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THE PROMISED LAND
[Illustration: MASHKE AND FETCHKE]
THE
PROMISED LAND
BY MARY ANTIN
WITH ILLUSTRATIONS
FROM PHOTOGRAPHS
[Illustration]
BOSTON AND NEW YORK
HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
The Riverside Press Cambridge
1912
COPYRIGHT, 1911 AND 1912, BY THE ATLANTIC MONTHLY COMPANY
COPYRIGHT, 1912, BY HOUGHTON MIFFLIN COMPANY
_Published April 1912_
To the Memory of
JOSEPHINE LAZARUS
Who lives in the fulfilment
of her prophecies
CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION xi
I. WITHIN THE PALE 1
II. CHILDREN OF THE LAW 29
III. BOTH THEIR HOUSES 42
IV. DAILY BREAD 60
V. I REMEMBER 79
VI. THE TREE OF KNOWLEDGE 111
VII. THE BOUNDARIES STRETCH 137
VIII. THE EXODUS 163
IX. THE PROMISED LAND 180
X. INITIATION 206
XI. "MY COUNTRY" 222
XII. MIRACLES 241
XIII. A CHILD'S PARADISE 252
XIV. MANNA 264
XV. TARNISHED LAURELS 276
XVI. DOVER STREET 286
XVII. THE LANDLADY 301
XVIII. THE BURNING BUSH 321
XIX. A KINGDOM IN THE SLUMS 337
XX. THE HERITAGE 359
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 365
GLOSSARY 367
ILLUSTRATIONS
MASHKE AND FETCHKE _Frontispiece_
THE GRAVE-DIGGER OF POLOTZK 24
HEDER (HEBREW SCHOOL) FOR BOYS IN POLOTZK 34
THE WOOD MARKET, POLOTZK 52
MY FATHER'S PORTRAIT 70
MY GRANDFATHER'S HOUSE, WHERE I WAS BORN 80
THE MEAT MARKET, POLOTZK 98
SABBATH LOAVES FOR SALE (BREAD MARKET, POLOTZK) 124
WINTER SCENE ON THE DVINA 144
UNION PLACE (BOSTON) WHERE MY NEW HOME WAITED FOR ME 184
TWOSCORE OF MY FELLOW-CITIZENS--PUBLIC SCHOOL, CHELSEA 230
WHEELER STREET, IN THE LOWER SOUTH END OF BOSTON 264
HARRISON AVENUE IS THE HEART OF THE SOUTH END GHETTO 288
I LIKED TO STAND AND LOOK DOWN ON THE DIM TANGLE OF
RAILROAD TRACKS BELOW 298
THE NATURAL HISTORY CLUB HAD FREQUENT FIELD EXCURSIONS 328
BATES HALL, WHERE I SPENT MY LONGEST HOURS IN THE
LIBRARY 342
THE FAMOUS STUDY, THAT WAS FIT TO HAVE BEEN PRESERVED AS A
SHRINE 346
THE TIDE HAD RUSHED IN, STEALING AWAY OUR SEAWEED
CUSHIONS 362
INTRODUCTION
I was born, I have lived, and I have been made over. Is it not time to
write my life's story? I am just as much out of the way as if I were
dead, for I am absolutely other than the person whose story I have to
tell. Physical continuity with my earlier self is no disadvantage. I
could speak in the third person and not feel that I was masquerading.
I can analyze my subject, I can reveal everything; for _she_, and not
_I_, is my real heroine. My life I have still to live; her life ended
when mine began.
A generation is sometimes a more satisfactory unit for the study of
humanity than a lifetime; and spiritual generations are as easy to
demark as physical ones. Now I am the spiritual offspring of the
marriage within my conscious experience of the Past and the Present.
My second birth was no less a birth because there was no distinct
incarnation. Surely it has happened before that one body served more
than one spiritual organization. Nor am I disowning my father and
mother of the flesh, for they were also partners in the generation of
my second self; copartners with my entire line of ancestors. They gave
me body, so that I have eyes like my father's and hair like my
mother's. The spirit also they gave me, so that I reason like my
father and endure like my mother. But did they set me down in a
sheltered garden, where the sun should warm me, and no winter should
hurt, while they fed me from their hands? No; they early let me run in
the fields--perhaps because I would not be held--and eat of the wild
fruits and drink of the dew. Did they teach me from books, and tell me
what to believe? I soon chose my own books, and built me a world of my
own.
In these discriminations _I_ emerged, a new being, something that had
not been before. And when I discovered my own friends, and ran home
with them to convert my parents to a belief in their excellence, did I
not begin to make my father and mother, as truly as they had ever made
me? Did I not become the parent and they the children, in those
relations of teacher and learner? And so I can say that there has been
more than one birth of myself, and I can regard my earlier self as a
separate being, and make it a subject of study.
A proper autobiography is a death-bed confession. A true man finds so
much work to do that he has no time to contemplate his yesterdays; for
to-day and to-morrow are here, with their impatient tasks. The world
is so busy, too, that it cannot afford to study any man's unfinished
work; for the end may prove it a failure, and the world needs
masterpieces. Still there are circumstances by which a man is
justified in pausing in the middle of his life to contemplate the
years already passed. One who has completed early in life a distinct
task may stop to give an account of it. One who has encountered
unusual adventures under vanishing conditions may pause to describe
them before passing into the stable world. And perhaps he also might
be given an early hearing, who, without having ventured out of the
familiar paths, without having achieved any signal triumph, has lived
his simple life so intensely, so thoughtfully, as to have discovered
in his own experience an interpretation of the universal life.
