Page 80 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Idling in Pelcovizna

After the Makova fiasco, I remained in the Pelcovizna bet
hamidrash, studying the Talmud by myself, but without much
enthusiasm. I was just reading the Book of Laws without any design
or method to accomplish any end. Reading the same books day in
and day out, despite the occasional spicy story, without any
discussion or elucidation or examination by one who has the
authority to grade or judge a student, is the most boring thing. My
mind was no longer occupied with those intricate questions and
opinions; I was mechanically performing a task to satisfy my father
and mother. The older boys and the few young married men living
with their in-laws without working spent most of their time telling
stories, playing chess, smoking, and going bathing in the Vistula three
times a day. I followed them and wasted my best time on swimming
and catching fish, looking for swallows’ nests, whittling Chanukah
dreidels, or making gragers for Purim.
My mother felt very grieved when my father told her that I would
not become a rabbi, that it was a waste of time. But I kept studying,
and going fishing often, which my mother considered a disgrace to
the family; no other boys were fishing in the Vistula except me and
my younger brothers. My father, to the contrary, liked fishing very
much, and gave me tips about bait and hooks, causing friction in the
family. He spent most of his time in the big city of Warsaw, but was,
as it is called in Latin, a rus in urbe, a rustic in the city. It pleased him
to see us swimming in the river, catching fish, planting in the fields,
or any work that is close to nature. My mother, on the other hand,
with her hopes of my becoming someday a learned man and perhaps
a rabbi, did not like to see me going barefoot when fishing from the
shore, or playing ball in the field, looking like a gentile boy. Only the
Gentiles went barefoot, and the rabbi and his friends would see me
when they went bathing in the river. That made my mother sigh and
say she had to bury her face in shame.
I was very restless and desired physical activity to use up my
energy. In my grandfather’s yard lived a Jewish coppersmith who
built a large copper boiler for the mikva or Jewish ritual bath. That
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