A Jewish Life on Three Continents: The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden 9780804786201

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A Jewish Life on Three Continents

Stanford Studies in Jewish History and Culture ed i ted by

Aron Rodrigue and Steven J. Zipperstein

A Jewish Life on Three Continents The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden translated, edited, and annotated, and with introductions and an afterword by lee shai weissbach

stan f ord u n iversit y press stanf o rd, calif o rn ia

Stanford University Press Stanford, California ©2013 by the Board of Trustees of the Leland Stanford Junior University. All rights reserved. Published with assistance from the Southern Jewish Historical Society and from the Department of History at the University of Louisville. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system without the prior written permission of Stanford University Press. Printed in the United States of America on acid-free, archival-quality paper Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Frieden, Menachem Mendel, 1878–1963, author. A Jewish life on three continents : the memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden / translated, edited, and annotated, and with introductions and an afterword by Lee Shai Weissbach. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-8047-8363-7 (cloth : alk. paper) 1. Frieden, Menachem Mendel, 1878-1963. 2. Jews—Lithuania—Biography. 3. Jews, Lithuanian—United States—Biography. 4. Jews, Lithuanian—Israel— Biography. 5. Zionists—Israel—Biography. I. Weissbach, Lee Shai, 1947- translator, editor. II. Title. DS135.L53F76 2013 320.54095694092—dc23 [B] 2012042058 ISBN 978-0-8047-8620-1 (electronic) Typeset by Bruce Lundquist in 10.5/14 Galliard.

For Rena Miri and Ari Judah, great-great-grandchildren of Menachem Mendel Frieden

Contents

The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden: An Introduction A Note on Translation and Editing A Note on References Acknowledgments Photographs follow Menachem Mendel Frieden’s Apologia Menachem Mendel Frieden’s Apologia

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1

My Father’s Family

13

My Mother’s Family

23

My Father’s House

43

Me and My Youth

73

My Entry into Heder

93

On My Way through Yeshivot

114

Passover and the Holiday Cycle

134

More Yeshiva Studies

162

My Studies with Rabbis

177

Matchmakers and Marriage

202

America

223

I Found the Best Woman

256

My Journey to the Land of Israel and My Early Activities There

276

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The Work of Americans in the Land of Israel and My Role in It

303

More on Life in the Land of Israel

332

Travels, the Era of World War II, and Illness

357

A Second Trip to the United States

394

Afterword: Menachem Mendel Frieden’s Journal and His Life after 1947

425

Glossary Index

457 463

The Memoir of Menachem Mendel Frieden An Introduction

Central to the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century history of the Jewish People are the experience of life in the shtetl, the mass migration of East European Jews to America, and the creation of a modern Jewish homeland in Palestine. Indeed, these are arguably the three most significant elements of the story of the Jews in the century leading up to the era of the Shoah and the founding of the State of Israel. In exploring these three fundamental aspects of the modern Jewish experience, students of East European Jewish life, of the immigrant encounter with America, and of Zionist activity in the Land of Israel have relied on a wide variety of sources and among these have been the autobiographical writings of those who were themselves products of the shtetl, or immigrants to America, or Zionist pioneers.1 Seldom, however, have students of modern Jewish history had access to an autobiographical account written by an individual who was involved in all three of the principal facets of the modern Jewish experience in their three different settings. The Hebrew memoir completed over half a century ago by my maternal grandfather, Menachem Mendel Frieden, is, however, just such a document.2 It is presented here in translation, edited slightly, and with chapter introductions and notes.

1.  On the general issue of using autobiographies as sources for the writing of history, see, for example, Jeremy D. Popkin, History, Historians, and Autobiography (Chicago, 2005), esp. chapt. 1; and David Carlson, “Autobiography,” in Miriam Dobson and Benjamin Ziemann, eds., Reading Primary Sources (New York, 2009). 2.  One of the few other autobiographies available in English by an East European immigrant to both America and Palestine is Golda Meir’s My Life (New York, 1975), but Meir’s work devotes only three of its fifteen chapters to Eastern Europe and America, and even these chapters are focused on Meir’s developing Zionism.

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Menachem Mendel Frieden stands as a representative of a noteworthy generation of East European Jews who grew up in a world whose distinctive character was already fading at the turn of the twentieth century and whose destruction came with the Shoah. His was a generation that matured at a time when the United States was emerging as a great center of Jewish life and that approached old age just as the tragedy of the Shoah was unfolding and as the State of Israel was coming into being. Nonetheless, my grandfather was most unusual in that he not only spent many years in each of the three major centers of Jewish life before and after the turn of the twentieth century, but also in that he penned a memoir that recounts his experiences in all three environments. My grandfather’s memoir reviews several generations of family history and covers his life from the time of his birth in 1878 until the middle of the twentieth century. It tells of his early years in a Lithuanian village; of his schooling, courtship, and marriage in Eastern Europe; of his migration to America and his exploits in the country early in the twentieth century; and, finally, of his settlement in Palestine in 1921 and his involvement in Jewish life there up until the establishment of the State of Israel.3 In covering so much crucial chronological and geographic territory, Menachem Mendel Frieden’s memoir is a rare and invaluable resource for the study of a tumultuous era during which the Jewish world was dramatically transformed by the encroachment of modern ideas into a traditional society, by great streams of migration, and by the project of nation building in Palestine. After all, as one guide to the methodology of history has observed, “at the heart of an historian’s work is [the] reading and interpretation of texts.”4 The historian Michael ­Stanislawski has called autobiographical writings “inherently problematic texts as historical sources,”5 and, as we shall see, the reading of Frieden’s memoir does raise some important questions about its subjective nature. Nonetheless, 3.  Compare what Hebrew University professor Yosef Klausner once wrote about Sins of My Youth, the autobiography of the Hebrew Enlightenment writer Moshe Leib Lilienblum: “even though we have here an autobiography and confession of an individual, whose sufferings and struggles take on a central part of the story, this book is in essence a reflection of the lives of entire generations of Jewish Lithuania in particular and Russian Jewry as a whole.” Klausner is quoted in Michael Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews: Essays in Jewish Self-­ Fashioning (Seattle, 2004), 59. 4.  Dobson and Ziemann, Reading Primary Sources, 2. 5.  Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews, 9.

Introduction

autobiographical writing, no less than the work of trained historians, “claims to tell true stories about past events,” 6 and, as such, it should certainly be exploited as a source of evidence. Frieden’s reminiscences do, in fact, shed light on a wide range of subjects, from the tension between Hasidism and its opponents to the workings of chain migration, from the impact of the Haskalah on impressionable youths to the challenges of peddling in the American South, and from the experience of travel at the turn of the twentieth century to the vicissitudes of business arrangements among Jews in Eastern Europe, in America, and in Palestine. So too, the memoir lays bare the tribulations that Jewish men, women, and children faced in adjusting to new circumstances as they transplanted themselves from one place to another. When it comes to some specific subjects, ­Frieden’s memoir provides intimate details simply unavailable elsewhere. It affords a vivid account of the day-to-day life of East European yeshiva students, for example, and it reveals much about the inner workings of the Palestine Economic Corporation, an agency that played a central role in the creation of a modern Jewish society in the Land of Israel. Frieden’s memoir is also helpful as a primary source that can prompt us to rethink some of the perceptions we may have in connection with the modern Jewish experience. In telling the story of Frieden’s life, the memoir reminds us, for example, that even those who were highly influenced by the Haskalah could maintain a traditional religious lifestyle. The memoir reminds us, as well, that not all East European immigrants who crossed the Atlantic ended up in America’s great cities. As we shall discover, when Frieden came to America, he made his home in the relatively small Southern city of Norfolk, Virginia. Similarly, ­Frieden’s memoir alerts us that, while the Zionist pioneers who involved themselves in farming and collective living have attracted most of the attention of those studying Zionist history, not all who came to build a Jewish homeland in Palestine took up agricultural endeavors. Frieden was, in fact, part of the small cohort of Zionist pioneers who established the urban and entrepreneurial infrastructure of the Yishuv, the pre-state Jewish community of Palestine.7 6.  Popkin, History, Historians, and Autobiography, 11. 7.  On the relative lack of attention to urban Zionist pioneers, see, for example, Zohar Shavit, review of Gur Alroey, Immigrants: Jewish Immigration to Palestine in the Early Twentieth Century, Ha’aretz, June 4, 2004.

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The Frieden memoir is also valuable for the way it makes evident that, not only for its author, but for hundreds of thousands of his contemporaries, the modern Jewish experience was transnational. Because most of the Jewish memoir literature available today focuses on a life in one specific milieu and because most of the scholarship in modern Jewish history has related to one specific country or region, the intense interconnectedness of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Jews in various places is sometimes obscured. Frieden’s memoir, by contrast, highlights the crucial interrelatedness of the world’s various Jewish communities. The Jews of Eastern Europe who took flight to places such as Western Europe, South Africa, America, or Palestine did not lose touch with their roots in the Old Country, and Jews both in the ­Diaspora and in the Land of Israel remained bound to each other through ties of ethnic identity, common origins, language and kinship. Moreover, Frieden’s memoir reveals some of the ways his early life in Jewish Lithuania influenced his encounter with America and how, in turn, his nearly two decades in the United States colored his experience in the Land of Israel. Further enhancing the value of Frieden’s memoir is the fact that it is an example of an autobiographical work produced by a rather obscure participant in the Jewish world of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Although, as the student of Jewish autobiography ­Marcus Moseley has pointed out, there seems to have been a “disposition toward the autobiographical” among the Jews of Eastern Europe in this period, those who recorded their life histories were primarily prominent personalities with a sense that their stories were important ones, and it is the autobiographical writings of those people that historians have most often consulted.8 On the other hand, historians have had fewer opportunities to turn to the autobiographical writings of more ordinary individuals, since not only were these people less likely to have recorded their life stories in the first place but, if these stories were written, they are less likely to have been published. Still, the autobiographies and memoirs of more obscure individuals such as Menachem Mendel Frieden contain a wealth of information, especially about the 8.  See Marcus Moseley, Being For Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography (Stanford, Calif., 2006), 412ff. (quotation from p. 422).

Introduction

experiences of ordinary people. As the literary scholar Alan Mintz has said in reference to Hebrew memoirs of the nineteenth century, the autobiographical writings of the less well known “ask to be taken seriously for the intrinsic truth of the experience they portray rather than for their association with the . . . authors who wrote them.” 9 Similarly, the English theorist Roy Pascal has reminded us that “one can take delight in the records of quite trivial people, not only because of what they tell us, but even because of themselves as human beings.”10 It is true that the autobiographical writings of little-known individuals are likely to be less elegantly composed than those of prominent politicians, authors, artists, and other public figures, but this may also help them avoid what the theorist Georges Gusdorf has called the “original sin” of autobiographers, that is, rationalizing their lives and making “the line linking past and present far too exactly continuous and logical.”11 In the end, what the historian David Assaf has said about the memoirs of the Yiddish writer Yekhezkel Kotik could be said about the reminiscences of Menachem Mendel Frieden as well: It is not their “striking artistic level” that makes them important, but “rather, their strength lies in their being an authentic cultural document, which preserves, along with significant data on all aspects of life, a gallery of images, flavors, and smells.”12 In recent decades, scholars who have studied autobiographical writings, sometimes called ego documents, have attempted to categorize their various types and especially to distinguish between works that should be considered true autobiographies and those that should be considered memoirs. Roy Pascal, for example, has suggested that “in the autobiography proper, attention is focused on the self, in the memoir or reminiscence on others,” and the great French authority on ego documents, Philippe Lejeune, has similarly posited that autobiographies focus primarily on reconstructing the life story of the author, and especially the story of the development of the author’s personality, 9.  Alan Mintz, Banished from Their Father’s Table: Loss of Faith and Hebrew Autobiography (Bloomington, Ind., 1989), 14. 10.  Roy Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography (Cambridge, Mass., 1960; rpt. New York, 1985), 179. 11.  See ibid., 15–16. 12.  David Assaf, ed., Journey to a Nineteenth-Century Shtetl: The Memoirs of Yekhezkel Kotik (Detroit, 2002), 75.

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while memoirs are more concerned with public events as they are recalled by the author.13 Marcus Moseley, too, the expert on Jewish texts, has argued that autobiography “functions primarily as an introspective, self-reflective mode of literary discourse” and that it is concerned mainly with the “perceptions and emotional responses of the self,” while memoir is concerned more with “deeds and events in the life of the other.”14 Along the same lines, Alan Mintz has contended that, unlike memoirs, true autobiographies are “acts of self-reflection displaying genuine inwardness” and that they often combine the story of the author’s life with “the subjective confession of personal deficiencies and the subjective expression of lament.”15 Menachem Mendel Frieden himself at one point mused about the different ways of recording life stories. He wrote that biographies and autobiographies “have always been read by the multitudes as suspense novels,” arguing that “biography is, in effect, a novel built and based on factual information, especially when it is about someone famous.” “It makes no difference,” he continued, if the interest in the subject “is for his good and agreeable qualities or because of his sins and deceit.” On the other hand, memoirs, according to Frieden, “take an individualisticsubjective approach” and “don’t interest the general public, but rather the family circle and the friends of the writer.” However, “it’s different if the writer of his personal memoirs widens his view and includes the times and the environment in which he lived and functioned, and thus describes the general lifestyle in that time and place, which perforce influenced him for good, or otherwise.” In this case, Frieden said, if the writer “is able to provide an accurate, true and objective description, an individualistic historical portrait will be created, very important for the future historian.”16 While some of those interested in autobiographical writings have immersed themselves in the debate over the distinctions to be made 13.  Pascal, Design and Truth in Autobiography, 5. Lejeune’s ideas are discussed in Colin Heywood, Growing Up in France: From the Ancien Régime to the Third Republic (Cambridge, 2007), 27. 14.  Moseley, Being For Myself Alone, 7–8. 15.  Mintz, Banished from Their Father’s Table, 7, 8. In making the latter statement, Mintz is discussing specifically Leon Modena’s seventeenth-century autobiography Life of Judah. 16.  The passages quoted here appear in a brief note composed by Frieden concerning “the Greats on History,” not included in this edition.

Introduction

between different types of ego documents, others working on these writings have found such a debate to be of little use. The American theorist of autobiography James Olney, for example, has not bothered much with the distinctions to be made between autobiography and memoir and has used these two terms more or less interchangeably, along with terms such as confessions or life-writing.17 Similarly, ­Michael ­Stanislawski, who has studied “autobiographical Jews” specifically, has also proclaimed that he is “not at all interested in revisiting the question of the genre distinctions between autobiographies, memoirs, life-stories, and the like. The taxonomic question is not only moot,” he adds, “it is circular.” Even the theorist Roy Pascal admits that “no clean line can be drawn” between the genres of memoir and autobiography and that “there is no autobiography that is not in some respect a memoir, and no memoir that is without autobiographical information.” More pointedly, Marcus Moseley has asserted that the exhaustive literary criticism of the genre of autobiography has led it “to be locked in a pattern of chasing its own tail.”18 Obviously, the line between the two genres of memoir and autobiography is a vague one, if it exists at all, and the life story penned by Menachem Mendel Frieden, which he himself called his zichronot, his memoirs, certainly bears witness to this fact. As we shall see, Frieden’s memoir contains elements often associated with each of these two genres. While the Frieden memoir seeks to describe events in the author’s life, it also aims to place those events in a larger historical context, and it contains elements of introspection and self-reflection as well. As might be expected, Frieden’s memoir is first and foremost an account of his personal history. In his memoir’s introductory Apologia, a sort of justification for his decision to write, Frieden explains that he had always had a certain curiosity about his roots and a pride in his heritage, and that his desire is to provide future generations of his family with information about the family’s past and about the course of his own life. This seems to have been his prime motivation for producing the document we have. 17.  See Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews, 4; and Moseley, Being For Myself Alone, 3. 18.  Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews, 8–9; Pascal, Design and Truth, 5; Moseley, Being For Myself Alone, 2.

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It is unlikely that Frieden consciously set out to imitate earlier autobiographical writings, although he may nonetheless have been influenced by some of these. As his memoir reveals, Frieden was early exposed to the Haskalah, and so he may have come across some of the Hebrew and Yiddish novels that influenced East European Jewish autobiographical writing. It is also possible that he was at least aware of important Jewish autobiographical works such as Solomon Maimon’s Lebensgeschichte (considered the first true autobiography by a Jew), Moshe Leib Lilienblum’s Sins of My Youth, and Mordecai Aaron Gunzburg’s Aviezer, all works that were themselves influenced by Jean Jacques Rousseau’s seminal Confessions, published in 1782. Frieden may well have read the auto­ biographical writings of some of his contemporaries as well. Certain passages in Frieden’s memoir are strikingly similar to parallel passages in the autobiography of the Zionist activist Shmaryahu Levin, for example, and Frieden was definitely familiar with the autobiographical reflections of the English author and playwright W. Somerset Maugham, whose lifespan, 1874 to 1965, was almost identical to Frieden’s own.19 In any case, whether consciously or unconsciously, when he put pen to paper, Frieden followed certain universal patterns of organization that have characterized nearly all autobiographical writings. For example, most such accounts are built around a series of turning points in the life of the author. As the British expert on childhood Colin Heywood has suggested, “the very act of writing an autobiography encourages people to put a shape on their existence, and even to dramatize it a little.” So too, nearly all ego documents address many of the same key subjects. It is quite common for autobiographers and memoirists to record their very earliest memories and to recall images of their parents, their early home life, and perhaps their first sexual experiences.20 Of course, even as it follows certain familiar patterns of life-writing, Frieden’s memoir, like all other autobiographical works, is the story of one specific person and describes the particular course that person’s life took. Thus it is that Frieden’s memoir serves not only as a portal 19.  For Levin’s autobiography, see Maurice Samuel, trans. and ed., Forward from Exile: The Autobiography of Shmarya Levin (Philadelphia, 1967). Versions of this work were available in Yiddish, Hebrew, and English by the 1930s. Frieden’s familiarity with Maugham’s writings is revealed in a brief reflection on old age not included in this edition of his memoir. 20.  Heywood, Growing Up in France, 90, 103.

Introduction

through which readers can pass in order to explore a great many aspects of modern Jewish history, but also as an account of a fascinating personal saga. Although in its Hebrew original, the writing in the Frieden memoir is not always polished, readers will find Frieden’s account of his life and times highly readable and often engrossing. Some of the descriptive passages in the memoir are vivid and almost lyrical. Telling of the way the men and boys of his childhood village prepared for the Sabbath, for example, he writes: “Their excursion to the bathhouse is all bustle and noise, every household together, the father leading and the children following, each with his belongings under his arm, a change of underclothing and the bath attendant’s fee.” Other elements of the story Frieden tells are heartrending. Describing the way he and his wife experienced the death of their first child, he recalls: “Our heartbreak and sorrow swelled as we saw the tiny, guiltless infant breathe his last and die in my arms.” And flashes of humor appear in the text as well. Relating how he was welcomed by his Southern customers when he peddled in North Carolina, for instance, Frieden writes that “they used to call me ‘Jesus’ because I had a small beard at the time and to them I bore a striking resemblance to their Lord.” Describing the hotel where he stayed when he first arrived in Palestine with his family, he recalls that the kosher food there “may have been ‘kosher’ but it was not ‘food.’” Although Frieden wrote his memoir primarily in order to record his own life story for the benefit of his family, he frequently sought to use his composition as an explicitly pedagogic tool as well. The memoir contains numerous digressions, some longer and some shorter, in which Frieden seems simply to be providing information in a straightforward and objective manner. Although he touches upon a variety of subjects when he assumes his pedagogic voice—subjects ranging from the development of mail order sales in America and the magnificence of the World’s Fair of 1939 to the proper technique for fishing—he most often expounds upon various elements of Jewish practice and various aspects of Jewish history.21 For example, he offers explanations of 21.  In this sense, Frieden’s memoir replicates a feature of Solomon Maimon’s Lebensgeschichte, which includes explanations of subjects such as Hasidism and Kabbalah intended for outsiders, including Christian readers. See Mintz, Banished from Their Father’s Table, 10–13; Moseley, Being For Myself Alone, 57.

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­ iverse religious rituals and customs, especially in the chapter of his d memoir dealing with holiday celebrations, and he elaborates upon certain aspects of the history of Jewish life in Palestine, such as the workings of charity organizations in nineteenth-century Jerusalem and the impact of the Arab riots of 1929. By the time Frieden completed his memoir, he was aware that his children had not acquired the depth of Jewish learning that he himself possessed, and he must have anticipated that later generations of the family would know even less of Jewish lore and Jewish history. Thus, writing about such subjects in his memoir was his way of passing on information he might have preferred his heirs had pursued on their own. Even though Frieden employed his memoir partly as a pedagogic tool, in his doing so there is a certain lack of consistency in the nature of his relationship with his intended readers. Although he seems to have supposed that his readers would be unfamiliar with many aspects of the world in which he lived, and especially with much of the Jewish tradition that was so central to his being, he often seems to have lost sight of that likelihood. Thus, in many passages of his memoir, he abandons his initial assumption about his readers’ lack of background and takes for granted that they will be able to identify various rather obscure individual personalities, geographic locations, sacred writings, and the like. More often than not, when he cites a verse of biblical or Talmudic text, for example, he provides only a few words and adds an abbreviation for the phrase “and so forth,” presuming that his readers will be able to complete the reference. In other words, Frieden frequently seems to assume that his readers will be quite comfortable in what the expert translator Jeffrey Green calls “the realm of intramural Jewish discourse.”22 This, of course, is not a fair assumption, since even Frieden’s own children did not develop the kind of familiarity with classic Jewish texts and with Jewish lore that would allow them to easily recognize random citations or to understand many of their father’s other references. Even a mere half century after Frieden’s death, it is unlikely that any of his intended readers would be able to picture the location of East European towns such as Zembin or Gorodets, nor would most be able to identify individuals such as the Maharsha (an early modern rabbinic 22.  Jeffrey M. Green, Thinking Through Translation (Athens, Ga., 2001), 152.

Introduction

commentator) or Shomer (a nineteenth-century Yiddish novelist), personalities well known in Frieden’s circle but no longer familiar figures even to most Jews. All this suggests that Frieden did not think systematically about exactly who the readers of his memoir were likely to be and that he did not edit his memoir carefully. At times, one gets the sense that Frieden actually was writing for himself more than for others. Nonetheless, despite the inconsistencies in Frieden’s assumptions about his potential audience, the sections of his memoir in which he adopts a pedagogic tone remain valuable for what they can teach, and they nicely complement those elements of this document that can educate in less direct ways about the period in which Frieden lived. Of course, no commentator is ever completely objective, and if Frieden’s memoir often allows its author to assume the role of educator, it also gives him an opportunity to express his opinion on a wide range of issues. When he assumes a pedagogic stance, sometimes Frieden’s judgments are relatively muted, but at other times his prejudices and opinions are quite explicit. He writes derisively, for example, about the Yom Kippur ritual of kaporet, an expiation rite involving chickens, and he forcefully denounces the British administration in Palestine. Nor does he hold back in recording his positive or negative feelings about the various people he encountered in the course of his long life on three continents. He evaluates Rabbi Pinchas Lintup, with whom he studied in Lithuania, as “a great scholar” and “a very good-natured person” who was “full of ideas,” even though he “had trouble expressing them orally.” He judges Emanuel Mohl, with whom he worked closely for over a decade in Palestine, as “an uncultured individual” who was “easily angered and grumpy, mean and miserly, lacking propriety in his speech and actions” and who was “not fit for his position,” but who nonetheless “did great things for the Land of Israel.” He characterizes the Jews in post–World War II America as ignorant of their heritage and generally unsophisticated and shallow: “Their minds are occupied primarily with business and, in their leisure time, with card games, movies, and making love,” he writes, “or they spend their time sitting idly, dozing off or maybe not, burping and yawning, until they go to bed.” Perhaps imprudently, Frieden does not hide his frank opinions even where his relatives are concerned; it was they, after all, who were intended to be the primary readers of his memoir.

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Finally, there is the third major element in Menachem Mendel Frieden’s memoir. In the tradition of classic autobiographical writings, besides telling a story and offering instruction, Frieden’s memoir serves as a vehicle for self-reflection, often with what the theorist Roy Pascal calls a “didactic intention.”23 That is, Frieden not only bares his soul intermittently throughout his memoir, but sometimes he does so in the hope that others will learn from his experience. Indeed, already in his Apologia, Frieden explains that, besides wanting to leave his family a record of its collective past, a second motive behind his writing is to evaluate his own life, to consider both his triumphs and his failures, and thus “to give coming generations of my family an opportunity to learn from my mistakes so that they can avoid making them.” With some of the turns his life had taken and with some of the choices he had made, Frieden was completely content, even delighted. He titled the chapter of his memoir in which he describes his decision to marry his second wife, Ray, “I Found the Best Woman,” and he was never sorry about his decision to make aliya, that is, to settle in the Land of Israel. On the other hand, he had many regrets as well. Writing, for example, about the way his first wife had concealed from him the illness that eventually caused her death, he exclaims, “Oh how I wish she had told me the truth” so that “we would have known that she should not become pregnant.” Most of all, it seems, Frieden bemoans those choices that steered him away from a life of complete immersion in traditional Jewish practice and strict adherence to Jewish law. Even though the modernizing culture of the Haskalah had a profound influence on the person he became, when he writes about the occasion on which he first came in contact with that culture in Lithuania, he declares that “deep in my heart, I regret what transpired still today.” Later, recalling how he had declined an offer to lead one of Norfolk’s congregations when he first arrived in America, he laments his decision to do so. Had he accepted the offer, he writes, “perhaps my family would have been educated differently. . . . I can’t forgive myself for being so neglectful.” Reflecting in old age upon how he had kept his businesses open on the Sabbath, he chastises himself: “It was an unpardonable sin, especially for a learned person from a pious family. . . . It is a sign of pettiness, 23.  Pascal, Design and Truth, 37.

Introduction

meekness, and weakness of character for which there is no justification. To this day, I’m ashamed of myself.” What we see, then, is that Frieden’s memoir actually fulfills several related goals, and it is worthwhile reflecting a bit further upon these goals as we approach the use of this rich document as a source for the study of modern Jewish history. The memoir’s intent, to use Pascal’s terminology is “to chronicle, to confess, [and] to expound” and in its focus, it is, in fact, able to strike something of a balance “between the self and the world, the subjective and the objective.”24 Put another way, to use historian Jeremy Popkin’s formulation, the memoir manages largely to “unite the stories of external circumstances and internal thoughts and feelings.”25 Of course, whether we read the Frieden memoir primarily as the story of a life, or as a pedagogic text sometimes colored by prejudices and opinions, or as a sort of soul-searching confessional, we must keep in mind that, when it comes to memories, precision is always elusive. As my annotation of the memoir reveals, the work is not always correct where specific facts are concerned, and even if my grandfather was attempting to provide a completely accurate account of his life from infancy until old age, that account could only be partial and incomplete. The French author Stendhal once described the mental image he had of his past as being “like a fresco, large parts of which have fallen away,” and William James once wrote that “the processes of memory involve so much selecting, editing, revising, interpreting, embellishing, configuring, and reconfiguring of mnemonic traces . . . that it is almost impossible to think of memory as a trustworthy preserver of the past.”26 The autobiographer Mary Antin, herself an East European Jewish immigrant to America and Frieden’s contemporary, once admitted that she had misremembered things from her past and observed that “we often build our world on an error, and cry out that the universe is falling to pieces, if any one but lift a finger to replace the error by truth.”27 Moreover, as students of history, we must keep in mind that what Frieden has recorded in his memoir is at least as much a product of 24.  Ibid., 180. 25.  Popkin, History, Historians, and Autobiography, 4. 26.  Stendhal is quoted in Heywood, Growing Up in France, 23. James is quoted in Stanslawski, Autobiographical Jews, 14–15. 27.  Mary Antin, The Promised Land (New York, 1997), 66.

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his feelings and preoccupations at the time he was writing as it is an accurate report of what he had experienced and felt as the events he describes were transpiring. As Pascal has observed, autobiography is “an interplay, a collusion, between past and present; its significance is indeed more the revelation of the present situation than the uncovering of the past.” He goes so far as to refer to autobiographical writing as a “record of illusion.”28 In the end, then, there can be no doubt that as much as Frieden was constructing a narrative of his life and defining his identity as he moved through time, he was doing so, as well, in recalling the past and composing his memoir. For Frieden, as for other authors of autobiographies and memoirs, the process of writing was also, in large part, a process of self-fashioning. Put another way, there are really two individuals represented in the Frieden memoir: Menachem Mendel Frieden, the subject of the memoir, and Menachem Mendel Frieden, its author, or, as Alan Mintz styles these two individuals, “the narrator as retrospective analyst and the narrator as experiencing character.”29 Still, it is unlikely that Frieden was conscious of the fact that in composing his memoir he was creating a past as much as remembering it, and it is thus reasonable for us, as contemporary readers, to acknowledge what Philippe Lejeune has called “the autobiographical pact,” an unspoken understanding that an author is making a sincere effort to convey an accurate account of his past.30 Unfortunately, our ability to judge the distance between the events in Frieden’s life and his recounting of those events is complicated by the fact that we do not know exactly when Frieden composed the various parts of his life story. In the Apologia that introduces his memoir, Frieden reports that he began recording the story of his family in 1923, soon after he arrived in Palestine, and that he completed the work in the months after he and his wife arrived for an extended visit to the United States in the middle of 1947. However, it is clear that Frieden did not simply write the story of his life up until 1923 in the early 1920s 28.  Pascal, Design and Truth, 11, vii. See also Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews, 68. 29.  Mintz, Banished from Their Father’s Table, 22. 30.  On the “autobiographical pact,” see, for example, Paul John Eakin, Touching the World: Reference in Autobiography (Princeton, N.J., 1992), 24ff.; and Popkin, History, Historians, and Autobiography, 28–30.

Introduction

and then bring that story up to date in 1947 and 1948. Frieden himself states that he began by recording only “fragmentary notes” and he obviously returned to his memoir more than once, adding material (sometimes only a sentence here and there) and perhaps doing some editing. In a brief section toward the end of the memoir, in which he describes how he resumed the study of Jewish texts after his heart attacks in 1943 and 1944, for example, he refers to his being in his seventy-third year, indicating that he wrote that section around 1951. Similarly, in providing brief accounts of the lives of his brothers in the third chapter of the memoir, Frieden appends a sentence at one point indicating that his brother Sam and Sam’s wife both died in 1960. The coherence of Frieden’s text is further complicated by the fact that as he worked on his memoir in 1947, he also began keeping a journal whose contents overlap with the final section of the memoir and whose entries continue beyond it. Entries from the journal form the basis for the Afterword to this volume. Despite lingering questions about exactly when various parts of the Frieden memoir were written, it is possible to conclude, however, that the text actually reflects Frieden’s concerns and mentality in the late 1940s more than it does his persona at any other period of his life. Although I knew my grandfather when I was a child—I last saw him in the year of my bar mitzvah, three years before his death in 1963— and although my feelings toward him are warm ones, it is really only through his memoir that I, and now others, can get a sense of who he was as a person, at least in the final decades of his life. So, at his core, who was this man whose memoir is such an exceptional and valuable historical document? As Pascal reminds us, “autobiography means . . . discrimination and selection in the face of the endless complexity of life,”31 and so the mere fact that Frieden decided to write extensively about some topics and little or nothing about ­others already indicates a great deal about who he was. It is revealing, for instance, that among the topics that dominate Frieden’s memoir are the dream of the Jewish People’s return to the Land of Israel and the realization of that dream. Of course, the prominence of this theme makes a certain sense, since Frieden began work on his memoir just after he 31.  Pascal, Design and Truth, 10.

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arrived in Palestine as a Zionist pioneer and he more or less completed it just as the State of Israel was coming into being. Nonetheless, the recurrence of this theme suggests that Frieden’s ardent Zionism was an essential component of his identity. Indeed, even Frieden’s self-image as an American, based upon his sojourn in the United States as a young man in his twenties and thirties, did not conflict with his identity as a Zionist. If anything, his American identity may even have enhanced his sense that, by bringing American know-how to the Land of Israel, he was making a major contribution to the Zionist enterprise. Other elements of Frieden’s memoir reflect fundamental aspects of his identity, as well. For instance, throughout the memoir Frieden continually returns to the matter of religious observance. Clearly an engaged participant in Jewish religious life, he seems to have found something to value in several camps within the world of traditional Judaism. It is intriguing to notice how he navigates between Hasidic and anti-Hasidic factions within his own family, for instance, and how he retains his view of himself as a learned and observant Jew even as he succumbs to the lure of the Haskalah. In this respect, Frieden is unlike most East European Jewish autobiographers who became caught up in the Haskalah, for most of them adopted the movement’s anti-­ traditionalism. As Marcus Moseley’s research has revealed, “autobiography in Jewish Eastern Europe remains almost the exclusive domain of those who have either broken with religion entirely, or whose faith in the verities of revealed religion has become considerably eroded.”32 That Frieden chose to write his memoir in Hebrew indicates something about his self-identification, as well. Frieden was certainly capable of writing competently in Yiddish or in English, but Hebrew was the obvious choice for him because the Hebrew language was linked both practically and symbolically not only to religious and cultural traditionalism, but also, perhaps somewhat paradoxically, to modernist enlightenment and Zionism as well. As Alan Mintz has observed, “writing in Hebrew makes available to the writer—and creates a connection with—the great classical literary tradition and its repertoire of sources and allusions,” but at the same time “to write in Hebrew was also a contemporary ideological choice.” It was, Mintz elaborates, “an act of 32.  Moseley, Being For Myself Alone, 377.

Introduction

identification with and participation in a movement for cultural and social reform . . . and, later in the [nineteenth] century, in a more actively nationalist movement for Jewish revival.”33 Given Menachem Mendel Frieden’s multifaceted connection with Jewish affairs, one of the striking things about his memoir is how little attention it pays to the Shoah, even though the memoir was completed only a few years after the end of World War II. This is particularly striking because such a large proportion of the existing Jewish memoir literature relates to the era of the Holocaust and the horrendous experience of those who survived it. Although Frieden does not ignore the Shoah (it comes up, for instance, when he writes about members of his family murdered by the Nazis), it is given very little notice. One might speculate that at the time he was working on his memoir Frieden was so focused on other matters, particularly the struggle for Israel’s independence, that the Shoah, which he had not experienced directly, simply receded into the background. Or, although the idea that there was a predilection toward silence about the Holocaust in its immediate aftermath has recently been challenged,34 perhaps Frieden’s lack of attention to the Shoah is nonetheless a manifestation of a reluctance to freely discuss this most painful chapter in modern Jewish history so soon after it occurred. Concerns of an essentially Jewish nature aside, it is revealing that Frieden wrote so much about his working life. This suggests that his search for a proper livelihood was a constant concern of his and that his identity as an individual was tied intimately to his career decisions. It is remarkable how often he had to make crucial decisions about employment, and how each of the decisions he made had lasting implications. His decision to abandon his yeshiva studies, for example, meant that he would not become the learned rabbi he had assumed he would be from the days of his youth. His decision to abandon peddling after a short while led to his establishment as an entrepreneur in Norfolk. His acceptance of a job offer working with the Loan Bank in Palestine associated him for many decades with the business of banking in the Land of Israel. 33.  Mintz, Banished from Their Father’s Table, 12–13. 34.  See Hasia R. Diner, We Remember with Reverence and Love: American Jews and the Myth of Silence after the Holocaust, 1945–1962 (New York, 2009). 

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That Frieden wrote so much about his family relationships also suggests something about his image of himself. From what he wrote, we can deduce that he thought of himself as a devoted family man: a dutiful son, a loving husband, and a concerned father. On the other hand, Frieden’s memoir also reveals a certain self-centeredness and self-­ importance. Some of this may be explained by the fact that my grandfather was, after all, telling the story of his own life and not of someone else’s. But there is more to it than that. Frieden emerges from the pages of his memoir as an individual with a marked sense of pride and superiority. In comparing himself with the other suitors of the young woman who would become his second wife, for example, he asserts that none of them “could compare to me in those things that make a person stand out: looks, learning, family background, and a fine reputation,” and it is telling that, as much as Frieden professes his love for both of the women to whom he was married—and his writing about them is perhaps the tenderest in his memoir—he discusses most of the events of his life in the first person singular, even when they involve his wife (and often his children) as well. Ultimately, however, understanding that Menachem Mendel Frieden was selective about what he wrote, that his memory was inevitably compromised, and that his life-writing was to some extent an exercise in identity formation, does not diminish the value of his memoir as a vehicle for learning about him as a person and gaining entrée into the worlds in which he lived. Even if some of what Frieden reports about his past is distorted or erroneous, his memoir still provides us a good sense of who he was, this child of the shtetl, this immigrant to America, this pioneer in the Land of Israel. As Pascal observes, even if what autobiographers tell us “is not factually true, or only partially true, it always is true evidence of their personality.”35 Perhaps even more importantly, the Frieden memoir also remains a marvelous source document for the study of the modern Jewish experience more broadly. Although, as Michael Stanislawski reminds us, given everything we now know about the nature of memory, “we—as historians or quite simply as readers—can no longer read autobiographies as factual first-person accounts,” if we approach these works with a 35.  Pascal, Design and Truth, 1.

Introduction

measure of skepticism, we can still read them “with great profit, as well as much pleasure.”36 Indeed, we might think about my grand­father’s memoir in terms of what Alan Mintz has said about certain other autobiographical texts: “The signal service performed by these texts . . . lies in their giving us a window into the interior experience of the generation of Jews who lived through the great transformation of Jewish life in the modern era.”37

36.  Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews, 176–77. 37.  Mintz, Banished from Their Father’s Table, 23.

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A Note on Translation and Editing

This translated, edited, and annotated version of Menachem Mendel Frieden’s memoir is based on a mimeographed transcription of the original Hebrew manuscript. How many copies of this mimeographed document were produced is unknown, but probably no more than a few dozen. Copies are in the possession of various members of Frieden’s extended family, and one copy is on deposit in the Goren-­Goldstein ­Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv University.1 Unfortunately, the manuscript of my grandfather’s memoir was discarded after the transcript was prepared, probably in the mid-1960s, and so it is impossible to know how exactly the existing Hebrew version follows the handwritten original. It is likely that many of the flaws in spelling, punctuation, grammar, and sentence structure that characterize the existing text and that complicated its translation were found in the original manuscript, but it is also possible that some of these errors crept into the document as it was being typed for duplication. Incomplete sentences abound in the text, as do run-on sentences and ones in which pronouns do not agree with their subjects or lack clear antecedents altogether. In this respect, Frieden’s composition style may have been influenced by the linguistic idiosyncrasies of the Talmud with which he was so familiar. It, too, is replete with incomplete or imprecise sentences and ambiguous pronouns, to say nothing of the kinds of digressions of which Frieden was so fond.2

1.  Goren-Goldstein Diaspora Research Center file number T-11/263. 2.  On issues related to the translation of the Talmud, see, for example, Norman Solomon, “Making Talmud Intelligible” in Report of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies, 2008–2009 (Oxford, 2009), 71–84.

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Other problems that impeded the work of translating Frieden’s memoir include his profuse use of “and” to begin sentences or to string together passages that should have been separated, and his tendency to alternate between past and present tense almost at random. The presence of simple typographical errors and other corruptions in the mimeographed document also hindered the understanding of what Frieden intended to write. In one place, the name of the renowned twelfth-­ century scholar Rabbenu Tam appears as harav menutam, for example, and elsewhere, the name of one of Frieden’s employers in Norfolk, Virginia, is recorded as r.p. vitko, which I was able to identify as the R. P. Voight Company only by consulting pre–World War I city directories in the course of my research. Because the available Hebrew version of the Frieden memoir contains so many composition and transcription problems, in the course of translating the document I have made many small corrections and minor editorial changes in grammar, punctuation, and sentence structure. I have added or removed the conjunction “and” as necessary for smooth transitions, for example, and I have generally put the text into the past tense unless there was some good reason not to do so. Although I have retained a few errors of grammar here and there in order to help convey a sense of Frieden’s writing style, in many places I have corrected pronoun usage or replaced ambiguous pronouns with nouns. Occasionally, I have silently added individual words or short phrases in order to clarify the meaning of a vague or incomplete sentence or in order to compensate for the few missing or indecipherable passages in the mimeographed document. In general, I have tried, as the veteran translator Jeffrey Green has suggested, to “steer a tactful middle course between supplying information and letting the reader sink or swim.”3 On the other hand, occasionally I have omitted brief portions of the original text where these were confusing, repetitive, or otherwise superfluous. In the course of translating and editing the Frieden memoir, I have also introduced a logical system of paragraphing, which is largely ab3.  Jeffrey M. Green, Thinking Through Translation (Athens, Ga., 2001), 43. On the question of producing accurate translations generally, see esp. 31–44 (“Honesty in Translation”) and 138–46 (“Why Translating Can Sometimes Be Very Tricky”).

Note on Translation and Editing

sent from the mimeographed version. I have for the most part, however, retained the mimeographed version’s chapter divisions, although I have divided Frieden’s seventh chapter into two parts (“Passover and the Holiday Cycle” and “More Yeshiva Studies”) based on a break indicated in the existing text, and I have divided his thirteenth chapter into three parts (“The Work of Americans in the Land of Israel and My Role in It,” “More on Life in the Land of Israel,” and “Travels, the Era of World War II, and Illness”) because it is so long. The chapter titles I have used are derived from Frieden’s own, although I have expanded the titles of a few chapters and I have, of course, supplied my own titles where the mimeographed text’s chapters have been subdivided. Just as I have retained some of Frieden’s grammatical errors in order to help convey the feeling of the original text, I have also retained some of his factual errors. I have, however, called attention to some of these errors in the notes and I have silently corrected a few, where the mistakes were obvious and likely to have been simply small slips on Frieden’s part. For example, where Frieden refers to his uncle Moshe as his mother’s “father” instead of her brother, I have corrected the reference, and where Frieden writes that the date of his brother’s birth is recorded in his brother’s own hand in a volume of his father’s Talmud, I have corrected this to indicate his father’s own hand. Similarly, I have corrected some mistakes that are almost certainly typographical errors. So, for example, where the mimeographed text says that the British introduced coins of 20 and 5 mils when the Palestine pound came into use in the 1920s, I have corrected the sentence to indicated that coins of 10 and 5 mils were introduced, and where the mimeographed text has “Friday, August 29,” as the day on which serious Arab rioting began in Palestine in 1929, I have supplied what was the correct date according to many other sources: Friday, August 23. August 29 was a Thursday. In his memoir, my grandfather was far from consistent in the spelling of proper names, whether those of people or places. For the Lithuanian town of Rokiškis, for example, the Hebrew text sometimes has the Yiddish name Rakishok and sometimes Rokishki. For the town of Obeliai, the text sometimes has the Yiddish Abel and sometimes Abeli. The name of the town which Frieden calls Sirutzina and which I have not been able to locate definitively, is spelled three different ways on one

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page of the mimeographed memoir alone! Rather that retaining these kinds of inconsistencies, in my translation I have adopted a single form for the name of each person and each locality mentioned in the text. By the same token, rather than retaining completely incorrect versions of proper names, I have corrected them where possible. Thus, for example, while the Hebrew memoir renders the name of the town where the famous rabbi Israel Baal Shem Tov died as something like mezibroz (the absence of vowels in the mimeographed text makes it impossible to know exactly how to transliterate the spelling that appears there), I have corrected the name of the town to Medzhibozh, and where the mimeographed text calls South Africa’s leader of the late 1940s malman, I have corrected the name to Malan. Another issue with which I had to contend was Frieden’s frequent use of abbreviations. Some of these, such as the letters ayin-yod for al yedai, or “by means of,” and the letters aleph-yod for eretz yisrael, or “the Land of Israel,” were easy to decipher. On the other hand, some of the abbreviations Frieden used are more obscure and were more challenging. For example, it took some effort on the part of a colleague whose help I enlisted to track down the meaning of mem-tzadi (it stands for moreh tzedek or “righteous teacher”) and it was only through the power of the Internet that I was able to confirm that the acronym aleph-pay-kof denotes the Anglo-Palestine Bank. In general, I have substituted whole words for abbreviations in my translation, although in most cases I have omitted my grandfather’s frequent use of zayin-lamed after references to his parents and other deceased individuals, indicating the phrase ­zichrono ­levracha (for a male) or zichrona levracha (for a female), meaning “of blessed memory.” Frieden was not consistent in the use of this formula and including it every time he did would have burdened the text unnecessarily. With all transliterations that appear in my English version of Frieden’s memoir, I have endeavored to maintain a certain internal consistency, but I have not followed one single transliteration scheme exclusively. In general, I have employed a system that aims for clarity, but that also recognizes that many names and common terms have widely accepted transliterations that do not all follow the same rules of transcription. So, for example, although both the word heder and the name Chaim begin with the same initial sound and the same initial letter in Hebrew,  I

Note on Translation and Editing

have used different initial letters for heder and Chaim in transliteration. I usually have retained Hebrew names in their Hebrew forms, except where using the English version of the name seemed more appropriate. Thus I have sometimes written Moshe and sometimes Moses; sometimes Yisrael and sometimes Israel. When it came to the titles of various books mentioned in the memoir, my practice was to retain the original Hebrew titles of classic texts such as the Shulchan Aruch, a standard compendium of Jewish law and practice, and of other books generally discussed under their Hebrew titles, but to cite in English the names of works generally known by their translated titles. Just as I have retained the term heder in the text, rather than translating the word as “traditional schoolroom” or something of the sort, I have also retained a few other Hebrew and Yiddish terms where they are difficult to translate accurately or where their retention helps maintain the flavor of the original memoir. Many readers will already be familiar with the terms I have left in Hebrew or Yiddish, but all of them are defined in the glossary. Of course, in any translation project, some words are harder to translate than others, and there are bound to be instances in which the meaning of a single word is so nuanced that it must be translated into English in a variety of different ways. For example, the term ba’alai batim, which Frieden uses on multiple occasions, can mean householders, the wealthy, members of the elite, or even congregants, depending on the context, and I have translated that Hebrew term accordingly. In this connection, a special mention is in order about the translation of the Hebrew word ha’aretz. Literally, this means “the land,” but since at least the beginning of the twentieth century, ha’aretz has been used by Zionists and then by Israelis to refer specifically to the Land of Israel, as if to make the point that this is the quintessential place on earth, the only significant piece of “land” in their consciousness. In order to convey the meaning and intent of this term, I have usually translated ha’aretz as “the Land of ­Israel,” but also sometimes as “homeland” or “country,” or occasionally as “Palestine” or “Israel,” as the occasion demanded. Technical matters of grammar, transliteration, and so forth aside, I understand, together with the translation theorist Douglas Robinson, that a translator is never simply a “passive conduit or vessel” and that

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he (or she) is often influenced by ideology and various other forces “beyond his count and ken.”4 Nevertheless, I have tried to be as true as possible to my grandfather’s memoir and to translate and edit his text as I think he himself might have done, had he had the opportunity to review his own work and render it into English. Throughout my work, I endeavored to avoid substantially altering the tenor of the original text as, for example, Martin Buber has been accused of doing in his translation of Hasidic stories for a German audience, or as Rachel Calof ’s son has been accused of doing in his translation of his mother’s memoir of life on the North Dakota prairie.5 Even though I have taken certain liberties with Frieden’s language, I have tried to capture his “voice,” at least to some extent, and perhaps even to “channel his spirit.”6 In my attempt to evoke my grandfather’s tone in an English text, I was fortunate to have access to at least one document that he actually did compose in English in the kind of formal yet conversational writing style he might have adopted for a memoir. This document is an annual report prepared in 1926 and addressed to the general manager of the Loan Bank, the institution for which he worked throughout most of his career in Palestine. I discovered this document in the course of my research at the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem during the summer of 2007.7 One way in which the present translation definitely remains faithful to the style of Frieden’s original text is by retaining Frieden’s frequent punctuation of his memoir with references to the Bible, the Talmud, and other traditional Jewish texts. It seems that Frieden generally quoted his sources from memory, since small deviations from the exact wording of the original appear more than once, and the parenthetical references to the original sources that he occasionally provided are not always accurate. In the course of my translation, I have ignored Frie4.  Douglas Robinson, Who Translates? Translator Subjectivities beyond Reason (Albany, N.Y., 2001), 15–16. 5.  See Martin S. Jaffee, review of Howard Schwartz, Tree of Souls, AJS Review 31 (2007): 369; and Kristine Peleg, “The Original Text of Rachel Calof ’s Memoir,” American Jewish History 92:1 (March 2004). 6.  On the issue of voice, see Green, Thinking Through Translation, 59–66 (“Translating the Writer’s Voice”). On “channeling,” see Robinson, Who Translates?, passim. 7.  Report from M. Frieden to E. N. Mohl, General Manager, The Loan Bank, Ltd., Jerusalem, Oct. 15, 1926, in the Central Zionist Archives, Jerusalem, file A405/47.

Note on Translation and Editing

den’s minor lapses, however, and in rendering quotations from traditional texts, I have relied heavily on existing translations of those texts. For example, in translating biblical quotations, I routinely consulted the widely used three-volume translation put out by the Jewish Publication Society of America, and also the tremendously rich Online Parallel Bible available on the Internet.8 Similarly, in translating passages from Pirke Avot, I consulted the time-honored editions prepared by Joseph Hertz and by Philip Birnbaum.9 In the end, however, I did not feel bound to use verbatim any of the existing translations I encountered, and I altered them as I felt appropriate. Of course, it is inevitable that much of the flavor of Frieden’s original language is lost in translation. It is, in fact, virtually impossible to replicate in English the exact character of the kind of early twentieth-century Hebrew in which my grandfather wrote, resonating as it does with the sensibilities of both traditional yeshiva studies and the nineteenth-­ century Haskalah. It is impossible, for instance, to fully capture the way phrases from traditional texts and liturgy made their way into Frieden’s prose, not so much in the form of direct citations, but rather as a matter of course, as if they came to him as second nature, which they no doubt did. The meaning of the passages containing these snippets of traditional language may be conveyed perfectly well in English, but the allusion to the sources is often lost. So, for example, when Frieden refers to someone as a “woman of valor,” an eshet chayil, he is not only praising her virtues but also echoing the text from the biblical Book of Proverbs which Jewish husbands traditionally chanted in honor of their wives at each Friday evening meal. Similarly, when Frieden ends his half year as a peddler in North Carolina and notes that “the arrangement I had made with peddling had come to an end,” he uses the phrase chasal ­siddur ha-rochlut, which is a play on the phrase invoked to mark the end of the Passover Seder: chasal siddur pesach. And one more example: when Frieden writes about striking teachers in Palestine’s Jewish schools in the early 1920s, he refers to the children in those schools as 8.  See the volumes The Torah: The Five Books of Moses (Philadelphia, 1967), The Prophets: Nevi’im (Philadelphia, 1978), and The Writings: Kethubim (Philadelphia, 1982). The Online Parallel Bible can be found on the Internet at bible.cc/. 9.  See Joseph H. Hertz, trans. and commentator, Sayings of the Fathers (New York, 1945); and Philip Birnbaum, trans. and annotator, Ethics of the Fathers (New York, 1949).

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tinokot shel beit rabban, echoing the same phrase used in the Talmud, which ordains that “one does not leave children in schools idle even in order to rebuild the Temple.”10 Ultimately, then, as Jeffrey Green has observed, a translation is “implicitly, an expression of the translator’s conception of the original,” colored inevitably by choices the translator makes. Thus, in preparing the present version of Frieden’s memoir so that it could be annotated and made available to an English-language audience, I have produced a text that is dependent on my own understanding of my grandfather’s memoir as well as on Frieden’s original intent. Still, I have tried to be what Green calls an “honest broker,” providing the reader with “an honest equivalent of the experience of reading the original text.”11 I hope I have succeeded.

10.  See tractate Shabbat 119b. 11.  Green, Thinking Through Translation, 18–20, 149.

A Note on References

In preparing the introductions and notes that accompany this English edition of Menachem Mendel Frieden’s memoir, I relied upon a great many sources of information covering topics ranging from the authorship of classic Jewish texts to nineteenth- and twentieth-century transportation networks and from orthodox Jewish religious practice to the general history of Eastern Europe, the United States, and Palestine. In gathering the information necessary for this project, it was often enough to consult standard reference works such as the recently revised Encyclopaedia Judaica (2006) and the older Jewish Encyclopedia (1901–1916), or Internet resources such as the extensive Jewish Virtual Library or the wonderfully rich and helpful JewishGen website. Internet searches using the Google search engine in both English and Hebrew also yielded some of the basic information that appears in the notes, information such as the dates of birth and death of individuals mentioned by Frieden, or the exact location of certain Talmudic citations. On the other hand, in order to solve some of the research problems I encountered, it was necessary to consult more specialized sources, whether traditional library holdings, or archival documents, or perhaps more obscure Internet sites. Where the information I share with readers was derived from easily accessible resources such as widely available survey texts, standard encyclopedias, or easily located Internet sites, I have generally refrained from providing exact reference citations. To have done so would have been cumbersome and not particularly useful. However, where I have relied on more specialized sources or where I encountered secondary sources that were particularly interesting or useful, I have cited those

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sources in the notes. So too, wherever I have quoted directly from a source, I have provided a citation. Because Menachem Mendel Frieden so often punctuated his writings with quotations from classic Jewish texts such as the Bible and the Talmud, a few words are in order about the way these are cited. Only occasionally did Frieden himself note the source of a passage he was quoting, but in preparing this edition of his memoir, I have, in the notes, identified all of Frieden’s references. Most readers will be familiar with the standard system for citing biblical quotations, which involves naming the book of the Bible in question, followed by chapter and verse. In order to understand the reference notes identifying quotations from the Talmud, however, it is worth reviewing the basic content and structure of that fundamental text, Judaism’s primary record of early rabbinic discussions dealing with Jewish law, ethics, customs, and traditions. The Talmud consists of two basic elements. The first is the Mishnah, which is the earliest written compendium of what is considered Judaism’s “Oral Law,” to distinguish it from what is contained in the Torah, the “Written Law.” The second element in the Talmud is the Gemara, a later discussion and expansion of the Mishnah. The terms Talmud and Gemara are often used interchangeably, as they are in Frieden’s memoir. The Mishnah, which records the discussions and rulings of rabbis referred to collectively as Tannaim, was first put in writing around the year 200 ce and it is organized into six “orders,” each of which is further broken down into tractates, sixty-three in all. The six orders of the Mishnah are Zeraim (“Seeds”), dealing with prayer, blessings, and agricultural laws; Moed (“Festival Days”), dealing with laws governing the Sabbath and festivals; Nashim (“Women”), dealing primarily with marriage, divorce, and certain forms of oaths; Nezikin (“Damages”), covering mainly civil and criminal law and the functioning of courts; Kodashim (“Holy Things”), which pertains to the Temple, sacrifices, and the dietary laws; and Tohorot (“Matters of Purity”), covering concerns about ritual cleanliness. The Gemara, which embodies the discussions and rulings of rabbis who lived in the three centuries or so after the redaction of the Mishnah and who are known as Amoraim, was developed simultaneously in the

Note on References

two major centers of Jewish learning at the time, the Land of Israel and Babylonia. As a result, in the fourth and fifth centuries, two version of the Talmud were recorded. These are known as the Talmud of the Land of Israel or the Jerusalem Talmud, and the Babylonian Talmud. The Babylonian text is a somewhat more limited version of the Talmud, because it generally refrains from expanding on topics such as the agricultural laws pertaining to the Land of Israel and the laws dealing with the Temple and sacrificial rites. On the other hand, the Babylonian Talmud is more clearly written and carefully edited than the Jerusalem Talmud and, over the centuries, it has taken precedence as a point of reference in religious matters. It thus became customary, as in the present work, that when reference is made simply to “the Talmud” or to one of its tractates, the Babylonian Talmud is implied. All editions of the Babylonian Talmud printed since the sixteenth century have employed the same system of pagination and the most widely used edition of the Talmud, still consulted by students and scholars today, is that produced in thirty-seven volumes by the Romm printing house in Vilna beginning in the nineteenth century. Given the standardization of its layout, the conventional method for citing references to the Babylonian Talmud is to indicate the name of the tractate in question and the page number on which the cited material can be found, including an indication of the side of the page it is on (either “a” or “b”). Only references to that tractate of the Talmud known as Pirke Avot (“The Ethics of the Fathers” or “The Sayings of the Fathers”) are identified differently, citing chapter and mishnah (used here to refer to a specific “teaching”). References to the Jerusalem Talmud are handled in the same way as references to Pirke Avot.

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Acknowledgments

There are numerous individuals who provided assistance and support as I worked on the translation, editing, and annotation of my grandfather’s memoir, but the people who deserve my greatest thanks are those who encouraged me to undertake this project in the first place. Chief among these is my dear friend, the renowned poet Hava Pinchas ­Cohen, who not only convinced me that my Hebrew language skills were sufficient for the task, but who remained excited about the value of my project and who, with her intimate knowledge of the Hebrew language and her sensitivity as a writer, helped me with the translation of several difficult passages. Also encouraging me in this project was my colleague and friend Ken Frieden, who has long been enthusiastic about the publication of this memoir, not only because he is an accomplished scholar of Jewish studies in his own right, but also because he is himself a grandnephew of the memoirist Menachem Mendel Frieden. Over the several years that I worked to prepare the Frieden memoir for publication, I had occasion to discuss my project with many colleagues and also to seek their help. Those whom I approached were always supportive of my efforts and gracious with their assistance. Among the colleagues who deserve my thanks in this respect are Hanan Alexander, Gur Alroey, David Assaf, Israel Bartal, Hasia Diner, Eric Goldstein, Menachem Kelner, Adam Teller, and Paula Hyman, whose recent death is a great loss. So too, I wish to acknowledge the assistance of my late friend and colleague at the University of Louisville, Bruce Adams, who helped me several times with questions about Russian history and language. I would like also to recognize the subscribers to the H-Judaic discussion group who responded to my inquiry

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about one of the towns mentioned in the Frieden memoir, and I want to express my gratitude to the very insightful and accommodating editors with whom I worked at the Stanford University Press in preparing this book for publication. I also want to acknowledge a debt of gratitude to a previous translator of Menachem Mendel Frieden’s memoir, a person whose name I do not know. It seems that shortly after my grandfather’s memoir appeared in its mimeographed Hebrew form, an English translation of the work was prepared for distribution within Frieden’s extended family in America. That translation, copies of which are now hard to come by, was apparently commissioned in California by Gladys Kaplan, a daughter of Jenny Savage, whose second marriage was to Menachem Mendel Frieden’s brother Shmuel. The English version of the Frieden memoir that was produced several decades ago omits whole sections of text, contains numerous errors of translation, and in several instances distorts the meaning of what Frieden wrote, sometimes in order to make the memoirist seem less self-aggrandizing or self-centered than he appears in the original document; perhaps the translator at the time thought that his or her patron would appreciate a slightly sanitized text. All in all, the anonymous translator who first put Frieden’s memoir into English took many more liberties with the document than I have taken and cut many corners, sacrificing in the process both accuracy and attention to style. Nonetheless, even though I never accepted the anonymous translator’s version of the Frieden memoir uncritically, it was tremendously helpful to have it at hand for the sake of comparison. I wish I could acknowledge him or her by name. The earlier anonymous translator of Frieden’s memoir also prepared a translation of the entries available in mimeographed form from the journal Frieden kept in the period 1948–1955. Unfortunately, I was unable to locate even a single copy of the journal entries as they were translated by that translator and so, in order to facilitate my review of those entries and again to have a text for comparison, I commissioned a new translation of the entries in 2006. That translation was prepared by Ilana Goldberg, at the time a graduate student in sociology and anthropology at Bar Ilan University in Israel. Her translation was extremely well done and proved to be very helpful, even though, as in the case

Acknowledgments

of the anonymous memoir translation, I seldom used her translations verbatim. I thank Ilana for her fine work. Over many decades, well before I even began to think about preparing my grandfather’s memoir for publication, I had numerous opportunities to become acquainted with the places in the United States and in Israel mentioned in the reminiscences. On the other hand, I had virtually no experience in Eastern Europe. For this reason, in May of 2006, I spent two weeks in Poland and Lithuania in order to become acquainted, firsthand, with the places where Menachem Mendel Frieden spent his early years. I owe sincere thanks to the University of Louis­ ville and its College of Arts and Sciences for the Intramural Research Incentive Grant that made that trip possible. I owe thanks, as well, to those individuals who facilitated my visit and helped me understand the East European Jewish environment. These people include Yale Reisner of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation in Warsaw, Larisa Lempertiene of the Center for the Studies of the Culture and History of East European Jews in Vilnius, and Daniel Gurvitch, my very amiable and knowledgeable tour guide in Lithuania. Also deserving of tremendous gratitude are the J. William Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board of the U.S. Department of State and the United States–Israel Educational Foundation for the award of a Fulbright Fellowship that allowed me to spend the academic year 2006– 2007 at the University of Haifa. It was in Haifa that I accomplished a great deal of the work of translating my grandfather’s memoir and began the work of annotation. Being able to do so in a Hebrew-language environment was most advantageous, as was my contact in Haifa with so many knowledgeable scholars in Jewish studies. Finally, I would like to thank the members of my own family (including some newly discovered second cousins) whose interest in my work on their ancestor’s memoir helped spur on my labors. I am grateful especially to my uncles Baruch Frieden and Ben Zion ­Frieden, the sons of Menachem Mendel, who verified and clarified some of what their father wrote, who filled in some information when it was needed, and who always expressed their appreciation for my project. Various other of my relatives, including my own children, proved to be willing listeners—sometimes even eager—when I talked about my

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work, and the fact that I have grandchildren to whom I can dedicate this volume was without question one of the things that kept me on task. More than anyone else, however, my wife, Sharon, supported and assisted me, as she has done throughout my career. She has always been my most consistent helpmate and my most discerning critic. I thank her for her encouragement, and for her love, from the bottom of my heart.

A Jewish Life on Three Continents

Menachem Mendel Frieden’s Apologia

I approach the writing of my memoir because of an inner impulse to record all that is preserved in my memory about the life of my family and about my own life, which encompasses the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth. I do not pretend to provide new insights concerning Jewish life in general during this period. Much has already been written about the Lithuanian Diaspora by Jewish authors in the past and they have written very well. I am interested mainly in the life of my own family. To the extent that I am able, I wish to leave for members of the family in future generations an accurate portrait of the life of the family in the past and to spare them the despair that overtakes me as I come to write about the past, on account of the lack of any details about the earlier generations of our family. I recall how, when I was still in my childhood, I used to leaf through the empty pages of my father’s books, the first pages in the binding; perhaps I’d find some notation about early members of the family. And I recall my disappointment at finding all the pages blank. Occasionally, I would turn to my parents, asking them to tell me something about their past. They would put me off with a question: “What does it matter to you?” I would listen in on the intimate evening conversations between my grandmother and my mother as they spoke about the past and about life in olden times. These have been preserved in my memory—things I learned in childhood—meager bits of information, it is true, but they can form a sort of initial foundation for my work, if I am at all able to dredge up from murky oblivion that which my eyes observed and my ears heard during my childhood and adolescence; if I am able to make known their correct meaning

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and  to be capable of describing the nature of that life from a time now distant. How pleased I would have been had earlier members of the family thought to record their memoirs as a keepsake for future generations. How important this is for one who is inclined to wonder about the family’s past. May future generations not come to fault me in this regard. Every generation makes its demands. There was a time long ago when the generations thought about the future. Evidence of this comes from the ancient sites that have been discovered over the last century, ancient sites and hiding places in caves. And even before them, hiding places and antiquities were discovered. It is the nature of man to be concerned that his memory will never be forgotten; our sages have said that the first human being wrote a book of memoirs: Sifra d’Adam Kadmoni.1 A second reason for this impulse is to give coming generations of my family an opportunity to learn from my mistakes so that they can avoid making them. I have made many mistakes in my life, due either to lack of knowledge or lack of experience, mistakes of my youth, of my middle years, and also mistakes of my old age. Indeed, “there is no righteous man in the land who has not sinned,”2 and sin is almost always a result of error or loss of sanity; these are synonymous. My hope is that those who read my words will benefit from them and find them useful, and this will be my reward. This, and more. The course of my life has passed through three continents: Russia, North America, and the Land of Israel. Each land has its own customs and lifestyle; each country its own culture and laws, and whether we like it or not, we are influenced by the variations from place to place, whether we realize it or not. In this memoir, if I am able, I would like to give an accounting to myself, to summarize everything, to the extent that my memory will serve me as I stand at the threshold of old age. May my memory not fail me. May the calmed psyche of old age not induce me to brighten up the past with the lantern of the pres1.  This is a reference to tractate Baba Metzia 85b, where the book said to have been written by Adam is actually called the Sifra d’Adam Harishon (The Book of the First Man). 2.  The reference here is to Ecclesiastes 7:20, although the biblical text is slightly misquoted in the original memoir.

Menachem Mendel Frieden’s Apologia

ent; may I succeed in bringing to life that which I experienced and perhaps also the personal emotions that always accompany events. The late Dr. Shmaryahu Levin once said: “Feelings are what build bridges between thoughts and actions.”3 And if this is so, then past events can’t be accurately described without remembering the feelings that influenced them. I have at hand no notes, either my own or those of someone else. Although I always thought about keeping a diary, I never did. And how sorry about that I am now. In the year 1923, two years after I made aliya to the Land of Israel and after I left the cigarette business with my hands in the air, when I had to decide if I should return to the United States or remain in the country and try my hand at an office job, in a dejected mood and finding it difficult to answer this fateful question, I found consolation in the determination to delay a decision for a while and I devoted myself to reading. And through that, I started occasional writing about this and that. And then the thought came to me to begin writing a memoir concerning the family and my life. I began with fragmentary notes, since I was immediately held back by a lack of proper material. But I continued to write, and that is the kernel of this present work. The writing of memoirs for the sake of future generations, whether for individual readers or the general public, is an ancient practice. One thousand three hundred years before the Common Era, Amhut I composed a poem to teach his son and heir the lessons of his life experience and in it he describes his failures and his mistakes.4 And there were many others like him in ancient times; what are Solomon’s Book of Proverbs, and the Wisdom of Solomon, and Ecclesiastes?5 And great Torah scholars and rabbis have written books dealing with faith that

3.  Shmaryahu Levin (1867–1935) was a Hebrew and Yiddish author who had served in the first Russian duma and who became a leading spokesman for Zionism. 4.  Whom Frieden has in mind here is uncertain, but it is probably Amenemhat I, who actually ruled from 1991 to 1962 bce. Amenemhat I is purported to be the author of the “­Instructions of Amenemhat,” a monologue in poetic form in which the pharaoh warns his son to be wary of those around him and urges him to rule wisely. 5.  The Book of Proverbs and Ecclesiastes are included in the Hebrew Bible, while the Wisdom of Solomon is an apocryphal book written in Alexandria, Egypt, about the middle of the first century bce.

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they have dedicated to their sons: the Rambam, the Ramban, the Shlah, and many others.6 As I began this work in earnest, a doubt crept into my heart: will I be successful? Is not my desire greater than my ability? After all, I have to go back over a period of more than seventy years, a period during which tremendous changes transpired in the life of our people in general and in my life in particular, and I have no notes! How difficult it will be to penetrate the darkness of the past and to bring to life the portrait of an individual during a period so long and so full of upheavals. The deeper I look into and penetrate the darkness of the past, the more perplexed I become and the more I struggle with the question: Is it worth it? Is it worth the cost, if one can speak of cost in this matter, the cost in energy, in peace of mind, and in time, time that is so valuable to a person who has reached old age? It seems to me that it may be more worthwhile to spend the time on Torah study and prayer. What frightens me most is that I might fail to portray the past accurately and honestly, due to the influence of changing times, on one hand, and because of my own ego, which may prevent me from presenting the negative side of things. “A person cannot represent himself as wicked,” said our sages.7 I’ll attempt to overcome my evil inclination and I won’t avoid answering for my mistakes, for otherwise none of this effort is worthwhile. The “truth” will always remain the truth. Although I began writing my memoir in 1923, I actually wrote very little, because already in September of that year I found office work that was important and very worthwhile in terms of the upbuilding of the Land of Israel. I gave this job my all and I was successful at it. It was with an institution that provided a strong foundation and a cornerstone for the early growth of the Yishuv. I remained in this job for twenty6.  The Rambam is Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (1135–1204), one of the greatest Torah scholars and philosophers of the medieval period. A physician as well, he lived in Spain, Morocco, and Egypt. The Ramban is Rabbi Moses ben Nachman (1194–1270), also known as ­Nachmanides. The Catalan-born Ramban was, like his predecessor the Rambam, a scholar, philosopher, and physician. Both Rambam and Ramban are acronyms based upon the full names of these rabbis. The Shlah, also known as the Shlah Hakadosh (“the Holy Shlah”), is the kabbalist and expert on Jewish law Rabbi Isaiah ben Avraham Halevi Horowitz (1565– 1630). His name comes from an acronym for the title of one of his major works, Shnei Luchot Habrit (The Two Tablets of the Covenant). He moved to the Land of Israel in 1621 and there served as a communal leader and Ashkenazic rabbi in Jerusalem. 7.  The quotation here is from tractate Sanhedrin 9b.

Menachem Mendel Frieden’s Apologia

two years, until 1944, when I was assailed by serious heart disease and I had to give up my work and retire on a pension. And then, after I had gotten a little rest, I returned to this text with an inner peace and a spiritual joy that I derived from the creation of the state, a great attainment toward which I had devoted the best years and greatest energies of my life. I wrote primarily during my stay in the company of my family in the United States during 1947. The first two chapters are devoted to “grandparents” and “parents.” In these chapters, the details are few, for, to my sorrow, I had no information about them at hand, except for what I saw and heard tell, and that is not much. I brought together what I knew in order to make a start, a source from which to begin, even if it is a rather dry source, a shaky peg on which I must hang the beginning, for it’s not really possible to start with myself, as though I were a child without a name, a shtoki, in the terminology of the sages.8 Besides, I hold dear the commandment “Honor your father and mother,” and all the more so when my forbearers were honest, hardworking people. Legend tells us that the father of Rashi, the incomparable Torah commentator, was a scholar of limited ability compared to the greats of France at the time, and yet when Rashi began his Torah commentary with Genesis he commenced with the words, “Thus said Rabbi Yitzhak,” who was his father.9 Most of this account revolves around me, for I’m writing my memoir and not that of someone else. These are the things that interest me, that I wish to go over, and that will be of interest to those who come after me. These writings will describe my childhood, maturation, middle years, and old age. Normally, old age can’t be very exciting and can’t hold much interest for later generations, for these years are few, without much change or reward. Not so my older years, during which I’m working on writing, for these are the years of the creation of the state and the revival of the nation, the years of the ingathering of the exiles, the years of the War of Independence and of the war for survival that is continuing still. One who has been privileged to live during these years, 8.  In the Talmud, a shtoki (from the Hebrew meaning “be silent”) is a child who asks his mother who his father was and is answered: “Be silent!” 9.  Rashi is the acronym for Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac (1040–1105), the French author of the first comprehensive and subsequently most widely consulted commentaries on the Hebrew Bible and the Talmud.

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to witness at close range what is happening day by day in our young state, is participating in her joy—a joy of creativity and building—and is feeling her pain, the birth pangs of a new state surrounded by enemies on all sides and forced to invest her greatest energies in security, in addition to shouldering her great burden of the ingathering of the exiles, a phenomenon like none other that has ever transpired in world history. That person records his principal impressions in the form of summaries of daily events as they unfold. It is impossible that these writings will not have the power to interest those who come after him, to know how he felt in his heart, the heart of one of the family, one who laid the foundations for the family in the Land of Israel and gave his all for this goal. It’s just not possible. So I hope. This is a kind of “recording” for the family, if you will, so that I will not be forgotten.

The Memoirist Menachem Mendel with his first wife Etel, Dvinsk, Russia, ca. 1902. All photographs are from the Weissbach family collection.

Menachem Mendel (standing right) and his wife Etel (seated right), with parents Avraham and Esther Sarah Ziv and seven of his nine Siblings, Lithuania, ca. 1904.

The Frieden Family’s 1921 U.S. Passport Photo: Menachem Mendel, known as Morris (center), daughter Miriam, second wife Ray, daughters Batya and Yehudit (rear, left to right); and son Ben Zion (front).

The Frieden Family in Haifa, Palestine, 1936: Maurice and Miriam Weissbach, M ­ enachem Mendel, Ben Zion, Ray (rear, left to right); Avraham and Batya Osherowitz, Baruch, Yehudit and Yoel Malkoff (front, left to right).

Menachem Mendel Frieden with his wife Ray and his grandson and future editor, Lee Shai Weissbach, Haifa, Israel, 1948 or 1949.

Menachem Mendel Frieden in Jerusalem, Israel, ca. 1960.

My Father’s Family

Editor’s Introduction

As he indicates in his Apologia, Frieden begins his memoir with an account of his parents’ family background. He starts in this way in order to set the stage for the story of his own life, but in doing so he also begins to provide insights into some of the factors that influenced the lives of a great many East European Jews in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. For example, what Frieden writes about his own family begins to illustrate the way in which nineteenth-century Jews in the Russian empire lived in a society that was largely isolated from the mainstream population around them. Frieden’s memoir reflects the fact that the Jews of the empire had business dealings with gentiles and interacted with Russian government institutions, but that most of them, especially those living in rural areas, sought to separate themselves from what seemed to them to be the rather unattractive social and cultural milieu of East European peasants. Jews followed their own religious and cultural traditions, they recognized their own social hierarchies, and they developed their own institutions. This first chapter of Frieden’s memoir also makes clear the importance of the heder, the typical early learning environment of most East European Jewish boys, and it suggests some of the specific kinds of economic pursuits taken up by East European Jewish householders. Likewise, this chapter points to the importance of kin connections in East European ­Jewish society and it reveals some of the discrimination East European Jews encountered. It alludes, for instance, to Russian government decrees that restricted the residence of Jews to certain geographic areas and that limited the access of Jews to higher education. In this opening chapter, Frieden briefly follows the stories of some of his uncles’ families for several generations and in doing so he provides an indication of the development of a Lithuanian Jewish Diaspora in the late

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nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Like some members of Frieden’s own family, many other Lithuanian Jews also moved to North America, to South Africa, or to the Land of Israel, as well as to other parts of the Russian empire or, later, the Soviet Union. So too, like some of Frieden’s kin, many were lost in the Shoah, the genocidal mass murder of Jews carried out by the Nazis during World War II. Also appearing in this first chapter are some indications of what ­Frieden’s own life holds in store and of the kinds of issues with which he will be concerned in later chapters. For example, this chapter previews Frieden’s connection with the world of Hasidism, that variety of Orthodox Judaism that was characterized by religious fervor influenced by the mysticism of the Kabbalah and dependent upon the leadership of charismatic rabbis often given the title rebbe. Hasidism was created in the eighteenth century and, in the years that followed, a number of Hasidic dynasties developed in Eastern Europe, each with its own following. As this chapter reveals, many members of Frieden’s family were attracted to Hasidism, but they were not all devotees of the same rebbe. This first chapter also alludes to the connection of Frieden’s family with Norfolk, Virginia, and with the Land of Israel, places that will feature prominently in Frieden’s own life story. Finally, this chapter begins to disclose something about Frieden’s character and psyche. We can sense his connection to family and his pride in Lithuanian Jewry. And this opening chapter also begins to reveal Frieden’s general approach to the writing of his memoir. For one thing, it reflects his fondness for quoting classic Jewish sources such as the Bible and Talmud in order to reinforce what he has to say and it contains some early examples of the manner in which Frieden assumes a certain level of Jewish literacy on the part of those who might encounter his reminiscences, losing sight of the fact that the future generations for whom he was writing might not be so familiar with his references.

❊ of the early generations of my father’s family because by the time I decided to write my memoir, there was no one left from whom to get detailed information. I only know that the name of my great-grandfather was Shalom and his family name was Milner. It is likely, judging by the family name, that he was the owner of a flour mill someplace in Lithuania. The name of my grand­ father, my father’s father, was Yom Tov Lipmann. It is believed that most i d o n o t h av e a n y k n o w l e d g e

My Father’s Family

families that use the name Yom Tov Lipmann are related to the author of the Tosefot Yom Tov.1 The name of my grandmother, my father’s mother, was Marisha. I can see both of them before my eyes. Grandfather was a tall man with a slim, erect body, a light complexion and a long, long beard. Grey hair crowned his head and deep brown eyes were set deep within his face. Whenever he was seated, his hand supported his chin or his cheek. I don’t remember ever seeing him with a smile on his face. There was always a hidden sadness crossing his troubled countenance, although I can’t imagine that there was anything specific on which this sadness was based. Grandmother was a small woman, plump and round, with a full, cheerful face and laughing eyes. She was always busy and full of energy and she was wonderfully good-natured. She loved her grandchildren with all her soul. That’s what our grandmother was like on our father’s side. They had five sons: Shalom, Avraham, Mendel, Zalman, and Chaim. They had no daughters. At the time from which I remember them, they lived in a village called Zbishok, not far from a town called Rakishok, in the Kovno province of Lithuania.2 Their business was a small store that supplied all kinds of things to the villagers and an inn (a kretshme in the local tongue), along the lines of what many village Jews did in those days. They could depend on making a living, but not on attaining wealth. Only a few other Jews lived in their village and in the vicinity, and on the Sabbath and on holidays they would all gather at Grandfather’s house to pray. A special room with a Torah scroll and some books was set aside for this purpose; a sort of small-scale synagogue. It contained a reader’s stand, an ark, and a table for the reading of the Torah. His son Zalman was the Torah reader even when he was still a youngster. 1.  The Tosefot Yom Tov is a commentary on the Mishnah and on Jewish law composed by Yom Tov Lipmann Heller (1579–1654), a rabbi originally from Moravia who lived later in Poland. 2.  During the nineteenth century, the territory of Lithuania was administered as provinces of the Russian empire. After 1868, the Lithuanian provinces (gubernias in Yiddish) were Grodno, Vilna, Kovno, and Suvalk or Suwalki. The Lithuanian provinces were included within the Pale of Settlement, that western portion of the Russian empire to which Jewish residence was restricted throughout the nineteenth century, with only a few exceptions. For more on the geography of Jewish life in Lithuania, see, for example, Dov Levin, The Litvaks: A Short History of the Jews in Lithuania, Adam Teller, trans. (Jerusalem, 2000), esp. 18 (map), 27; and Zvi Gitelman, A Century of Ambivalence: The Jews of Russia and the Soviet Union, 1881 to the Present (Bloomington, Ind., 2001) esp. 2 (map).

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In my time, only the youngest son, Chaim, lived with Grandfather and Grandmother, and even after he married he continued to stay with them and to manage their business. They lived in that village many years; in effect, until the decree was issued that banished all Jews from villages within the areas in which they resided in Russia.3 Then they moved to the neighboring town of Rakishok where three of their sons were already living. When I was little, Father used to take me frequently to visit this grandfather and that is why so many details have remained in my memory. The eldest son, Shalom, lived in Rakishok and was what is referred to as a prominent individual. He was an honored hasid of the rebbe of Lyady, whom he went to visit from time to time.4 He had a wholesale grocery business and was considered the wealthiest of Grandfather’s sons. He was no Torah scholar and he certainly had no secular education, but he conducted himself in a kindly manner, was well liked, and was generous when it came to the needs of the community.5 His wife, Miriam, was the daughter of a rabbi whose name I do not recall, but I knew her brother, who was a rabbi in the small town of Suvinishok, not far from the town where I was born. She was a wise and energetic woman, a woman of valor who kept a close watch over her husband, her family, and her employees. The couple had two daughters, very beautiful and relatively well educated for those years. They were taught languages—Russian and German—piano, and singing. They married 3.  The decree forbidding Jews to live in rural areas and thus forcing even those already settled in rural villages to move to larger towns was one of the infamous “May Laws” enacted in 1882 following a period of pogroms which the Russian government blamed on economic exploitation by the Jews. For more on the May Laws, see, for example, Louis Greenberg, The Jews in Russia, Volume II: the Struggle for Emancipation, 1881–1917, ed. Mark Wischnitzer (New Haven, Conn., 1951), 19–30; and Gitelman, Century of Ambivalence, 10. 4.  The rebbe of Lyady was associated with the Chabad movement in Hasidism, a movement distinguished from most other branches of Hasidism by its greater encouragement of Torah study and intellectuality. Chabad, an acronym based on the Hebrew words chochmah, binah, and da’at (wisdom, understanding, and knowledge), was founded by Shneur Zalman of Lyady (1745–1813). Although Shneur Zalman’s son moved the principal seat of the Chabad movement from Lyady to the town of Lubavitch and although, consequently, the followers of Chabad were often referred to as Lubavitch Hasidim, Lyady also remained a center of the movement and for a time it had its own rabbinic dynasty. See Avrum M. Ehrlich, Leadership in the HaBaD Movement (Northdale, N.J., 2000), esp. 127, 221–22. 5.  The records in the Lithuanian State Historical Archives, available through the JewishGen Internet site, indicate that a “Solomon” Milner, the son of Lipmann (who is almost certainly Shalom Milner), died of cancer in Rakishok in September of 1922 at the age of 71.

My Father’s Family

young, one to the son of a rich man from Dvinsk, the owner of a factory for conserves; the second, to a wealthy man from Ponivezh, a wholesale dealer for a manufacturer. Dvinsk and Ponivezh were two large cities, the first in the province of Vitebsk and the second in the province of Kovno, both of them in Lithuania.6 The second son was my father; about him I will write a separate chapter. The third son, Mendel, was short, thin, and very nearsighted, with sharp brown eyes and a short beard divided in two. His small hand was constantly separating the two parts. He was short-tempered, easy to anger, but also very good-hearted. He was a Hasid devoted to the rebbe of Lubavitch.7 He barely had any Torah learning, but he was zealously observant, careful with every iota. His wife, Ella Shayna, who was the sister of my mother and thus my aunt twice over, was a large and very pretty woman. Nonetheless, she held her husband in awe, as did all the daughters of Israel in those days. Three sons were born to them: Ya’akov, Shalom, and Shneur. This family also lived in Rakishok and made a living running a pension, a hotel where liquor was sold as well. This was a typical combination in those days, as it is today: a hotel and bar. After my uncle Mendel’s wife became ill, he had to sell the hotel-bar to his brothers because he was unable to manage the business without his wife. She had trouble with her legs after the birth of her children and was taken to Germany, to Mannheim, for treatment. She stayed there quite a while and returned, if not completely cured, at least able to get around with a cane. Her stay in Germany had a positive influence on her and she became more modern. She was in any case a smart woman and her modernized outlook increased her suffering, since her 6.  Although Dvinsk is in Latvia, Frieden refers to the city as being “in Lithuania” in the sense that its Jews (and Latvian Jews generally) were within the cultural orbit of Lithuanian Jewry. Note that the administrative boundaries within the Russian empire changed from time to time. An 1882 map of the empire, for example, shows Dvinsk as being in Courland province; see this map on the Internet at www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/maps/baltics.jpg (accessed Sept. 26, 2010). 7.  As the main center of Chabad Hasidism, the town of Lubavitch was home to the main line of Chabad rabbis. During the nineteenth century, these included Shmuel Schneersohn (1834–1882), the great-grandson of Shneur Zalman of Lyady, and Sholom Dov Ber (1860– 1920), a son of Shmuel Schneersohn. On the various rabbinic leaders of Chabad, see, for example “Founders of Chassidism & Leaders of Chabad-Lubavitch,” on the Internet at www .sichosinenglish.org/books/making-chassidim/20.htm (accessed Nov. 5, 2007).

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husband was quick to anger, as I mentioned earlier, and also a miser, perhaps out of necessity, for his income was limited.8 He had an ironware store in partnership with his younger brother, Zalman, and the competition between ironware dealers was keen and the profits small. They had little liquid capital and they were always busy seeking loans and assistance. This must have especially influenced Mendel’s state of mind, because he would get involved in something and it would make him angry and short tempered. In town, they called him “Mendel the Turk.” For some reason, it was accepted in Lithuania that Turks were irritable and short tempered, even though the people there had not seen even a single Turk with their own eyes. Mendel’s sons were educated in the usual manner in the traditional schoolrooms of Lithuania, where the form and method of instruction did not motivate most of the students. Those of the students who were not blessed with a natural desire to learn about matters of religion and Torah emerged from heder as near ignoramuses. All they knew consisted of a bit of Chumash and Prophets, laws according to the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, and just a taste of Gemara.9 Ya’akov, the eldest, did not excel in his studies, nor was he interested in them. He knew how to read and write Yiddish, and he could write and speak some Russian. He knew the order of the prayers for the entire yearly cycle, and he knew a smattering of Tanach. This was the “ration of learning” that most heder students took with them when they completed their heder studies. Only those who excelled when they began their Talmud studies and who demonstrated a great desire to learn were sent on by their parents to particular teachers who were highly qualified to teach Talmud and its related subjects. Ya’akov was not among these and after his bar mitzvah he began helping in his father’s store. While he was still young, he married a girl from Anyksht, a small town in Kovno province. She was intelligent and charming, from a 8.  The death records in the Lithuanian State Historical Archives indicate that Ella Shayna Milner died of cancer in Rakishok in December of 1927 at the age of 71. 9.  The Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, compiled in 1864 by the Hungarian rabbi Solomon ben Joseph Ganzfried (1804–1886), is a handbook of Jewish law which attempts to include all the regulations relating to life outside the Land of Israel. Considered a standard guide book for Ashkenazic Jews, the Kitzur Shulchan Aruch is, in essence, an abridged version of the earlier Shulchan Aruch (A Set Table), a standard code of Jewish law compiled in Palestine by Joseph Caro (1488–1575).

My Father’s Family

prominent family, very sweet and wise, but older than he and sickly. She bore him one son and died of tuberculosis. I became friendly with this woman and we were close; we both derived pleasure from the long conversations in which we engaged whenever we had an opportunity to meet. She would pour out her heart to me and feel better. Her son grew into an intelligent, wise, and sociable man. He came to the Land of Israel in the mid-1930s and became successful in his profession, bookkeeping for the Kupat Holim of the Histadrut in Tel Aviv.10 He and his wife have two girls, twins, one of whom married at the end of 1949 and the other in 1951. Mendel’s second son, Shalom, continued his studies longer, and for half a year he joined me when I studied with Rabbi Hillel from the town of Popil, near the town where I was born. Later, he ceased his studies, which were not very rewarding, and became a merchant. He went to Russia and remained wealthy even when the Bolsheviks came to power. Either the Soviet order did not seem reasonable to him, or his business did not seem reasonable to the Soviets, and so he fled. Later he returned, however, and reached some sort of compromise with them. I don’t know what his situation is today. The youngest son, Shneur, did not want to learn at all and became adept at watchmaking. He left for South Africa while he was still a youth and I don’t have any information about him. The fourth of Grandfather’s sons, Zalman, was a delightful person, well liked by all. I don’t recall what kind of education he had in his youth, for that was before my time. I do, however, remember the first time I saw him at our home: a good-looking man dressed in a fine military uniform with the insignia of a doctor on his shoulders. He came to us with his parents during a leave from the army to attend the brit of one of my brothers. And I, a little boy, looked at him with splendid reverence and pride—that I should have such an uncle—and I bragged about him to my friends. Zalman had been drafted by the Russians and sent to Kiev, the Russian’s holy city.11 There an army doctor took a liking to him 10.  Kupat Holim was the health insurance arm of the Histadrut, the General Federation of Hebrew Labor in the Land of Israel. 11.  Kiev, now the capital of Ukraine, was the center of the first Russian state and is called a holy city here because it was an early seat of Russian Christianity, having adopted Eastern Orthodoxy in the year 988 under Prince Vladimir (960–1015), later called St. Vladimir the Great.

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and made him his aide. From him he learned medicine by doing, but after his discharge from the army he didn’t want to continue his medical training, or perhaps he didn’t have the financial means to go abroad to continue his schooling, so he became a merchant.12 He had two sons and a daughter. The eldest son, whose name is Max Miller, lives in Washington, the capital of the United States. The second brother, who was a dentist, was murdered, it seems, in Hitler’s campaign of annihilation, and it is said that the daughter lives in Russia, but this is not certain. In his later years, this Zalman was the director of the Jewish National Bank founded in his city with the help of the Joint and later destroyed in the course of all the devastation wrought by the Nazi invasion of Lithuania.13 We have no definite information about him, but he was apparently murdered.14 Grandfather’s fifth son, Chaim, his youngest, got married as a youth, after he had been cured of a serious psychological illness, to the daughter of Mendel Schneersohn of the famous Schneersohn family.15 However, this family used the name Kazarnovsky, which was the name of the mother’s family, because this Schneersohn, whom I knew, was a Hasid and a pious man, and when he saw that members of his family were not conducting themselves in the ways of Torah and piety as he wanted them to, he forbade them to use the prestigious Schneersohn name and told them to adopt the mother’s family name instead. This brother, Chaim, came to America with his family and opened a grocery store, but he barely made a living. Nonetheless, he managed, and more so his wife managed, to raise six children, three boys and three girls. All the 12.  Jewish access to higher education was always limited in tsarist Russia and new restrictions on the number of Jewish students admitted to Russian universities were implemented in 1887 to reduce the number of Jews in the liberal professions and the number permitted to live outside the Pale of Settlement, since university graduates were exempt from some residency restrictions. Because of this, many Russian Jews seeking a higher education went abroad. 13.  A photo from 1925 showing the Jewish National Bank in Rakishok is available on the Internet at www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/rokiskis/rokmain.htm (accessed Nov. 6, 2011). On “the Joint,” shorthand for the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, see, for example, the Internet site of this relief agency at www.jdc.org (accessed Sept. 26, 2010); and Yehuda Bauer, My Brother’s Keeper: A History of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee 1929–1939 (Philadelphia, 1974). 14.  In fact, the death records in the Lithuanian State Historical Archives indicate that Zalman Milner died of cancer in Rakishok in November of 1929 at the age of 68. 15.  The Schneersohn family is that descended from Shneur Zalman of Lyady, the founder of Chabad Hasidism.

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boys received academic educations, but two of the sons died and only one, a doctor, survived. He lives in Norfolk, Virginia, and has a reputation as a prominent physician there. The girls received a secondary education, got married and live well, all in Norfolk. The parents were privileged to live to a ripe old age and celebrated their golden wedding anniversary with a magnificent affair arranged by their children. They have now died and are buried in the Orthodox cemetery in Norfolk. The cultural environment of my father’s family was not much different from that of other Lithuanian Jewish families of the time. Grand­ father Yom Tov Lipmann was a pious and God-fearing Jew possessed of a simple faith. He attended heder, studied Chumash, Tanach, Talmud, and the laws of Jewish practice according to the Shulchan Aruch of the rebbe of Lyady,16 a classic code of law for Hasidim, much as the Kitzur ­Shulchan Aruch was for ordinary Jews. He prayed with the proper intention three times a day, and every day he studied from the book Chok L’yisrael, a general text widely available in Lithuania and found in every Jewish household where there was some knowledge of Torah and some level of literacy but where, because of the burden of making a living, there was no time for regular Torah study and to fulfill the obligation of “and you shall meditate therein,” and so forth.17 This book met the needs of those with limited time and limited aspirations. The book was divided into daily study units that contained almost everything: selections from the Torah, from the Mishnah, from the Writings, from the Talmud, from rabbinic regulations, from Maimonides and from the Zohar. The sons of typical Lithuanian Jewish families continued along the same path. They lived simple, pious lives, spiritually satisfying within the bounds of their limited understanding. They married, had children, and died, without leaving any lasting impression at all. Still, there were not a few individuals of virtue among these men who were able to leave their little towns and go out into the wider world. Among them were some who dedicated themselves to the continuation of the tradi16.  This code of Jewish law was composed by Shneur Zalman of Lyady at the instigation of his teacher Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezhirech (ca. 1704–1772), known also as the Maggid of Mezhirech (the Preacher of Mezhirech), one of the earliest and most important leaders of Hasidism. 17.  The verse to which Frieden refers here is from Joshua 1:8, which reads, in part: “This book of the law shall not depart from your mouth and you shall meditate therein day and night.”

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tion and of rabbinic law. Among them were also some who devoted themselves to enlightenment and culture more generally. Both these groups provided their generation with towering figures who left a considerable legacy from which subsequent generations benefited greatly. From among them emerged the leadership in the struggle for national renewal. My father, Avraham, the second of Grandfather’s sons, received the traditional education of those days, like his brothers, except that his diligence and his sharp-mindedness elevated him somewhat above his brothers. Father knew how to study a page of Talmud, read midrashic texts and Hasidic books, and he was thoroughly familiar with several tractates of the Talmud. Justifiably, he was called “a Jew who knows a book,” among the best in this select group. He excelled at assimilating new material and he had great common sense. He wrote Hebrew in the old style without errors and he knew Tanach well. Father was tall, like his father, and resembled him in everything: his physical build, his dark complexion, his elongated nose and deep-set eyes, and his beard, long beyond measure. He was fastidious about the cleanliness of his body and his clothes; he dressed nicely and with good taste. He was a gentleman-Hasid, God-fearing and scrupulous in observance of every commandment, whether lenient or stringent, and yet he was not an extremist and he took into account changing times.18 His home was open to provide comfort to all who knocked at the door and it was a gathering place for all the rabbis and fundraising emissaries who visited our village from time to time.

18.  Frieden’s reference here is an allusion to the distinction in traditional Judaism between laws derived directly from the Torah, which must always be observed stringently, and those based on rabbinic interpretation, which may sometimes be observed more leniently.

My Mother’s Family

Editor’s Introduction

In the second chapter of his memoir, Menachem Mendel Frieden continues telling about his background, this time focusing on his mother’s family. This chapter, like the preceding one, again provides insights into matters of East European Jewish life more generally. Here, for example, there is further reference to the world of Hasidism, with a long reflection on the use of the word hasid early in the chapter and with much discussion of the way Hasidism faced opposition in Eastern Europe, especially from mainstream Orthodox Jews usually referred to as Mitnagdim, the Hebrew word for “opponents.” As the opening sentence of this chapter suggests, Lithuanian Jewry was especially hostile to Hasidism, and, indeed, the most famous and influential of the Mitnagdim was the Lithuanian rabbi Eliyahu ben Solomon Zalman, who lived from 1720 to 1797 and is known as the Gaon of Vilna. Nor were the Mitnagdim the only opponents Hasidism faced in Eastern Europe. Also confronting the movement, as Frieden’s memoir indicates, were proponents of the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment. Beginning in the eighteenth century, these individuals, known as Maskilim, advocated an increased exposure to secular education among Jews and their greater integration into European society. As Frieden asserts, at least a basic understanding of Hasidism and the controversy that surrounded it is necessary if one is to understand his family background, and, for that matter, his own life story. Indeed, a familiarity with Hasidism, the Mitnagdim, and the Haskalah are essential for any understanding of East European Jewish history in the nineteenth century. Frieden touches in this chapter upon other topics fundamental to an understanding of East European Jewish life as well. He further illuminates the nature of traditional Jewish education, for example, and he writes of the attempts of Jews to avoid military service in the tsar’s army. So too,

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this chapter again provides an indication of the dispersion of Lithuanian Jews to various corners of the world. This early chapter also allows us to continue becoming familiar with Frieden’s approach to the writing of his memoir. Once more, we find that he assumes a certain level of Jewish literacy on the part of his readers and we again encounter his practice of quoting from classic Jewish sources. In this chapter we also encounter Frieden’s tendency to diverge on occasion from his primary narrative in order to engage in some explanatory asides or to comment on matters relevant more to the times in which he was writing than to the history of his family. So, for example, while describing how one of his cousins made a living, he tells of the distinction between inns and hotels in nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, and in telling the story of his uncles’ migration to South Africa, he takes the opportunity to comment on the significance of Lithuanian Jewry for the development of that country’s Jewish communities. He also writes about the various activities of South African Jews in the late 1940s, and even about the political situation in South Africa at that time. With the conclusion of this chapter, Frieden is prepared to begin focusing more directly on his own family of origin.

❊ for being the first to adopt Hasidism in an environment that was entirely opposed to it. Ya’akov Rubin, my mother’s grandfather, was the first to go over to “the sect,” as they called Hasidism in those days. This Reb Ya’akov was a devout and Godfearing Jew in all 248 appendages of his body.1 He was an outstandingly learned man, had a pleasant temperament, and was given to philosophical reflections. He had an expansive spirit and was drawn to nature; he was at the same time introspective and outgoing. It was hard for him to confine himself to dry Talmudic studies alone and he began to dip into Kabbalistic and Hasidic teachings and to learn from the few Hasidim he encountered. Here he found what he was searching for. The study of Kabbalah satisfied his meditative side and the Hasidic lifestyle provided t h e ru b i n fa m i ly wa s fa m o u s

1.  The reference to 248 appendages is based on the traditional belief that there are 248 limbs, or appendages, within the human body, a belief derived from a text in tractate Makkot 23b, in which Rabbi Simlai explains: “613 commandments were given to Moses at Sinai—365 like the days of a solar year and 248 like the number of limbs in a person.”

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him with the openness and genuine companionship he sought in his middle years, so he became the only Hasid in a town of Mitnagdim. To take this step required great daring and energy at a time when the movement was in its infancy and the opposition to it was very bitter. But apparently this Jew was bold in spirit and of true courage, for he went ahead and became a Hasid. There are two amazing aspects of Hasidism to be recognized. The first is the way the founders of this sect dared to adopt for themselves the title of hasid when this is a title applied to the Holy One, Blessed be He: “For I am merciful saith the Lord.”2 And the second is that, although they were a small minority, they were able to stand up to the majority and to remain a force within Judaism to this very day. The term hasid is found in the Prophets and in the Writings and its usual meaning in those days was “one who fears God and observes the Torah.” In the days of religious persecution by Antiochus,3 the term hasidim was applied to the saintly individuals who sacrificed their lives for the sanctification of God’s name (the Hasmoneans, in the Mishnah and the beraita), as it is said, “righteousness leads to the holy spirit.”4 Also, someone who goes beyond the letter of the law in his behavior is called a hasid. It is accepted that wherever the Talmud makes mention of “a certain hasid,” this is either Rabbi Yehuda ben Baba or Rabbi Yehuda bar Ilai.5 Among the hasidim in the true sense of this term can be counted all the authors of the Aggadah and the midrashim, and also the scholars of the religion of Israel, the giants of the nation in their times: Rabbi Sa’adya Gaon, Rabbenu Bachya, the Baal Ha’akeidah, and the Shlah Hakadosh, all the authors of musar literature, and all those who dealt with matters of faith, of character, of ethics, and of 2.  The phrase “the Holy One, Blessed be He” is a standard formulation in traditional Jewish parlance. In the original text of his memoir, Frieden uses an abbreviation for the Hebrew phrase kadosh baruch hu. The quotation referenced here is from Jeremiah 3:12, where the term hasid is used to mean “merciful.” 3.  The reference here is to Antiochus IV, or Antiochus Epiphanes, who was ruler of Syria from 175 to 163 bce and who attempted to impose Hellenistic culture and religion in the Land of Israel, thus sparking the rebellion of the Hasmoneans or Maccabees. 4.  The quotation here is found in tractate Avodah Zarah 20b, where the term used for “righteousness” is hasidut. 5.  Yehuda ben Baba was a second-century Tanna who was killed for ordaining rabbis at a time when doing so was forbidden by the Roman government in the Land of Israel. Among the rabbis ordained by Yehuda ben Baba was Yehuda bar Ilai.

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Kabbalah.6 In terms of prestigious lineage, Ezra, Hillel, and many of the Geonim were included among the hasidim.7 At the end of the Second Temple period, the title hasidim was given also to the Essenes because of their extreme stringency,8 until the sages were forced to bring them under control. They designated a hasid who was overly rigorous in observance as a “foolish hasid,” to whit: “He saw a child drowning in a river and said ‘I will take off my tefillin and save him.’ By the time he removed his tefillin, the child had died.” This is clearly a “foolish hasid.”9 We can see from all this that only one who behaves with reverence and with a superb devotion and who observes the commandments with extra care deserves the name hasid, and only a treasured few have been worthy of this sacred designation. In the eighteenth century, however, the Baal Shem Tov from the city of Medzhibozh founded a new Hasidism that quickly spread throughout Podolia, Bessarabia, Volyhn, Poland, Lithuania, Galicia, ­Romania, and Hungary.10 The picture was very different in the Baal Shem Tov’s time from what it had been in the time of the Essenes and after, and recently it has changed greatly from what it was at the time of the Baal Shem Tov. The founder of the Hasidic movement, the Baal Shem Tov, did not stand out as one of the great scholars of his time, but he was God-fearing and meticulous in the heartfelt performance of commandments. His teachings grew out of his love for his 6.  Sa’adya Gaon (882 or 891–942) was an Egyptian-born Babylonian theologian, philosopher, linguist, and rabbi whose writings attempted to harmonize traditional Jewish thought and Greek philosophy and to offer a rationalist approach to understanding Torah. Rabbenu (“our rabbi”) Bachya is Bachya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda (early eleventh century), a Spanish rabbi said to have written the first work of Jewish ethics. The Baal Ha’akeidah is the Spanish rabbi Isaac ben Moses Arama (ca. 1420–1494), so called because of his authorship of the philosophical volume Akeidat Yitzhak (The Binding of Isaac). On the Shlah Hakadosh, see Note 6 in Frieden’s Apologia. 7.  Ezra (fifth century bce) is the prophet and scribe who, together with Nehemiah, led the revival of Judaism in the Land of Israel after the Babylonian exile. Hillel (ca. 110 bce– 10 ce) was a renowned and influential Tanna. 8.  The Essenes were members of a sect of Jews with messianic beliefs and an ascetic lifestyle that flourished from the second century bce to the first century ce. 9.  In the original memoir, Frieden attributes the reference to a foolish hasid to tractate Sotah, chapter 2, in the Jerusalem Talmud, although the reference actually appears in chapter 3. A similar example of a foolish hasid appears in the Babylonian Talmud, tractate Sotah 21b. 10.  Baal Shem Tov, literally “Good Master of the [Divine] Name,” is an appellation applied to Rabbi Israel ben Eliezer (1698–1760), generally considered the originator of Hasidic Judaism. He is also often referred to as the Besht, an acronym from the name Baal Shem Tov.

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fellow man and especially for the simple person who is not educated, but who is God-fearing and concerned about his ignorance and his place in the World to Come. The Baal Shem Tov taught this large segment of the people that the most important thing is not learning, but deeds—serving God with the proper intention, devotion, and understanding. He knew that the masses were extremely poor and forced to worry constantly about their livelihood. He commanded them, therefore, to banish all sadness from their hearts and to trust in God, who would hear their prayers. This teaching breathed new life into the souls of many among the masses, and it is no wonder that many followed his teachings. His disciples, and especially Rabbi Dov Baer of Mezhirech, who was an incomparable scholar, embraced his teachings and developed Hasidim into a system that was easy for the simple individual to comprehend. History repeats itself. At the time of the Second Temple and after its destruction, Judaism was divided into three schools of thought or parties: the Pharisees, the Sadducees, and the Essenes. The main difference among these was that the first one of these groups kept the laws in accordance with reason and traditional interpretations; the second, the Sadducees, observed the letter of the law and the words of the Torah in a straightforward manner without any analysis or interpretation; and the Essenes, in accordance with textual allegories and received mystical understandings, Kabbalah. In much the same way, in the days of the Besht and his followers, Jews were divided into Hasidim and ­Mitnagdim. The Mitnagdim tended to follow the ways of the Pharisees and the Hasidim followed the approach of the Kabbalists. The essential distinction between them is that the Mitnagdim are devoted to religious service and hardheaded Torah study, while the Hasidim are devoted to spiritual and ethical service, heartfelt and focused. The huge opposition to the Hasidim forced them to separate themselves from their communities in order to survive, and to establish their own circles and their own synagogues where they could pray in accordance with the changes they introduced into their prayer services. These changes and their separation from the established community brought about an exacerbation of the situation, to the point that the Mitnagdim proclaimed a ban against them and denounced them to the authorities so that several Hasidic leaders were imprisoned. This

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weakened the movement somewhat, because people held the Torah and its disciples in high esteem and they showed proper respect for the great Torah scholars who opposed the new movement known as Hasidism, most of whose adherents were common people, ignorant when it came to Torah learning. The movement came close to disintegrating and might have been completely wiped out if not for the appearance in the middle of the eighteenth century of Rabbi Zalman of Lyady, known as Schneersohn, who founded the Chabad sect of Hasidism. Its ways were very similar to those of the rabbis of the Mitnagdim, and perhaps his purpose from the beginning was to reduce the distinction from them and to weaken their opposition. The Shulchan Aruch that the rabbi composed diverged hardly at all from the code of law composed by the great Rabbi Joseph Caro. Rabbi Schneersohn traveled to Vilna with the intention of meeting with the Gaon, Rabbi Eliyahu, and explaining to him the principles of his version of Hasidism. He wanted to demonstrate that there was no reason for disagreement between them and to ask him to cease his opposition to Hasidism, but those who had incited the quarrel prevented their meeting and this widened the rift. The Mitnagdim twice brought about the imprisonment of Rabbi Schneersohn by telling the authorities that the Hasidim were conspiring against the government of Tsar Paul and after him Alexander I. The rabbi was released when he was able to lay bare the lies told by his accusers and in 1804 the Hasidic movement was sanctioned by the Russian government.11 The ­Mitnagdic rabbis continued in their opposition to the Hasidim and their ways, even after the authorization issued by the government. The quarrels between the two communities continued and this brought about a defamation of both parties in the eyes of the goyim. At the same time, the Mitnagdim were joined in their opposition by the first Maskilim, who harassed the Hasidim verbally in their journals, their newspapers, and their books. They exposed to their readers the negative aspects of the behavior of the Hasidic leaders, the “rebbes”: Joseph Perl in his work Revealer of Secrets; Isaac Baer Levinsohn in his 11.  Tsar Paul of Russia reigned from 1796 to 1801; Tsar Alexander I from 1801 to 1825. For more on Hasidism in this period, see, for example, Simon Dubnow, History of the Jews in Russia and Poland, vol. 1, Israel Friedlaender, trans. (Philadelphia, 1916), 371–79.

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book Words of the Zaddikim; and Isaac Erter in his book The Observer of the Land of Nod.12 None of these writers saw through to the bright side of the Hasidic system, and especially to its value for the simple Jews who found consolation in it. Essentially, the finest of the Maskilic writers objected because they feared that the simplicity of Hasidism would endanger authentic Judaism, the faith in its pure form. Only one among that early generation of Maskilim, Rabbi E. Z. Zweifel, in his book Peace upon Israel, came out in defense of Hasidism.13 At the end of the nineteenth century, a few Maskilim arose who disavowed both camps and praised Hasidism because they thought of it as a sort of reform movement and a revolt against the faith as it was practiced. One should wonder only about Rabbi N. Krochmal and S. I. Rappaport, who both objected to Hasidism.14 These two, who lived in the heartland from which Hasidism spread and who knew it from its original sources, did not appreciate its secret inner light and its positive influence on the masses, its ability to brighten the darkness of exile and the difficulties of life in the Diaspora. This is something that could not be done by dry and mummified rabbinics, by pedantry and stringency, which the masses of the people could neither understand nor live by. It only brought them to despondency, while Hasidism instilled a sense of new life into the dry bones of traditional Judaism. I would see this effect with my own eyes when the various emissaries of rebbes would be hosted in my father’s home. Father was a follower of the rabbi of Lyady, but his home was nonetheless open to every ­Hasidic 12.  The work Revealer of Secrets by the anti-Hasidic satirist Joseph Perl (1773–1839) has been described as the first Hebrew novel. Isaac Baer Levinsohn (1788–1860) was, among other things, a promoter of Jewish-Christian understanding. Here Frieden seems to have confused the title of the important collection of essays by Isaac Erter (1792–1841), Hatzofeh Le’beit ­Yisrael (The Observer of the House of Israel) with the title of an American Hebrew periodical published around the turn of the twentieth century, Hatzofeh B’eretz Nod (The Observer in the Land of Nod). On Perl, see, for example, Hillel Halkin, “The First Hebrew Novel: Joseph Perl’s Revealer of Secrets,” on the Internet at www.yiddishbookcenter.org/story.php?n=10031 (accessed Aug. 23, 2009). 13.  E. Z. Zweifel is Eliezer Zvi Zweifel (1815–1888). See Gloria Wiederkehr Pollack, “Eliezer Zvi Hacohen Zweifel: Forgotten Father of Modern Scholarship on Hasidism,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 49 (1982): 87–115. 14.  The individuals mentioned here are the theologian and historian Nachman Krochmal (1785–1840) and the scholar and biographer Solomon Judah Rappaport (1790–1867), both Galicians and both among the early proponents of the Wissenschaft des Judenthums movement, which advocated the scientific study of Judaism.

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emissary, be he from Kapust or be he from Sirutzina. All would be welcomed in our house and all enjoyed the hospitality that was customary in our home. When an emissary arrived, a celebration was declared in our town and this sort of festive occasion usually lasted a week. Every evening all the Hasidim of our town would gather at our house. The emissary would rehearse for them Hasidic sayings from his rebbe; every evening something new. Among those gathered were many who understood nothing about the channels of Divine energy or about emanation, but they nonetheless listened attentively so as not to miss a thing, and they breathed a sigh of relief when the emissary had finished.15 They knew that now he would get to the fundamental element that interested them most: tales of the miracles and wondrous deeds of the rebbe and, especially, swigs of whiskey for all those assembled while the tales were told. And when they were feeling good, full of liquor and the desserts that my mother served in generous portions, the emissary would begin a tune. He would always bring a new melody that had emerged from the mouth of the rebbe and his followers at their festive gatherings and that was destined to be spread among his many far-flung adherents. From this first new melody, they moved on to old melodies that all the Hasidim remembered, and a new spirit immediately took over in the room. The singing grew stronger, the faces grew redder, wrinkles got smoother, and eyes shone with a new sparkle. Hands began to clap and feet lifted themselves up in an ecstatic Hasidic dance. These Jews, who were occupied all day long in their difficult labors, toiling and working to keep their households going, suddenly got a new lease on life, an extra soul. A new spirit was evident in their faces. Weariness and exhaustion were forgotten. A heavenly inspiration hovered over them all and they felt an exquisite sense that life, even as it is, was worth living; that it is worthwhile being a Hasidic Jew. This is the influence of Hasidism on the masses of the people. If Chabad Hasidism had come along only to shed this momentary ray of light, it would have been worthy of its existence. 15.  The implication here is that the sayings of the rebbes were based on Kabbalistic lore, which concerns itself with concepts such as channels of Divine energy (sefirot), through which God is said to interact with creation; and emanation (atzilut), said to be the first and highest of the four worlds of creation. See, for example, the “Glossary of Kabbalah and Chassidut,” on the Internet at www.inner.org/glossary/gloss_a.htm (accessed Aug. 23, 2009).

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In the rabbinate in those days there emerged a kind of “snobbish” echelon that made a distinction between those who had received a thorough Torah education, particularly if they also had a broader education (and these were few), and the majority of Diaspora Jews, who remained “ignoramuses,” as they were called in those days, either because of a lack of proper mentoring, or a lack of appropriate education, or a grinding poverty. This snobbishness was reflected in the establishment of separate synagogues for each group of craftsmen and for the poor of the town, who did not feel at ease among the snooty intelligentsia. The Hasidism of the Besht and his followers, who understood the souls of these outcast individuals, poor both spiritually and materially, fashioned a new philosophy that placed every Jew, as a Jew, on the same plane as the educated around him, if only his deeds and his heart were right with God. If the Gaon of Vilna raised the standard of Torah learning in Lithuania, Rabbi Levi of Berditchev,16 the defender of Israel and their intercessor before our Father in heaven, lifted the hearts of the simple folk toward faith. The principles of Hasidism and its simple ways, easily grasped by ordinary Jews, are what helped them endure the yoke and the suffering of exile in the Diaspora. “Every Jew has a share in the World to Come” took on real meaning in Hasidism’s approach to these people, with its concept of unity with the Divine.17 The self-esteem of the simple Jew was raised by the adage of Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of ­Berditchev that “the Jew who attends to his wagon and at the same time recites the morning Verses of Praise sanctifies the Heavenly Name.” The powerful life force of the Hasidic movement is what gave it the strength to survive to this very day, and if it now faces opposition, well, mainstream Torah Judaism is in decline these days, as well, to the chagrin of every Jew concerned with faith and tradition. Concerning the influence of storytelling on the masses, which the Mitnagdim denounced so strongly in their attacks on Hasidism, saying that Hasidic stories are nonsense and a worthless waste of time, Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav observed in rebuttal that “the tales of 16.  Rabbi Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev (1740–1810), was one of the main disciples of the Maggid of Mezhirech (see Note 16 in the chapter “My Father’s Family”). 17.  The statement quoted is found in the introduction to tractate Pirke Avot.

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great ­zaddikim and their ways purify the thoughts of man, sweeten the laws, and save one from all his troubles.”18 And another, Rabbi Shalom of the Hasidim of Belz, used to say, “It is written ‘Then they that feared the Lord spoke one with another and the Lord hearkened and heard, and a book of remembrance was written before Him.’” The text does not say “they spoke” but rather “they spoke one with another” to teach us that when people converse and God’s deeds are on their lips, then God will listen. Thus, the stories that recount the powerful holiness of the righteous of Israel arouse ethical behavior in the hearts of Jews.19 And our teacher Maimonides wrote “Desirable speech is that which bestirs the soul to virtue with stories that praise worthy men and their merits in order that their practices will appear good in the sight of men and they will follow their ways.”20 Indeed, in every tractate of the Talmud we find actual stories and midrashim, and all of them are intended to teach us something. I have digressed a bit from the task before me—the writing of a memoir—in order to describe the pivotal element in my mother’s family, which is quite necessary in order to continue writing about this family, so that its beginnings and its continuation can be understood, as follows: Reb Ya’akov Rubin was the central pillar in his town in terms of the development and growth of the new Hasidic movement, Chabad, and he raised and trained his sons along the same lines. He had three sons: Aaron, Baruch, and Eliezer. I don’t know if there were any daughters; I never heard any talk of aunts in the family, either on my father’s side or my mother’s. This family, a family of kohanim, lived in the town of

18.  Nachman of Bratslav (1772–1810) was a great-grandson of the Baal Shem Tov and the founder of the Bratslav Hasidic dynasty. For more on Rabbi Nachman, see, for example, Arthur Green, Tormented Master: The Life and Spiritual Quest of Rabbi Nahman of Bratslav (Woodstock, Vt., 1992). 19.  The rabbi mentioned here is Shalom Rokeach (1779–1855), founder of the Belz Hasidic dynasty. The biblical text quoted is Malachi 3:16. 20.  The text referenced here is from Maimonides’ commentary on Pirke Avot 1:17, in which the Rambam discusses five categories of speech, ranging from prohibited speech to permitted speech to desirable speech. Although Frieden used quotation marks around Maimonides’ words, he actually paraphrased and edited what the Rambam wrote. The translation here is based in part on Moses Maimonides, The Commentary to Mishnah Aboth, Arthur David, trans. (New York, 1968).

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Shimburg, in Courland province.21 Eliezer, who was the youngest of the sons, was my grandfather, the father of my mother. This Eliezer was married at the age of fourteen to the daughter of a villager (his name I don’t know). Her name was Ita and she was thirteen. Immediately after the wedding, the groom was separated from the bride and he was sent off to continue his studies. The bride remained in her parents’ home and not until four years after the wedding, when the groom had finished his studies, did he return and become close to his wife.22 Nine children were born to this couple: four sons and five daughters. These are the names of the sons: Yehuda Zvi, the eldest; Moshe; Lippe; and Mendel. The daughters: Esther Sarah, this is my mother; the second, Ella Shayna; Rachel; Ethel; and Rayna.23 This Rayna, the prettiest of the daughters, died in the prime of life, a young woman of seventeen. All the sons and daughters were good-looking, like their parents. The sons were handsome, healthy, strong, tall, and fearless. Likewise, the daughters were pretty, stout in proportion to their height, and full of charm. My grandfather was a meticulous and pious Jew, scrupulous in everything to excess, but he was also a Jew with a good heart whose home was open to comfort all. I do not know the extent of his learning; I never saw him with a Gemara in his hand, as I saw my father. Apparently, Hasidism served him as a substitute for other studies. Before he came to live in our town, he was an estate manager for nobles who themselves lived in the capitals of Europe and rented out their properties, mainly to Jews, who always fulfilled their obligations and paid their rent on time. He had two farms, one of which was man21.  Courland, now a part of Latvia, was not within the Pale of Settlement, but Jewish families resident there before Courland was annexed by Russia were allowed to remain in the territory. Courland province was adjacent to Kovno province and Courland Jewry was within the cultural orbit of Lithuanian Jewry. See Gary Mokotoff and Sallyann Amdur Sack, Where Once We Walked: A Guide to the Jewish Communities Destroyed in the Holocaust (Teaneck, N.J., 1991), 314; and The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1901–1916), s.v. “Courland.” 22.  Early marriages such as this were quite common in traditional East European Jewish families in this period. See David Biale, “Eros and Enlightenment: Love against Marriage in the East European Jewish Enlightenment,” Polin 1 (1986): 49–67. 23.  Judging from what Frieden writes below in the chapter “America” and from information about the household of Eliezer Rubin in the Russian census of 1897, the first and only systematic census carried out by the Russian empire, it appears that here Frieden has misidentified has mother’s sister Rivka as “Rachel.” The census record for the Eliezer Rubin household in the Lithuanian town of Kvatki is available on the JewishGen Internet site at www.jewish gen.org (accessed Aug. 23, 2012).

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aged by his daughter Esther Sarah before her marriage. One of his farms was destroyed completely by a fire and he was removed from the other when a new Russian law was passed forbidding Jews to manage or buy lands. From the farm he had managed, he moved to our town and opened an inn, a kretshme, and also did some business with the local gentiles. Grandmother Ita was a large, pretty woman with a good heart whose hand was open to all who were in need, be it with a glass of liquor, some hot food, or a few coins to provide what was required. She would bake bread and bagels and sell them to the townsfolk, mainly the poor who were unable to bake their own bread. Although they had fewer resources after they left their farms, they nonetheless continued to live like respectable householders. They married off their daughters without dowries; half their dowry was their beauty and the other half their prestigious lineage. The girls had simple educations. They did not go to heder, but they could read and write and knew the prayers for the entire year, the Psalms, and prayers of supplication, and they read devotionals in Yiddish translation. Esther Sarah—that’s my mother—was a woman of valor even when she was young. She and the second daughter, Ella Shayna, married two brothers. The third daughter, Rachel, married a God-fearing Jew from Traskin, Kovno province, and from there the couple moved to the larger city of Ponivezh and ran a pension. Three sons and two daughters were born to them. The sons and the younger daughter left for the United States. From the rest of the family, no one remains. All were killed together with our six million brothers and sisters who were destroyed by Hitler, yimach sh’mo.24 Those in America established themselves nicely, became wealthy, and live pleasant lives. The fourth daughter, Ethel, married a townsman who ran a flour mill, like his father. Three sons and four daughters were born to them. All of them are in the Land of Israel and all the sons, Avraham, Hillel, and Dov, are true pioneers. They arrived with the Third Aliya, paved roads, built houses, hewed stones, and did hard labor most of their 24.  The Hebrew formulation yimach sh’mo (“may his name be blotted out”) is traditionally added when reference is made to an evil person, especially an enemy of the Jews. This expression is based on Exodus 17:14, in which the Israelites are commanded to blot out the memory of the Amalekites, who attacking them during their wanderings in the desert.

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lives.25 To this day they have to work hard to make a living. They experienced various illnesses which resulted from their edginess and their hard work, but they are satisfied with their lot in life. They raised their children and instilled in them pioneering values. Three of their daughters married in the Land of Israel, and the fourth, a nurse in Beilinson Hospital, was similarly married.26 And this is the saga of the sons of Grandfather Eliezer: Yehuda Zvi, the eldest, I knew only slightly because he lived out of town and came to visit only infrequently. He was God-fearing and meticulous like his father, imbued with faith and a fear of heaven. He was “one who knows a book.” This description would fit most of the Jews of Lithuania, for although there were also many among them who excelled in learning and were giants of Torah, the majority were Jews “who know a book.” That is, they were not scholars, but they knew some Mishnah, the Ein Ya’akov, and Bamidbar Rabbah.27 They recited from the Zohar, although they comprehended neither the language nor the wisdom of the Kabbalah that was within it, and they remembered some Gemara from their youth. This type of Jew made up the majority of Lithuanian Jewry. They were pious, careful with matters of both lenient and stringent observance, and strict in matters of modesty and ethical conduct. They did 25.  The Third Aliya (literally, the Third Ascent) refers to the third wave of Jewish immigration to the Land of Israel in the modern era. The First Aliya, sparked by the pogroms that followed the assassination of Tsar Alexander II, is dated from 1881 to 1903. The Second Aliya, dominated by socialists, followed new pogroms and the failure of the Russian revolution of 1905 and is dated from 1904 to 1914. The Third Aliya, following upon the transfer of Palestine from Ottoman to British rule, took place from 1919 to 1923 and was again socialist in orientation. The Fourth Aliya, 1924 to 1928, brought mainly middle-class families, especially from Poland, and the Fifth Aliya, 1929 to 1939, brought mainly German Jews fleeing the rise of Nazism. 26.  Beilinson Hospital was named for Moshe Beilinson (1890–1936), a physician and wellknown writer in pre-state Palestine, associated primarily with the labor-oriented newspaper Davar (The Word). Beilinson Hospital, the first in central Palestine under Jewish auspices, was established in 1936 with contributions from Jewish workers in the region. See, for example, “Rabin Medical Center,” on the Internet at www.clalit.org.il/rabin/Content/Content. asp?CID=185&u=576 (accessed Aug. 24, 2009). 27.  The Ein Ya’akov, compiled by the Spanish-born scholar Jacob ben Solomon ibn Habib of Salonika (ca. 1460–1516) and designed primarily for a popular readership, is a collection of the Aggadot in the Babylonian Talmud and some of those of the Jerusalem Talmud, together with some later commentaries. Bamidbar Rabbah is a collection of midrashic material touching upon the Book of Numbers.