I am not yet thirty, counting in years, and I am writing my life
history. Under which of the above categories do I find my
justification? I have not accomplished anything, I have not discovered
anything, not even by accident, as Columbus discovered America. My
life has been unusual, but by no means unique. And this is the very
core of the matter. It is because I understand my history, in its
larger outlines, to be typical of many, that I consider it worth
recording. My life is a concrete illustration of a multitude of
statistical facts. Although I have written a genuine personal memoir,
I believe that its chief interest lies in the fact that it is
illustrative of scores of unwritten lives. I am only one of many whose
fate it has been to live a page of modern history. We are the strands
of the cable that binds the Old World to the New. As the ships that
brought us link the shores of Europe and America, so our lives span
the bitter sea of racial differences and misunderstandings. Before we
came, the New World knew not the Old; but since we have begun to come,
the Young World has taken the Old by the hand, and the two are
learning to march side by side, seeking a common destiny.
Perhaps I have taken needless trouble to furnish an excuse for my
autobiography. My age alone, my true age, would be reason enough for
my writing. I began life in the Middle Ages, as I shall prove, and
here am I still, your contemporary in the twentieth century, thrilling
with your latest thought.
Had I no better excuse for writing, I still might be driven to it by
my private needs. It is in one sense a matter of my personal
salvation. I was at a most impressionable age when I was transplanted
to the new soil. I was in that period when even normal children,
undisturbed in their customary environment, begin to explore their own
hearts, and endeavor to account for themselves and their world. And my
zest for self-exploration seems not to have been distracted by the
necessity of exploring a new outer universe. I embarked on a double
voyage of discovery, and an exciting life it was! I took note of
everything. I could no more keep my mind from the shifting, changing
landscape than an infant can keep his eyes from the shining candle
moved across his field of vision. Thus everything impressed itself on
my memory, and with double associations; for I was constantly
referring my new world to the old for comparison, and the old to the
new for elucidation. I became a student and philosopher by force of
circumstances.
Had I been brought to America a few years earlier, I might have
written that in such and such a year my father emigrated, just as I
would state what he did for a living, as a matter of family history.
Happening when it did, the emigration became of the most vital
importance to me personally. All the processes of uprooting,
transportation, replanting, acclimatization, and development took
place in my own soul. I felt the pang, the fear, the wonder, and the
joy of it. I can never forget, for I bear the scars. But I want to
forget--sometimes I long to forget. I think I have thoroughly
assimilated my past--I have done its bidding--I want now to be of
to-day. It is painful to be consciously of two worlds. The Wandering
Jew in me seeks forgetfulness. I am not afraid to live on and on, if
only I do not have to remember too much. A long past vividly
remembered is like a heavy garment that clings to your limbs when you
would run. And I have thought of a charm that should release me from
the folds of my clinging past. I take the hint from the Ancient
Mariner, who told his tale in order to be rid of it. I, too, will tell
my tale, for once, and never hark back any more. I will write a bold
"Finis" at the end, and shut the book with a bang!
THE PROMISED LAND
CHAPTER I
WITHIN THE PALE
When I was a little girl, the world was divided into two parts;
namely, Polotzk, the place where I lived, and a strange land called
Russia. All the little girls I knew lived in Polotzk, with their
fathers and mothers and friends. Russia was the place where one's
father went on business. It was so far off, and so many bad things
happened there, that one's mother and grandmother and grown-up aunts
cried at the railroad station, and one was expected to be sad and
quiet for the rest of the day, when the father departed for Russia.
After a while there came to my knowledge the existence of another
division, a region intermediate between Polotzk and Russia. It seemed
there was a place called Vitebsk, and one called Vilna, and Riga, and
some others. From those places came photographs of uncles and cousins
one had never seen, and letters, and sometimes the uncles themselves.
These uncles were just like people in Polotzk; the people in Russia,
one understood, were very different. In answer to one's questions, the
visiting uncles said all sorts of silly things, to make everybody
laugh; and so one never found out why Vitebsk and Vilna, since they
were not Polotzk, were not as sad as Russia. Mother hardly cried at
all when the uncles went away.
One time, when I was about eight years old, one of my grown-up
cousins went to Vitebsk. Everybody went to see her off, but I didn't.
I went with her. I was put on the train, with my best dress tied up in
a bandana, and I stayed on the train for hours and hours, and came to
Vitebsk. I could not tell, as we rushed along, where the end of
Polotzk was. There were a great many places on the way, with strange
names, but it was very plain when we got to Vitebsk.
The railroad station was a big place, much bigger than the one in
Polotzk. Several trains came in at once, instead of only one. There
was an immense buffet, with fruits and confections, and a place where
books were sold. My cousin never let go my hand, on account of the
crowd. Then we rode in a cab for ever so long, and I saw the most
beautiful streets and shops and houses, much bigger and finer than any
in Polotzk.
We remained in Vitebsk several days, and I saw many wonderful things,
but what gave me my one great surprise was something that wasn't new
at all. It was the river--the river Dvina. Now the Dvina is in
Polotzk. All my life I had seen the Dvina. How, then, could the Dvina
be in Vitebsk? My cousin and I had come on the train, but everybody
knew that a train could go everywhere, even to Russia. It became clear
to me that the Dvina went on and on, like a railroad track, whereas I
had always supposed that it stopped where Polotzk stopped. I had never
seen the end of Polotzk; I meant to, when I was bigger. But how could
there be an end to Polotzk now? Polotzk was everything on both sides
of the Dvina, as all my life I had known; and the Dvina, it now turned
out, never broke off at all. It was very curious that the Dvina should
remain the same, while Polotzk changed into Vitebsk!
The mystery of this transmutation led to much fruitful thinking. The
boundary between Polotzk and the rest of the world was not, as I had
supposed, a physical barrier, like the fence which divided our garden
from the street. The world went like this now: Polotzk--more
Polotzk--more Polotzk--Vitebsk! And Vitebsk was not so different, only
bigger and brighter and more crowded. And Vitebsk was not the end. The
Dvina, and the railroad, went on beyond Vitebsk,--went on to Russia.
Then was Russia more Polotzk? Was here also no dividing fence? How I
wanted to see Russia! But very few people went there. When people went
to Russia it was a sign of trouble; either they could not make a
living at home, or they were drafted for the army, or they had a
lawsuit. No, nobody went to Russia for pleasure. Why, in Russia lived
the Czar, and a great many cruel people; and in Russia were the
dreadful prisons from which people never came back.
