Page 56 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Three teachers

Hirsh Yiddil conducted a class of ten boys my age, but he did not
live with his family in Pelcovizna. They lived in some other little
town, and he usually ate at the house of his pupils’ parents on certain
days. He was not a very learned Jew, but he knew how to drill into
the pupils’ heads their little lessons. Nor was he a modern
psychologist who understood the child’s mind, but he picked out
only the pleasant stories in the Bible, of which there are many, for the
pupils to read aloud in sing-song fashion. I will never forget the
touching story of Rachel, Jacob’s beloved wife, who died giving birth
to Benjamin. The commentator Rashi explains the passage in
Jeremiah which says, “A voice is heard in Heaven. Rachel is
lamenting her children’s misfortune and refuses to be comforted.
Thus said the Lord, ‘Refrain thy voice from weeping, and thine eyes
from tears: for thy work shall be rewarded, and they shall come again
from the land of their enemy.’”
Rashi says the reason Jacob buried Rachel on the road to Padan
Aram instead of in the tombs of his fathers was that he had a vision
that one day Nebuzaraden the Babylonian general would destroy
Palestine and carry off Israel into captivity. On their way they would
pass by Rachel’s grave, and lament and pray on it. She would
intercede with the Lord and he would have mercy on his children and
return them to their land. That paragraph had a special tune in which
to be read, and being orthodox and nationalistic, it appealed so much
to the pupils that it brought tears to their eyes and made them sigh.
The story of Joseph and his brethren also has a great effect on the
young mind. Benjamin, being the youngest and orphaned at birth,
made him Jacob’s favorite. When the brothers first returned to their
father and told him that a wild beast had killed Joseph, he lamented
and could not be consoled. When they returned to tell him that the
viceroy had retained Benjamin, he said, “Ye shall bring gray hairs
with sorrow to the grave.” The story is very dramatic and has been
played for centuries on the stage. To us, who in that backwoods area
never saw a theatre or real plays, this was the greatest dramatic
happening, and not one occurring in the far distant past. When one
prays three times a day, repeating many times the past glories of the
Tabernacle and David’s performances, and prays for the restoration
of Palestine to its former glory, these stories seem like they happened
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