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not allow books associated with the Haskalah in their homes, but, by contrast, there was no house in which one could not find sacred texts: books on ethics and, if one could afford it, a set of the Talmud; books on Jewish law and other reference books, even if these were not understood. “Perhaps our children will study,” they would say, “and they will need these books.” The general aspiration of all Lithuanian Jews was to raise Torah-true children and for this purpose they were prepared even to rent out the pillows from under their heads. The great Torah scholars who came out of Lithuania and Poland got their start because of the dedication of their parents to educate them in the corridors of Torah and ethics. Even though not everyone’s hopes were realized, nonetheless the majority of the Jews of Lithuania and Poland remained at least “average” in learning and the number of illiterates among them was small. Among these “average” Jews might be counted Grand­father’s sons. Yehuda Zvi, the eldest, lived at the crossroads leading to the town of Birz, a large town compared to the surrounding small villages. He made a living by selling liquor to the goyim, buying from them whatever farm produce they had to sell, and reselling it in Birz. This business supported its proprietors, if only meagerly. He and his wife had two sons and three daughters. The eldest, Ya’akov Yehuda, below average in Torah learning, followed in his father’s ways: he married and fathered sons and daughters. In my time, he was the leaseholder of the dairy on the farm I managed, as I will later relate. After some years, he moved to the large city of Ponivezh and ran a pension, an inn, on a side street. The difference between hotels and inns in those days was that simple Jews stayed in inns. Next to every inn there was a large courtyard with stalls. There was a place for wagons and horses, just as for their owners and passengers, and there were provisions for all. This was not the case with a hotel, which catered to a different class of people. Every town had an inn such as this, and in large towns there were many inns of varying types and standards. Inns of the first class catered to wealthy and observant Jews who didn’t trust the kashrut of modern hotels. I remember that our father never stayed in a hotel when he traveled, but only in inns known for their kashrut. The second son of Yehuda Zvi, the one named Mendel, devoted himself to the study of Gemara and the commentaries of Rashi and

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the Tosafists at the famous yeshiva of Telz.28 About him, I don’t know anything else. Neither do I know anything about the daughters, except one who was infirm in spirit and in body and who died in adolescence. This family’s end was like the end of all the Jews of Lithuania, who were annihilated in the course of the destruction of Lithuanian Jewry at the hands of the oppressor Hitler, may his name and his memory be blotted out. Grandfather’s second son, my mother’s brother, was Moshe, bright and sharp beyond the average when it came to Torah. His schooling in Talmud and Halacha was not very great, but he did know how to study a page of Gemara perfectly. A fervent Hasid in all 248 of his appendages, he was a man with imagination and a yearning for broad experience. He kept changing his occupation and his place of residence, but he did not meet with success on account of his lack of persistence. He was barely able to sustain his family and eventually he emigrated to South Africa during the period of the great migration of Lithuanian Jews from the confined Pale of Settlement. Even though there, also, he didn’t succeed in business, which he changed from time to time, he lived to a ripe old age. I don’t know the fate of the family there, but I have heard that his children did well, with some even becoming wealthy. The name of Grandfather’s third son was Lippe. He was the favorite among his sons. He was strikingly handsome, tall, well built, and bright. His general education was greater than his Torah learning, but he was no ignoramus. He wrote a good Hebrew and Russian and had a fine mastery of both languages. And he had a strong and pleasant voice; on the High Holidays he served as a cantor in various towns. He once took me with him to help with the services. He had a crooked finger on his right hand, one of the expedients Jews used in those days to be excused from service in the army. He was once engaged to be married, but broke off the engagement because, during a visit to the future bride’s home, he got the impression that she did not love him enough. Some time later, he married the daughter of the famous musician named Zimbalist. This musician played on an instrument made 28.  On Rashi, see Note 9 in Frieden’s Apologia. The yeshiva of Telz was founded in Lithuania in 1875. It was closed soon after the start of World War II, but was later reestablished in Cleveland, Ohio.

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of straw that he hand-crafted himself. At times he was called to play at the courts of high government officials, and once he was summoned to play before Tsar Alexander III, who gave him a gold watch, of which he was very proud. This family lived in the small Lithuanian town of Kupishok, Kovno province.29 Lippe’s wife was not especially pretty, but she was a wise, good woman. At first they lived a good life, but at one point he became bored with a confining small-town existence. He left his home and went to the large city of Dvinsk where he found work as a bookkeeper and secretary to a Mr. Baron, a beverage wholesaler. He was very satisfied with life in the big city and away from his family, but then it happened that the wrath of his employer’s wife came down upon him. She had fallen madly in love with him and he had no alternative but to leave his position. He didn’t want to return to small-town life, so he, like his brother, decided to ramble off to South Africa. There he found a place for himself. He opened a store selling books, stationary, and religious articles, brought over his family, and discovered the good life. Using his cantorial skills, he became a communal leader in the city of Cape Town, took his place in society, and succeeded in enjoying life as he liked it. He died recently at an age of over eighty. The two brothers attracted many from my mother’s family to join them, and now there are many families related to us that expanded and grew wealthy in South Africa and that occupy significant positions in Jewish life there. It is the Jews of Lithuania who laid the foundations for the relatively large Jewish communities of South Africa. It is they who expanded and developed commerce and industry in that land, enriching both the country and themselves. They had great success and their influence 29.  Frieden may have in mind here an instrument called in Yiddish a shtroyfidel. Although this term translates as “straw violin,” the instrument was actually a rudimentary xylophone laid out on a bed of straw. The Zimbalists were a well-know musical family in Russia whose members included the world-famous violinist Efrem Zimbalist (1889–1985) and his ­American-born son, the actor Efrem Zimbalist, Jr. (1918–). However, Frieden may be confusing certain elements of family lore here, because the most famous shtroyfidel musician in Russia was not a Zimbalist (whose family name derives from an instrument called a tsimbl, a sort of hammered dulcimer), but rather a musician from earlier in the nineteenth century, Mikhail Guzikov (1806–1837). See, for example, Pete Rushefsky, “Jewish Strings—An Introduction to the Klezmer Tsimbl,” on the Internet at www.tsimbl.com/; and the article “Music: Concert Music,” on the Internet at www.yivo.org/downloads/Concert_Music.pdf (both accessed Aug. 24, 2009).

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on the economic and political life of the country is widely recognized. They are also good Zionists, among the leading philanthropists; they respond generously to every worthy cause. Some of the wealthy have come to Israel and are participating in its development. A few South African young people took part in the War of Independence and rendered important service. It’s evident that many of them would like to come to Israel and to settle there, especially since the government has passed into the hands of the minister Malan. This minister and his party are extremely nationalistic, fascistic, and antisemitic.30 During the period of General Smuts’ administration, Malan was not able to do much harm because his party was in the minority, but since he took over the government, the situation of the Jews in the country has changed.31 For the moment, he is busy with the apartheid policy, the separation of blacks from whites and the weakening of their parliamentary rights. This policy, which is already being implemented, is liable to bring disaster to the country, for the natives are the majority and there have already been serious incidents in Johannesburg, uprisings of the natives against this policy. If they will be able to raise up a great leader from their midst, a lot could happen and the lives of white people could perhaps be placed in jeopardy. And so Malan has his hands full and he doesn’t have time to devote to the question of the Jews, whom he has more than once attacked in parliament. He is waiting to first take care of the native question, and then he’ll turn to the Jewish Question. The Jews know this and are preparing for the worst. Many would like to leave the country, but they can’t do that now because of the limitations placed on exporting capital. There is an African company in Israel that operates in several areas of the economy: mortgages, insurance, cooling systems, transportation. This company makes it possible for South African Jews to invest their money in Israel in secure businesses that yield decent profits; the value of shares in this company is rising markedly. There is reason to expect an increase in aliya from 30.  Daniel F. Malan (1874–1959), a leader of the South African National Party and prime minister of the Union of South Africa from 1948 to 1954, was a minister of the Dutch Reformed Church. 31.  Jan Christiaan Smuts (1870–1950), was a Boer commander in the Boer War of 1899– 1902 and prime minister of the Union of South Africa from 1919 to 1924 and again from 1939 to 1948.

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South Africa to the Land of Israel. Such an aliya is extremely desirable because the human capital is good: most of them are descendents of Lithuanian immigrants who grew up with and were educated in a beautiful traditional Judaism, and of this the Jews of South Africa are justly proud.32 Grandfather’s fourth son was Mendel, or Menachem Mendel. There is hardly any Hasidic family in which one of the sons is not named ­ Menachem Mendel in memory of that great rabbi who was known as Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch, the author of the Tzemach Tzedek (which in gematria has the same value as “Menachem Mendel”).33 This great rabbi insisted that his Hasidim set aside time for Torah study, just as for prayer. Despite his being denounced to the  authorities by the rabbis of the Mitnagdim, he was honored by the government with the title of “Citizen for the Ages.” He was one of the incomparable greats of Hasidism and was privileged to have many thousands of the children of Hasidim named for him in order to perpetuate his memory. This son, Mendel, received his education in the heder in our town, the same way his brothers did. When he finished in heder, he was sent to Slobodka, near Kovno, to study at the yeshiva of the followers of musar. After a year, he returned to our town, not bringing with him much Torah learning, but a full measure of musar and some cantorial training. Like his brother Lippe, he had a strong and pleasant voice and he was accepted into the choir of the Kovno cantor Motel Elicaster. When he came home, he became what we used to call in Yiddish “a proper unemployed person.” In small towns, there were many young men like this, 32.  For a brief review of the history of South African Jewry, written some two decades after Frieden’s memoir, see Robert G. Weisbord, “The Dilemma of South African Jewry,” Journal of Modern African Studies 5:2 (Sept. 1967): 233–41. For a recent general history of South African Jewry, see Richard Mendelsohn and Milton Shain, The Jews in South Africa: An Illustrated History (Johannesburg, 2008). 33.  Gematria is the Jewish system of numerology based on the fact that every Hebrew letter has a numerical value. Some employ gematria to derive hidden meanings in or relationships between words. Menachem Mendel of Lubavitch (1789–1866) was better known as ­Menachem Mendel Schneersohn and as the Tzemach Tzedek, after the name of his most important book, a vast compendium of Jewish law. The Tzemach Tzedek was the grandson of Shneur Zalman of Lyady and was the third rebbe of the Chabad Lubavitch dynasty. Despite what Frieden writes, some suggest that the Tzemach Tzedek had an unusually good relationship with certain leaders of the Mitnagdim, making common cause with them in opposition to the Haskalah. See, for example, Joseph Isaac Schneersohn, The “Tzemach Tzedek” and the Haskala Movement, Zalman I. Posner, trans. (New York, 1962).

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those who went out of town to study but for various reasons did not succeed and, after a year or two, returned home and were left neither here nor there. They continued to study on their own in their hometown synagogues, without any guidance or structure, and in the end they married and became householders and continued their isolated small-town existence. That’s how it was with this Mendel. He remained “one who knows a book,” and no more. Mendel avoided military service with a ruse, like his brothers. In his case, his expedient was “nearsightedness” and with this he was released from army duty. Many were the Jews who avoided military service with various tricks. There was a negative attitude toward Jewish soldiers in the Russian army, and egregious discrimination against them. There was also the issue of kashrut, which was an essential matter for the Jews of Lithuania and Poland, so that many were the Jewish soldiers who suffered from hunger rather than be nauseated by eating non-kosher food. Indeed, even Jews with academic training found it hard to be promoted into the officer corps of the Russian army. All these things motivated most Jews to try to avoid army service with all kinds of subterfuges. If one ruse did not work, they tried others, some of which left permanent physical damage. Two of my uncles and also one of my brothers were exempted using these kinds of tricks. After this uncle, Mendel, was exempted from military service, he married Zippa, the daughter of Rabbi Lintup of Birz. Rabbi Pinchas Lintup, who was the rabbi with whom I studied in my youth at one point, as I’ll relate later, was brought to Birz by several members of my grandfather Reb Eliezer Rubin’s family to be the rabbi of the Hasidim. He was to serve alongside Rabbi Zundel, author of the Halachic work Ze’ir Yitzhak, who had been the rabbi of the town for many years. The wedding took place in Birz and after the marriage the couple came to live together with the groom’s parents in our town. Mendel had no vocation and so, of necessity, he made his living like many other Jews, luftmenschen.34 That is, he worked at whatever came to hand. When his family grew and his income was no longer sufficient for his needs, he did what 34.  Here Frieden actually uses the Hebrew equivalent of “luftmenschen,” a Yiddish term that has come into English to mean an impractical person with no definite business or income. See, for example, Philologos [pseudonym], “The Pros and Cons of Air Power,” F ­ orward, Sept. 4, 2009.

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his brothers had done and emigrated. He went to the United States, to the city where most of my family was already settled: Norfolk, in the state of Virginia. First he opened a grocery store and then a second­ hand store. He earned nicely and raised a family: three sons and two daughters, all well-to-do people and generous contributors to the Israel Appeal, although they are basically simple folk. Mendel died in 1946 and was buried in the cemetery of the Hasidic congregation in Norfolk. This is the history of my mother’s brothers. Mendel’s wife is still alive, full of energy and a passion for living, and she’s over seventy. Her wealthy sons support her and respect her greatly, and she is able to spend her days traveling between the members of her family, remaining mainly with her youngest daughter in New York and, in the winter months, in the warm state of Florida. We met with her while we were in the United States during 1947–1948. And with this I have completed the history of the families of my grandfathers and my grandmothers and their offspring, as far as my limited knowledge allows.

My Father’s House

Editor’s Introduction

Like the earlier descriptions of his father’s and mother’s families, the descriptions that Frieden provides in this chapter of his father’s home and of the lives of his siblings again serve to illuminate elements of a life story that were common to many East European Jewish families during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Frieden begins to introduce us to his small-town birthplace, for example, and thus he provides a picture of a not atypical East European shtetl. So too, he writes again about some of the occupations in which Jews engaged and about the way Jews attempted to avoid service in the tsar’s army. In this chapter we can follow the slow migration of most of the Frieden clan to America and so the text also provides some insights into the Jewish experience in the United States around the turn of the twentieth century. Frieden alludes, for instance, to the fact that Jewish immigrants usually arrived in America without an extensive general education, without specific skills, and without a knowledge of English, so that they often looked for factory jobs or took up peddling. Indeed, in one of his characteristic digressions, Frieden comments on the long association of Jews with peddling and explains the origin of one of the most important institutions connected with Jewish peddling in the South, the Baltimore Bargain House. Another element in the modern Jewish experience to which this chapter provides a good introduction is the importance of kin networks and the phenomenon of chain migration, in which one family member follows another to a new location. As the story of Frieden’s family reveals, when it came to making a decision about where to live, or what business to enter, or whom to marry, kin connections were often crucial. So, for example, it was because Menachem Mendel’s brother Eliezer had chosen to settle in Norfolk that this city became established as the destination of several other Frieden brothers. Similarly, the migration of Menachem Mendel’s

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brother Hillel to South Africa was prompted by his uncle’s presence there, and Shmuel Frieden’s relocation to Los Angeles was due in part to the presence there of a brother-in-law. It is revealing, as well, that Frieden’s brother Chaim married his brother Eliezer’s sister-in-law and that various Friedens were at times partners in business, and even in crime. Another subject illuminated by this chapter is the complexity of name changes among immigrants to America. As Frieden asserts, it was not uncommon for immigrants to adopt new surnames, and given names were often altered as well. Indeed, the family name Frieden was one adopted in America. Menachem Mendel himself became Morris in America and his memoir reveals the American names adopted by some of his brothers, although this matter is treated far from systematically. Frieden reports that Eliezer Yitzhak became Louis, for instance, perhaps because one of the Yiddish diminutive forms of Eliezer is Lazer. Shneur became Sam and Hillel became Harry. On the other hand, Frieden fails to report explicitly that Chaim became Hyman; nor does he relate that his brother Shmuel, whose name would normally be rendered as Samuel in English, in fact became Simon. Yehoshua, whose name would generally be transformed into Joshua, became Jesse. This chapter, like the preceding ones, continues to expose the sorts of things about which Frieden himself was most concerned. He seems to have been especially focused upon the education (or lack of education) of his siblings and their children, whether religious or secular, and he often comments on the level of religious observance adopted by the various members of his extended family. So too, where his siblings were connected in one way or another to Zionism or to the Land of Israel, Frieden is sure to mention that connection. Writing about his nephew Harry, his brother Chaim’s son, for instance, Frieden comments that “there is hope that in the not too distant future, if his wife does not object, he will make aliya,” though one suspects this is nothing more than wishful thinking on Frieden’s part. ­Issues of health seem to be on Frieden’s mind, as well, perhaps because during his lifetime he himself was often plagued by illness, and because he was over seventy when he completed work on his memoir. One cannot fail to notice in this chapter, as elsewhere, Frieden’s lack of attention to careful editing and to comprehensiveness. The author’s failure to record the Americanized names of his siblings is but one example of his inattention to details that might have been considered important in a memoir intended as a record of a family’s past. Frieden also was not careful to record the names of the spouses of his various nieces and nephews,

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nor even of the spouses of all his brothers and his sister. And he was just as negligent when it came to indicating the dates of important events in the lives of his parents and siblings; sometimes these are provided, sometimes not. Nor does Frieden seem aware that future readers would be left in the dark by phrases such as “a year ago” or “last year,” given that it is never clear precisely when various parts of his memoir were written. On the other hand, this chapter, more than the preceding ones, provides examples of Frieden’s abilities as a compelling storyteller. In relating an incident such as his brother Eliezer’s ploy to obtain money for his travel to America, for instance, we get a taste of Frieden’s sense of narrative, and in this chapter we even see some flashes of his humor. For example, in reference to his nephew Lulo, who had strayed far from the Jewish faith, ­Frieden writes: “He has not a drop of Jewish propriety about him” and then he adds “I’m sure he’s not even a good goy.” Finally, this chapter also makes clear how opinionated Frieden could be at times. His observations concerning the personalities of some of his relatives, like his remarks concerning American marriage patterns and intermarriage between Jews and gentiles, and even his assessment of the character of barbers, reveal not only Frieden’s sense of self-confidence and moral superiority, but also his views on a number of cultural issues. ­Frieden’s views are not necessarily supported by fact, or supportable, but they are strongly stated nonetheless.

❊ t h e n a m e o f m y fat h e r wa s av ra h a m ,

son of Yom Tov Lipmann Ziv, and not Milner, as was the family name of my grandfather and his brothers. This difference in names between a father and his sons could be found in many Jewish families in the Russian Pale of Settlement. And the reason: yet another device for avoiding military service. There was an army regulation in tsarist Russia that exempted an eldest son from military service, just as an only son would not be drafted, since he had to help support his family. The Jews realized that by giving their eldest son the name of a family that had no sons and thus transforming their second son into the eldest, they could free two sons from military service. This was the most effective ruse in those days, because, if the scheme was questioned, money took care of everything. Thus it happened that my father, of blessed memory, was not counted among the

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Milners. And beyond that, when he came to the United States in 1913, he was given the family name we had taken in America, which was Frieden, as I will later relate. When my father died in the Land of Israel on the 5th of Iyar in 5694 and came to be buried on the Mount of ­Olives, two surnames were engraved on his tombstone: “Ziv (Frieden).” I did not include the name Rubin, which no one remembers in any case.1 My mother’s name was Esther Sarah, daughter of Reb Eliezer the kohen. She died on the 25th of Tevet in the year 5702 and she was buried beside my father’s grave on the Mount of Olives. No place have I found a record of their dates of birth and it is only on the basis of what I heard from them while they were alive that I have determined that Father lived to age eighty-four and Mother to eighty-eight.2 May they be remembered for all times. Both of my parents came from families that were blessed with length of days. My grandfather on my father’s side merited living past the age of ninety and my grandfather on my mother’s side was over the age of eighty when he died in Povzineh, the place to which he was sent with the rest of his family during World War I, having walked a distance of thousands of kilometers, despite the hardships of the long trip.3 May their memories be for a blessing. My father first married a young woman from the Mizrahi family in Panemunek, a railroad station town on the Libau–Romny line.4 1.  Where Frieden wrote “Rubin,” the family name of his wife, he obviously intended “Milner,” the original name of his father’s family. The Gregorian date of the death of Frieden’s father is April 20, 1934. 2.  The Gregorian date of Frieden’s mother’s death is January 14, 1942. The Russian census of 1897 indicates that Avraham Ziv was forty-nine years old at the time of the census and that his wife Esther Sarah was forty-five. Thus, Avraham was born around 1850 according to ­Frieden’s calculation and around 1848 according to the Russian census, while Esther Sarah was born around 1854 according to Frieden’s calculation and around 1852 according to the census. The census record for the Ziv family in the town of Kvatki is available on the JewishGen Internet site at www.jewishgen.org/ (accessed July 14, 2010). 3.  In May of 1915, in view of the German invasion of parts of the Russian empire, all Jews in the western portions of Kovno and Courland provinces were ordered to move east. By the end of 1915, at least 3.3 million civilians, including hundreds of thousands of Jews, had been displaced within the Russian empire, either because they had fled before the advancing Germans or because they had been relocated in light of the Russian government’s scorched earth policy and its fear that locals might collaborate with the enemy. See Peter Gatrell, A Whole Empire Walking: Refugees in Russia during World War I (Bloomington, Ind., 1999), esp. 3, 16–18, 22, 145–50. It has been impossible to identify the location of Povzineh. 4.  The Romny–Libau railway, connecting the Ukrainian city of Romny with the Baltic port of Libau was opened in 1874 and became one of the most important trade arteries in the western part of the Russian empire.

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He lived with this wife one year and then she died giving birth to her only child, Father’s eldest son, whose name was Eliezer Yitzhak. My father went to stay at his father’s and, after a year of mourning, he married our mother, who was eighteen years old. She was a pretty, healthy woman without schooling except in Hebrew reading, the daily prayers, and prayers of supplication. I don’t know when Father moved to our small town, whether before or after his first marriage. The place is called Kvatki, which means “flower” in Russian and Lithuanian. It stood on the banks of the Nemunik River, which empties into the large Niemen River.5 The Nemunik River was small near our town and in the summer it was possible to cross it on foot. Only in the spring, when the snow and ice melted, would this waterway overflow its banks and become a great churning river, flooding all the fields beside it. It did not flood our town because the houses stood about fifty meters above the river. Two flour mills that supplied the needs of all those in the vicinity stood at the two ends of the town. Only about a hundred families lived in town, most Jewish. Some were craftsmen, some were peddlers in the neighboring villages, and six were storekeepers. The mill owners were Jews also, and there were religious functionaries: a rabbi, a shochet, and two teachers, that is, melamdim, one for the young and one to teach Gemara with the commentaries of Rashi and the Tosafists. The town belonged to a Polish landowner whose large holdings were nearby. There was another landowner whose holdings were on the other side of the town, but he had no property within it. Several of the dwelling houses were privately held and their owners paid only a yearly fee for the use of the land, but most of the houses were built by the landowner and he would let them for years at a time at a low rent. A spacious synagogue with a large yard was in the middle of the town. The bathhouse on the bank of the river served also as a hekdesh, a hostel

5.  This paragraph contains at least two errors: the name Kvatki is related to the word for flower in Polish, but not in Russian or Lithuanian; and the Nemunik River (the Nemunėlis in Lithuanian) is a tributary not of the Niemen River (the Nemunas in Lithuanian), but rather of the Lielupe River. On the Nemunėlis River, see, for example, the United Nations document “Meeting of the Parties to the Convention on the Protection and Use of Transboundary Watercourses,” on the Internet at unece.org/env/documents/2007/wat/wg.2/ECE.MP.WAT .WG.2.2007.7.e.pdf (accessed Nov. 7, 2011).

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for the poor who wandered from town to town.6 The Catholic church, a grand, spacious building, stood at the entrance to town and next to it was a residence for the priest and his assistants and a large orchard into which youngsters would steal their way to pick fruit, if they could, for a special guard watched over it. In the middle of the town was a government school that served the children of the nearby villages and also a few of the Jewish children in the town. And near the school was the provincial government hall, selski in the local language.7 The river passed through the whole town and meandered for many kilometers until it spilled into the Dvina River, near Riga, a large city on the banks of the Duna and the one-time capital of Livonia. The city was founded in 1158 and was annexed by the Kingdom of Poland in 1551. For many years, Jews were not allowed to live in the city, and only in the middle of the nineteenth century was the decree cancelled.8 By the end of the nineteenth century, some 30,000 Jews were in Riga. I visited the city several times. Father’s store was a general store, as were the stores of all small village shopkeepers, because there were few customers and a relatively large number of places to shop, so only those that had a wide selection of goods could survive. In our store, which was located opposite the church, one could buy anything: thread, shoe laces, leather, glass and glassware, iron and nails, paint, haberdashery, cloth, both expensive and cheap, tobacco, cigarettes and cigars, rope and gunpowder, kero6.  The word hekdesh is derived from the Hebrew word kadosh, meaning “holy.” However, as a shelter for the poor, a hekdesh was often thought of as a loud and dirty place, a place of bedlam. For other discussions of the hekdesh in a small town, see David Assaf ed., Journey to a Nineteenth-Century Shtetl: The Memoirs of Yekhezkel Kotik (Detroit, 2002), 433n119; and Maurice Samuel, trans. and ed., Forward from Exile: The Autobiography of Shmarya Levin (Philadelphia, 1967), 134–35. 7.  The meaning of the Russian word selski is “rural,” but a good translation in this context might be “village [hall].” 8.  The Duna is the German name of the Dvina River, whose Latvian name is the Daugava. Frieden’s statement about the course of the Nemunik River, which contradicts his earlier assertion that the Nemunik empties into the Niemen, is partially correct, as one branch of the Lielupe River does flow into the Daugava. Livonia is a region comprising modern Estonia and parts of Latvia that was ruled by an order of German crusaders from about 1200 to 1562. The source of Frieden’s information for matters of general history is unknown. However, most sources give the founding date of Riga as 1201 and the period of Polish rule there as 1561 to 1621, rather than the dates cited by Frieden. Also, it appears that some Jews were allowed to reside in Riga already from the fifteenth century. See, for example, “History of Riga,” on the Internet at www.riga.com/history.asp (accessed Sept. 11, 2009).

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sene and various oils, and on and on. There was hardly anything a customer would ask for and not find. An almost completely clear picture of the house in which we lived is preserved in my memory. It was divided in two: half for the store and half for our living quarters. When the business expanded and Father began to deal also in flax and flax seeds, the living quarters became a storeroom and we moved over to live in the other half of the building, which earlier had been rented out to someone else, and we had more space.9 And when the family grew further, we added two rooms to the house. This house, which was the third house on the only street in the town, is where all of us were born: the eight sons and one daughter of our mother, and Father’s eldest son by his first wife. Here we grew to adulthood and remained until the day we departed, one by one, as times and circumstances changed. My parents stayed in the house until the last day before they left for the United States. And the following is the story of the members of my father and mother’s household, along with what happened to each one of them until this very day. As I’ve already indicated, Father’s eldest son, from his first wife, lived with us. His name was Eliezer Yitzhak. The second son, the firstborn of his mother, was named Ya’akov Shalom. The third is me, Menachem Mendel, your servant. The fourth is Chaim; the fifth, Shneur Zalman; the sixth, Hillel; the seventh, Shmuel; the eighth, Yehoshua; and the ninth, Alexander. And the tenth was our only sister, Reichel. 1. Eliezer Yitzhak studied in heder, as was usual, until his fifteenth year. When he was sixteen, he went with my uncle Mendel to the Slobodka yeshiva near Kovno. His heart wasn’t in Torah study—the life of a yeshiva student did not appeal to him—and he did not like the ways of the followers of the musar movement, so when Uncle Mendel left the yeshiva after one year, Eliezer joined him and the two of them returned home without much Torah or enlightenment, but perhaps with some knowledge of musar, which diminished over the years. He would help out in the store and travel with Father into the countryside, and he would occasionally return to the synagogue to pour over the Gemara, which he did not really understand properly. 9.  Note the confusion in Frieden’s description of his family’s home; though he says it was divided into two halves, it seems actually to have had three divisions.

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When the time came for him to present himself for service in the army, he didn’t want to deal with the matter, even though he could have been exempted as an eldest son. With no just cause, he felt that he was discriminated against as a stepson, although, as I recall, there was never an instance of favoritism or partiality involving him and us. Apparently, he nonetheless had the impression that there was some, and he decided to leave home and ramble off to America. But where to get the necessary funds? He knew that Father would certainly object to his leaving and so he decided to use deception. At that time very few Lithuanian Jews dared go to America, that impure land, as it was then called. The great stream of migration had not yet affected Lithuanian Jewry, and especially not its prominent families, for whom it would have been considered shameful to send one of their members off to the Golden Land. And so he consulted his friend Uncle Mendel and they came up with a plan to forge a letter from Father to his wealthy brother who lived in Rakishok, in which Father would ask him to consent to provide Eliezer with 100 rubles. Eliezer signed Father’s name and he also stamped it with Father’s seal, which hung on his watch chain. He could get hold of this seal only on the Sabbath, when Father would leave his watch at home. He and Mendel left the synagogue early on Shabbat, found the seal, and affixed the stamp to the forged letter. Uncle Shalom didn’t ask questions and didn’t check the signature carefully, and he gave Eliezer the money. From Rakishok, Eliezer went to his grandfather’s and from there he informed us of the whole story and asked that we deliver to him his clothes and the other belongings that he would need for his journey. Our parents were very angry, over the forging of the letter, over its being stamped on Shabbat, and most of all over the very idea of the journey, which was beneath their dignity and against their son’s best interests, for what would he do in America with no vocation? They asked him to return home, but he insisted on not doing so, and so they had no choice but to accept what he was doing and they gave my brother’s clothes and other belongings to Uncle Mendel, who was a collaborator in this transgression, so that he could deliver them to Eliezer. This is how our big brother emigrated to America; he blazed the trail for all of us. In America, Eliezer became a garment worker in a large factory in Philadelphia. Eventually, he married a Lithuanian girl, the daughter of

My Father’s House

Reb Getzel Liebman, and moved to Norfolk, Virginia. He opened a haberdashery in a black neighborhood, that is, an area where only dark skinned “Negros” lived. He barely made a living, but he had enough for his small family: two sons and an only daughter. The older son now lives in Texas. He became wealthy and supports his brother, who is paralyzed in one hand and lives in Norfolk. The daughter married not badly, but the trouble is, her husband is a gambler who spends most of his free time playing cards and losing what he earns from his position in a large department store. His wife, Eliezer’s daughter, is sickly and, were it not for the help she gets from her older brother, she would not be able to get along. They have a very beautiful daughter. This brother, Eliezer, started small, but when his brothers arrived, and I among them, he got tired of his little store, passed it on to one of them, and moved on to a bigger store and made a good living. He got tired of that store as well, sold it to me, and opened an even larger store on the main street. Meanwhile, he got mixed up in another deal with his son and two of my younger brothers and when it didn’t work out they maliciously declared bankruptcy. All of them were taken to court and sentenced to two years in prison. They were released after a year, but Eliezer found it impossible to stay in Norfolk so he went to Texas, where he and his son opened a hairdressing supply business.10 His wife died in Texas and he also passed away there a few years later. Both of them are buried in the cemetery of the Hasidic community. He died in his seventieth year on May 7, 1944; the 14th of Iyar 5704. The eldest son, whose name is Ellis, or “Buddy,” as they called him in Norfolk, remained in Texas, divorced his wife, and got remarried to a fine woman. They have three sons. He entered a partnership in the oil business and got rich. As he matured, he became a worthy person, a good Zionist who is active in various fundraising drives and who is taking his place as a member of the Austin Jewish community. 2. The second son, the firstborn of our mother, is Ya’akov. I don’t know the exact date of his birth. Although the government had 10.  The Austin city directory for 1930–1931, for example, lists Alex Frieden (almost certainly Eliezer’s son Ellis) as proprietor of the Capitol Barber Supply Company and Louis (Eliezer’s name in America) as a salesman for the company. Listed in the directory, as well, is Samuel Frieden, Eliezer’s other son and also a salesman for Capitol Barber Supply, and Rosaline Frieden, Eliezer’s daughter and a student at the University of Texas.

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e­ stablished a special bureau to deal with the residents of various towns, registering births and deaths, issuing passports, and handling other town matters, all this was left in the hands of local officials, and the Jews did not have the custom that the gentiles did of recording the dates of family births and deaths in a Bible, which no gentile house was without. From what I have heard, I only know that he was born in the year 1875. This brother, like the others, received the traditional education that all Jewish boys in the Diaspora received: in heder until bar mitzvah, and sometimes for a year or two afterward, and then either off to yeshiva to study Torah, or off to work if they didn’t show any inclination toward further study. It all depended on the character and the capabilities of the boy. When Ya’akov was fifteen he went with one of his friends who was already a yeshiva student to Dvinsk. This is a city, founded in 1278, with a large Jewish community (some 40,000 at the beginning of the twentieth century). It is situated on the banks of the Duna or Dvina River. Many yeshivas were located in the city and its rabbis were among the greatest Torah scholars of their time. Because it was the city closest to us, it attracted many of the Jewish youngsters who lived in the area. Ya’akov studied for about a year and then returned home. His heart, too, was not in learning. He began working in Father’s business until it was time for him to report to the army. Like others, he too tried to be released from military service on the pretext of nearsightedness and he was sent to the army hospital in Dvinsk for an examination. In these situations, people would try to bribe the army doctors so they would go along with the ploy. In Ya’akov’s case, Uncle Mendel tried to deal with the matter and he failed. He traveled to Dvinsk and went to see the army doctor in order to be examined himself. He didn’t say anything, but when he departed, he left an envelope containing a note with my brother’s name on it and 30 rubles, even though he had been advised to leave 50 rubles. Thirty rubles was not enough to bribe the doctor and so the doctor turned the money over to the government and my brother, who was a handsome and healthy young man, was taken to serve in the army for three years and eight months. He did very well in his military duties, so that he became a corporal, a high rank for a Jew in the Russian army.

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Ya’akov’s regiment was stationed in the city of Lida, in Vilna province. There he became friendly with the daughter of an important family and he married her after he was discharged, remaining in the city to join the family business. This family was well respected in the city and relatively wealthy. They had a walled house with a large courtyard in the heart of the town. A restaurant, wine shop, and delicatessen were on the first floor, along with their residence, and there was an army officer’s club on the second floor. The father died in middle age, and his wife, an attractive, wise, and good-hearted women, ran the business together with her two daughters and three sons. One son, the eldest, lived in Warsaw and was involved in some major enterprises; he was a genuinely rich person. Another son and the eldest daughter went to America for a number of years and then returned home to continue managing the business in Lida. After a while, the mother died and the business remained in the hands of the two daughters and two sons. There was another son who died young, and another daughter who was not involved in the business.11 Three sons were born to Ya’akov and his wife while they lived in Lida: Eliyahu, the eldest, Lulo, and Moshe. They all received academic training: Eliyahu as a mechanical engineer, Lulo as an artist, and Moshe as a chemist. On the eve of World War I, Ya’akov moved with his family to Warsaw, the Polish capital, and there he opened a wholesale ceramics business with a partner. In 1928 his good-hearted wife, Leah, died and he did not remarry. To our sorrow, this entire precious family was slaughtered, except the young son Lulo, who was in Paris when World War II broke out. He joined the Polish army that escaped to England 11.  According to a rudimentary genealogical chart prepared in 1969 by Jane H. Frieden of Norfolk (a daughter-in-law of Chaim Frieden), it was the Winogradow family of Lida into which Ya’akov Frieden married. Information about the Winogradow family was confirmed in an interview of July 28, 2009, with Raya Winogradow of Haifa, Israel, who is in possession of a family tree prepared in 1980 by her father, Daniel Winogradow (a nephew of Leah Winogradow, Ya’akov Frieden’s wife). According to a private communication of April 28, 2006, from Yale J. Reisner of the Ronald S. Lauder Foundation Genealogy Project at the Jewish Institute of Poland, the 1912 Warsaw Jewish community membership rolls list the owner of a ceramics factory named Abram Winogradow. This is Ya’akov Frieden’s brother-in-law who would eventually help Ya’akov establish himself in the ceramics business in Warsaw. Abram Winogradow’s wealth is revealed by the fact that in 1912 he paid communal dues of 125 rubles instead of the usual 5 to 15 rubles. The 1930 Warsaw residential directory Cała Warszawa lists “Jankiel Zyw” himself as a trader living on Leszno Street.

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with the British after Paris fell.12 The only one who survived, today he is in Scotland. His paintings have been exhibited in Paris and London, and his work is widely recognized in the art world.13 Eliyahu had come to the Land of Israel and married here. He made an honorable living as an engineer in the cooling division of the Levinson Brothers firm, but after the Russians took over Vilna province he left the Land of Israel with his wife and young son and moved to Lida to work as an engineer in a large factory.14 There he was murdered by the Nazis along with all the other Jews of the city. May their memory be for a blessing. 3. I am the third of the brothers, and I’ll return to tell about myself after I write about the rest of the family. 4. The fourth brother, Chaim, studied in heder, like his brothers, and he also studied in the government public school, but his heart wasn’t in his studies. He would help in the store and with Father’s other affairs and when the time came for him to present himself for military service, he left for the United States with his brother Shneur, going to their elder brother Eliezer Yitzhak, who was called Louis Frieden in America and who lived in Norfolk, Virginia. The change from Ziv to Frieden followed the custom of all those who left Russia for America in those days. All those who left without fulfilling their duty of military service were afraid that the Russian consul would be able to return them to Russia, so they changed their names so that the Russian consul would not be able to find them. I don’t know if this belief was really accurate, 12.  Lulo was a nickname for Alexander Ziv (or Aleksander Zyw in the Polish spelling), who was born in 1905. In January 1940, after much of Poland had been occupied by the Germans, the Polish general Sikorski and the premier of France agreed on establishing a Polish army in France, which numbered some 82,000 men by the time the Germans invaded France. One unit of the Polish army in France was the 10th Motorized Cavalry Brigade, which was involved in several actions against the Germans but eventually had to destroy its tanks and artillery and retreat southward so that its remaining members could escape through unoccupied ports and regroup in Scotland. Because Alexander eventually settled in Scotland, it is likely that he was a member of the 10th Motorized Cavalry Brigade. On the Polish army in France, see, for example, “The Polish Army in Great Britain,” on the Internet at www.polandinexile .com/polisharmy.html (accessed Sept. 11, 2009). 13.  See, for example, Joseph Darracott, “Obituary: Aleksander Zyw,” The [London] Independent, Nov. 3, 1995. 14.  After World War I, Lithuania became an independent state, but Poland, also newly independent, annexed Vilna. The city came under Soviet control as a result of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939.

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but the fact is that all the Jewish youths who did not fulfill this duty changed their names when they came to the United States.15 Chaim and my brother Shneur did not remain in Norfolk because they could not support themselves there. There were at that time no factories in Norfolk that could provide them with work, so they did as all the Jewish immigrants to America did and became peddlers. Our older brother had a brother-in-law in the state of North Carolina, in the town of Spring Hope, a small town where he was the only Jew and where he had a general store, so my two brothers went there and started in the peddling business, carrying bundles of all kinds of merchandise on their backs and shoulders and going from house to house or from farm to farm in rural areas and selling all kinds of necessities to those who needed them. Peddling was a Jewish innovation, known already in the days of the Tanach (Nehemiah 13:20)16 and mentioned in several places in the Talmud, where peddlers are called gossip mongers because they would go from house to house and hear what was doing in the area and tell one person what he heard from another.17 The Hebrew word for peddler is related to the concept of gossip mongering, and the first items carried by peddlers were spices. Our sages concerned themselves with the women of Israel and saw to it that they would be able to beautify and adorn themselves using spices. They decreed that peddlers should circulate in the towns with adornments so that the women would not become unattractive to their husbands. And this is one of the decrees that Ezra proclaimed so storekeepers could not stop the peddlers, even though they competed with each other.18 It might be assumed that when the People of Israel dwelled in their own land and occupied themselves mainly with working the soil, peddling was not very common. Only with the beginning of the dispersion did peddling became more common, for a Jew who migrated to a 15.  For more on immigrant name changes, see, for example, Donna Przecha, “They Changed Our Name at Ellis Island,” on the Internet at www.genealogy.com/88_donna.html #author (accessed Dec. 10, 2007). 16.  The passage to which Frieden refers speaks of the closing of the gates of Jerusalem on the eve of the Sabbath so that no goods could enter the city and indicates that “Once or twice, merchants and vendors of all sorts of wares lodged outside of Jerusalem.” 17.  The reference to which Frieden alludes is tractate Brachot 51b. 18.  The reference to which Frieden alludes is tractate Baba Kama 82a.

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foreign land without anything, and sometimes without knowledge of the language and customs of the place, could not support himself with a traditional business or with the purchase of land or with the establishment of a factory, so the simplest thing for him to do was to become a peddler, which did not require an investment or expenses beyond his means. He buys himself a basket, fills it with various notions, slings it on his back and goes from house to house and from place to place, and thus a small income is at hand. Peddling was the entryway, though a narrow one, into the world of merchandizing and industry. This peddling takes many forms. There is the peddler with a basket in his hand, the peddler with a pack on his back, and there is the peddler with a horse and wagon. There are peddlers of haberdashery and peddlers of precious stones; every land has its own customs when it comes to peddling. In Russia there was peddling by craftsmen as well; tailors, glaziers, and other kinds of skilled workers who did not have enough work in their own towns would load their tools and their goods on their backs and go from village to village during the week and return home with their earnings only for the Sabbath. The mass migration to the United States from Russia, Romania, and Galicia at the end of the nineteenth century brought peddling, which spread throughout the land, to a point from which wholesaling was raised to a high level and came to occupy an important place in the development of merchandising and industry in their vast proportions. Most of the immigrants to the United States in the early years were without means, without knowledge of the language, and without occupations. When they arrived in a port city, they remained stuck there either because of lack of funds or because of lack of familiarity with the country, and they looked for any kind of work. There in the port cities they began their new lives in a new country, and again peddling was the simplest way to achieve some sort of livelihood; peddling and factory work. This explains the fact that most of the Jews in the United States are found in the great cities of the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. The extent of peddling that took place in the cities brought about the need to spread peddling beyond the urban milieu to villages and to the environs of small towns. And to the extent that the peddler succeeded in his peddling, he became fed up with it, with wandering around in the villages, so he moved to a city and became a retailer. And from a retailer he be-

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came a wholesaler. And it is a fact that the great wholesalers in America were once peddlers, or their fathers were. Jacob Epstein, the founder of the Baltimore Bargain House, was a peddler in his youth. He was the first to convene all the peddlers in the vicinity of Baltimore with a proposal: instead of each peddler having to come back to the city from time to time to replenish his stock, which costs him time and involves extra expense, it would be better if each peddler would contribute some of his money and choose one or two people who were well versed in merchandizing to stay in the city and provide peddlers with their stock in response to their orders. Of course, as the Aramaic says, “He who reads the letter, let him be the agent to carry out its instructions,”19 and so Epstein was chosen to implement his own proposal. From this seed blossomed and grew a giant wholesale house that spread its network across the entire United States and South America. Not long ago, the Epstein family sold the business to a new corporation and received for its part 20 million dollars. This is the story of the new style of peddling in the United States.20 After a year of peddling, Chaim returned to Norfolk and entered into a partnership that we formed after a while for the wholesaling of various sweets. He married one of the daughters of Mr. Getzel Liebman, the sister of our elder brother’s wife.21 Afterward he was a partner in the Frieden-Liebman wholesale dry goods firm. From there, on to another wholesale firm named Frieden Brothers and Associates. He was the sole proprietor of this company and did well during the recent war.22 From this business Chaim moved on to a wholesale barber supply firm, which continues to this day under the name “Barber Supply Company” and 19.  The reference here is to tractate Sanhedrin 82a, although the Aramaic is slightly misquoted by Frieden. 20.  For another reference to the Baltimore Bargain House, see Eli N. Evans, The Provincials: A Personal History of Jews in the South (New York, 1997), 81–82. For more on this firm, see Deborah Weiner, “Filling the Peddler’s Pack: Southern Jews and Jacob Epstein’s Baltimore Bargain House” (paper delivered at the annual conference of the Southern Jewish Historical Society, Baltimore, Nov. 5, 2005). 21.  According to the chart prepared by Jane H. Frieden, the wife of Eliezer (Louis) was Annie Liebman and the wife of Chaim (Hyman) was Ida Liebman. 22.  Information in Norfolk city directories does not correspond exactly to what Frieden reports here, but it does confirm the existence of various partnerships in which Frieden’s brother Chaim (Hyman) was involved. The city directory of 1912, for example, lists Frieden Brothers and Company, wholesale grocers and notions, with Louis Frieden as president, Hyman Frieden as vice president, Jesse Frieden as secretary, and Joseph Liebman as treasurer.

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which itself manufactures several kinds of toiletries and soaps.23 He and his wife Ida had three sons and one daughter. The oldest son is Harry, the second, Joseph, and the third, Julian, and the daughter is Annette. Until the recent war, life was quite a struggle for Chaim. His wife was a profligate spender, but he was nonetheless able to provide all his sons and his daughter with a higher education. Harry is a doctor; Joseph, a chemist; and Julian, a surgeon. During the war Chaim’s business expanded nicely, but he did not accumulate a fortune because he had black market dealings, as did others. Still, he managed to establish himself well: a private home free of a mortgage and a fine business in its own building on a prominent thoroughfare. However, like most Jews, especially in America, who exert themselves beyond their capacity in their youth and are not careful with harsh and spicy foods, he suffers from ulcers and has already had two operations. His son Harry looks after him well, and since his second son came into the business with him, he takes care of himself and does not work hard. When he is able to marry off his daughter, he will probably retire from the business completely. Chaim is an easygoing man, sociable toward all, good-natured and half a Zionist. That is, he is interested in the welfare of the State of ­Israel and contributes to the appeals on its behalf according to his means. Were it not for his wife, a simple woman devoted to her children and her extravagant lifestyle, he would make aliya. But his wife will not hear of it, and she is the one who rules the home; he will never challenge her. His life is quiet and comfortable and he doesn’t like quarrels. They will come to Israel to visit, but that’s all, at least for the near future. Chaim’s son Harry married just recently, and he is forty years old. He has a nice practice, though most of his patients are non-Jews. He too is easygoing and well liked. He is active in Zionist affairs and a year ago he was the chairman of the local Zionist executive. There is hope that in the not too distant future, if his wife does not object, he will make aliya. Joseph, the second son, the chemist, is an exceptional young man. Good-hearted like his father, active in community affairs, and known 23.  The Norfolk city directory for 1935, for example, contains a listing for Frieden Brothers, Inc., with Hyman Frieden as president and treasurer, his wife Ida as vice president, and Nathan Liebman (a relative of Ida) as secretary. This firm was reported to operate Cavalier Laboratories, listed as a wholesale barber supply company in one entry and as a manufacturer of “toilet preparations” in another.

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to and welcomed by all elements of the city’s intelligentsia. However, like all young Jews in America, he knows little about Judaism and cares even less. He drinks too much and spends most of his free time playing cards. His older brother, Harry, was the same, but he changed his ways once he got married and took on the responsibilities of providing for his family, and it is to be hoped that he too, Joseph, will improve his behavior when marriage places a yoke upon his neck and a millstone upon his shoulders.24 Meantime, Joseph, too, got married and he manages his father’s business. Julian, the youngest son, is different from both his brothers. He is more serious and dedicated to his profession. He specialized in surgery and is considered an expert in the field. He did his internship at Doctors Hospital in New York, where only the very top students are ­accepted.25 Now he has opened an office in Los Angeles, which is convenient for his wife, who acts in light sketches on the radio. The daughter, Annette, a graduate of a women’s college, is cultivated and quite attractive. She has a lot of her mother in her, and little of her father. She is excessively proud and has not yet found a man who is good enough for her. She tried her luck in New York for a year and didn’t do well. This is what worries her parents. She is already past her prime. In the United States, people either marry young or in their forties. With them, maturity comes very early and young men and young women start to court from the age of fourteen, while they are still in high school. It’s no wonder, therefore, that a young woman of twenty-five is already considered beyond the age of early marriage and few young men pursue her. Of necessity, these young women take office jobs in order to be independent and they earn quite nicely. This is why the number of unmarried women in America has grown, just as in England. When young women become independent, there is no need 24.  The reference to marriage as a “millstone,” which appears several times in Frieden’s memoir, is based on a discussion in tractate Kiddushin 29b concerning which should come first, marriage or the study of Torah. In this context, Rabbi Yohanan asks rhetorically, “With a millstone around his neck is he going to study much Torah!?” 25.  Doctors Hospital was on Manhattan’s Upper East Side and eventually became the Singer Division of the Beth Israel Medical Center. It was closed in August 2004. See Alec Magnet, “New York–Presbyterian Plans Two $400M Construction Projects,” New York Sun, Dec. 1, 2005; and the Beth Israel Medical Center Internet site at www.wehealny.org/patients/ BI%20Singer%20division.htm (accessed July 14, 2006).

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for them to pursue marriage and they become more choosy and will marry only for love, which isn’t so common. They are no longer worried where sexual activity is concerned. Ever since birth control has become an accepted practice throughout the world, morality has declined and there are even countries where birth control is legal. The fact that in the United States some 50 percent of all marriages end in divorce is a result of the decline in morality and family purity, and there is a movement afoot in the United States to allow morganatic marriages, as in France.26 It’s true that the decline in morals is felt throughout the world, but it is felt even more in the United States because of the very marked change that has taken place in this respect, since in earlier times American family life was outstandingly pleasant and good. So this is the situation in which young women find themselves in the United States: if they don’t marry early, that is, before age twenty-five, they are likely to wait for the opportunity to marry until their forties, and after that there is no longer any chance of their marrying, and this they lament all the rest of their lives. Surprisingly, it is actually the attractive and wealthy women who remain spinsters, because, having independent and comfortable lives, they are too critical. They look down upon every proposal and, as the years pass and they age, their possibilities become fewer and so they remain single, unless they are willing to lower their standards a bit. May Annette find her mate and marry, and thus free her parents of worry. In the meanwhile, this daughter has already married. 5. Shneur Zalman (Sam), who says he was born on May 16, 1887, is the fifth son. He too, like the rest of us, received a religious education in heder. He arrived in America in the year 1904 and went with his brother Chaim to North Carolina and became a peddler. He returned to Norfolk and entered a partnership with his brothers. He was not an outstanding student and remained without any real education except a little English, which he picked up through his life experience in America. He is a gentle fellow who gives in on things in order to avoid confrontations and he married a young woman from a small town, 26.  A morganatic marriage, usually involving an alliance between a noble and a commoner, is one in which the title or the estate of the marriage partner of senior rank is prevented from passing to the lower-ranking spouse or to the children of the couple.

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Waynesboro, in the state of Maryland or Pennsylvania.27 She had an average education, but has a good command of the English language and has an interest in literature. She says that she has been writing a book for the last thirty years, but nobody has seen it. She is very egotistical. Sam moved to her hometown and opened a clothing and shoe store with his brother Hillel. His wife is the daughter of Mr. Hoffman, a simple but honest Jew.28 All his life he lived in small towns where there were few Jews, and where those present conceal their Jewishness as much as possible. They live their lives in a gentile environment and either for lack of alternatives or willingly, they imitate the goyim and socialize with them. There is no kashrut and no Jewishness. The couple had three sons and one daughter. Joseph, the eldest, was born in 1911 on the fourth candle of Hanukkah; David was born in May 1916; Leonard in 1927; and the daughter, Yetta, in 1913. Together with their retail business, they opened a factory for work shirts and other work clothes. At first they did very well with the business and, while they were in the short term successful, they began to expand their store and their factory, not taking into account that their town was small and there were multiple stores that competed with them, and that their capital was limited. And thus they got themselves into debt. Then a spirit of foolishness overtook them concerning how to get rid of their debt and enrich themselves quickly. They decided to buy up as much merchandise as they could get their hands on, from all over the country, because they had a good reputation and could get easy credit. Then, when they were unable to sell off all the merchandise they had amassed in a short time, they dragged our eldest brother, Eliezer Yitzhak, and his son from Norfolk into their net and transferred a great deal of merchandise to them. When the time came that they could no longer delay making payment for the merchandise, they declared bankruptcy. They counted on what was common practice in such instances, that the creditors would compromise with those declaring bankruptcy and forgive an appreciable part of the debt, 50 percent or even more, in order not to lose every27.  Waynesboro is, in fact, in Pennsylvania on the Maryland border. 28.  According to the chart prepared by Jane H. Frieden, the wife of Shneur (Sam) was named Annie.

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thing in the legal fees that bankruptcy cases entailed, and in order also not to lose a customer. This is usually the case if the creditors are certain that the bankruptcy was the result of a bad business climate or other such causes, and that the debtor had no alternative way to settle his affairs. In those cases, if the creditors are convinced of the good faith of the debtors, not only do they settle the matter of their debts, but they also help them reestablish their businesses, and the law is lenient where forced bankruptcy is concerned. It’s different when the bankruptcy is malicious. In that case, the creditors not only insist on full payment of the debt but also prosecution to the full extent of the law. In the case of my brothers, malicious intention was apparent, according to the testimony presented in federal court. The trial dragged on for a long time and involved high fees paid to prominent attorneys, but to no avail. The four of them were sentenced to two years in prison, and part of their sentence was commuted only on account of their good behavior. They were let out after a year. After their release, everything fell apart. Their business went to pieces even during the trial and they left Norfolk in shame. The eldest brother, Eliezer, and his son went to the state of Texas, and brother ­Hillel went there as well. Only the fourth person involved, Sam, remained in Norfolk for lack of courage and energy to begin over again in a new place. Sam opened a small store and closed it a short while later because it did not do well and his wife was not willing to help out. This woman absolutely would not give up on anything she thought she deserved. For this reason, Sam went to work for his brother Hyman and he’s been working for him for twenty years, going from town to town selling barber supplies to barbers. Because of this job, which obliges him to be in small towns all week long and to deal with barbers, most of whom are lower-class individuals with low moral standards, Sam’s manners have been debased and his devotion to Judaism has just about disappeared. His wife, who stays home alone all week with nothing to do, spends her time with her goyish neighbors and going from store to store all day long. She is not a proper homemaker and few members of the family visit her or her home. Sam has gotten used to this and has no response to it because he is agreeable by nature and gives in easily. His sons did not get any higher education, but they all became well established. They are all handsome fellows and had no trouble getting

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married and getting along. Sam is the only one of the brothers who did not plan for his future. Worn out by his work and growing older, he has no real home life nor occupation. If his brother Hyman sells his business, which he is thinking of doing, Sam will remain without work and without support, since there is no unemployment compensation or pension law in the United States. (Last year, a pension law was passed in the United States, as well.) The little bit of money they had from their share of his wife’s parents’ estate is running out. And what will become of them? They don’t take account of their situation and just get by; they are optimists who live for the present and don’t worry about tomorrow. May God help them. (Both of them passed away in 1960.)29 6. The sixth brother is Hillel, Harry, born in December, 1889, according to him. While he was still a young man, he went to South Africa with his uncle Lippe. This uncle got mixed up in some affair and, in order to get out of it, he transferred his business to our brother’s name and forced him into bankruptcy. Because of this, Hillel was compelled to leave Africa, so he came to America when some of his brothers were already there. He married a sister of his brother Sam’s wife, and he joined him in business, as I explained above.30 They had two daughters and one son. As explained above, Hillel left Norfolk after he was released from prison, to which he had been sentenced for malicious bankruptcy, and he went to Texas. He worked for a few years for someone from our home town, a Mr. Bender, and afterward he opened his own business. Two years ago, he left Texas and went to Los Angeles. He bought a small general store and lives comfortably. He also bought himself a house. The son manages the business together with his father. The daughter, Rosalie, has married and her husband manages a store for a large company that has a chain of stores. The younger daughter is still in university. This Hillel was a diligent student in his youth and so 29.  Frieden clearly added material to this paragraph after he completed the original version of his memoir. When Frieden wrote about a pension law being passed “last year,” he could not have been referring to the original U.S. Social Security Act of 1935, which provided for old-age benefits, unemployment insurance, and other, similar programs. Perhaps Frieden had in mind here the major amendments to the Social Security program enacted in 1950. See “Historical Background and Development of Social Security,” on the Internet at www.ssa.gov /history/briefhistory3.html (accessed Dec. 11, 2007). 30.  According to the chart prepared by Jane H. Frieden, the wife of Hillel (Harry) was Ella Hoffman.

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he has retained a little of what he learned as a child. The last time I saw him was when I visited the United States in 1939. 7. The seventh brother, Shmuel, was born in 1891, by my estimation. He emigrated to America with our parents and, together with our father he ran the small store that he bought from our elder brother. Like his brothers, he too got his education in heder. Much of what he learned as a child remains with him and he is observant. He has a fine, strong tenor voice; he sometimes acts as cantor at services and he sings well. He married a woman a few years older than he, a woman of valor, who has a better general education than he.31 They have four sons: Meyer, Leon, Emanuel, and Eddie. Meyer is a member of the Communist Party and is its secretary in Los Angles. Leon is a high school graduate and a partner with his brother-in-law in a women’s wear factory. The last two finished the University of California with honors, in chemistry. Both of them are university professors, one in Florida and the other at Harvard.32 The parents left from Norfolk to Los Angeles for the sake of their health. Shmuel had a brother-in-law who was there also. They opened a general store, worked hard, lived frugally, and succeeded in raising their children to be well-educated and goal-oriented individuals. Although the family looks upon this couple as miserly, I honor them greatly for their energy and their devotion to their children, for providing them with a proper education and guiding them to become virtuous adults. The two youngest are involved in the professions, to their own credit and to the credit of their parents. All the children are honest 31.  According to private communications of July 21 and August 10, 2008, from Joyce ­ rieden Rosenthal, a granddaughter of Shmuel, her grandfather’s wife was Sarah Bluestein of F Charleston, South Carolina. Shmuel’s second wife, whom he married sometime after 1955, was a woman named Jenny who had previously been married to a member of the Savage family. This was likely Leon Savage, a brother of Menachem Mendel Frieden’s second wife. See the chapter “I Found the Best Woman,” below. 32.  According to the chart prepared by Jane H. Frieden, the Communist Meyer was a lawyer. Earl Frieden (1921–1996), called Emanuel in the memoir, taught at Florida State University beginning in 1949 and eventually had a professorship named in his honor. Edward Hirsch Frieden, called Eddie in the memoir, taught at Harvard and is the author of Chemical Endocrinology (New York, 1975). On Meyer, see California Legislature, Fourth Report of the Senate Fact-Finding Committee on Un-American Activities, 1948: Communist Front Organizations (Sacramento, Calif., 1948), 184–90 passim. On Earl, see the memorial notice in Chaim T. Horovitz, Biochemistry of Scandium and Yttrium—Part 2: Biochemistry and Applications, vol. 13B of Earl Frieden, series ed., Biochemistry of the Elements (New York, 2000), vii–viii.

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and sensible individuals; blessed are they who merited enjoying this honor and satisfaction from their children. They have eight grandchildren; may these increase. Because of their hard work and their frugality, both Shmuel and his wife fell ill and were forced to sell their business. They bought themselves a large building and they live off the income from its rental. If there is any room for reproach, it is that they overdid their frugality, which brought them to serious illness, and especially in the case of Shmuel’s wife. And Shmuel also suffered greatly from digestive problems. They did not maintain their health, according to the commandment of our holy Torah, which says: “For your own sake, therefore, be most careful.”33 Shmuel wrote me thus: “We are both ill and are not enjoying life because we worked and suffered a great deal. The only joy we have is from our children and grandchildren, and it was all worth it.” The life of this couple is typical of that of many of the Jews of America who arrived from overseas. Many Jews, immigrants, when they arrived in the land of freedom, threw themselves wholeheartedly into retail trade and later into wholesale. They worked day and night without any rest and with minimum spending on their sustenance and they raised and educated their children in the bosom of the American system of free schooling all the way up to professional training. They filled the land with lawyers, doctors, pharmacists, and officials. In the course of doing this, they amassed wealth, some less so and some more so; all this at the cost of their strength and their vigor, too high a cost. When they arrive at old age, they have no strength left whatsoever to enjoy their wealth, for most of their time and money is spent in a search for good health and for expert doctors, but in vain. They are too late. One cannot burn the candle at both ends. 8. The eighth brother is Yehoshua (Jesse), born in 1893, it seems to me. I remember that Mother had a difficult birth with him. There was no doctor in our town, and one had to be brought from a distance of thirty Russian versts.34 He was a fine, young doctor who delivered the child dead but was able to bring him back to life. The name of the doc33.  Specifically, the passage quoted is Deuteronomy 4:15, but here, as in several other instances, Frieden has slightly misquoted the Hebrew. 34.  A verst is an obsolete Russian unit of length, equal to about two-thirds of a mile.

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tor was Zebursky and, because of the revival of the infant, in our town they called the boy by the name of the doctor who saved his life. He didn’t do especially well in heder and he was not interested in learning, so when Uncle Mendel went to America, he went, too. Our parents no longer objected after most of their sons were already in America, and they, too, planned to go over eventually. He learned a bit of English and worked for his brothers, and when our parents immigrated to the United States in 1913, he moved in with them and helped in the store. After a while, Father sold him the store.35 Yehoshua grew into a tall, powerful young man and became enamored of the easygoing American lifestyle, straying from the right path and spending his leisure time on drinking and women. But a miracle occurred and he fell in love with a fine, beautiful young woman and he married her and started living a normal life. He opened a ready-made clothing store, was very successful, and accumulated a fortune. They had three sons and two daughters: Leon, Arvin, and Lorman; Rona and Marcia. The sons are like the father. They did not want to study beyond high school. Only the youngest son and the daughters received a higher education. Yehoshua’s pretty wife developed a mental illness that lasted a number of years. After being in the best sanatoria, she would improve and come home, but after a while she would relapse. Her beautiful yet anguished face was animated by a certain element of charm. It was said that she became ill on account of the grudge she held against her socalled husband, who became involved with a mistress, but I don’t know if there is any truth to this. This Yehoshua was prone to do something like that, especially with his wife being chronically ill. More than once this woman said that she would put an end to her miserable life and in 1932, when I was in the United States for a visit, it happened. Her husband had gone to New York on business and at night, with her husband out of the house and when the children had gone to sleep, she went down to the kitchen, opened the gas jet, and put the hose in her mouth. In the morning the children found her dead. Thus she 35.  Abraham Frieden appears in the Norfolk city directory for the first time in 1914, where he is listed as the owner of a dry goods store on Church Street. Jesse Frieden, however, is listed as a traveling salesman.

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snuffed out her life, which could have been so beautiful and pleasant. She lacked for nothing: beauty, wealth, sons and daughters. And it’s inconceivable that she was not loved. Is it possible that in this case jealousy, imagined or justified, is what brought about the loss of her life? Not for nothing did our sages of blessed memory say: “Envy drives a man out of the world.”36 Yehoshua married a second time. His second wife looked after the children with understanding and with integrity and also managed the business together with the two older sons. The couple married off their older daughter quite well, and their younger son was sent to dental school, but he, too, tired of studying, got married to a wealthy girl and opened a successful laundry business—a “Laundromat” in English—like that of his brother-in-law. All this was after Yehoshua passed away following a second, unsuccessful, surgery for a stomach abscess at the Mayo Brothers Clinic in Rochester.37 He was brought back to be buried in the joint Christian-Jewish German cemetery. He died on May 11, 1944, the 17th of Iyar 5704, just a few days after the death of our eldest brother, whose coffin was brought back to Norfolk also. The two of them were buried in the same week, one in the cemetery of the Hasidic community, and the other in the joint cemetery, despite the values of our family. In one way his wife did not act properly: she did not maintain a relationship with our family, in order to prevent our having any influence on the orphaned children. There is almost no contact with them. 9. The ninth brother is Alexander—Sender. His birth is noted on the blank page of my father’s Talmud, tractate Baba Metzia, which is in my possession. The day of his birth is written in my father’s own hand: that he was born three days after Rosh Hashanah, 5655, which is 1894, on a Friday. He received his early education in heder and also in the government public school and he got to America together with our parents. Although he helped in the store, he devoted himself to learning the English language and in the very same year that he arrived he was admitted to high school in Norfolk and finished his studies in two years instead of the usual four. This amazed the faculty, and at the graduation 36.  The exact reference here is Pirke Avot 4:28, where the more complete text reads “Envy, desire, and ambition drive a man out of the world.” 37.  The Mayo Brothers Clinic, founded in 1883 and now known simply as the Mayo Clinic, is in Rochester, Minnesota.

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ceremony that year the principal remarked that this was the first time a student finished high school so outstandingly in two years, despite his not knowing the language at the outset. Our parents’ resources were limited, but he went on to the University of Virginia and after a year he transferred to Columbia University in New York. He was aided by his brothers, and especially by Yehoshua, who was already well established. Alexander studied chemistry and received his doctoral degree when he was only twenty-five years old. Alexander was invited to lecture at Columbia and while he was at the university, he met a student, Evelyn Hoffman, and they married in 1920. He left university teaching and moved to a town near New York called New Rochelle, where he established a research laboratory that did work for several factories, with forty chemists working under his direction. The crisis of 1929 in the United States forced the factories to discontinue their spending on research and he was forced to close his institute. He went to work as chief chemist for a large importexport and manufacturing firm but on the heels of a dispute with one of the directors, he left this firm and went to Milwaukee to work for the large beer manufacturer called the Pabst Brewing Company.38 This brother of mine is the finest of Father’s sons, the finest of the brothers, in terms of his being cultured and having a general education. He has a stalwart appearance and style, and a pleasant manner with people. He behaves as a gentleman with everyone. Clear minded and a thorough researcher, he is considered to be among the top chemistry experts in the United States. They had two sons and both are highly educated. One, Julian, is a research physician in Chicago.39 The other, Carl, is also a physician, finishing his hospital internship. In his youth, this brother, Alexander, was a good Jew and had warm feelings for Jewish tradition. His wife, who is far removed from anything Jewish and from Judaism, has caused him to distance himself from Jewish affairs and from religion. But lately he has become more involved in Jewish fundraising drives and has become interested in 38.  For a popular magazine article touching upon some of Alexander Frieden’s work at the Pabst Laboratories, with a photo of him, see John Lear, “Has Science Found the Spark of Life?” Collier’s, Sept. 1, 1951. 39.  One of Julian’s children, Thomas R. Frieden, became Director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in 2009.

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what’s going on in Israel. His sons were raised in an assimilationist atmosphere under their mother’s influence. As of now, I know nothing about them. This brother I saw in 1948 when he came especially to see us in New York before we sailed back to the Land of Israel. 10. Our only sister, Reichel, or Ray, was born on Simchat Torah in the year 1898. I remember that we were in the synagogue with Father. Mother remained at home because her labor pains were beginning. At the end of the morning service, Father sent me home to see how Mother was doing. I returned at once to the synagogue with the glad tidings that Mother had given birth to a girl. This was exactly at the time when the honors of hatan torah and hatan bereshit were being auctioned.40 Father was so happy about this news that he jumped up and bid double the previous offer. I don’t remember how many rubles that was. And this is how the date of her birth became so clearly fixed in my mind. Our sister did not receive any formal education, as was the custom in observant circles in Lithuania. What the sages had to say on this matter is well known: “Whosoever teaches his daughter Torah teaches her lewdness. So says Rabbi Eliezer.” But on the other hand, Ben Azzai said: “A man is obligated to teach his daughter Torah.”41 Reichel did learn to read the prayers, which Mother taught her, and she learned to write in Yiddish and in Russian, which she taught herself. She came to the United States with our parents and she helped in Father’s store, and later in mine. 40.  It was common in many synagogues to auction the honors of reciting the blessings over the reading of the final section of the Torah and its beginning section as the annual cycle of Torah reading was completed and begun again on the holiday of Simchat Torah. Those upon whom these honors were bestowed were called the hatan torah, literally the “bridegroom of the Torah” and the hatan bereshit, the “bridegroom of Genesis.” 41.  The reference to which Frieden alludes here is tractate Sotah 21b, although in his original text he indicates tractate Sotah 20. The seeming contradiction in the two passages cited grows out of a discussion of the ritual described in Numbers 5, in which a woman suspected of adultery is made to drink “water of bitterness” in a sort of trial by ordeal. It was believed that if a woman had merit of the sort acquired through Torah study, the “water of bitterness” would have no effect, so Ben Azzai believed that every father had an obligation to teach his daughter Torah in order to protect her. Rabbi Eliezer, on the other hand, felt that if a woman acquired merit through the study of Torah, she might feel that she had license to engage in immoral acts. The Rambam understood the word here translated as “lewdness” (tiflut in Hebrew) to mean “triviality.” For more on this matter, see, for example, Lee Buckman, “Torah Sparks: Parashat Naso,” on the Internet at www.uscj.org/Naso_57636172.html; and Moshe Kahn, “Jewish Education for Women,” on the Internet at www.lookstein.org/articles/jed_women.htm (both accessed Dec. 19, 2007). 

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Reichel fell in love with a young man from Baltimore, his mother’s only son, and she married him, despite the feelings of the family. This young man played the violin quite well, but he was so spoiled and lazy that he refused to play except when the spirit moved him. He was a traveling salesman for a tie manufacturer but because of his laziness he was unable to hold a position for long and was constantly changing jobs. It was easy for him to get a position, for he was handsome and articulate, but he couldn’t hold on to it. Never was he able to support his wife and the daughter that was born to them, for whatever he earned he spent on himself. He liked to dress well, to smoke expensive cigars, and to spend most of his time on trivial activities. It was said that he never took his daughter on his lap for fear of ruining the crease in his trousers. As a result, this only sister of ours had to work all her life and did not have the time to see to her daughter’s education. They lived in a gentile neighborhood and all her friends were goyim, both girls and boys, and, without a watchful eye and careful supervision over her, she picked up many depraved youthful habits. She matured early and strayed from proper Jewish behavior. This girl, Emily Ann, had a powerful and pretty voice and, on the advice of some teachers, her mother resolved to turn her into a prima donna. She spent her last cent to pay for voice coaches. There were times when she could not even pay her rent, until one of the brothers would save her from eviction and again she would get herself into debt. Eventually she left Norfolk and went to Hollywood, where she continued to oversee the development of her daughter’s voice, working with good teachers. The daughter rose in her profession somewhat, but never achieved stardom and she certainly could not earn a living, so it was up to her mother both to support her and also to pay for her voice coaches. In the meantime, our sister divorced her failure of a husband. The daughter married an Italian gentile, and he too is making the rounds in Hollywood, taking acting roles when he can get them. All this is embarrassing to her and to her family.42 The way she has ended 42.  Reichel’s daughter, Emily Ann, apparently adopted the stage name Margherita Ghirosi, and perhaps others. Although she never attained greatness, Emily Ann’s daughter, Aprile Millo, born in 1958, did achieve notable success as an opera singer. See, for example, “Aprile Millo,” on the Internet at sopranos.freeservers.com/millo.htm; and the Aprile Millo home page (with sound clips), on the Internet at aprilemillo.org (both accessed Sept. 14, 2009).

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up is a result of the way she started out. Her mother and her father are to blame for not supervising her during her youth and adolescence. If she had gotten some guidance and some Jewish education, she would not have arrived at such irresponsibility and failure. And to my chagrin, this is not the first such example in our family. Already before her, the son of our brother Ya’akov, the artist, who spent many years in Paris, married a Christian. He divorced her, and then again married a Christian, which is a rather rare occurrence. It is common knowledge that after a divorce from an intermarriage, that sort of thing is not attempted a second time. Not so with this decidedly irresponsible young man. He has not a drop of Jewish propriety about him, and I’m sure he’s not even a good goy. Most mixed marriages do not succeed. Even if those who get married are good people and most understanding, they end up being divorced. There is reason to object to intermarriage, and not only from a religious perspective, with us Jews being commanded explicitly: “You shall not intermarry with them.” Incorrect is the explanation offered by “reformers” who say that mixed marriages were forbidden because idol worship was the common faith in ancient society and that inter­marriage was the main cause of apostasy, as the Torah commands, “They shall not turn your children away from Me to worship other gods.”43 Today, they say, one need not be concerned about this because religion is no longer an issue, or because religion is not a major factor in modern life. This is wrong. Even in cases where nonbelievers intermarry, the marriage fails because differing worldviews simply do not mix. Not only that, but (and this is the main factor) individuals who grew up and were educated from childhood in different environments and with different codes of conduct will never reach the complete mutual understanding that is the foundation of a normal married life. Neither love nor patience can overcome the individual inclinations that are deeply rooted from childhood in the heart of each partner in a mixed marriage, and this explains 90 percent of the divorces of mixed-marrieds in the world. Few are the instances of normal lives among them, and many of the few who avoid divorce for one reason or another live tormented lives, and woe to those who live such lives. The children suffer most under 43.  The quotations here are from Deuteronomy 7:3 and 7:4.

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the influence of their parents, for each of them tries, either consciously or unconsciously, to sway them toward his or her way of thinking and his or her worldview. Against their will, the children are between the hammer and the anvil, and their childhood and adolescence are painful tragedies.

Me and My Youth

Editor’s Introduction

In this chapter, Frieden recalls the very earliest years of his life and, in doing so, he introduces his readers to numerous traditional customs and beliefs, some grounded in Jewish theology and some essentially folkways. Portions of what Frieden writes, about the atmosphere in Jewish homes on the eve of the Sabbath, for example, seem rather formulaic and it is difficult to know if Frieden was recording what he thought of as reality or what he recognized as an idealized vision of East European shtetl life. Similar descriptions of Sabbath eve appear also in other memoirs from this period, such as those of the Yiddish writer Yekhezkel Kotik, the American immigrant author Mary Antin, and the Zionist leader Shmaryahu Levin. By the time Frieden penned his description of Shabbat in the shtetls of Lithuania, he had come under the influence of rationalism and modernism, and so it is hard to believe that he truly accepted the notion that an Angel of Goodness and an Angel of Evil accompanied every Jew home from the synagogue on Friday evening, to take but one example. On the other hand, as later chapters of his memoir reveal, Frieden always remained a traditionalist at heart and likely accepted a belief in good and evil angels as part of his cultural heritage, without subjecting it to too much scrutiny. While some of what is contained in this chapter raises questions of historical accuracy, other parts seem to be straightforward accounts of various aspects of shtetl life and thus offer fascinating glimpses into the lived experience of East European Jews. We read about how, during the winter, householders preserved ice for use in the summer, for example, and we observe how the social hierarchies of the shtetl functioned in the synagogue and in the bathhouse. Similarly, we gain additional insights into family relations and into childrearing practices.

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In this chapter, we continue to encounter the particularities of Frieden’s approach to recording his life story. The chapter contains some fine examples of his more polished expository prose, for example. Describing how, in springtime, the river that ran through his town could turn into a raging torrent, Frieden writes that “Hour after hour, young and old would stand on the river bank watching the drama, as the river breached its banks and spread out, swallowing up planted fields and the ramshackle houses of peasants who had dared to build too close to its banks.” Recounting the humdrum weekday atmosphere in his shtetl, he writes: “From the tavern the sound of quarrelling occasionally broke out, or the fragmented humming of a Lithuanian melody by a drunkard in his cups. Chickens pecked at the garbage” he adds, “and a dog barked off somewhere as he chased after a cat.” Here, too, as in other portions of his memoir, Frieden engages in digressions that lead in unexpected directions. A discussion of the synagogue courtyard leads to a tangential discussion about King David and the Sabbath afternoon meal, and a description of one of Frieden’s early childhood accidents leads to a lengthy reflection on the place of miracles in Jewish tradition. The reader gains further insight into Frieden’s personal beliefs and attitudes in this chapter as well. In his digression regarding miracles, Frieden reveals his abiding belief in God’s watchfulness over individuals, and in the distinction he draws between the Jewish Sabbath and that of the Christians, as well as in his description of peasant behavior on Sundays, his disdain for Christianity and for the peasant society of Lithuania is evident. Another aspect of Frieden’s memoir that stands out especially in this chapter is the author’s inconsistency when it comes to the assumptions he makes about the knowledge base of his potential readers. In some sections of this chapter, as elsewhere in his memoir, he assumes very little background knowledge on the part of his audience, explaining, for instance, the traditional belief that on the Sabbath every Jew feels so unburdened that he seems to have acquired a sort of “extra soul.” In other parts of the chapter, however, Frieden assumes a great deal of knowledge on the part of his potential readers. Thus, he refers to such obscure figures as ­Nakdimon ben Gurion, Nachum Ish Gamzu, and Elisha, the Man of the Wings, as though his audience is thoroughly familiar with these individuals and their stories.

❊

Me and My Youth i, menachem mendel,

am the third son of my father and the second of my mother, of blessed memory. According to what my parents told me, I was born on zot hanukkah,1 the second day of Tevet in the year 5639, which is 1878, in the small town of Kvatki, Novoalexandrovsk district, Kovno province. This town sits on the Nemunik River, a tributary of the larger Niemen River, which flows through all of Lithuania and empties near Riga into the Dvina, which flows into the Finnish Sea.2 This town resembled the hundreds and thousands of other such towns in the Pale of Settlement in Russia, which differ from each other only in size and in the number of their residents, but not in the lifestyle there. Two things are engraved in my memory from my childhood in this town, and they are the synagogue and the river, perhaps because of my involvement with both these things the entire time I lived in the town. Both appear before me clearly in every detail. The synagogue, because from my tenderest childhood I would accompany Father as he went to pray there three times a day, in order to say “amen.” So too, in my youth I spent many days and nights there in prayer and study. That, and the square in front of the synagogue, spacious and fenced around. This courtyard served several purposes: a place to set up the wedding canopy when a young man or woman from the town got married, which happened only seldom, since there were few youngsters who stayed in the town until the age of marriage.3 The main use of the square was for the gathering of many of the synagogue’s worshippers in summertime to get some air before and after prayer or when there was a delay in the services, which happened often, or between the ­mincha and maariv services for political discussions concerning historical events as they saw them. These people comprised the intelligentsia 1.  Zot hanukkah refers to the eighth day of Hanukkah on the basis of the Torah reading for that day, which concludes with a passage (Numbers 7:84) that begins zot hanukkat hamizbeach (“This was the dedication offering of the altar”). 2.  Frieden here repeats errors concerning geography that he recorded earlier in his memoir. See Note 5 in the preceding chapter, “My Father’s House.” 3.  Jewish tradition has generally preferred that wedding canopies be erected outdoors, under the stars, as an expression of the hope that the couple being married would be blessed with many children. The allusion here is to the promise made to Abraham in Genesis 22:17, and elsewhere, that God would multiply the patriarch’s descendants as the stars of the heaven. See, for example, Michael Kaufman, Love, Marriage, and Family in Jewish Law and Tradition (Northvale, N.J., 1992), 175–77.

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of the town, for the simple folk would remain inside the synagogue and recite Psalms. It’s interesting that in regard to the recitation of Psalms there was a kind of religious snobbishness. Jews of the kind who “know a book” hated joining those who recited Psalms, even though this is what King David, the Sweet Singer of Israel,4 requested of the Holy One, Blessed be He: “Master of the Universe, may I merit having my words recited in houses of prayer and houses of study.”5 Moreover, legend has it that King David died with the departure of the Sabbath, for he never ceased his singing and music making during the Sabbath day and so the Angel of Death could not touch him. It is for this reason that, to this day, the third Sabbath meal is dedicated to King David and is called “the King’s Meal,” the meal of the messianic Davidic king. David’s spirit lives on forever in the mouth of every Jew, in his heart and his soul.6 The depressed and the brokenhearted poured out their souls and their troubles before God with the prayers of David, the son of Jesse. The pious king, the Sweet Singer of Israel, lives on, and his prayers are accepted. And thus it is said among the Jews: “David, King of Israel, continues to live on.” Nonetheless, the learned men abstained from reciting Psalms collectively, leaving the task to the simple folk, to their great delight. The synagogue courtyard served also as a sports field for the children. Although the word “sport” was unknown in the community, this is what was intended. The children of the town, whether they came to pray or whether they had not yet reached the age when this was required, would spend most of their time in the courtyard. Their activities and their games on the square served to exercise them physically and to develop their bodies to exactly the same degree that sport does in our day. Even though this was unorganized and was done without an understanding of the principles of athletics, the children invented their own games and these were of no less value for their physical develop4.  Tradition attributes the composition of the Psalms to King David and the phrase “Sweet Singer of Israel” is used to refer to him in 2 Samuel 23:1. 5.  The reference Frieden provides here is tractate Shekalim, chapter 2. However, David’s supplication quoted here appears in a commentary on Shekalim by the medieval rabbi Menachem Meiri (1249–ca. 1310). 6.  Jewish custom ordains the eating of three festive meals during the Sabbath, one on Friday evening, one after services the next day, and one on Saturday afternoon before sunset. There is a strong tradition in Judaism that the Messiah will be a descendent of King David.

Me and My Youth

ment. Moreover, the joy they got from their free movement and activity was great and salutary. And the river? It’s impossible to recall the river without awakening a longing for it. This river took two forms: one form in summer and a different form in winter. And with its changing form came a change in its size and swiftness. In summer, the river would get smaller and languid. Its waters seemed to stand still, with stalks and reeds rising out of its meager waters. Its bed was muddy and in some spots it was possible to wade across it. Few were the places where it was comfortable to wash or to swim in it. This is the form the river took in the hot summer months. As fall approached, its waters rose, strong winds stirred it up and increased its flow. Raging rainstorms and snowfall saturated the thirsty river. Its area grew in width and in depth. As winter approached, its waters became covered by a thin film. The film got thicker and stronger and the children of the town tested its strength by sliding along it, before the heavy snows covered it and prevented the young people from enjoying skating on the river. On the other hand, one could quickly travel great distances on it in a sleigh. Householders who had basements would supply themselves with ice for the hot days of summer by opening a hole in the ice that covered the river. From its surface they would cut blocks of ice which they hauled to their basements with horses. They then covered the blocks with sawdust. Thus was created a natural “refrigerator.” As spring approached, the rains came and softened the ice, the warm sun melted the snow and the river’s waters rose up from below. The groaning of the ice increased as it broke apart. The waters rose on both edges of the river and washed up on its banks. Deep fissures appeared in the ice and it split and began to move. Chunks of ice of all shapes cut paths for themselves and were swept along by the willful current. Occasionally the pressure piled up pieces of ice as the river took a sharp turn to one side, strengthened itself, and overflowed its banks, spreading out and causing great flooding. Sometimes the river caused significant damage in the wake of its swift passage, destroying fences and temporary structures. The height of the river increased from day to day until it reached the built-up area of the town, fifty meters above its normal bank. This flooding would last some two weeks. When all the snow had melted and when the river ice had all broken though and

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departed, the river very slowly began to return to its normal character, as if it were hard for it to strip itself of the splendor and the vigor it had had in its proud and stormy days, to retreat from its temporary greatness and to be transformed into a small river without any special character and with no majesty. When the days of summer arrived, the roaring river returned to its usual form and the cycle repeated itself. Year after year, summer and winter, the cycle did not cease. Hour after hour, young and old would stand on the river bank watching the drama, as the river breached its banks and spread out, swallowing up planted fields and the ramshackle houses of peasants who had dared to build too close to its banks. They stood and watched the great flow of water rage and carry off in its tremendous current an uprooted tree, a broken timber, the beam of a dilapidated house, overturned wagons with their wheels in the air, and sometimes even various animals. Along the entire length of the river near the town stood men holding long poles with iron hooks attached that could grab any significant item that got near the river bank, on either side, and that could serve to push onward any chunk of ice that came too close to the river bank and threatened to damage a building or a garden, or that might end up in a nearby field and cause harm. This river was a place for play and great enjoyment for all the inhabitants of the town, young and old. There wasn’t a child who did not know the basics of every style of swimming: breaststroke, backstroke, diving from a standing position and from a sitting position, and swimming under water. The bathing season was short for us, the Jews of Lithuania. The summer months when it was warm were few. Take away from these the days of sefira and of the Three Weeks and the Sabbaths and holidays, when bathing is not permitted, and what’s left?7 7.  The forty-nine days of sefira between the festivals of Passover and Shavuot are, among other things, days of remembrance for the students of the first- and second-century sage Rabbi Akiva, who died during that period, so various mourning customs are observed during this time. These customs vary by community, but generally include prohibitions on such things as listening to instrumental music and celebrating weddings. The Three Weeks, coming later in the summer, is the period from the fast day of the 17th of Tamuz (associated with the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem during the Romans’ attack on the city in the days of the Second Temple) until the fast day of the 9th of Av (traditionally accepted as the day on which both the First Temple and the Second Temple were destroyed). The period of the Three Weeks, like that of sefira, is one during which various mourning customs are observed. The ban on bathing reported by Frieden appears to be an especially stringent prohibition; it was asso-

Me and My Youth

Thus, the few days when swimming was possible and pleasant, and also permitted, were very dear to us. It is true, however, that there were some good swimmers among the inhabitants of the town who would take a dip in the river even in the fall, as long as the river was free of ice. They would jump from the bathhouse that stood on the river bank, perspiring and ruddy, right into the cold water. But these were only a few, able individuals with robust bodies. Those who were unable to endure such an ordeal were envious of those who could, and the former were the majority. Thus it was that the synagogue and the river were the only places that served the residents of our little town as what we would call today “clubs,” places to provide some entertainment and a change of pace in their mundane lives. And our town was very small. Most of its residents were Jews and a few were Catholics. The number of Jews in my day was about ten minyanim. One proper street ran through the town from one end to the other. Narrow alleys branched off from this main street, but only on one side, for the other side was adjacent to the river and there was no room for alleyways. The hub of the town was right at its main entrance, on one side. The town’s lone church and the house of the priest took up a wide area in this central space. The priest’s garden took up the left side of the core area, leaving a large square, a place for the peasants of the vicinity to leave their wagons and horses when they arrived each Sunday to pray in the church, to drink, and to purchase what they needed in the stores that stood across from the church on the other side of the street and of the square. These stores were five in number, four belonging to Jews and one to a gentile storeowner. Sunday was the foundation on which retail trade depended, and also the sole tavern in the town, even ciated with some mourning periods, including the final nine days of the Three Weeks, but usually not with sefira or the entire Three Weeks. Strictly observant Jews generally refrain from swimming on the Sabbath, either because it is not considered an appropriate activity for the Day of Rest or for fear that swimming could entail other activities prohibited on the Sabbath. See, for example, Yosef Tzvi Rimon, “Sefirat Ha-omer Part 3: Practices of Mourning During Sefira,” David Silverberg, trans., on the Internet at www.vbm-torah.org/shavuot/ sefiratha-omer3.htm; Daniel Lubicki, “The Three Weeks and the Nine Days,” on the Internet at www.vbm-torah.org/3weeks/mf.htm (both accessed Sept. 21, 2009); and “Is It Permissible to Swim on Shabbat?” on the Internet at www.ohrtorahstone.org.il/features/q&a58.htm (accessed Sept. 30, 2009). Frieden writes more about sefira and the Three Weeks in the chapter “Passover and the Holiday Cycle,” below.

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though the hours during which drinking and commerce were allowed were restricted. It was forbidden to open the tavern or the stores before prayer services in the church were completed. The priest would keep a close watch to be sure that the Jews did not dare to violate the sanctity of Sunday before the appointed hour. Next to the church, at a short distance, stood the selski, the government court house. From there on, there were houses on both sides of the street until its midpoint, where the synagogue and its square stood on one side and on the other side stood a government liquor store, present there because Jews were prohibited from keeping private taverns. From that point, there were houses again until the other side of town. All the houses in the town were single story, some with thatched roofs. Fields and forests surrounded the town on one side and the river on the other, and beyond the river, again fields and forests. It was an atmosphere that refreshed the spirit in summer and in winter. Most of the inhabitants were poor. Some were craftsmen, others peddlers in the villages who barely earned their daily bread. Those who were men of means were the owners of stores from which they made a living. Two of  them were considered wealthy: Father, and the owner of the big flour mill, Dov Lifshitz, the head of the Lifshitz family that is now in the Land of Israel.8 On most days of the week, quiet prevailed on the street. Here and there a peasant passed by on his horse and stopped at the tavern or at one of the stores. From the tavern the sound of quarrelling occasionally broke out, or the fragmented humming of a Lithuanian melody by a drunkard in his cups. Chickens pecked at the garbage and a dog barked off somewhere as he chased after a cat. On the porch of the government house sat the starosta, the town elder, and his secretary, their pipes in their mouths. Now and then they exchanged a few obscenities and winked at a young peasant girl or a young Jewish girl passing near them in the street. And then it was quiet again, the street slumbering. That was the picture of the town most days of the week, except on the eve of the Sabbath, on the Sabbath day, and on Sunday. 8.  An April 1949 entry in Frieden’s journal, not included in this volume, indicates that “the Lifshitz family is made up of the sons and daughters of my mother’s sister. The first to immigrate to the Land of Israel in 1920 was Avraham, who married the daughter of the rabbi from our town. After him came two more brothers and four sisters.”

Me and My Youth

On those days, the character of the town was completely different. The change was apparent already on Friday morning. Pillars of smoke rose from the chimneys of the houses, a sign that ovens were being prepared for the baking of challahs for Shabbat. On the lone street of the town, one could sense an increased movement of women on their way to the bathhouse, having baked their challahs and eaten their breakfast. They were hurrying to bathe and return home so that they could continue preparing for Shabbat and also so that they could free the bathhouse for the men and the boys who would take their place there in honor of the Sabbath. The scurrying of the women to the bathhouse is distinctly different from the way the men go for the same purpose. As for the women and the girls, their walking or even their running was done meekly, at the side of the road, furtively. The daughters of Israel are modest, especially when they are returning from the bathhouse, perspiring and red-faced, embarrassed lest they meet a man on the way. Not so the men and the boys. Their excursion to the bathhouse is all bustle and noise, every household together, the father leading and the children following, each with his belongings under his arm, a change of underclothing and the bath attendant’s fee. The price was set in advance in a contract between the community and the leaseholding bath attendant: so much for a child and double or more for an adult, except that the men of substance and the community leaders gave the bath attendant more money, because by doing so they got special attention from the attendant and his assistants. Darned if I didn’t see an attendant bend down and remove the shoes of rich men, and their pants, so the wealthy would not have to stoop down to accomplish this themselves. This is a case of being a slave to servants. Both the men and the children would vie to arrive first, for despite the small number of people in town, the little bathhouse was nonetheless unable to hold all of them at once and it was necessary to set up shifts, one group going out and another going in after waiting in the corridor. A large stove stood on one side of the bathhouse and shelves lined the entire length of the building on the other, and in the middle a sunken floor caught the water used by the bathers. To one side of the floor were short steps leading down into a mikvah fit for ritual immersion, and even inside the bathhouse, degrees of honor prevailed just as,

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by contrast, in the synagogue. There were specially designated places for the distinguished and the town elders, be they Jews or gentiles, and the simple folk were lower down, near the mikvah. There was a custom in town that poor people would hang their undergarments in the bathhouse near the stove to “disinfect” them, but it was forbidden to hang them too close to the “Eastern Wall,”9 the area reserved for the town leaders, or too close to the entrance of the bathhouse. After completing the bathing and the ritual immersion, in the mikvah in winter or in the river in summer, the people returned home in a dignified manner, washed, perspiring, and red-faced, gratified physically in addition to having fulfilled the commandment of preparing for the Sabbath. And the children, likewise: walking slowly with their parents, bundles of cloths under their arms and bundles of twigs in their hands, twigs that, having been used in the bathhouse to induce sweating, now had another service to perform as brooms with which to sweep the house during the week.10 When the head of the family enters his home, he exudes a sense of importance. A cup of tea awaits him on the table and next to it a piece of gefilte fish and some biscuits, a light snack before evening, and he recites passages from the Song of Songs. As twilight nears, the late ­bathers rush home. The craftsmen who wandered from village to village all week and, like them, the peddlers hurry to the bathhouse to shed the dust of the road and to relieve themselves of the sufferings of the week, during which they stayed in peasant homes without kosher food, living on bread and salt and water the whole time. The stores close even before the sun sets. The houses are clean and shiny, and golden sand is spread on the floor. The table is set, the challahs are covered with a beautiful embroidered cloth, handmade by the mistress of the house, and next to them are the candlesticks with Sabbath candles in them. A bottle of red wine and the special goblet for the blessing are next to the two loaves and 9.  In Jewish tradition, the eastern wall of a building, and especially of a synagogue, was the most highly regarded, since it faced the holy city of Jerusalem. 10.  Fundamental to bathing in a Russian bathhouse is a massage using a venik, a fragrant bundle of leafy birch or oak twigs. This type of massage, or lashing, is also known as plaitza, from the Yiddish word for shoulders or back. See, for example, “Venik and Venik Massage,” on the Internet at russian-bath.com/venik/ (accessed Sept. 21, 2009).

Me and My Youth

all this is on a clean tablecloth, as white as snow.11 The mistress of the house, dressed in Sabbath clothing, recites the blessing over the candles with her daughters around her. The husband and the boys, they too in Sabbath clothing, go to the synagogue. The windows of the synagogue are bright because of the illumination of the interior. The light twinkles and beckons and calls out, “Come quickly to welcome the Sabbath.” The mincha service is recited, the service to welcome the Sabbath, the maariv service, and then the congregation hurries home. People are greeted with “a Sabbath of peace and blessing” as they meet each other returning from the synagogue. At home, the head of the household sings “Shalom Aleichem” to the special traditional melody that is a legacy inherited from previous generations in each family. The Angel of Goodness who accompanies each Jew home from the synagogue says, “may the next Sabbath be as this one,” and the Angel of Evil, who also comes along, must, despite himself, respond “amen.” This is how the Sabbath Queen arrives and is greeted in every Jewish home. A Jew among the People of Israel keeps the Sabbath according to the instructions of our sages of blessed memory: “Half for the Lord and half for yourselves.”12 They gain pleasure from a deep and holy religious feeling, as it is said: “More than the Jew has kept the Sabbath, the Sabbath has kept the Jew.”13 And then there is the matter of the “extra soul”: When a Jew in the Diaspora removes his workday attire, he also casts off all the worries and miseries that oppress him all week long, the suffering of generations, with all the consequences of a life of exile and servitude. When he dons his Sabbath clothes, he feels like a different person, free in mind and spirit for twenty-four hours. He feels as if his consciousness has expanded and grown, that he has a different spirit, an extra soul. This spiritual freedom, along 11.  Here Frieden refers to the challahs placed on the Sabbath table as lechem mishneh, “double bread” or “extra bread.” This term derives from the account in Exodus 16:4–5 explaining that God provided the Israelites wandering in the desert with a double portion of manna for the Sabbath. 12.  This expression appears in the Babylonian Talmud in tractate Pesachim 68b and elsewhere. In general, however, this Talmudic concept is applied to the celebration of festivals. Frieden seems to be generalizing from this to include the celebration of Shabbat as well. 13.  This quotation is attributed to the secular Zionist philosopher and promoter of Hebrew culture Asher Ginsberg (1856–1927), who wrote under the pen name Ahad Ha’am (“One of the People”).

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with the taste of the choice foods of the Sabbath, is what inspires him, his consciousness and his psyche. As Shabbat nears its end, however, a different spirit begins to steal into his heart; the taste of the third Sabbath meal is different from the taste of the Friday night and the Sabbath daytime meals. It is different also in quality; it’s simple and inexpensive. There is a different spirit to it. It seems that the Kabbalah attempted to correct this situation, and so too the midrashim. They actually assigned to it a special sanctity. They called it the Sabbath Meal of the King, associated it with King David, and ordained the recitation of Psalms immediately after the meal. And the Hasidim came along and added Sabbath hymns, especially “B’nai Heichalah,”14 with melodies full of burning enthusiasm, but full also of quiet sadness as the extra soul, the soul of spiritual freedom, prepares to leave for another week. Both the body and the psyche are affected by this departure, as the weekday maariv service accompanies the Sabbath as it takes its leave. And as we bless the holiness of Shabbat when it arrives, we bless it upon its departure with the Havdalah ceremony, which separates the holy from the ordinary. The everyday part of life overtakes the individual with full force. Indeed, hour after hour he consoles himself with the recitation of “Vayiten Lecha” and with thoughts of the coming of Elijah the Prophet, who will herald the arrival of redemption, a tiny consolation.15 The extra soul has departed, and so too the temporary sense of freedom. 14.  “B’nai Heichalah” is the title of one of the Sabbath hymns (zemirot in Hebrew) sung at the end of the Sabbath day and given special significance by Kabbalists. The words of this hymn were composed by the Kabbalist rabbi Isaac ben Solomon Luria (1534–1572), known as Ha’ari (literally, “The Lion”), a name derived from the initials of his title. For more on this topic, see, for example, Wendy Doniger, ed., Britannica Encyclopedia of World Religions (Chicago, 2006), s.v. “Luria, Isaac ben Solomon”; and “On Music,” on the Internet at files.kabbal ahmedia.info/files/eng_TRANS_ShiratHaOlamot_05-09-05.htm (accessed Sept. 25, 2009). 15.  “Vayiten Lecha” is a section of the order of prayers for the conclusion of the Sabbath. The section begins: “May God grant you of the dew of heaven and of the fat of the land.” The recitation of this text lengthens the service and thus extends the Sabbath. There was also a mystical belief that lengthening the service delayed the return to punishment of the souls of the wicked, which were allowed to rest on the Sabbath. The reference to Elijah the Prophet is connected with the belief that Elijah will arrive to announce the coming of the Messiah, but that this event will not take place on the Sabbath. For this reason, the memory of the prophet is invoked as the Sabbath day ends. See, for example, Gersion Appel, The Concise Code of Jewish Law: Compiled from Kitzur Shulḥan Aruch and Traditional Sources, vol. 2 (New York, 1991), 410–17.

Me and My Youth

If the distinction between the holy and the profane is great for the Jews, the difference between the everyday of the Jews and the sacred of the Christians is even greater, as is the relative difference between the holiness of the gentiles’ Sunday and their weekdays. Already from first watch on Sunday morning, the church bells ring, announcing the beginning of Sunday, the Christian holy day, as it was established at the beginning of the fourth century in order to create a distance from the Jews and to set apart those Christians who still held on to the Jewish faith. They sanctified the first day of the week by declaring that it was on that day that Jesus, their messiah, rose from his grave.16 The doors of the church are opened wide. The bells continue to ring and the sexton beats a drum, a call to prayer. The peasants of the vicinity who have gathered enter the church; it’s nine o’clock in the morning. According to a special ordinance, all the stores and the tavern have to close their doors until the conclusion of the prayer services, which continue until twelve noon. At that hour, the doors of the church once again open and the peasants depart. The stores and the tavern open, as well, and the street fills with peasant men and their wives, some heading to the stores and some to the tavern. The noise and tumult grow. In the main, the shoppers are the peasant women and their children; the men head straight for the pub. Not too many hours pass before sounds of disrespect and indignity emerge from the tavern, and there are even blows exchanged. Immediately, the village women rush to the tavern and try to remove their husbands. It’s not easy for them. Those who have already managed to have their fill and to get drunk aren’t ready to give up their places and leave their drinking companions. In the end, however, the women succeed in removing them and getting them to their wagons, completely drunk or half-way so. Slowly the day darkens, the street empties, and so too the tavern, except for a few who continue with their drinking and their merrymaking. Even in the middle of the night, a song might break forth from some drunk who has been forcibly ejected from the pub and who remains in the middle of the street, wallowing in the mud and continuing to sing. 16.  Frieden’s knowledge of church history here is striking. It is true that some early Christians observed Saturday as a Sabbath along with Sunday as a day of worship, until a church council in 364 forbade the observance of a Saturday Sabbath.

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This is the standard image of the sacred day of the Christians. And then again the village repeats its rigid routine of quiet weekdays, followed by the eve of the Sabbath, the Sabbath, and, by contrast, Sunday. I have provided this portrait of the old-fashioned lifestyle in a small town in Lithuania, which serves as an example, almost without variation, of every small town in the circumscribed area where Jews were allowed to live in Russia, based on what remains fixed in my memory from my childhood years, a clear image that had not changed even after two decades, when I again encountered this town. Everything remained the same, both in the life of the Jews and in the life of the goyim, likely the persistence of several hundred years of routine behavior. And this is not surprising. Our town was far from a train station, and relatively far from any big city. Guests did not visit and no newspapers arrived, except for the official newspaper of the regional government, which had only a small number of readers because those who were able to read the paper and understand it were few. It was a small town cut off from the larger world. Under these circumstances it was completely impossible to introduce innovations into its modest lifestyle. Any of its residents who could not stand this lifestyle had to leave in order to find a different way of life. I am making a great effort to penetrate the fog that surrounds the beginning of my life and to reveal some details of my earliest years, details that may have been imprinted and recorded in my subconscious. I pick away at the murkiness of my memories, enshrouded in the fog of forgetfulness, and I come up with only bits and pieces. I come to a stop, and I start again. I would like to uncover the obscurities of my very first year, if such a thing is truly possible. And why not? The life of a child in a small town such as ours is so simple and so monotonous that there is no distinction between past years and those of the present. And if I look at the life of a child in the present, I will be able to judge the past from that. As I was thinking about this, two images formed themselves before me, more or less bright and clear: First, I’m standing on a chair next to a big table which sits in the middle of a dim room, wearing only a shirt and crying bitterly. A large man is standing near me, shouting at me to stop crying, and I continue to cry. This man is watching over me and he’s angry, which fills me with fear and increases my crying. Years later, when I described this scene to my mother, she told me that the man was

Me and My Youth

my uncle Mendel, her brother, who lived with us and helped around the house and cared for the children. In their first years of marriage, my parents couldn’t afford to have a maid in the house. My mother told me that I was two years old at the time. Second, my older brother fashions a whip for me, a string tied to a stick or a tree branch. I go outside. Near our store a horse is tied up. I go over to it, sit down on my rump beside the horse’s hind legs and begin to hit his legs with my whip. The horse, it seems, does not take kindly to my actions, lifts a leg and gives me a gentle kick, rather off-handedly. The horse seems to know that he is dealing with a little boy. However, the kick catches me on my right eye and I fall backwards with a loud and bitter scream, seeing blood pouring over the hand that ­covers my eye. Mother is the first to hear my screams and respond. When she sees me with blood streaming from my eye, she too calls out: “Oh! my son’s eye has been shattered.” They immediately call for the medical assistant (someone who gained some medical knowledge from service as a doctor’s helper)—there was no doctor in our town. After he washes off the eye, a deep wound is revealed, not in the eye but near it. Two miracles occurred in this case: that the horse’s foot was not shod and, secondly, that it did not hit me directly in the eye. The scar from this kick remains with me to this day; it is so pronounced that in my Russian passport it was registered as a special identification mark. It’s no wonder that this memory remains with me; I was four years old then. As I write, suddenly a third image appears before me: I and my good friend Noah are taking a walk near our homes, just for fun, and we’re thirsty. In my friend’s grandfather’s yard is a deep well with cool, sweet water. In order to draw water from the well, one must lower a pail tied to a pole or long timber, at the other end of which was a heavy block of wood that pressed down on the timber, providing force to lift the pail after it has been lowered into the water. My lazy friend Noah always left the drawing of water to me. On this occasion, as soon as I released the pail, the timber jumped upwards and carried both the pail and me directly above the well. Suddenly frightened, I let go of the pail. It flew up and I fell down, right into the well. Noah ran out to the street to raise the alarm that I had fallen into the well and word circulated that Monetka—that’s what boys named Menachem Mendel were called in Lithuania—had drowned in a pit. My par-

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ents were the first to come running, screaming and waving their arms at the thought that I had drowned in the waters of the well. But when they heard the sound of my crying burst forth from the hole, they breathed a sigh of relief. In the meantime, all those passing by in the street and the residents of the nearby houses had gathered around the well, standing and wondering how to get me out, while I was standing neck deep in the water and crying “get me out!” Some goy came by, looked into the well, took the pail and lowered it to me. He instructed me to get into the pail and to hold very tightly onto the rope. Then he lifted out the pail and its live cargo. And behold I was alive and well, just completely wet, shivering from cold, and crying. My father took me in his arms, carried me home, took off my wet clothes and put me to bed. They covered me with blankets and placed a lump of sugar in my mouth. A miracle. The well is very deep and its waters are very cold. If I had fallen into the center of the well, I certainly would not have survived. It happened, however, that I fell toward the side of the well and, in falling, I felt my leg catch on a ledge. I held on with all my might to the side of the well where the ledge was, a sort of band around the water, and I was saved. Since the miracle of Hanukkah with the jug of oil in the days of the Hasmoneans,17 we don’t know of any miracles that were experienced by the People of Israel as a whole. Nonetheless, miracles have happened to a few individuals. For example, to Nicanor, with his doors, and to Nakdimon ben Gurion, for whom rain fell but he had sunshine.18 Miracles also happened to some of our sages. For example, 17.  According to the Talmud, the main rationale for the holiday of Hanukkah is to celebrate the miracle that occurred when God caused a single day’s supply of oil to burn for eight days in the menorah of the Temple rededicated by the Hasmoneans after their victory over the Greeks. 18.  The miracle of Nicanor, recounted in tractate Yoma 38a and elsewhere, refers to the story of a wealthy man who had two great bronze doors fashioned in Egypt for the Second Temple in Jerusalem. As Nicanor was taking these doors to the Land of Israel, a storm threatened to sink the ship on which they were being transported and so one of the doors was thrown overboard. As the ship’s crew prepared to throw the second door into the sea, Nicanor took hold of it and demanded to be cast into the sea with it. Suddenly the storm abated and the ship eventually arrived safely in the harbor of Acre, at which point the door that had been thrown overboard rose from the water and floated back to the ship. See, for example, Adolf Büchler, “The Nicanor Gate and the Brass Gate,” Jewish Quarterly Review 11:1 (Oct. 1898): 46–63. The miracle of Nakdimon, recounted in tractate Taanit 19b–20a, concerns a time when pilgrims going to Jerusalem did not have enough water to drink. To address this situation,

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to Nachum Ish Gamzu;19 to Rabbi Shimon ben Yochai and his son;20 to Elisha, the Man of the Wings;21 to Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair;22 to Rabbi Hanina ben Dosa;23 and to many others. Nakdimon arranged to borrow twelve wells from a certain gentile, promising to return the wells, replenished, within a set time, or to pay for them in silver. In response to Nakdimon’s prayers, rain eventually fell to refill the wells despite an ongoing drought, but it appeared that this happened only after sunset on the day set for repayment. However, in response to another prayer from Nakdimon, the sun reappeared, demonstrating that the day had not yet ended. See, for example, “Tractate Taanit: Chapter III,” on the Internet at www.jewishvirtuallibrary .org/jsource/Talmud/taanit3.html (accessed Sept. 30, 2009). 19.  The most famous story about Nachum Ish Gamzu, whose name derived from his practice of responding to all situations with the phrase gam zu l’tovah (“this too is for the best”), involves his attempt to influence a Roman emperor by bringing him a chest full of treasure. When Nachum was on his way to the emperor, his treasure was stolen by an innkeeper and replaced with sand. When the emperor was given the chest of sand, he became infuriated at Nachum and the Jews he represented. At that point, Elijah the Prophet appeared to the emperor and described an incident in which Abraham had used sand to win a war. The emperor followed this example to miraculously win a protracted war in which he was involved, and consequently rewarded Nachum with riches and the cancellation of an anti-Jewish decree. See, for example, Pinchas Winston, “Parshas Ki Saitzai: Out & Up,” on the Internet at www.torah .org/learning/perceptions/5761/kiseitzei.html (accessed Sept. 30, 2009). 20.  The story of Shimon ben Yochai and his son Elazar again involves persecution by the Romans. Shimon had been condemned to death by the Roman government, so he and his son hid in a cave where they continued to study Torah. In order to help them survive, God caused a carob tree to grow miraculously near the entrance of the cave and a spring of fresh water to appear nearby. See, for example, “R’ Shimon Bar Yochai,” on the Internet at www.campsci.com/iguide/rabbi_shimon_bar_yochai.htm (accessed Sept. 30, 2009); and “Rabbi Elazar ben Rabbi Shimon,” on the Internet at www.chabad.org/library/article .asp?AID=111927 (accessed Sept. 30, 2009). 21.  According to the narrative in tractate Shabbat 49a, Elisha, the Man of the Wings, lived at a time when the Roman government forbade the wearing of tefillin, but he continued to do so nonetheless. Once, when a Roman soldier chased after him, Elisha removed his tefillin and closed them in his hand. When the soldier demanded to know what Elisha was holding, he replied that he was holding the wings of a dove, and the tefillin were miraculously transformed into dove’s wings. See, for example, “Babylonian Talmud: Tractate Shabbat,” on the Internet at www.come-and-hear.com/shabbath/shabbath_49.html (accessed Sept. 30, 2009). 22.  The miracle of Rabbi Pinchas ben Yair involved his ability to order the River Ginai to part when he wished to cross it on his way to fulfill the obligation of redeeming captives and when a companion wished to cross with wheat for Passover. In order to demonstrate that Jews do not desert their fellow travelers, the rabbi was also able to part the river when an Arabian merchant wished to cross. See, for example, Yisroel Ciner, “Beshalach,” on the Internet at www.torah.org/learning/parsha-insights/5759/beshalach.html (accessed Sept. 30, 2009). 23.  An example of a story about Hanina ben Dosa, a first-century Tanna renowned for his ability to bring about miracles through his prayers and supplications, involves a time when people were complaining that Hanina’s goats were causing damage. He replied that if this were so, his goats should be eaten by wolves, but that if it were not so, each of his goats should return with a wolf impaled on its horns. Miraculously, every one of Hanina’s goats appeared with a wolf on its horns. See, for example, “Hanina Ben Dosa: First-Century Miracle-Maker,” on the Internet at www.jhom.com/topics/miracles/ben_dosa.htm (accessed Sept. 30, 2009).

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Still, the Jewish faith is not to be based on a belief in miracles. The early scholars such as Maimonides and others, and before them Rabbi Sa’adya Gaon, made an effort to minimize the value of miracles. Maimonides, in “The Guide,” part 3, chapter 46, speaks of the nature of the impossible, that things do not change, for God created nature in such a way that it would not change: “The impossible has a stable nature, one whose stability is constant and is not made by a maker; it is impossible to change it in any way.”24 The Ralbag was an extremist in that he interpreted miracles as occurring within nature.25 The sages of France, by contrast, believed in miracles and chided Maimonides and the philosophers of his time. But even if we don’t believe in miracles, we are forced to believe, despite ourselves, in “personal supervision.” In my life there were many instances when I was in mortal danger and each time I was saved. So too, over the years, I’ve met other people who told me about times in their lives when they were in mortal danger and were saved. It’s impossible to explain these unusual events without faith in God’s watchfulness over every individual, unless we revert to the earliest mythology which holds that all people are born with a specific fate based on their astrological sign. Some of our sages employed astrology, even if they did not have true faith in it. Abraham, our patriarch, who came from the land of the Chaldeans, the originators of astrological teachings, was himself an astrologer.26 Personal supervision, the watchfulness of God over individuals, is one of the basic tenets of the Jewish faith, although some philosophers divide divine supervision into that which is common to all and that which is personal. This is the case with Ibn Ezra, who wrote: “God who is All knows the individual in a general rather than in a detailed 24.  Frieden’s citation here is incorrect. The quotation he provides is actually the first sentence of Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, part 3, chapter 15. The translation provided here is from Moses Maimonides, The Guide of the Perplexed, trans. Shlomo Pines (Chicago, 1963), 2: 459. 25.  Ralbag is an acronym for Rabbi Levi ben Gershon (1288–1344), a French philosopher, mathematician, astronomer, and Talmudist also known as Gersonides. 26.  The rabbis of the Talmud made the connection between Abraham and astrology, claiming either that Abraham was an astrologer, as in tractate Baba Batra 16b, or that he stopped practicing astrology, as in tractate Shabbat 156a. See, for example, Meir Bar-Ilan, “Astronomy and Astrology among the Jews in Antiquity,” on the Internet at faculty.biu.ac.il/ testsm/astronomy%20and%20astrology.html (accessed Sept. 30, 2009).

Me and My Youth

manner.”27 Such was not the thinking of Philo, Rabbi Sa’adya Gaon, Rabbi Yehuda Halevi, Rabbenu Bachya, and Rabbi Joseph Albo.28 Maimonides, too, divides divine oversight into two types: over species and over the individual.29 These, then, are the three incidents that have been well preserved in my memory from the time before I entered heder. Certainly there were many other things that happened to me, but these are shrouded in the fog of forgetfulness. In general, I recall that I was somewhat different from other children. So, for example, even when I was very small, I didn’t accept the authority of my two older brothers over me, despite my father’s warnings that I must listen to my elders, just as to my father and mother. (Father based this idea, it seems, on the teaching that et avicha was there to include your big brother.30) I was boastful around them and at every opportunity I tried to force my way of thinking upon them. But this was not in my best interest, for Father and Mother were busy at home, he with the business and she in the store, and they didn’t have much time to care for the children. The younger children always had to be looked after by the older ones, but I didn’t want to accept their control. I wanted to be free in spirit and to do whatever I desired when my parents weren’t watching over me. 27.  The reference here is to Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra (1089–1164), one of the most distinguished biblical exegetes of the Middle Ages. He was also a poet, philosopher, and grammarian. As in several other cases, the citation provided for the quotation here is inexact in Frieden’s original text; the sentence quoted is in Ibn Ezra’s commentary on Genesis 18:21. For the translation of the quotation here, see Ibn Ezra’s Commentary on the Pentateuch: Genesis (Bereshit), trans. and annotated by H. Norman Strickman and Arthur M. Silver (New York, 1988), 196–97. 28.  Philo is Philo of Alexandria (ca. 20 bce–50 ce), a Hellenized Jewish thinker who lived in Egypt and attempted to harmonize Hebrew religious beliefs and Greek philosophy. Rabbi Yehuda Halevi (ca. 1080–1141) is known primarily as a prolific poet who lived in Spain and wrote in both Arabic and Hebrew on themes such as love, religious devotion, hope, and sorrow. He was also a physician and a philosopher. Joseph Albo (ca. 1380–1444) was a Spanish rabbi known chiefly for his work on the Jewish principles of faith, Sefer Ha’ikarim (The Book of Principles). On Sa’adya Gaon and Rabbenu Bachya, see Note 6 in the chapter “My Mother’s Family.” 29.  The reference cited in Frieden’s original text here is Maimonides’ Guide for the Perplexed, part 3, chapter 8. However, the concept he mentions is actually discussed in part 3, chapter 17. 30.  In the fifth commandment, kabed et avicha v’et emecha (“honor your mother and your father”), the word et appearing a second time can be seen as superfluous and its inclusion has at times been interpreted as implying that the honor due to parents is also due to teachers, elders, and so forth.

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At the beginning of my fourth year, or even earlier, the desire came over me to enter heder, like my brothers. I became bored with the same old games, in which nothing had changed during the previous two years. They knew nothing of nursery school and of kindergarten in those days, and up until the age of five, the age at which every boy was obliged to enter heder, as it says in tractate Pirke Avot, “at age five to the study of Scripture,”31 children were free as birds, restricted only by what they learned from their elders about practicing good manners and reciting the “Modeh Ani” prayer each morning and saying “amen” in the synagogue. To my declaration that I wanted to study Torah there was no opposition from my parents. Indeed, they were pleased at the prospect of entering their boy, who was different from their other sons, into heder early, to place upon him the yoke of Torah, so that he should stop making mischief in the street with other children. I had thought to myself that my parents would probably object to my suggestion, and I was prepared to go along with them if they did. Although I did want to enter heder, I was also a bit afraid of it and of the rabbi, Rabbi Heschel, the melamed who taught Bible to the youngest children. But when my parents agreed to my suggestion, I did not have the courage to retreat from it. I put on a happy face and expressed a huge desire to take upon myself immediately the yoke of Torah.

31.  The reference here is to Pirke Avot 5:24, which lays out a series of milestones in a person’s life.

My Entry into Heder

Editor’s Introduction

In the same way that the preceding chapter of Frieden’s memoir provided a description of a Jewish home on Sabbath eve that may now seem clichéd to those familiar with the usual image of shtetl life, in this chapter Frieden writes about his entry into heder in a similar manner. All the usual elements are present: an introduction to the alphabet, the bestowing of sweets so that learning should be associated with sweetness, the critique of the melamed. Again, it is difficult to know if Frieden was recording what were truly his own memories or if, either consciously or subconsciously, he was incorporating the standard traditions of East European Jewry into his account of his first experiences with formal education. Either way, however, Frieden provides a vivid account of a child’s entry into heder and he has made this description of the experience his own; the portraits of his teachers Reb Heschel and Rabbi Yitzhak Ze’ev are lovingly sketched. Just as this chapter provides an account of education in heder, it also provides insights into some other essential aspects of shtetl life. So, for example, in writing about his own bar mitzvah celebration, Frieden conveys a great deal of information about the way that important life-cycle event was marked. He comments on the role of his teacher, on various customs concerning the bar mitzvah oration, and on the nature of the festivities held when a boy came of age. This chapter also reveals something about Frieden’s intellect and about his personal judgments concerning the world about which he wrote. His discussion of teaching and of teachers, for instance, reveals that Frieden was well aware of both the nature of learning and some elements of modern pedagogy. He shows that he appreciates the difference between rote memorization and true understanding and he is quite willing to be critical of traditional instructional practices, despite his fond memories of his early days in heder. Similarly, Frieden’s observations concerning the nature

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of bar mitzvah speeches reveal some of his attitudes regarding education, maturation, and authenticity. As this chapter shows that Frieden has given some thought to the subject of education, it also suggests that he understood some of the complexities of historical context. Despite his traditionalist approach to Jewish texts and Jewish lore, Frieden exhibits a welcome appreciation for the effect of past experiences on various peoples; they can be influenced by “their cultures, their customs,” he says, as well as by “their understanding of the social structure in which people lived at various times and under different economic and social conditions.” And in this chapter Frieden also shows himself to have a certain interest in human psychology, as he attempts to analyze the attitudes and behaviors of Jewish parents in the environment of the shtetl and the attitudes of his childhood friends toward him.

❊ my father wrapped me in his tallit, took me in his arms, carried me to the heder of the melamed Reb Heschel, and set me down at the table where several other children, older students, were already sitting. The rabbi began to teach me the alphabet, which was written in very clear letters on a paper board, so that he could explain the shape of the alef as if it were a device for carrying water: a pail, a bar, and another pail. Instead, however, I read the entire alphabet to him, forwards and backwards; I had already learned it a year earlier from my older brothers. I continued reading again from the beginning, and a shower of coins came down upon my head, directly upon me and all around the board. The rabbi explained that this was the Angel of Good Children who accompanies every child when he enters heder for the first time and favors him with money so that he can buy sweets and so that he will love the Torah, which is a sweet thing as well. Even though this explanation did not astonish me, since I had been told well in advance about what would happen and that it was not an angel who throws the money and the sweets, I nonetheless greatly enjoyed this fiction, for it gave me the opportunity to share the sweets with my companions and to win them over as close friends. Thus began, at the age of four, my path of holiness, my path toward taking on the yoke of Torah. They used to say among us that “teaching” was like death; just as one can never be too late for death, so too one can never be too late o n e s u n d ay m o r n i n g

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to take up teaching. This saying did not fit well the melamdim in our town. Throughout the Diaspora, most melamdim, and especially those who taught young children, were not qualified for their tasks, especially back then, when children would spend all day in heder and their fate was in the hands of the melamed, for better or for worse. Most melamdim did not get any training whatsoever for their sacred task. Simply put, any Jew for whom the usual gateway to a livelihood was closed—a young gentleman who had spent his dowry, a shopkeeper whose store had burned down, a merchant who had gone bankrupt and lost all his property, and so forth—all these tried their hand at teaching as the last anchor of salvation in the rough sea of life. It never occurred to parents to check into the qualifications of the new ­melamdim, to see if they were fit to wear this crown of Torah. And in those days, there was no such thing as a teaching certificate among Jews; anyone who wanted could crown himself as a teacher, whether the crown fit him or not.1 The situation was different in our town. It was a small town with few children and so only two melamdim were present there on a regular basis. For a short time, there was also a “teacher,” that is, a modern person who tried to instill some culture into our town, but he did not last long. The soil had not yet been prepared for a foreign culture. The two melamdim shared the teaching of Torah between them. The melamed Reb Heschel handled beginning Torah study with the little ones. He taught Hebrew, Chumash with Rashi’s commentary, and the early prophets. When a child completed the early prophets with Reb Heschel, he was ready to pass on to the class of the more advanced melamed, Reb Yitzhak Ze’ev. There, in the heder of Reb Yitzhak Ze’ev, he learned Gemara, Tosefot, and in Tanach, the later prophets; also good penmanship in Yiddish and Hebrew. This heder was the corridor that led to yeshiva study away from home. 1.  For a very similar view of melamdim, see Maurice Samuel, trans. and ed., Forward from Exile: The Autobiography of Shmarya Levin (Philadelphia, 1967), chapt. 5. Levin writes, for example, “To become a melamed was the last resort of every failure. If a young husband who, following the ancient custom, had been living with his in-laws while he studied the sacred books was suddenly compelled to earn a living; if a merchant met with disaster and was thrown on the street; if a respected paterfamilias saw his house burn down and found himself without a roof over his head, the first thing he would turn to until his luck changed would be a cheder” (p. 42).

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Both of these melamdim were well suited to their teaching duties. Although they had not received training in counseling and education, they did not need it. The work of teaching came to them naturally. Reb Heschel was known as someone with only limited responsibilities. ­Although his methods would not be appropriate for our schools today, he was able to teach any child to read the entire order of prayers in one year, even if the child did not understand their meaning. Only with the study of Chumash did translation begin, and even then it was quite halting. Reb Heschel was getting on in years; his children were out on their own and he and his wife were supported by his teaching. In all his years he never went further: Hebrew reading, Chumash with Rashi, and nothing more. I doubt if his knowledge exceeded a familiarity with the Ein Ya’akov.2 The home of Reb Heschel, which was also our heder, was not far from the synagogue, but outside the town. It was a small house with a thatched roof, surrounded by a fence. Beyond the fence was a plot planted with all sorts of vegetables. The site of the house was on rather low ground and on rainy days the yard and the house would be flooded with water and become a swamp that would turn green in summer and remain so until it would dry up entirely. The swamp presented a delightful diversion for the children at every possible opportunity. The house had two rooms: a separate bedroom that was closed off during the day by a curtain that was stretched across the entire length of the space, and a second room that served every other household purpose and was also the heder. A long table with a bench on either side nearly filled the greater part of the room. A comfortable chair at the head of the table served as the seat of the rabbi and the children sat on the benches on both sides. The number of students was greater than the number of places at the table, so it was necessary to create two shifts divided into two classes, one class for beginners and a second for those who had moved on to studying Chumash with Rashi. Moreover, for lack of space, these classes were further divided into shifts, so that while two groups were studying, two groups were playing outside. There was enough time for all, because there was no set time limit for studying, and even the beginners spent many hours in heder. 2.  On the Ein Ya’akov, see Note 27 in the chapter “My Mother’s Family.”

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Between the two rooms there was a stove that served to heat the house in winter and to bake bread in summer and challah for Shabbat. The stove took up a significant amount of space in the two rooms and its mouth reached almost to the entrance of the house. On the wall, near the seat of the rabbi, hung a whip that instilled fear in every child who entered the heder. The rabbi was quick to anger, tall, and stocky, with thick eyebrows, and they too frightened the youngsters more than a little. They used to say about him that he had the body of a goy. But he was a pious Jew and a simple man, satisfied with the little he had and proud of his endeavor of teaching Jewish children prayers and Chumash and some of the early prophets. And if he was quick to anger, he only used the whip on rare occasions. The look in his eyes, the raising of his thick eyebrows, and his deep, powerful voice were enough to render a child like clay in the hands of the potter. No child dared to anger the rabbi. On the contrary, children trembled at the very sound of his voice and listened attentively to the lesson. And how easy the lesson was: the vowel kamatz with the letter alef makes “ah”; kamatz with the letter bet makes “bah”; there’s nothing to it. And when they got to Genesis, how interesting it was to hear the story of the creation of the world, of the formation of the sun and the moon and of the luminous bodies that amazed us, the little ones, with their changes. And the rabbi’s wife, a small, roundish woman, somewhat stooped; how good she was to us children. She would watch over the little tykes with an eagle eye so that they would dress properly before leaving the heder in winter and so that they would avoid the swamp in summer. Truly then, Reb Heschel was not like the rest of the melamdim who taught young children. There were some sadistic melamdim, whose pleasure grew with each lash delivered upon a child’s tender flesh. There were melamdim who thought that it was possible to induce children to learn and to remember their lessons only through beatings and lashings. There were melamdim without the power to influence students in any other way; beatings would substitute for every­thing. But Reb Heschel was not like this. He never struck a child except when he committed a serious transgression, remaining stubborn even after being warned. These kinds of transgressions were few among his students and most days his whip remained in its place on the wall without being used.