Polotzk and Vitebsk were now bound together by the continuity of the
earth, but between them and Russia a formidable barrier still
interposed. I learned, as I grew older, that much as Polotzk disliked
to go to Russia, even more did Russia object to letting Polotzk come.
People from Polotzk were sometimes turned back before they had
finished their business, and often they were cruelly treated on the
way. It seemed there were certain places in Russia--St. Petersburg,
and Moscow, and Kiev--where my father or my uncle or my neighbor must
never come at all, no matter what important things invited them. The
police would seize them and send them back to Polotzk, like wicked
criminals, although they had never done any wrong.
It was strange enough that my relatives should be treated like this,
but at least there was this excuse for sending them back to Polotzk,
that they belonged there. For what reason were people driven out of
St. Petersburg and Moscow who had their homes in those cities, and had
no other place to go to? Ever so many people, men and women and even
children, came to Polotzk, where they had no friends, with stories of
cruel treatment in Russia; and although they were nobody's relatives,
they were taken in, and helped, and set up in business, like
unfortunates after a fire.
It was very strange that the Czar and the police should want all
Russia for themselves. It was a very big country; it took many days
for a letter to reach one's father in Russia. Why might not everybody
be there who wanted to?
I do not know when I became old enough to understand. The truth was
borne in on me a dozen times a day, from the time I began to
distinguish words from empty noises. My grandmother told me about it,
when she put me to bed at night. My parents told me about it, when
they gave me presents on holidays. My playmates told me, when they
drew me back into a corner of the gateway, to let a policeman pass.
Vanka, the little white-haired boy, told me all about it, when he ran
out of his mother's laundry on purpose to throw mud after me when I
happened to pass. I heard about it during prayers, and when women
quarrelled in the market place; and sometimes, waking in the night, I
heard my parents whisper it in the dark. There was no time in my life
when I did not hear and see and feel the truth--the reason why Polotzk
was cut off from the rest of Russia. It was the first lesson a little
girl in Polotzk had to learn. But for a long while I did not
understand. Then there came a time when I knew that Polotzk and
Vitebsk and Vilna and some other places were grouped together as the
"Pale of Settlement," and within this area the Czar commanded me to
stay, with my father and mother and friends, and all other people like
us. We must not be found outside the Pale, because we were Jews.
So there was a fence around Polotzk, after all. The world was divided
into Jews and Gentiles. This knowledge came so gradually that it could
not shock me. It trickled into my consciousness drop by drop. By the
time I fully understood that I was a prisoner, the shackles had grown
familiar to my flesh.
The first time Vanka threw mud at me, I ran home and complained to my
mother, who brushed off my dress and said, quite resignedly, "How can
I help you, my poor child? Vanka is a Gentile. The Gentiles do as they
like with us Jews." The next time Vanka abused me, I did not cry, but
ran for shelter, saying to myself, "Vanka is a Gentile." The third
time, when Vanka spat on me, I wiped my face and thought nothing at
all. I accepted ill-usage from the Gentiles as one accepts the
weather. The world was made in a certain way, and I had to live in it.
Not quite all the Gentiles were like Vanka. Next door to us lived a
Gentile family which was very friendly. There was a girl as big as I,
who never called me names, and gave me flowers from her father's
garden. And there were the Parphens, of whom my grandfather rented his
store. They treated us as if we were not Jews at all. On our festival
days they visited our house and brought us presents, carefully
choosing such things as Jewish children might accept; and they liked
to have everything explained to them, about the wine and the fruit and
the candles, and they even tried to say the appropriate greetings and
blessings in Hebrew. My father used to say that if all the Russians
were like the Parphens, there would be no trouble between Gentiles and
Jews; and Fedora Pavlovna, the landlady, would reply that the Russian
_people_ were not to blame. It was the priests, she said, who taught
the people to hate the Jews. Of course she knew best, as she was a
very pious Christian. She never passed a church without crossing
herself.
The Gentiles were always crossing themselves; when they went into a
church, and when they came out, when they met a priest, or passed an
image in the street. The dirty beggars on the church steps never
stopped crossing themselves; and even when they stood on the corner of
a Jewish street, and received alms from Jewish people, they crossed
themselves and mumbled Christian prayers. In every Gentile house there
was what they called an "icon," which was an image or picture of the
Christian god, hung up in a corner, with a light always burning before
it. In front of the icon the Gentiles said their prayers, on their
knees, crossing themselves all the time.
I tried not to look in the corner where the icon was, when I came into
a Gentile house. I was afraid of the cross. Everybody was, in
Polotzk--all the Jews, I mean. For it was the cross that made the
priests, and the priests made our troubles, as even some Christians
admitted. The Gentiles said that we had killed their God, which was
absurd, as they never had a God--nothing but images. Besides, what
they accused us of had happened so long ago; the Gentiles themselves
said it was long ago. Everybody had been dead for ages who could have
had anything to do with it. Yet they put up crosses everywhere, and
wore them on their necks, on purpose to remind themselves of these
false things; and they considered it pious to hate and abuse us,
insisting that we had killed their God. To worship the cross and to
torment a Jew was the same thing to them. That is why we feared the
cross.
Another thing the Gentiles said about us was that we used the blood of
murdered Christian children at the Passover festival. Of course that
was a wicked lie. It made me sick to think of such a thing. I knew
everything that was done for Passover, from the time I was a very
little girl. The house was made clean and shining and holy, even in
the corners where nobody ever looked. Vessels and dishes that were
used all the year round were put away in the garret, and special
vessels were brought out for the Passover week. I used to help unpack
the new dishes, and find my own blue mug. When the fresh curtains were
put up, and the white floors were uncovered, and everybody in the
house put on new clothes, and I sat down to the feast in my new dress,
I felt clean inside and out. And when I asked the Four Questions,
about the unleavened bread and the bitter herbs and the other things,
and the family, reading from their books, answered me, did I not know
all about Passover, and what was on the table, and why? It was wicked
of the Gentiles to tell lies about us. The youngest child in the house
knew how Passover was kept.
