Memoirs

For the two reasons specified below, I have given myself the surname “Wasserzug”; the first reason is that when I was five or six years of age, I was playing with some young children, I believe, in a house [ . . . ] near our home [ . . . ] in the holy community of Skoki [Schoken], at a distance of four parasangs from the holy community of Posen; behind the synagogue there was a river, and upon the bank of the river were planted some non-fruit-bearing trees, and each of the children who were playing climbed up to the top of a tree to cut off a branch for himself to play with it. I too, like them, climbed up to the top of a particular tree where I had seen a branch that I had found to my liking. However, the tree up which I had climbed had its roots in the riverbank and its branches were curved in a crooked manner, and the top of the tree extended out right to the center of that river, but the bough on which I was standing to cut off the branch snapped beneath me, and I fell headlong into that river; and since there was no one who knew anything about my fall, as the other children had become detached from me, and prior to my fall [ . . . ] they saw [ . . . ] that an object was floating on the water and realized that something with the appearance of a child’s hand was visible in the water, and they started shouting: “Jews! A human being is floating in the water!”—and they made their voices heard by the multitude of people who happened to be present. Now at some distance from there was a flour mill, and at that time, its grinder and its wheel had become entangled as a result of the flooding of the river—and this was an act of God, as they ran swiftly with the one whom they had delegated to shut off the flooding with a water-lock, and several of them skimmed over the water in a little boat to search [ . . . ] and they discovered me not far away from the millstones, close by the lock [ . . . ] and they hauled me out of the water, the Almighty having saved me in His mercy; and blessed be the man who saved me from death—and for that reason I gave myself the surname “Wasserzug.”

The second reason for my choice of surname is that it is well-known that Moses tended cattle, and was called by that particular name, “For, said Pharaoh’s daughter, I drew him [Heb. meshitihu] out of the water”: Now it so happened that on a certain day, when the King of Prussia had decreed that every Jewish man would have to choose a surname for himself, besides that given to him on the occasion of his circumcision, I chose the aforesaid name to serve as a memorial to the kindness of the Almighty, for what God wrought on my behalf by saving me from the mighty waters—and for the second reason, which involves the source for the name “Moses”; and I was thereby able to satisfy the king’s officials without transgressing the words of the Torah that commanded us not to alter our names; for that was one of the merits of our holy ancestors who went forth from slavery to freedom—may the Almighty, in His mercy, redeem us, speedily in our days. Amen, Selah. [ . . . ]

And now, dear reader, I shall unfold before you the essence of the character and the ways of my late father of blessed memory. He was one of the merchants in the town in which the holy community of Skoki resided, as his home was there; and because that place afforded insufficient opportunities for the merchants to provide adequately for their households, they were compelled to travel to the fairs held around the town in order to sell their wares—and the custom—an upright one—prevailing in my family home was that they would not eat any proper meal until such time as all the menservants and maidservants had gathered around and encircled the table, and then the head of the family, together with them, in identical fashion, sat down to eat food—everything that the Almighty had provided for them. And on those days when the head of the family traveled from his home to the fair, they would delay eating their meal until their master had returned to his house. On one particular day, when my father had traveled to a certain fair, and my mother of blessed memory was sitting at home, a certain pauper, a Jewish child of tender years, knocked at the door of her house in wintertime, barefooted and virtually naked; my mother of blessed memory stretched out her hand to that pauper to give him his due portion, but he refused to take it, and said: “If I have found favor in the sight of my lady, can an order be given to provide me with some soup from the samovar, to enable me to warm myself up from the fierce cold going through my bones?” My mother of blessed memory issued an order that he was to be given to eat from the family’s left-over food. While he was eating, he turned toward my mother of blessed memory and said to her: “It seems to me that my lady hails from the natives of the holy community of Waranik”—and this was indeed the case—and without a doubt, my father of blessed memory, Mr. Raphael, who had, throughout his life, been the overseer and lay leader of the community, had known her and been closely acquainted with her. He went on to say, “My father of blessed memory passed on, and I was left alone with my mother, who had not the means either to maintain me, to provide me with my daily portion of food, or to support me financially in my studies, as a result of which I wandered away from my home in the hope that maybe the Almighty would have mercy upon me and grant me favor in the sight of some kind gentlemen with a view to rendering me financial assistance.” Now when she heard what the youth was saying, her eyes streamed with tears, as she had known his father, who had once been a wealthy man and a distinguished Torah scholar, and had, throughout his life, been the overseer and lay leader of the community; but she said nothing to him, merely promising him that when her husband came back safely to his home from the fair she would endeavor to appeal to her husband’s heart regarding this matter. Then this poor fellow, whose name was Asher Judah Leib, went to the inn where he was lodging, and at around midnight, my father of blessed memory returned to his home, and after they had unloaded the merchandise he had brought, they prepared the table and set it ready for eating a meal, my father of blessed memory and all the members of the family gathering around the table in accordance with his custom. After the benediction ha-motsi had been recited she turned her face toward the fireplace, upon which a pile of firewood had been placed. Her seat at the table became vacant, and my father of blessed memory called out to her: “Zipporah! Why is your countenance sad? Tell me, I pray you, why are you crestfallen? What has happened to you today?” But she did not answer him a single word, but began to sigh and weep. At that juncture, my father of blessed memory was seized with fear and trembling and said to her a second time: “What is all this about?” Then she replied to him in a voice of weeping and in bitterness of heart: “If only you had been at home and seen a certain young man from among the natives of the holy community of Waranik, the son of Mr. Raphael of blessed memory, who is now a fugitive and a wanderer upon the earth, seeking bread and also support for his studies, and not a single human being has pity upon him, and he walks around barefooted and has no clothes to wear! And what are we to do, in that God has favored us with a male child and we do not know what his ultimate fate is to be when we pass on—and unto the man to whom these things in this house belong, I will have conceived nothing but travail and anger!”

