Page 42 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Father and Mother

When I began to know and understand my father, he had a wife
and six children, all born in the same house on Chernakowsky Street.
They named the three daughters after ancestors, like all parents do,
but my parents named the three boys after great men. I was named
after our great progenitor Abraham, because I was born in the week
when they read in the scroll in the synagogue the story of the great
Abraham when he traveled to Egypt from Canaan with his Sarah.
And I never begrudged my name: it doesn’t sound bad except when
abbreviated to Abe. The second son my father named Joseph, when
he arrived during the reading of the story of Joseph and his brethren.
The last one to arrive was Benjamin, who came when that tale was
read. Beside the girls already born before me, Chaia and Hannah, I
was my mother’s darling and Joseph my father’s. My features are
similar to my mother’s and Joseph’s to my father’s. After my
sickness, I was pampered by my mother and sisters until more boys
were born in the family. When Joseph came after my sister Rivka, he
became the idol of my father and the rest of us were gloomy and
jealous.
My father could read and write in Yiddish, Hebrew, Polish,
Russian and German. He transacted business in those languages,
writing petitions to court, applications, and other legal papers in
Russian and Polish. But books were seldom read; not only were they
a scarce commodity, but reading them was considered irreligious,
putting one in danger of becoming a goy. My father had a bookcase
with big books like thirty-six volumes of the Talmud, the Five Books
of Moses, the Midrashim, and various commentaries and liturgical
works—but not one book of modern literature. Had he read any
biographical books he probably would have written something about
himself; it is my regret that he left us no pedigree of our ancestors.
My father had to feed the family. To do that he had a bakery
route, barely earning a living—like everyone else in that country.
Being in business and meeting people all the time he had to converse,
and conversation, as Bacon said, is seven-eighths of your education.

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