Victims

Abraham Chajkes was famous throughout the town, nay, even throughout the entire district, as a decent, “solid,” wealthy merchant. [ . . . ]

He gave his growing children the best education according to his principles. His son went to first-class melameds [primary school tutors] and his daughter, in accordance with the increasingly well-established custom, also studied German and French at home. In her fifteenth year she was supposed to marry the son of the community’s leading citizen. But what happened? One evening, Rózia stood before her adoring father, and without beating around the bush confessed to him that she was fatally . . . in love . . . with a certain officer, that he was in love with her . . . and that he had promised to marry her.

“You’ll die before that happens!” her father shouted, overcome with pain and horror.

His wife burst out crying and he vehemently ordered her to be silent. He hurried the preparations for his daughter’s marriage, but on the day before the wedding the bride disappeared; she’d eloped with the officer. When he learned of this Abraham froze, petrified from horror and shame; and then fell upon his wife in a mad rage, crying out that she was, above all, foremost to blame. Exhausted by the violence of his emotions, he fainted.

When he’d regained his senses, he gritted his teeth, forbade any kind of search for Rózia, and forbade even the mention of her name in their home. [ . . . ]

This confirmed in Abraham’s always God-fearing-mind several fundamental points, which were informed by his son’s education. He was truly convinced that the cause of his daughter’s “possession” was her European education, which had completely turned her head and led her to where she would have never gone had she not abandoned tradition, adhering to the same standards as her grandmothers and great-grandmothers, as all the daughters of Israel who had not been infected with “sophistry.” [ . . . ]

So Abraham kept Gabriel, his only son, in heders, far from the [secular] world and life. The boy spent the entire day amid dirt and crowded conditions teeming with noise, hunched over immense tomes, exhausted from ceaseless, wearying intellectual labors carried out in unsanitary, lethal conditions. Returning home, he found a cold, empty room, devoid of the charm it had held for him in his childhood, when it had resounded with the laughter and pranks of his sister and was enlivened by his mother bustling about. Thus Gabriel, growing older, sat in a corner of the room and thought about how things had been long ago, how other children knew joy and caresses and gaiety, while in his house it was so sad and somehow terrifying [ . . . ]

Early on, he was struck by the contrast between the behavior of his father and that of other people. His friends were learning at home to write and read in Polish. From curiosity, envy, and soon, a felt need, he too started tracing letters and decoding the alphabet. Then he came to know the teacher of one of his heder classmates better. This teacher had graduated a few years before from the local grammar school [ludowạ] and because he could not afford to go on to gymnasium, he earned his living by giving private lessons. He was a well-read and intelligent youth. He held lengthy conversations and debates with his students and with Gabriel, convincing them of the narrowness and insufficiency of talmudic studies; he told them stories about the unbelievable miracles of contemporary science, how many marvelous things it had already achieved, to what noble and lofty aims it was leading humanity. [ . . . ]

Gabriel was already seventeen when one day he approached his father in an unusual frame of mind. His face, with its swarthy complexion, aquiline nose, and high forehead alternately flushed and turned pale. Abraham was seated at the table, immersed in some kabbalistic tractate. . . .

“Father,” Gabriel said in a muffled voice, “I have something important for you.” [ . . . ]

Gabriel took out a document and spread it out on the table.

“Look,” and he pronounced the words with difficulty. “This is . . . a certificate . . . that this morning I . . . privately passed . . . the exam . . . for the fourth year of normal school.”

Abraham stared at him, stupefied.

“What are you saying, child? What are you saying?!”

Gabriel repeated this in a steadier voice. [ . . . ]

Abraham stood motionless in front of his son, his neck outstretched and his gaze stupefied. He could not believe his own ears.

“I have decided to continue studying,” Gabriel added in a tone of explanation, “and since there is no gymnasium in our city . . .”

He could not complete the sentence. With the final word, uttered for the second time, it was as if he had struck his father a deafening blow. Abraham grabbed his son by the shoulder, shook him violently, and roared, “You, a meshumad, a convert!”

But he let go of him immediately, took a deep breath, and walked around the room several times.

“Braawonoseni hurabim, because of our sins, God, you sent this . . . !” he muttered to himself several times, wringing his hands. [ . . . ]

“Father, you cannot stop me from continuing my learning. I have made a decision—I am going to complete my studies. The Talmud and our holy books were written a thousand years ago and in the meantime the world has lived through many things, experienced much and learned. . . . I must know all of this in order to fill the gap in our heads, to be able to live usefully in the world . . . in this land that once welcomed us with hospitality and nurtured us like a mother . . .”

His father stood rooted to the same spot, incredibly astounded by the defiance, the passion, of this formerly quiet and affectionate youth.

“My boy!” he declared. “Good God! What has happened to you? Has evil sunk its roots that deeply inside you?”

He raised his voice and adopted an impassioned tone.

“No, Father!” Gabriel repeated with humble respect, but insistently. “I must continue my studies.”

“You will neglect your Jewishness . . . you will be living with goyim! . . .”

“And what harm is there in that?”

“You will cut off your peyes! . . . you will wear a short coat! . . . you’ll be talking in Polish! . . .”

“And what harm is there in that?” Gabriel observed again.

Abraham stood motionless for several minutes and the words died in his throat. Suddenly he burst out furiously in anger, “What harm is there in that? What harm is there in that, you say? And this is you, you, you who were with the best teachers, under my eye . . . you, the heir of so many rabbis and tsadiks! . . . Good God! Good God!”

Gabriel realized that he had wounded his father deeply.

“Father . . .!” he began and took his hand.

Abraham pushed him away forcefully.

“Away! Soon you’ll be saying that it is permitted to write on the Sabbath, too, and that it is permitted to eat pork! . . .”

Gabriel would not have had any objection to that, too, but he loved his father too much. He was prepared to sacrifice himself.

“I shall do this for you,” he said in a subdued, resigned voice, “and will remain at home. But . . .”

“What kind of but?”

“You will hire teachers for me and allow me to take an exam at the high school every year . . .” [ . . . ]

“The devil has ensnared you . . . the unclean spirit of your sister! Have God in your heart . . . I’ll teach you, you monster!” he screamed, his hands curled into fists.

“But . . .”

“Silence, you defiant child!”

Proudly, Gabriel stood up straight.

“I am not a child any longer!” he uttered bravely.

“What? What? Do you not know, you fool, that at your age I was already married but did not dare say a word to my father out loud; that in my day people like you were still whipped . . .”

“Those were primitive times,” the youth retorted with a sad smile. “Today we are different.”

“You lie! We do not change; we do not have to be different! Our forefathers, God-fearing men, cut and marked a path through life for us, and it is forbidden that we should depart from it . . . it is forbidden . . . not a single step . . . not a hair’s breadth . . .”

“But the storms of ages have carved furrows in that road, torn the stones out of it, ploughed out ditches, thrown ever so many boulders and obstacles onto it. We must clear it, improve it, or . . . open up a new one for ourselves . . . ” [ . . . ]

Abraham was overcome with despair and fury. He struck his son with his strong hand, shoved his son away, and screamed wildly, his arms raised:

“Then be damned, be damned!”

Gabriel, horrified, clung to him.

“Away!” his father shouted, enraged with passion, and violently shoved him out the door. “I no longer have a son!”

He slammed the door behind him and collapsed onto the floor.