The Passover season, when we celebrated our deliverance from the land
of Egypt, and felt so glad and thankful, as if it had only just
happened, was the time our Gentile neighbors chose to remind us that
Russia was another Egypt. That is what I heard people say, and it was
true. It was not so bad in Polotzk, within the Pale; but in Russian
cities, and even more in the country districts, where Jewish families
lived scattered, by special permission of the police, who were always
changing their minds about letting them stay, the Gentiles made the
Passover a time of horror for the Jews. Somebody would start up that
lie about murdering Christian children, and the stupid peasants would
get mad about it, and fill themselves with vodka, and set out to kill
the Jews. They attacked them with knives and clubs and scythes and
axes, killed them or tortured them, and burned their houses. This was
called a "pogrom." Jews who escaped the pogroms came to Polotzk with
wounds on them, and horrible, horrible stories, of little babies torn
limb from limb before their mothers' eyes. Only to hear these things
made one sob and sob and choke with pain. People who saw such things
never smiled any more, no matter how long they lived; and sometimes
their hair turned white in a day, and some people became insane on the
spot.
Often we heard that the pogrom was led by a priest carrying a cross
before the mob. Our enemies always held up the cross as the excuse of
their cruelty to us. I never was in an actual pogrom, but there were
times when it threatened us, even in Polotzk; and in all my fearful
imaginings, as I hid in dark corners, thinking of the horrible things
the Gentiles were going to do to me, I saw the cross, the cruel cross.
I remember a time when I thought a pogrom had broken out in our
street, and I wonder that I did not die of fear. It was some Christian
holiday, and we had been warned by the police to keep indoors. Gates
were locked; shutters were barred. If a child cried, the nurse
threatened to give it to the priest, who would soon be passing by.
Fearful and yet curious, we looked through the cracks in the
shutters. We saw a procession of peasants and townspeople, led by a
number of priests, carrying crosses and banners and images. In the
place of honor was carried a casket, containing a relic from the
monastery in the outskirts of Polotzk. Once a year the Gentiles
paraded with this relic, and on that occasion the streets were
considered too holy for Jews to be about; and we lived in fear till
the end of the day, knowing that the least disturbance might start a
riot, and a riot lead to a pogrom.
On the day when I saw the procession through a crack in the shutter,
there were soldiers and police in the street. This was as usual, but I
did not know it. I asked the nurse, who was pressing to the crack over
my head, what the soldiers were for. Thoughtlessly she answered me,
"In case of a pogrom." Yes, there were the crosses and the priests and
the mob. The church bells were pealing their loudest. Everything was
ready. The Gentiles were going to tear me in pieces, with axes and
knives and ropes. They were going to burn me alive. The cross--the
cross! What would they do to me first?
There was one thing the Gentiles might do to me worse than burning or
rending. It was what was done to unprotected Jewish children who fell
into the hands of priests or nuns. They might baptize me. That would
be worse than death by torture. Rather would I drown in the Dvina than
a drop of the baptismal water should touch my forehead. To be forced
to kneel before the hideous images, to kiss the cross,--sooner would I
rush out to the mob that was passing, and let them tear my vitals out.
To forswear the One God, to bow before idols,--rather would I be
seized with the plague, and be eaten up by vermin. I was only a little
girl, and not very brave; little pains made me ill, and I cried. But
there was no pain that I would not bear--no, none--rather than submit
to baptism.
Every Jewish child had that feeling. There were stories by the dozen
of Jewish boys who were kidnapped by the Czar's agents and brought up
in Gentile families, till they were old enough to enter the army,
where they served till forty years of age; and all those years the
priests tried, by bribes and daily tortures, to force them to accept
baptism, but in vain. This was in the time of Nicholas I, but men who
had been through this service were no older than my grandfather, when
I was a little girl; and they told their experiences with their own
lips, and one knew it was true, and it broke one's heart with pain and
pride.
Some of these soldiers of Nicholas, as they were called, were taken as
little boys of seven or eight--snatched from their mothers' laps. They
were carried to distant villages, where their friends could never
trace them, and turned over to some dirty, brutal peasant, who used
them like slaves and kept them with the pigs. No two were ever left
together; and they were given false names, so that they were entirely
cut off from their own world. And then the lonely child was turned
over to the priests, and he was flogged and starved and terrified--a
little helpless boy who cried for his mother; but still he refused to
be baptized. The priests promised him good things to eat, and fine
clothes, and freedom from labor; but the boy turned away, and said his
prayers secretly--the Hebrew prayers.
As he grew older, severer tortures were invented for him; still he
refused baptism. By this time he had forgotten his mother's face, and
of his prayers perhaps only the "Shema" remained in his memory; but
he was a Jew, and nothing would make him change. After he entered the
army, he was bribed with promises of promotions and honors. He
remained a private, and endured the cruellest discipline. When he was
discharged, at the age of forty, he was a broken man, without a home,
without a clue to his origin, and he spent the rest of his life
wandering among Jewish settlements, searching for his family; hiding
the scars of torture under his rags, begging his way from door to
door. If he were one who had broken down under the cruel torments, and
allowed himself to be baptized, for the sake of a respite, the Church
never let him go again, no matter how loudly he protested that he was
still a Jew. If he was caught practicing Jewish rites, he was
subjected to the severest punishment.
My father knew of one who was taken as a small boy, who never yielded
to the priests under the most hideous tortures. As he was a very
bright boy, the priests were particularly eager to convert him. They
tried him with bribes that would appeal to his ambition. They promised
to make a great man of him--a general, a noble. The boy turned away
and said his prayers. Then they tortured him, and threw him into a
cell; and when he lay asleep from exhaustion, the priest came and
baptized him. When he awoke, they told him he was a Christian, and
brought him the crucifix to kiss. He protested, threw the crucifix
from him, but they held him to it that he was a baptized Jew, and
belonged to the Church; and the rest of his life he spent between the
prison and the hospital, always clinging to his faith, saying the
Hebrew prayers in defiance of his tormentors, and paying for it with
his flesh.