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I remained with Reb Heschel for only one year. During that year, I was able to absorb everything that the rabbi had to teach me: prayers, a fluent reading of the Chumash with explanations in Yiddish, and I got as far as Lekach Tov, which is the book that serves as an antechamber to the salon of Talmud.3 My accomplishments pleased the rabbi and my parents, and already in my first year, he held me up as his premier pupil and as a boy with a good head on his shoulders who was quick to learn. He promised that I was destined for great things. Of course, these praises were not uttered in my presence, but I knew of them and I felt that I was upward bound as I left my first heder. I had not tasted the sting of the lash nor had I been flogged, and I did not feel at all burdened by the study of Torah. Reb Heschel’s Torah teaching was limited and easy for me, and its importance lay only in that it provided me the opportunity to enter the heder of Reb Yitzhak Ze’ev, which was the desire of every child. His heder was that which prepared the child to be admitted to one of the many yeshivot with which the Jews of the Diaspora were blessed and whose purpose was preparation for the rabbinate, the ultimate desire of the parents of all the children. The number of students in the heder of Reb Yitzhak Ze’ev Segal Halevi was small. There were two reasons for this. First, most of the students in our town were the children of poor people who, to their sorrow, could not hope to continue with an extended education for lack of means. They could not even dream of entering the heder of Reb “Itza Velva,” for his fee was much too high.4 From the time they started heder, it was decided that they would remain with Reb Heschel for a while, until they got as much Torah education as he could provide, and then they would be on their own, either to help their fathers in their trades or to make a living by working for someone else. Thus there remained only the children of the local notables and the wealthy who could afford to provide their sons with unlimited Torah education; only these went on from the heder of Reb Heschel to that of Itza Velva. 3.  Lekach Tov, compiled by the Bulgarian rabbi Tuviah ben Eliezer Hagadol (1036–1108), is a collection of midrashim on the Torah and the Five Megillot (the five “scrolls” of the Hebrew Bible, comprising the Song of Songs, the Book of Ruth, Lamentations, Ecclesiastes, and the Book of Esther). 4.  “Itza Velva” is a corruption of Yitzhak Velvel, Velvel being the Yiddish form of the Hebrew Ze’ev, which means “wolf.”

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Second, this Yitzhak Ze’ev, besides being a melamed, had other business ventures. He was the sexton of the synagogue and its hazzan all year long, except on the High Holidays, when he would travel to other towns, wealthier than ours, where they paid him handsomely to be the cantor. He had a strong and pleasant tenor voice which, though untrained, enabled him to offer up prayers sweetly and beautifully. He was among the better synagogue officiants. His income was substantial, and he didn’t want to take on more than twelve students, for he understood that with fewer students he could give them more of what he had to offer. If he had taken on a greater number of students, he would have had to divide them into two classes. Therefore, he insisted that a boy who did not make an effort to learn or whose abilities were limited had no place in his heder. The parents of the children who were entrusted to him also insisted that the progress of their children should not be impeded by the presence of slower children and they were willing to pay a relatively high tuition fee to make up for the loss he incurred by limiting the number of his students. This was not “snobbishness.” We children never took pride in our being the sons of the elite or the wealthy. At play, we made no distinctions. We were all equals and my best friend was the son of the bathhouse attendant, a boy with nice eyes and a good heart and with a golden tongue in his mouth. He liked to tell stories that would raise the hair on our necks, tales that he heard from travelers who spent the night in the bathhouse, which served also as a hekdesh, that is, a free hostel for any guest who happened into our town looking for charity and who could not spare a cent of his own money. The parents’ attitude was simply a recognition that sending their sons to the heder of Reb Yitzhak Ze’ev was necessary in order to have them increase their knowledge of Torah, to hurry their development, and to prepare them as soon as possible to attain the desired goal: the yeshiva and teaching. Where was the affluent family that was not prepared to do everything in its power, and even more, to prepare a son to be a rabbi in Israel? And this was true not only of the wealthy and the notables; even poor craftsmen gave up their last cent to educate a capable child. I recall that, once, before my time, there was a poor tailor in our town who had an only son who was an excellent student even as a youngster and who was admitted to Reb Yitzhak Ze’ev’s heder despite

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his poverty. He excelled in his studies and after two years he was ready to go to the yeshiva of Volozhin.5 His poor parents mortgaged everything of value in their home in order to enable him to go. I was privileged to see him return to our town a few years later as an outstanding ordained rabbi with a fine reputation. I don’t remember his name and I don’t know what happened to him after that. I entered the heder of Reb Yitzhak Ze’ev Segal at the age of six. Like other melamdim, he conducted his heder in his home, a house of three rooms. The man was blessed with several pretty daughters, born of his first wife and also of his second, whom he married after his first wife died young. He had only one son. (Later, Reb Yitzhak and his entire family moved to the United States and lived in Philadelphia and also for a short time in our city of Norfolk, where we met—the teacher and the student.) One long room served the needs of the family and was also the heder. However, the parents of the students asked him to move the heder to the synagogue, which was large and spacious and full of light and air, so shortly thereafter the heder was moved. In winter we studied in one of the rooms behind the large sanctuary, for it was easy to heat. We were comfortable from the day we moved in. This melamed was a man of many skills. He knew some music, was well versed in Talmud and commentaries, and he knew Hebrew and grammar properly, the only person in our town so qualified. He didn’t know languages, but he taught his students the alphabets of Russian and German and every one of his students knew how to address a letter both to domestic destinations and overseas. The core of the curriculum was Gemara, his forte. He knew how to explain a page of Gemara in Yiddish quite clearly, but he also taught Prophets and Writings and he knew Tanach by heart. He would teach us entire chapters without once looking at the text. Such was our rabbi, who gave me and my brothers most of our early training. I already had a reputation as a good student and the rabbi took me, particularly, under his wing in order to make me into a “vessel of Torah,” 5.  This yeshiva was founded in 1802 by Rabbi Chaim ben Isaac of Volozhin (1749–1821), a disciple of the Gaon of Vilna. Considered by some, including Frieden, to be the most important and influential of the Lithuanian yeshivot, it was a center of anti-Hasidic teachings. See, for example, Immanuel Etkes, The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image, Jeffrey M. Green, trans. (Berkeley, Calif., 2002), chapt. 5.

My Entry into Heder

as he put it. And I, in whom a religious sensibility had been instilled by my parents and by everything I saw and heard around me from my earliest childhood; I, who donned a tallit katan as soon as I understood how to keep it neat and clean; I, who learned to recite the “Modeh Ani” prayer from the first day I stepped out on the rough floor at the age of only one; I became devoted to this rabbi with all my soul. I was proud of what he said to me and of the special interest he took in teaching me Torah, and I liked studying Gemara very much. The give and take of the Tannaim and the Amoraim came alive for me and I listened in awe and reverence to my teacher relating their ideas. I absorbed their words with surprising ease because, after all, these were things with concrete relevance: for example, “these are the found items which one may keep and these are those that must be returned.”6 Truly, this was a matter that weighed heavily on my mind, for I remembered that I found several coins in the store that I hadn’t returned to anyone. My sense of honesty tormented me about not having acted properly, even though I didn’t know to whom to return the coins and, according to Father, they belonged to me. But I still felt that justice had not been done; someone had lost the money and it had to be returned. And, behold, our early sages had already dealt with this question. They had examined the matter from every angle and had come to certain conclusions according to which we Jews were to act. And so there were no more doubts and life was so much easier. We only have to follow the teachings of our sages as they spoke them and recorded them, and everything will turn out fine. Oh, how excellent were our sages who arranged everything for us in advance, and how great is our debt to them for their having concerned themselves with the life of the Jew from the day of his birth until the last day of his life. From this stems the love and reverence for the religion of Israel that every Jewish child of past generations has felt in his heart. There is no comparison between life in the heder of Reb Heschel and life in that of Reb Yitzhak Ze’ev. Here there was comfort. During the summer, we studied in the large hall which, at its south and north ends, had two long tables with benches on both sides. The hall was very high, 6.  This is most likely an allusion to tractate Baba Metzia 21a, which addresses the circumstances under which the finder of a lost object may keep it.

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and the echo of the student’s voices could be heard from afar. During the winter, we studied in a room at the western corner of the sanctuary. It wasn’t large, but, on the other hand, a warm stove separated it from the next room. The table and the benches were near the stove and pleasant warmth pervaded the room. And it sometimes happened that the warmth permeated the body of the teacher while he was teaching and he couldn’t help but doze off, soon to awaken refreshed and to continue. In Reb Heschel’s heder we learned only Hebrew reading and Chumash, subjects that do not require much review. The rabbi goes over the material until it is absorbed into the mind of the little child. Once the child knows how to read a portion of the prayer service, he’s finished his study of that section. Once the child knows the first part of the weekly Torah portion, he’s finished with it and goes on to the second part. There is no repetition. It’s different with the teaching of Tanach and language, and especially with the teaching of Gemara. Here there is a need for more than monotonous learning based on an explanation in Yiddish. Here there must be true understanding, a grasp of the rules of grammar applied to unfamiliar words and a comprehension of text that cannot be understood simply by knowing the meaning of the words, but rather by knowing the style employed by the prophet, as no two prophets prophesize in the same manner. This is all the more so when one gets to Gemara. The Aramaic is hard for children who have become accustomed to the simple, clear language of the Torah and the early prophets. And although Rabbi Itza Velva was well versed in Tanach and proficient in Gemara, his teaching style was like that of most of the melamdim of his day. They had not learned the principles of pedagogy and thus they could not teach them to their students. In the small towns there were no books about how to teach, and even the existence of such books was unknown. The difference between a good melamed and a poor one was that the former had a thorough knowledge of his subject and the latter only a shaky knowledge. But even the best of the teachers did not even dream about questions of style, about the approach to the Torah of some well-known Tanna, about his era and its influence on life at the time. And history? How were they to know that history is not only the story of the creation of the world, the giving of the Torah on Mount Sinai, the conquest and settlement of the Land of Israel, and the na-

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tion’s wars with neighboring nations, but that rather, there was an essential process of history based on the differences between various nations and states, their cultures, their customs, and their understanding of the social structure in which people lived at various times and under different economic and social conditions? They did not understand that it is impossible to comprehend the Torah of Moses if one does not know the historical background of the early peoples of the East, the cradle of ancient history. And the melamdim had no need for this knowledge of history, for faith was all they needed in response to any of their doubts. The days in heder were long: from morning until evening with a short break for the midday meal, which the students would bring from home. The break did not last long and the meal excelled in neither quantity nor quality: one or two slices of bread smeared with fat and salted, and water from the pail that stood at the entrance to the study hall. Only once in a great while did the teacher agree to release the children to go out to the yard to play, for, after all, there is a mishnah that says explicitly: “jesting and lightheadedness accustom a person to transgression.”7 So that is how we spent the days of our youth, without laughter and without games, sitting uncomfortably on a hard wooden bench from morning until evening, straining our brains to understand the words of the melamed, if they could be understood at all. This childhood experience, day after day and hour after hour, could not but leave a deep impression and have a lifelong psychological impact on the children and their future development. It is not proper for a normal, healthy child to devote himself to reveries and to exhausting ruminations. A normal, healthy child, raised by normal parents, influenced by their love and responding to it, cannot but be happy and good-hearted. His childhood is full of the joy of life and he is delighted by the world around him. Such was not the life of Jewish children in small towns. Just as their parents’ lives were not normal, neither were the children’s. Parents who survive on thin air, who are not secure in their livelihood from day to day, and whose circumstances are always in doubt, are not inclined to demonstrate their affection for their children openly. Their 7.  This statement is found in Pirke Avot 3:17.

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love is concealed deep within their hearts, but they are afraid to allow their feelings of affection to emerge. They fear that the children will take advantage of this apparent foolishness in a parent’s weak moment, and so the children live without open demonstrations of affection, without sufficient sustenance, and without any comforts whatsoever. On the other hand, the parents try to be a positive influence upon them by advocating ethical behavior and demanding extremely meticulous religious observance, and sometimes the children become the targets of the anger both of the parents and of the melamdim. This was the lot of most of my friends in heder and as a result many of them failed to achieve any level of success either in their studies or in the world of business, as I recall. There remains in my memory an unpleasant impression that my friends were envious of me because I was the son of wealthy parents and the top student in the group. I would always justify myself to them by saying that it was not my fault that I was a quick learner, and that my parents were not really all that rich. I would try to appease them by sharing what I had with them so they would like me, but I didn’t always succeed. Jealousy can make a person feel out of place even in his own little world. The years I spent in Reb Itza Velva’s heder until the time of by bar mitzvah are somewhat hazy in my memory. I remember that I advanced markedly in my study of Gemara, that I got to the point where I was able to prepare the page that the rabbi would teach the next day by myself, and that the teacher was very pleased with me. And I recall that my parents related to me with greater fondness. And not just my parents. My two older brothers also related to me as a divine being greater than they. I remember that I very much liked to bathe in the river that flowed next to our town and that, more than anything, I liked to fish in the river. I could stand on the bank of the river hour after hour engaged in this endeavor, and how happy I was when I caught even the tiniest fish with my rod, of which I took such devoted care. I guarded it as I would a very valuable possession. And suddenly I became a new person. I reached my thirteenth year and all at once I matured. It was not the passage of years, however, that brought about this maturation. Rather, it was the responsibilities that the thirteenth year brings—a Lithuanian child becomes a religiously obligated person in the full sense of the word. Not that the religion itself

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is in control of this, but rather the natural force of habit instilled by the home and the environment. In those days, it could not have occurred to me that there were distinctions between some Jews and others. We knew that there were apostates, but these were beyond the bounds of the Jewish People. We could not imagine a Jew who wouldn’t pray three times a day, who wouldn’t observe the laws of kashrut, who didn’t accept the Thirteen Principles of Faith.8 Religion was a fundamental element in the daily life of every Jew, with other things such as eating, drinking, and engaging in business, being necessary only to preserve the essentials, which were Torah, prayer, and observing the commandments. And although until I became bar mitzvah I was not obliged to fulfill all the commandments and I was not liable for punishment on account of my wrongdoing, I nonetheless tried to avoid sinning intentionally because I did not want my parents to be burdened with guilt on my account. When I reached my thirteenth year, however, I became responsible for myself and I was obligated to watch my step so that I would not, heaven forbid, transgress the laws of the Torah or the commandments. And if the Impulse for Good appeared within me in that year to assist me, this Impulse for Good was young and weak, for it was newly born, and how could it stand up to the Impulse for Evil, which was as old as I, as it is written, “sin crouches at the entryway”?9 What power does a person have to help him stand up to this evil, which has already had thirteen years to sink deep roots within his body? Indeed, Ecclesiastes has already observed, “better a poor and wise child than an old and foolish king.”10 Here the child is the Impulse for Good, wise but wretched so that no one pays attention to its prudent counsel, while the old king is the Impulse for Evil, to which all listen and are thus made into fools. I became determined to pay attention to the “poor child,” to help him along, since he had come to help me. I began to prepare for my bar mitzvah day. My teacher instructed me concerning laying tefillin (without the blessings), concerning careful 8.  Moses Maimonides, in his commentary on the Mishnah, defined what he considered to be Judaism’s Thirteen Principles of Faith. These include tenets such as a belief in the existence and incorporiality of God, a belief in the divine origin of the Torah, a belief in divine reward and punishment, a belief in the eventual coming of the Messiah, and a belief in the resurrection of the dead. 9.  This phrase is found in Genesis 4:7. 10.  The quotation here is from Ecclesiastes 4:13.

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attention to prayer, and concerning the laws pertaining to tefillin.11 He also helped me prepare my “oration.” Every bar mitzvah had to deliver an oration on the weekday or the Sabbath when he was first called to the Torah for the maftir. Most bar mitzvah boys could not prepare their talks by themselves, and so the task of preparing an oration for students who reached bar mitzvah age was delegated to the rabbi. The student would memorize the talk and deliver it very properly after being called to the Torah in the synagogue and again at home during the celebration. What value is there in repeating what someone else has prepared for you? But this was the custom, because few are those who excel in their study of Talmud and are able to prepare a homily by themselves at the age of thirteen. There are various customs when it comes to bar mitzvah orations. In the United States, for example, the bar mitzvah also delivers a talk in the synagogue, one that is always written for him by the local rabbi. This discourse, which in my day dealt with the laws of tefillin and other bar mitzvah obligations, now in the United States takes as its subject gratitude to parents and teachers for their devotion and guidance from the child’s youth and their bringing him to this day. And in the Land of Israel, the custom is for the rabbi or one of the distinguished members of the congregation to deliver a talk to the bar mitzvah, addressing the responsibilities he is taking upon himself on this day as one obliged to observe the commandments, and charging him to remain loyal to his people and to his homeland. I consider this custom most commendable, for what is the benefit of other customs that were put in place so as not to embarrass those who are unable to prepare their own homily? And what is the value of a boy praising his parents and teachers, again very properly, but in a talk prepared by the rabbi? Then came the happy day, especially for Father, who was released from punishment for his son’s wrongdoing when his son turned thirteen. It was enough for him to shoulder the burden of punishment for 11.  The concept of a boy reaching the age of religious and moral responsibility at thirteen and becoming a bar mitzvah (“son of the commandment”) appeared in Talmudic times, but the modern ceremonies associated with this coming of age did not develop until the Middle Ages. Donning tefillin regularly is one of the obligations traditionally associated with religious maturity. Thus, in the months before they turn thirteen, Jewish boys in traditional communities are instructed in the laws associated with tefillin, but they do not recite the relevant blessings when they only practice wearing them.

My Entry into Heder

his other sons, especially for a father with nine boys. What a heavy yoke to bear! And now one portion of the burden was lifted. I was happy, as well, that from this day onward I would be a responsible person in terms of the faith, obliged to watch my own behavior. Although this had an unpleasant side—for who knew if I would be able to acquit myself well?—at the same time I felt a certain elevation in status. I would now be taken into account both in the synagogue and in the street. I did not have to be taught the maftir portion, for I already knew the Torah readings for the entire year. I was a little embarrassed to deliver the homily that others had taught me. It had been my desire to prepare an oration myself and I had begun to compose it, but the rabbi insisted that I was not yet ready to prepare a discourse as it should be done and, against my will, I was forced to give the talk the rabbi had prepared. The day of my bar mitzvah fell on a Thursday and on that day I was called to the Torah for the first time and a modest celebration was arranged in the synagogue.12 The main party was deferred until the Sabbath day, as was usual. The preparations at home were tremendous, because, since we were among the wealthy of the town, everyone was invited: great and small, men and women, rich and poor. All were invited and all showed up at our house. Guests arrived already on the eve of the Sabbath: Grandfather and Grandmother, Father’s parents, and some uncles and aunts; which ones I don’t remember. We all dressed in our holiday best, for this Shabbat was not like any other, and we went to synagogue. We returned from the synagogue and the house was illuminated with many lamps and Sabbath candles, for it was Mother’s custom to light a candle for each child. As the number of children increased, so did the number of Shabbat candles. Father walked around the house with his hands behind his back, singing the melody “Shalom Aleichem” to the familiar Lithuanian tune and we, the children, helped him with our assorted voices. My elderly grandfather sat in his chair, enjoying great satisfaction from his son and his grandchildren. And Mother? Her face beaming with delight, she was very busy preparing 12.  A reading from the Torah is part of the morning service on Mondays and Thursdays, as well as on Sabbaths and holidays, and so it is possible to call a boy turning thirteen to the Torah for the first time on a Monday or a Thursday. It is unclear why Frieden was called to the Torah on a Thursday, since in his bar mitzvah year his birthday, the eighth day of Hanukkah, fell on a Saturday, January 2, 1892.

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the table, which had already been set early in the day. She constantly found more and more things to add. We all sit at the table, with Father at the head, Grandfather and Grandmother to his right, and the children on both sides, by age. Mother is at the end of the table opposite Father. Grandfather says the kiddush first and gives Grandmother a taste from the kiddush cup. After him, Father and Mother taste from his cup. Father says the blessing in a loud voice and with greater enthusiasm, as is his custom. Then there are other kiddush recitations, for this Shabbat is a special one. Each of the children recites the kiddush after Father, separately, one by one, not over wine, but over the small challahs that are placed near each person at the table. The younger children who do not yet recite the kiddush are impatient. They’re hungry and they don’t want to wait for the end of the long procedure of many kiddush recitations, but Mother hushes them: “Be patient, children.” The food is served, and for the first time I’m included among the adults when portions are distributed; I enjoy a nice serving of fish, meat, and so forth. The young ones look at me enviously. Sabbath hymns are few among ­Hasidim and only Father and Grandfather sing them, calmly, without the children joining in. Grace after meals is recited; the Sabbath evening meal is over. On the morning of my bar mitzvah Shabbat, Father and Grand­ father hurried to the bathhouse for emersion in the mikvah and returned to drink tea from bottles that were put aside on Sabbath eve. Then we went off to the synagogue and this time no one was missing; everyone arrived on time. In Lithuania, it is the custom to call no more than seven persons to the Torah on Shabbat, and so all those who were honored were the closest of relatives. The kohen was Mother’s father and then came my other grandfather, my father, my older brothers, and I was called for the maftir aliya.13 I ascended the bimah wearing my father’s tallit (the Lithuanian custom was that boys did not wear a tallit of their own until they were married), and I chanted the blessings and the reading from the Prophets in my soprano voice, pleasant and 13.  Normally, Sabbath morning Torah readings are divided into seven portions, but in some traditions it is permissible to divide the reading in such a way as to create additional aliyot when there are more than seven people to be honored. In traditional practice, a kohen is honored with the first aliya and a levi with the second.

My Entry into Heder

strong, to everyone’s satisfaction. Immediately after that, I delivered my oration and that also went smoothly and without any hesitations, since I knew it very well. After the service, everyone was invited to our house. The tables were piled high with good things to eat and I had to speak my homily again three different times. I did not receive any presents, because the practice of family and friends giving gifts to a bar mitzvah was as yet unknown. The bar mitzvah celebration was over. Grandfather and Grandmother returned to their village and the house returned to its normal routine, sometimes quiet, sometimes not. All that remained in the empty house and in my heart was the echo of the blessings everyone showered upon me, the echo of the traditional blessing: “May you be worthy to become a rabbi in Israel.” Already before my bar mitzvah, the desire to be a rabbi among the Jewish People became nestled in my breast. Aspiring to the rabbinate was so rooted in the heart of every Jew blessed with sons that no other aspiration could compare to it. As opposed to today, when parents might wish to see their sons become doctors or lawyers, in those days there couldn’t be any objective except the rabbinate. First, boys could not aspire to other professions because of the difficulty Jews faced in being admitted to higher education under the numerus clausus rules.14 Second, even if someone did manage to be admitted to a university, it cost a tremendous amount of money. This was not the case with rabbinical training. Admission to a yeshiva was automatic if a young man was capable and equipped for study. He would be welcomed with open arms. And money? No need for money. In every city where there was a yeshiva, the local Jews saw to the maintenance of its students. Thus, even the poorest Jewish parents would sell the pillows from under their heads to pay tuition fees for their children and to have them admitted to the heder of the best teacher if their sons demonstrated any aptitude and distinction at all when it came to the study of Torah. In this way there emerged from among the sons of Lithuania great Torah scholars who enhanced the glory of the Torah hundreds of times over throughout the Diaspora. 14.  Latin for “closed number,” numerus clausus is used most often to describe a quotalike system that limits the admission to university of students from a given group within the population, usually Jews.

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It was clear to me, also, that my path was the path to the rabbinate. This was the desire of my parents, who were thankful in their hearts that this son, their favorite, would certainly be a rabbi in Israel. As for me, the choice was made exclusively in terms of Torah learning for its own sake. The luster of the rabbinate was greatly diminished in our small town because the local rabbi was exceptional neither in his knowledge of Torah nor in his bearing; what great rabbi would have agreed to settle in this dark corner of a place? Nor could his life of poverty be attractive to me from a material point of view. I had a desire to learn Torah with all its fine points because I found in it an appealing spiritual joy. I gave no thought to practical goals, particularly because the Mishnah prohibits using knowledge of Torah as “a spade with which to dig.”15 The life of rabbis in small towns was a life of anguish and poverty. They made a living from the sale of liquor at Passover and of lulavim and etrogim at Sukkot, from the weekly allowance of a few cents they got from the tax on kosher meat, and from the fee they were paid for the time they spent serving on rabbinic courts, for in those days Jews tried to avoid making use of the government courts, but rather appealed to the laws of the Jewish People. And the rabbis did not complain about this at all, for this was the way of Torah, both when they were training for the rabbinate and when they attained it. They assumed this was the way things were and accepted it. Those who prepared themselves for the rabbinate knew in advance what to expect down the long road until they achieved ordination. The path was not strewn with roses; hunger and daily discomfort was their lot; wandering from yeshiva to yeshiva, alternating meager meals in the homes of various local householders, some better and some worse, and suppressing their longings for a different life, a life of which they were not even allowed to dream. For them, a secular life was not considered proper. They were to follow the ways of Torah as described by our sages: “This is the mode of living that the study of the Torah entails: a morsel of bread and salt you shall eat and water by measure you shall drink; upon the bare ground you shall sleep and a life of hardship you shall live while you toil in the Torah.”16 Aspiring to a rabbinical posi15.  “A spade with which to dig” implies a vehicle for making a living. The reference is to Pirke Avot 4:7. 16.  The quotation here is from Pirke Avot 6:4.

My Entry into Heder

tion stemmed from a deep religious sensibility, a sense that rabbis could dwell in a world of Torah and in prayer, that their learning would also be their craft, so that they could lead their communities in the ways of Torah and fulfillment of the commandments, even if, in their subconscious, there was also a recognition of the respect for the rabbinate that prevailed within Jewish communities in those days. And so, it was incumbent upon me to prepare for the rabbinate. This preparation is honorable, long, and difficult. True, it was possible to gain ordination as a teacher already at the age of eighteen, a relatively young age, but such recognition was extended only to an outstanding few, to those who excelled extraordinarily in their learning and in their Halachic rigor, and there were not many who gained this reward. Generally, the rabbis were scrupulous when it came to granting recognition as a teacher. (They did not grant full semicha, which is now forbidden. It was allowed, according to the Rambam, perhaps only in the Land of Israel, and even about this there was a great dispute in Safed during the first third of the sixteenth century between Rabbi Ya’akov Berav and Rabbi Levi ibn Habib. Moreover, when Rabbi Berav was chased out in 1541, true semicha was abolished even in the Land of Israel.)17 In place of true semicha came ordination as a teacher bestowed by an appropriate leading rabbi, and this only after a difficult examination on the details of the laws of Jewish observance and proper behavior, and only after reaching the age of twenty-five, and sometimes thirty. This meant that from the time of bar mitzvah until they were able to get their fill of the treasures of the Torah and Halacha and to gain ordination as teachers would be twelve to seventeen years, a rather extended period for an average student, but that’s the way it was. 17.  Frieden here is referring to a dispute that arose when Rabbi Ya’akov Berav of Safed (1474–ca. 1546) attempted to centralize the ordination of rabbis by restoring a system involving the laying on of hands (semicha) on the part of authorities who could trace their ordination back to Moses’ transfer of authority to Joshua. By the Middle Ages, a different system of granting rabbinic ordination and the authority to render decisions in Jewish law had replaced the original system involving the laying on of hands. The new system involved written certification. Berav’s sixteenth-century attempt to reinstitute the original form of semicha met with the vehement opposition of Rabbi Levi ibn Habib (ca. 1480–ca. 1545), the chief rabbi in Jerusalem. Eventually, Berav was forced into exile in Egypt for a time and, after his death, his reinstituted form of semicha gradually disappeared. On the history of rabbinic ordination, see, for example, “Semicha,” on the Internet at en.allexperts.com/e/s/se/semicha.htm (accessed Jan. 30, 2009).

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If a Jew wanted to become a rabbi, he had no alternative but to choose this long process. There was no shortcut to the rabbinate:18 from one yeshiva to a more prestigious one, for in those days there was a variety of yeshivot. There was hardly a city in the Jewish world that did not house a yeshiva within its boundaries. There were some that did not ask too many questions of the ones who knocked on their doors. Any young man who wanted to study Torah was accepted with open arms. But there were also yeshivot that were very careful in choosing whom they would admit. The minimum age was fifteen, and then only after being examined by the rosh yeshiva. The yeshiva was the antechamber to the salon of the rabbinate, and in the course of its development, a sort of pyramid emerged. At the base were yeshivot in many different places that were not overly rigorous. In my day, there were yeshivot like this in Lithuania in Dvinsk, that is, Dinaburg, which had some less important yeshivot and some more important ones; in Ponivezh; in Lida; and in Vilna. These had thousands of students of various ages and of differing abilities. Above these were the yeshivot of Mir, Eishyshok, Slobodka, Muntek, and so forth. At the top of the pyramid stood the elite of the yeshivot, the yeshiva of Volozhin, which every yeshiva student hoped to be able to attend. And how difficult was the examination one had to pass in order to become a student there! This yeshiva was founded at the beginning of the nineteenth century by Rabbi Chaim, a student of the Gaon of Vilna, and it developed and expanded so that it had more than four hundred students, among them sixty married men who separated from their wives for a few years in order to occupy themselves with Torah. Following a dispute between the administration of the yeshiva and the Russian government, which thought the yeshiva students to be revolutionaries, the yeshiva was reopened through the intercession of some influential people, and then closed again. The yeshiva existed for close to one hundred years and it produced many

18.  Here Frieden uses the term kefitzat derech (“foreshortening of the way”), a concept appearing in midrash and in Jewish folklore to denote the ability to move instantaneously from one place to another, a sort of teleportation. Kefitzat derech has been used to explain certain matters involving travel in the Bible and in connection with some of the miraculous feats of Hasidic masters.

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luminaries in the realms of Torah, wisdom, and knowledge, among them Chaim Nachman Bialik.19 The Hasidim of the Chabad movement also opened yeshivot: in Lubavitch, Zembin, Dachsitz, and Horodets. There were also yeshivot in Hungary, among them the principal yeshiva of Rabbi Moshe Sofer, the author of the book Hatam Sofer.20 There were also yeshivot in Galicia, as well as in America. The first yeshiva in New York, called Etz Chaim, was founded in 1886; a yeshiva on the model of the yeshiva of Volozhin, the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary, was established in 1897.21 Small yeshivot were also founded in several other cities with larger Jewish communities. These were sources of illumination with which Jews were blessed wherever they settled, sources of light that left no Jew unable to read and to pray from a prayer book and to understand biblical texts. Many Jews, even if Torah was not their profession, had a knowledge of Mishnah and Talmud and Halacha. These schools and houses of study and yeshivot were the treasuries of spiritual sustenance for the Jewish People and provided them the courage and the strength to suffer and endure long years of exile, and to survive. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in France and in Germany, in the Rhineland communities, in Worms, Speyer, Mainz, and in Vienna, renowned yeshivot drew students from all over to hear morsels of wisdom from their famous scholars and yeshiva heads and these institutions produced great Torah sages for all of Israel. So also was this true of the great yeshivot of Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, and Galicia in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.

19.  Chaim Nachman Bialik (1873–1934), a yeshiva student in his youth and later an advocate of the Haskalah and of Zionism, was a pioneer of modern Hebrew poetry. He is often considered the national poet of Israel. 20.  Moshe Sofer (1762–1839) arrived in Pressburg, then in the Austrian empire (now Bratislava, Slovakia), in 1806 and established his influential yeshiva there. He was a great opponent of all religious innovation and his main body of writings, known as the Hatam Sofer, consists of responsa. 21.  The present Yeshiva University in New York traces its origins to the Etz Chaim yeshiva and the Rabbi Isaac Elchanan Theological Seminary (RIETS). Etz Chaim provided a basic foundation in Talmud, and RIETS, named in honor of the chief rabbi of Kovno who died in 1896, provided advanced study. RIETS ordained its first rabbis in 1903. See, for example, Jeffrey S. Gurock, The Men and Women of Yeshiva: Higher Education, Orthodoxy, and American Judaism (New York, 1988).

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Editor’s Introduction

114

This chapter tells of Menachem Mendel Frieden’s first encounter with ­yeshiva education, a feature of East European Jewish life with which many Jewish boys and young men had experience in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Much of what we learn here derives from the story of Frieden’s own exploits. Frieden’s account of his daily activities at the yeshiva he entered in Dvinsk, together with his detailed description of the yeshiva’s physical setting within one of the city’s synagogues, is most enlightening. Through Frieden’s eyes, we get an intimate view of a student’s initiation into yeshiva life, of what it was like to eat in the homes of householders who had agreed to provide students with meals, and of the hierarchy of students in the yeshiva world. It is not, however, only from this chapter’s central narrative that insights into East European Jewish life can be gleaned. These come also from the chapter’s tangential references. From what Frieden writes, we learn about the Jewish traffic in untaxed cigarettes, for instance, and of the presence of Jewish prostitutes in Dvinsk. Frieden’s characteristic pedagogic asides also provide information here and there. In writing about the system of support for students at his own yeshiva, for example, Frieden takes the opportunity to explain the way other yeshivot supported their students. Parts of this chapter are noteworthy also for their revelation of Frieden’s considerable ability as a story teller. Recounted partly in the present tense, Frieden’s description of his journey to Dvinsk is not only an informative account of what a long-distance trip could be like in late nineteenth-century Eastern Europe, but also a colorful travel narrative. His descriptions of the various individuals who provided him with meals as a yeshiva student are sometimes poignant, sometimes edifying, sometimes a bit risqué, but always interesting.

On My Way through Yeshivot

And we might also notice that in this chapter, as elsewhere, Frieden is not reluctant to offer his opinions on various topics. In the course of his discussion of yeshiva education, he objects both to the way Jewish texts were taught in traditional yeshivot and to the way they were approached in the Jewish schools with which he was familiar at the time he was recording his reminiscences. In arguing that Torah had to be studied both “to learn its precepts and its laws” and “to learn about language and ancient history,” Frieden reveals how his perspective had come to be influenced by both traditionalism and modernism. Similarly, in a fleeting reflection on the nature of poverty, he reveals something of the egalitarian spirit he had developed over a lifetime.

❊ i at t e n d e d o n ly t w o y es h i v o t , one in Dvinsk and one in ­Lyady,

and they deserve some comment. Dvinsk, formerly Dinaburg, sits on the Dvina River. Toward the end of the nineteenth century, it had about 75,000 inhabitants, and of these, some 30,000 were Jews. During the time I was a yeshiva student, two great rabbis served there, giants of Torah: Rabbi Meir Simcha for the Ashkenazim and Rabbi Yosef Levin for the Sephardim or Hasidim.1 There were some seventy synagogues and study halls in Dvinsk then, and a number of yeshivot. It was a city of learned men and scribes. It was a well-known commercial city, especially for the wholesale trade, and merchants from all over the district and its surroundings, including the storekeepers from our town, would come there to buy their goods. My father, being the owner of the largest store in our town, would travel to Dvinsk once a month. He had many acquaintances there and my brother was already in a yeshiva there. Thus, when my turn came to enter yeshiva, I went to the same one, traveling with my brother, who was returning there from his visit home for the High Holidays. I got a valise ready by myself, and it was filled with everything I would need: a pillow, a blanket, changes of clothing and underwear, and finally, a confection that Mother had prepared for us. 1.  Ashkenazim are Jews who trace their origins to Central Europe and Sephardim are those who trace their origins to the Iberian Peninsula. However, those to whom Frieden refers as Sephardim in Dvinsk were not truly of Iberian background, but rather Ashkenazim who had adopted some Sephardic liturgical conventions, as was common among Hasidim.

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Immediately after Sukkot, we boarded a wagon that was to take us to the city of Rakishok, 35 versts from our town. From there we were to take the train to the city of Dvinsk. Throughout the holidays and throughout all the days of preparation, I was frightened and enfeebled; I was befuddled. On the one hand, I was proud to be going off to a yeshiva, the first step toward attaining my anticipated goal, the rabbinate. Moreover, the yeshiva was in a large city, with rabbis who were geniuses and giants of Torah under whose wings I would be sheltered and from whom I would derive Torah wisdom by the fistful. I would see wondrous places the likes of which I had not seen all my days and I would meet many young men like myself, seeking to attain the same goal that I was after. On the other hand, my heart was saddened; how could I leave my parents, my younger brothers, my grandfather and grandmother, uncles and aunts who loved me so much, my study hall and my rabbi, my good friends in whose company I had spent all my childhood years? Hardest of all was leaving my friend Moishele, the son of the bathhouse attendant, he who knew how to tell such excellent, lurid tales about kings and queens and princesses, about the Red Jews, a remnant of the Ten Lost Tribes, who live beyond the Mountains of Darkness and the River Sambatyon.2 He told about demons and evil beasts; stories that would make our hair stand on end. I liked this Moishele so much, he who would not share in any of my delicacies except after much coaxing, though hunger burned in his lovely eyes. All this, and also the anxiety about and fear of the unknown. But the desire to take on such an important journey won out. I repressed all my mental reservations and looked happily to the future. The horse and wagon stand beside the house. Our friend Raphael, who was also returning to the yeshiva and who took it upon himself to act as our guide, was waiting for us. Saryahu the glazier, who had become a wagon driver for lack of work in his trade, hurries us along. Our 2.  Frieden may be conflating two legends here. According to a medieval and early modern German legend, which may have been associated with increased antisemitism, the Red Jews were a savage horde, perhaps linked to the Ten Lost Tribes, that was bent on attacking Christendom as the apocalyptic End of Days approached. On the other hand, it is midrashic sources which relate that the Ten Lost Tribes were exiled beyond the Mountains of Darkness and the River Sambatyon (“the Sabbath River”), a river which was said to flow with great turbulence but to rest on the Sabbath. On the Red Jews, see Andrew Colin Gow, The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200–1600 (Leiden, 1995).

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younger brothers stick close to the wagon and cling to us. Our parents have odd looks on their faces. They are saddened by this first parting of ours, but they suppress their emotions and even manage to smile over their hidden tears. Warm kisses are exchanged, and our eyes fill with tears. Saryahu the wagon driver raises his whip and the horse lifts his legs. The wagon moves forward to the sound of called-out blessings for a successful journey, and the town is already behind us. We travel along and Saryahu, the glazier-wagon driver hurries on the horses and, while doing so, he talks about his primary craft, glazing. He curses his existence as someone who learned a craft that can’t support a person who practices it in a small town such as ours. He is embarrassed at being a wagon driver, which, according to him, involves simply competence and not craft at all. He turned to driving a wagon out of necessity, to compensate for the lack of income from glazing. He claims that glazing does not compare at all to other trades, such as tailoring or shoemaking: “Clothing, by its nature, wears out quickly, and shoes, too, are worn down by mud and snow in the winter and by heat in the summer. But it’s not so with glass. A pane of glass in a window can remain in place for years, unless there is an accident or a fire, or some delinquent goy throws a rock through the window of a Jew. Go wait for a friend’s misfortune! And new buildings are not being built in our town or in the surrounding area at all. That’s a glazier’s bad luck, and especially in a small town. There is just no future in a small town,” he continues. “Young people leave because they don’t have a decent life there and can’t find work, the number of old people declines as they die off in the natural way of things, and thus the town is gradually emptied of Jews.” Saryahu is a simple Jew, tall and gaunt and of little learning, but he talks like a philosopher. He has his own way of looking at the world and he will not change his views even when confronted with long explanations of the ways of nature and of life. In the fall, the roads are rough and travel is difficult and slow. The horse walks heavily in the mud and before each hill he stops to rest a bit and to turn his head back to see if his passengers have gotten off the wagon; he is familiar with the routine and knows that it’s customary for the passengers to descend before he goes up a hill. He goes up the hill, and stops again to rest and to wait for the passengers to get back on the wagon. And so we reached the first stop, half farm, half village,

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Zbishok, the home of my grandfather on Father’s side. Here we rested and we ate a full meal as only Grandmother could prepare. She was very glad to see her grandsons who were traveling far off to study Torah. From there the distance to Rakishok and the train station was not very great. We arrived just before evening and stayed at Uncle Mendel’s. The next day, early in the morning, we were taken to the train station for the line that runs between the cities of Libau and Romny with a stop at the Kalkun station on the Dvina River. We were afraid we might miss the train. Taking leave of our uncle and aunt took a while and we had to hurry, but the wagon driver made it on time. We arrived just minutes before departure and boarded the first rail car that we could. We barely were able to find a place to sit, for the train was packed with Jews and gentiles, but mostly Jews. I was rather astonished by the way the train moved. I did not have much in the way of technical knowledge and I was not familiar with the kind of power that could move such a huge load: rail cars full of people and goods. But I was ashamed to ask about this, forgetting in my astonishment the words of our sages: “the bashful cannot learn.”3 The train stopped at every station; some Jews got off and others got on. The passengers sat crowded together and talked among themselves, arguing with their hands, just as in the study hall in our town. And so we reached the station where we were to get off and take a wagon to Dvinsk. A Jewish wagon master helped us into his wagon and, recognizing that we were yeshiva students, he said to us in Yiddish, “You’re going to yeshiva; God bless you. Learning is a good thing; study and you won’t have to be wagon drivers.” When the wagon master asked to which yeshiva he was to take us, our friend Raphael responded in Yiddish, “to the Sand Synagogue.” The synagogue stood on the last street of the city, called the Street of Sand, because behind this synagogue there was a large barren expanse of sand that stretched to the Dvinsk Fortress where the military forces protecting the city were quartered. When we reached the synagogue, the wagon master unloaded our belongings, took his payment, and left. We dragged our things into the building just as it was time for the mincha service. The worshipers in the synagogue looked at us casually; they were used to seeing this scene at the beginning of each fall and 3.  This quotation is from Pirke Avot 2:6.

On My Way through Yeshivot

each spring as the yeshiva students arrived for their studies. The sexton welcomed Raphael as a longtime acquaintance and asked him some details about us, the new arrivals. Some of the yeshiva students who had gotten there before us gathered around to make our acquaintance, as was the custom, since veteran students were expected to greet “green” yeshiva students cordially. I stood there stunned and perplexed because, not knowing what to expect, I thought we would be housed in a hotel or in a special apartment for yeshiva students. Raphael had not revealed any specifics to us before our trip. As I looked around in my naïveté and disappointment, one of the veteran yeshiva students approached me and advised me to choose a bin in which to place my belongings. Such bins were located under the seats of the synagogue members. I did as he suggested and choose a compartment on the east side, for I was accustomed to taking my place in the east in the synagogue in our town, since the east side of every synagogue is reserved for the rabbi, the shochet, and the most important householders of the town. And when I asked the fellow where we would sleep, he pointed to the benches and the tables. “We’ll sleep on them,” he said. My eyes went dark at the thought that I would have to sleep on a table, but that was the rule. This is the way to Torah learning and the life of a yeshiva student. After the mincha service, several of the local householders went over to their small lecterns to study a page of Gemara, as was their daily custom. The veteran yeshiva students also sat over the Gemara, continuing their study, which they had interrupted for the service. I looked around the synagogue, scrutinizing it, and I perceived that it was a twostory building, not too large, divided in the middle by a wall that ran its entire length and rose to its full height. In the upper half of this wall were small windows and below, a wide entranceway into a hallway. The main room had windows on all sides except where the holy ark containing the Torah scrolls stood in the middle of the eastern wall. A high, wide bimah was in the middle of the space and on it stood a wide table on which the Torah was read. From the ceiling various lamps hung to light the hall, and benches, both short and long, stood adjacent to all four walls of the building. The benches were enclosed, subdivided inside into bins, with a lid covering each bin separately. These benches served two purposes: seating for the worshipers and storage places for

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the ­belongings and the clothing of the yeshiva students. The benches were also places to sleep at night if the tables did not suffice. The back half of the building was again divided into two floors. The ground floor had rooms on both sides: two rooms on one side for the use of the chief sexton, and a room on the other side for newly married yeshiva students who left their wives for a specific period of time to devote themselves to their studies. Down the middle was a hallway leading to the rooms and to the synagogue hall. On the second floor there was a women’s gallery whose entrance was from the exterior of the building, on the side. All the space at the entrance side of the large hall was taken up by a big table that served as the place where the rosh yeshiva delivered his Talmud lecture. The rosh yeshiva sat on a slightly elevated chair and all around, on his left, on his right, and in front of him, yeshiva students sat on benches to hear the lesson. Small lecterns were scattered all over the hall; these held the books of the yeshiva students, who spent most of their time standing next to the lecterns studying. This synagogue had two sextons: a chief sexton and an assistant. In my time, the chief sexton was already old and blind in both eyes. Still, he lived in his two rooms and held on to his position. He would chant all the blessings made on behalf of individuals, call men to the Torah, and sometimes lead services even though he was blind, for he knew all the prayers by heart. He and his old wife were wonderful people who treated the yeshiva students lovingly and with devotion, feeding those who did not have a place to eat on some days and inviting many for a glass of tea and serving them pastries which the old man prepared himself. Even though he was blind, he used to prepare fish without ever touching them with his hands, using only a knife and fork. They had wealthy children in town who more than once asked them to move to a proper apartment, for they were ashamed that their parents lived in the synagogue rooms. But the old couple refused to leave the place where they had spent most of their years and where they wished to remain the rest of their lives. The yeshiva students were dear to them and they considered it a great privilege to take care of the students and to ease their lives as much as they could. The second sexton, the assistant to the chief sexton, did all the actual work expected of a synagogue sexton. He saw to the cleanliness and good order of the synagogue and took care of all its needs. He took outstanding care of the Torah scrolls and of the sacred texts. He chanted

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from the Torah before the congregation on Sabbaths and holidays and he was always at the service of the synagogue administrator. It was also the sexton’s duty to look after the needs of the synagogue’s yeshiva students, to arrange for them to eat at the homes of various householders on specific days, although he was paid by the yeshiva students for his trouble, and the bigger the tip he got the better the “days” he would arrange. This practice of a household having a yeshiva student for three meals one day each week is deeply rooted among the Jews of the Diaspora, and even a poor person would not decline to take upon himself the responsibility of supporting a yeshiva student one day a week. There were some people who even maintained a particular yeshiva student every day of the week, or they might have a different young man each day. In the same way, there was no Jewish home in those days that did not invite a local poor person or traveler to be a guest for Shabbat. This principle of hospitality to men of Torah such as yeshiva students was so well known in the Jewish world that it was the main factor allowing for the spread of Torah study in the Diaspora and for the increase in the number of yeshivot producing great men of Torah. The roshei yeshivot concerned themselves with the physical needs of the yeshiva students, just as they looked after their spiritual needs. They were careful not to awaken jealousy among the students with regard to the choice of “days.” They didn’t allow a yeshiva student to be hosted in the same home every day of the week for fear of arousing the jealousy of other students and also lest his host’s lifestyle have a negative influence on the student. This is how all yeshiva students secured their daily bread, except in the very best yeshivot, whose students were the elite of Jewish youth. These young men received a weekly stipend from the yeshiva and arranged their own private lives. The top yeshivot sent emissaries all over the Diaspora to raise funds from wealthy Jews for the maintenance of their institutions, and the stipend students got in these yeshivot was based on the number of students enrolled and the extent of the contributions the yeshiva got during the year. The top students of ordinary yeshivot, on the other hand, would sleep in the synagogue on tables or on the floor and depended on “days” for their food.4 4.  For more on “eating days,” see, for example, David Assaf, ed., Journey to a NineteenthCentury Shtetl: The Memoirs of Yekhezkel Kotik (Detroit, 2002), 427n48.

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There were also some yeshivot that were supported by one rich man in the city. Dvinsk had such a yeshiva in the synagogue of a wealthy gentleman named Wittenberg. Students there always ate their meals at this rich man’s table. Surprisingly, however, the students of this yeshiva would drop out quietly, one by one, after the first year. They got tired of sitting at the same table with the same teachers and the same fellow students day after day and Sabbath after Sabbath, and of being under the strict discipline of the principal appointed by their benefactor, who ruled over them with an iron fist, in return for the charity and kindness that was offered them.5 And now here we are yeshiva students. I had been given a bin in which I placed the things I had brought with me: Sabbath clothing, ­underwear, a pillow and blanket, my tefillin bag. We were tired from the rough journey and so we ate a light supper of food that we had brought from home, chose a long table for ourselves, and my brother and I went to sleep, stretched out head to head. When I thought about my “bed,” so to speak, my heart sank and my eyes filled with tears. I went off into a corner so that others would not see my poor behavior. As I stood there depressed, broken, and crying, I felt a small hand on my shoulder. I turned my head and I saw a boy, or not quite a boy, good-looking and delicate, standing beside me and trying to comfort me in my anguish, saying, “you must be new. Let’s be friends and I’ll help you adjust to life here. I’m the son of the rosh yeshiva.” His words were so warm, pleasant, and sincere that I took them to heart. I bonded with him and things seemed much better. We remained fast friends the entire time I was in this yeshiva. And so I went to sleep, or tried to go to sleep, for I could not sleep at all. The difference was too great between sleeping in a bed with pillows and blankets in a warm home, surrounded by parents and brothers and after a full meal, and sleeping on a cold hard table in a synagogue, a sacred space (what a sacrilege!),6 surrounded by strange boys and an 5.  For another reference to Wittenberg’s yeshiva, see Buim Yidel Kreel, “Reminiscences of a Socialist in Rakishok,” on the Internet at www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/rokiskis/rok099.html (accessed Jan. 23, 2012). 6.  There are contradictory traditions regarding sleeping in a synagogue. On one hand, in the same way that rabbinic opinion prohibits transacting business in a synagogue and using the building as a shortcut, it also considers sleeping in a synagogue to be improper behavior. On the other hand, the Talmud (in tractate Pesachim 101a) indicates that travelers were often

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unfamiliar environment. I fell asleep only on account of my exhaustion and quiet sobbing, and I was hardly rested when the sexton awakened us; the older men were beginning to assemble in the synagogue for the shacharit service. I was still tired and weary, with sleep in my eyes, but there was no choice. I had to get up, get dressed, return my things to my bin, wash my hands and face, and get ready for the service. I expected that I would miss the glass of tea that I was used to drinking before shacharit at home, but I was able to get over this feeling. In the coming days there would be a number of much more important things I would have to overcome. The next day, which was Friday, my older brother, with the help of our friend Raphael, met with the sexton to arrange “eating days” for us. Later, the sexton provided us with a list of householders who had agreed to give us one day each week. Every day of the first week, he would take us to each home for the first time in order to show us the place and introduce us. And already on Friday evening, the first that I would spend away from home, he took me to the family that had agreed to feed me every Shabbat. This family, Kleinstein was their name, lived not far from the synagogue. They had a tavern, and their apartment was in the basement, if you could call it an apartment and if you could call it a basement. The family consisted of a mother (the father had died), two daughters, and two sons. The older son, a handsome, pleasant fellow, was a student just returned from the Telz yeshiva. The second son was about my age. At their place I ate my first meal of food given as charity. If I didn’t choke on this meal, it was because, first, I was very hungry; we had eaten almost nothing all day. Second, I was embarrassed in front of the girls, lest they think I was still tied to my mother’s apron strings. And third, the second son, whose name was Reuven, befriended me immediately and made me feel extremely welcome. The older son, on the other hand, made me uncomfortable when he started quizzing me about lessons that I had not yet covered and asking me about an issue that was unclear to me, but his mother stopped him. “Don’t upset the child,” she said, and this annoyed me even more. In any case, this Shabbat meal was completed successfully, as I did not cry. welcomed to sleep in a synagogue. See, for example, “The Synagogue,” on the Internet at www.torahlab.org/community/article/synagogue/ (accessed Jan 3, 2008).

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There is a saying of our sages that states “a mountain and a mountain may not meet, but a person and a person may.”7 An interesting incident in which I was involved illustrates how true this is. About fifty years later, after I had been in the Land of Israel some fifteen years, I saw a notice in the newspaper Ha’aretz, which I have read from the first day I arrived in the country until today, announcing that the director of the main orphans’ home in Vilna had come for a visit and asking anyone from Vilna who had settled in Israel to get in touch with him. It was signed “Kalman Kleinstein.” The name of the family that had hosted me on Sabbaths when I was a yeshiva student in Dvinsk immediately came to mind. I wrote to him to ask if he was from the family I remembered and the next day an elderly Jew with an elegant beard and hair appeared at my door. I immediately recognized him and identified myself. I reminded him of their basement apartment and he was overwhelmed at my powers of recall and at my eagerness to meet with him. He was very pleased that we got together and he told me everything that had happened to him and to his family. He had come to the Land of Israel with his wife—there were no children—bringing with him several hundred pounds. He had entered into a partnership with a printer whom I knew, but I advised him against this move and he later canceled the arrangement. He made the mistake, however, of leaving his money with the printer as a loan in order to secure a position working for him. After a while, the printer went bankrupt and Kleinstein lost both his money and his job. In the meantime, his wife died and he was left all alone in his old age. I remained close with him and helped him as much as I could as long as he lived in Jerusalem, but he eventually moved to Tel Aviv and got work in an old age home. There he took sick and died while only in his sixties. He had gotten several marriage proposals, for he was still a vigorous, tall and handsome man, but death caught up with him first. It’s really too bad that he did not succeed in the Land of Israel. May his memory be for a blessing. He left behind the family of one of his sisters living in Beit Oved, which was established by the bank that I managed as part of the “Settle-

7.  This is an Aramaic proverb of unclear origin.

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ment of the Thousand” project.8 So this is how, after fifty years, I met again one of the people who was my host when I was a yeshiva student, but under reversed circumstances: I who ate food given as charity was now a bank manager in the Land of Israel, and he, the host, was now in the country without money and without employment. Truly the world is a wheel that comes full circle. And how sorry I am that he did not live longer to allow me additional opportunities to repay him at least partly for his kindnesses in those days in Dvinsk. I did not like the “days” the sexton had arranged for me; some of them I remember still now. One was at the home of a Jew who made cigarettes, which his daughter would sell to army officers by going door to door, even though this was illegal. These cigarettes were sold cheaply, since the high tax on them had not been paid. The man was sickly and poverty oozed from every corner of his home. After a few times, I gave up on this “day” and asked the sexton to exchange it for another. Another day I ate at the home of a coachman. In this home, which was distinguished by neither its cleanliness nor its affluence, the people tried to prepare a special meal for me, but I noticed that they themselves never ate together with me. I realized that they couldn’t eat such a full meal and the food used to stick in my throat. I didn’t want to offend them, but I also didn’t feel I could burden them, so I told them that I was leaving town. Another day I would get not meals, but rather a contribution of a few kopeks. I liked that because, with the money, I could buy anything I wanted. Once, however, the woman who was to give me money was not at home and I was told to go to another house to look for her. I asked passersby about this other house, but none of them wanted to answer me. Eventually, a wagon driver whom I asked responded with a hearty laugh and led me to the building. I entered the house and experienced a great trauma. I saw a bunch of women walking around wearing nothing but nightgowns. They gathered around me and started teasing me, asking me whom I wanted to see. My head swirled and my face turned beet red. I started to get away from them, and then the woman 8.  Beit Oved is a moshav, a cooperative agricultural community, near the city of Rishon Lezion. The “Settlement of the Thousand” (hityashvut ha’elef in Hebrew) was a program initiated in 1926 to speed recovery from the economic crisis of the period by creating intensive farming holdings on which a thousand families would settle.

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I was seeking thrust a coin into my hand and hurried me out of the house, telling me never to come looking for her in that place again. I was naïve and didn’t know what this all meant or what kind of house this was, and when I returned and told the other yeshiva boys what had happened, they all had a good laugh at my expense and then explained things to me. At that point I gave up this “day” as well. I didn’t want any part of a prostitute’s earnings. Thus, I was left for some time without meals for three days a week and I would eat bread and milk, or nothing but leftover milk, which I would buy with my few coins. This, until I was assigned some new “days.” And so I found myself left without a meal only on Friday. I sustained myself on that day by looking forward to the Sabbath evening repast. My brother Ya’akov had better luck with his choice of “days.” He was a good-looking fellow and the sexton arranged eating days for him in the homes of prominent people, so he enjoyed his “days,” if not his studies. This brother of mine had trouble understanding the subject matter and he didn’t belong in a yeshiva. As a matter of fact, he remained in the yeshiva only half a year and then he returned home. The day after I arrived in the yeshiva, I was examined by the headmaster. I have forgotten his name, but not his face or his countenance. He was short and gaunt, with a small scraggly beard and a large head, out of proportion to his lean body. He had a wide forehead and bright, deep-set eyes crowned with thick eyebrows. He had been a rabbi in some Russian town but had been driven out to the “Pale of Settlement”—the seven provinces where Jews were permitted to live—by the decrees of 1882. He was an extremely pious rabbi and a superlative Torah scholar. Many distinguished members of the community would join the yeshiva students to hear a lesson in Talmud from him, to enjoy his simple and masterly way of explaining an issue to his listeners. My examination went well, and the rosh yeshiva seated me next to his son, who was younger than I but who was already considered one of the top students in the yeshiva. It was my bad luck that, at the time, in this yeshiva they were studying the tractate Eruvin, a difficult tractate, as all students know.9 I was 9.  The tractate Eruvin is one of several dealing with laws of Sabbath observance.

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still not accustomed to studying difficult topics, but with diligence and with the help of my good friend, the rosh yeshiva’s son, I was able to penetrate the issues addressed in the tractate and I progressed quickly. And as I progressed, my desire to learn more grew and I studied hard, day and night, not only the tractate that the rosh yeshiva was teaching, which I worked on with his son Binyamin, but also on another tractate that I would study by myself, getting help from the older students only when I came to something I couldn’t understand alone. There were about forty students in the yeshiva, and among them were some young men and some newly married students who were on the verge of ordination. There was a custom in the yeshiva that one of the students would take over part of the daily lesson that the rosh yeshiva would begin, and anyone who wanted could challenge the presenter with questions based upon the commentaries on the text. And woe to the student presenting who did not know how to respond. The rosh yeshiva would rebuke anyone whose question he recognized as not coming from his own studying, but rather from within the commentaries. He would say that such questions were asked for the sake of annoyance, just to trip up the presenter, and that these questions were not for the sake of Torah learning. He would answer such questions himself. Binyamin and I were the youngest of the yeshiva students, but, nonetheless, we did not put the yeshiva to shame. Once in a while the rosh yeshiva would place the burden of presenting part of a lesson on us, and we never failed in our assignments, for it was clear to both of us that we had to work hard and to be well prepared for each daily lesson. Our friend Raphael did not study at the yeshiva, but on his own. His knowledge was limited and he was older than the others who were learning, so it was better for him not to be exposed to the criticism of the headmaster and the yeshiva students. He was under the patronage of one of the elders of the synagogue, who provided him with a room in his home and with meals. This patron and his wife had no children, but they had raised a girl, now grown, as their daughter. Raphael started an affair with her and hoped to marry her, but the affair became known and he was thrown out of the house. He then left the city, returning home and leaving us without our guardian.

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During the term, that is, from Sukkot until Passover, I made a great deal of progress in my studies because of my diligence.10 I was faithful to myself, to my parents, and to the goal they set before me. I knew that one does not attain ordination without tremendous effort, that one can achieve it only by studying day and night and forsaking worldly pleasures. I was imbued with a true religious fervor and I was extremely attentive to every religious practice, both those about which one could be lenient and those demanding strict observance. I considered the Thirteen Principles of Faith to be sacred.11 My prayers were honest and sincere. They brought me spiritual contentment and I paid no attention to material concerns. Besides, there was a certain scholarly competition among the yeshiva students. We would pose questions to each other to test our erudition: with what topic does the Gemara deal on such and such a page, which we are now studying? Or, on what page would we find the sayings of such and such a Tanna or Amora? And if one was proficient he would not only specify the page, but also in which column it could be found and if it was at the top, in the middle, or at the bottom of the column.12 We would count his correct answers against his incorrect ones, and this is how his proficiency would be assessed. If his percentage of correct answers was too small, he was given a month to improve his mastery and if, after a month, he again did poorly, he would be moved further down the bench, just as in the days of the Second Temple. The better students sat next to the rosh yeshiva, and he would turn to them first during the lesson to check on comprehension; they had to have mastered both the day’s material and previous lessons. Not every student had the privilege of sitting near the rosh yeshiva, and there was no greater shame than having to give up one’s place to a better student. Such skill is attained only by diligent study. Learning Torah is a demanding discipline that requires constant attention. “Turn it over and 10.  Typically, the yeshiva year has been divided into three terms called zmanim (“times”): a short term of about six weeks from the beginning of the Hebrew month of Elul until Yom Kippur, another term from just after the fall holiday of Sukkot until Passover, and a third term from after Passover for about three months into the summer. 11.  On the Thirteen Principles of Faith, see Note 8 in the preceding chapter, “My Entry into Heder.” 12.  On the standard pagination of the Talmud, see the Note on References at the beginning of this volume.

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over again,” said our sages.13 And the more you probe it, the more you become attached to it, the more you find it interesting, and the more joy and satisfaction you get from it, as in the explication of the verse “let her breasts satisfy you at all times.”14 As our sages explain, “her breasts” are the Oral Law and the Written Law, which are intimately connected to each other and complement each other; one cannot understand the Written Law without knowing and understanding the Oral Law.15 In recent generations, the study of the Written Law has been neglected. It was considered beneath the dignity of aspirants to the rabbinate to spend their time studying Tanach; they spent all their time on Gemara and the commentaries of Rashi and the Tosafists. There were some among them who did not know Tanach from the original text, but only as the Gemara made reference to it. On the other hand, in our schools these days they pay attention only to the Torah, and not in order to learn its precepts and its laws, but rather to learn about language and ancient history. Both the former and the latter approaches deprive one of the wholeness of Torah. In the words of the Gaon of Vilna: “One should not approach Talmud immediately, but rather first let the student study the books of the Tanach in depth, knowing their linguistic structure and their entire content. Then let him study the Mishnah and all its commentaries in the same penetrating and all encompassing way. Only then, equipped with this kind of extensive preparation, should a student be allowed to approach the broad literature of Halacha and to begin a careful consideration of Gemara, tractate by tractate.” On his way to the Land of Israel, in a letter to his family from Koenigsberg (where he changed his mind and returned to Vilna), he wrote, among other things, “Let them learn Tanach first, so that they know it almost by heart.” That’s how passionate he was about the study of the basics of Tanach before turning to other texts.16 13.  This is a reference to Pirke Avot 5:25. A fuller excerpt from this passage reads: “Turn it [the Torah] over and over again, for everything is contained in it; constantly examine it, grow old and gray over it.” 14.  This quotation is from Proverbs 5:19. 15.  On the “Written Law” and the “Oral Law,” see the Note on References. 16.  Although some of his disciples emigrated to the Land of Israel, for reasons unknown, the Gaon of Vilna himself abandoned his journey there when he got as far as Koenigsberg in Germany. The letter he wrote to his family from that city was later published as Alim Litrufah (Medicinal Leaves). For more on the Gaon’s views on Torah education, see Immanuel Etkes,

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And so Passover was approaching, the end of the first term in the life of yeshiva students, and we were asked to make preparations to return home to celebrate the holiday. I very much anticipated this day, the day I would return home. I so missed my parents, my brothers, my old friends, the river, and the forest beyond the river which belonged to a rich goy. There I had had so many adventures while gathering nuts and all kinds of fruit. The guard there was truly wicked and he would chase us, trying to catch us, or, if he couldn’t, he would send his dog after us. I longed for all of that, and more than once my thoughts would drift from the Gemara and settle on all the things I missed. But immediately I would recall “how fine is this tree . . .” and I didn’t want to depart this world and so I would return to the passage in the Talmud.17 But now we were free to think about home because in another day or two we’d be leaving the yeshiva, to return only after the Passover holiday. Not all the yeshiva students went home for the holidays. A few were orphans and didn’t have a home to which to return; every place was home to them. Some were poor children and couldn’t allow themselves the luxury of going home. How they envied us, the children of the wealthy, and how I sympathized with them. We were happy and they were disappointed and embarrassed. Indeed, I felt this was an injustice, but I rationalized this situation as something that can’t be challenged. This was before I understood that social distinctions between people were the result of human action and not of eternal and irreversible laws. I believed, in my simple way of thinking, that poverty was a decree from heaven above. After all, our sacred Torah proclaims: “For there

The Gaon of Vilna: The Man and His Image, Jeffrey M. Green, trans. (Berkeley, Calif., 2002), 58–63. 17.  The reference here is to Pirke Avot 3:9. Here is an excellent example of Frieden assuming a great deal of knowledge on the part of his readers. Not only does he take for granted that readers know the quotation in question in its entirety, but also that they understand that the quotation may be taken to imply that one who is distracted from Torah study is worthy of punishment by death. The full text from the Mishnah is: “Rabbi Ya’akov said: one who walks on a path and is reviewing what he has learned, and interrupts his review and says ‘how fine is this tree; how fair is this field,’ Scripture regards him as if he is making himself worthy of death.” Subsequent commentators have argued that admiring nature is not actually a sin, suggesting that turning away from attention to Torah should be understood allegorically as rejecting Revelation, and pointing out that, in fact, no text in Scripture can be found to support the idea expressed in this quotation from Pirke Avot. See Joseph H. Hertz, trans. and commentator, Sayings of the Fathers or Pirke Avot (New York, 1945), 53–54.

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will never cease to be needy ones in the land.”18 How fortunate I was to be counted among the wealthy and not among the destitute, even though I didn’t know why this was. The fact that I was eating meals given out of charity in someone else’s home didn’t place me in the category of poor people. In my mind, as in that of other yeshiva students, this was not considered something that lowered our status. On the contrary, we were honoring our hosts, those who gave us our daily meals, by allowing them the privilege of welcoming students of Torah into their homes, in the same sense that the Holy One, Blessed be He, was righteous toward Israel by allowing it to merit the gift of his Torah.19 And so the happy day arrives. We pack our belongings and go to the train station after quick goodbyes to the headmaster, to the two sextons, and to our fellow students who are going in different directions or staying behind. Traveling from home is nothing like traveling back home. A trip from home, and especially a first trip when leaving, is full of quiet sadness and uncertainties about the future, but this is not the case with a trip back home, full of carefree happiness and joy. You can picture exactly what will happen: how you will meet your uncles when you get off the train at the final stop, how you will see Grandfather and Grandmother on the farm in Zbishok, through which our wagon will have to pass on the way home, and the reunion scene when we get there. We urged the time onward and, if we had been able, we would have sped the train along even faster on its way to get us home. The journey went quickly. We spent the night at Uncle Mendel’s in Rakishok. My uncle probed to see what I had learned, but his knowledge of the fine points was not sufficient to test me on my studies, and he contented himself with questions about the religious practices of my yeshiva, questions which I was able to answer to his full satisfaction. 18.  The reference here is to Deuteronomy 15:11. The full verse reads: “For there will never cease to be needy ones in the land, which is why I command you: open your hand to your brother, to the needy and to the poor in your land.” 19.  Frieden probably has in mind here a passage from tractate Makkot 23b, which appears also in Pirke Avot 1:18 and which reads: “Rabbi Chananya ben Akashya said: The Holy One, Blessed be He, wished to bestow merit upon Israel, therefore he gave them the Torah and commandments in abundance; as it is written, ‘It pleased the Lord for His righteousness’ sake to magnify the Torah and make it glorious.’” This passage is customarily recited at the end of any study session held in a synagogue, most notably at the conclusion of the study of Pirke Avot. Most printed versions of Pirke Avot conclude with this text.

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The night passed, and we were on our way home in a wagon loaded with merchandise. The going was tough, for it had rained the night before and the wagon sank in the mud up to the midpoint of its wheels. The horse tired quickly and stopped from time to time to rest. On hills, we had to get down and help the horse by pushing the wagon from both sides. The wagon driver holds the reins in one hand and the ­wagon’s bar in the other, and he urges the horse on with his whip and his voice. The horse strains with all his might, breathing heavily, and with our help he reaches the crest of the hill and stops to rest. If we had resented the fact that, as usual, the train had been late in reaching the station, how much more so were we bothered by this slow wagon trip, which this time took more than the usual five hours from Rakishok to our town. But this too passed and we were nearing the town; the tops of the steeples of the Catholic church were already visible and a half hour later we arrived home. They were waiting for us. Just as soon as we got down from the wagon, our parents and brothers surrounded us, kissed us, and hugged us. They took us inside. The samovar was humming quietly on the table, surrounded by cups, baked goods, and desserts. We all sat down to tea eagerly, for our throats were dry and we were hungry. What a special pleasure to sit at our own table, to drink and to eat our own food, after eating all those charity meals in other people’s homes. What a feeling of release and of freedom. So recently yeshiva students, we sensed that we now had returned to our former status, free to eat and to drink and to sleep and to ramble around as we wished during the coming days of vacation and celebration. Father sat grandly at the head of the table and drank very sweet tea, as was his custom. At times, we used to envy him that he had the prerogative of putting so much sugar in his tea. Father had had a cough for a long time and sweet tea is a proven treatment for coughs. He coughed and he smoked a lot; he coughed and he drank a lot of sweet tea, and he continued to cough and to smoke. When Father died at the age of eighty-four in Jerusalem, it was not from the cough, but rather from pneumonia, which he caught from walking to synagogue in a downpour on a very rainy evening. Mother’s face glowed with happiness at the arrival of her yeshivastudent sons, healthy and whole. Notwithstanding all the discomforts

On My Way through Yeshivot

and hardships of life in the yeshiva, I was not quite sure how to behave. I very much wanted to leave immediately to meet with my friends, to play and to return to my childhood ways, but I had to act differently, for, after all, I was a yeshiva student come from afar, having seen the wide world, and it would not be proper to revert to my childhood mischief. In any case, guests were beginning to arrive: Grandfather and Grandmother, our nearby neighbors, and Rabbi Yitzhak Ze’ev. The guests treated me respectfully, and I had to respond as an adult, which pleased me, and so my desire to revert to my childhood disappeared immediately. The rabbi besieged me with questions: What have I learned? Which tractate? Who is the rosh yeshiva? What sort of yeshiva is it? And on and on. In the course of his questioning, he tested me on the tractate I had studied. I answered all his questions properly because I really knew the tractate well. The rabbi was amazed at the significant progress I had made in just half a year, and he, who had contributed to my success by providing me with my foundational education over several years, was pleased that his efforts had not been in vain. That’s how our first day back home passed. And every day following was the same: other people’s visits to our home and our visits to others’, going to synagogue three times a day, encounters with friends, and walks together. And then the Passover holiday arrived. Perhaps it’s worth describing the way proper preparations were made for this holiday, and the way it was celebrated by Jews in the small towns of Lithuania, so that all this will not be forgotten in light of the great advances and the many changes that have taken place in Jewish life in our time. The period in question is only sixty or seventy years past, but the difference is tremendous. It would be nice if coming generations at least knew how previous generations conducted themselves in the ­Lithuanian-Russian Diaspora.

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Editor’s Introduction

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Because Menachem Mendel Frieden was concerned with recording for future generations as much as possible about his early life, in this chapter he recalls the holiday celebrations of his youth. In doing so, he interweaves a general description of the way various holidays were observed with recollections about his own family’s customs, thus reminding us that although many of the beliefs and practices associated with the Jewish holidays are common to Jews all over the world, some were peculiar to individual Jewish communities, such as Frieden’s own now-vanished Lithuanian milieu. Frieden adopts a decidedly traditionalist approach in discussing the Jewish holidays, apparently taking many of the beliefs he recounts on faith. He writes with conviction about the way individuals are judged before a heavenly court during the Ten Days of Repentance, for example, and about the way their fate for the coming year is determined during that period. The account of the Jewish holidays Frieden provides is by no means systematic. Rather, he seems to have recorded only those elements of Jewish tradition and practice that came to mind as he drafted his memoir, perhaps focusing on those he found most noteworthy. So, for example, he leaves out completely any mention of the holidays of Hanukkah and Purim, admittedly minor holidays on the Jewish calendar, but he goes on at some length about Simchat Beit Hasho’evah, a rather obscure commemoration that takes place during the holiday of Sukkot, recalling the drawing of water to be used for libations of the altar when there was still a Temple in Jerusalem. Furthermore, Frieden is rather inconsistent when it comes to describing the observance of the holidays he does discuss. In some cases, he includes very basic information, such as the prohibitions associated with Yom Kippur, while in other cases, he ignores the basics but includes such esoterica as the Zohar’s explanation of why Rosh Hashanah is celebrated over two days.

Passover and the Holiday Cycle

The aspects of this chapter’s narrative that may be of most interest are the ones in which Frieden describes holiday practices that were specific to his community and his own family. Frieden’s description of the baking of matzah in his hometown of Kvatki is fascinating, as is the description of the merrymaking in the Frieden home on Simchat Torah. Also of interest is Frieden’s account of practices that are largely absent from contemporary holiday observance, such as the symbolic floggings that took place on the eve of Yom Kippur. Although accounts of local practices and customs give this chapter much of its distinctive character, what most personalizes it, perhaps, is Frieden’s occasional expression of his attitudes and opinions. In the course of this chapter, Frieden records his opposition to the expiation ritual of kaporet, for example, and he raises his objection to reciting the “Prayer of Purity” which has traditionally ushered in Yom Kippur. He also shares his understanding of the yearning for a rebuilding of a central Temple in Jerusalem, arguing that, if such an edifice was to be built, it should be used not for animal sacrifices, but rather as a place of assembly to discuss “national issues affecting the people of Israel and those of the Diaspora.” Also reflecting Frieden’s personal outlook is his frequent return to the theme of the redemption of the Jewish People, a theme that was very much on his mind both in the 1920s, when he first arrived in the Land of Israel and began recording his life story, and in the late 1940s, as the State of Israel was coming into being and he was completing work on his memoir.

❊ o u r s a g e s o f b l e s s e d m e m o ry a d v i s e u s ,

“One should learn and expound upon the laws of Passover thirty days before Passover.”1 There is a special tractate, the tractate Pesachim, which contains all the laws and customs of the holiday. The three main holidays of the Jewish People, called the three pilgrimage festivals, all are significant for two reasons and all have two names. Passover is called the Festival of Freedom, the Festival of Unleavened Bread, and the Festival of Spring. ­Shavuot is called the Festival of the Giving of the Torah and also the Festival of First Fruits. Sukkot is the Festival of Booths and the Festival of the Harvest. Since the destruction of the Temple and the cessation of the Passover sacrifice (except among the Samaritans, who offer 1.  The quotation here is from tractate Pesachim 6a–b.

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the sacrifice still today),2 most of the emphasis in the laws of Passover has been on avoiding eating or seeing leavened food, hametz, during the holiday. Our sages ordained that even a small bit of hametz on Passover is forbidden. That is, even if what is involved is less than the size of an olive, the smallest measure used in Jewish law. The initial preparation for Passover involves the flour for matzah and its baking. Already long before Passover, when the wheat is still on the stalk, wheat merchants contact wheat growers concerning a specified section of their field and guards are posted to watch over its produce in order to avoid any contact with moisture from the time it is harvested until it is threshed. Under strict supervision, the wheat is transferred to a flour mill that has been certified by the local rabbi as free of hametz and, immediately after its milling, the flour is sent for safekeeping to a properly prepared storage facility so that it should not come in contact with flour that is hametz. This is the law concerning the supervision of the flour until it’s time for baking. In those days, there were no factories for the baking of matzah in small towns and, more generally speaking, the first factory for the baking of matzah was established in Austria only in 1856.3 Back then, matzah was baked in a very primitive fashion. This is the way it was done: a Jew would lease a whole house or clear out two or three rooms in his own residence and clean the space thoroughly so that there was no trace of hametz. Then he would prepare the necessary equipment: ­tables, rolling pins, piercers, and so forth. He would then dig a pit about half a meter deep opposite the large oven that was then found in every home. This hole allowed the person supervising the baking to see into the oven readily and to watch the matzah so that it would not bend or

2.  The Samaritans are members of a group that numbered no more than of a few hundred throughout the twentieth century and that practice a religion based on the Torah but not on later Jewish texts so that they maintain some practices similar to those of the Jews. They are centered on Mount Gerizim, where they once had their temple, near Nablus in Palestine. For more on the Samaritans and their Passover ritual, see, for example, James A. Montgomery, The Samaritans: The Earliest Jewish Sect (New York, 1968), esp. 37–40; and Alan D. Crown, ed. The Samaritans (Tübingen, Ger., 1989). 3.  On the controversy sparked by the invention of machine matzah, see Philip Goodman, “The Matzah Baking Machine: A 19th-Century Controversy,” on the Internet at www.myjewish learning.com/holidays/Passover/TO_Pesach_History/Modern_176/Machine_552.htm (accessed Oct. 20, 2009).

Passover and the Holiday Cycle

burn. Bent matzahs were unfit for use. Once all this was prepared the house was ready for baking. The flour was brought to the house and water that had been drawn the night before and taken immediately into the house was prepared, so that there would be no fear of its contact with hametz. This is because during the day the water sources are cool and at night they are sweltering.4 The baking began in the morning. A woman would knead the dough continuously, without any interruption whatsoever. The rolling out of the matzah dough was done the same way; any break in the process had to be avoided lest the matzah become leavened. The matzah dough was rolled out to the desired thickness and passed off immediately to the piercer who thoroughly pierced the matzah in rows so that it would not swell up in the oven. After the piercing, the matzah was given right away to the baker, who placed it immediately in the hot oven and removed it when it was done. The richest person is town was the first to have his matzah baked and the rabbi would have his baked last, after everything had been cleaned once again in special preparation for the baking of his carefully guarded shmurah matzah. Generally, the person for whom matzah was being baked stood over those engaged in the process of baking and watched them with an eagle eye to avoid any concern about leavening. He would then invite all the bakery workers that day for a meal in a room set aside for the purpose. At this point, his wife would appear and distribute gifts and desserts to all the workers, with a special present for the baker, the person who stands near the oven and has the hardest job, a job that demands effort and care and knowledge in order to insure that the matzahs would come out nice-looking and kosher. When the baking was finished, the matzah was taken home and put away in a special place where it would not be seen and where the children could not get to it before Passover. The first step in preparing for Passover was thus completed. The second step, preparing the house for Passover a week before the holiday, was exacting, hard work and it was undertaken with the participation of every member of the household. The windows and the walls 4.  Water drawn at the end of the day was thought to be cooler and cooler water was preferred for matzah baking because it slows the fermentation of dough. There is a long discussion of this in tractate Pesachim.

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were whitewashed. The doors, the floor, and the utensils that could not be ritually immersed in scalding water were washed several times, and the furniture also was cleaned and washed down thoroughly. Each room was closed off after it was prepared and each remained closed until Passover eve. During the last two days before the holiday, we carried on our lives in the hallway and in the kitchen, where the floor was covered with mats. On the evening before the 14th of Nissan, the hametz was burned, leaving only enough for two meals. The hametz that remained in the house or in storage or in the store was sold by the local rabbi to a nonJew by means of a binding sales contract, even though the goy knew that the sale was a legal fiction. Still, there was no other way to observe the practice of eliminating the hametz in one’s possession other than by selling it to a goy for a period of time. This was like other legal fictions that allowed for things such as charging interest in business dealings, or the non-cancellation of debts in the seventh year, or preparing food for Shabbat on a holiday.5 In order that the blessing over the burning of hametz remaining in the house just before Passover not be recited in vain, a few crumbs of bread were placed in every room to be discovered by the head of the house, who went from room to room gathering the crumbs into a wooden spoon by the light of a candle. The spoon and the hametz that was gathered were burned the next morning. According to Jewish law, every firstborn son, whether of his father or his mother, is obliged to fast the day before Passover as a reminder of the slaying of the firstborn in Egypt, the last of the ten plagues that were inflicted upon Pharaoh, king of Egypt, before he released the People of Israel and freed them from their slavery under the leadership of Moses. In order to be exempted from this fast, firstborn sons could go to the synagogue and join in a celebratory meal that is served at the completion of the study of a tractate of Gemara. Advanced scholars would try to arrange to complete a tractate on Passover eve, and those who were not students themselves would participate in the completion 5.  Fundamentally, the Torah prohibits lending at interest and demands the cancellation of debts every seven years, but rabbinic law has found creative ways to keep these practices from interfering with normal financial transactions. Similarly, although on a festival it is permitted to cook only food to be eaten that day, rabbinic law created the practice of eruv tavshilin (literally “mixing of cooked foods”), which allows food to be cooked for the Sabbath on a Friday, even if that Friday is a festival.

Passover and the Holiday Cycle

of the tractate by others. By doing so and partaking of the celebratory meal they would be exempted from fasting. The morning meal on Passover eve was light, eaten before the prohibition on eating hametz commenced at about 9:30. The noon meal included neither hametz nor matzah; mostly potatoes and similar foods. Actually, we were left a bit hungry, and this was in fact intentional, so that the matzah on Passover night would be eaten with a hearty appetite. Only with wine was there leniency, for it was said that wine leads to a desire for more wine.6 And so everything was ready for the first night of Passover. Despite the difficult and tiring work of preparing for Passover over several days, the fatigue of the women of the house melts away as Passover night approaches and the table is set so beautifully, according to the means of each family. The best table settings are used and bottles of red wine sparkle in the light of the candles that have been kindled in honor of the sacred holiday. The men have gone to synagogue dressed in their holiday best and they are filled with the majesty of the Festival of Freedom which will soon be sanctified during the Seder with a recitation of the Great Hallel, dubbed the “Egyptian Hallel,” because of the verse “When Israel came forth out of Egypt,” and so forth.7 We return from the synagogue to a house illuminated by special lights in honor of the festival. Our table is set ever so beautifully. Large candles burn along the length of the table and above, a special candelabrum with four candles sheds its light over the entire table. Haggadahs for all the children are near their cups. At the head of the table sits Father in his snow white kittle. His chair is cushioned with pillows so he may recline, as is required, and near him is the Seder platter arranged in the manner of the Hasidim: the shankbone, the egg, the ­haroset, and the bitter herbs.8 Next to the three matzahs used in the ritual is a 6.  Apparently, the idea here was to stimulate a desire for wine because the consumption of four cups of wine is required as part of the Passover Seder. 7.  The reference here is to Psalms 114:1. The Hallel (literally “Praise”) is a selection of six Psalms, numbers 113 to 118, which are recited during the Seder and on other joyous occasions. 8.  Reclining at the Seder table is required as part of the ritual to reflect a status of freedom; slaves or servants would not be allowed such an informal posture. All the foods on the Seder plate have one or more symbolic meanings: the shankbone is a reminder of the ancient Pascal sacrifice; the egg is a symbol of a second holiday sacrifice; the haroset recalls the mortar with which the enslaved Israelites had to work; and the bitter herbs call to mind the bitterness

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shmurah matzah sent to us by the local rabbi. Mother, regal, sits next to Father, dressed in her loveliest clothes and wearing all her finest jewelry. Her face glows on account of her happiness and the sanctity of the holiday. The greeting exchanged on the holiday evening is “May you have a kosher Passover.” This is the main thing: a kosher Passover, for if, heaven forbid, there should be an appearance of hametz already on this first night—some barley found in the soup, or something like that—the laws of Passover demand that not only all the food that was prepared for the meal, but also all the dishes and other utensils that were touched by the food containing the hametz be considered unfit for use. Could there be a greater misfortune and embarrassment than this? There would be nothing to eat and the entire observance of the holiday would be impaired. It’s no wonder, then, that every housewife was careful in her preparations for this night and that the traditional Passover greeting focused on this burning issue. And how pleased the queen of the household was when the evening passed without a mishap. Throughout all of this, we sit around a table adorned with all the silver and gold tableware that we own, even if it isn’t all needed on this night. Father recites the blessing over the first cup of wine and each of us, except the youngest, recites the blessing himself. Then comes a token washing of hands and our young brother recites the Four Questions, which he has practiced for several days before Passover. The raisin wine, which Mother has made herself, is red, pungent, and sweet, and it goes down easily. The glasses are filled again for the second cup, we eat a vegetable dipped in salt water, the bitter herbs, and so forth, and we recite the Haggadah out loud, using the traditional melody that was handed down to Father from Grandfather and to Grandfather from his father and from several generations before that. This melody has variations that fit each section of the Haggadah. And how the melody rose when we came to “pour out Thy wrath,” as we opened the door for the entry of Elijah the Prophet so he could of slavery. The vegetable dipped in salt water, mentioned later by Frieden, is intended to recall the tears of the Israelites in bondage and to arouse the curiosity of the children at the table, the youngest of whom is expected to recite the traditional Four Questions, asking “Why is this night different from all other nights?” The vegetable has also been understood as a symbol of springtime.

Passover and the Holiday Cycle

drink from the special golden goblet that was set aside for him.9 How appropriate it is for the Haggadah to associate the Festival of Freedom, going back more than three thousand years, with the prophet who will appear to announce the arrival of the Messiah and the salvation that is destined to come. How much hope and encouragement have we Jews drawn from Passover eve, year after year during our thousands of years of exile, by connecting the first Festival of Freedom with the celebration of freedom and salvation yet to come. The call of “next year in Jerusalem” arises year after year from the throats of millions of Jews all over the world at the conclusion of the Passover Seder, and if this wish has not yet been fulfilled, in our hearts we are absolutely certain that the day will come. Even if the Messiah tarries, he is bound to arrive next year, or the year after next. He will come; “the Eternity of Israel shall not be denied.”10 For what do we have left without this hope for the coming redemption, and how would we have been able to endure one thousand eight hundred years of dark exile and to survive the wrath and fury of all who hate us without this expectation? How could we have withstood the abuses of the various states, each with its particular anti-Jewish laws, and of the various nations, each with its accusations against the Jews? How could we have withstood the blood libels on Passover eve, the Inquisition, down to this very day, with the accusations leveled by Communism against any Jew who dares to speak in favor of individual rights in the name of democracy?11 9.  The reference here is to a selection from Psalms 79 recited near the end of the Seder. The complete first verse of this text is “Pour out Thy wrath upon the nations that know You not, and upon the kingdoms that call not upon Your name.” The recitation of this selection is associated with the tradition that Elijah the Prophet, for whom a special cup of wine has been set aside, may appear on Seder night. 10.  The quotation here, from 1 Samuel 15:29, is an often-used watchword denoting a faith in the survival of the Jewish People. The exact intention of this phrase is not clear and it has been translated not only as it appears here, but also as “the Strength of Israel will not lie,” “the Hope of Israel will not lie,” “the Glory of Israel does not deceive,” and in other ways. 11.  Given when Frieden penned much of his memoir, he probably has in mind here Joseph Stalin’s suppression of Jewish life in the Soviet Union during the 1930s and his liquidation of the USSR’s remaining Jewish institutions and Jewish leaders soon after World War II. Stalin’s policy included the murder in January 1948 of the leading Jewish intellectual and activist of the period, the Yiddish actor and director Solomon Mikhoels. See, for example, Arkady Vaksberg, Stalin Against the Jews, Antonina W. Bouis, trans. (New York, 1994); and Alessandra Stanley, “A Jew Stalin Killed Now Symbolizes Rebirth,” New York Times, Jan. 14, 1998.

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Indeed, our predecessors saw what might happen to us in the socalled enlightened world and they prepared the remedy: hope and faith in the redemption that we have merited, we who live in this glorious era. With our own eyes we are seeing the truth of the words of the prophet, “the Eternity of Israel shall not be denied.” And when did the Prophet Samuel speak these words? Just as the first king of Israel lost his exalted position. This was as if to say, neither the king nor the kingdom is eternal, but only the nation.12 And now the Seder is completed. The impressions of the Seder and the influence of the four cups of wine had hardly left us, and we youngsters were already thinking about what to do with the remaining days of the holiday, and of how many walnuts we would still win or lose, for it was a hard and fast rule that Jewish youngsters should play with walnuts on Passover.13 And how many and varied were the games. There was the dish game: This was a simple, amusing game that required no special skill or experience. Each player puts an agreed upon number of nuts into his dish. The player at the head of the table starts. He takes all the nuts out of his dish except one and puts one of his nuts into each of the other player’s bowls. If the last nut he deposits in someone’s bowl creates an even number of nuts, he takes all the nuts in that bowl. If the number is odd, he gets nothing. After that, the second player goes, then the third, and it goes on. That’s how it’s played until all the dishes are empty. Of course this game has a mathematical basis and one who knows some math has an advantage. There was the bank game: One player is the banker. He takes a hat and places into it any number of nuts he wishes. The player next to him deposits one nut, for instance, into the hat and then the banker throws the hat with all the nuts straight up into the air. If the number of nuts that fall out of the hat is odd, the one who deposited his one nut gets two, and if the number that fall out is even, he loses his nut. Usually, the banker is the winner if he knows how to throw the hat into the air the right way. 12.  The first king of Israel was Saul. In 1 Samuel 15:11, God declares his regret over making Saul king because he had disobeyed God’s command regarding a war against the Amalekites. 13.  Playing with nuts on Passover has a long history. The Talmud, in tractate Pesachim 109a, relates that Rabbi Akiba used to give children parched ears of corn and nuts on Passover eve so that they would stay awake and ask questions. See also David Assaf, ed., Journey to a Nineteenth-Century Shtetl: The Memoirs of Yekhezkel Kotik (Detroit, 2002), 438n7.

Passover and the Holiday Cycle

There was the triangle game: Two walnuts are placed next to each other on the floor with another on top of them. A player takes ten steps backward and throws a nut toward the triangle of nuts. If he hits it, he gets all three; if not, he gets a second chance. There was the eye game: A nut is placed next to the player’s shoe and he throws another nut down upon it from eye level. If he hits the nut near his shoe, he gets it. And there were several other sorts of games that I’ve already forgotten. In any case, this was the main pastime that kept us children busy on Passover. We were occupied with this during the first day of Passover, and in the evening we already started the days of sefira. From the time of the destruction of Beitar,14 some seventy years after the destruction of the Second Temple, at the time of the third Jewish revolt attempted against Rome, the days of sefira, at least until the thirty-third day, took on the character of days of general mourning for the People of Israel, days when many activities of a joyous or festive nature are forbidden. The days of sefira are counted from the start of the grain harvest until its conclusion as a reminder to observe the laws of the harvest: those concerning gleaning, grain that is forgotten, and the corners of the field. These laws oblige the owner of any farmed field to leave some of its produce for the poor and they are the first of the humanitarian laws in which our sacred Torah excels. This is another reason that our sages transformed the days of sefira into days of mourning: so that we should not forget the laws of the harvest after we were exiled from our land, since these laws don’t apply outside the Land of Israel. Sefira also serves to keep alive the embers of hope for salvation and to keep us from forgetting the war for independence of Bar Kochba, supported by Rabbi Akiva and his 24,000 students who, according to legend, died during the period of counting. This again bears witness to the way our sages saw to it that we should not, heaven forbid, forget our illustrious past and that the Jewish People should not break its ties to the Land of Israel, maintaining those ties, if not with actions, at least with remembrance. When it came to this momentous matter, they left us many reminders in the form of special days of mourning, fast days, 14.  Beitar, a fortified city south of Jerusalem, was a center of Jewish resistance during the revolt against Rome led by Simon bar Kochba beginning in 132 ce. The capture of Beitar by the Romans in 135 ce resulted in the massacre of its defenders and the end of the revolt.

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and prayers for all generations, in addition to assurances about the eternity of Israel and its revival. All this served as a driving force behind a national aspiration for complete salvation, a source of light in the darkness of exile, and an indication of faith in our future, which is materializing before us, in our time. The days of sefira end with Shavuot, and this is a holiday in two senses. It is the celebration of the end of the harvest, the Festival of First Fruits, and it is the Festival of the Giving of the Torah, the time when, according to tradition, the Torah was received. During the many generations of our long exile, several religious customs were introduced in connection with this holiday, including performing a “preparation for Shavuot” on the night of Shavuot, creating the possibility of touching upon the entire Torah on this night by reading the beginning and ending of each weekly Torah portion as a symbolic allusion to “receiving the Torah” on Mount Sinai.15 There was also the custom of decorating synagogues with greenery in remembrance of the first fruits, and of eating honey and dairy foods, a reminder of Torah being “honey and milk under thy tongue.”16 Various other customs can be found in Sefer ­Minhagim and in the writings of Avudraham.17 The days of summer are few, and especially the days for bathing in the river, which could revive and energize the children of the small towns of Lithuania, shut up at home and in heder throughout the winter, without light and without fresh air due to the intense cold of that period. Bathing is prohibited during the days of sefira, and the children had barely started to enjoy themselves in the days after Shavuot when the vexation of the Three Weeks from the 17th of Tammuz to the 9th of Av overtook them. These are days commemorating the destruction of the First and Second Temples and the loss of Jewish sovereignty which 15.  The custom of studying all night on the eve of Shavuot apparently originated in the sixteenth century with the Kabbalists of Safed in the Land of Israel. In addition to reading passages from the Torah, it also became customary to study Talmud, mystical literature, and other texts. One tradition has it that the Israelites at Mount Sinai overslept before they received the Torah (shofar blasts, thunder and lightening were needed to awaken them), and performing a preparation for Shavuot (tikkun leil shavuot in Hebrew) was instituted as a result. 16.  The quotation here is from Song of Songs 4:11. 17.  Sefer Minhagim (Book of Customs) is a compendium of the laws and customs of Ashkenazi Jews compiled by Isaac Tyrnau, a rabbi active in Hungary in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. David Avudraham was a rabbi of fourteenth-century Spain and one of the foremost authorities on Jewish prayer services.

Passover and the Holiday Cycle

began a period of desolation that lasted some 1,878 years, until the proclamation of the renewed State of Israel on the 4th of Iyar 5708.18 Both children and adults get some consolation from the Sabbath of Consolation, the Sabbath after the 9th of Av, when the maftir reading is the prophecy in chapter 40 of the Prophet Isaiah, or, according to some, the beginning of the prophecy of the Second Isaiah: “Be comforted, be comforted, My people.”19 This is again a measure instituted by our sages to ease the melancholy of the Three Weeks with the comforting words of this prophet who foretells the redemption of the nation and the return of Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel. Just as a sense of depression mounted during the Three Weeks and with the reading of the Prophet Jeremiah’s Lamentations,20 so feelings of joy mounted with the reading of the Prophet Isaiah’s words of comfort. On the Sabbath of Consolation it was our custom to undertake visits to family. A bridegroom was required to go visit his bride and her family on this Sabbath. In every Jewish home the anticipation of the Sabbath of Consolation was great. And again, the joy of this Sabbath had hardly passed and we were already at the threshold of the Days of Awe. Rosh Hashanah, then the Ten Days of Repentance, then Yom Kippur; these are days of penitential prayer, forgiveness, and atonement. In town, the first sign of the approach of the Days of Awe was the sound of cantors and their choirs rehearsing the Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur liturgy. From every synagogue and from every cantor’s home, at all hours of the day and night, the chanting and the singing of the cantor and the choir broke forth. And the hearts of all the Jewish townspeople began to tremble at the approach of the Days of Judgment, days of soul-searching concerning the deeds of the year that is ending. These are placed in the balance, and woe unto him for whom the outcome is a harsh decree. “On Rosh Hashanah their destiny is inscribed and on the fast day of Yom Kippur it is sealed.”21 Ten days are allowed for the balancing of the scales, but only for ordinary individuals, because the truly evil 18.  The civil date was May 14, 1948. 19.  Some scholars have argued that the Book of Isaiah is the work of two different prophets, or perhaps even more. 20.  The Book of Lamentations is chanted in its entirety on the 9th of Av, the fast day commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples in Jerusalem. 21.  This is a line from the Yom Kippur liturgy.

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are finished; their decree is issued in only one day, and the same holds true for the completely righteous. Only average people, for whom the scales are constantly teetering up and down without being in balance, are given one last chance to tip the scales to the side of merit, through repentance, prayer, and acts of charity. Who would not stand in awe during these days? Even if he believes he is not totally wicked, every Jew knows that neither is he a saint, for “there is not a righteous man on earth who does not sin.”22 He hopes to be an average person and, as such, he knows he should try to tilt the balance in his favor and he dreads the thought that he may not be able to do so. On the eve of Rosh Hashanah, there is less business and a rush of preparations, but not preparations for the holiday itself, because the New Year of the Jews, unlike that of other nations, is not a festive occasion, but a Day of Judgment. The preparations are spiritual preparations. A religious awakening and a quiet solemnity are apparent; awe before the unknown. Dread of the Day of Judgment is palpable in the gait of every Jew on this day, and we children, too, were influenced by our parents’ sense of trepidation. No adult or child would dare raise his voice on Rosh Hashanah eve. Interactions between people are all full of innocence and goodwill. People are careful not to upset others, either by their speech or by their actions. Our souls yearn to be in the synagogue, there to begin the work of repentance and prayer. We enter the synagogue, and it is the same synagogue that we attend all year long and of whose sanctity we are not very mindful all year. But today, how awesome this place is! With what trepidation before its holiness do we enter the synagogue this evening. The synagogue is illuminated as it is on every Shabbat and holiday, but even its lights are different this evening. One has the impression that the lamps are moving and swaying in awe of the sanctity of the day. The people stand at their places, the men dressed in kittles. No one is speaking and no one is listening; all are wrapped in their penitential reflections and all are waiting for the cantor to begin the maariv service. And how different is the melody used by the cantor for this maariv service—his voice does not carry its usual strength, power, and boldness. This time, his voice is soft, pleading, and humble; the cantor is a representative of the com22.  Here Frieden has slightly misquoted Ecclesiastes 7:20.

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munity and a great responsibility is placed upon his shoulders. Will his prayers be accepted? The congregation senses the difference in his voice and in his posture and this has its effect. The people respond in the same manner, with a quiet inner fervor. I remember that this is how my father used to behave during the maariv service on the first night of Rosh Hashanah: he would draw out his prayers, standing by the wall in his usual place in the synagogue, until he was the last one there. Then, caught up emotionally in his prayers, he would burst out in loud cries and pound the wall. We children were deeply stirred and, with our hearts breaking, we would wait for him to finish his prayers. Then we could go back home together. It was hard to enjoy our dinner when we recalled Father’s groaning and crying out in the synagogue, but the blessing “Shehechiyanu” would bring us back to our obligations, for this blessing had a particular meaning on this night.23 We were poised at the beginning of a new year and our lives depended on decisions made by a heavenly court, whether for judgment or for mercy, and who knew what the decision would be? Therefore, the entire meal took on the solemnity of repentance. We did not take joy in the food, and the grace after meals was recited with intensified emotion and fervor. There is a variety of customs for the days of Rosh Hashanah. There are some Jews who don’t say a single word about workaday matters during the two days of Rosh Hashanah, which are considered as one. This is because the New Year is also the first day of a month and in ancient times the beginning of a month was established by hearing witnesses affirm that they had seen a new moon. If the witnesses tarried and did not arrive on time, but rather late in the evening, then the following day was declared the beginning of the month. Because of the doubt this raised, Rosh Hashanah is observed for two days even in the Land of Israel.24 In the section of the Zohar regarding the Torah portion Pinchas, a different basis is given for this practice: we learn this from the fact that in the 23.  The “Shehechiyanu” blessing is: “Blessed are You, Lord our God, King of the universe, who has kept us alive, preserved us, and enabled us to reach this season.” 24.  Because of the possible confusion over dating, as explained by Frieden, an additional day of observance was added to several Jewish holidays in the Diaspora. However, this additional day is observed in the Land of Israel only for Rosh Hashanah.

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Book of Job it is twice written “one day,” and so forth, and this suggests that the two days of Rosh Hashanah are as one long day.25 People spend Rosh Hashanah in the study of Torah, in prayer, and in the recitation of Psalms. They wear a kittle—a white robe—during synagogue services, they immerse themselves in the mikvah each morning, and they attempt to concentrate their thoughts on matters of repentance. The piece of bread that is used for the blessing over bread is dipped in honey, so that we may have a good, sweet year. The head of a ram is eaten, a reference to the saying “may we be as a head,” and so forth, and also as a reminder of the ram that was offered as a sacrifice in place of Isaac, according to the story of the Binding of Isaac.26 However, when it comes to repentance, the greatest awe and passion is evoked by the blowing of the shofar. It was a custom to blow the shofar after the morning service already from the beginning of the month of Elul, a signal call to the masses to awaken and to prepare for the imminent Day of Judgment. On both days of Rosh Hashanah, a hundred shofar blasts are sounded, except if it is the Sabbath day, when, in our time, shofar blowing is prohibited, even though the shofar was sounded even on Shabbat in the Holy Temple. The shofar blower and the prompter go to the mikvah before the shofar sounding and then they mount the bimah. Two distinguished men from the congregation remove two Torah scrolls from the ark and mount the bimah as well, standing on either side of the shofar blower. The prompter begins with a reading of Psalm 47 and the congregation repeats after him eagerly and loudly, seven times. The prompter chants a few more special verses, among them “obliterate Satan,”27 and then he prompts the shofar blower with each sound according to the traditional order. 25.  In two places in the Book of Job there appear descriptions of the “sons of God” (perhaps meaning angels) presenting themselves to be judged. Both Job 1:6 and Job 2:1 begin with the passage: “One day the sons of God presented themselves before the Lord.” 26.  There are several symbolic foods customarily eaten on Rosh Hashanah to reflect aspirations for the new year. Bread or apple dipped in honey is the best known. Here Frieden alludes to the custom of eating the head of a fish, a sheep, or some other animal and reciting the prayer: “May it be Your will that we be as a head and not as a tail” which, in turn, is based on Deuteronomy 28:13: “The Lord will set you as a head and not as a tail.” The story of the Binding of Isaac, Genesis 22:1–24, is read in the synagogue on the second day of Rosh Hashanah. 27.  This is a reference to reciting verses from the alphabetic acrostic Psalms 119 which correspond to the phrase kra satan, meaning “obliterate Satan” or, more loosely, “may Satan’s evil decrees be shredded.”

Passover and the Holiday Cycle

Sometimes it happens that the shofar does not sound properly. The shofar blower tries again, and still there is a problem. The congregation becomes concerned. Even after the shofar blower whispers “and let the graciousness,” and so forth, into the mouth of the shofar to gain some merit,28 the shofar remains stuck or, as it is said, Satan blocks its throat and won’t budge. Then it becomes necessary to call another shofar blower to take the place of the first, who leaves the bimah brokenhearted and sad of spirit. Others who are proficient in shofar blowing are always present in the synagogue, for it was customary among the Jews that children in heder be taught to blow the shofar during the month of Elul. I and many of my friends possessed this knowledge and skill. The blowing of the shofar is concluded and we move on to the additional service; we always have a sense of relief after the shofar blowing. It’s hard to know where this feeling of relief comes from. Perhaps it is from the Kabbalistic notion that the blasts of the shofar confuse Satan as he stands ready to denounce the Children of Israel before the Heavenly Court on this day of judgment, even though we are commanded directly in the Torah regarding shofar blowing. In any case, perhaps the reason for the sense of relief is that we have rid ourselves of the Accuser and can now hope for forgiveness and pardon. All this is repeated on the second day of Rosh Hashanah, except if it falls on Shabbat, when there is no shofar blowing. The seven days following, until the eve of Yom Kippur, are the most awe-inspiring days of all. Daily we increase our prayers, our atonement, and our acts of charity, until the arrival of Yom Kippur eve. In the morning service of that day, an observant Jew will arrange for his release from all unfulfilled promises. We ask forgiveness from anyone whom we know has a grievance against us, for Yom Kippur cannot atone for wrongdoing that one person commits against another. On the night before Yom Kippur begins, we performed the ritual of kaporet. That is, every male took a rooster and every female a hen, specifically a white one, a reference to the verse “they shall be as white as snow.”29 If a woman were pregnant, she would take a rooster and a hen. 28.  The reference here is to Psalms 90:17: “And let the graciousness of the Lord our God be upon us; let the work of our hands prosper; O prosper the work of our hands.” 29.  The reference here is to Isaiah 1:18, a verse traditionally associate with the High Holidays. In its entirety, the verse reads: “Come now, and let us reason together, says the Lord;

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Each person would take the fowl in his right hand and say, “a life for a life” and recite a special prayer, a section of Psalm 107, verse 10, which begins “Such as sit in darkness and in the shadow of death.” Then he would take the kaporet in his left hand and place his right hand on the head of the fowl and swing it over his head three times, saying, “This is my replacement, my atonement,” and so forth. Then the shochet would come to the house and slaughter the fowl. A payment in lieu of the kaporet would be given to the needy, and the fowl would be eaten on the evening just before Yom Kippur and at the conclusion of Yom Kippur. This is an ancient custom, from even before the time of the Geonim in Babylonia, and it is likely that this practice was instituted after the destruction of the Temple, using a chicken, which was not fit for sacrifice, to replace the goat that had been sent off to Azazel by the high priest in order to atone for the sins of the House of Israel.30 The ­Ramban banned this custom as reflecting the practice of the Amorites.31 The Rashbah also prohibited the custom.32 I don’t want to stick my nose in among the greats, but it seems to me that the practice should be abandoned. After all, it was introduced to replace sacrifices and these days prayer services have been instituted to replace sacrifices. Ever since I came to this conclusion, I have not practiced the ritual of kaporet. It is a custom to honor whomever enters the house just before Yom Kippur with special deference, and to eat more than usual, since eating before Yom Kippur evening is considered a commandment. We go to the mincha service early and we recite the “Ashamnu” formula for the first time. During the night and the day of Yom Kippur, we will repeat the “Ashamnu” liturgy seven times.33 We are flogged thirty-nine times by the sexton of the synagogue in punishment for the sins for which a court would have demanded lashes.34 We return home to eat a final though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.” 30.  The ritual of making atonement by sending a goat off to Azazel in the wilderness is described in Leviticus 16:8–10. 31.  The biblical Amorites were inhabitants of the land of Canaan who, in post-biblical literature, came to represent any practitioners of heathen superstition and idolatry. 32.  Rashbah is an acronym for Rabbi Shlomo ben Aderet (1235–1310), a Talmudist, teacher, and leader of Spanish Jewry. 33.  The “Ashamnu” (literally, “We Have Sinned”) formula is a listing of many different types of sins that may have been committed within the Jewish community. 34.  The custom of symbolic flogging as part of the Yom Kippur ritual has been largely dis-

Passover and the Holiday Cycle

meal and then the fast that will last until the evening of Yom Kippur day, more than twenty-four hours, begins immediately. Five things, all of which involve physical pleasure, are prohibited on this day in order to fulfill the main commandment of atonement: “and you shall practice self-denial.”35 The things prohibited are eating, drinking, washing, wearing leather footwear, and sexual intimacy. On this day, two services are the climax points in the transcendent awakening of every Jew who yearns to know God and who fears for his soul. The first is Kol Nidre and the other is Ne’ilah.36 It is imperative to begin Kol Nidre at sunset, and that is why we hurry to the synagogue immediately after the meal that begins the fast. Although electricity had not yet been introduced in small towns during my time there, the atmosphere in the synagogue on Yom Kippur eve was electric, and also stifling. It was a custom to bring memorial candles to the synagogue; they would be lit inside a wooden box filled with dirt. The floor of the synagogue was covered with straw or hay or mats to accommodate kneeling and prostration during the service, which is not permitted on a bare floor. The synagogue was filled to capacity, mainly because of the children who would all attend on this evening. The windows and the doors were closed, lest the candles blow out, heaven forbid. The synagogue was filled to the point of suffocation by the smoke of the many candles, the perspiration of the huge crowd, and the dust raised by the shuffling of feet on the dry grass. And still the congregation stood and recited with heartrending cries the “Tefilah Zakah,” composed by Rabbi Abraham Danzig of Vilna, the author of the Chayei Adam and the Chochmat Adam.37 continued. The token thirty-nine lashes was apparently derived from the injunction in Deuteronomy 25:3 that lashes should be limited in number to no more than forty. See, for example, Louis Jacobs, The Book of Jewish Practice (West Orange, N.J., 1987), 115; and Jill Jacobs, “Captives, Cruelty, & Compassion,” on the Internet at www.myjewishlearning.com/ideas_belief/ warpeace/War_TO_Combat/War_Ethics_Walzer/POWs.htm (accessed Oct. 23, 2009). 35.  The Day of Atonement is ordained in Leviticus 23:23–32. The phrase Frieden quotes is from verse 27. 36.  The Kol Nidre prayer service is named for a declaration which is a key element in the service and which begins with the words kol nidre (“all my vows”). The concluding service is called Ne’ilah after the Hebrew word for “locking” or “adjournment.” 37.  Frieden is referring here to the custom of marking the formal start of Yom Kippur and accepting its restrictions by reciting the “Tefilah Zakah” (Prayer of Purity) before the Kol Nidre service. The Chayei Adam (The Life of Man) and the Chochmat Adam (The Wisdom of Man) of Abraham Danzig (1747 or 1748–1820) are books dealing with the laws in the Shulchan Aruch and related texts.

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This prayer has no equal in its description of the transgressions that a person might commit in thought or in deed. In my youth, I, too, would recite this prayer with great fervor and much weeping, and even then I was dumbfounded by its content. I could not comprehend how a person could beg forgiveness for things he had never in his life done. A child’s imagination could not conceive that it was possible to commit such obscenities. To this day, long after I stopped even considering reciting this prayer, I don’t understand how a great rabbi and teacher in Israel could imagine such sins. How did he know of their existence and their nature? He describes thoughts that are mostly only imagined and can manifest themselves only in sick, indecent fantasies, and this illusory prayer is still today printed in High Holiday prayer books and there are still congregations that devotedly stand and recite this prayer. Concerning the “Kol Nidre” declaration, the Talmud (in tractate Nedarim 23) says: “He who desires that none of his vows made during the year shall be valid, let him stand at the beginning of the year and declare, ‘Every vow which I may make in the future shall be null.’ His vows are invalid provided that he remembers this at the time of the vow.”38 The intention here is to annul only future vows; with this statement, a person annuls in advance all vows he might make during the year and then regret, and thus he does not need to be released from them by a rabbinical court. However, the ancient form of this declaration was intended to annul vows made in the year past. This can be seen in the “Kol Nidre” text of Rav Amram Gaon, which was written in Hebrew.39 Apparently, the text we have today is older. It is in Aramaic, which was the spoken language in Babylonia. Many authorities spoke against this “Kol Nidre” altogether. Rav Hai Gaon writes: “We do not release people from vows between Rosh ­Hashanah and Yom Kippur and we did not learn from our teachers that they ever did this. You should be strict about this, as we have been, and do not alter the practice of the ancient rabbinical academies.” And the Kolbo, too, writes: “We have already made our position clear that we should not recite ‘Kol Nidre’ at all, for what use is the release from a 38.  The exact reference for this quotation is tractate Nedarim 23a. 39.  Rav Amram Gaon is Amram ben Sheshna (died ca. 875), once the highest rabbinical authority of the Jewish center of Sura in Babylonia.

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vow to one who has stipulated his right to nullify a vow after he makes it? We have long understood that there is no basis for this ritual, that these words do not release one; that there is nothing to it.”40 Rabbenu Tam, who saw that the ritual nonetheless had taken root, changed its formulation to the future tense and this was accepted in the communities of France.41 In the Land of Israel, the custom is to use both formulations, both for the past and for the future. Enemies of the Jewish People have used the “Kol Nidre” as evidence to demonstrate that the Jew is not afraid to make a false promise based on its nullification in advance, and some judges would refuse to accept the oath of a Jew. The Geonim were apparently afraid that in the future gentiles would not trust the word of a Jew and they made a great effort to eliminate the recitation of “Kol Nidre.” They failed to do so, however, for this baseless ritual had taken root among the people and could not be eliminated. And so the custom in both of its formulations remains to this day. And what is amazing is that Jews who feel free to ignore all religious practice all year long do not discard the “Kol Nidre” prayer. This prayer, which is the lynchpin of the Yom Kippur evening service and is not a prayer at all, but rather an announcement of the nullification in advance of all vows and oaths, nonetheless draws congregations to come hear it in such solemnity and majesty. And the melody? It is said that it came from Spain. What sweetness! It emanates from the majesty of its holiness and it is improved even further if it is chanted by a cantor who knows his craft. The whole thing is wondrous and remains a marvel. At the conclusion of the evening service, many Jews remain in the synagogue all night, engaging in learning, reading Psalms, and reciting the “Shir Hayichud.”42 The shacharit service is without any special distinctiveness, as is the musaf service, except for the avodah, a service which describes the activities of the high priest on Yom Kippur when 40.  Rav Hai Gaon is Hai ben Sherira (939–1038), who headed the rabbinical academy at Pumbedita in Babylonia. The Kolbo is a work on Jewish law presumed to have been written by the French rabbi Aharon ben Ya’akov Hakohen of Lunel (1262–1325). 41.  Rabbenu Jacob ben Meir Tam (ca. 1100–ca. 1171) was a grandson of Rashi and one of the French Tosafists. 42.  The “Shir Hayichud” (Song of Unity) is a series of seven responsive poems composed in Spain by Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021–1058) and traditionally recited in the synagogue only on Yom Kippur eve.

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the Temple was in existence. The congregation is aroused once again as the past is depicted in brilliant colors and in holy majesty. In his heart, every Jew feels the great loss suffered with the destruction of the Holy Temple, as if it happened in his own day, and this again arouses a longing for complete redemption and the ancient hope is renewed that the Temple be rebuilt speedily in our days. At the conclusion of musaf, the congregation disperses for an hour or two. The people are worn out from the long service, they feel the effects of the fast, and they want to rest. They return for the afternoon service, which is recited without any special intentness, but then the evening approaches and the Ne’ilah service begins. It’s as if the congregation is shaken awake once again and gains strength to complete this final prayer service. In most places, it is not the cantor who leads the Ne’ilah service, but the rabbi of the community and, as usual, he prays with fearful reverence and with great devotion. The rabbi is no cantor and his voice is not strong, but what he lacks in vocal quality he makes up for with his devotion and his ability to move others, and this too has an effect on those gathered. When the service is completed, some extraordinary declarations are added, the first proclaimed once, the next thrice, and the last seven times: “the Lord is God,” recited in a voice filled with religious sentiment and inner fervor, accepting the one and only God. If everything has gone well and pardon and forgiveness have been granted, we go home happy and satisfied, confident that everything is all right, that there is nothing to worry about. The very pious proceed immediately to recite the blessings on the appearance of the moon and, in order to start the new year properly, to begin fulfilling the commandment to erect a sukkah. May there be peace upon Israel. In our town, people would gather in the home of a respected householder right after the end of the fast, together with the cantor and his choir, and they would spend the evening happily singing and drinking, till the middle of the night. My father, however, when he returned from the synagogue at the end of Yom Kippur, would recite Havdalah and, with some tea, immediately lie down to rest for an hour or two. Father would stand all day long and not sit down at all during the entire time. “May the Temple be rebuilt speedily in our days.” These words, which are recited in the meditation “may it be Thy will” that is said three times a

Passover and the Holiday Cycle

day at the end of the “Shmoneh Esrai” prayer by every Jew who prays the shacharit, mincha and maariv services, do not mean the rebuilding of the Temple where sacrifices were offered in days of old. It’s hard to imagine these days that any Jew, no matter how pious, would want to return to sacrifices. It would be fitting to remove from our prayers any hint of a desire to renew the practice of sacrifices, such as appears in the “may it be Thy will” prayer. The opinion of the Rambam on this matter is well known from what he explained to his students in the Guide: “I know that you will at first thought reject this idea and find it strange.”43 With the establishment of the State of Israel in our day, there is perhaps a place for this prayer, but with a new intent, that of establishing public buildings that will serve as places for national gatherings where a general discussion of the needs of the nation and other national issues affecting the people of Israel and those of the Diaspora would take place, for those in the Diaspora can not be affected by decisions of the Knesset, which apply only to the citizens of Israel.44 The ­Binyanei Ha’uma Convention Center which stands in Jerusalem today is privately owned and cannot serve this purpose. The public buildings I have in mind must be erected by the entire Jewish People and be the property of the entire nation. The state must initiate this project and oversee its construction and maintenance in cooperation with representatives of Jewish communities throughout the Diaspora, for that way an edifice can be erected to the glory of the entire people. A building like this should contain individual halls named in honor of each and every Diaspora community that participates in its construction. It is even possible that this building would take the form of the two ancient Temples in its exterior, in order to associate the architecture of times past with the modern architectural developments of our day.45 43.  The quotation here is from part 3, chapter 32 of the Guide for the Perplexed. The translation is from Moses Maimonides, A Guide for the Perplexed, M. Friedlaender, trans. (New York, 1904), 383. Maimonides makes this statement in the context of an argument that sacrifices actually had no religious meaning and were instituted to wean people from idolatry. See Gidon Rothstein, “Moreh Nevukhim—Chapter 32,” on the Internet at www.rjconline.org/ mn32.html (accessed Oct. 4, 2010). 44.  The Knesset (“Assembly”) is Israel’s parliament. 45.  This paragraph is an example of a late addition to the Frieden memoir. The original section of Binyanei Ha’uma (“Buildings of the People”), Jerusalem’s International Convention Center, was designed in 1949 and construction was begun in 1950.

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Most of our holidays are significant in two ways: they have a religious meaning and a secular one. Passover: its religious significance is connected with the Pascal offering and its second meaning is as the Festival of Freedom. Shavuot: the giving of the Torah and the Festival of First Fruits. Sukkot relates to the commandments concerning erecting a ­sukkah, in remembrance of the verse “I made the Children of Israel dwell in booths,” and so forth.46 And Sukkot is the Festival of the Harvest. This is the last of the three Pilgrimage Festivals about which the Torah says “you shall rejoice in your festival” and “you shall have nothing but joy.”47 Still today, this is the most pleasant of the holidays and it lasts nine days outside of the Land of Israel, for Shemini Atzeret, the eighth day of the holiday, is a separate holiday and Simchat Torah is added to that at its conclusion.48 The first thing involved is building a sukkah, something that is already initiated on the evening Yom Kippur ends. Back then, there was not a Jewish household that did not erect a sukkah, whether it was one built into the house, where it was only a matter of placing new branches on its roof for the holiday, or one erected during the four days between Yom Kippur and Sukkot. Most people had the walls of the sukkah ­already built and stored away from year to year; they were taken down at the end of the holiday and put in place again as the holiday neared once more. A poor Jew who could not afford to erect his own sukkah would join together with another Jew, or several families would get together to erect a joint sukkah and they would take turns eating in it in order to fulfill the commandments concerning the sukkah. 46.  The reference here is to Leviticus 23:43. The entire relevant quotation, verses 42 and 43, is as follows: “You shall dwell in booths seven days; all that are home-born in Israel shall dwell in booths; in order that future generations may know that I made the Children of Israel dwell in booths when I brought them out of the land of Egypt; I am the Lord your God.” 47.  The references here are to Deuteronomy 16:14 and 16:15. 48.  What Frieden intends to explain here is that in the Land of Israel Sukkot is a seven-day festival, followed by another holiday known as Shemini Atzeret (the Eighth Day of Assembly). Shemini Atzeret, which is attached to Sukkot but not actually a part of that festival, is also the day on which the annual cycle of Torah readings is concluded and begun again. For this reason, Shemini Atzeret is also known as Simchat Torah, the Rejoicing of the Torah. Outside the Land of Israel, where an extra day is added to the various festivals, Shemini Atzeret is observed on the day after Sukkot as a holiday distinct from Simchat Torah, and Simchat Torah is celebrated on the day following Shemini Atzeret. The day before Shemini Atzeret is called Hoshana Rabah, discussed by Frieden below.

Passover and the Holiday Cycle

Our sukkah was decorated by lining the walls with swatches of cloth in various colors that we would take from our store and with various fruits. From the ceiling of the sukkah we would hang all kinds of ornaments and drawings and fruits: apples, plums, grapes, anything that came to hand. All this would remain until after the holiday because what was hung as decoration was considered a part of the sukkah and it was forbidden to take it down during the holiday. Father would sleep in the sukkah every night, as Jewish law demands, for the sukkah must serve as a complete living space during Sukkot, and only rain, if it comes, nullifies this obligation. How sorry Father was if it rained during those days and prevented him from fulfilling the commandment. With the end of the second day of Sukkot, the intermediate days of the festival arrive and Simchat Beit Hasho’evah begins, a commemoration of the joy experienced at the pouring of water in Jerusalem in the days of the Temple, as suggested in the verse from Isaiah 12, “With joy shall you draw water.”49 In order to make the arrangements for the celebration of the drawing of the water, the priests and the Levites would descend to the women’s courtyard. There they would set up a structure around the wall, a place from which the women could observe the celebration, so that men and women should not mix. There were also golden candelabra there, each with four golden cups with wicks and oil that would be lit at night. Each candelabrum was fifty cubits high and the younger kohanim would climb up on ladders to fill them and light them, and there wasn’t a courtyard in Jerusalem that was not brightened by the light of these candelabra. Pious and accomplished men would dance before the people who stood along the walls of the Temple and they would call out songs and words of praise and proverbs. The Levites would play musical instruments and chant songs along the fifteen steps that descended from the main compound of the Temple to the women’s area, corresponding to the fifteen “Songs of Ascent” in the Book of Psalms.50 49.  The reference here is to Isaiah 12:3. The entire verse reads: “With joy shall you draw water from the wells of salvation.” The name of the now obscure commemoration held during the intermediate days of Sukkot, Simchat Beit Hasho’evah, means “Rejoicing at the Place of the Drawing of Water” or “Rejoicing at the Well House.” 50.  Psalms 120 to 134 all begin with the words “A song of ascent.”

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At the crowing of the rooster, two kohanim would sound trumpets to announce that it was time to draw water from the Shiloah Spring for the altar libation. The joy on this occasion was so great that it became paradigmatic: “Whoever has not witnessed the rejoicing at Simchat Beit Hasho’evah has not witnessed rejoicing in his life.”51 The pouring of the water over the altar was done according to a very specific procedure from which no deviation was allowed, and the crowd followed it very carefully. Legend tells that once one of the kohanim poured the water not on the altar but on his feet and all the people pelted him with the etrogim that were in their hands.52 This custom of libation is of ancient origin, from before the building of the Temple, as we can see from the verse in the Torah which tells that “Jacob set up a pillar and he offered a libation on it and poured oil on it.”53 And in the Book of Samuel the Prophet it is said, “And Israel assembled at Mizpah and drew water and poured it out before the Lord.”54 And also we have David who poured out before God the water brought to him by his three warriors.55 It is clear from this that the water libation was a sort of worship of God. Another commandment of the holiday of Sukkot is the taking of the Four Species, which are the citron, the palm frond, the myrtle, and the willow. We bundle them together and recite the blessing “on the taking of the lulav.” In our town, the sale of lulavim and etrogim was controlled by the rabbi. He would order them from merchants in the larger cities, and this was one element of his income. Even though, regarding the Four Species, the Torah commands “and you shall take for yourselves,”56 meaning that each person should have his own, most of 51.  This quotation is from tractate Sukkah 51a. 52.  This incident is recounted in tractate Sukkah 48b. 53.  This quotation, which Frieden has abridged and which describes Jacob’s actions after he wrestled with an angel, is from Genesis 35:14. 54.  This quotation, which Frieden has slightly misquoted (the text refers to Israel, but begins “And they”) is from 1 Samuel 7:6 and relates to a period of warfare between the Israelites and the Philistines. 55.  The reference here is to an incident, related in 2 Samuel 23:3–17, in which David requests water from a cistern near Bethlehem. Three of his warriors manage to proceed through the camp of the enemy Philistines to get it, but when they present the water to David, instead of drinking it, he pours it out “as a libation to the Lord” (verse 16). 56.  The reference here is to Leviticus 23:40, which reads, in full, “On the first day [of Sukkot] you shall take for yourselves the fruit of goodly trees, branches of palm trees, and boughs

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the Jews in small towns could not afford to acquire a set because it was so expensive. Even the wealthier householders would buy their etrogim and lulavim from the rabbi in partnership, two families together. The synagogue would purchase one or two sets and any Jew could say the blessing over these. This is a practice we don’t have in the Land of Israel, for the supply is plentiful and the cost is low, so not only does every Jew buy a set of the Four Species for himself, but also for his children, to each his own: a palm frond, a citron, myrtle, and willow. Simchat Beit Hasho’evah continues until Hoshana Rabah, which serves as a sort of reminder of the need for atonement. Until Hoshana Rabah, the fate of a few still hangs in the balance before the Court on High, so the day is a kind of “lesser Yom Kippur.” The supplications for salvation chanted on this day are many and beautiful. The bimah is circled seven times, holding the Four Species. Most of the liturgical poems for the day are by Rabbi Eleazar Hakalir.57 In the Mishnah, this day is called “the beating of the branches” and in Temple times the beating was the main part of the service.58 In our time, however, it has become secondary and the recitation of supplications for salvation has become primary. There is a disagreement about the exact laws concerning the beating of the willow branches, which is done after the recitation of the supplications. Many contend that this is a law handed down to Moses on Mount Sinai and others that it is a custom from the time of the prophets. On the eve of Hoshana Rabah there is a special order of service, and there are some people who remain awake all night engaged in Torah study and prayer, for Hoshana Rabah ends the period of judgment. The feeling of joy that pervaded the intermediate days of Sukkot was somewhat diminished, but toward the end of Hoshana Rabah the happiness returned in full force. Shemini Atzeret begins. There is no need to dwell in the sukkah any longer, nor to eat separately, without the family, and at night, when of thick trees, and willows of the brook, and you shall rejoice before the Lord your God seven days.” “The fruit of goodly trees” is understood to be etrogim, citrons. 57.  Eleazar Hakalir (pre-tenth century) lived in the Land of Israel and is one of Judaism’s earliest liturgical poets. 58.  For the mishnah in question, see tractate Sukkah 44b. The reference in this mishnah is to the ritual beating of palm branches near the altar of the Temple, but the Gemara argues that the ritual involved not palm branches, but willow branches, and the custom was adopted of ritually beating willow branches on the ground during Hoshana Rabah services.

