What this man tells:
“In the house of the Zion Group there is no change or novelty. We play chess and talk politics, and we exhaust every subject. But the subjects themselves are stale, especially for a man like me whose mind is set on the Land of Israel, and for whom anything not connected with the Land is unworthy of his attention.
“Besides the chess players and those who talk politics, there are some who tell jokes. When you hear a joke for the first time, you laugh; the second time, you smile; the third time, you shrug your shoulders; the fourth, you are bored to tears. This is something I know and perhaps you too, but those who ought to know it, namely the tellers of jokes, do not. That is why they repeat their jokes over and over and over again.
“So who makes you go to the group house? Surely you can go back to the Beit Midrash. But so long as people studied the Torah for its own sake or with an end in view, such as making a show or winning fame, you used to go into the Beit Midrash and open a book; when they stopped studying it for its own sake or with an end in view, the books changed their ways and no longer gladdened your heart. Or perhaps they did not change, but hid away their words for the time to come.
“Besides the books, you find in the Beit Midrash a few idlers sitting before an open book and talking to each other. Men’s talk, it is said, is worth half as much as study, yet they talk about the rise in the price of meat and the controversies between butchers and slaughterers. I am half a vegetarian and find no interest in their chatter. What harm is there if people do not eat meat and do not slaughter living things? My vegetarianism gave great grief to my father and mother, but between ourselves, this world does not give satisfaction even to its Maker.
“In short, wherever you turn you find either boredom or weariness. Willy-nilly you return to your father’s house. You find your mother cooking potatoes for the meal of the day. At that moment you imagine that September is already over; autumn is here; the rains are falling drop by drop; shadowy women are bending over, taking potatoes out of the damp and crumbling soil. A sluggish chill surrounds your heart, and you see yourself abandoned and adrift. You go into a second room and find your sisters with their friends, preparing their lessons. Seven times they have dipped their pens in the ink and still the copybook is clean. The seven wisdoms cannot be written just with the dip of a pen. It takes a great effort to put something down in writing. They chew their pens with their teeth and use them to chase away the flies. But once the pen has taken up ink, it soils their dresses and their copybooks. If a girl has soiled her dress, it can be washed, but if she has soiled her copybook, that is a misfortune, for the teacher calls a superfluous drop of ink Zhidek, namely, a little Jew, as a term of abuse. So they begin weeping until their voices echo from one end of the house to the other, and you cannot concentrate on even a trivial matter, such as the reason why a fly has landed on your nose. At the same time my little brother is sitting in the doorway banging with a hammer. Mother gave it to him for cracking nuts to make a cake, and when the nuts were finished he started just banging. And since it is not worth while just banging, he threatens to hit his little sister on the nose. And since she believes anything one tells her, she cries.
“Suddenly, a neighbor comes in to borrow a pot or return one. These neighbors find it difficult to stay at home, so they make the rounds of other people’s houses.
“Our mother is not in the habit of visiting her neighbors, but if one of them comes in, she gives her a cordial welcome and offers her a taste of whatever she is cooking or baking. I do not begrudge the neighbors anything, but I cannot abide their exaggerations. They speak of every mouthful as if it came from the Kaiser’s table.
“While this one is sitting, her husband comes in. For seven years he can do without his wife, but as soon as she comes into our house he follows to ask after her. When he comes in he takes a chair and sits and talks about what is known and what there is no need to know. At such times I feel indignant at my mother for making him welcome and listening to things she has already heard a hundred and one times. Among other things, he asks when my father will come home from the shop, as if it were an idle question. But in fact he needs my father, to borrow a little money or to have him sign a note. If so, why does he not go to see him in the shop? He has his good reasons, for in a shop a man behaves as a businessman, and my father would no doubt refuse him, while it is otherwise at home, when he comes as a friend.
“There are some who come to have my father write letters of recommendation for them to our relative in Vienna. This relative of ours is a university professor and has the title of Hofrat. Our townsfolk think that he is the Kaiser’s counselor, and that the Kaiser does nothing without asking him first, so that in Szibucz he is regarded as a minister of state, and they pester him whenever there is any trouble. At the time when his fellows sat and busied themselves with trivial matters, he sat and read and studied; now that he has won a name in the world, all the ignoramuses in town come to ask him to do them favors. It is the way of the ignoramuses to hate wisdom and the wise. Once a man has studied and made himself a name, they come along to distract him with their petty affairs.
“My father comes home from the shop, his face sad and weary. He has had no ships wrecked at sea or cities destroyed on land, but his heart is ravaged by the cares of winning a livelihood and the pains of bringing up children. My father hoped many hopes for me, but in the end not one of them was realized; and here I am about to go up to the Land of Israel. Where is the sense of it? Since the day Szibucz was built it is unheard of that a young man should go up to the Land of Israel. And if he goes there, what will he do there? A thousand times my father has already spoken with his son, and all to no avail; now my father is silent, with a silence that is more painful than speech. His eyes that used to shine with wisdom are dimmed with sadness. My mother also is sad with the same sadness, and even sadder than my mother am I. It is not fitting for a man to tell about his sadness, especially a man who is preparing to go up to the Land of Israel.
“With his learning, his wisdom, his virtuous ways, my father could have earned a living as a rabbi in any great city, but the great merchants he used to see in his childhood, when they came before his rabbi to settle their disputes, led him astray, for he saw them behaving grandly, like wealthy men, and he tried to be like them. What he neglected, he neglected, and what he sought was not granted to him, and here he is a shopkeeper, waiting for customers. If customers come to buy, it is good; and if they do not come, it is not good.
“In short, my father should have been a rabbi, and he hoped his son would achieve what he did not. It is a virtue the Almighty has given His creatures: they wish to make right through their sons those things in which they have not succeeded. However, this is not achieved through every son. I need not go far to find proof, for I myself am an example.”
I do not know who is interested in these things, but since they weighed on me, I told them.
As I was leaving, one young man came up to me and rebuked me for making friends with Yeruham Freeman, who was a communist and an enemy of Zion. I must say that, although this young man was a Zionist and Yeruham was not, I liked Yeruham better. But even apart from this one, other people had already hinted to me that I was not doing right in talking with Yeruham Freeman in public, because he was suspected of communism and I belonged to another country, and there was danger that I would be expelled from the town.
Later on I said to myself: I was born in this town and spent most of my youth here — but an official, who was not born here and has done nothing here but enjoy the best the town can give, may come along and tell me: Go, you belong to another country and you have no permission to stay with us.