There were men in Polotzk whose faces made you old in a minute. They
had served Nicholas I, and come back unbaptized. The white church in
the square--how did it look to them? I knew. I cursed the church in my
heart every time I had to pass it; and I was afraid--afraid.
On market days, when the peasants came to church, and the bells kept
ringing by the hour, my heart was heavy in me, and I could find no
rest. Even in my father's house I did not feel safe. The church bell
boomed over the roofs of the houses, calling, calling, calling. I
closed my eyes, and saw the people passing into the church: peasant
women with bright embroidered aprons and glass beads; barefoot little
girls with colored kerchiefs on their heads; boys with caps pulled too
far down over their flaxen hair; rough men with plaited bast sandals,
and a rope around the waist,--crowds of them, moving slowly up the
steps, crossing themselves again and again, till they were swallowed
by the black doorway, and only the beggars were left squatting on the
steps. _Boom, boom!_ What are the people doing in the dark, with the
waxen images and the horrid crucifixes? _Boom, boom, boom!_ They are
ringing the bell for me. Is it in the church they will torture me,
when I refuse to kiss the cross?
They ought not to have told me those dreadful stories. They were long
past; we were living under the blessed "New Régime." Alexander III was
no friend of the Jews; still he did not order little boys to be taken
from their mothers, to be made into soldiers and Christians. Every man
had to serve in the army for four years, and a Jewish recruit was
likely to be treated with severity, no matter if his behavior were
perfect; but that was little compared to the dreadful conditions of
the old régime.
The thing that really mattered was the necessity of breaking the
Jewish laws of daily life while in the service. A soldier often had to
eat trefah and work on Sabbath. He had to shave his beard and do
reverence to Christian things. He could not attend daily services at
the synagogue; his private devotions were disturbed by the jeers and
insults of his coarse Gentile comrades. He might resort to all sorts
of tricks and shams, still he was obliged to violate Jewish law. When
he returned home, at the end of his term of service, he could not rid
himself of the stigma of those enforced sins. For four years he had
led the life of a Gentile.
Piety alone was enough to make the Jews dread military service, but
there were other things that made it a serious burden. Most men of
twenty-one--the age of conscription--were already married and had
children. During their absence their families suffered, their business
often was ruined. At the end of their term they were beggars. As
beggars, too, they were sent home from their military post. If they
happened to have a good uniform at the time of their dismissal, it was
stripped from them, and replaced by a shabby one. They received a free
ticket for the return journey, and a few kopecks a day for expenses.
In this fashion they were hurried back into the Pale, like escaped
prisoners. The Czar was done with them. If within a limited time they
were found outside the Pale, they would be seized and sent home in
chains.
There were certain exceptions to the rule of compulsory service. The
only son of a family was exempt, and certain others. In the physical
examination preceding conscription, many were rejected on account of
various faults. This gave the people the idea of inflicting injuries
on themselves, so as to produce temporary deformities on account of
which they might be rejected at the examination. Men would submit to
operations on their eyes, ears, or limbs, which caused them horrible
sufferings, in the hope of escaping the service. If the operation was
successful, the patient was rejected by the examining officers, and in
a short time he was well, and a free man. Often, however, the
deformity intended to be temporary proved incurable, so that there
were many men in Polotzk blind of one eye, or hard of hearing, or
lame, as a result of these secret practices; but these things were
easier to bear than the memory of four years in the Czar's service.
Sons of rich fathers could escape service without leaving any marks on
their persons. It was always possible to bribe conscription officers.
This was a dangerous practice,--it was not the officers who suffered
most in case the negotiations leaked out,--but no respectable family
would let a son be taken as a recruit till it had made every effort to
save him. My grandfather nearly ruined himself to buy his sons out of
service; and my mother tells thrilling anecdotes of her younger
brother's life, who for years lived in hiding, under assumed names and
in various disguises, till he had passed the age of liability for
service.
If it were cowardice that made the Jews shrink from military service
they would not inflict on themselves physical tortures greater than
any that threatened them in the army, and which often left them maimed
for life. If it were avarice--the fear of losing the gains from their
business for four years--they would not empty their pockets and sell
their houses and sink into debt, on the chance of successfully bribing
the Czar's agents. The Jewish recruit dreaded, indeed, brutality and
injustice at the hands of officers and comrades; he feared for his
family, which he left, often enough, as dependents on the charity of
relatives; but the fear of an unholy life was greater than all other
fears. I know, for I remember my cousin who was taken as a soldier.
Everything had been done to save him. Money had been spent freely--my
uncle did not stop at his unmarried daughter's portion, when
everything else was gone. My cousin had also submitted to some secret
treatment,--some devastating drug administered for months before the
examination,--but the effects were not pronounced enough, and he was
passed. For the first few weeks his company was stationed in Polotzk.
I saw my cousin drill on the square, carrying a gun, _on a Sabbath_. I
felt unholy, as if I had sinned the sin in my own person. It was easy
to understand why mothers of conscript sons fasted and wept and prayed
and worried themselves to their graves.
There was a man in our town called David the Substitute, because he
had gone as a soldier in another's stead, he himself being exempt. He
did it for a sum of money. I suppose his family was starving, and he
saw a chance to provide for them for a few years. But it was a sinful
thing to do, to go as a soldier and be obliged to live like a Gentile,
of his own free will. And David knew how wicked it was, for he was a
pious man at heart. When he returned from service, he was aged and
broken, bowed down with the sense of his sins. And he set himself a
penance, which was to go through the streets every Sabbath morning,
calling the people to prayer. Now this was a hard thing to do,
because David labored bitterly all the week, exposed to the weather,
summer or winter; and on Sabbath morning there was nobody so tired and
lame and sore as David. Yet he forced himself to leave his bed before
it was yet daylight, and go from street to street, all over Polotzk,
calling on the people to wake and go to prayer. Many a Sabbath morning
I awoke when David called, and lay listening to his voice as it passed
and died out; and it was so sad that it hurt, as beautiful music
hurts. I was glad to feel my sister lying beside me, for it was lonely
in the gray dawn, with only David and me awake, and God waiting for
the people's prayers.
