Page 60 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Three teachers

our system of education been better organized, and Reb Hirshely had
been my teacher in my earlier youth, I would probably have turned
out a better man.
An incident I will never forget occurred on the fasting day of
Tisha b’Av. We did not have class, so two of us pupils went to a fruit
garden outside the village and helped pick gooseberries for a Jewish
man. Of course, big juicy gooseberries and big ripe red currants were
tempting to the eye, so we stuffed ourselves when we thought
nobody was looking. The next day, Reb Hirshely, who could read our
faces and penetrate our brains, knew all about what we had done the
day before. Not fasting is not a minor offence in a Jewish
community, even for a young boy nearing bar mitzvah. Hirshely was
the judge, prosecutor and executioner all in one. We were
condemned, and immediately we were on our knees receiving a
proper whacking. We cried and called “Mama! Mama!” My sister
Rivka and her chum ran to the window and saw that shameful
procedure, after which the whole family knew about it. The pain of
the spanking wasn’t as great as the disgrace, but it did expiate our
offense, and we benefited from his strictness in the future.
My mother and sisters despised Reb Hirshely and wished for the
end of the term. The conditions were that he would teach three
months and receive meals in my father’s house and three months in
the house of Hirsh Leib, the father of one of my schoolmates. Since
we lived in two rooms, the rest of the family had to stick to the
kitchen while we studied. It was very hard for mother and the rest of
the children, huddling in that little room the whole day, not daring
even to look in the front room. The teacher was very independent, to
the point of insulting my mother if she came in the room for
something. In retaliation for the disrespect that my mother and
sisters showed him, he complained to my father about the bad food
my mother cooked; this, of course, was the greatest insult to a
woman.
Hirshely did not use snuff, but he smoked a liulkey, or long flexible
pipe, continuously. The floor around him was always strewn with the
burned tobacco which he cleaned out of his pipe. Good tobacco is
costly anywhere, even in Turkey, where they grow it, and Hirshely
could not afford it. Now, the leaves of the tobacco plant are the same
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