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Simchat Torah begins, there were processions. The synagogue fills with boys and girls and also with women. During the processions the separation between men and women is not so strictly enforced; the reins are almost completely released. We start with the verse “You have learned to know” and at times the right of distributing to prominent townsmen the honor of reciting the appropriate selections, verse by verse, was sold for the benefit of the synagogue.59 Sometimes this led to quarrels and to a diminution of the honor, since the person buying the right would privilege only his own relatives and friends, which the town considered to be spiteful. Eventually, selling the right to distribute these verses was abandoned in our town. Then the synagogue official or officials begin to distribute the honor of carrying the Torahs in procession: First the kohanim and Levites, then the town dignitaries, and after them the others. And woe to the official who does not follow the rules of precedence, especially with the procession during which the verse “Helper of the weak” is recited.60 The cantor leads those holding the Torah scrolls and the children follow them, holding flags. They circle the bimah, then stop before the ark to sing and dance, and the first circuit is completed. And we dare not stop until seven circuits around the synagogue are completed. After the processions, members of the congregation are honored by being called up for the reading of the Torah, verses promising the People of Israel blessings in return for their obedience to God’s laws. On Simchat Torah, the processions are repeated during the day, and then people disperse to their homes to eat and to rejoice in the spirit of the holiday. Again the reins are loosened. People go from house to house and drink no end of liquor. Even those who have taken a vow of abstinence don’t abide by it strictly on this day; they get drunk and 59.  The verse mentioned by Frieden is Deuteronomy 4:35, which reads in full, “You have learned to know that the Lord is God; there is none else besides Him.” This is the first in a series of biblical verses chanted as part of the Simchat Torah ritual just before a synagogue’s Torah scrolls are carried in procession. 60.  The verse in question, chanted during the sixth of the seven processions around the synagogue on Simchat Torah, reads in its entirety: “Helper of the weak, save us; Redeemer and Deliverer, prosper us; Eternal Creator, answer us when we call.” For another description of Simchat Torah in an East European shtetl, compare Yehudit Hadar, “Holidays and Festivals in Our City,” Jerrold Landau, trans., on the Internet at www.jewishgen.org/Yizkor/Podhajce/ pod129.html (accessed Jan. 23, 2008).

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engage in all sorts of childish behavior, all in the name of rejoicing over the Torah, the Torah that was given to us against our will, forced on us when a mountain was held over us and we were told: “Here will be your graves if you do not accept this.”61 Truly, there is at times a need for coercion in order to force us to accept something worthwhile whose value is not immediately apparent. This is why our sages have said: “The Holy One, Blessed be He, had a precious gift called the Torah and he gave it to Israel.”62 He gave it against their will because God knew very well that the survival of the Jewish People was dependent on the Torah of Israel and the Land of Israel. The Torah and the People of Israel are one; one cannot exist without the other. From this stemmed the hopefulness of Israel in the years of exile. As long as the People of Israel held fast to the Torah and to the Land in its desolation, there was evidence of the connection between them—of the silken thread that ties together the three, the Torah of Israel and the People of Israel in the Land of Israel. And the Jews of Lithuania were almost all observant of Torah. Because our only sister was born on Simchat Torah, we used to invite the whole crowd from the synagogue to our house for a reception. Food and drink would be prepared in abundance and the whole town would visit our home on Simchat Torah and have a good time. And the rabbi, Yitzhak Ze’ev, would entertain the children all day long on Simchat Torah, putting on a hat and turning his long gabardine coat inside out. He soon got drunk and went out into the street with the children following him. His pockets were full of all sorts of sweets that he had collected and that he would distribute. And everyone was dancing.

61.  Frieden is here alluding to a midrash found in tractate Shabbat 88a and based on Exodus 19:17, which reads: “Moses led the people out of the camp towards God and they stood at the nether part of the mountain.” This verse is interpreted in the midrash to mean that God held Mount Sinai over the People of Israel and warned that if they did not accept the Torah, where they stood would become their burial place. 62.  In the Talmud, the sages express the idea that God gave a “precious gift” to Israel in reference to the Sabbath; see tractate Shabbat 10b. Frieden may be paraphrasing here in relating the concept of a “precious gift” to the Torah. So too, tractate Brachot 5a contains the idea that God gave Israel three precious gifts, all of them acquired through travail and pain: the Torah, the Land of Israel, and the World to Come.

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Editor’s Introduction

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In this section of his memoir, Menachem Mendel Frieden returns to the story of his early education. After his year in Dvinsk, he was sent to study in a yeshiva in the town of Lyady, which was the seat of his father’s rebbe. The account of his time in Lyady provides added insights into the life of late nineteenth-century yeshiva students in Eastern Europe, and it offers a glimpse into the workings of Hasidic courts in that period as well. ­Frieden’s reference to the letter of introduction he brought with him to the rebbe of Lyady suggests the importance of networking within the world of Hasidism, for example, and his brief description of the time he spent at the rebbe’s court offers evidence of the openness of the court to newcomers and gives a sense of the kind of connection that could be forged between students and Hasidic masters. At the same time, Frieden’s description of his encounter with the rebbe of Lyady and his court serves as a useful reminder that not all those who came in contact with Hasidism became completely enamored with the Hasidic lifestyle. Frieden is quite critical of the materialism of the rebbes of his day and he expresses disgust with one common Hasidic practice, even as he comes to admire the Hasidic style of prayer. And there are also other tidbits of information about East European Jewish life to be gleaned from this part of Frieden’s narrative. At the beginning of this text, we get a hint of the importance of clothing styles as markers of Jewish observance, for instance, and in Frieden’s account of his interactions with his childhood friend Noah, we get a glimpse into smalltown business activities and rivalries. Finally, this narrative brings us closer to an appreciation of Menachem Mendel Frieden, the person. It provides a clear sense of Frieden’s pride in his own accomplishments and it contains his first mention of the subject of romantic love. Perhaps most importantly, this section of his memoir re-

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counts Frieden’s first encounter with the Haskalah, the Jewish Enlightenment. The story of how the young yeshiva student was first introduced to the literature of this profoundly influential intellectual movement is both fascinating and revealing. As Frieden writes, his exposure to the Haskalah had an impact on his values for the rest of his life. And yet, he was not confident that this impact was a positive one. In a poignant introspective passage which is a departure from his usual narrative style, Frieden expresses his doubts about the path he took in life. He laments his entry into the world of the Haskalah, wondering if he would not have been better off remaining in the less complicated world of Orthodoxy and pursuing a rabbinic career.

❊ of the holiday season, but on this day also ends the period of many holidays that fall in the pleasant months between Passover and Shemini Atzeret, even though these holidays are interspersed with days of mourning and fasting. The High Holidays are over and we come to normal workdays, days replete with worries about earning a living and preparations for the difficult days of winter that are approaching. And the day is nearing for me to leave my home and my parents and brothers and to return to a place of Torah. I returned to the yeshiva in Dvinsk by myself, without my brother, for he decided that it wasn’t worthwhile for him to continue with his yeshiva studies and so he stayed home to help in the store and with Father’s other business affairs. I continued my education in the yeshiva together with my friend Binyamin. I broadened my knowledge of Gemara and I grew more diligent in my studies. This learning brought me deep spiritual joy. It’s difficult to describe to those who have not experienced it themselves the spiritual pleasure that comes from assiduous study of the Talmud as one develops the ability to reveal the enlightenment latent in the Torah. What inner happiness pervades every fiber of the diligent student’s body when he finds himself able to probe a difficult passage of Talmud and to understand it properly. There is no pleasure like it or that can be compared to it. This term, too, I finished to the satisfaction of the rosh yeshiva and to my own satisfaction. At the end of the term, Father planned a trip to Dvinsk to buy supplies for his store so that we could return home together. He met with the rosh s i m c h at t o ra h i s t h e h i g h p o i n t

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yeshiva before our trip and he was very pleased to hear the headmaster’s opinion of my work in the yeshiva and his thoughts about my future. Although Father was an observant and knowledgeable Jew, he was nonetheless inclined toward modernism and abhorred extremism. He was strict about the cleanliness of his clothes and his home, and he dressed nicely. The collar of his shirt had to be properly ironed and he wore a modern-style hat in those days. All this was apparently a result of his business trips to larger cities, and so he bought a modernstyle hat and a white collar and tie for me too. For the first time in my life I was dressed as a proper young man. I remember that when we returned to Rakishok and Uncle Mendel saw me in my hat, he looked at me and spat on the floor—splat—“you look like a complete goy in that outfit and that hat. All of a sudden you’re dressing like a gentile.” Father laughed at him and paid no attention to what he said. Not only that, but he even gave Uncle Mendel’s young son, Shalom, a hat like mine, which he had bought for him as a holiday present. This matter of dress caused some disagreement between Uncle Mendel and his wife, who was an intelligent woman inclined toward modernity as a result of her several visits to Germany because of problems with her legs. In the same way, the hat and the overshoes I wore raised some ire on the part of my rabbi and my friends when I came home. They called me an apostate and I was truly ashamed in their presence. But slowly, slowly, I grew accustomed to my new shorter clothing and to my hat, and my rabbi and my friends got used to them as well, especially when they realized that my modern dress did not influence my religious behavior nor my studies. Again I derived great joy from being at home, from my brothers, and from the whole family during the three weeks I spent with them. And so the holidays passed and Father informed me that he had decided that this time I should not return to Dvinsk but rather to the great yeshiva in the city of Lyady, in Mohilev province. What was behind this change? Again the same thing: my modern clothes. My grandfather, my mother’s father, and Reb Yitzhak Ze’ev feared that I might get mixed up in bad company with a tendency toward heresy if I stayed in Dvinsk, a large modern city. They convinced Father to send me to Lyady, the seat of the rebbe of Lyady, of whom Grandfather and Father and most of the Hasidim of our town were disciples. They believed that the court

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there would have a great influence on me and would lead me down the path of Hasidism. It was known also that the rosh yeshiva there was one of the great scholars of the Jewish People and an enthusiastic Hasid. (What they didn’t know was that, although this rosh yeshiva was indeed a great Torah scholar and a great Hasid, he was not a follower of the rebbe of Lyady, but rather of the rebbe of Kapust. If they had known this, they certainly would not have agreed to send me to this yeshiva.) So too, they were influenced by the fact that I had a friend who was also going to Lyady on the recommendation of a nephew who had already been there for some time. And so it was decided that I should travel with my friend Noah Lifshitz to Lyady. The distance from our town to this city in Mohilev province is great. We had to take a train to Rudnya and from there take a stagecoach for the long, tiring ride to Lyady.1 The whole journey took several days because the railroads in Russia at that time were neither very punctual nor very comfortable, especially not in third class. The stagecoach, a wide covered wagon drawn by three horses, was filled with men, women, and children, and their belongings. It moved along heavily because the roads were in bad shape in the fall. Thus, I arrived directly at the home of the rosh yeshiva exhausted from the hardships of the trip. My friend Noah arranged with the rosh yeshiva’s wife that I would board with them while I was studying because he and two or three other yeshiva students were also boarding with them. Their home was not particularly spacious and the rosh yeshiva’s family, six souls, took up every room in the house. Nonetheless, they still found room for a few yeshiva students. The rosh yeshiva’s wife chose to live this way in return for the small payments we would make for lodging. They gave me a corner of a small room—a bed and a chair. The house was full of commotion all day long, for the rosh yeshiva’s wife dealt in the sale of all sorts of products that she would buy from the local peasants. Buyers of the goods would fill the house, bargaining over the price. There was no privacy. Although privacy had been lacking in the yeshiva in Dvinsk, too, and the living conditions were none too comfortable, still, all of us yeshiva students had been together there 1.  For stagecoach, Frieden here uses the French term diligence.

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and the synagogue was our home, day and night, except during prayer services. We were able to behave as we wished, which was not the case here. I didn’t become friendly with the yeshiva students who lived in the house. There were also two girls living in the house, and this made it uncomfortable for the boys, even though I was treated quite properly, since I was the youngest and the smallest among them and they also knew that I was the child of wealthy parents. In reality, we didn’t spend much time in the house, for we were in the synagogue where the yeshiva met all day long and for much of the night. There we heard the daily lesson from the rosh yeshiva, and there we studied at all hours of the day and part of the night. When I arrived at the yeshiva there were eighty students there, all older than I, some of whom were also pursuing a secular education. Some of them were very accomplished in their studies and were considered geniuses. I was told, however, that once the yeshiva of Lyady had been among the most important yeshivot of the province, attracting students by the hundreds from throughout Russia and holding sessions in several of the city’s synagogues. But Lyady was not a large city and could not handle four hundred students. The emissaries who were sent out to gather donations for this yeshiva didn’t collect enough funds for its maintenance and for their own needs, which were growing as a result of their mission, and thus began the decline in the number of the yeshiva’s students. They could not find enough “days” to eat in people’s homes nor other assistance in the city, and they scattered to other places, including some other prominent yeshivot. Also, the court of the rebbe did not have a positive influence on the yeshiva. Those at the court looked askance at the yeshiva, first, because they felt it did not teach Hasidism and follow its ways and, second, because the rosh yeshiva was a disciple of the rebbe of Kapust and so was not under the sway of the local rebbe. The competition between the emissaries of the yeshiva and those of the Hasidic court also led to strained relations. The “dynastic” competition among various Hasidic rebbes, among the rebbes of Lyady, of Kapust, of Sirutzina, and their followers, was great in those days, and this lowered the prestige of all of them in the eyes of the Jewish public in general, and especially in the eyes of good Hasidim. The later Hasidic rebbes were not like the great leaders of

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­ asidism and its early rabbis. The early Hasidic leaders were great H Torah scholars and were devoted heart and soul to the service of God. They were not concerned with material things. This is not so with the dynasties into which Hasidism has been divided today. In this yeshiva, which had declined somewhat from its former greatness, they had abandoned the custom common to all the great yeshivot of having the rosh yeshiva examine every new student to see if he is fit for the yeshiva. This yeshiva needed every student in order to survive. Here, instead, every new student was to present the daily lesson when he first appeared in the yeshiva, and the way he discussed the lesson determined the attitude the rosh yeshiva and the other yeshiva students would adopt toward the new student. For most of the term in this yeshiva, they were learning the tractate Shabbat, which I already knew very well. I had learned part of this tractate with my friend Binyamin during my last term at the yeshiva in Dvinsk. I asked my friend Noah to find out what the lesson would be the next day and I went over the passage once or twice, but I was still not confident. So too, I was fearful of appearing before others and afraid of the questions with which I would certainly be bombarded in order to trip me up. At ten o’clock on the day after I arrived in Lyady, I was called upon to present the lesson before the rosh yeshiva, a truly learned man, and in the presence of some stocky students, all of whom I thought were Torah scholars. These fellows were tall and solidly built, and among them were some young married men. They sat to both sides of the rosh yeshiva, in order, according to their status. Behind them sat the younger students and I was seated among them at the very last table, where I was hardly visible to the rosh yeshiva. As I began to make my presentation on the Gemara, I was shaking all over and my words came out mumbled and disjointed. The rosh yeshiva eyed me suspiciously—at least that’s how it seemed to me— and the students on the frontmost benches started to whisper about me among themselves and seemed to be awaiting my downfall. They did not want to consider me, so young and so small, as being one of them. I mustered all my strength to stop shaking, to ignore my surroundings, not to look directly at anyone. I focused my eyes on the Gemara and I felt my heartbeat come under control. My pleasant cantorial voice (I had a soprano voice) grew stronger and I explained the passage in a

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direct, clear manner, according to Rashi’s commentary and as I under­ stood it, without getting into the questions and answers of other commentators, as yeshiva heads and yeshiva students do when they try to show their understanding of the Tosafists and the Maharsha.2 I was not asked any questions; all were silent. I noticed with a quick glance that the rosh yeshiva was listening attentively and this encouraged me to continue to the end of the lesson more freely. When I had concluded, the rosh yeshiva said he was amazed and that he would like to know where I acquired this style of learning, so simple and correct. I explained that I had been taught this style of learning by the rosh yeshiva in Dvinsk. His system was to teach the lesson in a simple, clear manner, without any difficult questions or answers from the students, and only later to go over the passage again in greater depth. He would raise questions and provide answers, build arguments and refute them, and in the end he would come to the same conclusion concerning Halacha. He would demonstrate that, in effect, all the casuistry was superfluous, even if it did sharpen the mind and point the way to understanding every Tanna and Amora, each following his own path. This method helps one understand more clearly the give and take concerning this or that Halacha, but we should not expect that every rosh yeshiva will teach in this very simple manner, which any advanced student could replicate. A rosh yeshiva simply must engage in casuistry and demonstrate his erudition and his acuity. There is a great need for erudition and acuity in those who aspire to a rabbinic seat, for they will have to make judgments regarding law and matters of Halacha in which there is a disagreement between two Tannaim or Amoraim or among the later commentators. About these disputes our sages have already declared, in connection with the disagreements between the school of Shamai and the school of Hillel, that a voice from heaven announced: “These and those are the words of the living God.”3 2.  Maharsha is the acronym for the Polish rabbi Shmuel Eliezer Eidels (1555–1631), a commentator on the Talmud, Rashi, and the Tosafists. 3.  Shamai, like Hillel (see Note 7 in the chapter “My Mother’s Family”) was a leading rabbinic authority in Palestine around the turn of first century. Both Shamai and Hillel had their followers and their two schools famously disagreed on many matters of Halacha. The quotation cited by Frieden is from tractate Eruvin 13b, which ends with the observation that “the law follows the rulings of the school of Hillel.” The Talmud suggests that these rulings were more lenient and more sensitive to the welfare of individuals.

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What I had to say pleased the rosh yeshiva, who agreed with me, and he expressed the opinion that the rosh yeshiva in Dvinsk was apparently a great Torah scholar. I was immediately moved up to the front bench among the older students and everyone began to relate to me as if I were older. The only one who did not treat me as he should have was my friend Noah, because he was jealous of my success. This Noah was the grandson of one of the men of means in our town, the proprietor of the first general store in town. However, when more stores opened, his went into decline. He was an elderly, conservative Jew and didn’t respond to the demand for up-to-date merchandise, even when it came from the local peasants. Our store was the largest in town and was the most threatening competitor of the old man’s store. Our success was great because Mother, who managed the store, was very energetic and very honest, and she was able to attract many customers, both his and others. Our store was well known for carrying anything a household might need. And so the relationship between our families was somewhat strained. Still, as children, we paid this no attention. Once, this Noah became ill with appendicitis. There was no doctor in our town, and no hospital, and they had to bring three doctors from the surrounding area. They performed the operation in his parent’s home and because his sister was not around, I volunteered to hold down Noah’s legs during the surgery. My uncle Mendel held his head. Noah recovered, and he always remained obliged to me for my help during the surgery. Here in the yeshiva, however, he did not live up to his obligation because of his excessive jealousy. We parted company and since then I have not seen him. I was told that he became seriously depressed for several years, but I don’t know what ultimately became of him. The positive attitude of the rosh yeshiva and of the older students encouraged me to become even more diligent, in order to reach even greater heights. I devoted myself to my studies with greater persistence and I spent my nights, just as I spent my days, learning several tractates at the same time, together with some other fellows. We set up shifts in such a way that the studying went on throughout the night. Word got out that in such-and-such a synagogue there was studying going on all night long and many from other synagogues would join our nighttime study sessions. On Thursday nights we would all remain awake and study aloud and with great diligence. During this period I learned

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three tractates. My knowledge and proficiency increased greatly and I was very pleased. I could already see before me the attainment of my goal, the rabbinate. And that is how I completed the first term. I did not return home for the holidays, because the distance was great and the cost of the trip and the effort it took dissuaded me. I decided to stay where I was and to continue with my studies even during the break. During the term, I would occasionally go to the rebbe’s. I had in hand a letter from my father and from one of my uncles, Father’s brother, who was an important follower of the rebbe. My uncle was wealthy and his donations to the rebbe were significant. I was welcomed gladly at the court and several times I joined in the third Sabbath meal there, but the way the Hasidim ate from the rebbe’s leftovers, which was far below the standard of good manners, did not appeal to me at all. By contrast, I admired the majestic appearance of the rebbe and his sons-in-law in prayer and I eagerly began to come to pray in the rebbe’s synagogue every Shabbat morning. While I was studying in Lyady, I had eating days, as usual. I had three good “days.” One was at the home of Rabbi Fraidish; it was a pleasure to dine there. The rabbi would himself sit beside me at lunchtime, in all his dignity, and amuse himself discussing Torah subjects with me. He had heard about me from the rosh yeshiva and on the recommendation of both of them I received an invitation from a Jewish flour mill owner for every Shabbat. The daughter of the rabbi was a friend of the mill owner’s wife’s sister. This sister, the mill owner’s sister-in-law, would come every Friday to take me to the mill, which was out of town, for Shabbat. She was a very pretty young woman and all the yeshiva students envied my good luck. This young woman was well educated and she showed a great interest in me. When she saw that I was ignorant when it came to general knowledge, she chided me bluntly, asking how it could be that someone like me could devote himself to Talmud study alone, without wanting to acquire any secular education. When I explained to her, somewhat ashamedly, that my goal was to become a rabbi in Israel and that I have no choice but to continue with my Torah studies in order to reach my objective, her interest in me came to an end. I didn’t stop the Sabbath visits, however. She continued to come to take me to their home outside the city, as usual, and I would very much enjoy the natural beauty of the area around the mill, which

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compensated for the weekdays that I spent in the stifling and restricted atmosphere of the synagogue. Tuesdays I had at the home of a wealthy gentleman of the city named P. Feinberg, at whose table several fellows dined every day. They were welcomed with respect and one member of the family always ate with us to demonstrate their fondness for us. This man was very rich and very generous; he provided sustenance to all. Three days, including Shabbat, were excellent and interesting. By contrast, the other four days were terrible. The people involved were very decent, but their poverty was evident in their homes from wall to wall. They attempted to prepare a reasonable meal for a yeshiva student, but they never partook of the meal themselves because there was not enough food. It was difficult for me to stop going to them, for I didn’t want to offend them, but I couldn’t not stop going to them and the only way I could find to tell them was to inform them that I was no longer going to eat “days” at all. I was afraid to tell my parents about this and only asked them to increase the amount of pocket money they sent me each month. The additional amount they sent was small, however, and it was not enough to sustain me four days each week, so I would skimp on meals on those days and balance them with the meals on the good days. This kind of lifestyle, coupled with little sleep and intensive studying, affected my health, which had never been especially good. I was weak, and what Jewish child could be strong, having to sit day after day in a closed-up heder, without air or light, engaged in diligent study? I was weak and became even weaker for lack of sufficient food. I was forced to cut back a bit on my assiduous learning on the orders of a physician who saw me, free of charge, and who prohibited me from nighttime studying so that I would be able to sleep a greater number of hours. Among the students of this yeshiva were a few who had been infected by this thing called Haskalah. More than once, the rosh yeshiva warned me to beware of these fellows, for although they excelled in their Torah studies, they were absolute heretics when it came to faith and orthodox Judaism, and it was forbidden to come in contact with them, so as not to learn their ways. These students were quite independent and supported themselves by tutoring in various languages: Hebrew, Russian, and German. These fellows had their traps set to snare yeshiva students specifically, and especially the better ones among them. They would

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frequent the synagogue of the craftsmen, where supervision was in the hands of one of the yeshiva students and they had complete freedom to behave as they wished. They could even read books of Haskalah to their heart’s content, something that was forbidden in other yeshivot, where supervision was in the hands of the rosh yeshiva and reading books on nonreligious subjects was considered treif. One evening, a young man came into our study hall, approached me, and began to argue about the passage I was working on. I was surprised at his great erudition and the profundity of his intellect and his sharpness. He posed questions that I could not answer. I stood in awe of him. This fellow was a Lithuanian, like me, from a town in our province. The name of the town was Abeli and from our casual conversations I discovered that he knew my father’s family, since Abeli is near Rakishok. He came to me again the next day and began to speak about the need of every young person to have general knowledge as well as Torah learning. He gave me the example of the greats of the Jewish People in all ages who had a broad knowledge of non-Jewish subjects. As the Gaon of Vilna, who was well versed in many outside fields, once said, “having knowledge in various areas is necessary in order to understand our holy Torah and the wisdom of Israel.”4 Then he asked me, suddenly, “do you know Hebrew?” “But certainly. What Jew who studies Tanach and Gemara does not know Hebrew,” I responded. “Yes,” he said, “but the Hebrew of which I speak is different from the Hebrew of the Tanach and the Talmud, which was written in Aramaic and not in Hebrew. There are also books written in Hebrew that deal with matters that are altogether worldly and it would be worth your while to read some of them sometime when you are not occupied with Torah study. These books will open your eyes to a different world which you don’t know but with which every person should be familiar for the sake of learning Torah, among other things. Here,” 4.  It is unclear if Frieden is quoting directly from the Gaon of Vilna in this instance, but the Gaon did on several occasions express the idea attributed to him here. For example, in the preface to the translation of Euclid’s Geometry prepared by Rabbi Boruch Schick of Shklov, the rabbi writes: “I heard from the holy lips of the Gaon of Vilna that to the extent that one is deficient in secular wisdom he will be deficient a hundredfold in Torah study, for Torah and wisdom are bound up together.” See Baron Philip [pseudonym], “Torah U’madda, Torahdik or sheker?” on the Internet at www.hashkafah.com/index.php?showtopic=5076&st=20 (accessed Jan. 25, 2008).

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he said, “I have at hand a Hebrew book written in simple language in the style of the Tanach that you will be able to understand easily. I’ll leave it with you. Read it when you have an opportunity.” I knew that I shouldn’t let anyone else see this book. I hid it in my lectern so that I could look it over while the other students were sleeping. The volume was Ahavat Zion by Abraham Mapu, the first book I read that inspired me to acquire secular knowledge.5 It revealed to me a new world, a world about which I did not know and which I did not recognize, and perhaps this book is to blame for my giving up the goal I had set for myself when I began my studies, the rabbinate. This book, with its gracious and pleasing style, was written in classical Hebrew and was not like other books that were written in a Hebrew copied from the German or French language. I read it all in one night and it had an odd effect upon me. I was naïve and matters of love were far from my mind. My thoughts were focused on learning and on the performance of practical commandments. The language of this book was the Holy Tongue, the language in which the Torah was given. The book was full of biblical quotations and I couldn’t understand how these verses had been altered by the author. He had stripped the words of the awe they evoked because of their holiness, and within this book a different spirit wafted up from them. How does a Jew dare to do such a thing, to use this Holy Tongue to depict physical love, whose proper place is in little chapbooks written in Yiddish by Shomer and bought only by housemaids and other lower-class individuals.6 At first, I was disgusted by the reading. True, the Song of Songs was written as a love story, but the commentaries have explained it as an allegory, written to please the ear, which in reality describes the 5.  The Lithuania writer Abraham Mapu (1808–1867) was a Hebrew novelist whose work was influenced by French Romanticism. The widely read Ahavat Zion (Love of Zion), a love story set in biblical times, was first published in 1853. Writing about the influence of Haskalah novels on East European Jews, Marcus Moseley has observed that “no novel left so deep an impression as Abraham Mapu’s lascivious biblical romance ’Ahavat tsiyon; the impact of the first reading of this novel—frequently the first work of this type to be encountered by the proto-Maskil—is recorded by countless Jewish autobiographers.” See Marcus Moseley, Being For Myself Alone: Origins of Jewish Autobiography (Stanford, Calif., 2006), 449. 6.  Shomer is the pen name of the Yiddish romance novelist Nachum Meir Shaikewitz (1849–1905). See, for example, Alyssa Quint, “‘Yiddish Literature for the Masses’? A Reconsideration of Who Read What in Jewish Eastern Europe,” AJS Review 29:1 (2005): 61–63.

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love of I­ srael for the Holy One, Blessed be He. That’s why the Song of Songs is called the Holy of Holies. In the Song of Songs, the names are known to me from the Tanach and the story is familiar. But here the writing is different, incomprehensible to the ear for fear that something holy is being profaned. But, wonder of wonders, I put the book down and then picked it up again. I could not stop reading until I had reached the end and its effect was very great; it changed my values for the rest of my life. Deep in my heart, I regret what transpired still today. I am certain that if I had not chanced upon the young man from Abeli, I would probably have continued on the path I had traced out for myself from the start, a well-paved path that many young men had trod over hundreds of years in order to reach their goal, the rabbinate. In view of my abilities, which were already apparent as I started out on this path, I had it in my power to reach a fairly high station. I would have arrived at a pleasant and comfortable livelihood, I would have pleased both my parents and myself, and perhaps I would have been happier than I am. The very act of learning and acquiring knowledge within the broad and many-branched rabbinic culture, deep as the sea, widens one’s understanding and provides a clear perspective on life. It provides one with happiness, if not great wealth, which truly is not the most important thing.7 One who immerses himself in rabbinic literature and puts all his time and all his heart into it, lives it and takes pleasure in it from a religious perspective, for he is able to fulfill the commandment of “and you shall teach them diligently” with all his heart and soul, and he also frees himself from the bother of worrying about physical survival.8 His way is laid out for him: to study and to teach. And the journey through the stories of the earlier and the later commentators is a pleasure without compare for the God-fearing Jew. His ultimate reward is assured. And what is he lacking? As I look back on the years that have passed from the day I read that book until today, and as I think about what that 7.  Here Frieden has employed a play on words, using the Hebrew osher spelled with an initial letter aleph and meaning “happiness” and its homophone osher with an initial letter ayin, meaning “wealth” or “riches.” 8.  “And you shall teach them diligently” is a reference to Deuteronomy 6:7, which reads in full: “And you shall teach them diligently to your children, and shall talk of them when you sit in your house, and when you walk by the way, and when you lie down, and when you rise up.”

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reading did to me, I am full of remorse about the past. I remained neither here nor there; I did not become a rabbi, though I continued my studies several more years, and I did not acquire a sufficient general education so that it would bring me what I had hoped it would. The way I lived at the yeshiva in Lyady, the lack of sufficient nourishment, the lack of air and comfort in a little corner of a room where I slept with several others—all this affected my health. I became ill and should have returned home. But I didn’t want to go home before the end of the term, lest someone say that I had been asked to leave the yeshiva, as had happened to another student. Thus, I remained until the end of the term under the care of a doctor, and only when it ended did I go home. During those months that I was somewhat ill, I did not study much. I only took part in those lessons taught by the rosh yeshiva. The rest of the time I spent reading the books given me by my new friend from Abeli. I lived outside the supervision of the yeshiva, from which I was released because I was ill, and it was easy for me to read whatever books I wanted. It was not so with my friend from home, Noah. He informed his parents that I had become an apostate, that I no longer studied and that I only read heretical literature, and this became known to the whole town. When I met my father in Dvinsk on my way home, he told me all about this. I put his mind at ease by assuring him that I was very far from being an apostate, but that I did want to acquire secular knowledge as well as a knowledge of Jewish thought. He objected strenuously to this and insisted that I must continue my Torah study, as soon as I was completely well, of course. When I returned home, Mother started to take care of me and to watch over me carefully. They didn’t even allow me to study Talmud during those days, and for lack of books of general interest in our town, I turned to studying the Tanach and Hebrew grammar from the Hebrew language textbook of Ben Ze’ev and the book Maslul by Chaim Cöslin. Only then did I begin to understand the Tanach as “a book.”9 Only then 9.  The first book to which Frieden refers is probably the two-part Hebrew reader Beit Hasefer (The School) by the Enlightenment writer Yehuda Leib Ben Ze’ev (1764–1811). The second book, Maslul, is a Hebrew grammar textbook first published in 1788 by the German Talmudist and grammarian Chaim ben Naphtali Cöslin (d. 1832). For more on Ben Ze’ev, see, for example, Zohar Shavit, Poetics of Children’s Literature (Athens, Ga., 1986), 149–57.

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did I come to realize the greatness of the social ideals and the grandeur of the pure holy humanity embodied in the words of the Torah and the prophets of Israel, words that have been a light unto Israel and unto all the enlightened nations of the world.

My Studies with Rabbis

Editor’s Introduction

This chapter of Menachem Mendel Frieden’s memoir carries forward the story of the author’s education, but it also reveals a great deal about the development of his psyche. Here we read about the young Frieden’s attempts to continue his preparation for the rabbinate, about his first significant interactions with the opposite sex, about his troubles with the military draft, and about his first encounter with the idea of marriage. This chapter also contains a number of Frieden’s by now familiar explanatory asides. ­Frieden expounds upon the way Hasidic masters developed their information networks, for example, and upon the way Jews circumvented the Russian empire’s laws prohibiting their involvement in agricultural leaseholding. At the end of his memoir’s preceding chapter, Frieden provided a foretaste of his self-reflection and expressions of regret. In this chapter we come upon more of the same. Frieden laments what he considers to be his moral weakness in dealing with sexual desires, he bemoans his failure to see his education through to rabbinic ordination, and, most evocatively, he agonizes over his failure to leave home to pursue a secular education. Thinking he could do so at some later time was “a foolish denial of reality, a willful self-deception,” Frieden writes, and he asserts that he would never be able to justify his timidity. Indeed, he expresses regret over the fate of most small-town youths who lacked “a spirit of daring and rebellion” and were thus unable to break out into the larger world. Nor is it only about the great disappointments of his life that Frieden looks back in anguish. He even laments the loss of a composition book containing his early poems and short stories. Perhaps, he writes, the notebook would have revealed “sparks of poetic or literary skill that could have been developed into something significant.” Reflecting on his early development in true autobiographical style, ­Frieden relates how he began to shape his own values and his religious phi-

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178 My Studies with Rabbis losophy. He recalls fondly his studies with the Halachically lenient Rabbi Lintup and he recounts his increasing identification with the Haskalah. We see Frieden turning into a more worldly young man, teaching himself Russian, reading more and more secular literature, and even studying music with the church organist of Kvatki. All this against the background of his ultimately disappointing attempts to continue his study of Talmud independently and his despair over the direction his life was taking. Frieden discloses that at one point he even considered ending his own life. Sections of this chapter apparently written when Frieden was in his seventies are among the most psychologically revealing of the entire memoir.

❊ as a result of the conditions I enjoyed there under the care of my parents, grandparents, and aunts. I felt well, my face was no longer pale, and it came time to return to my studies. I had in mind to go to the famous yeshiva of Mir, but my parents objected to my continuing my studies at any yeshiva, for two reasons. First, it was clear to them that life in a yeshiva draws its students away from religion and from tradition; they took the exception to be the rule. Second, they had pity on me and were afraid that the living conditions in a yeshiva would again make me sick, and this was not a baseless fear. For my part, I was not resolute in insisting on my idea of going to the Mir yeshiva for another reason: I was afraid I would not be admitted to this great academy because, on account of my health, I had neglected my studies. The family had its way and decided that I should continue my studies with the rabbi of Popil, Rabbi Hillel. The town of Popil was near ours, and Father knew Rabbi Hillel and respected him greatly. Of course, our town, too, was blessed with a rabbi, but our rabbi was weak and old and refused to take on students. Also, I would not have wanted to stay on in our town and so I agreed to go to Rabbi Hillel. This rabbi was one of the worthy rabbis, a great scholar and also a great Hasid. He was a bright and sociable Jew, very well versed in the lore of Hasidism. He liked a drop of liquor now and then, as did most Hasidim, but he understood his position and his capacity for drink and never exceeded the appropriate limits. m y h ea lt h i m p r o v e d c o n s i d e ra b ly at h o m e

My Studies with Rabbis

A rabbinic position in the small town of Popil could not provide a living, and this rabbi was wretchedly poor. His desire to augment his income was the reason for his wanting to take me on as a student. If “poverty befits Israel,” as our sages said, it was not at all becoming in the eyes of the rabbi of Popil and it embittered his life.1 His home (if it can be called that) was two small rooms in the synagogue. It was a place full of strife and intrigues, and it was into this atmosphere that I entered. I was obliged to sleep in the women’s section on a divan upholstered with two pillows. The food was none too good, far worse than the food I got at home, but the conditions were better than the yeshiva-student conditions that I had endured during the preceding two years. Much Torah I did not learn from Rabbi Hillel: one page of Gemara each day and no more, although on my own I would study an additional tractate without him and I would get explanations from the rabbi only when I encountered a difficult passage. On the other hand, the rabbi did make an effort to bring me into the embrace of Hasidism. Every Friday and Sabbath I would study “Hasidism.” The rabbi really knew how to expound this philosophy, built on a foundation of naught, and to interest me in it. I devoted myself to understanding the wondrous technicalities of the connection between the hechalot and the ten sefirot,2 a marvelous and complex construction, abounding in mysticism and also naïveté, and everything standing on the shaky foundation of Kabbalah. By the end of the first term, I was able to repeat a Hasidic teaching after hearing it only once from the rabbi. I returned home for the holidays and after the holidays the question again came up: Where to? I had not learned much Torah with the rabbi of Popil, but his instruction in Hasidism pleased my parents, especially when I could repeat a teaching time and time again. They did not know how to evaluate my achievement in my other studies, and so they decided that I should return to the rabbi of Popil to continue studying with him. Furthermore, Father convinced his brother Mendel from ­Rakishok to send his son Shalom with me to this same rabbi. Thus, the two of us 1.  The quotation here is from tractate Hagigah 9b. The full statement is: “Poverty befits Israel like a red trapping on a white horse.” For more on this statement, see Louis Jacobs, The Jewish Religion: A Companion (Oxford, 1995), 380. 2.  Hechalot (literally, “palaces” or “temples”) are the celestial divine abodes described in early Jewish mystical texts. On sefirot, see Note 15 in the chapter “My Mother’s Family.”

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180 My Studies with Rabbis again traveled to Popil to live with the rabbi; there was no shortage of benches in the women’s section of the synagogue, the rabbi’s home. This Shalom was a handsome young man, very mischievous, and was considered the favorite in Uncle Mendel’s family. He was a year younger than I, his knowledge of Torah was much inferior to mine, and he did not have much desire to learn. But his father decreed that he had to continue studying and so it was. In his hometown, which was larger than ours, he had been drawn into a circle of friends from whom he learned life-lessons completely different from those I had learned, and he tried to pull me in his direction. Not far from town there lived a family, relatives of my mother, that held the lease on the only flour mill in the vicinity and had a growing income. This relative would come to Popil frequently to visit us, bringing gifts to the rabbi from his small farmstead, and sometimes he would take us to his home for Shabbat. He had a daughter, young and pretty and full of life. My Shalom quickly fell in love with this young woman and began courting her. The girl, on the other hand, was after me. For lack of extra rooms in the house, the three of us would sleep in the same room and Shalom would give me lessons in “love making.” For the first time I became aware of the physical pleasure of nighttime romancing with a young woman, and more than I learned from Shalom, she taught me herself. I was an innocent, however, and both a deep religious sentiment and a sense of integrity permeated my being, so I was always able to conquer my evil inclinations, natural though they are, and we were not drawn into excessive intimacy. I assume that subconsciously I also feared the consequences of being overly intimate. Still today I am sorry that my sexual desires were aroused because of Shalom and the girl, and even though I remained chaste and did not know a woman until my first wedding night, the sexual excitation I experienced resulted in many restless and sleepless nights, and many a nocturnal emission, until I was able to overcome them.3 Thus, I de3.  As historians David Biale and Michael Stanislawski have pointed out, autobiographers influenced by the Haskalah and attracted to Western concepts of public and private realms had to negotiate “shifting boundaries” in regard to discussions of sex. Here Frieden is willing to record information that other writers may have chosen to keep private. See Michael Stanislawski, Autobiographical Jews: Essays in Jewish Self-Fashioning (Seattle, 2004), 58; and David Biale, “Eros and Enlightenment: Love against Marriage in the East European Jewish Enlightenment,” Polin 1 (1986): 53.

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cided to cease our visits to their place, but Shalom was determined and continued going each Shabbat by himself. I went only once a month. And so my second term with the rabbi of Popil passed without much success and I refused to return to him again. Shalom also went home and did not return. Again the question arose: Where to? This time, however, they met with success in finding a place of Torah learning for me, though this success was only short-lived. In Birz, a not insubstantial Lithuanian town within Ponivezh district, there lived the honorable Rabbi Zundel, author of the book Ze’ir Yitzhak and rabbi of the Ashkenazic community, to which most of the Jews of the town belonged. But there were also Hasidic Jews in Birz and they had their own synagogue with its own religious leadership. The leaders of the Hasidic community set their sights upon Rabbi ­Pinchas Lintup, the rabbi of a small town, Vabolnik, who was one of the great rabbis of Lithuania and an old friend of the Gaon of Ponivezh.4 Sharp and well versed in the entire treasury of Jewish law, he knew almost the entire Talmud by heart, he studied philosophy and progressive ideas, and he was pious and zealous. It has been said that he was denounced to the Rogatchover of Dvinsk for being too liberal in his writings and too lenient in his rulings concerning what is treif.5 The Rogatchover responded: “I am familiar with this gaon. Would that there were more like him among the People of Israel.” Although Lintup was a partisan of the Mitnagdim in spirit, he agreed to accept the position of rabbi in the Hasidic community of Birz. It happens that his eldest daughter married my uncle Mendel Rubin and because of this family connection it was suggested to my father that he send me to Birz to study with this genius of a rabbi. At the beginning of the term, I was brought to Birz to live and study at the home of Rabbi Lintup. Their house had four rooms and they had three daughters and three sons. At the time, the eldest son was in Volozhin, the eldest daughter was in our own town with her husband, 4.  Vabolnik is 16 miles south of Birz. The Gaon of Ponivezh is Rabbi Eliyahu-David Rabinovitz-Teomim, who served in Ponivezh from 1871 to 1891. See Joseph Rosin, “Panevezys (Ponevezh), Lithuania,” on the Internet at www.shtetlinks.jewishgen.org/panevezys/pon1.html (accessed Oct. 30, 2009). 5.  The reference here is to Rabbi Joseph Rosen of Dvinsk (1858–1936), also known as the Rogatchover Gaon. I am indebted to David Assaf of Tel Aviv University for help in identifying the Rogatchover, spelled haravtzavi in the Frieden typescript.

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182 My Studies with Rabbis so that two sons and two daughters remained at home. One of the sons was my age. He became my friend and we studied together. It should be noted that the salary this rabbi received from the Hasidic community was small and did not suffice to cover his household expenses, so his wife dealt in money lending at reduced interest rates. This caused the rabbi much heartache, but the rabbi’s wife was the boss in the home and the strongest-willed member of the family. This woman had come from a wealthy family, but when they moved to Birz she lost most of her money through her business dealings. This is what she did: She lent ten rubles and the borrower would have to return one ruble each week and five kopeks interest. The size of the loan determined the amount of interest. Just think how the interest rate could grow. Nonetheless, she did not profit from her business because many borrowers did not repay their loans and the rabbi absolutely forbade her from dunning the borrowers or going to court, so, little by little, the money ran out and the rabbi’s wife had to give up her business, to the delight of the rabbi. He was a very good-natured person and could not bear to witness anyone’s suffering; he was willing to give the shirt off his back. As I’ve already written, he was possessed of modern ideas and although he was a great scholar and pious, he was lenient in applying Halacha. He used to say: “I don’t agree with those rabbis who take the easy way out when it comes to Halacha by being strict in their rulings. I prefer to find a more permissive response to a question in order to spare the finances of Jewish individuals. If I can only search and find support among the early or later commentators, being more lenient is preferable.” Some rabbis were angry about his liberal approach and a few complained about him to the great rabbis of Dvinsk and to his friend Rabbi David Teomim of Ponivezh. They complained most that he was too free in publicizing his many opinions opposing the strictness of others. Rabbi Joseph, the Rogatchover, responded: “If I were not familiar with him personally, I would cut him off from the community, but I am acquainted with his honesty and his purity of heart and his great knowledge of Torah, and he has upon whom to rely if he is lenient in Halacha. Let him be.” I loved Rabbi Lintup and respected him greatly. For this reason my studying with him influenced me tremendously and was a great joy.

My Studies with Rabbis

He arranged an ideal program of study for me. For an hour or two he would give me a lesson in Talmud. I would have to review the lesson by myself and then in front of him. He would make observations, correct what needed correction, and in the course of teaching he would bring in the ideas of the greats of previous generations, their inquiries and their responses. His expertise was so great, resting upon his prodigious memory, that he never opened a book to verify what he said. He would only tell me in what book I should look in order to see if he had quoted correctly, and I never found him to have erred. I learned not only ­Gemara with him, but also Halacha and biblical texts, responsa literature, and so forth. Again I devoted myself to my studies as I had at first, in the yeshiva. His son, who had become my friend, would go with me to the synagogue to learn because we could not continue doing so in the house, which was crowded and uncomfortable. In the synagogue we would both study out loud using the traditional singsong of Talmud study. The synagogue itself was empty. It was a tall, wide building and the echo of our voices would carry to the outside, so that people passing in the street would stop for a while to listen and take pleasure in the rabbi’s son and his friend, the rabbi’s student from Kvatki. And so we established our reputations. The rabbi was pleased with my diligence and with my progress, and also with the way I influenced his son to be conscientious in his studies, and he tried to support me with all his goodwill. He would give me his own books so that I might study them, and he also allowed me to copy them, for in my youth my handwriting was wondrously good, something that remained with me until my seventieth year, when my hands began to tremble somewhat from the mild arthritis I contracted, brought on by the heart disease which has afflicted me several times now. And this handwriting of mine bears witness to how difficult writing has become; it’s not what it used to be.6 I completed the term and went home for the holidays. Immediately after the holidays, I returned to this new place of Torah and devoted myself to my studies even more. I progressed in my studies to such an 6.  Medical research has recently discovered a link between arthritis and heart disease, although it appears that, contrary to what Frieden writes, heart disease does not cause arthritis. See, for example, William J. Cromie, “Arthritis and Heart Disease Linked,” on the Internet at www.hno.harvard.edu/gazette/2003/03.06/01-arthritis.html (accessed Feb. 7, 2008).

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184 My Studies with Rabbis extent that when a question of something being forbidden or permitted was brought before the rabbi, he told me to decide the matter, in order to test me. In this way, he encouraged me to apply myself even further to the study of Jewish law. I forgot what had happened to me in Lyady and again set my sights on my original goal, the rabbinate. After all, the goal was getting closer. I said to myself that I would stay with this beloved rabbi for several years in order to be ordained by him as a teacher and rabbinic authority: yoreh yoreh and yadin yadin, and so forth.7 I was very content with my lot at the time. “Many designs are in a man’s heart,” but apparently it was also “God’s plan” that I would not realize the goal that I had set for myself, initially and now again.8 Just as in the yeshiva of Lyady, now again here some unforeseen developments disrupted my plans. They uprooted me from the abode of Torah that I so loved. The Maskilim of the town of Birz—and there were many wellknown Maskilim there—took an interest in me once they heard about me and the way I studied diligently in the great synagogue every day. The generation of Maskilim in those days considered it a sacred duty to bring every bright yeshiva boy under the influence of the Haskalah, which, at the time, they called Bat Hashamayim.9 Just as in Lyady, here too they would come into the synagogue and engage the two of us in conversation about the Haskalah. With cleaver and carefully directed exchanges, they would get to the point: They have no intention, heaven forbid, of seducing us away from religion and Torah. They themselves are religiously observant, but they aren’t zealots. And just as they are not fanatical about religion, they are not fanatical about bringing people over to their way of thinking. But Torah learning is better when accompanied by proper worldly ways, and the ways of wise individuals 7.  Frieden is referring to the traditional formula used to describe the levels of authority attributed to a rabbi. Yoreh yoreh indicates that one has demonstrated sufficient education to be able to teach Jewish law and render judgments on matters pertaining to daily life. Yadin yadin indicates that one has demonstrated a higher level of education and is able to render judgments on monetary and property disputes as well. 8.  The reference here is to Proverbs 19:21, which reads in its entirety: “Many designs are in a man’s heart, but it is God’s plan that is accomplished.” 9.  For a similar reference to Bat Hashamayim (literally, “the Daughter of the Heavens”), see M. Sh. Geshouri, Chapters of Memories: From Podhajce to Jerusalem, Jerrold Landau, trans., p. 103, on the Internet at www.jewishgen.org/yizkor/Podhajce/pod099.html (accessed Nov. 1, 2009).

My Studies with Rabbis

involve knowing something of the history of their people in their land and acquiring some of the wisdom of the ancient and modern world. This knowledge is needed all the more so by a Jew, living in exile and hounded in every country and in every land. How will I be able to withstand the weight and duration of the exile if I do not know our history, our glorious past, and the other portals into the wisdom of the Jewish philosophers: Rambam, Ramban, Yehuda Halevi, Spinoza, and so forth?10 These were stinging words that penetrated deep into the heart and soul and to them there was no possible retort. The influence of the Maskilim on the rabbi’s son, my friend, was great, and they influenced me quite a bit as well. They would bring us the best Hebrew books then available. Together we would mark in them and whatever we didn’t understand they would come and explain to us. In this way, we would steal an hour or so from our studies so that the two of us could read the books. To the extent that we freed ourselves to do this reading, we had to reduce our study time. And this was not just in the synagogue; at home, too, we would occupy our evenings reading these superfluous books. Of course, the good rabbi would at first chide us that it was not proper to waste study time on this reading: “First get your fill of Torah and Halacha, and afterwards you can devote an hour to this as well.” His good nature, however, prevented him from imposing his wise council upon us. Furthermore, he knew that we knew that he himself read books such as these, and that when a new book came into his hands he didn’t put it down until he had finished it. Even though his time was very limited, aside from his involvement with his rabbinic and communal duties, he wrote a great deal: new insights into the Torah and about matters that were of prime importance in the Jewish world at the time. This great rabbi wrote many books, but he never published a single one, saying that he was writing just for himself. He felt a personal need to write. He used to say: “So much has already been written in the treasury of rabbinic literature to the point where a rabbi in Israel must return to a study of Gemara and its commentators in order to make a Halachic judgment, and what good 10.  Spinoza is the Dutch-Jewish rationalist philosopher Baruch (or Benedict) Spinoza (1632–1677).

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186 My Studies with Rabbis would it be to add more books to the confusion. ‘Of making many books there is no end.’”11 Incidentally, I heard a nice commentary on this verse—“making many books”—that this delays the End of Days. As is well known, our sages said: “He who quotes a statement in the name of its author brings redemption to the world.”12 This means that anyone who quotes a statement without citing the author delays salvation. Obviously, it is possible to write many books only by including in them the work of others, and the authors of these books appropriate this work without attributing the material with which they fill their books to its originators. Thus they delay redemption, the End of Days. Rabbi Lintup did not publish his work because he didn’t want to add to the mass of material that already existed. He wrote only to express his own opinions and thoughts about a book and to ease his own anguish, for he was full of ideas but he had trouble expressing them orally. I heard him preach several times, and never did he finish. In the midst of his oration, new ideas would appear and he would become distressed. A leading cause of his anguish was the return home of his eldest son when the yeshiva of Volozhin closed down.13 Even before his arrival, the house was too small to hold me and his sons and daughters, but somehow we managed. When the eldest son returned, the situation became worse. Meanwhile, the two daughters were maturing and things began to happen. Inadvertently, you would meet the older daughter in the hallway and she would stop you and you would grab a squeeze and a kiss. It’s not good that we were constantly in the same space. 11.  The quotation imbedded in Lintup’s statement is a fragment of Ecclesiastes 12:12. Despite what Frieden writes, it is likely that his teacher in Birz did publish at least one book of Talmudic commentary. The Ariela Library in Tel Aviv holds a copy of a volume titled Pitchai Shearim (The Openings of Gates) by Pinchas Lintup, published in Vilna in the Hebrew year 5641 (1880 or 1881). 12.  This concept appears at least twice in the Talmud, in Pirke Avot 6:6 and in tractate Chulin 104b. 13.  The Volozhin yeshiva closed in 1892, most likely because of internal problems. See Shaul Stampfer, Lithuanian Yeshivas of the Nineteenth Century: Creating a Tradition of Learning, Lindsey Taylor-Gutharz, trans. (Oxford, 2011). There is, however, a problem with the chronology reported here. Frieden did not leave home to study until after his bar mitzvah in January 1892, and by the time he arrived in Birz he had already studied in Dvinsk and in Popil for two years, so his studies with Rabbi Lintup could not have commenced as early as 1892.

My Studies with Rabbis

Already when he was in Volozhin, this son also had become interested in Haskalah and he, too, influenced me. He advised me that every person must learn some trade, as it is written: “Love work and despise positions of power.”14 He, indeed, learned double-entry bookkeeping by correspondence from a Mr. Ya’akov Mark in Libau, and he offered to teach me the course. I consented and finished the course in a short time. (This study stood me in good stead here in the Land of Israel when I became manager of a lending bank and later of a mortgage and savings bank established by the Palestine Economic Corporation, an American institution created by the late Justice Brandeis.)15 As a consequence of overwork and the uncomfortable conditions in the house, in which there was no remaining space, I again took sick and returned home even before the end of the term. How it pained me to leave this dear rabbi, my teacher, guide, and friend, whom I truly loved and to whom I was devoted with all my heart and soul. If some knowledge of Torah remains with me, it is because of him. And so, for the second time, my rabbinic career got stopped in the middle, and this time the interruption was extremely distressing, for it left me at a crossroads. I had before me two ways forward into the future. One way: continuing my Torah study at the Telz yeshiva, which replaced the Volozhin yeshiva after it closed down, though it was not as great. Many from Volozhin transferred there to complete their studies and to be ordained. I suggested such a course of action to my parents and they rejected it, especially Mother, who didn’t think I had the strength for such a regimen: I was weak by nature and could not continue studying in a yeshiva. The living conditions there were not appropriate for me and for my frail health. Instead, they suggested I stay at home and study by myself, since, according to the rabbi from Birz, I was capable of continuing my studies without anyone looking over my shoulder. The other path that lay before me was to leave home and go to a big city such as Warsaw, Vilna, or Odessa in order to prepare for entrance 14.  This statement is found in Pirke Avot 1:10. 15.  Frieden’s work with agencies of the Palestine Economic Corporation (PEC) figures prominently in later portions of his memoir. For a brief history of the PEC, see Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1948), s.v. “Palestine Economic Corporation”; and the following archival finding aid: Brenda Hearing, compiler, Palestine Economic Corporation (PEC): Records, 1921–1944 (New York, 1993), on the Internet at www.nypl.org/sites/default/files/archivalcollec tions/pdf/pec.pdf (accessed May 15, 2010).

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188 My Studies with Rabbis exams to a secondary school and afterwards to a university in another country, as many young Jews were doing at the time. I knew that such a life would be difficult and that my weak body could not endure it, even though my natural talents, my speedy comprehension, and my diligence would make it easy for me to learn. Moreover, I would have to support myself if my parents didn’t agree to my traveling abroad, and they would certainly not, for they would not even agree when I suggested that I go to the yeshiva in Telz. Had I been strong of will and of character, I would have stood by my convictions and left home, without the consent of my parents and without their support. I would have behaved like the many others who left their parents’ homes, suffered and studied, suffered and gained knowledge, and, through their own efforts, continuing on to schools of higher learning, either as regular students or as externs, acquired an academic education. They became doctors, engineers, chemists, and so forth, and among them are some who achieved worldwide fame. But I was weak-willed and frail of body and alone in a small town. There was no one there to rouse me and give me courage to execute this plan of mine. On the contrary, there were many who opposed it: my parents, my brothers, the entire family, and my teacher at the time, all of them people who were out of the mainstream. All were pious and all were afraid to even mention the word “Haskalah.” This is the fate of most small-town youths. The small-mindedness of the place weakens the character, saps one’s energy, and debilitates many who could have achieved greatness had they possessed a spirit of daring and rebellion. Only a select few who were blessed with especially strong wills and extraordinary energy were able to overcome all the obstacles that stood in their way and to break free. In the face of such obstacles I prepared to make my decision, and to this day, in my seventy-third year, I have not forgotten the time when I stood at the crossroads of my future and I cannot forgive myself my frailty of spirit. I could not muster the strength to stand by my convictions and on my own two feet, to leave that contemptible town and to go the way of others like me who were able to achieve their goals and to be men among men. They took advantage of the abilities that were granted them for their own benefit and for the benefit of others. Many of them enhanced the reputation of the Jewish People among the na-

My Studies with Rabbis

tions through their scholarship in every branch of Jewish learning and worldly knowledge. And so, on account of my frail spirit and my limited, provincial environment, I did not have within me the courage and the daring to chart a new path for myself. Having no other alternative, I chose the easy way of “sit and do nothing.” I stayed in town, easing my conscience with the rationalization that I had to remain temporarily to let my health improve. I knew full well that if I did not leave the town immediately, all my plans would come to naught, for I would not be given another chance. Yet I forced myself to believe that I could still change my life once I got well. It was a foolish denial of reality, a willful self-deception. I will never be able to justify what I did. And thus I remained in town and sat in the synagogue and studied, at first very studiously, but my diligence dissipated from week to week. Studying alone cannot be compared to studying in a yeshiva with many other students who have a deep knowledge of all the treasures of Talmudic literature and who fuel everyone’s desire to reach their level. And there was also some jealousy involved. Nor does it compare to learning with a prominent rabbi, full of Torah and wisdom, who bestows upon you the fruits of his intellect and encourages you to grow in your knowledge of Torah and to glorify it. He places before you all sorts of complex issues and delights you daily with new insights that broaden your spirit. None of this compares to solitary study in your hometown synagogue. There is no rivalry among students, no one to lend a supporting hand when a passage refuses to be understood. You work hard to plumb its depths and sometimes you just can’t do it. And if you succeed in mastering the passage, who will be aware and who will know of your success? I sat in the synagogue and hummed to myself a page of Gemara and I didn’t find the inner joy that I used to experience from studying in previous years. Missing was the former incentive, the driving force, that energized me to learn more and more. Being on my own was not good for me. If I stopped my studies in the middle and went home for a taste of something good to eat, I didn’t have to justify myself to anyone. On the contrary, Mother would urge me to do so. Six months passed from the day I returned from Birz and I hadn’t seen much benefit to my studying, although I did improve in my knowledge of Hebrew and

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190 My Studies with Rabbis Tanach and, like all yeshiva students before me, I tried my hand at writing poetry about the beauties of nature and short stories about this and that. It’s too bad that my composition book got lost during my travels. I would have liked to see them and to consider if these were early sparks of poetic or literary skill that could have been developed into something significant but that I neglected. At the time, I also began to study Russian by myself and to read classic Russian literature. I became more or less proficient in the language and I was able to prepare petitions to government offices for anyone who needed them. And I also began to learn to play music from a gentile who played the great organ in the Catholic church in our town. All these things that I tried, by the way, did not bring any great benefit and served only to fill my spare time and to distract my parents and the family. The whole time I felt that I was sabotaging my future. I was fed up with life in my small town. I was oppressed by the tedium and idleness; my life was one big bore: in the morning, a glass of tea with cake and immediately off to the synagogue for shacharit and a bit of study. Then back home for lunch and some rest. Then back to the synagogue for mincha, study, maariv, and again study for an hour or two. Then home for a late supper and the daily routine is over, only to be repeated once again. In the meantime, one matures, gets together with the few young women in the town, goes out for walks and returns home late. The parents are suspicious and gossip. And so the days and the evenings pass. If sometimes depression got the better of me and boredom troubled my soul to such an extent that I considered suicide or flight, and if sometimes I threatened my parents by revealing my feelings in order to force them to allow me to go someplace else, they were always ready with an answer: “In another year you will have to appear before the draft board in order to fulfill your military obligation, and what good will it do you to go traveling now?” This answer was clear and correct, all the more so because they intended to hasten my appearance a year early in order to take advantage of the right that I had because my older brother had been inducted into the army after he failed to gain exemption on the basis of his claim of nearsightedness. Many were the young men who used this excuse, and my uncle Mendel was one of them. Unfortunately, by the time my brother went

My Studies with Rabbis

for his draft physical, the army had realized that most of the Jews who used the ploy of claiming nearsightedness did not actually have poor eyesight and a decree was issued that every recruit claiming nearsightedness had to be sent to an army hospital for an examination. And so my brother Ya’akov was sent to an army hospital in Dvinsk. True, the Jews had found a remedy for the new situation, as well, in the form of bribes to the military doctors, and my father adopted this tactic. He traveled to Dvinsk and went in to see one of the military doctors for a physical exam. As he left, he handed the doctor’s wife an envelope with 50 rubles in it and a note bearing my brother’s name. It seems that the wife never gave the money to her husband or that the amount was too little. In any case, when my brother appeared before the medical board, he was found fit for duty. He was drafted immediately and sent to Lida for military service with a company that was stationed in that city. The 50 rubles had gone to waste and my brother was taken into the army.16 I still remember the way my mother wailed when the astonishing news arrived, and the wailing of all the brothers with her, except me. I could not repress the gratifying thought that my brother’s being drafted would give me the opportunity for an exemption when it came my time to report. Now I am ashamed at the insufficiency of my brotherly love; how could I be happy when my brother found himself in such dire straits? But the fact is, that’s how I felt at the time and I remember how my mother rebuked me for my coldness in the face of my brother’s troubles. I was nineteen at the time and the age at which one was drafted was twenty-one. However, my parents, who feared that I might actually follow through on my idea of leaving our town, decided, when I completed my nineteenth year, to submit a request to the district head in my name asking for my release from my military obligation on the basis of my brother’s service. The law demanded that whoever sought such a military exemption produce a birth certificate or appear before a panel that would determine his age, lest there be some collusion. In fact, at the time I looked to be about sixteen or seventeen. I didn’t have a birth certificate to present, and so I was called to appear before an 16.  Frieden records a slightly different version of this story about the attempt to gain a draft exemption for his brother in the chapter “My Father’s House.” In the earlier version, it is Frieden’s Uncle Mendel and not his father who delivers the bribe, and the amount is different.

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192 My Studies with Rabbis evaluation board in the district capital. I was advised to grow a beard before I appeared, so that I would not be judged as too young on the basis of my features. When I arrived before the panel with a beard several centimeters long, they judged my age to be twenty-three. On the basis of this estimate, it appeared that I was older than my brother who was in the army, so that I would now be conscripted and my brother released. “There goes your donkey, Rabbi Tarfon.”17 I thought I was going to take advantage of my brother’s misfortune, but now he would benefit from the situation. “A brother is born for adversity.”18 I saw in this the hand of God. I should not have been so happy in the face of my brother’s misfortune back when we got notice that he had been drafted. A man in the district capital who was dealing with my case advised me to try to leave the city if I could, so that I would not be taken into the army immediately, and this I did. I went home and began considering how to escape this awkward state of affairs. My brother had already served a year in the army, he was with his company stationed in the city of Lida, and he was satisfied with his circumstances. He had some connections and his situation was not as difficult as that of others. Because of his connections, he was appointed a corporal and avoided the hard work that Jews were usually given. It did not make sense to send me, the student, in order to free my older brother. An attorney in the town of Rakishok, a friend of ours, advised us to produce a birth certificate showing that I was twenty-one and thus to alter the circumstances, but we did not know how to acquire such a document. Now, because Father was a Hasid, as were others in the family as well, they decided that we should go to a rebbe, who would provide a blessing and some advice. It was decided that, even though Father was a Lyady Hasid, I should go to the rebbe of Sirutzina, who was closer to our town. I did not want to see Lyady again, especially because I had lowered my opinion of the rebbe there since I had spent a year in that 17.  In this quotation from tractate Sanhedrin 33a, Rabbi Tarfon is referring to himself. He had ruled mistakenly that a certain cow was not kosher for consumption and he assumed that he would have to sell his own donkey in order to compensate the cow’s owner. In other words, Tarfon thought he was doing something right, but it seemed now that his actions were going to cause him harm. 18.  This familiar phrase, which serves, for example, as the title of a poem by the Haskalah writer Yehuda Leib Gordon (1831–1892), is taken from Proverbs 17:17.

My Studies with Rabbis

town and visited at the rebbe’s often. And so I traveled to Sirutzina, also a substantial distance. In those days, Hasidim used to bring every difficult matter requiring a serious decision to their rebbe. They believed in the saintliness of the rebbe and in his ability to render proper advice. And indeed the rebbe could give good advice because, on the basis of their connections with thousands of Hasidim throughout the Jewish Diaspora, they became expert in many matters and it was not difficult for them to offer sound advice on almost any subject. Furthermore, the deep faith in the rebbe and in his advice had a psychological effect on the Hasid and he did everything he could to follow through on the advice, usually succeeding. Reports of these successes were passed by word of mouth and spread throughout the Hasidic community, which drew even more Hasidim to come to the rebbe for advice. And so the rebbe gained more and more information, and his sound advice was based on the multifaceted experience he acquired through his Hasidim. An emissary of the rebbe of Sirutzina used to come to our town with two purposes in mind: to recruit Hasidim, specifically for this rebbe, and also to collect contributions from all the local Hasidim, for, according to Hasidic principles, they were not exempt from supporting another rebbe even if they were the adherents of a different sect. And like all the emissaries, he too would stay at our house when he came to our town. I arrived in Sirutzina early in the morning and the wagon driver took me to the emissary’s house. The emissary had many children and when I came into his home so early in the day, only he and his wife were awake, but the house was full of sleeping youngsters, some in beds and others on straw mattresses on the floor. I had to step over the heads of boys and girls in order to get to where the emissary was seated in an empty corner. He offered me some tea and then took me immediately to the “court,” as they called the rebbe’s home. I prayed a portion of the shacharit service in the rebbe’s small synagogue and when the service was over, the rebbe’s sexton prepared a slip for me, since there was no disturbing the rebbe with a private conversation without first indicating in a note what was being asked of him. The sexton took me into the rebbe’s room with the note in my hand. The rebbe was seated in a chair next to a table opposite the entrance to the room. On his head was a fur-trimmed hat and he was bedecked in tallit and tefillin. He looked at me with his deep, bright eyes, reflecting great wisdom. His face was

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194 My Studies with Rabbis round and white. A thick medium-size beard adorned his face and his entire appearance radiated a holy splendor. The rebbe does not offer a handshake; it is the practice among Hasidim not to shake the hallowed hand of the rabbi. I was very much affected by what I witnessed and I betrayed my feelings with quiet sobbing. The rebbe asked me something—I don’t remember what— read my note, and looked at me again. I overcame my nervousness, put 3 rubles on the table, and the rebbe said: “You will get the document from ___ and he lives in Dvinsk. Ask for him at the inn. Go in peace.” The whole business, which cost me several days of travel and much expense, was straightforward and completed in about ten minutes. I did not remember the name I was given, or perhaps did not hear it well, and the sexton wrote it down for me, together with the name of the inn. On the same day, I started for home, fully convinced that my problem had been solved. On the basis of his many contacts, the rebbe knew where to get a certificate, and even in a place somewhere not far from us. This was not a miracle; it was nothing out of the ordinary, only some good advice based on the wide experience and the wealth of information that he acquired from his many Hasidim. When I returned home and told Father the details, he straightaway left for Dvinsk, which he knew very well. He immediately found the Jew and the man took it upon himself to produce the required item. The price was 50 rubles. Father paid the money and returned home. We waited a month, two months, and we heard nothing. We contacted the Jew and he informed us that I had to go to the well-known town of ­Dusiat where this matter would be handled. He had given my particulars to a local man who was his partner in acquiring documents such as these. I remained in that place for two weeks and didn’t leave until I was told that my papers had been sent to our district capital and that I was to wait until I was again called before the district military board in order to clarify the matter. In time, I received the summons, went, appeared, and was released on the strength of the document that attested to my being twenty-one years old and on the strength of the law which permitted me an exemption based upon my brother’s military service. And so I was free. This affair had lasted about a year and I had, indeed, reached the age of twenty-one. I had been relieved of the nightmare of army ser-

My Studies with Rabbis

vice, which had weighed upon me the entire time I was dealing with it. Until a young man like myself in the Russian empire was released from military service, he was tethered to his home with an iron chain; it was impossible for him to leave his town without a passport, and he couldn’t obtain a passport until he had been released from the army. And now I was free and able to do as I wished, for I had reached the age of majority. I was young, only twenty-one, with excellent skills. I had a good enough knowledge of Hebrew to give lessons and a sufficient knowledge of Russian to continue my education on my own. I would travel to Vilna, “the Jerusalem of Lithuania,” and complete my studies in order to go abroad to acquire a secular education, as others had done. I had already tried living the life of a hermit in a yeshiva and eating the bread of affliction. Just a little courage and daring were needed. I would have to shake off my provincialism and get out into the wide, wide world. I’d had enough of days of idleness without purpose and I was building castles in the air, fanciful images of a near future of difficulties and a more distant future of honored academic titles, images of broadened horizons. And even as I was still envisioning and dreaming, the voice of my father awakened me: “Hurry, my son, we have to go home. They’re waiting for news from us, and with such joyful news at hand, we have to hurry.” Upon our return, the house was filled with joy and gladness. Guests arrived and departed, bringing greetings of “mazel tov” and toasting “l’chayim.” Mother was jubilant and was preparing a reception for the entire town on the Sabbath that was due to arrive two days hence. And I was still continuing with my own thoughts and my own plans to leave the town. I saw before me all the difficulties and I felt that, for someone my age, my knowledge was limited after all. The main thing was to survive the hardships that I would confront at the beginning. I had no money. My parents would certainly not agree to my going. How would I be able to face the difficulties? It’s true that my health had improved, thanks to my mother’s care, but would I be able to maintain my health living the life of a wanderer, lacking sufficient food and rest? I had already been tested by such conditions in my yeshiva days and they had brought on a crisis where my health was concerned. While I was still considering this question, concocting fanciful plans and dismissing them as impractical, thinking and wondering what to

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196 My Studies with Rabbis do in order to break away from my life of idleness in this small town, I was accosted by the vexation of “matchmaking.” It was customary in Lithuania for young men to get married immediately after their release from the army. After all, from a religious perspective, it was “at eighteen to the wedding canopy,”19 and most of the Jews of Lithuania were Godfearing and tried to fulfill this directive even ahead of time. As far as I know, there was no law in those days prohibiting the young from marriage at an early age, and in Eastern lands, still today, people marry at a very early age, especially the girls, the reason being that in hot countries physical maturity is accelerated and arrives very early. And so my parents began to pressure me to get married. In our town there was the family of Lifschitz, the owner of a flour mill, and he had a daughter, not at all pretty, but with a large dowry. At the time, a member of this family had already married my mother’s younger sister, so a kin connection already existed. The parents agreed immediately to a match, with the girl’s father, who was a friend of my father, serving as the matchmaker himself. I objected strenuously to this match and threatened to leave home immediately. I even began to prepare for my departure and was inwardly pleased at the opportunity I had been given to carry out the plans I had made previously. In the meantime, Father leased a large estate near Birz, one of the farms of Count Tishkevitz.20 Father had some liquid capital that he didn’t need in his regular business and so he invested the money in this agricultural venture. This count resided in Paris, like all the counts did, living a life of great excess, as was the custom of the nobles. He would spend great hoards of treasure on this lifestyle of his and he was always in need of money. For this reason he would, from time to time, lease one of his estates to a Jew in violation of the law, for a Jew was not allowed to lease farmlands. The Jew would pay rent for several years in advance and in this way he would fill the gap between the nobleman’s income and his expenses. As soon as the estate was leased, my brother 19.  This idea is found in Pirke Avot 5:24. Compare Note 27 in the chapter “Me and My Youth.” 20.  The Tishkevitz family was one of great regional influence. Among other things, the family had possession of the town of Birz itself from 1806 until the 1860s. See Yosef Rosin, “Birzh (Birzai), Lithuania,” Sarah and Mordehai Kopfstein, eds., on the Internet at www.shtet links.jewishgen.org/Birzh/Birzh1.html (accessed Nov. 2, 2009).

My Studies with Rabbis

Chaim and I had to move there in order to manage it. I couldn’t refuse to go, for Father had already paid a large sum toward the annual rent of the farm and it was impossible for me not to obey his command. The basic idea of living on an estate outside the city as a “landlord” attracted me. At the time, more and more Jews were leasing farms from nobles and managing them. Although this was illegal, the Jews found ways to circumvent the law. The great distress caused by the special laws that had been passed concerning the Jews forced them to learn these ways. Otherwise, there would have been no way to survive in the Russian state. The counts and other nobles, the landowners, would help the Jews get around the laws, because it was only they who were able consistently to fill their pockets, emptied by the profligate lives they lived in the capitals of Europe. On the one hand, Jews made money from this business but, on the other, they also did a lot of good for agriculture, because for the most part they leased the most neglected estates. These lands had been managed by functionaries who didn’t have the resources needed to handle them properly, but the Jews who rented the estates would invest their own money in improving them. Otherwise they would not have earned a thing. The lease fees were set by the management according to the income the estate generated, and this was very little because the produce was transferred to grain merchants while it was still standing in the field or just after sowing, since the manager had to send funds to his master abroad. This is why the rent was low and it was worthwhile for the leaseholder to improve the estate; the lease was for several years with an option for even more. The leaseholder would improve the fields and the barns and this was good both for him and for the lessor. And so one morning we moved to this estate, called Gavenishok, five miles from Birz, the city in which I had studied for about a year and a half with Rabbi Lintup. The estate was quite large and divided in two. There was a forest in the middle and a forest at the edge of the farm’s fields. Behind the middle forest there was a small farmstead that we sublet to another Jew. Not far from the forest stood the buildings of the main farm which we were to manage: a house of eight rooms with a large garden planted with various fruit trees. Opposite the house there was a large courtyard with a well in the middle and around the courtyard were the barns for the livestock: eighty cows and forty work horses.

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198 My Studies with Rabbis At the side of the residence were the grain cellar and storehouses, and beyond the house and the garden were the dwellings for the workers and the maidservants. The workers would plow, plant, harvest and thresh the grain. The workers’ wives would milk the cows, feed them, and care for them. A portion of the produce, and feed for their animals, went to the workers. Every worker’s family had a cow and sheep and they would tend them together with the farm’s herds. We also employed a gentile supervisor, who was an expert in farming and other trades as well—leatherwork, carpentry and so forth. In winter, when the fields were covered in snow, the workers labored in the forest, gathering wood for heating and for woodworking. The yield from the dairy we let out to a cousin who turned the milk into butter and cheese and took it to Riga every month or two. We also allotted him living space in our house. The produce of the fields was either sold on the open market or sent to Riga after enough had been set aside for the next year’s planting, for the animals, and for the workers’ share. My brother Chaim was the driving force in the management and care of the estate. I kept the accounts and handled negotiations with the brokers, and I also had other undertakings of my own: some study, some reading, travel to Birz to meet with the rabbi, and so forth. I very much liked this new lifestyle, an ideal one, among fields and gardens and the beauties of nature, with pure air, light and sun, fresh food in abundance, strolls in the garden and the consumption of all sorts of fruits, walks in the wide, green fields and visits in the evening with the young people of Birz with whom we used to spend time. All this was in contrast to my former yeshiva life, a life without even minimal sustenance and comfort. The huge transformation brought about within me by my pleasant, respectable life led me to forget all my former dreams of some kind of professional career. What did I want with the rabbinate or a secular career when I had this world before me: the manager of a large estate with everyone addressing me as paritz, that is, using a title reserved for Polish dignitaries? I was happy with my lot. The sparkling vision of an easy, comfortable, and honorable life blinded me for a while. I discarded my earlier plans, based on abstract ideals, which I could not implement in any case, given my situation, since my parents would not

My Studies with Rabbis

support them and since they were uncertain anyway, even if conditions had been different. Father would make an appearance on the estate from time to time in order to check on the situation and he found that all was in order; his sons were performing their duties very efficiently. And thus a year passed. True, the income was limited in the first year because the farmstead had been neglected and could not be improved in only one season, but a greater income was expected the next year. Agriculture is so dependent on so many factors, both inherent and external, that it is impossible to detail them. Most of all, agriculture is dependent on the mercies of heaven: “I will give you rain in its season”;21 salutary and not turbulent rain, an orderly change of seasons and not an abrupt one. Cold and snow in due time, the illnesses of livestock, epidemics, plagues of rodents, blight resulting from hail, and normal prices; all these are in the hands of heaven and they are almost entirely unsusceptible to human intervention. But human actions are also very important: plowing at the right time, fertilizing, sowing at the right time based on the nature of the soil and on practical knowledge rather than on agronomic theory. In terms of this aspect of agriculture, there is a great difference between the person who engages in agriculture as an occupation he loves and one who enters upon farming as a business. And the difference is even greater when one works his own private land, land which he has bought or inherited. He will invest in it all his might and power regardless of the cost, for this is not only his own property, so that all he invests in it will only increase its value, but this is also his reason for living, his future, and the future of his family for generations. If a catastrophe should occur, this is only a transient event. If the land does not yield a great deal this year, it is possible to wait; he is always able to sustain himself from the land. This is not the case with the leaseholder, however, and all the more so with one who leases land for commercial purposes. He will not be eager to invest much in it if he is unable to realize an immediate profit. He cannot be certain that the land will remain in his hands for a long time. This year he might improve the land in the hope of benefiting 21.  This quotation is from Leviticus 26:4.

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200 My Studies with Rabbis from it in coming years, and the landowner will come along and remove him. What can he do? Thus, he is not secure on the land and it is not really his possession, so he will not invest all his strength and fortune in it. Agricultural land will not thrive if one cannot treat it as his own, and Jews generally cannot be secure in making agricultural investments in Russia, for this is against the law. A Jew may invest a large part of his capital and an order will come from the authorities saying that he must leave the farm immediately, since he is on the land illegally. Already at the end of the first year, we began to sense the presence of the authorities. All of a sudden the pristav, the adjunct of the ispravnik who administered the district, appeared and asked: “By what right are you here?” Our excuse had been prepared in advance: “We are present here by permission of the count; we have a letter from the count’s representative appointing us managers of his estate on his behalf.” This was not a sufficient excuse in terms of the law, but it was sufficient for the pristav when accompanied by a gift: a wagon filled with fodder and sacks of grain and various fruits delivered to him from time to time. The demands for gifts grew from month to month. They came in the form of written orders, business-like: so many poods of wheat, barley, oats, and so forth, and he asked also that we send a bill. We meekly sent a bill, which was never paid.22 There was hope for an exceptional harvest in the second year because the fields had been worked and fertilized exceptionally well in the second spring. The grain in the field came up very well and we were looking forward to harvesting the wheat which had ripened nicely. Then for half an hour a heavy hail rained down on the wheat fields, a hail the likes of which the gentile workers said they had not seen in twenty years. The wheat fields were completely beaten down, and so too the barley fields, a destruction the likes of which had not been seen in years. In a half hour the harvest was ruined and the loss amounted to several thousand rubles. Thus is the fortune of agriculture. In order to salvage some of our investment, we bought several hundred geese and let them loose to fatten up on the ruined fields so that they could be sold at a profit. But the profit was like a drop in the sea compared to the loss that 22.  In the Russian empire, an ispravnik was a district governor with police powers. A pood is an obsolete Russian measure of weight, equivalent to about 36 pounds or 16 kilograms.

My Studies with Rabbis

the hail had caused, and the hope of a lucrative season in the second year had vanished and with it our hope of being paritzim. I and my brother did not despair. We loved this kind of rural lifestyle and we wanted to continue in it, but Father lost hope. Our income was not sufficient to cover the year’s expenses and certainly not to cover preparations for the coming year. It would be necessary to invest additional money, and this he did not want to do. And so he presented me with an ultimatum: either I marry and accept the management of the estate, or he would transfer the estate to someone else and wash his hands of the whole business. During the two years that had passed, the number of matchmakers who had approached my parents in Kvatki and me on the farm with possible matches had increased. I had become a catch worthy of being honored with many offers. The standard for the dowry had been set high: ten thousand rubles, nothing less, and good family connections. After all, I was a handsome fellow, a scholar, and a Maskil. I was from a wealthy family of good lineage, one of the leading Hasidic families of Lithuania, and I had an honorable and secure source of income.

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Editor’s Introduction

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Frieden begins this chapter with one of his pedagogic digressions, ostensibly included in his memoir in order to educate future generations who will read it. In this case, he explains the history of matchmaking and, in like fashion, he later recounts the history of dowries. Frieden’s discussion of matchmaking is prompted by the fact that this chapter is devoted primarily to the story of his early courting experiences and his eventual betrothal to Etel Porat, a pairing facilitated by a shadchan, a matchmaker, in the longestablished manner. The path that Frieden followed to marriage reflects his straddling two worlds, that of the traditional Judaism of Eastern Europe and that of the Jewish Enlightenment. On the one hand, he had a modern enough sensibility to insist that his bride be someone to whom he was romantically attracted. On the other hand, however, he did not rebel against the employment of a shadchan, a practice much criticized by the Maskilim of the period, who objected to courtship and marriage being made into a commercial transaction. Of course, Frieden’s account of courting his wife must be understood as a narrative written well after the events described. The account must have been colored not only by the fact that his marriage to Etel Porat was a happy one, but also by the tragic end of the marriage with Etel’s early death. Ultimately, what Frieden provides here is both a wonderful description of East European Jewish courtship practices during the late nineteenth century and a charming tale of romance, young love, and the rocky road leading to marriage. What Frieden writes here about his early life also provides more information about some common economic undertakings among Jews in the Russian empire. From this chapter we can glean additional details about the way Jews served as estate managers, for example, and we can also learn about how they won contracts from the Russian government, about how

Matchmakers and Marriage

purchasing agents conducted their business in the East European hinterlands, and, again, about how Jews often had to circumvent the law in order to make a living. Like the preceding chapter, this one, too, contains a measure of ­Frieden’s introspection and self-assessment. Looking back to a time when he was in his early twenties, our author reflects upon some of the pivotal episodes of his early adult life. He writes of his infatuation with his bride-to-be, Etel, he remembers grappling with questions about his abilities and his future, and he confesses the emotional breakdown he suffered after being swindled in Warsaw. Although in recounting these elements of his early life Frieden is very self-critical, one also gets a sense of the high regard in which he held himself as a bright and sensitive individual. In the final part of this chapter, Frieden relates how, having failed at several business ventures, he decided to emigrate to the United States. The way he writes about his decision to cross the Atlantic suggests that he settled upon this move without too much soul-searching, as if the decision to relocate were a completely natural step to take in view of his situation. This feeling derived, no doubt, from the knowledge that hundreds of thousands of other East European Jews were reaching the same conclusion at just about the same time, motivated primarily by the search for economic opportunity and by the persistence of antisemitism and the pogroms it sparked in the Russian empire. It helped, as well, that by the early years of the twentieth century, a great deal of information was available about what awaited potential immigrants to America. Moreover, many East European Jews, including Frieden, already had relatives who had made the trek to the New World. Indeed, between 1881 and 1914, some 1.6 million Jews moved from the Russian empire to the United States, with nearly half a million coming just in the years between 1904 and 1907, the period of Frieden’s immigration.

❊ i n m y d ay i n ru s s i a ,

the fortunes of shadchanut, matchmaking, were in decline because of the many untruths matchmakers told and their exaggerations about those being paired, which led to grievances between the parties and between the matchmaker and those involved in the match. This was contrary to the meaning of the title “shadchan,” which comes from the Aramaic word shadach and is related to serenity, quiet, and ease. For the Hebrew “and the land was quiet,” the Aramaic

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is v’arah shadichat and shadichat means “at rest,” suggesting that matchmaking, shiduch, is about speaking heart to heart with the parties involved so that they become bound in matrimony and both sides emerge pleased with the arrangement.1 In the time of the Talmud there was no shadchan to be a go-between in matchmaking. A match was arranged by the parents of those to be spoken for, or by the bridegroom, who would himself ask the bride if she was willing to marry him. In the thirteenth century, there is already mention of a shadchan as a paid go-between; the matchmaker’s fee was from 2 to 3 percent of the dowry. The work of the matchmaker increased mainly when it involved finding spouses for young men and women from small towns, where it was difficult to make local matches. Of course, it goes without saying that we are speaking here of the children of the wealthy or of a young man who was an excellent student. These could not get married in their own towns and couldn’t go out to find their own mates. The matchmaker would collect the young men and women ready for marriage from here and from there and pair them off according to their exaggerated attributes. Matchmakers had to exaggerate in order to get the prospective groom and bride to meet if, in their estimation and in light of their experience, they speculated that after meeting, progress toward a wedding would advance quickly. This, even if it was discovered that the shadchan had exaggerated concerning something like the bride’s dowry or the quality of the groom or his educational achievements. Every shadchan had a notebook and in his wanderings from town to town he would make a list of the candidates for marriage with details about them. He would study the pages of his notebook very, very well and consider whom to match with whom. He would compare the lineage of the two sides, weighing the value of a family’s reputation against the value of the dowry. He had to think about the truth of the claims being made and how much he was permitted to exaggerate to the two parties. He would go from one party to the other, talk to them, coax the parents, try to persuade the groom or the bride. He would talk until he was able to bring the sides close enough together to agree 1.  The phrase quoted by Frieden, “and the land was quiet,” is found in Judges 3:11 and refers to a forty-year period of peace for ancient Israel. Compare Pesach Eliyahu Falk, Chosen and Kallah during Their Engagement (New York, 2000), 193–94.

Matchmakers and Marriage

to an “appointment” at a half-way spot. The parents of the groom and the bride would come, together with the couple, and the matchmaker would be the intermediary. If the meeting went well, especially between the potential groom and bride, then the parents would sit down with the matchmaker to do business. They reached an agreement, wrote an engagement contract, broke some crockery, wished “mazel tov” and the shadchan came out on top.2 If the potential bride did not find favor in the eyes of the groom and his parents, or vice versa, the meeting was unsuccessful and the poor shadchan left brokenhearted, getting only his travel expenses from the two parties, and he had to start his work of pairing off couples all over again. If, despite the saying that “thirty days before the formation of a child, a voice proclaims in heaven, ‘the daughter of such and such shall marry such and such,’” the pairing of couples is as difficult for the Holy One, Blessed be He, as was splitting the Red Sea, then how much harder is it for the shadchan, who is only flesh and blood and who must employ his resources properly in order to bring about the fulfillment of this heavenly decree?3 Every locality had its matchmaker, and it was a hard and fast rule that no matchmaker from one area was allowed to invade the territory of another, for there was here a case of “a poor person going after a loaf of bread.”4 However, if the parties to the match were from different localities, an exception was made. In that case, the affair was conducted by both matchmakers and if it ended in an engagement, they would split the fee. In our area the matchmaker was the well-known Reb Leib the Shadchan, a follower of the rebbe of Lyady. He liked to have a drink from 2.  Several explanations exist for the breaking of crockery as part of the engagement ritual. Some sources say, for example, that this symbolizes the end of the couple’s childhood and the creation of a new family. Other sources explain that the breaking of crockery foreshadows the breaking of the glass at the end of the wedding ceremony, a reminder of the destruction of the Temples in Jerusalem. 3.  Frieden is here misquoting tractate Sotah 2a, where the actual time frame mentioned is forty days for the prenatal matchmaking described here. Later, in his chapter “I Found the Best Woman,” Frieden writes correctly of forty days. The idea that the pairing of a couple is as difficult as splitting the Red Sea is also in Sotah 2a. 4.  This is a reference to the concept in Jewish business ethics and law which teaches that one may not engage in unfair competition, thus depriving a person of his livelihood. The concept is derived from tractate Kiddushin 59a, where the question is posed: “If a poor person is going after a loaf of bread and another comes and takes it, what is the law?”

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time to time and he was a Jew who “knows a book.” Every so often he would show up in our village to take its pulse, to see if there was any choice merchandise with which it was worth dealing. When he got wind of someone, he would appear with a bundle of proposals: if not this one, then that one; a beautiful bride and a dowry to boot, if you could believe him. If his list of prospects didn’t please my parents, he would get his travel expenses and start over again. Once, Reb Leib brought a proposal that my parents jumped at as a real find, and they sent him to appeal to me on the estate. He had a letter from Father saying that my parents thought I should take an interest in this matter and asking that I agree to meet the prospective bride. They had in mind a young woman who lived in a well-known town not far from us. She was fatherless and had only a mother. The family had a store selling ready-to-wear goods, run by the daughter and the mother, and they were proposing to turn the store over to the bridegroom who was chosen. They offered a dowry of some 10,000 rubles and, according to the matchmaker, a young woman with all the best qualities. The shadchan worked at persuading me, describing to me what a great deal this was, and so forth. I couldn’t refuse, for I knew that I had to show some interest. Otherwise Father would sell the estate. Thus, I agreed to meet the potential bride in the city of Ponivezh, halfway between us. I met with the prospective bride; this was my first encounter for the purpose of marriage. She was not especially young—perhaps three or five years my senior—and she was not especially pretty, but not loathsome either. I met her at the hotel where she was staying and, to my astonishment, I found that the rabbi of the town, a young man, had accompanied her as a sort of “expert” or “examiner.” This irritated me immediately. It’s true that it was a custom among Jews that, where matchmaking was involved, a Torah scholar who could examine the prospective groom would attend the first encounter, but I abhorred this custom. It was similar to a man going to market to buy a horse and taking with him an expert on horses to help him with his purchase. When this rabbi tried to begin discussing matters of Torah, I turned the conversation in another direction. I told him to ask the rabbi of Birz about me; that a marriage should be with me, and not with my knowledge of Torah. The way I dismissed the examining rabbi by not responding to him was not to his liking and we became

Matchmakers and Marriage

uncomfortable with each other. The bride realized this and asked me to go for a walk with her. We strolled for about an hour. I spoke about ideals, about Zionism, and her replies were terse. In response, she tried to turn the conversation toward things that interested her: business and commerce, affairs that she knew well and about which she spoke intelligently and very freely. We returned to the hotel and agreed to meet again the next day. At the hotel, I couldn’t sleep a wink all night. I didn’t find anything to hold against the young lady, whom I had gotten to know better during our walk of an hour or more, and whom I had found to be a bright but simple woman. She had no education except that she knew how to run a business, but she had a certain charm and seemed to be goodnatured. When, in her youth, her father had died, she had to help in the store. Her town was not large and she had no opportunity to acquire an education, especially because she had to devote herself to the business. I imagined that this match would perhaps allow me the opportunity to acquire a broader education, as well as continue my Torah studies, just as many other yeshiva students had acquired both Torah and learning by marrying well and being free of worries about their livelihood. And still, I was not attracted to her. She was too much the business type and too simple. True, it was not her fault, but did I have to marry a plain woman? As for myself, if I ever did think about marriage, I always imagined that my wife would be young and very pretty, with a higher education at least comparable to mine. She would be delicate and pleasant and I would be able to have a life with her in tune with my ideals. I was sentimental and very naïve, with a well-developed sense of aesthetics, and a love of singing and music. And, as I saw things then, how could I bind myself for an entire lifetime to a woman so far removed from all this? I feared that if I met with her again, I would change my mind, so I decided not to see her a second time, even though I understood that, in fleeing from her, I would cause the young woman much embarrassment and I felt very sorry about offending her. I was unsure of myself, however, and I took the easiest way out, without considering others. I returned home and didn’t tell the truth. I said the bride was just right for me. Father and Grandfather thought the matter was still moving ahead and they themselves went to find out what was delaying its completion. When they arrived at the young woman’s home, they were

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driven from the house in disgrace. Those there didn’t even want to speak to them. How angry they were at me over the way I had offended the young woman! I should have told them the truth, because then they would not have made the trip. Thus the whole affair was terminated and inwardly I was happy about it. A woman like that was not for me. The matchmaker did not give up and continued his efforts to marry me off. Indeed, after a while, he succeeded in matching me up with the one who had been ordained for me in heaven, if only for a few years. The young woman in question was the only daughter of Reb Yehuda Leib Porat of Dvinsk, from a family well known in Lithuania and in Vilna. He was a Hasid devoted to the rebbe of Kapust. Learned and God-fearing, he was a wise and handsome Jew. They had a son, an ordained rabbi, but without a position because he limped on one leg and could not find a post to his liking. Later he got a rabbinic position in a suburb of Dvinsk and after that in Prut. They also had one daughter. Her name was Etel. She was a young woman, my age, of average height and beauty. She had a high school education, played piano, and gave Russian language lessons. Mr. Porat was a subcontractor involved in draining sewage cisterns for the Dvinsk fortress. My parents liked the suggested match, even though the proposed dowry was, relatively speaking, quite small: 2,000 rubles. My parents were influenced by the family lineage and by my first experience, which had ended in failure. I also was drawn to this proposal and agreed to a meeting in Dvinsk. The matchmaker arranged an interview for me with the prospective bride’s father. He would come to the hotel where I would stay for an initial conversation and to look me over, to inspect me and see what I had to say. If he liked me, he would arrange for me to meet his daughter. Mr. Porat appeared at the hotel where I was staying and I liked him from the first moment I saw him. He was a Jew in his late fifties with a nice face and eyes that conveyed intelligence, as it is written, “A man’s wisdom lights up his face.”55 His manner was aristocratic and refined, and he spoke with incisive wisdom. We talked about a number of subjects, which I don’t recall, but the conversation was stimulating and 5.  This quotation is from Ecclesiastes 8:1.

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interesting and lasted for several hours. When he left, he invited me to visit his home the next afternoon for a cup of tea. The next morning, the matchmaker, who had already managed to see the prospective father-in-law, came to my hotel and told me that the father-in-law was very pleased. He liked me very much and the matchmaker was certain that our match had been decreed in heaven. I came to the Porat home on the outskirts of Dvinsk at the appointed hour and I met both the mother and the daughter. I looked around me and saw a pleasant apartment furnished charmingly and with good taste, but small. There was no great wealth reflected in this home, but an effort to maintain a comfortable status. I was familiar with his kind of family from my years in the yeshiva. I quickly redirected my attention from my physical surroundings and rested my eyes on she who would be my wife for eight years. And it is as if the two of us were of the same mind at once. I saw before me a young woman my age (she was actually two years older than I) with a roundish face that had a graceful aura about it. She had pretty eyes and was of medium height, a little plump but not enough to affect her figure. I don’t remember what we talked about, but I do remember that I didn’t have to make an effort to please her. I was as uninhibited in my speech and in my behavior as if I had known her for years. The feeling was instinctive; on her part also (she told me later). I felt that she would be my companion for life and we sensed ourselves already naturally bound to each other. We parted as good friends, with a promise to write to each other. I returned home satisfied with this encounter. It was close to Passover and this gave me the opportunity to write a letter to Mr. Porat about the Festival of Freedom and its influence on the Jewish People through all the days of its exile in the past and in the present. The letter made an impression on everyone, including his son the rabbi, as he later told me. The response from the father-inlaw, written in good Hebrew in the Biblical-Talmudic style employed by Maskilim in those days, informed me that he would like to meet with my parents and that he was willing to come to us in order to do so. Father immediately sent him an invitation, saying that he would be very glad to see him. A week later, Mr. Porat appeared at our home. This was a surprise visit, without advance notice. I was at the estate

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and a messenger was sent to fetch me. We spent an entire day together at my parents’ home, and the next day we traveled to the farm because Mr. Porat wanted to see the place his daughter would have to live if everything worked out happily. He spent several days there and then sent a telegram to his wife and daughter to come to Rakishok in order to draw up an engagement agreement. The mother and daughter arrived in Rakishok before me and they were welcomed at the home of my twice-uncle Mendel, as we had asked. My future father-in-law, my father, and I arrived together a little later and we immediately began negotiating the dowry. My uncle was the most demanding. The father-in-law pleaded that he simply could not afford to offer more than 1,500 rubles; when the shadchan had said 2,000, he had done so on his own authority. The business of a dowry has changed radically over thousands of years, and it’s worthwhile elaborating on this matter. Our Torah speaks of “the bride price of virgins,” a disbursement made to a father so that he would give his daughter over to the man making the payment, a custom that was in place for thousands of years in the East. When Shechem took Dinah for himself, he said to Jacob’s sons: “Ask me a bride price ever so high, as well as gifts.” And King Saul ordered his servants: “Thus shall you say to David: The king desires no dowry.”6 This was in the early period. In the next period, the bridegroom gave a dowry as a gift to the bride herself, together with everything else that was given. In the third period, from the time of the Scribes,7 the dowry was transformed into the ketubah, the marriage contract, which is a document providing insurance for the woman in case of a divorce. In the days of the Geonim, a “bill of adjudication” would be prepared, indicating the amount of money the father of the groom and the father of the bride would give the couple after their wedding. From all this it is clear that the primary definition of a dowry is money given either to the father of the bride or to the bride herself, or to both of 6.  The first reference here is to Exodus 22:16, where the subject is laws concerning seduction. The second reference is to Genesis 34:12, where the subject is Shechem’s rape of Jacob’s daughter Dinah. The third reference is to 1 Samuel 18:25, where the context is a discussion of David’s proposed marriage to Saul’s daughter Michal. 7.  “The time of the Scribes” refers to the period of the Second Temple, during which scholars who taught the Oral Law and enacted certain legal rulings assumed the leadership of the Jewish People.

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them. Furthermore, according to Jewish law, everything that a woman brings into the household of her husband at marriage remains hers, be that in the form of property the woman obtained during the period of her betrothal or property given as part of her dowry, and the husband can only reap its profits. Indeed, this law is observed especially strictly in the case of property that is part of the dowry, which cannot be sold at all.8 In the lands of the East, to this day a man still buys his wife from her father with money. Whether this is a lot or a little depends on her age and her other attributes. It is therefore amazing to observe the custom as it is practiced today, and not only among Jews, whereby the bride or her father has to pay the bridegroom to marry her. Moreover, the amount paid is determined by the worth of the groom, as judged by his Torah learning or his academic achievement or his lineage, as well as by the economic status of the potential in-laws. It is true that in recent times this custom has fallen into disuse. When it comes to marriage, a dowry is no longer the chief concern, if it comes into consideration at all. Two people meet, are attracted to each other, and marry. The parents help the couple if they can, and if they can’t or don’t want to (the decision is theirs), the couple manages somehow. This is not the way it was fifty years ago and more; the dowry was paramount. I explain this as a consequence of life in the Diaspora, for making a living was difficult for Diaspora Jews. Raising sons to be learned in Torah was the main goal of Jewish parents, be they rich or poor, and a dowry was like a magnet attracting the young men of Israel to the possibility of continuing their Torah studies, or even their secular studies and their general education. A dowry and the promise of a few years of food and lodging at the hearth of the bride’s father helped many young men acquire Torah learning and higher education. They were free to devote themselves to their studies without bearing the yoke of earning a living. They did not have that millstone around their necks. Another consideration was that the status of women in society was generally low. Most women did not receive an education. A pious Jew (and what Jew in those days was not pious?) was not permitted to educate his daughter at all: “Whosoever teaches his daughter Torah teaches 8.  For a good brief discussion of the types of property mentioned here, see The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1901–1916), s.v. “Dowry.”

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her lewdness.” 9 A daughter remained dependent upon her parents. She stayed at home, truly a millstone around the neck of her father. Girls always outnumbered boys all over the world, and as a result of the law of supply and demand, the power of women and their ability to marry as they desired declined. From this also came the custom of marrying off daughters as early as possible, while they were still young and capable, and woe to the parents whose daughter remained unmarried until she was past her prime. There was no verdict more horrible than “she shall sit until her hair turns white,”10 and from this emerged the demand for a dowry; if a father wanted to rid himself of his daughter, let him pay up, please. While our fathers negotiated the dowry, I went for a walk with the bride. As we strolled, I asked her about her father’s financial situation. I explained to her that I was not asking this in order to obtain a larger dowry, but because I was in need of money, since my father wanted me to stay on the estate and return half of his investment to him. Still, this would not be an obstacle to our relationship. She pleaded that her father could not offer the sum that was being asked and that even the amount he was promising could not be guaranteed in its entirely. We returned to the house immediately and I told the parents to stop all the negotiations over money and to draw up the engagement agreement right away, on the terms offered by the father-in-law. My uncle looked at me as though I were crazy, but he could no longer object. The agreement was signed and crockery was broken in accordance with the custom of Jews to mix sadness with joy. Mazel tov. Father and I, the bride, and her parents all returned to Dvinsk, ­Father to buy merchandise and I to stay at the bride’s home and get to know her better. We exchanged gifts as was customary. I stayed with them for about two weeks. During that time, we became much better acquainted and our love blossomed. I learned a lot that it would have been better to know earlier, not that this would have affected the heart of the matter, but it would have saved me from causing some offense. Etel told me about her previous engagement to a man from Warsaw that had been broken off after several months due to the promise of a dowry which 9.  On the meaning of this passage, see Note 41 in the chapter “My Father’s House.” 10.  The quotation here is from tractate Ketubot 109a.

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the family was not able to produce and which the intended husband was not generous of spirit enough to forego. I learned also that the family’s economic situation was worse than I had imagined. She told me that the salary her father received was not enough to cover the household expenses and that even that was not always paid on time because of cash flow problems. The primary contractor himself does not have the funds needed for his wretched business because the Russian government is very late in payment and a significant part of it goes for bribes to the military officials who have a say in the awarding of contracts. Moreover, the competition for contracts among the Jews themselves reduces the income to a minimal profit. When the government calls for bids on a job, tens of Jews arrive to participate in the competition. Each of them holds a heavy envelope in his hand, a tender, as if he intends to bid on a job, though sometimes there is nothing but old newsprint or plain paper in the envelope. Nonetheless, one has to take into account all those who desire to win the contract. They hold negotiations in secret so that some will withdraw from the completion in exchange for a certain payment. All this is known to the government officials, but bribery blinds their eyes as well. I was certain that the whole matter of the dowry was thrown into question. I saw that after the terms of the engagement had been arranged, the family moved from their nice apartment into a different apartment in the same building. It was smaller and less comfortable, and its entrance was from the courtyard and not from the front. I noticed that my very presence in their home was a hardship for them, since it involved added expenses; there were always guests coming through, and so forth. My heart was heavy. Not that I regretted the engagement. On the contrary, I had grown attached to my bride, heart and soul, with a love that was pure and absolute. I could not imagine that I would be able to live without her. This was true love, unlike the love I once had for a girl from our town, the daughter of fine parents who had fallen on hard times, with the father sick in bed. The young woman was a seamstress in Riga and had come to visit her parents at home. She was pretty and pleasant and full of charm, and I, inexperienced and bored, fell in love with her when I met her at the home of my old friend Raphael. She was a relative of his wife. This young woman had a way of turning the head of a provin-

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cial lad like me, and after she left town I continued to write her torrid love letters. Her replies, however, were infrequent and cold and, in the end, when she asked me to come to Riga, I sobered up and dropped the affair because I realized that this was only a diversion and that I had feelings of neither affection nor loathing toward her, a sign that this was not love but only a game. Now this was not the case. I was bound to Etel with every fiber of my body and my soul was united with hers. But how could I support her if there was no money and I couldn’t remain on the estate? I had no trade and no profession. This pained me greatly and, with much apprehension, I returned home and explained the true situation to my parents. But they did not lose heart at all. As mother said, it had been decreed in heaven that “the daughter of such and such shall marry such and such” and even if there’s no money, somehow we’ll manage. They told me to return to the estate and to ask the father-in-law to send the dowry. I would continue to manage the estate, the source of my livelihood. My father-in-law sent 800 rubles and promised to send the rest after the wedding, but I knew this was only an excuse he made because he didn’t have any more money to send. I invited the bride to come visit me on the estate and I met her in Rakishok when she arrived by train. We stayed at Uncle Mendel’s home in Rakishok for one day and from there we traveled to my hometown. We stayed at my home about two weeks and then went on to the estate. At first, she liked the estate. The natural surroundings, the quiet, and the rural lifestyle, in contrast to urban life, had an effect on her right away. She also came to know me better and to realize that my love for her was most genuine. She became acquainted with my talents and my abilities and my desire to be something greater than the manager of an estate. As time went by, she became more attached to me. A month passed, however, and she began to tire of the farming life. Not only that, but she came to realize that if I remained on the estate for long, I would never leave it. I would remain a rustic and be unable to take advantage of my fine talents. She began to attempt to persuade me to leave the estate and try my hand at some other pursuit. She would be willing to wait for me, if only I agreed to continue my secular studies in something such as medicine or economics. I was still young and could still achieve something, though she knew that this aspiration,

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which, all along, had been mine as well, was far from being achieved. Still, I was inclined to agree with her. Nonetheless, I put off my decision for the time being, and she returned to Dvinsk. When she got home, she wrote me with a sort of ultimatum: she would never agree to be a country dweller; I had to leave the estate. Her father also wrote me saying that in his personal opinion, he had to agree with his daughter. Given his love for her, he could not disagree with her. My parents were very disappointed at the decision reached by the bride and her father, but, having no alternative, they agreed to release me from managing the estate. My parents very much wanted to see me married. Apparently, they feared that I might return to my first love if the engagement were called off. They found a relative of ours who agreed to be a partner in the estate. He invested about 2,000 rubles in the partnership and Father returned to me 800 rubles, the portion of the dowry that had been paid. The money was deposited with the bank in Ponivezh and I again returned home. I wasted about two months helping a bit in the store and with Father’s other business affairs, without having my heart in it. I was very much in love, and staying in touch by mail was too slow. I wanted to hear from Etel every day. I was weary of this temporary arrangement and of waiting for a letter to arrive once in two weeks, so I decided to go to Dvinsk in order to seek a more sensible and permanent arrangement. I informed them that I was coming, but when I arrived at the train station, no one was there to meet me. This disturbed me and raised doubts in my mind about the whole affair. As it was, my bride’s recent letters had not satisfied my longing. They conveyed a certain chilliness, and now she did not find it appropriate to come to meet me. I considered retracing my steps, but my love for her brought my clouded thinking and my pride under control and I decided to go to their home. When I arrived, her parents greeted me very warmly and expressed surprise that their daughter had not met me. It had been an hour since she left for the station. Just then she, too, appeared, very sorry that she had been late for the train and had missed me at the station. Her warm welcome dispelled my feelings of resentment and completely relieved any doubts I had. The discussion about the future went on ponderously. Suggestions upon suggestions were raised and discarded. Above all, her parents wanted to hear nothing of my continuing to study. After all, they knew

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they would be unable to support me through years of schooling. They knew also that my parents wanted to hasten our wedding and that they would not agree to my suggestion that it be postponed a few years. This seemed to them to be unrealistic and also unfair to the bride, who would have to wait who knows how long, if she agreed to wait for me at all. Implementing other suggestions involved much more money than was available in the small dowry, so the matter dragged on without any resolution. In the meantime, my stay at the bride’s home became uncomfortable both for me and for them. For me, because I saw that the mother no longer related to me as she had before. She eyed me suspiciously, and perhaps she was right to do so; she had matched up her daughter with a young man who it seemed would be unable to succeed at anything. He sits in his bride’s home for several weeks and isn’t ashamed of his idleness. What will be the outcome? I got wind of a rumor that, were it not for the fact that they had broken off their daughter’s previous engagement, they would have gladly annulled the agreement now as well. And there was also the fact that the situation that had developed was their fault, since they had objected to my remaining on the estate. After all, the estate promised an ample income and I could easily have provided for their daughter honorably and comfortably there. All this compelled them to preserve the relationship between us. Still, the situation distressed me greatly. I decided that I would go to Warsaw and become a purchasing agent, buying merchandise for anyone interested. In those days, Warsaw was the merchandising center for the entire interior of Russia and a manufacturing center for all sorts of goods. Small-scale merchants could not go to Warsaw to buy stock themselves, so they bought it from wholesalers. However, there were also people who would take orders from retailers for all kinds of goods, travel to Warsaw, buy the goods, bring them back to their cities, and offer them to those who had ordered the goods at the purchase price plus a set percentage, a commission. And there were agents who got rich from this. This arrangement was good for the small-scale retailers; sometimes they would get their merchandise from the agent on credit, which helped them expand their inventory. True, I knew that this business took more money than I had at my disposal because, as a beginner, I would not get credit from the manufacturers. Nonetheless, I decided

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to get started on a trial basis. My future in-laws and my bride liked the idea and that very day I started out to take orders. I can’t say that I was very successful. As I began work, it became clear that many small shopkeepers already had arrangements with commission agents, owed them money, and could not place their orders with someone else, like me, especially since I was new, they didn’t know me, and I couldn’t promise them credit. Nonetheless, I was able to get orders whose value was high enough so that, to my mind, it was worth trying my luck. My father-in-law gave me 400 rubles—he had no more at hand—and I set off for Warsaw. I was a provincial young man, without experience and without an understanding of how various kinds of people operate. I was a simple person and I thought everyone was honest. My experience in the yeshiva had not taught me about the tricks played by dishonest individuals, and my small-town life had not introduced me to the evil ways of the world. I don’t remember anyone from my town who was suspected of being deceitful. Thus, I did not know how to distinguish between truth and lies; in my eyes, everyone was upright. And here I was, encountering the big, bustling city, hectic and noisy. I could not get my bearings and, already on my second day there, I stumbled upon some unscrupulous people who, it seems, took my measure correctly and fully exploited my blind trust, as they are wont to do. Before I knew what was happening, I had lost some 350 rubles, most of my money. I was so stunned by this unexpected calamity that, regretful and ashamed that I had allowed myself to be taken advantage of so completely already on my second day in the city, I lost my senses. And worse than that, I then made an even greater mistake. Instead of restraining my anguish and my sense of misfortune, learning from this bad experience, getting over this failure, and trying to build on the ruins, trying to repair the damage that had been done, I again took the simple way out. I wrote a letter to my father-in-law, a letter full of distress and weeping over my bitter fortune and over the tragedy that had befallen me and begging forgiveness for the agony I was causing them. This letter had a crushing effect on the entire family, and not just because of the money I had lost, but even more so because of my loss of will, of virility, of the strength and ability to bear up to failure and overcome it. I left Warsaw with the little money I had left and my brother met me in Vilna. He got frightened when he saw my face; it looked like that

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of a dead person. That’s how much I had changed from one day to the next. I had not eaten and I had not slept. I had spoken to no one and I had the look of a madman. I had no hope for the future. There remained in me no spark of life nor any desire to go on, and I decided to break off all contact with Dvinsk. But this is not what my father-in-law had in mind. He came to my brother’s place in Lida to persuade me to forget what had happened. Not asking about how it happened, he tried only to lift my spirits. He said that the misfortune that had occurred was a small thing and that it would grow larger only if I continued in my sorrow and dejection. It often happens that one does not succeed at first but learns from the experience and tries again. He revived my spirit, and my will to live and to get going returned. My brother and his brothers-in-law had a restaurant and tavern, and a delicatessen, and they suggested that I go to Vilna and try to obtain the distributorship for Lipsky Beer, which was then very popular throughout the Vilna region. They had a large courtyard and a cellar very well suited for this business, and they also had a friend among this beer manufacturer’s agents. I traveled to Vilna with my in-law and I succeeded in securing the distributorship. Within a month, my branch was open. Business was not bad. The beer was high quality and many were eager to drink it, despite the competition and the obstructionism of the local beer company. Yes, it was a good business, but there was “a sheep’s tail with a thorn in it.”11 Russian law did not permit Jews to deal in intoxicating beverages, so again it was necessary to circumvent the law and to get a license in the name of a goy. We found such a gentile and the license was taken out under his name. He was supposed to be present in the cellar where the beer bottles were filled, the labels affixed, and so forth, for if the government inspector should come by and find me in charge, and not the goy, the business would be shut down immediately. But this goy loved to drink and when he got drunk he made all kinds of trouble for me; he would threaten to go to the authorities and tell the truth. And this happened almost every week, because he got drunk almost every week. I got so tired of this situation that I decided to give up this busi11.  This Talmudic expression is the equivalent of “a fly in the ointment” or “just one little problem.” See Lewis Glinert, The Joys of Hebrew (New York, 1992), 16.

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ness, as well, and I soon found another Jew who was happy to take over the enterprise right away, leaving me with a small profit. Again I was left hanging with nothing decided. I invited my bride to come to Lida and she came. We spent a few days at my brother’s; his family liked her very much. The two of us returned to Dvinsk after a stay of a few days in Vilna and again the question of what to do arose. A year had passed since we got engaged. I had tried my hand at commerce and at a distributorship and I had not succeeded. I had lost half my dowry even before the wedding, and what will come next? How long will we go around in circles like this? We decided, first of all, to get married. At least that matter would be settled. I returned home to invite my parents to the wedding, which took place in the small town of Abeli, a train station between Dvinsk and Rakishok, convenient for both families. In the evening we returned to Dvinsk, to the home of my bride, who was now my wife. It cannot be said that either of us enjoyed our honeymoon very much. As a husband with his wife, I could not remain in my in-law’s home for long, especially since I knew that they really could not support us at their table. I reckoned as follows: I am a young man of twenty-five in the prime of his vigor and energy, and talented, and I’ve become someone who can’t succeed at anything. How sorry were my in-laws and my wife that they had made the mistake of taking me away from the estate, where at least my livelihood was secure and I could continue with my studies, since the work I had to do there was limited. My father-in-law nagged me with questions about why I was unable to find work that would provide a livelihood and, when I mulled it over, I was able to solve the riddle: by my nature, I’m unfit for commerce. My kind is not suited to buying and selling. I can’t stand the fraud and deceit I witnessed in commerce, particularly in Russia, where  the nature and location of Jewish businesses is restricted and where completion is great. By nature, I object to everything coarse, whether in word or in deed. To this day, I can’t stand hearing a vulgar joke. I have a kind of natural dignity which I inherited, no doubt, from previous generations of my family and which gets in the way of my dealing with material concerns. I am naturally inclined toward a life of nobility, toward lofty ideals, toward culture and the humanities, but I lack the drive to accomplish material success. And if I was unable to

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leave my small town when I was single, how could I do so now, with a millstone around my neck? True, I suggested to my wife that she stay with her parents while I go to Odessa, a great center of Jewish life in those days, but she wanted to hear nothing of it, of remaining alone. Her parents, and mine, also objected to this, and again my weak character came to the fore. I did not know how to overcome their objections and to act on my own convictions. “You have enticed me, and I was enticed” to go look for some kind of business in Dvinsk itself.12 They looked and found a glassware store that was for sale and I agreed to give this business a try. After all, I did have a little experience as a storekeeper. They agreed on a price with the seller, but the money available from the dowry was insufficient and my father came to Dvinsk to help. However, he was not pleased with the business; he understood that it was not suitable for me. The work was hard and the hours long. Moreover, my wife was disinclined to help me in this distasteful business. The shop stood in the middle of the marketplace, facing very fierce competition from similar shops. Customers had to be dragged in from the street and Father knew I couldn’t be this kind of haggling merchant. He expressed his reservations, but did not retract his willingness to help if we would decide to buy this store. And then a marvelous thing happened, as the seller had second thoughts after we had concluded the sales contract and I had already been in the store for several days. He pleaded that he was unable to find another business and that he had a large family to support, and he threatened not to leave the store premises. Here, for the first time I took courage and agreed, on my own, to return the store to him if he would immediately refund all my money, plus an additional 50 rubles for all the trouble he had caused me over several weeks. Thus the matter of the store was concluded. Secretly, I was very pleased that this affair turned out as it did and that I was again free to act on my own. In the idle period before we again searched for a business in Dvinsk, I quietly made up my mind that if I didn’t find some reasonable station in life quickly, I would go to America, whither two of my brothers had gone recently, joining our 12.  The quotation Frieden employs here is from Jeremiah 20:7.

Matchmakers and Marriage

older brother who had been there for some time. There was talk of an approaching war between Russia and Japan that year and, because of that, emigration to America was increasing, as well as to South ­Africa.13 Obviously, the Jews of Russia, deprived of rights, had no desire to serve in the Russian army, particularly in wartime. Moreover, the cost of trans-Atlantic travel had been reduced to almost nothing as a result of the great competition between the English and German shipping companies. The trip to the United States cost no more than 20 rubles. So too, opposition to the tsarist government was growing and any young person suspected of being a revolutionary was sent to Siberia without a trial of any kind. At the same time, the government began to increase the size of its army, and even those who earlier had been exempted because of specific privileges were now being drafted. This included people like me who held red exemption certificates. I informed my wife and my in-laws of my plan and they had no objection at all. I went home immediately to prepare for my journey. I was able to get a permit to leave Russia, using some excuse that I don’t recall. My wife came to us to say farewell and she remained with my parents the entire summer. I met my in-laws at some railway station on my way to Libau, from whence I was to depart for New York. From Libau I took a small boat to Copenhagen; everyone was seasick on the way. There we stayed about two weeks, waiting for a ship that would take us to New York. Those two weeks in Copenhagen were very pleasant. We were housed at the expense of the shipping company on an old boat that was no longer in service and that was used to lodge passengers who were waiting to depart. Every day we would go into town and visit in the synagogue and in the homes of local Jews, who welcomed us very graciously. The journey from Libau to New York was as dreadful and difficult as it was inexpensive. The ship was apparently a cargo vessel and the pas13.  A war between Russia and Japan, did, indeed, break out in February of 1904, due to the competing imperialist ambitions of the two countries in the Far East. This war, which lasted until September 1905, was a Japanese victory and a major cause of the failed Russian Revolution of 1905. On the Russo-Japanese War, see, for example, Richard Michael Connaughton, Rising Sun and Tumbling Bear: Russia’s War with Japan (London, 2003); and Denis and Peggy Warner, The Tide at Sunrise: A History of the Russo-Japanese War, 1904–1905 (New York, 1974). On the Revolution of 1905, see, for example, Andrew M. Verner, The Crisis of Russian Autocracy: Nicholas II and the 1905 Revolution (Princeton, N.J., 1990).

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sengers were housed in 2 × 2 compartments like cattle.14 Our sleeping accommodations were on the hard, straw-covered floor. The food was meager and terrible and those who could grab it from the hands of the seaman when he began to distribute it were the ones who got it. I was not accustomed to grabbing, and I never got any of the food distributed by the shipping line. I lived on the ample food that my mother had prepared for me: all kinds of good things to eat, cakes, and so forth. And although the journey lasted eighteen days, I was able to survive until I reached New York, completely exhausted and broken.15 When we arrived at Ellis Island, where immigrants were inspected before they were allowed to disembark in New York, I was sent for a special inspection. My heart sank. No one had come to meet me. And who would come? Moreover, I was unable to say anything, though I had learned a few words of English during the trip. My appearance was dreadful from the long passage and the lack of a healthy diet. Nonetheless, after a meticulous examination, the physician found me fit and allowed me to disembark. From New York, I took a train to Norfolk, where my brothers lived. I got there early the next morning. How happy I was to arrive in the land of freedom whose streets, according to legend, were paved with gold. The gold in the streets I didn’t see, but I felt the freedom as soon as my feet touched the ground. Nobody asked me for a passport except in order to get off the ship. People were friendly toward me and tried to understand me when I approached them with my fractured English. Theirs were not the irate faces, filled with hatred toward every Jew, to which I had been accustomed in Russia.

14.  A compartment of 2 × 2 meters, which is almost certainly what Frieden is indicating, would be one of about 6 ½ feet by 6 ½ feet. 15.  For a detailed discussion of the problems facing emigrants from the Russian empire, including those encountered in obtaining permission to leave and those involving various health concerns, see Gur Alroey, “Out of the Shtetl: In the Footsteps of Eastern European Jewish Emigrants to America, 1900–1914” Leidschrift 22 (April 2007): 91–122. Alroey reports that a ship ticket from Libau to New York in the period of Frieden’s emigration would have cost about 70 rubles, the equivalent of 35 dollars at the time or a little over $700 today. If Frieden paid only 20 rubles for his passage, he had indeed obtained a very inexpensive ticket.

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Editor’s Introduction

This chapter provides a fascinating firsthand account of an East European immigrant’s initial encounter with America and of his early years in the country. Even though Frieden’s description of his experience is no doubt influenced by the passage of time and even though the account is filtered through the consciousness of a Zionist pioneer in the Land of Israel, it nonetheless paints a vivid picture of a newcomer’s encounter with the United States early in the twentieth century. Many of the trials and tribulations about which Frieden writes were shared by tens of thousands of other immigrants as well: the peddling in the countryside, the struggle to get a start in business, the migration from one place to another and from one job to another, the not uncommon confrontation with personal tragedy, and, more generally, the encounter with new cultural realities. In this regard, Frieden’s initial reaction to African Americans and his adoption of the prevailing attitudes of white society are especially revealing, as is his first significant experience with antisemitism in America during his search for work in Saint Paul, Minnesota, the city to which he relocated for his health. Also enlightening is the picture Frieden paints of Jewish life in America in the early years of the twentieth century. Here we have a commentary on the state of religious leadership in smaller Jewish communities, on the manner in which Jewish peddlers plied their trade, on the impact of illness on immigrant families, and on many other features of the Jewish experience in the era of mass migration. This section of Frieden’s memoir is among those that suggest that one of the dominant questions in our author’s life was how to make a living. Writing in retrospect, Frieden devotes more attention to his business affairs than he does to just about any other aspect of his existence. Even momentous events such as the death of his first child and the birth of his second merit far less space than do his various attempts to find a suitable way to

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earn a livelihood. Perhaps Frieden’s focus on business affairs was because by the time he completed his memoir, he had developed an identity as a professional absorbed in the world of business. Or perhaps finding a livelihood was indeed an all-consuming concern throughout Frieden’s life. Although this chapter finds Frieden in an environment entirely different from that of his childhood and youth, this part of his memoir retains many of the features of earlier portions. Like earlier chapters, it quotes classic Jewish sources from time to time and it contains plenty of Frieden’s familiar digressions. Some, such as that about his parents’ attitudes toward money, provide additional insights into Jewish life in Eastern Europe. ­Others, such as that in which he explains how the Civil War freed American blacks from slavery or that in which he describes how the growth of mailorder sales drove peddlers out of business, are more purposefully pedagogic, as if Frieden felt compelled to inform future readers of his life story about certain subjects that captured his attention. This chapter also offers a number of passages in which Frieden’s storytelling abilities are vividly on display. Frieden’s account of how he and his brother became lost on a dark, snowy night is truly frightening, for example, and his account of his wife Etel’s death is tender and heartbreaking. As this chapter tells the story of major challenges and misfortunes in Frieden’s life, it is not surprising that it is at times plaintive and confessional. At one point, we read of Frieden the peddler sobbing over his fate at the side of the road. A little later, we find him piling regret upon regret: he is sorry about not completing his yeshiva education, about leaving Russia, about turning down the offer of a rabbinic position in Norfolk, and, most of all, about allowing himself to lament the past so bitterly. Still later, we find Frieden recording his intense grief at the loss of his wife. All in all, this chapter serves as a striking reminder of the way in which Frieden’s memoir is doubly absorbing and illuminating. It is both a personal story unique to Frieden the memoirist, full of human interest and of self-examination, and also an enlightening description of the kind of immigrant experience shared by a multitude of Jews around the turn of the twentieth century.

