Page 43 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Father and Mother

Therefore my father was considered a very bright man. He had a
pleasant personality, broad shoulders, a nice black square beard, a
high forehead, and a straightforward look. A politically-minded man,
he followed the news in the newspapers closely, which made him
prominent among the Jews in the community who could not read
Polish or Russian. People gathered in the synagogue on Sabbath day
or in the evenings, and there they used to listen attentively to his
accounts of the day’s occurrences and his views on the political
outlook.
We Jews in those eastern countries were very much interested in
politics because, like a dry leaf agitated by the slightest breeze, Jews in
Poland, Russia, and Romania were affected by the smallest political
intrigue inside or outside their country. Despite our lack of education
and the unavailability of newspapers, we took more interest in world
events than the ordinary citizen of this land, since we expected
political and economic laws to affect us before any other of the
inhabitants. In Russia officials from the czar down to the local
magistrate oppressed and despised us, and naturally we hated them;
yet whenever a governor, a minister of state, or a high dignitary of
the state religion died, and a new one was to be appointed by the
government, we were in fear of getting one worse than the last. So we
followed the news eagerly, reading between the lines to find out who
would be the next governor or governor-general. As a rule, we
lamented the departed official, who we now thought of as Juden
freund.
This activity was my father’s favorite, the thing from which he got
the most enjoyment. Being well-versed in political affairs, he was able
to make predictions to the synagogue coterie about who would be
the next governor or even the army field marshal going to fight the
Turks or Japanese. When the Frenchman André flew in his balloon
to the North Pole, my father was the greatest attraction in the
synagogue. It was such an exciting occurrence that people used to
watch the sky for André, and I remember looking through a piece of
a lens at night, watching the stars to see if a light might be moving
among them. André disappeared in the frozen waste, and this was
even more interesting, as the mystery increased and my father gave all
the details of the North Pole and polar bears and the midnight sun.
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