Page 92 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Failure in Ochota

In Pelcovizna there was not a thing to amuse a boy or girl except
slicing feathers for the females and fishing and swimming for the
males—or, in winter, making snowmen and skating on the ice. To be
respectable and religious I kept studying the Talmud in the bet
hamidrash, and to relieve the boredom of reading aloud day in and day
out the rabbis’ discussions of female hygiene and divorce, and laws
regulating the Holy Days, sacrifices, damages, and idolatry—none of
which subjects were practiced in the Diaspora or in the future
Palestine—the other boys and I used to go bathing and swimming
four or five times a day in the waters of the Vistula. Every swimming
period was an hour’s pleasure cheating our orthodox fathers of their
great hopes and desires of having learned sons in the family.
Our family then consisted of five children, one being married off
and the others left to eat, sleep, and do nothing. Domestic affairs did
not interest my father; mother had to carry the burden of managing
the household economy on a shoestring—even the business of
investigating and choosing a husband for my sister Chaia. A
matchmaker suggested a nice young man who was studying in the bet
hamidrash. Of course, my mother wanted a learned son-in-law of fine
family, so she went to the place in Warsaw where the young man’s
family lived and found out where he studied. She went there and
called for him from the door, since no woman would enter a bet
hamidrash where men only were studying. The young man was shy
and wondered who that woman could be. In the meantime, having
no manners, he began cleaning his nose with his finger. That was
enough for my mother, who came home and told the matchmaker to
buy the boy a handkerchief, not a kaleh or bride.
The marriage of my sister Chaia had impoverished my father, as
he had to give her a dowry and a wedding party for about a hundred
guests, ninety percent of them relatives who often waited over a year
to eat fried goose and dessert on such occasions. The goose money,
the trousseau, and the carriage fare all had to be borrowed at high
interest on weekly payments. After the fried goose we lived on old
bread, tea, and a snippet of meat from Sabbath to Sabbath. It was
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