❊ in the year 1904, I arrived in Norfolk in the state of Virginia, one of the forty-eight states that constitute the United States of America, the land of freedom and equality, or at least that’s how it was described and that’s how I found it when o n t h e d ay o f h o s h a n a ra b a h

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I made my way to the country for the first time. When I descended from the train with my two homemade suitcases in hand, I didn’t know where to turn. I approached a black man and showed him my brother’s address. I then boarded a coach drawn by two gallant horses and within a few minutes I was already at my brother’s home, a small two-story house in the heart of a black neighborhood. At the front was a small store and behind it was a kitchen. Upstairs, on the second floor, were three rooms and bathroom facilities, none too elegant.1 My brother was not in the store at the time and his wife, Annie, a tall blond woman, quite good-looking, welcomed me happily, though she wrinkled her nose somewhat at having to pay the coachman a whole dollar to cover my fare; it would have been possible to get here for five cents. She was right but, first of all, I was not aware of that possibility and, more to the point, I was not accustomed to scrimping. At home we were comfortable and Father was fairly extravagant, especially when traveling, although Mother was extremely thrifty. Father was involved in business affairs that could not be conducted in a parsimonious manner. Expansiveness and openhandedness were needed in dealing with forests, flax trading, legal claims, and so forth. At the same time, Mother took care of the store, summer and winter. The work was especially difficult during the hard winters of Lithuania. There was the cold of the snow, the doors were open, and there was no heat, except for a whispering coal stove with which to warm one’s hands. A cold wind would blow through the entire store while Mother busied herself with the gentile customers: weighing, measuring, and cutting, warming her hands and again hurrying back to her mercantile tasks. That’s why she protected the fruits of her labors so carefully; perhaps more so than the fruit of her womb. I remember that sometimes even the bread was kept under lock and key and measured out to each child. Only on the Sabbath and on holidays would she become openhanded in honor of the occasion; then there was no limit. Father was an aristocratic person, extremely meticulous, seeing to it that everything was in good order. He did not pinch pennies, although 1.  The civil date of Frieden’s arrival would have been Friday, September 30, 1904. The brother to whose house Frieden went was his oldest sibling, Eliezer Yitzhak, called Louis in America. Norfolk city directories list Louis Frieden as a grocer at 678 Church Street in 1904 and as the owner of a dry goods business at the same address in 1906.

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he was not a spendthrift, either. He was good-natured and never raised a hand against the children. When he had to, he threatened to tell Mother and she would put us in our places as we deserved. Indeed, when we needed it, Mother did not spare the lash or the folded towel. And still, how great was our love for her and how much we honored her desires, not because of the threat of the towel, but because of how we honored and adored her. Mother was extremely pious, as she had been taught in her parents’ home. She knew how to read the prayers in the prayer book and she would recite Psalms during every free moment of every day. She was familiar with devotional texts that had been translated into Yiddish, such as the Tzena Ure’ena and Nofet Tzufim.2 She did not know how to write, but she nonetheless managed the store perfectly; she would record information in her own system of notation. Only after my brother Ya’akov was drafted into the Russian army did she ask me to teach her the basics of writing so that she could correspond with him by herself. Father was different. He too was pious and observant of both leniencies and stringencies in the law. I recall that he never forgot to place some water near his bed so that he would not walk four cubits in the morning before washing his hands.3 But he was not an extremist when it came to the children and, as I have said, he behaved generously and reasonably, and so we, too, followed in Father’s footsteps when we could. Among all my brothers, only one, Shmuel, was parsimonious like Mother. All the others were free with money and enjoyed life. When I came to America and was completely on my own for the first time, I took my first steps toward living as I wanted. Thus, I took the coach drawn by two horses without considering how much it would cost me. I thought it necessary to make an impression and to exhibit a 2.  Tzena Ure’ena (Come Out and See), appealing primarily to a female readership, was authored by Rabbi Ya’akov ben Yitzhak Ashkenazi of Janow (1550–ca. 1626). It summarized the weekly Torah portions and some of the commentaries related to them, and also contained additional materials such as prayers and readings from the Prophets. Nofet Tzufim (The Honey­comb’s Flow), by the Italian rabbi, philosopher, and physician Judah Messer Leon (ca. 1420–ca. 1498), was essentially a textbook of rhetoric extolling the oratory of Moses and other biblical figures. 3.  A cubit is defined as the distance from the elbow to the tips of the fingers. According to traditional Jewish practice, one who sleeps for 20 minutes or more is required to wash the hands and recite the appropriate blessing upon waking.

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certain dignity vis-à-vis my brother and so I could not appear as a beggar at the door. I had come to America with 20 dollars in my pocket and a gold watch, a present from my wife, and only a few items of clothing, but good ones. I didn’t have to be ashamed before anyone because of my appearance, and I was also already fluent in a few words of English. I was very tired from the hardships of the eighteen-day voyage on the ship Iceland and for this reason, I spent a full week at my brother’s in complete rest. I made the acquaintance of several Jews at the synagogue and on the street, the rabbi and the cantor, and I tried to plumb the depths of the freedom of America in actual practice. The impression that was made upon me was very powerful. For the first time in my life, I witnessed people intermingling, doing business and even enjoying themselves among goyim, with nobody saying a word against them. This at a time when, in Russia, the word zhid would burst forth from the mouth of every goy one encountered.4 I was very much impressed by the equality between people that I noticed at first glance, but I couldn’t understand the attitude toward the blacks. When I asked my brother why behavior was different towards the “niggras,” as they were called there, he answered: “Wait till you get to know them and then talk about it.” I accepted this answer and realized that I had a lot to learn in order to understand this land of freedom. I remember that I wrote my first letter to my wife and my in-laws full of wonder at the freedom that becomes apparent to anyone who sets foot in this country. In my opinion, I wrote, the prospect of American Jewry, which will continue to grow as a result of the flow of immigrants that is increasing yearly, is to supersede European Jewry when it comes to the fate of the Jews, a matter that is becoming increasingly urgent throughout all of Europe. Although my first days in America were devoted to rest and recovery, I could not stay idle, for from the first day I arrived, I was concerned about devising a way to quickly become more or less settled so that I could bring over my wife. As I said earlier, my material assets were zero. However, by contrast, the spiritual assets I brought with me were great 4.  The term zhid is the Russian-language equivalent of the highly offensive pejorative “kike.” On the use of this term, see, for example, Emil A. Draitser, Taking Penguins to the Movies: Ethnic Humor in Russia (Detroit, 1998), 112.

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in the eyes of the Jews of Norfolk, even though in my own eyes they were meager: a bit of Torah learning, a little cantorial ability, and a scholar’s visage, the countenance of a yeshiva student. In Lithuania, which abounded in Torah, my knowledge was insufficient for me to be considered a scholar. My expertise was limited. I had managed to learn a few tractates of Talmud, some Jewish law here and there, and Hebrew language, but I would not dare present myself to be examined for ordination as a rabbi. At most, I could explain a page of Gemara or teach a lesson in Hebrew, but no more. I never dreamed I would be able to take advantage of my limited abilities, to use them as “a spade with which to dig.”5 However, when I arrived in America and in Norfolk, I was suddenly transformed into a learned man. My knowledge was very great compared to that of the Jews of Norfolk, few of whom knew any Torah. Those who did had already forgotten it. Word got around the city that I was a rabbi and a cantor. This probably started when I was asked to lead services at the Orthodox synagogue on my first Shabbat in Norfolk. The next day, the leaders of the synagogue approached me and proposed that I accept the post of cantor and rabbi of the Chabad community. Although Norfolk had a cantor and a rabbi for the community at large, the members of the Chabad sect did not accept their authority. In fact, the cantor was not much of a cantor and Rabbi Gordon, of blessed memory, was still young and his learning did not exceed that of the average yeshiva student. The first time I heard him teach Gemara, I had to correct him concerning the plain meaning of the text.6 My brother was very proud of me and urged me to accept the offer that was made: a position that would allow me not only to earn a decent income, but also to bring my family over at once and to live honorably in complete comfort. Such a great success as I took my first steps here! I again stood at a crossroads. One way, the easier one, was to accept the position that promised me a livelihood, respect, and the ability to bring my wife over immediately, a life of ease and boundless benefits, an opportunity to expand my spiritual awareness and to achieve my 5.  For an explanation of this phrase, see Note 15 in the chapter “My Entry into Heder.” 6.  Rabbi Gordon is the Lithuanian-born and educated Jacob David Gordon (1873 or 1877–1947). Although Frieden reports that Gordon was present in Norfolk in 1904, other sources indicate he came to serve the city’s Orthodox community only in 1907. See Irwin M. Berent, Norfolk, Virginia: A Jewish History of the 20th Century (Norfolk, 2001), 25–26.

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earliest goal, the rabbinate. I could be one of the more modern “instruments of holiness” who were beginning to spread out across the United States in those days.7 And the second way, the more difficult one, was not to be drawn down the trodden path. The title of rabbi or cantor commanded neither respect nor glory in America in those days, especially in smaller cities. Mass migration had brought in its wake the creation of smaller Jewish communities rooted in the traditions of Orthodox Judaism throughout provincial America and all such communities needed a synagogue and clergy immediately: a rabbi, a cantor, a sexton. They were unable to attract ordained rabbis or recognized cantors, for such people were not among the immigrants, and if there were a few, most of them remained in the larger cities. Out of necessity, small communities took whomever was available. Anyone who wanted to, appropriated the title of rabbi; formal ordination was not demanded and a rabbinical association had not yet been established.8 It is no wonder, then, that I immediately encountered the attractive offer that was made to me. I could not, however, agree to deceive people. I was certain that, with my limited knowledge, I was not at all qualified for the rabbinate, even though I was sure that very soon I could have achieved ordination as a teacher. Moreover, I really had no interest in being an “instrument of holiness,” even though I understood that if I forsook the rabbinate I would have to work hard in order to earn a decent living. While I was still thinking about what I should do, and with the synagogue officials waiting for an answer, the community’s cantor came to me and explained the true situation. There is a split within the Norfolk Jewish community, with most people supporting him and the rabbi, and only a minority, though a wealthy one, seeking a new rabbi and cantor. He said that he, the cantor, was a family man and that the law of “a poor person going after a loaf of bread” applied to him.9 I was happy 7.  The term “instruments of holiness,” klei kodesh in Hebrew, is often used to designate clergy. 8.  In fact, the Union of Orthodox Rabbis of the United States and Canada, known in Hebrew as the Agudas Harabonim, had been established at a meeting of Eastern European yeshiva-trained rabbis in New York in 1902. For more on religious leadership in America’s smaller Jewish communities, see Lee Shai Weissbach, Jewish Life in Small-Town America: A History (New Haven, Conn., 2005), chapt. 9. 9.  On “a poor person going after a loaf of bread,” see Note 4 in the preceding chapter, “Matchmakers and Marriage.”

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to get this information, for with it, my problem was solved. I was no longer at a crossroads. I would not deprive this Jewish family man of his livelihood; this would be ethically unjust and a violation of Jewish law. I promised him that he did not have to worry and that I would not get involved in the communal dispute. I told my brother what I had decided. He was very angry at me and at my decision to reject this worthy position and he told me that, because of his anger and irritation, he would no longer take an interest in my affairs. I explained to him why I could not accept the offer, but to no avail. However, when he saw that I was determined, he stopped pressuring me. He said that I had no alternative but to follow the path taken by all newcomers to America who had no occupation: become a peddler or open a grocery store. These were the two ways of making a living with which most Jewish immigrants began when they came to America and sometimes they stayed with these occupations their entire lives. For lack of a suggestion of something more appropriate for me, I decided to become a storekeeper. After all, I had some mercantile experience from my father’s home. In the American South there are two types of food stores, those that deal with “whites” and those that are opened in neighborhoods inhabited by “blacks.” In order to open or buy a store in a “white” section of town, two things were necessary: knowledge of the language and a great deal of money. I was relatively deficient in both. I had neither the necessary knowledge of English nor the necessary funds, and my brother was neither able nor willing to offer the money needed to buy a “white” store. By comparison, a “black” store did not cost much and so I looked for a store in a black section of town. I sought and found a Jewish-owned store that was for sale in a black area in one of the suburbs of the city. The low price being asked seemed reasonable. I pawned my gold watch for 50 dollars and, with my brother as a reference, the wholesalers agreed to transfer the storekeeper’s debts to me. I also incurred a partial debt to the storekeeper, to be paid off over several months. And thus, without knowing the language and without any money, I became the owner of a store outside the city, among black folks whom I feared whenever I saw them, since one has to become accustomed to these black-skinned people. I had never before seen people of this color, their behavior brutish and lacking in manners.

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These “niggras,” as they are called derogatorily, used to be slaves of the white people throughout the entire southern section of America; enslaved and chattel. Whoever reads Uncle Tom’s Cabin can get a sense of black slavery in the United States. The liberation of the blacks, as demanded by the northern states, was a result of a civil war between the North and the South in the year 1861, a war which ended in the defeat of the South and the freeing of the blacks. This liberation from slavery did not bring on its heels the psychic liberation of the blacks and for many years they retained the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed over hundreds of years, a lifestyle of bondage and poverty, of corruption, thievery, brigandage, and murder—the work of their hands, wherein they glory.10 The assumption was that every black was a thief and a murderer and that one had to keep careful watch around them, and I didn’t know the language and was unable to converse with them. Their faces were the faces of savages, their eyes protruding and frightening, their white teeth jutting out from the blackness of their faces, their lips red and thick. I shook all over with fear, and these blacks will take advantage of you when they see that you’re afraid. They steal merchandise and tell you to shut up. I was unable to confront them. I didn’t know what to do and I was at my wits end after a few days. In the meantime, when he saw my despair, the man who had sold me the store and who still had not found another suitable business for himself proposed that I return the store to him and that he pay me for my troubles. I eagerly took him up on his suggestion and gladly gave back the store. So again I was free to find something to do. My brother had given up on me. I didn’t want to be a rabbi and cantor. I had failed as a storekeeper. Nothing was left but for me to try my luck as a peddler.11 This brother of mine, who had been in America many years, was not yet on 10.  Frieden is here alluding to Isaiah 60:20, in which God speaks of the People of Israel as “the work of My hands, wherein I glory.” Traditionally, this verse is recited before studying each chapter of Pirke Avot. 11.  Peddling was a very common initial occupational choice for many Jewish immigrants to America, both in the nineteenth century and in the early twentieth. See, for example, Rudolf Glanz, “Notes on Early Jewish Peddling in America,” Jewish Social Studies 7 (1945): 119–36; and Hasia Diner, “Entering the Mainstream of Modern Jewish History: Peddlers and the American Jewish South,” in Marcie Cohen Ferris and Mark I. Greenberg, eds., Jewish Roots in Southern Soil: A New History (Hanover, N.H., 2006).

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a sound financial footing. His haberdashery had not brought him much good fortune. Nor was he well aware of his true financial status. When I asked him about his situation, he answered that he didn’t know. He buys and sells, and he takes from his business what he needs to live, but his financial status is never clear. I suggested he take an inventory of the store so he could know what his status was, and I did it for him. It turned out that, in effect, he had no money. The profit he earned barely sufficed to sustain his family, despite their hard work. Obviously, he couldn’t assist me, nor would I have wanted to take his help. I was determined to stand on my own and I had no choice but to go to my other two brothers who had preceded me and who were in North Carolina, in the small town of Spring Hope, where my brother’s brotherin-law Liebman lived. My brothers made a living peddling. I informed my brothers that I would soon come to join them and they responded immediately saying I should not come, that this kind of work is not for me. It is suitable neither to my strength nor to my dignity. But I ignored their negative response and went. On this journey I intended, above all else, to learn to speak English. In Norfolk, I was unable to make much progress; everyone spoke Yiddish. Things were different in this provincial setting where there are no Jews. There was no alternative but to speak nothing but English. When I arrived in Spring Hope, I didn’t find my brothers, for they had left to carry out their business on Monday and would not return until the Sabbath. It was the custom of peddlers to leave for the week and come back on the weekend to replenish their stock and then to start all over again. I waited for them until they returned. When they saw me, they were annoyed. “Why did you come? We wrote you not to come.” They told me I would not be able to put up with this kind of work, especially since I’m careful when it comes to kosher food, which is unavailable in this town. “Well then,” I said, I would try. “I’ll stay as long as I can and we’ll see.” We all stayed at Liebman’s home and they bought their merchandise from him. I asked them to prepare a pack of goods for me as well, and I would go out with them on Monday. Three packs were made up: one for my brother Shneur; one for my brother Chaim; and a smaller one for me. We decided that Shneur (Sam) would go alone to one part of the territory, and Chaim and I would go out together so

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that I could learn the principles of peddling from him. Afterward, we would each go our own way to our own territory, since it would not pay for us to travel together. The arrangement was like this: we bought all sorts of notions, small things such as needles, thread, string, buttons—all kinds of little things needed in every home. We also took along the most important thing, eyeglasses. The whole business is built on eyeglasses. A pair of glasses that costs a few cents can be sold for several dollars. This business flourishes especially among the blacks; they can easily be convinced of almost anything. They have faith in the white man, especially in the South, a legacy of years of slavery when everything a white person said was sacred. The merchandise is wrapped up all together and put in a sack or in a large cloth. The bundle is tied up with straps and a space is left on its two sides for both arms to be inserted. Thus the bundle is carried on the back, bound to both shoulders, and we go on our way. In America, there are no agricultural villages. Each farmer has his own farmstead and the distance from one farmer to his neighbor, who also has his own farmstead, depends on the size of his landholdings. Near the farmer’s house are the small, wretched shacks where the black laborers who work his land live. They get part of their wages in produce and very little of it in cash. There are also farmers who lease part of their land to their laborers, who then work it on their own account. Any farmer or laborer who needs something would have to travel to a nearby town to buy it, and that’s why the peddling trade has flourished so in the country. People prefer having small items brought to them in their homes so that they don’t waste their time, even if it means paying a bit more. The three of us started out early in the morning and when we were at some distance from the town we reached a crossroads. Our brother Sam took his leave and went off in one direction and we went off in another. We would arrive at the first farm and ask to come in. If the lady of the house needed something, we would be allowed to enter. We would open our bundles and the lady would select what she needed and pay for it. We would then pack up our bundles and go out to the homes of the black workers. There, we wouldn’t ask permission to enter. In the South, a white person never asks permission to enter the home of a black; it would be a disgrace for Southerners to do so. With the black

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customers we spend more time because they want to buy everything they see, if they can only afford it. In the course of time, peddlers learn to judge in advance whether a black has money or not and so they know if it’s worthwhile taking time with him. We had not yet acquired this skill and so we wasted a great deal of time for nothing. We made several stops and sold a few things and, when we got tired and hungry in the course of our wanderings, we would remove our packs from our shoulders in a roadside grove and sit down to eat and rest. When I learned that I would be unable to get kosher food in Spring Hope, I wrote to my brother, asking that he send me some black bread and sausage, and this was my diet the entire time I peddled. My brothers would get excellent provisions locally, and they would also eat with the farmers. Here we are sitting in a wood by the side of the road with my shoulders aching from the weight of the goods and the pressure of the straps. The bundles lie near us. I’m eating bread and sausage and the food sticks in my throat. I couldn’t repress the pain in my heart when I remembered the wife I had left in a land so far away. I was reminded of my life in Lithuania, of my home, my parents and brothers, of the false hopes that had gotten me to my present situation. I am sitting in a forest in North Carolina, eating the bread of sorrow. I could not keep from crying. My brother, who had gotten used to these conditions over several months, laughed at me and said: “You see, I wrote you not to come. I knew you wouldn’t be up to this kind of thing.” I had no possible response. It’s true that my “eating days” during my years in yeshiva were not among the best things in life, but then it was for the sake of learning; Torah is not acquired in the midst of plenty. So too, there is a spiritual satisfaction in the life of a yeshiva student, because he has before him the sacred goal of learning Torah. There is compensation for being stuck with “eating days.” But what kind of satisfaction can the life of a peddler provide? It’s a strange sort of life, wandering from place to place and each night looking for a different spot to sleep. Moreover, sometimes mere entry into a home is denied, for at that time peddlers had a bad reputation on account of the behavior of a few of them, men without scruples who deceived people by selling them inferior merchandise at exorbitant prices and who sometimes took things that didn’t belong to them. There were some localities that wouldn’t even issue licenses to

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peddlers because storekeepers in the towns objected. I had surely fallen from the top of the mountain to the depth of the valley.12 At that point I was sorry about a number of things: I was sorry that in my early years I did not have the desire and the strength to continue my studies until I reached my goal; I was very sorry that I was unable to manage in Russia and that I had to leave my wife and family and wander off to this land; and most of all, I regretted that I had not accepted the position of rabbi and cantor that had been offered me in Norfolk. And even more than this, I was extremely regretful that my character was so weak that I was given over to lamenting the past. I felt sorry about my feeling sorry, because there was no use in doing so. I recalled the saying of our sages: “He who bewails the past,” and so forth.13 And so, while I sat in that Carolina wood, I decided that this peddling is temporary, only for as long as it takes me to learn English. I will not go around on foot carrying a pack on my back. Certainly not. I’ll arrange our peddling so it won’t be so hard on us and so it will also bring in a greater profit. I informed my brother of what I had decided and told him that I intended to buy a horse and wagon. We’ll both ride in it and we’ll be able to carry more goods; this will pay the expenses of the horse. We will have to buy our merchandise directly from the wholesaler and not from Liebman, where the price is higher. This Liebman fellow will certainly be angry, and so we’ll have to rent a place that will provide both living accommodations and storage space for the stock we’ll order from Baltimore using a catalogue I saw at my brother’s. The following week, my two brothers went off by themselves with their packs, and I remained in town to make the arrangements I had suggested. I found an inexpensive apartment, sent an order to the wholesaler in Baltimore, and bought a horse and wagon. Within a month we were well organized. Chaim and I would travel with trunks filled with all kinds of merchandise and our sales increased, while Sam would go out on foot with his pack during the week. On Friday, we would return to our apartment. I bought dishes and I would cook food, other than meat, and we would eat at home. On Sunday we would send off an 12.  Here Frieden employs the Aramaic saying: meigrah ramah el birah amiktah. 13.  The reference here is to tractate Brachot 54a, where the full quotation is “He who bewails the past utters a prayer in vain.”

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order to Baltimore and on Monday we would again go out. I concentrated not so much on increasing how much was sold, but on two other things: learning the language and dealing honestly in order to improve the reputation of peddlers, at least in the part of the country where we traveled around. Both these things I achieved to a certain degree. By the time I left peddling to return to Norfolk, we were known as “honest peddlers” and we had a decent place to sleep every night. We would be welcomed with respect and they would allocate the finest room in the house to us. Of course, we would pay for our lodgings, not with money, for money would not have been accepted, but with gifts from our stock. In the evening I would get an English lesson, given gladly by the farmer’s daughter, who was often a schoolteacher in a nearby town. Everywhere we spent the night, we became friendly with the family. My brother would dine at their table and I would eat only what I could: eggs, fruit, coffee. My behavior was appreciated by the Southerners, for they are all people of faith and they respected me greatly. They used to call me “Jesus” because I had a small beard at the time and to them I bore a striking resemblance to their Lord, Jesus of Nazareth.14 Every evening the neighbors would gather. They would sit around in a semicircle in front of the big fireplace—there was one in every home—chew tobacco and spit it into the fire from a distance of several meters; that’s how well they had learned to spit. Everyone came to hear the latest news from the peddlers, and even though our English was not yet perfect, we gradually learned how to tell them about events in a world foreign to them. Only once were we unable to find a place to sleep. It was a day when sales were bad. We had traveled for more than half a day without selling a thing and we decided to go to a new location. It was a snowy, frosty day and the horse dragged himself along. Eventually, we were drawn to an area that was completely unknown to us. In any case, it was getting dark and we began to look for a place to spend the night. Every place we went, they refused to let us in. It got darker and darker and the horse was exhausted. We helped him pull the wagon until we reached a farm where we hoped to find some rest for the horse and for ourselves. 14.  Because of either the author’s error or the transcriber’s, the mimeographed version of Frieden’s memoir has “Joseph of Nazareth.”

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And here, too, we were told to keep moving. When we refused, saying that our horse had no strength to budge, the farmer came out with a gun in his hand and threatened to shoot if we didn’t get going immediately. And so we wandered on for several more hours. The area seemed empty of habitation, until we saw a light in the distance. We got to the place and found the house of a black man, one room and not much more. True, he offered to let us make use of his room, but we declined the offer. He arranged a place for the horse in some cave and fed him, and we managed somehow in the wagon until daybreak. He marveled at how we had arrived at his place, an old gold mine to which no one ever comes. Hungry and frozen, we were happy to leave the place and we hurried off to reach some settlement.15 That’s how six months passed for me. I learned to speak English fairly well and also to read a little, and I decided that I had had enough of peddling. I turned everything over to my two brothers. From then on, my younger brother Sam no longer had to go on foot and to trade with a pack on his back. I took 50 dollars and returned to Norfolk. The arrangement I had made with peddling had come to an end. Actually, the peddling business had already begun to go into decline on account of the retail-wholesale trade conducted by way of catalogues sent to every farmer throughout the land. This business was developed primarily by the Jew Rosenwald, who made many millions.16 His catalogue pictured every item that was for sale in his store and it contained anything needed by man, woman, or child: personal items, housewares, farm equipment. Everything was illustrated and detailed, available in every size and with the price listed. The rural population, and especially blacks, readily took to this system. They would send their orders with payment through the mail and they would get their merchandise 15.  For another account of an East European Jewish peddler and his encounter with blacks in the South, see Louis Schmier, “‘For Him the “Schwartzers” Couldn’t Do Enough’: A Jewish Peddler and His Black Customers Look at Each Other,” American Jewish History 73:1 (Sept. 1983): 39–55. 16.  The reference here is to Julius Rosenwald (1862–1932), a clothier who became part owner of Sears, Roebuck & Company in 1895 and helped transform the firm into a mail-order giant. Rosenwald also became a major philanthropist whose projects included a network of schools to serve African American children and the Museum of Science and Industry in Chicago. See, for example, Morris Werner, Julius Rosenwald: The Life of a Practical Humanitarian (New York, 1939); and Peter M. Ascoli, Julius Rosenwald: The Man Who Built Sears, Roebuck and Advanced the Cause of Black Education in the American South (Bloomington, Ind., 2006).

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in perfect condition. These mail order houses were careful about being efficient and honest so as not to lose a single customer. Every customer had the right to return merchandise at the expense of the company if it was not as he had ordered. That’s how the business grew throughout all of America, in town and country, leaving no room for peddlers to prosper and so they were put out of work. Some peddlers did remain in larger cities. They would provide housewives with everything they wanted for their homes and their families, from brooms to pearls and jewelry, with easy weekly or monthly payments. Over time, however, these peddlers, too, were displaced by large retailers who also provided weekly or monthly payment plans called “installment sales.” These retailers are the ones who introduced high volume sales on an unprecedented scale, enriching manufacturers, themselves, and the country. Their stores were huge and the whole business was based on the concept that everyone is honest.17 This is an example of following the principle in Judaism that every person is presumed to be upright unless proven otherwise. Every person enjoys being comfortable and having an abundance of possessions; only if he can’t afford them does he get along without them. It is on this premise that installment selling was established, and it spread from America to the rest of the world. If a person has to pay in cash, he can’t buy things until he has the money and so the manufacturer, the wholesaler, and the retailer have to wait until the customer has cash in hand. They are thus forced to reduce their output and their stock. This reduction leads to less work and decreased employment and this, in turn, causes additional reductions throughout the economy. It’s different if the customer is allowed to obtain what he needs immediately and to pay for it when he gets the money, or to pay for it in small installments with money he can set aside from his usual expenditures. Thus, demand for various commodities will rise, manufacturing will increase, more work will be available and there will be no unemployment. Everyone will benefit from this, including the country as a whole. 17.  Frieden probably has in mind here novel practices such as allowing customers free entry into the store and displaying merchandise in the open. See, for example, William Leach, Land of Desire: Merchants, Power, and the Rise of a New American Culture (New York, 1993), esp. part 1.

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Some unscrupulous merchants took advantage of the inclination of people to buy on time and would sell them goods at exorbitant prices. They made millions and the government was forced to limit this excessive exploitation by requiring certain provisions in installment sales contracts. During World War II, installment buying was stopped completely because of the great shortage of goods and the increased demand brought on by the war; this was in order to prevent inflation. Price controls were instituted as well. These partial limitations were rescinded only in 1948.18 The reigns were loosened and again sales increased daily and profits mounted. That’s a result that leads to prosperity. Everyone has work, everyone makes money, and everyone lives in affluence and great comfort. Americans like to work, and to work hard. Their productivity is the highest in the world and when they retire, they want to enjoy the fruits of their labor. This is the secret of America’s success: to live and to let live, to earn and to allow others to earn. It’s not only money that passes from one hand to another, but also profits. Americans are not accustomed to haggling. They understand that everyone is a link in the chain of national success and so there is a principle that everyone in each and every occupation and in each and every branch of manufacturing and trade should get his share of the country’s profits. When I returned to Norfolk with only 50 dollars in my pocket, I had no choice but to open a grocery, a business one could start with no money. It happened that a Jewish grocer whose wife became ill and had to leave Norfolk on doctors’ orders was offering his store for sale. This was a small grocery not far from my brother’s business on a little side street on which there were three stores. It was in a black neighborhood full of houses of prostitution serving both blacks and whites. These houses supplied the customers for the three stores. Turnover was not a problem; I had to go buy stock from the distribution centers every day, even though there was no one to leave in the store. 18.  In fact, installment buying was not completely stopped during World War II, but it was regulated for the first time in September 1941, when the government imposed certain controls, such as rules for minimum down payments on many goods. These controls expired in 1947, not in 1948 as Frieden writes, but they were re-imposed briefly in 1948–1949 and again in 1950–1952 during the Korean War. See E. Allan Farnsworth, Installment Sales (Tübingen, Ger., 1973), p. 4-22.

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I bought a steamship ticket on credit and sent it to my wife, telling her to hurry and join me. At the same time, I hired a helper for the store. For several months I lived in the store’s back room, a miserable room with no light or air, damp and dirty. In the meantime, I acquired an apartment and furniture, and when my wife joined me she found a rather pleasant home ready for her, and a business that provided a livelihood, if only through hard work. A grocery in this kind of neighborhood had to be kept open from 6:00 in the morning until 10:00 or even 12:00 at night. Nonetheless we were pleased with our lot, for this time we had finally gotten settled. Another reason I liked this store is that I could close it on Shabbat and holidays, which would have been impossible with a store where whites traded. Moreover, American law permits one to keep his business open on Sunday if he keeps it closed for religious reasons on a day he considers sacred; “religious freedom.” I was very pleased I did not have to desecrate the Sabbath, although I was sorry that I had no time to study except on Shabbat. Alas, this is the life of the Jews in America who are completely immersed in their businesses and have no time for anything else. How our happiness increased when we learned of my wife’s first pregnancy. Our hearts leaped for joy over the fact that we were about to embark upon a true family life. My wife prepared for the blissful day, expanding in body and spirit, and we were both thrilled about what was to come. And then the happy day arrived and we had a son. We arranged for a most splendid brit milah in the hospital. My wife was already preparing to leave the hospital when our eight-day-old infant son took sick and only a few days later he was gone. Our heartbreak and sorrow swelled as we saw the tiny, guiltless infant breath his last and die in my arms. His death affected my wife terribly. She absolutely refused to return to our home and I left her for a while with some friends, where there were two young women who tried hard to restore her spirits, to console her and to give her strength. I found another apartment and we moved to a more comfortable home in a more pleasant neighborhood among white people. Slowly, slowly, she returned to good spirits and our family life returned to normal. I became determined not to remain the owner of a grocery, a smallscale, contemptible business which involves arduous labor, does not reward the hard work it demands, and does not take advantage of

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my abilities. I was aware of Jews whose stores wore them down completely; twenty years and more they were stuck in this petty business and they didn’t dare get out because their strength had been sapped by hard work. They didn’t have the energy to start in another line of work and they died in the grocery business and because of it. I decided to take advantage of the good credit I had acquired with all the wholesale houses in the meantime. I had a solid reputation as an honest merchant who was careful to always pay his bills promptly. I contacted one of my brothers, Hyman, asking him to give up peddling and join me. We immediately opened another store in a suburb of the city. We expanded our activities and began to see good results. The second store progressed quickly and we called our brother Sam to come to Norfolk and I established my first firm: M. Frieden and Brothers. At the same time, I thought of two things that would expand our business: one was to continue opening new stores. This was a completely new concept, for chain stores of the kind that now dominate the grocery and haberdashery business in America had not yet been established. This was a brilliant idea, witness its tremendous flowering today. However, we had too little capital at our disposal to dare to implement this bold idea, so we pursued a second scheme, to move slowly from retail trade to wholesale.19 I had had enough of the retail business which, though it provides a secure income, has limited potential for growth, except through the opening of more stores. This is not the case with a wholesale business, whose potential is limitless. Moreover, you can oversee a huge wholesale operation personally, while in retail trade with multiple stores you’re dependent on others, for you can only be in one store yourself. So that’s how we got going. At first, we bought merchandise in large quantities from other wholesalers and they would share their profits with us. Gradually we began to order goods directly from the factory. For lack of credit, however, we had to pay cash, which made it very hard for us. Slowly, on the recommendation of the bank with which we dealt, we began to get credit from the factories and as our wholesale business increased, we cut back on our retail sales. We closed our retail stores and opened a wholesale house and we became well known in the city. 19.  The Norfolk city directory for 1909 lists “Frieden Brothers” as a wholesale confectionary firm at 754 Church Street, with Morris, Samuel, and Hyman Frieden as partners.

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In the meantime, on December 4, 1909, my first daughter, Miriam, was born. With the arrival of this daughter, my wife recovered her health completely and happiness returned to our home. For the entire two years between our son who died and our daughter who survived, my wife never played the piano. When our daughter was born, she began to play again, for she would have to teach the girl to play. All was gladness and joy. Our wholesale business dealt mainly in candy that we ordered from candy factories all over the United States. Virginia produces the very best peanuts, and from these nuts all sorts of sweets, called “peanut candies,” are produced.20 We had a large warehouse connected to our wholesale house, and there we opened a factory. Our product was a good one and sold quickly. At the same time, there was on the market a candy in the shape of a hand with its fingers stuck in a tree. The only factory that supplied us with this product could not fill all our orders, so we decided that we, too, would make this candy. We bought the necessary equipment and began to manufacture this product, and not just to supply our own needs; we also got orders from nearby cities. Our business began to grow tremendously and the burden of all the work fell upon me: ordering the raw materials, keeping the books, and so forth. One of my brothers took care of sales and the other looked after the factory. The most difficult thing was finding new capital for the business and this difficulty grew daily, to a point where I began to investigate the workings of the factory, which was completely under the management of my brother Chaim. I discovered in calculating the cost of producing the hard candy, which was made entirely of pure sugar, that not only does it not yield a profit, but that we lose some 25 percent on every crate we sell. I immediately stopped production. We learned later that the workers were stealing some of the raw material. The manufacture of “the hand” came to an end. The pressure of working twelve hours a day and spending part of the night in meetings, for I had begun to take a large part in the Zionist work that was developing in the United States at the time, took its toll on my health. At the same time, my wife began to feel ill. It was feared that I had a lung disease. (Only after her death did I learn that, before we 20.  Virginia peanuts are one of the four most popular peanut groups cultivated for their desirable characteristics. The other three are Spanish, Runner, and Valencia.

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were married, my wife had been stricken with this disease and had recovered.) I began to feel tired constantly and to cough at night. I went for a vacation in the hills of Connecticut and I had throat and nose surgery, but this did not help. The doctors recommended that I leave Norfolk, for its air was moist and malaria-ridden. I was advised to go to Minnesota, which has wonderful cold, healthful air and so, in the summer of 1910, I left the business to my brothers, took my family, and went to the big city of Saint Paul, the capital of Minnesota. It was a long and tiring trip. We rented a room in a simple pension in one of the suburbs of the city and I began to look for work. We had left most of our belongings in Norfolk until we got settled. I decided to first look for a position as an employee because the amount of money I had was too small to start a proper business of my own and I didn’t want to open a store. And here for the first time I encountered the social standing of the Jews in America. In Norfolk, I had had almost no association with non-Jews; all my business was with Jews. The goyim with whom I had contact were ones who sought me out for business dealings such as insurance sales, wholesale transactions, and so forth. Obviously, they didn’t reveal any hostility toward me, especially since most of them were indeed worthy individuals from the wealthier upper class. The relations between us were always very proper, although there could not be relations of friendship between us because we never became involved in their circles. I discovered that in the city of Saint Paul it was otherwise. I began going around to stores and factories, having read their notices in the local newspapers. Every place I went was a non-Jewish business and in every place their first question was if I were a Jew. When I answered in the affirmative, the reaction usually took a turn: either they tried to send me on my way politely or they pushed me out gruffly without making any excuses. For two weeks I walked the streets of Saint Paul following advertisements in the press. It wore me out. I stopped looking for a job and was forced to take what was, relatively speaking, the easy way out: storekeeping. But before acting on this option, I tried my luck in another direction. My older brother’s wife had a relative, a Mr. Shallit, in Mankato, Minnesota. My brother wrote to him and he came to see me in Saint Paul. I impressed him favorably and he invited me to visit him. He said he’d see what he could do for me. I went to see him and stayed at his

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home. It was the home of a wealthy Jew and they were straightforward people; his wife was an intelligent woman. He had a big store with a large inventory and he was considering opening a branch in some small town in the area so that he could sell off the goods that filled his storerooms and for which Mankato itself did not offer a large enough market. I traveled to several towns that he identified, remote towns without a single Jew there. I could not take upon myself such an existence, to be the only Jew in a gentile environment where there was no possibility of maintaining Jewish tradition, no kosher food, no place to pray. It would be a place without any Jewish life and I would be forced to live a goyish life if I wanted to survive there. This I could not do. He had nothing else to offer me, and so we parted company and I returned to Saint Paul. My wife was pleased when I told her why I could not accept Mr. Shallit’s offer, for besides my arguments against the proposal, she had an additional one: she was pregnant and would not be able to endure a pregnancy and childbirth in an unfamiliar, gentile environment in an isolated town. I was alarmed at this news and was not at all pleased about it. We were in a strange city without family or friends, with little money and with no livelihood. How would I be able to make provisions for this situation now? I had no alternative but to find a store that I could afford, and immediately. Among the advertisements in the paper, I found one for a store, half grocery and half newsstand, that was for sale in a nice, wealthy neighborhood. I went to see the store and found it just right for my circumstances. The store was in a two-story building on a street near where the wealthy of the city lived in their grandiose palaces. It was small and its income came from the sale of newspapers, magazines, ice cream, and various canned goods. Behind the store were two rooms and bathroom facilities, and on the second floor were three rooms with a separate entrance, so they could be rented out. The rent was not very high, but the cost of the place was not small, relatively speaking, given that there was little stock in the store. The key money, however, made up most of the expense.21 21.  It is unclear how Frieden is using the term “key money” here. Key money usually means an extra payment, usually illegal, made by a potential tenant in order to secure a lease on a desirable property. However, the term can also mean a security deposit. On the concept

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We reached an agreement right away, since I could not afford to wait and the place was suitable for my needs. It was in a very pretty area among wealthy people, a quiet environment just right for my wife during her pregnancy. I sent a telegram to Norfolk asking them to wire me more money. I received it and paid for the store after the lease on the building and the previous owner’s debts were transferred to my name. And so again I became a storekeeper. True, I was a storekeeper among whites and not blacks, but still a storekeeper, something I very much disliked being. Nonetheless, we were happy that we had become pretty well settled and we telegraphed to have our things sent to us. They arrived and we set up a rather comfortable home. Again we resumed a normal life. Even though the hours were long, the work in the store was not difficult and we were involved in dealings with respectable, well-educated people. Orders were telephoned in and I had to deliver them myself, for it did not pay to hire a messenger. I brought the packages; they were light ones: a newspaper, a magazine, ice cream, a canned good, and so forth. People received me nicely and sometimes invited me to stay a moment, asking about me and my family. The air was clean and healthful, though it was very cold, sometimes 25 below zero.22 There was no heating system in the building, only coalfired stoves. In the apartment there was a large iron stove in the middle of one of the rooms and it heated all of them. When it was fired up, it retained its heat for an entire week. We only had to clean out the ashes and add coal once a day. The pregnancy was going well. My wife visited a doctor and he found that everything was in order. When I went into the city to buy merchandise or out to deliver an order, my wife helped in the store. Our daughter developed nicely in the clear, refreshing air and we were happy with our lot. The first snow came, a heavy snow that covered everything with a thick blanket. This was a snow that created a layer of white that remained until spring, when it began to melt. As the cold and snow intensified it became difficult to walk in the street and we went out only when we had to. In Norfolk we didn’t need much in the of “key money” in Israel, which may have influenced Frieden’s use of the term, see Yochi Yahel, “Greetings from Israel,” Global Tenant (January 2004): 4–5. 22.  The coldest temperature on record in Saint Paul during the winter of 1910–1911 was, indeed, minus 24 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 31 degrees Celsius) on January 3.

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way of winter clothing, because the winter is mild there; snow falls only for a short time and then melts. Here in Minnesota, the ears and face freeze immediately when one goes out into the street and one needs to be very careful and to have special clothes to withstand the extreme cold, which grows even more intense when the sun sets. After a visit to the doctor when my wife’s pregnancy had reached its ninth month, he informed her that she was ill with tuberculosis. Indeed, my wife had been coughing throughout all the months of her pregnancy, but the doctor had told her nothing. And now this sudden calamity. My wife was no longer apprehensive about telling me the truth, and she revealed that before our marriage she had contracted this disease and, after getting good care, she had been completely cured. She didn’t think she needed to tell me about this because she felt absolutely healthy. I can’t describe how I felt then. I knew that someone with this illness could not withstand a pregnancy. I chastised the doctor for not preventing the development of the pregnancy and he was indeed very sorry that he had not performed an examination earlier when she told him about her coughing. Now there was nothing to be done. This was the end of the pregnancy period and he feared that it would also be the end of her life. The doctor my wife saw was a gentile. She went to him on the recommendation of the Jewish midwife whom we had engaged to take care of her when the time came. I then recalled that one evening in Norfolk, when I came home, I found my wife in bed and when I asked her what had happened, she told me that she had gone to my good friend Dr. Friedman because she had coughed up some blood. The doctor had examined her and said it was nothing, that there was no sign of illness. The matter was forgotten, because even then she didn’t reveal to me the truth about her previous sickness. Oh how I wish she had told me the truth, because when the disease is dormant, it’s possible to watch that it doesn’t develop into active tuberculosis. And even more so, we would have known that she should not become pregnant. Because her earlier pregnancies had gone well, however, she didn’t want to frighten me. She was an upright and very modest woman, mindful about ritual immersion, and under no circumstances would she have consented to terminating her pregnancy

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by abortion, and at that time easier ways of preventing pregnancy were not yet known.23 The last month of my wife’s pregnancy was a month of terrible fear, restlessness, and deep sadness for us, without our knowing what to do. The doctor came to see us frequently and found the pregnancy to be going well. When my wife’s labor pains began, I phoned the doctor and he came immediately, but without a nurse. I wanted to run get the midwife, but there was not enough time because my wife was about to deliver. The doctor began to tend to her as I held a lantern to provide him with light, for the house had no electricity. The birth was easy, lasting about an hour, and we had a second daughter. In the meantime the midwife arrived. It seemed that there was no great danger. True, my wife was weak, but she wasn’t in pain. The doctor came the next day and gave my wife a thorough examination. After the examination, he told me she had a high fever and that, in her condition, this was very bad. He summoned a nurse to look after her, for the midwife abandoned my wife when she learned of her illness. The nurse would come for only a few hours a day and I had to look after the store, my wife, the infant, and Miriam as well. It was very hard for me during those days, not only on account of the work, but even more so on account of the fear of what might happen. I saw that my wife grew weaker from day to day. The doctor would come with the nurse and they treated her, but without hope. He told me that I had to be strong and prepare myself for what was to come. I was to be careful not to become infected myself and not to let the girls become infected. He would see what he could do. A few days later, he came, gave my wife some medication, and left without saying a word. I brought the medicine and gave my wife one spoonful. She fell back helpless on the bed and remained motionless for several hours. I phoned the doctor and he said he would come immediately and that if she should awaken in the meantime, I should give her another spoonful of the medication. She did awaken and she spoke, 23.  Frieden is, of course, mistaken about methods of birth control being unknown; rubber condoms, for example, had been available since the 1840s. However, the Comstock Act of 1873 made the provision of birth control information or materials illegal in the United States until its restrictions were removed gradually beginning after World War I.

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telling me she felt no pain and that she was not afraid. She asked for the medicine and I gave it to her. Some ten minutes later she began to expire. I bellowed from the depths of my heart, I called out to people in the street, and I telephoned the doctor. Some neighbors came in and one woman, a regular customer of ours who was a former nurse, examined my wife and told me she was dead. Her pure soul breathed its last as she lay in my arms on the 18th of March 1911. To this day I can’t comprehend how I endured the terrible tragedy that befell me during the prime of my life. Perhaps it was the responsibility I felt toward my two little orphans, Miriam and Batya, the twoweek-old infant that I now had to nurture. Perhaps it was my dismay, the numbness that overcame me as a result of the tremendous blow I had suffered. But I behaved as a completely normal person. I telephoned a townsman of mine who was in Saint Paul at the time and asked him to come over. He arrived immediately and I asked him to deal with the burial society. I told him to telegraph Norfolk asking that someone come to help me in my hour of need. I looked after the two girls myself. The store, I closed. I had neighbors in the house, living on the second floor, and I asked them to take in the infant until after the funeral. I remained alone at home with my dead wife and my daughter Miriam, who did not yet understand the huge catastrophe that we were facing. The funeral took place the next day. All of our non-Jewish neighbors and some of the new friends that we had managed to make came to accompany the deceased. She was buried in the cemetery of Saint Paul’s Jewish community and a tombstone was placed over her grave.24 I remember nothing of the shiva period. My younger brother Yehoshua came from Norfolk and looked after the store, and I sat all day long during the shiva with Miriam at my side, crying whenever I cried. Both of us crying over our terrible tragedy, over the freshly closed grave that had taken from us all that we held dear. The nights were hard. When the girls slept, I was able to release my bitter feelings and to let the tears flow from my eyes, aching from sleeplessness. 24.  The Saint Paul city directory for 1911 reveals that there were three Jewish cemeteries in the city in that year: the Mt. Zion Hebrew Congregation cemetery, the Sons of Jacob cemetery, and the Russian Hebrew cemetery, where Etel Frieden was most likely interred. Morris Frieden’s name does not appear in the directory for 1911, probably because he had arrived too recently to be included.

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And so the shiva period passed and when I arose from the shiva I had to decide what to do. My brother Yehoshua had to return to Norfolk and how could I be left alone with two little girls who needed constant care? My store, the source of my livelihood, remained closed. How would I be able to survive, even if I could find someone to take care of my children? In the meantime, they telegraphed from Norfolk that I should return there. (Later, I learned that they feared for my life and so decided to call me back to Norfolk.) Having no other choice, I agreed. I sold the store for 1,000 dollars and this included the furniture and housewares, since I didn’t want to take anything with me except clothes. I went with Miriam to take leave of the sacred grave that we were leaving behind. I was broken in spirit, in mind, and in body. My strength was waning, for my pain was growing daily as I witnessed the misery of my children, suffering from insufficient attention. I could not sleep at night. Sales in the store were down after its being closed for a week and all this convinced me to return to Norfolk, to the family and to the place where I had acquired many friends. Perhaps I would be able to revitalize myself, primarily for the sake of my little orphans. The trip of one day and two nights with an infant in diapers was very difficult, but somehow we reached Norfolk safely, broken and tired. My brothers and their wives were waiting for us at the station and they took the girls straight to my brother Hyman’s. For several days I stayed with them in the house without moving and without reacting to anything. I could find no peace; I moaned and cried over my sad fate and over the fate of my little orphan girls. What will become of them? I was filled with doubt, delusional. There were some days I didn’t want to see dawn at all. I had lost the thing most precious in my life and so why should I remain alive? But what would happen to my little daughters? Should I leave them to be cared for by my family? Do I have the right to do that? Is that how I would fulfill my obligation to the deceased, by abandoning her children? And my sister-in-law was demanding that I make arrangements for the girls right away. She also had children and she didn’t have the strength to look after mine as well. She made her demand not out of any ill will, but primarily to compel me to emerge from my apathy, to bring me back to the real world. My brother also pressured me to return to reality and to see to my daughters. And, of course, they were right.

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Tears stream from my eyes every time I read what I have written about the great tragedy that befell me; I can’t control myself. I feel a searing pain in my heart when I recall that year of 1911. The hardest thing was when I had to write to my wife’s parents about what had happened, about the great calamity that had befallen them as well, for she was their only daughter. They knew exactly when she was due to give birth and they awaited a telegram from me which I had, indeed, sent the day after our daughter was born. And then, hardly a week had passed and I had to inform them of the awful catastrophe. I don’t remember what I wrote. I only remember that the letter was utterly heartfelt and that it was apparently full of agony and anxiety, for less than a month later I received a very warm and gracious condolence letter from her father. They knew that they were partly responsible for the tragedy that had befallen them, because they didn’t inform me and warn me about the pernicious disease in their daughter’s past, a disease that, although dormant in her body, might awaken at the first opportunity when she was weakened for some reason, with pregnancy being a most dangerous condition, one that always leads to a resurgence of the disease. My mother’s sister Rivka lived in Norfolk with her husband, Mr. Stam, a shochet and bodek.25 This Rivka had a grocery store, and she also had a daughter Miriam’s age. They lived in a room behind the store. This Rivka suggested that I rent a larger apartment and that she and her family would move into that apartment together with me and my children. We would hire a housekeeper and she would look after me and the children. I accepted this suggestion gladly. She also found a woman who would care for the infant during the day. And that’s how I was compelled to get settled and how I was compelled to again take on the burdens of daily life. My brothers, who in the meantime had opened a large wholesale house in partnership with the brother-in-law of my older brother, asked me to take a position as a salesman with their firm. Gradually, life made 25.  Mr. Stam is Samuel Stam, who, over time, served not only as a kosher slaughterer, but also in several other roles in Norfolk, including Hebrew teacher and director of the Hebrew Charity Home. The Norfolk city directory of 1912 lists Stam as “rabbi” of Congregation B’nai Israel, although in 1913 he is listed simply as a grocer. As late as 1954, Stam was involved in the establishment of a new mikvah in Norfolk. See Berent, Norfolk, 34, 38, 75, 118, 183.

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its demands upon me and, as is only natural, my pain began to diminish. Bit by bit, activity and work allowed me to put behind me my great tragedy. As the Sweet Singer of Israel declared: “I am put out of mind like the dead.”26 The year-long period of mourning is the most difficult year to get through. Day after day one is reminded of the past; day after day, in every free moment, the thoughts of someone in a situation like mine return to the past, to the tragedy, to the years spent with her whom he has lost. The future is almost irrelevant and the present does battle with the past. The present makes its demands and overshadows the past, or tries to. There is a constant struggle between them and, as the months pass, the present overpowers the past by the force of the demands of daily life and by the force of the natural will on which the life of man depends, the will to live and to survive. And finally the present conquers the past; the distance between them increases; memories of the life of the past, a truncated life, grow dimmer. This is what life demands and only in unusual circumstances do a select few remain with their sorrow throughout their lives. But, again, these cases are very rare and the world is not built on rare, unusual occurrences. In general, the world proceeds in its customary fashion. When my parents heard about the tragedy that had befallen me, Mother announced her desire to come to America and to take my daughters to Lithuania, and several months later she arrived. Mother, who had never before left her home, except for one trip to Riga for medical treatment, risked her life. For her, traveling to America and returning home with a child about a year old was an act of true devotion. When she arrived, Mother immediately took the infant back from the woman into whose care she had been entrusted in Portsmouth, a town across the river from Norfolk, and watched over her herself. She stayed with us until a Russian ship came along, bound for Libau. How this mother’s love for her children and grandchildren had grown! Mother stayed with us for three months, taking care of me and the children until a telegram arrived from Father asking her to return. I decided not to burden her with both of my children, so Miriam stayed with me. 26.  This quotation is from Psalms 31:13. On the “Sweet Singer of Israel” see Note 4 in the chapter “Me and My Youth.”

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I took Mother and my baby daughter to New York, put them on the Russian ship and, giving the nurse in the ship’s hospital a nice gift, I arranged with her to look after the child and to help Mother. She promised to do so and she kept her promise. They arrived in Libau safely, but the train ride and the trip of thirty Russian versts in a wagon were very hard on Mother. At one point, in the middle of the night, she feared for the baby’s life. She was barely able to get to a village where a gentile took her in and helped her. She stayed awake all night caring for the weakened child and revived her. Thus, they eventually reached our hometown of Kvatki safely. I returned to Norfolk with my mind eased somewhat, since I knew that my little daughter was in caring hands. That’s how my first year as a widower passed. My younger daughter was in my parent’s home and my older daughter was developing nicely in the home of her aunt Rivka, who looked after her lovingly, just as she did with her own daughter, Esther. My work as a salesman for my brothers’ business didn’t satisfy me at all. The brother-in-law, Mr. Liebman, was a coarse and ignorant man who disliked me still from my peddling days in Spring Hope, North Carolina, and so I decided to leave them. I immediately found a position as a salesman for a non-Jewish wholesale grocery firm, the R.P. Voight Company, which had never done business with Jews in the past. I was very successful in this position because I found them a group of new Jewish customers whom they had not anticipated. I was satisfied with this job, but I was tired of being dependent on others; there is no advancing oneself as a wage-earner, even if the work is good. Even the best salary remains only a salary and doesn’t allow for the advancement and opportunity a person enjoys if he is on his own. At about this time, a cousin of mine, Alex Leitman, arrived in the United States. He went into partnership with a Jew named Isaacson, who owned a kosher restaurant and knew a lot about the empty sack business.27 They didn’t have any capital and they talked me into joining their partnership, into becoming a silent partner so that I could con27.  Cotton textile sacks replaced barrels as the most popular way to package flour and other food products by the 1890s, and by the time of World War I, the use of barrels virtually ceased. On textile sacks, see Anna Lue Cook, Textile Bags (Florence, Ala., 1990), esp. chapt. 1; and Joan Kiplinger, “Vintage Fabrics,” on the Internet at www.fabrics.net/joan301.asp (accessed Nov. 27, 2009).

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tinue in my job. I invested 500 dollars in the business. At the same time, there was a kosher delicatessen for sale next door to my partners’ kosher restaurant and, upon Alex’s recommendation, we bought this store as well and we hired a clerk who knew the business to run it while I was at my job. In the afternoon, I, too, would help out in the store. I didn’t get involved in the sack business, because it was mostly a trade in used bags that were repaired and reconditioned. I didn’t like the dust and this sort of work, and I suggested to them getting into the sale of new sacks. I even helped them get an order for thousands of dollars worth of sacks from a large business, but we were unable to fill the order for lack of capital funds.28 I saw that the sale of sacks demands a great deal of money, which we didn’t have. They would take money from the store for the sack business and so the store suffered and I was afraid I would lose my investment. For this reason, I proposed to my associates that we dissolve the partnership. Since most of the investment had gone into the store and my two partners could not buy me out for cash, I got the store and I left them the sack business, in which my investment was small. I knew that there was much opportunity to become wealthy in the sack business if it were only possible to obtain the necessary monetary resources. At the same time, the potential for “the store” and for its successful large-scale expansion were limited, but I had no choice but to take over the store in which I had sunk my investment. This Leitman was a simple young man without much education, but he was honest, for he came from an old-fashioned Jewish family and was raised on the pure ethics of the tradition. He was energetic, imaginative, and daring. When he saw that they were unable to acquire the necessary capital, he got rid of his partner and took on one who had money. It was not long before his business brought the hoped-for results. Later, he left this partner, Kaplan, as well and moved to New York.29 He got involved in some major businesses and became very wealthy. He divorced his wife and married another woman. He visited Israel during Passover of 1950. 28.  The Norfolk city directory for 1912 lists both Mendel Frieden and Alex Lietman (sic) as affiliated with the “Virginia Bag Co.” There is no Isaacson listed in the directory. 29.  The Kaplan here is Louis Kaplan, listed in the Norfolk city directory for 1913 as treasurer of the Virginia Bag Company.

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I remained with the store, which was run by a clerk until I returned from work at my job in sales. I would work in the store in the evenings, too, but, for lack of proper management, its receipts did not show a profit. I lived with the Stam family with my daughter Miriam. The two of us had a separate room and life went on as usual. I was busy at work and in the store until late at night and I had no time left to think about the future. Meanwhile, the past continued to recede. My brothers and my friends started to urge me to remarry: What kind of a life is it without a wife and without a home? I am still quite young and it’s a shame to waste the best years of my life as a recluse. I didn’t get out much. I behaved entirely as though I were still in mourning. Still, I was not lacking for marriage proposals. I was thirty-two and in the prime of life. During the year and a half that passed since the time of my tragedy, I managed to heal in body and in soul. I looked good and people considered me a well-educated man and a great Torah scholar (that’s what the ignorant people of Norfolk said). They also thought I was somewhat wealthy, though the truth about this was like the truth about my being ordained as a rabbi. All my denials on these two counts were of no avail and the more I denied what was said, the stronger the belief in my rabbinic ordination and in my wealth grew. It was for this reason that marriage proposals kept coming. I was weary of my condition as a widower. I had become accustomed to the normal ways of a man with his wife during seven years of marriage, and the body makes certain demands. My patrician ways and my religious sensibility did not allow me to satisfy my needs in other ways. Despite the suggestions offered by friends, even female friends, about how to deal with what I was missing, I maintained my purity, just as I had maintained my virtue until my marriage. But I suffered. I was tired of the solitary life. At about this time, I used to eat lunch at the restaurant of my former partner, Mr. Isaacson. Once, I met there his wife’s sister, a young New Yorker, very pretty, very charming, and fairly well educated. Mr. Isaac­ son tried to match me up with her. I liked her and we went out for about two months. I got to know her well. As far as I was concerned, I would have been prepared to marry her, for I was not sure if I would find someone better. However, I was hesitant about her suitability as a mother to my daughters. I didn’t sense any interest on her part when

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I met her from time to time with my Miriam. Even when she tried to talk to her tenderly, I perceived a certain coldness toward Miriam, and every time Mr. Isaacson pressed me to conclude the matter, I put off my response until later. Once he told me candidly that she too, his sister-in-law, had not yet made a definite decision. Even though she always held me close during our many outings, she had a fellow in New York, some clerk, with whom she was involved. She very much wanted to marry me, except that I was a widower with two daughters and she was fearful and couldn’t make up her mind. Her family in New York demanded that she return; they weren’t interested in a widower with children. I immediately withdrew from the affair and she returned to New York, despite her own feelings and the wishes of her sister, who would very much have liked her to end up with me. I told them I had not stood the test, and we parted without this causing me any sorrow or disgrace. I might say that I felt relieved that the matter ended as it did. Deep down, I was happy about my daughters’ good fortune that I didn’t get tied up with this young woman. I sensed that she would be only a “stepmother” to my daughters, and this I did not want under any circumstances, even if it meant my remaining a widower all the rest of my life. The family in Norfolk was disappointed over this development, because they thought our relationship was a serious one and they were waiting for a positive outcome. I explained my misgivings to them and, even though they said it was impossible to judge such things in advance, that one could not know how a woman would respond to stepchildren after the marriage takes place, they nonetheless acknowledged that my behavior was proper, given the way I felt. They recognized that an outsider could not take the place of a true “mother.”

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Editor’s Introduction

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Although the title Frieden gave this chapter indicates that it focuses on the story of his remarriage, the chapter actually recounts not one, but two momentous developments in his life. Not only does it describe his courtship and eventual marriage to his second wife, Ray Savage, but it also tells of his life-altering decision to leave the United States and take his family on aliya to the Land of Israel. The story of Frieden’s courtship is a touching one, for Frieden makes it clear that in looking for a new wife, he was searching not only for a mate but also for someone who would be a mother to his two daughters. His feelings of gratitude and affection for his wife Ray are given free reign in the text, reflecting, of course, the way he wanted to express his sentiments as he was recording his reminiscences, as much as the way he felt at the time he first met and married Ray. By contrast, Frieden tells of his decision to immigrate to the Land of Israel more briefly and less emotionally, perhaps because his Zionist consciousness was so engrained in his psyche by the time he penned his memoir that he felt no need to spell out how and why he had resolved to make aliya. In the background to the decisive marriage and emigration decisions about which Frieden writes are momentous world events as well. These include the rumblings that preceded World War I and that helped motivate Frieden’s parents to come to America; the Great War itself, which had significant consequences for Frieden’s business efforts; and important Allied military victories, including British successes in the Middle East that led to Britain’s receiving a mandate to govern Palestine. In the realm of specifically Jewish affairs, too, the period covered in this chapter saw dramatic developments that touched the life of Frieden and his family. The flow of East European immigrants to the west was disrupted by the Great War and the Russian revolutions; the Balfour Declaration was issued by the British government, proclaiming its support for a Jewish homeland in ­Palestine;

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a distinctive American Jewish culture shaped by the mass migration of the turn of the century began to crystallize; and a definitive struggle over the leadership of the world Zionist movement was won by advocates of immediate action to settle the Land of Israel. Although this chapter recounts such key developments in Frieden’s life as his second marriage, the birth of two more of his children, and his determined decision to take his family to Palestine in the midst of unrest in the country, the bulk of the narrative deals with the more mundane subject of Frieden’s business ventures during the second decade of the twentieth century. Indeed, even as this chapter again prompts us to consider such matters as the important role played by kin connections in the lives of Jewish immigrants, their readiness to move from one place of residence to another, and the challenges they faced if they were committed to religious observance, it does so in the context of Frieden’s account of his search for economic security and advancement. So too, some of the most engaging episodes recounted by Frieden in this chapter, such as the saga of his interactions with his employee Greenberg, relate as much to his business affairs as to anything else.

❊ did not bring in significant profits, but it did give me something additional to do in my free time and also a higher social status; I was a merchant and not only an employee. But what’s more important is that the store gave me a new life and the best thing that life could provide for me and for my children, an everlasting love for the most wonderful woman in the world. The Seligman family came from Rakishok, the city from which my father’s family also came, and the two families had ties of friendship and of marriage between them. The head of the family, Mr. Zalman Seligman, a simple Hasid, was a good-looking man with a long, graying beard. He had an honest face and a solid body. He was tall, broad shouldered, and good-hearted, though quick to anger as well as quick to be reconciled. His wife had died after his three sons and one daughter were grown, and he got married again to a woman from the town of Anyksht, a widow who had four sons and one daughter.1 She was an t h e st o r e i o w n e d

1.  The records of the Russian census of 1897 for the city of Rakishok and the town of Anyksht, available through the JewishGen Internet site, reveal the makeup of the Seligman and Kadishavitz households involved here. In 1897, the Seligman household (“Zelikman” in

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intelligent woman, considering conditions in a small town, and full of charm. After their father died, this woman’s sons emigrated to America one after the other, and when her mother moved to Rakishok with her second husband, the daughter moved to Ponivezh. After a while, the Seligmans emigrated to the United States, as well, and settled in the city of Baltimore. In 1907, Mrs. Seligman’s daughter also moved to Baltimore. There, the Seligmans opened a grocery store opposite the Johns Hopkins Hospital. Seligman’s daughter from his first marriage married his second wife’s second son, whose family name was Kadishavitz. When the Kadishavitz family came to America, the eldest son changed his name to Kadish and the three other sons and the daughter took the last part of the name Kadishavitz and called themselves Savage.2 When I was in Baltimore to have an operation on my nose, I visited the family and became friendly with them. After two of his sons moved to Norfolk, the old man Seligman decided to move there as well, and he took an interest in my store. He specially liked the fact that the store was kosher, because this elderly gentleman would not have been comfortable operating a grocery all of whose customers were goyim and where he would have to sell treif. He suggested that I sell him my store and, since the store made hardly any profit, I decided to do so. They used to invite me to their home on Shabbat and there I met Mrs. Seligman’s daughter, Rivka. She captured my heart at first sight. She was young—twenty-one years old—pretty and delicate. Her good-heartedness and her good nature radiated from her beautiful eyes. She drew everyone close with her earnestness. the available records) consisted of the merchant Zalman, age 49; his wife Chaya, age 44; and his children Chane (age 13), Shmuel (age 10), Leibe (age 6), and Motte (age 4). Also in the household was Raicha Zelikman, the daughter of Zalman, a 25-year-old servant and cook whose relationship to other members of the household is unclear. The Kadishavitz household (“Kadyshevich”) consisted in 1897 of the “widow” and “beggar” Feiga, age 33; her sons Shmuel (age 9), Vulf (age 8), Leizer (age 4), and Genokh (age 1); and her daughter, age 6, whose name is recorded as “Sora” rather than Rivka (see below). This may represent an error in the record, or Feiga’s daughter may have had a compound name. 2.  Family lore relates that it was a branch of the Kadishavitz family that migrated to Chicago that shortened the family name to Kadish and that when the Kadishes wrote to inform their eastern relatives, they neglected to say which half of the original family name they had dropped. Thus, the easterners took the name Savage. See Suzanne Holden, “Letter to Judge Explained at Tri-Family Gathering,” Virginia Beach Beacon, Nov. 9–10, 1978, 22–23.

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I was attracted to her with all my heart, and the more I visited her home, the more I got to know her qualities and her goodness, her refinement and the purity of her soul. I saw in her someone who would be a true mother to my daughters, a mother by the grace of heaven, if she would only agree to marry me. My love for her was a boundless love, rising from the bottom of my heart and flowing through all my senses. I was afraid to talk to her and reveal my feelings; perhaps she would reject me, for many of Norfolk’s wealthy young men were courting her. And what am I? A widower with two little girls. True, none of those who were courting her could compare to me in those things that make a person stand out: looks, learning, family background, and a fine reputation. Still, who knew if my family situation would be a stumbling block in this matter of love? To me it was clear that she was the women destined for me by divine providence, one who would be a faithful and devoted mother to my orphaned daughters and my heart’s desire for the rest of my life. About her alone was it written: “The daughter of such and such shall marry such and such,” although the Gemara indicates that this declaration, made forty days before a child is born, concerns a first union, which depends to some extent on luck. A second match, of a widower or a widow, depends on their behavior and the matchmaking here is as difficult as the parting of the Red Sea.3 Of course, Rabbi Samson of Sens explains that if a widower marries a young woman, or if a widow marries a young man, this is also a first union, and the gaon Rabbi Jacob Emden says that a true match is made only if one meets one’s true soul mate.4 God has many ways of keeping His word. In order for me to be united with this Rivka, younger than I by twelve years, there had to be an intermediate stage, a temporary pairing. The Talmud says: “Only with one’s first wife does one find pleasure,”5 and this implies that only the first love is a true one. But this is not so, for there are degrees of love for a woman, as in the case of Jacob, who 3.  On matchmaking being as difficult as splitting the Red Sea, see Note 3 in the chapter “Matchmakers and Marriage.” 4.  Samson ben Abraham of Sens (ca. 1150–ca. 1230) was a French-born Tosafist who later moved to the city of Acre in the Land of Israel. Jacob Emden (1697–1776) was a German Talmudist, prayer book editor and diarist, know also for his opposition to followers of the false messiah Shabbatai Tzvi. 5.  The statement here is found in tractate Sanhedrin 22a.

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loved Rachel above Leah, though she was his first wife. True love is not limited to one woman alone. And how did the earlier practice of having several wives at the same time arise, a practice still followed today in the East? It is possible for a man to love many women at the same time, to different degrees and in different ways. He may love this one less and this one more, this one more deeply and this one more spiritually. And perhaps it is the woman and her relationship with the man who loves her that determines the degree of love. It is only after years of intimacy that it’s possible to know if a love is true. True love is like old wine. The longer a wine ages, the more its taste improves, and a cup of old wine is preferable to a bottle of new. The wisest of all men defined love long ago when he said: “love is strong as death” and “many waters cannot quench love, neither can the floods drown it.”6 If this is so, then true love permeates all 248 appendages of a person’s body.7 It is dependent on nothing else and will endure until the end of life itself. This is the secret and the foundation of true love, though any degree of love can be steadfast and faithful. The misery I felt from not confessing my love grew and I could no longer contain my feelings. I decided to reveal my deep love for her. I left my fate in her hands. She didn’t reject me, but she said she was too young to marry. Normally such a response is taken as a definite refusal, expressed in such a way as to be polite and not hurt and embarrass the one proposing marriage. In this case, I based my reaction on her honesty, knowing that if she wanted to refuse me in no uncertain terms, she would surely have done so. She knew my situation and understood that she could not keep me in suspense for long, and so I took her answer at face value, that is, that it was too early for her to think of marriage. Thus, I still had hope and I could wait for her. I continued to see her at every opportunity and she never refused to go out with me. All this gave me the confidence and the courage to continue courting her and hoping. Rivka, or Ray, as she was called in America, did not have even an elementary education. When she was little she was not given any schooling, except for some lessons in Hebrew reading, and she did not know 6.  These sentiments are found in Songs of Songs 8:6 and 8:7, traditionally attributed to King Solomon. 7.  On “248 appendages,” see Note 1 in the chapter “My Mother’s Family.”

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any foreign languages. While she was still very young, she had to take care of her sick father for over a year. To his very last day, he did not want to be cared for by anyone but her. When he died and her mother remarried, Ray left home and tried to support herself working for a photographer in the city of Ponivezh. When she came to America, alone and without money or friends, she immediately went to work in a tie factory owned by a relative. English she learned by listening and, amazingly, she showed no evidence of her lack of education; it was masked by her delicate appearance and her good-heartedness. She always knew how to find the right word to say in conversation, despite her lack of schooling. She was modest in her manner and at the same time endowed with a fine, penetrating sense of humor. She hated vulgarity in any form from any person, but especially from men who were lacking in manners and judgment. She was aware of her lack of education and it bothered her; this is why she so appreciated educated individuals. Among all her acquaintances and among all those who sought her company, there were none who, in her eyes, could compare with me in good manners and judgment. She thirsted for knowledge and sought out gentility and erudition. I think that to a certain extent, she found these in me alone. This worked in my favor, as did her financial circumstances and the situation in her stepfather’s home. His three sons were in the house, all ready for marriage, and each of them was after her. She was courted especially by the youngest and finest of them. He would buy her presents and both declare and demonstrate his love for her daily. They were very simple though honest fellows, but without any education or manners. They were all over the house and she was uncomfortable with them, but her kindness and good-heartedness did not allow her to put them off. She was bothered by them, but she still had to keep house and take care of them. As I continued to entreat her from time to time to be my wife and the mother of my daughters, she took this situation into consideration. If she married me, she’d get a man to her liking and also a secure living and a certain social standing. And what about the girls? She was certain she could care for them properly, but who knows? She was not acquainted with the younger one, for she was in Lithuania and it was not clear when she would be returned to America. She saw Miriam often and would play with her, and every time I saw her playing with Miriam I saw the

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“mother” in her, so lovely was her relationship with her. I had seen other women, how they turned up their noses when they saw me with Miriam. When he moved to Berkley,8 my old teacher, Reb Yitzhak Ze’ev, about whom I wrote earlier, tried to match me up with his sister’s daughter, a pretty young woman whose parents came from the small town of Suvinishok, not far from our town. She had attended public school in Philadelphia. I had nothing against this young woman; Jennie was her name. I didn’t find her especially attractive, but neither did I find her unappealing. She wanted me very much and pursued me, and I was unsure about the whole matter. Once, however, we met while I was out for a walk with Miriam by the seashore. I stopped to talk with her and I happened to notice that she looked askance at Miriam, as if to say: “what an additional bother.” Right on the spot I decided that this was not the right one for my children. I immediately ended my relationship with her. Years later, this Jennie married my wife’s brother Leon and they have two married daughters. She is still a pretty woman and is not at all a bad wife for Leon (although in the first years of their marriage they didn’t have the best of relationships). Finally, after several months, I was able to win Ray’s consent, and that day was the happiest day of my life. When she said “yes” I had the feeling that life was starting anew, and not just for me, but for my daughters as well. That’s how certain I was of my good fortune and that of my daughters. And how pleased I am, after forty years of marriage, that I did not err in the least. In fact, the incomparable good deeds she has done on my behalf and on behalf of my daughters have multiplied well beyond my expectations. Truly our sages were correct when they said that the pairing of two people is dependent both on good luck and on the behavior of the couple. If they are worthy, their lives are as a paradise on earth. Much more than a “mother” can do, she did for them. She devoted all her strength and energy to them and, together with the children that were born to us, she nurtured them with unbounded faithfulness and love. Our many friends and acquaintances, and especially the family, marveled at her patience and good-heartedness and at her devotion to the raising of the children, and they said “there is no 8.  Berkley was a town directly across the eastern branch of the Elizabeth River from the city of Norfolk and was annexed by that city in 1909.

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one like her.” And, truly, there is none like her. But why should I get ahead of myself; I’ll still get to that, to telling about her great achievements, when I write about our family life. And so we got engaged under propitious circumstances, and in order to allow my betrothed to grow accustomed to my daughter, I and Miriam moved in with them because, in the meantime, one of the young men had gotten married. I was given a nice room and I remained with them until the wedding, which took place on that happy and auspicious day, the 2nd of March 1913, two years after the tragedy. The wedding was conducted in the presence of my family and hers by my good friend, the late Rabbi Dr. Goldberg.9 Immediately after the ceremony, we traveled to Baltimore to spend the seven days of feasting at the home of her brother Louis.10 This was instead of going on a honeymoon, because I had to return to work on Monday. The inauguration of U.S. president Wilson took place on March 4 and we went to Washington a day earlier. We could not find a place to spend the night and it was even difficult to find a place to eat—that’s how crowded it was—so we returned to Baltimore. During those days we spent time with most of the members of my wife’s family who lived in that city and on Sunday night we returned to Norfolk. We continued to live with the Seligmans until we found a suitable apartment of our own. I was about to establish a household and begin my family life anew, and, knowing that my dear wife wanted to hurry to do this as well, I realized that one can’t get ahead by working for others. Thus, I again entered into a partnership with a Mr. Shraga, a nephew of the storeowner who sold us our grocery store, and business was not bad.11 The store 9.  This is Louis I. Goldberg, born in Kovno in 1876 and educated at Harvard and the Jewish Theological Seminary of America. As rabbi of Norfolk’s Beth El congregation from 1909 until 1918, Goldberg adopted some of the practices of the nascent Conservative movement in American Judaism and championed the causes of Hebrew and Jewish education and of Zionism. See Irwin M. Berent, Norfolk, Virginia: A Jewish History of the 20th Century (Norfolk, 2001), 31–33, 45–47. 10.  In traditional Jewish practice, after a wedding ceremony the celebration continues for seven days, during which festive meals are arranged and the blessings recited at the wedding are repeated. 11.  In an example of the not uncommon corruption of information in city directories, the Norfolk city directory for 1913 lists “Frieden & Shargo” as the grocery business of “Max ­Frieden” and “Jacob Shargo” at 1120 Chapel Street.

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was in a two-story building, but we didn’t want to live among blacks, so we rented a nice apartment belonging to my brother, who had moved into an even nicer apartment. It was not far from the store. We took this apartment so that my parents would be able to live with us as well, because in the meantime, after eight of their sons had already come, they too had decided to immigrate to America, especially because there were rumors that a war would break out at the beginning of 1914. They came in the spring of 1913. How pleased they were that they were able to immigrate before the outbreak of the First World War, and even more so when they got to know my dear wife and to see how devoted she was to the girls. My wife became pregnant immediately and she had her hands full with housework and with helping out in the store, because I was occupied with my job. For that reason I decided to leave my job as a salesman and, with the approval of the firm, I turned the position over to my younger brother Jesse. Because the business in the store was not enough to provide a livelihood for two partners, I decided to embark also on wholesale candy sales, the line of work I was in before I had left Norfolk. My plan was to get out of the retail business at the first opportunity and to increase my wholesale trade. At the same time, the person who had sold us our store opened another store for himself on the same street and drew away all my customers. Sales declined, but my wholesale trade began to increase and do well. My brother-in-law Louis came from Baltimore and suggested that we enter into a partnership. I agreed, because my partner in the store had left me and it was hard for me to manage two businesses with only a clerk. At the same time, we rented an apartment for my parents with their daughter, our only sister, and my brother-in-law moved from Baltimore and came to live with us. On December 19, 1913, exactly nine months after our marriage, my wife gave birth to a daughter, Yehudit. Although I already had two daughters, that didn’t affect my happiness. However, having two families live in the same apartment didn’t make the women very happy, and especially not my brother-in-law’s wife. Also, my brother-in-law was not especially effective, either in the store or in the wholesale business, and after a few months, he decided to leave the partnership. I paid him for his share more than he was due and we were both satisfied, but it was hard for me to handle both businesses and, now that she had to

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care for three children, I didn’t want my wife to have to work in the store. For this reason, I sold the grocery and moved to a large store with a courtyard and a sizeable warehouse and I began to develop the wholesale enterprise. I had a clerk who took care of sales and I sat in the office, managed the business and expanded it. A number of months passed and I saw that I wasn’t getting ahead, that there was always a shortage of funds. Sales were insufficient to cover the increasing expenses. I made an accounting and discovered that I was in the process of losing all my money and also the money my father had brought with him from Russia and invested with me. And here I had to take care of my dear wife and three children. I girded my loins, dismissed the sales clerk, put my sister and my father in charge of the office, and returned to selling my merchandise myself. In less than a year, the entire enterprise underwent a transformation. It grew and flourished and it was a blessing. But then the United States entered the war and my relatively small wholesale business fell on very hard times. It was impossible to obtain stock or credit. Both prices and costs rose and when inventory did become available, I didn’t have enough cash to buy it, as other wholesalers did. At the same time, my older brother was about to sell his department store on a side street because he was going to purchase a larger store on a main street. The store sold men’s clothing and all kinds of accessories.12 I immediately agreed to his suggestion that I buy his old store and we settled on a price of 7,000 dollars. I had 4,000 dollars in cash on hand, I gave him a note for the rest, and I got the store. True, not much merchandise was transferred with the store and right away it was necessary to order a lot more stock, which was hard to obtain, but there were a lot of orders my brother had placed previously, and this merchandise began to arrive bit by bit. The price was reasonable and day by day the inventory began to increase. Likewise, sales increased from day to day because the war brought a lot of work to the residents of Norfolk, which is a coastal city with shipyards and a large naval base. The black people who were most of my customers earned a lot and spent a lot, for that is the 12.  According to Norfolk city directories of the period, the store Louis Frieden sold to Morris Frieden was called The Leader, located at 613 Church Street. Louis’s new business, a clothing store on Main Street opened in partnership with Ellis Frieden, was called Louis Frieden and Son.

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way of the blacks. They are among the best of customers; they don’t have the inclination to save. Everything they earn they spend immediately. I expanded the store and added certain items that were not carried before, and this increased my sales and my profits even further. My wife and my daughter Miriam would help alongside me, and Father was my cashier. My blessings were increasing. The bad thing was that I had to keep the store open on Shabbat, because most of the sales were made on the Sabbath after the workers received their wages Saturday at noon. In effect, the store survived on Saturday sales. On that day, sales were ten times greater than they were on weekdays. We hired additional sales clerks in order to meet the needs of our many customers. After my wife gave birth to my first son, Ben Zion, on the 9th of July 1917, I bought a house and a share in a villa on the seashore where we would spend the summer months. We were very happy in those years. I had a beloved wife, three daughters who were developing nicely, with the eldest doing well in school, excelling in her studies, and also helping in the store. I had a nice business that was appropriate for me and successful, money in my pocket, and a private home. Every day, I praised God for our blessings with all my heart. There was a great deal of work to do in the store and I could not oversee it all by myself. Moreover, once a month I had to travel to Baltimore and New York to buy merchandise. Together with the store, I had inherited from my brother a person who was its chief supervisor and who also took care of dressing the windows. This man left me after a short time for some reason I still don’t know. I remained alone until a Jewish fellow from Georgia appeared and offered himself as an expert department store manager and window dresser. I engaged him for a month on a trial basis and during the month he succeeded in demonstrating his capabilities. He was an incomparable salesman. He arranged a “general sale” with much success, and he stayed on permanently to my great satisfaction. The job was much easier for me now, but the strenuous work I had had to do for several months previously, with not a day of rest, affected my health. On top of that, I had to undergo hemorrhoid surgery, performed by Dr. Berlin.13 It did not go all that well and I was very weak. 13.  This is Dr. Lewis (sometimes Louis) Berlin, born in Russia in 1879 and educated primarily in Baltimore. In Norfolk, aside from conducting a medical practice, Berlin was active

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And sales were increasing. After months of my being in frail health, the doctor, who feared I might come down with the same disease that had afflicted my first wife, ordered me to go to the Catskill Mountains in New York, where sufferers from tuberculosis went for a cure.14 I stayed at a nice pension some thirty miles from the clinic and I’d go to see the doctor once a month. He found some abnormalities in my lungs and one examination revealed signs of tuberculosis and some blood. The disease was not active, however, and it was only evident on one side. The mountain air and excellent food restored my health completely within four months and the doctor told me I could go home because the disease was contained. I was only to be careful not to overtire myself and to maintain a proper diet. I felt good and healthy and returned home to my family and my work. Upon my return, I learned that the store manager I had left in charge, Mr. Greenberg, not only was a drunk, but also had been stealing from the till at every opportunity.15 Because of this kind of behavior, he had left his previous home after being fired from his job. I had not known about this during the months he was working in the store with me. He had overcome the shameful aspects of his character, stopped drinking, and brought his family to live with him, a gentle wife and two daughters. They were happy because they were certain that he was cured completely and had given up his drinking. However, when I went away for a few months, even though I left Father to watch over the store, Greenberg became the primary store manager and had access to the cashbox. in Jewish and Zionist affairs. In the early 1930s, for example, he was both chief physician at Norfolk Memorial Hospital (originally Mount Sinai Hospital) and president of the Norfolk Zionist District. See Berent, Norfolk, 62–63, 97, 100. 14.  The Catskills had developed as a resort area by the mid-nineteenth century and by the 1880s railways had opened the region even to less-wealthy vacationers from New York City. Jews faced discrimination in the mountain hotels and resorts and this spurred the development of Jewish-owned boarding houses and lodgings, often serving kosher food, in the southern Catskills, mainly in Sullivan and Ulster counties. Also, in the late nineteenth century, several spas offering medical treatments and several facilities catering to tuberculosis patients opened in the Catskills. The best known of these was the Loomis Sanitarium, established in 1896. Anticipating discrimination at the Loomis Sanitarium, the Workmen’s Circle, a Jewish socialist organization, opened its own sanitarium in 1910. See Stefan Kanfer, A Summer World: The Attempt to Build a Jewish Eden in the Catskills, from the Days of the Ghetto to the Rise and Decline of the Borscht Belt (New York, 1989), esp. 52–55; “The Catskills: A Paradise Lost?” on the Internet at catskills.homestead.com/ (accessed May 4, 2010); and John Conway, ­Loomis: The Man, the Sanitarium and the Search for the Cure (Fleischmanns, N.Y., 2006). 15.  The 1920–1921 Norfolk city directory lists Joseph Greenberg as a clerk at The Leader.

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It was this opportunity that influenced him to return to his depraved ways and to start drinking again. This was in a period when there was legislation in the United States prohibiting the sale of alcoholic beverages and he was forced to buy on the black market or from legitimate sources that controlled a lot of alcohol.16 The prices were high and he was forced to steal from whomever he could. Had I been smart, I would have fired him at once and been done with it, but two things kept me from doing so. First, he was a salesman with God-given talents, experienced both in buying merchandise and in marketing it. He was also an excellent window dresser and because of him my business had expanded and grown. During the war years, it was not easy to find someone suitable to replace him and I was concerned about my health and didn’t want to devote myself so much to work, as I had done in the past. I was also very involved in Zionist affairs and in establishing a proper Jewish school in Norfolk. This took a lot of my time and I was unable to devote much to the store. Second, I had pity on his wife and children, when she came to me sobbing and said that if I fired him he would have no other prospect. And again my feeble character got the better of me and I believed her promise that she would keep an eagle eye on him. And he too promised that he would not touch liquor again. “You have enticed me, and I was enticed.”17 I left him in his position and he was very circumspect, at least when I was around. I kept an eye on him to keep him from backsliding and it seemed that I had succeeded in rescuing this family. Another year passed and we got to the 2nd of November in the year 1917, famous as the date of the proclamation of the Balfour Declaration.18 The war was still going on and it was after only about a year 16.  The timing of the events described here is not completely clear, but the Eighteenth Amendment to the U.S. constitution, which banned the sale, manufacture, and transportation of alcohol, was adopted in 1919 and went into effect in January 1920. Previously, the state of Virginia had enacted a ban on alcohol in November 1916. Unpopular in Norfolk, Prohibition faced many problems of implementation. The Eighteenth Amendment was repealed with adoption of the Twenty-first Amendment in December 1933. See, for example, “Prohibition in Virginia,” on the Internet at www.rustycans.com/HISTORY/virginia.html#top (accessed Oct. 8, 2010). 17.  Here Frieden is again quoting Jeremiah 20:7, as he had in his chapter “Matchmakers and Marriage” in connection with his search for a business in Dvinsk. 18.  The Balfour Declaration, contained in a letter of November 2, 1917, from British Foreign Secretary Arthur James Balfour to Lord Rothschild, stated that “His Majesty’s Gov-

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that Allenby entered Jerusalem at the head of his army.19 The creation of a Jewish national home began to take shape in the minds of practical Zionists and the desire to do something concrete grew stronger. My work on behalf of Hebrew and Zionism in Norfolk was quite substantial. In those days, Norfolk was known as the city with the most active Jewish community in the state when it came to Zionist affairs. We had a Hebrew school like no other in the state and most of the work was on my shoulders.20 I’ll admit that I founded the school primarily so that my own children would learn Hebrew and receive a traditional Jewish education; that’s how I got drawn into this vital task, to which I gave so much of my energy and my money. The school excelled in an exemplary fashion. Soon after the proclamation, at a time when we Zionists believed with perfect faith in England’s promise, and when it did not occur to us to doubt for a moment her integrity and her good intentions when it came to assisting the Jews in establishing a national home in Palestine, I began to work on behalf of this sacred task with greater intensity. I demanded from the Zionists of Norfolk practical work on behalf of the Land of Israel: larger donations to the Jewish National Fund;21 special contributions for the establishment of settlements; and, most of all, aliya to the Land of Israel, to cultivate it and to care for it. Engaged in this work, the idea evolved in my mind that I myself should make aliya, that I should translate into action the Zionism I had believed in for so many years. I was asking others to arise and make aliya, for there was no way to implement the Declaration except with actions, and I must set ernment view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people.” The issuing of this declaration is seen as a major milestone in the history of Zionism, especially because Great Britain was given a mandate to control Palestine in the aftermath of World War I. See, for example, Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York, 2003), passim. 19.  General Edmund Allenby (1861–1936) was commander of Great Britain’s World War I Egyptian Expeditionary Force, which conquered Palestine and Syria from the Ottoman empire in 1917 and 1918. 20.  It is unclear to which specific Hebrew school Frieden is referring in this self-aggrandizing statement. Norfolk had several private Hebrew schools in this era, but that of the Beth El congregation was known for its high quality, its intensive curriculum, and its teaching of modern Hebrew. Since Frieden’s friend Rabbi Louis Goldberg was the driving spirit behind this program, perhaps this is the school with which Frieden was involved. See Berent, Norfolk, 32. 21.  The Jewish National Fund was created by the Fifth Zionist Congress in 1901 for the purpose of buying land in Palestine and developing it for Jewish settlement.

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an example for them. As it is said, “He who reads the letter, let him be the agent to carry out its instructions.”22 My realization grew that I had no right to demand actions of ­others that I was not willing to undertake myself, and so once, at a public gathering held to celebrate the Declaration, I announced that I would be a person who both “preaches well and acts well,”23 that I was preparing to leave the United States and go to settle in the Land of Israel. This statement made a strong impression, but did not produce much in the way of results. Only three Norfolk Jews announced that they, too, would go to the Land of Israel, and they were, in fact, simple folk. One was a butcher, one a tailor, and the third a small-scale shopkeeper; simple people without much sophistication, but devoted Zionists. A Jewish state had been under discussion forever, and now, if the Jews wanted it, England was helping us to create it, so those who desired a state had to make aliya. These three wanted it and were doing so. Incidentally, these three: One of them is now the owner of the large building at the corner of Allenby and Nachlat Binyamin Streets in Tel Aviv; his children received their higher education in England. Another lives in Raanana; he’s not wealthy, but is enjoying his life in the Land of Israel.24 He has a son at university who is an excellent student. The third is deceased. These two never regretted their going to the Land of Israel, even though they had some hard times there, and they did not fault me for instigating their immigration. They got settled better than I did and they are happy with their lot in life. I, too, am pleased with their lot in life, which I helped them achieve by motivating their aliya. In 1919, the year during which I decide to immigrate, three luminaries who have already gone to their eternal rest came to the United States to stimulate increased activity on behalf of the Land of Israel: ­Ussishkin, Shmaryahu Levin, and Mossinsohn.25 I wrote to Ussishkin 22.  This concept, found in tractate Sanhedrin 82a, was earlier quoted in the chapter “My Father’s House.” 23.  This is a reference to a comment made about a Talmudic sage in tractate Hagigah 14b. 24.  A town north of Tel Aviv, Raanana was first settled by American Zionists in 1922. 25.  Menachem Ussishkin (1863–1941) was a Zionist activist who would later head the Jewish National Fund. Dr. Ben Zion Mossinsohn (1878–1942) was headmaster of the Gymnasia Herzliya, the first Hebrew-language high school in Palestine. On Shmaryahu Levin, see Apologia, Note 3. The visit of Ussishkin, Levin, and Mossinsohn took place in the context of an

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and to Mossin­sohn, describing my financial situation and my background and asking their advice concerning my aliya. I heard nothing from ­Ussishkin, but Mossinsohn answered me with a detailed letter saying that my aliya was a good idea and that I would be able to get well settled with the funds I had at my disposal. He described the beauty of the land and the spiritual pleasure that a cultured Jew feels when he arrives. It’s too bad that I no longer have his letter. This letter from Mossinsohn only increased my confidence in the action I was about to undertake and I began to put my plan into effect. My dear wife, as usual, was not opposed to taking this step, so devoted was she to me and so confident of my ability to support the family wherever I went. In her eyes, the idea that I should act on my yearning to make aliya, a lofty ideal of mine for many years, was a sacred one. She said that wherever I went, she would go with me. First, I sold my house when an appropriate buyer came along and I moved into the summer residence in which I had a share. There we lived for most of the winter. Only at the end of the winter, when it grew colder, did we move into a rented apartment in the city. I looked for ongoing battle within the World Zionist Organization (WZO) over the future role of the institution, the nature of its economic and fundraising programs, and, most of all, its leadership. On one side in this dispute were American Zionist activists, led by Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis (1856–1941), who believed that with the establishment of British control over Palestine, most of the political work of the WZO should come to an end and who wanted a clear separation between fundraising for charitable purposes and the marshaling of funds for the economic development of the emerging Jewish homeland. On the other side in the dispute were Zionist activists of East European origin, led by Chaim Weizmann (1874–1952), later president of the State of Israel, who believed the political and educational work of the WZO should continue and who were behind the establishment of the Keren Hayesod, which would collect funds for social welfare and education programs, as well as for the creation of national institutions and the promotion of economic enterprises in Palestine. A delegation including Weizmann, Ussishkin, Levin, and Mossinsohn arrived in the U.S. in April 1921 in order to raise funds for the Keren Hayesod with or without the cooperation of the American Zionist leadership. The tension between the followers of Weizmann and those of Brandeis reached its climax at a conference of the Zionist Organization of America in Cleveland in June 1921, with the East European Zionist leaders and their American supporters carrying the day, and with many prominent American Zionists, including Brandeis himself, resigning from their leadership positions in the WZO. On the tension between the Brandeis and Weizmann camps in the period 1919–1921, see, for example, Yonathan Shapiro, Leadership of the American Zionist Organization, 1897–1930 (Urbana, Ill., 1971), esp. 135–143, 167ff.; Melvin I. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (Garden City, N.Y., 1975), 246–98; Ben Halpern, A Clash of Heroes: Brandeis, Weizmann, and American Zionism (New York, 1987), esp. 196–232; and Josef Fraenkel, “Louis D. Brandeis (1856–1941): Patriot, Judge, and Zionist,” on the Internet at www.hagshama.org.il/en/resources/view.asp?id=1635 (accessed Oct. 3, 2007).

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buyers, but selling the store was not so easy. One of my friends, a longtime Zionist who had visited the Land of Israel recently, assured me that, according to what he had learned during his visit, a family could live comfortably there on 100 dollars per month. I accepted his assessment unquestioningly, for, after all, he had been in the country. On this basis, I sought some sort of investment that would provide me with an income for support when I first arrived in the land, so that I would have an interval of time to get acquainted with the situation in the country before embarking on some sort of business venture. About this time, Greenberg, the chief clerk in my store, came to me with the following suggestion: He sees that my attitude toward him is different than it had been previously and sales in the store have declined for the simple reason that I had stopped ordering merchandise in order to reduce the store’s inventory so that it would be easier to sell. His salary is high and, in light of the amount of business being done, it doesn’t make sense for me to retain a highly paid manager. His suggestion concerned negotiations he was conducting with a Syrian Arab, the owner of a modest hotel, centrally located and catering to simple folk, mainly military personnel. If I bought the hotel, that is, the business and the appurtenances, my investment would be small, about 5,000 dollars. He would manage it, and we would divide the profits. Based on the figures he showed me, my share of the profits would be no less than 100 dollars per month, exactly the income that I would need to facilitate my departure for the Land of Israel. I was enticed by this suggestion and bought the hotel. Greenberg took over as manager and the income was not bad. The store, I managed myself while I looked for a buyer. A few months passed and, lo, I was informed that this Greenberg was again drinking. Once, I came by and found him drunk in bed. The woman who was the maintenance manager of the hotel told me that he had been drunk for two days already. I waited until he sobered up, then I brought a lawyer, made him turn the hotel over to me and promise to leave the place immediately. I got a person to manage the hotel for about a month, until I found someone else who leased it from me. The rent was about 100 dollars per month more than the payments I was making myself. I thought I had been able to arrange the matter of the hotel to my satisfaction and to provide for a secure income. I also found a buyer

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for the store and I turned it over to the person who bought it. Here I was, ready to leave, and I ordered tickets from the Cunard Line on the Mauretania, which was due to sail from New York on the 12th of May 1921.26 I turned the apartment over to others and we moved in with my mother-in-law for a few days. And then came word of the riots in Palestine that broke out on the 1st of May.27 The next day, the papers already had all the details: there were killed and wounded in Tel Aviv, Jaffa, Petach Tikvah, and other places. I was stunned, as was everyone. The entire family, and my friends, began to urge me to cancel our trip. And my mother-in-law! My wife’s mother came with the newspaper in her hand and shouted: “You outlaw, where are you intending to take my daughter and your children? Didn’t we have enough pogroms in Russia?” The whole family was on her side; they would not allow me to go. I felt miserable and bitter. I knew they were correct and that I didn’t have the right to take my family and a young, gentle wife to a place I knew nothing about while it was full of murderers. We Zionists had no idea that there were those in the Land of Israel who opposed us. After all, England had promised us the land. Can’t England keep its promise? The British army is in the country, so how can it be that the army didn’t prevent these murderous acts? Most Zion­ists did not know what their leaders knew: that there was intense opposition to the Balfour Declaration from the local Arabs, that the leadership of the army in the country was opposed to it as well, and that it had a treacherous hand in this Arab upheaval. In this regard, the Zion­ist leaders did not act properly. Many difficulties resulted from their withhold-

26.  The Mauretania, built in 1907, was the sister ship to the Lusitania, the British luxury steamship torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine in 1915. For more information and photographs, See “R.M.S. Mauretania,” on the Internet at www.atlanticliners.com/mauretania _home.htm (accessed May 5, 2010). 27.  The word translated here as “riots” is the Hebrew word meoraot (literally “events”) used as a euphemism for the Arab uprisings of the interwar period. As Frieden suggests below, among the Arabs of Palestine and among some in the British military administration of the country, there was much opposition to the policy outlined in the Balfour Declaration. After the first British High Commissioner for Palestine arrived in the country, the hostility of the Arabs was expressed in rioting and attacks on Jews in Jerusalem in April 1920, and in even more intensive rioting in Jaffa and other places in May 1921, leaving some 43 Jews dead and dislocating many others.

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ing of information. This did not serve the Zionist program well and it led to the disillusionment of many who were wavering. My position was a difficult one. I had sold the business, given over the apartment, sold some of the furniture and given a bit of it to family. I kept only the clothes, linens, and bedding. I had already paid for the tickets. What was I to do? Beyond this, I didn’t want to spoil the good impression that my plan had made on the local Zionist movement. The knowledge that I had canceled my trip in light of the news coming from the Land of Israel would certainly have a negative impact on Zionist work throughout the state. The family advised that I move to California, a place that would be beneficial to my health and also good for doing business, which was flourishing in the state. In response to this idea, I suggested to my wife that she remain in Norfolk with the children. I would go by myself to investigate the situation in Palestine and then decide whether to return to America or send for them to come join me in the Land of Israel. The family jumped at this proposal. “Good, let him go alone,” they said. “He’ll spend two or three thousand dollars and then return the way he went.” But my wife did not want any part of remaining alone with the children. “Either we all go, or you stay, too,” she said. Reports from the Land of Israel indicated that the frightful situation had quieted down. It turned out that this was not a pogrom, but rather a skirmish, and that the Jews had put up a vigorous defense. In many places they had succeeded in repelling these attacks. There was also talk of a discovery that this was the work of the English, who regretted issuing the Declaration and Zionist aliya. We should not despair, for it is incumbent upon us to work with greater energy, to leap into the breach, and not to allow these English to revoke the Declaration. At the same time, the English government announced it would do everything in its power to abide by the Declaration in its true spirit, for the government was distressed over the criticism it was receiving around the world for allowing such attacks to occur while its army was still in place. My decision to leave remained firm and it was agreed that we would all go. The local Zionists arranged a big farewell party for us, with hundreds of Norfolk’s Jews in attendance. There were orations, congratulations, and good wishes, especially since this was such an extraordinary

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trip. Many of those present thought I was crazy to leave behind a large family, many friends, successful business ventures, and a fine reputation as a well-liked person and to depart for a barren dessert among savages, murderous Bedouin; I must have gone mad. I paid no attention to all these things, even though my heart was heavy.

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My Journey to the Land of Israel and My Early Activities There

Editor’s Introduction

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This chapter, which recounts the engrossing story of the Frieden family’s journey from Norfolk to Jerusalem and of its initial adjustment to the Land of Israel, is both one of the most compelling sections of Menachem Mendel Frieden’s narrative and one of the richest in terms of its description of the world in which Frieden lived. The detailed information conveyed in this chapter not only enlivens Frieden’s story, but also allows us to expand our understanding of the nature of travel in the early 1920s, of economic conditions in post–World War I Palestine, of reactions to the Arab riots of the period, and of many other matters as well. A number of elements of this chapter invite a close reading that can reveal even more than what Frieden makes explicit. His account of his brief encounter with the Zionist activist Shmaryahu Levin and the American Zionist leader Robert Szold, for example, tells much about the nature of American Zionism in the period just after World War I. The account provides evidence, for instance, that aside from engaging in various aspects of the organizational work of the Zionist movement and aside from being immersed in internal political debates, those who led the movement were ready to meet with individual Zionists personally, and it reveals that the presence of East European Zionist notables in America had an impact not only on the internal dynamics of the Zionist movement, but also on the rank-and-file Zionists with whom they had contact. Moreover, when ­Frieden reports that the conversation he had with Levin and Szold was conducted at least partly in Hebrew, we get some insight into the penetration of Hebrew culture among Zionists in America. Having a record of Zionist notables conversing in Hebrew, even in America, suggests that the revival of the language was not simply an ideological goal of the Zionist movement, but a practical undertaking as well. So too, the sentiment expressed by Levin in his conversation with Frieden reinforces the notion

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that attachment to the physical environment of the Land of Israel was a fundamental element in Zionist thinking and suggests that Levin understood that Frieden’s motivation for aliya was more idealistic than practical. Similarly, to take another example, Frieden’s account of his confrontation with a British officer on the train he and his family took from Egypt to Palestine suggests the complexity of the interpersonal dynamics involving Westerners in a non-Western society during the early part of the twentieth century. We understand, for instance, that the British officer Frieden encountered felt he had every right to commandeer an entire rail car of an Egyptian train, but that, on the other hand, his wife, at least, was ready to show consideration for an American family in a way that she almost certainly would not have been willing to accommodate a native family. This chapter is also one in which Frieden’s inclination to express strong opinions is again evident. In his comments concerning the British mandatory government in Palestine, in the distinctions he draws between men’s and women’s ability to endure physical hardship, in his analysis of the school system organized by the Yishuv, and elsewhere, we find judgments expressed in absolute terms that reflect Frieden’s self-assurance and his willingness to be assertive concerning matters that could have been approached in a more nuanced fashion. Finally, although a good part of this chapter concerns the practical matter of making a living, Frieden’s almost mystical attachment to the Land of Israel shines through here as well.

❊ 9 t h o f m ay 1 9 2 1 , I left Norfolk for New York. Many people traveled with us to Old Point and there was much weeping as they bid us farewell.1 The local residents who witnessed what was taking place aboard the ship at Old Point were astonished at the scene and asked what was going on. When they were told that I was going with my family to Palestine to realize the promise of the Balfour Declaration, they all shook our hands. They were amazed that among the Jews of America there were still people who were willing to struggle for their liberty, just as their ancestors, the Pilgrims, had done. And they were on the

1.  “Old Point” is almost certainly the resort town of Old Point Comfort (now part of the city of Hampton, Virginia), once a major railhead and passenger ship port across the Hampton Roads harbor from Norfolk. See the Chesapeake and Ohio Railway map on the Internet at www.davidrumsey.com/maps900019-24473.html (accessed May 22, 2008).

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even more amazed at the courage of my wife, who had agreed to such a journey with four small children. They were completely right to be amazed, and I’ll never forget the courage of my beloved, who made my migration possible, who brought us to our homeland. May God remember her for blessings all the days of her life, on account of her great strength and devotion in taking upon herself this heavy burden, which only a few like her would have done. She herself was not a Zionist by conviction and did this only because of her love for me and her devotion to me and to my ideals. How privileged am I and are my children to be blessed with such an extraordinary wife and mother. Truly, she is a gift to us from God. We remained in New York until the ship sailed. We had to deal with transferring our baggage to the ship and we had to exchange our funds for sterling. My family enjoyed this great city, which they were seeing for the first time. Before my departure, I also paid a visit to the office of the Zionist Organization of America. There I met with Shmarya Levin, of blessed memory, and Robert Szold, may he have a long life. Both of them spoke with me in Hebrew and I remember what Shmaryahu Levin said to me: “I don’t know about the economic situation and how you will manage there with a family, but nowhere else will you see skies such as those in the Land of Israel.”2 On May 11 we boarded the ship, a luxury liner of that period, on which we traveled in second class. As I boarded, all my doubts, all the unsettling thoughts I had had in the past, and all my longings evaporated. I felt unburdened and full of joy as I was finally able to implement my old-new goal of aliya to the Land of Israel in order to build it and care for it. I was certain that somehow I would manage. I had 1,000 dollars cash in my pocket and a purse of 2,500 pounds sterling in my satchel, in addition to an investment of some 5,000 dollars in Norfolk, which would provide a decent return.3 2.  On the presence of Shmaryahu Levin in America, see Note 25 in the preceding chapter, “I Found the Best Woman.” Robert Szold (1889–1977), a Manhattan lawyer who had held a number of government positions, including Assistant Attorney General of Puerto Rico, was a Zionist activist and ally of Louis Brandeis. A distant relative of Henrietta Szold, founder of the women’s Zionist organization Hadassah, he headed the Zionist Organization of America in 1930–1932. See, for example, “Religion: Zionist Chiefs,” Time, July 28, 1930. 3.  In the 1920s, 1 pound sterling had a value of 5 dollars. See Harry Viteles, A History of the Co-operative Movement in Israel, book 7 (London, 1970), 340.

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The voyage in the month of May was comfortable and very pleasant. The sea was calm and the ship provided all the comforts a passenger would want. We met three other Jews traveling to the Land of Israel. One of them was a Palestinian Jew who had come to America as the representative of some religious institution, had gotten stuck there throughout the war, and was now returning to his family. He was a bright Jewish fellow who assisted us when we arrived in Egypt, since he spoke Arabic as if he had been an Arab from the womb. The second was a pious Jew, a former merchant, who was going to the Land of Israel out of a deep sense of religious obligation. Over their objections, he had left behind his wife and family. The third was a young man who was going on behalf of a company established in New York to buy land holdings in Palestine to sell to American Jews. This was simply “business.” Meeting these people pleased us very much, seeing that there were other Jews as well, who were traveling to the Land of Israel, even if their reasons were different from ours. And we were most pleased about Mr. Gavrieli, the Palestinian, who could speak on our behalf in Arab countries and who could provide us with good advice in making our arrangements in the Land of Israel, for he knew the country very well. After six days we reached Cherbourg and from there we went by train to Marseilles, because only from Marseilles could we sail for the Land of Israel. We arrived in Marseilles very tired, for the train ride lasted an age and was very hard, most of all on the children. After we rested a while in a hotel in Marseilles, we began to look for ships sailing for Egypt. In those days, there were no ships sailing to Palestine. We made the acquaintance of a man who dealt with such matters and through him we obtained tickets on a Japanese ship sailing in a few days to India by way of Egypt and dropping anchor at Port Said.4 From there we would have to take a train to Jerusalem. The accommodations on the ship were called “middle class” and the cost was inexpensive. We didn’t know the meaning of “middle class,” but judging from the fare, we understood it did not mean such high quality. To wait for a better ship, however, would have required us to remain in France for another two weeks or so, and that we did not want to do. So we agreed to travel on the Japanese ship. 4.  Port Said is the Egyptian city at the northern end of the Suez Canal.

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The French know how to take advantage of those who don’t know much about travel. First you have to change your money into sterling because, according to them, the Japanese take only sterling. But the sterling we then had to change into francs because the company is not allowed to pay in anything but francs. Thus I was doubly exploited. I couldn’t complain, however, because I didn’t know the language, and so we accepted our fate. The ship was to leave Marseilles on Sunday. When we got to Marseilles, we had left our belongings, that is, our seven pieces of baggage, in the customs house in order to avoid an additional inspection and customs duty. Our things were not to be moved until the day the ship was to depart, when they would be accompanied by a customs agent directly from the customs house to the ship. But the customs house is closed on Sunday and what were we to do? There is only one proven remedy, one mediator: money takes care of everything. Fifty dollars brought the manager of the customs house down to the ship on a Sunday. Our belongings were taken out of customs and a customs agent brought them straight to the ship in the customs truck. The ship was about to leave in an hour. The family was brought and, with our hand luggage, we just managed to get aboard before the ship left the port. We were shown to our cabin, a fairly large room with six wooden bunks. The room was located below third class, a place reserved for people from India. The filth was frightful and the confusion great. Here and there Indians sat removing their clothing, and they walked around half naked. We were shocked. My wife and the children were crying. How would we be able to travel for six days in accommodations like these, with people like these, and who knows what we’d find in the room assigned to us? Who had been there before us? In the meantime, some food was served in a small room reserved for white passengers like us; there were other people who had fallen into the same trap we had. The food was put out on a table without a cloth and consisted of a pail of rice and a dish of onions. I wanted to pay the difference to travel second class, but that class was fully booked and there was not a single space available. Thus, with a heart full of sorrow for my wife and children, we were compelled to remain where we were. On the first day we couldn’t touch the food served and we ate from the provisions we had brought with us for the journey. We asked that

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our quarters be especially disinfected and this was done. We were given clean linens from second class. We took charge of our hygiene ourselves; we stayed in the cabin only to sleep and spent the days on deck. A young Japanese waiter took a liking to our children and, at my request, he brought them ice cream twice a day and various kinds of baked goods. This, and the little bit of food we had brought with us, sufficed for our children throughout the entire voyage. I and my wife got used to the rice and the boiled eggs that were provided and we lived on these during the entire journey. This was the first test we faced as part of our aliya to the Land of Israel; the first but not the last. The second test was more difficult than the first, even though it only lasted a few hours. At that time, the Egyptians were revolting against England.5 Tens of English soldiers had been killed by the Egyptians and the British placed an embargo on foreigners entering Egypt. As a result of events in the Land of Israel, they prohibited Jews from going there as well. When we arrived at Port Said at midday, we Jews were not allowed to disembark. I demanded to be put in touch with the American consul and I was told it was impossible to contact him from the ship. In the meantime, night fell. The children were sitting on our belongings on the deck of the ship, since other passengers had already taken our cabin. Hours passed and the ship had to leave Port Said harbor. Finally, the ship’s captain got off the ship and contacted the American consulate. The consul immediately approached the Egyptian authorities and at three o’clock in the morning we were allowed to disembark in Port Said, together with the young American who was traveling with us. The other two Jews aboard left with the ship and were taken to Aden. The next day, when we informed the Palestine Administration that two Jews had been denied disembarkation in Port Said harbor, they took charge of the matter and the two Jews were brought back from Aden to the Land of Israel. We did not know where to turn, so an Arab go-between took us to an Arab hotel. The beds were properly made, with netting to keep out 5.  Although Egypt was never a British colony, Britain had dominated Egyptian affairs since 1882 and had declared the country a protectorate during World War I. The revolt to which Frieden refers was instigated by Egyptian nationalists and involved rioting mainly in Alexandria and Cairo. Britain granted Egypt nominal independence in 1922.

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mosquitoes, but it seems this wasn’t sufficient protection against bed bugs. We wrapped the children in sheets and they slept soundly, since they were very tired. I and my wife sat up in chairs the rest of the night, until morning’s light. In the morning we went out into the street. Our first destination was a European restaurant where we could eat a decent meal after six days of half fasting. We had left our belongings in the customs house. The Arab took us there and got them released, but before that I had to declare that there was nothing among our things on which duty had to be paid. They opened one suitcase and found a silver goblet that had been given to us as a gift before we left. As a result, the agents demanded that we open all our baggage; this would have taken hours. Because we were only passing through Egypt on our way to Palestine, I went to the chief customs inspector and contended that they had no right to open our bags. The chief inspector agreed with me. Thus, all our bags were taken, tied together with an iron cable, and a customs agent accompanied us to the train, exactly as in France. I didn’t have any Egyptian currency and I also didn’t know its value, so when I exchanged 50 dollars at the port, I asked that they give me only sterling. However, when I had to buy train tickets they would only take Egyptian pounds, so again I had to exchange my currency twice and lose money on the commission. This is the story when it comes to lack of experience with foreign travel; this is how tourists who are not well versed in various local customs are exploited. And so we were on the train going from Egypt to Palestine. At the customs station of Qantarah sat an English agent with the authority to either permit or forbid the passage of people crossing the Egyptian border, bound for the Land of Israel.6 The English official asked for proof that we were not going to settle but that we were, rather, tourists, and that we had enough money for our travel expenses. I told him that we were going to visit the country. If I found it agreeable, I would remain, but if not, I would return home. When he saw my family, he laughed and said that one doesn’t travel with four children just to visit the country, but when I showed him a check for 2,500 pounds sterling, 6.  Qantarah, meaning “bridge” in Arabic, is a city on the Suez Canal about 30 miles south of Port Said. A rail line across the Sinai Peninsula from Qantarah to Palestine was begun in 1916.

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he immediately gave us a permit to cross the Suez without having our bags inspected, since this would be done when we reached Palestine. We crossed the Suez in a boat and then again boarded a train. The train was packed with passengers and there was no room for us. I went through the carriages and found one that was closed off. I asked the conductor to open the locked carriage and then an English officer appeared and said that the carriage was reserved. I stood my ground and said that I, with small children, needed a place to sit and that it’s not reasonable to keep a carriage locked and to wait for someone to arrive. I heard the officer’s wife tell her husband that we should be allowed to enter, since we will some day be masters of this land. And the husband answered: “The Jews aren’t masters of the land yet.” This officer was also traveling to the Land of Israel with his family. He had taken over a carriage and had closed off part of it so that he would have a comfortable place to sleep. The closed section was opened only after I asked for the head conductor. And so, as I was taking my first step across the threshold of the Land of Israel, I came up against an Englishman who understood the situation better than I: that we are still not the masters of the country. Only I, in my naïveté, thought that the land was ours. Even the events of May did not open our eyes to an understanding of the British. The closed compartment was spacious. We situated the children on the benches and we sat wherever we could. When more passengers came in, we arranged places for the children to sleep on the floor. At seven o’clock in the morning we were at the Rehovot station and for the first time we saw a Jewish railway station with signage in Hebrew.7 On both sides of the road there were orchards and there were Jews getting off the train and getting on, speaking Hebrew among themselves. We had indeed arrived in the Land of Israel. How excited I was that my dream of so many years was being fulfilled. Here I was in the Land of Israel. How my heart and my soul rejoiced that I was the first in my family to be privileged to make this ascent at the beginning of the Third Aliya.8 Now I understood the true 7.  The town of Rehovot, about 12 miles south of Tel Aviv, was founded by Jewish immigrants from Poland in 1890. 8.  On the “Third Aliya,” and also the First and Second Aliya, mentioned below, see Note 25 in the chapter “My Mother’s Family.”

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meaning of the Balfour Declaration: it gave every Jew the opportunity to make aliya to the Land of Israel, to build it up and to establish it as an independent Jewish state. Aliya to the land should be seen as a continuation of the migration that has been going on for two thousand years, although that was a tiny migration, one person from a town or a couple from a family. It was based on deep religious feelings wrapped up with national sentiments, without any distractions, informed by pure idealism and self-knowledge. Then it was aliya for the purpose of dying and being buried in the Land of Israel; now the aliya is, and must be, to live in the country, to develop and work and protect it. The opportunity has been provided for a meaningful, massive aliya that will realize the dream of many generations over thousands of years, the hope for the return of the People of Israel to the Land of Israel. This is what I believed and how I felt at this auspicious moment, as I set foot on sacred ground. I was certain, in my innocence, that the People of Israel, who for two thousand years had not ceased praying thrice daily for a return to Zion, who during all its long years in exile had not stopped hoping for the coming of the Messiah whose main mission would be to restore the Land of Israel to the People of Israel, that this People, which had suffered persecution, humiliation, and contemptible misery throughout the Diaspora, would certainly rise as one to take advantage of the opportunity now given it and ascend to the Land. How proud I was to be able to be the first of my family to fulfill my obligation and my great aspiration. Indeed, this day, May 29th in the year 1921, was a great day for me; perhaps, from an ideological perspective, the happiest day of my life. The train continued on its way past beautiful, well-tended orchards and arrived at Lod. There we had to change and board a train bound for Jerusalem. I’m busy with the Arab who’s transferring our belongings from one train to another and I don’t know how to speak to him. I’m running here and there, holding on to my small son while my wife takes care of the girls, and then a Jew addresses me in Yiddish: “Don’t hurry so; you won’t miss the train.” At the same time, he helps me with a heavy suitcase and shows me the shortcut to the train going to Jerusalem. He too is going to Jerusalem and we make each other’s acquaintance. He’s in fact an American, a Mr. Mohl, who’s been in the country some two years on behalf of the Kehilat Zion association, for

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which he is managing the Balfouria land holding.9 This acquaintanceship stood me in good stead during the difficult times I encountered, as I will relate later, and helped me remain in the Land of Israel until today. It turned into a friendship that lasted for twelve years and ended in a senseless estrangement. Mr. Mohl advised us to stay at the Allenby Hotel, the finest hotel in Jerusalem, where he was staying with his family as well. After a twohour train trip, we arrived at the hotel, tired, dirty and perspiring from the long journey, but full of joy. With God’s help, we had reached the place of our dreams, the Holy Land and the Holy City. I felt that a great burden had been lifted from my shoulders, the burden of a long and difficult exile. Even though I was weary, I felt myself to be very strong, full of vigor and eager to work. I was in my prime at the age of fortytwo, full of youthful energy. True, when I arrived in America in 1904 I also felt very good, with a sense of personal freedom. The difference between life in Lithuania and the life of the Jews in America made a deep impression on all who arrived there. But the longer one lives in America and the more one comes in contact with the non-Jews there, the more that impression weakens and the more the freedom that prevails in America appears to be, in fact, less pure, as far as Jews are concerned. Although the law does not make distinctions based on race, religion, or national origin—all are Americans under the law—there is in fact a great distinction between various groups. Antisemitism increases as the number of Jews grows and, with it, their influence in economic and cultural affairs. And other minorities feel themselves not a little stressed and oppressed as well. It is not like that here. Not even a day passed before I felt myself to be a native, an integral part of the country. There was no question in 9.  “Mr. Mohl” is Emanuel Nehemiah Mohl (1883–1956), a Russian-born, Americantrained engineer who, over the years, held several positions connected with development and construction in Palestine. The Kehilat Zion association, known in English as the American Zion Commonwealth, was a corporation founded in 1914 by American Zionists for the purpose of buying land for Jewish settlement in Palestine. The activities of the American Zion Commonwealth, suspended during World War I but resumed with the establishment of the British Mandate, reached their greatest intensity in the 1920s. Balfouria, named in honor of Lord Arthur James Balfour, who issued the Balfour Declaration, was an agricultural settlement established on lands acquired through the American Zion Commonwealth in the Jezreel Valley. Frieden further discusses both Kehilat Zion and Balfouria in the next chapter.

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my mind about my personal freedom, just as no such question arises in the mind of a Russian in his country or in the mind of an American in America. It is only in the mind of a Jew in the Diaspora that such a question arises, wherever he may live. He knows he is out of place, that he is not in his own homeland, and he is anxious about his right to be in his place of exile and about its attitude toward him. He feels differently when he arrives in his own land, the land of his forefathers. There is no doubt about his freedom. One who arrives in the Land of Israel feels that he has come home. The soul of a Jew yearns for and seeks the source of its origins, and when the immigrant sets foot upon the soil of the Land of Israel, his soul finds its place of origin and the individual his liberty. His rite of wandering from country to country and state to state has come to an end and he has come home. He feels the kind of spiritual and physical independence that can’t be experienced anywhere else. We arrived at the hotel at about ten o’clock. We washed and rested a bit and then went down for lunch at the kosher table. This hotel had two kitchens, a kosher kitchen under the supervision of the rabbinate and a general kitchen for non-Jewish guests. After we had been in this hotel for a day, we decided to look for a different one. First of all, because the kosher food may have been “kosher” but it was not “food.” The children were hungry all day and we had to bring them additional things to eat from outside. And second, the cost was quite excessive. That, and the inconvenience of living in a hotel with four children, kept us constantly on edge. We stayed at the Allenby Hotel for five days and then moved to the Hotel Warshavsky. Although its cleanliness left something to be desired, the food at this hotel was good and plentiful. Best of all was the very paternal attitude of old Mr. Warshavsky, the proprietor. He assisted us in every way he could, even helping us with finding an apartment and getting settled in. We also met other guests at the hotel. Some of them were people who had fled from Petach Tikvah as a result of the riots of the previous month, among them an American family that was planning to return to Chicago. The head of the family predicted that within six months, and no longer, we would return to America as they were doing. Others, who were preparing to return to Europe, claimed that their wives were unwilling to remain here because they feared new unrest. They were truly prophetic; much more serious riots broke out at the end of 1922,

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in 1929, and in the period 1936–1939. Nonetheless, those who left the country, the defectors, were few. They were faint of heart and lacking in idealism, and they muddied the waters. The Land of Israel cannot be built with immigrants such as these. The country was in very bad shape it terms of its development and financial situation, and it needed the best manpower to build it anew. The only desirable settlers for the Land of Israel were the type who came in the First Aliya and the Second. I rented an apartment from a Christian Arab in a courtyard, all of whose tenants were Christians, but decent people who got on with us very nicely. The flat was built in the Arab style, with large rooms and high vaulted ceilings. The windows had iron gratings, the doors were of iron, and the walls were a meter thick. Conveniences were lacking. A hole in a small room in the courtyard served as a toilet. I made some improvements in the apartment, including a modern toilet. There was a primitive shower; that is, there was a drum with a perforated bottom that allowed water to pour down on a person with the pull of a rope. The water was drawn from a large cistern under the entire dwelling, using a hand pump. When the water in the cistern ran out, we would buy water from an Arab who would bring it in a skin container from a pool in the Old City, a shilling a skin. The neighborhood we lived in was called the Musrarah neighborhood. There was no electricity and we used kerosene lamps; in the main room we hung an oil lamp on the wall.10 It was hard to find the kind of furniture and housewares to which we were accustomed, and what was available was very expensive. Food, however, was cheap. There was meat in abundance. Fruit of all kinds was very inexpensive, and eggs were twenty or more for a shilling. There was no butter to be found, but milk was cheap. In any case, we managed. My dear wife fixed up the house in such a way that the flat was a showplace: pleasant and comfortable, half modern and half Oriental, a huge accomplishment that few others could have achieved. Visitors would come to see how an American family could manage in this desolate land, half Asian and altogether African, although this did not 10.  A photograph of the Musrarah neighborhood in 1910 is available on the Internet at www.palestineremembered.com/GeoPoints/al_Musrarah_4015/Picture_12382.html (accessed May 7, 2010).

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do any good when it came to persuading them to come and settle in the Land of Israel.11 Two families from Norfolk visited us during the second year after our arrival. One was the Altschul family, he and his wife, from among the wealthiest families of Norfolk.12 They came for Passover and celebrated the Seder with us. They were full of praise for the celebration, the Seder, and the way we had arranged our household. I urged him to invest some of his wealth in the country and, at my suggestion, he left 5,000 pounds with the Anglo-Palestine Bank to be invested in a well-known factory, with specific stipulations.13 These conditions were demanding and could not be met, so in the end he got his money back. The second family was that of Frank Garfield, owner of a wholesale house.14 They came to see if they could find some business in his field, but his wife couldn’t acclimate herself to conditions in the Land of ­Israel and they left. Truthfully, it was not easy for American families used to so much luxury and comfort to get accustomed to life in the country in those days, without electricity, without abundant water in Jerusalem, without gas for heating, without the theater, without cinema. And the language, Hebrew, is difficult to learn and to master. Moreover, the schools are quite primitive and the Arabs have their hands in everything. They are the masters of the land. They control all wholesale trade in goods such as flour, sugar, iron, and so forth and so on. And if it’s hard to get used to the Hebrew language, it’s even harder to learn Arabic. In the summer it’s very hot and in the winter, very cold. There 11.  On efforts to influence visitors to Palestine to contribute to Zionist causes and perhaps make aliya, see Kobi Cohen-Hattab, “Zionism, Tourism, and the Battle for Palestine: Tourism as a Political-Propaganda Tool,” Israel Studies 9:1 (2004): 61–85. 12.  The Altshuls were Benjamin Altschul (died 1932) and his wife, Celia. Benjamin was president of Altschul’s, a leading Norfolk department store, and a recognized philanthropist. See “14 Institutions Aided by Will of Altschul,” New York Times, July 8, 1932; and Irwin M. Berent, Norfolk, Virginia: A Jewish History of the 20th Century (Norfolk, 2001), 125, 133, 135, 145–47. 13.  The Anglo-Palestine Bank, established in 1902, supported Zionist enterprises such as the purchase of land and the facilitation of imports. It also established credit unions, gave loans to farmers, and helped finance construction of the first houses in Tel Aviv. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the bank was renamed Bank Leumi Le-Israel (National Bank of Israel). See “Jewish Colonial Trust,” on the Internet at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ jsource/Zionism/jct.html (accessed June 12, 2008). 14.  Norfolk city directories of the 1920s list Frank Garfield as a wholesale notions merchant and a dry goods merchant. The directory of 1927 indicates that Garfield’s wife, Fannie, was then vice president of the Young Women’s Hebrew Association.