The Gentiles used to wonder at us because we cared so much about
religious things,--about food, and Sabbath, and teaching the children
Hebrew. They were angry with us for our obstinacy, as they called it,
and mocked us and ridiculed the most sacred things. There were wise
Gentiles who understood. These were educated people, like Fedora
Pavlovna, who made friends with their Jewish neighbors. They were
always respectful, and openly admired some of our ways. But most of
the Gentiles were ignorant and distrustful and spiteful. They would
not believe that there was any good in our religion, and of course we
dared not teach them, because we should be accused of trying to
convert them, and that would be the end of us.
Oh, if they could only understand! Vanka caught me on the street one
day, and pulled my hair, and called me names; and all of a sudden I
asked myself _why_--_why?_--a thing I had stopped asking years before.
I was so angry that I could have punished him; for one moment I was
not afraid to hit back. But this _why_--_why?_ broke out in my heart,
and I forgot to revenge myself. It was so wonderful--Well, there were
no words in my head to say it, but it meant that Vanka abused me only
because _he did not understand_. If he could feel with my heart, if he
could be a little Jewish boy for one day, I thought, he would know--he
would know. If he could understand about David the Substitute, now,
without being told, as I understood. If he could wake in my place on
Sabbath morning, and feel his heart break in him with a strange pain,
because a Jew had dishonored the law of Moses, and God was bending
down to pardon him. Oh, why could I not make Vanka understand? I was
so sorry that my heart hurt me, worse than Vanka's blows. My anger and
my courage were gone. Vanka was throwing stones at me now from his
mother's doorway, and I continued on my errand, but I did not hurry.
The thing that hurt me most I could not run away from.
There was one thing the Gentiles always understood, and that was
money. They would take any kind of bribe at any time. Peace cost so
much a year in Polotzk. If you did not keep on good terms with your
Gentile neighbors, they had a hundred ways of molesting you. If you
chased their pigs when they came rooting up your garden, or objected
to their children maltreating your children, they might complain
against you to the police, stuffing their case with false accusations
and false witnesses. If you had not made friends with the police, the
case might go to court; and there you lost before the trial was
called, unless the judge had reason to befriend you. The cheapest way
to live in Polotzk was to pay as you went along. Even a little girl
understood that, in Polotzk.
Perhaps your parents were in business,--usually they were, as almost
everybody kept store,--and you heard a great deal about the chief of
police, and excise officers, and other agents of the Czar. Between the
Czar whom you had never seen, and the policeman whom you knew too
well, you pictured to yourself a long row of officials of all sorts,
all with their palms stretched out to receive your father's money. You
knew your father hated them all, but you saw him smile and bend as he
filled those greedy palms. You did the same, in your petty way, when
you saw Vanka coming toward you on a lonely street, and you held out
to him the core of the apple you had been chewing, and forced your
unwilling lips into a smile. It hurt, that false smile; it made you
feel black inside.
In your father's parlor hung a large colored portrait of Alexander
III. The Czar was a cruel tyrant,--oh, it was whispered when doors
were locked and shutters tightly barred, at night,--he was a Titus, a
Haman, a sworn foe of all Jews,--and yet his portrait was seen in a
place of honor in your father's house. You knew why. It looked well
when police or government officers came on business.
You went out to play one morning, and saw a little knot of people
gathered around a lamp-post. There was a notice on it--a new order
from the chief of police. You pushed into the crowd, and stared at the
placard, but you could not read. A woman with a ragged shawl looked
down upon you, and said, with a bitter kind of smile, "Rejoice,
rejoice, little girl! The chief of police bids you rejoice. There
shall be a pretty flag flying from every housetop to-day, because it
is the Czar's birthday, and we must celebrate. Come and watch the poor
people pawn their samovars and candlesticks, to raise money for a
pretty flag. It is a holiday, little girl. Rejoice!"
You know the woman is mocking,--you are familiar with the quality of
that smile,--but you accept the hint and go and watch the people buy
their flags. Your cousin keeps a dry-goods store, where you have a
fine view of the proceedings. There is a crowd around the counter, and
your cousin and the assistant are busily measuring off lengths of
cloth, red, and blue, and white.
"How much does it take?" somebody asks. "May I know no more of sin
than I know of flags," another replies. "How is it put together?" "Do
you have to have all three colors?" One customer puts down a few
kopecks on the counter, saying, "Give me a piece of flag. This is all
the money I have. Give me the red and the blue; I'll tear up my shirt
for the white."
You know it is no joke. The flag must show from every house, or the
owner will be dragged to the police station, to pay a fine of
twenty-five rubles. What happened to the old woman who lives in that
tumble-down shanty over the way? It was that other time when flags
were ordered up, because the Grand Duke was to visit Polotzk. The old
woman had no flag, and no money. She hoped the policeman would not
notice her miserable hut. But he did, the vigilant one, and he went up
and kicked the door open with his great boot, and he took the last
pillow from the bed, and sold it, and hoisted a flag above the rotten
roof. I knew the old woman well, with her one watery eye and her
crumpled hands. I often took a plate of soup to her from our kitchen.
There was nothing but rags left on her bed, when the policeman had
taken the pillow.
The Czar always got his dues, no matter if it ruined a family. There
was a poor locksmith who owed the Czar three hundred rubles, because
his brother had escaped from Russia before serving his term in the
army. There was no such fine for Gentiles, only for Jews; and the
whole family was liable. Now, the locksmith never could have so much
money, and he had no valuables to pawn. The police came and attached
his household goods, everything he had, including his young bride's
trousseau; and the sale of the goods brought thirty-five rubles. After
a year's time the police came again, looking for the balance of the
Czar's dues. They put their seal on everything they found. The bride
was in bed with her first baby, a boy. The circumcision was to be next
day. The police did not leave a sheet to wrap the child in when he is
handed up for the operation.
