Zikhronot u-masa‘ot (Memoir and Journeys)

4. On the Way to Iasi

Those who seized the youths to put them into the army in the city where I was born, desired to have, as a residence for themselves, a house adjacent to the one in which my father lived; it was there that these hardhearted and cruel men assembled and transacted business with the souls of the Jewish children. They seized them and incarcerated them, and when their fathers came along, weeping and wailing, and gave them ransom monies in exchange for the children’s lives, they set them free and took others in their stead. And in this house, the sound of weeping and crying, and the wailing of fathers and children jointly together, could be heard each day—the sound of a great tumult. My father of blessed memory, whose heart melted like wax at the sound of these weeping souls, was weary of his life, and all his days were a painful ordeal, and he was heartbroken. Even at night time, he allowed his eyes no sleep and his eyelids no slumber, and besides the fact that it was his regular habit to arise at midnight to give thanks to the Almighty and to lament the destruction of our Holy Temple, he added on further lamentations during these days, and meditations and dirges, and he fasted almost every day, and each night he wept and chanted lamentations.

Now it once happened that one Wednesday, on the thirteenth of Tammuz in the year five thousand five hundred and eighty-eight [1828], that my father arose early in the morning, and went to the synagogue to pour out his complaint before the Almighty. And when he returned home from there, he took his clothes and his pillows and cushions and put them in his suitcase, and ordered me likewise to get myself ready, as we had a journey in front of us. And even before I was able to inquire of him as to where we were going and what his destination was, there was a wagon standing outside, harnessed to two horses, and a non-Jewish man, a villager, was driving them. And my father made haste, and issued an order that the packed suitcase be put onto the wagon—and he blessed his wife—that is to say, my mother, and his daughters; and there was much crying, and they all fell lovingly upon his neck and asked him: “Where are you going?”—however, he answered them not a single word, but simply blessed them a second time, and said: “The Lord is my Shepherd. He will lead me in the paths of righteousness for His name’s sake!” So we turned away, and began our journey; I too had wept profusely upon the neck of my mother and my sisters; moreover, the recollection of my wife and my sons whom she had borne to me, entered my mind—but I too trusted in the Almighty and in the righteousness of my father—may the memory of the righteous be for a blessing—and I remained silent. I had no idea as to the proposed destination of my father of blessed memory until we arrived at a large city, when I asked him what it was called, and my father said to me: “Satanov.”