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is no heating system and heating a home with coal is impossible because there are no coal-burning stoves. All the heat is from small kerosene stoves, which are difficult to obtain. By a miracle, we were able to get hold of one of the good German-made kerosene stoves that were brought in specially for the government. Only one who comes to the Land of Israel by virtue of an inner drive and a spiritual need and who is ready to renounce all comforts can manage and remain in the country. Such individuals, and especially such women, are rare indeed. Many families did not stand the test on account of their women, and, truly, if life in the Land of Israel was difficult for men and for youngsters who were used to the good life in Europe or America, for women it was much more difficult. The women suffered especially from the lack of servants, from their insufficiency with the language, and from the scarcity of social contacts. It’s no wonder, therefore, that many of them compelled the heads of their families to turn on their heels. Only exceptional women were motivated to give up conveniences and stay on, without ever changing their minds, whether because of their devotion to their husbands or because they were imbued with Zionist idealism themselves. When a family moves from one place to another, every change, no matter how small, makes a difference. The voyage from New York to France was very pleasant and comfortable, and it was the first ever such experience for the family. On the other hand, the trip from France to Port Said was mortifying and caused all of us much agony; it was a change for the worse. But by contrast, the trip by train to the Land of Israel and the very setting of our feet on the soil of the Land constituted a very gladdening change. The move from the Allenby Hotel to the Hotel Warshavsky, again a change, was half and half. One modification that brought great happiness was our move into a private flat. This experience was the best of all; we again felt that we were masters of our own fate. We no longer had to depend on the kindness of hotel employees for every little thing. We could eat what we wanted, when we wanted. The children were particularly happy on the day we moved into the flat. They again felt themselves to be free, in their own home. They experienced that personal freedom of which they had been deprived for more than two months. They were free, we were free, and their joy brought us happiness.

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Already on the second day we were in Jerusalem, I hired a teacher, a daughter of Mr. Ralbag, the emissary with whom we had traveled from America, to give the children language instruction. It’s true that they had studied Hebrew in America, in the school of which I was one of the principle founders, but they did not know how to speak at all. After we got settled in the flat, I sent the girls to the Jerusalem Gymnasia located in the Bukharin neighborhood.15 Here again we encountered the difficulties of adjusting to new and not very easy conditions. Our children were used to the orderliness and conveniences of schools in the United States and to the propriety of American teachers. And here they suddenly came up against conditions that were very difficult for them: an extremely uncomfortable school building lacking sanitation, and children who were rude. It was such a great mixture: Ashkenazim, ­Sephardim, Yemenites, children from Europe. And the behavior: like a bubbling cauldron; different languages and various customs. My daughters simply could not get used to a coeducational school, for they had always attended girls’ schools, with only their Hebrew school being mixed. The clothing the school children wore was so diverse and strange. There were clean children and dirty children and poor children in tatters. And worst of all was the rapport, or the lack of rapport, between the teachers and the students. The influence of the one group on the other was missing. It’s thus no wonder that when they returned from school, the girls were annoyed, tearful, and disgruntled. They refused to return to school and they had to be forced out of the house so that they would go. They would be crying outside and my wife would be crying inside behind the closed door. Great was the heartache in those days, as we came to realize how difficult it was to adjust to this unfamiliar lifestyle. The state of education in the Land of Israel was truly terrible in those days. The public schools were under the supervision of the education 15.  The Bukharin Quarter of Jerusalem was established in 1891 by prosperous Jewish immigrants from Bukhara in central Asia. See, for example, Ruth Kark and Michal Oren-­ Nordheim, Jerusalem and Its Environs: Quarters, Neighborhoods, Villages, 1800–1948 (Jerusalem, 2001), 112, 130. The Jerusalem Gymnasia was founded in 1909 as only the second modern high school in Palestine (the first was the Gymnasia Herzliya in Tel Aviv). Among its founders and early teachers was Yitzhak Ben Zvi, later the second president of Israel. In 1928 the school moved to the newly developed Jerusalem garden neighborhood of Rehavia. It is unclear how Frieden’s daughters, at their ages, were admitted to a high school.

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department of the Zionist Executive for Palestine.16 There was skimping everywhere, both in terms of budget and in terms of pedagogy. For lack of funds, it was impossible to construct school buildings suitable for their functions. Schools were housed in residences unfit to be places of learning, and basic textbooks were lacking. Teachers were not paid even their meager salaries on time and, with their pay always a few months late, they were constantly bothered about having to deal with their own debts. They did their work impatiently and with little tolerance, for “if there is no meal, there is no Torah.”17 The classes were overcrowded and poorly organized. The Yishuv was small and poor—some 70,000 souls—and the mandatory government had not yet learned to navigate the political jumble, which had not yet sorted itself out. Already from the beginning, it refused to support the Jewish schools, saying that Jewish children could attend the schools that the government was establishing. But the Yishuv was adamant, and rightly so, that education must remain in Jewish hands, under the direction and authority of the Jews. This, despite the minimal resources available to the education department of the Jewish Agency. This situation caused both students and teachers to suffer, and any disinterested observer newly arrived in the country would get the impression that a major blunder had been committed, affecting both teachers and children. Why shouldn’t Jewish children attend the schools set up by the government? First, the observer might say, in places where only Jews live, the teachers would certainly be Jewish, and in places where the population was mixed, the teaching staff would certainly be mixed as well. There would be a great benefit in mixed Jewish-Arab schools, 16.  The Zionist Executive was established at the First Zionist Congress in 1897 to implement the policies of the Zionist Organization (later the World Zionist Organization), which was also founded at the congress. Because the Zionist Organization initially represented the Jewish People under the terms of the British Mandate for Palestine, the Executive played a significant role in the administration of the Jewish community there at the time the Friedens arrived. In 1929, the role of representing the Jews of Palestine was transferred to a newly created Jewish Agency, a partnership between the Zionist Organization and other, non-Zionist Jewish groups. In his memoir, Frieden at times uses the terms Zionist Executive and Jewish Agency interchangeably. For more on this matter, see “World Zionist Organization,” on the Internet at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Zionism/wzo.html; and the section “History,” on the Internet site of the Jewish Agency at www.jafi.org.il/about/history.htm (both accessed May 7, 2010). 17.  This quotation is from Pirke Avot 3:21.

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which would serve to bring the two peoples closer, since, of necessity, both will be living together in this land. So why did the Jews reject this system, at the very time when they knew that, for lack of funds, they could not afford to organize an independent educational system? Only after probing the matter and learning about the existing situation and about the aims of the education provided by the government could one understand why the education department of the Jewish Agency insisted on the idea of directing the education of the younger generation itself. We had a responsibility to educate the younger generation, and the generations coming with the Third Aliya and with future aliyot, in a spirit of national identity, in Hebrew culture, and in a Hebrew environment. It was absolutely necessary to educate the Jewish child, the future of the people, already from kindergarten in a deeply felt national, Zionist spirit. This work would not be undertaken by the mandatory power, which had revealed its true face from the outset, trying to reduce and to diminish and perhaps even to obliterate completely the character of the Balfour Declaration and its influence. It was absolutely necessary for the Yishuv to maintain a firm stand concerning every aspect of life in the Land of Israel, and especially where educating the younger generation was concerned, for it is the essence of the nation and its future. Such was the situation in the Land of Israel in 1921, at a time when the mandate was not yet confirmed and it was still possible to hope that the British government would show goodwill toward the Jews, at least until the mandate was recognized by the League of Nations. For its part, the government declared: “We are opening public schools for the inhabitants of the country without regard to race or religion. Whoever wants will come and study. The Arabs came and the schools are full of Arab teachers who are teaching the Arab children in a purely Arab spirit. If the Jews want their own schools under their own supervision, we will not object, but neither will we assist them.” The Jews should have insisted that they wanted their own schools, but that the government should help out; it should not have benefited from our refusal to enroll in her schools. If we had enrolled our children, the government would have had to increase the number of schools and of teachers. One can speculate that if we had insisted on our refusal to enroll in their schools and had not opened our own schools, the government would have had to accede to our demands eventually.

My Journey to Israel

However, even among us, there were some who sided with the British, saying that we should use the government schools to meet our needs because we had no other recourse for the time being. The other side was worried that perhaps some would actually send their children to the government schools, and because of their fears, they hurried to open schools of our own. We burdened ourselves with a load too heavy to bear. Hebrew education suffered from the start and is still suffering today. True, after a few years the government began to provide support for Jewish schools according to a per capita formula based on what it spent on its own schools, but the amount was small compared to the great needs resulting from the growth of the Yishuv and the increase in the number of children. Still now the teachers threaten to strike and occasionally they carry out their threat, and children in schools are left idle, deprived of learning. After I arranged a place for us to live and enrolled the girls in school, I began to deal with a more mundane matter: making a living. When I left America, I had in mind that from then on I would forsake commerce. My seventeen years in America engaged in buying and selling was enough. I wanted to return to agriculture. I had a penchant for agriculture from the time I had spent on our estate in Lithuania, before I went to America. I loved nature and living things and the quiet rural lifestyle. Moreover, although the Land of Israel was now desolate, there had been, after all, a time when it had sustained itself primarily through agriculture. In the period of the two Temples, most of the nation was agricultural and now, as well, it is only through agricultural development that we can revive the barren land. In reality, agriculture is the very foundation of every country, and especially of our little country, lacking as it is in raw materials, water, and forests. It certainly will not be able to sustain itself on industry alone, even if we are able to establish an industrial sector despite the lack of local raw materials. And so, everyone into agriculture! From the little bit that I knew, it seemed that most of the work was done by Arab laborers who received minimal pay for working from sunrise to sunset. However, as on previous occasions in my life, now, too, I was unable to do as I wished. The Hotel Warshavsky had been full of guests, refugees from Petach Tikvah who had left during the events of May, and they had influenced my wife, saying: “What? You intend to take up

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­ rchard keeping in Petach Tikvah and sacrifice your lives and the lives of o your children to be killed by savages?”—those being the Arabs who would butcher any Jew who fell into their hands. They told her about the events in complete detail and a great fear overtook her and the children. I had been in the country for only three weeks. I heard about the murder of Jews by Arabs in cities and in villages, and how could I abandon to this my fragile young family, which had never before known fear? No, I could not do it. And it was precisely then that I was offered a large orchard in Petach Tikvah belonging to an Egyptian Jew who, as soon as he heard of the riots in the country, had telegraphed the manager of the orchard telling him to sell it immediately at any price. It was a first-rate orchard of some seventy dunam,18 and it would have been possible to buy it at half price. I was inclined to buy the orchard, especially as it was being sold so cheaply, but I could not do it because of the situation in the country and the fear of leaving the city. So, the matter of becoming involved in agriculture came to naught, against my will and despite my desires.19 My heavy expenses and my limited funds required me to find some sort of livelihood. I placed an ad in Doar Hayom, a daily newspaper published in Jerusalem in those days by Mr. Ben Avi and his colleagues, saying that I was seeking a business partnership.20 I got many responses, but after I investigated them, none of the proposals held my interest. I continued looking and then came a suggestion that grabbed my attention immediately. And this is how it came about: On my first day in the Land of Israel, I left the hotel to buy a few items in a pharmacy and I came upon one that was close to the hotel. I entered and asked for something and the pharmacist recognized me as a newcomer and started a conversation, asking me where I was from, and so forth. I liked 18.  A dunam is a unit of area, originally Ottoman, equal to about a quarter of an acre. 19.  Orchard keeping was, indeed, a major element of Jewish agricultural development. Between 1918 and 1938, Jews invested 70 million dollars in citrus groves, expanding production sevenfold. In the same period, citrus products accounted for some 80 percent of Palestine’s export revenues. See Alon Tal, Pollution in a Promised Land: An Environmental History of Israel (Berkeley, Calif., 2002), 52. 20.  Doar Hayom (The Daily Mail) was published by Eliezer Ben Yehuda (1858–1922), the person most responsible for reviving Hebrew as a modern spoken language, and his son, ­Itamar Ben Avi (1882–1943), who had previously worked as a journalist in France and edited the first daily paper in Palestine, Haor (The Light).

My Journey to Israel

this fellow and, apparently, he liked me as well, and we became friends during our very first conversation. This person was Chaim Salomon. I believe that this meeting, my first with a native of the Land of Israel—he was a fifth-generation native—made a strong impression on me. Already on the day of my arrival, I encountered a warmhearted person, a good Jew, full of tremendous energy and integrity. He spoke six languages, was very learned, and was active in community affairs. At the time, he was vice-mayor of Jerusalem. He was both bright and modest. His father, Yoel Moshe Salomon, was one of the founders of Petach Tikvah. Mr. Chaim Salomon opened a pharmacy after the First World War. He had learned the profession on the job from another pharmacist while he was still young. Over time, he expanded the business to include both wholesale and retail sales, together with his brotherin-law, Mr. Gutel Levin, who resides in Haifa, and another relative, Mr. ­Elshtein, who manages the branch in Tel Aviv. Today, they are the country’s largest pharmaceutical wholesalers under the firm name Salomon Levin ­Elshtein, with two factories for the manufacture of medications, preservatives, oxygen, and so forth. In 1921, however, the business was limited, and sinking for lack of capital.21 When I came to Mr. Salomon to get his advice about several proposals that had come my way, he told me that he, too, had a proposal for me and that was that I join their partnership. True, a partner was expected to invest at least 5,000 pounds, but since they believed my long experience in sales would bring great benefits to the business, to the expansion of the wholesale trade, they would agree to take me in as a partner with an investment of the funds I had at my disposal, but at least 3,000 pounds. Actually, I had only 2,500 pounds on hand, but I expected that I could get the additional 500 pounds from the family in America. Mainly, it was my experience in America that was of value to them, because they needed to get their pharmaceutical supplies from America. 21.  “Mr. Gutel Levin” is Moshe Gutel Levin and “Mr. Elshtein” is Israel Asher Elshtein. The firm of Salomon Levin Elshtein eventually evolved into the giant Teva Pharmaceutical Industries. In recounting Chaim Salomon’s story, Frieden has made several small errors: for example, Salomon’s original pharmacy was established in 1901, not after the First World War; and he became deputy mayor of Jerusalem in 1927, so he did not hold that post when he and Frieden met. See, for example, “Our History,” on the Internet at www.tevapharm.com/en-US/ About/CompanyProfile/Pages/History.aspx (accessed Nov. 29, 2011).

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I went to Haifa to meet with Mr. Levin, the brother-in-law who managed the Haifa branch, and Mr. Levin agreed to Mr. Salomon’s proposal. From there I traveled to Tel Aviv to see Mr. Elshtein, the manager of the Tel Aviv branch who also had a share in the partnership—a small share—and it was he, of all people, who objected to including me in the partnership. He was firmly opposed, saying that the business could not provide support for another family and that the amount of capital I would invest in the firm would not suffice to expand the business enough to justify taking in another partner. Perhaps he was correct. The amount of money was indeed too small, but Mr. Elshtein had some sort of personal ulterior motive in this matter. His objection meant the withdrawal of the proposal and for this I was very sorry. Mr. Salomon was also disappointed, but he didn’t want to impose his will on Mr. Elshtein, who was part of the family. My regret was truly great, for I was captivated by this business venture and it was well suited to my talents. I have remained friends with Mr. Salomon to this day, and also with Mr. Levin. On the other hand, I can’t stand Mr. Elshtein, and not only because he blocked the proposal, but also because he is someone I don’t like as a person. At Mr. Salomon’s suggestion, I invested a little of my money in land, in partnership with him and a Sephardic Jew who dealt in such matters, for in those days land sales, the buying of land holdings from Arabs, was very complicated. Great patience, much expertise, and long experience were needed to see the matter through to its conclusion. Actually, it was a mistake on my part to invest a portion of my funds in land holdings, for it would be a long time, years, before I would see any profit from this, and reducing the small amount of capital I had prevented me from considering proposals that required more money. I relied, however, on what our sages had to say: “One should always divide his wealth into three parts: investing a third in land, a third in merchandise, and keeping a third ready at hand.”22 I relied also on the advice of Mr. Salomon. Several years later, these investments, which did not seem advisable when I made them, stood me in good stead in my time of need, as I will relate further. After Mr. Salomon’s proposal was withdrawn, I decided to look for 22.  This advice is found in tractate Baba Metzia 42a.

My Journey to Israel

some sort of industrial enterprise; small, but enough to support myself. I didn’t want to get involved in something big and I wanted to stay away from merchandising completely. To my mind, after agriculture, it was industry that was the most important thing for the development of the Land of Israel because of two considerations. First, industry creates jobs for new immigrants, who will certainly be coming because of the condition of the Jews in the Diaspora, on the one hand, and because of the yearning of all Jews for the homeland, on the other. Whether based on religious sentiments or Zionist national feelings, this yearning is latent in the souls even of those who don’t want to admit it. And second, if there is no industry and local manufacturing, 99 percent of life in the Land of Israel will depend on imports, and the economic scales will never be in balance. A country cannot be built on an unbalanced economy. Every industrial enterprise reduces imports and affects the country’s economic balance. I met an Egyptian Jew who made cigarettes; this was a handicraft trade. In those days there was only one cigarette factory in the Land of Israel, a Turkish firm that made only high-quality cigarettes sold at twenty for a shilling, and it was doing a good business. I thought that in this country, whose population would grow year by year as a result of massive migration, there was room for several cigarette factories. Moreover, they would be making a product that could be sold all over the world in huge quantities. True, I had no experience in this line of work, but I thought that since I would start on a small scale, I would be able to learn the trade over time. In the meantime, what this Jew made by hand he sold immediately and, for lack of resources, he couldn’t keep up with demand. Thus, he suggested that I enter into partnership with him. I didn’t want a partnership, for what did I need with a partner who had no capital? Instead, I offered to buy his business and to appoint him as supervisor of production in the workshop. His entire business was not worth more than 200 pounds. He worked in a single room with half a dozen laborers. I rented an apartment in the Sukkat Shalom neighborhood of Jerusalem.23 It had five 23.  The Sukkat Shalom neighborhood was established in 1889 as a commercial venture where comfortable houses were sold to individual purchasers on installment. See Kark and Oren-Nordheim, Jerusalem and Its Environs, 83, 107–8.

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rooms. I paid a high rent for a year in advance and I arranged the rooms so that they would be suitable for the work and in compliance with the requirements of the government health department. I ordered work tables and I traveled to Egypt with my manager to buy tobacco and the other things needed for the enterprise, including empty boxes with engraved labels from Bezalel.24 The logo was based upon the verse “And it came to pass in the end of days.”25 I bought tobacco for several hundred pounds, and other supplies, and we returned to Jerusalem to begin the work in earnest. I put three kinds of handmade cigarettes on the market: those at twenty for 6 grush, those at twenty for 5 grush, and those at twenty for 4 grush.26 The tobacco we used was of the best quality. It was a fine product and sales were quite good. The name of the firm was Ariel. This was a blunder, for religious Jews did not want to smoke cigarettes with the name “Ariel” written on them. Because of my lack of knowledge concerning the Agudah segment of Jerusalem’s population, I had made my first mistake.27 Arabs refused to buy the cigarettes because the label represented the return of the Jews to the Land of Israel. Because the customs duty on tobacco in Palestine was high, we left most of the tobacco in 24.  Bezalel is the art academy opened in Jerusalem in 1906 by the Lithuanian-born sculptor and painter Boris Schatz (1866–1932), who, like other Zionist leaders, believed in the need for a national arts and crafts movement as a part of Hebrew culture. The academy was named for Bezalel ben Uri, the artisan charged in Exodus 35 with constructing the Israelite Tabernacle in the desert. See Dalia Manor, Art in Zion: The Genesis of Modern National Art in Jewish ­Palestine (London, 2005). 25.  This phrase appears in Isaiah 2:2, a part of the introduction to the prophet Isaiah’s vision of the future. Family lore relates that Frieden’s cigarette labels bore an illustration based on a verse in Isaiah 11:6: “And the wolf shall dwell with the lamb, and the leopard shall lie down with the kid; and the calf and the young lion and the fatling together; and a little child shall lead them.” 26.  Originally, the term grush, or piaster, referred in Palestine to a silver coin worth a hundredth of a Turkish pound. When the British introduced the pound sterling into Palestine, it was divided into 1,000 mils and both the Jewish and Arab inhabitants of the country began to apply the term grush to the 10 mil coin. See Philologos [pseudonym], “Money Hole,” Forward, Nov. 28, 2003. 27.  In Isaiah 29 the name Ariel is applied to Jerusalem and, apparently, religious Jews did not want to see the name of the Holy City consumed in fire as they smoked. The ­Agudah segment of the population refers to Jews who adhered to the philosophy of the Agudat Yisrael political movement. This movement, founded in 1912 at a conference in Poland, was supported by traditional Orthodox Jews, including many Hasidic groups, and held many antimodernist positions. See, for example, “Aguddat Israel,” on the Internet at www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ jsource/Politics/aguddat.html (accessed June 17, 2008).

My Journey to Israel

Alexandria under bond. With the help of a Jewish agent in Alexandria, I would request a shipment of tobacco as my workshop needed it. Although the product was a good handcrafted one whose quality was recognized by smokers, the Yishuv was, in general, poor and frugal, and neither wanted to nor could spend a lot of money on smoking. People settled for a cheap product and so sales did not manage to cover our many expenses. In addition to suffering poor sales, after several months of work I discovered that my manager, who had represented himself as an expert, actually knew less about the business than I did and was learning the trade at my expense. He lacked knowledge of the main aspect of the work, which was mixing the tobacco. This became clear to me after I noticed that my bank balance was getting continually smaller week by week. I made a calculation on my own, without asking the supposed expert, and realized that there was almost no profit from the sales. All this could have been corrected and the business could have been developed and put back on its feet had it not been for the great mistake that I made and that led to the closing of the workshop. Just as I was trying to rectify the situation by dealing with the quality of my product, the vexation of an Egyptian cigarette factory that started sending cheap cigarettes to the country, thirty for 3 grush, pounced upon me. Until that point, cheap cigarettes were available only from a local Arab producer who had started up at the same time I did. His product, however, was of poor quality and the Jews did not take to it very well. But the situation changed when the Egyptian factory began to send inexpensive product to the country. The product was quite good and very cheap, and the public seized upon it. Its distribution was in the hands of a Jewish wholesaler who used his contacts to ship the product all over the country and my sales were cut in half. I had two options: to close my workshop or to do as they did and produce cheap cigarettes. I chose the second option. I regretted the losses I had sustained already, I was concerned that closing my workshop would bring about even greater losses and, mainly, I didn’t want to close the shop and dismiss the workers who made their living working there. My manager suggested that we go to Egypt and order cheaper tobacco and thinner cigarette paper so that we could sell our cigarettes at thirty for 3 grush. We did as he suggested

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and were proven wrong. Cheap cigarettes can’t be made by hand. I had no machinery and no money to buy it. We began producing the cheap cigarettes but couldn’t sell them. The tobacco was bad and the workmanship even worse. It was impossible to smoke the cigarettes, and sales plummeted spectacularly. I decided it was better to close the workshop immediately and to save what could be saved but, unfortunately, it happened that just then a Jew arrived from Salonika bringing with him tobacco to be sold in Palestine, and he was an expert in the trade. An acquaintance of mine, Mr.  Isaacson, came to me and suggested we form a corporation in order to open a modern cigarette factory under the supervision of the Jew from Salonika. This Mr. Isaacson was a wealthy man who always had good ideas, but he did not want to invest his own money; he wanted to be a partner in a business only on the strength of his coming up with ideas. The shares that were offered for sale did not find buyers because at that time money was scarce in the Yishuv and, especially because he who was offering the shares refused to purchase any with his own funds. Thus, this affair came to naught as well. The man from Salonika sold his tobacco to the Arab factory and left the country. I had no other choice, for I was left with almost no money: I closed the workshop and I dismissed all the workers with severance pay of several weeks’ wages. I sold the finished product that I had to “Hamashbir” at half price and, for promissory notes, I sold my inventory for very little to another Jew from Switzerland who was going into partnership with an American Jew I knew well.28 It might be noted that I myself advised them not to get started in this business, for I knew that neither of them had enough money nor any experience, but they went ahead and bought everything from me very cheaply anyway and it wasn’t long before they, too, lost their small investment and went out of business.29 28.  “Hamashbir” is a reference to Hamashbir Hamerkazi (the Central Purveyor), a consumer cooperative established in 1916 in order to purchase and provide food, tools, machinery and other supplies to Jewish agricultural workers in Palestine. After the Histadrut was founded in 1920, it absorbed Hamashbir. See Margaret Plunkett, “The Histadrut: The General Federation of Jewish Labor in Israel” Industrial and Labor Relations Review 11:2. (Jan. 1958): 155–82; and Viteles, A History of the Co-operative Movement in Israel, book 7, 6–11. 29.  Both the establishment and the failure of the Ariel tobacco firm are mentioned in Moshe Novomeysky, “The Industries of Palestine: Its Conditions and Prospects,” Bulletin of the Palestine Economic Society 4–5 (May 1924): 13, 15, 16. Frieden’s foray into cigarette manu-

My Journey to Israel

I had some tobacco left under bond in Egypt. I went to Alexandria and sold the tobacco and then returned to Jerusalem. Again I was left at a crossroads. I had a few hundred pounds on hand, enough to cover the cost of taking the family back to America. I also had a few hundred pounds invested in land which had no buyers, nor were my partners in this landholding able to buy out my share. This was all I possessed and around my neck I had the millstone of a family with small children. That same year, my parents came from America and moved in with me. True, they brought a little bit of money with them and a promise of support from my brothers in America, so that they would not be a burden to me. They promised this support after my father had divided all his money between them, and they fulfilled their promise as long as my parents remained alive. I seriously considered the idea of returning to America for a few years until the situation in the Land of Israel improved. In America, I could get started in some business even without capital, since my reputation could get me credit anywhere, and the family urged me to return, saying they would help out. Regretfully, already the year before, my brother Hyman had informed me about the hotel I had bought and then leased out, which was supposed to earn me a net profit of 100 dollars per month. The man who had leased the hotel had gone bankrupt, so I came out of that business venture broke as well, with a loss of 5,000 dollars. My wife and my children were all inclined to think that it would be best for us to return to America for a few years. After several weeks of debate and consideration, I made a firm decision: to remain in the Land of Israel no matter what. I had come out of exile and had no desire to return. And the family, too, agreed that it would not be proper for us to leave the homeland. My parents certainly didn’t want me to leave them. We made a decision and our minds were eased. We burned our bridges behind us and there was no going back. Despite everything that had happened to me, I was certain that I would still find a way to make a living in the country, for I was only looking for a way to support my facturing also is discussed briefly in Joseph B. Glass, From New Zion to Old Zion: American Jewish Immigration and Settlement in Palestine, 1917–1939 (Detroit, 2002), 287, where Frieden is misidentified as “Friedman.”

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household and no more. How proud I am still today of the decision we made at the time. Still, my worries did not come to an end. How shall I support my family? I did not even consider going into business, for I had already been burned once. I divided the few hundred pounds I had remaining: I left a small part for whatever emergency might arise, in case I was forced to return to America. The second part, I left to cover living expenses until I could find some kind of work.

The Work of Americans in the Land of Israel and My Role in It

Editor’s Introduction

By far the longest chapter of Frieden’s original memoir is that which recounts the story of the author’s life in the Land of Israel from about 1923 until he left for an extended visit to America in 1947. Because of its length, that portion of the memoir is presented here in three parts, each as a separate chapter. The present chapter, the first of the three, begins with a lengthy discussion of the various ways Jews in the Diaspora, and especially American Jews, were involved in the support of Jews in the Land of Israel, both those who were there for traditional religious reasons and those who came motivated by Zionism. Frieden’s detailed discussion of this topic seems somewhat out of place in a personal memoir and, indeed, this part of Frieden’s text is rather different in approach from the earlier parts. The inclusion of this material is explained, however, by at least two considerations. First, Frieden’s review of various efforts to assist Jews in the Holy Land is similar to his other pedagogic excursus, albeit a more extensive one, and one with its own digressions. Frieden seems to have felt that it was important for those who would read his memoir to be aware of the projects he describes in all their variety and complexity, and his capsule history of this work is interesting and useful, if somewhat disjointed. Among other things, Frieden’s account of assistance efforts in Palestine allows him to reflect again on the age-old connection that Jews in the Diaspora had with the Land of Israel. Second, Frieden’s account of the work of Americans in the Land of ­Israel forms the background for the story of his own involvement in those efforts. After all, as we shall learn, during most of his working life in Palestine, ­Frieden was employed by the Loan Bank, an agency of the Pal­estine Economic Corporation, which was perhaps the single most important American initiative on behalf of the economic progress of the Zionist enterprise. Indeed, Frieden’s detailed account of his career in Palestine is one of the

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most valuable elements of his memoir. As a source for the study of the history of the Yishuv, the memoir provides a rare firsthand account of the workings of an institutional system that played a key role in the development of Jewish life in pre-state Palestine. Beyond that, we have in this section of Frieden’s memoir an account, more generally, of the experience of a Zionist pioneer in the interwar period, since interspersed within Frieden’s account of his working life are glimpses into his family life, and even some indications of his inner thoughts on various subjects. In the present chapter, we learn about how Frieden came to erect a home for his family in Tel Aviv, for example, and about the birth of his second son, although his description of that event is rather brief. So too, we witness in these pages the early stages of Frieden’s relationship with his supervisor, Emanuel Mohl, one of the more compelling human interest aspects of Frieden’s text. And, in a classic autobiographical turn, we become privy to Frieden’s thoughts about the Histadrut, the all-encompassing labor union of the Yishuv, and to his feelings of regret over the opportunity he missed when he turned down an invitation to affiliate with that organization.

❊ that American Jews undertook in the Land of ­Israel began toward the end of the First World War and were in the form of expanded charity operations. Earlier, too, many years before the Balfour Declaration, there were emissaries who collected funds in America for the poor of the Land of Israel through an institution called Kollel America. This was one among other kollel charity organizations in the Land of Israel whose emissaries would go abroad to collect money for the poor of the country and for students of Torah.1 Before the days of the Zionist movement, most of the Jewish inhabitants of the four holy cities—Jerusalem, Hebron, Safed, and Tiberias—survived mainly on funds acquired abroad by emissaries.2 True, most of these t h e f i r st e f f o rt s

1.  The Kollel America, or Kollel America Tifereth Yerushalayim, was founded in 1897 to support the five hundred or so American Jews then living in Jerusalem. See Simcha Fishbane, “The Founding of Kollel America Tifereth Yerushalayim,” American Jewish Historical Quarterly 64 (Sept. 1974–June 1975): 120–36. 2.  On the special status of the cities mentioned, see The Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1901–1916), s.v. “Palestine, Holiness of.”

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emissaries would embezzle from the funds they raised and would send their kollel organizations only a small part of the money they collected, leaving the lion’s share for themselves, but there were also some honest men among them. In any case, those in charge of the charity organizations had no choice; the emissaries did as they pleased. Toward the end of the war, when the great suffering of the Yishuv in the Land of Israel became known in the United States, a ship was dispatched with food supplies for the country.3 From all the places where the ship anchored, it also brought new people who wanted to reach Palestine. The Joint, an agency that united all the Jewish organizations in the United States, was established to aid the Jews of Europe and also those of Palestine. Dr. de Sola Pool was sent to take charge of the funds sent to the Land of Israel by the Joint.4 At the same time, an association called Kehilat Zion was established in America for the purpose of buying land holdings in Palestine and selling them to American Jews either in small parcels or larger ones. The late Menachem Sheinkin was the guiding spirit in this endeavor.5 He came to America from the Land of Israel in order to help the association in its sale of land holdings. I recall that he came to Norfolk and spoke at a Zionist gathering about the obligation of each and every Zionist to buy land in the country in order to fulfill the promise of the Balfour Declaration. According to him, anyone who bought 10 dunams and planted an orchard could be assured of a complete livelihood if he planned to make aliya and tend his orchard. Nearly all the Zionists, and I among them, purchased either a smaller or larger amount of land. In order to strengthen itself and its projects, the association had to begin some practical work in the Land of Israel. Mrs. Dr. Straus was sent to the country, where she began to develop a farmstead on a parcel of land that was leased to her by the Jewish National Fund. This land was near the moshavah Merhavia and near Afula, which was a stop 3.  The ship mentioned here was the collier Vulcan, dispatched in 1915 under the auspices of several American Jewish relief groups to deliver to Palestine some 1,000 tons of foodstuffs (mainly flour). See Reports Received by the Joint Distribution Committee of Funds for Jewish War Sufferers (New York, 1916), 137–40. 4.  Dr. de Sola Pool, is David de Sola Pool, rabbi of New York City’s Spanish and Portuguese Synagogue. On the Joint, see Note 13 in the chapter “My Father’s Family.” 5.  Menachem Sheinkin (1871–1925) headed an information office for new Jewish immigrants established in Jaffa in 1906 and a few years later was one of the founders of Tel Aviv.

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on the Zemach–Haifa rail line.6 The establishment of this farmstead by Mrs. Straus cost a great deal and its success was limited.7 Thus, the association decided to replace its manager, and Mr. Emanuel Mohl, a building engineer, was sent to Palestine to take over management of the farm. He came to the country, investigated, and evaluated the situation. When he returned to America, he presented a report to the association and was then asked to go back to Palestine. He came back with his family and settled down to manage the farmstead and also to expand the work of the Kehilat Zion association in the country. The farmstead was established primarily as an experimental project to allow Jews to receive training in the cultivation of the soil and to prepare them as agricultural settlers, the first on Jewish National Fund land. Dwelling houses for the laborers were erected on the farm and the overseer of the project was Mr. Gefner, an expert farmer with experience from the moshav Merhavia. Nonetheless, he could not balance the budget. This was because the work wasn’t done according to his expert guidance, but rather at the direction of the association and the manager, who adopted innovations that were suited neither to the soil nor to the needs of the homeland. The losses were very great. At the same time came the resignation of the Brandeis group from the Zionist Actions Committee in view of the differences of opinion between Mr. Brandeis and Dr. Weizmann over the nature of the work to be done in the homeland after the issuing of the Balfour Declaration. Weizmann placed the emphasis on political and cultural work, while Brandeis and his followers believed that the emphasis should be put on practical work and private initiative, economic expansion, the develop6.  The moshavah of Merhavia functioned as an experimental training facility aimed at implementing the collectivist ideas of the German sociologist and economist Franz Oppenheimer (1864–1943) and when Oppenheimer’s concept failed, Merhavia became a moshav, an agricultural cooperative settlement. For more on the moshavah and other early Zionist settlement schemes, see Yossi Katz, “Agricultural Settlements in Palestine, 1882–1914,” Jewish Social Studies 50: 1/2 (Winter 1988–Spring 1992): 63–82. The railway mentioned was an Ottoman line through the Jezreel Valley, from the port city of Haifa to the settlement of Zemach on the Sea of Galilee. 7.  The farmstead in question was the agricultural settlement of Balfouria and Mrs. Straus was the American Nellie Straus, whose failure as manager at Balfouria, according to one report, was partly because she “suffered from a heart ailment that often incapacitated her and that made the knowledge of the imminence of death her ghost companion throughout her life.” See Joseph B. Glass, From New Zion to Old Zion: American Jewish Immigration and Settlement in Palestine, 1917–1939 (Detroit, 2002), 200–201.

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ment of industries, and the creation of a momentum that would allow for the absorption of a huge, ongoing aliya. Such a massive economic impetus would itself have the desired political effect.8 The Brandeis group was in the minority. It withdrew and decided to begin practical work in the homeland immediately, on its own.9 It established the Building and Loan Association, Ltd.,10 on the model of similar associations in the United States; Justice Brandeis had come up with this idea in his hometown of Boston. However, whereas the main idea behind such associations in America was to encourage saving among the common people so that, with their savings, they could eventually buy houses that were already standing, in the Land of Israel there was a need to put the emphasis on the actual construction of new dwellings. In those days, the days of the Third Aliya which brought immigrants from Europe, the demand was great for essentially modern apartments of the kind to which they were accustomed. Such apartments were almost impossible to find in the big cities. What was being built was constructed in a purely Arab style, and even dwellings like those were scarce and could not meet the growing demand that the new immigrants created. The Arab landlords were aware of the demand for apartments and would raise their rents and require advanced payments for a year or more. A pressing need was created to erect buildings that would be suitable for the demands of the aliya. The Building and Loan Association decided, therefore, to itself begin the work of construction on behalf of those who needed apartments. They would be required to contribute a part of the funds needed for the construction of a building and the rest was provided by the association in the form of a first mortgage. 8.  Until soon after World War I, the main executive organ of the Zionist Organization was called the Smaller Actions Committee, which Frieden calls simply the Actions Committee. On the rift between Brandeis and Weizmann, see Note 25 in the chapter “I Found the Best Woman.” 9.  In 1922, the Brandeis group founded the Palestine Cooperative Company, Inc., in order to facilitate the practical work it thought necessary in the Land of Israel. This company became the Palestine Economic Corporation in 1926, after its assets were merged with those of the Reconstruction Committee of the Joint Distribution Committee in Palestine. 10.  There is some confusion over the official name of the building and loan institution the Brandeis group established under the auspices of the Palestine Cooperative Company. It was likely the “Palestine Mortgage and Credit Bank, Ltd.” but may have been the “Palestine Building Loan and Savings Association, Ltd.” See A Brief Outline of the Activities of the Palestine Economic Corporation (New York, 1935), 5–7; Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1948), s.v. “Palestine Economic Corporation”; and Glass, From New Zion to Old Zion, 279.

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At the time, the Land of Israel was lacking in competent construction workers, except for the Arabs, who know only the Oriental style that was suitable to the local climate. The Histadrut, which was established at that time, faced two problems involving workers in the country: a shortage of skilled laborers, on the one hand, and an alarming shortage of work opportunities on the other. For this reason, it established the Solel Boneh company, a construction contracting firm that would teach workers their trade on the job. True, the construction they did was not of the highest quality, but the workers learned their craft while they worked, with the training being at the expense of the structures themselves and at the expense of the owners. Both suffered, although the country as a whole benefitted because, over the years, thousands of laborers became expert in their trade and through their efforts new cities arose. Mr. Emanuel Mohl, who was mentioned above, was installed as manager of this new Building and Loan Association, at the same time that he was managing the Balfouria farmstead and negotiating for the purchase of the lands of Afula on behalf of Kehilat Zion. The Kehilat Zion ventures did not prosper as had been hoped. Difficulties arose both here and in America even before any land could be purchased. On the other hand, there was reason to expect an expansion of activity in the country on the part of the new construction company. Mr. Mohl devoted himself to the work of the new Building and Loan Association with all the energy that was required. Construction of the Beit Hakerem neighborhood in Jerusalem began; more than sixty houses were built and there were plans for suburbs near Haifa and Tel Aviv.11 At the same time, Mr. Mohl was not able to devote himself properly to the work of Kehilat Zion. True, he did continue to deal with negotiations for the Afula lands and he completed their purchase, but for lack of sufficient time, he had to neglect oversight of the experimental farm. He asked me to take over management of Balfouria and I agreed because I was out of work. I went to Balfouria to see the place and what was being done there, and also to pay the workers their salaries. Right away I noticed that there 11.  Beit Hakerem was founded in 1922 as one of Jerusalem’s planned garden suburbs. See Ruth Kark and Michal Oren-Nordheim, Jerusalem and Its Environs: Quarters, Neighborhoods, Villages, 1800–1948 (Jerusalem, 2001), 152, 160, 169, 187.

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was nothing for me to do, except to pay the workers their salaries twice a month. The actual operation was being managed by Mr. Gefner. I had no knowledge of agriculture and I had nothing to do. I was paid 50 pounds per month in my position, but the second month I refused to accept payment because, to my mind, I didn’t earn the money since I didn’t do any work. I thought Mr. Mohl was paying the money out of his own pocket and I wasn’t comfortable taking it without doing any work whatsoever. Later I learned that the association itself had chosen me to replace Mr. Mohl as manager of the farm, but for some reason he didn’t reveal this to me. I told him that I saw no future for myself in this position. If he had told me the truth, I would certainly have devoted myself to the matter more seriously; I would have learned the specifics of land purchase and so forth. When I told Mr. Mohl that I would not accept payment, he forced me to inform the association that I had resigned. At that point, Mr. Passman was sent to Palestine to take over the position temporarily until Mr. Weinstein, the son of the association’s chairman in America, arrived to continue the work. It was under his guidance that the moshav Balfouria near Afula was expanded.12 Again I was left without any work. While I was still struggling with the problem of how to support my family, Mr. Mohl came to me again with a proposal. Actually, he would not have come to me, but he happened to tell me that he was looking for a manager to take over the running of the Kupat Milveh from Dr. de Sola Pool, who supervised the affairs of the Joint Distribution Committee in the Land of Israel. This organization, which was established in America during the First World War to help Jewish war victims in Europe, is still in existence today and doing splendid work in Israel under the name Malben.13 After the Balfour Declaration was announced, the 12.  “Mr. Passman” is Charles Passman, and the Weinstein mentioned as “chairman” (actually president) of Kehilat Zion (the American Zion Commonwealth) is Solomon J. Weinstein. Although both Balfouria and the garden city of Afula were established by Kehilat Zion in part to attract capital to the Yishuv by selling plots of land to American Jews on easy terms, the purchasers of the plots were not asked to commit to settlement in Palestine. See Irit Amit, “American Jewry and the Settlement of Palestine: Zion Commonwealth, Inc.” in Ruth Kark, ed., The Land That Became Israel (New Haven, Conn., 1989), esp. 255, 259; and Joseph B. Glass, “Balfouria: An American Zionist Colony,” Journal of Israeli History 14:1 (Spring 1993): 53–72. 13.  The history of the Kupat Milveh (literally, “Loan Fund” or “Loan Bank”) is outlined below. Malben is an acronym based upon the Hebrew for “Institutions for the Care of Disadvantaged Immigrants.”

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Joint Distribution Committee began to send aid to Palestine, also, and Dr. de Sola Pool was sent to supervise this work. Here in the Land of Israel the Joint distributed a great deal of money to those in need, including some who were unable to maintain themselves without assistance during and immediately after the war, even though they owned property in the country. These individuals did not want to take the money in the form of charity, but rather as loans that would be repaid when God restored their ability to do so. Some of the local notables who assisted Dr. Pool in supplying assistance suggested that he establish a fund that would provide aid in the form of loans against promissory notes that would be redeemed when the borrowers were able to do so. These loans were given to individuals, to institutions, to groups of workers who set up handicraft industries, to the Bezalel Academy, to scribes of ritual texts, and so forth. The work of the institution was carried out by locals; it was supervised by Dr. Pool in Jerusalem and in Tel Aviv. Branches were also opened in Haifa, Tiberias, and Safed. The loans were granted almost without anything for security; sometimes with jewelry as collateral, sometimes with a joint guarantor. But they were lenient when it came to repayment, because the Yishuv was in a depression after the war and, in any case, the Old Yishuv had been used to living on the halukah, whose affairs were managed in a substandard manner.14 The Jews in the Land of Israel who received halukah funds had become arrogant when it came to any kind of charitable distribution, and this included money from the Joint, the “rich aunt” in America. This is the story of the halukah, which I already touched upon at the beginning of this chapter: From time immemorial, Jews in the Diaspora have aspired to ascend to the Land of Israel, to connect with its very soil. The yearning to return to the country, the Chosen Land, never disappeared from the hearts of the Jewish People. Since the days of the destruction of the First and Second Temples, the arrival of individuals never ceased; there was always some Jewish settlement in the country, even if it was small and poverty stricken. Most of those who came were elderly individuals whose main desire was to be privileged to die in the Land of 14.  The Old Yishuv is a term applied to the Jewish inhabitants of Palestine in the period before the beginnings of modern Zionist aliya around 1880. The halukah (literally, “distribution”) was the system of charitable support from abroad on which many Jewish inhabitants of Palestine depended.

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Israel and to be spared gilgul mechilot.15 Most of these immigrants came with little or nothing. They lived on their share of the halukah. The difference between charity and the halukah was that the purpose of the halukah system was to support settlement in the Land of Israel and so it had a national character of sorts. Already in the days of the Second Temple, the Jews of Alexandria in Egypt would send funds to support their brethren in the Land of Israel. After the destruction of the Temple, Jews outside the Land of Israel made an effort to help sustain the remnant that remained in the homeland, and especially the ­yeshivot in Tzippori and in Tiberias.16 The greats among the Tannaim would regularly circulate in the cities of Syria to collect donations for what were called “scholars’ patronage funds.” Rabbi Eliezer, Rabbi Yehoshua, and Rabbi Akiva were involved with these patronage funds and big donors would receive a special Aramaic title. This practice continued into the period of the Amoraim. The Jews of Babylonia and Persia would also send donations to support scholars and yeshivot. With the closing of the yeshivot in the Land of Israel and the transfer of Jewish learning to Babylonia, donations to the Land of Israel ceased. In the year 1257, Rabbi Yechiel of Paris established a yeshiva in Palestine with three hundred students who came from France and England. In the year 1267, the Ramban founded his great yeshiva in Jerusalem and thus increased the Jewish population of the city, with almost every­one being supported through fund drives conducted abroad. Rabbi Ovadia of Bartenura established two yeshivot in Jerusalem in 1521; they were supported by contributions from Italy and from Egypt and by money from the regulation governing inheritance, which said that all the property of anyone who died in Jerusalem without heirs went to the community chest.17 15.  The mystical belief in gilgulai mechilot held that with the arrival of the Messiah, righteous Jews who died in the Diaspora would go through underground tunnels (mechilot) in order to be resurrected in the Land of Israel. See, for example, Ilil Arbel, “Afterlife,” on the Internet at www.pantheon.org/articles/a/afterlife.html (accessed June 19, 2008). 16.  Tzippori, also known by its Greek name, Sepphoris, was an important city in the Galilee in the period of the Mishnah. 17.  Rabbi Yechiel ben Yosef of Paris (died ca. 1265) was a Talmud scholar and rosh yeshiva who defended Judaism in a famous disputation held at the court of Louis IX and who later settled in the Land of Israel. Rabbi Ovadia ben Avraham of Bartenura (1445–1530) was an Italian-born scholar who settled in Jerusalem in 1488 and became a forceful communal leader and spiritual authority there.

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During the sixteenth century, the commentator Rabbi Moshe Alsheikh ordained the placement of boxes in every Jewish home for donations destined for the Holy Land. The Shlah Hakadosh, when he came to the Land of Israel and was accepted as the chief rabbi of the Ashkenazic community of Jerusalem in 1623, also introduced boxes for donations and special overseers to collect money for the Land of Israel in Germany and Poland.18 These donation boxes became accepted throughout the Orthodox Jewish Diaspora over hundreds of years, until this very day. Women had the custom of depositing into these boxes, before kindling the Sabbath lights, an amount of money equivalent to the number of candles they would light every Friday night. It should be pointed out that many people make the mistake of associating these donation boxes with the name of Rabbi Meir Baal Haness, but in truth these boxes were named for Rabbi Meir Hakatzin, that is, Rabbi Meir bar Ya’akov, who came to the Land of Israel with his teacher Rabbi Yechiel of Paris and died in Tiberias.19 At the end of the eighteenth century, four cities were designated for the halukah and they were Jerusalem, Hebron, Tiberias, and Safed. As the number of Torah scholars and elderly folks coming to the Land of Israel from various countries increased, so too did disputes over the way to distribute the money coming into the communal coffers, and this led to the division of the general halukah fund into individual kollel funds. Each group of immigrants coming from a certain place organized a kollel for itself that was named for its country or city; for example, the kollel of Warsaw, the kollel of Vilna, of Reisen, of Galicia, and so forth. Each kollel would send its emissaries to its own country or city to collect donations, and the money would be divided among those belonging to that kollel. At the time I arrived in the country, there were some thirty-three different kollelim in Jerusalem. For each kollel there were a number of supervisors who controlled the funds and distributed them as they 18.  Rabbi Moshe Alsheikh (1508–ca. 1600) was a Turkish-born rosh yeshiva in Safed. On the Shlah Hakadosh, see Note 6 in Frieden’s Apologia. 19.  Rabbi Meir Baal Haness (“Meir the Miracle Worker”; 2nd century) was an important Tanna. The confusion between him and Rabbi Meir bar Ya’akov Hakatzin (“the Chief ”; 13th century) stems from a reference by Rabbi Jacob of Paris (an emissary of Rabbi Yechiel of Paris) to Rabbi Meir bar Ya’akov Hakatzin as a miracle worker. See The Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. “Halukkah.”

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wished. This gave them complete control over the members of their communities. Anyone who defied a supervisor immediately lost his share of the halukah. The money was distributed according to the number of individuals in each family and the standing of the family, in accordance with Jewish law. In effect, however, the lion’s share of the money went to the supervisors and the heads of the communities, even if they were wealthy, although, to be sure, there were also decent people who managed the halukah honestly and lawfully. As disputes and complaints increased and became known abroad, donors became irritated and they stopped sending money until such time as the halukah would be reorganized on a just and logical basis. At that point a general committee of Ashkenazic kollelim was established, an orderly system for the halukah was instituted, and this also led to a certain cost saving. The negative aspect of the halukah institutions concerned the use of emissaries. The multiplication of emissaries that each kollel dispatched caused a contemptible competition between them and sometimes the kollelim fell prey to dishonest individuals who engaged in embezzlement in the course of making their rounds. Their improper behavior gave the entire system of halukah a bad reputation. The kollelim suffered and so did the poor in the Land of Israel. But there was also a positive side to the halukah system, for in those years the Yishuv was poor and needy and could not have survived on its own. The Ashkenazic community suffered particularly, since it was in the minority compared to the veteran Sephardic community. The latter used to tyrannize the Ashkenazim, newer immigrants, who were supposedly depriving them of their livelihood, because before they arrived, the Sephardim would dispatch their own emissaries throughout the entire Jewish Diaspora. The Sephardim used to cast aspersions upon the Ashkenazim before the Turkish authorities; they were on good terms with them since they knew their language and customs. It was the oppression of the Ashkenazic immigrants by the Sephardim, the veterans of the Yishuv, that compelled the former to organize themselves as an Ashkenazic community and to seek aid and support from their brethren in Europe. They were forced to set up ­kollelim. These kollelim, with all their faults, helped them greatly in striking roots in Jerusalem and other cities, and in enlarging the population of the country in general, and this is all to their credit.

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The Kupat Milveh established by the representative of the Joint, Mr.  de Sola Pool, as suggested by the Jewish notables of Jerusalem, continued providing loans and helped greatly in the development of handicraft industries, retail sales, and even the businesses of small tradesmen. With the establishment of the Zionist Executive in Jerusalem and the departure of Dr. Pool for America, the management of the Kupat Milveh was turned over to the Zionist Executive. The Executive centralized all its operations in Jerusalem and changed the name of the loan fund to the Central Kupat Milveh, Ltd. The branches of the Kupat Milveh were transferred to the offices of the Zionist Executive in every city and the agents of the Executive handled the distribution and collection of loans. The Joint had to cover losses year after year, for most of the loans were not repaid and remained on the books as assets. The Joint did not provide new funding and so the amount of money that was loaned grew smaller. The expenses did not diminish, however, and the losses were in the thousands of pounds. The Joint was preparing to shut down its projects and it began to dismantle its operations in the Diaspora or to turn them over to the local Jews.20 A Mr. Kaplan, from a well-known audit firm in New York, came to Palestine at the request of the Joint to examine the books of the Kupat Milveh covering its operations under Dr. Pool and the Zionist Executive, and the late Dr. Magnes and Mr. Mohl were given power of attorney to handle all the Joint’s property in the Land of Israel.21 They were, in any case, directors of the Kupat Milveh. Their first recommendation was to separate the loan fund from the Zionist Executive and have it operate independently. As a result, they offered me the job of managing the Haifa branch of the Kupat Milveh. True, the pay was very low, 25 pounds a month, for Mr. Mohl always tried to economize at the expense of others and did not consider whether they could survive on a tiny salary. Nonetheless, I accepted the offer gladly in order to begin working and to be rid of the nightmare of 20.  It is almost certain that in this sentence Frieden intended to write “operations in the Land of Israel” and not “operations in the Diaspora.” 21.  “Dr. Magnes” is Judah Magnes (1877–1948), a U.S. Reform rabbi with traditionalist tendencies who was extremely active in communal affairs, being, for example, among the founders of the American Jewish Committee in 1906. In 1922, Magnes immigrated to Palestine, where he served as chancellor and then president of the newly established Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

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constantly thinking that I might be forced to leave the country. I would begin working with the firm belief that, over time, my salary would rise to one on which I could support my family (I didn’t know Mr. Mohl well enough at the time). Moreover, I saw in this work an important service to the homeland, a way of providing some relief from the disappointment I felt after closing my workshop and dismissing workers at a time when there were so few jobs in the Land of Israel. I saw before me a wide open field in which to work for the good of the land, even if I myself had to suffer. I began work on the 15th of September 1923. I worked two weeks in the central office in Jerusalem in order to familiarize myself with the nature of the operation, and on the 1st of October, Mr. Yishaya Broide, then the director of the Kupat Milveh, took me to Haifa to introduce me to Mr. Shavueli, manager of the Zionist Executive and the Kupat Milveh in Haifa. I told him to turn over all the affairs of the Kupat Milveh to me, and within a month I transferred the office of the loan fund to new quarters and I organized the work as I thought it should be done. I realized immediately how important the functioning of this institution was for the upbuilding of the homeland. Even though its size and scope were limited, the Yishuv, too, was still relatively small and the little that the loan fund did was practical work of which one could be proud. As I began my work, I immediately was confronted by the absurdity of the complete dependence of the branch on the central office. The branch office did not keep its own books and had no idea of its financial situation. Each month, the branch would receive a report on the status of each account, and often the report was incorrect because in the meantime a payment had been made and not recorded to the borrower’s credit. The branch would accept loan applications, which were then approved by a local committee composed of notables from the city. The applications would then be sent to Jerusalem for final approval after the accounts of the borrower and his guarantor were examined, but the Jerusalem office did not approve all applicants. Those applications that were approved were returned to the branch with a check for the amount of the loan, minus the interest. However, the members of the local committee would become angry over the rejection of applications that they had approved, even though an investigation often justified the reversal of their approvals.

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If the account books had been kept locally, this unpleasantness could have been avoided. The branch manager had no authority in all this, which lowered his esteem and his influence in the eyes of borrowers. I explained to Dr. Magnes and to Mr. Mohl the shortcomings of operating in this manner, which was completely impractical and caused unnecessary problems, complications, and duplications. They saw the wisdom in my reasoning, but could not introduce any changes as long as the institution remained under the control of the Zionist Executive. And my position as manager, too, was under their control, that of Mr. Broide and the late Mr. van Vriesland.22 Mr. Mohl traveled to America with the suggestion of transferring the activities of the Central Kupat Milveh to the Brandeis group in Palestine and severing its ties to the Zionist Executive completely. This suggestion appealed to both of the organizations involved: the Joint was happy to turn the institution over to this American association and to be done with the losses it sustained every year, and the Brandeis people were pleased to take it over because, for lack of funds, the building and loan association they had recently established had not developed quickly enough and they could use another institution that would lighten the load of their expenses. The Joint transferred all the property it had in Palestine to the association in return for shares in the Brandeissponsored enterprise. The name of the organization was changed to the Loan Bank, Ltd., in order to erase the impression conveyed by the name Kupat Milveh that the institution was a charity. This change had a significant psychological effect on the repayment of loans granted by the fund. It was essential to raise the sense of responsibility of the borrowers toward the institution. Mr. Mohl was appointed the manager of this bank and when he returned from America with the overall authorization of the Joint to act on its behalf where its holdings in Palestine were concerned, the former managers of the loan fund, Mr. van Vriesland and Mr. Broide, were dismissed. The institution came under the authority of the Brandeis people and into the hands of Mr. Mohl. This was at the start of the year 1924. 22.  “Mr. van Vriesland” is Siegfried A. van Vriesland (1886–1939), first treasurer of the Zionist Executive. See Chaya Brasz, “Expectations and Realities of Dutch Immigration to Palestine/Israel after the Shoah,” Jewish History 8 (1994): 331–32, 337.

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Mr. Mohl submitted a request to the mandatory authorities concerning the change of the name of the institution to the Loan Bank, Ltd., and received approval. In the meantime, he began a general reorganization of the institution.23 The first order of business was to sort out the accounts carried on the books. The account books kept by the institution listed loans in the amount of 80,000 pounds. After a methodical review, it became clear that more than half of these loans were worthless; there was no one from whom to demand payment, either because both the borrower and the guarantor had disappeared, or because the loans were not properly guaranteed, making it impossible to demand payment legally. These loans were set aside and voided. Although they were still listed in a special account book as “canceled and doubtful loans,” they reduced the institution’s balance by about 40,000 pounds. Only loans that were properly guaranteed, in the amount of nearly 50,000 pounds, were listed as assets. The Joint added 10,000 pounds in cash in order to increase the working capital of the bank, and the Brandeis group also promised to contribute additional amounts from time to time, as necessary, in order to supplement the bank’s capital and to expand its activity. At the time that Mr. Mohl took over the institution, there were thirty-six workers in Jerusalem, four in the Tel Aviv branch, three in Haifa, three in Tiberias, and two in Safed, aside from the two head managers in Jerusalem. Altogether, the institution employed fifty people. The large number of workers was a result of the duplication of effort in the central office and the branches. Following my suggestion to transfer the books to each branch and to allow the branches to keep their own accounts allowed for the dismissal of sixteen clerks from the central office and improved the quality of the work greatly. This also led to an expansion of the loans being made and an increase in repayments. Giving branch managers freedom of action also improved the public image of the institution. Although this freedom of action was given only to me at first, with the other branches functioning as they 23.  For another account of the origins of the Loan Bank, Ltd., see “Report of the Joint Palestine Survey Commission” (London, 1928), reprinted in Aaron S. Klieman, ed., The Jewish Yishuv’s Development in the Interwar Period, vol. 16 of Howard M. Sachar, ed., The Rise of Israel (New York, 1987).

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had previously, over time, when my experience convinced Mr. Mohl of the efficacy of my system, this freedom was granted the other branches as well.24 I remained in Haifa for only six months. In those six months, I enlarged the scope of our loans by some 50 percent and I elevated appreciation for our institution in the eyes of the Haifa public to a high level. Loans were repaid and there were no losses. The Yishuv in 1924 was small, however, and the scope of the work for the Haifa branch of the bank was limited. I dismissed the four clerks and made do with only one clerk and a youngster, but this small operation was not enough for me and so I informed Mr. Mohl that the Haifa branch was sound and in good order, but too small to keep me busy. I suggested he send one of his clerks from Jerusalem to manage the branch and he did. He sent Mr. S. A. Weinstein, his head bookkeeper, to run the Haifa branch and he asked me to take over the Tel Aviv branch.25 During the time I ran the Haifa office, we lived in two rooms. The older two girls we left in our apartment in Jerusalem with my parents. On the 1st of May, I went to Tel Aviv to take over the branch there. The manager had been Mr. Savurai and he had three clerks working with him.26 Although the Tel Aviv office was the most important of the branches, its business had not grown in proportion to the increase in the population of Tel Aviv. It disbursed about 800 pounds a month in loans and repayments were even less. Mr. Savurai had been the bookkeeper of the Zionist Executive and from there he had been sent to manage the Tel Aviv branch. He had instituted a bookkeeping system for the Tel Aviv accounts, despite his supposed dependence on the central office and its account books, but his operation was a bit 24.  A report of April 24, 1924, in the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem (hereafter CZA) concerning the branches of the Kupat Milveh confirms that the institution’s “intention is gradually to increase their autonomy” and notes that recent changes had altered the image of the Kupat Milveh; it was no longer seen as an “institution of a somewhat charitable character.” See file A406/44. 25.  “S. A. Weinstein” is Shlomo Weinstein (1872–1961), whose biography in the Hebrew reference series David Tidhar, Encyclopedia of the Pioneers of the Yishuv and Its Builders (Tel Aviv, 1947– ), vol. 2, 651, and vol. 11, 3883, indicates that he worked for the Loan Bank in Haifa and Tiberias in the period ca. 1919–1935. 26.  “Mr. Savurai” is Moshe Savurai, formerly Goldzinger (born 1894), who made aliya in 1914. See document in CZA file A405/44; and Tidhar, Encyclopedia of the Pioneers of the Yishuv, vol. 19, 5704–6.

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sloppy and negligent because the number of his workers was inappropriate for the scope of the work and so an unnecessary duplication of efforts resulted. So too, his dependence on the central office affected his sense of purpose. I rented an apartment on Hess Street, near the old cemetery. The girls were afraid to sleep in their room, for its windows looked out on the cemetery, but we stayed in the apartment for a year, until the house I began to build on my lot in the new commercial center was finished. That was all I had left. The history of this lot is as follows: When I arrived in the Land of Israel and met Mr. Salomon, he told me that a parcel of land was available in Tel Aviv, a large parcel that would cost some 25,000 pounds. It was suggested to Mr. Salomon that he form an association to buy it. Three partners had already been found; he was the fourth and they were looking for a fifth. Each one would have to invest 2,500 pounds and the rest could be obtained as a bank loan. I agreed to his proposal and he suggested that I go to Tel Aviv to investigate the matter. I arrived in Tel Aviv, visited the site, and liked what I saw, for it was located between Tel Aviv–Yafo Street and Herzl Street, right in the middle of the city. I saw a sign posted at the site by the Tel Aviv municipality indicating that anyone interested in this parcel of land should address himself to city hall. I went there and was referred to a Mr. Smilansky.27 I told him that several Jews were interested in buying the parcel and that I was one of them. Mr. Smilansky told me that the city itself wanted to buy the parcel and would like us to drop our interest in it, for if many people expressed an interest in the land, that would only raise the price being asked by the Arab sheik who owned it. It would do no good for those interested to persist, since the city would do everything it could to prevent the purchase of the land by private individuals. I told him that since the city itself wanted this land for a commercial center, I would withdraw my interest in the site and advise my partners to do the 27.  “Mr. Smilansky” is David Smilansky (1875–1953), who arrived in Palestine in 1906 and was one of the founders of the Ahuzat Bayit association, which, in 1909, established the urban development on the outskirts of Jaffa that became Tel Aviv. In the period that Smilansky served as “general manager” of Tel Aviv (1921–1927), the city’s population grew from 2,084 to 37,729 and the number of its buildings rose from 200 to 3,281. See, for example, Gur Alroey, “Journey to Early-Twentieth-Century Palestine as a Jewish Immigrant Experience,” Jewish ­Social Studies 9 (Winter 2003): 28–64; and Joachim Schlör, Tel Aviv (London, 1999), 40–43.

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same. However, I wanted ten lots to be reserved for the five partners. Mr. Smilansky thought this would be possible, but in the end only one lot was sold to me, and that’s the lot on which I began to build my house as soon as I got to Tel Aviv. I used the little money I had left, because Barclay’s Bank promised to lend 500 pounds for any building project on this site. The Barclay’s office was then in a private apartment on Herzl Street. When my building was completed, it had a basement, three storefronts, a second floor with two rooms, and another floor with five rooms into which we moved. With Mr. Mohl’s permission, I transferred the bank’s office to the second-floor space of two rooms. The clerks’ union, of which Mr. Savurai was a member, objected to my being put in charge of the branch, and the local committee that approved loans also opposed me and announced that it was resigning. The objection of the union was manifested when two members of the union’s actions committee appeared and demanded that I simply give up my position. I was rather astonished at such a demand. I wasn’t familiar with the Histadrut and its practices. In America, I had had a department store in which a number of clerks worked and I never encountered any kind of union. In my tobacco workshop here, too, I had not encountered a workers’ union, and now some people appear and demand that I leave my position? I explained to them that, first of all, I had no intention of meeting their demand, for I’m not a member of the Histadrut, and that, second, I was sent here by the directorate of the bank, which is American owned. If they have any complaints, they should refer them to Mr. Mohl. I didn’t think Mr. Mohl would pay any attention to their demands because they weren’t reasonable. As I spoke my piece, I sprinkled in my own observations about who I am and what I had managed to accomplish in the country. I explained to them the situation of the bank, how it had functioned until then, and what we intended to do: the reorganization we were undertaking, which is only for the good of the institution and of the country, and our intention to add to the capital of the bank and to expand its activity. This, because the demand for loans will increase as immigration increases and until now there was no institution in the country that would lend money at low interest to people in the middle class and below. I explained that as we increase our activity, we want to increase the sense of responsibility of the borrowers so that they will repay their loans

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and enhance the amount of inexpensive credit available to the masses. This could only be done under new management; the old management would not be able to succeed even if it wanted to alter its methods, because the public had lost confidence in it and because it would be hard for it to cast off the impression that the institution was a charity. My explanation impressed them and, on the spot, they suggested I come to work with them, for they, too, needed new people with American experience. I told them that my worldview was different from theirs and that we would not be able to work together. To this day, I regret that I did not accept their offer, especially in light of the immense growth of the Histadrut. I could have done so much for them in those early years when they were short of men of action, and I would have found a place for myself among them much more so than I did being involved with Mr. Mohl’s activities. But, above all, my personal philosophy interfered. I grew up and was educated in a relatively wellto-do home without even a scintilla of socialist ideology. And I certainly didn’t learn about this ideology during my seventeen years in the United States; that ideology is hardly known there. Moreover, my six months in Haifa and my association with those of the middle class and below made apparent to me the need for an institution such as a loan bank that would provide inexpensive credit to these people. True, the savings and loan associations that were developing in the Land of Israel made these kinds of loans, but their loans were very expensive due to the membership fees required and their high interest rates. And in any case, these associations, established by Mr. Mordechai Ben-Hillel Hacohen, were not yet numerous and their resources were limited so that, for lack of money, they could not accept everyone who wished to be a member.28 Only the Loan Bank could meet the great demand, especially from new immigrants in need of some initial assistance at low interest. I was convinced that the Loan Bank, an American institution, would grow and become the primary institution offering inexpensive credit to those who needed it and that it would provide a strong foundation for the establishment of the commerce and small28.  The writer Mordechai Ben-Hillel Hacohen (1856–1936), who was associated with early banking endeavors in the Yishuv, was among the founders of Tel Aviv and an uncle of assassinated Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

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scale manufacturing so necessary for the development of the Land of Israel. I was convinced that this institution needed my American experience and that I would be a boon to the institution and to the Land of Israel. Had I known its future, I would have acted differently. But no one can predict what is yet to come; prophecy and foretelling the future were ended with the destruction of the Temple. One of the two members of the Histadrut who invited me to work with them was Mr. Zvi Lubianiker, now a member of the Tel Aviv city government, and I wonder at how great a personal loss I sustained when I refused Mr. Lubianiker’s invitation and at how great a mistake I made in evaluating the two job opportunities that were open to me in 1924. So too, I erred in my evaluation of the future of the Loan Bank, counting as I did on its source of working capital, which I considered unfailing. It turned out to be the opposite. I didn’t appreciate the situation because at the time I didn’t realize the disadvantages of a job dependent on decisions made by people thousands of kilometers away who were unfamiliar with the Land of Israel and who insisted on directing the enterprise in accordance with their view of things, which was not at all appropriate for the country and its future. Neither did I know Mr. Mohl well, and I wasn’t familiar with his small-mindedness and his other limitations. Even though I had known him for some three years, I had not interacted with him in terms of “his pocket, his cup, and his anger.” Later, during the ten years we worked together, I was able to become acquainted with him in all three of these respects, which our Sages defined as ways to know a person.29 On the other hand, I didn’t know how to properly appreciate the future and the strength of the Histadrut. I was not familiar with its leaders, people such as Berl Katznelson, Yosef Aharonowitz, Beilinson, and others.30 I met only with the frontline troops, the tough fist, and from 29.  In Hebrew, the phrase “his pocket, his cup, and his anger” is the alliterative kiso, koso, v’ka’aso. This is a reference to tractate Eruvin 65b, which observes that “in three ways can a person’s character be perceived: with his cup of wine, with his wallet, and with this level of anger.” 30.  Berl Katznelson (1887–1944) was a Belarus-born intellectual who arrived in Palestine in 1909 and became a leader of the Zionist labor movement. He was, for example, among the founders of Hamashbir Hamerkazi (see Note 28 in the chapter “My Journey to the Land of Israel and My Early Activities There”) and editor of the Histadrut newspaper Davar (The Word). See, for example, Anita Shapira, Berl: The Biography of a Socialist Zionist, Haya Galai, trans. (Cambridge, 1984). Yosef Aharonowitz was the editor of the journal Hapoel Hatzair

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them I had nothing to learn. I was not privileged to meet the primary founders and guiding lights of the Histadrut, through whose activism and energy that great political party which united most of the laborers of the Land of Israel was founded. This gave it its strength, in contrast to the lethargy and weakness of the rest of the splintered parties, which did not have a common goal. They did not look to the future and they could not take a clear stand on the vital questions that presented themselves when it came to the development of the revitalized land. As the wisest of all men once proclaimed: “Better is the end of a matter than the beginning.”31 That is, at the beginning of every venture one must already be thinking about its later stages, about what will happen eventually. That’s the good outcome that one must see already at the beginning of an undertaking. I’m certain that if I had been privileged to get to know the greats of the Histadrut, without doubt I would have bonded with them and I would have excelled on account of my diligent and devoted labor in those days. The broad areas in which the Histadrut was involved would have given me the opportunity to set my abilities in motion. The outcome certainly would have been altered, and my social status in the Land of Israel would have been entirely different. In my work with Mr. Mohl, I lost out completely. The opposition of the local committee to my work in Tel Aviv, which it demonstrated with its resignation from its duties, was opportune for me. Through my work with the Haifa committee on loan approvals, I realized that they were working not for the welfare of the institution, but for the good of the borrowers. They approved loans that, in my opinion, should not have been approved, neither on the basis of need nor on the basis of the security offered. This reduced the quality of the work. When the Tel Aviv committee resigned, Mohl wanted to nominate another, but I objected and told him that I preferred to work without a committee. Although I was not familiar with the population in Tel Aviv, I would rely on my own insight, and I would take full responsibility for the approval of loans. (The Young Worker) during the period of the Second Aliya and one of the founders of the socialist Zionist party Mapai, the dominant political party in the Yishuv and in the early years of the State of Israel. On Beilinson, see Note 26 in the chapter “My Mother’s Family.” 31.  The quotation here is from Ecclesiastes 7:8. Authorship of Ecclesiastes is attributed to King Solomon.

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I started my work with great energy, laboring day and night. I investigated every loan application from all angles, looking at needs and benefits. I visited most applicants in their homes in order to speak to them and get to know them, to judge their honesty, but most of all to see what benefits a loan could afford them. It was clear to me that if a person gets a loan with a smile and the loan will help him with his business, the loan will be repaid completely and on time, even if it is granted without cosigners, and all the more so if there are cosigners. It’s human nature for most people to be honest and good, and every person is regarded as honest until proven otherwise. It also became clear to me that if a person sees that the bank is interested in his business and truly cares about its welfare, it’s impossible for the relationship not to be mutual. Just as the bank expects good faith on the part of the borrower, the borrower expects fidelity on the part of the bank. He should have faith that the bank is looking out for the welfare of the borrower as well as its own welfare. Over the many years of my work, my feelings about the relationship between the borrower and the lender were born out by the fact that although I did not always insist on full security guarantees, the bank did not suffer any losses from the loans that were made during my tenure. I was also helped by a member of the local committee, the late Mr. Bezalel Lapin, who, despite having resigned, came to meet me, and afterward would come in once a week to advise me and provide information about various people. He was a very upright individual, a scholar, and a wise person.32 We became very friendly and he remained a good friend of mine and of the institution. May God remember him in kindness. Mr. Kivshani, my assistant, who was familiar with Tel Aviv, also helped me greatly, but the thing that helped me most was the new system I instituted of investigating each applicant, as I described above, and getting to know each one personally. Not many months passed before the work of the branch grew and expanded in its scope and character. Word got around in the city that the Loan Bank was making loans of up to 50 pounds and that the manager was a pleasant man, so loan applications grew in number from day to day. Loan approvals increased, 32.  During World War I, Lapin had been on the committee to distribute American relief funds to the Jews of Jaffa. See Reports Received by the Joint Distribution Committee of Funds for Jewish War Sufferers, 135.

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as well, for I insisted that the loan applications that I approved be considered valid upon review in Jerusalem. Repayments also mounted, since I asked that the records for the Tel Aviv accounts be transferred to me and I kept the books myself. The borrowers got timely notices of payments due, and they paid promptly. I didn’t allow extensions to those behind in their payments; I firmly demanded payments on time and I conditioned the public to make them. The borrowing public knew that, just as I was lenient when it came to granting loans, I was rigorous when it came to repaying and settling them on time. Anyone who got behind in his payments had his loan renewed only reluctantly and for a smaller amount. That’s how I was able to alter the thinking of the public concerning the institution, which had previously been seen as a charity fund. Now it was recognized as a financial institution whose main goal was to help people of the middle class and below to get credit on good terms. There was no other such organization in the Land of Israel and the public came to treasure it. It helped also that, before I took over the branch, it would take a month or more until a person would get a positive or negative response concerning his loan application, but that I shortened the period of review and approval to only one week, since the borrowers were the kinds of shopkeepers or tradesmen who couldn’t wait a long time for funding. They needed an immediate response. A loan provided in a timely fashion is twice as useful. It had been the practice to send the applications to the Jerusalem office and to have that office send the approved applications back with a check on the Anglo-Palestine Bank in Tel Aviv. This too was inconvenient for the borrower and eventually I changed this practice as well. I would still send the applications to Jerusalem for a general review, for it was possible that a borrower who presented a loan application to me still owed money to another branch if he had moved, or that he owed money to another branch due to his being a guarantor. The central office would check on this, but payments in Tel Aviv were made in cash. In the Kupat Milveh, the practice had been that if a borrower refused to pay, the institution would pressure the cosigners to pay. This practice resulted in well-to-do people refusing to cosign for loans and closed the door on many borrowers. It was my practice not to press cosigners unless all other measures to force the borrower to repay his loan had been

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taken and they had failed. Only then would the cosigners be required to repay the loan. As a result of these changes, the extent of the loans made by the Tel Aviv branch grew from 800 pounds a month to 2,000 pounds monthly. I broadened the scope of the work, but I reduced the number of clerks to three. Despite the expansion of activity and its quickened tempo, and despite the increase in work that resulted from taking over tasks formerly handled in the central office, my own situation did not improve. My salary was 30 Egyptian pounds per month,33 and on this I had to support a family of seven souls, for in 1925 my second son, Baruch, was born. This was a tiny salary in view of my needs and in view of the value of my increased effort and its excellent results. Mr. Mohl did me the favor of adding 5 pounds per month, while he was making 7,000 dollars a year. He was a wealthy man with a small family and a tight fist. Although he made a pretense of being my friend, he ignored the difficulties I and my wife faced in supporting a large family on such a small salary. This exposed him for what he was: an envious and malicious man lacking in culture and civility. His main concern was to show the directors of the association the cost savings he had introduced at the bank at the expense of his employees. Every raise for the clerks caused a great deal of stress and occasioned many arguments and pressure from the employees’ union. Since I was not a member of the union, I was not included among those who got raises and I, myself, never requested a raise from Mr. Mohl. It was beneath my dignity to show any weakness, and his malevolence did not allow him to grant a raise on his own without someone vigorously demanding it. In October 1925 my wife traveled to the United States because she was pregnant and didn’t want to give birth in Tel Aviv under the difficult conditions she had at home, since my salary did not allow us to hire a maid. We only had a young girl help with washing the floor, on her hands and knees. My wife was already in her sixth month of pregnancy. Were it not for a check for 100 pounds that came from her family in Africa,34 I would not have been able to fulfill her request to 33.  The Egyptian pound, worth 2.5 percent above sterling, was the legal currency in Palestine under the British until 1927. See Harry Viteles, A History of the Co-operative Movement in Israel, Book 7 (London, 1970), 340. 34.  This is probably a typographical error and should read “her family in America.”

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go to the United States because I was deep in debt for the house I built at No. 3 Hakishon Street. This check was enough to cover the expenses of the trip, so she and our older son, Ben Zion, who was then seven, left the country. I arranged the trip for her with the Cook Agency down to the smallest detail. Nonetheless, it weighed upon me that I let her go in her condition and I was overjoyed to get a telegram from Norfolk saying that she had arrived safely. On the 15th of December I received the telegram announcing ­Baruch’s birth. I was very happy at the birth of a son, for I already had three daughters and very much hoped for another boy, and here my wish was fulfilled. Still, I was sorry that I could not be present at the brit. I praised God with all my heart that she had come through both the trip and the birth safely and that both mother and child were safe and sound. Six month later, my wife returned to the Land of Israel with her sons. I met her in Haifa and we arrived in Tel Aviv in the evening. The girls went crazy with joy when they saw the beautiful little baby. During the nine months that my wife was in America, I rented out two rooms to Mr. Pomerantz, a Polish Jew, and his wife. He was an outstanding scholar and a man of distinction. His wife, too, was well educated, although she talked a lot, as do all women, who took nine measures of speech.35 It seems to me that she got a good portion of these nine, but she was a very decent woman. They had come to the Land of Israel with a bit of money, but they were unable to establish themselves and they lived a life of sorrow and poverty for several years. Mr. Pomerantz came from a family whose business was liquor manufacturing and he was an expert in the field. Here, for lack of sufficient capital to establish a brewery, he began making a drink similar to beer. He employed a primitive handicraft method because he didn’t have enough money to purchase machinery. The enterprise did not succeed, and within a year or two he used up the little money he had and was left with nothing. How hard it was for me to see these good people existing on next to nothing, on tea and bread and the like. When my wife returned with her sons, these people moved out of my house, but our friendship remained 35.  This is a reference to tractate Kiddushin 49b, which states: “Ten measures of speech descended to the world; women took nine.”

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and has lasted to this day. I was privileged to see their reestablishment, for Mr. Pomerantz was able to interest the Tnuva company in a patent he had on the production of a distinctive kind of beverage. The company bought machinery and built a modern factory and Mr. Pomerantz brought to market a drink called Tzuf. The public liked it immediately and the business prospered, but the work was too hard for him and a few years ago he sold his share in the factory to Tnuva for 10,000 pounds. He and his wife are living on this money, for they are childless.36 With the return of my wife and her sons we again went back to a normal life at home. True, during her absence my mother took care of the household, and my parents also moved in with us when construction of my building was finished, but for me this was not a normal lifestyle. It was hard for me to live without my dear, good wife, even for a short time, and only with her return to the Land of Israel did I feel that I was again alive and well. On the heels of the Fourth Aliya, which began in 1925, the work of the Tel Aviv branch grew from month to month. Those who came in this aliya settled mainly in Tel Aviv. People of means from Poland came to invest their money in industry and in the construction of homes and stores. What was then called “Lev Tel Aviv,” the “Heart of Tel Aviv,” was established in that same period. This aliya was made up of Jews from Warsaw, Lodz, Bialystok, and other such places, common people of the type that constituted the majority of the Jewish population in these cities: small-business owners, tradesmen, and small shopkeepers. They heard that there was prosperity in the Land of Israel and they came in droves. The demand for apartments and stores increased and the price of lots, houses, and apartments rose. Rental costs rose as well, so that constructing buildings for rental became the best possible investment. As Jews are wont to do, they began to build by forming combinations, building without capital, building in the hope of future income. They would return to Poland, earn money, and send it to Palestine to fin36.  “Mr. Pomerantz” is Asher Pomerantz (1878–1952), who visited Palestine in 1914 and then came to settle in Tel Aviv in 1925 with his wife, the former Esther Eisenstadt, whom he had married in 1901. Pomerantz received his patent for Tzuf (“Nectar”) in 1930. See ­Tidhar, Encyclopedia of the Pioneers of the Yishuv, vol. 5, 2301–2. Tnuva is a cooperative established in 1929 to market first dairy products and later other agricultural goods as well. See “About Tnuva,” on the Internet at www.tnuva.co.il/Site/EN/tnuva.asp?pi=20 (accessed June 27, 2008).

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ish the construction or to pay off their burdensome mortgages, that is, mortgages that they had gotten from private individuals at high rates of interest because they had no alternative. The Apotikai Bank established by the Zionist Executive had limited funds and could not meet the great demand for mortgages resulting from the surge in building.37 And our bank, that is, the mortgage bank, gave out loans only for buildings that were being erected under its own auspices.38 The work went on feverishly day and night. The empty streets suddenly filled with houses and stores; they were hardly recognizable, so quickly did they change. And then Grabski’s wrath fell upon the Polish Jews and they could no longer receive funds from Poland.39 Building stopped and houses under construction were left unfinished. Thousands of workers who had made their living from construction were fired and left unemployed. The high tide of 1925–1926 was reduced to nothing. Widespread unemployment affected the entire economy. At the beginning of 1927, Polish Jews began to leave the Land of Israel in droves. Commerce was paralyzed and a high proportion of workshops fell silent. Those who suffered were primarily the immigrants of the Fourth Aliya who had opened small workshops and businesses. These people had hardly had time to sink roots in the land and they were unable to withstand the crisis of 1927, which was felt primarily in Tel Aviv. Of course, the condition of these people had an impact on others in Tel Aviv, as well, and the demand for loans from the Loan Bank grew significantly. It could not meet this demand due to a lack of capital and to the unstable situation in the city, which influenced the bank to operate more cautiously. 37.  The Apotikai Bank was created to facilitate the long-term financing of agriculture and industry. Among other things, it played a role in establishing a port in Tel Aviv. Eventually this bank became a subsidiary of Bank Leumi (see Note 13 in the preceding chapter, “My Journey to the Land of Israel and My Early Activities There”). 38.  Frieden is probably referring here to the Palestine Mortgage and Credit Bank, Ltd., which was, like the Loan Bank, part of the network of institutions created by the Palestine Economic Corporation (See Note 10, above). 39.  Władysław Grabski (1874–1938) was a Polish politician, economist, and historian who served as prime minister of Poland in 1920 and from 1923 to 1925 and who is generally recognized as holding antisemitic views. The Fourth Aliya is sometimes called the Grabski Aliya because of the role Grabski’s discriminatory measures played in motivating Jews to leave Poland. See, for example, Don Peretz and Gideon Doron, The Government and Politics of Israel, 3rd ed. (Boulder, Colo., 1997), 35.

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At this critical juncture, Dr. J. L. Magnes contacted the Joint and asked for immediate assistance to rescue Tel Aviv from its crisis, which was about to reach catastrophic proportions. The Joint sent 50,000 pounds to the Loan Bank to be used in granting loans for practical assistance to those who needed help and who would be able to set themselves aright with these loans, except that they were unable to find guarantors for the loans because, in light of the situation, well-to-do Jews declined to cosign for others. Such loans were given from a fund called the “Special Fund for Special Loans.” It was considered imperative to activate this fund as soon as possible so that it would have an impact on the general situation in the city. True, the sum was small, 50,000 pounds, but this amount served as a stopgap. In one month, more than three thousand loans were granted in Tel Aviv alone, loans to small shopkeepers, tradesmen, peddlers, and new immigrants. The loans, in amounts of 10 to 30 Egyptian pounds, were given readily, without demanding full security and sometimes without any cosigners. And not only the borrowers benefitted, but also others with whose businesses the borrowers had a connection. I am not saying that these loans averted the crisis completely, but there is no doubt that this activity of ours, implemented in such a short time and affecting three thousand families in one city, was the main factor in ending the crisis in the Land of Israel in that fateful year. And what is even more interesting is that these loans, which were given without security but in a timely fashion and with great willingness, were repaid in full. This is proof positive of the correctness of my bank’s judgment that credit provided willingly in a timely manner for a constructive purpose does not require 100 percent security in order to effect repayment by the borrower. It goes without saying that it was hard work handling more than three thousand loans in one month, together with seeing to the normal business of the Loan Bank, which itself was more difficult, since payments on regular loans declined greatly and they also had to be attended to in a particular manner. I labored sixteen hours each day and night, since, in accordance with Mr. Mohl’s instructions, only a single inexperienced clerk was hired to provide some extra help. The burden of the heavy workload over several months began to have its affect on my health, for aside from my work at the bank, every week

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I had to spend some very late nights on my work as the chairman of the Association of Jews from America and England. And so, day and night, I had no rest. I became seriously ill and the doctor ordered me to leave the country in order to rest for at least two months. I decided to go to Warsaw to see my brother Ya’akov, whom I had not seen in some twenty years. I could not afford to go to Switzerland, as the doctor advised. I knew that with my brother, who was at his summer home, I would be able to get a good rest without incurring expenses. I informed my brother that I was preparing to come to visit and I immediately got a letter saying that they were awaiting me anxiously. True, my brother had visited America in 1921, just as I was leaving for the Land of Israel, but I was informed that he was coming when everything was already set for our trip and I couldn’t delay our departure. That’s why I had not seen him in more than twenty years.

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In this section of Menachem Mendel Frieden’s memoir, the author continues the account of his activities with the Loan Bank in Palestine. As we have seen, Frieden seems to have considered his work to be at the core of his existence, and so the story of his life remains structured around a description of his work. Here there is much detail about the operations of the Loan Bank and about its relationship with other financial institutions in Palestine, making Frieden’s memoir a very valuable source of information about the economic history of the Yishuv from an insider’s perspective. Interwoven with the chronicle of Frieden’s experiences at work in this part of his memoir are also several absorbing accounts of individual episodes in Frieden’s life. In an engaging narrative style, Frieden tells of his visit with his brother’s family in Poland in 1927, for example, and also of his discovery of embezzlement at the Loan Bank and of his narrow escape from harm during the Arab riots of 1929. In this respect, the memoir provides unique glimpses into subjects such as Warsaw Jewish life in the interwar period; the inner workings of the Yishuv; and the violence that frequently accompanied the development of the Jewish community in Palestine between the two World Wars. Emanuel Mohl, introduced earlier in the memoir, makes recurrent appearances in this section of Frieden’s narrative. Frieden writes about his own interactions with Mohl and about an affair that Mohl conducted with his assistant, among other things, and he also includes a piercing assessment of Mohl’s character. That Mohl appears so often in this section of Frieden’s memoir is not surprising, given that he had such a profound influence on Frieden’s career and that Frieden always felt he had been mistreated by Mohl. Although much of this chapter deals with Frieden’s work with the Loan Bank, and even its more personal elements are often set against the back-

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ground of the author’s career, it ends with an account of the marriage of Frieden’s three daughters. As befits a text that is at times introspective and that reveals the intimate side of its author’s persona, in this part of his memoir Frieden reveals some of his feelings about his daughters and about their husbands, and he reflects upon the way he reluctantly accepted the marriage decisions of his eldest children.

❊ 1 9 2 7 i l e f t t e l av i v on a French ship bound for Constantza, Romania, but instead of going directly to Warsaw I had to go to Bucharest. In those days Russian Jews were not allowed to remain within Romania’s borders. Although I was an American citizen, I had been born in Russian Lithuania and this was noted in my passport.1 Whenever Russian Jews passed through Romania, they were placed in sealed railroad cars as soon as they arrived at the border and they were sent to the border of the country to which they were traveling. I absolutely refused to travel in this manner and I firmly demanded to travel as I wished. I also demanded to be allowed to contact the American consul. They allowed me to disembark, but they took my passport and told me I would get it back in Bucharest. I was pleased to have the opportunity to see the beautiful city of ­Bucharest and, moreover, I had an acquaintance who knew the city well: Kurt Ruppin, the brother of the late Dr. Ruppin.2 We traveled to Bucharest together and stayed at the lovely Hotel Esplanade. We spent our first two days touring the city and its environs, but my passport did not arrive. We telegraphed twice but received no reply. It took five days for my passport to appear and then I was able to continue on my way to Warsaw. In Warsaw they were very worried about me because, according to their calculations, I should have been there five days earlier. I arrived in Warsaw in the morning, got off the train, and looked for my brother or someone else from the family, since I was certain that in june

1.  Frieden’s passport application indicates he was naturalized as a U.S. citizen in Norfolk, Virginia, on September 27, 1912. The relevant document from “U.S. Passport Applications, 1795–1925” is available on the Internet at www.ancestry.com/ (accessed July 15, 2010). 2.  “Dr. Ruppin” is Arthur Ruppin (1876–1943), a leader in Zionist settlement activities in Palestine, where he took up residence in 1907, and a pioneering sociologist, originally in Berlin and, after 1926, at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem.

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someone would come to meet me. However, I found no one. I was very surprised and disappointed at such a welcome. I took a taxi to his home, where I found only the maid. I explained to her who I was and she told me that my brother had gone to meet me. While we were still conversing, he appeared. He had gone to meet me at a different station and when he didn’t find me he came home. Our reunion after twenty years was truly dramatic and very emotional. We were very pleased that, after twenty years, we were privileged to see each other again. His family was then at their summer house, some three hours from Warsaw by train, but a few hours later his wife Leah and his son Moshe returned home. Their oldest son, Eliyahu, was studying at the university in Danzig and their middle son, Lulo, the artist, was off painting in Paris. That very same day, we all went to the summer home, called “Mosessohn,” where they lived in a house surrounded by pine trees on all sides, a beautiful and comfortable place with clean, refreshing air. I stayed there some six weeks, and only once did I travel to Warsaw to visit the city, which had changed much since I saw it in 1902. My brother and their son Moshe would come only for the weekend and return to their business on Monday morning. My brother’s business, in partnership with another Jew, was a large glassware, porcelain, and ceramics wholesale firm. The relationship between the partners was not particularly good, which forced my brother to be in the office constantly to keep an eye on his colleague. Eventually, he was able to buy out his partner and be rid of him. The business remained in his hands and expanded tremendously. It became the largest supplier in Warsaw, with retail customers all over Poland. The business was destroyed in the Nazi bombardment of Warsaw even before the city was invaded and before he and his two sons were murdered by the Nazis. All six weeks that I rested in that charming summer villa, my sisterin-law, the charming Leah, provided me with excellent care. She stuffed me with the most nutritious foods: cream, cherries, strawberries and other kinds of choice fruits, chicken and goose every day. I gained some 15 liters and felt very good.3 My health returned and I was ready for work with redoubled vigor. During my stay with them, my brother did 3.  Since one liter of water has a mass of almost exactly one kilogram, Frieden is here indicating that he gained some 15 kilograms or 33 pounds.

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not allow me to spend a cent of my own. When I arrived in Warsaw, he confiscated all my funds and whenever I asked him to give me back some pocket money, he would give me 100 zlotys and more. When the time came for me to return to the Land of Israel, he gave me back all the money he had taken from me and also bought me my return ticket to Palestine. His wife Leah bought numerous gifts for every member of my family. They were truly wealthy, but he had no ready cash because he had invested everything in his business. This was his response whenever I importuned him to move to the Land of Israel, or at least to invest some money there. He wasn’t a Zionist, although he did contribute to the Jewish National Fund and other funds. He was too much involved in Warsaw life, a life of wealth and comfort, despite the difficulties brought about by the antisemitic tendencies of the Polish public and government. He had a solid social position among the merchants of Warsaw and he would spend several nights a week at the posh wholesalers’ club, playing cards and so forth. He was happy with his lot and very pleased with his social standing and with his family. How could he leave all this and go to Palestine? And his family didn’t want to hear of it, either. The sons were involved with the academic youth culture of Poland. On account of their excessive extravagance, they were welcomed into the company of Polish aristocrats, whose own profligacy had compelled them to borrow money, and they were happy to benefit from the extravagance of the rich “zhids.” Thus, among other things, their son Eliyahu took ten years instead of five to complete his engineering degree, for he spent most of his time drinking and carousing with his high-society companions; that left little time for his studies. The second son was the same way. Only the third son, Moshe, lived differently, decently. He excelled in his studies and attained a high standing as a student of chemistry and he was involved in research activities until he was murdered by the Nazis. We have no details about all this. My sister-in-law died in 1928 and from the entire family only Lulo, the middle son, remained alive.4 I returned to the Land of Israel in September 1927 and went back to work with renewed strength. Mr. Mohl was not happy with his deputy, 4.  See the discussion of Ya’akov’s family in the chapter “My Father’s House.”

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Mr. Rosenstein, who had worked for many years under the previous administration of the Kupat Milveh, nor with Mr. Levin, the treasurer of the organization, who also had been among the early staff members. Mohl reached an agreement with his deputy concerning his dismissal, after an arbitration hearing supported him and provided for severance pay to compensate Mr. Rosenstein for his years of service. He was unable, however, to get rid of Levin, who was an Orthodox Jew and a member of Agudat Yisrael with many connections among the elders of the Jerusalem community.5 Although the arbitrators recommended that he should be dismissed with severance pay of 500 pounds, he refused to accept this judgment since he didn’t want to remain unemployed. He was too old to find work elsewhere and he was not capable of going into business for himself, so he continued at his post despite Mr. Mohl’s feelings. After the dismissal of Mr. Rosenstein, Mr. Mohl proposed that I go to Jerusalem to be his deputy. I of course accepted this proposal and on the 1st of January 1928 I moved to Jerusalem and my salary was increased to 40 pounds a month. Incidentally, in August 1927 use of the Egyptian currency came to an end in the Land of Israel and a new currency was introduced, the Palestine pound, inscribed in Hebrew as well as in the two other official languages. And so I was privileged to see coins from the Land of Israel with Hebrew lettering for the first time in 1,700 years, since the Hasmoneans had struck their distinctive coins. There were one pound and half pound notes, coins of 100 mils and 50 mils in silver, coins of 10 and 5 mils in base metal, and coins of 2 and 1 mil in cheap bronze.6 This currency remained in use until the State of Israel issued its own currency in the middle of 1948. 5.  “Mr. Rosenstein” is almost certainly Dov Rosenstein (1889–1948), who immigrated from Poland in 1911 and was one of the founders of the Jerusalem garden neighborhood of Beit Hakerem. See file A405/47 at the Central Zionist Archives in Jerusalem (hereafter CZA) and the Hebrew reference series David Tidhar, Encyclopedia of the Pioneers of the Yishuv and Its Builders (Tel Aviv, 1947– ), vol. 5, 2313–14. “Mr. Levin” is Ben Zion Levin. See CZA file A405/44, which contains, among other documents, a “strictly private and confidential” report prepared by J. C. Hyman in May 1924 concerning a proposed dismissal of Levin and evidence of his support within the Jerusalem Orthodox community. On Agudat Yisrael, see Note 27 in the chapter “My Journey to the Land of Israel and My Early Activities There.” 6.  The minting of coins for the new Palestine currency caused something of a political crisis. The coins were to bear the name “Palestine” in English, Arabic, and Hebrew, but Zionist leaders insisted that “Palestine” be changed in Hebrew to Eretz Yisrael (“the Land of Israel”). In the end, the compromise of “Palestine (E.Y.)” was adopted. See Philologos [pseudonym], “Money Hole,” Forward, Nov. 28, 2003.

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I transferred to my new position in Jerusalem, but the family remained in Tel Aviv because I had found neither a suitable apartment nor a new manager for the Tel Aviv branch. I would stay in Jerusalem for the first three days of the week and return to Tel Aviv for the rest of the week, until the month of April, when I found an apartment in a new building that had been erected by Mr. Mandelbaum on the way to the university, beyond Mea Shearim. This is the building that was destroyed in our War of Independence and is now known as the Mandelbaum Crossing, located on the Israel-Transjordan border, near the American Colony.7 It was a roomy and extremely comfortable apartment. I was very pleased with my work as deputy manager, for Mr. Mohl’s work with mortgage banking and with the establishment of the ­Gav-Yam company increased and expanded, and so the work of the Loan Bank fell, of necessity, upon me.8 In effect, I was the actual manager of the Loan Bank. I introduced improvements and increased its activity. In that same year, Mr. Mohl’s wife died. She was a dear, modest woman who had become very friendly with my wife, may she be blessed with long life. They were loyal companions. During the years 1926 to 1928, Mrs. Mohl suffered greatly because of her husband’s attitude toward her, for Mr. Mohl became involved with another woman, Miss Berger, someone whose younger years were 7.  The “Mr. Mandelbaum” to whom Frieden refers is Simcha Mandelbaum, who made aliya in 1921, and the university to which he refers is the then newly established Hebrew University on Mt. Scopus. The so-called American Colony in Jerusalem was established in 1881 as a Christian utopian settlement by Chicago natives Anna and Horatio Spafford and their followers. See “The American Colony in Jerusalem,” on the Internet at www.loc.gov/exhibits/ americancolony/ (accessed June 30, 2008). The Orthodox essayist Chana Regev has described the legendary Mandelbaum home as an “attractive, three-story house [that] stuck out like an impressive palace at a crossroads opposite the green hills of Jerusalem” and has observed that every Jerusalem resident was familiar with it. See “The Mandelbaum Gate: Home of the Mandelbaum Family,” on the Internet at chareidi.shemayisrael.com/archives5765/CHS65features. htm (accessed Jan. 29, 2007). 8.  The Gav-Yam company, or the Bayside Land Corporation, was founded in 1928 by the PEC to develop the industrial infrastructure of the Land of Israel. Together with the Jewish National Fund, the Gav-Yam company acquired an extensive stretch of land along Haifa Bay between Haifa and Acre for both industrial and residential use in conformity with modern town planning principles. See A Brief Outline of the Activities of the Palestine Economic Corporation (New York, 1935), 9; Universal Jewish Encyclopedia (New York, 1948), s.v. “Palestine Economic Corporation”; and “About Us” on the Gav-Yam Internet site at www.gav-yam.co.il/ GavYam/site/gavyam/eng/about_us/main.asp (accessed June 30, 2008).

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behind her. She had a higher education and was related to the wealthy Warburg family in America.9 She was an ugly woman, although she had a good figure and nice eyes. I would say that he didn’t fall in love with her, but rather she with him, and she gave him no rest. And as for him, well, first of all, “stolen waters are sweet.”10 Second, he depended on her relationship with this wealthy family in order to retain his position. And third, he took advantage of her in his capacity as a manager by having her prepare reports, because, in effect, all contact between the local manager and the corporation in America was maintained only through dispatches and the exchange of letters. Mr. Mohl had no expertise in these matters since his general education was rather weak. The only training he had was from Cooper Union, where he did not excel in his studies.11 His knowledge of mechanical engineering was minimal and tenuous. In English such students are called “half baked.” In effect, because of her love for him, Miss Berger would edit all his reports and correspondence with the American corporation. At the time, Miss Berger was the manager of the orphans’ agency established by the Warburgs and the Baron and she oversaw the youth village called Meir Sheffiya near Zichron Ya’akov.12 The affair between them, which was known all over the country and discussed by everyone, became known to Mr. Mohl’s wife as well, and it embittered her life. In my presence, in the presence of my wife, and in the presence of others, he continued to chase after this woman Berger and to show disdain for his wife, until he drove her to her death. Even during his wife’s funeral the man behaved contemptibly and boorishly toward the deceased. When we left the cemetery after the burial and the grand eulogy by Dr. Magnes, who extolled her properly, the man was not ashamed to get into the car with 9.  “Miss Berger” is Sophia Berger (1882–1958). The Warburg family was an important Jewish banking family in both Germany and the United States. The generation of the Warburg family active in America in the 1920s and ’30s included Paul Warburg (1868–1932), an early advocate of the U.S. Federal Reserve System, and his brother Felix Warburg (1871–1937), a philanthropist and leader of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. 10.  This is a reference to Proverbs 9:17. 11.  The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art, founded by the American industrialist Peter Cooper in 1859, is a college in New York City offering programs in fine arts, architecture, and engineering. 12.  “The Baron” is the Franco-Jewish philanthropist Baron Edmond de Rothschild (1845– 1934). On the Meir Sheffiya Youth Village, see “Sheffiya—Youth Village,” on the Internet at www.eretz.com/NEW/guidehaifa.shtml (accessed June 30, 2008).

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this mistress of his and to drive off to his home as if nothing had happened. We continued on by foot with the late Dr. Magnes and others of Jerusalem’s elite to pay our last respects to the deceased. That’s how this simpleton behaved in public at a time like that. After his wife’s death, Mr. Mohl tried to get rid of his mistress because what was fine as “stolen waters” didn’t suit him as a widower in his prime. He was not a bad-looking fellow and some even thought him handsome. He had a good job that provided him with a nice income and a certain social status. But his status was only due to his position, for the Yishuv had come to know him for what he was: a man with little education, unenlightened and boorish when it came to Jewish knowledge; a course person, quick to anger and hungry for recognition, which eluded him. But he did have one asset: he was an energetic worker, even though he was unpleasant toward his employees and the public. He was tolerated only because he was a representative of an organization that was contributing to the Land of Israel and which was the only American company operating in the country in the early years of its growth. It was involved in construction and development through its own projects and in partnership with other companies such as the electric company and the potash company.13 Thus, it was not worth his while to remain involved at all with this woman, and certainly not to make her his wife. This woman would not loosen her grip on him, however, and she threatened him with her contacts in America. At that point his standing in America was a bit shaky because of his friction with Mr. Levin, an American lawyer who had been sent here as his deputy to help him with his work. This Mr. Levin was a pleasant, easygoing man, pious and observant of the tradition, and the public took to him immediately. Mr. Mohl sensed this and began to keep after him and tyrannize him. This Levin would write his own reports to the corporation in America, which it appreciated, and Mr. Mohl feared that Mr. Levin might become an obstacle in his relationship with the corporation. That’s why 13.  The PEC had made an investment in the Palestine Electric Corporation, Ltd., which had power plants including a hydroelectric station at the headwaters of the Jordan River, and it “materially aided” the development of Palestine Potash, Ltd., which extracted chemicals from the Dead Sea. See A Brief Outline of the Activities of the Palestine Economic Corporation, 12–13.

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he tried to get rid of him. They clashed frequently and this was known even in America.14 That is why Mr. Mohl was afraid of Miss Berger’s threats and so, in the end, he married her and they went off to spend their bittersweet honeymoon in America.15 This all took place in the middle of 1929, and at the same time the embezzlement of Loan Bank funds by the accountant and the treasurer was discovered. This embezzlement started already in the days of Mr. Rosenstein, the former deputy manager, and it continued for about two years. When I came to Jerusalem, I examined the funds held by Mr.  Levin and I found everything to be in order. During the unannounced audits carried out from time to time by Kesselman and Kesselman, the corporation’s official accounting firm, everything was found to be in order, as well.16 About a year after I arrived in Jerusalem, I began to have some doubts about the cashier-treasurer, especially when I would be asked to sign checks for the withdrawal of bank funds for various payments. Once I refused to sign a check for 300 pounds when the accountant, Moshe Goldstein, was not in the office. I told the treasurer that I would wait for Goldstein to approve the expense and, in the meantime, I began to examine the books myself. This was on a Friday. This incident troubled the treasurer and on Shabbat he came to my house and admitted that for two years he and the accountant Goldstein had been taking money when they needed it because their salaries did not cover their household expenses, since they were both family 14.  In a brief section of his memoir omitted from this edition, Frieden reports that when the PEC office in New York learned of Levin’s criticism of Mohl, it felt it had to support Mohl even though “the corporation knew that everything Levin said about Mohl was the absolute truth.” Indeed, the PEC was well aware that Mohl often did not get along with his colleagues and that he was somewhat paranoid about his position. For example, after a series of conversations Mohl had during August 1926 with Judge Julian Mack, a collaborator of Louis Brandeis, Mack wrote that when Mohl expresses his concerns “it is of course in very large measure a matter of nerves with him” and that he is “conscious of his own isolation in Palestine which he feels to be not solely his fault.” See CZA file A405/48/A. 15.  Although both Emanuel Mohl and Sophie (sic) Berger Mohl are profiled in the Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, not surprisingly, there is no hint there of the relationship between them as described by Frieden. See Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. “Mohl, Emanuel Nehemiah.” 16.  Kesselman and Kesselman was a firm established by Robert Kesselman, an American who had settled in Palestine and had served as chief accountant for the Department of Public Works of the British mandatory government. See for example, Joseph B. Glass, From New Zion to Old Zion: American Jewish Immigration and Settlement in Palestine, 1917–1939 (Detroit, 2002), 101; and Melvin I. Urofsky, American Zionism from Herzl to the Holocaust (Garden City, N.Y., 1975), 157.

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men. Thus, they permitted themselves to embezzle some funds from the bank. They did so with the hope that they would be able to cover the loss and it would not be noticed. They kept two sets of books and whenever they found out that the cash on hand would be examined, they would obtain some money from outside sources to cover the losses until after the audit. For the unannounced audits by the official accounting firm, they would prepare alternative payment sheets to cover the missing funds. In this way they were able to embezzle some 800 pounds during the two years. Goldstein had taken 180 pounds and the treasurer had taken the rest. Although I already had my misgivings and had intended to tell Kessel­ man about my suspicions on Sunday, the treasurer beat me to it with his confession. I was astonished to hear about his embezzlement. That he, an extremely observant Jew, should allow himself to do such a thing! He said that he could not survive on his small salary. The first time he misappropriated funds was when he was about to be fired. At that time, he simply took home some 200 pounds from the cash on hand and then it became routine. He got the accountant involved inadvertently, when he was caught by him early on and the accountant agreed to let him continue if he got his share of the money. I discussed all this with Mr. Levin, who was himself a lawyer, and with Kesselman, and we agreed to telegraph Mr. Mohl in America about the incident. We also asked the attorney Horvitz his opinion about what measures to take. On Sunday morning, I asked Kesselman to examine the books. I didn’t allow Levin, the treasurer, to touch the cash on hand, and I advised Goldstein to immediately return his share of what was missing. I made him no promises, but I said that perhaps he would be able to avoid imprisonment if he returned all the money at once. He went to his father, a well-to-do man, and he returned the 180 pounds on behalf of his son. I told Goldstein he could not continue in his position until the entire matter was settled according to Mr. Mohl’s instructions. We got a telegram from Mr. Mohl instructing us to have them both jailed at once. Personally, I was against jailing the two. I knew of Levin’s ties with the leaders of the various Jerusalem communities and I understood that his imprisonment would arouse a flood of protests directed to the corporation in America; these would bring shame upon the Land of Israel.

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In my opinion, it would be enough to dismiss the two of them without severance pay. This would be a severe enough penalty for both. For this reason, I didn’t hurry to inform the police. In the meantime, I was called before Rabbi Kook, of blessed memory, the head of the Jerusalem rabbinate, and he asked me personally not to have Levin put in jail.17 A lot of pressure had been put upon him to telegraph the corporation himself and to ask that Mohl’s directive be rescinded. Two days later a telegram arrived from the corporation with instructions to ignore Mohl’s directive and instead to fire the two and to try to recover the missing money from Levin on behalf of the company with which we had insured our clerks. In this way, I avoided a great deal of unpleasantness for us and for the corporation. The embezzled funds, a sum of close to 600 pounds, we got from the insurance company and, on its behalf, I arranged with Levin to return this sum to the insurance firm with annual payments. I got back about 150 pounds for the insurance company and, on my recommendation, it waived the rest, for Levin was a very poor man and I didn’t want him to be completely ruined. We did have a one-third mortgage on his home. This is how the matter was concluded here, but there was nonetheless some unpleasantness with this Levin in New York, for he went to America and every day he would appear at the office and sit and scream until he had to be removed by force. Then he found some crooked lawyer who was delighted at the prospect of making a case against Mr. Brandeis, but he was immediately silenced and the matter was brought to a close. At the end of August that year, the riots of 1929 broke out. As the result of incitements on the part of the Arabs, the British, and the Mufti, the relationship between Jews and Arabs had become more bitter.18 The disturbances began with a quarrel between the Arabs of the ­Sanhedriya quarter and their Jewish neighbors in which two Sephardic Jews were 17.  The extremely influential Abraham Isaac Kook (1865–1935) was the first Ashkenazic chief rabbi in Palestine under the British Mandate, serving from 1921 until his death. He was committed to strict observance of Halacha but was also a strong supporter of Zionism and an advocate of outreach to secular Jews. 18.  “The Mufti” to whom Frieden refers is Haj Amin el Hussaini (ca. 1895–1974), scion of a prominent Jerusalem family, who, in 1921, was installed by the British mandatory government as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, the chief jurist interpreting Muslim religious law in Palestine. He was an extreme nationalist and opponent of Zionism and the predominant political and spiritual leader of Palestinian Arabs during most of the mandate period.

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killed. A huge funeral was planned for them, and the British police blocked the route that had been selected by the organizers of the funeral. When the organizers of the procession defied the police, the police attacked the mass of mourners with truncheons, beat them left and right, and injured many. The huge funeral procession was dispersed and the dead were buried by the burial society on Mount Scopus under police guard.19 This incident only increased the bitterness. The Arabs began to speak openly about attacks on the Jews and the Mufti sent messengers to every Arab village urging them to arise as one against the Jews. The leaders of the Jewish Agency and of the city called the government’s attention to what was going on, and it responded that it was aware and was taking steps to keep order. We already knew, however, how true the government was to its word. There was fear in Jerusalem and preparations for defense began, but resources were very limited and it was impossible to act openly, for the law was against the Jews. I sent my family to my parents, who had stayed in Tel Aviv when we moved to Jerusalem, and I remained at home alone. The Arab attack began on Friday, August 23. In the mosque, the Arabs were incited to go out immediately to assail the Jews of Jerusalem and at noon the Arabs emerging from the mosque, gathered and began to beat any Jew they came upon. They laid siege to the Jewish quarter of the Old City, where the Haganah was ready for them. When the Arabs began to invade, grenades were lobbed at them and four of them were killed. The rest scattered into unguarded alleyways and several Jews were killed. Even before that, two Jews had been killed near Jaffa Gate while the police stood by and did not intervene. When the Arabs broke out of the Old City through Jaffa Gate, the Jews began to run into the new city and all the shops closed down. We were still in the office and through the window we saw an Arab mob trying to break down the iron door that had been closed at the entrance to our building. We went out on the balcony and saw how the Arabs were trying to break down the door. Nearby were the journalists Ben Avi and 19.  The description of the outbreak of the disturbances of 1929 provided by Frieden does not correspond in exact detail to other descriptions available. See, for example, Bernard Wasserstein, The British in Palestine: The Mandatory Government and the Arab-Jewish Conflict, 1917– 1929 (London, 1978), 230. 

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Dr. v. Weisel, and with my own eyes I saw how an Arab plunged his knife into Dr. Weisel’s back.20 We hurried to the roof and began hurling stones at the Arabs and they retreated from our door, leaving Dr. Weisel on the sidewalk wallowing in his blood. They had not succeeded in stabbing Ben Yehuda because he stood with his back to the wall and defended himself with a stick. British policemen sat in a car with rifles and bayonets and did not even try to interfere with the Arabs or to threaten them. The group of Arabs that had stood near our office entered the Russian Compound in the direction of Mea Shearim.21 On the way, they encountered several Jews and beat them to death. When they reached the entrance to Mea Shearim, they hesitated to continue, but when one of their leaders urged them to follow him in the attack on the neighborhood and began breaking through, he was immediately shot by one of our men who had been hiding in a corner, and the Arabs dispersed right away. In Tel Aviv, in Jaffa, in Haifa, and in several other places there were incidents of assault that were repelled courageously, but the main murders were in Hebron and Safed. In Motza, near Jerusalem, rioters from the village of Colonia killed five members of the Makleff family: the father, the mother, a son and two daughters, and with them two visitors from Tel Aviv who were guests in their home. One of these was Rabbi Shlomo Zalman Schach, of blessed memory.22 Among those killed in Hebron were students and rabbis of the yeshiva, and there were many 20.  On Ben Avi (called Ben Yehuda later in this paragraph), see Note 20 in the chapter “My Journey to the Land of Israel and My Early Activities There.” “Dr. v. Weisel” is Wolfgang (Ze’ev) von Weisel (1896–1974), a physician and journalist who was among the founders of the ultranationalist and militaristic Revisionist faction of Zionism. On von Weisel’s activities in this period, see, for example, Colin Shindler, The Triumph of Military Zionism: Nationalism and the Origins of the Israeli Right (London, 2005), 100–101. 21.  The Russian Compound is so called because it is the site of a Russian Orthodox church and several buildings erected as hostels for Russian pilgrims during the nineteenth century. 22.  The members of the Makleff family killed were the agricultural expert Aryeh Leib Makleff (born 1876), who had come to Palestine in 1891; his wife Batya (born in Jerusalem in 1877); and his children Minna (born 1905), Avraham (born 1907), and Rivka (born 1910). Makleff ’s youngest son, Mordechai (1920–1978) escaped by hiding in a neighbor’s house and later become chief of staff of the Israel Defense Forces. Rabbi Schach, apparently one-time deputy to Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook, had been on the committee to distribute American relief funds to the Jews of Jaffa during World War I. See Encyclopaedia Judaica, 2nd ed., s.v. “Makleff, family of Ereẓ Israel pioneers”; and Reports Received by the Joint Distribution Committee of Funds for Jewish War Sufferers (New York, 1916), 135.

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rabbis among those killed in Safed as well. These killings were carried out with indescribable savagery, severing the limbs of the living, the murder and rape of women, riotous slaughter that only the Nazis exceeded. All together, 133 Jews were killed in three days and many more were injured.23 For five days, I was a guest in the home of my dear friend Mr. Salomon, for sleeping in my apartment was dangerous. Neither could my family return to Jerusalem as yet, for there was no contact between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv for several days. My daughter Miriam was in the United States then. She sent telegram after telegram, but for three days it was impossible to get to the post office, which was located near the Old City. Only on the third day, with a sense of self-sacrifice, did I go to the post office to send her a telegram saying we were alive. Slowly things got back to normal. The government was surprised at the agitation aroused by these riots all over the world, and especially in the United States. In order to quiet at least a little the flood of protests directed against it from the United States, the British government named a commission of inquiry to investigate the events and their cause, on the model of the commission it had dispatched after the riots in the country in 1921.24 Like the previous commission, this commission also found that, as usual, the Jews were to blame. Moreover, since the main cause of the riots was the question of the Western Wall, the government also appointed a commission to consider the rights of the Jews with regard to the wall, the last remnant of the Second Temple.25 In this way the government calmed the great furor raised against it among Jews all over the world. 23.  For more on the disturbances of 1929 in general, see, for example, Wasserstein, The British in Palestine, 217–35; Walter Laqueur, A History of Zionism (New York, 1989), 244–45, 255–60; and Martin Sicker, Pangs of the Messiah: The Troubled Birth of the Jewish State (Westport, Conn., 2000), 80–83. 24.  Frieden is here referring to the Shaw Commission, which conducted its investigation in Palestine late in 1929 and published its findings in March 1930. See, for example, Laqueur, A History of Zionism, 490–92. 25.  As the political scientist Martin Sicker has observed, the Western Wall “carried a symbolic significance for both the religious and secular Jewish communities that can hardly be overestimated.” During the British Mandate, the wall was under the control of Muslim authorities, who recognized the right of Jews to pray there but continually harassed them, barring them, for example, from bringing with them items such as benches or even Torah scrolls. See Sicker, Pangs of the Messiah, 76–81.

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Following the events of 1929, the Joint founded a well-funded agency to aid the victims of the riots in the Land of Israel and, on the advice of the late Mr. Warburg, it sent Dr. Hexter to handle the management of this aid. Dr. Hexter was a lecturer in economics at New York University and had written a book on the principles of economics.26 Hexter appointed Mr. Passman as his deputy. British Jewry also contributed to this project and its work began in 1930 with aid in the rebuilding of places that the rioters had destroyed, such as Be’er Tuvia.27 Mr. Passman took charge, and the assistance they provided to merchants was handled by me through our bank. The speedy and constructive work that I did on their behalf in a short time pleased Dr. Hexter and when he asked Mr. Mohl about my monthly salary, which was 40 pounds at the time, he was amazed and astonished at how my labor was being exploited. Dr. Hexter said that a person like me, with my good judgment concerning credit and with my energy, could, at the time, earn 10,000 dollars a year in America. Embarrassed by Dr. Hexter, Mr. Mohl added 10 pounds to my salary. The loans that the bank processed, made without full guarantees, were repaid entirely over the years, for the loans that I approved after a full examination of the need for them and their objectives achieved their purpose and allowed the borrowers to regain their footing in their previous businesses. They were repaid by the borrowers with goodwill and with appreciation for the help the organization had provided in their time of need. The work at the Loan Bank continued apace. During those years, we enlarged the popular savings department, which we had inaugurated in 1925, but which the corporation had suspended after the total savings had reached 5,000 pounds in a short time. The corporation was fearful 26.  “Dr. Hexter” is Maurice Beck Hexter (1891–1990), who, aside from his relief work, also served as a non-Zionist member of the Jewish Agency Executive from 1929 to 1938. ­Hexter taught at Harvard in the 1920s, not at NYU as Frieden writes. The book Frieden mentions is probably Hexter’s Social Consequences of Business Cycles (Boston, 1925). See Maurice Hexter, Life Size: An Autobiography (West Kennebunk, Maine, 1990). On the relationship between Felix Warburg and Hexter, his “earphone and mouthpiece” in the Holy Land, see Hexter, Life Size, esp. 60–64; and Rafael Medoff, “Felix Warburg and the Palestinian Arabs: A Reassessment,” American Jewish Archives Journal 54:1 (2002): 19. 27.  Be’er Tuvia is a moshav founded in 1887 on the southern coastal plain of Palestine. For Hexter on Charles Passman and on Be’er Tuvia, see Hexter, Life Size, 73, 98–99.

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about using money deposited by the public. After the riots, when the Yishuv revived itself and continued building the country, and when the demand for funds increased and we applied some pressure, Mr. Mohl got the corporation to agree to renew the savings operation and it expanded immediately. The number of those with savings accounts grew and the amount of savings reached 15,000 pounds in a short while. Then the corporation again told us to suspend the operation. The corporation’s directors, and especially Mr. Flexner, were very conservative and were afraid of dealing with large sums of the public’s money.28 And so the tempo of our savings operation slowed to a stop. This was regrettable, since the public’s great faith in our institution, the Loan Bank, Ltd., had permeated every sector of the Yishuv. We had involved the schools in our savings program and our clerks would appear on a set day every week to collect the pupils’ savings. The teachers would assist, for they recognized the value of our goal: to instill in the schoolchildren the concept of saving. This bank could have become the national bank, but they lost the opportunity. Already by 1929, faith in Mr. Mohl and opinions about him had been in decline on account of the friction with Mr. Levin. Even if the accusations leveled by Levin, the treasurer, were not given complete credence, they did contain a fair amount of truth and they did their work. Also, the rumblings that the corporation heard during visits to Palestine were weighed in the balance against Mr. Mohl. An additional denunciation came in 1928, when the corporation opened its new agency to begin granting loans to cooperative institutions—the Central Bank of Cooperative Institutions in Palestine, Ltd.—and it sent Mr. Viteles to manage this bank.29 Mr. Viteles already had experience with cooperative ventures from his work with the Joint in Europe after World War I. In the early years, there were few financial cooperatives; these were the ones created by Mordechai Ben-Hillel Hacohen, who opened the 28.  “Mr. Flexner” is the New York lawyer and philanthropist Bernard Flexner (1865–1945), who was instrumental in establishing the PEC in 1925 and who served as chair of its board until 1944. 29.  “Mr. Viteles” is Harry Viteles. In fact, the Central Bank of Cooperative Institutions had its origins in 1922 and came under the control of the PEC in 1926. See, for example, A Brief Outline of the Activities of the Palestine Economic Corporation, 4; Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. “Palestine Economic Corporation”; and CZA file A405/47.

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first such institution in Tel Aviv. Mr. Viteles was not very successful in dealing with these cooperative institutions and the number of loans they were granted was small, for neither Mr. Viteles nor Mr. Mohl knew how to connect with the Yishuv. They did not understand the character of the leaders of these institutions, men who were extremely decent, spiritual, idealistic, and guileless. Because of their boorishness, men such as Mohl and Viteles could not understand the nature of those who ran these institutions and they dealt with them insensitively and pedantically. They made undue demands for guarantees and for a completely unjustified involvement in the work of these organizations, and so their requests for loans from the Central Bank ceased.30 And then Mr. Viteles discovered that the main cause of the paucity of loan applications to the Central Bank was the Loan Bank; people knew that the Loan Bank granted loans easily and at a low rate, 7 percent. Many people took advantage of these loans and that’s the sense in which the Loan Bank competed with cooperative savings and loan institutions, where loans were more expensive because every borrower had to become a member of the association and pay dues. Moreover, the interest rate was higher. If it were not for the ease of getting a loan from the Loan Bank, the savings and loan institutions would have gotten more members and they would have been forced to turn to the Central Bank for financial assistance. This argument was valid to a certain extent, but all the savings and loan associations made it clear that the Loan Bank was not competing with them. Members of savings and loan associations got loans from the Loan Bank, but this was not a duplication of efforts, because, in order to protect the security of their institutions, the savings and loan associations could not accommodate all the loan applications they got from their members. Mr. Viteles sent reports to the corporation frequently, and Mr. Mohl’s rejoinders to these were not received favorably. The directors of the corporation were interested in the development of cooperative institutions in the Land of Israel and they 30.  The Central Bank of Cooperative Institutions did, indeed, have an Advisory Committee on Short Term Loans and an Advisory Committee on Intermediate and Long Term Loans, and these committees were apparently quite intrusive. See the following New York Public Library finding aid: Brenda Hearing, compiler, Palestine Economic Corporation (PEC): Records, 1921–1944 (New York, 1993).

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saw that perhaps the Loan Bank was indeed impeding their expansion. Mr. Singer,31 who was based in London and handled the corporation’s affairs there, for London Jews also held a small number of shares in the Central Bank, also supported Mr. Viteles’s argument. We, for our part, would send reports to indicate that we were not competing with the savings and loans, that our clients were mainly new immigrants who did not join cooperative associations until they had been in the country for a year or two. This was the situation in 1932. I was very tired because I had not had a vacation since 1927, and Mr. Mohl wanted me to travel to New York to present his position to the corporation. He knew I could not afford the trip and so he offered me 100 pounds so I could go. Another reason for my trip to America, where I had not visited since I left there, was to see my daughter Miriam. She had gone to America in 1928 to study but, because I was unable to support her, she had to go to work to support herself.32 At first she lived in Norfolk and supported herself by giving lessons in Hebrew and piano, but she couldn’t study because there were no schools of higher education there.33 She went to New York and found work in a Hebrew school, but it did not pay her enough to live on, so when she was offered a teaching position in New London she moved there and again there were no colleges.34 I saw that there was no reason for her to stay in America without studying and I wanted to discuss the situation with her. I came to New York and met with my daughter Miriam and my brother Alexander, who took us to a small town near the city.35 From there I went with my daughter to New London. I stayed with her 31.  This is Paul Singer. See for example, A Brief Outline of the Activities of the Palestine Economic Corporation, 2; and CZA file A405/47. 32.  Passenger ship list information indicates that Miriam Frieden (recorded as “Freeden”) had arrived on November 7, 1928, in Providence, Rhode Island, aboard the SS Alesia, which had sailed from Jaffa on October 11. The relevant ship list from “Atlantic Ports Passenger Lists, 1820–1873 and 1893–1959” is available on the Internet at www.ancestry.com/ (accessed July 15, 2010). 33.  Norfolk’s Old Dominion University was established only in 1930 and Norfolk State University only in 1935. 34.  Frieden seems to be in error here, as Connecticut College had been founded in New London in 1911. Indeed, in private conversations, Miriam reported having studied at Connecticut College for a time. 35.  The small town mentioned is New Rochelle, New York. See the chapter “My Father’s House.”