Many bitter sayings came to your ears if you were a Jewish little girl
in Polotzk. "It is a false world," you heard, and you knew it was so,
looking at the Czar's portrait, and at the flags. "Never tell a police
officer the truth," was another saying, and you knew it was good
advice. That fine of three hundred rubles was a sentence of lifelong
slavery for the poor locksmith, unless he freed himself by some trick.
As fast as he could collect a few rags and sticks, the police would be
after them. He might hide under a false name, if he could get away
from Polotzk on a false passport; or he might bribe the proper
officials to issue a false certificate of the missing brother's death.
Only by false means could he secure peace for himself and his family,
as long as the Czar was after his dues.
It was bewildering to hear how many kinds of duties and taxes we owed
the Czar. We paid taxes on our houses, and taxes on the rents from the
houses, taxes on our business, taxes on our profits. I am not sure
whether there were taxes on our losses. The town collected taxes, and
the county, and the central government; and the chief of police we had
always with us. There were taxes for public works, but rotten
pavements went on rotting year after year; and when a bridge was to be
built, special taxes were levied. A bridge, by the way, was not always
a public highway. A railroad bridge across the Dvina, while open to
the military, could be used by the people only by individual
permission.
My uncle explained to me all about the excise duties on tobacco.
Tobacco being a source of government revenue, there was a heavy tax on
it. Cigarettes were taxed at every step of their process. The tobacco
was taxed separately, and the paper, and the mouthpiece, and on the
finished product an additional tax was put. There was no tax on the
smoke. The Czar must have overlooked it.
Business really did not pay when the price of goods was so swollen by
taxes that the people could not buy. The only way to make business pay
was to cheat--cheat the Government of part of the duties. But playing
tricks on the Czar was dangerous, with so many spies watching his
interests. People who sold cigarettes without the government seal got
more gray hairs than bank notes out of their business. The constant
risk, the worry, the dread of a police raid in the night, and the
ruinous fines, in case of detection, left very little margin of profit
or comfort to the dealer in contraband goods. "But what can one do?"
the people said, with the shrug of the shoulders that expresses the
helplessness of the Pale. "What can one do? One must live."
It was not easy to live, with such bitter competition as the
congestion of population made inevitable. There were ten times as many
stores as there should have been, ten times as many tailors, cobblers,
barbers, tinsmiths. A Gentile, if he failed in Polotzk, could go
elsewhere, where there was less competition. A Jew could make the
circle of the Pale, only to find the same conditions as at home.
Outside the Pale he could only go to certain designated localities, on
payment of prohibitive fees, augmented by a constant stream of bribes;
and even then he lived at the mercy of the local chief of police.
Artisans had the right to reside outside the Pale, on fulfilment of
certain conditions. This sounded easy to me, when I was a little girl,
till I realized how it worked. There was a capmaker who had duly
qualified, by passing an examination and paying for his trade papers,
to live in a certain city. The chief of police suddenly took it into
his head to impeach the genuineness of his papers. The capmaker was
obliged to travel to St. Petersburg, where he had qualified in the
first place, to repeat the examination. He spent the savings of years
in petty bribes, trying to hasten the process, but was detained ten
months by bureaucratic red tape. When at length he returned to his
home town, he found a new chief of police, installed during his
absence, who discovered a new flaw in the papers he had just obtained,
and expelled him from the city. If he came to Polotzk, there were then
eleven capmakers where only one could make a living.
Merchants fared like the artisans. They, too, could buy the right of
residence outside the Pale, permanent or temporary, on conditions that
gave them no real security. I was proud to have an uncle who was a
merchant of the First Guild, but it was very expensive for my uncle.
He had to pay so much a year for the title, and a certain percentage
on the profits from his business. This gave him the right to travel on
business outside the Pale, twice a year, for not more than six months
in all. If he were found outside the Pale after his permit expired, he
had to pay a fine that exceeded all he had gained by his journey,
perhaps. I used to picture my uncle on his Russian travels, hurrying,
hurrying to finish his business in the limited time; while a policeman
marched behind him, ticking off the days and counting up the hours.
That was a foolish fancy, but some of the things that were done in
Russia really were very funny.
There were things in Polotzk that made you laugh with one eye and weep
with the other, like a clown. During an epidemic of cholera, the city
officials, suddenly becoming energetic, opened stations for the
distribution of disinfectants to the people. A quarter of the
population was dead when they began, and most of the dead were buried,
while some lay decaying in deserted houses. The survivors, some of
them crazy from horror, stole through the empty streets, avoiding one
another, till they came to the appointed stations, where they pushed
and crowded to get their little bottles of carbolic acid. Many died
from fear in those horrible days, but some must have died from
laughter. For only the Gentiles were allowed to receive the
disinfectant. Poor Jews who had nothing but their new-made graves were
driven away from the stations.
Perhaps it was wrong of us to think of our Gentile neighbors as a
different species of beings from ourselves, but such madness as that
did not help to make them more human in our eyes. It was easier to be
friends with the beasts in the barn than with some of the Gentiles.
The cow and the goat and the cat responded to kindness, and
remembered which of the housemaids was generous and which was cross.
The Gentiles made no distinctions. A Jew was a Jew, to be hated and
spat upon and used spitefully.
The only Gentiles, besides the few of the intelligent kind, who did
not habitually look upon us with hate and contempt, were the stupid
peasants from the country, who were hardly human themselves. They
lived in filthy huts together with their swine, and all they cared for
was how to get something to eat. It was not their fault. The land laws
made them so poor that they had to sell themselves to fill their
bellies. What help was there for us in the good will of such wretched
slaves? For a cask of vodka you could buy up a whole village of them.
They trembled before the meanest townsman, and at a sign from a
long-haired priest they would sharpen their axes against us.
The Gentiles had their excuse for their malice. They said our
merchants and money-lenders preyed upon them, and our shopkeepers gave
false measure. People who want to defend the Jews ought never to deny
this. Yes, I say, we cheated the Gentiles whenever we dared, because
it was the only thing to do. Remember how the Czar was always sending
us commands,--you shall not do this and you shall not do that, until
there was little left that we might honestly do, except pay tribute
and die. There he had us cooped up, thousands of us where only
hundreds could live, and every means of living taxed to the utmost.
