Page 57 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Three teachers

just a few years earlier. These impressions remain with many grown
men. In later years when I became skeptical and began to reason, but
not yet coming in contact with people of other religions, I
condemned many acts and ceremonies of my people. I thought: we
are the only people who adhere to the biblical stories. But when, in
this great country, representing the world at large with its
cosmopolitan population, I saw people of such advanced races as the
English admiring and firmly believing in the Bible and its beautiful
stories, I began to realize the strong magnetic hold these ancient
dramas have on mankind.
The Five Books of Moses are divided in sections or sidrot, one for
each week’s reading. In school we learned or studied each sidrah,
beginning early in the winter and finishing on New Year. When the
stories come around once each year, they look new and interesting.
Even Prophets, which is mostly historical and authentic—although
not in order, and the dates do not fit in—still has a number of
beautiful stories. Of course, some are abhorrent; the narrator did not
spare the king, the rich, or the false prophet, and said what he saw.
Hirsh Yiddil was orthodox and believed in these stories as written, so
he sang along with us and felt the same way we did. He was strict,
keeping us disciplined and making us come to school clean, more or
less.
My father was a Talmudist himself, considered as a great man, a
great Talmudist and learned in all the religious discussions in the
Jewish books. Of course, he wished his first-born son to be a great
man, as all fathers do. When he came together with other fathers of
his type in the synagogue, they discussed ways to get the best teachers
for their sons, to speed up their learning. We never had a teacher
from our own town. It was always someone recommended by an
outsider from another town. As it is said in the Bible, no prophet
prophesies in his own village. Search and thou findest: Hirsh Yiddil
looked like a Lilliputian to my father after he heard of a teacher by
the name of Rabbi Shlomo. The family name I never knew, and
probably my father didn’t know it, either. The title “rabbi” was his
family’s, I suppose, but later in our little assembly in the school we
nicknamed him Prune Juice.

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