My father of blessed memory replied and said: “What is the meaning of this sound of commotion and trembling with which you are bombarding the world in such great measure? I shall wait till the morning, and I shall send a message to the young lad, and have him put to the test before the rabbi, the head of the ecclesiastical court; if he finds him ready and sufficiently talented to study Torah, I will then support him and he will be like a member of our own household, and the time of proof will be tomorrow! But as far as you are concerned, keep silent and cast the cloak of sadness from off you; arise, eat your food which you have prepared!” Now I, the writer, knew nothing of this entire episode, as I was already asleep in my bed; moreover, my father of blessed memory had ordered all the members of the family not to tell me anything of what had taken place. At dawn, I went to my teacher, and from there, went on to prayers—and my father of blessed memory meanwhile sent a message to the wayfarers’ inn to bring the youth to him. After my father of blessed memory had made enquiry of him regarding this matter, and he had responded in the same way as he had done to my mother of blessed memory, my father of blessed memory then said to him: “Go to your inn, and at about ten o’clock in the morning, you are to go to the rabbi for testing, to ascertain whether any sparks of Torah still remain within you, and in the event of your responding positively to the test, I will support you and will watch over you until the days of evil have passed.”—While my father of blessed memory was in the synagogue, after the morning service, he went up to the rabbi and said to him: “May I request His Excellency to test the young man whom I shall send to him on matters of Torah, and to report back to me as to this individual’s essential character in the evening, between the afternoon and the evening service.” So it happened that at the time when the students were gathering around the rabbi, this youth too came along, and said to the rabbi: “Reb Itterl ordered me to attend before the rabbi with a view to his testing me in relation to my studies.” However, we, the other students knew nothing whatsoever of all this, but rather, this man who had come along with his clothes all torn and worn out, and bare-footed, was simply an object of scorn among us, thinking to ourselves, as we did: “If he is indeed a Torah scholar, how would it be possible for him to have sunk to such a lowly and inferior state as he has?” The rabbi showed him a certain place in some tractate on which to test him—and the lad took the Gemara, seating himself by the side of the oven with the Gemara in his hand; and within about half an hour, he greeted the rabbi once more and declared that he had completed his task—the task of looking through and considering the passage in the Gemara: but when he started speaking, he stuttered over the perusal of the idiom of the Talmud—even over the most straightforward words appearing in the Gemara text—and he appeared as someone to whom the idiom of the Talmud was unfamiliar: however, after the rabbi had read over to him the text of the Gemara in the correct manner, and had engaged with him in the analytical dialectics of the Talmud, he grasped it with rapidity and responded to everything the rabbi asked him—and after he had concluded his task, he went off to his inn, as this was what my father of blessed memory had ordered him to do. So it came about on that day, at the time when the congregation went out of the synagogue after the evening service, that my father of blessed memory enquired of the rabbi as to the character of the lad—what he was and what he did, and, in regard to the question of his studies, whether he would still be capable of achieving success in the field of learning; and the rabbi replied: “He possesses plenty of wisdom and understanding, but on account of his abandonment of his studies, he has virtually forgotten the linguistic idiom of the Talmud, though if he persists with his learning, he is fit and ready to succeed.” My father of blessed memory delayed not a moment in sending instantly for the lad, with a view to bringing him into his household, and he ordered all his patched-up clothes and everything contained inside them to be committed to the flames; and he ordered that he be dressed in my pleated garments; and he ordered that the tailor R. Aryeh be summoned, as he was the especially designated tailor in my father’s household, and the most delightful garments were made by him. Then he went with him to the shop and handed him material with which to sew for the youth from the soles of his feet right up to his head, and he ordered him to complete his task by that very night, in order that the clothes would be ready for the next day, by the time that they would be summoned to prayers in the synagogue—and so the tailor did. At dawn, he brought the clothes, and they dressed the man in his holiday clothes, and as a result he became a different person, so that he was no longer recognizable.—And I went to the prayers and seated him at my side, by the eastern wall, for my place was there—and after the prayers were concluded, the rabbi beckoned to me to approach him, and he asked me: “Who is this young man?” Whereupon I said to him: “He is the young man with whom His Excellency learned yesterday in order to test him.”—Then the rabbi raised his voice aloud in the gladness of his heart—so it came about, when the young man, R. Leib, had grown ever greater in learning, that he became one of the students of the aforementioned rabbi, the head of the ecclesiastical court, and he circulated freely within the household of my father of blessed memory for roughly three consecutive years, and he ate his meals at the table of my father of blessed memory throughout the time when he was resident in the town of Skoki.