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Thus there began to form, or to show itself within me that heart so proud and yet so tender, that effeminate and yet indomitable character which, constantly vacillating between weakness and courage,…
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…
There were two reasons why Di Yunge chose to carry on by themselves in a separate cafe. One was purely financial. The coffeehouse on Division Street was too dear for young writers, most of whom either…
One afternoon a friend from class asked me a religious question. After I answered her, she remarked that it was curious that our teacher had not been able to answer the same question. “Don’t be so…
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 was sent to school at Iwenez, about fifteen miles from our abode, and here I began to study Talmud. The study of the Talmud is the chief object of a learned education among our people. Riches…
I was born on 19 February 1758 in Nový Bydžov [in Bohemia] of well-to-do parents who destined me at birth to be a rabbi, a common practice among the Israelites then. For at that time, when all…
In these years of the 1880s, as anti-Semitism raged all over Russia, there were only two ways for the Jews. Either give up all that had become essential to them, in the name of Judaism; or take the…
The new Rabbi pleased everybody, because he was beyond all doubt a righteous man. I was then a boy of twelve. My father received two letters from Rabbi Yukel on the subject of a good match for me in…
I was the fourth [child] born and the first son, a tender darling to my father and my mother (cf. Prov. 4:3) after my mother had given birth to three daughters. My parents were worriers and trembled…