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about two weeks and then went to Norfolk, to the families I had not seen since 1921. I then came back to New London. After some consideration, it was decided that my daughter would return to Palestine after the end of the school year. I returned to New York in order to leave for home by way of Warsaw, in order to see my brother again. I had come to America on the North German Lloyd Line by way of London on the ship Europa and I returned on the Bremen.36 My route was to Breman, Berlin, and Warsaw, and I returned from Warsaw via Vienna, Trieste, and Jaffa. And so I had taken a trip of about 20,000 kilometers in three months and I had gotten a view of the great wide world. My daughter returned to the Land of Israel at the end of 1932. I was unable to influence the directors of the corporation concerning the affairs of the bank, for there really was nothing to add to all the reports that had been sent, and Mr. Mohl was disappointed with the results of my trip. However, I was very pleased that I had been able to travel to see the families and to fetch my daughter Miriam back to the Land of Israel, since she had been unable to learn a profession during her four years in America. In 1933, the secretary of the corporation in America, Mr. Leavitt, came to Palestine to deal with a number of matters that were on the agenda: completing the purchase of the land on the bay,37 the friction between Mr. Mohl and Mr. Viteles, and, mainly, it seems, investigating Mr. Mohl, looking into the many complaints that had piled up against him in the corporation’s office. Mr. Mohl did not behave properly toward Mr. Leavitt. He scorned him and rejected his opinions on a number of matters that were on the agenda. At about this time, a telegram from the office in New York came for Mr. Mohl when he was away from the office. When he called me from Haifa, I told him about the telegram and he asked me to open it and read him what it said. It read: “Leavitt was sent to the Land of Israel to take care of everything.” I knew that Mohl’s time had come. In October of that year, Mr. Mohl 36.  Frieden has apparently misremembered a detail here. Passenger ship list information indicates that he had arrived in New York on June 5, 1932, aboard the SS Bremen, not the Europa. The relevant ship list from “New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957” is available on the Internet at www.ancestry.com/ (accessed July 15, 2010). 37.  “Mr. Leavitt” is Moses A. Leavitt, whose official title was Vice President and Secretary of the PEC. The “land on the bay” was the property on Haifa Bay being bought by the Bayside Land Corporation.

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resigned or, more correctly, the office refused to accept his conditions, which is equivalent to a dismissal.38 Surprisingly, when his dismissal became known in the county, it did not elicit much reaction. Many were happy about his misfortune and those who were sorry about it were few. This was the tragedy of the man Mohl. This person had left America in the prime of life. He left behind a business in which he was a partner until the day he moved to the Land of Israel; he had 40,000 dollars in a bank in New York when he left the United States. He had brought his family with him: a wife, a son, and a daughter. For some fifteen years, he had worked intensely and dauntlessly, for he was possessed of great energy. He built residential neighborhoods, the first in the country, in cities and in villages. He increased the work of the corporation in the Land of Israel several times over. For his work with the Jewish National Fund on the lands along Haifa Bay he deserves much credit, for not only did he help the Jewish National Fund redeem those lands through his work with the corporation—the JNF was in danger of losing them for lack of resources until the corporation gave them some 50,000 pounds—but, in return, he also acquired 5,000 dunam of the best of these lands for the corporation. In this way he laid a firm financial foundation for a company to develop the lands along the bay. It was then that the Gav-Yam company was founded and it prepared the holdings, which are today worth one or two million pounds. The Gav-Yam company prospered to such an extent that it supported all the other subsidiary companies of the corporation in the country, which themselves have strengthened and grown and, thanks to ­Gav-Yam, now support themselves. Thanks to Mohl’s great energy, during the years he was on the job the activities of the corporation diversified and expanded: workers’ housing, urban neighborhoods, building construction, the development of banks, and industrial loans at a time when business owners could not obtain credit from any other institution. In this way, he aided in the industrial development of the Land 38.  Mohl’s continued employment by the PEC had been a matter of contention since at least the middle of 1931. For example, in a long, blunt letter of July 15, 1931, addressed to Justice Brandeis, Mohl wrote that his dealings with the leadership of the PEC “having been out of alignment for some time, are now wholly out of gear.” He argued that “the P.E.C. has drifted from its policies, standards, [and] methods” and that the situation “makes it impossible for me to continue without there being some fundamental changes.” See correspondence in the Brandeis Collection, Brandeis School of Law, University of Louisville, reel 94.

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of Israel. His name was well known; they referred to various institutions by his name—Mohl’s Bank—and when he resigned or was fired, his name and his memory were erased as if he had never existed in the Land of Israel. His name is no longer remembered and all his good deeds, which contributed so much to laying the foundations on which the country was built anew, have been forgotten. The work of a period of fifteen years has left its mark on the land, but he who performed the work is forgotten. Why is this? Why is he himself not recognized? After all, he, together with his assistants, did great things for the Land of Israel, so why is the man ignored and forgotten? Certainly he was an uncultured individual, both generally speaking and Jewishly. By nature, he was easily angered and grumpy, mean and miserly, lacking propriety in his speech and actions. He was too small a person for the important job that was given him. He didn’t know how to behave, either with the public or with his employees. He was not fit for his position. The Yishuv tolerated him but did not like him. It tolerated him out of necessity, for the Yishuv needed the projects of the corporation. When the corporation realized the situation, it had to dismiss him despite the merits of his work. When he retired, or was forced to retire, the Yishuv retired him as well, and the man whose name once was known by everyone and who was mentioned in the newspaper daily, has been forgotten all these seventeen years now, although he tries to be remembered. During the war he worked for the government and today he is doing some sort of work for the Histadrut, but no one knows him. He became wealthy in the country as well, for he has some land on the coast in Netanya, where he lives, and this land, like other urban property, has increased in value. He didn’t lose anything in the Land of Israel except his good name, for he has been forgotten. For three years he lay at home sick and paralyzed. His daughter returned from America to care for him, and in January 1950, the man died, abandoned and crestfallen. The actions that Mr. Viteles took in opposition to the Loan Bank bore fruit from the beginning. The Loan Bank used to get 7 percent interest on its loans, but in light of Mr. Viteles’s complaint that the Loan Bank was giving stiff competition to the cooperative financial institutions, the corporation in New York instructed the bank to raise its interest rate to 9 percent, the top legal rate in the country. Raising the

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interest rate did not reduce the number of loan applications the bank received, so the corporation asked that the number of our loans be reduced by other means and the scope of our work began to diminish from month to month until, at the end of 1936, the bank stopped making loans altogether in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv, and Haifa. The Loan Bank continued handling savings on a small scale and making loans in Safed and Tiberias. Most of the capital of the Loan Bank was in the form of a loan from the corporation, and after a new banking law was enacted concerning capital funds, the corporation did not see fit to add to the bank’s capital. The bank lost its identity as a bank and was transformed into an uncapitalized company called the Loan Corporation. With the decrease in the activity of the Loan Bank, I moved to become manager of the mortgage and savings bank that until 1936 had been under the direction of Mr. Vilentchuk, who was also the manager of the Palestine Water Company.39 Mr. Vilentchuk, a Russian Jew, an engineer by profession, came to the mortgage bank in 1930. As an engineer and overseer of the building projects with which the bank dealt, Mr. Vilentchuk was named to manage this bank when Mr. Mohl resigned and Mr. Simon came to arrange matters.40 Vilentchuk was also appointed to manage the water company, which had begun to increase its activities in the country. He remained as manager of the water company until 1949 when part of the Palestine Water Company was sold to the Mekorot Company, a division of the Histadrut, and he went over to Mekorot along with other employees of the company.41 Mr. Ettinger, who managed the Gav-Yam company in Haifa for almost fifteen years, resigned in 1949, as did Mr. Viteles, who was the 39.  The bank mentioned here is the Palestine Mortgage and Credit Bank, a subsidiary of the PEC. For confirmation that Frieden came to manage both the Loan Bank and the Mortgage and Credit Bank, see The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. “Palestine Economic Corporation.” “Mr. Vilentchuk” is Isaac Vilentchuk, and the Palestine Water Company, organized in 1933, was also a subsidiary of the PEC. See A Brief Outline of the Activities of the Palestine Economic Corporation, 7–9. 40.  Emanuel Mohl had been “managing director” of the Palestine Mortgage and Credit Bank as well as the Loan Bank before he parted company with the PEC. “Mr. Simon” is the German-born and New York–based economist Julius Simon (1875–1969), longtime president of the PEC. See A Brief Outline of the Activities of the Palestine Economic Corporation, 2; and Hearing, Palestine Economic Corporation (PEC). 41.  On Mekorot (“Sources”), see, for example, “Milestones” on the Mekorot Internet site at www.mekorot.co.il/Eng/Mekorot/Pages/Milestones.aspx (accessed June 11, 2009).

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manager of the Central Bank for more than twenty years.42 Given that I retired in 1944, as will be explained later, none of the corporation’s early managers were left. This year, 1950, the Palestine Economic Corporation merged with the Israel Corporation, Ltd., which had been established by English Jewry in 1930.43 On the 9th of July 1935, I married off my two daughters Miriam and Batya. I say I married them off even though this matter was not dependent upon me, since these marriages were undertaken without my consent. That is, they themselves chose the men they wanted to marry. As to Batya, I was pleased with her choice: Avraham Osherowitz.44 He was an electrical engineer who studied in France, a Polish fellow who had grown up in the Land of Israel. He knew languages: Arabic, English, French, Polish, and Russian. An outstanding merchant and the son of wealthy parents. Batya was not a bad-looking young woman and very good-hearted, but she was uneducated because she didn’t want to study. She was a free spirit and inclined to be influenced by her environment, forming imprudent friendships without much discretion. She was not interested in managing a home. When she had money at hand she was a spendthrift, but when there was no money she could do without. Where modesty was concerned, she didn’t excel. She never behaved properly, to our way of thinking, and she caused us much trouble. We were very happy when she found herself such a spouse. Her character, so different from that of our other children, resulted from the care she was given by her grandmother, my mother. She pampered her too much, gave her too much freedom, and hid her behavior from us. When we left Tel Aviv, she stayed with my parents and when I moved my parents to Jerusalem, she refused to come with them and remained in Tel Aviv, working as a salesperson in a women’s clothing store. Her salary was small and insufficient for her needs. From time to time she would get a few pounds from me, but that didn’t prevent her from living in debt. Before her wedding, I paid off all her debts. 42.  “Mr. Ettinger” is Mark Ettinger. See The Universal Jewish Encyclopedia, s.v. “Palestine Economic Corporation.” 43.  Frieden seems to be mistaken here. Apparently, the Israel Corporation with which the PEC merged in November 1949 (not 1950) was a body established by the Zionist Organization of America (not an English group) to support middle-class economic endeavors in Israel. See Louis Shub, “Zionist and Pro-Israel Activities,” American Jewish Year Book 52 (1951): 121. 44.  Avraham Osherowitz had been born in 1909 and would die in 1984.

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The situation was different with Miriam, my eldest daughter. She completed the Gymnasia Herzliya with distinction and played piano rather well. She knew Hebrew and English fluently, was wise and understanding. She was a capable secretary, amazingly speedy and accurate. She fell in love with a fellow from Alexandria in Egypt who had wandered about a bit: from Egypt to the Palestine Gendarmerie in 1922, from there to Cuba, from Cuba to the United States and then as a tourist back to the Land of Israel, where he has remained illegally.45 A very handsome fellow, he has a solid build and knows Eastern languages such as Greek, Turkish, Hebrew, Italian, French, Spanish, and English, but he is without a vocation. She fell in love with him and, against my wishes, stood her ground. Both of these daughters were married on the same day in our apartment on Alharizi Street with Rabbi Dov Kook officiating.46 At the beginning of 1936, in the month of March, our daughter ­Yehudit was married, again according to her own choosing and against our wishes. He was a simple fellow, a construction worker without even a basic education. He was from a family that had immigrated to the Land of Israel from Russia. All that could be said about him was that he was “a good fellow,” an expression that was applied to the kind of young men who were even-tempered, honest, and able to get along with every­one. And this Yehudit was quite pretty and a gymnastics teacher, a graduate of a women’s gymnastics institute in Denmark.47 And that’s how I married off three daughters within one year. In the eyes of all our friends, this was an extraordinary occurrence and 45.  Miriam’s husband, unnamed here, was Maurice Weissbach (1906–1964). The Palestine Gendarmerie was a military force charged with police duties. It had both a “British Section” and a “Native Section” composed of Jews as well as Arabs. See “Report on Palestine Administration, 1922,” on the Internet at www.ismi.emory.edu/PrimarySource/Report%20to%20L%20 of%20N%20Pal%201922.pdf (accessed May 21, 2010). 46.  Alharizi Street is in the Rehavia section of Jerusalem. Rabbi Dov Kook was the brother of Rabbi Abraham Isaac Kook. In a taped interview of October 10, 1982, Miriam recounts the story of her wedding day somewhat differently. She reports that on the day of Batya’s scheduled wedding, she and Maurice eloped and were married in the town of Ramat Gan. They then changed into appropriate clothing and appeared at Batya’s wedding reception on Alharizi Street. Batya and her husband soon took up residence in Tel Aviv; Miriam and her husband in Haifa. It appears that soon after 1935, Frieden moved to 28 Aza (Gaza) Street in Jerusalem. See the Hebrew Address Register of the Residents of Rehavia (July 1937), on the Internet at www.isragen.org.il/upload/infocenter/info_images/22032009085338@1937Rehavia-address -low.pdf (accessed May 21, 2010). 47.  Yehudit’s unnamed husband was Yoel Malkoff (1910–1997).

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they ­envied us for such an achievement, to have freed ourselves of three daughters in one year without giving dowries, except in the case of Batya: the small sum of 150 pounds. We ourselves were not extremely pleased, for we were unhappy with Miriam’s and Yehudit’s husbands, even though both were, generally speaking, good fellows. Both were uneducated and lacking in knowledge of the faith and Torah of Israel. They were truly ignoramuses in matters of religion and far removed from its practice. We know from our sages that “he who marries his daughter to an ignoramus, it is as though he had bound her and placed her before a lion.48 By nature, I hate ignorant people, I utterly despise vulgarity. I hate boorishness in people and now, for spite, I was given such sons-in-law. What could I do? Since I was ignored and my objections did no good, I had to come to terms with reality. I got used to them and found in them both good qualities and weaknesses of which I was not aware earlier. Thus is the fate of human kind and the believer must accept his destiny; “The daughter of such and such shall marry such and such.”49 May God grant them a good life.

48.  This statement is found in tractate Pesachim 49b. 49.  On this quotation, see Note 3 in the chapter “Matchmakers and Marriage.”

Travels, the Era of World War II, and Illness

Editor’s Introduction

Beginning with an account of two trips Frieden and his wife took in the late 1930s and covering the years of World War II and its aftermath, this portion of Frieden’s memoir deals with a period that had ended shortly before the author completed the bulk of his narrative, and his account of the period has something of a stream-of-consciousness feel to it, intensified by the insertion of a number of passages added as afterthoughts. Frieden moves from topic to topic as various subjects come to mind, without making much of a distinction between highly significant matters and more trivial ones, and without a sense of clear organization. Writing about his visit to Norfolk in 1939, for example, he jumps from explaining his concerns with overeating to rehearsing the history of his wife’s family, and then from describing his daily schedule to proclaiming his lifelong love of fishing and telling how it is done. He then goes from commenting on the mores of his hosts to outlining the status of his various siblings just before his return to Palestine, one step ahead of the outbreak of the Second World War. Similarly, at the end of this chapter, Frieden skips from an account of the retirement agreement he reached with the Palestine Economic Corporation to a discussion of his family’s living arrangements, and then on to his son Ben Zion’s search for employment and an analysis of the character of Ben Zion’s American wife, Dinah. The space Frieden’s memoir devotes to World War II itself is surprisingly limited, given the significance of that event for twentieth-century history in general, and for the fate of world Jewry in particular. Although Frieden does record some general thoughts about the nature of the war and about Nazi policy toward the Jews, and although he provides glimpses into various aspects of the war here and there, his memoir is concerned almost exclusively with the way he and his family experienced the period of the war and its aftermath. He writes about the enlistment of his sonsin-law and of his sons in the military, for example, and about the health

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problems he faced in the early 1940s. Frieden does write somewhat more, however, about the situation in Palestine and about the struggle for Israel’s independence as it developed during the forties. He was, after all, still living through the period of that struggle as he worked on completing his ­memoir, and the creation of the State of Israel was one of his fondest hopes. Although this segment of Frieden’s memoir is primarily descriptive, it does contain its share of passages that impart a sense of the author’s own personality and attitudes, as we have come to expect. For instance, his predilection to be judgmental comes across as he engages in some amateur psychology, evaluating the behavior and character of the passengers he observed on board the ship he took to France in 1939. Similarly, his willingness to be bluntly critical is apparent in what he writes about his non-Jewish fellow trans-Atlantic passengers and in what he writes about his relatives in Norfolk, to say nothing of what he writes about American Jews in general. On the other hand, there are passages here that remind us that Frieden is by no means a simple thinker. It is telling, for instance, that despite his own strong Zionist sentiments, Frieden nonetheless has only praise for the educator Judah Magnes, whose support for a binational state of Jews and Arabs in Palestine conflicted with the vision of mainstream Zionists, those who foresaw a state that would have an exclusively Jewish character. Finally, it is worth observing that this segment of Frieden’s memoir contains yet another of the author’s by now familiar laments about his shortcomings. In an outpouring that is somewhat rambling and repetitious, he again weeps over his neglect of Torah study and of religious obligations earlier in his life, and over his decision to forego an opportunity to lead a congregation in Norfolk. “Alas the shame, alas the disgrace!” he cries, even as he writes about the joy of returning to his studies in retirement. This is confessional literature in all its glory.

❊ 1 9 3 6 I took a two-month vacation, which I was due. We traveled, my wife and I, to Carlsbad,1 together with my devoted friend the late Dr. Agranat and his wife.2 At that time, the riots in the summer of

1.  The spa town of Carlsbad (Karlovy Vary in Czech) is in western Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic. Carlsbad, together with the towns of Marienbad (Mariánske Lázně) and Francesbad (Františkovy Lázně), mentioned below, form the region’s “spa triangle.” 2.  The Agranats are the dentist Aaron-Joseph Agranat (d. 1946) and his wife, Polya, known in the United States as Pauline and in Palestine as Pnina (d. 1955). Both Russian-born,

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of 1936 were beginning, carried out by the Arabs who were rebelling against both the Jews and the British, who held the Palestine mandate.3 My wife had never before visited Europe and we all enjoyed this trip together very much. We traveled in luxury. We sailed by ship first class to Trieste and we stayed in the best hotels. In Carlsbad we met up with my brother Ya’akov Shalom from Warsaw, who stayed with us for five days. This was the last time I saw him before he was murdered by the Nazis. We implored him mightily to come to Palestine, but he said he couldn’t leave. His business was growing and he had no cash. If only he had known the future! My wife, who had problems with her legs, took mud baths, and I took baths that were supposedly radioactive. The baths were much too pleasant, as there were places adjacent to relax after the treatments and, in general, we felt wonderful on account of the environment, the walks in Marienbad and in Francesbad, the company, and the lovely accommodations we had everywhere we went. The people of Czechoslovakia know how to treat guests. Czechoslovakia in 1936 was still a free country and the spirit and influence of Masaryk could be felt in everything.4 We stayed in Vienna both on our way to Carlsbad and upon our return. Before we went home, however, we all took an extraordinary break in Mürren and stayed in a Jewish hotel, where we met some other travelers from the Land of Israel.5 From Mürren we took a trip to St. they immigrated to Louisville, Kentucky, in 1905 and then moved first to Chicago and then to Palestine. Agranat had a great deal in common with Frieden: in Eastern Europe, he had been a student who aspired to study in the Lithuanian yeshiva of Mir; as a young man he had rejected Hasidism and discovered the Haskalah; as an immigrant whose extended family settled in a mid-size American city, he remained an avid American Zionist who was one of the few who moved to Palestine, where he became an urban professional. The Agranats were the parents of Shimon Agranat (1906–1992), president of the Supreme Court of Israel from 1965 until 1976. See Pnina Lahav, Judgment in Jerusalem: Chief Justice Simon Agranat and the Zionist Century (Berkeley, Calif., 1997), passim. According to family lore, Shimon dated Frieden’s daughter Miriam at one point in the early 1930s. 3.  For brief accounts of the Arab riots of 1936–1939, see, for example, Ahron Bregman, A History of Israel (Basingstoke, Hamp., Eng., 2003), 27–29; and “The 1936 Riots” at www.jewish virtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/riots36.html (accessed June 30, 2010). 4.  Thomas Masaryk (1850–1937), an advocate of Czech independence both before and during World War I, was Czechoslovakia’s leader from the time the country was created in 1918 until his death. 5.  Mürren is a traditional Swiss Alpine village, not reachable by public road and noted for its mountain views.

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Moritz, the gem of German Switzerland. We spent an entire day there and on our way back we passed some glaciers, which we were seeing for the first time in our lives. From Mürren my wife and I went to Milan, arriving at our hotel on the eve of Yom Kippur. We found a synagogue where we prayed and, to the dismay of the owners of the hotel in which we were staying, we fasted the entire day. The next day we went to Lake Como, an exceedingly beautiful spot. We waited until the evening and then went back to Milan. On the morning of the second day, we returned to Vienna by way of Venice, where we stayed a day and a night. I had been in Venice twice before. My wife very much enjoyed this city of canals; we went for a ride in a gondola, the way new lovers do. We returned to Vienna to meet up with the Agranats and we spent two days there and visited the exhibition that was then on display. Happy and well rested, we returned home, where, meanwhile, the Arab uprising had taken on the character of a rebellion against the En­ glish and against the Jews. The roads were dangerous, but I nonetheless continued my weekly travels for work to Tel Aviv, Haifa, Tiberias, and Safed. More than once we were shot at, especially when we got to the forests near Bab el Wad, the gateway to the valley.6 We always traveled with a military and police escort. Thank God I was never hit. Whenever I reached Tel Aviv or Haifa, I would phone home to say I had arrived safely. When I was on my way back, they would await me anxiously. So dangerous were the roads in those years, 1936 to 1939, that trips such as these affected my nerves, and in 1938 I began to feel their consequences. At the beginning of 1939, I was very tired and irritable, and so I decided to take three months’ vacation of the five I was due. Mr. Simon agreed to pay me for the other two months, so that I could afford to travel. My wife and I planned out trip for the end of June 1939. At the same time, the Arab riots intensified and there was fear that road travel in the country would be halted. The travel agency advised us to come earlier so that we wouldn’t miss the ship leaving for France on June 14. We hurried to take leave of the office and of our friends as quickly as we 6.  Bab el Wad in Arabic, or Sha’ar Hagai in Hebrew, is the point at which the main road between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem passes between cliffs and begins its ascent into the Judean Hills.

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could, we boarded the bus that was leaving for Tel Aviv with a military escort, and we arrived without any difficulties. We bid farewell to Batya and to the Tel Aviv office and hurried on to Haifa. We left Baruch in Haifa with Miriam until we would return to the country, but Baruch did not like the idea of remaining behind. He wanted to go to America with us, although he knew this was impossible, especially since we were due to sail the next morning. All day and night he was in a state of great turmoil, fighting an internal battle between desire and reason. Just as we were about to leave the house, desire won out over reason: he locked our luggage and himself in the bathroom, twittering and crowing as he was wont to do, and announcing that he would not open the door unless we took him along. Finally, after much imploring and promises of reward, he grew weary and, with tears pouring forth like pearls over his cheeks, he relented. He opened the door and parted from us with great warmth, receiving his inducement of four dollars in cash. We felt sorry both for him and for Miriam when we left them together. We are aware of his stormy nature and his obstinacy, and of Miriam’s stubbornness, but we were counting on her and Maurice to know how to handle him. We boarded the French ship Champlain and were immediately disappointed.7 We had bought tickets from Mrs. Epstein, the mother-inlaw of Mr. Passman, second class to Marseilles and tourist class from France to America. It turns out that they did not give us second class accommodations, but rather something between second and third class, which were neither here nor there. The facilities were open to anyone from third class. The congestion in the corridors and on deck was great, and there was no place to sit even if you could get a deck chair at full cost. There was so much crowding that there wasn’t even room to stand comfortably. The ship anchored in Alexandria for a day and a night, and left directly for Marseilles only the next day. With nothing else to do on board ship, I began to take an interest in its Jewish passengers; who and what they are. There is nothing more fascinating than observing passengers on a ship going on a long jour7.  The liner Champlain, built in 1932, featured many design innovations later incorporated into the French Line’s more famous ship, the SS Normandie. The Champlain was sunk by a mine in 1940, one of the first passenger ships to be lost in World War II.

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ney. Every traveler’s character is revealed on board a ship. He sheds all the craftiness and trickery with which he disguises himself at home to fool either himself or others. Here, on board ship, he feels himself free in the extreme and everyone behaves in accordance with his nature and disposition, according to his temperament and style. Fetters are loosened and the observer sees him as he is, without the cosmetics and coiffure of hypocrisy. Many and varied were the passengers, and strange were their ways. Because of the ordinariness of their appearance, I could not understand them using the powers of observation one usually uses to understand people, because individuals are different and changeable and they take on new forms when they are on a sea voyage. I will describe just four passengers, all of whom presented themselves neither as they were nor as they were supposed to be: 1. Rabbi Pinchasovitz. A broad-shouldered man with a large paunch and a long beard, tall and stately. Outwardly he is inspiring, but something about his countenance is off-putting. I was wary of making his acquaintance, but I observed him from afar. He went from one man to another and from one woman to another, speaking with everyone. With men, he talked about himself and his greatness as a Torah scholar, about his path to an understanding of Torah and its explication in accordance with the laws of nature, about which he knew not even a little. With the women, he talked about his life with his wife, who remained in Tel Aviv, and about their relationship and the relationship between men and women. He attended all the entertainments, and these were of the French type, which are not especially known for their modesty, and he made it a point to sit next to one woman whom he was pursuing and whom he would engage in conversation at every opportunity. And this man was a rabbi in Israel and one with an important position in his community. Indeed, this was freedom. 2. Mr. Boyer. An American Jew who settled in Raanana, a member of the American organization that bought land there.8 He had a small 8.  Frieden is probably referring here to the New York Achooza Aleph organization, incorporated by a group of New York Jews in 1914 for the purpose of acquiring land in Palestine on which shareholders would settle. The organization established the colony of Raanana in 1922. See Joseph B. Glass, From New Zion to Old Zion: American Jewish Immigration and Settlement in Palestine, 1917–1939 (Detroit, 2002), 166–76.

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­ rchard. His wife did not agree to immigrate to the Land of Israel and o he was reconciled to this and was going back to her. He dreams of being able to bring her back to the country. He is a Jew who studied Torah in a yeshiva in his youth, but he became a heretic when he got older and has remained so. He talks about God and the Messiah and enjoys himself. He argues all day long with the above-mentioned rabbi and they are partners in the same endeavor. Each has found his match. And as great as is his heresy, even greater is his gluttony. He really overeats and he drinks to excess. He is the first to grab whatever is put on the table, not caring if there is anything left for others. We were not served individual portions; rather, platefuls of food were put on the table and whoever grabbed it got it. Mr. Boyer was the chief snatcher. It was disgusting to watch him eat. 3. A German woman who lives in Kiryat Shmuel in Jerusalem. She was traveling to her husband in America. She is from Frankfurt and is extremely pious, scrupulous in observance. She wears a wig to cover her hair and her modesty is readily apparent. Her children are traveling with her, and she behaves toward them in a most maternal manner, with tenderness and kindness in her Orthodox fashion. She prays three times a day with the devotion of a Hasid. On her Sabbath table are candles and a goblet of wine for blessing the day. She is modest in her ways, which have been the ways of modest women since medieval times. Much praise is due this woman. 4. Mr. Sherman. A shochet and bodek in the United States, he came to the Land of Israel to do business: buying etrogim, shofars, tefillin, and mezuzahs. He was a Jew with a paunch and a red face, a lusty butcher. He was enjoying this world and, as he said, he was looking forward also to the world to come, dealing as he did in sacred objects for the observance of the commandments. He was providing American Jewry with proper ritual objects imbued with the sanctity of the holy city of Jerusalem. A first-rate hypocrite whose true nature can be exposed only by penetrating his inner being. And so, we have here three regular fellows and, by contrast, one proper daughter of Israel. At benches on either side of one table, sat some twenty people, all with voracious appetites and no manners, gluttons whose prize was the fleshpot. We were tired of these table mates and were very glad to reach Marseilles and to be rid of them.

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Also on the ship, returning to America, was the entire family of Dr. Dushkin.9 They were in second class and we didn’t encounter them until we were all in the taxi that took us to the office of the agency that was supposed to arrange our travel from Marseilles to Paris by train and on to the port of Le Havre. According to our tickets, we were supposed to travel on the regular train—at least that’s what we were told—so we would have to wait until the middle of the night. Dr. Dushkin was to take the express, however, so we paid the difference and were immediately transported to the station from which the express train for Paris was leaving. We arrived in Paris in the middle of the night and were transferred to a magnificent hotel with an extraordinary bathroom as large as our entire apartment. We immediately bathed in the steam bath, something we had not done since we had left Jerusalem. In the morning we had an excellent breakfast. We were not able to tour Paris, something my wife wanted very much to do, given that she was there for the first time, but we had to leave immediately for the train to Le Havre. Dr. Dushkin had a great deal of baggage and, with his family already seated aboard with us, it could not all be loaded on the train before it departed. They were very apologetic, but gave assurance that another train was leaving in two hours and that it would arrive before the departure of the Normandie, which was the largest passenger ship in the world. Although we exchanged our cabin on the ship, our new cabin didn’t please us either, since it was an interior compartment. However, all the rest of the arrangements and the service on this ship were beyond imagining; they represented the last word in passenger comfort and luxury. We had not inquired if there was kosher service on this elegant ship and, like other travelers we met, we registered to sit with the rest of the passengers. And how sorry I was when I saw, seated around one specific table, Jews who were scrupulous about eating only kosher food, which was provided at their request. Although we did not eat treif meat, we didn’t have kosher meat either and so for the five days of our voyage, until we 9.  Alexander M. Dushkin (1890–1976), a pioneer in American Jewish education and summer camping, was a lecturer in pedagogy at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the late 1930s, and also principal of a secondary school in the Beit Hakerem neighborhood of Jerusalem. On Dushkin in Palestine, see Alexander M. Dushkin, Living Bridges: Memoirs of an Educator (Jerusalem, 1975), esp. chapt. 6; and Glass, From New Zion to Old Zion, 244, 337.

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reached New York, we did not enjoy sitting at the table we had chosen. The main thing we ate was celery, which our European table mates didn’t like; the two of us ate our fill of this tasty vegetable every day. Tourist class passengers were allowed to explore the entire ship, with explanations provided by one of the crew. We were shown the ornate chapel where services were held every Sunday; the room used as a synagogue in second class, which was considerably different; the fresh flowers room; the general store; the exercise room; the children’s play room; and the open game decks. Room after room, ping pong, and so on and so on. We had good weather nearly every day of the crossing, as was usual in summer, and even my wife, who does not tolerate sea travel, suffered not at all. The ship was so large it was not affected by stormy seas. We weren’t alarmed by our encounter with an iceberg from afar. We had been advised hours earlier that we would see it, but not to be concerned because, even though we would be close enough to observe it, we would be far enough away to avoid a collision. We also encountered a small American destroyer on its way to blow up the iceberg.10 Although it was far away from us, a mysterious fear came over us nonetheless. We all recalled the incident of the Titanic, so many of whose passengers were lost. I crossed the Atlantic seven times, but this is the only time I saw an iceberg: a huge mass of ice even above the water, and it was several times larger under water. It aroused an ambivalent sense of awe in all the passengers. We were glad to arrive in New York on June 26.11 True, the passage was very pleasant, but we Jews had felt a chilly environment around us. Every time I travel on ships like these, I experience this same goyish atmosphere, which is more conspicuous on board a ship than anywhere 10.  The International Ice Patrol, established in 1914, at one time attempted to destroy icebergs by shooting at them, bombing them from planes, using explosives, and painting them black, but all these techniques were abandoned as ineffective. See, for example, “Sunday Ship History: International Ice Patrol,” at www.eaglespeak.us/2007/05/sunday-ship-historyinternational-ice.html (accessed June 30, 2010). 11.  Passenger ship list information confirms that Morris and Ray Frieden, as well as ­Alexander and Julia Dushkin and their children Esther and Miriam, arrived in New York on June 26, 1939, aboard the SS Normandie, which had sailed from Le Havre on June 21. The relevant list from “New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957” is on the Internet at www.ancestry .com/ (accessed July 15, 2010).

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else, since we are stuck in one place whether we like it or not. The attitude of the gentiles toward the Jews: the goyim contend that everywhere there are too many Jews, even on this luxury liner where the Jews were a distinct minority. Most of the passengers were common folk, and yet everywhere there was still the same attitude toward the Jews. Those Jews who attempted to make their acquaintance were met with superficial responses. It did no good that many of our Jews made such attempts. Even the waiters, whose earnings depend on the pocketbooks of the passengers and who know that Jews are more generous, even they waited on us indifferently. You see with your own eyes how these people relate to those passengers who are not Children of the Covenant and how they relate to you, and you get angry and determine to reduce their tip. When you come to the end of the voyage, however, you are generous, as you are accustomed to be. Let them not say that Jews don’t behave properly around them, for this isn’t true, except in a few exceptional cases of people who aren’t used to traveling and haven’t acquired much experience. I’ve observed the goyim and they are much worse: many of them are drunken, lascivious, indelicate, and vulgar. When I observe all this in my travels, I write them off as if they were the dust of the earth; they are people who behave like jackasses. Then, I am even prouder to be a member of a people with a history rich in humanitarian and ethical values from which all other nations have drawn the little that they have. During the long years of exile, the Jew was as a lamb forsaken among hungry wolves, thirsting for human blood. The lamb has remained alive and well, and the wolves, many of them, have met their end and disappeared from the earth. As American citizens, the disembarkation and inspection were easier for us. My brother who worked in New York could not come to meet us, but we were met by our longtime friend Frieda Bohen and we went together to a hotel that Dr. Dushkin had recommended, the Tudor Hotel near 42nd Street in the middle of town.12 We parted from the Dushkins, with whom we had become friendly during the trip. Dr. Dushkin, a well-known Jewish educator in America, had come to Palestine to help with the disordered field of education, which needed 12.  This hotel, 20-stories high and built in 1931, is now the Hilton Manhattan East.

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much improvement. Just as many others like him, however, he experienced resentment and had to leave the country because of the disharmony between them and the local educators. There was no mutual respect on the part of those who headed educational institutions in the country. These leaders looked down jealously upon all those who came from abroad, as if the newcomers had arrived to restrict their progress and dispossess them of the positions they had acquired in their institutions and in the public eye. They failed to recognize that those who came from developed countries had something to contribute to our inexperienced little land. Those who came asked only to help, to fix what needed fixing, to introduce improvements and innovations that were already accepted practice in more cultured lands. The locals, however, hindered them and arrested their progress. Disappointed, they returned to their countries of origin. This is the way it was with de Sola Pool, with Dr. Berkson,13 and also with Dr. Dushkin. Dr. Dushkin had been called back to New York to head the American Institute for Jewish Culture.14 (As I write this, Dr. Dushkin has been called back to Israel and has been appointed a professor of education at the Hebrew University.) Dr. Magnes was the only one who remained at his post, a sacred post, despite the opposition he faced from people at the university and in the Yishuv on account of his political activity, which was contrary to the ideas of most of the Yishuv.15 He was a towering figure of honesty and faith, of justice and integrity. He had great determination and maintained his convictions; he did not flinch in the face of any opposition, until his dying day. Truth was his guiding light, both in regard to himself and in regard to others. His death was a loss for the entire nation, 13.  Isaac B. Berkson (1891–1975) was a progressive American educational philosopher, administrator, and teacher who was a member of the executive committee of the Jewish Agency in Palestine from 1928 until 1933, during which time he and his family lived in Jerusalem. On Berkson and his wife, see, for example, “Libbie Suchoff Berkson,” on the Internet at jwa.org/ encyclopedia/article/berkson-libbie-suchoff (accessed June 30, 2010). 14.  The institute Frieden mentions seems to be otherwise unknown. Dushkin himself reports that he was called to New York “to develop and direct the community program of the Jewish Education Committee, a notable group charged with the expenditure of a million-­ dollar fund for the improvement of Jewish education.” See Dushkin, Living Bridges, 142. Dush­kin returned to Jerusalem in 1949.  15.  Magnes was a forceful advocate of Arab-Jewish cooperation in Palestine and supported the creation there of a binational state in which Jews and Arabs would enjoy equal rights. See, for example, Daniel P. Kotzin, “An Attempt to Americanize the Yishuv: Judah L. Magnes in Mandatory Palestine,” Israel Studies 5:1 (Spring 2000): 1–23.

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and especially for the university. It was an incomparable loss. The nation has been widowed and the university has lost one of the best of its sons and builders.16 Perhaps a time will come when the People of Israel will properly appreciate its greats while they are still alive, and not only after they are deceased. As we learn, acharai mot, kedoshim.17 In that year, a World’s Fair was held in New York. Every day, thousands came from every corner of this great country and from abroad to visit the fair. The hotels, the restaurants, the trains, and the streets were much more crowded than usual at every hour of the day and night. We were pleased that we were able to get a room at the Tudor, which is not a first class hotel, but whose advantage is that it’s in the middle of the city. Moreover, our pocketbook would not allow us a first class hotel. In the evening, my brother showed up and we went to dine at one of New York’s splendid restaurants. I am simply unable to describe the huge size and the magnificence of this World’s Fair. The technical advances of the entire developed world were on display in the individual pavilions of each and every country. The site of the fair, which had been one great swamp near New York, was transformed in a relatively short time into a place of eyeopening beauty. During the year, plantings of all kinds had been put in the ground, looking as if they had been there since creation. There were spraying fountains, dazzling lights, trams that covered the entire site, and everywhere you turned stood courteous multilingual guides, at your service, who explained everything and provided excellent directions. There were huge restaurants of every kind in every corner, resting places in gardens among greenery and flowers, and cinema at no charge. As you become familiar with the place and begin to comprehend the enormous amount of work that was done here and the huge amount of organization needed, you begin to understand the technological and

16.  The Hebrew here is a play on the words baneha (“its sons”) and boneha (“its builders”). 17.  This is a play on words. “Acharai Mot” and “Kedoshim” are two different Torah portions, named for words that appear early in the text. However, in many years, for scheduling reasons, these two portions are read on the same Sabbath, so it is common to hear the phrase “Acharai Mot—Kedoshim,” which can be translated “after they are dead they are holy.” Frieden offers high praise for Magnes elsewhere in his memoir, as well, and in a section not included in the present version, he indicates that at one time he worked with Magnes in some of the educator’s philanthropic endeavors.

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organizational power of this land, North America. Arranging the fair cost 150 million dollars.18 A great deal of time is needed to take in the fair thoroughly, but we were in a hurry to get to Norfolk. My wife had not seen her family since 1925, so we chose the most important sights to see in two days and planned to see the rest in three or four days on our way back to the Land of Israel. Our first order of business was a complete tour of the length and breadth of the fairgrounds by tram in order to get a look at the exterior of the various national pavilions and at the entire fair. There certainly was plenty to see: the building styles of every country, each in its own fashion, and so on and so on. Then we visited the Perisphere, which words cannot describe, and the General Electric pavilion, which cost 5 million dollars.19 It contained the wonders born of progress in the fields of electricity and lighting. The Palestine pavilion contained nothing that was new to us, but it was nonetheless always full of Jews of all sorts whose faces lit up with joy upon seeing the products of the Land of Israel that were exhibited there.20 The Russian pavilion: Anyone who remembers Russia in the days of the tsar and conditions then has to be amazed, whether he wants to or not, at the tremendous industrial and agricultural development that has taken place there and that is on display in the pavilion. We visited the French pavilion, which was imbued with a sense of congeniality and great beauty, in the French fashion. Visiting each place takes a great deal of time if one wants to see it properly and to appreciate its nature. My wife’s legs hurt and she had trouble walking, so we were forced to end our first visit to the fair, and we left much that was worth seeing until we would return to New York on our way home. In order to experience the landscape that we had to cross on our trip to Norfolk, we chose to go by Greyhound bus. Greyhound is a com18.  The 1939 World’s Fair was held at Flushing Meadows in the New York borough of Queens. An Internet site, rich in pictures and information about the 1939 World’s Fair can be found at www.pmphoto.to (accessed July 7, 2008). 19.  The Perisphere housed a moving walkway and a diorama. It and its companion, a 700foot spire called the Trylon, were the iconic central structures of the 1939 World’s Fair. 20.  On the Palestine pavilion, see Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, “Performing the State: The Jewish Palestine Pavilion at the New York World’s Fair, 1939/40,” in Barbara KirshenblattGimblett and Jonathan Karp, eds., The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (Philadelphia, 2008).

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pany whose busses crisscross the entire country. The trip by bus is also less expensive than by train. It took about fourteen hours and was very, very interesting. We passed many typical small towns and stopped over in Philadelphia for about two hours in order to eat and rest. The seats are very comfortable, and they can be extended to become a sort of outstretched couch so that one’s legs can be extended in a half-lying-down position. We passed through the states of New York, New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and Maryland on the way to Virginia. We arrived at midnight and assumed no one would meet us at such a late hour. How surprised we were when we saw a large crowd waiting for us at the bus station. We were the last ones to get off. My wife’s whole family, with their children, came to meet us. A whole line of cars was waiting for them and for us. I was disappointed, however, that no one from my family came to welcome us. Although they offered the justification that they didn’t know when and where we were arriving, this was a lame excuse. I felt a sense of burning humiliation before my wife’s family. The main reason for my family’s absence was that I had telephoned my brother-in-law from New York, and not my brothers. Perhaps they were right. I should have called one of them. I had made a mistake and they were taking revenge and embarrassing me. We all drove to the home of my brotherin-law Louis, my wife’s elder brother, who had invited us to stay with him during our visit. The table was set with all sorts of good things to eat and everyone stayed with us until morning light. They gave us a large, nicely furnished room. We were very tired from the long trip and went to bed. I am generally not used to eating a lot, and especially not meat and other fattening foods. The less one eats of these foods, the better. We had already forgotten American food customs, which are like those of Poland and Romania, where eating a lot is considered commendable. Already with the first breakfast the issue arose: I eat little and try to protect my wife from falling into their habits, and the family becomes irritated. “Don’t you like the food? Don’t we know how to cook?” Alright then, I explained to them that the doctor had forbidden us to eat too much and had told us to cut down on meat. This they understood and we stood the test, although it was difficult to abstain from the appetizing foods that were brought to the table.

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The family of my wife, my dear Rivka, is not a small one. It originated in Anyksht, a small town in Lithuania.21 The Kadishavitz family was one of the more prominent ones in town. They had a private home and a business. When the large-scale migration from Lithuania to South Africa began at the end of the nineteenth century, the head of the family was swept into the current, while his wife and five children—four sons and a daughter—remained in Anyksht. They were supported by money that the father sent and, like thousands of other families in the same situation, they waited either to be called to come to Africa or to have the breadwinner accumulate some money and return to Lithuania to continue in his former business. All of a sudden, the disruption of the war between the Boers and England intruded upon the lives of these Jewish immigrants and business in South Africa came to a standstill.22 Many of the immigrants returned to their homelands and to their families to wait until the fury of the war would subside in Africa, that land of great gold mines and of mountains from which precious stones are cut. The head of the Kadishavitz family, too, returned, with the small amount of money he was able to take out of the country with him. He began in business and barely made a living and then disaster befell him: a loaded wagon turned over on him and he was badly injured. He remained ailing for about a year and then passed away. The oldest son, David, came over to the United States, and after him Eliezer, that is, Louis. The third son, Avraham, remained as the family’s breadwinner. He worked like a slave as a wagon driver in the countryside and, together with his mother, he tried to collect the debts the peasants owed his father. They lived in great poverty, and so Avraham followed his brothers to the United States. The mother got married again to a Mr. Seligman, a Jew of Rakishok, an eminent merchant and a community leader, and she moved to Rakishok with him. The daughter didn’t want to go with them. She studied photography with a neighbor, 21.  Frieden related the story of the Kadishavitz-Seligman clan in the earlier chapter “I Found the Best Woman” mainly from the perspective of the Seligmans. Here he relates the story primarily from the perspective of the Kadishavitzs, some of whom changed their name to Savage. 22.  The Boer War (1899–1902) was a conflict between the British imperial government in South Africa and two neighboring independent republics, the Orange Free State and the Transvaal Republic, which had been established by Boers, settlers of Dutch background. The war resulted in the conversion of the two Boer republics into British colonies.

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learned the craft, and went to work for a photographer in Ponivezh, a district capital in Lithuania. Lonely, friendless and without money, she had few clothes and only one pair of shoes, and even these were too tight for her feet. She wore them on weekdays and on Shabbat, and she had nothing to change into. Ever since then she has had foot trouble. Her tight shoes caused what are called “hammer toes” in English, and she suffers from these still today. All the children received only the education an old-fashioned heder in a small town could provide: some reading of Hebrew and prayers, and a bit of writing in Yiddish—enough to write a simple letter. And when they uprooted themselves from Lithuania and had to worry about making a living, they did not even dream about acquiring an education and culture. They went to work immediately and worked hard all their days, until they married. This placed an additional burden on their shoulders and so they certainly did not have time to study. Thus, they always remained simple people, with no education, either general or Jewish. They worked hard, and they still work hard, even though they have been able to attain a firm footing economically. Eventually, the Seligmans also moved to America and the daughter, Rivka, tired of her difficult and lonely life, came as well. She went to Baltimore, where her mother and the family of her mother’s husband lived. Later, as I have already related, the entire family, including the Seligmans and the Savages, moved to Norfolk. The sons and the daughters grew up and most of them married and had children of their own. And so the family expanded both in quantity and in quality, for most of the children received a secondary or higher education and are taking their proper place in society. When we arrived in Norfolk, we were overwhelmed with invitations and visits from my wife’s family and from mine, and also from friends and acquaintances from times past. My brother-in-law’s house roared with people all day long and into the middle of the night, even though this upset the usual routine of our hosts and our friends. As with most American Jews, the evenings and the nights are devoted to two things: going to the movies or playing cards, with only occasional visits to friends, which themselves involve playing cards. To their credit, I must say that during the six weeks we spent in Norfolk they refrained from playing cards, since they knew I objected to such games, and they tried to pass the time with us in ways we enjoyed.

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Our daily schedule was like this: We would get up late, for, after all, we had gone to sleep late, which I’m not used to. Ever since I came of age, I would try to go to sleep at ten o’clock and awaken at six o’clock, except during my years in the yeshiva, when we used to treat night as day, and except when I had meetings at night in connection with my communal work. So, we got up late, had breakfast, visited a family member’s store, sometimes one, sometimes another, and returned home for lunch and an hour or two of rest, if we had no company. At five o’clock we had “tea,” a custom we introduced, for it is not common in America. Americans don’t take to having tea; they drink cold soft drinks, which can be found in every drugstore and confectionary. In the afternoon, a quick visit to some relative or other and in the evening, after a rich and fancy dinner, members of the family again would gather at one home or another to spend time together until midnight or later. Then its back to start over again. On hot nights, everyone would drive out for a swim and a stroll at a summer home on the shore, eighteen miles from the city. Ever since my childhood, I have liked to go fishing. When I lived in Norfolk, which is encircled by a river and close to the sea, I enjoyed this pastime often, and during this visit I twice went out into the bay to fish with my brother and brother-in-law. We rent a small motor boat, along with some fishing gear, and a black helper takes us out about a kilometer from the shore, drops anchor and prepares the tackle, which is really nothing more than a long, strong line attached to a spinning reel, and a metal hook tied to the line. On the hook is some bait that the fish like, pieces of crab or some other repugnant creature. Sometimes several hooks are attached to the same line and the line is lowered into the water using the reel. A cork is attached to the line; if it jiggles, it’s a sign that a fish has approached the bait. He strikes it, inspects it, and swims away; he’s afraid. He knows his food is not provided without cost, but he can’t overcome his hunger. He attacks with force and takes the bait and the hook. When he feels the hook poking into his flesh, he dives deep into the water in the hope of ridding himself of the hook, and this is the time to be very careful. If you pull on the line at the same time that the fish is dragging it downward, the line will break or the hook will dislodge from the fish’s jaw. The fisherman must allow the line some free play. When

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the fish reaches the sea floor, if the line allows him to do so, he begins to rise again and that’s the time to pull the line in. When the fisher­man brings the fish to the side of the motorboat, he must take care. You must grab the fish in order to remove the hook, but if you hold him by his middle he can slip out of your hand the minute you extract the hook from his mouth. Hold the fish by its head, under the bones on his sides, and then you can be sure he won’t get away. We amuse ourselves in this way for two or three hours, until our fish basket is full, and we return to shore. We divide up the fish not according to how many each person was able to catch, but rather by the number of people who went along, including even those who might have been seasick and didn’t catch a single fish. Then we go home. And this is where the wives get upset. They pray that the fishing will not be so good, for it’s up to them to deal with the fish and to prepare them for dinner; the maids don’t work on Sunday. Having no choice, they prepare the fresh fish suitably and make an excellent, delicious dish. This is a special type of fish known all over the United States for its extreme tastiness.23 If we don’t go fishing on a Sunday, then we go to the beach to swim and to have a “picnic,” a big meal in the company of several families, where each family brings the best dishes it can provide. We’re seated at a long table and everything that’s been brought is put out and everyone takes what he wants. Drinks are provided as well, wine or something else. That’s how the day is spent until evening, when we go home. This practice is known all over America. If a city does not have a beach, then people go to a forest or to the countryside. And so Sunday is over. On weekdays, this is the schedule: work, eating, and a visit to the cinema or playing cards. I’ll be darned if I ever saw anyone read a decent book on a Sunday, as I have explained. The daily newspaper is read quickly for the headlines and for those parts that are of personal interest to the reader: perhaps the stock market report or the sports section, or a serialized detective story. Of course, there are exceptions in large enough numbers to justify the publication of thousands of books, but I’m speaking of American Jews 23.  The fish Frieden has in mind may be Spot or Croaker. See James Kirkley and David Kerstetter, Saltwater Angling and Its Economic Importance to Virginia (Williamsburg, Va., 1997).

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in general. They are, in the main, as I have described them. Their minds are occupied primarily with business and, in their leisure time, with card games, movies, and making love. Or they spend their time sitting idly, dozing off or maybe not, burping and yawning, until they go to bed. In my day, we were nine brothers and one sister in Norfolk, but during the year that I visited, only my brothers Chaim, Shneur, and Yehoshua, and my sister with her husband and daughter, were still in the city. My eldest brother had gone to Texas and Shmuel to Los Angeles. I was not at all pleased with my family; they didn’t behave properly toward me at all and we didn’t visit them very often. Shmuel came to see us in Norfolk with two of his sons, two fine fellows who excelled in their studies and were selected to represent the university in Los Angeles at a student conference held at Harvard. My brother Harry, that is, Hillel, also visited us from Texas and we spent a few days together in New York on our way home. I was not happy with my sister’s situation. Her husband was not successful and didn’t support the family. She was working hard, maintaining the household with difficulty, and she was deep in debt. Their daughter grew up without parental supervision. She was studying singing because she has a powerful voice, though it is untrained. At the end of July, we took a trip to Washington with my brotherin-law Louis and his wife Nora. We were with them a week and had a very good time. Mr. Fine, a lawyer and high government official, was our guide and he showed us the most interesting sights in America’s capital. In this period, Hitler’s aggression toward the other countries of Europe was beginning to reveal itself. As long as Hitler was concerned only with the Jews, no other nation said a word, but when he started in with Czechoslovakia and then with Poland, they saw that they were too late to deter him and the winds of war began to blow across the world. Mr. Fine, who worked at the State Department, informed us one day that if we wanted to return to Palestine, we needed to hurry. We were scheduled to return on August 29, but I arranged with the French Line agency to use the tickets I had to leave on the same ship, the Normandie, which was due to sail for Le Havre on August 16. We went back to Norfolk immediately, packed our things, and left for New York on August 11 to complete all the arrangements for sailing on the 16th. We spent the days in New York with Hillel and on August 16 we left on the Normandie for Le Havre. On the 20th we arrived in Paris. I

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immediately went to see the French Line agent about our travel from Marseilles to Palestine and here he informed me that he had not been told about our travel plans so he had not reserved places for us on the Champlain, which was leaving for Palestine on the 26th of the month. He suggested we travel by way of Italy. On that same day, August 22, Paris was already astir. There was news of an end to negotiations between Britain and Russia and about the signing of an agreement between Russia and Germany, and this meant war.24 In Paris, the word la guerre was on everyone’s lips. Suddenly, the city was filled with soldiers. Confusion was growing hour by hour and tourists were knocking at the doors of travel agencies seeking passage to every corner of the world. They were eager to get home. Many were using Italian ships, since Italy was still sitting on the fence concerning its alliances, concerning which side it would join. I agreed to have the agent send a telegram to Italy to get us a place on a ship bound for Alexandria. Then a couple from Tel Aviv, Mr. Kahan and his wife, came to our rescue. They also had returned from the United States on the ­Normandie, where we had gotten to know them. They knew Paris well and spoke French. He brought me to a young man from Palestine, a clerk for the company, who immediately arranged a place for us on the Champlain. I brought over the original agent, who had our papers, and I made him hand them over to this young man. Our names were then registered as passengers on the Champlain, due to sail from Marseilles on August 26. I gave this young man several dollars and we left Paris by train for Marseilles. We boarded the ship on the morning of the 26th of the month and it was full to capacity. Fifteen hundred French soldiers were aboard, along with some six hundred civilians. There was no place to put a foot down, and yet we were happy to be aboard. In the end, we were given a cabin among those assigned to the French army officers. The ship, full to the brim, departed that very night. All the corridors were full of soldiers. There was no place to move. 24.  The reference here is to the Nazi-Soviet Nonaggression Pact, signed on August 23, 1939, only about a week before the beginning of World War II. Also named the RibbentropMolotov Pact for the foreign ministers involved, the agreement provided that Germany and the Soviet Union would not attack each other and, in a secret protocol, also allowed the Soviets to annex Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, and eastern Poland.

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During the first day of the voyage, various rumors were flying; it was said the ship was returning to France. All the rumors were based on Italy’s indecision.25 On the next day, we were surprised to see that the ship had changed its course westward. We heard that it was going to the port of Bizerte on the North African coast, in Tunisia. This port was known throughout the world for its huge anchorage surrounded on all sides by lofty mountains and was able to accommodate the entire French fleet. We stayed in this port twenty-four hours and then continued on our way. Only a few hours passed and we returned again to Bizerte. This time the ship did not anchor out in the water but in the famous harbor and we were allowed to go into the city. It’s a small and pretty town. We were very happy to have this opportunity and we ate in a modern coffee house. We sent some telegrams, and a few people went out dancing in the street near a café as its orchestra played for them. We stayed in ­Bizerte for two days, until two French cruisers came to escort us to Malta. We remained at Malta for twenty-four hours until two English destroyers came to replace the French warships. We were not allowed to go ashore on Malta but left from there for Alexandria, where we arrived without incident. We spent the night on the ship and the next day it departed not for Haifa, as usual, but first to Beirut to let the French troops disembark. A few of the passengers got off in Beirut in order to continue their journey to Haifa by taxi, but most stayed to spend the night on board ship and we reached Haifa the next day. The voyage, which normally takes four days, lasted ten. By the time we reached Haifa, war had already been declared. We were very glad that we were able to return home before war broke out. If we had not hurried from New York, we might have been stuck in America throughout all the years of the conflict. The family was glad as well since they had not heard from us since I telegraphed from France that we were about to sail. They had not gotten the telegram from Bizerte. We stayed one day in Haifa with Miriam and with Baruch, whom we had left be25.  Although Italy had signed a treaty of friendship and alliance with Germany in May 1939, Italian foreign minister Galeazzo Ciano was still involved in negotiations over a possible alliance with Britain and with France, Italy’s traditional allies, as late as September 1939. On the complexities of Italy’s policy in August of 1939, see MacGregor Knox, Mussolini Unleashed, 1939–1941: Politics and Strategy in Fascist Italy’s Last War (New York, 1982), chapts. 1–2.

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hind so that he could go to school, and the next morning we reached Tel Aviv and then Jerusalem. We were pleased to be home, but dazed by the beginning of the war. We found the banks closed by order of the government and we also discovered that, in my absence, a decision had been made to move the headquarters of my bank to Tel Aviv. Here is the brief history explaining this move: The Americans of the Brandeis group had opened a commerce and industry information office in Tel Aviv under the direction of the late Mr. Rehavia Epstein and Mr. Aaron Baroway. This office was closed for lack of resources and because others were providing the same services. Mr. Baroway was appointed as assistant to Mr. Julius Simon, president of our corporation, who was in the country and managed its affairs, and this Mr. Baroway immediately insisted on the need to move the headquarters to Tel Aviv, since most of the bank’s investments were around Tel Aviv and Haifa and it would be easier to oversee their accounts from nearby. Both Mr. Viteles and I objected to this move, but during my absence they transferred part of the office to Tel Aviv and so when I returned I had no alternative other than to complete the move. My family relocated on January 1, 1940, when I found us a comfortable apartment at No. 1 Rosenbaum Street. At first, Hitler’s war was directed mainly against Czechoslovakia and Poland, and only after these two countries were conquered was the German army freed to take its main actions against the governments of Western Europe. The successes of Hitler’s forces mounted and intensified. The French front collapsed, the evacuation from Dunkirk sent shock waves throughout the world, and the situation of the Allies became critical.26 At this point the Jewish Agency began recruiting the young people of the Yishuv for the British army. There were two motivations behind this recruitment drive. First, to prepare for the defense of the Land of Israel, should Hitler succeed in breaking through and reaching the Near East. It was clear that if this happened, the British would withdraw from the county without defending it and we had already heard 26.  Germany invaded Denmark and Norway on April 9, 1940, and attacked France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands on May 10. The Allied evacuation from the port of Dunkirk, France, in which nearly 350,000 British, French, and Belgian soldiers escaped across the English Channel to Britain, took place between May 26 and June 3, 1940.

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terrifying rumors about the murder of Jews wherever the Nazis had gone. We did not believe the rumors about these atrocities, but we were fearful and wanted to be ready to defend the land and our lives. Second, even though the White Paper directed against us by England was still in effect,27 we nonetheless wanted to provide all the help we could to the Allies in their time of need. This despite Britain’s policy toward us. It should be remembered for eternity that even in this time of crisis, when the sword was at our throats, England did not want to accept our help and attempted to thwart the recruitment of Jews in the Land of Israel. They limited the number of those enrolled to the number recruited among the Arabs, which was one tenth our number. They did not allow the Jewish flag to be raised as a symbol beside the British flag, and only after America joined the war effort and insisted upon its formation was the well-known Jewish Brigade established. First came the okay for Jews to join the “Buffs” and only later was the creation of a Jewish Brigade authorized.28 Yoel, Yehudit’s husband, enlisted in accordance with the directive of the Jewish Agency, as did Maurice, Miriam’s husband. Yoel was transferred from the Buffs to the Royal Engineers, completed a number of advanced courses, and, after Italy joined the Allies, he served there in 1945 as a major doing bridge construction. In the same year, Maurice left the army as a captain. He had served in the desert, in Greece, in Syria, and in Italy. His assignment had been mainly managing labor camps, since he knew many languages. In those years, Yehudit and Miriam and their children came to live with us in Tel Aviv. The house was crowded and the peace and quiet I was used to disappeared. Life was very hard 27.  The British White Paper, or policy statement, of 1939, adopted in response to Arab objections to Zionist aims, limited the number of Jewish immigrants allowed into Palestine in the period 1940–1944 to 75,000 and provided that after 1944, further Jewish immigration would depend on the consent of the Arab majority in Palestine. The White Paper also placed restrictions on the rights of Jews to buy land. The text of the White Paper is available on the Internet at avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/brwh1939.asp (accessed Dec. 12, 2011). 28.  The “Buffs” refers to the East Kent Regiment of the British army, to which Jewish companies that accepted Jewish volunteers from Palestine as of 1940 were attached. In 1942, a Palestine Regiment was created with three Jewish battalions and one Arab battalion. Only in September 1944 did the British agree to the formation of a Jewish Brigade with its own insignia and flag. On the Yishuv’s participation in the war effort during World War II, see, for example, Yehuda Bauer, From Diplomacy to Resistance: A History of Jewish Palestine, 1939–1945, Alton M. Winters, trans. (Philadelphia, 1970), passim.

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during the first two years of the war, but after that, Yehudit moved to Jerusalem. Miriam remained with us all those years and moved to Haifa in the middle of 1946, when Ben Zion returned to Palestine. The difficult years of war, the crowding, and the lack of quiet distressed us, as did Baruch’s irresponsible behavior, which was a result of his falling in with a bunch of street kids at the school he attended, leading to the neglect of his studies and to his dismissal. Even after he transferred to the Gymnasia Herzliya, his behavior did not improve and this led to daily confrontations with us, which upset me and broke my heart. It grieved my dear wife and the rest of the family as well. This on top of my worry over my three soldiers, for Ben Zion also left Palestine at the beginning of 1940 to go to America by way of Transjordan, Iraq, India, Singapore, and the Pacific Ocean. He traveled for two months and reached Los Angeles. He began studying and working at the Curtiss aircraft factory and when the United States entered the war, he immediately enlisted in the army and was sent to England as a master sergeant. He remained there for three years with the American Eighth Air Force.29 I was additionally annoyed and nervous because, on top of all this, Mr. Simon’s attitude toward me changed in a way that was quite unfair. First he suggested that I resign my position and they would help me go to America with my family. This was prompted by a telegram I received from our families in America asking us all to return immediately on account of the difficult wartime conditions in our region. Of course, I agreed neither with their suggestion nor with that of Mr. Simon. The cost of living rose daily and my salary was completely insufficient to support my family. I asked that the salary of my clerks be raised and to some degree, it was. They also raised the salary of the two directors of our corporation, and they left only mine the same. This angered me to the depths 29.  In the early part of the twentieth century, the Curtiss firm was one of the two main aircraft manufacturing companies in the United States. In 1928, it merged with the Wright Brothers’ firm, the other main company in the field, and Curtiss-Wright remained an important airplane manufacturer in the 1930s and during World War II. See, for example, Louis R. Eltscher and Edward M. Young, Curtiss-Wright: Greatness and Decline (New York, 1998); and John Whiteclay Chambers, “Aircraft Industrialists,” in The Oxford Companion to American Military History (Oxford, 2000). On the activities of the Eighth Air Force, see “Eighth Air Force Operations in England during World War II,” on the Internet at www.398th.org/Research/ Operations.html (accessed May 31, 2007).

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of my soul, especially since it was such an insult; everyone got a raise, but against me, who had been there twenty years, they discriminated. All this, coming at the same time, affected my health, which had been fragile in recent years, and at the beginning of February 1943, after an especially angry incident at home involving my son Baruch, I suffered a serious heart attack. I lay on my back without moving for six weeks. I improved, got out of bed, and after a month of rest I returned to work. Baruch did not mend his ways and neglected his studies completely, saying that they were not worthwhile, since he was about to enlist in the American army, even though he was not yet eighteen. He stood his ground, as usual, and at the beginning of 1944 he joined up and was sent to Egypt and from there to North Africa. The experiences of 1943 and Baruch’s upsetting enlistment did not improve my health, which remained unstable all of 1943, and in 1944, on the same day in February as in the year before, the 12th of the month, I suffered a second heart attack, more serious than the first. I attribute the two heart attacks, which occurred on the same day in February, to the fact that in that month I had to prepare the bank’s annual report. Preparing the statement of accounts and the report demanded particular exertion on my part, for I had to draw them up after working hours were over. In previous years I had been able to manage, but the recent difficult years, which affected my health, lowered my resistance. Any extra strain was hard on me and there was additional aggravation in view of the fact that my heart was weakened in the preceding two years, 1942 and 1943. This time the heart attack was very dangerous and I needed oxygen for several weeks. Complications developed when some previous problems with my lungs reappeared. There were times when the doctors despaired and there were days when I resigned myself to my fate and prepared myself to leave everything behind forever. However, with the help of excellent and devoted medical care and, above all, the faithful dedication of my dear wife, who watched over me every minute of the day and night, I was able to leave my sickbed after eighteen weeks of lying on my back. Broken and exhausted in body and spirit, I couldn’t move hand or foot on my own. Only with the assistance of my wife, who helped me and supported me in my every activity, with dressing and putting on shoes, with eating and drinking, did I begin to recover.

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My strength returned only slowly and it was several months before I was permitted to travel to Jerusalem in order to rest for a couple of months at the home of my daughter Yehudit. I was a semi-invalid. My hands did not function properly due to arthritis. I couldn’t think of returning to work. I had to remain under a doctor’s care, for even though I had managed to survive, my illness persisted. My heart was weak and from time to time I experienced pains brought on by some exertion or a change of atmosphere or location. Doctors became a part of my life and they are with me wherever I turn, to this very day. An intravenous turpentine injection is needed at least once every year or two.30 This is how I lived my life in 1944, 1945, and 1946. In those years, as I felt my strength returning slightly and I had no work to do, I renewed the practices of my youth: studying Torah for its own sake and observing the positive commandments as I understood them and to the extent I was able. It may be true what our sages say: “One who studies Torah as an old man is like ink written on blotted paper.”31 Nonetheless, I derived great spiritual satisfaction from what I was studying, primarily philosophical works to which I had paid little attention in my later years. How I regret the many years that have passed without my engaging in Torah study. I now have a great desire to learn that which I missed and that which I neglected when I could have studied. It’s difficult to learn in old age and with a frail body, and I find myself among those who cry out for the past, even though my experience has shown me that it’s worth studying and taking action even in old age. Study brings back to me things I had forgotten. I acquired a great deal of knowledge from my study of philosophical texts in these years. I am extremely grateful to my Creator for His benevolence in having preserved me and sustained me as I faced my dangerous illness, and I am again enjoying the world of the Holy One, Blessed be He. Even though it was difficult for me at the beginning, the sagacity I had in the past has been renewed, my ability to remember has been reawakened, and I am getting better at understanding even difficult passages. I find a special satisfaction in philosophical texts and in books 30.  In the past, turpentine injections were used in fighting certain infections. 31.  Frieden is here paraphrasing Pirke Avot 4:25, which reads: “Elisha ben Abuya said: If one learns as a child, to what is it compared? To ink written on clean paper. And if one learns as an old man, to what is it compared? To ink written on blotted paper.”

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of ethics and repentance, books I have at my disposal to help me in my soul-searching, which it pays every person to undertake in times of stress. And how ashamed I am about the carelessness I exhibited over many years, from the day I arrived in America, in neglecting study, Torah, and worship, to which I had devoted all the days of my youth. Alas the shame, alas the disgrace! As we know “If you neglect it for one day, it will leave you for two.”32 But I always had an excuse. From the time I came to America, I already had a millstone around my neck: I had left a wife in Lithuania and I wanted to bring her to America as quickly as possible, and this spurred me to find a livelihood that was ample and secure. This was difficult without knowing the language of the country, and so I devoted all my free time to reading books in English. I learned the language on my own, just as I learned everything else I know through independent study, without teachers and with only the few books I had available. I was never comfortable with my neglect of my most important studies, but I couldn’t muster the strength to overcome my neglectfulness. Rather, I took the easier path. I wish I had taken the offer I had been given when I first got to Norfolk, a position as a cantor, Hebrew teacher, and something of a rabbi. Had I done that, of necessity I would have continued with Torah and learning and I would have attained a proper level of observance of the Law and the commandments, and an honorable life. I was foolish to reject that opportunity because I did not want to make of the Torah “a spade with which to dig.”33 You see, this position would have led to study of Torah for its own sake. If I had taken that job, perhaps my family would have been educated differently as well. I can’t forgive myself for being so neglectful. Still, I didn’t abandon the traditions of our forefathers and I kept a Jewish home, kosher even for the most meticulous, the only home in which my parents would eat without misgivings. I also guided my sons and daughters in the ways of truth and of Jewish tradition, although that did not prevent them from deviating when they grew up and went off on their own. Of all of them, only my daughter Miriam has a connection with the spirit of Judaism and tries to keep a kosher home. 32.  This concept is based on a passage in the Jerusalem Talmud, tractate Berachot, chapter 9. 33.  On this expression, see Note 15 in the chapter “My Entry into Heder.” 

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During all my years in the United States, I tried to nurture a spirit of Jewish peoplehood in my city. With the help of my friends, I founded a Hebrew school that existed for several years and provided a Hebrew education for all the Jewish children of the city, except for those of the Reform. The school closed about a year after I left Norfolk to make aliya. This was as in the case of Yehoshua ben Gamla.34 When my daughters came to Palestine, it was not difficult for them to enter into the appropriate grade in school immediately. But all this does not alter the main point: I neglected the study of Torah for seventeen years. This period of neglect was while I was in the United States, but how much greater is my shame that I neglected nearly everything when I came to the Land of Israel and continued with my lifestyle, devoid of Torah and study. True, here too the pretext was an even greater worry about making a living as soon as I came to the country, for the family grew, expenses mounted, and my attempts at manufacturing did not succeed. I remained without means and, out of necessity, I had to take on a job that barely sustained my family. I remained unable to advance the building of the homeland except through the work of my office, which allowed me to distinguish myself in this regard. In those days, the agency for which I worked was a major contributor to the building and development of the homeland. For that reason, I devoted myself to it with such zeal and faithfulness that it took up all my time, twelve and even sixteen hours a day. Deeds are more important than study, especially in the Land of Israel. But this too is nothing but an excuse, as is the additional observation that after such a difficult workday, I had no strength left to devote time to Torah study as well. Where there is a will, one can overcome this problem, too. During those rueful hours when I lay on my back, moving neither left nor right, as my doctor had ordered, I had plenty of time to do some soul-searching concerning the past. I felt great remorse about the past and vowed that if the Healer of the Sick would, in His great benevolence, raise me up again and give me life, I would try with all my might to correct that in which I had fallen short and that in which I 34.  Yehoshua ben Gamla was a high priest in Jerusalem who, around the year 64 ce, instituted a system of Jewish education for all children, regardless of their financial or family situation. It is said of him in the Talmud, “if not for him, the Torah would have been forgotten in Israel.” See tractate Baba Batra 21a.

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had failed. I would arrange the days I had remaining on this earth, with the grace of heaven, in order to return to the life of a Jew faithful to his Torah, his people, and his land. The ability to study I had when I was young is coming back to me easily and this provides me great spiritual satisfaction, even though I am unable to fulfill the dictates of the Torah as our sages ordained and as I did during my youth in the yeshiva. In old age, we must accommodate our lives to our physical and spiritual capabilities. Learning in youth is unlike learning in old age, when overexertion affects both body and soul. I must act accordingly and, to deal with this, I vary my schedule and the books I study. From a difficult passage in the Talmud I pass to some undemanding reading in history books, and from there to a chapter of Psalms. From there I go on to books on ethics or philosophy and some light reading of the best authors represented in the multitude of new books that are coming out in the Land of Israel. It’s difficult for me to walk, so I can’t go out for strolls as much as I would like. The muscles of my legs are hardening, a result of sclerosis of the arteries. Old age has finally caught up with me. Until I became ill, even though I was frail, I didn’t feel old at all and I showed no signs of aging. I always looked younger than my years, and even today, in my seventy-third year, people think I’m in my early sixties. So here I sit at home. I try to help my wife with the housework to the extent that I can, and to organize my time in an orderly and systematic fashion. I try not to become upset, for this is the main thing: not to get angry. But this is hard to do, for as a person ages his nerves grow weaker and they can no longer withstand irritation. Only the minds of great scholars become settled as they get older, and they can render judgments about everything based on moderation and cold reason. I don’t consider myself a great scholar such as this, no matter what others may say. With the end of the war in Europe, Yoel and Maurice returned from the army. Ben Zion also informed us that he had been discharged and that he was preparing to return home. He was going to New York to arrange passage on the first ship coming to Palestine, a ship operated by the American Express Company on behalf of the American government. The ship was part of the American fleet and there were many travelers returning to the Land of Israel. Also, American citizens were having problems obtaining permission to leave the country for Pales-

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tine on account of the situation here after the dissidents renewed their activities against the mandatory government.35 Ben Zion and his wife arrived in Palestine in June 1946, a week before the mass arrests carried out by the government and the declaration of a state of emergency. Most of the members of the Jewish Agency were arrested, and in Tel Aviv hundreds of people were detained and sent to prison camps. The curfew in Tel Aviv lasted four days. We were all restricted to our homes and were not even allowed to come out on our balconies. Only on the second day of the closure were citizens allowed out for an hour to buy necessities. Deep mourning descended over the entire land. People were condemned to prison camps without trial and they sat there many months. There was sorrow and acrimony that exceeded any previous bitterness toward the mandatory government. Even though the Yishuv had become accustomed to the arbitrary behavior of the British toward the Jews in the Land of Israel, people did not imagine that they would dare imprison the entire leadership of the Yishuv in the manner of East European governments that want to cleanse their countries of their opposition. Already at the end of 1945, when Bevin announced the British government’s policy concerning Palestine and when the government decided on a joint Anglo-American commission to study the situation, holding up immigration in the meantime, and so forth, the Yishuv responded forcefully.36 It did not accept the limitations placed on aliya and began attacks on rail lines and other assaults against the mandatory government. The British responded by declaring a state of emergency and a curfew, and by firing on the Jews in Tel Aviv and other places, which resulted in much loss of life. The uprisings continued in every part of the country, carried out mainly by dissident groups, without the participation of the Haganah, which could not agree with their tactics.37 Activities against the government continued, and it re35.  By “dissidents” Frieden means the militant Jewish militia groups the Irgun (also known by the acronym Etzel) and the Stern Gang (also known as Lehi). 36.  “Bevin” is British foreign secretary Ernest Bevin (1881–1951), who was intent upon enforcing the White Paper of 1939 (see Note 27, above). 37.  The most extreme action carried out by the Irgun and Lehi was the July 22, 1946, bombing of Jerusalem’s King David Hotel, which housed offices of the British mandatory government and military command. For several months before this action, the Haganah, the

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sponded to each incident with great cruelty, culminating in the actions of 1946 and the declaration of a four-day curfew in Tel Aviv. Our daughter-in-law Dinah, Ben Zion’s wife, had never during her life in the United States witnessed such actions on the part of the government: a curfew, mass arrests, shootings, and so forth, and she couldn’t understand them. For the first time in her life, she was forced by British soldiers to go to an inspection station to identify herself. Every man and woman up to age fifty throughout the land was taken to such a station for identification and for a check against the lists of wanted dissidents compiled by the police. Only my wife and I were not compelled to go. The army spread out over the entire besieged city, dug in along Rothschild Boulevard, and when, on the second day, we were allowed out to buy necessities, we were astonished at the way the city looked, at the way the army had taken over every corner, as if an enemy city had been conquered after intense fighting. How our hatred of the government that broke faith with the Balfour Declaration permeated everything! How our resolve to remain steadfast for our freedom from this malicious government was redoubled! The result of the horror that was visited upon us was the opposite of that intended. Not only did it not silence our desire for freedom, but it strengthened and increased our determination to maintain our old-new hope of reviving our nation and our government in the Promised Land. In those dark days, our national unity was solidified firmly for the sake of gaining our national independence, employing all our efforts and every means that would achieve our goal. It was in those days that the defeat of the mandatory government began. They saw that, although they held power, all their efforts to break our spirit came to naught. The more they increased their pressure upon us, the more the unity and determination of the nation increased. For this reason, their spirit and their power weakened and, although they didn’t want to, they had to relax their perverse policies. Most of all, they were alarmed at the way their strong measures against us influenced world public opinion, and especially American public opinion, which opposed their repression of the Jewish community of Palestine. That’s when the British began to think about withdrawing from the mainstream defense organization of the Yishuv, had followed a policy of cooperation with the Irgun and Lehi, but this policy did not last.

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country in such a way that the Arabs would complete the task they were unable to complete. In the middle of 1945, I began to discuss my pension with Mr. Simon, president of the Palestine Economic Corporation, the proprietors of the bank. He had lived in the Land of Israel most of the time since 1934. Even if I had not become ill, it would have been time for me to retire from my job, since I had reached the age of sixty-five and this is retirement age. The matter of pensions within the agencies of the corporation had not been decided upon; although it was discussed year after year, they never reached a conclusion and the matter remained unresolved. I suggested to Mr. Simon in writing that, in principle, I would agree to receive half my salary as a pension, as was the normal practice in other workplaces in the Land of Israel. However, since the cost of living index was continuing to rise and stood at 250 at the time of our negotiations, and since every employee was getting a cost of living supplement tied to the increase in the index each month, I should get my entire salary, since I had previously waived my cost of living supplements. To the extent that the cost of living would decline, my payments would accordingly be reduced. Thus, if the index would decline by 25 points, my payments would be reduced by five pounds, and when the index reached 100, I would get only 30 pounds per month, half my salary. Mr. Simon accepted my suggestion in principle, but he couldn’t confirm an arrangement without the consent of the directorate in New York. The negotiations continue without our reaching an agreement and in the meantime I am getting my full salary, which is 60 pounds per month. At this point, in 1950, it is very hard to live on this, for the cost of living index stands at 319 points and is actually much higher. The shortfall is exhausting the monetary reserves that I had remaining from the sale of some land that I owned and from the help I received from the family in America. But, thank God, I don’t require any help from my children. On the contrary, I help them whenever I can. I praise the Creator that I have the possibility to do so, since Ben Zion and his wife returned to the Land of Israel without anything: no money, no profession, and no education. Although his wife is able to be an English-language secretary and, indeed, after a couple of weeks of rest, she got a job with an importer at 30 pounds per month, this is not enough on which to live. Moreover, she is a frail person and inca-

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pable of working a whole day. After a while, she began working only half days. Ben Zion certainly can’t rely on his wife’s work. When Ben Zion and his wife returned, Miriam and her son were still staying with us because they had not yet found an apartment in Haifa. Maurice would remain at work in Haifa and return to Tel Aviv for the weekend. This was quite inconvenient, both for them and for us. She had no choice but to move to Haifa into a single room where the three of them lived. It was a small room with neighbors who were not particularly pleasant, and she was pregnant. Finally they found a three-room apartment in a building that was completed at the end of 1946. They paid 650 pounds key money, half of which they got in loans. I gave them 300 pounds and Miriam transferred to me a part of a lot that she had in partnership with Mr. Winogradow.38 She had paid 145 pounds for her share. (The lot was sold in 1950. I got my 300 pounds back and gave Miriam the profit.) And so she got settled nicely on Mount Carmel and on May 14, 1947, she bore a son, who was named Lee Shai. He’s a lovely child. We gave Ben Zion our bedroom and we made the dining room into our sleeping area. As a dining room we used Baruch’s room, a small room where our maid used to sleep, and we were more or less comfortable. Ben Zion looked for work and could not find any, so we decided that he should seek out some sort of business partnership. He got an offer to become a salesman for a lock factory on condition that he provide the factory 2,000 pounds as a loan to be returned over two years. His salary was to be 6 percent of all the factory’s sales, whether they were handled by him or directly by the factory. Judging by production levels, a 6 percent commission should have yielded about 100 pounds per month. This appeared to be a good offer. The product they made was good and the factory could not keep up with demand, which was great and growing as building in the Land of Israel was expanding. The factory manufactured primarily door locks and the owner of the factory said that he was asking for the loan in order to increase production. It happened that I knew this factory owner from the time our bank provided him 38.  This is Daniel Winogradow (1909–1990), the son of Shmuel Shmaryahu Winogradow, who was a brother of Ya’akov Frieden’s wife, Leah. See Note 11 in the chapter “My Father’s House.” 

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with a loan. The firm was Schneirson and Son. Mr. Schneirson was a first-rate locksmith, but not a trustworthy person when it came to financial matters; I had trouble collecting the loan he got from our bank. He was a man of vision but without a head for figures. He was always getting into trouble and in the past declared bankruptcy. Indeed, he was always on the verge of declaring bankruptcy. I knew he owed money to the Anglo-Palestine Bank and to the Industrial Bank.39 He offered to guarantee the loan with a lien on his machinery. Ben Zion rejoiced at receiving such a good offer, but he knew he was unable to come up with this amount of money and so he turned to Adash, Batya’s husband, to help him.40 Adash, too, was impressed by the proposal and was willing to lend 1,500 pounds if I would add 500. I expressed my reservations about Schneirson’s trustworthiness, based on my experience with him.41 I told them that they had to verify that the machinery that was being offered as collateral to guarantee the loan was free of any other lien. I went with Ben Zion to see the manager of the Industrial Bank, a friend of mine, and I explained the matter to him. He told me that some of the machinery was mortgaged to the Anglo-­ Palestine Bank and agreed with me that Schneirson’s affairs were complicated but that the proposal was worthwhile if the loan was well secured. According to Mr. Macht, the manager of the Industrial Bank,42 Schneirson owed some 10,000 pounds on his factory, which he believed had a value of 12,000 pounds. Anyone who examined this proposal with his eyes open could see that there was great danger in it, and that’s what I said to Ben Zion and Adash. Nonetheless, they pressured me and, against my better judgment, I agreed to provide 500 pounds. Adash provided 1,500 pounds and the deal was concluded. Ben Zion worked for this company only four months and earned almost 39.  The Palestine Industrial Bank, partially owned by the Anglo-Palestine Bank and the Jewish Agency, had been founded in 1933 to provide credit to industrial enterprises. See Yakir Plessner, The Political Economy of Israel: From Ideology to Stagnation (Albany, N.Y., 1993), 166. 40.  “Adash” was the nickname of Avraham Osherowitz. 41.  In this sentence and below, the existing Hebrew memoir has “Mendelson” instead of Schneirson, but Ben Zion Frieden, in a phone conversation of July 5, 2007, confirmed that the correct name is Schneirson. 42.  “Mr. Macht” is Alexander Macht (1892–1972), a banker and chess master in Lithuania, who brought his family on aliya after attending the Maccabiah sporting competition in Tel Aviv in 1935.

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400 pounds, but already in the third month it became clear how right I was about Schneirson. First he pressured Ben Zion to reduce his commission from 6 percent to 5 percent, then he began to sell his merchandise directly from the factory and so Ben Zion couldn’t fill the orders that he got from store owners. After that, he began to delay payment of Ben Zion’s commission. Production began to drop and it became clear that he owed a lot of money to his workers. They stopped working and the factory closed down. At that point, court cases were initiated and it developed that he had already mortgaged some of his machinery previously, despite his avowal that it was not mortgaged. Ben Zion was out of work, and that’s when the Haganah, in which he had been active from the age of fifteen, took advantage of his situation and compelled him to return to its ranks. In contrast to his recent experience, he was very successful at his work with the Haganah and with the Israel Defense Forces. He excels in boundless devotion, in energy, in daring and courage. He has earned a fine reputation for himself and for his brigade and has attained the rank of colonel. He is amiable toward all who are under his authority and beloved by all. He is modest and easygoing, unlike others. It’s too bad he’s limited by his lack of education, but his good character, his courageous spirit, his devotion to duty, and his pleasant manner, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, his raging determination in the face of the enemy in battle, make him stand out and he is recognized by everyone except those at the top, for whom party affiliation is more important than bravery. He is rooted heart and soul in the land. May God be his support and may He protect him and all those who serve under him in defense of the country until the peace for which we yearn arrives.43 His wife, Dinah, is a lovely woman, pretty and smart. She has a quick mind and is eager to learn as much as she needs to know, but no more. 43.  In 1948–1949, Ben Zion Frieden was commander of Israel’s Alexandroni Brigade, which operated primarily on the coastal plain. Among those serving under Frieden was the future prime minister Ariel Sharon. A 1998 M.A. thesis submitted by Theodore Katz at the University of Haifa alleged that the Alexandroni Brigade had committed a massacre of Arab civilians in 1948, but Frieden and some other veterans of the brigade sued Katz for libel and won. Discussions of this incident are often heated and highly partisan. See, for example, “Not Just an Academic Battle,” Jerusalem Post, Nov. 25, 2001; “The Theodore Katz Saga” at members.tripod.com/Church-of-Rabin/katz.htm; and “History’s Revenge,” at www.israelinsider .com/views/articles/views_0201.htm (both accessed July 10, 2008).

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Generally speaking, an American high school education provides students with only limited knowledge. Here, when she saw that she needed to know Hebrew, she immediately devoted herself to learning the language. For several months, I taught her the fundamentals of the language to the extent that I could in brief daily lessons. She learned to speak right away, and she speaks quite well, but as soon as she learned to do so, she discontinued her studies. If she has to write a letter in Hebrew, she does so with the aid of a dictionary. A lovely woman, but very self-centered as a result of her circumstances, her upbringing, and her schooling. Her father, a simple person, arrived in Palestine during the Third Aliya with his family, but he left his family and migrated to Cuba and from there to the United States, where he settled in the city of Tampa, Florida. His wife bore him three sons and a daughter; Dinah was the youngest of his children. His wife, her mother, died when Dinah was only eight and her father was remarried to the wife of the local rabbi, who had divorced her. She was not an especially good-natured woman. She was strong-minded and controlled her weak-willed husband. She was domineering toward Dinah as well, which embittered her life and made her selfish. She follows the maxim “If I am not for myself, who will be for me?” as she understands it, and not as Hillel intended it.44 She became this way out of necessity and she remains so. She loves Benz deeply and faithfully, but just as others controlled her, she now controls her husband and there are times when Benz rebels against her domineering.45 However, he does not have the strength to protest, since he loves her very much. His good-heartedness will not allow him to persist in his resistance and he accepts her authority. For us, it was difficult to witness Dinah’s lifestyle and behavior with equanimity, we who, from early in our lives, had became accustomed to quiet manners and to concessions for the sake of peace, as we learned from the lives of our parents. None of us ever saw them quarrel or squabble or even exchange harsh words. More particularly, 44.  This quotation, one of Hillel’s most famous maxims, is from Pirke Avot 1:14. It can be understood not as a justification for selfishness, but as a statement about the responsibility of people to understand that they are not owed something by others. See, for example, “Hillel’s Enunciation of Objectivist Principles,” on the Internet at www.starways.net/lisa/essays/hillel. html (accessed July 4, 2010). 45.  “Benz” is a contraction of Ben Zion.

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from the time we began our blissful lives together, nothing transpired between my wife and me that could lead to any bitterness between us whatsoever. Thus, despite our love for her, our warm relationship with her, and our appreciation of her positive traits, and despite her need to adjust to life in the Land of Israel, it was nonetheless hard to continue living with them under the same roof. This was on top of other things that had befallen us in the years 1940 to 1946, the era of World War II, of our anxiety about the security of the Land of Israel in the days of El Alamein, when the sword was at our throats.46 This great fear, the worry over our sons and sons-in-law on the various fields of battle, the frightening cost of living, which required a life of deprivation, and, above all, the serious illness that consequently befell me—my heart disease, which also harmed the health of my wife, who devoted herself to my care day and night and who is largely responsible for my partial recovery and my getting out and about—all this motivated me to leave the Land of Israel for a year in order to travel to the United States, to Norfolk, Virginia, to recuperate with both of our families. This measure would also solve the problem of Benz and Dinah. We decided to sell the rights to our apartment and, with the money, to help Benz acquire an apartment and also cover the costs of our trip to the United States, where we will not have to worry about expenses. When we informed our families about our plans, they told us that they were already awaiting us and that everything would be ready for us. We sold our apartment and those of the furnishings that were too big for the smaller apartment into which we would move when we returned to the Land of Israel. We left our books and the furniture we would use, some with Miriam, some with Yehudit, and some in storage. Ben Zion found a nice apartment in Ramat Gan and that’s how we rid ourselves of all our troubles in one fell swoop: the management of a household, the crowding in the apartment, and the concern with other worries.

46.  El Alamein, in Egypt on the Mediterranean coast, was the site of a major battle in the fall of 1942 in which Allied forces under British General Bernard Montgomery defeated Axis forces under German Field Marshal Erwin Rommel. Had the Axis forces been victorious, they could have advanced on Alexandria and eventually on Palestine.

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Editor’s Introduction

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This final chapter of Menachem Mendel Frieden’s memoir is quite different in character from the earlier ones because it deals with events more or less contemporary with the composition of the memoir itself. Frieden begins this chapter by describing the early months of what he calls his “second trip to the United States” (it was actually his third visit to America since his emigration to Palestine), but then, rather than concluding his memoir before he reaches the end of 1947 or the beginning of 1948, that is, before he reaches the time during which he was actually setting down the story of his life, he allows his text to evolve into a commentary on current events. In fact, it was at the same time that he was completing his memoir that Frieden also began keeping a journal, and his journal entries often either overlap or complement the final section of his memoir, which itself is somewhat jumbled chronologically. Frieden’s autobiographical narrative is thus devoid of any real sense of closure. Because of the unusual and somewhat confused nature of the original text of this final chapter, here it is more heavily edited than earlier chapters. As seems fitting, this last chapter of the Frieden memoir contains examples of all the elements present in the work as a whole. Much of the material here, of course, constitutes a straightforward narrative of events. The chapter begins, for instance, with a detailed account of the Friedens’ ocean voyage from Haifa to New York. Frieden seems to have been fascinated by sea travel and by the social interactions that take place aboard a ship, and this is one of several descriptions of ocean voyages in his memoir that reveal that he possessed keen powers of observation. Indeed, even if one were interested only in investigating the nature of sea travel in the first half of the twentieth century, Frieden’s memoir would be a document worth consulting. Other topics about which Frieden conveys information in a reportorial style include the way his son Baruch was treated for tuberculosis, the way

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he spent the High Holidays of 1947, the way he interacted with his various relatives in Norfolk, and the way he followed news of what was transpiring at the United Nations while that body was discussing the fate of Palestine. Beyond simple narrative sections in this final chapter, there are passages relating family history and there are pedagogic digressions, including one regarding the interior arrangement of synagogues and another reviewing the history of the Jewish presence in England. There are also judgmental evaluations of individuals and of institutions. The reader gets a good sense of how Frieden feels about his brother-in-law Louis’ son-in-law, for example, and Frieden’s enmity toward the British administration in Palestine is palpable. It is noteworthy, as well, that Frieden chastises those in the Yishuv who opposed cooperation between Jews and Arabs in the period of the mandate. And this last chapter again sees an introspective Frieden assessing his own character. He returns to confessional lamentations of the kind in which he engaged earlier in the memoir, although in some respects, his self-evaluation is self-aggrandizing; he reports, for instance, that although he was uncomfortable declining invitations to eat in non-kosher homes, “I did not forsake my convictions.” Finally, toward the end of this chapter, we find one of the most remarkable and engrossing elements of this generally fascinating memoir, as we come across the section that records the observations and emotions of a member of the Yishuv as he witnesses from afar the birth pangs of an independent state in his homeland. In the words on the page, one can detect not only Frieden’s jubilation at the prospect of the creation of a Jewish state, but also his trepidation in the face of armed Arab opposition and his anxiety about the fate of his children and their families in the Land of Israel. Surely by the time a reader has come to the end of this chapter and thus to the end of Frieden’s memoir, he or she will have developed a very good understanding of the life that Menachem Mendel Frieden led on three continents, both as a representative of his generation and as an individual exceptional in his exploits.

❊ a f t e r b u y i n g t i c k et s f o r t h e s h i p , the Rossia, we remained almost without money. We were without an apartment and without furniture, but we said we’d worry about that when we returned to the Land of Israel. From the day we gave up our apartment on June 15 until the ship sailed on July 17, we stayed with the children in Jerusalem, Tel

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Aviv, and Haifa. We felt an extraordinary sense of liberation when we boarded the ship. Our cabin was big and spacious, with two beds, two chests, a sofa and two upholstered chairs, a table, and shelving. Next to the cabin were a bathroom and a separate room for radio transmissions to the whole ship. I’ve traveled by ship many times, but this kind of room is usually reserved for VIPs. The ship had served the Hitler Youth in the German navy and had been turned over to Russia after the war. In general, freedom of movement was allowed on board ship. There were different price categories: first class, second class, third, and fourth. The distinctions had to do with the quality of the cabins and the sleeping rooms. There was one kitchen for second and third class, and a special one for first class. We traveled in first class and had a separate dining room, but everyone mixed socially. All the passengers were free to roam the ship and first class passengers constantly rubbed shoulders with third class passengers. We suffered a bit because there was no kosher food available and we sufficed with potatoes, cheese, and eggs during the first days. Later, it became impossible to eat the eggs or the fish; there was fish at every meal and we came to detest it completely. It’s a good thing we had cookies and chocolate and fruit available, and we supplemented with that. Occasionally we also had good ice cream and some tomatoes, and the bread was not bad. The waitresses were Russians, pretty and charming. I revived my Russian, which I had not used since I left Lithuania in 1904. All in all, I felt good at the end of the voyage and this confirmed my belief that the path to good health is eating sparingly, a practice that most people scorn. The route of the ship was from Odessa to Haifa, from Haifa to Naples, from Naples to Marseilles, from Marseilles to New York, and then back again. The Russians don’t know how to deal with European travelers, those from free countries, and the sixteen-day trip from Haifa to New York was tedious. There was no orchestra, no cinema, no dancing, and no games. The passengers paced back and forth on deck and became bored. They played cards a lot and made a lot of noise, until one of the crew warned the players to quiet down. The radio provided little in the way of news and dealt mainly with propaganda. It was hard to read on deck because of all the commotion; it was possible to do so only in the cabin. There was no library on board and there was nothing to read except the books I had brought with me.

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Our cabin, along with the cabin of one of the other passengers we met, Dr. Hershkovitz of the Weizmann Institute,1 served as the gathering place for those with whom we had become acquainted, good people whose company we enjoyed. I assume they enjoyed our company as well, and the voyage was very pleasant. About 120 young people from various sports organizations in Palestine who were going to a gathering in Prague traveled with us as far as Naples. They made things lively at times and when they got off in Naples the ship quieted down, except for the clamor of the card players, Italian and Arab passengers who were at it all day long and much of the night. There were Jews and Jewesses of all types: emissaries, those like us who were traveling on visits or returning from them, and uninteresting people immersed in their own private conversations. We became friendly with two couples. One was Dr. and Mrs. Perlman, he a urologist and she an ophthalmologist. He was sometimes sick and suffered greatly, but when his illness let loose its grip he was a lovely man, full of good humor, and she is a splendid woman, pretty and amiable. They were originally from Vilna, had no children, and lived in Tel Aviv. (To our sorrow, we learned that he died in the United States.) The second couple was Dr. and Mrs. Hershkovitz. He is a chemist at the Weizmann Institute and she is also an ophthalmologist. He, a lovely, genial person, not boastful about his knowledge, was on his way to Canada at the invitation of a government chemical institute. She is irritable and jealous and bickers with her husband constantly; her behavior made a negative impression. My wife became very friendly with Mrs. Perlman. The Perlmans had worked hard all their lives and were, for the first time, allowing themselves some rest and relaxation. Apparently, they were also seeking some medical attention for Dr. Perlman, which, unfortunately, did not go well. 1.  The Weizmann Institute, founded in 1934 as the Daniel Sieff Research Institute and located in the city of Rehovot, is one of Israel’s premier centers for research in science and technology. In 1949, the institute was renamed for its founder, Chaim Weizmann, Israel’s first president and himself a chemist. Passenger ship list information for the SS Rossia indicates that Frieden has misremembered the name of his fellow passenger whom he calls “Dr. Hershko­vitz.” This was actually Dr. Yehuda Hirshberg (1902–1960); his wife was Dr. Freida Hirshberg. The relevant ship list from “New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957” is available on the Internet at www .ancestry.com/ (accessed July 15, 2010). On Yehuda Hirshberg, see, for example, E. Y. Fischer, “Y. Hirshberg—In Memoriam,” Journal of Chemical Education 40:3 (March 1963): 112.

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The ship anchored in Naples for two days, and we took advantage of each day to visit this charming city and its marvelous surroundings. We also visited Pompeii and even though I could not do much climbing, we very much enjoyed the exceptional scenery in the area. We departed for Marseilles on the evening of the second day, but there no one was allowed off the ship, even though the ship was in port for twenty-four hours. We didn’t understand what they were doing, neither the Russians nor the French. The ship stood idle and only toward evening were a few bales of cotton and some barrels loaded aboard. We passed Gibraltar at night and did not have an opportunity to see this natural fortress at the strait. We encountered a storm as we entered the Atlantic and my wife suffered greatly that day, as did several other women. More than a few men suffered from seasickness as well, but not I, for already in my youth I had become accustomed to the water. The ship began to near its destination, New York, and, indeed, we had become weary of the journey. Seventeen days is a long time, too long to maintain friendships that are bound to be temporary. We met by chance and our attachments were loose. Relationships were beginning to cool and all were thinking about the reunions they would have when they got to their destination and were making their plans. There were also some who, if they had something to worry about when it came to the inspections, were nervous about disembarking. Everyone was thinking about himself and transient friendships were forgotten as if they had never existed. To what can this be compared? To a fair. People come, they gather at random from near and far in hostels and in the marketplace, they engage in one-time encounters and business dealings, and when the fair is over they all go home. All their relationships and ties disappear, as if they had never existed. The final day on board ship is different from the rest. There is noise and bustle, packing, unpacking, and repacking of luggage. Those who are traveling to the United States for the first time are on edge. They latch onto passengers who are American citizens and ask their advice. They ask questions, mainly about the disembarkation in the port. How are inspections handled? What questions are asked? What should one reveal and say, and what should one not? We helped many of them fill out the declaration forms that were distributed to everyone the day before.

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The luggage has already been packed and sent up, and the ship enters the harbor slowly. It passes near the Statue of Liberty and those who are seeing it for the first time feast their eyes on this symbol of freedom. The ship moves at a turtle’s pace because the congestion in New York harbor is great and demands particular caution. Officials of the government immigration service board the ship and get organized for the inspection of passports and visas and, as usual, everyone rushes together to the inspection station, because everyone wants to be first. An order is given and the room is cleared. Then, people are let in one by one. Citizens of the United States are allowed in first. We had not pushed our way forward but were nonetheless among the first to enter, and in less than five minutes we were finished, since I had prepared all the required documents in advance. The official across from whom I sat said that he wished everyone would prepare his papers as I had, and we could save a lot of time. We found a porter and disembarked.2 We started to look for Baruch, who was supposed to meet us at the port. We looked for him but did not find him. In the meantime, a customs agent approached to inspect our baggage. I had prepared a list and showed it to him. He hardly inspected anything and recorded the list in his papers. I had to pay about 10 dollars because, as a citizen who doesn’t live permanently in the United States, I had to pay duty on everything, while a citizen who does live in the country is allowed to bring in up to 100 dollars’ worth of goods duty free. The inspection was completed and Baruch still had not appeared. We waited about an hour. A policeman accompanied me as I looked through the crowd waiting behind a fence, and still I didn’t find him. The porter was prodding us to go, so we took a taxi to the Tudor Hotel, where we had stayed the last time we were in New York. I called Norfolk immediately to find out what was going on with Baruch, and I found out that he was in New York and staying at the San Moritz Hotel.3 I called there and he wasn’t in, so we started to worry, but just then he telephoned to 2.  Passenger ship list information indicates that Morris and Ray Frieden arrived in New York aboard the Rossia on August 4, 1947. This information also reveals that the Drs. Perlman were Zimon (Simon?) and Taube. See “New York Passenger Lists, 1820–1957.” 3.  On the Tudor Hotel, see Note 12 in the preceding chapter, “Travels, the Era of World War II, and Illness.” The St. Moritz Hotel, 35-stories high and built in 1930, is now the Ritz Carlton Hotel on Central Park South in Manhattan. See Carter B. Horsley, “The Ritz Carlton Hotel,” at www.thecityreview.com/cps/cps50.html (accessed July 11, 2008).

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say he was on his way. He had wanted to board the ship, but for this he needed a special permit, so he had been scurrying here and there. By the time he got on the ship, we were gone. He returned to his hotel and started calling other hotels alphabetically, but then he recalled that we had mentioned the Tudor Hotel and that’s how he found us. We were very happy to see him since we hadn’t seen him in two years. And then I heard for the first time that he had gotten sick and been in a military hospital for about a year. During the physical examination he had undergone just before his discharge, they found a lung infected with tuberculosis. They induced pneumothorax and it had only been about three months since he left the hospital.4 He remains under the care of a Veterans Affairs doctor and gets 135 dollars a month from the army for his maintenance, since he is still unable to work. The family was aware of all this but, on the orders of my doctor, they didn’t tell me on account of my illness. We were deeply shaken to learn all this. This disease is hard on the young, but it is not dangerous if one is aware of it and takes care of one’s health, mainly eating a good diet, resting, and avoiding aggravation. Knowing Baruch’s character and his stormy disposition, we were very frightened. The family in Norfolk visited him in the hospital several times, but they were not very cordial about welcoming him into their homes when he returned to Norfolk. At Louis’s they were in the midst of home repairs and did not have room for him. There was no room at Hyman’s either. The only one with a spare room was Leon, but his wife would not let him stay for more than three days because his illness frightened her. Nathan and his wife took him in, for they had a free room. They took good care of him as long as he remained with them, until he moved to Los Angeles.5 We stayed in New York two days and a night. The heat was stifling and we didn’t visit anyone. On the evening of the second day, we took a train to Norfolk. We arrived at eight o’clock in the morning and, just as eight years earlier, my wife’s family came to meet us, but no one from 4.  Before the advent of anti-tuberculosis medicines, a common practice was to induce pneumothorax, that is, to intentionally collapse the lung of a tuberculosis patient in an effort to rest the organ. See, for example, “A History of Tuberculosis Treatment,” on the Internet at www.umdnj.edu/ntbcweb/tbhistory.htm (accessed July 8, 2010). 5.  Nathan was the son of Leon Savage, and thus a nephew of Ray Frieden and Baruch’s cousin.

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my family, for they were at Virginia Beach, their summer home. We thought we would stay with my brother-in-law Louis, as in 1939, but we learned that his house was undergoing repairs and they themselves were staying at their daughter’s. Even before we arrived, they had decided that until their house was ready, we would stay with my brother-in-law Leon. They had an empty first-floor room with a bath and they had reserved it for us rather than renting it out. And so we drove straight from the boat to Leon’s home. We were very tired because the train ride had not been very comfortable and we couldn’t sleep; at five o’clock in the morning, we had to get up and transfer to a boat for the three-hour trip to Norfolk. We had something to eat and went to rest. And so we had arrived without any unusual difficulties or adventures. I had been worried because of my health and because the trip was a bit risky, but, with God’s help, all had gone smoothly. We had reached our destination. For a while we were free of the abuse of the mandatory government and of its malice toward us, the Jews of the Yishuv. We wanted to breathe in some of the atmosphere of freedom in a free country, and especially to improve our health, which had been in decline for both of us on account of the situation in the world generally and in Palestine in particular, and on account of my illness, which was itself the result of overall conditions. The only thing that disturbed us was Baruch’s illness. The things he needs most are care and supervision, for he will not look after himself and will not forego anything, even if it harms him. We wanted to take an apartment together with him and to watch over him but, on the other hand, we wanted him to begin his university studies. The number of discharged soldiers who were entering universities was so great that year that Baruch could not get into any school on the East Coast; only the university in Los Angeles admitted him. The number of soldiers registering for university studies was the result of a special law that had been enacted by the Congress of the United States which allowed any soldier who had attained a high school education to attend a university at government expense, one year for each year he served in the military.6 6.  The reference here is to the Servicemen’s Readjustment Act of 1944, generally known as the GI Bill of Rights, or simply the GI Bill. The GI Bill provided for college or vocational education for veterans returning from World War II and for loans for the purchase of homes,

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Baruch is due three years of education at the expense of the government, which pays both his tuition and about 75 dollars per month for living expenses. This was later raised to 110 dollars for single people. During the months he spent in Norfolk, his health improved and the doctor agreed to perform another operation on his lung, so it was decided that he would go to Los Angeles and we would spend some time together there. However, months passed and no apartment could be found. After all, our resources are limited, as the corporation is paying me only 60 dollars per week. We could get by somehow, but we could not get settled, since that would take a lot of money. In the meantime, he stayed with my sister, who had been divorced from her husband and had a spare room. Everything worked out all right. He liked the university and student life. He had enough money because, altogether, he got some 200 dollars a month from the government. He made a lot of friends and excelled in his studies because he is very capable and wanted to learn. He got excellent grades, until he got caught up in our struggle for survival in the Land of Israel. Just as he had enlisted to serve in the World War even before he was eighteen, he now informed the Jewish Agency that he was prepared to leave the university in order to volunteer his services. The effort undertaken in the months of April and May involved recruiting people with technical and aviation skills, which the country needed desperately, and gathering military supplies, which would be smuggled out of the United States because America had placed an embargo on the shipment of war material to the Middle East, and particularly to Israel. Thus, at the end of March 1948 he left the university and went to work for the Jewish Agency as a volunteer. He travelled throughout America and Mexico, gathered a great deal of equipment and in the end he was able to take three B-17 airplanes to Israel.7 among other benefits. See, for example, “Born of Controversy: The GI Bill of Rights,” on the Internet at www.gibill.va.gov/GI_Bill_Info/history.htm (accessed July 8, 2010). 7.  Initially, Frieden was upset that Baruch was going to interrupt his university studies to volunteer for service in the Land of Israel. “I wrote to him saying that he mustn’t stop in the middle of the year,” Frieden recorded in his journal in March 1948, “but will he heed my advice? . . . He always does as he wishes and he is always wrong. But this does not change his behavior.” The three airplanes mentioned here were flown to Israel by way of Czechoslovakia. On their way, they carried out a bombing raid on Cairo; Baruch apparently took part in that raid. For more on Jews from Palestine with World War II aviation training in the U.S.

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In any case, on the 6th of September 1947, Baruch went to Los Angeles and we remained in Norfolk to wait for him to get an apartment there. In the meantime, we were very welcomed guests in Norfolk. The work on Louis’s house took longer than we had expected, so we stayed at Leon’s until after Yom Kippur. At first we hesitated to stay with them for a long time. We remembered that in 1939 they were in very bad shape and that he was able to open a small grocery only with the help of his brother Louis. We also remembered that his wife was not so eager to host relatives from her husband’s family and that she had not behaved toward Baruch as she should have, so we were sorry that we would have to stay a long time with them. We had a very pleasant surprise when we discovered that their situation was now secure. He owns an apartment house with thirteen units that he rents out. The building is valued at 50,000 dollars and he only owes some 10,000 dollars on it. The grocery store in the same building supports them respectably and, across the street from the building, they have a private home in which they live. Indeed, it was a very pleasant surprise to see that in the space of nine years he had succeeded in attaining such a strong financial position. He married off both his daughters and opened businesses for them as well. They treated us extraordinarily well. They and their daughters took care of us with unmatched warmth and affection. Although we did not want to burden them, they satisfied our needs beyond what would be expected. It was a pleasure being in their company. True, they both work very hard and we were uncomfortable seeing this, given that we were idle. They arranged for us to have seats in the new synagogue for the High Holidays. This synagogue, called the United Orthodox Synagogue, was created at the time we arrived in Norfolk through the merger of the Hasidic synagogue, of which my father was one of the founding members, and the Twentieth Street Synagogue.8 All together, about four Army and the smuggling of B-17 aircraft for use in Israel’s War of Independence, see, for example, “Israeli Air Force Bombers,” on the Internet at webspace.webring.com/people/qs/ skythe/bomber1.htm; and “Pictorial History: Air Force Volunteers,” on the Internet at http:// israelvets.com/pictorialhist_air_force.html (both accessed Feb. 1, 2012). 8.  The Hasidic synagogue to which Frieden refers is Kahal Hasidim and its merger with the Twentieth Street Synagogue actually took place in 1946. The Twentieth Street Synagogue, founded as the B’nai Jacob Center in 1928, was the first uptown Orthodox synagogue in Norfolk. The United Orthodox Synagogue is now known as B’nai Israel Congregation. See

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hundred members. The elaborate, stately building cost some 200,000 dollars. In one wing is a sanctuary with some five hundred seats and a smaller room for weekday services, along with a room for the rabbi and a room for Torah study. A second wing is reserved for social gatherings, weddings, meetings, and so forth. It’s magnificent and very pretty, well built and tasteful. The men sit in the middle of the large hall and the women sit on the two sides of the hall, which are raised above the men’s seats and separated by a partition made of wood and about a meter high so that the women can see the men at their full height and the men can see the women from the waist up. The holy ark and the seats face not east, but south; the lot did not permit any other arrangement. The bimah is not in the center, as in longtime Jewish practice and as described in the Talmud and in the writings of the Rambam.9 True, according to the Kesef Mishneh, it appears that this is not required, but rather developed according to local practice. This, however, does not change the fact that it has been customary for hundreds of years. Only the Reform began to alter it in the year 1810. When the Reform attempted to modify this custom and place the bimah next to the holy ark, Orthodox rabbis objected and seventyone of them issued a prohibition against this innovation.10 And why did the simple folks of Norfolk who call themselves Orthodox decide Irwin M. Berent, Norfolk, Virginia: A Jewish History of the 20th Century (Norfolk, 2001), 54, 82–83; and the Internet site of B’nai Israel at www.bnaiisrael.org/ (accessed July 14, 2008). Demonstrating the kinds of errors that appear in city directories, Kahal Hasidim on Holt Street appears in the 1933 Norfolk city directory as “Kahal Chasidene” and the Twentieth Street synagogue appears as “B’nai Jacob,” “Jacob Benn Center” and “Benn Jacob Center.” 9.  There is a powerful tradition that synagogues in the Western world should be oriented toward the east, that is, toward Jerusalem. The references here concerning the placement of the bimah, as cited parenthetically by Frieden himself in the original memoir, are tractate Sukkah 51b and Rambam’s Hilchot Tefillah 11:3. For a discussion of both these sources, see “Daf Yomi - Sukkah 51 - Bimah in the Center,” on the Internet at dafnotes.blogspot.com/2006_10_22_archive .html (accessed Nov. 22, 2006). 10.  The Kesef Mishneh is an early sixteenth-century work by Joseph Caro expanding on the Rambam’s Mishnah Torah by identifying the Rambam’s sources. The year 1810 was the year in which Rabbi Israel Jacobson (1768–1828) established a synagogue in Seesen, Germany, which is considered the first temple associated with the Reform movement in Judaism. One of the leaders of the opposition to changes in the interior arrangement of synagogues was Rabbi Akiva Joseph Schlesinger (1837–1922), and it is he who assembled a group of seventy-one rabbis who prohibited worship in synagogues with a bimah at the front of the sanctuary. See, for example, Yaakov Klass, “Where to Place the Bimah in the Synagogue,” on the Internet at www.jewishpressads.com/printArticle.cfm?contentid=13160 (accessed July 8, 2010).

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to change a long-established practice? The seats are plushly upholstered and very comfortable, as in a cinema. The holy ark has no doors; it is covered only by an ark curtain. The workmanship of the ark is very good and enhances the beauty of the synagogue, but what good is this magnificence if the synagogue stands empty all week and sees few worshipers even on Shabbat? Facing the main sanctuary is a folding partition and behind the partition is a large room that serves as a prayer hall on weekdays and as a place for small meetings; for kiddush on Friday evenings, a sort of oneg shabbat with singing; and for the kiddush on Shabbat. It is also the place where Mr. Stam, my one-time fellow townsman and uncle, teaches a page of Gemara before the afternoon service. He’s a learned man, the son of our former rabbi. In Lithuania he was a shochet, but he didn’t want to continue in that line of work and became a merchant. He has suffered a great deal. His wife, my aunt, died and left him with three daughters, all of whom have now married. He himself got married again not long ago to a very fine woman. He’s in good shape. He has remained true to our tradition. His home is kosher and he hosts every emissary or rabbi who visits Norfolk, free of charge, since, to the disgrace of the local Jews, at this time there is no kosher restaurant in town, even though they can boast of three synagogues and one Reform temple. It is about them that the prophet cried: “Who requires of you this trampling of My courts?”11 They all publically desecrate the Sabbath and the majority does not observe kashrut. During 1947–1948 in Norfolk, I ate in only three or four homes where I knew they kept a more or less kosher kitchen. I am not among the strictest of the strict, but I do insist on absolute kashrut. In truth, I’ve suffered a lot of unpleasantness because I didn’t want to nauseate myself by eating non-kosher food at the homes of some of my good friends, but I did not forsake my convictions. Still, when I recall that I, too, did not stand the test and kept my department store open on Shabbat during my last years in America, how can I speak against others? “Remove the beam from between your eyes.”12 11.  This divine rebuke appears in Isaiah 1:12. 12.  The reference here is to a commentary attributed to Rabbi Tarfon in the midrashic text Sifrei Deuteronomy. Rabbi Tarfon is said to have observed: “I doubt if there is anyone in this generation who is fit to rebuke others. For if one says to another, ‘remove the speck from

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And none of the excuses I might come up with will do any good, for there is no excuse for desecrating the Sabbath in public, except in order to save a life, and, for me, there was nothing about keeping my store open on Shabbat related to saving a life. It was an unpardonable sin, especially for a learned person from a pious family. To hold in contempt the thing that the people holds most sacred, the Sabbath, is certainly unforgivable. It is a sign of pettiness, meekness, and weakness of character for which there is no justification. To this day, I’m ashamed of myself. The High Holidays passed. I fasted easily on Yom Kippur, with the help of God and on the assumption that I could tolerate fasting for one day. Yom Kippur is the birthday of our host, my brother-in-law Leon. He arranged for a grand party to be held after the fast. Lots of people were invited; there was a big crowd and it was a nice gathering. My brother-in-law Abe and his wife came to Norfolk for Yom Kippur and after the holiday we went with them to Washington, where they live. We spent about five weeks with them, but we didn’t get much pleasure from our visit. True, they received us with affection and warmth, gave us their bedroom, the best room in the house, and tried to provide us every comfort. What was especially convenient for me was that there is a Hasidic synagogue near them where I could go to services on Shabbat and holidays and I didn’t have to go looking for a place to pray far from the house. Nonetheless, it was uncomfortable on account of the relationship between Abe and his wife, which was not as it should have been between a man and his wife who have lived together for over thirty years. Abe (Avraham), my wife’s third brother, is a simple, uneducated person. His father died when he was young and he became the bread­winner while his two older brothers immigrated to America. He worked hard until the day that he, too, came to America. All he knew was the little he learned during a few years in a Lithuanian heder: prayer, prayer book reading, and Chumash, which he has already forgotten. When he came to America, he had to make a living. He joined his brothers making cigars in Chicago and when his mother came to America after she married Mr. Seligman, he too moved to Baltimore and later to Norfolk. There between your eyes,’ the reply always is, ‘remove the beam from between your eyes.’” See, for example, Allen S. Maller, “Mekor Chaim: Acharei Mot/Kedoshim,” on the Internet at www .ujc.org/page.aspx?id=144803 (accessed July 15, 2008).

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he opened a smoke shop and continued cigar making in the store. He later stopped that and introduced swimming gear and games. Most of the customers in that kind of store are common people, those with little finesse and few good qualities. He picked up their traits and thus remained uneducated and lacking in refinement, but he remained honest due to the influence of his forthright and observant parents in Lithuania. When he moved to Washington, he opened a retail liquor store, which is a profitable business but not one in which one learns good manners and modesty in speech and action. His wife is a coarse, fat woman, nagging and talking endlessly, and she always has complaints against her husband, sometimes fully justified. He works hard and when he comes home he’s tired and not interested in conversation. He eats little and has become accustomed to drinking. I think he’s seriously ill, for he is very gaunt. And so the relationship between them is beyond repair. While we were staying with them, they tried to minimize their arguments and I tried to bring them closer to each other with some words of wisdom directed to him and to her, but not to both of them together, and this helped to some extent. They are both frugal, she outdoing him in this respect. Their son, who returned from the army, works in their business. He is divorced from his wife, who exhibited no excess of virtue, and he lives with them. He, the son, is also poorly educated, though he finished school. When it comes to Jewish learning, however, he has no idea and no interest. He is just like them, occupying himself with work and sleep. He reads nothing but the headlines in the paper, goes to the movies and to baseball games, and has little contact with other people. His wife, who was young, pretty, and passionate about living, was unable to accept this kind of life of solitude. She was not especially wellborn or virtuous and so she began seeking and finding a good time wherever she could. “Stolen waters are sweet.”13 Her husband was so wrapped up in his work and in sleeping that he had no suspicions and did not keep track of her. He also didn’t try to keep her properly amused himself. Only when others told him of his wife’s activities did he hire a private detective who followed her and discovered her debauchery. He obtained a divorce from the courts without 13.  See Note 10 in the chapter “More on Life in the Land of Israel.”

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the get required by Jewish law, and she has already married a second time. I approached his wife’s family in Norfolk about obtaining a get for him, but I was unable to convince them. I left the matter in the hands of the rabbi and it seems that eventually a get was obtained because I was informed by the family that recently he married again. Let’s hope he has better luck with this second wife. We remained in Washington until the 6th of November. While I was in that capital city, a journalist from the Washington Post came to interview me and the next day my story appeared in his newspaper, an important one because it represents the government. In the interview, I explained why the Arabs had risen up against the Jews, as I understood the situation, and the full story appeared in the newspaper, quoting me properly.14 After the article appeared, I was asked by the secretary of the Zionists in Washington to lecture before a mass meeting, but I declined because I didn’t feel well enough for this kind of appearance. I am sorry about this. I should have spoken, for later, in Norfolk, I was approached and I spoke several times before large crowds with much success, though I had to limit my talks to half an hour on the advice of the doctor. My brother-in-law Louis informed us that his house was ready and that they had already moved into it. He invited us to return and stay with them. Louis and Nora came to Washington, spent about a week there, and then we went back with them to their house. It was a spacious house with a large, comfortable room for us, good central heating, and the services of a maid. Everything was nice and pleasant, except for one thing that was out of line. This Nora, a simple but very good woman, was always an excellent hostess, meeting the standards of our forefather Abraham. She was especially wonderful when we stayed with them in 1939. She respects me greatly and loves Ray wholeheartedly. But this time she was different. She had changed completely and the reason was her love for her son-in-law Sam, the husband of her daughter. She had one daughter and two sons. She is not big-hearted enough to share her love with her two sons, let alone with two strangers such as her husband’s sister and her brother-in-law. This Sam is what might be called “half baked.” There are lots like him in America. A rather handsome young man, he completed high school 14.  See “Palestine Plan Welcome Seen by Ex-Banker,” Washington Post, Sept. 29, 1947.

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and started university but didn’t finish. He thinks he knows it all, but he doesn’t know anything to the core. This kind of young man looks for work of which he thinks himself worthy, but disdains work that he’s capable of but considers beneath him. This Sam stopped his university studies either for lack of funds or for lack of ambition and laziness, or for both reasons. He worked as a clerk in a ready-to-wear clothing store, met the Savage’s daughter and courted her. She is pretty, finished high school and studied drawing, and she is spoiled as only daughters are. She resembles her mother and is not particularly bright. Sam knew how to fawn over this Nora, which she enjoyed. He won the mother’s heart even before he was able to win the daughter’s, and they were married. Sam went to work in Louis’s store and he soon took control of its management. He enlarged the store and during the war years, with the increase in demand, they prospered. According to what others have said, most of the profits from the war years made their way into Sam’s pockets. Although Louis knew about this and those who worked in the store informed him as well, he couldn’t do anything about it, since Nora always took Sam’s side and Louis was weak in character. He could not stand up to both of them, especially since the mother insisted that Sam and his wife live in their home and that’s where their two sons were born. This Sam built himself a home costing 30,000 dollars in the summer resort of Virginia Beach. He bought a house for his father and built two homes in the city. He has two automobiles and his house is furnished with all the comforts. It’s obvious that he’s not lacking for money. ­Living on his account are his father, his mother, his sister, who matured a long time ago but still has not found a man to her liking, and a brother, a physician who is not practicing his profession but has instead been sitting idly since returning from the army. Very odd people. His father is a Lithuanian Jew who once learned Torah but forgot what he knew long ago. He likes to appear to be a scholar, but always gets caught by his lack of knowledge. He pretends to be observant, but is not: he eats treif, doesn’t pray, and only wants to be among goyim. His wife is also a strange woman. She sits all day without working; gets all dolled up and remains idle. A very strange family. From the time we came to stay at Louis’s home, Sam stopped coming to visit, even though he used to come to see Nora every day. Nora was resentful about this and her attitude toward us was a result of her

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feeling that we were the cause. She pursues him with all 248 appendages in her body.15 All her attention is focused on him, his family, and his children. She neglects her husband, her sons, and her daughters-in-law. Once I confronted her about the way she discriminated in her relationship with her daughter and her husband, on one hand, and her two sons, on the other. She didn’t respond, but maintained her resentment toward me. She is obsessed with one thing: Sam. She doesn’t stop mentioning his name and directs all her attention toward him. She’s a sickly woman, and if Louis says anything critical of Sam to her, she immediately becomes ill. Thus, he is afraid to say a word against Sam and he has no one with whom he can talk and pour out his heart. He holds all his bitterness inside himself and this is what weakens him and periodically makes him sick. When we could no longer stand to witness his pain, Ray and I urged him to pour out his heart to us, but he didn’t want to. He said that everything we had heard from the family was gossip based on the family’s jealousy of him and Sam. However, I got to know this young man and I saw how he operated; I warned Louis more than once to beware of Sam. His second son, Nathan, also suffered from having dropped out of school to help his father in the business. During the war years, Sam was able to gain an exemption from the draft on the pretext that he was the only one running the business and supporting the family, and Nathan was drafted into the navy. When he was discharged from the military and returned home, Sam did everything he could to impede his progress in the business. He treated him like one of the employees, which only added to Louis’s and Nathan’s anger. The arguments within the family grew to such an extent that Nathan once said he could no longer work with Sam. It was “him or me.” I entered the fray to end the acrimony, which was endangering Louis’ health and the business. At the same time, Sam’s father asked Louis to make Sam part owner of the building in which the store was located, for the building was listed only in Louis’s name. Now Louis finally recognized the danger. He absolutely refused to do this and the relationship between them became even cooler. I then suggested to Louis that, since Sam was well established, with his own assets, both hidden and not, Sam should have his share of 15.  On this expression, see Note 1 in the chapter “My Mother’s Family.”

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the business bought out and he should leave the partnership. Nathan was the one who sacrificed his education in order to help his father in the business and also allowed Sam to use his status as breadwinner to avoid the draft. While Sam made his fortune, Nathan returned from the service with nothing. Because Nathan and Sam cannot live with each other, only Louis and his son should remain in the business. Louis agreed to my suggestion, since it was a reasonable one, but when Nora heard of it she burst out crying and immediately took sick. Louis, being spineless, consented to her wishes and the plan was discarded. I feared that the consequences for Louis and Nathan would be dire, that Sam would overpower both of them through his intrigues and with the support of his mother-in-law, but they have recently written me to say that my worries were unfounded. In the end, Sam had to leave after Louis paid him 26,000 dollars, his share of the business profits, since Sam himself had not invested anything when he came into the partnership. In November 1947, all my attention, heart and soul, was turned toward what was transpiring at Lake Success.16 The deliberations concerning Palestine were about to reach their conclusion. The eyes of the world’s Jews, or what was left of them, and especially those of America’s Jews, were focused on the meetings of the United Nations as it considered the recommendations of the committee on the partition of Palestine.17 Every day various viewpoints and predictions appeared in the newspapers and on the radio, always based on the leanings of the particular source, either in favor of partition or against it. The statesmen and the experts and those who could sniff out what was happening behind the scenes were issuing predictions and changing their prognostications from day to day. And if Jews abroad were on edge over not knowing what the results of the deliberations of the special session would be, how much more anxious was the Yishuv, with its doubts and hopes concerning the special session that was dealing with the most 16.  Lake Success is a village on Long Island, not far from New York City, which was the temporary home of the United Nations from 1946 until 1951. 17.  The eleven-member United Nations committee that recommended the partition of Palestine into Arab and Jewish states had been constituted in the spring of 1947 and had spent five weeks in Palestine studying the situation in the country. Its recommendation in favor of partition was influenced by the willingness of the Zionists, who favored partition, to cooperate with the UN committee, while Arab representatives, who believed Palestine should become an Arab state, refused.

