaginary wonders, according to a bedtime game of ours, we exchanged anecdotes about the marvellous adventures of our American life.
My father's ambition, after several years' sojourn in enlightened circles, reached even beyond the pension; but that was flying farther than Polotzk could follow him with the naked eye. I do not remember our first teacher. When our second teacher came we were already able to read continuous passages. Reb' Lebe was no great scholar. Great scholars would not waste their learning on mere girls.
When I turn a corner in snowball days, the boys with bulging pockets see a head held high and a step unquickened, but I know that I cringe inwardly; and this private mortification I set down against old Polotzk, in my long score of grievances and shames. Fear is a devil hard to cast out. Let me make the most of the winter adventures that I recall. First, there was sleighing.
It was not so bad in Polotzk, within the Pale; but in Russian cities, and even more in the country districts, where Jewish families lived scattered, by special permission of the police, who were always changing their minds about letting them stay, the Gentiles made the Passover a time of horror for the Jews.
How, then, could the Dvina be in Vitebsk? My cousin and I had come on the train, but everybody knew that a train could go everywhere, even to Russia. It became clear to me that the Dvina went on and on, like a railroad track, whereas I had always supposed that it stopped where Polotzk stopped. I had never seen the end of Polotzk; I meant to, when I was bigger.
So it must lie till there was time to cart it to the Dvina, which had all it could do at this season to carry tons, and heavy tons, of ice and snow and every sort of city rubbish, accumulated during the long closed months. Polotzk had no underground communication with the sea, save such as water naturally makes for itself.
In Polotzk he continued to distinguish himself for scholarship, till people began to prophesy that he would live to be famous; and everybody who remembered Israel Kimanyer regarded the promising grandson with double respect. At the age of fifteen my father was qualified to teach beginners in Hebrew, and he was engaged as instructor in two families living six versts apart in the country.
My father's mind was ready for the reception of such ideas, and he was inspired by the new view of the world which they afforded him. When he returned to Polotzk he knew what had been wrong with his life before, and he proceeded to remedy it. He resolved to live, as far as the conditions of existence in Polotzk permitted, the life of a modern man.
Before sunset the news was all over Polotzk that Hannah Hayye had received a steamer ticket for America. Then they began to come.
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