When there are too many wolves in the prairie, they begin to prey upon
each other. We starving captives of the Pale--we did as do the hungry
brutes. But our humanity showed in our discrimination between our
victims. Whenever we could, we spared our own kind, directing against
our racial foes the cunning wiles which our bitter need invented. Is
not that the code of war? Encamped in the midst of the enemy, we could
practice no other. A Jew could hardly exist in business unless he
developed a dual conscience, which allowed him to do to the Gentile
what he would call a sin against a fellow Jew. Such spiritual
deformities are self-explained in the step-children of the Czar. A
glance over the statutes of the Pale leaves you wondering that the
Russian Jews have not lost all semblance to humanity.
[Illustration: THE GRAVE DIGGER OF POLOTZK]
A favorite complaint against us was that we were greedy for gold. Why
could not the Gentiles see the whole truth where they saw half? Greedy
for profits we were, eager for bargains, for savings, intent on
squeezing the utmost out of every business transaction. But why? Did
not the Gentiles know the reason? Did they not know what price we had
to pay for the air we breathed? If a Jew and a Gentile kept store side
by side, the Gentile could content himself with smaller profits. He
did not have to buy permission to travel in the interests of his
business. He did not have to pay three hundred rubles fine if his son
evaded military service. He was saved the expense of hushing inciters
of pogroms. Police favor was retailed at a lower price to him than to
the Jew. His nature did not compel him to support schools and
charities. It cost nothing to be a Christian; on the contrary, it
brought rewards and immunities. To be a Jew was a costly luxury, the
price of which was either money or blood. Is it any wonder that we
hoarded our pennies? What his shield is to the soldier in battle, that
was the ruble to the Jew in the Pale.
The knowledge of such things as I am telling leaves marks upon the
flesh and spirit. I remember little children in Polotzk with old, old
faces and eyes glazed with secrets. I knew how to dodge and cringe and
dissemble before I knew the names of the seasons. And I had plenty of
time to ponder on these things, because I was so idle. If they had let
me go to school, now--But of course they didn't.
There was no free school for girls, and even if your parents were rich
enough to send you to a private school, you could not go very far. At
the high school, which was under government control, Jewish children
were admitted in limited numbers,--only ten to every hundred,--and
even if you were among the lucky ones, you had your troubles. The
tutor who prepared you talked all the time about the examinations you
would have to pass, till you were scared. You heard on all sides that
the brightest Jewish children were turned down if the examining
officers did not like the turn of their noses. You went up to be
examined with the other Jewish children, your heart heavy about that
matter of your nose. There was a special examination for the Jewish
candidates, of course; a nine-year-old Jewish child had to answer
questions that a thirteen-year-old Gentile was hardly expected to
understand. But that did not matter so much. You had been prepared for
the thirteen-year-old test; you found the questions quite easy. You
wrote your answers triumphantly--and you received a low rating, and
there was no appeal.
I used to stand in the doorway of my father's store, munching an apple
that did not taste good any more, and watch the pupils going home from
school in twos and threes; the girls in neat brown dresses and black
aprons and little stiff hats, the boys in trim uniforms with many
buttons. They had ever so many books in the satchels on their backs.
They would take them out at home, and read and write, and learn all
sorts of interesting things. They looked to me like beings from
another world than mine. But those whom I envied had their own
troubles, as I often heard. Their school life was one struggle against
injustice from instructors, spiteful treatment from fellow students,
and insults from everybody. Those who, by heroic efforts and
transcendent good luck, successfully finished the course, found
themselves against a new wall, if they wished to go on. They were
turned down at the universities, which admitted them in the ratio of
three Jews to a hundred Gentiles, under the same debarring entrance
conditions as at the high school,--especially rigorous examinations,
dishonest marking, or arbitrary rulings without disguise. No, the Czar
did not want us in the schools.
I heard from my mother of a different state of affairs, at the time
when her brothers were little boys. The Czar of those days had a
bright idea. He said to his ministers: "Let us educate the people. Let
us win over those Jews through the public schools, instead of allowing
them to persist in their narrow Hebrew learning, which teaches them no
love for their monarch. Force has failed with them; the unwilling
converts return to their old ways whenever they dare. Let us try
education."
Perhaps peaceable conversion of the Jews was not the Czar's only
motive when he opened public schools everywhere and compelled parents
to send their boys for instruction. Perhaps he just wanted to be good,
and really hoped to benefit the country. But to the Jews the public
schools appeared as a trap door to the abyss of apostasy. The
instructors were always Christians, the teaching was Christian, and
the regulations of the schoolroom, as to hours, costume, and manners,
were often in opposition to Jewish practices. The public school
interrupted the boy's sacred studies in the Hebrew school. Where would
you look for pious Jews, after a few generations of boys brought up by
Christian teachers? Plainly the Czar was after the souls of the Jewish
children. The church door gaped for them at the end of the school
course. And all good Jews rose up against the schools, and by every
means, fair or foul, kept their boys away. The official appointed to
keep the register of boys for school purposes waxed rich on the bribes
paid him by anxious parents who kept their sons in hiding.
After a while the wise Czar changed his mind, or he died,--probably he
did both,--and the schools were closed, and the Jewish boys perused
their Hebrew books in peace, wearing the sacred fringes[1] in plain
sight, and never polluting their mouths with a word of Russian.
And then it was the Jews who changed their minds--some of them. They
wanted to send their children to school, to learn histories and
sciences, because they had discovered that there was good in such
things as well as in the Sacred Law. These people were called
progressive, but they had no chance to progress. All the czars that
came along persisted in the old idea, that for the Jew no door should
be opened,--no door out of the Pale, no door out of their mediævalism.
FOOTNOTES:
[1] A four-cornered cloth with specially prepared fringes is worn by
pious males under the outer garments, but with, the fringes showing.
The latter play a part in the daily ritual.