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sensitive aspect of its being. We of the Yishuv who happened to be in the United States during this momentous time could find no rest during these days and nights. My ears were glued to the radio and to the various explanations provided by the best political commentators of the country. They evaluate and reevaluate the positions of the fifty-seven nations participating in the special session: who will be for and who against partition, and every­thing revolves around what the position of the United States will be. Everyone knows full well that most countries will vote the way America votes, and even those countries that are sitting on the fence will be influenced by America. And the commentators, some in favor and some opposed, all consider whether or not there will be the twothirds majority needed to adopt the partition recommendation. That’s how the final days of November passed, with bewilderment and anticipation and bated breath. When the final day of debate arrived, a fateful day for the People and the Land of Israel that will be marked forever in the annals of twentiethcentury Jewish and world history, the 29th of November 1947, not only were the five million Jews in the United States nervous, but a great many non-Jews also took great interest and anxiously awaited the results of this momentous vote. The American public in general demonstrated much interest in our cause, and sympathy for it, and expected the proposal to pass; “public opinion” is the main determinant when it comes to every political issue in America. The government had to take into consideration public opinion, which was known to be on our side. All the radio stations in the United States set up special broadcast facilities in the halls of the United Nations so that they could share the voting procedure with their millions of listeners, as it transpired. November 29 was a Saturday in America and I had to leave the radio and go to synagogue. There the people could not concentrate on prayer. They hurried to finish and return home to listen again to the radio and learn the latest from Lake Success. There were reports of much activity involving the various delegations, and especially the American delegation, for it seems that only at the last minute did the government decide on its position supporting the committee recommendation. The British delegation maintained its position of neutrality, being that there was no agreement between the Arabs and the Jews, and

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America’s influence was of no avail. England calculated that her neutrality would derail the partition plan, for to her it was clear that, if it were approved, partition could not be implemented without outside forces being involved, and that if she did not contribute the forces that she had in the Land of Israel, the UN would not be able to find any other military forces to implement the decision. Her neutrality absolved her from providing forces and so partition would have to be delayed by the assembly. England made a serious mistake. It is true that a military force was needed to implement the decision, but this force derived from a source that England did not anticipate: the Yishuv. An additional source of hope for those who awaited the approval of the recommendation lay in the fact that, already in October, Russia had announced that it supported the partition plan without reservation. This time the views of the two extremes coincided: America and the Soviet Union. On the evening before November 30, 1947, the results of the voting became known: thirty-three in favor and thirteen against. The number of votes in favor surpassed the two-thirds needed for endorsement of the partition plan. Already at six o’clock in the evening, the radio announced the outcome all over the United States and throughout the world. Even though we had hoped for this outcome, it’s hard to describe the emotions that were unleashed when the news was broadcast. We were awestruck at the enormity of this decision concerning our fate, the fate of the Jewish People. My heart swelled and also filled with fear; I was afraid that I would be unable to withstand such great excitement, although at that moment we still did not realize the extent of what was transpiring, the magnitude of the revolution concerning the fate of the Jewish People on this evening. We would again be a nation and have a state with rights and responsibilities equal to those of others nations. The moment was so great that we could not immediately grasp its full meaning. The news, which spread with lightening speed throughout the United States, sparked spontaneous joyous celebrations everywhere Jews lived, above all in New York, with a population of more than two million Jews. All night, the streets of New York were filled with Jews singing and dancing. In Norfolk, a great many people gathered in the synagogue and recited the full Hallel. Only then did we begin to under­ stand the Song of Ascents in Psalms: “When the Lord brought back

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those who returned to Zion, it was as if we were dreaming.”18 On that night we were truly like dreamers awakening. For the second time a clear declaration had been made that the Jews have a right to return to their country and homeland and to reestablish their sovereignty. And this time the declaration was made not by a single government, but by an international organization of fifty-seven states. For the first time it was clearly emphasized that the world’s Jewish Question and the problem of Palestine would be solved only with the establishment of a Hebrew state, and as soon as possible. On the day after the decision, the American papers were full of jubilant and supportive accounts and editorials concerning the propriety of the way the members of the UN had voted. They wished the Yishuv and Jewry in general much good luck and success in the future. The exception, actually, was the antisemitic Jews, Rosenwald’s American Council for Judaism.19 They were a tiny handful opposed to Zionism and Jewish nationalism and they were truly shocked by the UN decision. They were silenced for the time being and they lost their standing even among the goyim. I am not in a position to describe the impact of the decision on the Yishuv, for I was not in the Land of Israel at the time. It was all written up in the pages of that day’s newspapers in the Land of Israel. A day passes, then two days, and I am not as I was. I ask myself what’s the matter. What am I missing? We had long yearned for and awaited this day and now this blissful time has come. What more do I want? I’m amazed at myself. The deep impact that I felt still permeates every fiber of my soul, but nonetheless there is a certain doubt in the hidden recesses of my heart. We Jews know from experience that more than once we have met disappointment on the heels of kind words and celebratory declarations and decisions on the part of the powers that be. 18.  The passage quoted is from Psalms 126:1. On the Hallel, see Note 7 in the chapter “Passover and the Holiday Cycle.” 19.  The American Council for Judaism, founded by a group of Reform rabbis in 1942, was an anti-Zionist organization that feared expressions of Jewish nationalism would interfere with Jewish integration into American society. Chosen as president of the council was Lessing Rosenwald (1891–1979), a Chicago businessman and son of Julius Rosenwald (see Note 16 in the chapter “America”). See Thomas A. Kolsky, Jews Against Zionism (Philadelphia, 1990); and “An Inventory to the American Council for Judaism Collection,” on the Internet at www .americanjewisharchives.org/aja/FindingAids/acj.htm (accessed July 16, 2008).

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Against my will and despite my wishes, a verse from the Song of Ascents that follows the one that I mentioned above creeps into my heart: “Except the Lord build the house, they labor in vain that build it.”20 We have had enough of the pronouncements of various nations. We want to see a fulfillment of the declarations of our prophets concerning our salvation and the ingathering of the exiles, and who knows if the time has come? We, the members of the Yishuv, know the British and the Arabs. We know the treachery of the English. Even if they are forced to leave the Land of Israel in accordance with their declaration and in compliance with the UN decision on this matter—and there is no doubt that they will leave—they will entrust their scheme to the hands of their faithful henchmen in the Near East, the Transjordanians, the Iraqis, the Syrians, and the Egyptians. The Arab states would not have had the impudence to declare before the UN that they would not recognize its decision had they not been certain that England would stand with them, whether openly or secretly. This is what is going through my mind and I pray with all my heart: may we not be disappointed once again; may the decision remain in force not only on paper but in actuality. May the nations that voted in favor of the decision recognize their obligation to see to its implementation. May it be so, Master of the Universe, may it be so. Even as the Jews of the Diaspora were celebrating the tidings of independence, and even as there was great joy in the displaced persons’ camps and among the illegal immigrants in Cyprus,21 and even as there were demonstrations of joy all over the Yishuv in Palestine, the response of the Arabs to the UN resolution began with bloody attacks on Jewish bus passengers near the airport in Lod. Six Jews were murdered and another was killed at the boundary between Jaffa and Tel Aviv on November 30, just one day after the decision. Unfortunately, my fears had not been unfounded. The news from the Land of Israel was shocking. Hour after hour the radio told of riots in the country. 20.  The passage quoted is from Psalms 127:1. 21.  The displaced persons’ camps, housing some 250,000 Jews in 1947, had been established by the Allies after World War II, primarily in western Germany and Austria, as temporary homes for victims of the war and survivors of the Shoah. The so-called illegal immigrants in Cyprus were Jewish refugees whom the Yishuv had attempted to bring to Palestine by boat despite British restrictions on immigration and who had been caught by the mandatory authorities and interred on the island of Cyprus.

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On December 1, a three-day protest strike by the Arabs; riots in various Arab countries; in Halab, Syria, the burning of synagogues and the looting of Jewish stores.22 Protest demonstrations in all the Arab states. In Aden, seventy-five Jews were murdered. There was news of the killing of Jews in Persia and Afghanistan. On December 12, ten Jews on the way to Kfar Etzion; on December 15, fourteen Jews were killed and many wounded by the Arab Legion near Beit Nabala.23 Twenty Arabs were killed by the ­Haganah in a reprisal action. The flight of Jews from Syria and Lebanon began. These are some of the reports I collected, primarily from the Jewish press, during the month of December. Today, December 31, the newspapers are reporting on the oil refinery affair: Etzel threw a bomb at Arabs standing in line in front of the oil refineries in Haifa. Many Arabs were killed and wounded. In retaliation against this action by Etzel, all the Arab employees of the refineries, hundreds of them, attacked the Jewish refinery workers with whom they had worked amicably and harmoniously for many years and savagely murdered some forty of them, defiling their corpses. Many Jewish workers were seriously injured, as well. All the security forces of the refineries are Arab and they were instructed by the British not to interfere with the mass murders being carried out before their eyes. British forces arrived only after the killing was over. The Palmach immediately went out on a mission of revenge against the residences of the workers and many Arabs paid for their violent behavior with their lives. But nothing will bring back to life the sacred victims, free of wrongdoing, who fell at the hands of the murderers who were avenging the ill-­advised action of Etzel. They should have considered the consequences of their action, since they knew how small the number of Jews was among the workers, compared to the number of Arabs.24 News of this attack and of others stunned the Jews in America and 22.  Halab is the ancient name of the city of Aleppo in Syria. 23.  Kfar Etzion was a kibbutz founded in 1943 between Jerusalem and Hebron. Beit Nabala was an Arab village east of Lod; it was eventually occupied by Israeli forces and destroyed in September 1948. See, for example, Sam Pope Brewer, “Arab Legion Force in Palestine Kills 14 Jews in Convoy,” New York Times, Dec. 15, 1947. 24.  The Palmach, established in 1941, was the elite strike force of the Haganah in the period before the establishment of the State of Israel. On the oil refinery incident, see, for example, Zachary Lockman, Comrades and Enemies: Arab and Jewish Workers in Palestine, 1906–1948 (Berkeley, Calif., 1996).

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many began to doubt that the forces of the Yishuv could withstand the Arabs and the English. And the extent of the bloodshed perpetrated by the Arabs influenced not only the Jews, but also the government of the United States, which had not taken seriously the threats of the Arabs when the decision of November 29 was adopted. Both these and those began to look for ways to shirk their responsibilities vis-à-vis the decision. Some Jews began to talk of doing without a state for the time being, since there was no hope of achieving it. From on high, a signal was given to the American press, which, rightly, had been unanimously on our side all along, and all of a sudden they changed the tone of their reports concerning Palestine. They began to emphasize the gains and the strength of the Arabs and the meagerness of our forces. Our defensive actions were described as revenge attacks against helpless women, children, and old people, rather than against Arab fighters. The American press was turned in its new direction as a result of British influence on the American government in the wake of the exacerbation of relations between the United States and Russia over the matter of Germany.25 It was up to the State Department to alter public opinion toward us before it dared to demand a reversal of the November 29 decision, as England desired. England and its skullduggery! This is how public opinion in the United States was conditioned for the government’s reversal concerning the decision of November 29. As the security situation in the Land of Israel worsened, so grew the sentiment that the decision should be reversed, for it was impossible to implement it without a strong military force that could stand up to the Arabs, and the UN had no such force. Moreover, there was no nation that was offering to create such a force in order to compel the Arabs to abide by the UN decision. At the same time, the Jews had indicated their accep25.  Following World War II, Germany had been divided into American, British, French, and Soviet zones of occupation and by the end of 1947 disagreements over Germany’s future were becoming a major cause of developing Cold War tensions. While the Soviet Union wished to see Germany weakened economically so that it could not wage war in the future, the Western Allies came to believe that Germany’s economy had to be revitalized to help bring economic stability to Europe. In March 1948, a conference of the Western Allies held in London would announce a plan for combining the American, British, and French zones of occupation in western Germany into an independent state and providing aid for its economic revival. The Soviet zone was to be excluded from this scheme. Under these circumstances, as Frieden suggests, close American and British cooperation was necessary.

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tance of partition, subject to a few amendments. What nation would go fight the Arabs in order to grant the Jews a state of their own? None. At the end of December 1947 we had been invited to a Hanukkah party at the home of Esther, the daughter of Mr. Stam, my sometime friend and uncle. As my wife was getting out of the car, she twisted her foot. They took her into the house and right away called Harry, my nephew, who is a general practitioner. Her foot had swollen immediately and he bandaged it. They iced it and she lay on the sofa until the party was over. Then we went again to Leon’s house, where we had a downstairs room with an adjacent bathroom, rather than to Louis’s, for at Louis’s the bedroom was on the second floor and she could not climb steps. Eight days in bed did not help, so Dr. Harry took her to his office to x-ray her foot and he discovered that her ankle was broken. He took her to the hospital and put her foot in a cast for a month. I remained at her side during that month in order to assist her and to see to all her needs. I didn’t accept any invitations to lecture about the Land of Israel and the situation there. This is how we find ourselves at the end of December 1947, in Norfolk, Virginia, U.S.A., five months after leaving the Land of Israel. We could have enjoyed our stay here, had not the fury of the Arabs swooped down upon us and the Yishuv. And we so much need some rest after all that had happened to us during the years 1940 to 1947. But Jews are not allowed a life of ease. Although the British announced solemnly that as long as they were in Palestine they were responsible for keeping the peace there, it become apparent that this declaration was made only to prevent the Arabs from attacking the Jews or disarming them. On the other hand, the British would disarm any Jew they found with weapons for self-defense. The arson fire that burned the new commercial center in Jerusalem on December 11 was set by Arabs under the noses of the British police, who did not interfere with them. It’s clear that this action, the burning of the commercial center, was a kind of trial balloon on the part of the Arabs, to see how the police would react. The fact that the police stood idly by as this malicious act was perpetrated showed the Arabs that they were free to act, and they then increased their murderous activities. The Jews were compelled to leave the border areas between Jaffa and Tel Aviv,

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and in Haifa and Jerusalem. Travel on the roads became more dangerous, except in convoys. During all the months before the British left the country, the ­Haganah could not operate openly because the British emergency regulations remained in effect even after the UN decision and the British considered the Haganah an illegal organization. Anyone caught with military equipment was sentenced to hang. The Haganah limited itself to reprisal actions and tried as much as possible not to confront the British. It was forced to operate only at night and to disperse immediately after an operation. The British would not allow armed Jews to accompany convoys and they had to hide their weapons so they would not fall into the hands of roving squads of British soldiers and police. We lost many people as a result of these difficulties. A special burden placed on the forces of the Haganah was the existence of dissident organizations that did not recognize the authority of our institutions and carried out their own terrorist activities. These activities caused many Arab casualties but they also sometimes occasioned reprisals by the Arabs and the British so that more harm than good was done by the actions of the dissidents.26 Hardest of all was the defense of the Old City of Jerusalem. The Jewish population of the Old City had grown smaller during the period of the mandate due to frequent Arab riots and by the time of the War of Independence about 2,000 Jews remained there, surrounded by thousands of Arabs. These Jews refused to leave the Old City even after the Arabs began organized attacks against them. The frequent need to defend the new part of Jerusalem, with a population of close to 100,000 Jews in scattered neighborhoods, made it impossible for the ­Haganah to send significant reinforcements to the Old City, especially since the British objected to the dispatch of any additional Jews, claiming this would upset the status quo. Especially threatening was the Arab outpost at Sheikh Jarrah, from which they attacked the nearby Jewish neighborhoods and blocked passage to Mount Scopus, the site of the new Hadassah hospital and the Hebrew University. The Haganah launched several attacks on this Arab base and they captured it, but the British forced them to relinquish it. 26.  On the dissident groups, see Note 35 in the chapter “Travels, the Era of World War II, and Illness.”

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The outlying suburbs of Jerusalem, such as Mekor Chaim, Yemin Moshe, Gush Etzion and, on the other side, Kfar Ivri and Atarot, were immediately cut off by the actions of the enemy on the outskirts of the city.27 Although these outposts defended themselves valiantly when facing the Arabs, who outnumbered them several times over, and although this prevented the Arab forces on the two sides of Jerusalem from uniting to attack the new city, it was clear that the outposts could not hold out for long without help. However, the British prohibited this and experience showed that they had to be reached at night. Once or twice there was success in doing so, but one unit, students from the university, fell into an Arab ambush and in a desperate battle all of them were killed.28 Throughout the entire winter of 1947–1948, the British continued to insist that they were responsible for keeping order. In October, the high commissioner had issued a warning to both sides that if they did not reach an agreement, the British would leave Palestine and their departure would lead to chaos from which both sides would suffer. The commissioner thought his warning would influence the moderates on both sides and that they would ask the British to stay in Palestine and continue to govern. First the British left the area of Tel Aviv and Petach Tikvah and the area of Shechem and Tulkarem.29 Their intention was mainly to provide the Arabs of the region in which they were strongest an opportunity to organize an Arab Liberation Army and thus to endanger all the isolated Jewish settlements throughout the country, for the British immediately suggested that all those who lived in such settlements leave in order to make 27.  Mekor Chaim is a southern suburb of Jerusalem established by ultra-Orthodox Jews in 1924 and named for the communal leader and philanthropist Rabbi Chaim Cohen of Brisk. Yemin Moshe was a mixed Ashkenazic-Sephardic neighborhood established in the early 1890s. Gush Etzion was the group of settlements in the vicinity of Kfar Etzion (see Note 23, above). Kfar Ivri was a Jerusalem suburb founded in the 1920s for urban workers who would also farm truck gardens. Atarot was a small and not very successful agricultural enclave, also established in the 1920s. See Ruth Kark and Michal Oren-Nordheim, Jerusalem and Its Environs: Quarters, Neighborhoods, Villages, 1800–1948 (Jerusalem, 2001), 160, 179, 84, 340, 350. 28.  There were several attempts to relieve Gush Etzion that resulted in the ambush and killing of Jewish fighters. The best known of these occurred on January 16, 1948, when thirtyfive members of the Haganah were massacred. For more on Gush Etzion and the convoys that tried to reach the area, see, for example “Kfar Etzion Remembered: A History of Gush Etzion and the Massacre of Kfar Etzion,” at www.zionism-israel.com/Gush_Etzion_Massacre.htm (accessed July 17, 2008). 29.  Shechem is the Hebrew name used for the Palestinian city of Nablus.

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it easier for the Arabs to take over. The Jews refused to abandon these places and the British placed the responsibility for the potential victims of violence upon the obstinate Jews who would not take their advice. In the meantime, Kawukji invaded the country with his Arabs from Syria.30 This Kawukji, who led the Arab insurrectionists during the disturbances of 1936 to 1939, had begun to put together an Arab Liberation Army around Damascus and at the beginning of January he crossed the Jordan and set up his headquarters in Shechem. He declared a military government in the region and conducted large-scale military exercises. He would invite British and American journalists to witness the maneuvers of the Liberation Army and the journalists were very impressed by this Arab force, fully equipped with modern weapons. They predicted that when the English leave Palestine, Kawukji would be able to implement his plan: the conquest of the Upper Galilee and of part of the coastal plain from Tulkarem to Netanya, thus dividing the northern and southern parts of the country from each other. However, in his first attack on the Jewish settlement of Tirat Zvi he suffered a great defeat. This settlement in the Beit She’an Valley fought back valiantly and inflicted heavy losses upon him. The nephew of the mufti, Abdul Qadar, organized a second force in Ramallah in order to cut Jewish Jerusalem off from the lowlands.31 The news from the Land of Israel got worse day by day. If previously the Haganah had limited itself to defensive actions and continued the policy of “restraint” imposed upon it by the Jewish institutions, it now became necessary to go on the offensive, since the British opposed every defensive action and this prompted the Arabs to increase their murderous activity wherever they could. It was necessary to move from defensive actions to “attacks,” which are, in effect, the best defense. Such offensive actions against Arab settlements stunned the Arabs because the number of their killed and wounded was great and this brought about the first week-long period of relative quiet in the country. Nonetheless, the British announcement that, despite the UN decision, they would not allow the UN implementation committee to come to Pales30.  Kawukji is the Beirut-born Fawzi al-Kawukji (or al-Qawuqji; 1890–1977). 31.  On the Mufti, see Note 18 in the chapter “More on Life in the Land of Israel.” Abdul Qadar is Abdul al-Qader al-Husseini (1907–1948), who was killed in a battle with Jewish forces in April 1948.

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tine before May gave the Arabs the incentive to begin a second wave of attacks upon the Jews. Mainly, they attacked the transportation routes between Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, between Tel Aviv and Haifa, and convoys going from Jerusalem to the Dead Sea. Many of our Jewish brethren were killed and wounded. England, with its British empire, is beginning to lose its imperial greatness as a result of its weakened financial position, and the decline of her empire is dragging with it her moral standing. Her demise will be like that of previous empires: Babylonia, Persia, Greece, and Rome. It is an inalterable law of history and it’s too bad that it is Britain’s involvement in our affairs that is bringing to light the beginning of this process. We are not ungrateful to those who have treated us well and we will never forget that there were Jews in England already in the seventh century, though they had very limited rights. True, the first blood libel recorded in history took place in England in 1144 and, although the Jews were allowed to remain in England in 1201,32 they were expelled in 1290 and for three hundred years only a select few were allowed to enter the country with special permission from the king. Jews were allowed back into England in the seventeenth century and were given limited rights, and only in 1859 was Lord Rothschild admitted to Parliament. Only in 1873 were all restrictions against the Jews of England removed.33 It might be said that from the time of Cromwell onward the condition of the Jews in England continued to improve.34 In any case, the Jews of England gained equal rights, without any limitations. They are equal citizens not just in law but also in fact. There are Jews in Parliament and in the House of Lords. 32.  This is a reference to the charter issued by King John in 1201 confirming the rights of the Jews of England and Normandy. 33.  Lord Lionel Rothschild was elected to Parliament in 1847 and reelected several more times, but he could not take his seat until 1858 (not 1859, as Frieden writes), when the law requiring members of Parliament to swear a Christian oath was revised. Restrictions on Jews entering universities were removed in 1871; it is unclear why Frieden cites 1873 as the year in which all restrictions against Jews were lifted. See, for example, Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain, 1656–2000 (Berkeley, Calif., 2002), 101–8; and Zaki Cooper, “The Day When a Jew Took His Seat in Parliament,” Sunday Times, July 19, 2008. 34.  Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) governed as Lord Protector of England from 1653 until his death and it was during the period of his protectorate, in 1656, that Jews were readmitted to England.

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And the Balfour Declaration, on the basis of which we came to the Land of Israel and gained our independence, was issued not only in an effort to influence the Jews to persuade the United States to hasten her entry into World War I, as others often argue, but mainly, perhaps, as a result of the spirit of the English people and their liberal leaders, who were devoted to biblical tradition. According to the country’s leaders at the time, a Jewish homeland was a goal of the war, for it was impossible to create a free world without addressing the crying needs of the Jewish People, the carriers of world culture and progress, which had existed for hundreds of years, and giving them the right to a life of freedom, a life of sovereignty in their own land. It is well known that the Balfour Declaration was issued by the Lloyd George–Balfour government with pure intentions, faithfulness, and goodwill in the spirit of freedom and liberty, part of British tradition for hundreds of years.35 The behavior of the British army in regard to the Balfour Declaration was a source of disappointment, however. The army concluded that Britain’s hold on the Middle East depended on an understanding with the Arabs. Even before the end of the war, General Bols, commander of the Jerusalem front, objected to allowing a delegation of British and American Jews, Weizmann among them, to visit the Land of Israel and it was only on the strength of an order from the prime minister that they were allowed to come.36 The Arabs, who were very pleased to be out from under the yoke of Turkey, which had ruled harshly over the body, soul, and property of the Arabs of Palestine for so long, were prepared to work together with the Jews. However, the English, that is, the military, did not want to see any cooperation between the Jews and the Arabs and it was they who began to organize Arab opposition to the Balfour Declaration. There was misjudgment on the part of the Jews, as well. When military rule was replaced by civilian government in Jerusalem, there were many moderate Arabs who offered to cooperate with the Jews if they would be given a role in the operations of the Zionist Executive. I don’t 35.  David Lloyd George (1863–1945) was the prime minister of Great Britain at the time of the Balfour Declaration. 36.  General Bols is Major General Sir Louis J. Bols (1867–1930), chief of staff during World War I in Palestine to General Sir Edmund Allenby (see Note 19 in the chapter “I Found the Best Woman”). Bols served as chief administrator of Palestine from June 1919 to June 1920.

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know who the ingenious sage was who so stalwartly blocked this initiative, but it is a fact that ever since then Arab objections have grown and strengthened, with the aid of the British, who must have been secretly pleased at the stupidity of the Jews in rejecting the proposal of the moderate Arabs. On the basis of this rejection, their task in the period between the wars was lightened, and this caused us a great deal of difficulty both in the mandate period and now, with the establishment of the state. This was the situation at the beginning of 1948. We get our news from the Jewish papers of New York, which I receive the next day. The English papers report only summaries based on what they hear from their correspondents in the Land of Israel, and they are subject to ­English censorship, while the Jewish papers get their news from the Jewish Agency via their own channels. We live for these reports out of worry and with little consolation. It is difficult for us to be far from the Land of Israel during these days, and it is seven times more difficult for us to be away from our children.

Afterword Menachem Mendel Frieden’s Journal and His Life after 1947

As we have seen, by the time Frieden composed the final chapter of his memoir, he was writing more about current events than about history. No longer recounting the past, his autobiographical narrative had turned into a series of discrete observations, somewhat like journal entries, in which he recorded what was going on presently in his life and in the world around him, as well as his reactions to those developments. Indeed, as we have noted, it was at about the same time that Frieden completed work on his memoir that he began to keep a journal as a sort of continuation of his memoir project, making intermittent and sometimes repetitive entries describing his experiences in Norfolk, chronicling what he was hearing in the news about the fighting in Palestine and about the complex diplomatic maneuverings that followed in the wake of the November 1947 decision by the United Nations to recommend the partition of the country into separate Arab and Jewish states, and occasionally recording his thoughts on all these matters. Some of Frieden’s journal entries seem to have been composed over several days and his dating of the entries is often absent or misleading, but the entries are copious and suggest that writing in his journal became an important activity for Frieden. Clearly, it was the fact that he had a great deal of time on his hands in Norfolk that motivated Frieden both to bring his memoir up to date and to begin keeping a journal, but even after August of 1948, when he returned to what was then the new State of Israel, he continued keeping his journal for a time. It is beyond the scope of this volume to publish all the entries ­Frieden recorded in the journal he had begun keeping by early in 1948, or even

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most of them. Nonetheless, 1948 was a momentous year both for world Jewry and for Menachem Mendel Frieden personally and so it is worth reproducing selections from Frieden’s journal from that year and from the years that followed in order to gain a sense of how Frieden’s life proceeded in the period immediately after he finished composing his memoir. First of all, Frieden’s journal entries from the winter and spring of 1948 reveal that as his sojourn in Norfolk continued, he grew more and more impatient with his status as a guest there. He continued to look askance at the lifestyle of his hosts and to compare it unfavorably to the culture of the Land of Israel. Early in 1948, for example, he recorded these thoughts in his journal: My life here is a life of idleness. We spend our evenings at the home of my host or at the home of one of his friends and, as usual, they play bridge and rummy. These are the national pastimes of this country, especially among the Jews, although their most popular game is “Po ker,” a game in which hundreds and thousands of dollars pass from one hand to another and from one pocket to another. . . . Admittedly, there are card players in our country, too, and already special “clubs” for bridge and rummy players have been established, and games of chance are played there as well. It is chiefly immigrants from Europe who play passionately and who shamelessly lose considerable sums of money in games of risk, to no end of scorn, for it is not in this way that the land will be built. But there is a still a great difference in this matter between the Land of Israel and other places. In the Land of Israel there are many venues where the evening is spent on more important matters, such as interesting lectures on a variety of important topics. Those who attend lectures are more numerous than those who patronize the clubs, and there are many who sit at home and read or pay visits to friends and spend the evening in engrossing conversations, or even mundane ones, which also have a special value in maintaining friendly relations without a loss of time and money. Yet it is the opposite in the United States, and especially in provincial cities, where the pursuit of “a good time” means playing cards and going to the cinema.1 There are few Jewish 1.  Here Frieden wrote the term “good time” in English.

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homes where one can find serious literature or a Hebrew book, apart from the machzor, which lies in glory next to the tallit in the corner of some drawer from one High Holiday season to the next. During my first three months here, I insisted upon not spending my time idly, time which becomes so precious in old age. This was all the more so since even in my youth I did my best not to waste my time unnecessarily. In the end, however, I was forced to submit my will to the will of my host; “Everything that the head of the household says, you should do,” said our sages of blessed memory.2 I saw that my reluctance to join in their lifestyle caused them sorrow. It seemed to them that this was a matter of haughtiness and arrogance while we were their guests. Although they recognized the gap between me and them in matters of education, ethics, and worldview, and they did not pressure me, I could see that their relationship with their friends was suffering because they were forced to decline several social engagements since they didn’t want to leave us at home alone. I joined their get-togethers and played as they did. After a while, I began to keep an account of losses and gains in our card games and when I returned to the Land of Israel, I donated the net profit of 14 dollars to the Jewish National Fund.

Although Frieden often wrote about his situation in Norfolk, and also about what was going on in the wider world around him (he noted the Communist takeover of Czechoslovakia in February 1948, for example, and he critiqued the film Gentleman’s Agreement),3 his journal entries from the early part of 1948 reveal that his attention was focused primarily on the struggle for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and on the situation of his family there. After all, violence was an ever present reality in the Land of Israel almost the entire time Frieden was in Norfolk, so he followed the news from there assiduously and continually waited impatiently for letters from his children. As the end of the British Mandate approached, Frieden reported on his activities in support of the Zionist cause in Norfolk, persisted in his railing against the Arabs, the British, and a seemingly uncaring world, and maintained 2.  This is a quotation from tractate Pesachim 86b, where proper conduct while eating at the Passover Seder is being discussed. 3.  Gentleman’s Agreement, directed by Elia Kazan and starring Gregory Peck, deals with the subject of antisemitism and won the Academy Award for best picture in 1947.

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his rather jaundiced view of American Jewish life. In a characteristic journal entry from this period, he wrote: Tu Bishvat.4 The Zionists arranged a lovely celebration in the big hall adjacent to the new Orthodox synagogue; the crowd was quite large. I lectured on the origins and the value of this holiday, on the importance of trees in the life of any country, and in particular in the Land of Israel, which is very hot and thirsty for shade. And our holy Torah required the protection of trees even in times of emergency during a war. I described to them the customs of the holiday in times past and today in the Land of Israel, and the vast reforestation efforts of the Jewish National Fund. After my lecture they showed the film Beit Ha’arava, which was produced in Palestine and which made a good impression.5 The news reports from Palestine in the American press are unclear. Every newspaper views the events from its own perspective and we are filled with worry, especially because of the lack of clarity about the situation. And here, on January 24, we receive a letter from Yoel and Yehudit which gives a true and accurate picture of the situation as it is. The Yishuv is standing firm and is responding to all the attacks of the Arabs as well as it can, but its ability is very limited, and the Yishuv is obliged to take only defensive action in order to deflect the attacks. It cannot go out on the offensive in order to survive the many attacks of the Arabs, which are planned and supported with equipment by the English, and which cost us much blood and produce many casualties. In his letter, Yoel is indignant about the United Nations in general and about the Americans in particular for not doing anything to intervene and stop the Arab and English attacks on the Yishuv, despite their decision of November 29. It’s as if it would suit them to be rid of this unfortunate matter if the Arabs, who are backed by the British, did succeed in uprooting the Yishuv and pushing them into the Mediterranean Sea, and be done with it. Do you not yet know, my dear Yoel, that our friends in the world are few and those who hate us many? Why, the loss of six million Jews in Europe at the hands of the Germans did not stir 4.  Tu Bishvat (the fifteenth day of the Hebrew month of Shvat) is arbor day on the Jewish calendar. In 1948 it fell on January 26. 5.  Beit Ha’arava, called Bayit Bamidbar (House in the Desert) on screen, is a 25-minute-long documentary film directed by Joseph Krumgold and Ben Oyserman, made in 1947–1948 for the United Palestine Appeal based in New York.

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any nation to raise its voice against a murder the likes of which had no parallel in human history. Moreover, not one could be found among them that was prepared to save those who could be rescued from among the surviving remnant. Arab oil is more precious to them than Jewish blood. Indeed, we can depend only upon the help of God and upon our own strength. How the heart aches that we are not with them in this time of trouble. Even though there is no way in which we could help, at least we would feel like comrades in distress. We are physically so distant from the place and from them, but our hearts are with them and our souls share their suffering. Meanwhile, we are obliged to take part in social gatherings and parties that are held every evening for every occasion that arises.

A journal entry from a few weeks later reveals similar concerns and sentiments, and again features Frieden’s analysis of recent developments: The situation in the Land of Israel is getting worse and is worrying us immensely. This is quite noticeable in the letters we received today from the children, even though they try to conceal it. One can sense their worries from the general tone. England’s intention to weaken the Yishuv militarily and economically and to create a situation that will force it to ask her to stay in the country is becoming more and more apparent. Or, if this does not succeed, to complicate matters at the UN, so that it, the UN, will ask to remain in the country until it can ready a force of its own to carry out the partition. This much is known, but the UN can neither today nor in the near future amass such a force, since many of its members will oppose it because they don’t have any forces available after the demobilization of arms and equipment that took place right after the war. Russia is the only country that could and would be willing to dispatch such a force immediately, and for this reason alone other governments will delay sending UN forces to the Land of Israel so as not to give Russia a foothold in the Near and Middle East. In the meantime, England has a free hand in the country and that’s why there is such concern in the Yishuv. We have not yet caught our breath from the news of the bombing of the Palestine Post building and lo, ruin and destruction, along comes the cruel bombing on Ben Yehuda Street which claimed more than fifty victims—men, women, and children. This bombing, like the previous one, was carried out by the British army, though it may have been done

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without the knowledge of the head of the British military command, who is charged with keeping order in the country.6

Given the kind of news reports Frieden was logging in his journal, he was especially upset over what he saw as the unconscionable lack of reaction among American Jews. “What irritates me to the depths of my soul,” he wrote, “is to see American Jews in their affluent and raucous lives, filled with joie de vivre and cravings, and you stand and wonder: Do these people have no hearts? Do they not feel the pain of their brothers and sisters beyond the sea in the Holy Land?” “The popular aphorism is proven true.” Frieden observed, “out of sight, out of mind.” At some points in the months leading up to the establishment of the State of Israel in May 1948, Frieden was so troubled by the situation in Palestine that he was too preoccupied with worry to write in his journal. In April 1948, for example, he penned this passage: It has been several days now that I have not written and that I have done nothing. I can’t concentrate on doing anything. The news from the Land of Israel is getting worse and worse, no letters are arriving from the children, and we are helpless. Thus, days went by without working and with no will to work and then today, on April 12, a telegram arrived from Ben Zion that a son was born to them—a firstborn, may he be blessed with good fortune. A weight has been lifted from our hearts, because we knew that Dinah was pregnant and we had sent her provisions for the child and yet we had been worried about her, especially because for some months we had not heard a word from Ben Zion, or even half a word. And so—thank God that, as he relates, everything is all right. It is too bad that we cannot be present at the celebration of the brit and the Redemption of the Firstborn.7 Our rejoicing 6.  The bombing of the Jerusalem offices of the Palestine Post, the main English-language daily in the Land of Israel, took place on February 1, 1948. It was, in fact, carried out by an Arab terrorist working with two deserters from the British army, and it was apparently the first car bombing in history. One person was killed and many more injured. See, for example, “Palestine Post Bombing—1948,” on the Internet at zionism-israel.com/his/Palestine_Post_Bombing.htm (accessed Sept. 17, 2010). The Ben Yehuda Street bombing, also in Jerusalem and also carried out by Arab terrorists and British army deserters, took place on February 22, 1948. For more on the bombing and some photographs, see “Ben Yehuda Street Bombing,” on the Internet at www.zionism-israel.com/dic/Ben_Yehuda_Bombing.htm (accessed Sept. 17, 2010). 7.  The Redemption of the First Born (pidyon haben in Hebrew) is a ceremony in which a firstborn son is ritually “redeemed” from what, in ancient times, was to be service in the Temple. This is done through a symbolic payment of money to a kohen. See Numbers 18:15–16.

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is great, for even though we have six grandchildren, this seventh one is the first who will bear our name. We sent a telegram, and how much we would like to see them already!

Despite the serious nature of most of Frieden’s journal entries from the winter and spring of 1948, there are also some that are more mundane and lighthearted. Here, for example, is a charming account related to a major snow storm that affected much of the United States early in 1948: Snow. Snow as far as the eye can see. The streets, the houses, the rooftops, and every tree is loaded with several centimeters of heavy snow. Everything is wrapped in a thick mantel of snow—a ravishing sight for the eyes. We, who have seen snow in the Land of Israel only two or three times, we are riveted by this sight. There is hardly any traffic in the streets. The automobiles are sunk up to their wheels in snow at the curb, and the snow continues to fall. . . . This great and expansive country has become still. It is immersed in an eerie silence. Nature’s power is still great, despite the enormous development of the forces that struggle against her. But Nature still gets the upper hand.

Also to be found among the journal entries Frieden penned during the latter months of his stay in Norfolk were highly sentimental ones, expressed in a tone that he had adopted in sections of his memoir as well. One such entry was written on the occasion of the Friedens’ thirty-fifth wedding anniversary. Although their hearts were “filled with great worry and sorrow over developments in the Land of Israel” and they were “not in the mood for overabundant joy,” Menachem Mendel and his wife, Ray, nonetheless celebrated with family and friends. In his journal, Frieden referred to his wife as “the most precious of women and dearer to me than everything dear,” and he wrote lovingly about his relationship with her: During all these years that we have been together I do not remember one time when there was even a moment of misunderstanding or an exchange of harsh words between us, or even a trifling row, as is normal and as occurs among many. Few are the couples that can take pride in attaining blissful lives such as ours, especially since my wife had to look after the two young daughters I had when we married, stepchildren who are often a stumbling block when it comes to mutual understanding and tranquility. But it was not so with us. And

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upon whom is it fitting and proper to bestow the honor and the blessing for bringing us this happiness? It is due mostly to her, my Rivka, to her good-heartedness and her virtuous ways, ways of pleasantness, and to her deep, pure love, her devotion and faithfulness to marital life and her understanding of how to build a good and comfortable life at all times and under any circumstances. She has been able to find the right word at the right moment, to appease with a generous hand and a hearty laugh, to stand firm without yielding and to make concessions when necessary, to love and cherish—and this indeed is the main thing—for there is no value to love if there is not also esteem alongside it—and there is no cherishing without proper appreciation. Intimate love without honor and respect for the loved one cannot endure the adversities of time, the many difficult trials that one inevitably encounters in family life. And our sages of blessed memory have already said that a love that is dependent on something else does not last.8

When it comes to sentiment and emotion, however, there is perhaps no entry in Frieden’s journal more passionate than the one he labeled “May 14, the 5th of Iyar 5708,” in which he recorded his thoughts and feelings at the birth of the State of Israel: This date will be inscribed in golden letters in the pages of our long and varied history, and if only we could inscribe it in white fire, as the Tablets of the Law were inscribed. It is the day of the proclamation of the State of Israel by the leaders of the Yishuv in Israel in the museum building in Tel Aviv. The brief radio report today about the declaration of a democratic Jewish state to be called from now on “Israel” constitutes and incorporates, in a few words, the end of a period of two thousand years of Israel’s exile and the renewal of its sovereignty. It is the result of the dauntless efforts of modern Zionism over fifty years. The Zionist program, as it was defined at the First Zionist Congress in the city of Basel in 1897 by the immortal leader Dr. Theodor Herzl and which was engraved with an iron stylus on the hearts of Zionists around the world, has achieved more than we dreamed. Although we have been looking forward to this declaration with great anticipation for some two weeks, still I stand at this moment stunned and amazed by the sheer greatness of this news, which has been broadcast around 8.  The reference here is to Pirke Avot 5:16, which reads, in part: “A love that is dependent on something, when the thing ceases, the love also ceases. But a love that is not dependent on anything never ceases.”

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the world. The vision of two thousand years has been fulfilled and become a reality. The heart swells and trembles, beating at an alarming pace. I was afraid that I did not have the strength to withstand the effect upon me of the historic announcement, which completely changes everything for us. At that moment, the will to live on and on increased, and to return home as quickly as possible so as not to miss a moment of this historic event away from the air of the Land of Israel.

Despite Frieden’s elation at the declaration of the State of Israel, his joy was tempered by concerns about the military situation there, as well as by worries about his family and by second thoughts about his own behavior. Just a few days after Frieden celebrated the announcement of Israel’s independence, he wrote in his journal: For some weeks now we have not gotten any letters from Israel and I have received no reply to the telegram I sent Ben Zion, although the Union Telegraph office explained to me that he must have received the telegram, otherwise it would have been sent back to them from England. This is even more worrying. How ill-advised it was to leave the Land of Israel at such a time, although in the middle of 1947 the situation was not so bad. But how can we sit here amidst the fleshpots, and enjoy the bounty of this country when my soul is with our country, with the Yishuv and my children, with the sufferings of them all? I cannot rest as I take to heart all that is happening there every day and every hour. The lack of news about my family clouds our spirit, especially when it comes to Yehudit and her family, who are besieged in Jerusalem, with no resources, and I am powerless to rescue them. Oh, how the heart aches for you, inhabitants of Jerusalem, the entire Yishuv, and my children and grandchildren in particular. May God have mercy upon you, upon everyone: the afflicted, those who suffer from hunger and from the injuries inflicted by the cruel enemy. Despite my suffering soul and the distress which weighs upon my heart, however, my confidence and my faith are increasing that the Yishuv, having learned from its trials and tribulations, will stand firm and alert in the face of all that will come its way and will succeed in repelling the enemies that surround it. The spirit of Israel and the spirit of valor in our dedicated young fighters will withstand every gale, normal or extraordinary, to sustain the fortress of Israel, the state and the land.

The entries in Frieden’s journal from the weeks after the declaration of Israel’s independence reveal that he remained active in support of

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the Zionist cause within the Jewish community of Norfolk—he spoke at a fundraising rally at the end of May, for example—but that, at the same time, he continued to chafe at the circumstances in which he found himself and that he concentrated on preparing to return home as quickly as possible. He dealt with various passport issues (among other things, he had to convince the U.S. State Department to extend the validity of his passport even though he intended to travel to a war zone) and he sought transportation. By mid-summer, he was finally able to book passage on the Marine Carp, a ship departing from New York for Haifa on August 20.9 As we have seen in his memoir, Frieden was fascinated by ocean voyages and he wrote about each of the ones he took at some length. Similarly, in the journal he kept during 1948, he described his trip back to the Land of Israel in great detail. Entries from the time before Frieden’s departure tell of preparations for the voyage, about the purchase of various items to take back to Israel, about the few days he and his wife spent in New York before sailing (including another stay at the Tudor Hotel and breakfast at an automat), and about farewell meetings with friends and relatives. Amid all the reporting on preparations for the trip, however, Frieden did not abandon his practice of committing to paper descriptions of his emotions and his inner thoughts. In a journal entry from early August, for example, he indicated that he had recently gotten word that all his children in Israel were safe, and he went on not only to again express his longing for home, but also to analyze the situation he would find there. In doing so, he once more revealed how he felt about the Arabs and the British, and he reiterated the then dominant Zionist narrative, since shown to be much too simple, about the flight of Arabs from the new State of Israel and the threat posed by those who remained: The situation is improving. The achievements of the Israel Defense Forces and of the state are great, and there is hope for additional, even 9.  For an account of an incident involving the Marine Carp in Beirut harbor 1948, in which passengers bound for Haifa were arrested, see Observer [pseud.], “Home of the Brave,” on the Internet at www.varchive.org/obs/480608.htm (accessed Sept. 17, 2010). For more on the Marine Carp, see Solomon Bloom, “The Marine Carp and Cousin Katz,” on the Internet at www.jackhbloom.com/Articles/1.The_Marine_Karp_and_Cousin_Katz__.pdf (accessed Sept. 17, 2010).

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greater victories, since the renewal of fighting on July 9.10 Army operations captured Kfar Lod, Ramle, and Rosh Ha’ayin.11 On July 17, Nazareth was captured, and in Jerusalem, Ein Kerem. On July 20 there was again a truce. Twenty-five thousand immigrants arrived in Israel in the nine weeks since the establishment of the state. How my heart rejoices. All at once, all the worries which filled our life with grief and which burdened us over the past six months and which kept us from enjoying this blessed and prosperous country have disappeared. Our apprehensions have passed and we are getting ready and finishing all the preparations for our return home. How my soul yearns to reach the Land of Israel speedily, to see with my own eyes and to experience the spirit of the free state, and to breathe its air, cleansed of the British and the Arabs. The latter departed and fled from the country, leaving behind their property, houses, orchards and land. They fled on account of the admonition of the Mufti and the Arab states that they leave at once, even though the Jews offered the Arabs the opportunity to stay in place and receive Israeli citizenship and enjoy equal rights and responsibilities as citizens of the state. In retrospect we are happy that they fled, because had the Arabs stayed within the state, there would always have been a danger of their becoming a fifth column. This we have come to realize from the thousands who did remain in the country. They must be watched carefully and intently; they cannot be trusted.

Passenger ships sailing for Israel were few in the summer of 1948, and when they booked space on the Marine Carp, the Friedens had been unable to secure a private cabin. They had been obliged instead to reserve places in separate men’s and women’s dormitory-style accommodations. In his usual style of recording detail, Frieden noted in his journal what happened on the day of the ship’s embarkation: When we boarded the ship, I found that the cabin in which I was registered was entirely Christian—I was not happy about this; I did not want to sleep with people who are not Children of the Covenant. Here again a miracle happened. In a facing cabin in which everyone was Jewish there was one empty berth because by mistake a woman had been registered among the men, and of course she had to leave. I grabbed the bunk without asking questions and so I remained with them. 10.  The United Nations had arranged a truce in the fighting, which went into effect on June 10 and expired on July 9, 1948. 11.  The three places named here are all small towns not far from Tel Aviv.

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In general, the Friedens’ trip seems to have gone relatively smoothly. Summarizing the situation, and slipping in a couple of interesting asides, Frieden noted: Apart from crowding in the cabin, the voyage was quite pleasant. Food was plentiful. It was difficult for those who keep kosher, but we had plenty of milk twice a day, coffee, tea, cheese, fish, eggs, and fruit. We were sated and felt good. One sees on an American ship the same kind of wastefulness one encounters all over the United States when it comes to food. The weather was pleasant throughout the trip and the ship quite sturdy; this time my wife did not suffer from seasickness. A special room was set aside for public prayer and one of the passengers even had a Torah scroll. The members of Habimah, who had spent a few months in America, were returning.12 Apparently their trip had not been successful from a financial point of view; this according to several of the participants.

As we know from Frieden’s memoir, one of the things he was most inclined to write about when it came to a description of his travels was the people he saw around him on board ship, and his journal, as well, reveals his penchant for describing and judging his fellow passengers. About those on the Marine Carp he wrote, “anyone looking in on the motley assemblage on the ship would find the unusual characters who stand out at times quite interesting and worthy of note.” Thus, for example, in writing about the men who shared his cabin, Frieden reported that among them was the Knesset member Zechariah Gluska.13 I’ve known this Gluska for a while already because of his dealings with our bank. I also took him to court once when he refused to honor his signature on a surety note. He is a man who deems himself a Torah scholar, but he is devoid of both Torah and wisdom. Once I pointed out to him an error concerning something about which he was boasting in front of 12.  Habimah, founded in Moscow in 1918 and relocated to Tel Aviv in 1928, is today the national theater company of Israel. On Habimah’s 1948 visit to the United States, see “Visitors from Palestine,” Time, May 17, 1948, which reported: “As far back as February, Palestine’s famed Hebrew-speaking Habimah players had announced a six-week visit to Broadway. The sets and costumes were shipped well ahead; but when the company set out six days before the opening, they found Lydda airport in Arab hands and had to be secretly air-ferried to Athens. From there, in dribs & drabs, and by divergent routes, they reached New York.” 13.  The Yemen-born Zechariah Gluska (1895–1960) came to Palestine with his family in 1909 and eventually emerged as a leader of the Yemenite community there. He was elected to the Knesset in 1949. See Tudor Parfitt, The Road to Redemption: The Jews of the Yemen 1900–1950 (Leiden, 1996), 58.

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our cabin mates and I said to him that he must not have learned Rashi, otherwise he would not have made such a mistake. He expressed himself coarsely about Rashi and when I reprimanded him for insulting the greatest of our commentators, declaring that he himself was an ignoramus, he accosted me with invective. After that I no longer acknowledged his presence.

Also among those on board ship, according to Frieden, were young pioneers who had received agricultural training in the United States or Canada; a couple of parents going to see their son on a kibbutz; the wife of a rabbi from near Tel Aviv; a “well-built Lithuanian Jew in the prime of life,” a widower hoping to meet “an attractive woman with money”; several passengers who became involved in romantic trysts; and many nouveaux riches who were being forced to return to Israel because the U.S. government had not extended their visas. Of them, Frieden wrote: They return sated and fatted with suitcases full of every kind of bounty—especially the women. These kine of Bashan stroll on the deck,14 changing their dresses hour by hour and acting coquettish; for the most part, a rather disagreeable crowd. Most express their regret that their visas were not extended and that they are being forced to return to Israel at a time of instability. There is no joy on their faces as the ship approaches Haifa. And I stand and wonder: Do these people have no hearts? Do they have no self-respect? Are they not proud of the young state, of the sovereignty we have acquired with the blood and fire of our finest youth? Surely, they are like chaff among us.

Perhaps the most moving entry in the section of Frieden’s journal concerning his trip home is the one in which he describes his actual arrival in Israel: Although the ship could have gotten to Haifa faster, the captain slowed it down so as not to arrive in Haifa on the Sabbath, a clear indication of the emergence of the State of Israel. And so we arrived in Haifa harbor. There are no words to describe how all our hearts trembled and swelled at the sight of the bustling and tumultuous port and city, and all are Jews. The port officials, the baggage document inspec14.  The allusion here is to Amos 4:5, where the unflattering image of fat cattle that have enjoyed the rich pasture of Bashan, along the Jordan River, is applied to the elite of Israel, who have oppressed the poor.

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tors, all are Jews, and above everything the flag of Israel flutters in the morning breeze, and the insignia of the state adorns her officials. Maurice was the first to board the ship and from a distance we saw Yehudit and her children and Ben Zion. Oh! How great was our joy at seeing everyone healthy and whole, thank God. And here now Ben Zion also boards with his military uniform and the insignia of a major. He helped us get around the queue for inspecting documents and arranged for the luggage to be taken off the ship, and together we disembarked. We went through a special customs inspection thanks to Maurice’s intervention and we left the port immediately. Our luggage was loaded atop Ben Zion’s car and Maurice’s car and we all drove to Miriam’s. Our encounter with Yehudit and her children, and especially with her son David, whom we hadn’t seen until then, was an experience so replete with emotion it cannot be described, for we knew that she had suffered more than anyone. Miriam was waiting for us and how great was our joy to be back together again after more than a year and after all the hardship and suffering that they had gone through—and thank God, everyone looks not bad. Only David shows signs of the events in Jerusalem and sleeping in a bomb shelter most nights. His face is white, almost bloodless, his eyes are too shiny for him to be healthy. The first day of our return to the country was good, and great was our joy at finding the state with everything ticking along as if it had been prepared for everything that had transpired during the past year. During the first days, it was as if we were dreaming.15 We could not digest everything at once. The impact was too great.

The journal entries Frieden penned in the first months after his return to Israel chronicle his readjustment to a country that was now independent but still in the midst of war, and they reveal both the joys and the difficulties this entailed. Here, in a journal entry from around September of 1948, is how Frieden summarized his first few weeks back in Israel: After resting for a week, we traveled to Tel Aviv and Ramat Gan to see Batya and her family, and Dinah and our new grandson, the second who was born, like David, while we were in the United States. We stayed for some ten days in Ramat Gan and then returned to Haifa. We 15.  Here Frieden is either consciously or again unconsciously quoting Psalms 126:1: “When the Lord brought back those who returned to Zion, it was as if we were dreaming.”

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decided to stay with Miriam, because she has a three-room apartment on Mount Carmel, a wonderful place. Here we shall remain until we find an apartment here or in Jerusalem. We are comfortable at Miriam’s: a spacious flat, an exceptional view looking out to the sea from a broad veranda. Here too is my book collection, from which I had been separated for more than a year, and whose absence I felt the entire time. The synagogue is not far, and I was received there with great honor, because I have many acquaintances there from a long time ago. I also became friendly with Rabbi Glazer, a good Jew, well versed in Torah. For the time being we decided to search for an apartment in Haifa, although Jerusalem attracts me as always. The situation in Jerusalem is still tense, however, and life is still hard. Transportation is difficult and wearying because Latrun is in the hands of the Arab Legion and the journey to Jerusalem is circuitous.16

Judging from subsequent entries in his journal, which he seems sometimes to have updated in retrospect, Frieden continued to pay close attention to the struggles of the young State of Israel in the months after his return from America. He recorded not only the major military, political, and diplomatic developments of the period, but his reflections on those events as well. His close identification with the new state is clear and his willingness to express his opinions unrestrained. Here, for example, is one revealing excerpt from Frieden’s journal concerning a major crisis, the murder of the primary United Nations representative dealing with the Arab-Israeli conflict: And now the assassination of Bernadotte on September 17.17 We, in our innocence, thought that with the establishment of the state the various dissident groups went out of existence. After all, the state exists, and what more do they want? This murder, this terrorist crime, astounded the entire state. The murder of the UN emissary appointed to mediate the conflict between Israel and the Arabs is tantamount to a direct attack on the UN itself, whatever our opinion may be of the nature of the UN delegate’s proposals. We can disagree with his proposals, and certainly 16.  Latrun is a fortress that commands the main highway from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. 17.  Count Folke Bernadotte of Sweden (1895–1948) had been appointed by the UN in May 1948 to mediate the Arab-Israeli conflict. In this capacity, he negotiated the first truce of the Arab-Israeli war and formulated several proposals aimed at bringing peace. Among the ideas he put forward in September of 1948 was placing the city of Jerusalem under international control. His assassination was carried out by Jewish extremists in Jerusalem.

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some will do so, but on the other hand, did his proposals disappear with his murder? Why, all the members of the UN are aware of them. Even more so, his murder will spur those nations that have not yet made up their minds about the count’s proposals regarding Jerusalem to join with those supporting the internationalization of the city. This is a despicable political murder that can in no way influence the UN decision on this matter in our favor. On the contrary, this murder will bring disgrace and dishonor upon the state, distrust in its ability to curb such outbursts, and will diminish the prestige of the young country precisely at this critical time when we need the goodwill of the nations.

And here is an excerpt concerning some of the military developments of late 1948: The Arabs are unable to stomach the defeats they suffered at the hands of the Israel Defense Forces and it seems they are looking for an opportunity to have a second round by violating the terms of the second truce on all fronts. The Egyptians are especially adept at these violations. They recently perpetrated a clear and brazen violation when they carried out a forceful attack on a convoy that was carrying food and provisions to several outposts in the Negev in accordance with the terms of the truce. We had no choice but to launch an operation to free the entire Negev from Egyptian aggression and operation “Ten Plagues” commenced on October 16.18 With successful operations over a week’s time, we captured Beersheba and completely cut off communication between the Egyptian army encamped in the territory of Gaza and its troops in Hebron, and between them and their base in Faluja, where some three thousand Egyptian soldiers remained completely surrounded. At the same time we engaged in battle with the Arab Legion in the Jerusalem area and captured several Arab villages to the south of Jerusalem. . . . Thus the soldiers of the Israel Defense Forces proceed from strength to strength; may they be blessed.

Even as he fixed his gaze on politics, diplomacy, and military action, however, Frieden also worried about his own situation. Among his main concerns was maintaining some source of income. One idea he had was to open a laundromat in Israel, but he abandoned that scheme as demanding too much start-up capital and being impractical to imple18.  Operation Ten Plagues is also known as Operation Yoav.

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ment. For some time, Frieden had been receiving a pension from the Palestine Economic Corporation, but he was still insecure. He thought the pension inadequate for his needs, and he knew that the PEC had the right to stop payments at any time. As he wrote, “I don’t have a contract with the company and . . . although it is now six years that they have paid me without hesitation and I am sure they will not stop, who knows what might happen if changes take place and a management appears who knew not Joseph?”19 Another one of Frieden’s concerns was finding a permanent place to live. In an entry from his journal late in 1948, for example, Frieden made clear the difficulties he and his wife were facing when it came to housing. Among the items the Friedens had shipped from the United States before they left were some large ones, and Frieden reported: The refrigerator and bridge set arrived from America, and we put them into storage, because there is no room for them at Miriam’s. The refrigerator is large and her kitchen small. And again the question of the apartment arises. It is true that we lack for nothing at ­Miriam’s, who has given us a nice, spacious room in her apartment. We are enjoying her exceptional hospitality, and we take great pleasure in Lee Shai—he is a clever boy, developed beyond his age—and also in Yehuda, a charming and gentle youngster. The relationship between us is not only that between parents and children, but also like that between friends. As long as Maurice is in the army it is not noticeably crowded, because Miriam and her sons sleep in one room. But when Maurice is discharged, and I hope he will be discharged soon (he is commander of a prisoner of war camp in Atlit),20 the crowding will become noticeable and, although they both are suggesting that we stay with them forever, we cannot agree to this, because it will be uncomfortable both for them and for us. Each family needs a corner of its own.

As the year 1948 ended and 1949 began, Frieden’s journal entries continued to treat of the same matters that had occupied him since his 19.  The reference here is to Exodus 1:8, which describes the appearance of a new Egyptian pharaoh who “knew not Joseph” and was unaware of all the good Joseph had done for Egypt. 20.  Atlit is a coastal town just south of Haifa and the site of the ruins of a Crusader castle. From 1939 until 1948, what became the Israeli prisoner of war camp at Atlit had been a detention camp for immigrants who had come to Palestine in defiance of British restrictions.

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return from America: the military operations that were still ongoing, the intense diplomatic activity that was taking place to try to bring an end to the fighting, the country’s precarious economic situation and also his own, the search for an apartment, and concerns about his children. In January 1949, for example, Frieden noted his son Ben Zion’s promotion to lieutenant colonel and his hope that Ben Zion would not pursue a military career. On the other hand, he wrote, “if everyone attempts to get discharged, who will remain? When we are surrounded by those who hate us, lying in wait,” he continued, “the security situation requires the maintenance of a large and powerful regular army.” Apparently relying mainly on contemporary news reports, Frieden also wrote about the first census of Israel’s population and about preparations for the country’s first elections. When the holiday of Hanukkah arrived during this period, Frieden recorded these thoughts: Although most of the youth are still in the army, this traditional festival is doubly joyful this year—the year of our independence. The memories of the battles of the Maccabees, of the war of the Maccabees against the Greeks such a very long time ago, are bound up with many of our victories in this war. Their spirit, the spirit of valor of this family, still beats in the hearts of the people of Israel to this very day, bringing the courage of our generation to its full realization. The difference, though, is this: that they, the Hasmoneans, fought against political and religious enslavement. Their main motivation was religious sentiment, while here we fought against invaders whose purpose was to utterly destroy us, to throw us into the sea, to negate what we had already accomplished with the approval of the nations of the world. But the spirit of valor, the dedication and the vigor is the same, then as now, and it is this that has sustained and that will always sustain us in times of trouble if we will only be alert and prepared for the spiritual and physical sacrifices which will be demanded of us.

At about the time he entered these thoughts in his journal, ­Frieden also marked his birthday and, betraying a certain solemnity and referring to classic Jewish sources as he was wont to do, he noted that “this year there is a double importance to my birthday, because I have reached the age of seventy—I have arrived at the age of ‘a hoary head.’”21 21.  Here, as he did also in his memoir, Frieden is referencing a well-known passage in Pirke

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He reflected upon the meaning of this milestone: In the seventieth year, the words of Psalms, chapter 90, which is attributed to Moses our teacher and is called the Prayer of Moses, have a special impact on a person. It includes these words: “The span of our life is seventy years, or, given the strength, eighty years.”22 These words remind a person that here he has arrived at self-reflection, at a time when the alloted lifespan for anyone has, more or less, already arrived and passed.

With the continuation of the year 1949, Frieden’s journal entries became increasingly infrequent and Frieden became less and less inclined to write about his own life. Instead, he began to write almost exclusively about what was transpiring in the new State of Israel. As he himself declared in his journal soon after his seventieth birthday, “from here onwards I will continue mostly with the affairs of the Land of Israel and only a little with my private affairs.” In accord with his new approach, Frieden wrote extensively about the elections to the first Knesset in 1949, including accounts of the main issues in the campaign and of the positions of the various political parties vying for parliamentary seats. Commenting on the political landscape that was emerging and concerned about its complexity, Frieden wrote: “Twenty-two party lists were submitted, that is, twenty-two parties and splinter parties in tiny Israel, which has not achieved a population of even one million, while the United States with a population of 150 million has only two parties. When will we begin to learn a bit from others?” he asked, “when will we learn to copy something from the other nations of the world—when will the nation unite?” Writing about his own voting experience in Haifa on January 25, 1949, Frieden reported that “election day began with a violent wind storm on Mount Carmel” and that when he and his wife eventually reached their polling station “with great difficulty,” they voted for the United Religious Front.23 “This day will be inscribed forever in the chronicles of the PeoAvot 5:24, which includes the idea that “at forty, the age is reached for understanding; at fifty, for counsel; at sixty, for old age; at seventy, for a hoary head; at eighty, for special strength.” 22.  The exact reference is Psalms 90:10. 23.  The United Religious Front was a coalition of several political parties with faith-based platforms. The Front won 12.2 percent of the vote and held 16 of the 120 seats in the First Knesset, making it the third largest faction, after two left-wing parties, Mapai (with 35.7 per-

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ple of Israel in golden letters—black fire against white fire like a brilliant menorah,” he exclaimed. In the weeks immediately after the results of the 1949 elections were announced, Frieden recorded in his journal the speech delivered on that occasion by David Ben Gurion and he also recorded the speech that Chaim Weizmann delivered upon his inauguration as the first president of Israel in February. Frieden also recounted information about the formation of the first government of Israel, with Ben Gurion as prime minister; about the continuing involvement of the UN in the conflict between Israel and its Arab neighbors; and about the conclusion of armistice negotiations with the Arab countries bordering Israel. An agreement was signed with Egypt on February 24, 1949; with Lebanon on March 23, 1949; with Transjordan on April 3, 1949; and, finally, with Syria on July 20, 1949. Because Frieden had spent so many years in America before making aliya, and because he had so recently spent over a year in the United States, he also paid some attention to certain developments within the American Jewish community, and especially to the marshalling of financial support for the new State of Israel. Around the middle of 1949, Frieden wrote about the celebration of Israel’s first Independence Day, about the austerity program enacted by the government to address the country’s economic problems, and about the acceptance of Israel as a UN member state. He also recounted the transfer of the remains of Theodor Herzl for reburial in Jerusalem, and about the installation of the Knesset in Jerusalem at the end of 1949. The Knesset had previously been meeting in Tel Aviv. In his last journal entry of 1949, on December 25, he wrote: Jerusalem is renewing her youthfulness, her streets are abuzz, cars loaded with furniture have been going and returning from Tel Aviv for several days. Here and there are seen both old faces and new. The faces of the city’s old-timers are beaming with joy over the great change resulting from the transfer of the Knesset and the government to Jerusalem, which has brought in its wake a renewed and normalized lifestyle in the city. The city is again the capital, as in days of yore. With the permanent installation of the Knesset in Jerusalem, the city is destined cent of the vote and 46 seats) and Mapam (14.7 percent of the vote and 19 seats). David Ben Gurion (1886–1973) was the leader of Mapai. See “Factional and Government Make-Up of the First Knesset,” at www.knesset.gov.il/history/eng/eng_hist1_s.htm (accessed Sept. 1, 2008).

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again to be the center of culture and science for the People of Israel, as in the past: “For out of Zion shall go forth the Law.”24 With the transfer of the Knesset and the government will also come a different sort of life, a life of commerce and industry that will provide work for many of the new immigrants who are coming to Jerusalem in great numbers.

Indeed, Frieden commented at length about the arrival of new immigrants: “from the refugee camps in Europe and from the danger of perishing in the Arab countries,” he wrote, “the stream of immigration to the country is increasing like a surging river.” And he chronicled the efforts made to absorb these masses, in the process expressing some of his disappointments with the way the government bureaucracy was dealing with immigrant absorption. He lamented the inadequate housing they were given, both in “homes that were abandoned by the Arabs in their flight from the land” and in crowded makeshift temporary camps, and he decried the fact that even the permanent housing being constructed was “built in haste, with workmanship that is hardly outstanding.” ­Frieden also bemoaned the fact that little appropriate employment was being made available to new immigrants and he proclaimed that despite all the difficulties that arose from the massive influx of new arrivals, many problems could have been prevented “had the right people been found to put their mind to it.” As the excerpts above illustrate, even though most of the topics covered in Frieden’s writings from the beginning of 1949 onward focus on public affairs of various sorts, in all his comments on issues such as the political situation in the country, the security situation, and the arrival of new immigrants, Frieden’s love of his homeland and pride in its achievements continued to emerge, even as he expressed an appreciation for the various challenges facing the young state. Moreover, despite his focus on public affairs, throughout 1949 Frieden did from time to time write in his journal about his own experiences. In April of 1949, for example, he wrote about the continuing problems he faced in trying to find an apartment for himself and his wife: It is almost two years now that we are wandering—in America and here—with no apartment of our own. We are not used to this. This is

24.  The text quoted here is Isaiah 2:3.

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the first time that we’re wandering. Although Miriam tries with all her goodwill to make us comfortable in her apartment, we are fed up already with the impermanence. We want a private corner. At first it was quite pleasant to be rid of the upkeep of an apartment and managing a kitchen, especially after the troubles of the past five years. The Second World War and my illness sapped the strength of my beloved wife and we both needed rest and tranquility. That is why we decided to travel to America. It did not occur to us that it would be so difficult to get settled again when we returned to the Land of Israel. And here we are, already nine months in the country and we haven’t been able to arrange for a private flat.

Given the situation in which they found themselves in the middle of 1949, Frieden and his wife decided to go to Jerusalem for the Passover holiday and, after conducting a Seder with several members of their family present, to look for an apartment there. Apparently, housing prices were lower in Jerusalem than in other parts of the country and finally, in June of 1949, Frieden was able to write in his journal of “relief from the problem of an apartment.” The solution had come with the intervention of Chaim Salomon, to whom Frieden referred as “my friend from the first day I arrived in the country.” Frieden relates that Salomon was about to move into a new home and that he arranged for the Friedens to take over what had been his temporary abode, “an apartment with four large rooms at a lovely corner on Salameh Street in Talbieh, a beautiful environment.”25 In turn, the Friedens exchanged apartments with their daughter Yehudit. ­Yehudit, her husband Yoel, and their two children moved into the flat on Salameh Street, and the Friedens moved into the two-room apartment that had been Yehudit’s. “Thank God that this painful issue is finally resolved and my hope to live again in Jerusalem is being fulfilled,” Frieden wrote. Once the Friedens moved into their own place, Menachem Mendel recorded in his journal that he and his wife were “busy arranging the small apartment to our liking: white-washing, sanitizing, adding a shelf here and a shelf there,” and he reported: 25.  The location of this home is on what is now known as Orde Wingate Square, named for a British army officer and Christian Zionist who helped train members of the Haganah in the 1930s.

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We met again with many of our friends and acquaintances from the past. All are happy to see us and we are glad to see them, and my dear wife is filled with joy that again she has a corner of her own, even though it is a small one. The family here and overseas is glad that we have gotten settled. The main difficulty for me in Jerusalem, however, is the ascents and descents, which make it difficult for me to walk. As our sages of blessed memory have said: “Any city that has ascents and descents ages its inhabitants by half of their days.”26

By the fall of 1949, Frieden had come to confine his journal entries to nothing but sometimes rambling writings that marked special occasions of one sort or another. After the High Holidays in 1949, for example, he wrote of how he had observed the Day of Atonement at a time when Israel was suffering economic distress and food shortages: The Days of Awe have passed. I endured the Yom Kippur fast easily, thank God, even though the pre-fast meal was composed of only a few vegetables and the break-fast meal was again an egg and some vegetables. Perhaps this is why we did not notice our hunger on the fast day. At times, a regime of austerity is good and benefits human beings and their health, but austerity that lasts forever is not necessarily good. I immediately embarked on performing the commandment of building a sukkah and with the help of my son Ben Zion we set up a sukkah on the open balcony. For years I was unable to fulfill this commandment, and now, with my return to Jerusalem, I merited having a sukkah.

Another example of an occasion worthy of a journal entry came in December of 1949, when Frieden reported on the bar mitzvah ceremony of his eldest grandson and, in doing so, reflected on the way he had tried and failed to direct him toward a traditional religious orientation: This year my first grandson, Miriam’s son Yehuda, turned thirteen and we celebrated his bar mitzvah in Haifa with great joy in the company of the whole family and many friends. For me it was a doubled and redoubled celebration. I had the privilege of enjoying the bar mitzvah of my first grandson, in whom I take a special interest. I had tried to educate Yehuda in the ways of Torah and tradition when I had 26.  This is a statement made by Rabbi Judah in tractate Eruvin 56a.

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the opportunity during the years of the Second World War. His father was serving in the English army, and my daughter and her son moved to our home in Tel Aviv immediately after the first bombing of Haifa.27 I hoped that the foundation I laid in molding his religious education would stay with him and guide him even after he was no longer under my care, but it so happened that I fell ill and when I recovered I no longer had the strength to continue studying with him. The two years that passed without his being under my guidance, as he was in the first years, constituted a very serious interruption because the foundation I had laid was not deep enough and when they returned to Haifa in the middle of 1946, the spiritual connection between us was completely severed. In the meanwhile, he grew to be a handsome, pleasant young man. He matured and developed a self-awareness, and his involvement with the Scouts extinguished the last spark which still smoldered within him from the days when he was under my tutelage.28 Nonetheless, some sort of spiritual awareness of Jewish ethical values is still noticeable within him.

Having entered his eighth decade of life in 1949, thoughts about old age seem to have occupied Frieden increasingly. On the occasion of his seventy-first birthday at the end of 1949, for instance, he entered into his journal a long introspective meditation, replete with references to classic biblical and rabbinic texts. In part he wrote: When a person reaches the age of “hoary heads” and passes it, he experiences a feeling that is difficult to describe, a feeling of joy and sadness mixed together. Joy at having been privileged to arrive at and even exceed the age of seventy. And if the state of his health is satisfactory and stable, why, the joy involves not only the past and the merit of having arrived at seventy, but also the future and the hope of perhaps also reaching the age of “special strength.”29 And the sadness is over the life that has passed and the period of decline that is drawing 27.  The first Axis air raid on Haifa was carried out by forty aircraft of the Italian air force on July 15, 1940. For photographs of the oil installations set on fire in the raid, see images 069958 and P02269.006 in the collection of the Australian War Memorial, on the Internet at www.awm.gov.au/ (accessed Sept. 17, 2010). 28.  The Israeli Scouts organization (“Tzofim” in Hebrew) was founded in 1919 as the first Zionist youth movement in the Land of Israel and claims to be “the first egalitarian Scouting movement in the world.” See “The ‘Tzofim’ (Scouts) in Israel,” on the Internet at www.zofim .org.il/about_tnua_english.asp (accessed Sept. 24, 2008). 29.  See Note 21, above.

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nearer. And there is also a sense of tranquility, if a person’s deeds and his past ways were righteous and honest in his relations with God and humanity. And on the contrary, if a person’s ways in the past, when he examines them with a critical eye, were not upright, and he did not properly fulfill his obligations to God and to humanity, then he is attended by a feeling of shame and, if he has a soul, a feeling of regret, as well. If a person arrives at a feeling of regret, how fortunate he is, for a feeling of regret is a sign of the sentiment of repentance, and from this comes a sense of relief. And it is not for nothing that the teachings of Israel have raised the quality of repentance to such a high level, saying: “In the place where a repentant person stands, even the completely righteous cannot stand.”30

And further on the occasion of his birthday, Frieden again poured forth a confession in the same way he had done here and there in his memoir: I mention my faults today as a declaration of guilt. I have sinned, certainly I have sinned, and I am willing to accept the consequences, but I ask one thing. Let not the reasons and the circumstances that led to my sins be forgotten. This is not a justification, but, as our sages have said: “Do not judge your fellow man until you have stood in his place.”31 Even the angels of heaven could not resist sinning when they descended to earth and were ensnared by the realities of a sinful world. From the day that I understood how to distinguish between good and evil, and especially because of the education I received during my childhood from my pious and upright parents, I have endeavored to be righteous and to deceive neither myself nor others. It seems to me that I have not deprived any person of his due. I have neither stolen nor robbed, not merely in deed but also not in thought, contemplation, or judgment. I have not envied anyone, except for the great in religion and science. And still I am certain that my sins are plentiful. If I have not violated all the “thou shalt nots,” I certainly have transgressed many, whether intentionally or inadvertently. And how much more certain it is that I have not fulfilled all of the positive commandments. Why, there are both positive commandments and prohibitions that a 30.  This quotation is from tractate Brachot 34b. For more on the traditional Jewish view of repentance, see, for example, Kerry M. Olitzky and Rachel T. Sabath, Striving Toward ­Virtue: A Contemporary Guide for Jewish Ethical Behavior (Jersey City, N.J., 1996). 31.  These are the words of Hillel in Pirke Avot 2:5.

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person tramples with every footstep. But I am certain that I have tried to follow a righteous path and to live honestly, and what person could do more than this?

Journal entries for the year 1950 are sparse: on the occasion of his March 2 wedding anniversary, a reflection on his years with his wife Ray, for example, and on the occasion of Passover, an account of the holiday celebration, marred by the absence of his daughter Batya and her husband, with whom Frieden had become increasingly upset. “Recently, my relationship with this son-in-law of mine, Batya’s husband, has not been especially good,” he wrote, “for two reasons.” The first of these, Frieden explained, was that “he did not pay me my share of the funds he received against our joint loan to Ben Zion,”32 and the second was that “in the past months, he began to chase after another woman,” a development which, Frieden believed, had exacerbated his daughter Batya’s poor health. Indeed, Frieden was constantly worried about his children and he was concerned that Batya “always lived an irregular life: smoking excessively, always trying to lose weight, playing cards all night and all day, and so forth.” Batya intended to go to Switzerland for convalescence and treatment, and Frieden hoped that when she got better her husband would “sense his guilt and improve the way he lives with her, and she, too, will learn her lesson and change her lifestyle to a normal one.” The only journal entry of 1950 after that of Passover is one from December marking Frieden’s seventy-second birthday and followed by a long account of Frieden’s volunteer work with the anti-tuberculosis league in Israel, work he undertook, no doubt, largely because he himself had suffered from the disease and his first wife, Etel, had died of complications from the illness. In 1951, journal entries were again penned only on the occasion of special events. One such event, as in the preceding year, was the Friedens’ wedding anniversary in March, which it seems was overlooked by all of their children except Miriam, much to Frieden’s dismay. Reflecting on his many years of marriage, Frieden wrote that on their anniversary, he and his wife had a custom of “reviewing all of the years 32.  On the loan made to Ben Zion, see the chapter “Travels, the Era of World War II, and Illness.”

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since the day of our wedding . . . seeking a self-examination: have we done anything that we should not have done? Have we failed to do something that we should have done?” And Frieden then went on to reiterate one of the main reasons he felt such a review of his marriage was important: This is not in order to learn from our mistakes; the time for that has already passed. Rather it is in order to keep a record of them for future generations, for whom these memories are being written down. They will read my words and learn a lesson about how to live a full, pure life, even without riches, if only one thing unites two bodies and souls, and that is pure love and complete understanding, proper appreciation and, most importantly, goodwill. . . . May I be able to recall many more blissful days in the time to come. May we both be granted health, at least to the extent that we should not need to be cared for and become too much of a burden upon each other, so that our journey through life should not be disrupted. Amen.

Another 1951 journal entry was written in April, detailing preparations for the Passover holiday at a time when all sorts of commodities were rationed and in short supply. “Whoever has no ration points will not receive any allotment of food, nor of clothing and footwear, unless he has recourse to the black market, where one can buy anything that his heart desires, if he is prepared to pay the inflated prices,” Frieden wrote, but he added that, “as a matter of principle, we haven’t bought anything on the black market.” In May of 1951, Frieden entered into his journal an account of that year’s Independence Day festivities and added several paragraphs of ruminations on the significance of the day and on the importance of marking it properly. Then, shortly after Independence Day, he wrote a long and, as was usual in his journal entries, a somewhat repetitive discourse in commemoration of thirty years since his arrival in the Land of Israel in 1921: When I now survey these years, the many disappointments, and the difficulties of providing for and bringing up a family with a pittance for a salary and bent to the will of an ignorant and vulgar boss, and the trials I endured in all those years, and, on the other hand, the compensation that I received in seeing the establishment of the state, why all the

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tribulations and disappointments are as naught compared to this privilege of ours, of seeing and experiencing the sovereignty of Israel. How very worthwhile all of this was. I am proud of the venture that I dared to undertake, of the courage that I mustered to cast away the good and the beautiful and the comfortable, and to set off to an unsown land.33

In September, Frieden wrote about the bar mitzvah celebration of his second-oldest grandchild, Yehudit’s son Avraham, known as Rami. It seems that Rami had to be threatened with the cancellation of a reception and the loss of all the gifts that would entail if he did not complete his preparations for the bar mitzvah ceremony, but ultimately, the ceremony was held very successfully in the Rehavia synagogue in Jerusalem, of which Frieden had been a founding member, and it was followed by a reception at the Malkoff home for some four hundred people. Following on the heels of the account of Rami’s bar mitzvah, there is a review of the fall holiday celebrations of 1951, during which Frieden was ill for part of the time, and then there are no further journal entries until that of March 1952, marking the Friedens’ thirty-ninth wedding anniversary and relating how they spent that day and the few days following. The tone of this entry is much like that of some of ­Frieden’s previous writings, and includes this tender passage: When I regard the years that have passed since March 2, 1913, I survey them with a discerning eye, considering all the adventures that we have experienced during these thirty-nine years: highs and lows and again highs, and with all of them our serene life together has continued, full of pure, refined love. I am filled with deep gratitude to the Creator of All for this blessing with which He has blessed me in a full measure and a pure prayer is in my heart: may we merit the continuation of our lives together until the end of time, because I cannot imagine how our lives could be separated. Our souls are bound to each other in an unbreakable bond.

The next entry in Frieden’s journal was not written until some time around Hanukkah, in December of 1952. In this entry, Frieden took note of the decision his son-in-law Maurice had made to take his family to America because of the difficult economic situation in Israel and indicated that that he had “attempted to influence him to change his mind.” 33.  The reference here to Israel as an “unsown land” is based on Jeremiah 2:2.

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He wrote as well that Miriam and Yehuda were against the move, but Maurice insisted and the family left for the United States in November 1952. Miriam’s departure was hard on Menachem Mendel: “This daughter of mine is my favorite child,” he wrote in his journal, “she is attached to us with all her soul and all her might and so, too, is Yehuda.” “May I merit seeing them returning to Israel in good financial circumstances,” he concluded, “so that they may live here as they desire.” Of course, Hanukkah was also the occasion of Frieden’s birthday, and with Miriam gone, instead of marking the occasion in Haifa, as the family usually did, its gathering was held in Ben Zion’s home in Tsahala, a housing development for the career military.34 Frieden could not resist using the occasion to express his feelings on a matter of religion, as he often did throughout his memoir and his journal: The state of religion in the Israel Defense Forces can be judged by its status in the housing development of Tsahala. This development, with a population of more than five hundred families, most of whom are officers in the Israel Defense Forces and a few of whom serve in the Ministry of Defense, has neither a synagogue, nor a school, nor any evidence of religious concerns. On the Shabbat of Hanukkah, only a minyan or so of worshippers gathered in a private home. Among them there was not one army officer, except for the military rabbi and two soldiers who were guests. How greatly religious and moral vitality has diminished among our officers, who do not see it as incumbent upon them not only to look after themselves, but also to see to the education of their children in the spirit of religion and tradition from an early age. Every one of the officers is busy on the Sabbath with repairs to his house or tending to his garden, and the public desecration of the Sabbath is apparent throughout this large housing development. How very sorrowing it is for me to see such a state of affairs among our army officers, most of whom are intelligent, educated, and cultured people, scions of respectable families, but removed from any traditional religious sentiment.

The available sources indicate that Menachem Mendel Frieden penned only two journal entries after that of December 1952, one at the time of his seventy-fifth birthday in December 1953, and a final one in the spring of 1955. The journal entry of December 1953, in which 34.  The name Tsahala is based upon the acronym Tsahal, derived from “Tsva Haganah L’Yisrael,” Hebrew for Israel Defense Forces.

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­ rieden told of a party for some sixty guests that his daughter Yehudit F had arranged in honor of his birthday, was in Frieden’s typical style and ended with these words: My soul is filled with gratitude and joy for the privilege that has been given me to arrive at this age, and despite the heart disease with which I have been afflicted for ten years now, I feel, thank God, quite good. And when the sun is shining, I go for a stroll of about an hour, or more, and return home strengthened and energized. I enjoy eating and sleeping almost as a young man does. I read a great deal, and especially philosophical literature, with great pleasure. I pray that He Who Gives Strength to the Weary will strengthen me and bring me healing in order to provide for a long and healthy life, that I may merit at least the age of my parents, may their souls rest in Paradise. As I told the guests who attended the just mentioned get-together: I still have much to do. I hope I have the privilege of seeing the State of Israel standing strong spiritually and economically; of seeing the peace that must come between her and her neighbors; of seeing the ingathering of the exiles fulfilled completely as promised by our prophets. May it be that these things quickly come to pass.

Frieden’s final journal entry, inscribed during the month of Iyar in 1955, is especially poignant. Here, in part, is what he wrote: Again a year has passed without my writing anything. I suffer from arthritis in my right hand and sometimes writing is difficult for me. In fact, what is the use of writing ongoing memoirs? Why, I have already written about my past, and here again a year has gone by, as well as the eighth candle of Hanukkah, and I, thank God, am seventy-six years old. My powers are weakening, but see what a wonder it is that, to the extent one ages, the desire to continue living grows stronger to the same extent, especially at this time, the era of the development of our state. Each and every day one sees and feels it flourishing, despite the mistakes made in the past and in the present, whether due to inexperience in statecraft and in technical matters, or even somewhat willfully, because partisan concerns were placed above general concerns of state. It is too bad that in old age desire surpasses ability and strength, that an old man is expected to decrease his wishes and aspirations.

Although Frieden seems to have ceased completely making journal entries after 1955, he lived on in his Jerusalem apartment with his wife,

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Ray, until November 1963, when he died peacefully in his sleep. He is buried in the Kehilat Yerushalayim section of the Har Hamenuhot cemetery in Jerusalem. Ray, who died in May of 1967, is buried beside him. All of Frieden’s children and their spouses survived Menachem Mendel Frieden, although Miriam’s husband, Maurice, who had moved the family to Cincinnati, Ohio, died just a few months after him, in February 1964. Miriam herself remained in America until 1976, when, in retirement from a career in teaching, she moved back to Israel. She died in 1991.35 Batya remained in Tel Aviv until her death in 1989, while Yehudit remained in Jerusalem for many years but eventually moved to Haifa, where she died in 2004. Ben Zion spent a few years in the United States in the 1950s, but then returned to Israel to pursue various business ventures. He eventually settled in Netanya. Baruch, who never married, finally did graduate from UCLA and remained in the United States until his death in 2011. All together, Menachem Mendel Frieden had eight grandsons and one granddaughter. Some of these grandchildren remained in Israel, but others have lived elsewhere, either temporarily or permanently: in South Africa, Britain, France, and the United States. As the twenty-first century begins, these nine grandchildren have children and grandchildren of their own. All of them have been influenced, even if ever so slightly, by the eventful and purposeful life that Menachem Mendel Frieden fashioned for himself on three continents.

35.  For more on Miriam, see Lee Shai Weissbach, “Miriam Weissbach and Her Melodies for Tehillim,” Journal of Synagogue Music 23:1–2 (July/Dec. 1993).

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Glossary

Aggadah (“lore” or “narrative”; pl Aggadot): That element of rabbinic literature, especially as recorded in the Talmud and in midrash, that is homiletic and expositional, rather than legalistic. aliya (“ascent”; pl aliyot): Immigration to the Land of Israel; or, the ritual of “going up” to recite the blessings before and after the public reading of a portion of the Torah, and sometimes doing the reading as well. Amora ( pl Amoraim): A sage who lived during the three centuries after the redaction of the Mishnah and whose discussions and rulings are embodied in the Gemara. Ashkenazim (adj Ashkenazic): Jews who trace their origins to Central Europe. bar mitzvah: The ceremony marking the entry of a Jewish boy into religious and moral adulthood at age thirteen. Also, the boy himself at the age of thirteen. beraita: A statement of a Tanna, a sage of the Mishnaic period, that is not found in the Mishnah. bimah (“platform” or “stage”): The raised platform in a synagogue from which the Torah is read and from which services are led. bodek: see shochet. brit or brit milah: The Jewish ceremony of ritual circumcision, generally performed on a male child on the eighth day after his birth. challah (pl challot): Braided egg bread baked for the Sabbath and other festive occasions. Chumash: One of the Hebrew terms for the Five Books of Moses, or Pentateuch. etrog (pl etrogim): Citron, used in celebration of the holiday of Sukkot. gaon (pl geonim): The head of one of the great rabbinical academies in Babylonia during a period of about 450 years beginning toward the end of the sixth century ce. More recently, a “genius” or “prodigy” or any high rabbinic authority.

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Glossary Gemara: That element of the Talmud that consists of rabbinical commentaries and expansions on the earlier Mishnah; sometimes used as a synonym for Talmud. get: A document certifying a Jewish divorce, without which former spouses may not remarry according to Jewish law. goyim (“nations”; sing goy): Non-Jews, gentiles. Haganah: The underground military organization of the Yishuv from 1920 until the establishment of the State of Israel. Haggadah: The text used at the Seder on Passover. Halacha (“the way one goes”; adj Halachic): Jewish religious law. halukah (“distribution”): The organized distribution of funds collected for the support of traditionalist religious Jews in Palestine, generally administered by a kollel. hametz: Specifically, any leavened food prepared from five specific grains (wheat, spelt, oats, barley, and rye). More generally, any food product or utensil which, according to religious law, Jews may not consume or use during Passover. haroset: A mixture usually including fruit, nuts, and wine, eaten at the Passover Seder. Hasid ( pl Hasidim): A pious person or, more specifically, a disciple, devotee, or follower of Hasidism or of a specific rebbe. Haskalah: The Jewish Enlightenment; the eighteenth- and nineteenth-century Jewish intellectual movement that advocated an increased exposure to secular education and a greater integration of Jews into mainstream society. hazzan: A synagogue cantor. Havdalah (“differentiation” or “separation”): A brief ceremony marking the end of the Sabbath or a holiday. heder (“room”; pl hadarim): The setting in which children began their traditional Jewish education. hekdesh: A shelter for the poor; bedlam. Histadrut: An abbreviated term for the General Federation of Hebrew Labor in the Land of Israel, founded in 1920 and serving both as a trade union and as the sponsor of a wide range of economic, mutual aid, and cultural activities. Joint, The: The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, founded in 1914 to coordinate relief for Jews in distress throughout the world. Kabbalah: The Jewish mystical tradition. kaporet (“expiation”): A mystical ritual associated with Yom Kippur involving the slaughtering of a chicken and donations to charity.

Glossary kashrut (adj kosher): The system of traditional Jewish dietary laws; adherence to those laws. kiddush (“sanctification”): The blessing said over wine or, sometimes, bread on the Sabbath and other festive occasions. Also, the social hour with refreshments that often follows Sabbath services and at which this blessing is recited. kittel (“robe”): A white robe worn by some Jews on certain special occasions. kohen (“priest”; pl kohanim): A member of the Jewish priestly class that had sacred functions until the destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem, and who, since then, has had certain honorific religious rights and duties. kollel ( pl kollelim): In its original meaning, a charity distribution organization established to support a specific traditionalist community of religious Jews in Palestine. l’chayim (“to life”): The classic Jewish toast. levi: A Levite. lulav ( pl lulavim): A palm frond that, together with myrtle branches, willow branches, and an etrog, is used in celebrating the holiday of Sukkot. maariv: The evening worship service. machzor: A High Holiday prayer book. maftir: The concluding section of the Torah reading on Sabbath and holiday mornings; also, the person honored with the recitation of the blessings before and after the maftir. Maskil ( pl Maskilim): An advocate or follower of the Haskalah. matzah: Unleavened bread, used primarily at Passover. melamed ( pl melamdim): A teacher of young children in a heder. midrash ( pl midrashim): Rabbinic interpretation of or elaboration upon a biblical text, often containing allegorical material and frequently aiming to teach moral lessons. mikvah: A ritual bath used for various Jewish rites of purification. mincha: The afternoon worship service. minyan ( pl minyanim): Traditionally, the quorum of ten adult men needed to conduct public worship services. Mishnah: The first recorded compilation of the “Oral Law,” which complements the “Written Law” of the Torah. The Mishnah was codified around 200 ce and constitutes the core of the Talmud. Also (as m ­ ishnah), an article in the Mishnah. Mitnaged ( pl Mitnagdim): An Orthodox Jewish opponent of Hasidism. moshav: A cooperative agricultural community in Palestine, and later, Israel.

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Glossary moshavah: An early form of Jewish agricultural settlement in Palestine in which the land, houses, and other assets were intended to be the private property of individual farmers, but in which, for practical reasons, some agricultural work was performed in common. musaf: The “additional” worship service, appended to the shacharit service on Sabbaths and certain other special occasions. musar (“ethics”): A system, developed among certain non-Hasidic Orthodox Jews in Lithuania, which promoted a moral outlook based on rabbinic ethical principles and emphasized introspection, and which influenced many yeshivot, including the famous Slobodka yeshiva near Kovno. oneg shabbat (“Sabbath delight”): A Sabbath gathering, often after services, involving socializing, eating and drinking, and sometimes singing. Pale of Settlement: The western portion of the Russian empire to which Jewish residence was restricted, with few exceptions. Reb: A title of respect derived from the Hebrew word for “master,” always used together with a given name. rebbe: A Hasidic master or charismatic rabbi. rosh yeshiva ( pl roshei yeshivot): The headmaster or dean of a rabbinical academy. Seder (“order”): The ceremonial meal held on each of the first two nights of Passover by traditional Jews in the Diaspora, and on the first night only by Jews in the Land of Israel. sefira or sefirat ha’omer (“counting” or “counting of the sheaves”): The fortynine days between Passover and Shavuot, during which each day is ritually enumerated and during which certain joyful activities are prohibited. semicha (“laying on of hands”): Rabbinical ordination. Sephardim (adj Sephardic): Jews who trace their origins to the Iberian Peninsula. Also sometimes applied to Hasidic groups that had adopted some of the liturgical conventions of Sephardim. Shabbat: The Hebrew word for the Sabbath; Saturday. shacharit: The morning worship service. shiva (“seven”): The seven-day period of formal mourning observed by family members after the burial of a close relative. shmurah matzah (“watched” or “guarded” matzah): Matzah prepared from wheat that is carefully watched over from the time it is still in the field. shochet: A ritual slaughterer who butchers meat in accordance with the laws of kashrut. Sometimes paired with bodek, one who conducts inspections to determine the kashrut of meat. shtetl: A village or small-town Jewish community of Eastern Europe.

Glossary sukkah: A temporary hut, roofed with branches, erected for use during the festival of Sukkot. tallit: A Jewish prayer shawl with tassels at each corner. tallit katan (“small tallit”): A four-cornered garment with a tassel at each corner worn all day long by observant Jewish males, usually under their street clothing. Talmud: The Mishnah and the Gemara together, codified during the second through sixth centuries in two versions, one in Babylonia and one in Jerusalem. Tanach: The Hebrew Bible, expressed as an acronym based on the names of its three sections: Torah, Nevi’im (Prophets), and Ketuvim (Writings). Tanna ( pl Tannaim): A sage of the Mishnaic period, approximately 70 to 200 ce. tefillin: Phylacteries used during morning prayers; two small leather cases containing biblical texts and worn, with the aid of leather straps, on the forehead and the arm. Tosafist: A French or German Talmud scholar and commentator of the century or so after the death of the commentator Rashi around 1100 ce. treif: As an adjective, non-kosher; as a noun, a thing that is non-kosher. Yishuv (“settlement”): The Jewish community of Palestine before the establishment of the State of Israel in 1948. zaddik ( pl zaddikim): A righteous or pious individual; often used to refer to a man considered a spiritual master such as a Hasidic rebbe. Zohar: The principal text of Kabbalah, appearing first in Spain in the thirteenth century but claiming to contain much older traditions.

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Index

Abeli, 172, 219 African–Americans, attitudes toward, 227, 230–31, 233, 264, 265–66 Agranat, Aaron–Joseph and Polya, 358, 358n2, 360 Agudat Yisrael, 298, 298n27 Aharonowitz, Yosef, 322, 322n30 Ahavat Zion, 173, 173n5 Ahuzat Bayit, 319n27 Albo, Joseph, 91, 91n28 Aliyot, 35n25; First Aliya, 287; Second Aliya, 287; Third Aliya, 34, 283, 292, 307; Fourth Aliya, 328–29, 329n39 Al–Kawukju, Fawzi, 421 Allenby, Edmund, 269n19 Allenby Hotel, Jerusalem, 285–86 Al–Qadar al Husseini, Abdul, 421, 421n31 Alsheikh, Moshe, 312, 312n18 Altschul family, 288, 288n12 American Colony, Jerusalem, 337, 337n7 American Council for Judaism, 414, 414n19 American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, 20, 305, 307n9, 309–10, 314, 316, 317, 330, 346 American Zion Commonwealth (Kehilat Zion), 284–85, 285n9, 305, 306, 308, 309n12 Amram Gaon (Amram ben Sheshna), 152n39 Angels: of Good Children, 94; of Goodness and Evil, 83 Anglo–Palestine Bank, 288n13, 325, 390 Antin, Mary, xxi, 73 Antisemistim: in America, 243, 285; shipboard, 365–66 Anyksht, 18, 257, 371 Apotikai Bank, 329, 329n37

Arab–Jewish conflict of 1947–1948, 418–22, 427–40 passim; armistice, 444 Arab Liberation Army, 420–21 Arab riots: of early 1920s, 273–74, 273n27, 286–87; of 1929, 342–45; of 1936–1939, 287, 358–59, 360–61, 421; following UN partition vote, 415–16, 418–20 Assaf, David, xiii Atarot, 420, 420n27 Atlit, 441n20 Autobiographical writing, nature of, xii–xv, xvi Ba’al Ha’akeidah (Isaac ben Moses Arama), 26n6 Baal Shem Tov, 26–27, 26n10 Bachya ben Joseph ibn Pakuda, 26n6, 91 Balfour Declaration, 268, 268n18, 284, 305, 423; opposition to, 273–74, 273n27, 292 Balfouria, 285n9, 306n7, 308–9, 309n12 Baltimore Bargain House, 57 Bar mitzvah, 104–5, 106–7; Frieden’s, 105–9, 106n11 Baroway, Aaron, 378 Bathhouse, in Kvatki, 47–48, 48n6, 79, 81–82, 99 Be’er Tuvia, 346, 346n27 Beilinson, Moshe, 35n26, 322 Beit Ha’arava (film), 428, 428n5 Beit Hakerem, 308, 308n11, 336n5, 364n9 Beit Oved, 124–25, 125n8 Ben Avi, Itamar, 294, 294n20, 343–44 Ben–Hillel Hacohen, Mordechai, 321, 321n28, 347–48 Ben Yehuda, Eliezer, 294n20 Ben Yehuda Street bombing, 429–30, 430n6 Ben Ze’ev, Yehuda Leib, 175n9

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Index Berkson, Isaac B., 367, 367n13 Berlin, Lewis (or Louis), 266, 266n13 Bernadotte, Folke, 439–40, 439n17 Bevin, Ernest, 386, 386n36 Bezalel art academy, 298, 298n24 Biale, David, 180n3 Bialik, Chaim Nachman, 113, 113n19 Birth control, 60, 247n23 Birz, 36, 41, 181–82, 184, 196, 196n20, 197, 198 Bizerte, 377 Boer War, 371, 371n22 Bols, Louis J., 423. 423n36 Brandeis, Louis, 270n25, 306–7 British Jewry, history of, 422, 422nn32, 33, 34 British mandate, for Palestine, 268n18, 291–92, 291n16, 359, 386–88; final months of, 418–22 Broide, Yishaya, 315, 316 “Buffs” (British army unit), 379, 379n28 Bukharin neighborhood, Jerusalem, 290, 290n15 Caro, Joseph, 18n9, 28 Catskill Mountains, 267, 267n17 Census: of Russian empire in 1897, 33n 23, 46n2, 257n1; of Israel in 1949, 442 Central Bank of Cooperative Institutions in Palestine, 347–49, 347n29, 348n30 Chabad Hasidism, 16n4, 17n7, 30, 113, 228 Chain migration, 43–44, 203 Champlain (ship), 361n7, 376 Chok L’yisrael, 21 Cigarette industry, in Palestine, 297–300 Cold War, 417, 417n25 Construction industry: in Palestine, 307–8, 328–29; in Israel, 445 Copenhagen, 221 Cöslin, Chaim ben Naphtali, 175n9 Courland, 17n6, 33n21, 46n3 Currency, of Palestine, 298n26, 326n33, 336, 336n6 Curtiss–Wright aircraft manufacturers, 380n29 Czechoslovakia, 358–59, 358n1, 359n4 Danzig, Abraham, 151n37 Declaration of Independence, of Israel, 432–33 De Sola Pool, David, 305, 305n4, 309–10, 314, 367 Discrimination against Jews, in Russia, 16n3, 20n12, 34, 41, 80, 109, 196–97, 218

Dowries, 210–12 Draft evasion, in Russian empire, 37, 41, 52, 190–94 Dushkin, Alexander M., 364, 364n9, 366–67, 367n14 Dvinsk, 17, 17n6, 112, 194; army examinations in, 52, 191; Frieden’s early married life in, 219–20; Frieden’s yeshiva studies in, 118–30, 163–64, 168; Porat family in, 208–9, 212, 215 “Eating days,” 121–26, 131; in Lyady, 170–71 Education: in heder, 18, 94–96, 95n1, 102–3; in Palestine, 290–93, 366–68; of females, 69n41, 211–12. See also Yeshivas Egypt, British rule in, 281–82, 281n5 Ein Kerem, 435 Ein Ya’akov, 35n27, 96 Elijah the Prophet, 84n15, 140–41, 141n9 Elisha, the Man of the Wings, 89n21 Ellis Island, 222 Elshtein, Israel Asher, 295–96, 295n21 Emden, Jacob, 259 n4 Emissaries: from Palestine, 304–5, 310–13; from yeshivas, 121, 166; Hasidic, 29–30, 193 Epstein, Jacob, 57 Epstein, Rehavia, 378 Erter, Isaac, 29n12 Etzel (Irgun), 386–87, 386nn35, 37, 416 Farm management: by Frieden, 197–201; by Lithuanian Jews, 196–97, 199–200 Fast days, 78n7, 144, 145n20. See also High Holidays Fast of the firstborn, 138–39 Fishing: in Kvatki, 104; in Norfolk, 373–74 Flexner, Bernard, 347, 347n28 Frieden (né Ziv), Alexander and family, 67–69, 68n39, 349 Frieden (né Milner, later Ziv), Avraham, 22, 45–47, 46n2, 64, 66, 132, 194, 264; and leased estate, 196–201 passim; and matchmaking, 206–12 passim; customs of, 29–30, 36, 164, 225–26; during holidays, 139–40, 147, 154, 157; in America, 66. 265, 266, 267; Kvatki home and store of, 48–49; on Shabbat, 107–8; visits Dvinsk, 115, 163, 220 Frieden, Baruch, 361, 380, 381, 399–403, 402n7, 455; birth of 325–27

Index Frieden, Batya, see Osherowitz (née Frieden), Batya Frieden, Ben Zion, 327, 380, 385–86, 388–91, 430, 438, 453, 455; birth of, 266; in Haganah, 391, 391n43, 442 Frieden (né Ziv), Chaim (Hyman) and family, 54–60, 62–63, 196–98, 232–37, 241, 242, 375 Frieden, Dinah, 386–87, 388–89, 391–93, 430 Frieden (né Ziv), Eliezer Yitzhak (Louis) and family, 47, 49–51, 61, 62, 225, 231–32, 265, 265n12, 375 Frieden (née Rubin, later Ziv), Esther Sarah, 34, 46–47, 46n2, 65, 175, 187, 189, 191; and family store, 169; cares for granddaughter, 251–52, 354; frugality of, 225–26; in Palestine, 328; on Passover, 140; on Shabbat, 107–8 Frieden (né Ziv), Hillel (Harry) and family, 61, 62, 63–64, 375 Frieden, Miriam, see Weissbach (née Frieden), Miriam Frieden (née Ziv), Reichel (Ray) and family, 69–71, 161, 375 Frieden (né Ziv), Shmuel (Simon) and family, 64–65, 64nn11, 12, 375 Frieden (né Ziv), Shneur Zalman (Sam) and family, 54–55, 60–63, 232–37, 241, 375 Frieden (né Ziv), Yehoshua (Jesse) and family, 65–67, 68, 264, 248–49, 375 Frieden, Yehudit, see Malkoff (née Frieden), Yehudit Gaon of Vilna (Eliyahu ben Solomon Zalman), 23, 28, 129, 129n16, 172, 172n4 Garfield, Frank, 288, 288n14 Gav–Yam company (Bayside Land Corporation), 337, 337n8, 351, 353 Gentleman’s Agreement (film), 427n3 Gersonides (Levi ben Gerson; Ralbag), 90, 90n25 GI Bill of Rights, 401–2, 401n6 Gluska, Zechariah, 436–37. 436n13 Goldberg, Louis I., 263, 263n9, 269n20 Goldstein, Moshe, 340–41 Gordon, Jacob David, 228, 228n6 Grabski, Władysław, 329, 329n39 Grand Mufti, 342–43, 342n18, 435 Green, Jeffrey, xviii, xxx, xxxvi Greenberg, Joseph, 266–68, 272

Gunzburg, Mordecai Aaron, xvi Gusdorf, Georges, xiii Gush Etzion, 420, 420nn27, 28 Habima, 436, 436n12 Haganah, 343, 386, 386n37, 391,416, 419–20, 420n28 Haifa, 296, 306n6, 344, 416, 437–38, 447; and Kupat Milveh, 310, 314–15, 317–18; Frieden’s daughter Miriam in, 389, 439 Hai Gaon (Hai ben Sherira), 152, 153n40 Hakalir, Eleazer, 159, 159n57 Halevi, Yehuda, 91, 91n28 Hallel, 139, 413–14 Halukah, 310–13 Hanina ben Dosa, 89n23 Hanukkah, 75n1, 88n17, 442 Hasidism: appeal of, 30–31; opposition to, 27–29; origins, 25–27; rebbes’ networking in, 193, 194; storytelling in, 31–32 Haskalah, see Maskilim Hasmoneans, 25, 25n3, 442 Hatam Sofer, 113, 113n20 Hebron, 304, 312, 394 Heller, Yom Tov Lipmann, 15n1 Herzl, Theodor, 432, 444 Hexter, Maurice Beck, 346, 346n26 Heywood, Colin, xvi High Holidays, 145–54, 148nn26, 27, 150n34, 406, 447 Hirshberg, Yehuda and Freida, 397, 397n1 Histadrut, 19n10, 300n28, 308, 320–23 Holocaust (Shoah), xxv, 20, 34, 37, 53–54, 428–29 Hoshana Rabah, 159, 159n58 Hotel Warshavsky, Jerusalem, 286, 293 Hussaini, Haj Amin el, 342–43, 342n18, 435 Ibn Ezra, Abraham ben Meir, 90–91, 91n27 Ibn Gabirol, Solomon, 153n42 Immigration, to America, 203, 221, 222n15 Installment sales, 238–39, 239n18 Intermarriage, 71–72 Irgun (Etzel), 386–87, 386nn35, 37; 416 Ish Gamzu, Nachum, 89n19 Israel Corporation, 354, 354n93 Jaffa, 273, 305n5, 319n27, 344, 415, 418 James, William, xxi Jerusalem: and halukah, 312–13; Arab disturbances in, 273n27, 342–44, 418,

465

466

Index 430n6; as holy city, 304; convention center, 155, 155n45; during and after War of Independence, 419–20, 433, 444–45; Frieden’s early years in, 286–88, 290, 293–301 passim; Frieden’s employment in, 336–42; Frieden’s final years in, 446, 455; in ancient times, 78n7, 157; Kupat Milveh in, 314–17 passim, 325; medieval yeshivas in, 311, 311n17; proposed internationalization, 439–40; Shlah Hakadosh in, 4n6, 312. See also individual Jerusalem neighborhoods Jerusalem Gymnasia, 290, 290n15 Jewish Agency, 291–92, 291n16, 343, 378, 386, 402, 424. See also Zionist Executive Jewish Brigade, 379, 379n28 Jewish National Fund (JNF), 269n21, 305–6, 337n8, 351, 427, 428 Kabbalah, 27, 30, 30n15, 84, 149, 179 Kadishavitz family, 257–58, 257n1, 258n2, 371–72, 406 Kaplan, Louis, 252–53 Kaporet ritual, 149–50 Kapust, rebbe of, 165, 166, 208 Katznelson, Berl, 322, 322n30 Kehilat Zion (American Zion Commonwealth), 284–85, 285n9, 305, 306, 308, 309n12 Keren Hayesod, 270n25 Kesef Mishneh, 404, 404n10 Kesselman and Kesselman, 340–41, 340n16 Kfar Etzion, 416 Kfar Ivri, 420, 420n27 King David, 76, 84 King David Hotel, Jerusalem, 386n37 Kitzur Shulchan Aruch, 18n9, 21 Kleinstein, Kalman, and family, 123–24 Knesset: first elections, 443–44, 443n23; transfer to Jerusalem, 444–45 Kolbo, 152, 153n40 Kollel America, 304, 304n1 Kollel charity organizations, 304–5, 312–13 Kol Nidre, 151–53 Kook, Abraham Isaac, 342, 342n17 Kook, Dov, 355, 355n46 Kotik, Yekhezkel, xiii, 73 Krochmal, Nachman, 29, 29n14 Kupat Milveh, see Loan Bank Kvatki, description of, 47–49, 75, 79–80; Sunday in, 79–80, 85–86

Lapin, Bezalel, 324, 324n32 Leavitt, Moses A., 350, 350n37 Lehi (Stern Gang), 386–87, 386nn35, 37 Leitman, Alex, 252–53 Lejeune, Philippe, xiii–xiv, xxii Lekach Tov, 98n3 Levin, Ben Zion, 335–36, 336n5, 339–42, 340n14, 347 Levin, Moshe Gutel, 295–96, 295n21 Levin, Shmaryahu, xvi, 3, 3n3, 73, 270, 278 Levinsohn, Isaac Baer, 29n12 Levi Yitzhak of Berditchev, 31, 31n16 Libau, 221, 222n15, 251 Libau–Romny rail line, 46n4, 118 Lida, 53, 112, 191, 218–19 Liebman family, 51, 57, 57nn21, 22, 58n23, 232–33, 235, 255 Lifshitz, Noah, 87, 165, 169, 175 Lifshitz family, 80, 80n8, 169, 196 Lilienblum, Moshe Leib, xn3, xvi Lintup, Pinchas, 41, 181–83, 185–87, 186n11 Loan Bank (Kupat Milveh), 309, 314–19, 320–22, 323–26, 335–37, 346–49, 352–53; embezzlement at, 340–42; Fourth Aliya and, 328–30 Lod, 284, 415 Lubavitch, Hasidism of, 16n4, 17n7, 40n33; yeshiva in, 113 Lubianiker, Zvi, 322 Lulav and etrog, 110, 158–59, 158n56 Lung disease, 242–43, 246–47, 250, 267, 267n17, 450; son Baruch’s, 400, 400n4, 401; Frieden’s, 381 Lyady: Frieden’s studies in, 164–75; history of yeshiva in, 166; rebbe of, 16, 16n4, 21, 21n16, 28, 29, 164, 192–93; rebbe’s court in, 162, 166, 170 Macht, Alexander, 390n42 Maggid of Mezhirech (Dov Baer of Mezhirech), 21n16, 27 Magnes, Judah L., 314n21, 338–39; and Loan Bank, 314, 316, 330; at Hebrew University, 367–68, 367n15 Maharsha (Shmuel Eliezer Eidels), 168n2 Mail order sales, 237–38 Maimon, Solomon, xvi, xviin21 Maimonides (Rambam), 4n6, 32, 69n41, 90, 91,105n8, 111, 150, 155, 404 Makleff family, 344, 344n22 Malkoff, Avraham, 452

Index Malkoff, David, 438 Malkoff (née Frieden), Yehudit, 379–80, 433, 438, 446, 455; birth of, 264; marriage of, 355–56, 355n47 Malkoff, Yoel, 355, 379, 385, 428 Malta, 377 Mandelbaum, Simcha, 337, 337n7 Mankato, Minnesota, 243–44 Mapu, Abraham, 173, 173n5 Marine Carp (ship), 434, 434n9 Marseilles, 279–80, 364, 376, 398 Maskilim, 23, 28–29; of Birz, 184–85; yeshiva students as, 171–74 Matchmaking, 190, 201, 202, 203–5 Maugham, W. Somerset, xvi Mauretania (ship), 273n26 May Laws, 16n3 Mekor Chaim, 420, 420n27 Mekorot water company, 353 Merhavia, 305–6, 306n6 Milan, 360 Millo, Aprile, 70n42 Milner, Chaim, 16, 20–21 Milner, Ella Shayna, 17–18 Milner, Mendel, 17–18, 118, 131, 132, 164, 210, 212 Milner, Miriam, 16–17 Milner, Shalom (Frieden’s cousin), 19, 179–81 Milner, Shalom (Frieden’s great–grandfather), 14 Milner, Shalom (Frieden’s uncle), 16–17, 50 Milner, Ya’akov, 18–19 Milner, Yom Tov Lipmann and Marisha, 14–16, 46, 118, 131 Milner, Zalman, 15, 18, 19–20 Mintz, Alan, xiii, xiv, xxii, xxiv–xxv, xxvii Mir, yeshiva of, 112, 178 Miracles, 88–91 Mitnagdim, 27–28 Mohl, Emanuel: Frieden’s initial encounter with, 284–85, 285n9; and American Zion Commonwealth, 306–9 passim; and Loan Bank, 314–30 passim, 335–37, 340– 42, 340n14, 346–50 passim; and Sophia Berger, 337–40, 340n15; retirement of, 351–52, 351n38, 353n40 Mohl (née Berger), Sophia, 337–40, 340n15 Moseley, Marcus, xii, xiv, xv, xxiv, 173n5 Mossinsohn, Ben Zion, 270–71, 270n25 Musrarah neighborhood, Jerusalem, 287

Nachmanides (Ramban), 4n6, 150, 311 Nachman of Bratslav, 31–32; 32n18 Nakdimon, 88n18 Name changes, 44, 45–46, 54–55 Naples, 398 Ne’ilah, 151–54, 151n36 Nemunik River, 47, 47n5, 48, 48n8, 75, 77–79 Netanya, 352, 421, 455 New London, Connecticut, 349–50 New York World’s Fair of 1939, 368–69, 369nn18, 19, 20 Nicanor, 88n18 Nofet Tzufim, 226n2 Norfolk, Virginia: Frieden as widower in, 249–55; Frieden in, during 1911–1921, 258–75; Frieden’s early years in, 224–25, 227–31, 237–42; Frieden’s relatives in, 21, 42, 51, 54–70 passim; Frieden’s visit of 1932, 349–50; Frieden’s visit of 1939, 370, 372–75; Frieden’s visit of 1947–1948, 400–405, 426–27; snow in, 431; Zionism in, 242, 268–70, 274, 413, 434 Normandie (ship), 361n7, 364, 375 Old City. Jerusalem, 343, 419 Olney, James, xv Oppenheimer, Franz, 306n6 Orchard keeping, in Palestine, 294, 294n19 Ordination, rabbinic, 111, 111n17, 184, 184n7 Osherowitz, Avraham, 354, 354n44, 390, 450 Osherowitz (née Frieden), Batya, 450, 455; birth of, 247; marriage and character of, 354, 355n46 Ovadia ben Avraham of Bartenura, 311, 311n17 Pale of Settlement, 15n2 Palestine Building Loan and Savings Association, 307n10 Palestine Cooperative Company, 307nn9, 10 Palestine Economic Corporation (PEC), 307n9, 340n14, 347nn28, 29, 351n38, 388, 441; constituent institutions, 329n38, 337n8, 339n13, 353n39; merger with Israel Corporation, 354, 354n93 Palestine Gendarmerie, 355n45 Palestine Industrial Bank, 390n39 Palestine Mortgage and Credit Bank, 307n10, 329, 353 Palestine partition plan, 411–14, 411n17

467

468

Index Palestine Post bombing, 429–30, 430n6 Palmach, 416, 416n24 Pascal, Roy, xiii, xv, xx, xxi, xxii, xxiii, xxvi Passman, Charles, 309, 309n12, 346 Passover: games with walnuts, 142–43, 142n13; preparation for, 136–39; Seder, 139–42, 139nn7, 8 Peddling: Friedens’s experience with, 231–37; history of, 55–56; in America, 56–57, 233–34, 238 Perl, Joseph, 20n12 Petach Tikvah, 273, 286, 293–94, 295, 420 Philo of Alexandria, 91, 91n28 Pinchas ben Yair, 89n22 Pomerantz, Asher and Esther, 327–28, 328n36 Ponivezh, 17, 112, 181n4 Popil: Rabbi Hillel of, 19, 178–81; synagogue in, 179–80 Popkin, Jeremy, xxi Porat, Yehuda Leib, 208–10, 212, 213, 218 Port Said, 281–82 Prohibition, 268n16 Provinces, of Russian empire, 15n2, 17n6, 33n21 Qantarah, 282, 282n6 Raanana, 270n24, 362n8 Rabbenu Tam (Jacob ben Meir Tam), 153, 153n41 Rabbinate: in America, 229, 229n8; income from, in Lithuania, 110; preparation for, 110–13 Rabbi Tarfon, 192n17, 405n12 Rabinovitz–Teomim, Eliyahu–David, 181, 181n4, 182 Rakishok, 16. 17, 20n13, 116, 210, 257, 371 Ralbag (Levi ben Gershon; Gersonides), 90, 90n25 Rambam (Moses ben Maimon; Maimonides), 4n6, 32, 69n41, 90, 91,105n8, 111, 150, 155, 404 Ramban (Moses ben Nachman; Nachmanides), 4n6, 150, 311 Rappaport, Solomon Judah, 29, 29n14 Rashbah (Shlomo ben Aderet), 150, 150n32 Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac), 5, 5n9, 47, 95, 129, 168, 437 Reb Heschel (Frieden’s teacher), 94–97, 101–2

Red Jews, 116n2 Rehovot, 283, 283n7 Riga, 48, 48n8 Rogatchover Gaon, 181, 182 Rokeach, Shalom, 32 Romania, 333 Rosen, Joseph, 181, 182 Rosenstein, Dov, 335–36, 336n5 Rosenwald, Julius, 237, 237n16 Rosenwald, Lessing, 414, 414n19 Rosh Hashanah, see High Holidays Rossia (ship), 395–96 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, xvi Rubin, Eliezer and Ita, 33–34, 46 Rubin, Ella Shayna, 34 Rubin, Ethel, 34–35 Rubin, Lippe, 37–38, 63 Rubin, Menachem Mendel, 40–42, 49, 50, 52, 66, 86–87, 181 Rubin, Mendel, 36–37 Rubin, Moshe, 37 Rubin, Rayna, 33 Rubin, Rivka, 33, 34 Rubin, Ya’akov, 24–25, 32–33 Rubin, Ya’akov Yehuda, 36, 198 Rubin, Yehuda Zvi, and family, 35–37 Ruppin, Arthur, 333n2 Ruppin, Kurt, 333 Russian Compound, Jerusalem, 344, 344n21 Russo–Japanese War, 221 Sa’adya Gaon, 26n6, 90, 91 Sabbath: evening meal, 107–8; “extra soul” on, 83–84; observance, 78n7, 82–84, 240, 266; of Consolation, 145; preparations for, in Kvatki, 81–82; third meal, 76 Sack industry, 252–53, 252n27 Safed, 111, 304, 310, 312, 344–45, 353 Saint Paul, Minnesota, 243–49, 248n24 Salomon, Chaim, 295–96, 295n21, 319, 345, 446 Samaritans, 136n Sambatyon River, 116n2 Samson of Sens, 259n4 San Moritz Hotel, New York, 399n3 Savage, Abe, and family, 406–8 Savage, Leon, and family, 262, 401, 403, 406 Savage, Louis, and family, 263, 264; in 1939, 370, 375; in 1947, 400, 401, 403, 408–11, 418 Savage, Nathan, 400

Index Savurai, Moshe, 318, 320 Schach, Shlomo Zalman, 344, 344n22 Schatz, Boris, 298n24 Schneersohn, Menachem Mendel, 40, 40n33 Schneersohn family, 17n7, 20, 28 Schneirson and Son lock factory, 389–91 Sefira, 78n7, 143–44 Segal, Yitzhak Ze’ev, 95, 98–100, 101–02, 133, 161, 262 Seligman family, 257–58, 257n1, 261, 371–72 Shavueli (Kupat Milveh official), 315 Shavuot, 144, 144n15 Shaw Commission, 345n24 Shechem, 420, 421 Sheinkin, Menachem, 305, 305n5 Shemini Atzeret, 156, 156n48, 159–61 Shimon ben Yochai, 89n20 Shlah Hakadosh (Isaiah ben Avraham Halevi Horowitz), 4n6, 25, 312 Shomer (Nachum Meir Shaikewitz), 173n6 Shraga, Jacob, 263–64, 263n11 Shulchan Aruch, 18n9, 28; of the Rebbe of Lyady, 28 Simchat Beit Hasho’evah, 157–59 Simchat Torah, 69n40, 156, 156n48, 159–61 Simon, Julius, 353, 353n40, 360, 378, 380, 388 Singer, Paul, 349 Sirutzina, rebbe of, 192–94 Slobodka, yeshiva of, 40, 49, 112 Smilansky, David, 319–20, 319n27 Social distinctions, in Lithuania, 81–82, 75–76, 98–99, 130–31 Social Security Act, United States, 63n29 Sofer, Moshe, 113, 113n20 South Africa, Jews in, 38–40 Spring Hope, North Carolina, 55, 232, 235 Stam (née Rubin), Rivka, 250, 252 Stam, Samuel, 250, 250n25, 405 Stanislawski, Michael, x, xv, xxvi–xxvii, 180n3 Stendhal, xxi Stern Gang (Lehi), 386–87, 386nn35, 37 St. Moritz, 360–61 Straus, Nellie, 305–6, 306n7 Sukkat Shalom neighborhood, Jerusalem, 297, 297n23 Sukkot, 156–59, 156n48 Synagogue buildings: in Dvinsk, 119–20; in Kvatki, 47, 75–77, 146, 151; in Norfolk, 404–5; in Popil, 179–80; regulations concerning, 404nn9, 10, 122n6

Szold, Robert, 278, 278n2 “Tefilah Zakah” (Prayer of Purity), 151–52, 151n37 Tel Aviv: Arab disturbances in, 273, 344, 415, 418; British curfew in, 386–87; Fourth Aliya and, 328–30; Frieden’s employment in, 318–30 passim, 378; Frieden’s home in, 319–20; Kupat Milveh in, 317 Telz, yeshiva of, 37n28, 187 Ten Lost Tribes, 116n2 Teva Pharmaceutical Industries, 295n21 Thirteen Principles of Faith, 105, 105n8, 128 Three weeks, 78n7, 144, 145 Tiberias, 304, 310, 312, 353 Tishkevitz family, 196, 196n20 Travel, Frieden’s: by Greyhound bus, 369–70; by ship in 1904, 221–22; by ship in 1921, 279–81; by ship in 1932, 350; by ship in 1939, 361–66 , 375–77; by ship in 1947, 396–99; by ship in 1948, 435–38; by stagecoach in Lithuania, 165; by train from Egypt to Palestine, 282–85; by train in Lithuania, 118, 165; by wagon in Lithuania, 116–18, 132 Tsahala, 453, 453n34 Tuberculosis, see Lung disease Tu Bishvat, 428, 428n4 Tudor Hotel, New York, 366, 366n12, 399, 434 Tulkarem, 420, 421 Tzemach Tzedek, 40, 40n33 Tzena Ure’ena, 226n2 United Nations, 411–14, 411nn16, 17, 417–18, 428, 429, 444 United Orthodox Synagogue, Norfolk, 403–5, 403n8 Ussishkin, Menachem, 270–71, 270n25 Venice, 360 Vienna, 359, 360 Vilentchuk, Isaac, 353 Vilna, 54n14, 112, 195, 218–19 Viteles, Harry, 347–49, 350, 352, 353–54, 378 Volozhin, yeshiva of, 100n5, 112, 113, 186n13, 187 Vriesland, Siegfried A. van, 316 Warburg, Felix, 338n9, 346, 346n26 Warburg, Paul, 338n9

469

470

Index Warsaw, 216–17 Washington, D.C., 263, 375, 406–8 Weinstein, Shlomo, 318, 318n25 Weinstein, Solomon J, 309n12 Weisel, Wolfgang von, 343–44, 344n20 Weissbach, Lee Shai, 389, 441 Weissbach, Maurice, 355, 355nn45, 46, 389, 438, 441, 452–53, 455; World War II service of, 379, 385 Weissbach (née Frieden), Miriam: 383, 389, 345, 455; birth of, 242; childhood, 248, 252, 266; during World War II, 379–80; hosts brother, 361; hosts parents, 438–39, 441, 446; marriage of, 354–55, 355n46; returns to America, 349–50, 453 Weissbach, Yehuda, 447–48, 453 Weizmann, Chaim, 270n25, 306–7, 397n1, 423, 444 Weizmann Institute, 397n1 Western Wall, Jerusalem, 345, 345n25 White Paper of 1939, 379, 379n27, 386n36 Winogradow, Daniel, 389, 389n38 Winogradow family, 53, 53n11 Wittenberg’s Yeshiva (Dvinsk), 122 World War I, 46n3, 264, 265, 268–69, 423 World War II, 375–76, 378, 448, 448n27

World Zionist Organization, 270n25 Yechiel ben Yosef of Paris, 311, 311n17, 312 Yehoshua ben Gamla, 384n34 Yemin Moshe, 420, 429n27 Yeshivas: education in, 109, 128n10, 129; location and hierarchy, 112–13 Yom Kippur, see High Holidays Zbishok, 15, 117–18 Zimbalist family, 37–38, 38n29 Zionist Executive, 291, 291n16, 314–15, 318, 329, 423–24. See also Jewish Agency Zionist Organization of America, 270n25, 278 Ziv, Alexander, 53–54, 54n12, 71, 334, 335 Ziv, Avraham, see Frieden (né Milner, later Ziv), Avraham Ziv, Eliyahu, 53, 54, 334, 335 Ziv, Esther Sarah, see Frieden (née Rubin, later Ziv), Esther Sarah Ziv, Ya’akov Shalom. and family, 51–54, 126, 190–92, 201, 359; Frieden’s 1927 visit with, 331, 334–35 Zundel (rabbi of Birz), 41, 181 Zweifel, Eliezer Zvi, 29n13